by Adrian Cole
The grovellers began to mutter in anguish. Evidently this was an unqualified breach of whatever contract they had with the Keeper. The Voidal smiled. “I see—a few morsels. Tell me, where do these tunnels lead?” He made a suggestive movement with the sword.
Larg looked pained. “But a short distance, sirs. They are necessary—to the good of the Keep. They—ventilate the aged skin. They are mere burrows in which we shelter ourselves. The Keeper would not dispute it.”
Grabulic shook his head and the dark man again made a pass with his sword. “I think not, Larg. I think perhaps these tunnels go much further. Like worms in a tree, you have burrowed far and wide—no doubt throughout the entire Keep! Is it not so?”
None of the creatures answered and the Voidal knew that he had struck the mark with his guess. Larg shuffled closer to him, eyes fixed upon the cold sword. There was a gleam of distinct cunning in his eyes. “A word with you, warrior,” he whispered.
“Speak.”
“Our secret is out, but it is nothing, a mere item of no import. I have other knowledge that would be more useful to you. It would give you more power than you have.”
The Voidal’s face remained grave. “Yes?”
“I will not yield it freely.”
“I see. You wish to barter this knowledge for my silence in the matter of the labyrinths?”
“You are a reader of minds!” nodded Larg with the gruesome semblance of a smile.
“Your mind would be open to the wind. Well?”
“Do we have a bargain?”
“Perhaps. But you will have to provide me with more than a promise if I am to dismiss what I have discovered.”
“Very well,” grunted Larg. “I will show you.” With that he stepped to the mouth of the wound. “Follow if you will.”
The Voidal obeyed, dropping down to the floor of the tunnel, Grabulic behind him, grinning in spite of the gruesome surroundings. The smell of corruption here was thick. Larg began the journey down the cramped tunnel, while behind the two men the rest of the grovellers followed. Down into the rotting flesh of the Keep they went, the tunnels twisting and turning like dried up artificial veins, intersecting and crossing at steep angles. The entire body must have been riddled, as if by maggots. The flesh was desiccated, flaking and crumbling. One by one the grovellers dispersed, taking different tunnels until only Larg remained to lead the way.
They had been travelling endlessly, through what must have been the excavation of centuries, when Larg came to an abrupt halt in the stifling darkness. Only his eyes lit the pitch air.
“We near the place. Even the Keeper has no knowledge of our passage so close to his sanctuaries in the Keep.”
“Necral sees all,” ventured the Voidal.
Larg snorted derisively. “All, warrior? You have seen the inside of this place, rotting and decomposing. The Keeper is just as raddled, or has he kept that from you?”
The Voidal said nothing, though he mused on the information.
“The place I will show you is most hallowed. Only the Keeper knows of it, save Larg and his grovellers. We have not shared our knowledge, knowing that one day it would be a useful weapon.”
“I see,” nodded the Voidal. “And that day has come?”
“Look beyond,” said Larg, pointing to a narrow slit in the wall through which a shaft of light arrowed.
The Voidal stooped to press his eye to the vent. He drew in his breath at what he saw, motioning Grabulic to look, which he did. He, too, gasped involuntarily.
There was a large chamber there, hollowed out of the body of the giant as if some huge internal organ had been removed; the walls were slick, tinted red as though the flesh still pulsed with life. Veins stood out like blue pillars. But it was not the structure of the chamber that had caused the Voidal and Grabulic to gasp—it was the things within it. For here in choked abundance there were frightful creatures that had the appearance of hybrids, as though men and non-men had been crossbred and mutated to produce the most outlandish of beings. Their outer characteristics were hideously exaggerated, and as the two men looked in at them, they saw that they were all female. Some were lovely of body, but had sub-human faces, others’ bodies were wildly grotesque but had beautiful faces; still more were unspeakably horrific. All were chained, some linked to the walls of the chamber by membranous filaments, flowing through which was a familiar crimson fluid. Sizes varied—there were dwarfish, squat-faced beings and tall, gangling spiderish things. Some there were that crawled in dark corners, away from the pulsing mass of bodies near the light.
