by T. C. Rypel
Simon growled for her to mount the horse. Again. He was forced to scoop her up in a bloody furred arm and toss her aboard the horse, where she clung to the animal’s neck, her head laid against its own such that she could not see the werewolf’s awful apparition. Stumbling backward and falling again, Simon bellowed at the curvetting mount. It galloped off, the woman holding fast in insensate flight.
Simon regathered his senses, the woods spinning about him. He caught an unwholesome scent mingled with that of blood and entrails. It came from the north. A smell of earth churned by something vaguely verminous.
He bounded off in the direction of the scent.
Behind him, there was a sharp clap, a black rift opening gauzily, like dream-mist, in the space above the campsite.
Anton Balaerik stepped through and landed lightly on the soft mat of pine-needled earth. He gazed off toward Simon’s spoor, a look of grave concern etching his sharply chiseled features. Gonji’s nemesis from a parallel world, who had briefly manipulated the Church itself, now turned his attention on the savaged brigands. He found two who had yet to pass into the Dark Land.
Extracting the round ivory artifact by which he stayed the moment of death, he performed a ritual incantation and in seconds caught up and engaged the dying embers of the pair’s spirits.
“Do you desire life?”
Awed affirmation was exuded in response.
“Then attend on me…”
Their wounds closed as if by the hand of a ghostly surgeon, and the two rose shakily to fall in at Balaerik’s side. A half-life of evil servitude seemed far preferable to the sudden knowledge of what awaited them beyond the curtain of death.
* * * *
Under the moon’s magic influence, Belial Farouche transformed into his favorite persona—a large, hulking faun. His quick-thumping hoofbeats and leering, horned head were a familiar nightmare to the women and children of Burgundy. None ventured out unescorted after twilight for fear of his assaults. For he’d been known to take his pleasure with the unwary and the ill defended, and he found that pleasure in two predilections: lust and sadism.
The latter passion always guided his full-moon meanderings, for like Simon’s Beast, Belial would secure the month’s nocturnal transformations by spilling blood on that night.
He withdrew now from the stiffening corpse of the mountain man, whose head and chest had been crushed beyond recognition by Belial’s stamping hooves. He was anxious to be the first to encounter his long-lost nameless brother, freed by now from the imprisoning body of Simon Sardonis. He wondered how the Beast had found the soft, shapely offering of the young virgin, cackling as he loped along toward the free companions’ camp. This would be a grand night, for their father, whom Belial was always anxious to please, would be rejoining them from the mystical isle that was their cross-world base of operations.
Belial passed the great sentinel serpent in a delve and padded along its body a few steps, tittering as it hissed in annoyance. Then, hearing the deep growling in the distance, he snickered in secret, inane mirth and squatted down to rest while he sharpened his goat’s horns with a file drawn from his pouch. Replacing it, he felt the reed pipe and was seized by the urge to play. The instrument had given him great enjoyment since his discovery that beings of this sphere associated it with satyrs.
It would be a fine jest on his newly returned brother.
Belial pranced through the wood toward the low growling sounds, piping mellifluous notes without melody.
The werewolf’s snarls of blood-frenzy came closer. But something was wrong. Belial stopped playing and listened. Heard the creature make a beeline for him through the forest. Saw the hurtling golden form. And abruptly feared the look in its red-rimmed silvery eyes.
“Brother—?”
The broadsword and battle-axe arced for him like the mandibles of a voracious insect. Blurring speed was Belial’s forte, courage in battle occupying the farther end of his spectrum of attributes. He slipped the enfolding steel edges, back-stepping with rapid stutter-steps, gasping aloud.
The werewolf’s own power nearly knocked the wind out of him as his arms struck his chest from the force of the opposing scythes, intended to leave Belial in three pieces.
