The Other of One: Book Two

by Brian G. Burke

  “Ugh…my heaaad!” yowled he, with his arms wrapped around his ears. “What happened? More ta the point…where are we?”

  Next voice he heard was Icrick’s. He sounded to be snivelling.

  Wetting Khrum’s lips with the last of Ebyulán’s water, the Grogoch forced a smile, gave him back his little hat, and answered, “Welcome back…again. You were your other self there for a whileen (sniff). But, you’re back now! Back here, with your friends…(sniff)”

  “What’s with you? Are ya cryin’? What for? Did somethin’ happen?” asked Khrum.

  Something had happened.

  Not only had Icrick lost the Symphogram during the cave-in—probably in smithereens someplace, for all he knew—but, when the Grogoch gestured it, Khrum turned to see a scattering of bodies on the ground. Those of his friends; all of whom were at the mercy of the villains surrounding them. The remaining thousands were on the far side of the dam, using Ogres to tunnel through. They were progressing fast, under the brutal snap of Gremlin whips.

  These calamities, though severe, were neither here nor there in comparison to when Khrum set eyes upon young William. Wren had him cradled at her breast. His eyes were closed. He looked almost peaceful. His face had been slashed from the corner of his right eye down to his right earlobe. A deep wound. So deep that the leprechaun heard it dripping.

  “I-Is he still alive?” he begged Icrick.

  When Icrick didn’t respond, Khrum grabbed him by the fur and demanded again, “IS HE ALIVE, DAMN YA? SPEAK!”

  Trembling harder, now that they were among enemies, Icrick wept, “I…I don’t know! He was just…laying there, not saying a word.”

  Then, “Shush!” he said. He heard a wisp of breath slipping from the boy’s direction. Wren heard it too.

  “William?” he cried excitedly, caring not for all else, so long as his friend was unhurt. “William, lad, how’s the head? Can ya talk? What number am I thinkin’ of?”

  “How in the hell is he supposed to know that?” The moaning Head pointed out, as he spat up lumps of dusty mush.

  “I mean, how many fingers am I holdin’ up?!” the leprechaun corrected, accidentally giving him the vulgar ‘V.’ “Lad, say somethin’ will ya! Are…ya…well, I asks?”

  William couldn’t speak at first, or swallow. His mouth was too dry. It took him a second, but he eventually humoured Khrum with an answer. A mutter, more so, which only Wren could make out. She put her ear to his lips and then smiled.

  “Well? What did he say?!” the leprechaun asked, disregarding the evil beasts who had congregated in, with ropes and shackles.

  “He said, this must be what one o’ your hangovers feels like…” she smirked.

  Khrum slumped in respite, and sighed, “Well, thank God for that! He’s alive!”

  Alive, not that it mattered. A raid of Hobgoblins rounded them up for capture. It was only by fluke that they overlooked a brass thing peeking out from behind some propped-up slate, covered in rubble.

  The Ahueé dragged them an arrow’s march into the great court of skulls. Over the centuries, that’s what this cupola had become known as, and for clear reason.

  Screened below the last of Lòrs enfolding crags, whose extended doming ledges partway wreathed the jutting spire of Briggun’s keep as some manner of unfinished ceiling, the core of this monumental courtyard floor was comprised of an emblem; that of a ram’s severed skull. Many dead trees lined this horrible crest, in whose branches skulls were dressed by the dozen. Ugly, fat baobob trees. Positioned then, on a high platform above some stairs, near the emblem’s eastern rim, was the foully tainted portcullis of the Pooka’s eerie castle.

  Alas, this was where their punishment would be decided.

  First to be judged was he who was in possession of Thérn. Not that they knew anything of William himself. All they had eyes for was his sword, an inner itch which even they themselves could not comprehend. One of the strongest Ahueé, name of m’Borgo, took the liberty of overseeing this.

  Disarming William of his trusty weapon, whereupon he jammed it into the dirt safely out of the way, m’Borgo dragged his captive before the gates. Meanwhile, the rest were being lined up just off the courtyard under the watchful guard of their own captors. They were absolutely quiet. Reticence of such is not uncommonly hinged to apprehension, or exhaustion; yet this particular case was mostly attributable to their feelings of rout. Ordinarily their hopes would’ve resided with a brave rescue from Redmun. But he had already been cuffed by special manacles called charuns. Invented by Duhrais, an old blacksmith maiden who was held prisoner by the Hobgoblins for her talents with steel, these heavy restraints had the ability to absorb Erethus magic if worn, rendering the wearer powerless. And with not a dragon around for a half-moon, there was no other hope.

