by SJB Gilmour
Contents
Copyright
Title
Angela of Troy
Extras
About The Author
Angela of Troy
SJB Gilmour
Published by SJB Gilmour at Amazon.
Copyright © 2011 SJB Gilmour.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a data retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright holders.
This work is fiction. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
General Digital Format Release ISBN: 978-0-9871084-4-9
Angela of Troy
Angelina Troy was a woman of legend. Seasoned veterans feared her sword and gods themselves lusted after her body, just as demons in the pits of the darkest hells loathed her and her necromantic power. Nothing, it seemed, could bring her down. Then she met the one man who neither feared her nor desired her. It was that encounter which was the beginning of her ultimate undoing and her terrible fall from grace…
I had always found standing naked before lecherous demons a little trying. Even though the rites protected my body, just as the burning nine-pointed star on the ground guarded my soul, it was still bothersome. I’m told many male necromancers don’t mind so much, but I know no other females who enjoy the experience.
It would have been nice to be clothed but there was (and still is) no alternative. Opening a portal to a hell and summoning a demon from that hell into the nonagram certainly contains the demon, but where there’s one demon; there are millions. If others were to follow the demon summoned, they would possess the first biological thing they encountered, including clothing. The last thing one needs is a pair of breeches in need of an exorcism. I tried it with an imp once. Not pleasant.
Could I have been wearing metal armour? In that era, the only readily available armour was brass, and that had to be fitted with leather and woollen padding and nobody in their right mind wears armour without padding.
The demon I had summoned examined my body from ankle to neck, paying closer attention to my nether regions until finally, he fixed his horrid eyes on my chest. Not for the first time in my necromantic career, I wished the weather had been warmer.
Still, I needed information from this moronic being, so I put up and shut up. Were he more intelligent, he may have been less perverted, but then he would also have been rewarded with more power and thus harder to interrogate.
‘If I provide you, necromancer, with the information you seek, what would you provide me in return?’
His leer was disgusting beyond words and seemed an odd contrast with his forced mode of speech. Mind you, I was forcing him to speak a language I could understand. His native tongue was incomprehensible. We humans have only one mouth, with one tongue. He had three mouths with at least as many tongues inside each one.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest, forcing him to make eye-contact. When he wasn’t leering at me, he was checking the star on the ground to make sure he was within the wards. Were he to try to cross them, any suffering he might have experienced in his hell would feel like he was being rubbed down with fragrant oils in comparison.
‘You’ll get to return to your own hell, instead of one far worse,’ I replied, the power welling within me amplified my voice, making him flinch with every syllable.
The information I needed from him was simple. A rogue werewolf was on a killing spree, and if I was to stop him, I had to know who his next victim would be.
Normally, a few murders would be of no concern to The Sorcerers’ Guild or Lentekhi, the base of my Amazon legion. This werewolf was selectively hunting down and killing sorcerers and the only lead we had were the last words of one of his victims.
The victim had been mauled so badly, his death from blood-loss was inevitable. Before he finally crossed over to Hades’ realm, he had croaked ‘It was revenge… The demon…’ Then the man died. If The Guild had had the sense to send a necromancer after the man’s soul then and there, I wouldn’t have needed to do things the hard way.
The demon I faced relented. ‘It was the Gryphon demon.’
His excitement over my body was beginning to wane, if his softening organs (he had several) were anything to go by.
‘Your prey became a werewolf as a result of a Gryphon demon’s actions,’ continued my demon. ‘It was destroyed, cursing your prey. Only its master knows its secrets.’
‘And what demon is that, beast?’ It does no harm to remind a demon just who’s boss.
The demon leered at me again, his excitement building once more. The name he provided was as unpronounceable as his own, but it was enough. I may not be equipped to make the sounds of the monster’s name, but I could remember them. That’s all a necromancer really needs to summon any such foul force.
‘And now, necromancer,’ he asked, leering again, ‘are you sure you would return me so soon?
The demon was one of the countless varieties The Guild was yet to give any classification, such as species or what-not. He was evil, randy and were he not confined within the wards I had set, would no doubt ravage me with such savagery and cruelty that I would be grateful when death took me. The form he chose was vaguely human, however as I already pointed out, he had given himself various extra limbs and organs that could further serve his cruel lust.
I didn’t answer him. Satisfied I now had all I needed, I began chanting the rite to return him to his hell. The powers of demons vary, not so much between the species, but more because of their rank or status in their own particular society. The one I had chosen was middle-class. He would not have the strength to rise so high that he might have the power and audacity to defy me when I questioned him.
But, he was crafty enough to surprise me. To this day, I am unsure how, but the demon had been able to push through the protective barriers I had erected within my mind. Seeing the most recent object of my own desires, he chose that moment to change his form into an exact replica of it.
Shocked, I was left with only one choice of action. If this demon was to return to his hell with news of both my own carnal longings and worse, how to find them within my mind, I would be plagued by demons forever. And so, risking the wrath of the demon’s overlord or devil or whatever wicked higher power he served, I began a new rite.
