Tales of Cthulhu Invictus

by Brian M Sammons

  “He has.”

  “Then you fell ill. So very ill. It devastated him. If we lost you, and if I could give him no others…” Her breath shuddered. “I pray that you never know such fears.”

  “The ritual…is that truly how you had so many more children!”

  “And saw most of them die.” Faustina’s countenance wrenched with anguish. “Fecunditati Augustae, indeed.”

  “Why didn’t you put a stop to it?”

  “I tried. I smashed the idol Capra had given me, to keep beneath my marital bed. I made no more sacrifices. I stopped taking my babies to the templum. If I was to be struck barren after that, so be it.”

  “Yet, you weren’t struck barren. Our littlest sisters seem to thrive.”

  “So far, though that is why I’ve sent them to your father’s great-aunt for their safe-keeping; she is a devout follower of Diana, and if any influence can protect them…but, oh, I miss my babies!” Her tears fell freely in a rain. “And soon you will be married off, and then Lucilla…”

  “Oh, Mother!”

  She bent forward, wracked with sobs, face buried in her hands. “All I ever wanted was to be a good wife to your father, a good mother to my children. Now so many tiny urns rest in the mausoleumm and I have serpents in my womb!”

  ***

  The girl sits upright, awake in the darkness. The moon has set, the frightening moon curved like a blade. It has set and the stars shine bright through the window. They shine bright, as if they do not care that another child has died.

  Will she never have a brother? He was so very tiny and so very weak; even she understands it was not a surprise. But, will she never?

  And what of her sister?

  Will they bring her back?

  Across the room, on a pallet, the slave-woman who tends the nursery sleeps. The slave-woman snores and snorts like a pig, and sleeps as if an earthquake would not rouse her.

  In the girl’s small hands, coins clink. They are bored through with holes, strung on cords so she may wear them as necklaces if she likes. She is supposed to keep them in her jewelry case after bed-time, but she crept to fetch them once the slave-woman’s snores began.

  She feels better holding the coins. Safer. As if her father, who gave them to her, is here beside her.

  Steps sound, stealthy ones, outside of the room. Hastily, the girl curls on her side, clasping the coins hidden beneath the covers, and feigns her own sleep.

  But, she peeks. She watches them come in. First comes the stranger, old and wizened Capra, with her whiskery, nearly-toothless mouth. Next comes her mother, carrying a blanket-wrapped form in her arms. A bare foot protrudes.

  Mother carefully places the blanketed bundle in the cradle-bed and unfolds it.

  Her sister is there. Lucilla.

  Her sister yawns. Her cheeks are rosy and plump. Her eyelids flutter. She smacks her lips, coos, and gurgles.

  “Promise me this one will be all right,” begs their mother.

  The stranger’s laugh is a bark, a shrill goat’s bleat. “You know full well I cannot promise that. But, rest assured, you can always make another.”

  With that, they leave the nursery as stealthily as they’d come. When they are gone, the girl sits up again. She spreads out the many coins, all in a row.

  On their surfaces, gleaming by starlight, she sees the noble profiles of her parents. She sees the images of babies, her dead brothers, her sister, herself.

  She sees the letters struck into the metal, and though she cannot yet read well, she knows what they say.

  Fecunditati Augustae.

  ***

  In the years to come, Galeria would think back often on those dreams and memories.

  She would think of her mother, whose womb had borne not serpents, but another pair of twin boys…one of whom, called Commodus, survived.

  She would think of how Faustina became revered with great affection by Rome’s soldiers. They had even named her Mater Castrorum, Mother of the Camp, and grieved her terribly when an accident that may have been no accident untimely claimed her life.

  Galeria’s own marriage produced but a single son. Once, when the boy fell ill, the household slaves informed her that there was a stranger at the door, a wizened old woman with a whiskery, nearly-toothless mouth.

  “Give her a scrap of crust and a sip of water,” Galeria said, “and a coin or two, then tell her to gather her rags around her and remove herself from my sight.”

  As for her sister, Lucilla…

  Lucilla, two of whose three children by her first husband died while still very young…ambitious Lucilla, who had enjoyed her reign as empress and resented its loss most fiercely…

  They never spoke of these things.

