The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller
Page 12
A creeping horror worked its way into Gedreos’s heart. Despite his inability to recall his old name, he knew what he was. Among those things was an Antiquarian, a travelling expert sworn to protect the people and lands of the Phoenix Kingdom from deadly Relics. He had failed in his duty: his attempt to solve the problem had only made things worse.
I have to deactivate this manse, he told his Voice. I won’t allow those people to die, or let that Working finish its task.
How do I get back?
Do I have other options?
As Gedreos jogged past the shattered head lying on the path next to the marble statue, he glanced at its features. They were untouched by the elements, for there was no weather here. Despite the rest of the statue being a true-to-life reproduction of a figure in a voluminous robe, the face was instead carved as a detailed mask, with the mouth closed and only the stylized suggestions of nostrils. At the edges of the mask, the sculptor had carved an intricate series of interlinked gears disappearing deeper into the Ancient’s head.
This was its actual face, then, Gedreos marvelled. The bodies of the Dead truly were shells. Imagine the arts needed to build a moving machine capable of a living body’s functions!
Maybe someday I’ll make a study of the Ancients and their—
Gedreos cut himself off as, rounding the statue’s head, he nearly ran into one of the fire-shaped white lights. The flame had been hidden so entirely behind the fallen head that even his Voice hadn’t been able to detect it.
Falling back a step, Gedreos turned to go farther right along the path, but the flame blurred with motion and repositioned itself directly in his way. Then it collapsed inward, resolving into a pure white, mostly featureless silhouette of a man clad in pauldrons, wearing forearm armour and wielding a seven-foot-long spear with a leaf-shaped blade at its tip.
“Ilatavasaos vas fashest, gon reshist.” As the apparition spoke, the suggestion of a mouth in the lower half of its radiant white head-region moved, though the motions weren’t quite in synchronization with its words. The light-soldier’s voice had a fuzzy quality to it, as someone might sound if a thick pad of wool were wrapped around their face. Gedreos noticed a few parts of its body wavering and flickering: an ankle; then a finger; then a section of torso.
How do I say, ‘the Dead Lord?’ Gedreos thought back hurriedly.
“Golemis.”
“Suv Golemish rusu?” The silhouette’s muffled voice had the distinct upturned tone of a question at the end of it, but it was impossible to see a facial expression amid the glowing expanse of its head. It raised its spear’s tip to hover less than a foot away from Gedreos’s chest.
<‘Which of the Dead?’>
How am I supposed to know? Pick me a name, a real one if you have it!
“Golemis Ilas Otalines!”
“Lesatavasaos gedrei val Golemis—” and here the spectre’s face-region distorted for a second, during which time instead of speech it let out an odd series of hissing and popping noises like rain landing in a hot oiled skillet, “... saftas vas renfesest.”
Gedreos almost missed the instruction, so fluidly did it follow the translation… but the Voice supplied impulses to accompany its suggestions. Gedreos stumbled to his left just in time to avoid a downward strike of the apparition’s spear, then stepped backward a split second before the translucent soldier reversed the blow, slicing upward with the spear-tip.
What now? Gedreos backpedalled away from the steadily advancing spectre. I’m unarmed, the Serpent’s Tongue is too slow, and my other Relics are ill-suited to combat.
Gedreos didn’t waste time questioning, following the impulses as they arrived. Crouching below a sweep aimed at his chest, he launched himself at his attacker. Although he braced himself for an impact, his Voice’s choice of words proved accurate. Entering the space the light-automaton occupied, Gedreos passed straight through it. The soldier’s body warped around him with a sensation which reminded him somewhat of exiting a building’s doorway into a gentle rain or mist.
How do I kill it? Gedreos demanded, tucking into a roll and coming to his feet facing the light-creature.
Gedreos backpedalled again, narrowly avoiding several jabs of the spear as the spectre lunged forward. In the same instant in which the silhouetted soldier moved, several large portions of its body warped and flickered. As it lashed out with a final broad sweep of its weapon, the automaton snapped backward in time, vanishing and reappearing farther away from him in exactly the same pose. Only thanks to this malfunction did the weapon fail to reach Gedreos’s throat.
Gedreos continued to back up as swiftly as he could, sweat breaking out on his arms and face. That was too close! No warning about the last strike?
About to retort with something scathing, Gedreos was distracted by his heel striking something solid: a six-foot rock wall.
