The Grimoire of Yule (The Shadows of Legend Book 1)

by Adam Golden

  “You succeed.”

  The old heretic swelled with pride. He’d done it! Finally, after so much effort, so much struggle, he would have real magic, real power! Power to match and destroy his enemies. The shock hit him like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky. Violent spasms rocked every sinew, rolling out from his core and flooding his entire body. Pain obliterated existence. Pain was existence.

  Arius arched backward until he was bent nearly double, every muscle jerked and surged, alternating between locking tight and quivering with agony. He wanted to scream, he needed to scream, but he couldn’t. His lungs would not obey his fevered commands to fill and his jaw was fused shut. God it hurt! His bones were flaming razors, simultaneously searing and flaying his soft innards, his guts cramped as though clutched fists of iron. The once delicious comfort of his resinous cocoon felt suddenly corrosive and biting, like rough sand grating on raw flesh, slowly gnawing away at him inch by inch. Why hadn’t he lost consciousness? Why wouldn’t he die?

  ‘Stillness. There is no success, no ending, no pride. Magic is nothing but the paltry toys of ignorant children. True Power transcends the spells and charms you covet. Stillness is Power. Power is life.’

  Each image forced itself onto his mind with the force of a hammer blow, digging, rending, slicing its way deeper into his consciousness, like the efforts of some demented surgeon. All thoughts of life, of hope, of power and vengeance were gone. There was only the pain, and before it’s cutting fire, everything was lost. Hope, faith, memory, everything that made him him was extinguished. There was no Arius, no Chara, no Nicholas. There was only pain, pain that pried at the edges of his sanity, gouging at it like a pick working away at thick ice, and where the pick worked its way through the surface, there was an odd and troubling freedom, a frightening exhilaration, a . . .

  Stillness.

  —

  The screaming went on for days, with never a hiccup or a pause. It wafted up through miles of empty, twisting corridors. Terrible, blood chilling keening, the likes of which no-one of the Brotherhood had ever heard, leaked into the vaults and alcoves above like an unpleasant odor. Vaguely sensed at first, but impossible to ignore once detected. It clung to the man’s attention as though with talons, wore away at defenses built by long years of isolation and mediation until it was all he could hear. No wall, door, or distance seemed enough to block it entirely. It permeated the abbey as though leaching through the very bedrock itself, and the acolytes of Saul, men sworn not only to stare down into the abyss but to welcome it into themselves, were unsettled . . . no, more they were afraid.

  Brother Phocas was afraid. He, a Brother of the Seventh Degree, who had taken The Curse deep inside himself without faltering, who’d faced the power of more than a half-dozen witches with calm aplomb, was shamefully afraid. Until that first strained, whispered note of anguish had reached his sleeping ear inside his cell, Phocas hadn’t thought fear could still reach him. How long had it been since he’d felt such things? Or felt anything beyond duty, sacrifice, and service? Fear at something as paltry as a sound? It was disgraceful, a blot on the honor of the Brotherhood, and it wasn’t just him.

  He’d seen full Brothers, men deep in the Mysteries, jumping at shadows like frightened children. Paladins, heavy with the weight of decades of honored service, muttering to themselves fretfully in the corridors. Three Brothers of the Ninth Degree had Gone to Glory since it began. Three! Of course, Phocas felt the pull of The Longing as they all did. He was delighted for his Brethren, after all, was it not what they all dreamed of? And yet he could not ignore the facts. Something unnatural was afoot. Something evil haunted the abbey, and that damned heretic was at its core!

  Keys rattled in Phocas’ hand as he unlocked the last of the doors between the abbey proper and the deepest of the cells. His breath came in shallow gasps that never seemed to give enough air, and a cold sweat prickled on his skin that overran with gooseflesh. The coarse cloth of his black vestments clung uncomfortably and rubbed. At this distance, the noise pressed with a physical force, it struck like a barrage of hard swung slaps. Colors danced before his eyes, he felt squeezed as though caught in a mangle.

