by Chris Turner
He woke to a small fanged creature gnawing at his boot. Hastily he shoed the animal away. Fortunately, it was only a baby volfi teething. He took a sharp breath. Where there was one volfi there would be another. He stepped out the doorway to behold mist shrouding the valley. A quiet watchfulness permeated the vale. He resumed his trek through the woods and the vine-tangled copses, with the full reality of his predicament. Though he was thankful not to have not been mauled by predators during the night.
* * *
For days Risgan travelled, always north and somewhat west, drifting like a vagabond through the forests. His luck prevailed and he hunted rabbits, remained free from assaults by gibbeths and was able to refresh his canteen and bathe himself in pools of clear water. Many times he passed ruins and temples and broken fanes—sites which brought a flutter of desire to his chest. He resisted the urge to explore these ruins—for his heart drew him inexorably in—but conflicted with the aim to put as many leagues as he could between himself and the Pontific’s wrath. Eating berries and nuts, he foraged in the bush and hunted for small game with his knowledge of trapping. He roasted squirrels and chipmunks over a small fire when he dared the light. A wedge of stone between plinths of a mouldered altar often sufficed for a bed. He avoided hunters’ trails and took the off-the-beaten ways—usually small animal paths that skirted the thinned copses and fields of the few woodsmen and landowners who risked the territory.
On the ninth day of his pilgrimage he could plod no longer. He dropped in exhaustion, sprawled on a wide, weed-eaten stone terrace in front of what may have been an expansive castle. He looked up in bleak wonder. Obviously the castle was some kind of fort or outpost, but now abandoned. A silence hung over the grounds. Risgan peered with mistrust at the looming mass. Was it a monastery? His eyes refused to believe what they saw. The structure was like no other he’d seen, constructed in a middle gothic period, thrust in the middle of nowhere, and forged by an unknown hand, perhaps a robber baron of the Romaric era, or some fantastically rich and eccentric viscount. There was evidence of other crumbling outbuildings, which seemed scattered about the outlying forest. Possibly the area had been a thriving community at one time, but the passing of countless years had left the stone decayed and rank. Onion domes surmounted the castle’s roof, corniced on all sides with lye-stone. Phantom-brick formed the sides; a few long glazed windows of the thickest quality glared back like eyes. The stained glass had faded with the passing of ages and too much sunlight. Most peculiar of all, Risgan noted a giant thorn tree hovering at the rear, thick and ageless, draped with unsettling litch-vine and coarse, three-inch prickles. The mass whose trunks split and towered to both sides, plunged the mansion into a cool draft of early evening shadow.
Risgan exhaled. He took steps toward the building, as if half drawn. Up the walkway he crept; withe-weed stuck gaudily through the crooked flags. His feet led him on through the ruined court and up to the oaken portal, bleached now and faded with age.
Risgan found the front door surprisingly accessible. Inside, he was equally perplexed. A large open chamber stank of must and mildew and lay sunk in perpetual gloom. He looked up to see a series of arches supported on high marble with columns to his right. Balustraded galleries straddled the highest landings and higher still, the ochre dimness showed a basilica sunk into a murk of ancient mourning. A warren of strange rooms lay off to the side and seemed graced of recent activity. Here, a door of carved wood, there a stairway leading to some hallway or some unknown chamber. His eyes gravitated toward an eerie, green-musted mirror fitted above dilapidated wainscoting and wood trim. At the farthest end, another thorn tree had intruded its bulk upon the stone and its thick trunk now snaked through a back window in the sun-dusted air like some eerie scavenger, spawning boughs through the stained glass like a great octopus. A curious waist-high statue with some kind of lantern head stood conspicuously aside the trunk like some guardian. Its metal body and wooden limbs were almost lifelike and had Risgan’s brows rising in bafflement.
His reconnaissance revealed little more. The side chambers looked more like storage places, or workrooms. He felt an odd displacement in this setting—a chilling feeling, as if he were a figure in a dream, which he made efforts to shrug off. There seemed living things about that he could not put his finger on. No sound intruded on the eerie stillness, yet... Risgan was tempted to find another residence of layover. He flashed on the memory of the flesh-tearing gibbeths that roamed the forest and discarded the idea.
