Asenthine and I quickly hid ourselves away and watched the procession. Fortunately, the company had moved through an exit from the back of the house and away from us. The vampyre coven carried the boy in a coffin and made for the depths of the forest.
“Xycanthia! Damn! This just gets worse and worse,” I growled.
“You mean the vampyre you slew? And you did say you cut off her head?” Asenthine replied.
“Aye, that damned head was what was in there doing all of this. The coven that just left was worshipping the head, and it just killed that boy. Or didn’t kill him. I have no doubt he will be back in a few days, though a little longer of tooth than when he left here. Well, I didn’t see D’vartha in there with the rest of those imbeciles, and we are going to have to find her.”
“Any ideas?”
I went over to Wrathmane and took from my saddlebag a mixture of powdered vervain, garlic, and an assortment of various other herbs mixed into a concoction I refer to as Vampyre’s Bane.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Into the house?” Asenthine asked.
I nodded. “We had better do it before her coven returns. I brought the bitch to heel before, and I’m going to do it again. It’s the only way. We have to find D’vartha. She is the only one who can overcome the spells of the Earthly Demonic.”
Silent though we thought we were, slipping through the door of the witch’s cottage, the severed head of the vampyress immediately acknowledged our presence. It was sitting upright in a small wooden chest—a handy carrying case—with the lid thrown back.
“Greetings, Slayer. It has been a long time…” the head on the table hissed.
Before she could say another word, I flung a handful of Vampyre’s Bane in her withered face and said, “Aye, bitch, I am back.”
The severed head of Xycanthia choked and sputtered. With one fist, I grabbed Xycanthia’s head by what was left of her once-crimson locks and lifted it from the box. Immediately, I poured most of the sack containing Vampyre’s Bane into the box and pushed Xycanthia’s head face-down into the mixture. A sibilant hiss like that of a den of vipers arose, and I lifted the thing and began my inquisition.
“Where is D’vartha, you ruddy-mouthed slut?”
“I’ll not tell you, you jackanape!” came a sepulchral croak from the decapitated head.
I shoved her withered face back down in the box. She cried out in anguish and pain until I lifted her free and held her at arm’s length.
“All right! What is it you wish to know?”
“Where is D’vartha?” I demanded.
“The witch has fled far. Far from her home and far from her mind,” she said.
“Do tell, Xycanthia,” I prompted her.
“No!” she ejected, like a petulant child.
I threw her into the box and flung a heaping dose of Vampyre’s Bane into her face.
“My sister is out of her mind,” she choked. “She has delved too far into The Book of Dead Runes.” After a brief coughing fit, she said, “Remove me from my coffin and wipe away these damnable herbs and I will tell you.”
Asenthine found a cloak left behind by one of Xycanthia’s followers and handed it to me. “She is stalling for time.”
“I know, my good man. They shall soon return,” I said as I upheld my end of the bargain and wiped the Vampyre’s Bane from Xycanthia’s head.
“Who are you, weirdling, who reeks of the vampyre, yet is not one of us?” said Xycanthia.
Ignoring Xycanthia, Asenthine drew his blade and said, “I’ll stand watch while you interrogate her.” He then stepped outside.
“Now, Xycanthia, my patience wears thin,” I said. “So I will ask you once more before I feed what is left of you to flames. If you want to continue on in this miserable, abhorrent state, where did D’vartha go?”
A sickening, demoniacal laugh came from the grey withered face, and her lips moved like writhing grave wyrms. “She has gone to the Plain of Gnathongules to traverse Time itself. She is possessed by the rune, Yr. As I have said, she looked too deeply into the well of knowledge that comprises The Book of Dead Runes.”
Xycanthia’s head let out a brittle cackle.
“She read too far in the back of the book without heeding the advice in the front of the book. She began tilting the runes. Inverting them. Distorting them. Perverting them!” She flicked her tongue at me and wagged it like a serpent, her cachinnations filling the room. “She dug me up, you know—what is left of me after you murdered me, Karnov!” she screeched.