The radiant soldier advanced, its body warping and flickering. He jerked to the right as it swung the blade down, then tried to duck when it reversed the strike… but instead of swinging upward like last time, the apparition shifted its grip on the spear’s haft and swung it wide and low, dragging the leaf-shaped blade straight across his stomach. Gedreos’s heart leapt into his throat with a sickening thrill of terror as his instincts told him his guts were about to spill out onto the pavement.
A second later, he realized nothing had happened to him: in a freak accident of fortune, the spear-tip itself had warped and dissipated as the automaton had struck.
Crunch.
The bottom half of a huge, metal-studded club landed in front of Gedreos as though from nowhere, smashing the light-automaton into twin showers of glass-like white shards which flew up and out to either side. The splintered light rained down, then faded from existence.
Gedreos’s gaze followed the weapon, and he met the eyes of the giantess Raine who was leaning over the wall to glare down at him.
“Oh.” Gedreos tried not to think about how easily she could have crushed him instead, if she chose. “Hi.”
“Greetings to thee as well, O easily frightened one,” Raine responded, hefting the club with one hand and propping it against her right shoulder. “Thou art fortunate indeed that Aquamarine and I reachèd our decision swiftly.”
“You can relax, young human,” Aquamarine said in their flutes-and-violins voice, peeking around the side of the wall segment. “We shall not harm you unless you force us to.”
“How reassuring.”
“We should return to the building,” suggested Aquamarine. “The creatures of light move after the fashion of patrols. This place will not be safe for long.”
“Wait,” Gedreos said. “There’s a way out of this Place Aside. I can get you back to the Liberated World, if you protect me.”
“Who speaketh? The man, or the Fae?” asked Raine suspiciously.
“The man,” Aquamarine murmured, staring at and through Gedreos. “Though there is something else to him, something I cannot yet place.”
“The Fae I would fear; the man, not at all. Let him show us this way back! He may yet try some trickery, yet he knoweth it is his death should he fail… and if I know the ways of a coward’s heart, he shall be too afraid to risk his skin. Lead on, human!”
Gedreos glared at Raine for a second, her denigrations of his character almost spurring him to challenge her. Deciding the better of it, he turned away and spent another moment getting his bearings. “It’ll be a minute’s walk this way. The gate might be closed beyond my ability to open it, but if not, I intend to get us all out of here. I could use some backup in the real world, especially if it comes to blows with the Fae.”
He started down the main path again at a quick pace. Behind him, Raine’s footfalls sounded once for every four steps he or Aquamarine took. To his surprise, despite a slight clinking noise from her sack, Raine’s steps were no heavier than his own. He supposed he should get used to such contradictions if he were going to work with fiends.
Voice. I can’t keep calling them ‘fiends’ or ‘non-humans’ if I’m going to look to them for protection. What are they?
That agrees with everything you’ve told me of the Ancients. All the things they fashioned were created to serve specific purposes, Gedreos observed. Seers to provide the Fae with information of some kind, and just a number for the servants of the Dead. The names say as much about the namers as about the named.
The spot Gedreos was looking for was on the other side of a rock sculpture even taller than Raine. The installment was a natural granite outcropping which had been shaped into a twelve-foot half sphere and carved with runes Gedreos recognized as yet more Old Ancient script.
Is this thing a Lens? Gedreos asked his Voice. That’s a lot of writing.
“Hold,” Raine instructed, coming to an abrupt halt. “I sense a threat past yonder stone. Mine bones do speak of cold fire, like unto the creature of white flame I slew.”
“How close must you get, Gedreos, to determine the truth of this escape?”
“Not sure yet— give me a moment and I’ll find out,” Gedreos said, withdrawing the bronze hoop of the Lock and Key from its hidden pocket in his cloak. Holding the device in his right hand and pinning it to his palm with one thumb, he extended his arm and closed his eyes. Feeling his connection to the Relic reignite, Gedreos chanted:
“Hastas sansii rin khas isvist; hastas sansii isvist: siskas nen rakhas eshest.”
“What is he saying?” Raine demanded of Aquamarine as Gedreos proceeded with a second repetition of the phrase.
Aquamarine’s large blue eyes remained fixed on Gedreos in what could have been wonderment as they left off mouthing the words alongside him. “He says: ‘Show the safe way through the gauntlet; show the safe way: be key and lock.’ Friend Raine, I am humbled: the young human’s pronunciation of Old Ancient is better even than mine.”
“More Fae trickery from his absent master?”
