Simon Blackfyre and the Corridor of Shadows: Book 2 of the Simon Blackfyre sword and sorcery epic fantasy series

by A J Allen

  Rachel looked around her in awe. She peered through the broken window at the arid yellow plain stretching on all sides toward endless horizons of crimson and gold. “No. I saw and felt the same battle as the others spoke of, but not this place.”

  Simon fixed his gaze down a stone corridor, its high vaulted ceiling supported by fluted pillars leading from the room. His blood raced through his tingling veins like fiery sprites. A single torch burned on the wall mount near the entrance.

  Jack covered his nose. “What’s that horrible stench?”

  Simon grabbed the torch. “Follow me and stay close.” He led them down the dirt floor of the corridor, repeating the ancient Asharru silently to himself, yet careful not to utter a single word.

  The dull padding of their footsteps was the only sound as they wended their way deeper and deeper. Clammy vapors filled the slimy stone passageway and it was becoming harder to breathe. Jack and Rachel wheezed and coughed.

  Simon paused. “Do you see that?” he whispered. There was a fork in the corridor ahead. The left-handed way seemed to be lit by a soft, glow of moonlight emanating from some point further in its depths.

  Jack wiped his mouth. “I can barely catch my breath. Where are we going, Simon?”

  Rachel trailed behind. “What if she’s wrong? What if they all are? This isn’t the way to fight them. I know it’s not.”

  Simon stared into Rachel’s entreating eyes, seeing the flame’s small reflection burning like the terrible truth in her heart, the very same fear that consumed his own. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her but knew he could not.

  Rachel had risked everything to willingly follow him and he would do anything to protect her, yet... What if the Holy Seer was wrong? What would he do then?

  Simon stepped back from her, doubt taking a hold of his thoughts, pushing out the ancient words, making it harder to keep repeating them over and over. He had to finish this quickly for the longer they stayed, the greater the peril of never returning. “Stay here.” Simon handed the torch to Rachel. “I need to see where that light is coming from.” He turned and stepped toward the foggy luminance in the branching corridor.

  “What are you talking about? Come back. Simon, come—”

  “You disappoint me, boy.”

  And there it was. It. The voice. It had shown itself once more.

  The monstrous voice roared its defiant condemnation in Simon’s mind, silencing Rachel’s pleas and shutting out the world. “Does your world mean so little to you that you would sacrifice what little time you have left before it ends? Ask the girl if she feels the same. Go on,” it taunted. “Ask the girl.”

  “Did you hear it?” Simon flashed around. “That’s it. We must be—”

  The torch lay burning on the dirt. And the torch was all there was.

  “Rachel? Jack? Where are you?” Simon ran back and picked it up. He swept the corridor with the flames looking for any sign of his friends, a mounting wave of panic, nausea, fear and wretchedness all brimming together like a knot of vipers in his gut.

  “Rachel! Jack!” Simon coughed and gasped for breath as the air became choked by smoke and the sulfurous odor of relentless, crackling fire. “Please, where are you?”

  The only reply was the beating of his heart...

  Then, suddenly, breaking the silent blackness Simon heard Rachel screaming; she screamed her lungs dry as though from a great distance.

  “Simon! Simon, where are you? Help us!”

  Simon rushed headlong back down the stone corridor, turning, twisting, and descending ever deeper. At every bend, his friend’s cries for help sounded just ahead but when he rounded the next corner, there was never a friend to see… only the endless blackened tunnel descending deeper into a place of eternal misery and madness.

  “Simon, where are you? Help us, please!... Simon, help us… please…”

  The relentless cry became more plaintive, ever weaker, shakier, less alive at every new call. Simon turned and fled down another passageway toward the echo.

  I don’t care about the damned name! I must find them and return. When I speak the words, they will wake us.

  Once more he had no sense of direction or where he was running, except that this time, the faces of Rachel and Jack burned like beacon fires leading him on.

  “Rachel, where are you? I’m here,” he gasped. “I’m here.”

