The Barrow

by Mark Smylie

  They stared at each other and at the broken blade for a split second in shock.

  And then Godewyn was springing forward and jamming his own sword up through the gap in Arduin’s armor under his left arm, using sheer strength to drive the dull, broad point past his arming doublet and the bit of mail there and then into muscle and tissue and bone and lung, and bodily carrying Arduin backwards in the rush. The broken blade went flying out of Arduin’s grasp and blood spat from Arduin’s mouth as he was driven right-shoulder-first into the wall, his empty hands clawing at Godewyn’s face and neck as they grappled and Godewyn jammed the broadsword in further.

  Stjepan lay back on the casket lid, Annwyn lying entwined upon him as her hands and legs stroked his flesh. He was still semi-hard inside her, and she humped her hips against him slowly, luxuriating in the feeling of their sweat-slickened bodies sliding against each other.

  “Would that I had been born a woman in a land that loves them,” she whispered softly as she nuzzled into his neck.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” came a voice from above them.

  Stjepan, exhausted, looked up in confusion.

  Above them on the lip of the pit Leigh stood casually, looking down on them. Gilgwyr stood behind him and giggled. And several of the Hathaz-Ghúl could be seen peering in the archway into the chamber behind them both, tasting the air with their black tongues. Stjepan blanched, his eyes narrowing at the sight of the Ghúl.

  “That really was most entertaining,” Leigh said with a cruel smile.

  Arduin, clutching his side, slumped to the ground as Godewyn wrenched his broadsword out from under the knight’s armpit, blood splattering everywhere, pouring out from under Arduin’s armor onto the ground. An exhausted Godewyn looked down at the dying knight with contempt and elation.

  “And you were once crowned a Champion in one of the Great Tournaments?” Godewyn said with a sneer, and spat to the side. “Maybe I’ll buy myself a title and a grand estate with the loot from this hole, and enter a tournament or two myself . . . Lord Godewyn, Champi’n of the Tourney, how do you like the sound of that, eh?”

  He sheathed his broadsword and walked over to the pile of loot by the exit. He reached down and grabbed up a few heavy sacks of coins and hoisted them over his shoulder, and staggered out the entrance without nary a look back.

  Arduin’s body shook, and he coughed up blood, the viscous stuff flowing from his mouth; he was choking, having trouble breathing, and he knew that he was dying. His eyes rolled up to look at the ceiling as he tried to gasp for breath.

  Forgive me, oh my father, I have failed you, he thought. Forgive me, oh my king, for I have failed you. Do not forsake me, for I am your loyal vassal.

  The masked head of the body looked on impassively.

  Godewyn took a couple of heavy, exhausted steps into the shrine of Ishraha, with its demonic statue and warrior bodies resting in alcoves, and he looked up from carrying his heavy burden, and froze.

  Several Hathaz-Ghúl crouched in the semi-darkness of the guttering lamplight, waiting silently and staring at him.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Godewyn whined.

  The Ghúl stirred and moved forward.

  And Godewyn screamed.

  Annwyn pulled herself off of Stjepan’s deflating erection and casually stepped off to the side, and he slid off the iron casket lid and crumpled to the ground, curling to protect himself. She stood imperiously and Gilgwyr licked his lips at the sight of her curvaceous body, her breasts lifted high on her chest as she raised her arms and ran her hands through her golden hair, her body gleaming with sweat in the lamplight.

  And then he gasped when his eyes finally registered the headless body that stood in the upright casket behind her.

  “The body of Azharad!” he cried. “So it was here! But . . . where’s his head?”

  “Ah, dismembering the body is an old tactic to foil divinations,” Leigh said patiently. “It destroys the totality of the body, the physical self, and thereby makes it invisible to magic scrying and fortune-telling. Usually it is done as a curse on an enemy, but in this case, the Nymargatia in his service may have used it to hide his body from those that might have sought him out to destroy him utterly. I do not doubt that his head will be hidden somewhere in the barrow.”

  Annwyn laughed. “Did you really not recognize it, hidden in plain sight?” she asked. When the two men glanced at each other in confusion, she laughed again. “Do not worry. I know where it is.”

