by John Shirley
“Do not look upon it!” the priest told Atanequ. “The Spawn of the Toad has crawled out of its belly. Take the Daughter of Yhoundeh from this place, Great Hunter. Take her to Uzuldaroum. She must arrive in time for the Festival of Springtime. Go now!”
The black presence writhed and bubbled as Atanequ raced toward the cavern’s exit with Quarha on his shoulder. The priest remained behind, placing himself between the horror and the hunter. He sang an ancient song, his fingers painting a pattern of sorcery in the smoky air.
When Atanequ reached the threshold of the exit tunnel, he turned back to see a glowing, five-pointed star with a blazing eye at its center. The serpentine entity seemed transfixed by the priest’s glowing sigil, its tentacles waving wildly about the old man yet unable to touch him. The monstrosity grasped at the senseless Voormis instead, crushing them to death in its viscous coils.
Whatever ancient spell the priest had used to fend off the Spawn of Tsathoggua, it did not affect the rousing Voormis in the same manner. The shaggy ones staggered to their feet and rushed toward the priest, tearing at him with claw and fang, rending his flesh as the glowing symbol flickered. Atanequ heard the old man’s death cries ringing through the tunnels as he ran toward the distant surface with Quarha in his arms.
~*~
One month later the Great Temple of Yhoundeh welcomed its newest holy daughter with cascades of white flowers and bands of singing maidens. Before the antlered statue of the great Elk Goddess herself, Atanequ was praised for guiding the princess through the icy mountains and the wild jungles beyond. When the highest of the high priests heard the tale of the hunter’s exploits and the daring rescue of Quarha from the subhuman worshippers of Tsathoggua, he assigned a place of honor to Atanequ during the opening rites of the festival.
Atanequ and Quarha had grown very close during their month of travel through the jungles south of the Eiglophian range. The i’imbru that possessed Atanequ became known to the princess. Yet she had refused to give Atanequ the gift of her love, for her body and her virtue were both promised to the Great Temple of Yhoundeh. Atanequ had come to understand this, although his i’imbru was in no way lessened by her adherence to religious propriety. Perhaps he would linger in Uzuldaroum awhile, and the princess’ heart would eventually soften toward him. It was the hunter’s first time in the great city, and the splendor of its silver towers, lush gardens, and broad arenas fascinated him.
On the morning when the Festival of Springtime began, Atanequ stood among the honored guests of the temple and watched Quarha walk toward the eight-sided altar at the foot of the giant Elk Goddess, who was sculpted of purest white marble. The Daughter of Yhoundeh stood proudly upon the raised octagon, in sight of a thousand priests, acolytes, nobles, and even the King and Queen of Uzuldaroum. Quarha basked in the glow of their admiration as she raised the long, curved dagger in her fists and directed its point toward her beating heart.
The day grew silent but for the warbling of temple birds in the trees, and Quarha sang the holy words she had been taught by the highest of high priests. Atanequ looked about him with some consternation. He had never witness this rite and did not know what to expect, but he did not like the position of the dagger in Quarha’s gentle hands. All the observers about him were calm, yet he seethed privately inside the silk raiment the temple had afforded him.
When Quarha’s song was finished, she drove the blade deep into her heart with a single practiced thrust. She made not a sound, yet it was Atanequ who cried out as if his own flesh had been pierced. Quarha’s lifeless body tumbled across the altar-stone, spilling crimson as the citizens of Uzuldaroum applauded her noble and selfless sacrifice.
Now the bounty of spring was assured, and the threat of eternal winter staved off for another year by the grace of the Elk Goddess, and the blood sacrifice of her holy daughter.
Atanequ shouted his lone protest and ran across the temple yard toward the altar. Priests and noblemen fled from his path as he leaped into the waters of the sacred wading pool and splashed his way toward the body of Quarha. At last he knew what it meant to be chosen as the Daughter of Yhoundeh, but he could never love that harsh goddess.
“The Ice Demon take you all!” he wailed as he wept.