“What anteroom of hell is this!” cried Grabulic.
Larg sniggered unpleasantly. “Hell, master? There is no hell here. This is the Keep that rules over the Ocean of Souls. There may be other Gods with their places of paradise and their hells, but not here.”
The Voidal scowled down at the scrawny figure. “This is the work of Necral?”
“It is. I told you—his mind is as debased as his rotting Keep. This is a place he puts aside for his private, uninterrupted amusement.”
“Then he has indeed created a hell for those unfortunates. Who are they?”
“Hybrids. Bred from souls that he has secretly culled from the Ocean. He tortures them and moulds them for pleasure, then discards them when they displease or bore him.”
“Discards them?” echoed the Voidal. “He returns them to the Ocean of Souls?”
“Nay. There is a place, deep down in the frozen entrails of the Keep. There, among mouldering bones, the discarded ones are tossed, too crippled to complain. They soon reach their own oblivion.”
Grabulic grunted in horror and the Voidal’s thoughts clouded as he turned away from what he had seen.
“If you wait long enough,” said Larg, “Necral himself will materialise beyond in one of his many forms. Then you shall see him sport with his countless toys.”
“We have seen enough,” growled the Voidal. “Lead us to a place where we can enter the halls of the Keep.”
Larg hesitated. “And our bargain, master? Will you say nothing of our tunnels?”
The Voidal nodded. “Aye, nothing. Go back to your gluttony.”
Larg snickered in satisfaction and began leading the two men out of the tunnels. He came to a long flap of loose skin—a broken valve—and lifted an edge of it. The mouth of a disused organ, it led into the inner chambers of the Keep. “Here we must part,” said the groveller.
“Come on,” said the Voidal to Grabulic, and they slipped out of the dark and to the edge of a huge chamber that had a ribbed ceiling far overhead. Its arches were made of bone, yards thick, and from them hung vats of ignited blubber drained from the very walls. There were no columns here, only more ribbed bones ten times thicker than a man supporting the place, a gigantic stomach. They had gone but a few steps when they saw that they were standing on a ridge which was an extended artery, a black pipe leading into one of the walls. Below them, working in the glow of the blubber lights, were scores of beings, diligently buzzing around line upon line of naked cadavers that stretched out into the far reaches of the great hall. These workers were Necral’s Revivers, who prepared the dead souls for rebirth. Countless numbers of the naked bodies were being partially reanimated and led away gently to openings in the sides of the chamber, other dried veins that led away like drains. The reborn ones slid down these to other halls, ultimately to be removed from the Keep by the Sowers.
“Do you have a plan?” said Grabulic.
“Necral has committed a grave error in creating that foul place we saw. He has compromised himself. We must find him and confront him.”
“But surely he will submit us to a similar, dreadful fate if we reveal what we know!”
“I think not. Come.” The Voidal led the way along the great artery and on through a tunnel that led off from the immense chamber of the dead. They found yet another open vein that served as an upward tunnel, moving along the internal passageways of the Keep. “We must be in the skull itself. Pe
rhaps Necral already knows we are here.” Grabulic did not share his calmness.
Suddenly there was movement around them, which came from all sides. From up out of the floor burst shadows, and from out of the walls came others, rupturing the flesh heedlessly in their desire to ring the two men. Both stood still, weapons poised. They saw now what it was that confronted them. They were rotting dead men, flesh peeling from them, eyes white, hands no more than clawed bone. A festering stench wafted from them as though they had been vomited up from some remote charnel pit. Their vile bodies closed in, arms reaching out, but they did not press home their attack.
“They have not come to destroy us,” said the Voidal. “These are Necral’s creatures and will save us a further search. They will take us to him.”
“Then he knows of our intrusion.”
“Yes, but I wonder how long he has watched us.”
