by Mark Smylie
A swirling wind seemed to be flitting about in the upper reaches of the chamber, causing the myriad candles and lamps to flicker.
As she circled the chamber above them, Annwyn listened to what Leigh was chanting, and slowly she added her voice to his.
“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!” they chanted together.
Godewyn had picked out a horse, a destrier that had belonged to Sir Helgi. It was a fine and expensive warhorse that would likely get him in a spot of trouble once he was back in civilization, as anyone who knew anything about horses would assume he had stolen it; which, he supposed, he was in fact in the middle of doing, strictly speaking. He was quickly loading the horse with supplies and weapons from the camp and the sacks of coin and treasure that he had managed to haul out of the barrow, and trying to ignore Erim as she spoke to him.
“We have to go back into the barrow . . . we have people in there. Please help me,” she said. She had managed to rise to her knees, the healing effects of the vial slowly working on her.
“Help you do what? Get killed?” Godewyn asked. “No need to crawl back in there, if you’re really so desperate to die then I can take care of that right now.” He walked toward her, pulling a crossbow and a quarrel from the rack of weapons in the center of the camp as he passed it, swiftly yanking the bowstring taut to the nut and latching it, and slipping the quarrel into place. He stopped a few paces away and pointed the loaded crossbow at her. She was surprised that she could eye him steadily. “You and I ain’t a we, and I ain’t got nothing in there. Maybe you got people back there, but not me, not any more. All my people are gone from this earth, and if they’re lucky they’re on the Path of the Dead.” He looked at her with a strange expression on his face. Like something was starting to dawn on him. She suddenly remembered that she had taken off her shirt and tied it around her waist to staunch her wounds, and that he was looking at her naked chest. He nodded. “But why the fuck do you want to go back in there anyway? You don’t belong here any more than I do.”
“I’m no fool,” Erim said bitterly. “I know there’s no place for me in this world. I’ve no king, no country that will claim the likes of me. All I’ve got is the people by my side. We rode and fought and bled together, side by side, you and me and Stjepan. Does all that mean nothing to you? Does revenge mean so little? For your dead men, your friends, your boys.”
“Aye. Gilgwyr,” said Godewyn, considering. “I do owe him at least one death. You know, the truth is, when you set out to rob a wizard’s barrow, the greatest danger is always from the ‘friends’ you bring with you. Tell you what.” He smoothly reversed the crossbow and handed it to her. “That little shit ever comes out for air, you shoot him for me. That mad fucker Leigh, too, if you want.”
Godewyn turned around and limped back to his chosen horse and the sacks of loot it carried. He barely managed, bad leg and all, to get into the saddle.
Erim managed to haul herself up onto her feet and stood, swaying. “You coward,” she spat.
“Sorry mate, I ain’t that easy and life ain’t that simple,” he said. “If you’ve got something you think you gotta prove, you go right ahead. Me, I came out here cause I needed the money. I wasn’t in this for nothin’ else an’ I never pretended to be. No, I got what I came for. See you around.”
Godewyn turned the big horse and urged it to start walking. Erim stared after him as he moved through the camp, slowly working up toward a trot and starting to pass beyond the flickering light of the lamps and campfires.
“Fuck it,” she said to herself.
She raised and fired the crossbow in one smooth motion.
There was a wet smacking sound and a scream as the quarrel hit home.
Leigh sat down in a meditative stance on the casket lid, facing Stjepan and Gilgwyr and the open casket behind them, the Libra de Secretum Malifiri de Nymargae open in his lap. As Annwyn kept repeating the base formula of the ritual, Leigh opened the book and began to vary his words on top of hers.
“Azharad! King of the Bale Mole!” Leigh cried out. “I summon you! Azharad! King of the Uthed Wold, Master of the Vale of Barrows! I summon you! Azharad! Master of the Nameless Cults! I summon you! I summon you from your prison! I release you back into the World! The sacrifices are prepared for you, the way made safe!”