In a dusty corner he lay down, not far from the thorn tree and fell asleep aside its weird, lifelike statue.
Foul dreams plagued him and he awoke with a sharp gasp. The hour was sometime in the early morning for a thin, pale light filtered down from the dust-covered casements.
The statue stood at his side in all its macabre glory. He leaped to his feet, brows arched in surprise, for the mansion had taken on a new character in the dull, opaque glow straining from the high windows. A door opposite the forbidding tree seemed ajar, backlit by some eldritch glimmer.
He hastened to investigate. Slipping past the iron-bound door, he discovered a modest chamber of sorts—lit with miniature oil lamps burning on a long knotted table. Papers and scrolls sprawled across its top and were covered with peculiar diagrams and symbols. The lamps cast a bronze glow over the area. Risgan saw bizarre collections of art ranging about the place, or perhaps they were cryptic inventions, lurking in the shadows. There, a massive clock, outlandish and disturbing, resting on a wooden pedestal whose hands ticked backward. And here, a large beaker of green liquid bubbled in froth nearby, in whose depths floated a crystal lattice enclosing a submerged frog.
Risgan drew back in unease. His eyes swam in confusion, settling finally upon another fantastic mirror of jet and stone. It reflected a black and white image, of himself, where it should be colour. He screwed up his face in marvel. A strange tube of eerie green paste caught his attention, in which was suspended an unfathomable maze of crystals, and another possible amphibian trapped within which seemed even eerier than the last.
Over to the left by the stairwell Risgan caught a glimpse of something that he had never seen before. A dozen short standing figures crafted of the oddest assortment—cobbled together with shields, wood, horn, glass, hemp and other odd bits of material. In the back of his mind stuck the question—what diseased mind could have conjured up these small soldiers—in fact, one of the figures he thought to have spied earlier in the main hall—the strange statue beside the tree seemed unusually human. Farther back—gears, pulleys, and another complex invention centered about what looked like a type of ‘engine’.
Risgan pulled at his chin. A workshop of extraordinary possibilities! All the curiosities seemed to jump out at him, cobbled together in haphazard format, and demanding elaborate thought and workmanship. Who could have built them—if inventions they were?
Risgan whipped out his sack and began stuffing it with what curios and gizmos he perceived of value. At last his gaze rested on an old dust-ridden tome, which he popped open to read a well-read page:
Phantoms and Phenomena of the Old World—
Gods and Demons:
Douran: cryptic river god and goddess, known for her revenge and dealing with connivers and traitors.
Bonehammer: ruthless favourite of blacksmiths.
Felsifar: gnomic demiurge, deity of inventions, purported to roam the Fadnar forest.
Glorifax: cherubic creature of goodness, loyalty and virtue, accepting all prayers of all creatures.
Besimeeth: demonic entity of the 1st order, class unknown, a force to be reckoned with.
Risgan halted. The rest was hastily scrubbed out and the bottom page was torn. More was scrawled:
Beasts, legendary and contemporary:
Ghargul: ghoul-man, short stocky flesh-eater and grave-haunter.
Gibbeth: bear, vole, voracious koot.
Isk: flying dactapod, four-winged taloned condor, prized for its razor-hooked beak, used on t
he end of warriors’ poleaxes.
Volfi: tree-weasel, flesh-eater, predator.
Orkvor: Spider, caterpillar, moth, dactylillion.
Mastakon: toothless were-bat known to demonize the steppes.
...
Risgan snapped the book shut; sweat beaded his brow.
With a grave sigh he resumed his hunting, snatching an object here or contemplating another there to add to his collection. One of the items was an apprentice’s spellbook which would likely command a large price in the proper markets, perhaps a specialty lore shop. He saw much that was strange and often confusing. A weasel in a glass ball on a garish shelf; a rat squeezed in a lengthy tube, long dead; a magical carousel of trees, roots dangling in the sky, treetops pinned in the ground. None of these items Risgan added to his collection.