  Stell, who was bound by thick rope, was so humbled by what he dreaded most—his own failure—that he couldn’t even open his eyes to behold whatever badness was stirring. He didn’t have it in him. Tied up next to him, the Dullahan, Wren, Icrick, and Khrum, were just as harried by the terrible thoughts which congested their minds, sparing no room for chance. And yet, there was not one of them who would not have taken William’s place. Not after all he’d sacrificed for them.

  William, who was beaten to all but a shell of the boy he once was, just about managed to raise a swollen eye to the Erethaoí, to whom he could barely whisper these pitiful words…I’m sorry.

  “You tried, lad, you tried.” Redmun uttered back, so proudly, but he was so heartbroken to see him like this; crushed and defeated.

  Of a sudden frightful stroke, one of the Ahueé came trudging up to William, wearing a set of iron knuckles, and punched him across the jaw for mouthing out of turn; a harrowing, crunching crack. Wren sobbed aloud for him to stop, for all the good it did. She begged and, naturally, they did not listen. Rather, they enjoyed her anguish. It excited them. It was such a gruesome attack that the others couldn’t bring themselves to watch anymore, for fear of what torture might befall their dear William next.

  He plunged onto his hands and hankered to breathe. Then another Hobgoblin sprinted up from his left and kicked him in the stomach, and again in the nose. William coughed up a spatter of blood, exposing himself for another run. A cannibal this time, boasting to his friends, grabbed him by the face and started opening up the cut on his cheek. William screamed with such despair, horrifying those who were punished to listen. This put the cannibals into such hysterics that they were virtually stumbling over themselves with laughter.

  Struck voiceless with her palpitating tears, Wren regained herself enough to candidly beseech, “Ple-e-ease! Can’t you see he’s weak? He won’t fight back, I promise you! We surrender. Don’t you hear? We surrender to you, a thousand time over and more. You win! Just, please, leave him alone. Do what you must, just stop hurting him like this!”

  Silencing her through the dominating shadow which he imposed over all others, m’Borgo stepped back into the fray and seized William by the hair. He tugged his head back. Oozing drool slavered from the corner of his flaking mouth as he held the boy steady, so he could properly witness the grand opening of the old portcullis gate.

  Via a grinding jolt of long-rusted cogs jerking loose, the gate cranked open, a foot at a time, with the steaming pipes above hissing between each turn, Urk-Sssh-Urk-Sssh, spawning the worst sound imaginable. Then it stopped.

  Through the gloom of the opening portcullis, nothing first emerged except for an odd gasp of wind, to be shortly followed by the distinct resonance of weeping; a ghostly melancholic cry. With strength enough to focus his one good eye, William tried to see where it was coming from. That’s when he distinguished six figures materializing from within, loosely garbed in grimy robes. Robes of slaves.

  Of them, three were men, and three were women. Couples once wed. Once happy, no doubt. Shuffling nervously along in twos, they gave the impression of souls, kind, young souls, who were being forced against their will to walk an unseen plank with unse
en knives at their weary spines. They looked so frightened, like they knew what was coming. Then they halted, but under whose orders?

  Suddenly, with a series of damp snaps, a disgusting throng of raw tendrils lashed out from within the gateway, to wrap themselves around the slaves’ wrists, bonding them fast. All stilled again. At least, until the voices arrived, from deep within the darkness. Cackling, shrieking, gnashing; each preserving an essence of such madness, as if from a horde of the most evil, most driven lunatics this side of Lythiann. If they weren’t lamenting, they were sneering. Was it a sacrifice? Were the slaves about to die? Such pain, such horror. It grew and grew, when finally, they showed themselves. Six skeletal spectres, bodiless but for tails of shredded hems, sailed up into the topmost portion of the dome where they evaporated, wails and all. Again, the dome stilled.