“I gave her your head assuming she would burn it or destroy it by some sorcerous device—”
“No, Slayer! She had other ideas!” Xycanthia interjected. “She buried what was left of me in her garden of the Earthly Demonic to steep in her sorcery and ferment. Then she dug me up and carved these infernal runes into me to make me her oracle. She wanted me to be her guide to the Plain of Gnathongules. She was already drunk with power and losing her grip on sanity when the Yr rune took possession of her. She fled into the night like a wild animal to wade through the mists of Time itself. Her sole pleasure is to be the corruption of the ‘innocent and the holy men.’” These last words lingered as they came from Xycanthia’s mouth in disgust.
“Why is D’vartha concerned with the corruption of good men?” I asked.
“Unh!” Xycanthia groaned. “Why has woman always corrupted that which they touch down through the annals of myth, legendry, and history? Power. Power! Do you know nothing of the nature of women—or for that matter, men, Karnov?”
I knew Xycanthia was waxing philosophical to draw my attention away from her coven, soon to return, and I was becoming concerned with Asenthine’s prolonged absence when the tall man stuck his head through the door and said, “Ho, Karnov!”
He swung the door wide and displayed two bundles of severed heads in each fist.
“They are all accounted for. Twelve heads!” Asenthine said. He dropped the decapitated heads of Xycanthia’s former coven onto the floor.
“And the boy they buried?” I asked.
“I followed them. They didn’t have a chance to bury him. After I killed them all, I put him to the sword, as well. His head is there amongst the rest.”
Xycanthia’s mouth opened like that of a slack-jawed yokel, then closed into a tight frown.
“I’ll just take these out and burn them while you finish your conversation with Xycanthia,” Asenthine said.
“You were saying, Lady Xycanthia?” I chuckled. “Go right ahead. I have all night.”
She closed her eyes and played dead. Her lips were drawn tightly until I asked her if she would like more Vampyre’s Bane in the box with her. That was all it took.
The severed head of Xycanthia was indeed a busy oracle for some time.
Chapter II: The Tunnel of Sorrows
D’vartha had ostensibly run off to the Plain of Gnathongules to traverse time in a deadly game of corruption that would manage to open gates to loose forces wild and primeval, chaotic, and beyond good and evil: a potential future that had been here before man, in an alternate reality, but had not yet manifested itself. She was now possessed by a sort of succubus that was not a demon, but worse than a demon—the rune, Yr. Yr was the feminine infernal manifested on our plane of existence.
She had begun by delving into a malevolent tome titled The Book of Dead Runes. As D’vartha advanced with her runic experiments, she had come to resurrect her treacherous vampyre sister, Xycanthia, as an oracle to help her navigate the increasingly cryptic passages in the grimoire. Through her delvings in the dangerous practices of the tilted runes, she had descended into madness, finally becoming possessed by the Yr rune, and so had set out in the dark of night for the Plain of Gnathongules to change history and, in so doing, influence the future.
Surprisingly, Xycanthia confessed to us to her own nefandous deeds regarding her seizing the opportunity to restore herself to power. By projecting her black spirit out from her once rotting head—now pres
erved by D’vartha’s lingering sorceries—Xycanthia had bewitched those nearby, anyone lost or wandering deep in the woods. She promised to fulfill their greatest wishes in exchange for a single kiss. Once each had gotten close enough to see the horror they were conversing with, she would mesmerize them and deliver the kiss, sucking out their very life essence and replacing it with her own vampyric seed. Thus the revenants would return from death as her vampyre slaves.
The coven had rapidly multiplied once she had her initial members, for they would steal forth furtively amongst the living and transfer the Vampyre’s Kiss where they could. All of this Xycanthia explained to us. So it couldn’t have been too long since D’vartha had run off, possessed by the Yr rune. That much of Xycanthia’s story I chose to believe for now because I needed to find D’vartha, and it was all I had to go on.
When I put pressure on Xycanthia to restore my connection to the Cosmic Ice, she told me that D’vartha had been careful to instill in her oracular powers that extended to only limited areas of expertise. D’vartha, mistress of the black arts, had craftily blocked Xycanthia in certain arcane ways, the most important to me at the moment being a mastery of the Earthly Demonic. Xycanthia revealed that D’vartha had given her access to certain runes only, denying her too much power, which she might otherwise gain by being able to connect with the complete rune row, and therefore the very realms of creation.
