Within that perfect tableau beneath the earth, a galaxy of images and memories surged through her: the warm yet hardened faces of her parents. Her two baby sisters, naked and burbling as she helped wash them in a basin after a rainfall. Her mother, unable to rise from the disease that swept through her body like a desert twister and left her dead in a matter of days. The only time she saw father shed tears. Exploring the dunes just outside the village with a young man she fancied, an apprentice potter. A rare desert rose, discovered and picked by her youngest sister. The strange, faraway expression her father wore as he waved goodbye, riding with the rest of his company to his final raid.
Each burst of recollection struck home like a bullet. Despite this, Ituanhi managed to steady her breath and her hand. In the midst of the terror and the horror writhing in her guts, a new realization filled her with a sense of courage: a violent end beneath the dead lake would be better than a life spent in servitude.
Together, the unlikely duo stood poised, waiting for death.
Then, more new sounds emerged from the tunnel behind them. The crash of boots against stone. The wheeze of strained breath. A distant scream, human.
Ituanhi turned and saw an orange star, blazing and bobbing, filling the chamber with dull, frantic light. The harsh face of Darsaan went beneath it, along with three others. Her cousin’s face twisted and churned in a mixture of deep breathing, curses, and stark, livid fear. It all dripped away when he locked eyes with Ituanhi. Grim determination overrode everything, then.
One of Darsaan’s three men disappeared from the light in a flashing instant. Ituanhi blinked, wondering if he’d ever been there at all. And then the man’s wretched shriek of terror pierced all senses, and Ituanhi noticed the hunched, shadowy figures tailing behind them. In the orange light she saw the flash of scales and baleful slitted eyes. And teeth, so many teeth.
Darsaan’s torch revealed a second tunnel, veering away from the massive cavern of creeping death. A slim hand gripped Ituanhi’s and pulled her as Anemiki tore into the newly-lit pathway.
The hisses and titterings became a sonic wave of reptilian fury. Ituanhi turned and looked for just an instant into the great cavern they’d just left, and wished she hadn’t.
Once, as a child, she had seen a hive of quartz snakes; a great pile of slender lizards huddled together, surrounded by slime and piles of veined white eggs that gazed up at her like sightless eyes. She’d had nightmares about it long afterward. The torch-lit glimpse into that putrid chamber had been far, far worse than any of that.
They ran. Ituanhi found her feet and Anemiki led her in a full-tilt scramble, once again keeping one claw on the left-side of the wall. Up ahead, the cavern split in twain. The rotting, evil stench was thick and pervasive here. Dark, slim nightmare shapes spilled from the right side of the tunnel. They screeched and charged as the pair approached.
Anemiki veered left, releasing Ituanhi’s hand and swiping with his talons at the creatures as he passed. There was no room for Ituanhi to swing her sword, so she held the long edge before her as a shield, slim and sharp. Small, wriggling creatures threw themselves upon her, tiny claws pricking her thighs and forearm. With her free hand she withdrew a knife and plunged it into rank flesh. The hissing monsters recoiled for an instant, and the pair broke through. Against her better judgment, Ituanhi glanced back as the beasts surged upon the three men pursuing them. The match flames extinguished as the men jerked into action. Tittering noises swelled and men screamed, weapons blasting in panic. The noises of hurt and dying humans filled the caverns and a dread chill crawled up Ituanhi’s spine. She pushed herself faster, running without any regard for balance or stealth, keeping her left hand against the wall as she’d seen Anemiki do. Panicked footsteps and reptilian hissing pursued them. Again Ituanhi stumbled and again she rose sobbing, her fear and panic blocking the sting of her scratches and bites.
The path tilted upwards. White-gold light from the outside world teased her eyesight. A tiny cavern mouth opened up ahead, blue skies shining. The profile of Anemiki ran before her with slight limp, dark patches of blood smearing one leg. He reached the opening and crawled out of sight. She threw herself into it, scrambling between the dust and dirt and stones as light and color flooded her world. Again the taloned hand gripped hers and pulled. Ituanhi coughed and sputtered into the open air. The tunnel had spat them out on a slope, around the other side of the dead lake. Below them stood the eight stalkers and their guard. The riding lizards were restless and jumpy and their guardian held a rifle in his hands, looking anxious.
