The Other of One - Book One: The Lythiann Chronicles

by Brian G. Burke

  Upon the altar itself was the thin, dwindling tail of what looked to be a green, swirling vortex. The fine end of its funnel was discreetly bending and swivelling above the marble altar as it emitted the most delicate of illuminations. Within the progression of its great, widening upward cone were gatherings of drifting spectres, evil souls of those who were damned to an eternity of torment by the edge of Thérn itself. Trolls, Gremlins, and Goblins alike. All were moaning and mourning in painful bellows as they spiralled upward through the vortex. They were alone in their misery, and anyone who’d passed through over the years had surely done so unnoticed by them. For these spirits were left to bear their mundane curse with no means of contact with the outside world. That living altar, it seemed, was breathing that sort of life into them; the barest, most hollow of consciousness.

  “What on earth...” said Icrick, hiding behind William’s arm.

  As agitated as Icrick, the lad replied, “I have absolutely no idea!”

  Following the vortex upwards to see how far it went, his gaze paused at its end, where a great whirlpool of green light was twisting in the highest point of the tower’s climb.

  Beyond the altar then, on the farther confines, was a dense backbone of wall, which also scaled deep into the tower. On this a huge, dust-ridden tapestry was nailed, tattered and flowing by the slight draught of the vortex. Embroidered on the tapestry was a portrait of the Death Bringer, a shrouded demon with the face of a wicked skull. He was standing over an infernal dale of his own tormented souls.

  “What a hideous decoration!” said Icrick, with two handfuls of William’s cloak to his face.

  “Ya got that right, Icrick lad,” said Khrum, frowning. “Wouldn’t be the sort o’ yoke ya’d have hangin’ at the end o’ your bed, anyways.”

  To their left and to their right were two stairways running upward by the rounded walls. There were four doors walking up alongside each stair, both of which met with small landing areas on either side of the mainstay. This then led to another shorter, but steeper, flight of steps thereafter, before carrying on to the next level. Both stairways progressed just as the prior level did, and so on, in and out, like great plaits of solid stone. Up and up they continued, as far as young William could see, hence bringing him to believe that there could very well have been many more doors as well, and that wasn’t a very encouraging thought.

  “I wish I didn’t have to say this,” he said, being purely dispirited by the height of the tower, “but I think we’re going to have to split up.”

  “I wish ya didn’t have ta say it either,” said Khrum, putting it aside as the silly idea that it was. “So let’s just pretend ya didn’t say it, yup?”

  “Sorry, Khrum,” said the lad. “But—”

  “I know, I know! You’re right! We’ll split up.”

  Then, as if something had suddenly exploded from the deep, there was a loud crashing of chains which roared piercingly throughout the acoustics of the tower.

  Peering up, Icrick saw something hurtling down from the ceiling at great speed, and he screamed with quavering horror, “LOOK OUT!”

  With that, they all stumbled back under the shelter of the passageway when a massive steel grate fixed with twisted rusty spikes came crashing to the ground behind them. It jammed right into the stone slabs upon the floor. An immense haze of dust spun into the air, making the vortex flicker. Then, slowly, with an aging crank of long dereliction, the grate somehow hoisted itself back to wherever it came from.

  “That was too bloody close now!” exclaimed William, coughing. “What was all that about?!”

  “It’s like Crosco said...it’s this tower,” whimpered Icrick, not daring to leave the boy’s side. “It’s full of hazards and...and traps! Set for those who dare enter to retrieve the blade of Mysun! It’s all Drevol’s work. Or, at least, the work of his minions.”

  Dusting himself down, William replied, “We’ll just have to watch our step so, if that’s the case.”

  Suddenly, the snarl visited them again in the night, before fading away back to its dealings.

  “Lookit, that noise is givin’ me the right willies, so it is!” trembled the leprechaun. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I knew what it was!”

  “Me too,” said William. “But it probably won’t annoy us unless we annoy it first. So, we’ll just try and keep out of its way.”