With Xycanthia’s head in the chest serving as her coffin, we set out apace from D’vartha’s cottage. The witch had agreed reluctantly to guide us to the Plain of Gnathongules and use her oracular powers to navigate the great Menhirs of Time that stood there.
Asenthine and I slept in shifts, guarded as we were against any treachery on Xycanthia’s part. The threat of sleeping in a box with Vampyre’s Bane choking her certainly did not appeal to Xycanthia, and there were no problems from our wicked oracle—although we well knew that we might as well have been carrying a deadly viper inside that box.
* * *
After many days of travel without incident, we traversed a series of mountain passes until we came to the Tunnel of Sorrows. That is what Xycanthia called it.
I removed Xycanthia’s small casket from the panniers fastened to Wrathmane and held the oracle aloft by her hair.
“Brace yourselves, for there will be much remorse, Slayer,” Xycanthia’s dead grey face told me. “It is likely you will weep, for you will feel guilt for those things you have done wrong in your life, and a sense of failure and loss for what could have been. Even your friend—as highly evolved as he is—may not fare well. It is only for the strongest to bear. Be strong, for I care not to be stranded in the Tunnel of Sorrows. It will be unlikely, if not outright futile, to draw those up here that would take me away and exalt me. Only the weak fall prey to the Vampyre’s Kiss, and only the strong and the brave chance to go near the Tunnel of Sorrows.”
Xycanthia’s dead eyes followed me as I looked at Wrathmane and she said, “It is best to dismount from your beasts. Though impervious to the attacks of the tunnel, your mounts could absorb some of your fears and run off in the… ensuing chaos… if they are in contact with you once it begins.
“Continue straight ahead until you see the light coming through the backside of the cave from the Plain of Gnathongules. It isn’t far, but it will seem like endless torment. And it will be at its zenith when you see the light.”
I replaced Xycanthia’s head in her coffin and shut the lid, returning the oracle to my saddlebag. Asenthine dismounted Merklethenon and, taking him by the reins, the vampyre followed me as I entered the aperture into the tunnel. We needed no torches, for brilliant, blazing jewels of all kinds and colors lined the veins of strata spiraling through the walls of the tunnel and provided more than ample illumination. There was plenty of space for walking alongside our mounts, and I began to doubt Xycanthia’s words regarding the nature of the purportedly nefandous portal to the Plain of Gnathongules.
Anon, I heard a stringed instrument. It was the yucixle—the saddest of all plucked instruments. “Did you hear that?” I inquired of Asenthine.
“No. I heard nothing,” he said. However, he looked about, his countenance showing concern. I stole a furtive glance at him a second time and was sure he must have perceived something amiss as well.
We hadn’t gone but a few more paces when I heard the sound again, and then a female voice singing melancholically in the distance. The head of Xycanthia remained silent. I looked at Asenthine. “Surely you hear it?”
He shook his head. “No.”
As the yucixle played, the woman’s voice spoke. “Karnov, once phantom-clad rider of the Cosmic Ice. Thou, who hast been cast down, and rightfully so—you were given a great responsibility and you failed. Now your powers are gone.” She began to sing, and I was back in Nesodomntha’s cave, held fast by Esmadrunga’s one tentacle coiled tightly around my torso like a great python. Though I was the strongest I had ever been, no matter how hard I struck with my sword, I could not sever the grip of the abhorrence. My life force quickly ebbed from me. Esmadrunga’s eyes rolled back and her lips formed into a circular shape as she sucked in the force that was the Cosmic Ice, draining it from me and taking it into her own being as a sponge drinks water. As the last of the force that was the Cosmic Ice left my form, Esmadrunga’s tentacle released me, and I fell lifelessly to the floor.
Asenthine was shaking me as I awoke on the floor of the Tunnel of Sorrows. The mysterious woman’s voice trailed off melancholically. “Karnov, you failed. Karnov, you failed.” The cadence resolved with an echo.