“The stalkers,” Ituanhi said, starting down the slope.
The warrior on guard gaped as she ran at him. Ituanhi forced herself not to look behind her at the scores of slithering beasts that were surely pouring from the bowels of dead lake. The lone rider flung himself into the saddle of one stalker and spurred the panicking creature into motion.
Darsaan, bloodied and battered, burst free from the cave and screamed “Wait! Wait, damn you!” Behind him, the serpentine, tittering creatures followed. Sunlight glinted from black scales. Triangular heads and slim, coiling tails followed behind them as they leaped down the slope, raptorial and ferocious. Ituanhi’s guts heaved at the memory of their hatchery, deep beneath the lake bed.
As they approached, the stalkers bolted in panic. Ituanhi tugged on the nearest set of reins.
“We ride these things?” Anemiki screeched.
“Yes,” Ituanhi said as she scrambled into the saddle. The stalker snapped its teeth, hissing and fidgeting. Anemiki stood frozen, staring at the lumbering beast. Realizing that he had probably never ridden another creature before in his life, Ituanhi reached out, shouting “Take my hand!” Anemiki did so, swinging his legs awkwardly into the saddle. “Hold on tight,” she said, whipping the reins. The stalker needed little encouragement to run as the black tide of claws and scales swept toward them.
From the corner of her eye, Ituanhi saw Darsaan fling himself upon the saddle of the final straggling mount, kicking out at a black creature who snapped at his boot. Their stalker’s lumbering steps became powerful strides and they cut a line between the stone pillars as the hordes of dead lake gave chase. A line of the awful reptiles teemed from a cavern to their right. Ituanhi struggled with the reins, veering away from the marauding devils. The land sloped higher and higher and Ituanhi grit her teeth as though the stalker’s efforts were her own. With a final stride, they were away. Waves of sand and dirt rolled before them as they left the dead lake behind. The screeches of the black lizards faded, unable to keep their pace. Darsaan tailed close behind as they raced across the open desert. Ituanhi cursed the creatures for failing to kill her cousin.
The Seraffi’s arms were wrapped tight around her belly, his face burrowed between her shoulder blades. “Anemiki, you know this area,” Ituanhi said. “Where can we go?” Before he could reply, gunfire rattled the air. Their stalker screamed and tumbled, flinging Ituanhi from the saddle. Bright lights scattered across her vision and pain burst through her shoulders and spine. She looked up just in time to watch Darsaan’s stalker plow toward her, Anemiki tumbling to the dirt and disappearing beneath its charging feet.
Darsaan brought his stalker to a halt before Ituanhi. He held a pistol in one hand. His thin mustache curled above his lips in a cold sneer. “Found you, bitch-cousin.”
Ituanhi staggered to her feet, drawing her father’s sword. “I’m not going back. Not with you. Not to uncle, nor the pig in his mountain keep.”
Darsaan snorted. “True enough. You’ve become a consort to demons. It will be a mercy to kill you now.” He tossed his spent gun to the dirt and dismounted, drawing his own sword. “It was terrible,” he said, words drenched in mock drama, “we found her dead; raped by winged demons and her corpse mauled by lizards. We were forced to fight our way out. I was the only survivor.”
He advanced, sword aloft. Ituanhi felt a chill which settled into the marrow of her bones. She had been trained in the martial arts by h
er father but she had never fought in wars or bloody campaigns. Darsaan had every advantage upon her. “Uncle will be furious if you come back without me,” she tried.
“Oh, certain people will stomp up and down their halls for a time, true. But what’s one lonely wench in this wide world really worth? Now come here and die, cousin.”
His blade arced downward, meeting hers. The clash of steel rang loud and clear in the open sands. Darsaan came at her again and each parried blow jarred Ituanhi’s arms to the bone. Any attacks of her own were turned aside almost playfully by her cousin.
Darsaan’s next attack opened a short gash in Ituanhi’s forearm. “First blood,” he said, grinning. Ituanhi would have cursed him had she any breath to spare, but the weight of everything—running away, finding Anemiki, crawling through the dark, escaping the black lizards and swinging swords beneath the desert sun, it all caught up to her. Sweat trickled from her forehead and her limbs trembled like jelly.
