“God help us all… They are coming!”
THE PIPER IN YELLOW
A very long time ago, before the rise of the kings of Aon and the empire of Yorn, a traveler from a distant land came to the country of Edunia. Amongst the broken stone and rotting timbers of that once great kingdom, he stumbled upon a hermit who lived in a hovel of thatch and oak.
“Come,” the hermit said to the stranger. “Sit by the fire and warm thyself, for the night is long and it is not often that I receive visitors.”
The traveler did as he was bade. The old man brought food and water, and round the fire they sat as the sun sank and the moon rose and a shadow covered the countryside.
“I was lucky to come upon you,” said the traveler, “for yours is the only dwelling I have seen for some while, since I entered the vale. There was a village a ways back, a town in the old time. The homes and farms had rotted away, and all that remained of the town-proper were heaps of shattered rock and an ancient church on an overgrown town square.”
In the dancing firelight, the old man’s eyes shone.
“That would be old Bethlehem,” he said. “The people of that town were devout, and the village prosperous. Before he came.”
“He?”
The hermit rose and walked to a cupboard, removed two tankards, and filled them from a cask on the table.
“All storytelling is a thirsty business,” he said as he handed one to the stranger. “But some telling is more thirsty than others. Come,” he said, “sit by the fire. And let us talk of things about which no man should speak…”
* * *
These lands are steeped in time and in mystery. It hangs over them like a heavy shroud, like a fog that never lifts. The domed hills and shadowed vales feel older than they should.
Life flees from here, and most men avoid it. It is not a mindful decision they make, no cold calculus is involved. It is much deeper. It comes from something forgotten. From somewhere forgotten.
But whatever the cause, they avoid old Bethlehem. The travelers and merchants do not know why they no longer turn down the road through the glen. Why instead they take the long way round through Fingoyle. They do not choose. They simply do, and their memories escape them. That you would dare to do what they cannot is an enigma unto itself, and what it says of you, only you may know.
But it was not always so.
There was a time when the valley was prosperous, when the game was good and plentiful, the sun shone bright and the crops came up tall and straight. The goods flowed freely down the Brachen Road. The merchants travelled from far kingdoms and all prospered.
It was Beth’lem that prospered most. It had many names you see. Beth’lem. Little Bethlehem. New Bethlehem. Lil’ham. But whatever it was called, its future—straddling the trade road through the vale—seemed assured. So when the plague came, it struck like a judgment from a vengeful God.
It started with the Goodspeed child, a family that lived just beyond the borders of the town. She returned from the forest one night with a cough. Nothing all that unusual for the young. But by the next morning her face had become pallid, and her limbs shook from the cold even as her body burned from fever.
But it was what she saw in her pain-racked nights and febrile waking dreams that sent a chill of fear through the families of the village and drove her poor father mad. She spoke of mountains that walked, of darkness that crawled, and creatures that surround us all, floating unseen and sleeping just beyond the vision of man.
But it was when she spoke of him that they feared the most.
“He is coming,” she said, that last night before mercy extinguished her flame. The poor child’s body went rigid, her eyes focused on some world far beyond our ken. “The watcher at the threshold, the rider on the plain. The sword and the flame. The pestilence and the plague. None will be spared, not from the yellow man.” Her eyes fell on her father. “And you, Daddy. You will go first. You will prepare the way.”
I cannot say what it was that the accursed father Goodspeed saw in the languid gaze of his only child, but it is said that as he stared into the depths of her soul, his body began to quake, and in one moment of sanity-breaking fear, he leapt to his feet with a shriek and ran from the room. They found his body hanged from a tree by the brook, dead by his own hand, horror still etched upon his face.
That is how it began, with the death of the father, the daughter close on his heels. It did not end there.
Kate Bridges was next, and then Patrick Longlin, and then Stuart Mars. Each one lived just a little closer to Beth’lem than the one before. The pestilence was on the march, and like the great plague that consumed Egypt of old, it cared not for the grown and the aged. The children were its victims, though it made no accounting for first-born, and no blood of the lamb could stave off its fury. When it reached the town-proper, it spread like a field set to the flame.
When the first town child fell ill, the people prayed. By the time they all had—every son or daughter of Beth’lem below the age of 14—the people cried out for anyone, be he god or devil, to save them.
And something heard them, be he god or devil.
He came from the east, the yellow man. Whether because of the robe he wore or his sallow skin, that’s what they called him. He was tall of stature, four and a half cubits if he was a span.
He arrived by the Brachen Road. No beast bore him, and had any of the townspeople noticed the flocks of birds winging south at mid-summer, they might have wondered what drove them to take flight.
No watchman met him at the town gate, and he entered without question or hassle. He walked through empty, silent streets, heavy with the stench of pestilence, and a rare smile curved the edges of the stranger’s lips. He followed the High Street to the town square and the church that even now holds sway over it. It was there that the townspeople had gathered, beseeching their god to save them from the plague that threatened to take their children.