  But Galeria would think of them. She would think of them often, especially on evenings when the horned moon chased the sun from the sky.

  Fecunditati Augustae.

  Ia Shub-Niggurath.

  A Plague of Wounds

  by Konstantine Paradias

  It was the ninth day of the month of Av and Judea was burning. From the shores of the Dead Sea to Japha, the synagogues smoldered and the fleeing warriors were hunted like animals, cut down by horse-back legionnaires. In Jericho, the hard earth was soaked with blood. In Bethlehem, the Rabbis were hobbled with mallets and dragged in the streets.

  For six years, Bar Kochba the Star-Son had bled the Romans dry, striking them from cover in the caves and the shadows. He and his generals had made the Romans fight for every bush, every step they took. A precedent of costly rebellion was set. Such a thing could put all sorts of dangerous ideas in the minds of the common people.

  I had known this day would come. I had dreamt of the horrible stench of the bodies wrapped in Torah Scrolls, the wailing of the widows as they were dragged through the streets by Roman legionnaires. The commander of the Sixth Ferrata Legion and emergency praetor of Judea, Tilius Romanus, had counted on my predictions which is why he called me to attend the ceremony on the hill where he burned the Talmud as an offering to his myriad gods. The sight of the Holy Book smoldering in that great flame, a thousand years of wisdom laid to ash to be scattered in the winds, made the wound on my chest smack its lips in delight.

  “Today, we flay the Star-Son. We’ll hang his naked corpse on the Wailing Wall, as a warning to the people. His generals, we will kill in degrees. Their screams should destroy what is left of their spirit. You have done well, Rabbi Rotem,” he tells me, that small man with the head full of storm-clouds pregnant with malice. The soldier by his side looks at me as if I am lower than an insect. A moon-shaped scar runs across his face and over one terminally shut eye.

  “I thank you for your mercy, o Praetor.” I all but prostrate myself before him. He thinks himself king of Hell, this tiny man, finds great pleasure in such acts of humility. No matter. It’s what has spared my family from the horrors below.

  “Rome is considering the removal of all observant Jews from Jerusalem. Hadrian himself is drafting the laws as we speak. I have decided to negotiate allowing a small number of the population to remain, as a show of the Empire’s boundless mercy. How would you like to be head of Jerusalem’s synagogues, Rabbi?”

  “It would be my honor, o Praetor,” I nod, making sure to add that necessary hint of elation in my voice. In the eyes of my people, I shall forever be branded a traitor. My name will be struck from the genealogies, my children will be considered cursed. But they are alive now and this will have to do. This is an empty station, a pointless title. “To be presented with such singular honor.”

  “I would have you do something for me, Rabbi. Something that will provide me with a little extra incentive with which to help me change the emperor’s mind to your favor.”

  Another trap. Another favor. I smile and nod, like a damned man headed for the gallows. “Of course, o Praetor.”

  “There is a small pocket of resistance left in En-gedi, by the shores of the Dead Sea. A group of Bar Kochba’s men who have nested themselves in
the mountains and strike at my garrison there. If you could find their positions and lead my men to them, we would put an end to this rebellion and restore order.”

  “Won’t they know me, o Praetor?”

  “We have kept your name safe, Rabbi. We’ve made sure that every last man that could have known you is either fertilizing the spice fields or about to perish on the chopping block. This should be a simple mission for a man of your cunning. All you have to do is find them. We will take care of the rest.”

  I bow and begin to leave without a word. The scar-faced soldier grasps my shoulder, stops me dead in my tracks.

  “Balbinus will escort you to keep you safe. And honest,” the praetor says. The soldier gives me a gap-toothed grin. Whatever scarred his face also took his front teeth and a part of his tongue. His mouth is a red gash. “He was stationed in the Ninth Legion, only survivor of his cohort. Hard as nails and good with a bow. It’s what saved him from Bar Kochba’s assault. The experience made him slightly more violent, of course, so you had best try to stay on his good side.”