A failed thrust left her wide open. Darsaan’s hilt slammed against her sternum, knocking her windless to the ground. He stood above her, silhouetted by the sun. He touched the tip of his sword between the rise of her breasts and stooped down. As he opened his mouth to speak, a stone struck the back of his skull. Darsaan fell sideways as a rush of gray-white feathers and flashing talons sprung upon him. The Seraffi’s wings dangled twisted and useless behind him as he loosed an avian battle scream.
Despite the Seraffi’s surprise attack, Darsaan was a natural fighter. He grabbed hold of Anemiki’s wrist, twisted until the bird-man squawked, then wrestled him to the ground. He climbed on top of the squirming Seraffi and drew a knife. The blade sparked against the sunlight.
Ituanhi didn’t think. As Darsaan raised the knife for a killing blow, she was on her feet, sliding her father’s sword into his guts. Her cousin looked at the hilt protruding from his belly. His mouth dropped open. The dagger fell from his fingers and he slumped to the ground, twitching, bleeding, dying.
Silence descended, broken only by Anemiki’s pained chirping.
“Your long talon is sharp, Ituanhi-ki.”
Ituanhi said nothing. She stared at her hands. Rather, the blood upon them, exemplified by the scarlet tones of the falling sun. She trembled. “I’ve never killed before.”
“No? Not hunted before?”
“That’s different. Hunting is surviving.”
“If you didn’t kill him, would we survive?”
Ituanhi wrinkled her brow and grunted. She wasn’t in the mood for tough questions. “What about you? Are you hurt... oh!” She gasped. Anemiki’s white plumage lay limp in the dirt, caked in a pallet of browns, blacks and reds. The bandage that had secured his broken wing was long gone, and now both of his wings contorted in wrong directions. “Oh, Anemiki…”
He looked at his ruined wings. His liquid eyes betrayed little. “Won’t move,” he said. “Now a land-dancer, like Ituanhi-ki.”
Her heart deflated. “Anemiki... I’m so sorry.”
He sighed. “Sad, yes. But, you dance without wings, stalker-lizards without wings. Lake snakes, even. Perhaps Seraffi too.”
Anemiki acted strong, but Ituanhi knew the weight of being flightless and never rejoining his clan must fall upon his shoulders like the weight of the sun. Tears bit at the corners of her eyes and, embarrassed, she turned to blink them away. If she could give him anything, it wouldn’t be her pity.
“What of the lake snakes?” she asked, the thought suddenly occurring to her. Anemiki looked back across the wind-swept dunes. The sunken bowl of the dead lake was barely a shadow in the ground perhaps a mile away. He hissed.
“They like the darkness. Bind my wings, Ituanhi Longtalon, then we go.”
Ituanhi retrieved her sword from Darsaan’s corpse and searched him and the packs of the dead stalker. She found bandages and a short length of rope and provisions.
“ ‘Ituanhi Longtalon’?” she asked as she secured Anemiki’s wings to his body.
“Kiii! Name for a warrior!”
Ituanhi laughed.
They found Darsaan’s stalker nearby. The two companions, vagabonds from different races, for different reasons, saddled up and rode away as the last rays of the sun fell behind the hills, casting the spires of Dead Lake into darkness.
Thannhausefeer’s Guest
By Howie K. Bentley
The wine-dark sea swallowed the remains of the scattered wreck and retched up a lone figure too strong to die just yet. Breakers rolled in under the gray sunless sky and cast the man face down on the snowy shore. All about him lay bleached human skulls and assorted bones scattered alongside desolate rocks and boulders.
The man’s long black hair stuck to his bearded face. He wore a water-logged cape of giant silver wolf skin and drenched accoutrements fashioned from various other animal hides. His sword still rested in the scabbard slung over his back, and a dirk hung in its sheath at his hip. Echoes of the splintering ship and the screams of dying men staining the deck red with blood rang in his thrumming eardrums.
The man gasped for air—his chest rattling—breathing in the stinging salt air and spitting up acrid brine. He slowly raised himself on all fours and struggled to get to his feet. Drops of bright crimson pattered down onto the back of his left hand and the floor of the barren shore. He touched his moist warm forehead and looked at his hand. From the looks of the blood and the throbbing in his skull he had suffered a powerful blow to the head.
