Karnov

by Matthew Knight

  With a smile she mocked us as her ribbed leathern wings twitched and fluttered. Abnon was dead, but I had it in my mind to avenge him. Asenthine seemed to reckon the same, but before we could move forward, another of the winged devil-women alighted on Asenthine’s back with a loud thump and dug her claws into him. The succubus screamed her awful cry and started to take to the skies with the vampyre, but before she had lifted him far from his saddle, he grabbed her by her long black tresses and flung her over his head. The abomination hit the ground and came back up, giant bat-like wings beating the air in anger.

  I carried the attack to the feasting demoness who sat on the dead body of the archer, eating his heart. I slashed at the succubus, a feint, then with a two-handed thrust I drove my broadsword into a veiny wing. I wrenched my glaive free and felt the wind from her razor-sharp talon as she barely missed digging into my throat. I hacked into her other wing. She let out a cry and leapt on me, knocking me to the ground. Her raptor-like talons again sought my throat, but I managed to bring my arms over her upper arms and under. I took a deep breath and flung my arms wide. She was fast, and I was going to have to finish this quickly, else I was a dead man. Like a flash of levin, my hand shot to the dagger at my baldric and drove upwards into her sternum, me betting everything that her heart—if she had one—occupied the same space as mine. I felt the succubus go limp and I got my boot between us and kicked her from me. And still she attacked, albeit much slower, slow enough that before she could throw up any sort of defense, I had hacked into her neck with one blow and sent her head spinning from her body like a top. The demoness’ body folded its crippled wings, then toppled to the ground.

  I turned to see Asenthine still engaged in battle with his assailant. From behind the demoness, the abbot pelted her with rocks and what looked like rotten fruit, though where he found it, I have no idea. Asenthine still fought the succubus from horseback, his rapier locked in a deadly dance with the fangs and talons of the creature while he turned his mount this way and that. Both vampyre and succubus bled from myriad wounds, but both seemed to possess their full strength. The horned winged creature fluttered her sable vans and dipped in again. With a decisive thrust, Asenthine drove the point of his rapier into her heart. The succubus alighted on her talons, and I raced in behind her and slashed. Her head fell from her shoulders as she beat her wings and began to take to the air, then collapsed to the ground.

  Asenthine and I were breathing laboriously from our exertions. I nodded and said as I gasped for breath, “The head. It’s always the head to stop things like that. It’s why I prefer this.” I twitched my fingers over the blade of my ensanguined broadsword.

  Asenthine thrust his bloody rapier into his scabbard and said, “Well, put that meat cleaver up. We need—” But he was interrupted by hooves that clattered on the cobblestone streets of Darkling Reich.

  Though we stole only glances out of the corners of our eyes for fear of the intoxicating and debilitating effects of looking upon that strange angular architecture that lined the streets of Darkling Reich, we recognized that we seemed to be in the heart of the sinister city now. Herein, avenues crisscrossed and lay labyrinthine in all directions. Again, the sinister hoofbeats beat the cobblestone streets back and forth, but we saw no one illumined by the great metallic moon that glistened wetly like mercury. The moon had ceased receding, and I surmised we had arrived at the destination wherein it had intended to lead us, like a carrot dangled before the snout of a hungry beast.

  Anon, a blade slashed my arm and with the return caught Asenthine across his back. We hadn’t heard the knight’s approach but saw his mount recede down the avenue across from us, his mount’s hoofbeats kicking up a delayed echo. I felt myself growing weary, weary unto death. I remembered a dream, a recurring dream in which Death stalked me and I had died. A dream in which I became weaker and weaker until I fell into eternal oblivion. One of the few times in my life I had known genuine fear was just now. I sank into eternal impotence and slid involuntarily from my mount. I woke with a thud upon the ground, sank again into total darkness, and woke once again to find Wrathmane, the abbot, Asenthine, and their mounts gone.

  I found my feet and drew my broadsword, weaving and staggering. I didn’t hear the hoofbeats until the knight had ridden by and slashed me across my face. Only lightning reflexes prevented it from being a fatal blow, but I was well aware that the knight in his armor of polished jet was toying with me. I could hear his laughter, amplified tenfold as he rode off down the alleyway.