  She started walking up out the pit, and as she reached near the top Gilgwyr reached down and extended a courteous hand to help her out of the pit. She was humming to herself as she picked up her damask robes and casually wrapped them around her body. Stretching and shaking out her muscles, Annwyn made to leave the room, trailing the robe behind her on the ground, and Gilgwyr watched her go with a leer. The Hathaz-Ghúl parted for her, recoiling with respect and fear.

  Leigh walked down into the pit, and stared haughtily down at Stjepan.

  “Well, Magister,” said Stjepan lightly, looking up at him with a crooked smile. “Who would’ve thought the crazed, evil magician would turn out to be . . . well, a crazed evil magician?”

  Leigh kicked him in the stomach and Stjepan curled into a ball, coughing and hacking.

  Erim came to, and felt broken grass against her face and hands and pressing against her front and right side. She blinked her eyes open and rolled onto her back. She could barely keep her eyes open, but she knew that she would be seeing stars and storm clouds and night sky if she could but focus properly. She realized slowly that she was lying head-down right next to the steps that led away from the barrow and back down the hillside toward their camp. She could feel the weakness in her body, a deadly fatigue threatening to pull her down into eternal sleep. By the gods, I can’t let that happen again, she chided herself. If it does, next time I won’t wake up.

  Despite the numbness that seemed to envelop her body, she rolled back onto her stomach and started to crawl her way down the hill, grimacing as she went. She thought she could see the dark shape of their camp blurrily in the distance.

  Suddenly a badly limping and bloodied Godewyn passed her, half walking, half stumbling down the steps, several large and heavy-looking sacks slung over his shoulders.

  “Hey . . . Hey there . . . Godewyn,” she croaked out, her throat parched and unresponsive. “Godewyn!”

  Godewyn continued on, without a word or look to acknowledge he’d even heard her, disappearing down the steps toward the camp.

  Erim kept crawling through the grass, but faster now.

  Annwyn entered the false tomb, and her eyes roamed over the scattered evidence of looting and a fight. She frowned and grew tense when she saw that the body was no longer on the low rock-and-stone bier, but relaxed again when her eyes fell on the masked head of Azharad lying by itself in the far corner.

  Her view of the other corner was blocked by several Ghúl, perched on the bier or crouching next to it. As she moved forward, she saw past them and stopped, frozen: the Ghúl were watching her dying brother with rapt fascination.

  Arduin coughed blood, and struggled, his body shaking, his wide, wild eyes taking in his unnatural audience with fear and confusion. He weakly held up the handle and shard of a broken sword as a last line of defense against the Ghúl. And then Arduin saw her, and he opened his mouth, and blood spilt out to drip from his chin onto his breastplate.

  Annwyn walked slowly to him, the Ghúl parting before her. Her mind was a blank for a moment, as it registered what she was seeing, and then her head started to fill with all the things she’d ever wanted to say to him: I love you. I hate you. You should have truly loved me. You have no idea who I am. I was nothing to you. You should have stopped them. Why didn’t you stop them? You killed him. You deserve this. You deserve worse. Her face went through a variety of emotions: sorrow, disdain, delight, pity. Then she crouched down next to him, and cradled his head briefly before kissing him on his forehead.
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  Confused, Arduin looked up at her with tears in his eyes, and he tried to speak to his sister, but no sound came out of his throat but a last gurgle. His eyes went blank as he died and his body relaxed and slumped into its armor.

  After a minute Annwyn stood, her face settling once again into a calm mask.

  She walked to the other corner, and picked up the mask and head, and wrapping them in a fold of her damask robes she cradled them carefully in her arms.

  She left the chamber, and the Ghúl moved forward and began eating.

  The high-domed chamber now gleamed in orange light. Candles now ringed the perimeter of the chamber and the lip of the pit to join their light with the lanterns, and Gilgwyr was placing a ring of candles around the upright casket. Stjepan was still down in the hole, his hands tied behind his back, his pants mercifully back up. Leigh stood silently nearby, meditating.

  Annwyn entered, bearing the masked head of Azharad in her arms. The Ghúl began trickling into the room behind her. She crouched by the lip of the pit and with two hands she held aloft Azharad’s head before handing it down to Gilgwyr, who studied it reverently.