His vision was blurry, and he staggered and fell—tried to raise himself up again. He caught a flash out of the corner of his eye of a billowing white gown blowing in the wind. The woman leaned down, and he wrapped his arm around her. She braced him and helped him to his feet.
Rolling his head to one side, he glanced at her, his vision wavering in and out. Flaxen hair framed her pale-skinned classic beauty with high cheek bones and full red lips that seemed to have never smiled. Her icy blue eyes looked through him upon dim netherworld vistas far beyond the realm of man. She appeared familiar, but he didn’t know who she was. They had walked for only a moment when she languorously raised her right arm and pointed to the colossal citadel at the top of the hill in the distance.
“You must go there,” she said in the monotone of a black lotus dreamer. He nodded his head and did not argue. He knew he was bleeding from a head wound and winter had set in. It was best that he find shelter and a warm place to dry.
A massive splash just to the rear of the ship and walls of sea rose up and washed over the deck, drowning some crewmen and throwing others overboard. A crash like lightning followed by a thunderous roll. The galley’s bow shot up and twisted, and the ship exploded from bow to stern. Planks flew high into the air. The main mast collapsed, and the lines dangled high above the galley like striking serpents.
I was hanging onto the gunwale–shouting, he recalled. Where was I going?
Helped along by this single strange woman with her white gown blowing in the wind, the lone survivor of the shipwreck faded in and out of consciousness. Somehow, he traversed the distance from the shore and was nearing the titanic edifice at the top of the hill.
Trebuchet! One shot hits us and we’re sinking! he remembered shouting and clenching the gunwale.
The ship exploded. Men screamed as the mast crashed to the deck and crushed them. The tattered sail whipped in the wind. The deck ran red with the blood of the men who weren’t immediately cast into the sea.
Yet I live. Here I am, but where am I?
Lying at the top of the steps and leaning on his arm, the shipwreck survivor pounded his fist on the door that climbed high into the sky. His head fell to one side, and he rolled onto his back and mustered all of his strength to knock yet again on the towering door to the castle. The woman in white was nowhere to be seen. A loud slamming—and the door creaked open as the injured man’s head fell back. He slid into black oblivion as if it were a hot bath on a cold winter night.
* * *
“You took quite a blow to the he
ad and lost some blood, but the cut wasn’t as deep as we thought,” a woman’s voice said.
The man’s hand shot out and gripped her by the wrist.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “I just need to replace the poultice on your forehead. The salve has done wonders for you in these last two days.”
“Two… Two days?” The man mumbled, becoming aware of his surroundings, his blurred vision gradually clearing.
“My sword?! My cloak?!” he exclaimed.
“Your sword is in its scabbard in the corner, and your cloak and clothes are hanging over by the fire. They are surely dry by now.”
The fire crackled and gave off a pleasant aroma of well-seasoned cedar.
“Are you cold? I will get you another blanket.”
“No,” he mumbled, reaching for her. “Shipwreck. Trebuchet fired… Trebuchet fired on us.”
She smiled down at him as though he was a child. “There was a shipwreck, but I don’t know anything about a trebuchet. I think you are still getting over the fever dreams. You were restless most of last night. So, you came from the wrecked ship? Were there any other survivors?”
The man looked off into the distance, trying to peer back through the misty veils of time and recollect the events of recent days. “No. Only I survived the attack.”
The woman’s bell-like laughter rang throughout his sleeping chambers. “Maybe the gods of the sea attacked you. There was a terrible storm on the evening you showed up at my lord’s castle. My name is Lydiana.” She gently brushed his chest with her hand.
He could now see her clearly. Flaming red hair that rippled like waves in the sea fell to her waist. She had piercing blue eyes set back in a handsome face, and her bright blue velvet gown hugged her voluptuous feminine form.
The man’s brows furrowed as if he was trying to find a solution to an immediate problem.
“What is your name, man from the sea?” she asked in a childlike voice.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Well, how about I call you Manannan? You look to be a Tuath, and it is said that Manannan mac Lir is the sea god of the Tuath je Danaan.”
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