Swords v. Cthulhu
Page 15
As he’d approached Alamoi, he’d gawped in awe at the pair of towers that dominated the cityscape, rising story after story higher than the next tallest building. Scaffolding clung to them like scabs, and the tiny figures of workers scurried here and there upon their surfaces.
At first, he thought it only another hallucination that the two towers seemed to bend toward one another at their peak, but the vision did not waver. Realization arrived late: these were not two towers, but instead the opposing sides of an arch. Closer now, he could make out the ropes and pulleys lifting an enormous keystone into the heavens. It inched upward as he watched.
The dreaming construct would soon be complete. What would happen then was a great mystery, but not one Garen was eager to solve.
He hurried down alleyways and squeezed between abandoned buildings, looking overhead to orient himself. In this harried state, he nearly missed the shadows that gathered to follow his steps.
The mind of Garen was a nigh-constantly distracted one, but with many nights of training he had honed his observational senses, his deepest, truest mind alert to danger and discrepancy without intentional thought. A prickling of the skin at his nape drew him back to the moment, and with careful side glances he made out the shapes that followed him. They were small and narrow-limbed, soft-footed, naked save for those who wore tangles of rags about their waists.
Children. The dreaming must have overlooked those too small to be of use in its endeavor. In the absence of parental discipline, they had turned feral.
Sensing that they had lost the surprise, the urchins rushed in; they wielded flint knives, crude axes, hammers, and other discarded, broken tools.
These survivors had not been nourished by the dream, Garen saw now. A vision of truth flooded Garen’s mind as he broke into a sprint.
First they had scavenged, but stores quickly ran thin. The half-starved children had learned to hunt the small animals first — cats and other abandoned pets. Soon they exhausted these reserves too. The remaining animals too cunning, the dreaming workers proved easier prey.
What Garen had made for rags were bundles of human scalps and tanned hide; trophies of successful hunts. The taste of dreamer flesh had twisted them past salvation or reason, Garen a morsel of curiosity they risked their lives to taste.
The vision spurred him swiftly forward, but more attackers whooped with wordless battle cries; soon Garen was cut off by another cohort. Too harried to find his blade in his pack, he leapt toward the nearest wall and began to climb, driving his fingers into the narrowest chinks between the stones. He cursed the Alamoi masons who fit the blocks together so well, and his nails cracked and bled. The children lapped at the splotches he left behind, shoving one another to get at his juices.
These drippings and his vertical flight stymied them briefly; they milled about below. A boy nearly twelve winters by the look of him — taller than the rest, with more muscle, and eyes like burning coals — made frantic gestures and grunted at the others. He cuffed a smaller girl behind the ear, and, chastened, she began to climb, a snarl upon her chapped lips.
Garen gained the clay-tiled roof just as the girl grabbed his ankle. A swift kick sent the child sprawling down onto the others in a heap. Their shouts of dismay warmed him against the chill breeze.
Garen pulled at a tile, and it came up easily enough, offering good heft. He pelted the children, cackling with each satisfying thwack of clay against urchin flesh. The pack suffered only a little of this before fleeing back down the alleys.
“You die anyway,” the oldest boy grunted over his shoulder before following the others. “They finish soon.”
“No, no, no!” Meldri snapped. “If you combine the essences in that order, you’ll ignite the fats of your own flesh and burn like a candle.”
Besthamun’s pale fingers scooped up the vials and returned them to the case. “Again, from the beginning.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t concoct the mixture ahead of time,” Garen said with a sigh. They had been at this for three days, and the complex steps of the mixture’s alchemy had eluded him.
“The final compound is unstable. A stray pebble in your sandal could cause it to ignite as you carry it,” Besthamun said softly.
Garen took her hand into his. “I burn already, in spirit. What does it matter to me if my flesh does as well?”
She tugged her fingers free and turned away so he could not see her stinging tears. It was nearly certain that she sent him to his own demise with this task. While she had enjoyed his company in her bed these past nights, she could not convince herself that their time together would be anything other than a brief respite before his inevitable doom.