  The door gave way and Phocas staggered forward. The keys dropped from his hand, forgotten. The heavy clang as they struck the stone floor lost amidst the other-worldly caterwauling. Phocas halted inside the door and forced a long slow breath. The preternatural assault continued, but slowly the dark Brother managed to pull himself erect and salvage some semblance of composure. He worked numb fingers inside the cavernous sleeves of his robe, forcing them to dexterity before closing them around the hilts of the heavy daggers which rested in the sheaths strapped to each forearm. His grip was less sure than he was used to, but the smooth bone hilts brought the comfort of the familiar, and at least the illusion of security.

  The cells were dark, dark as the bottom of a well on a moonless night. That was to be expected of course, no fuel would be wasted this deep into the ruins, and certainly not on a heretic as foul as the prisoner they held. It didn’t matter, the Brotherhood was at home in the dark, and a Brother as deep in the Mysteries as Phocas had no need of light to see. His Curse gave him eyes that pierced the night as well as any owl’s.

  The monk moved forward haltingly, but with purpose. He could overcome the force pressing against him . . . he could! At his first step over the threshold, the undulating howl rose into an ear-piercing shrill that rang off the walls as though Phocas stood inside a great brass bell.

  The Saulite Brother staggered backward until his back struck the edge of the open door and caught him. A sickening wet pop sounded inside his head, and the world went mad, spinning furiously before his eyes. His body jerked and heaved, rebelling against any attempt at control. The spinning intensified and the veteran witch hunter emptied his stomach violently, spattering the inside of his cowl, his vestments and the floor with the remains of his breakfast. His grip on his knives forgotten, Phocas clutched at the sides of his head in agony. A slow oozing trickle of blood ran from each ear and a harsh ringing had replaced every other sound.

  The pain was excruciating. He was deaf, dizzy, and likely to vomit out his guts at any second from the pain and disorientation, nevertheless a burst of relieved frantic laughter ripped from the Saulite. The screaming had stopped. He might die in the next moment, but for this one, the hellish, unnatural wailing was silent. His power-enhanced eyes found the old man, and he forced himself to straighten. His right hand slid into his left sleeve and came out clutching a foot of wickedly sharp curved steel.

  “Time to die, monster.” He couldn’t hear the words over the ringing, but they brought a wolfish smile to Phocas’ bloodless, bile-spattered lips nonetheless.

  The old man laid in the center of the furthest cell, writhing in a pain that the monk hoped was as severe as it appeared. His back was arched into an almost perfect ‘U’ shape, as though his long, stringy grey hair had been tied about his ankles. His whole body quaked and shivered with constant spasms, twisting and jerking this way and that, as though trying fruitlessly to escape whatever it was that was happening to it.

  Phocas felt no pity for the old heretic, he’d gone meddling in the dark and he’d earned his reward. Some said the wages of Sin was death, those people were fools. The Brotherhood knew the true wages of Sin, they knew horror and pain that other men couldn’t dream of. The slow insidious erosion of the soul was far worse than death. That was the true price demanded of the unnatural arts the old fool had meddled in.

  Phocas smiled grimly at the notion that the old man was learning the lesson that was graven on the bones of each of the soldiers of Saul. That ancient, prideful old blasphemer had looked into the abyss and been undone. He lacked the strength of the Brotherhood, the purity of purpose, and so he was undone. He was . . .

  There was no movement, no transition from one state to the next. In one instant the old fool laid as he’d been—twisting and wailing as though his soul were being flayed in the pit itself,—in
the next he was standing upright, outside his cell and mere inches from Phocas’ face. Bloody spittle flew endlessly from jaws spread painfully wide and, though Phocas could not hear it, he could see the heaving, straining effort of frantic bellowing that the priest could not or would not halt. His body was rigid, pale as a slug dug from beneath a rock, and slick with days of sweat and filth. He quivered with the exertion of days of whatever he was experiencing. His robes were fouled and torn, his face and neck were in bloody tatters, as though the old man had been clawing at himself, but his eyes…

  Phocas shuddered inside his hood. The eyes were wide, unnaturally wide, and filled with blood where vessels had burst. They were haunted, wild, and mad with mindless agony. There was more, more than simple pain. Pain, even the worst sort of pain, was a thing of the body, a thing that could be overcome, adapted to, but this . . . There was a horror in those eyes, a terrible sort of understanding. A formless, nameless terror. Something beyond reason or instinct bubbled in Phocas’ breast as he looked into those wide damned orbs. Something old, something dark and primordial lingered there. Yes, this one had seen, he’d plumbed the chasm, perhaps to its deepest depth.