Goaded on by the shambling zombies, the two men moved ahead as directed in silence, again travelling the dim passageways of the Keep. Ever upward they were herded, until at last they passed through a constricted tunnel that led like a throat into halls of pure bone. Here they debouched into a vast room, where a few blubber cressets sputtered like haunted eyes. before them was a pit that seemed to drop down into an infinity beyond reality. Around its far edges they could see line upon line of the zombie creatures, all motionless, awaiting their commands.
Presently total darkness descended as every one of the winking lights snuffed out. The two men were walled in a black chasm that pressed in on them menacingly. A deep voice came across at them from somewhere beyond.
“Behold, the two men who seek to cheat the Gods and avoid the eternal chain of life and death!” it mocked.
As the echoes died away, the Voidal spoke, his voice ringing out over the unfathomable pit. “Keeper! Show yourself! We do not fear you, nor your reprisals.”
A brief silence greeted this, but at last came a bubble of laughter, rising and swelling. Light seeped back into the chamber. Beyond, across the chasm, was a massive head, cloaked in a black hood, all features hidden. But neither the size nor covering of that head caught the eye, as did the mass of writhing evil about it. Congesting the darkness were innumerable demon-like beings, fawning and squirming about the robed figure, depraved, lunatic acolytes of the master of the dead.
“The Gods are not mocked, nor is your arrogance more than a passing breeze to us!” laughed the hooded being.
“Then listen well, Keeper of the dead!”
More laughter rocked the cavern. “Very well. If I am to hear you, I shall. Then I will place you once more in your cycle.”
“You know me, Keeper.”
“Yes. Voidal, sometimes called Fatecaster. Long have the Dark Gods used you. Did you think to outwit them by escaping your cycle of lives?”
The Voidal was impassive, but Grabulic could sense him thinking.
“You have stepped off the path of your predetermined destiny,” said Necral, “but the track you follow will only lead you back to your preordained path.”
“Not if you set me upon some other course.”
“I? Do you think I would go against the decrees of the Dark Gods? In my own right, I am also a god, yet there are limits to what I would take upon myself!”
“Within this realm you are omnipotent,” said the Voidal.
“Indeed.”
“In this realm, you create the laws.”
“Within the bounds set me, that is so. But the boundaries, the properties of the Ocean of Souls, they are my limits.”
“And Skull Keep?”
There was a momentary silence. The hooded head moved in the darkness. “Skull Keep serves an eternal function, one which I perpetuate. It also has its rigid laws.”
“Yet you are able to introduce new laws, set new precedents here.”
This remark seemed to disturb Necral. “As a god, I have some powers!”
“You mould the destinies of all who pass through Skull Keep.”
At this the Keeper laughed. “Do I? No, Fatecaster, not all. Even I must obey the word of others: why, my own fate is not my own. You will ask again that I re-shape your fate—destroy what has been woven for you by the Dark Gods and design you a new one. But I cannot. What I do, they will undo if it displeases them. And if I should disobey them, what would be the price of my folly? I would not ponder such a fate!”
“Will you not at least show me my destiny?”
Again the Keeper laughed, mockingly. “Show you! Even if I knew it, why should I reveal it to you?”
“I think you do know it. You know a great deal about me. And before I leave this place, I mean to share in that knowledge.”
Necral laughed convulsively, while the things that squirmed about him chittered and hissed along with him. “Are you threatening me? You are nothing!”
“No threat, Keeper, no. But I will strike up a bargain.”
Necral’s laughter continued, but was not now so mocking. “Bargain? But you have nothing that I desire. Not unless you can trade the secret of your destiny for my own!” Again the terrible laugh.
“Perhaps I hold a key to that,” said the Voidal calmly.
Silence smothered him at once, and beside him Grabulic shook visibly with panic. Within Necral’s black hood, twin orbs blazed briefly, red stars ablaze in some hellish outer dimension. “Don’t toy with me, Fatecaster! Speak openly. What do you mean?”
