by Allan Cole
"What about the men, sir?" Maeen asked. "Shouldn't they be able to listen as well?"
"The size of the counterspell would alert our host," Janos said. "We must not underestimate this man. He has little wit, but much low cunning, and his powers are as great as any wizard I have encountered. Just because I let him win that little table game, and sniffed out the sleeping spell he cast on our food, it does not mean our continued existence is assured beyond this night."
"It may be difficult, sir," Maeen said, as he put his professional mind to work. "But not impossible. He's got the terrain, and the numbers, I'll admit. However, the demons of surprise are on our side, now. And as for his men - why, most of `em are walking wounded." He sniffed. "I've never seen such a mangy lot in my life."
But Janos wasn't listening; his brow was furrowed in concentration. Then his skin pearled white. "Oh, what a fool I've been," he groaned. "The bastard's tricked me!"
We asked what was wrong. Janos shook his head in fury. "Only try and think of escape, and you'll see for yourselves," he said, voice shaking with emotion. "Think on it hard. Hard as you can. Imagine us fleeing this place. Take it step by step. First the door... then into the streets... then back down the road they marched us on."
I closed my eyes and followed his directions. The door gave way with ease; soon we were all running along the road toward the harbor. I imagined a likely boat to steal; then just as I had us all aboard, and ready to sail, a terrible, unreasoning fear hurled out of some dark corridor in my soul and sank its teeth into my guts. I could not see the beast, but I could smell the mad reek of its presence, and feel the hot pain of its fangs burrowing into me. I knew I had only one hope of escape: I fled back down the avenue; back into the building that held us; back into the chamber that was our prison; and slammed that door shut with all my might. I opened my eyes, bile in my throat, panic in my breast, and saw the same terror on Maeen's face.
"Do you see what he has done?" Janos gritted. "I said he had low cunning; but by all the gods I mock, I did not suspect the extent of that cunning." Mortacious had placed more than one spell on the food. One was to make us sleep until he was ready. The other was to prevent us from fleeing once that moment came. We were trapped in this ghastly city; our own fear molded to make that trap.
"There is only one way to break the spell," Janos said. "My own magick is useless. So we must steal some of his."
We did not discuss the how and why of it, for we sensed any lingering discussion would arouse the worm from its lair. We would go at it simply: one step, then another; seizing opportunity as it came. The door gave no trouble, and there were no guards outside. Janos told the men to wait until we returned, then we crept softly away. I cannot speak for my two companions of that night; but if this account is to be as honest as I have sworn, I must admit how thoroughly Mortacious had unmanned me. I did not face the task ahead as a brave warrior; or as the hero of a stirring ode. All along the way I felt the wizard's cold fingers needle my spine, and heard his scornful laughter. Despair was my constant enemy, every hulking shadow my final moment. We were only three furtive little creatures; kin to all the dark things that scuttle; cousins of shame.
We moved along bleak corridors, past dark empty rooms that reeked of pain; the doors to those rooms yawned open, eager to swallow us. Some rooms were barred, and we heard the low moans of their occupants. Near the entrance to the building, I smelled the sharpness of a familiar oil, and the scent of much-used leather. Sergeant Maeen, bless his old soldier's senses, traced it quickly: it was the last room along the main corridor, just by the exit. The room was unlocked and Maeen cracked it open and disappeared inside. He returned a moment later, and managed a small grin through the web of fear. It was an armory, he whispered; and with that small hope to light our way, we moved out into the chill night.
There was no sign of anyone about, although that did not ease our fear. We circled the place, leaping from shadow to shadow until we came to the rear. Across a wide, barren field, the great building with its smoking furnace beckoned. We hugged every pebble for cover as we scurried to it. The smell of the place was overpowering, and far overhead fiery sparks showered into a moonless night. Why we hurried there, I dared not wonder, for any thought beyond the moment would be a black pit from which we would never escape. Perhaps it was a god, who pitied us; perhaps it was Janos's lifetime lover, Holy Reason; perhaps it was only the small blind guide, that squeaks in the breast of all living things. All I know is, we saw the building... and went.