This rite, one saved only for the darkest emergencies, was one that would rend the demon’s soul from its form, sending it back to its hell, vulnerable and alone without its bodily form, sometimes built up over aeons, to protect it. This demon’s form had been off-putting and bizarre, but it had been easy to cope with. The form it now chose was not. He changed himself into the human and very charming shape of the man I’d been having all manner of erotic dreams about.
It was over very quickly. All it took was a simple command, and a not-so-simple release of as much power as I could summon. He didn’t even have time to scream.
I did. Once I had closed the portal and doused the flames of my nonagram, I collapsed to my knees and howled in shock and terror. Anyone who has survived the horror of rape has an idea of what that experience was like. For me, it was not my body the demon violated, but my mind. I retched onto the ground and lost control of my bladder.
When I was done gasping for breath and expelling all manner of bodily fluids, I drew in a few ragged breaths then dragged myself to my feet.
‘Purgarito!’ I commanded in Magaeic. The quick, single-word spell cleaned the worst of the muck from my skin, but I still needed to bathe. Numbly, I made my way from the yard into one of the empty huts in the deserted village where I kept my kit.
I was in an area that would one day be called Evreux in southeast Normandy. It was a vastly different place from the civilised land it has now become. Of course, this was only a few centuries after the death of the prophet from Nazareth. The Gallic tribes had only just begun making their way into this land. It was a primitive, barbaric place.
The locals were superstitious to the point of idiocy. A pestilence had gone through the area some years before. Those lucky enough to survive the illness weren’t fortunate enough to be gifted with any extra intelligence. They fled the village, branding it cursed.
There were several small huts scattered about. I had chosen one of them to shelter in; the werewolf had chosen one on the other side of the hill from mine. If he suspected I was nearby because I was hunting him, he did not show it. It was not uncommon for sorcerers to seek out places such as this to practice their art away from prying eyes.
I had made no move to engage the werewolf yet, nor would I until I was certain of my plan of attack. That, I hoped, would be sooner rather than later. I had no taste for this cold savage region. I longed to return to my base in Georgia by the Black Sea where the walls were white-rendered stone, the air was warm and sweet and water flowed in our baths.
There was no such luxury here. Once I had added a few more sticks to the fire to warm my hut, I took a bar of soap and a rough hemp towel from my kit and went down the hill to the creek to bathe. It was icy and difficult. There were no rocks or logs I could use to keep me from the dirt and mud. Once clean, I had to stretch out and manoeuvre myself from the creek to some scratchy reeds to stay mud-free. Not a very dignified exercise.
By the time I made it back to the hut, I was cursing the backward folk of this land. I would not have been so irked if I had not known I’d be needing to repeat the process again sometime in the immediate future.
It is something of an oddity among sorcerers that necromancers are almost universally obsessed with cleanliness. Presenting oneself to evil on a demonic scale usually leaves the sorcerer just itching to scrub their skin raw - a sensation people now often describe after having met with lawyers.
I had to know more about why the werewolf was choosing the sorcerers he chose before he set out to hunt again. It was late morning and I knew he would be resting until the cover of darkness came to cloak his movements. Before I could summon the demon whose name I had just gleaned, I had my rituals to perform. I set myself to a few hours of exercise and training to clear my mind, bathed again to cleanse my body then ate a small meal. The routine of this practice helped me rid my mind of some of the terror I had felt.
That stated, I was still shaken by the demon’s ability to break through my strongly-held defences. Worse, I was horrified my ability to hold such control over my mind was hampered by such a childish thing as the longing for a man. Try though I might, thoughts of that man were never far from my mind at that moment and it was that lack of total devotion to my singular task that frightened me the most. It doesn’t do for a necromancer to doubt her abilities. Without the confidence to force a demon to do one’s will, the demon will win. Every time.
The words of drill sergeants past echoed in my mind: ‘Forget your loves, your pride and your shame! You are a soldier: nothing more. You have one task and one task only. Find your enemy. Kill your enemy. Return alive.’
That man, the one I had so foolishly let myself become enamoured with, would have to wait. I returned to the yard outside the hut in the early afternoon and once more removed my clothing to begin the rites of necromancy to bring forth yet another demon.
This one took no interest in my body. Nor did he seem particularly interested in why I had used more of my power than really necessary to protect my mind from his corruption. He simply sneered at me, seeing only the soul who summoned him.
‘Your demands?’ He was a powerful Gryphon demon, with the head of a lion and the body of a giant reptile. His voice was more a growl than actual words. He was also far more powerful than the lecherous creature I had summoned that morning. He almost sounded bored. It was as though he would answer my questions only if he felt like doing so. True, I could force him, as he knew, but doing so would also exhaust me.
‘The werewolf, Benjamin McConnell, you know of him?’
The demon smiled and yawned. ‘I do,’ he replied shortly. ‘He seeks revenge upon all who associated with the one who cursed him.’