  Directly right of where he stood he noticed a pile of rags and bones, with a decomposing skull resting on top. With an awful creak, the skull opened its rotting mouth, then hissed at the boy, as if warning him in some manner of disdain, before dying with a horrid grin.

  “Um...l-l-let’s get moving!” William stuttered, dragging his gaze from it.

  Watching as the spikes diminished back into the shadows above, they seized their chance and made a break for it.

  “Right! You two! Go and check that side. I’ll check this side,” the lad instructed, as Icrick darted to the opposite stairway with Khrum scuttling behind him.

  William spotted a blazing torch set upon the wall just beside him, so naturally he thought it would be a good idea for him to take it.

  He recalled there hardly being any windows in that tower. Whatever moonlight that may have once been available to them, would now be scarce. However, that tower was indeed a treacherous place. As soon as he removed the torch from its frame, he heard three sharp clicks of a concealed mechanism. Before he knew it, with a slicing, horizontal whoosh, a large, hidden blade of smouldering frost spun out from the mortar and almost took William’s head clean off before disappearing back into the wall just a few feet behind him. Still, that momentary twitch of suspicion which came over him initially paid off immensely. In hearing that mechanism it immediately fuelled William’s awareness, such that he quickly hopped backwards, while the icy blade just missed scalping him by a strand’s width.

  Having just caught sight of the action, Khrum said, “Oooh, now that was close,” adding a whistle thereafter.

  But Icrick didn’t see what had happened, because he was too preoccupied with grabbing ahold of a torch on his side.

  “Icrick, wait!” William yelled.

  “Don’t bloody touch that!” Khrum cried out, but it was too late.

  With a stupid look of wonderment as to what they were waffling on about, Icrick lifted the torch. All of a sudden, a bunch of old sword heads jutted out from the wall like spikes. They would have taken Icrick’s legs clean off had he only been a step lower. Whereas Khrum—being so tiny—ended up getting wedged in between them, and there he so waited, belly sucked in, for them to withdraw again.

  “Ya fool, Grogoch!” he yelled, groping himself for damage, including his crotch, which he then released with a nod and a sigh of relief. “Are ya tryin’ ta kill me or what?!”

  “I didn’t know!” Icrick argued, partially from terror, though partially from feeling shameful about almost murdering his leprechaun chum.

  “Just be careful, you two,” William solicited. “I have a feeling we haven’t seen the half of it yet! Just keep your eyes peeled and watch your step. I’m going to check this room now. So you check your door, and we’ll all meet out here when we’re done...then we’ll move onto the next one. Agreed?”

  “Right ya are, lad!” Khrum said, putting on his hat. “And you, Grogoch. No more meddlin’ with my hide or I’ll brain ya so I will. Got that?”

  “I said I was sorry,” grumbled Icrick.

  And so it was that they began scaling the ghastly tower of Thérn. Little did they know, it would be quite some time before they would see each other again.

  * * *

  With a bitter judder, William approached his first door. It was of an ancient hew and was antique in life too, being welted with cracks and rot. With great caution he placed his hand upon the old wood and pushed it open. He also made sure to put his torch in first, lest there happen to be any more secret mechanisms about. There were none, so he was safe for now.

  It was darker than dark in that room, you won
’t be surprised to learn. Nor was there evidence of any windows; so the torch only lit up so much of the chamber at any one time. In the lad sauntered, scared and tense. Making a shuddering creak, the door closed behind him. It was just William now, alone in some strange room, with nothing for companionship bar his torch and his wild imagination.