  I stumbled along, weary unto death and diminished to impotence by Death incarnate that was the Knight of Darkling Reich. I was alone in a world within a world that was not the world I knew. Was I to die this far from home? And alone? Forgotten? Killed by Death on a quest to save the world, a quest that had amounted to nothing. Every sound was amplified. Every sound echoed. My weakened heart raced, and my body shook. At one point the trembling started to subside, whereupon for a length of time the knight seemed to have gone away. It was as if he had never existed—that is, until I felt his sword slash my thigh, and I crumbled to the ground.

  Rising, I stumbled through this maze of torment that was the streets of Darkling Reich, mocked by an assassin who could have killed me any moment he chose yet rather seemed to derive perverse pleasure from my prolonged suffering. My armor was rent and my garments were in tatters. I had lost much blood. Only when I dropped upon the ground to sink into eternal slumber like a man trapped in a boreal world who gasps his last few gelid breaths before lying on the tundra to expire had I realized I had dropped my sword. It lay yards away. The knight was standing over me. His cachinnations reverberated as he raised his sword for the killing blow. Unable to move and with eyelids half-opened, I saw a stealthy phosphorescent arc that illuminated a great bird of prey alighting behind him. I was as one in the throes of sleep paralysis, and I waited on the quietus, but it never came. The green effulgence lashed out and struck the knight’s casque. I heard a sizzle. The knight headed over onto the ground like a mannequin, as if the assassin who had been Death itself had never existed as an animate thing.

  Through my dim and hazy gaze, I saw Hegumen Hordane the Hierophant and the Abbot Eothoclemes. A clatter of horse’s hooves, and Asenthine rode up on his steed holding Wrathmane by the reins beside of him. From behind the hierophant and the abbot a figure riding pillion with Asenthine dismounted and sauntered forward. The thing was a pitiful emaciated creature, stringy red locks obscuring its face. Slowly raising her bowed head, she struggled to remain erect. Recognition seemed to slowly return to her haunted emerald eyes. “K-Karnov…” she stammered.

  “D’vartha!” I gasped and sank into black oblivion.

  Chapter VII: That Night in Darkling Reich

  After many days of fever dreams in which I was stalked by a great black shape that was Death itself, I now sat around the circular table in the feasting hall of the abbey with my companions. We quaffed foaming jacks of ale as they recounted that night in Darkling Reich.

  The hierophant spoke. “Had it not been for you keeping the Knight of Darkling Reich at bay whilst I found D’vartha and performed the exorcism, I fear we would not be sitting here discussing it now.”

  “I saw you fall from the sky when Abnon’s arrow plunged into the succubus that had borne you aloft, though I did not see you strike the ground. I presumed you dead,” I said

  He chuckled. “A man may die when he falls from the sky, but not an eagle. I transformed into the mighty raptor ere I could hit the ground. I retrieved my staff and flew with it in my beak until I sighted the gravemound on the hillside in which D’vartha slept, immured as she was, deep within, while the knight did the demoniacal bidding of Yr.”

  D’vartha spoke. “Once the husk of Yr had entered me, she became only stronger and stronger. I was deceived by the head of Xycanthia to traverse the depths of the tilted runes and suffered the bouleversement that ensued. You said the oracle now sleeps under the hierophant’s spell. Remind me to burn her ac
cursed head before we leave. The corrupted Yr used me as a vessel to carry out her malevolent agenda—to traverse Time and plunge creation into chaos by the subversion of the male manifestation of order and pave the way for the feminine in chaos, bringing back the All-Night.”

  The hierophant nodded. “Though our world is neither the beginning nor the ending of Time—as there really is none—by the husk of Yr’s calculations, our here and now is the starting point to set the end, as we perceive it, in motion.”

  “I thought I was dealing with the Yr rune, but it was the husk of the rune—corrupted and perverse—that possessed me,” D’vartha said to us. “Had Hordane not rescued me from being buried alive and performed the exorcism, I would have starved to death and rotted in my casket. For surely the knight saw me as a plaything only and was already losing interest in me.”

