The New Death and others
Published by James Hutchings at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 James Hutchings
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CONTENTS
The God of the Poor
How the Isle of Cats Got Its Name
The Enemy Within
The End
If My Life Was Filmed
A Date with Destiny
Everlasting Fire
Under the Pyramids (based on the story of the same name by H.P. Lovecraft)
The Face in the Hill
The Prince of the Howling Forest
The Uncharted Isle
Compatibility
The Moon Sailed Sadly Through the Sky
The Scholar and the Moon
The Doom That Was Laid Upon Fame
Weary Love
Fame's Beloved
The Name of the Helper
The Warring Gods
The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune (based on the story of the same name by Robert E. Howard)
The Adventure of the Murdered Philanthropist
When Love Calls
May Every Woman
Death and the Merchant
Lost, Feral or Stray
The Apprenticeship
The Jeweled City
Rumpelstiltskin
The Producer
Law and Justice
The Bird and the Two Trees
Monsters
The Sailor
The Prince and the Sky-Maiden
The New Death
The Garden of Adompha (based on the story of the same name by Clark Ashton Smith)
The New Magazine
The Perfect Woman
The Lamb's Speech
Legend: The Story of Kevin Marley
The Construction Workers of Telelee
The New God
That Which Unites Us
The Death of the Artist
Two Brothers
Unprotected
The God of the City of Dust
The Dragon Festival
I Heard the Mermaids Singing
Singles Bar
The Auto-Pope
Todd
Diamanda and the Isle of Wives
Sigrun and the Shepherd
The Morning Post
My Cat Is Not Like Other Cats
The Handsome but Impossibly Demanding Prince
The Exchange
Mourning Has Broken
Temptation
Local News
untitled
Charon (based on the story of the same name by Lord Dunsany)
Creative Commons license
contacting me
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The God of the Poor
In the beginning of the world the gods considered all those things which did not have their own gods, to decide who would have responsibility and rulership.
"I will rule all flowers that are sky-blue in colour," said the Sky-Father.
"I will listen to the prayers of migratory birds, and you all other birds," the goddess Travel said to him. And so it went.
At last all had been divided, save for one thing.
"Who," asked the Sky-Father, "shall have dominion over the poor?"
There was an awkward silence, until the Sky-Father said,
"Come--someone must. Those with no gods will grow restless and cunning, and in time will cast us down, and we shall be gods no more."
"Not I," said blind Justice, and her stony face flashed a momentary smirk at the thought. "Why not Fame or Fortune?"
"Darling I don't think so," said the sister goddesses together.
There was a long pause. The gods shuffled their feet and avoided one another's gaze. At last a voice broke the silence.
"I will," said Death.
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How the Isle of Cats Got Its Name
Death stalked the cats of Telelee.
Throughout the city there was much hiding under couches, and a yowling fear of shadows who came in the night. These shadows gathered squint-eyed kittens and cats trembling with age. Starving alley cats like leather bags filled with bones, and pampered house-cats more spherical than cat-shaped, alike were taken. The shadows asked not whether a cat was tom or queen. White cats and black, tabby and orange, grey and tortoiseshell, cats that looked like their owners and cats that looked like nothing but cats, the shadows hungered for all.
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Once upon a time there was a city called Telelee.
In this city there lived the sorceress Abi-simti. All the sorcerers in the world trembled at her name, and before her they were as puddles before the sea. But she was like one who drinks salt water; the more magic she knew, the more she wanted.
This was all very well for a time, while there were still tomes to find and entrails to study and beings to summon forth and bargain with. But after a time, Abi-simti had learned all the magic that could be discovered by mortals.
Thus she set her greedy heart on the magic known only to the immortal gods.
Now this was easier said than done. For if the gods gave their secrets then they would be cast down, and would rule mortals no more. This they could not tolerate. The gods are monsters of vanity. They must always justify and explain their ways to mortals, and demand praise, and are greatly jealous as to who has the most worshipers, though they affect a haughty disdain.
Abi-simti went to every temple in Telelee, and spoke most sweetly and learnedly to the priests thereof, and sought to learn whether this god or that would trade away their secrets. But each time she went home disappointed. The priests too were disappointed. It was a small thing for Abi-simti to know the desires of the priests, and to appear as a man or woman with all that the priest admired, whether flaming red hair, or coal-black skin, or violet eyes, or all three. Though she could work no magic on her voice it was pleasant enough, as befits one who must cajole and command the spirits, and she could pitch it low when pretending to manhood. And though she could not mute the clacking of her left foot upon a marble floor, this foot being in truth a cloven hoof after an unfortunate summoning of a certain efreet, this detail went unnoticed by the priests.