Before his strong arms could sweep the dead girl into his embrace, a volley of arrows from the temple guards caught him in the chest. Seven blessed shafts pierced the Great Hunter’s body and sent him reeling across the eight-sided stone, where he lay next to Yhoundeh’s brave daughter.
The Darkness Below
By Brian M. Sammons
Borsk’s sod-walled, thatched-roofed tavern sat next to an eastward jutting spur of the road between the once mighty capital of Commoriom and the new seat of power, Uzuldaroum. The sagging structure had been raised by his father’s father when orichalcum merchants still regularly came to the mines in the foothills of the Eiglophian Mountains. There slaves had once dared the darkness that slept beneath the nearby ebon peaks to wrench riches from the earth for their avaricious masters. The orichalcum mongers would then haul their golden-coppery plunder by the wagonload back to Uzuldaroum, and in their comings and goings they would stop at the earthen tavern for food, a dry bed, some mead, and willing women.
Then, one night decades past, the long-slumbering dark beneath the mountains awoke. Perhaps it was the greedy miners scratching in the earth that roused it. Perhaps it was just its time to awaken and remind men why they feared the dark. Whatever the cause, the darkness flooded into the mines, engulfing them completely. Before the next cock’s crow the Three Pits, as the trio of ancient mines were commonly known, were abandoned amidst screams, blood, and prayers for protection from the consuming darkness. Over one hundred and fifty slaves never left the Pits that night, not to mention a number of proper men from wealthy families.
The priests of Yhoundeh were summoned and arrived three days later. They blessed the mines, burnt incense, read incantations from an ancient scroll, and made blood sacrifices. Their servants collapsed the entrances to the Three Pits and the priests declared that the foothills were now sacred to the elk-goddess. Any trespass upon them was punishable by death. Faced with two ways to die, either by Yhoundeh’s ever-vigilant inquisitors or the horrors that lurked below, the miners never returned to the Pits.
When the mines died, so too did the most of the trade on the eastern road, which turned the once busy tavern Borsk would inherit into a leaking, slouching hovel of mud and straw that no one bothered to visit. The beds moldered unoccupied, the mead became increasingly watered down, and the coin-hungry night ladies left for more prosperous places to spread their legs.
So when, many years later, eight rough men came to Borsk’s door, demanding to be served food and drink, the tavern keeper did his best to accommodate them within his meager means. He did so not only out of greed for the pazoors in their purses, but out of fear of the sharpend bronze that hung from their belts. Each man wore the boiled mastodon-hide armor of Uzuldaroum’s slave infantry and carried well-worn weapons. They had the look of seasoned reavers to them, and surely not a band to be trifled with. Still, despite his fear, Borsk could not help listening in on the drunken ramblings that grew in volume as they drained the tavern’s last mead barrel.
“You sure all that orichalcum is just lying there; ready to be harvested like ripe fruit? We don’t have the skill or the time to cut it from the stone. If the followers of the she-elk discover us…” The smallest of the slave soldiers let his question hang in the air until a one-eyed, scar-faced brute put down his cup to answer.
“I told you, my father’s father was in the Pits when the slithering shadows rose up out of the deeper dark. He and his fellows escaped with their lives, but left everything behind to do so. That includes the orichalcum they had mined for the night. It was still in the carts, waiting to be hauled up when they ran away. It is still down there now. No one ever went back after the elk priests condemned the place.”
“And what of Yhoundeh’s inquisitors?” An
other of the eight said.
“Have you seen any yet? Just as the darkness has no doubt returned to slumber over the many years, so too have the followers of the she-elk become soft in their duties. After generations of finding no one treading their cursed hills, they now stay in their keep, only venturing out for supplies.”
“You had better be right about both the inquisitors and the sleeping dark,” A mountain of a man from the ice-bound wastes of northern Polarion said. “Should we encounter either, I will make sure you pay for convincing us to risk our necks thrice over for orichalcum dreams that are naught but smoke.” He had the coldest eyes and largest axe out of the warriors and spoke to them with authority. So absolute was his command, that none spoke further of their plans, and soon the runaway slaves were singing drinking songs, cursing, laughing, and at last snoring as drink claimed them.