He felt a chill grip his back, the tendrils of misgivings. Were eyes watching him? How long could he stay here before getting discovered? He thought to make a quick retreat, if only to avoid a confrontation with whatever macabre owner resided, and who likely was not far away. In the warmer light of the greater hall he spent more time, perhaps more than he should have, considering the amount of plundering and tinkering on his mind. Minutes passed and he turned, bathed in a sweat. He was just in the middle of snatching a peculiar round gem, the size of a warrior’s fist, when a hidden trapdoor suddenly jerked open from the wall and out jumped a peculiar horrid-looking midget. The figure harboured a brownish face and a ridiculous flower-fan of hair, yellow and orange. The creature, if a she it was, was no more than three feet high and wore tight trim stockings and a dowdy caftan of maroon and jade. Her braids were sewn tightly to her skull which ran with a bald strip up the middle. In brief, the figure gave Risgan a scare. At her belt poked several magical items, including a skull amulet, five leather rings and cryptic beads and other odd curios which caused Risgan reflection.
“Who are you?” the figure demanded.
“I might ask the same of you.”
“I asked you first. Answer quickly.”
“I am nobody—Risgan, a Relic Hunter, doing a bit of housecleaning upon this dreary manor. It is chock full of clutter. Look, might you take up a sack, fair queen, and join my cause? There is also much dirt to clean.” He offered the woman a fresh bag, tempting her with an amiable grin.
The pleasantry did not tickle the newcomer’s funny bone. “So—you mock me now, do you?” the figure cried. “I am Afrid—an Autonomicist. Does my studio look like a simple soup kitchen for vagrants as yourself to wander about? Agreed, it is in need of dusting, but that is not cause for it be ransacked.”
Risgan, more than twice the midget’s height, paused in doubt, peering down at her haughtily. “Now that you mention it—” He had a sudden feeling that small people could deliver nasty hexes, so he thought to tread cautiously.
“Arousing from my morning meditations,” she snapped, “I came below to pass glad eyes over my creations—and here I catch you breaking into my domain and despoiling my creations. Begone, you filchpurse!”
“This is simply not the case,” responded Risgan. “I am nothing more than a historian, a student of archaeology. I keep my sack always at my side.”
“Bah, a web of lies.” She jumped over and stole a quick look at the size and quality of Risgan’s sack.
Risgan drew back in haste. “I sense that I have interrupted your morning meditation and will conciliate by beating a casual retreat. At that, I bid you good day!”
“Not so fast!” came the figure’s hostile cry. “I see that I will have to impart stricter terms. Pass me that stuffed sack of yours—for my perusal.”
“’Tis just a few odds and ends,” Risgan explained in a hurried voice. “I keep personal objects in this sack for nostalgic purposes only.”
Afrid clapped hands with delight. “So then, gifts!—you have brought gifts for good, kind Afrid!”
Risgan cleared his throat. “Well, I wouldn’t say that.” His hand wavered in slight indecision. “If you would accept this small token of my good will, we shall be done with this business and I will be on my way.” He offered Afrid a grey pebble carved in the shape of a sentimental piece a hesitant lover might give his beloved.
Afrid wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I am distrustful of such jewellery given by strangers. This piece seems far too plain for my tastes. I would rather take my chances with the objects in that large sack of yours.”
“I must object,” said Risgan. Hopping back to a safer area, he played coy but the midget leaped the last few feet and laid her mitts in Risgan’s stash before he could counter.
“Oh, ho, my treasures!” she cried. Her milky grin turned to a scowl. “Wantonly pillaged by a liar! My ploximeter and my double base-newtar!”
Risgan explained, “I was trying to figure out what those eyesores’ functions were. Their outer repulsiveness gave such a look of danger I covered them with this sack.”
“Don’t talk clever to me, rogue! Look here, my spell book too—‘Causations and Maginations’! A theft beyond imagination. My workbook ranks in the highest of orders.”
