The God Tattoo: Untold Tales from the Twilight Reign

by Lloyd, Tom

  I don’t think there’s anything more I can tell you about him. I spent three years asking wherever I went and I never heard a word. He wasn’t a man people could forget, but it was as if he hadn’t even existed. I even checked every way he could have got to our village as best I could, asking children away from the village. I got chased off a few times, but not once met anyone who knew his name or saw his face. All I can tell you is when I think of his face, I see him standing on the village square, laughing and eating peaches. I’m sorry. The next thing I remember was when he had gone.

  We woke up with a cold mist hanging over the whole village, but not thick enough to hide what I’ve dreamed about ever since. The unmen – hung from the big oak on the green with an apple in his mouth and his legs roasted underneath. The rooms of my father’s inn – each with a girl collared and leashed to the wall, blue tongues sticking out of their mouths and so much pain on their faces.

  The wrestling pen – covered in bodies and limbs from the duels the foresters had played with their axes. The oxen, dead and stinking, cut and strung open and left to rot in the road.

  And the children, oh the children . . . What happened to the children? The worst dreams are always of the children. Of the creatures that came from the forest. Of the feasts we shared with ghosts and daemons. In others we sold them to spirits and ghouls, I can see them licking their lips as they paid us in leaves. When I was working a few months back I had a sudden memory o’ four little girls out skipping, hand in hand, off into the forest – leaving a trail of blood while hungry eyes watched from the forest. We didn’t find a trace of most o’ the children. Those we did, I think they’d been fed to the dogs by their parents.

  None of us could say what really happened, only that we needed to hide it, that we needed to make the world think we’d never existed. We all suspected; we all suspected what we did, but no one knew anything. We just sat there for hours before we could move. All I remembered was the sound of a flute; a song with no words and the stars looking down and laughing at us.

  But whatever blame we bear, whatever evil came from within us, it was still the minstrel who brought it out. I can still hear his voice; can still see his face. They’re burned into my soul.

  Oh, I forget nothing of Rojak.

  VELERE’S FELL

  My learned friend,

  Knowing you as I do, I feel sure that the report I have copied below will be of great interest to yourself and certain fellows. I have no safe way to confirm any facts, but if it proves to be nothing more than a macabre tale I hope you will appreciate it on that standing.

  This report bore seals of the highest secrecy; seals that bound the messenger, one Sir Daraz Tergev, to deliver it intact to the hand of the Menin lord himself, upon forfeit of his life.

  — My Lord,

  My life is forever yours, my words ever unworthy,

  When this finds the favour of your hand I feel sure Numarik shall be conquered and Daraban within your sight. If Lady Fate is benevolent, she will see this to you before you see the pyres of our victory. What follows is the product of translated reports and witness accounts. They provide, at best, unsatisfactory conclusions, but it is beyond my power to exhume any more of the tale from the ruins of this place. Battle raged before we had even sighted Daraban’s walls – though perhaps madness and anarchy are more suitable terms. Much of the city was destroyed or aflame when we arrived and only a handful of regiments resisted our entry into the city.

  Needless to say we hold the city and your foolish Krann leads the revels and debauchery. While I lack your tribe’s noble blood, my heart is Menin; it revolts me to witness such abandon with impotent commands on my lips. Your Reavers pursue their orders with a feral lust, but currently they are the only regiment other than my own Huntsmen with a semblance of discipline. As we sighted the city I smelled something other than death on the breeze and my gathering of documents, as ordered, has borne out my instincts.

  Commissioned report of Prefect Iliole following alleged occurrences in the border region known as Velere’s Fell

  Having investigated the disappearances fully, I must conclude that the village of Three Stones has been taken by surprisingly bold Elven slavers. There is little more to do than send the remaining militia of Riverdam to deal with the situation. It is a disturbing tale but the impending threat to our borders overshadows all, the myth of the Menin Lord has given many over to madness and fantastic speculation.

  The inquiry into this mystery was initiated by a pair of hunters who arrived at the gate of an outpost two weeks past. One has since died, unscathed but determined to deny himself both water and food. The other lives but his mind is damaged beyond hope. He is confined to a cell for his own safety after trying to scale the walls and walk to Numarik. The hunters spoke only in a fleeting, incoherent manner of what had happened in the Velere’s Fell region; of unholy screams in the night, of an army of ghosts, and ‘a plague that walked’ – all encountered as the pair travelled home to the village of Three Stones.

  I am told it is a vile backwater at the best of times, or so the landowner would have me believe. For my part I have never heard of the place and was hardly aware that people lived in Velere’s Fell. I am advised that Three Stones is a recent settlement, the closest of a series of villages to that unremarkable hillock that lends its name to the region. I leave the significance of the name to more sober minds than the superstitious cretins surrounding me. What bearing such ancient history could have I do not know, but evidently it is enough to excite and terrify some.