Whoever she was, she had sung of my battle with the sorcerer Nesodomntha and how the Queen of the Earthly Demonic, Esmadrunga, had vanquished me; and I had gone back to relive it. I was there in that moment again as surely as I now stood in the Tunnel of Sorrows.
Asenthine took in a deep breath and swallowed hard. He seemed to be fighting back something, perhaps something more than concern for me. We nodded to each other, and I said, “Let’s continue.”
I hadn’t been on my feet for very long when I heard the strings of the yucixle again. The woman’s voice was humming, and she began singing. What she was singing was now happening to me as the battle with Nesodomntha and Esmadrunga had happened only moments agone.
“Karnov! Karnov!” The voice that was the sweetest sound I had ever heard beckoned me. It was Adaira. My poor Adaira! I heard her singing a threnody over the plucking of the yucixle’s strings. “My love has ridden far and away. To save another, but me he’ll not save. My love is far, far away. And green grass will grow over my grave.”
And there she stood before me with arms outstretched, but each time I moved to embrace her, she receded, falling back and back. Her voice reached me now only ghostlike over the sad arpeggiations of the yucixle’s strings. “How could you leave me, Karnov? Leave me and our child while you go to fight a war in a foreign land? Had you been home where you belonged, you could have stopped them. Stopped the vampyre lord from taking our lives.”
“I am a warrior,” I said. “I fight for those who cannot defend themselves, and I cast evil back into the pit that spawns it! Do not you remember telling me this was why you loved me the night before I rode off to lead Queen Leandra’s army against the minions of Suntha Guull?”
I reached for her, and the wind swept her raven locks about her fair countenance; she drew back farther into the mist. She slowly, sadly shook her head and said, “Oh, Karnov. Foolish Karnov.” The sword flashed in my hand of its own volition. Before me lay my dead wife and son. “Foolish Karnov. You carried the war home with you. Look what you’ve done. You have killed me and your only child.”
I dropped the bloody sword on the floor and, clutching my head in my hands, I screamed, “No! You had been turned. You both had been turned by the vampyre lord and his legions!” She held our son in her arms. She stroked his hair. He was covered in blood, and it stained the front of her alabaster gown. I saw where my sword had cut her through the neck. Her eyes r
olled back and her head tilted slightly. It rolled off her shoulders as she pitched sideways and vanished into the fog that rolled along the floor of the tunnel.
I don’t know how long I squatted there with my head buried in my arms, screaming, but I remember Asenthine shaking me and the echoes of my shouts subsiding over the plucking of the yucixle’s strings as they, too, faded to naught.
“Get hold of yourself, man,” Asenthine growled in his low baritone.
“You heard the yucixle’s strings, did you not?” I grabbed him by his shoulders and shook him. Asenthine nodded his head in agreement. “Did you hear her sing the dirge? Did you hear what she said to me?”
He shook his head morosely and looked off. In the throes of madness and my own grief, it did not dawn on me at the time that Asenthine must be hearing voices of his own.
“Come,” Asenthine said. “We must get through this. We have to reach the Plain of Gnathongules.” Then he shook violently and almost collapsed.
I caught him and steadied him. We made our way through the tunnel. I remembered Xycanthia’s warning that the closer we got to the exit, the worse were the lamentations heaped on one’s leadened soul by the Tunnel of Sorrows.
This time, instead of yucixle strings, I heard sour notes blown on a number of trumpets. I was a child again of not more than twelve winters. Thon Gjord towered over me, his thick brows furrowed. He clenched his right fist and shoved me with his left hand. It was then that he spied the rock in my hand.
“No rocks!” he said, then added, “We fight fair, rock-picker!”
“That is easy for him to say, standing there shading me like a tree,” I thought as the rock left my hand and missed my target. Dissonant notes came from the trumpets again as Thon Gjord sat on my chest and pounded my head into the ground with his meaty fists.
To the cacophony of those horrible horns, a chorus of voices from the children in the village swelled and mocked me as they stood by and watched this missing link beat me into the earth. “Karnov! Karnov! You lost every battle since the first one. Couldn’t even protect your wife and child when you got older.” The lack of rhythm to their song cradled the awful notes coming from the trumpets as they mocked and jeered me.
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