“No doubt. But ’tis a mere instinctual tendency of mine,” intoned Risgan. “When I see an object that interests me, I tuck it in my sack.” He gave a whimsical chuckle.
The midget flung out an outraged finger. Risgan’s chortling immediately subsided. A sudden hand or wind had constricted his throat.
“How long have you been here?” she demanded.
“An hour only,” he rasped, clutching at his throat, wondering from where Afrid’s spell had come.
“Not true!” came a mechanical voice that echoed from the dimness.
Risgan whirled about. A living, walking belly-high mannequin composed of diverse materials jerked to life, the same he had been studying earlier in the form of the statue with the lampshade head.
The creature stepped out of the shadows by the thorn tree and approached on stiff legs. Two broken shields served as a torso, a lantern for a head and a mop for hair. Polished planks composed arms, brass rings served as fingers and wooden clogs as feet. An eerie, glowing girdle was wrapped around the creature’s midsection, possibly some pulsating disc or ring. But of this Risgan could not be sure.
“The intruder has been here all night and all morning,” the figure reported.
Afrid nodded, gave a low mutter and turned to Risgan: “Hammish is a faithful servant of mine—an automaton; she only tells truths. A crude prototype fashioned of inanimate material from my initial essays into Mylixean magic. Since then, I currently require live subjects for my experiments. You, a thief, shall be amongst the first picks.”
Risgan stared aghast, his blood running cold.
Afrid held up a hand. Risgan attempted to contextualize Hammish’s claim. “Time wears thin, vagrant, and tall tales wear on the soul.”
Thinking to flee, Risgan turned sharply for the door. But Afrid made a sudden gesture and a wind whooshed through the chamber. Thorn branches writhed to life and came fanning down from the nearby misshapen tree and formed a tight fence around him. They bent over to imprison him like an impotent insect in a matchbox.
Risgan choked out a curse. He crouched in his new cage, looking out from close-knit pales like a cornered animal.
Afrid frowned in thought. “I must meditate on this. An appropriate punishment comes to mind, but I must deliberate upon such acts. Hammish! Guard the trespasser well. The depth of this intruder’s dissembling is not be underestimated. I shall be gone—for no more than an hour.”
Risgan objected to the program but the sorceress disappeared into the trap door. For two hours Risgan roved about his cage and desperately seeking a means of escape, but to no avail. The vigilant Hammish slapped back at his fingers when he gripped the bars to shake them. The thorn branches were of such resilience as to be crafted of potent magic and Risgan uttered a crude snort of dismay. His small blade could not penetrate the bark.
Afrid presently returned with eyes glazed in rapture. Her meditations had
passed well it seemed. She pressed her hands behind her back in scholarly poise and made a profound declaration: “Good news, thief, I have arrived at a significant decision. You shall participate in the honour of being my premier guest at Thornkeep.”
“That’s a kind invitation,” said Risgan. “Then perhaps, you might loose me from this abominable cage. I feel a call of nature coming on.”
“By all means.” Afrid wiggled her small digit and the tree branches suddenly unfurled themselves. Risgan, blinking in amazement, nodded with approval and within moments he stretched to his full height. In the time that it took him to attempt a swift-footed leap for the door, Afrid assigned him a stasis. Feet pinned to the floor, he groaned in dismay, courtesy of another sinister flourish.
The sorceress chuckled at Risgan’s consternation. He could not move his legs. They seemed rooted to the planks like old stumps. “What’s all this?” he cried, in a distraught tone.
“A necessary countermeasure against your frivolity. Treat it as an incentive for you to obey my wishes.”
“I shall not.”
“Magic Avatar. Facelessness!”
Risgan suddenly put hands to a face with no mouth and was snuffling air through his nose.
Afrid held a hand to her ear. “What’s that? Cat got a thief’s tongue?” She cackled. After a time she reversed the spell and Risgan was left with tongue and lips to speak.
“Hold up! That was completely uncalled for!” he wheezed. “I was about to compliment you on your spell-weaving and you go and rudely—”
