Alfred stared at the vast vortex of impenetrable sorcery before them. He had severe doubts that his tiny mote of ineffectual magic could have any effect whatsoever on such a conjuration. But the old writing and father Latherus had said that Angall's Whisper was a key amongst other things, so he knew he had to try.
He glanced sidelong at the other aspirants. Deena, Dunc, Sebastian, Peyter, Farah, and Manzak. All sat on jittering horses, staring at the Torrent.
Alfred cleared his throat and spoke. His voice felt quiet and impotent next to the rolling power of the Torrent.
"We don't know what's in there. But we know that the gods gave us our blessing because they meant us to go in. If Angall gave us all a key to this place, why go to all that trouble if all he wants us to do is die?"
Peyter gave a grim smile, his uneven brown teeth showing.
"Because the bastard gods all have a wonderful sense of humor at our expense."
Alfred knew that in the recent past he could have heard himself saying those exact words to mask his fear. But he couldn't be that man anymore.
"We are weak alone. But we have all felt the strange warmth that comes from the Blessing within when we are all close to one another. "
Farah glanced at him and seemed to blush.
"I have felt it, Alfred. Like a tiny sun within. Like a candle flame that wants to join a bonfire."
Sebastian rolled his perfect green eyes.
"I'll just stay a candle of one, thanks."
Dunc, with his sleek black hair and keen face, nodded.
"I thought I was the only one feeling that."
Deena cast back her hood and tightened her jaw as she stared at the Torrent.
"It's communion."
Alfred took a deep breath and drew on his Blessing. He felt it well within him like a hot breeze from a campfire. It swirled around his ribs with an almost painful tickle. The urge to set it free overwhelming, as it always was. But he resisted. Instead he let it heat and build within his heart. His chest expanded and a faint golden glow began in the tips of his fingers and in the whites of his eyes. Beside him, one by one the other aspirants did the same.
Soon they all sat before he Torrent, glowing with holy Light. Malkolm Bluheart looked on them with an expression of trepidation and pride. No one knew what would happen next. Then without warming or prompt, the aspirants released their Blessings at once.
Seven motes of golden light issues forth from their throats. Tiny stars that drifted on an unseen breeze towards the wall of ancient sorcery. They hit the Torrent and stuck there like burrs, fizzing.
For a long moment nothing more happened.
Alfred started to think his fears proven true. Their puny magic could have no effect on a wall put there by the gods. He sighed and felt his burgeoning faith waver. Then the motes began to his louder, like hot steel from the forge cast into water.
Beneath each mote, a hole began to appear in the wall of the Torrent. Small at first, then growing to the size of an apple. Beyond them nothing but darkness.
The holes grew in size until wide enough for a man to walk through. The aspirants dismounted and stood there staring seven perfect doors into the unknown.
Alfred spoke up.
"Father Bluheart. You think that some remnant of the Sorrow is really still alive in there. After all these centuries?"
Bluheart stood as in awe as the rest of them.
"Stay in the light as much as you can. It will be waiting for you, just outside it."
The aspirants gathered their courage and walked up to their doorways. They offered each other reassuring glances. But each looked as scared as the other. Alfred took one look back at the high towers of Ironghast monastery. Then he gathered as much faith in his soul as he could muster and stepped inside.
He would not see true light again for a long while. And when he did, it would ignite his soul.
10
King Oligan Rathratta knew his last day in the world.
He had committed many murders during his long reign, through the hands of others. But the life today would be the last life he would take. And it would be by his hand.
When he woke that morning the pale sun shone through his open window. The sheer yellow curtains billowed in the breeze. The scent of the rose gardens far below his royal bedchamber drifted up and he awoke to their sweet smell.
For a few brief moments he thought it decades ago. In a different age of the kingdom, married and with children on the way. The turmoil of a thousand years before his birth was still buried deep within the earth. The brotherhood of vicissitude was still just a fledgling organization whispering to each other in a few dark corners of the land.
His face was whole and comely, with a defiant jaw and sculpted cheekbones. Statues of him decorated the town square of many a town. The burden of kingship did not yet lay heavy on his shoulders. All was well.
Then it all began to come back to him.
His wife and children had died decades before. He did not realize this until now. Oligan had deluded himself all these years that the pale vascular forms floating in their glass coffins being rejuvenated. Of course he now knew that they were being poisoned with the vile toxin of the god that nourished them. What had emerged, abominations that broke his heart and his mind every evening he was forced to share a meal with them. Food they never ate and wine they never drank.
His once handsome face was a ruin. Melted half away during the folly of his purges. He had ordered the deaths of so many living beings. He slaughtered men and women, and so many rare Old Races that no longer graced the world. He had become a scarred and superstitious old recluse, terrified of magic and its power. All on the advice of his long-time advisor and chief Witchfinder Merrick Clay.