  Had the slaves been spared? Unable to inhibit their relief any longer they gave in to their tears, when all of a sudden, by a spine-chilling scream which saturated the entire dome, all six slaves jolted up onto their toes, like they’d just been struck by lightning. The hairs on Wren’s neck rose when she saw them stiffening so. They didn’t know what was causing this, or why. Silent seconds passed, but for the gurgling of the slaves who were lacking strength enough to scream, before they collapsed, dead it appeared, on the ground.

  An unsettling mutter of senseless tongues returned, but from the innocents this time.

  Skin scarred and lips blistered, shrivelled faces and hair unkempt, the demonically possessed began thrusting, and floundering, and crying in their meaty shackles. A depraved, maniacal bliss it seemed. Shrieking to a chant, they rocked on their knees; their grinning stares affixed upon young William. Those fiendish smiles reminded him of the vision he’d had about his mother in the kitchen, only these were a million times worse. Chant, chant, chant they did. Chanting words from an ancient world.

  “U’má, I’mná, Ou’rí, Ch’aí. A’saní-G’roú, Bo’tós, S’caí,” they went, rhythmically, over and again.

  Nobody knew what it meant, but it was, without question, ceremonial. A court ritual, which would only be sung upon the entrance of a king.

  Their tortured bodies then wilted to the dirt as they dragged, from the dim gateway by way of their long fingernails, a mysterious conveyance.

  Jagged of style and of an ebony shade blacker than ravens feathers, this nightly carriage, whose wheels squeaked as horridly as they did that night in Thérn’s tower, crept from the gloom, showing nothing of its passenger within. It wasn’t the same infant’s carriage which William had encountered that eve, but instead more of a trancelike version of it. A stagecoach, more like, with some minor similarities.

  Continuing with their mantra, across the bloody stone, the slaves hauled his carriage to the edge of the platform at the top of the steps. Its red lamps glowed on either side like devil’s eyes. Then happened the most disturbing thing of all. Those slithering tongues, in a jolt, freed the possessed and, when they did, those wretched beings quickly arced up onto their fingers and toes, assuming a spidery pose, before scuttling up into a dark window which had suddenly opened on the roof of the coach. The whole conveyance rattled in, what could only have been, a struggle. Arms, legs, and entrails flew out across the courtyard in crimson splatters. Whatever was in there was mauling them. Eating them. Most upsetting of all was how freely they’d offered themselves up to it. Like they couldn’t help it. Like they were being forced to do it. Even the Ahueé and cannibals turned their faces from it, for fear being on the wrong end of it themselves one day.

  Once the massacre was over, the dome fell as calm as a grandfather clock. Soundless, cold, and dim.

  Breaking into a dark whirlwind, the carriage suddenly devoured itself before manifesting, from its shades of drear, with its back to all, a Pooka, who lingered in its stead.

  “Don’t look at his eyes, my friends.” Redmun said, to offer one last bit of advice. “Look elsewhere but at his fix.”

  Ten feet tall would have been considered beyond respectable for any regular Pooka, and justifiably so. But then…then there was this beast, who, in contrast to what might’ve—at one time or another—been deemed a worthy ruler of their species, measured ten feet in breadth alone, and was almost three times that in stature. A huge figure, broad; but he remained relatively gaunt and awkward looking, with his pointed shoulders up to his ears, and his bony, bat-like arms folded at his sides. Size aside, what set this one apart from the rest was the crown of bone which, throughout the centuries, had developed from the crest of his skull. Likewise, where one’s heart would be was, instead, a broken pattern of green illumined cracks, splaying brightly through his heavy cloak. Markings of the Krimmín stone.

  Save for these royal appendages, he maintained all the terribleness of any one Pooka. He was hideous. Horribly rough in texture, his coral skin riddled in foul oddities; rashes, lesions, boils, bloody rawness, bumps, and fitful hair growth alike. His face, though somewhat human, was disgracefully horrid, having eyes small and pale, with rash-red lids set deep into his enlarged brow. His nose was but a rotten skeletal passage, and his mouth, carved to a wide skeletal grin, housing teeth like shards of jagged glass. Slithering down his back to spread out along his twisted body was his thinning, grey hair. And he possessed a stare that would frighten anyone, or anything, into an early grave. And there was his Pooka’s Claw, dangling decoratively from his belt.