  “Oh, my Lord, forgive me; that I spent all day within the earth, and did not recognize you,” Gilgwyr said. He turned and walked down into the base of the pit, and he approached the open upright casket, and placed the masked head of Azharad back onto its body.

  “And what did he promise you, old friend?” Stjepan asked, seemingly more out of curiosity than bitterness. “Azharad’s voice, calling out from his prison here, what did he promise you?”

  “Oh, Stjepan, my dreams have been so beautiful, I cannot begin to describe them to you. The moment Harvald said he had the map, the voices of a hundred corpses promised me that I could have anything I wanted, any treasure, any pleasure of my heart’s desire, even live forever,” Gilgwyr breathed triumphantly. Then he sighed. “I would have asked for your death first, just as a surprise present, but you were always the only one who could read it.”

  “How long were you and Harvald in the Nameless Cults?” Stjepan asked.

  “We had made our first sacrifice to the Forbidden Gods even before we met you, Black-Heart,” Gilgwyr said with a grin. He turned to look at Stjepan. “But we’d begun to suspect Harvald was no longer a true believer, and was looking for a way out: your influence, you heathen bastard. Your heart may be black, but you still have one. He’d started to grow a conscience again.” Gilgwyr shrugged. “But alas, once you’re in the Nameless Cults, there’s no turning back. That’s why the curse on the map killed him, you know, it knew he was a traitor.”

  Stjepan smiled to himself. “Good for you, Harvald,” he said quietly. He turned to look up at Gilgwyr. “But you? You always were a pretty twisted fuck, Gilgwyr, even for our lot, even for Therapoli.” He bared his teeth in a feral grin. “But still, did you think no one would notice? The things you knew, the games you were playing. You had grown too brazen, Gilgwyr. And too many people had started to ask who you really were, and how you knew the things you did. Do you think this is your moment of triumph?” Stjepan laughed. “You overplayed your hand, dear Gilgwyr. The Fat Prince isn’t dead. You tipped your hand too far, after you let your pride get the better of you and you showed off just how much the Whisperers could tell you, and then in your anger and despair let a priestess of the cult of Ligrid walk openly at the Sleight of Hand. Too brazen by far, dear Gilgwyr. And so they set a trap to catch your beautiful priestess in the open again, and you fell for it. She’s likely dead, as are all her coven, they had the best eyes amongst the Marked waiting to see where she’d lead them next, and a hundred swords waiting to purge the festering rot of your Nameless brethren from the city streets. You’ve nothing to return to. No more Sleight of Hand for you, old friend.”

  As Stjepan spoke, a look of growing fear and anger crept up Gilgwyr’s face, distorting his features until he was almost unrecognizable. “You lie!” he finally hissed, and yet he thought back to his sudden odd dreams and unexplained fears during their journey and in his heart he knew that Stjepan was telling the truth. “You lie!” he screamed.

  “Of course he’s lying,” said Leigh calmly, stirring from his meditations. “That’s what Black-Heart does. He’s the best liar I’ve ever met. He’s merely trying to manipulate you into doing something stupid.”

  “Am I?” Stjepan asked casually.

  Gilgwyr kicked Stjepan between the legs, screaming down at him in mindless rage.

  Godewyn was wrapping a bandage around a gouge in his leg as Erim crawled into the campsite. He had stoked the campfires back up to a comfortable roar and had clearly been ransacking the tent she shared with Stjepan.

  He turned and casually tossed a vial onto the ground in front of her.

  “Have some of that. I found it in Black-Heart’s bags, so it’s something he brewed up, curse his heathen hide, but it’ll help,” he said.

  Erim arrived at the vial. She took it in her hands, fumbling with the stopper for a moment, and then finally got it open and took a swig as Godewyn began to pack his meager belongings. She drank the vial down, not even stopping to ask herself what it was she was drinking. When she had drained it dry, she breathed and then looked at the small hand-written label. As she had never learned her letters, they were just squiggly lines. But she could feel a warm, restorative heat radiating from within her belly and spreading to her limbs.

  Godewyn’s voice floated to her. “Where’s Too Tall?”

  “What?” she asked, a little dizzy.