Garen began again, pantomiming the steps to properly combine the elements and essences of the kit. This recipe had come from the deepest recesses of the Dream Library; its mere existence had been the subject of whispers among their fellow scholars, and the scrolls containing it had nearly combusted in the sunlight — a trap laid by the mad thing who had dreamed the notes and then scribed them faithfully. The recipe itself contained many false steps and dangerous combinations. Such dream knowledge, even when functional, was always counterintuitive and dangerous to use, holding its own logic.
Being unable to dream had made Garen unfamiliar with its peculiar non-logic. Even so, Besthamun did not doubt that Garen would master the formula. Every night, after their pleasures, he threw aside her furs and stepped naked out into the cold night air to practice.
She doubted any knowledge could escape Garen’s grasp for long; despite the fits of madness he suffered when not presented with a task or goal, his mind was one of the sharpest she had ever encountered. It hungered to understand. In these days, Garen was still more ignorant than wise in the ways of the world (a skillful lover, admittedly), but if he survived into his twilight years, his mind might solve some of the deepest philosophical questions, such as the nature of the Dreamers that visited the plagues upon humankind — from whence did their slumbering nightmares emit? Questions no ordinary scholar could contemplate for long without turning mad, but Garen was already lost. It would only be a matter of degrees for him.
Meldri leaned in and whispered as Garen mimed taking the flame to the tincture of aumsblood. “He nearly has it.”
She nodded, and held a finger to her lips.
With a flourish of his right hand, Garen completed the final step. Sweat dripped from the tip of his broad nose, and his blouse was soaked through.
“How was that?” he asked.
“Satisfactory,” Meldri said with a sniff, but he could not hide his excitement, his eyes sparkling in the light of the alchemist’s flame. Their plan might yet work!
“I say we celebrate,” Garen said, and he took Meldri into his arms and kissed him deeply, breaking only to nibble upon Besthamun’s neck.
“I suppose you have earned a brief respite from your training,” Meldri murmured.
Garen sweat under the high mountain sun, relentless in its drumming beat on his copper skin. He threw aside his cape of furs and used his elevated vantage point to survey the territory he must cross to reach the base of the archway.
Mangled, magpie-pecked corpses of those that had fallen from the scaffolding littered the ground below; the living paid these dead no attention. Beyond the field of corpses, a maze of ladders and platforms coiled around the stone foundations like paper snakes. These teemed with the dreaming workers now, but after a moment of watching, Garen could see that the tide of humanity had reversed: the dreamers now climbed downward. A crowd of hundreds milled just below the keystone, which was swinging into place atop the arch.
Now Garen drew his blade from his pack and clenched it between his teeth. His mouth tasted as metallic as blood as he climbed down to the street once more. He kept a careful eye on the shadows for the urchins, but saw none; a strange energy in the air grew taut, and even the feral children must have been able to sense it. Perhaps they had fled the city ahead of what came next.
Once the pack merged with the larger crowd, they began to sway in place, as if leaning to and fro to a tune only they could hear. A dim memory of a song with a matching beat played itself in Garen’s mind, and he nearly shrieked to silence it. He didn’t wish to recall whatever that was now, a memory of a time when he too had been exposed to a dream, and returned from it lacking some deep, fundamental piece of himself, the only survivor in an entire village of dreaming dead.
He shook away the audial phantasm and pushed his way through the crowd, hundreds of half-naked bodies now, shoulder to shoulder, pressing ever inward to seek the shade of the supports. The heat from their bodies drew more sweat upon Garen’s brow. His heart raced, somehow certain that they were watching him with their mindless gazes, but had determined him harmless.
It was only when he took out the vials given to him by Meldri and Besthamun that they reacted at all. In one mighty voice they screamed long and shrill, nearly tearing the tissue of Garen’s ears. All of the dreamers, at once. Garen took up his blade and turned to put his back against stone, but the dreamers did not turn to face him. Instead, their sightless gaze was directed skyward, where the keystone had been fitted into place.
