Swords v. Cthulhu

by Jesse Bullington

  She presses half-made dolls into your hands and tells you to go to the temple, that she’ll hold them off as long as she can. You consider trying to argue, but already her skin is taking on an unhealthy grayish tinge, and so you take the dolls and run.

  The temple steps flash under your feet, and you don’t stop until you are beyond its golden doors, and those doors shut firmly behind you. You see that the temple is only a facade, that within it is open to the elements, and the back wall of the chamber is not a wall but a cliff that drops off into a gorge that seems to go down forever. Between you and the cliff there sits a golden throne, and upon it reclines the fattest man you have ever seen. His flesh hangs over itself in massive folds, like an avalanche of a person, a mountain of flesh that cascades ever down and down. Covering his face is a mask of yellow silk, and to either side of him stand guardians in golden masks, holding curved golden swords. In one of his massive hands, he holds what must be the Shining Trapezohedron, a black stone striated with red that seems to pull you toward it.

  The Yellow King holds out the stone, as though inviting you to come take it, but as you start to move forward, so too do his twin guards. You glance down at the sword in your hand, and then at the dolls that Ivrian gave you. Hastily you begin shaping one of the dolls, pressing into its face a piece of gold prized from the door at your back. You hear the footsteps of the guards coming closer, and you use the doll as Ivrian taught you. When you look up, one of the guards has turned stiffly and cut the other down.

  You smile in triumph as the guard whose strings you now hold turns and advances on his former master, and the Yellow King is silent even as the guard cuts off his hand so that the Trapezohedron rolls free. It is only as you pick it up that you realize why this came to you so easily. The moment you touch the stone, you feel its power, feel it drawing your gaze, gathering up your strings as readily as Ivrian ever did, and you realize that you are the puppet, and that you always were.

  If you cast the Shining Trapezohedron away, refer to passage X.

  If you gaze into the Shining Trapezohedron, refer to passage XI.

  X

  Realizing that the Shining Trapezohedron is something more than a jewel, some cursed and terrible artifact that can bring you only doom, you raise your arm to cast it into the chasm behind the Yellow King’s throne. At least, you intend to. But while the signal races from your mind, it never seems to reach your hand, which stays where it is, gripping the stone tightly.

  You understand that you are no longer in control of yourself. That you are a puppet, being pulled by strings that you cannot see or imagine. Though your will screams against it, you turn your gaze toward the stone in your hand.

  Refer to passage XI.

  XI

  You cannot resist the pull of the stone, and inside the Shining Trapezohedron you see at first only swirling clouds of red and black. Then the clouds part, and you are looking into the past and the future. You see yourself entering the Jeweled Remora in Lankhende, taking a table near the hearth, in spite of the heat and closeness of the night. There you meet with your companions, and you speak of your quest for the jewel. You keep your voices lowered, but a stranger watches you avidly from the shadows.

  From the depths of the stone, you hear a voice at once strange and familiar, reciting a rhyme that stirs dim memories that seem to come from another life: “… and much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot.”

  Ordo Virtutum

  Wendy N. Wagner

  Hildegard leaned on her walking staff and picked her way around a mound of rubble. Mud and heaps of fieldstone covered the whole knoll of Rupertsberg, obliterating the pleasant hill where she’d chosen to build her new priory. The cost of construction, she supposed. At least the monks’ house was completed, its thatched roof and whitewashed walls in proper order, the whole structure cozy and inviting as it sat on its sandstone outcropping above the Rhine. The river’s waters whispered to themselves as they hurtled over their rocky bed, as if the river were still talking about the man it had brought to the Benedictines.

  “It’s only a few more steps, Mother Hildegard.” Sister Richardis took Hildegard’s elbow.

