Lost Is The Night

by Greg James

  Its approach towards the Wanderer might be slow, but it never halted.

  Soon, it would be upon him.

  If neither sword, nor magic could harm it – what could be done?

  There was a way, Murtagh guessed as much, but could he do it?

  It was much to ask, even when he was the one doing the asking and no one else. He’d forsaken the honour and grace of his calling. He’d pissed on the memories of Milanda, Leste, and all of his kin through his actions. This night was his penance, but could he be wholly penitent for what he’d done?

  Now was the time to find out.

  Leste, forgive me.

  His voice cracked as he called out, “Khale, drive it ... Gods’ bones ... drive it to me!”

  The Wanderer’s eyes cleared for a moment, and he looked at Murtagh. The former Captain could see understanding in his eyes.

  He doesn’t believe I can do this.

  “To me, Khale! I say, drive the beast to me! Do it now!”

  Khale did as Murtagh bid him to.

  He advanced on the tide of silently boiling pitch and began herding it towards Murtagh with fierce blows of supernatural force. A bead of sweat ran along the length of Murtagh’s spine as the creature fought back against Khale. Perhaps it would overcome the Wanderer’s assault. Perhaps it would perceive his purpose. The sacrifice he was going to make.

  Murtagh cast aside his sword. He would need it no longer. He strode towards the thrashing form of the daemon. This was his time, to go into the Thoughtless Dark, join with the dead and see what fate awaited him there. For his part in the burning of Colm and the slaughter of its people, he doubted it would be a good and fair fate. But that was as it should be.

  The creature reared up over him like a colossal, hooded cobra composed of night-soil. Its liquid mouth opened, letting out an atonal cry.

  “Leste ...”

  It plunged towards him and everything went dark. Tendrils and fronds ensnared him, piercing his flesh and bones. Creeping folds blinded him and closed about his head and torso. It was as though he were being consumed by a wet, toothless mouth as it drew tightly around the rest of him, and began consuming his flesh. Murtagh’s screams drowned in its black matter. Every part of his body burned with salival fires of dissolution.

  He heard something. A few last words.

  “Fare well, Murtagh Alen,” Khale said.

  And Murtagh knew death as it truly was; it was not a mete and fitting thing.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Heavy bronze doors stood before Cacea at the end of the promenade. She reached out a hand to touch them but they opened before her as the song declaimed and sustained a pure note that pierced her with the beauty of an arrow shot true. Once inside, she walked along a hallway inset with alcoves occupied by suits of armour composed of interlocking, hexagonal plates of dark-veined stone. Resting atop each suit was a helm made for an alien head, its shape and design was alike to a giant cockroach’s shell.

  The song banished foreboding as she passed by the last of the alcoves and stepped into the central chamber. It was a dome of polished bronze, its apex lost in gathered shadow. Cacea’s path was laid out before her as a mosaic of turquoise and quartz that met with other paths coming from similar portals that opened into the chamber. The point where they all met was a hollow at the centre and from it arose a cascade of incandescent flame. The light of it surged and eased in time with the song and, as Cacea moved closer, she could hear the tinge of an echo in the sound.

  The source of the song was the tower of flame.

  In the fluctuating light cast by it, she could see the shapes of others walking towards the spectral inferno. They swayed as they walked, not unlike the flowers of the forest. Their steps were those of the sleep-walker. Their faces, when she was able to see them, were empty of will. The song was inside them. The song was everything.

  It was inside her.

  She could feel it passing over her soul.

  It was an eclipse of her being; a promise, a balm, a hope, a salvation.

  And yet, she felt it as a shadow too.

  She stopped moving, and the gravity of the song retreated somewhat from her heart.

  Cacea wiped at her eyes, feeling strangely awake, and looked around at the others in the chamber. She saw some that looked human, and others that resembled the Chalga-swine. A few of the Chalga-insects with their hideously-mouthed tails were approaching the smoking light as well. It shone in their wings as they came closer, closer and closer to it.

  They stopped in their flight, but only for a moment. Each one of them arose as if buoyed by thermal currents from the hollow below the flame. They flew into the light.

  They were consumed by it.

  The tower of flame burned bright and black for a brief moment.

  The song pierced Cacea and, once more, her feet began to pace towards the light. Slowly, slowly, she went on and, at every step, she fought against it – but it did no good.

  She could see it flaring black and bright as others came to the precipice of the hollow and jumped, disappearing in small, silent eruptions of smoke and flame.

  The song itself was no longer a thing of melody and cadence. It was a force, a strength, a will, a hunger that ached to be sated.

  And Cacea realised what had been familiar about this place; the forest with a castle, for want of a better word, at its heart much like the forest and the castle of Lord Barneth. And the many promenades leading into this central chamber, like the spokes of a colossal wheel meeting at its hub, where these unfortunates immolated themselves in this torrential cascade. This place was a wheel of death. A wheel being fed on blood and loss.

  A Red Wheel; like the one I died upon.

  Inside herself, Cacea screamed alone.

  I am dead, that is why I am here.

  I am the same as Anhedon.

  I am no more alive than he is.