Belial yammered at the werewolf insensibly, trying to make it understand that he was its brother. Unknown to him, the energumen still slept within, arrested by Simon’s inebriate spell. But the wine served Simon almost as poorly. He could not match Belial’s speed or lightning evasive moves, and the faun pulled away from him, luring him toward the huge serpent that Simon had caught scent of.
Belial now made a game of it, indignant to be so rudely treated. He began piping an annoying little scale over and over, wringing growls that might have been curses from the werewolf’s canine throat. Simon went at him again and again, swinging, lunging, tumbling head over heels—
Until he struck the scaly mound that rose up across his path, knocking him backward. Simon roared in primitive response to the enormous fanged head that loomed over him. Ophidian eyes gleamed like alien stars, cold and lidless, set at either side of the yawning rictus mouth with its curving white fangs, each as long as a man’s arm.
He scrabbled backward, felt the seething of the pungent earth as the sinuous creature withdrew its full concealed length from the depression in the ground. Massive coils wrapped the werewolf in a crushing grip. Simon yiped and howled against the relentless pressure. Belial bounded over the great serpent’s bulk and laughed between taunting notes on his pipe.
Simon saw white pinpoints searing his vision like a swarm of shooting stars. His breath was stayed. Darkness stole over his consciousness…
When he opened his eyes again, his head swimming and the world engulfed in dark murky hues, Simon heard first the triumphant laughter of the energumen inside him. Then:
“Mon fils—my son.”
He stared up into the smiling visage of Grimmolech, father of demons and architect of Simon’s lifetime of misery.
* * * *
Simon was chained in an oubliette of an abandoned fortified prison, amid rank, sweating stones of ancient origin. Thick musty odors assailed his nostrils. He was a man again; it must be day in the world outside. He scarcely had time to check the strength of the chains when an overwhelming nausea overcame him. He knew the feeling well: They’d been starving him; nor had his lips tasted any water. For how long, he could not even guess.
A portal swung open in the ceiling. Filthy light seeped through a grating. Peering down at him was the object of his lifelong hatred. The being who had effected in his pregnant mother a secondary conception, that of the shape-shifting demonic spirit.
Grimmolech smiled down benignly.
“Why don’t you just succumb? What can your life be but an endless nightmare filled with forlorn hope? I could not have expected that those fanatical priests would take you from me and raise you in their…obsolete faith. Keeping my son a prisoner for all these years.”
“Bastard out of Hell! Come down here and join me. I’ve looked forward to ripping you to pieces for such a long time.” Simon’s entire body radiated loathing.
“Be silent,” Grimmolech said in a steady voice that bespoke confidence, a lifetime of command. “I will speak to my son now.”
“Your son is a raving madman. An idiot without so much as a name to call himself by.”
“Until such time as he is free of you, Simon will serve as his name.”
Simon roared at his tormentor and strained at his shackles until he dropped, exhausted, his anger vented. And then, in a rare event that occurred only at such times as Simon would be too weakened to prevent its reentry, the energumen projected itself outside of their common sphere, appearing on the floor of the cell as a small male child, naked and reaching up imploringly to its unholy sire.
“Father!
Father! Take me up with you. Save me. He—he made me drunk—the dirty swine!”
Grimmolech made a placating gesture. “I know, I know, my son. You must be patient. Soon you will be freed. Have courage, as befits a higher being.”
“But I can’t stand this any longer!” The spirit began to weep. “He tortures me. He makes me suffer so—”
“And he shall pay, as will all these beings who have prevented your fulfillment. Now stop that. Be strong. Noble. Show no weakness.” An impatient tone insinuated itself into Grimmolech’s voice now.
The energumen tried to climb a wall of the oubliette, but its ectoplasmic substance lacked strength to operate in the real world, and it soon rediscovered that it could not exist outside Simon for long. Despairingly, with a mad wail and an ineffectual flailing of its small fists, it reentered Simon’s imprisoning body with violent vibration.
When he had recovered from the shock of their melding, Simon shouted up at Grimmolech through the grating: “We’re all prisoners of something, n’est-ce pas? But yours will last for eternity, demon.”