“I have said that you are able to create your own laws in this realm. Further—I have witnessed the application of these powers.”
“Where? What have you seen? There is nothing in Skull Keep but the endless rituals of the dead.”
“Rituals which a god such as yourself must find intolerably tedious and monotonous, Necral,” nodded the Voidal.
“What do you mean?”
“Surely you must have sought ways to alleviate such boredom? Surely you have created pastimes, games, unique circumstances with which to stimulate yourself in your endless sojourn in this dismal place?”
Necral’s fire-eyes gleamed wickedly. “What have you seen?”
“I have seen your private hell, Necral. Its images are burned upon my mind. When I pass from this place to my next life, those images will go with me, just as I must carry—this.” He drew from his cloak his right hand and held it aloft, balled into a leather-gloved fist.
Necral emitted a strange sound that may have been a gasp or a groan. “Cover that abomination!” he cried.
“You know it?”
“Of course! Cover it I say! You have no power over it!”
“You fear that it may point to your own heart?”
“Cover it!” snarled the Keeper and the things about him surged forward like hounds on taut leashes.
The Voidal did as asked. “Very well. As you say, I cannot control its whims. It is not my own hand—”
“What have you seen in this Keep?” persisted Necral.
“Your chamber of horrors filled with creatures that were once women, now condemned to a vile fate to satiate your macabre appetite.”
The hood nodded slowly, resignedly. “As I feared. But—how did you come upon that place? By chance, or were you guided by some force?” There was a cold fear in the Keeper’s tone now.
“It seemed to be chance,” replied the Voidal enigmatically. “But remember that the images of what I saw will remain with me. Although my memory is blighted, you shall not wipe that away.”
Necral considered this, fearing the intervention of powers greater than those of the Voidal, or of himself. “What do you want of me? Be warned—do not ask for control of your destiny. It was never mine to give you.”
It was the Voidal’s turn to weigh his thoughts and for a while he was silent. At length he spoke. “I am no more than a means to an end, a vessel. This hand that curses and despatches doom is not mine to control. Tell me, Keeper, who am I? What have I done? How am I to reclaim my soul, my destiny?”
“You ask much. I cannot answer it all.”
“You understand nothing! Power is relative, you fool! Even gods have their limitations.”
“Then answer those questions that you can.”
Necral sighed heavily. “I cannot divulge the nature of your crime. Only the Dark Gods can tell you that. But there are laws that govern your punishment. Your identity is bound up with your crime. The Dark Gods have decreed that you must atone for your sins by wandering the omniverse, bringing doom to those who displease them, for they have many enemies, including certain Gods. The hand you carry, the Oblivion Hand, has greater powers than either of us could comprehend. You are able to carry it secretly between the dimensions, where the Dark Gods cannot go without detection. You seem to be mortal, so Gods do not fear you, but you are everlasting. You think your wandering is erratic, but each step is part of a vast plan. One day you will have done enough to atone for your crime. Only then will you be released. Perhaps then you will learn what it was you did.”
The Voidal listened in silence, as did the fascinated Grabulic.
“You also carry a sword of a peculiar nature. It is cursed with strange properties.”
The Voidal indicated the shivering Songster. “It was because of the sword that my companion lost his hearing. It was a cruel fate, the more so if in all his future lives he is destined to be deaf.”
“The Sword of Silence rendered him deaf as a punishment.”
“Why?”
“Who aids the Voidal, hinders the Dark Gods. This man summoned you, invoking your aid to free himself and others from a world of nightmare, where he had been set as punishment for his scorn of certain Gods. Grabulic, in fact, mocked all gods through his songs. His gift was his voice, for he sang as few men have ever sung. But he chose to use it indiscreetly.”
“How long is his punishment to last?”
“What is time?”
“I will not have his pain on my conscience.”
“Hah! It was not your doing. The Dark Gods decreed it.”
“Nevertheless, I want him freed of their curse. Send him back to life with his hearing restored. Let him always be Grabulic, and let him sing as he once did.”