In the morning the rough men left the tavern, grumbling about thick heads and sour stomachs. Moments later Borsk left, himself. Whereas he had seen the slaves continue west towards the Eiglophian Mountains, Borsk ran north towards the stone and timber temple-keep of Yhoundeh. It was just before midday when he found himself before the fearsome horned captain of the inquisitors.
“You have something for me?” The highborn holy warrior asked. He sat on his massive white auroch, gleaming in the high sun as its rays reflected off his bronze breastplate and elk-antlered helm.
“Men, eight of them of them. Escaped slaves, heading towards the Three Pits.” Borsk said.
“How do you know this?”
“They were in my tavern last night, boasting of their plans to plunder the mines.”
“Why risk their possible wrath by telling me? I’ve never known you to be especially brave or pious, barkeep. In fact I’ve always thought you to be a worm.”
“Your words wound me, sir,” Borsk said. “I pray to the elk-goddess every night. Also the darkness from the depths has slept for three generations. Should these slaves enter the mines, they might stir it up again.” He grinned through his brown teeth, squinted against the glare coming off the bronzed warrior, and added, “And perhaps there might be a small reward for such information? For helping to keep the sacred hills free from trespass?”
The captain laughed. “I thought as much. Fear not, brave barkeep. Should your information bear fruit, you shall be rewarded. Yhoundeh is generous to her faithful.”
The holy warrior rode off towards the east with twelve of his best men following close behind. Borsk returned to his sagging tavern where later that night he had his own dreams of newfound riches, although his were all about pazoors with the symbol of the elk pressed into them.
~*~
Two days later Borsk was walking through a damp morning fog, hauling two full buckets from the nearest stream on a yoke across his shoulders. Heading back to his tavern, in the feeble gray light he spied a large antler-crowned figure waiting for him along the trail. The shadow signaled to him in recognition.
Borsk smiled and picked up his pace; counting the coins he would soon have even before they crossed his palm. But after just a few hasty steps, he faltered. Something was off about this, but it took Borsk some time to for his greed-muddled mind to put the pieces together.
The man in front of him wasn’t mounted and Borsk could not recall ever seeing the captain of Yhoundeh’s inquisitors without his pale auroch underneath him. Then there was the silhouette, it was all wrong. The man in front of Borsk was both much taller and heavier by far than the inquisitor. And then there was the large double bit axe that rested against the man’s leg…
“Oh no,” Borsk whispered as he shrugged off the yoke and water buckets. He turned to flee but gasped at the sharpened bronze just inches from his face. The well-notched sword belonged to one of the slave soldiers from the other night, and even though the dark-haired southerner from Tscho Volpanomi had one arm in a crude sling, he still looked twice the killer Borsk could ever hope to be.
The trembling barkeep began to babble for mercy when the one-armed thug kicked him square between the legs. Borsk sucked in air, hit the moist earth, and buried his face in a cool patch of moss. He laid there, tears running from his eyes, breath catching in this throat, hands on his aching manhood, and waited for the sword to fall and finish him.
The blade never descended. Instead a kick to the gut flipped him over on his back like a turtle on its shell. When Borsk finally opened his pain-clenched eyes, he saw the large leader of the slave soldiers smiling down at him. The man’s bushy beard was streaked with dried blood and upon his head was the bronze elk-antlered helm of the inquisitor captain, now with a fist-sized dent to one side of it.
“Just the piece of filth we’ve been looking for,” the Polarian said.
Protests, pleas, and prayers sprang to Borsk’s lips, but the brute silenced him with a wave of his hand.
“Keep your lies between your teeth. We know it was you that sicced Yhoundeh’s hounds on us. We got that from the man who wore this,” the mighty warrior tapped the helmet on his head, “after we killed his men and put the fire to him.”
“I am so sorry, I didn’t-” Borsk began, but a giant, muddy boot to his stomach drove the wind out of him.
“Silence, dog. I know why you did it. You were greedy, not to mention foolish to cross me, but then you are also lucky. Normally I would kill you for what you did. You got all my sword-brothers killed but Troamar here. You also nearly wrecked the sole reason I risked my life leaving Uzuldaroum’s damned army and came all the way to this foul place. But like I said, you are lucky because I am also greedy and I can use you now.”