  Wheezing in slow, tortured pants, this creature, at first, did not talk, only looked. He’d lain dormant for so long that he wanted to take it all in, to see what he’d been missing. But it was the manner in which he did it. The way in which he watched them, with only his red-raw eyes moving across them, as they all stood conscious of themselves. He studied them. Read them. His cold glance alone was enough to jolt their nerves; even for those who worshipped him so. And not one of his minions could look him back in the eye, what’s more. And they had the ability to do so.

  m’Borgo shoved William forth with a grunt, and grunted at the sword, pouring grave intensity into the Pooka’s already penetrating breaths. But still he voiced nothing.

  Everything went so still that William, of all people, felt he should have his own say, which was not to anyone’s expectations.

  It took him one or two attempts to actually speak, what with his painfully bruised cheek. But when he did, he managed to mutter, “Please…do…what you like with me. Just don’t h-hurt…them.”

  Baffled by this courage, wondering why someone would ever offer such a pointless proposal when they’d have nothing to gain from it themselves, other than some meaningless sense of rectitude, Briggun continued to stare at him, yet with shiftier glances.

  Unsettled by this response, William decided upon another approach.

  “With me gone, you’ve won! Lythiann…will…be all yours!” he proclaimed, appearing excited in the hope that the Pooka would find it infectious, and thus hear him out.

  He, however, was not some witless Troll. He did not resign to such petty tricks. For he was the one and only Drevol Briggun, a Satan of those lands. Ruler to everything outside his castle gates. A thousand times more powerful than every last imp, sorcerer, and creature on Lythiann put together.

  In a peculiar synthesis of tongues, with the most common clearest of all, Briggun hissed with his low and disconcerting tone, “I thought I destroyed you, child.”

  He seemed almost gentle, but it was this disturbing calmness which raced the boy’s heart all the more.

  “D-Destroyed?” was all he stuttered, praying he hadn’t just set Redmun up for trouble with his hesitation.

  He’d been caught off guard by that question, you see. Redmun, however, was already prepared for punishment, and wouldn’t dream of blaming William if such circumstances arose. Besides, the poor lad was at the mercy of their most feared foe. Of course he was going to feel uneasy. Anyone would.

  “Yes. De-stroyed.” Briggun repeated, strangely amiable still.

  During his interrogation, the Po
oka’s focus was slowly edging its way over to the Erethaoí. He was beginning to suspect that Redmun, perhaps, had something to do with their getaway the night of the tornado. And the more he pondered it, the more sense it made.

  In an attempt to mislead him, William said, “Wait! It…was me! It was me who did it! The Wrythus, I can…use it sometimes. And that was one o’ those times. I…did it. I made the fire…shield us!”

  “Is that so?” Briggun smirked interestedly, not even bothering to look at the boy, and then he decided to ask, “If that is, in fact, the case… enlighten me, my dear child…what were those Erethus words you chanted that night to summon your magical shield? I should very much like to know. There is only one such spell, as you well know.”

  Redmun started to gag. His eyes came up on him as he lifted up onto his toes, and up higher still until he was hovering three feet in the air. Something had a grip on him, strangling him. An ethereal noose unseen. The man fumbled for whatever was holding his throat, but nothing could be clutched.

  “Answer me, child,” grinned the Pooka, finally giving him some attention. “Your time is running short.”

  With his face as red as the blood that was clogging it, Redmun coughed painfully, sending a trickle of bile from the corners of his mouth. Briggun, the fiend, was using him as a sadistic sand timer, which flustered the boy in his answers.

  He couldn’t think. He had no idea of what to do, because either way the Erethaoí was sure to be damned.

  “I CAN’T REMEMBER!” he chanced. “I WASN’T…MYSELF WHEN IT HAPPENED! I CAN NEVER…REMEMBER WHEN THE WRYTHUS COMES! THE…SHIELD JUST COVERED…US! ALL…I KNOW…IS THAT…I…CAUSED IT! ME!”

  Much to everyone’s surprise, William’s little gamble worked, and Drevol let the man go. Nevertheless, the wonder endured if whether he freed him out of trust, or if he was merely growing bored of torturing him so.

  Redmun was so sapped of his strength that he couldn’t move. He lay, sprawled out, hands to his throat. He was lucky he hadn’t been killed, yet his throat had been so badly damaged that he would never sound like his old self again.