  “What was he?” I asked. “For I’ve surely never encountered such a formidable foe before, a man who cannot even be struck, let alone vanquished, by weapons of steel.”

  “He was not a man,” D’vartha said. “He was an opposing force of creation itself, a runic manifestation of Death mocking man in human form, although he was given an ego and masculine desires when he was shaped on the physical plane. When Hordane struck the knight with his staff and banished the runic force, his armor fell onto the ground in pieces, with no sign of a man who had worn it. Then the armor melted into tarry piles and disintegrated.”

  “As I scanned the expanse of Darkling Reich on the wings of the eagle, I saw no sight of you at first, Karnov, only Asenthine and Eothoclemes, wandering the labyrinthine maze in which you had vanished,” the hierophant said.

  Asenthine nodded. “It was as if you vanished into the ether, Karnov. The knight had veiled you in the blackness of death, where we could not find you. The hierophant found me and called me away. With the help of the servitors he called forth with his arcane staff, we dug up D’vartha, and he exorcised her. You would not believe the device the knight had designed to send air down to D’vartha’s buried body. It even defies the scientific knowledge of my own people.”

  D’vartha shuddered.

  The hierophant spoke. “Once I had exhumed D’vartha’s body, I bound the Yr rune and searched Darkling Reich through the eyes of the knight. It wasn’t long before I found your location in the maze, and in good time. I quickly performed the exorcism and guided our companions on the wings of the eagle you saw alight just before I hurled the Knight of Darkling Reich back into the darkness that begat him by the gramarye of my staff.”

  “I fear creation itself remains in grave danger, D’vartha,” said Asenthine. “We must make haste and return to our world and point in time, and regain the power of the Cosmic Ice. You must use your mastery of the Demonic Trinity to reinstate Karnov’s powers of the Cosmic Ice, for not only is the world now threatened with vampyric sovereignty, but the Queen of the Earthly Demonic, Esmadrunga, is now enthralled by the sorcerer, Nesodomntha. The very balance of chaos and order is yet again in a most perilous position.”

  D’vartha’s emerald eyes widened, then drew tight again like those of a cat. I could tell she was ruminating over all that we had said. It was a great deal for me to think about, as well.

  “Will you come with us, Hegumen Hordane the Hierophant?” I asked. “We could use your wisdom and mastery of the arcane staff.”

  “No. I must stay here. As your wyrd is to be the Rider of the Cosmic Ice in your world, so is mine to be the guardian of this realm. But as it is the way of chaos and order, and gods and demons to ever dice with the fate of men, our paths may very well cross again.”

  I nodded my understanding and drained my drinking jack. Then I called for another. I was ready to plunge back into the mêlée against whatever forces threatened mankind. Just give me time to quaff but one more ale, and the wicked would fall before my blade!

  Book III By Byron A. Roberts

  Chapter I: A Reclamation of Power and a Recollection of Sorrow

  I stood alone at the edge of the labyrinthine forest, gazing into the shadowed depths of the sylvan verdure and brooding upon the events of the past several days. Not two hours ago, the crimson-tressed witch D’vartha had completed the arcane rite of transformation and once more imbued me with the eldritch might of the Cosmic Ice, empowering my battle-scarred frame with the ancient sorcery which would again enable me to assimilate the perfidious souls of the undead. As I glanced at the faint tendrils of cerulean energy which danced and shimmered wanly upon the surface of my rune-etched armour, I found myself pondering the secrets of the hoary might which I so potently wielded. Although I still knew scant little of the enchantment’s nature beyond the cryptic fragments D’vartha had divulged concerning its origin being irrevocably linked to the mysterious soul-magicks of the Demonic Trinity, I nevertheless felt exultant to once more experience the primal energy which its embrace afforded me. At the same time, I was grimly aware that the ceaseless thirst of my ensorcelled mantle would undoubtedly demand to be slaked before long. Indeed, it seemed like an eternity since my adamantine blade had cloven vampyric flesh and channelled the malefic spirits of the night-spawn into my ice-clad thews. Silently, at the periphery of that benighted woodland, I solemnly vowed that the nefarious Nesadomntha and his aberrant horde of Niaughu fiends would soon suffer the ire of the Phantom-Clad Rider, and pitiless indeed would be the dire and dreadful wrath of Karnov!