‘Then he’s a lycanthrope? Turned into a werewolf? He seeks to kill his maker?’
Lycanthropes differ from full-blood werewolves. A human bitten by a werewolf, should he survive, becomes a lycanthrope: doomed to become a monster in the light of a full moon. Full-blood werewolves usually hunt these creatures down and kill them. Usually.
If such monsters become powerful enough to master the curse, thus being able to control the urge to kill and even resist the change brought on by strong moonlight, they are sometimes left to their own devices. Could McConnell be a lycanthrope? It did not make sense. If he was a monster, the resident werewolves on Earth should have taken care of the matter themselves.
The demon laughed at me scornfully. ‘Foolish witch. You know not what he truly is! You know nothing of the curse of The Silver Shroud.’
I sighed. This demon’s language was even more stilted than the one I’d met that morning. I took his scoffing as typical demon bluff intended only to shake my resolve. I tried another tack.
‘I’ll have a name from you, demon!’
The demon did not seem perturbed one bit. He glared at me, the façade of boredom gone in an instant.
‘Know this, necromancer. Long have we Gryphon demons been allied to Herpethia.’
Herpethia was a snake demon worshipped by a cult in Asia. The cult claimed her to be a goddess, but in truth she was nowhere near deity status or strength. She was simply another demon hoping for advancement by somehow invading Earth. As if that could ever happen.
‘It was she who sent one of my servants to your world. It was she who allowed that servant to lend his power to one of your kind, bent on destroying those who will stop her reaching your world.’
This sounded like something I had spent my whole life trying to avoid. My mother, the great and powerful witch Cassandra of Troy, had brow-beaten me with prophecies until the day I was old enough to leave.
When I was but thirteen years old, I fled my home Τροία, or Troy as it’s known now, by the Sea of Aegeas and travelled over the land to Byzantium, now Istanbul. There I joined the crew of a ship that took me to Lentekhi where I stayed for the next several hundred years. There, I was trained first to be a soldier. Then later, I was given leave to seek out and train from many of the necromancers working within The Sorcerers’ Guild, as well as a few who weren’t. (In case you’re curious, you’ll not find the Amazon base on any map. It has moved several times in the last aeon. Where the Amazon base is, Lentekhi is.)
‘You speak of a foretelling?’ I asked the demon.
He nodded. ‘Aye, witch. Herpethia shall fail at the paws of the werewolves. Still she tries and will continue to do so until she is ultimately defeated. Though allies we are, I shall take delight in her downfall.’
‘Who, demon? Who was this contact?’
The demon smiled. ‘You cannot save him, witch. He is already dead. His soul is beyond the reach of even one such as you.’
‘Still, I will have a name from you!’ I began chanting a rite known to cause pain to any demon trapped within the wards of a nonagram.
‘Angus!’ roared the demon. ‘It was one of your kind called Angus who gave his soul to my servant in return for power!’
I swore to myself and dismissed the demon. Angus had been dead for nearly three hundred years. Many of his associates however, were still alive and well, though no-doubt living in fear of the werewolf McConnell.
Angus had been a sorcerer. Like myself, he was a necromancer, only he had become infamous for befriending and even releasing some demons from the protective wards he created. Dangerous an
d stupid.
He had even trained me for a few years during one of the few periods in my adult life when I was on speaking terms with my mother. She and he had been friends of sorts.
I did not mourn Angus’ passing. When his remains were found in Italy centuries before, I had long since moved on to learn from greater and wiser necromancers than he. Just as well. His methods were becoming more and more dangerous. His forays into other realms became increasingly long, exposing him to greater depths of evil depravity until his sanity began to fail him.
The first incidents attributed to McConnell occurred shortly after Angus had been found dead. It was then that records of McConnell’s activities began. He hunted down and killed Angus’ every living relative. He killed his neighbours and everyone he could find who ever did business with him.
All through this, he had made no attempt to hide his identity or make the killings appear the work of anyone but himself. And, he continued to do so for hundreds of years, slowly and determinedly seeking out any and all of the sorcerer’s associates and meting out the same fate.
Of the sorcerers living in that part of Normandy, only two had worked with Angus. One, a sorcerer called Philippe was dead, found butchered by a river. The other, a witch called Moira Cromwell, was still alive and holed up in a hut deep in the forest. She wasn’t in seclusion for the privacy. She, I now knew, was McConnell’s next target.
I did not have time to bathe again now. Instead, despite feeling the desperate need for another wash, I donned my Amazon leathers and arms. My head was bare, but my chest, fore-arms and thighs were protected with brass plates over tough leather. Some of my sisters wore the simple helmet with the Y-shaped face-guard, but I found it limited my sight too much. Instead of opting for the round shield and long-sword, I carried only my shorter blade and my long-bow.
Before setting out, I paused to send news of my discovery to The Guild. In so doing, I was forced to revisit the thoughts I had tried to banish earlier that day. The memory came back to me of how I met the man who was making my insides go gooey.