  Her face was wet and she raised a hand to wipe it clean. The palm came away red with blood.

  I died on the Red Wheel.

  I died my first death at the hands of Lord Barneth.

  Did he send me here to die again?

  Cacea could feel a sudden cold emanating from the tower of flame. The song was in her bones. There was no stopping it now. She was going to burn and die in fire.

  A hand found her own. She turned her head with an effort. The song did not want her to look away from the light of imminent death.

  It was Anhedon beside her.

  His sword was in its scabbard and he was walking at the same slow pace as she was.

  “We’re going to die,” she said.

  “We are dead, you and I, we have been for some time,” Anhedon replied.

  “I know, but it looks like it’s going to happen again.”

  And he said something that she did not understand.

  “Do not fear death, Cacea. It is not the end of everything, what seems might not always be as true as it seems. Sometimes, it is a gift and not a curse.”

  Anhedon the Last had lost his reason, she thought.

  The depths of the flame let out a pained, cosmogonic groan as the world shook around them. The light grew fierce and violent. It rose and rose. It wove and it flowed. Cacea saw thrones set in high alcoves about the central chamber: stone figures of heroes, daemons and horrors sat upon them, staring into the fiery tower with sightless eyes studded with dusky jewels reflecting its funereal light.

  “This is it then,” Cacea said.

  “Aye, it is.”

  Cacea took Anhedon’s other hand in her own.

  “Cacea Selwen, you have been a light for me in this dark place. Fare well.”

  He smiled, and so did she.

  They plunged into the fire together.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Khale descended the coiling stair that wound down inside the buried tower, away from the chapel-room with its idol of Juular and guardian-daemon. A wan light burned from below and danced before his eyes as a far, receding flame. Dawn
was fast approaching. The Crone and her kin would be waiting, and Khale did not mean to see himself damned by them.

  He came to an arched doorway and passed through it. He saw Barneth’s wife and children sprawled across a grand, four-poster bed. The rich wood of its frame was exquisitely carved with hellish things. Annera Barneth had been disrobed to the waist. It appeared that her naked son and daughter had died while suckling at her sagging breasts. Their fingers rested in the spiders’ nest of their mother’s genitals.

  Khale grimaced at the scene.

  He approached the bed and examined the dead. There was a curious withered quality to their skin and flesh, as if something had been drawn out. He could see no signs of wounds, no bruising, and there appeared to be blood and fluid still inside the corpses.

  It had been a long time since he felt this close to fear.

  Barneth, he thought, what have you done? What other abominations have you set free?

  There was another door past the bed. He approached it, drawing his sword, and opened it with a careful hand. He was watchful, turning incantations over in his head should they be needed. The door closed behind him.

  The Wanderer stood in a sanctum which smelled of incense and other headier, and more bitter, aromas.

  There was no sign of Cacea.

  Not even bait, what is this then?

  Barneth stood before Khale, or rather what remained of him.

  For the face dressing the Lord’s bones was no longer that of a man. It was a shifting mass of purulence, running thickly with the colours of death and decay. The flesh beneath the once-fine clothes moved in slow, nauseous motions. The clutching fingers of the thing appeared to weep tears of pale corruption onto the flagstones. There was an intense odour of blight hanging in the air. It was familiar in some ways.

  “Hatred,” Khale said, at last, “you hate me, do you not? I know the stench of it well. Far too well.”

  The rotten thing groaned as it tried to lurch towards him. Instead, it stumbled and fell. The sanctum resounded with the crack of its brittle bones shattering on the ground.

  Khale strode forward and drew the thing to its feet, “You hate me, and you have held onto that hate, have you not? Many others have suffered and died in my place at your hands over the years, yes?

  It gurgled wordlessly as he shook it by the throat.

  “I have done the same, Barneth. I know how it is to hate another. I know what it means to feel like you’re carrying something sick in your guts and know it’s not your own, that it shouldn’t be there. But then, you change and it becomes a part of you. It consumes you. And you make others suffer in the stead of the one whose memory torments you.

  “You’re no mage though. You never were. Now, look what trying to be one has done to you. The shadow of your hatred crawled out of the Thoughtless Dark and it has swallowed you whole. Aye, you have paid in hard coin for this night’s work, my Lord.

  “And Cacea, dead as well, is she not? Though I think she must’ve died better than you have lived.”

  The thing groaned and lunged at him, in answer. It tried to grasp Khale with its bilious hands. A patch of skin along his jawline burned where a tainted fingernail scratched at him.

  Barneth’s eyes were torture-black pits: gates which opened onto a thousand hells, and he was enduring the fires of every one. Khale’s eyes ran over the moaning thing, and he felt a trace of pity for it.

  “You cannot even tell me what I did now, can you? The terrible wrong I committed in your eyes. Did I kill someone? I think so. I do not know who it might have been, for I have slain so many and too few worth remembering. Your hatred has taken your tongue and your vengeance has rendered you mute. How deeply that must wound you, my Lord.”

  Khale’s eyes turned to the ornate mirror behind Lord Barneth.

  Shadowglass.