That man, if Oligan could even call him a man. That disciple of torture and suffering. Like demons often do he had come with smiles, as a friend and councilor in his time of greatest need. He had promised so much and given so little. Oligan had little aged in forty years thanks to his minute doses of the same vile essence that had transformed his family. But it was no gift.
It suited the powers of the Sorrow and their disciples like Clay to maintain the status quo. To present a constant familiar public image to the populous, in order to keep them sedated and ignorant. Oligan even wondered if somehow the Sorrow had arranged his injuries. To better present a mask of benign unchanging normality to his subjects. Even those that knew something was rotten at the heart of the old empire too afraid to voice it aloud. The Witchfinders, the blackguard and the draconian laws around magic saw to that. And of course, Oligan had done much work in the kingdom over the years. Reduced taxes, safer roads and borders, less crime and dissent, flourishing trade and bountiful harvests. Another, and perhaps the best, manipulation of the Sorrow. Keep the people's bellies fat, their cups filled with wine, and their streets clean. Then people are even less likely to question the strangeness at the heart of the kingdom. When people go missing, and new laws are introduced curtailing their freedom, people who are unwilling to give up basic comforts just accept it. And they don't question when a neighbor goes missing never to be seen again.
When the daggers of reality came stabbing back into his mind, Oligan knew that morning that he could take it no more. He got up out of bed, and walked to the window in his nightgown. His body was still muscled and skin smooth but his old bones ached and his organs churned against each other. It felt like he was aging from the inside out. He let the fine yellow curtains waft over his skin and then he stood there on the little balcony.
The city spread out below him. Fine old red slate roofs with chimneys billowing woodsmoke. Well-kept parks and rock gardens filled with statues. Ale houses, blacksmiths and bakers. He wondered how the people saw him. As a beloved ruler? He doubted that. He had withdrawn from any semblance of public life forty years ago, most people lived and died without ever seeing him. As a tyrant? A faceless monster to be obeyed. Or was he something abstract? So far removed from the reality of their day to
day lives that he never factored at all. Oligan took a step closer to the low wall of the balcony. Seagulls flitted close, drawn in from the harbour. His heart was beating fast now.
Just a few more steps and it might all be over.
These people don't know that their king sold their lives to monsters. And for what? The love of walking corpses.
Oligan was aware of the cool sea breeze on his ruined face. It cooled the ever-burning flesh. Tinctures he was given daily for the pain but he applied them. He deserved the daily torture and wore it with pride. He took another step closer to the edge. Far below he could hear the faint sounds of a market.
A voice came from behind king Oligan. A high and mocking tone.
"Be careful, your majesty. The winds are growing stronger."
Oligan turned. For a moment he almost lost his balance and teetered back over the edge. As he adjusted his footing, he connected eyes with Merrick Clay. The Witchfinder stood unblinking in the doorway, a polite smile on his thin injured face. Oligan righted himself and stood there, his own burned face exposed and his twisted mouth grimacing. He stammered out a reply.
"I...I was just taking in the city, Merrick."
Merrick Clay glided into the room, bringing a small jug of sweet white wine and a plate of sugared pastries.
"Your breakfast, your majesty. I think most of the servants are now too afraid to come into the private chambers of this tower now. They fear they will be cursed and conjured by your girls."
Oligan straightened his nightgown and walked back into the bedchamber.
"I have dismissed most of them. Tongue or no tongues to tell the tales, I don't want them seeing what their monarch and his family have become."
Merrick put down the tray next to the king's bed and straightened up with a curious expression.
"You are not proud of all we have achieved, your majesty? We two have almost singlehandedly resurrected the old Green King that time had buried beneath the earth. Taken us forty years and long campaigns. Without your hard but fair rule, we would have had those aberrations born with the Magus Heart running about the countryside. Doing whatever they wanted. Changing things. Wasting their power on selfish desires. Magic belongs to the Sorrow. You know that."
Oligan reached over to a marble dressing table and picked up his mask. He held it out in front of his face, gathering the courage to entomb himself once more.
"Of course I do. And you have kept every promise you made me, Merrick."
The Witchfinder grinned and offered a tiny bow.
"To the letter."
Oligan enclosed his head in the beaten bronze mask and then picked up a crimson silk robe. He was unused to dressing himself but he could no longer bear the presence of terrified servants.
"What can I do for you, loyal Merrick?"
The Witchfinder licked his pale lips.
"I wish to discuss and council you on our next moves. Would you walk with me, your majesty?"
It was said with sickly politeness but Oligan was clear that it was not a request.
He tied his silken robes at the waist. Then Oligan reached for a torque of twisted gold and placed it around his neck. He may be a puppet, but he was determined to show some semblance of looking like a king, right to the last.
The two old schemers walked through the empty corridors of the palace.
Oligan was amazed at how the Witchfinder was still functioning. He had removed his bandages and the thin face was a map of livid scars and infected pustules. His hands little more than blackened claws. Yet he limped on beside the king, now savoring the slow knitting of his flesh. They made their way up a long winding staircase to the private chamber with its burning braziers that had been the war room for them for years.