After an eternity of terror, the building loomed up us, a cliff face of polished stone that stretched deep into the night in either direction. The only feature was the immense black eye of the arched entrance, and the twin columns that supported the arch. We stumbled onto the cobblestone road that served the entrance and gasped to the iron gates barring the way. At that moment luck abandoned us with the drum of footsteps and the grind and shriek of heavily laden wagons. As we stood there, helpless orphans of fate, torchlights flared at the curve of the road. Then a long procession ribboned out of the night in our direction. We ducked behind one of the columns and prayed luck would relent and shield us from our enemies' probing eyes.
Our hiding place gave us a clear view of the procession's approach. There were more than twenty large wagons, and instead of beasts to draw them, there were people laboring in chain and harness; men and women, barely covered in filthy rags. Large men with whips moved among them, lashing anyone who faltered. I jumped as the iron gates beside us suddenly rumbled into life, rolling open on oiled runners. We huddled back into the column's slender shadow as whips cracked and the wagons moved through. A charnel smell wafted over us as they moved past and I saw with horror the wagons were heaped with bodies. There were some still living among them, for I saw movement and heard desperate pleas.
As the third wagon was dragged by us, one of the women faltered in her chains and fell to her knees. Her rags were clotted with dried blood. They came open as she fell, and I saw a gaping wound in her belly, and the glistening of entrails. She looked up, and for a moment our eyes met; but they were as blank as an oxen's. A whip snaked out, cutting a bloody furrow in her cheek. She did not show pain or emotion, but only rose dumbly to her feet and gripped the chain to labor on.
As the last wagon moved through, Janos hissed for us to follow. We leaped on the back and clung there, struggling for a grip on gore-soaked wood. The gates rumbled shut and we were inside. I looked back and saw with numb acceptance there was no one to operate the gates. Moments before the wagon was jerked around a turn, I spotted an odd shadow near one of the gate's huge hinges. The bars there were bowed and twisted from some accident. I risked my grip and nudged Janos and he saw it too: a gap just large enough for us to squeeze through. We jolted along a dark passageway. Somewhere in the wagon a man groaned ceaselessly; then I heard a child cry and almost wept. But the cry had stirred my anger and that anger pierced a hole in Mortacious's black sorcery. It was only a small hole, a pinprick at best, but it was enough to allow a slender light of courage to peep through.
I still feared Mortacious: my flesh still flinched under his spell's cold net; but if he came upon us now, he would find a man - not a scuttling rodent. A big door boomed open and light flooded down the passage. As we leaped from the back of the wagon, a wave of intense heat followed the light. It seared the lungs and turned the roots of my hair into small, hot needles. But I still had sense enough to catch Janos's signal: we ducked under the slow-moving wagon and used it as cover as we crawled the rest of the way on our hands and knees.
We were in a vast chamber of pain and death. The floor and walls were mirror-smooth and blazed with reflected light and heat. The most ghastly scenes and demonic creatures decorated that surface and were granted locomotion by black wizardry, so they swirled and flowed from place to place, making an obscene nightmare of fang and talon; rack and tong; cracked bone and severed muscle. One-third of that chamber was filled by a monstrous open furnace. An unholy fire ra
ged, with blue flames taller than a man shooting up to arc and curl and writhe like serpents driven mad by intruders in their nest. The flames were stoked by huge bellows with great clanking chains that moved to an invisible will; with each stroke the bellows gathered in a torrent of shrieking air, with the other, it expelled the air as a howling wind. An endless belt, such as would turn a carpenter's lathe, but as wide as a city lane and made of meshed metal, was suspended over the roaring fire, driven by thick-toothed gears commanded by sorcery.