  With a weary sigh I fixed my gaze upon the gibbous moon which glowered down upon the arboreal vault like a baleful, silvern eye. Our journey back across the interdimensional threshold had been inestimably less perilous than our accursed trek to the blighted Plain of Gnathongules, for our path home had been clearly mapped for us with the indispensable aid of Hegumen Hordane the Hierophant and his powerful magicks. So precise had been the sage’s eldritch cartography that he had been able to conjure a mystic gateway directly to the southern expanse of Duros Zuil where the trackless woodlands met the trade routes leading to the cities of the coastal fiefdoms. Reflecting now upon the morning of our sojourn, I reached into the leather pouch at my belt and brought forth a small, multifaceted crystal which glimmered with a wan, sapphirean luminescence. The gem had been given to me by the Hierophant immediately prior to our departure, and as I peered into the stone’s lambent depths, I recalled the words he had spoken to me mere moments before we plunged headlong into the fulgid portal between worlds…

  “Karnov, take this gem. It will aid you in your impending and direful struggle against the forces of darkness. This stone has been infused with powerful sorcery, imbuing it with the ability to cast out any malign spirit which has deigned to take possession of an innocent host, duly cleansing that soul of corruption and banishing any invasive eidolon to the black reaches of the chaosphere. My ensorcelled stave is studded with gems such as this, and ever do they serve me well in my rites of exorcism, for the energumen fiends of the abyssal void are invariably reluctant to vacate their mortal vessels. Now, go! You must not tarry. The turmoil wrought upon this realm by your red witch D’vartha was considerable, and there are many here who would see her swinging from the gallows for the madness she unleashed upon the land, unwittingly or not! Farewell!”

  Grim of visage, I duly returned the stone to my belt pouch and strode sullenly to the makeshift camp which I and my traveling companions had established at the frontier of the dense forest. The vampyric nobleman Asenthine sat silently before our blazing fire, his eyes closed and his head bowed as if in deep meditation. The lithe warrior’s slender rapier was at his side and his thin lips bore an ensanguined hue, for he had recently fed upon the blood of some hapless woodland beast. Even bathed by the rutilant glow of the dancing flames, I mused that the man’s gaunt face unerringly retained its deathly pale pallor. My hulking steed Wrathmane was tethered nearby to a gnarled yew tree, silent and content from his reacquisition of the same spectral power as that which sustained me. The benevolent Abbot Eothoclemes had furnished us with meagre provisions for both human and equine consum
ption before our departure from his realm, and we had gratefully availed ourselves of those victuals as the dusk had yielded grudgingly to the night upon our return.

  The sound of stealthy footsteps suddenly drew my attention and I turned to see the witch D’vartha slinking toward me from the tenebrous shadows of the foliage. She was clad in a figure-hugging, green woollen dress and doeskin boots, the garments having been graciously bestowed upon her by the Abbot and his attendants as a replacement for the tattered and mouldering rags which she had sported during her period of possession-induced madness. The lissom woman’s tousled tresses seemed to shine an even deeper shade of crimson in the undulating light of the campfire and her beguiling eyes sparkled like twin emeralds.

  “I must rest now,” the witch purred. “The rite of the Cosmic Ice was taxing for me, and I must replenish my energies. The lost facet of your power has been returned to you, but be aware that the enchantment differs subtly from that which you formerly wielded due to certain fluctuations in the patterns of the chthonic web.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked guardedly.

  “The mana of the Threefold Covenant is a living entity, Karnov. Each incarnation of it is unique. The way in which it manifests may be malleable, ebbing and flowing like an eldritch tide.”

  I scowled. “I am none the wiser, D’vartha.”

  The witch rolled her eyes. “Suffice it to say that the effects of absorbing and shaping the soul-force of the undead may shift with whichever aspect of the demonic balance is currently in the ascendancy. That is all I can tell you. Now, do try not to lose your power again, Karnov Ice-Blade.”