  Phocas lifted his knife and found himself offering a heartfelt prayer for whatever remained of the poor old wretch’s soul. There was only one peace left for either of them. The only peace those as deep in sin as they could hope for, the peace of death. The dagger slid forward and, in the instant before the tip struck the old man’s breast, the screaming stopped.

  Silence crashed down on the dark room like an avalanche. The monk’s knife clattered on the stone floor and Phocas began to sputter and choke as something rose inside him. It rose from deep within his core in painful jerks, as though whatever it was had been pulled from him by force.

  His eyes bulged and he gasped at the old man. The hideous form of the priest was unchanged, his frozen rictus of terror remained unmoved, even in silence, and Phocas’ attempts to batter at him had all the effect of an insect striking a boulder.

  The monk’s eyes bulged with strain as whatever was being drawn out of him stopped the flood of air and, for a moment, the two men stood, mirroring each other’s struggling, gasping horror.

  Wispy grey tendrils, like vapor or smoke but unlike either, leaked from Phocas, sucked into the gaping maw of the old priest. It was a Soul Eating! The realization hit the monk, and he knew a panicked desolation like nothing he’d felt before. A Soul Eating.

  How? Brothers only learned that most powerful of spells upon achieving the Tenth Degree! Only the Abbot could call forth a soul! How did not matter, nothing mattered. ‘Not like this!’ his panicked mind gibbered. He couldn’t go like this. But he could, he would, an Eating could not be stopped once started.

  ‘Dear God, deliver me!’

  The monk’s skin seemed suddenly too tight, too dry. His tongue was thick in his mouth and he couldn’t seem to call forth any saliva. He felt weak, drained. The flow of his essence, the combination of his power and his will, his soul, was a steady streaming into the creature who had been Arius.

  The dry, empty husk of Brother Phocas slumped to the floor in a pool of black cloth and dust, utterly consumed and instantly forgotten. The creature that had been Arius pulsed. Gelatinous masses seemed to slither and swim like eels beneath his flesh. Joints popped and bones shifted, grating on each other as they twisted and set in mad configurations. Flesh split and oozed, expanding here, contracting there, giving way to jutting spurs of bone, and quickly something new took shape. The room fractured and twisted, reality curved and flexed around the newborn monster. It understood.

  The stone floor shifted and oozed like soft butter, pooling and flowing, melding with what had been Arius’ legs, and joining the mad new creation taking form. The iron bars of the cells around him screeched and squealed as they tore loose from stone moorings. They flattened and widened, twisted and bent. A whirlwind of shrapnel, of flesh, iron, blood, stone, and cloth cascaded around each other, changing and shifting madly. They shattered like plate glass dropped from a height again and again until they were broken down into their smallest components. The raw matter formed itself erratically, slamming into the creature haphazardly and at odd angles. It was as though some twisted sculptor were madly pitching globs of clay together, joining random materials and shapes into a hideous collage of odd angles and alien planes, an eye-twisting mockery of the human form which seemed in constant flux.

  The malformed, vaguely ovoid lump that sat atop the wide, triangular neck couldn’t be called a head. It had no features, no face, just a smooth expanse of flesh studded with chips of stone, bits of twisted iron, the remains of teeth and flat plates of bone gathered in a senseless hodgepodge, and down on its wide trowel shaped chin was a single, wide, bloodshot eye.

  Throughout the creature’s creation, that eye never wavered or twitched from its orientation. West. In the mad riot of the creature’s tumultuous gestation, it stared on, steadily west toward the sensation that had called it back. Toward the beacon that had silenced it’s screaming. A flare in a lightless night had drawn it back from the ocean of torment. It shone before the creature like a private sun. Such power!