  ***

  I do not stop by my home that night. The door is still branded with a streak of red. It means ‘friend to the Emperor’. The sight of it makes the wound in my chest itch. I feel it throbbing, at the verge of another outburst. The carnage all around excites it.

  Making my way to the back alley, I remove the covering from the hole in the wall. I try to soothe Anna, telling her that I must go on a mission for the praetor. I lie to her that I will be back before she knows it. She makes no effort to speak to me. From the sound of her breathing, I know that she is holding back a torrent of pure hate, biting her lip hard enough to break the skin. Even through the brick wall, I can feel my sons’ eyes branding me. No reason to bother with pleading for forgiveness. They will come to terms with this, thank me when they have children of their own.

  I sleep in a corner in one of the back rooms of the Synagogue, miraculously left unscathed by the fire. The wound itches and breaks out into a stream of words, its lips flapping together like gums, its tongue lolling. In Greek and Aramaic and Latin and its own nonsense language, it foretells of the terrible doom that will befall the world. To weather its torment, I bury my face against the mattress and wait for dawn.

  We leave Jerusalem on a pair of confiscated Beduin striders, Balbinus and I. We disguise ourselves as spice merchants, hard on their luck due to the war. He lets me ride in front, his bow and quiver in plain sight. We ride across Judea, taking the back roads to avoid the terrible scarecrows of the crucified, laid across the viae glareatae. We make camp in the wilderness, looking for dark places where the smell of the decaying dead and vulture-waste won’t reach us. On a Sabbath, Balbinus catches a fattened crow and makes us dinner. Its belly is fit to burst with plucked eyeballs.

  We reach En-gedi in a fortnight, skirting away from the garrison. A pair of sentries hail us but a simple motion from Balbinus makes them look the other way. The praetor has planned this ahead of time to make our entrance as inconspicuous as possible. Once we move past its gates, En-gedi reveals itself to be an unimportant little place laid out in a semicircle with its back against the mountains. It does not seem to have suffered as badly in the war. The synagogue is still standing. Even though I have never been here, I find myself knowing this place. The shape of the mountains flashes before my eyes, revealing strange peaks that defy reason. I brush these visions aside.

  “I guess the praetor sees the merit of avoiding senseless slaughter.” I mutter to keep myself occupied.

  “It dulls the blades, makes money for greedy blacksmiths,” Balbinus whistles through the hole in his teeth. I all but jump at the sound of his voice.

  We find room and board in the house of a lone woman whose husband made for the hills and never came back. There are no effigies on her hearth, not even a shrine. Balbinus finds a little cross scribbled with coal behind one of the beds. ‘Donkey-worshipper’, he calls her. Faithful to the cult of the Nazarene. Except the cross seems to be drawn all wrong; its edges are skewed, there’s a familiar little gap in the center, crudely traced with a finger.

  It looks so much like a mouth.

  It speaks to me in a hushed whisper that night. It brings me fever-dreams of a great bloated thing, stomping across the face of the world, sucking air through the hole where its neck should be. Its hands dig into the sides of the mountains, claws raking across the rock. Unseen teeth reduce the living to a thin red paste which fills its belly. In its shadow, blind and blighted children trail, picking at the scraps of leftover flesh.

  The next day, we resume our role of spice merchants, haggling over cardamon and nutmeg with the farmers in the market. One of them, a pox-marked halfwit by the name of Simon, is the one to provide me with answers.

  “You cannot have grown the nutmeg here. The ground is no good for it.”

  “No, we bring it from the mountains. Get good price for it, too. Best price in Judea.”

  “Who would be so mad to try and grow anything in Masada? The entire place is all but barren!”

  “We have people who know. They can make water spring forth from the rock like Moses.”

  “Miracle-workers, then?” I laugh, nudging Balbinus. He chuckles with his mouth closed, thankfully. “I would pay good money for a flask of water from a stone.”

  “You have the money with you?” the halfwit says. I make a show of producing my pouch, letting the Roman silver rattle on the bench. I slap his hands as he reaches out to grab them, to drive the point home. “Come find me at noon.”