Stjepan looked down, his eyes widening, as the dead maggots piled in the black muck at the bottom of the pit began to wriggle and move, as though they were suddenly coming back to life. He struggled, repulsed and nauseated by the sight and sensation around his knees, but Gilgwyr laughed and tightened his grip and pressed the dagger against Stjepan’s chin and neck with enough force to draw blood. The maggots began to wriggle through the mud, back toward the casket, initially to Stjepan’s relief, but then to his greater alarm, as he twisted to look back over his shoulder. The maggots were wriggling up under Azharad’s muck-covered robes, filling the hollowed out flesh of his body. Stjepan looked at the corpse’s hands, pressed together as if in prayer, and watched in horror as the thin, dried, desiccated skin began to swell, the maggots filling out the flesh beneath, looking for all the world like a deflated sack slowly filling with air or water. The skin had become a thin membrane, almost like the thinnest of parchment paper, and he could clearly see the maggots wriggling and writhing and pressing against the surface.
As Annwyn and Leigh chanted, the body of Azharad twitched, though Stjepan could not tell if it was merely the echoing ripple of the multitude of maggots beneath the body’s skin, or because of the return of some semblance of life. Gilgwyr started to stand up behind Stjepan, his dagger now at Stjepan’s ear.
“You know, I’m not sure which I’m going to enjoy more, watching our Lord eat you, or watching him stuff his decaying flesh into that scrumptious bit of snatch,” Gilgwyr said with a leer. “Today is a beautiful day, a great d—”
Suddenly the body of Azharad lurched forward, his maggot-infested arms embracing Gilgwyr, and the bottom half of his mask opened up to reveal a mangled mouth of sharpened teeth. The body of Azharad clamped its teeth down on the crook of Gilgwyr’s neck and took a deep, ravenous bite as Gilgwyr screamed in pain and surprise.
And a dark spirit took shape and form near the peak of the corbelled ceiling of the chamber.
A whispering wind swirled through the passages and chambers of the other parts of the barrow. The wind brought a message for all that were left to hear: Our Lord and King has returned. Rejoice! A dim light began to glow in the eye-sockets of the desiccated warriors standing silent guard in the alcoves of the shrine to Ishraha, the Rebel Angel, the Bright King. First a finger moved; then a neck began to turn. Dust fell from their armored limbs as they stirred, called to duty once more.
Stjepan grimaced and ducked away, crawling and rolling through muck and dirt as the body of Azharad chewed and rent Gilgwyr’s face and neck, eating his flesh and his features and drinking his blood. The repulsive, wretched thing dropped Gilgwyr’s twitching body lifeless to the ground, and leaned its head back, reveling in the taste of human flesh after so long.
Leigh stood to one side of the casket lid, holding the ancient book open, and faced the swaying body of the Sorcerer King. “Azharad!” he cried. “Take the body of Annwyn, daughter of Leonas of Araswell, as your first bride upon your return! Indulge your lust! Taste the world again!” Above them, some of the Ghúl lowered themselves to their hands and knees and began linking themselves together, interlocking their legs and arms as though weaving themselves into a bed of backs. Annwyn slowly lowered herself back onto them, writhing now with a look of rapture as she whispered the words of the ritual.
The body of Azharad walked up out of the pit, moving slowly, as though unused to what passed for flesh and muscle upon its bones. The wind moved about the room with a low roar now, as though a hundred voices were whispering loudly all at once.
The dark, unfathomable spirit shape began to lower itself down from the recesses of the corbelled ceiling, wispy smoke drifting with purpose through the air toward the body in motion.
Annwyn opened her legs wide, revealing her glistening slit, and her hands reached up to greet the body of Azharad as it reached the lip of the pit. The moving corpse opened its dark robes, revealing the peculiar quality of its flesh, the stretched-thin skin gray and white over the mass of maggots that now gave it bulk and form.
Annwyn’s eyes fluttered as her lustful gaze took in the creature before her and then drifted down to what it offered her as it moved between her open legs. Its cock was erect and monstrous, twitching eagerly with both lust and the wriggling of the maggots that filled it to bursting. She smiled and looked up with hooded eyes at the creature’s mask as it hovered above her. The body of Azharad reached out with its hands and stroked along her torso with sharp nails, settled itself at the juncture of her thighs and hips, lined up its cock, and thrust itself within her.