Far overhead, rising like a hollow mountain, was the great chimney. Its interior was a gaping red maw, with long, white fangs nestled about its entrance. It was a grotesque idol to a dark god, a demon Master. All we looked at - chamber, furnace, fire, belt and chimney - was the engine of Mortacious's black powers. We hid behind the wagonload of gore for more minutes than I now care to ponder, and watched what fed that awful engine, and what it produced.
The men with whips commanded their ragged slaves to empty each wagon. The corpses were slung on a bloody pile by the belt. If any emerged from the wagon still alive, the whip men drew short swords from scabbards at their belts, and corrected the error of stubborn life. When the butcher's heap reached a certain size - I did not calculate their grisly measurement - the slaves were ordered to toss the bodies on the moving belt. The flames leaped higher in hungry contemplation of their meal. The bellows shrieked and howled in demon song. I turned away as the first body crossed into the heart of the fire, but Janos bade me to turn back and witness Mortacious's evil. The corpse leaped as if in agony when the blue flames arched to embrace dead flesh; it writhed and bent this way and that. Then the body burst into flame and sparks and black smoke rose up, and filled the room with that wretched, greasy odor we smelled when we first arrived in this terrible city. The smoke curled into a thick column with sparks leaping and dancing about in its belly. The column lifted up and up and was greeted by the chimney's red maw. My stomach lurched as I saw the huge fangs had come to life, gnashing and clicking together in ghastly appetite. I heard the obscene sound of a giant, invisible diner breaking fast; slurping and sucking with delight as the smoke, laden with a life's hot cinders, passed into the night.
Janos gave me a nudge and my eyes jolted back to the belt, where I saw the corpse complete its hellish journey. I heard Maeen gasp, as he took in what my own disbelieving eyes were witnessing. Instead of a blackened mass of burnt meat and bone, the corpse looked exactly as it had before. In fact, the only marks on it, were the bloody wounds it had suffered when it was still a man, with a life to win or lose. But disbelief was followed by complete confoundment when the belt delivered the corpse to the other side. As the body flopped to the floor, one of the whip men stepped up and gave it a mighty kick. He kicked it again and again, as if death were not sufficient to satisfy revenge. Then my mind screamed for some kindly god to deliver me from this place, as the corpse twitched into life.
Three more of the whip men joined the first, lashing at the man who had come back from death. They tormented him to his feet. He shambled about, a hulk given purpose in pain. For the first time I saw him clearly. Their victim had long, white blonde hair, matched by a still-longer beard of the same color. I remembered the battle we had seen before being captured and realized this man was the chieftain whose death we had witnessed. Now he stood before the whip men, alive again.
I heard fire burst from another body; above, the slurping of the godly diner. Janos leaned close and whispered: "They're not alive. They're still dead." I shook my head; what could he mean? But this was not the place for a full answer. He signaled to Maeen that it was time to withdraw, and we slipped out of the chamber. "Mortacious doesn't bring the dead to life," Janos said. "He commands the dead! He told me so himself, when he said he had the power over men's souls. What we just witnessed was his power at work. He fed the souls of those poor devils to whatever it is he calls his Master. In return, his Master feeds him the sorcerous powers he lacks; and it gives him the corpses as his slaves." Far down the corridor, we heard another soul being sucked from its shell. Janos shook his head. Even in this city of horror, newly gained knowledge made him marvel. "Why, there has not been a person we've seen since we were captured, who is alive. They're all dead! All of them, except Mortacious."
I suddenly remembered the gaping wound beneath the wizard's scarf, and his pains to hide it. No. There were no exceptions. Everyone was dead, including Mortacious. The beast in the chimney was the only master of the realm, with a dead wizard as his chief slave. I told Janos this, and once again I saw the hungry gleam in his eyes as he added new secrets to his understanding.