“What?”
“Troamar broke his arm in that battle you put us in, and while I am strong, I am not strong enough to carry all the orichalcum out of the mines that would make this trek worth all the trouble. So you will go with us to the Three Pits to help us haul out the orichalcum. If you do your job well and do nothing else stupid like trying to run away before I say you are done, then I might just let you live. Oh, I will take your left hand off at the wrist to teach you a lesson, but I will leave you with your miserable life.”
The bloody-bearded man leaned over and spoke through gritted, yellow teeth. “But piss on my good nature again, and you will die screaming more than the she-elk’s champion did. And that man took half the night to die. Understand?”
Borsk surely did. While he grew up with tales of the nightmarish Three Pits plaguing his childhood dreams, the Polarian barbarian that towered over him was a much a monster as anything from the dark. Had he not killed the inquisitor captain and a dozen of his best men? What could Borsk do in the face of such a real and frighteningly close threat but say yes? So he agreed and the giant hauled him to his feet, spun him around to face east, and give him a shove to get him going.
The trek was both long and hard. The land was not only hilly but heavily wooded with yuka and pine. It soon became clear that the slaves were avoiding the easier travel the road offered for fear that more followers of Yhoundeh would be out looking for their missing brethren. For two nights the trio slept rough in the wilderness without even a simple blanket to put down on the cold, damp earth. To add to the misery, the large Polarian, who Borsk learned was called Kjeljuk, would allow no fire lest vengeful eyes spy it and come searching. While the runaway soldiers seemed used to such hardships, Borsk suffered greatly, but he was wise enough to do so in silence. As for food, Kjeljuk begrudgingly shared some of their tough, dried and heavily salted army rations with the barkeep as they had no time to harvest the bounty of the forest or the many nearby streams.
By mid-morn of the third day the three men stood at last at the feet of the darkly looming Eiglophian Mountains. Before them was the crumbled and moss-covered entrance to one of the long-shunned orichalcum mines. A silence as still as the grave hung heavy in the air and none of the men, not even mighty Kjeljuk, seemed eager to break it for fear of what they might summon.
Troamar was the first to speak and it was only his all-consuming greed
that overcame his good sense.
“That be silver, no?” The warrior asked, and then raced forward towards the caved-in mouth of the mine.
Before the pile of rubble there were etchings in the stone that shone with a silvery glint. It was an unbroken semi-circle around the mine entrance, and along the line were arcane silvered symbols that gleamed despite the sun being behind dark rain clouds.
“Markings of sorcery.” Kjeljuk said with both fear and respect in his voice.
“The priests of Yhoundeh did that, or so my father told me when I was young.” Borsk said. “He said the touch of those symbols would be an anathema to the Shadows Below and that they would dare not cross them for fear of being consumed by holy fire.”
“What about us? They burn us too?” The one-armed savage from volcanic Tscho Vulpanomi asked.
“Only one way to find out.” Kjeljuk said.
He then grabbed hold of the pleading Borsk and tossed him to land on the silver symbols with a heavy thud. The barkeep’s posterior sent bolts of pain to his brain, but no more than any hard fall onto unyielding earth would produce. No mystical holy fire sprang forth to consume the trespasser, much to his relief.
“So we can take this silver, then?” Troamar asked as he pulled a copper dagger from his belt. His eyes all but twinkling as he went towards the silvered half-circle.
“No,” Kjeljuk quickly ordered, which caused Troamar to stop dead in his tracks. “Just because we can touch these symbols does not mean I am willing to mar them. No telling what magic you might release. Leave them be. Besides, we are here for the orichalcum and there is plenty of that to be had in the mine. All we have to do is get to it.”
Kjeljuk dropped a large, hide-wrapped bundle he had been carrying for the past three days and pulled off his mastodon-leather cuirass, with Troamar quickly following suit. He then untied the bundle, which revealed a pair of pickaxes and shovels. He grabbed a pick in each of his mighty hands and tossed one at Borsk, who yelped, flinched, and failed to catch it.