  He rounded another corner but his foot never met the ground this time. In one breath, Simon fell into a fathomless pit, and with the next, he lurched forward and broke through a festering, churning surface, to surface gasping for air in a steaming pit of blood, guts, and bone. He wiped the gore from his eyes. An immense cavern stretched out before him. He pushed and clawed his way through the putrid cauldron of vile remains.

  Simon hauled himself over the rocky edge. Exhausted, he closed his eyes to catch his breath. Warm, gluey drops splattered on his face. He looked up and blinked.

  The gargantuan six-headed creature towered over, filling the entire cavern.

  Each enormous head, the size of a boulder, swayed on a neck as thick as a tree protruding from a red-scaled, bestial body like that of a monstrous lizard. So high in the darkness were the faces that Simon couldn’t see them clearly.

  “I know you, boy,” came that voice again. “I know you.”

  The tallest neck near the center bent toward him. A serpentine face of what might have once been a man hovered over Simon, sniffing, its nostrils flaring. “Mmm, I smell it.” Hooded yellow eyes bore into Simon’s soul, gripping him in their spell. “Mmm, I know you…boy.” The way the thing said boy, lingering again over the word and salivating, made clear Simon was a morsel it could devour inside a second.

  A long, slippery tongue worked its way free through closed lips and licked, lapping at Simon’s horrified face. “I taste you, boy…” it said again as if mocking. “And I taste it, coming seeping through your skin, the fear that marks you and all your kind.”

  Simon closed his eyes and concentrated. He wanted to say the words now but hesitated. Blood pounded between his ears, his strength and courage wavering. His legs trembled yet he stood his ground. “You hold no power over me in this world, demon, or over my friends.” He opened his eyes. “Where are they?”

  The demon reared its huge, twisting necks and scuttled back a few steps. “I see you, slave. I see right through you and nothing but the abyss awaits.”

  Though Simon knew this thing could not destroy any living body, his hand still yearned for a heavy blade to strike its neck. He took a breath and stepped forward. “No. It is we who have power over you. Show them to me at once.”

  “The slave has power over the King?” A long, spindly crab leg unfolded and pointed toward the back of the cavern. “The witch has lied to you. The winged queen will never return.”

  “Simon, help us!” The tiny, wavering voice came again.

  Simon turned and stared at the bubbling charnel pit. A woman and man wrapped in bloody sheets rose through the roiling surface and hovered like unmerciful wraiths, their heads bowed. One raised its head, the face a hideous mockery of Rachel, its black oval eyes and grotesquely exaggerated features a living mask of her desecrated beauty.

  “Why didn’t you help me, Simon?” It drifted closer stretching out its arms. “You abandoned me, Simon.” The sheet fell from its body revealing the ashen nakedness of a living corpse. “I know you want me and I want you too. Come, join us.” It grinned, revealing a row of white, twisted teeth. It touched its own breasts and licked its lips with a long tongue, seeking to entice.

  “No.” Simon fell to his knees and clenched his eyes shut. None of this was true. It was all sorcery, a dark conjuring whose power he could deny. All he had to do was say the words. “Dalach mair su faytoh—”

  The soulless wraith, its defilement of Rachel’s beauty more hideous than the demon he sought, shoved him back down on the ground. He could feel it gliding on top of him like the cold from a crypt, the arms closing about his ne
ck, drawing him closer.

  “Look at me, Simon.” The thing hissed in his ear, mocking Rachel’s sweet voice. “Look at what I’ve become... all because of you.” The thighs were opening, pressing down on him, cold breasts pushing down against his heaving chest.

  “You can’t save them, boy,” the six-headed thing roared from somewhere in the cloying darkness. “Not in this world or any other.”

  A thunderous charge of bestial footsteps rumbled toward Simon, cracking and collapsing the corridor and the pillars that held his mind aloft. “You think it is that simple to be the savior of your people because the dead flow through your veins?”

  Rachel’s shade ground itself against him, the sickly-sweet scent of its breath against his face. “I can feel you wanting me, Simon, to be with me. Your body can never lie. Join us.”