Her gasp interrupted her chanting, but then she resumed, her voice husky with unnatural lust and passion. The map was moving frenetically on her skin, like a hornet’s nest stirred by a stick. She was now staring up past the brazen, horned mask to the dark spirit shape that hovered in the air above them. “I open myself to you, Azharad, as the World opens itself to you! I am open to you, O King! I am the path, the door between the Worlds! Azharad! King of the Bale Mole! I am open to you! Azharad! King of the Uthed Wold, Master of the Vale of Barrows! I am open to you! Return to the World! Azharad! Master of the Nameless Cults! I am open to you! Return to the World!”
Leigh was watching the coupling above him with rapt attention. The wind in the chamber was swirling in circles under the coffered dome above them. Behind him, Stjepan lay on his side, momentarily forgotten. He looked around and spotted Gilgwyr’s dagger lying in the muck nearby, and as silently as he could manage he shifted around so that the hands tied behind his back could grasp the sharp blade. He rolled back on the dirt so that the dagger was out of sight behind and beneath him, and he started to work its sharp edges on the rope holding his hands.
As if he sensed something behind him deserved his attention, Leigh turned slowly and looked over his shoulder at Stjepan.
“Everyone thought you were insane long before you were exiled from the University,” Stjepan said, shaking his head up at his former Magister. “How could you have gone so terribly wrong, Magister?”
Leigh walked over and crouched in front of Stjepan, peering into his face. Stjepan stopped moving the dagger, holding still.
“Insane? Insane?” Leigh laughed. “Since when has the pursuit of power and wealth been the province of the insane? Unless you think every merchant and noble, every priest and king, to be insane like me!”
Above them, Annwyn writhed passionately as the body of Azharad moved upon and in her, at first slowly and awkwardly, then with increasing surety as control over its functions and limbs returned. The dark spirit shape enveloped both of them, its wispy, smoky tendrils running over the flesh of both its body and hers, as though seeking to direct its body’s actions and raise the flames of lust that wracked her skin and the riotous images of the map displayed upon her. Soon Annwyn was having difficulty repeating her chants, as every thrust of the hideous corpse-thing was now producing a sharp cry of passion.
“Most of them will not bring ruin to the world in their greed!” said Stjepan.
“They have already ruined it, with their petty pursuits and mindless sorrows!” cried Leigh, standing and towering over Stjepan. “Gone are the days of magic, when men and heroes of true power walked the world!”
“And is that how you see yourself?” asked Stjepan.
“Do you really think you have the right to judge me? You were a great student at the University, at least when you could put your mind to it, but you’re just a hedge-witch, like your dead mother; no match for the likes of a true magician like me! You know not the game here, nor the stakes!” ranted Leigh as he backed into the center of the pit and began turning in circles, his arms wide. “We change the fate of the World today!”
Annwyn’s eyes rolled back into her head, eyelids fluttering. The bed of Ghúl backs roiled beneath the sweating skin of her back and ass as the body of Azharad pressed down and into her, making her feel like she was caught in a great vise of flesh that pistoned its hardest part deep within her. Annwyn was no longer chanting, instead she was moaning and gasping and babbling like a mad woman, caught up in the frenzied motions of her lustful coupling with the body of Azharad, the roar of voices in the air, the ministrations of the dark spirit shape, the furies of the map within her body and upon her skin, and the thrusting of the unnatural cock within her—all of which was driving toward a climax.
“I am the servant of a Nameless Cult!” roared Leigh, triumphant and deranged. “Nymarga, the Devil, the Magician King, knows well my worth! I will usher Azharad back into the World, and after that we will raise the Worm Kings again, and they will rule the broken Earth from Thrones of Brass and Fire! I will be his Vizier, and Annwyn his first Bride, his first Queen . . .”
The dark spirit shape hovering in the air about the body of Azharad finally began to move onto the body, seep inside it, to try and inhabit it, to reach down through it and touch her insides through its plunging member. And at that Annwyn’s eyes flew open. The appearance of rapture on her face changed in an instant. Her face hardened, became stern and purposeful. And she cried out in a different voice now. “Sumes paradeska malathratta ir dures, dume lira malathratta! Malathratta ir dures! Malathratta ill dures!”