"But what of us?" Maeen said. May the gods forgive us forever coming to such a place, but how do we avoid the furnace?" The wizard's plan was obvious. In the morning we would join the dead who populated this city as slaves. We would be walking, laboring corpses; and I did not say it, but I wondered if that state were to be favored over what would become of my soul?
"The solution is back in that chamber," Janos said after a few moments. "If we pass through that fire as living men, we will have stolen his sorcery. It is only the souls of the dead, that our Lord Mortacious can claim." I quaked in horror of his logic, but fear of what I had seen drove me to accept his reasoning.
"There is still one great danger remaining," Janos said. "When all twenty of us pass through that fire and gather at the other side, there is no possibility that Mortacious will not know in an instant. A few - the three of us, for instance - might escape unnoticed. But all of us challenging him will be as loud a jangle to his senses as any bell that has ever been cast."
Once again I was confronted with one of Janos's peculiar hesitations. I knew my friend's imagination had raced beyond this place and was set on the road to his obsession. The Far Kingdoms were calling him again; a wanton song that tested all his bonds. But this was no time for doubt's ungracious mewlings; whether his, or mine.
"The only way to get to that furnace is to kill the men who guard it," I said, using reason as bait, instead of emotion. "It will take all of us to accomplish it."
"Even then," Maeen broke in, "the odds are slender. And they get more slender still once we reach the streets."
Janos nodded. "Let's do it then," he said. "Besides, I am weary of this wizard. He marched the twenty of us in like whipped dogs. But now it's time for the twenty of us to go out; and we'll do it as fighting men... as soldiers."
* * *
We went back for the others. It was desperately hard to reenter Mortacious' palace, even though once more, we saw no guards. Janos told them what to expect, and I was amazed no one balked at the horror to come, nor questioned the possibility of what we had seen. Perhaps being in this city of dead souls inured us all to terror. My courage was revived a bit when we stopped in the armory Maeen had found, where the weapons confiscated from us were held. My sword's steel was reassuring, although I wondered how effective it would be against the already dead.
The ghosts of the events that followed are with me now; but my mind shrinks when I press it for the ink of recollection. It was a terrible night's work; and my quill hand is refusing to mount the thorny summit it presents. I have already suffered for seven longs days on the tale of the wizard who commanded men's souls; and bargained his own to wield that scepter. A heap of ruined pages beside my writing table attest to my painful labors. Horror does not wither with time's long passage; it lies fresh on your pillow when you rest you head, and waits, alert, when you rise. I tried to escape the task entirely by pleading those obscene events might injure a sensitive reader; but the lies have proved easy meat for the ghosts, now their hunger has been awakened. I must flee to truth for courage to drive those ghosts across the linen. And the truth - obscene, or not - is a necessary glue to cement final understanding. So I shall go on, trusting this confession has made the mountain small.
* * *
If Panic is Fear's sister, it was she who gave us strength that night; while her brother fired our blood lust. We f
ell on them unawares, those poor soulless men with whips and short swords forged only to cut a compliant path for final release. They were silent when we came howling into the chamber, and silent they remained during the furious fight. We slashed them down and pierced them where they fell. But as we moved on to reap their brothers, they rose up and came at our backs. We were killing men who were dead when we slew them, then killing them again, and again. We cut off their limbs, but they still had teeth to bite; and the lopped off arms, attached to hands that still gripped swords, snaked across the floor in blind search for us. So we severed every joint, chopped off every head, and gutted the flopping trunks that rolled about to knock us from our feet.
We were twenty butchers, half-mad with fear, wading through a great slaughterhouse of meat no man could eat; grappling with poor dumb beasts who did not cry out when we maimed them, and fought with only the wizard's hate to hold them up.
Finally, we were done. Our clothes were blood-drenched uniforms; our faces gory masks. We turned away from the demons our slaughter had conjured. All of us knew the blood would remain even if we bathed in whole rivers of pure water. The shame was undeserved: but fairness is a great stranger to life. There was nothing we could do but swallow ugly fate and get on with it.