It was not god that answered them.
Father Johansen was in the middle of prayer—one of many that had gone up that day, buoyed by fear and desperation—when it happened, when the stranger arrived.
“Please, sir,” said Father Johansen, always a nervous man but in that moment particularly undone, “this is a house of God.”
“God? Does your god answer you now? How long have you prayed?” asked the stranger. “And still your children suffer.”
At these words, a murmur swept through the assembly. Who was this man? How could he know that? Might he have the answer to save them?
“That is blasphemy, sir,” said the preacher, but there was no conviction in his voice, and by inches he had moved away from the podium.
“I think not. Blasphemy is to speak lies. I speak the truth.” The stranger took a step down the aisle, and then another. The feeling in the congregation was as that of a man, standing on a hillside before a storm, the electricity pulsating around him. “I have come from far away, beyond the lake of Hali and the jeweled cities of Carcosa. I have come here, to you, in your time of need.” He raised his arm and extended one finger of a boney, blackened hand that stretched forth beyond the sleeve of his cloak. “You worship a broken god, a god that failed. He does not hear your cries. He does not answer them.”
There were those in the church that day who, in brasher moments past, filled with drink and with vigor, would have sworn that no man would so curse our Lord without soon meeting Him. And yet even they sat in silence as the stranger spoke, their fear overawing their religious devotion.
“You cower here. You cry out for salvation. Salvation has arrived. You pray for a deliverer. He stands before you. You ask for a sign. He who has eyes, let him see.”
The stranger raised his hand. A shadow fell upon the tabernacle of the Lord. Day became night, and the stream of light from the great stained glass windows ceased. The air grew cold and dense, and tendrils of mist wrapped around the legs of the assembled villagers like cats’ tail
s, and every man and woman it touched felt a little bit of life fade away. There was a deep groan, like the shrieking of wood on a ship in the midst of a storm. Then the shadow lifted as quickly as it had fallen, and the light returned.
“This and much more I will show you, if you so choose.”
“Can you save our children?” came a cry from the front. “Can you save my baby?”
“Perhaps. If you are willing to pay.”
“So it’s money you want,” cried another, one who still doubted.
For the first time in their midst, the stranger smiled.
“Oh no, not gold. Not silver. Not jewels or trinkets. Something much more precious. But sacrifice? Yes, sacrifice will be required. A price must be paid. The price of power. And the power you seek is great indeed. So too is the cost.”
The stranger sighed, deep and long.
“Now I tire of this place.” He turned and almost staggered to the entrance, and it seemed to those who still could bear to look upon him—for many could not, nor could they say why not—that the figure no longer seemed so large, so stately. In fact, he seemed to diminish.
He cast one last glance back at them and said, “Choose, but choose now. I will await your answer at sundown beneath the dead oak that keeps watch over the river bend. Send three men. No more, no less. Sundown.”
The doors to the church swung open at his touch, and slammed shut behind him as if carried by a strong wind. The people of the town were left to shiver in the pews, astonished at what they had seen and fearful at what would surely come after.
* * *
As the sun descended, three men were chosen. The Lord Mayor, the Sheriff, and one man who bore no title but was trusted by all, a woodsman who lived in the forests beyond the town proper. All of them had children. All of them had something to lose.
They found the stranger at the bend of the river, on the spot where he had said he would meet them, beneath the branches of the ancient oak. Whatever stature he had lost upon departing the church had returned to him now, and in the growing shadows of a waning day, he was even more fearsome than they remembered.
“And so you came. Are you prepared to pay?”
“Whatever the price," said the Lord Mayor. “For while we are by no means rich, we have enough. And what we have is yours.”
“Ah, you listen, but you do not hear. A price must be paid, but it cannot be paid in gold and silver.”
The Sheriff stepped forward. “Then what then? My Jeannie is dying and we have not the time for trifles or false hopes.”
The stranger grinned, though it felt more like a sneer. “Then to the point, shall we? All for one. The many for the few. All life, for one life.”
The Lord Mayor looked to the Sheriff and saw only confusion. It was only the man of the forest who understood.
“Oh my God,” the woodsman murmured. “He means to have a sacrifice.”
The Sheriff drew his sword. “You are as filled with lies as you are evil.”
“Put down your weapon,” the stranger said, and as he did he waved his hand before him. To the Sheriff, the weight of the sword became as if he were holding a cart-full of stone. It dropped from his hand, the point driving deep into the ground.
“I have not lied to you. I told you the price was steep, but one well worth paying.”
“You want us to kill a child?” The Lord Mayor whimpered. “But why?”
“The plague will not pass on its own. It will lay in the grave all that it touches. To stop it will require a great power. And as power comes only through sacrifice, great power comes only through the greatest of loss.”