  Hildegard eased free of the girl’s grip. “I am well enough, Sister. Do not trouble yourself.” She looked around. The green of the untrammeled ground here at the edge of the construction site compelled her with its peace and viriditas — its lively green energy. She wished she could absorb some of that green to help her shake off the effects of her latest illness. She needed to be strong for her nuns. She had brought them to Rupertsberg to help them focus on the beauty of God’s creation, and now their strange guest threatened her hard work.

  She took the last few steps toward the monks’ quarters and rapped on the door. It flew open, and Marten’s pale, nervous face peered out. He was only nine, and while promised to the service, was not yet a novice. She smiled at the boy. “Bless you, my child. Is Brother Arnold or Father Justin available?”

  He shook his head hard. “Father Justin was called back to Disibodenberg. And Brother Arnold is resting.”

  “I am awake now,” a reedy voice grumbled. The monk nudged the boy aside and gave Hildegard a solemn bow. He was as much in awe of her as the boy these days. “Holy Hildegard. How may I be of service?”

  Hildegard waved Richardis inside and then followed her within the humble cottage. The space felt warmer and more homey than their own — but of course, this house was completed. The nuns’ more expansive quarters still awaited a real floor.

  “Brother, why did the builders do no work today? I saw them arrive in the morning and their cart is still here, but there is no sign of them.”

  Brother Arnold took a step backward. “I did ask the man.”

  Hildegard brought her walking stick down with a thump. “Asked who?”

  “The man from the river,” Marten interjected. He took a quick step behind Brother Arnold, eyeing Hildegard’s stick.

  “The man from the river.” Hildegard sank onto the bench beside the fireplace. Yesterday, the workmen had pulled a stranger out of the rapids, tending him as best they could, but they had finally called for Hildegard in the night, and when she walked into the little infirmary, she’d seen something in the stranger’s sharp gray eyes that made her wish she could turn her back on the man. She felt for the rosary on her belt and squeezed its familiar beads. God had warned her that before this place would be her sanctuary, it would first be her greatest test. And now she knew the test was begun.

  “He claims he is St. Rupertus returned, and the local men have gathered around him.” Brother Arnold dropped onto the bench beside Hildegard. Save for his cheerfully round belly, a legacy of his more comfortable life at the abbey in Disibodenberg, he was a small man, no taller than Hildegard. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  Sister Richardis knelt before Hildegard and clasped her hands about the older woman’s. “I told you this place was trouble, dear Mother. Our visions…”

  The nun’s hands trembled around Hildegard’s. Hildegard took a deep breath. Sister Richardis had become her dearest companion, her helpmate, her friend. She would not let this sweet young woman be harmed by anything. She would not let harm come to any of her nuns.

  She forced herself to her feet. “St. Rupertus and his mother, the wise woman Berta, joined our Lord many long years ago. Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar.”

  “But he says he is Rupertus!” the boy blurted. “And he can do things!”

  Hildegard’s lips thinned. “What kinds of things?”

  Three workmen stood outside the makeshift infirmary, their weather-beaten faces sullen and coarse. They stepped forward as the nuns approached, closing off the path. “No one disturbs His Holiness,” the one said. He held a long hoe in his hand, the sort stone workers used to spread mortar, and for the first time Hildegard realized how intimidating a weapon a simple hand tool could be.

  She raised her hand in benediction. “Bless you, my son. I am here to ch
eck on my patient.”

  “No one disturbs His Holiness.”

  “If it weren’t for my help last night, the man would be dead. Now step aside.” She took a step forward.

  The man’s tongue flickered at the corner of his mouth as he thought over what she said and then spat on the ground. The phlegm glistened, yellow and thick against the mud-worn ground. “Just you.”

  Hildegard glanced at Sister Richardis, whose freckles stood out against her fair skin. She held herself bravely, but everything about this situation clearly made the young nun uncomfortable. Brother Arnold and Marten waited farther back on the path. Hildegard returned her attention to the workmen. Only the speaker looked at her. The other two stared at Richardis like hungry dogs in front of a fresh kill.