  The dance of light and dark across its surface told him this was the portal which had been opened into the Thoughtless Dark.

  There was but one way to close it, and he held it in his hands.

  Khale hauled the struggling remains of Milius Barneth towards the mirror. He laid a hand upon the surface of the shadowglass. Utter cold. Harder than the hardest stone. A prison without walls. One that would endure for eternity.

  He grasped the creature, feeling the weight of all its misspent evil and impotent malice. The Wanderer spat out dark words in sorcerous speech, working a conjuration of banishment and binding.

  Barneth clawed at the mirror’s frame, trying to moor himself. Khale tore one of the Lord’s hands free and watched flesh come away from bone. He cast it to the ground where it dissolved into a scattering of dust and dark slime.

  Khale heaved the monstrosity across the mirror’s threshold, pushed and let it fall into the abyss beyond. Its distant cries were echoes lost in the halls of infinity. Khale watched the dwindling form of Milius Barneth thrash against its spell-woven bonds.

  Light and dark.

  Fire and shadow.

  Falling away from the world, ensnared, forever.

  Then, with a word, Khale shattered the mirror. Its glass made no sound as it broke apart.

  Khale fell to the ground, feeling spent. It had been a long night, and he had lost the life he meant to preserve. She was gone, just as Milanda before her. And he was as filthy with blood and death as he had been when he came to the gates of Castle Barneth.

  After a time, the Wanderer arose, left the sanctum and returned to the upper levels of Castle Barneth. The way to the Thoughtless Dark was closed. He could feel it. The labyrinth was no more. The castle’s dimensions were as they should be once again.

  It would be dawn soon; his time here was almost done.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Only her life, Wanderer, that is all we asked of you, only her life.”

  Khale hurried through the corpse-choked halls of the castle, ignoring the fell tones of the Crone that called to him on the air. Another witch bearing another curse.

  Would he never be free of such creatures?

  Then, he heard another voice call his name, and stopped.

  “Khale.”

  This could not be.

  It was absurd.

  He followed the sound of the voice to the Great Hall where a figure stood—a figure who should not have been there. Khale looked upon himself, but older, much older and heavily armoured.

  “You should not be here,” he said.

  “No, but I am.”

  “Why come to me now?”

  “Because there was no other time to come to you.”

  “What do you mean to do here?”

  “I mean to kill you.”

  “You cannot do that and live yourself.”

  “I can, and will.”

  The elder Khale was dressed for battle in a king’s elegant, lobstered suit of armour. A dragon-crested helm framed his neatly trimmed mane of pure white hair. His eyes were the same, though: sickly, yellow and diseased.

  The younger Khale was tired and worn. His hair and body were bloodstained and bloodied from his own wounds. The skin where Barneth’s shadow had scratched him still burned fiercely. His clothes hung from him as rags.

  But he would fight. He would not walk away from this.

  “Guard yourself,” the younger Khale said.

  The elder Khale said nothing.

  Khale faced Khale, their swords drawn.

  The one foe in creation who could match him was here. The one enemy he had no wish to fight, for reasons other than fear, stood before him. His death here could change the past, and the other’s death could undo the future. Even the simple fact of them being together was enough to turn things to chaos.

  “Why come you here?” Khale asked again. “Why now of all times?”

  “You know better than to ask these questions. All that is to be said is that I am here, and we must face each other now, at this hour.”

  “That is not enough. To be here is enough. To fight holds what purpose? You owe me words of truth.”


  “I owe myself nothing,” the other said, “nothing but the pain and anguish I have always brought down upon my own head.”

  Though the elder Khale would not be drawn, the younger discerned a pained distress in the lines of his face—a face he would one day wear and call his own. Could the future centuries take such a toll, after all that he had suffered unto now?

  This could not be.

  “Come, it is our time to die,” the elder Khale whispered.

  The younger Khale shook his head and raised his sword.

  It was a battle that should not have been possible.

  Their blades crossed.

  Light and dark erupted in fury around them. Skeins of time were cut. Cause and effect ruptured, spilling a wretched excrescence across the two warriors. History itself haemorrhaged, and its blood ran down the castle walls. What was to come became no more as their swords sang, parried, danced, and clashed.

  They uttered spells that brought thunder and flames into the Great Hall, creating showers of shattered timber and masonry. Strange shapes seemed to twist in the frenzy that the warriors conjured; some bore fangs, others were clawed, still more writhed into existence as tendrils and boiling spheres that fluctuated in and out of being.

  Khale and Khale were caught in the raging eye of a cosmic storm.

  A sheen of sweat glimmered on the younger Khale’s brow. He knew this could be the end as the elder Khale circled, preparing to harry him once again with ferocious blows. Centuries spent in pain and misery could be undone. All he had to do was lower his guard and let the other’s blade take him.

  But he could not do it. He would not.

  To end this long life with a simple surrender ...

  No.

  He fought on, although he knew not why.

  “Fall! Fall!” he roared at his elder self.

  The elder Khale answered him with a volley of eldritch lightning-strokes that shook the castle to its roots.

  “Not until you do,” the other spat back, “there’s no more of eternity left for us. It’s over, Khale.”