The tenseness in the air snapped. A chill gale blew inward to the arch, followed after a moment by a hot breeze, damp, fetid, like the exhalation of some great beast. Garen nearly retched at the indescribable stench.
Bodies rained onto the paving stones from the scaffolding, first one, then another, then dozens, falling and cracking onto the stone-lined streets. Flocks of magpies and crows swooped forward to dine on the fresh meats, fluttering, glossy-black wings blanketing the gore from Garen’s eyes like a feathered eclipse. Garen tore his gaze away and went to work. He hurriedly formed compounds and solutions by rote. Now his only thoughts were of Besthamun and Meldri.
“What harm does it do to let the dreamers build?” Garen asked. The three of them lay in a sweaty tangle of spent limbs in Besthamun’s bed.
“The dream plagues are the dreams of Them — those titans and gods from before language and song, the horrors banished outside by the first fires and spears. In their eternal slumber, their dreams twist the wakened and reshape those that they touch. Their dreams cause great horror and tragedy, but mostly they pass quickly,” Meldri said.
“Mmm.” Garen nodded, tap-tapping his chin against Besthamun’s shoulder.
“The dream in Alamoi has never passed,” Besthamun said. “Our mentor, the Great Blind Scholar Trikilin, studies ashamani — dreams of purpose. There are half-written records of other purposeful dreams in the Library. Each was an awesome calamity, greater still than any war or famine. There are stories of the banished demons building exits from their prisons. If they were to return, the world would drown in blood and fire.”
“I’m merely surprised you would be so eager to destroy your home,” Garen said.
Besthamun sat upright. “How do you know this?”
Garen shrugged. “Try as you might, you can’t hide the accented lilt in your speech.”
“We thought you knew nothing of the Shining City,” Meldri said, tone hurt.
Garen chuckled, hand on Besthamun to draw her back to the bed. “I study dream plagues in my own way; of course I know as much as I can about your city. But I had thought it useless in my quest.”
“We were pressed into Trikilin’s service as children by our father, a master architect,” Meldri said in a far-off tone. “We left before the plague took hold. Sometimes I dream that I am walking the streets near our home again. Of the way the stones felt warm beneath your feet, even after the sun had set.”
“I miss the smells of mountain grubs and rock sparrow eggs frying in the stalls along the marketplace,” Besthamun whispered.
“In my dream the people become monsters. They tear down Alamoi, brick by brick, devouring each stone with blackened maws.” Meldri began to sob.
“We will see it destroyed by our own hands and our people freed from the dream’s service,” Besthamun said, taking her brother’s hand. She stared at Garen, who shrugged.
“I will do my best.”
Later, after Meldri had drifted off, Garen said: “You don’t expect me to survive.”
Besthamun rolled to face away. “I suppose not. The detonating compound will only give you moments to find shelter, even if you live long enough to formulate it. But… you are clever.”
He laughed.
“Perhaps the most clever man I have ever met.”
“Maybe so. But if you really cared about me as anything other than a tool for your plans, you wouldn’t send me to my death.”
“I’m not forcing you to go.”
He sighed. “I would give anything, even my life, to dream again. Aside from the fits of madness, one does not feel… real?… after so long without dreams. This talk of saving the land from the calamitous dreaming of old gods; none of that matters to me.”
“You will still attempt the task?”
“Of course. Perhaps I will surprise you with my survival. And if not, I hope that in death even I can dream.”
“I hope so too.”
A thunderclap brought Garen back to the present. A swarm of pink-hued abominations spilled from the space below the arch, a swarm buzzing louder than the screaming birds, their shapes writhing, unnatural. Beyond them, through the arch, in a space that had never known light, something immense lurked, a presence with no recognizable shape. Garen knew it to be the Dreaming One, the thing banished. It approached, heralded by its servants. Its path was not yet fully paved, the invisible door still swinging open. Garen still had time.