  “No!” The moment he grabbed the specter, his hands chilled as though grabbing frigid, wet clay. He pushed the phantasm away without opening his eyes, for if he did, he feared he might never look upon the real Rachel again. His senses and mind seethed, struggling to hold fast the clearest image of her warm, smiling face, her honey-kissed hair falling to pale, smooth shoulders, and her eyes, her green eyes shining brighter than any royal treasure he could imagine.

  “Look at me!” The thing that was not Rachel clawed at his arms.

  Simon pressed his shaking, filthy hands over his wet eyes and repeated in his mind the only words that could save them all from madness. Dalach mair su faytoh lantori daemonicou! Dalach mair su faytoh lantori daemonicou! Dalach mair—

  A hideous, deafening screech ensued and, in the next instant, his blood froze in his crystal veins. Simon’s head snapped back, rigid, soulless white eyes open unto the abyss, and all was darkness once more.

  Chapter 15

  Your Deepest Desire

  The blurry outline of a young woman’s face smiled down on Simon through the haze. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them rapidly, trying his best to focus though he felt he’d been struck on the head with a cudgel. Simon reached up to touch her but she remained just beyond the brush of his fingertips.

  He sat up in the chair and rubbed at his eyes, seeing her clearly for the first time. He looked around the Council chambers expecting to see his friends under the care of the Holy Seer and her monks. “Where are Rachel and Jack?”

  Felicity Craverston patted his feverish cheek with a wet rag, “Are you feeling better now, Simon?” She brushed back the damp hair from his forehead.

  Her angelic expression, strangely soothing and exciting at the same time, beckoned him closer. Everything appeared as before except only Felicity and he were in the Council chamber at Farrhaven. An oil lamp burned on the desk and another on a small table beside a bed, a bed he did not recall seeing when he first entered. “What are you doing here, Felicity?”

  “Rachel and Jack are resting in their quarters. The Holy Seer is tending to their needs and asked that I attend to yours.” She leaned forward, the top of her shapely bosom exposed beneath her crimson velvet gown. “They pulled you back just in time.”

  “I need to see them.” Simon tried to stand but collapsed almost instantly back in the chair. He slumped forward, his head dizzy and heavy as if suddenly waking from too much drink the night before. His throat was parched and his lips dried and cracked.

  “What are you trying to do?” Felicity placed her cool hand gently onto his shoulder “You’re too weak to walk. We’ve made a bed for you here.”

  Simon draped his arm across her and she helped him to his feet. He would never have guessed her to be so strong for such a slender woman and it seemed she might easily scoop him up like a child as she led him to the bed in the corner of the room. “I’m so thirsty. I need water.”

  “Food and drink will be coming shortly. Here, lie down and rest.” She lay him back and unbuttoned the top of his sweat-stained tunic “You’re lucky to be alive.” She sat beside him on the bed and placed a hand on his thigh. “I can only imagine what terrible things you saw in the Corridor of Shadows.”

  “Did Rachel and Jack tell the Holy Seer? Does she know?”

  “I’m sorry. I overheard them speaking and they’re more afraid than ever now. You didn’t learn its name, Simon, and now they never will.” She ran a long, cool finger over his hand.

  “But I did exactly as she asked. I spoke the words and—” Something pricked his memory and his pulse sped. He sat up, his mind and senses clearing. “How did you come to know about the corridor? We spoke to no one else.”

  She slipped her crimson felt gown over one shoulder. “I told you. I overheard them talking, right here in this room. Soon, everyone will know.” Her hand slid between his legs, gliding ever so slowly up toward his manhood.

  “Stop. What are you doing? They will hang me just for touching you.” He lurched out of bed and backed away from her. “Get dressed and go.”

  “Deny you want me, Simon, and tell them you do not wish to take what has so long been forbidden to someone like you… and I will go. That is the only way you can make me leave.” She pulled down the other shoulder of her clothing and let the gown drop to the floor. “Yet—after what I felt, I believe your body has spoken the truth already.” She eyed him with an insidious, calculating expression.