  “Garrett. Garret Akins. The one we called Too Tall, where’s he at?” he asked again.

  “Oh, him,” she said, her voice thick with sorrow. “Sorry. He didn’t make it.”

  “Right,” came Godewyn’s voice, and he kept rummaging about.

  She looked up at Godewyn, and she frowned suddenly.

  “What . . . what are you doing?” she asked.

  “What am I doing? I’m getting the Six Hells out of here, that’s what I’m doing,” said Godewyn.

  Erim looked around the deserted camp. They were the only ones there, aside from the horses and burros. “Where’s Stjepan?” she asked in alarm.

  At that moment, Stjepan was still down in the bottom of the pit, kneeling in black muck and dead maggots with his back to the open upright casket, his hands tied behind his back, eyeing the many Ghúl that now clustered about the chamber above him. Gilgwyr was perched on the lip of the hole, whetting a long dagger, and angrily studying Stjepan. Annwyn walked around the lip of the pit, finishing lighting the circle of candles around it. The candles around the casket were all lit as well.

  “So,” said Stjepan. “I guess it’s obvious you’re not here for Gladringer, if it was ever even here to begin with. But even with his head returned, you won’t be able to revive him . . . did you think it would be that simple? There’s only one book I’ve ever heard of that describes that ritual . . .”

  Leigh popped over to Stjepan and crouched in front of him. He felt within his robes for a moment absent-mindedly, as though he couldn’t remember where he’d left something, before carefully pulling a fragile-looking book from within their mysterious blue-black folds like a stage magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, and reverently he held it up before Stjepan. The ancient parchment pages of the book were haphazardly bound between copper plates, with faint letters etched into the surface.

  “The Libra de Secretum Malifiri de Nymargae. A translation of the Khodex a’dan Quresh, the Book of Secrets attributed to Nymarga the Devil himself. Written after he took the throne of the Empire, to prepare his devotees for the days when he would be gone,” Leigh said. He laughed. “Luckily for me it’s in the Éduinan alphabet. Have you ever read it?”

  Stjepan looked at Leigh and the book with a peculiar light in his eye. “Oh, that book is most definitely forbidden, Magister,” he said softly.

  “Aye, that it is, dearest pupil, that it is,” said Leigh in a conspiratorial tone. “I found this copy hidden deep in the University Libr
ary, a secret hidden so long that none lived that remembered to guard it, not even poor Clodarius, the fool, though he eventually guessed that something of great evil and import had been removed, and suspicion naturally fell on me. Me, of all people! As though somehow I was the only Magister with a black reputation. My revenge shall be sweet and it shall be long, for indeed the rumors were true, and the book contains within it a ritual to bring back a wizard from the dead, the first step on the path to becoming a true Worm King. And for bringing back Azharad, Sorcerer King of the Bale Mole, one of the greatest Devil-worshippers in our history, I’ll be placed upon a throne of brass and fire, to watch my enemies suffer the greatest torments that I can dream of, and for that I can thank you, Stjepan, and your translation of the map that led us here.”

  Leigh spun away and began to mark out a magic circle.

  “Now that his body is whole, three things are necessary to complete the ritual!” cried out Leigh in a magisterial voice. “First, a healthy body for him to eat, to sate his hunger!”

  Leigh glanced back at Stjepan, and Stjepan started to struggle at his bonds, suddenly concerned that the open upright casket was right behind him. Gilgwyr dropped down into the pit behind Stjepan and slipped his dagger under Stjepan’s chin.

  “Not so fast, Stjepan old boy. Can’t let our new Lord go hungry,” Gilgwyr said into his ear.

  “Second, a willing bride for him to fuck, to sate his lust!” Leigh cried out, and he gestured up at Annwyn as she circled the room. She looked down at Stjepan and met his sad gaze with an inscrutable look. “Fortunately she doesn’t need to be a virgin,” Leigh said as an aside before raising his voice again. “And finally, a stalwart spirit for him to corrupt!”

  Turning to face the open casket, Leigh cried out in a thunderous voice. “De lunda mundi illume! Open the World! Open the pathways! Open the door between the Worlds! Unlock the chains that bind this spirit, and free it to return! Unbind this spirit, that it may return to the flesh of this World!”