  We spend the rest of the day huddled in the cool darkness of a watering hole among hard-faced Beduins and straggler cut-throats trawling around the Roman army, hoping for mercenary work. These are the same creatures that they employed during the height of the fighting. The ones that were sent into the desert or made to patrol the wilderness, to kill the stragglers and break the supply lines. Some of them were Jews, as damned as I was, maybe more so, by virtue of their actions. My wound begins to itch without warning. I trail my eyes across the room and catch one of them making his way towards me.

  “I know you,” he whispers hoarsely. He’s young, barely twenty years old. He’s missing the fingers of his left hand, the sign of a petty thief punished under Roman martial law. “Man from Jerusalem, what are you doing here at the edge of the world?”

  “I don’t know you,” I lie as the wound lets me know who he is with painstaking detail; his father had been a goat herder in Nazareth. The boy had acted as a messenger for me for two months in the first year of the war.

  “You’re that Rabbi, the one that crawled at the feet of the praetor,” he growls a touch louder, just enough to make a few heads turn. “They killed my father, because of you. Took his goats, burned our home; they salted the earth.”

  The boy reaches for the knife in his belt. Balbinus is up on his feet before I can even tell he moved, his hand a blur. There’s a flash of metal and then the boy coughs blood as the dagger punches into his belly again and again and again. He’s dead before he’s even hit the floor. The cutthroats blink at the scene. In that small window of opportunity, Balbinus drags me outside by the wrist, into the streets and back alleys as a riot erupts.

  “So much for our cover,” he whistles.

  “You did not have to kill the boy! I could have stopped him!”

  “You had his father killed and his future destroyed. He would have driven that knife into your eye and then he’d have me killed, too, just to make sure,” Balbinus mutters, wiping the blade on a rug that’s been left out to dry.

  I put my head in my hands and recite the Sheheheyanu. The wound prays with me, humming the words against my lungs. The vibrations make me sick to my stomach. Above, the noon sun hangs high in the sky. “We need to leave En-gedi. We must make for the mountains as soon as possible.”

  “Then let’s go find your halfwit and his rock-water.”

  ***

  Simon lives in a small hut at the outskirts of the town. He has u
s wait in the hall with a child keeping us company. Its body is ravaged by measles. It’s wearing thick clothes despite the heat. The more I look at the child, the more familiar he seems to me. The wound whispers the child’s name in my brain:

  Yuval.

  “Shelom, Yuval,” I greet the boy. He looks at me with wide, glassy eyes. He does not seem alarmed that I know his name. If anything, he seems to recognize me. “What are you doing here all on your own?”

  “I am here to watch for the Voice of the Mountain,” the boy says without speaking, his words reverberating inside my skull. “The Messiah has come.”

  I blink, trying to clear my head. On the boy’s back, a patch of fabric moves, undulating according to the motions of obscene musculature. Lips work to make words. A tongue flaps against gums, pushing against newly-formed teeth. Balbinus looks at me, puzzled.

  “Another one of your victims?” he whistles. His voice is cut off abruptly. There’s a hollow, striking sound. I bite my lip so I won’t scream when I see his twitching body, his head crushed against the wall by Simon’s bare hand.

  “You will come with us up the Mountain. He is ready for you now.”

  It is time, the boy whispers in his non-voice.

  ***

  We move in a solemn procession, they and I, Simon the halfwit at the front with his robes shed from his back, proudly exhibiting the wound on the back of his neck. It’s a vertical slit with long lips, its gums lined with jagged teeth. It sucks in the air hungrily, reveling in its nakedness. Behind me, the children follow in lock-step. The boys and girls of En-gedi, naked from the waist up, proudly displaying the undulating lacerations that cover their bodies. Their mouths whistle and speak with shrill voices, letting out a stream of drivel prophecies.

  The path we follow does not exist on any map, endlessly winding, twisting and turning in impossible directions whose names I know but cannot be spoken by a mortal man. The mountains begin to shimmer and fade. Above, a sickly sun hangs in the sky, shedding baleful red light on all. I am no longer in the Masada that I know. The sea that stretches below is not the Dead Sea of Judea. And yet my mind is not reeling by the sight. My step does not falter.