“No. This is a Relic fashioned by one of the Dead, and he is commanding it in a dialect used by the Dead Lords and their servants. Young Gedreos has studied much lore in his short cycles.”
Gedreos opened his eyes, then blinked several times, having difficulties focusing his vision. “We’re… we’re almost close enough to tell if the way opens in both directions. If it does, I might be able to use this Relic— the Lock and Key— to get us through to the real world.”
“And what is to prevent thee from departing alone, and leaving us to a slow death in this empty place?” Raine put in, a challenge evident in her tone.
“Nothing, if you aren’t willing to accept some risk,” Gedreos retorted, his brown eyes meeting her amber gaze. “If I pay the cost of using the Relic, I get to choose who passes. If you let me draw on your strength, I can’t pass through unless everyone else linked to the device also does.”
“What does drawing on our strength entail, Gedreos?” asked Aquamarine, their ear-fins flaring and then flattening against their head as they spoke.
“I estimate,” Gedreos replied, his eyes turning ice-grey as he let his Voice speak, “That to open the gate alone, then hold it long enough for three people to pass through, would require an amount of energy whose loss would cost me five to six cycles of my life. This constitutes an approximate tenth of a human’s— that is, of my people’s usual lifespan.”
His eyes returned to their usual brown colour. “If I drew on all three of us, it would cost each of us a third of that amount: less than a twentieth of our lives.”
“Thou ask’st me to bind myself to an Ancient’s toy and give up my life’s essence?” roared Raine. “Charlatan! How foul the man-beast’s trickery!”
“Keep your voice down, Gigant, if you don’t want the light-automata to find us,” Gedreos said evenly. “And I’m asking nothing: I’m telling you the cost to mistrust my word that I’ll take us all out of here.”
“I will agree to be bound to the Invention until we are free of this place,” Aquamarine said, a somber tone in the strings and woodwinds beneath their voice.
Raine’s eyes seemed about to burst from their sockets. “Thou wouldst trust the human with thine life’s force?”
It was Aquamarine’s turn to meet the Gigant’s incredulous stare. “I have no desire to risk being left behind here. And in truth, it would pain me to see such a young one give up so many of his few remaining cycles of the seasons. Have we not the gifts of our peoples to aid us in withstanding the loss? Little Gedreos has nothing, yet he is willing to risk himself to aid us.”
“You make me sound so heroic,” Gedreos muttered, “But the simple fact is, it costs me less to take three through with your help than to open the way for myself alone. I heard what you said in there, and I agree: this place is an empty reflection, a dead end. I’ve got no wish to die of hunger— or thirst, more likely— in an Ancient’s prison-world.”
Raine’s glower turned slowly to a mirthless smile. “Ah. I suspected thy supposed b
ravery a trick, given the weakness of thy people’s craven hearts. Thou mak’st far more sense speaking a coward’s thoughts so. Perhaps I will humour thee, then, for I fear not thy trickery.”
“I am pleased to hear it, friend Raine.” Aquamarine’s voice held just a little too much patience. “Let us make haste, before the patrols return this way.”
“Yes. No more words.” Raine shifted her metal-studded club into a two-handed grip and stepped over Gedreos, narrowly avoiding treading on him as she took the lead.
“Indeed,” Gedreos muttered. “No more words.”
Chapter 7
In the dark room deep within the manse, the book’s pages fluttered restlessly in the breeze. Drawn in by the ancient tome and its captivating story, the wind had become confined to the crystal case. That wind, the first visitor to this place in so many decades, could now only flit back and forth across the book’s surface like a trapped moth. The book demanded to have its pages turned, and to gainsay its will was more than any mere gust of air could do.
Like many well-written books, this one had some chapters which served to establish the character of the beings it was written about. The breeze lingered, enthralled, over a set of pages in the first third of the book, which told of life under the rule of the Dead and the Fae. This was a short story told from the perspective of a servant of the Dead Lord Enviselas: a servitor whose own people named him “Grand Chief” and “Beholden” and eventually “monster.”
This is the story the captured wind read:
The three thousand, eight-hundred and second cycle of the Fae Queen’s rule. The fortress-city of Enviselas’s Hold
B’kosk’s official title was Grand Chief. Grand Chief B’kosk, Protector of Enviselas’s Hold.
Quietly, though, behind closed doors, the people of his fortified capital city called him B’kosk the Beholden. Even more quietly, the children, huddled excitedly in their circles of stone in the woods which they believed kept them from prying ears, whispered another epithet: Thrall B’kosk, slave of the Dead Lord.