  A party led to the village by said landowner and my sheriff, a good and Gods-fearing man whose word I value, found little remaining. The inhabitants were gone, the cattle slaughtered and in an advanced state of decay. No trace is to be found of the villagers but the buildings were intact and no goods of value taken, an unusual departure to the conduct of past raiding parties but not one I shall complain about. In the interests of civic morale here I have instructed an accomplished officer to stay at the neighbouring village and report as necessary. This I hope will placate the population enough for the issue to be ignored in favour of real problems such as impending invasion.

  — This is the earliest reference I have uncovered in the chaos of Governor Corren’s offices, the administrator given rule of this region. The hunters’ reports themselves are unhinged and of little value; however, the horrors they mentioned he placed at your feet, unsurprisingly I suppose. He seemed to believe that a ‘gale of annihilation’ preceded your armies, but I believe this horror beyond even your supreme mortal skills.

  Report of Vantan Dey, Officer of Riverdam, to Prefect Iliole

  Having spent two nights in this Gods-forsaken region I am ready to leave. There is an air to the lands all around here that fills me with dread. Some strange horror has suffused every stone and branch, creeping further into my soul with every breath I take. The people tell me nothing, they hardly speak to each other and the children do not play but sit silently in small groups.

  The first night I heard strange noises, inhuman I believed, coming from the direction of Three Stones – although if that was the origin, the sound would have had to carry for almost five miles. Whatever the implications of that observation one draws, the conclusions remain dismal.

  When I broached the matter with the innkeeper here he refused to listen to me, feigning business as an excuse to ignore it, though I saw in his eyes I had not been dreaming. His aid was required however, and willingly enough given, when I began to question others in the village – many of whom starting drinking as I broke my fast, if they had ever stopped. Of his assistance I remain glad; the mood of men and women here varies from sullen to aggressive and unhinged. I suspect there would have been violence had the landlord not been at my side. One man spoke of daemons that rode the land thereabouts riding down the damned, but his fellows quickly, and with threatening words to the both of us, hushed him.

  For my own safety I retired early that evening to my quarters, from
whence I heard the distant disturbance recommence and continue for half a bell – too faintly to discern the source and too disquieting to investigate in the dark. I had taken a room overlooking the village square and from there I could see the main road and houses, most of which were dingy and squat places.

  From my window I observed how the strains on the wind seemed to sap the sanity and reason of the locals. They became more animated and vocal than they had been by daylight, albeit still aggressive and their words were mostly nonsensical. Fights flared from nothing; children viciously beaten for no reason and directly below my window I saw a woman stabbed through the heart. Despite my oath and shame I dared not venture out to her aid; having experienced their hostility earlier I knew I would be in the gravest of danger.

  Later, once the village had quietened and the crazed sound faded to leave an ominous still silence, I watched a man run naked down the street and out past the boundary. The man screamed and moaned all the way, shockingly loud in the unnatural quiet night air and continuing until well after he had left the village – only to stop abruptly in a manner that chilled my blood.

  Unable to sleep, I found myself pacing and gnawing nervously on my knuckle until the blood ran freely. A few swallows of the local moonshine did little to calm my fears; half-a-dozen barely impacted upon them but did at least allow me to settle. Attempting sleep I lay abed and listened to the abrupt, unnatural peace and drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep until, against the absence of cicadas or any nocturnal creature, some slight movement broke the silence.

  This must have been several hours before dawn and I doubt that any other was awake – that or all were awake and similarly lying in the dark, staring fearfully at the walls. My curiosity overcame a tremulous spirit and I observed again from the darkened security of my window.

  To my horror I saw a mountain lion walk unperturbed past the inn and take station by the well at the centre of the small square. Its hide shone so brightly in the moonlight I initially thought it to be a phantom or the conjuring of a frightened mind, but then a cloud dimmed Alterr’s eye and I knew it was not so. There and then the creature whelped a pair of cubs, licking each clean with a tender touch before deliberately crushing their helpless bodies in its jaws. The corpses it left where they fell and sloped back up the street before disappearing from my field of vision. Nothing would have induced me to leave my lodgings and follow had it been a mere house cat.

  The next morning I told this tale to the innkeeper. Initially he made attempts at humour, describing it as the sort of fever-dream induced by the local drink, but when I insisted he flew into an abrupt rage and threw my breakfast to the floor with a string of curses.

  Eventually I calmed the man and persuaded him out into the street to look at the spot, which I had fixed quite carefully in my mind. Before we reached it I heard hooves or running feet and was struck on the head. I remember little of the incident and awoke to find myself in the common room of the inn, bleeding but fortunate in most other respects.

  The villagers were quick to assure me the only blood to be seen in the street was my own, but their inexpert joking only added to my conviction. As for my accident, they claimed a horseman had knocked me down – a man swathed in black and hooded, unknown to them all so each insisted. I scarcely know where to begin my disbelief at the whole tale, but such was my dizziness and confusion I was unable to press the point.

  Around noon I recovered enough to persuade two men to take me to Three Stones. Being large and uncomplicated men of disrepute, they seemed uninterested in anything but money so I promised them all I had on my safe return. Upon cresting the rise that preceded the village, a stench of corruption assailed us to such a degree that we all emptied our stomachs on the spot. When recovered, we were obliged to continue on foot as the horses refused to go further, shying at the sight of the village boundary and the unholy stink. What we found I can hardly describe in an adequate fashion.