“We won’t do it,” said the woodcutter. “I don’t believe you can heal them, whatever imposture and parlor tricks you may possess.” He gestured at the sword of the Sheriff, still driven into the ground, the other man having no desire to touch it again. “And besides, no one would pay that price.”
The stranger stepped forward and stretched out his hand to touch the shoulder of the woodsman. The other man did not flinch. He would show that he was not afraid. But when the stranger touched his arm, he did know fear. The touch was not cold, precisely. Instead, the woodsmen felt empty, as if he had been gutted, everything inside of him ripped away.
“You have a son, do you not? A boy named James? From this moment he is healed. When you go home and see that what I say is true, let that be the answer to your doubt. But it is only temporary. The illness will return to him, unless you do as I say.”
“I can’t,” and the tears began to flow down the granite face of that man, “even for James. I can’t trade his life for the life of another.”
The stranger lifted his hand from the woodsman’s shoulder to touch his cheek, almost caressing him with his cold, bone-thin finger. “Simple creature. You pay that price every day. How many in your trade lay down their lives to build the houses and shops that make up your town? How many have been hanged from this very tree to keep others safe? How many soldiers die at your king’s command, for his glory or his treasure or his land?”
“But how can we choose?” said the Lord Mayor. “How can we even begin to pick one of our own?”
The stranger never looked at him, keeping his eyes instead upon the woodsman. “You are a devout man.”
“We are all devout men, my lord,” interrupted the Lord Mayor. The stranger ignored him.
“Do you remember the story of Jonah and the great fish?”
“Of course,” answered the woodsman.
“And when the storm beset the ship in which he hid from your god, how did his companions determine who was to blame?”
“They cast lots.”
“Yes, and when the lots fell upon Jonah, they threw him into the sea?”
“They did.”
“And did the storm abate?”
“It did.”
“Then that is your answer.” The sun had fallen, the moon taking its place. Even the wind had died away, and but for their voices, silence held sway. “Go home,” said the stranger, “check on your son. See that I speak the truth. Then make your choice.”
* * *
The woodsman returned to his home to find his wife in tears. Their only son had been made whole; it could only be called miraculous. The boy’s fever had broken just after sunset.
* * *
They gathered in the old church to cast the lots. I can see that you are surprised that they would so decide. Ah, my friend, fear and wonder are powerful drugs, and the townspeople had both in abundance. Fear that their children would die. Wonder that the son of the woodsman had been cured. There was only one who objected, only one who spoke reason in the face of madness.
The woodsman went to the church that evening to plead with his friends and neighbors not to choose a path that could not be unwalked. But the stranger had done more than cure the woodsman’s son; he’d robbed him of the faith the people once had in him.
“You have already received the stranger’s blessing,” said one. “Your child lives, while ours stand on death’s doorstep. Why would you deny us what you enjoy?”
The woodsman’s pleas for them to hear reason were rebuffed, and soon words turned to shouts, arguments to threats.
The Sheriff stepped forward, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “You’ve said your piece, woodsman. Now get out.”
“He stays,” said a voice from the back, and that cold command chilled the blood of all present. The stranger stepped from the daylight beyond into the church. “For the pact must bind you all.”
“I won’t be a part of it,” said the woodsman. “I won’t be bound to this.”
The stranger chuckled and to all who heard, it sounded like a growl.
“Do you think you have a choice? What in this life led you to that conclusion? You are no island. You are bound to the decisions of the whole. You wish to disagree? The blood of untold women and children slaughtered for the crimes of their cities or their kings mocks your innocen
ce. Stay, or go. It makes no matter. You will be bound.”
The woodsman fell silent, and the stranger turned to the congregation.
“Have you made your choice?”
“We have,” answered the Lord Mayor.
“And what have you decided?”
“We will do as you ask. Cure our children, and the life of one will be in your hands.”
The stranger held his arms high above his head. “So it has been spoken, so you are now bound.” Down his hands swung, meeting in one great crash.
Every man and woman in the assembly fell backward as if buffeted by a mighty wind. Many cried out in pain. The woodsman clutched his hand, the agony as if he had grabbed a glowing brand. When he looked down at his palm, he knew why. His skin sizzled, and already, the red, seared flesh had begun to rise—and it formed an image. A ring, with a single point at the bottom of the circle. At its center, three spheres melded together, as if one globe but with three lobes. It was a sigil, one that the woodcutter doubted many had ever seen before. He knew not what it meant, only that it was of a dark and deadly purpose, and that all who gathered that day bore it. The smell of burning flesh hung heavy in the air.
“A spoken oath, sealed in flesh and fire. One you dare not break.”
The stranger reached inside his cloak and removed a leather satchel. He threw it at the feet of the Lord Mayor.
“Now your god decides. Inside are circles of marble, one for every family in this town. All are white, save one. He who draws the black sphere, from him shall the sacrifice come.”
The stranger turned and made his way to the door of the church. “Where are you going?” cried the Lord Mayor.
The Fiddle is the Devils Instrument Page 11