  ‘You are remade.’ The voice of its master pounded in its mind and pride, horror, anguish, delight, and dread crashed off each other inside the monster. It understood, it knew the truth, it knew whom it served at last!

  ‘In pain you found Stillness. In Stillness you transcend self, pride, and mind.’ The creature swelled with something like pride, hatred, and a thousand other conflicting emotions and sensations. ‘You have broken the petty bonds of sanity, matter, spirit, and Order within yourself. Now you will break them for all of existence. You are reborn, washed in the purity of disarray. My herald, the harbinger of Chaos!’

  The creature remembered being the priest, remembered the priest’s life and desires as it remembered being the stone of the floor, compressed by centuries of force and heat, or how it recalled being the iron of the bars, its constituent pieces belched into the vastness of space by ancient stars. It was all of those things and none. It was something new now. Something better. Those old lives and old sensations didn’t matter, and yet, it’s eye never faltered from the west, even as it’s master spoke. The beacon, the power. It coveted it, but what’s more it recognized it, knew the feel of it.

  Nicholas.

  The creature was of Chaos, it cared nothing for dead girls in bookshops, for love, or pain or vengeance. But power? It cared about power, it especially cared about the kind of power that set the choking bonds of Order on reality. This Nicholas had such power, he sought control, sought to pollute the purity that anarchy promised, and so he must be unmade. The monster felt a thrill, a sadness, and a wonderful self-loathing. It was remade by its master so that it, in turn, could remake reality.

  It would begin with these monks who thought to dabble with darkness, who sought to press halters of order on its master’s rightful domain. It would show them the glory of entropy and then it would go west and this Nicholas would know Chaos! He would breathe tumult and cry bedlam, and when the last shred of sanity slipped into the void, Nicholas would be undone. It thrilled at its mission, at its strength and vitality. It was more than alive, more than aware, as fluid as the cosmos and as immutable as the void. It was Maelstrom, the death of reality.

  War at Pylae Wharf

  “Fire!”

  He could barely hear his own command over the chaos on the wharf, but nearly three-dozen bowstrings snapped on cue and a cloud of flaming arrows streaked into the sky seeking targets. Only about half of them found their marks, and Belsnickel winced as he watched the others pepper his wharf and blaze wherever they landed. If it kept up, those demon wraith creatures wouldn’t matter, the fires his archers lit in their efforts to fight back would do them all in anyway.

  ‘Not to mention ruin me,’ the gangster thought as he peered through the smoke and panicked, fleeing bodies to take in the scene. Two triple-masted trading vessels were already bur
ning, their crews swarming over their decks like panicked ants desperately trying to contain the blaze. A constant tattoo of splashes sounded as people sought escape from the suffocating embrace of the swooping fabric monsters, or else tried to evade the choking clouds of smoke that hung everywhere.

  A score of smaller fires dotted the expanse of Belsnickel’s domain, adding to the panic and, at least as important, consuming valuable trade goods. Those were goods that could no longer be taxed by his collectors, loaded by his laborer, or carted to his warehouses. For every coin a merchant lost when his wares went to flame, Belsnickel lost three or four in fees. His empire was burning, and he was the one holding the torch!

  Ash and bits of flaming cloth fluttered on the wind like dirty snow, his men were making some progress, but for every one of the howling cloth demons they managed to set alight it seemed there were a score more to take their place.

  Witchcraft!

  The priests and old women had been right. It was real, and it was on his docks.

  He could barely credit it. The burly crime boss felt a tap from his lieutenant, Vexin, and snapped out of his thoughts.

  “Make ready!” he bellowed. Vexin signaled, and all around the wharf oil-soaked rags tied about arrowheads were touched to braziers and torches in smooth synchronized motions. His lieutenants knew their work, all of his men did. Most of the gangs that called themselves Collegia were made up of failed gladiators, runaway slaves, madmen, and foreigners. They were bullies and murderers, suited for nothing better than shaking down defenseless civilians.