He took the last triggering essence of the explosive compound in his fist, blade in the other, and screamed his defiance to the heavens.
The winged servants dived at him. The dreamers raised their fists and howled. Attackers struck from all directions.
Despite his madness, Garen had the luxury of time. He had studied many subjects, but first among them was the martial forms. In this he was a practiced scholar. Now his mastery was apparent, though no sane mind could witness it. In each movement he accomplished precisely what was needed for his knife to sunder limb from torso, head from neck. He spun into the writhing horde of dreamers and laid waste to any who dared come within his considerable reach.
Still an endless number pressed him, their blunt teeth and splintered nails rending his skin, his spilled blood a gory rain that speckled the air. Despite his mastery of the knife, he could not resist such great numbers for very long. Each swing took him farther from the nearly completed chemical mixture. He carved a path to escape — a gap in the crowd that could close at any moment — and then he flung the final element back at the mixture-filled vial that lay at the foot of the arch.
It shattered against the beaker, and the mixture inside flared white.
All sound, all vision extinguished. For the briefest of moments, Garen thought he had fallen asleep at last, and his every weary muscle relaxed.
Then chaos, terrible heat, and so much screaming. Above it all, the roar of stone fracturing, toppling, collapsing, the archway coming down heavy block by block, repeatedly thudding into the earth and rippling the courtyard like an unending earthquake.
Garen felt his body thrown clear of the collapsing arch. His ankle fractured when he landed, his ribs badly bruised at the very least, but he still clung to his dagger. The bodies of the dreamers had sheltered him from the worst of the explosion. Now his ears sounded with ringing temple bells, his skin numb and unfeeling. He was certain that he was dying, but the ringing began to fade and the numbness gave way to agony.
The winged harbingers screamed in horror at the collapsing arch. Their movements shifted; another plan seemed to form quickly, as
if they shared a common mind or purpose. Iridescent wings beat rhythms of despair as they swooped low, snatching up the scattered dreamers of Alamoi. Garen watched, dumb with fright, as the servants tore at the scalps of their victims, peeling back flesh and bone until a pink slithery mass of brain was exposed. These organs they plucked like imperfect rosebuds and stored in the featureless gray canisters each carried in slings upon their abdomens.
One servant drove for Garen as he scrabbled away, unable to stand and too terrified to turn his gaze from the slaughter. He swept out with the bronze blade, but the servant had suddenly never occupied the space he thought it had, and his weapon did not draw its ichor.
One of the servant’s claws pried the blade from Garen’s hand. The others snatched him up and lifted him spread-eagled into the air, and still other limbs poked and prodded his skin. Garen let out a long sigh and went limp. His fate was sealed; why should he fight it? The horror of what he was witnessing dulled, and all he experienced felt somehow familiar.
How long the examination continued, Garen wasn’t certain, but suddenly the servant cast Garen roughly aside. He landed on a pile of stones, the breath knocked from his battered lungs. Their writhing harvest complete, they flew away into the blue sky, disappearing into pinpoints, and leaving behind shimmering pools of blood and skull-rent corpses on the ruined courtyard floor. The archway was no more; nor was the tunnel of space it had heralded. The Dreamer remained locked away. To what purpose they turned now, Garen would never know.
After some time, Garen made it to his feet, despite his ruined ankle. He was no longer tempted to look back on the carnage. Not all of the dreamers had been harvested. Some were stirring here and there, and he did not look forward to the explanations they would demand from him when their senses fully returned. He made as much haste as possible, limping to the road he had followed into the city, and following it back into the valley. He crawled, scampered, and hopped for six days without rest, pausing only to scavenge a tree limb as a makeshift crutch. On his sixth day of flight, Garen collapsed at the doorstep of a traveler’s inn in a dreamless coma. It was the closest thing approaching sleep he had experienced in more years than he could remember.