  Corpses littered the ground; many torn so horribly I can hardly believe it was the work of living beasts – surely only a horde of daemons could have enacted such horror, but how they could have been summoned I do not know. The closest to an incantation or charm that I could see, beyond those protective wards inscribed on the boundary stones, was a cross bound within a circle on the door of one house. It had been scratched into the wood by claws I would guess, and fairly recent too, but it was just one symbol rather than anything that could be a spell.

  Some of the dead looked to be almost fresh, others had putrefied beneath the sun for weeks, but astonishingly there were neither flies nor vultures to be seen. Closer inspection of one corpse revealed smaller corpses within the wounds, where flies themselves had fallen victim to this corruption.

  The buildings themselves showed significant signs of age and decay – though Three Stones has existed but a handful of years I saw fungus and rot everywhere. It was clear we could not stay long around such signs of plague and ruin without risking our lives. No amount of money would have persuaded my guides to remain until evening, had I lost my intellect so completely that I contemplated it myself. As it was the horses suffered the whip for most of the journey back, though more of a comfort to us than necessary inducement.

  This letter I send with a trader whom I have persuaded to remain until it is finished. He is abandoning his interests here and will not stay another night before fleeing to Riverdam. I shall certainly follow him when my work is complete, but I fear it will take another night at this place as there is an ancient resident of these parts I have yet to meet. It is said he knows the folklore and spirits of the region as well as any witch might, but his home is apart from the village and must wait for morning.

  No compulsion or reward could induce me to return to Three Stones. Once my questioning here is complete and documented I shall return to the city, on foot if necessary. Currently I can only be sure of the fear-stricken innocence of these villagers, whose lives are tied to this land and can scarcely comprehend escape from their serfdom. Their terror is genuine; born of a rural superstition I begin to share, and the root of their obstruction to my investigation rather than malice or complicity. None could account for the sudden presence of corpses in Three Stones and thus far I can gain no evidence that anyone has, or would, venture in that direction.

  My memory of that awful visit grows ever more vague and hurtful with each passing hour, but there remains that one feature I remember with clarity. The symbol carved into the door of the inn, the most central of the buildings of Three Stones. I did not recognise it, nor could decide whether tool, weapon or claw had been employed to fashion it, but it now haunts my dreams.

  Such is the strength of disquiet I feel whenever I recall that scratched image, I have found myself unable to recreate it for the locals, but they claim not to recognise the description. My fearful guides refused to admit its existence at all when questioned though they had seen it as plainly as I. As yet I find no worthy explanation (nor even fanciful account) that seeks to explain these events, but there is a greater force here at work than one man can manage.

  — This was the only report to originate from that officer. Perhaps others were lost, but I found a statement signed by the trader that confirmed the madness of that village. In response the prefect secured an entire regiment of Vartin Guards, brothers of whom distinguished themselves on the field against us, to investigate further. This I conclude to be a sign that he considered this a serious threat; the Vartin Guard held to the last man when we attacked and bloodied the Reavers well.

  The symbol of the cross within a circle is one I do not understand, but the device was echoed to a degree on the streets of Daraban. There, the central crossroad was aflame, with a multitude of precise grooves cut into the packed earth. Even when that unholy fire was extinguished it afeared all and our lesser beasts refused to traverse it. The devotee of Larat who accompanied our force denied all knowledge of it, though his reaction was one of great anxiety. Subsequently he made furtive gestures that put me
in mind of warding against a daemon’s presence, but rarely do Larat’s followers fear any daemon so the meaning remains a mystery to me.

  Letter to Governor Corren, an urgent request from Prefect Iliole concerning the disappearance of the 4th Regiment of Vartin Horse Guards

  Most honoured Governor Corren,

  I understand how inopportune the timing of this call is, but my district of Riverdam is on the brink of utter chaos and no level of threats will induce the population to denounce the call for surrender to the Menin. I appreciate your likely response, but events in the hill region of Velere’s Fell have become a banner of hysterical discord with refugees actually fleeing towards the Menin armies.

  The 4th Regiment of Vartin Guards had been preparing to march to Daraban and join the defence, but I managed to persuade its captain to first impose his sense and honour to the Fell region; a task he willingly undertook having observed the broken spirits of those he hoped to bring to war.

  Entire villages have been stripped of life; sightings of daemons and monsters widely reported while madmen are driven to murder by the whispers they hear as night falls. One of my most trusted officers sent to the area has reported similar madness before also disappearing. I suspected slavers, but the 4th Guardmen have not returned or sent word either and I fear that accursed place has taken them.

  I am at a loss. Every day brings rumours more outlandish than the last. There is a darkness stalking this place and those mages as once did live here have fled. The ancient myths of Aryn Bwr cursing the ground where his son was felled appear to have come true, though how any foul magics done by that long-dead king could still be in effect I do not understand.