  In there he saw a table with three mahogany chairs placed around it. It had been laid out quite elegantly with fine silver candlesticks, a bowl of fruit (which was still fresh, strangely enough), beautiful porcelain plates, golden cutlery, a black satin tablecloth, and violet napkins. Then, as though conveyed into reality through some twisted ghost story, there was a rather antiquated baby carriage, ebony and of jagged style, aside the wall to his right-hand side. He could barely swallow with trepidation, should something pounce from it, or worse. Need I say, his presumptions couldn’t have been more real when, from within the carriage, he heard a most haunting tune. It reminded him of a music box, except with worn clockwork. Its melody played slowly and sombrely, and eerily flat to the note. As if awakened by its tune, a crying started somewhere on the other side of the tower; loud enough for William to hear, but low enough for him to question himself. A child’s crying. That of a newborn—and how it bawled!

  Tentatively, William approached the carriage. For some reason he was drawn to it, though he would have preferred to just leave it be.

  The closer he got to it, the higher he raised his neck, endeavouring to see inside but without closing too much distance. The crying grew louder. Further he advanced, reluctant as he was to do so, with that awful, infantile music torturing him with every stride. Strange to say there was something about that music, in a derisively peculiar sort of way...but William couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  He proceeded forth until he was but a few feet away from it. The music unexpectedly slowed to its death. Out went William’s hand. He was going to nudge the pram to see if anything would happen. But before he could do so, the carriage rolled forward some inches all by itself...and a baby chuckled as if slung to his back. Fearfully he took his hand away, when all of a sudden, the table behind him rocked as though someone or something had bumped it. He spun around, but nobody was there. He hardly had the chance to turn back when he heard the child giggling again over his shoulder. When it did, William stumbled away from where the pram had once been, for it was there no more. The spot where it’d rested was now nothing but callous stone walls and floor. Where did it get to? Suddenly the moderate squeaking of rusted wheels visited the night. Away they rolled, until they were but a whisper in the dark. And eventually...they were gone.

  Trembling perceptibly, William muttered, “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I need to find this sword and get out o’ here as fast as I bloody well can.”

  Suddenly, there was another sound. This time it was of the cutlery.

  Wincing for fear of the unexpected, he shed his burning torchlight in that direction. Again, not a soul was present. You may well have presumed that poor William didn’t care much for the tower at all by this stage, for terror had him snagged in its rigid jaws, and he just wanted to be rid of it. Still, he desperately needed to find Thérn; owing to which, any strange occurrence which might have happened in the meantime may very well have been some clue as to where he might discover it. So there was nothing else he could do but embrace his fears, and proceed about the unusual goings on.

  He was just about to examine the table itself when, unwarily, he inhaled some dust that made his chest tickle. With a cough, he spluttered and cleared his throat, and thought nothing of it. He went back to the table a second time. But again the dust swarmed about him, with a voice of uncertain muttering, before flushing through his airways even worse than it had done before. Stumbling over his feet, William fell into a second fit of coughing, but now he was forced to lean over and spit onto the ground by way of ridding himself of its musty putrescence.

  “Yuck!” he spluttered, finally catching his breath again.

  He still didn’t learn from this experience. For, at that point, his wits were far too numb from fear to react accordingly. William merely presumed it to be a dusty room and nothing more, so he approached the table yet again. This time, from out of nowhere, there was a demonic, scornful yell right into his face. It was so close that he could feel the moist spray of spittle in his eyes and the stench of rotten, meat-like breath forcing itself up his nostrils.

  “LEAVE US, FILTHY PIG!” it roared, as if it were some demented old man.

  William started, dropping his torch. Of course, he would have run after it, but the dust was now wafting into his eyes. Had he not known any better, he would’ve said that the dust was after him. Vigorously he rubbed his eyes in a vain attempt to see straight. The more he did so, the worse it got. Now his eyes were stinging and watering to such a degree that William was growling and moaning in irritation. Even if he forced them open, he could only do so for a few seconds before he had to clench them shut again.

  While he was overcome, the voice sneered again, only now it was calmer and all the more maniacal.

  “...Get yourself out of here, lad!” it warned, with what could only have been a cold scowl.