  “Fine. Just me.” She leaned close to Richardis and whispered in her ear: “Take Marten and go warn the other sisters. No one is to leave their quarters. Bar the doors. I will rejoin you as quickly as I can.”

  Then Hildegard drew herself up to her full height and strode past the men, her chin high and her shoulders squared: the image of confidence. They could not hear her heart pound in her chest as she passed.

  She pushed open the door of the building that, when complete, would house the priory’s kitchen, and crinkled her nose at the scents that flooded out: the strong musk of working men and the sharper tang of medicinal herbs, all of it underwritten by a pungent and foreign smell that was something like hot tar. Stepping inside, she saw the man from the river sitting up in bed, now clad in a close-fitting tunic of homespun.

  “I see you are awake.”

  The man in the sickbed waved to her. “Mother Hildegard. How very good of you to check on me.” He spoke in cultured tones, his accent suggestive of the far north. If he was the reborn soul of St. Rupertus, he had traveled far since his time as the mystic hermit of the Rhineland.

  “You are my patient.” As her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, Hildegard noticed the four workmen of varying age crouched on the floor around the sickbed. They looked as ill-mannered as the lot outside. “I need a moment alone with you.”

  The men looked up at her, their eyes flat and unreadable. As far as Hildegard could tell, those orbs held no intelligence, showed no sign of thought at all. She gripped her walking stick tighter.

  “Go,” he commanded. “She will not trouble me.”

  They stood as one, and she waited until they had filed out the door before she crossed to the false Rupertus’s side. “You know I have hired these men to build my church. They should be working.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “You speak as if such worldly pursuits are of any interest to me. These men are like the two of us: they seek to honor God.”

  “They honor God with their labor, not sitting on the floor staring at you.”

  “You too shall sit and stare. Sit, Mother Hildegard. Sit and see my wonders.”

  He sat up straighter in the bed. All the weakness and illness she had seen the night before had vanished. She had never seen such vitality in a man. She leaned against the wall, the small hairs on her arms and neck prickling. Despite his mundane appearance, some inner sense warned her Rupertus was nothing like an ordinary man.

  He stretched out his hand, palm up, spreading his fingers as if holding an invisible ball. His eyes focused intently into space. A sound began, a tingling, whining buzz that she felt more than heard. It made her skin itch and crawl.

  A faint purple glow appeared over his palm.

  “A cheap mummer’s trick.”

  He laughed, but did not take his gaze away from the purple gleam. A sheen of sweat appeared on his upper lip.

  The purple light intensified and became a ball of colored fire, bright enough that Hildegard had to squint against its brilliance. A wriggling black line appeared in the heart of the flame. Her lips began to move in a silent Hail Mary. This. This was what God had warned Hildegard of in her visions, what Sister Richardis had dreamed about. This man and whatever was worming out of that purple fireball were part of her ultimate test.

  The buzzing climbed in pitch until it was the scream of a mason’s auger, chewing into her ears and her mind. Her eyes screwed themselves up against the searing purple light. A black tendril burst out of the purple flames. It stretched itself long and then it flapped and writhed, and the buzzing grew louder, and suddenly the purple light was too bright to stand. Hildegard threw her free hand over her burning eyes.

  The room went dark.

  It took a minute for her eyes to see again in the lesser light of the tallow lamps and the fading sunlight coming through the shutters. The man who called himself Rupertus chuckled.

  “What do you think of my little friend?”

  Hildegard focused her dazzled vision on him. Some thing sat on his palm. The creature was no bigger than a sparrow, or perhaps a magpie, and crouched atop a cluster of black tentacles. Two scabrous wings flapped slowly behind it, holding up its sloppy body, which was too fat and bulbous to balance neatly on its slender tentacles. The surface of its breast suddenly rippled and pulled open to reveal the damp surface of an eye. Its pupil lolled about for a moment and then settled upon Hildegard. Its iris was as coldly gray as Rupertus’s. It blinked again, and then the moist tentacles scuttled up Rupertus’s arm.