  Simon’s cheeks flushed with a dizzying rush of desire. How can this be? She had never once glanced his way before. A savage and fierce yearning for what had so long been denied welled up without resistance inside him. Aroused and willing, wanting more than anything to take her now, a noble’s daughter, to ravage that sweet mouth and bury himself deep inside her smooth alabaster thighs.

  “You have but to speak the word. Say what you want and you shall have it... for eternity.”

  Transfixed by her now glowing aspect, Simon struggled but could not look away, compelled now by something stronger than his will. This was more than just blind lust risking all for the fleeting pleasure of a few brief heartbeats if only to deny the overwhelming sorrows of this world a final time before they hunted him down.

  “Please, Felicity. I beg of you. I cannot do this.”

  “Oh, but I know you can.” She seemed to glide across the floor toward him, her small feet never touching the floor. Without warning, she grabbed him firmly beneath his leggings and squeezed gently. Her lush lips rose in a sly smile. She glanced down. “See? You can’t deny your deepest desires no matter which lies you believe. Your body speaks the truth to me. Do not deny what your soul so clearly craves…” Her lips parted and he tasted her sweet mouth, too sweet, like a sugared slice of soppy fruit.

  Simon’s gooseflesh crawled. He broke their embrace and backed toward the rear door. “No, this is wrong.” He shook his head. “This is all wrong. You’re a noble woman and a Strathwald protector, Robert’s favorite. It’s no secret how he feels about you. If he is successful in the rites you could become the next queen.”

  “I have no doubt, my poor, simple Simon. I will be crowned a queen.”

  She seemed to glide across the floor again, no footsteps, as if in a dream. She backed Simon against the door, the tips of her breasts pressed against his skin, hardening. “But there is only one true King.” A wild fury ignited in her eyes. “And he is already chosen.”

  Her eyes rolled back in her head until only the whites were showing. She opened her mouth and two large spider legs swiped at Simon’s face.

  He jerked his head back at the last moment and grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging into cold, oily clay until they grasped something waxy like fish cartilage. His senses told him this was real, but then again, they had lied before. If he was still in the realm of nightmare shades, there was but one way to be certain.

  Simon strained with all his strength and shoved the thing backward onto the floor.

  He braced himself for the next attack and searched around the chamber for something to use as a weapon.

  The crooked legs retreated into Felicity’s mouth and she chortled and gurgled as though they were stuck in
her throat. “You failed, Simon. You spoke bravely, but in the end, lacked the courage to act. You were born a worthless slave and shall die the same.” The demon sprang to its feet in a single motion. Sharp bone punctured through once dainty toes and fingers, the twisted claws of whatever lay hidden beneath the clean patina of Felicity’s porcelain skin. “Your friends are dead.”

  “No, it’s only you, whatever you are. Of that much I’m certain.”

  “Are you? You saw them. You saw what became of your little whore, Rachel, because you couldn’t save her. Only the true King can deliver us from these weak, pathetic bodies and souls.” The demon grinned, dark ooze dribbling out the side of its mouth. “Join us, Simon, join us and we’ll be together forever.”

  Simon jolted back at the sound of Rachel’s pleading voice on the vile lips of this unholy, heartless thing. He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting to regain mastery over the crippling dread encircling his heart. There was only one chance to end this madness or be its prisoner here forever.

  “You know it’s true.”

  Her marble white face looked as if seamed with spreading veins of coal.

  He could not falter now. He looked up at the ornamental sword mounted over the threshold, focusing his mind on one deed of unified thought and action, the way of Soru Kentay.

  “He’s come to take you home, Simon. He’s come to take us all. The winged queen will never return.” The mouth opened wide like a leathery sack, jawbone cracking and breaking free, hanging slack in loose flesh.

  Simon sprang forward and lifted the sword from its wall mounts. He landed and spun on his heel, two hands on the hilt, its glinting blade facing the huge insect. Its body was now the size and proportions of a big brown rat and each leg as long as a tail, crawling out from what remained of the demon’s gaping, oozing mouth.

  Crypt Crawler, Mr. Byrch had called it; they shouldn’t be this far north in any world.