  All of a sudden, as he struggled to see, William was violently shoved from one side of the room to the next. He was about to call for aid when he sucked in another awful cloud of that wicked dust. Down he fell, onto the ground, coughing and wheezing, and rubbing his eyes. He urged himself to stand whilst, through blurred vision, he saw the flickering flame before him. Staggering over to it, he picked it up, but again he was thrown. This time he stumbled into another pair of arms, which shoved him onto somebody else, he couldn’t see who. They were like bullies in a playground toying with their victim.

  William stumbled and griped as they tossed him all about the room, all the while guffawing with their wheezy laughs. Fortunately, the boy’s vision soon became clear enough for him to make things out. The bad news was, he couldn’t see any door. What he could spy were two stairways just right of the table which he had not noticed before. Both were hidden behind brickwork, running up behind the wall. One went left and the other, right. With no time to choose, he broke from the invisible crowd and rushed to the stair on the right-hand side, constantly rolling and banging into the walls as he strove.

  He scrabbled as hastily as he could, but one of the steps suddenly crumbled beneath him. Taking a traumatic jolt, he collapsed through the stair, but caught ahold of the next step just in time. In doing so, he fumbled, and his torch dropped into another room, which wasn’t too far below him. How unfortunate he was, given how that room was a-clutter with piles of scattered hay and timber barrels. It was an old pantry of some sort. The torch buried itself into one of the stacks, which immediately caught fire, the rising flames licking just below William’s wagging legs. He roared aloud and, with all his might, he attempted to pull himself to safety. Suddenly the next step broke, dropping him into the inferno. Luckily he dropped rapidly enough to tumble safely from the burning heap and not get scorched, though he was far from out of danger’s way.

  The entire room was ablaze now, aside from the clear patch where William stood. Pigs, white-skinned from fear, were hanging by their necks behind him. One was still twitching. That was it; he needed to get out of there. He’d seen enough.

  Feet beyond the wall of fire which had now fully surrounded him, William could make out a mass of tall silhouettes crowding around, observing him in his despair with cold and lifeless stares. Satanic-looking beings they were, freakishly gangling as they looked on in an eerie sway. They were hissing in such a sinister manner that William’s skin almost rippled with goose bumps. What manner of creature could achieve such terribleness simply through their being alone? One could but wonder.

  Peering staunchly into their dead and stony eyes, William bravely demanded, “Who are you people?! What do you want from me?!”

  When he stepped forth, a chained noose that was hidden beneath the scattered straw s
uddenly snagged his ankle and, whisking him off his feet, yanked him right up into the air.

  He tore upward so hastily that he thought he was going to splat right into the ceiling, though he didn’t. Instead he was dragged through the stone and mortar, as if the walls themselves were that of some ethereal manifestation. With savage speed the chain whisked him up and up, through floor upon floor of rooms. He cried out, but there was nobody who could help him. In every chamber he zipped past, William caught an instantaneous glimpse of those same shadowy figures from before. Every floor they were present; room after room, peering at him with their dark and faceless features. Suddenly the chain came to a rapid halt and he was left dangling in silence, gasping for air.

  He found himself in another chamber. An unfurnished, quiet room, he noted, with four walls, a ceiling and a floor, that was all. Not even a door. He was able to see where he was because that same torch was gently rocking back and forth in the centre of that very room, as if someone had dropped it in a great hurry.

  “What’s going on?” he cried, but no one replied. “Icrick?” (There was silence.) “Khrum?” (Still no response.)

  Just then, the chain liberated him before vanishing from sight. Falling with a harsh thump onto his shoulders, William was left sprawled out on the floor. Woefully he crawled to the torch and lifted himself with both arms, being almost completely deprived of all strength. Like some callous, ghostly prank, the flames suddenly turned to a shade of blue, and as he examined them, the very tongues turned into frosted ice; yet still they flickered as in the same manner of fire itself. Nevertheless, it was but trivial in comparison to William’s exhaustion. He was so drained of his wits that all he could do was find the nearest wall, by which he could rest in an attempt to regain some strength.