Leigh stopped and stared down at Stjepan for a moment in confusion, then turned and looked up at Annwyn and the body of Azharad in outright alarm.
“Somehow I think Annwyn has other plans,” said Stjepan with a grim grin playing on his face as the dagger started moving against his bindings again.
Above them, the spirit and body of Azharad realized something was wrong and tried to withdraw, but Annwyn wrapped her leg and arms tightly around the body and would not let it go. Wisps and tendrils of dark matter seemed to waver and lash out around the body of Azharad as his spirit, not yet fully connected to his body, was being slowly pulled away and down into Annwyn. But the dark shape seemed to be fighting back against Annwyn’s spell, struggling to remain tethered to its flesh, clinging to its body like a man might cling to a rock to avoid the pull of the whirlpool, but the spirit was weak after centuries imprisoned, and it was losing the fight. Her blue eyes flashed as she cried out: “Malathratta ir dures! Malathratta ill dures! I open myself to you, Azharad, as the World opens itself to you! I am the gate! I am the path, O King! And I close the gate, and I bind you! Azharad! King of the Bale Mole! I bind you! Azharad! King of the Uthed Wold, Master of the Vale of Barrows! I bind you! Azharad! Master of the Nameless Cults! I shut the door, and I bind you!”
Leigh’s eyes flew open as he realized what was happening. “No . . . no . . . no, no, no, my Lord!” he stammered as he tossed the ancient book aside and started to move up the slope of the pit.
Stjepan finally undid his bonds. He raised the dagger and in a flash hurled it straight up into the back of Azharad’s head, then launched himself at Leigh, the rope used to tie his hands now held as a garrote. They went down in a heap against the side of the pit, the rope around Leigh’s neck.
The dagger into his skull severed the last ties between Azharad’s body and his spirit, and the dark spirit shape was now fully unmoored. Annwyn’s body arched back and her arms and legs spread wide, opening herself to the winds in the chamber, and the foul spirit was being drawn out of the air and out of its own body and instead into hers. Her chant was lost in the roar of the wind and a great cry of terror and despair that seemed to rend the very air of the chamber.
With a face of grim determination, Stjepan slowly strangled Leigh with his makeshift garrote, his knee planted firmly in the middle of Leigh’s back. The Magister clawed against the dirt, his eye
s bulging. This cannot be how it ends, he thought desperately. I was so close. All my plans. So many people to ruin. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. And a voice, scratching at his left ear, barely audible beneath the roar of his heart and his lungs, answered back: Of course it isn’t fair. But it’s not the end.
With a final great cry, Annwyn consumed the spirit of Azharad. The brazen, horned mask shattered, and the body of Azharad fell away from hers, limp and useless, dead once more, as dead maggots poured out from the bag of its skin and bones onto the ground. The Ghúl slowly lowered Annwyn’s shuddering body to the earth and gently clustered around her.
Leigh, red-faced, his mouth working soundlessly, started to convulse as his heart seized up, and then his bowels released in his death spasms.
When he was sure the Magister was dead, Stjepan let go of the rope around Leigh’s neck and spun about, snatching up a discarded pickaxe from the earth, and turned and took a step as if about to run up the side of the pit, looked up, and froze.
The room was quiet and still.
The lip of the pit near the entrance was crowded with the revived corpses of the barrow’s guardian warriors, armed and armored in their archaic finery and bearing large oval shields, pointing the rusted points of their spears and swords down at him. They formed an arc across part of the lip, and surrounded a group of the Ghúl that seemed to be clustered behind them. Stjepan could barely see Annwyn, he got the barest glimpse of her pale ivory body beneath the huddle of the cadaverous creatures. A part of him was afraid they were consuming her; a part of him was afraid they weren’t.
“Annwyn! Annwyn? Can you hear me?” he shouted, almost laughing. “A witch! A sorceress! You’re a witch . . . the Divine King’s priests were right . . . I don’t understand, but how?”