Merrick addressed the king in a dry croak.
"One of our royal sight-thieves has interpreted a message this morning bearing news. Your daughter arrived at the city of Crowburgh, many leagues away. She made them an offer for something that they possess. It was rejected. So she has unleashed the Sorrow on the city. Given herself over to war."
Oligan felt hot tears rise behind his mask. He kept his voice even.
"She is never to return here to the palace?"
Merrick dismissed this with a curt wave.
"No. Her future lies elsewhere now. Not among the sheltered royal court, but out in the wild as a great general. Grown into something more, you should be proud."
The two figures walked through double doors into the high gloomy chamber. They wandered amongst its pillars by the burning bronze braziers.
Oligan felt like a man walking to the gallows.
Oligan felt the despair rise but he choke it down. Oh he was such a sinner, such blight on the landscape, he thought. But he must soldier on.
“Why this illusion and lie of saving my family, to turn them into this? To make them monstrous."
Merrick wrung his leathery hands together and spoke in a sympathetic tone. Still the mockery beneath remained.
"I gave you decades of hope, Oligan. And I postponed your grief all these years."
Oligan's shoulders sagged. He passed by a pan of burning coals and considered letting his robes ignite. To run aflame at the window.
"A lie of hope. And I could have mourned."
Again Merrick dismissed him with a flick of charred digits.
"Then mourn. But you should be celebrating. You have reigned longer than any king in history. You have given these lands order and peace."
Oligan mulled on his crimes.
"Yes. I have done unimaginable things."
Merrick turned to him and he was the wise and kind councilor again. The one who had seduced a royal mind all those years ago.
"Come, your highness. Join me in the reliquary. When was the last time since you stood before the Green King? Since your family awoke?"
"I have not entered since."
"Then come, my king. I think you need to remind yourself that we are all servants to something bigger and stronger than us. Something beautiful."
Merrick led the king through to the antechamber. The room where the great reliquary was kept. Like a titanic hourglass it sat there in the middle of the humid room. Inside, the filthy green fog swirled as always. Except now, sometimes something living could be seen. A tentacle sweeping past. A stinger scraping the glass. an unearthly eye through the gloom.
God was awake.
Merrick had told the king that this entity was a general in the armies of the Sorrow. He was a great warlord that had been defeated in ancient times and dug beneath the earth to survive. Like a tick. Yet he was powerful beyond measure, and until his brothers were found, he would lead the war.
The king could not imagine anything more terrifying or horrific than this thing. The thought that he was just a herald to the true force of the Sorrow made his stomach lurch.
He followed Merrick Clay around the reliquary. They ascended a set of brass steps to the viewing gallery above. The two damaged men stood there, looking down into the churning pond of meat-filled mist. Oligan felt dizzy, like he might tumble forward into the filth.
Merrick's scarred face was lost in reverie.
"All our work, Oligan. All these years of faith and devotion. It is paying off. Are you not elated?"
King Oligan looked down into the churning fog. An unholy glow emanated deep within.
"How many souls have we thrown into that pit over the years, Merrick? How many Magus Hearts have you ripped out of people's bodies, and fed them to this thing?"
Merrick seemed to take the question seriously. He furrowed his brow and muttered beneath his breath.
"I would estimate between three to five thousand, your majesty. Every little morsel a tiny mote of nourishment for him. Like a child we have raised together, no?"
Merrick turned to the king and gave a horrible grin of satisfaction, like a proud parent. Oligan looked back at the Witchfinder. He saw nothing but madness in the eyes of Merrick Clay. He was a cult priest who had spent years ushering i
n the end of the world. A torturer that had sacrificed so many people to this wretched god in a vat. The awful irony being that Merrick was also a magic-user. He had the same strange glowing growth in his own body that he had torn out of so many others. The twisted killer had fed his own kind to a hungry maw. It occurred to Oligan to let himself fall forward into the reliquary. To give the monstrous thing within one final meal. But he stood firm. Oligan was suicidal, no doubt. But even he did not want his last breath to be the poisonous fog and the scraps of a thousand corpses that swirled below.
Merrick raised his hands in prayer.
"You have been so patient with us, lord. We know we can never abate your hunger, but we have given you sustenance as we could. But now you are awake, and there a whole world for you to feast on. It is waiting for you. It is all for you."
Oligan looked across at the thin man with the scarred face turned up in rapture. He stared at the scrawny creature that had used and manipulated him for most of his adult reign. Oligan knew that his own soul was damned. He was no innocent. He was aware of every life he had taken to preserve his bloodline, his power. Oligan was a selfish, vain, greedy king, whose greatest terror was to be deposed and forgotten. He sacrificed his people and his world for the obsessive love of his family. And he had damned his family's bodies as vessels of this poison that swirled below him.
King Oligan Rathratta was as wretched a man as ever walked the earth. Doomed to forever be preserved as a glorified slave to these horrific entities.
A Prayer of Freaks and Sinners Page 11