Grimmolech eyed him coldly.
“This is your world—until you’ve had surfeit—”
Grimmolech slammed down the trapdoor. In fury, he set a spell of localized, increasing heat upon the ceiling of the dungeon cell, subjecting both Simon and his disembodied son to an agonizing session of stifling torture.
* * *
The small mercenary detachment who stood rampart watch on the walls of the abandoned fortification and former prison gazed down in awe as their present lords, the Farouche Clan, assembled in conference.
Breathless, these free companions, to observe the council of those unnatural beings who were said to have their origins on a world concentric to the earth known of ordinary men.
In the ward below strutted the ruling clan’s patriarch, the off-world sorcerer Grimmolech, reeking of regal bearing. His moon-maddened son Belial bounded up from the shadows, his goat’s hooves clattering on the flagstones. Belial bowed to his father before squatting down on his haunches to play sadistically with a large rat he held tethered, strangled on a string.
Anton Balaerik entered through the gatehouse, signaling his two escorts to remain at the barbican.
“Gen-kori—honored cousin,” Balaerik greeted Grimmolech, who replied in kind.
There was a brief wait, during which the sentries on the walls were so rapt by the figures below that they failed to take notice of the hulking black form that had scaled the curtain to loom up behind them. The first warrior felt the hot breath at his neck, spun around, and drew his pistol. There was a snapping of powerful jaws, a flash of canine teeth—
The mercenary screamed as he watched the pistol, and the hand that clutched it, flung away into the night air. Dark blood pulsed from the stump of his arm.
“Very careless,” Blaise Farouche growled. “But I think you’ve learned a valuable lesson here. Take it to your grave.” With the vicious swipe of a clawed arm, the man was battered off the rampart and down onto the ward fifty feet below. His body struck with a wet crash and a clatter of breaking bones.
The rest of the mercenary sentry detail fell back in stunned awe. Now their alertness was restored.
“Blaise, is that necessary?” Grimmolech said in a calm voice that nonetheless commanded attention.
The coarse black ruff relaxed on the werewolf’s neck as he glanced down at his father. His lips snaked back in a grin as he looked to the next soldier, who stared at him, shaking and open-mouthed, trying not to fix on the dark hole that had once contained the human Blaise’s right eye.
“My depth perception isn’t so good these days,” Blaise said archly. “I meant to bite through his pistol barrel. Don’t get me angry. Curry my coat before I address my father. I seem to have picked up burrs…”
The terrified mercenary began raking his fingers through the werewolf’s coarse, ruffled fur.
“Ahhh—you have a nice touch…”
The mercenary swallowed back a knot of fear.
Down below, Blaise’s brother Roman Farouche padded through the gatehouse—an enormous white lynx, scrutinizing the environs warily before greeting his father.
“And where are Serge and Rene?” Grimmolech asked after a time.
Roman, the lynx, raised himself from all fours up onto his hind legs. These began to grow and broaden in accordance with his need for support. There was a distending action in his throat as he sought the ability to make human speech.
“Blaise?” Roman hoarsely called up to the wall. “Come down and tell Father what you told me.”
Up on the bailey wall, the black werewolf slapped aside the reluctant groom’s hand and leapt down dramatically, with a resounding thump, to join his shape-shifting fellows.
“Serge, I can tell you,” Roman told Grimmolech, “has declined to attend. He insists he’ll be in touch with us soon. It seems he’s on the track of certain…scrapping outlanders who are making trouble in the province. Huns, he thinks. Also—”
“Also?” Grimmolech echoed impatiently.
Roman sighed. “Serge hates this host who imprisons our brother. He claims it’s infuriatingly hopeless. He maintains that we should…sacrifice our nameless brother to be rid of this troublesome Simon.”
“So—more obstinacy,” Grimmolech said. “And how am I to command respect from lesser beings when I can’t even control my own sons? What of Rene?”