  Rupertus stroked the eyeball-creature’s wing and let it settle on his shoulder. “What does your god think now, Mother Hildegard?”

  “Get out,” she commanded. “Get out of my priory.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood upright. “Your god’s time has come to an end. You’re welcome to join me, little nun.”

  Hildegard pointed her stick at the door. “Go.”

  “You’ll regret this,” he said, in the same mild voice someone might use to inquire about the weather. He stepped out the door and closed it softly behind him.

  The room smelled more of tar than ever.

  Hildegard rapped on the door of the nuns’ quarters, harder and more frantically than she intended. She forced herself to draw a deep breath and call out: “It’s me. Mother Hildegard. Let me in, sisters.”

  A rumble sounded. Then the door opened a crack, and Marten’s small face peered through. “Is it really you?”

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, I swear I am the Mother Hildegard, once anchorite of Disibodenberg and now leader of this group of sacred brides.”

  He opened the door a little wider. “Demons can’t speak the holy tongue, can they Mother Hildegard?”

  She pulled him to her in a sudden hug. “I hope not, my child.” She pushed him inside. Richardis hurried to shove a heavy chest back in front of the door.

  “We’ve heard things outside, Mother,” she whispered. “Like the sounds of beasts in the night, but much worse.”

  “Demons,” Marten whispered. The young nun beside him, Diemud of Cologne, bobbed her head in agreement.

  “What of the man from the river?” Richardis asked. She moved to the large trestle table sitting before the fireplace, and the other nuns joined her on the rough-planed benches. Just a few days earlier, the biggest concern of any of these high-born women was the number of splinters rubbing off the surface of these coarse benches — and now they feared demons and their own hired laborers.

  “Is he really St. Rupertus?” Sister Ancilla, the oldest of the nuns, hugged a piece of firewood defensively to her chest. Her eyes were fixed on Hildegard, begging her for a comforting reply.

  Hildegard shook her head. “I’m not sure why he would claim to be the good saint, other than to appeal to the memories of the local people. But there is nothing saintly about this stranger from the river.”

  Ancilla added her wood to the fire and stirred up the flame. For a moment, the ten nuns sat in silence, each too caught up in her own fears to ask any more questions. Their anxiety filled the room like a chill mist.

  Hildegard stood. “Sisters Ancilla, Richardis — perhaps you can prepare a simple meal for us. Marten will help
. I must pray for guidance.”

  Richardis nodded. Before they had arrived at Rupertsberg, none of them knew much about cooking, but circumstances had forced them to learn. Perhaps such hardship had been good for them all. Hildegard could only hope so.

  She went to the straw mat in the corner of the house’s main room and dropped to her knees. The murmurs of the women’s work did not distract her from her purpose, and soon her mind dropped into the peaceful place where she had so often found God’s words. She let her eyes sag shut and floated there, outside of time and trouble, feeling only the wonder of creation buoying her up.

  Little by little her senses returned to her. Grudgingly, Hildegard brought her awareness back to the room, where the nuns now sat sipping soup. The smell of turnips and onions made her stomach growl. The hand of God rested on her for one last moment, and then she was just herself again.

  Little Marten helped her up. While she had been lost in prayer, Brother Arnold had joined them. Another trunk was piled in front of the door, too. Hildegard took her place at the end of the table and took a few eager bites of Richardis’s stew. Pins prickled inside her knees from such long kneeling.

  “It’s been quiet the last few minutes,” Ancilla said. She went to the fireplace and poured hot water into a copper bowl, sending up the scents of rosemary and thyme. She dipped a cloth in the infusion and held it out to Brother Arnold.

  Hildegard put down her soup spoon. “You are injured.” She hadn’t seen the gashes running down the right side of his face until he turned to take the cloth. The edge of his pink cheek was marred with dark blots of clotted blood.