Now Roman stepped back and eyed the wolf-formed Blaise, who came forward erect, smiling ferally and clawing at an itch across his abdomen. “You’ll like this, dear father,” Blaise declared. “Brother Rene, it seems, has been murdered by rebels, his cord severed.”
“What?!” Grimmolech demanded.
“It can only be he, I’m certain. They say they have a shape-shifter buried in a secret grave. They’ve called for officials of the French king as well as representation from Dijon for the great unveiling.” Blaise was cold and smug, seemingly enjoying the thought of the retribution to come.
“How dare they?” Grimmolech intoned.
“I’ll be there, of course,” Roman said, “as the duke’s representative.”
“Who did this thing?” the demon father inquired with mounting anger.
“The town of Lamorisse,” Blaise apprised him. “The ‘holy’ Knights of Wonder again.”
“We’ll give them something to wonder about, eh, milord?” the satyr Belial advanced, trying vainly to gain his father’s approval and attention.
“They should never have been allowed to exist for so long,” Grimmolech said, eyes shining. “Gonji again. That samurai warrior’s influence again. Wherein have we failed? This lone samurai’s interference should have been stopped years ago. Balaerik—you had him in Toledo and again in Africa—”
The manipulator from yet another alien dimension seemed displeased with the reminder. “I’m afraid he slipped through our fingers because of unexpected aid. Certain churchmen…had their eyes opened, decided to oppose us, if only with the invisible powers they wield in ignorance. That is bad for us—those who learn and accept the secret of the enfolded worlds, of our cabal, and then begin to think about their lowly place in it, and to rebel…
“And then there is the ongoing problem of this…Japanese warrior. He still seems protected by Powers Unknown. In Africa, again he found unexpected aid. He is more dangerous than the church and secular leaders. And now they are influenced by him. He teaches them to see how they are being controlled. Perhaps even the pope has listened to him. This Gonji seems a man of great faith. He understands its mysterious power. That feeds his skill and renders him a formidable foe. He may even be protected or helped now by supernatural powers—adepts from the other spheres. Inimicals. Meddlers themselves who condemn us for meddling—our enemies, Grimmolech.” Balaerik folded his arms.
Grimmolech turned to his sons again. “What about you, my fine sons, fruit of my loins? Last winter you had him in your grasp. He should have been discredited and destroyed. A foreigner invading French territory with an army of highwaymen. Roman—Blaise—you channeled a costly amount of cosmic power through the gateways, and to what end? A callow and ineffectual display of elemental rage. Do you realize what chaos you caused on contiguous spheres by crossing winters with the Kirok 7 sphere? But I shan’t punish you,” he said, strolling away from his sons, lost in thought for a time.
Belial looked disappointed, always warmed to see his more favored siblings in trouble of their own making. Blaise’s pointed ears had been pinned back penitently. They perked now, and his sly grin at Belial evinced the fact that it had as usual been pure artifice on his part. Roman seemed unmoved, awaiting his father’s next command.
“No, I shan’t punish you, for I am as guilty of failure as you. It was I who allowed my wayward half-son Simon Sardonis to slip through my hands all these years, to be perverted by those monks who guarded his youth. He might have triumphed with us, once. I might have adopted him, taught him the ways of the spheres, introduced him to a larger cosmic scheme. He is a most atypical Terran…Now, I have him, and yet he resists every effort to tear from him the soul of my true son.” His face clouded, almost with pain. Grimmolech shook it off. “The samurai…he is our greatest enemy. Don’t you see what he’s done to us, Balaerik? He’s caused us both to succumb to emotionalism, to sink to the level of these unenlightened beings.” Grimmolech’s eyes darkened as he formed a vision. “He hasn’t begun to suffer. Where is he now?”
“In Austria, I believe,” Balaerik replied.
“Have you prepared things for him there?”
“The machinery has been set in motion.”