At last she had visited every temple. She had even gone to the secret temple wherein a hyena-mouthed Lady is offered human hearts, which her worshipers call the fruit of the spear. She had gone to those caves and abandoned buildings where worse is done, to please gods that have no face or name. These gods promised to give away power. But it was clear to the wise sorceress that the secrets they told were as the cheese in the trap, which is not laid out for the rat's sake.
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It is well-known that cats have the ability to sense entrances to the infernal realms, and the desire to enter therein, in order that they may combat demons and devils. This explains why they spend so much time under houses, and why they often disappear, never to be seen again. At night they gather to share news of the things below. The subjects of which they speak are so horrid that the conversation sounds sinister even to those who do not speak Cat. It is not a good sound to hear in the night; yet such things may not be spoken of by day.
On this particular night the boldest cat in Telelee came to the temple of Bast, which to human eyes appears to be an alley behind a fish-market. She was a white moggy with a black patch on one eye, and her name was Artemisia.
"Is there a greater thaumaturge in Telelee than the bull-footed Abi-simti?" she asked an ancient grey cat, who was the high priest.
"I have not seen nor heard of a greater in my eight lives past, nor in this ninth," said the high priest. "Not in Telelee nor in the wide world".
"It is whispered in the depths," replied Artemisia, "that she has spoken with the
worshipers of the Lady. Yea, and even gone to the grottoes of the skinless devourers who are worse than Her." This news made both cats arch their backs, and their fur stand on end.
"Only the desperate and wretched, who have some wrongness of body and mind, worship those of whom you speak," said the high priest at last. "Thus these gods are like wolves who are half-starved, and whose meager food is rotten. The one who dines on Abi-simti's worship will grow strong. Many things which hide in the darkness below shall hide no longer". The old cat lifted and shook all four of his paws, one by one, as if he had stood in something foul.
"Yet your whiskers are longer and more sensitive than any others," said Artemisia, "and can feel even into the future. Can you not therefore tell us how we may thwart the wizardess' designs?"
The high priest stood for a long while with ears cocked and eyes wide open, listening for the faint vibrations of future things.
"I can," he said at last. "Yet the witch is not a ball of wool, that may be knocked one way or the other with ease. We are like a cat who walks upon a fence lined with shards of glass. Yet there are dogs on either side, and I can see no other way".
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Exhausting the gods that are known in Telelee, Abi-simti then studied those only known in other lands. But Telelee is as the sea into which all rivers flow, or the market where all gather, or as some moralists have it, the lowest point in all the world, to which all base matter must descend. Thus most of the gods not known there were dead, or senile, or had passed from the world in which Telelee is found. Just when she was close to despair, she learned of the god who had been driven away.
He had come from another world, younger than hers, where the gods still lived among mortals. This god kept a group of witches, who were called Snake-Wearers. These women would drive themselves into a frenzy with wine and dancing. Then they would bare their necks to the fangs of venomous snakes. The poison would drive out their reason but increase their strength. Their nails would grow and harden until they were like the claws of lionesses. To stand against them in battle was to take a sword to stop a river, or to argue against old age. Wherever they went the people hid, and envied those who were visited by locusts and plague.
Finally all the other gods made war on him, whether for despoiling the land or for giving away his power none may say. He and his followers fled, through a great desert and to a high mountain. The journey to reach the god was long and dangerous. Yet every so often a farmer would find a sheep or an ox mutilated and dead, and no wolf or boar about who might have done the deed. Then folk would say that it must have been a witch, on her way to join the god.
Having read this, Abi-simti longed to pledge service to the god and thereby to be told the secrets of the Snake-Wearers. Yet her desire did not overwhelm her cunning. There was the problem of the desert, so barren that there were not even djinns. If there had been djinns, then she could have bound them to her service to carry her. She would have arrived in an instant, in a chariot of finest crystal, and her arrival would have been as the entrance of the Queen of Sheba into the city of King Solomon (an event which is known in almost all worlds). She wasted little time on such thoughts. For there were no djinns. And there is a law of the universe, as immutable as the desire of all matter to bind together which grows more ardent the greater the mass, and is called gravity. This law is that, of all spirits, only djinns may bear one across a desert.
Abi-simti contemplated this desert that she must cross like any traveler, enduring days of cruel sun and nights of sepulchral cold, and the bleached bones giving demonstration of her likely fate. She beheld with mind's eye the bare mountain that must be climbed, and the sharp rocks which waited to embrace her, and felt despair.
As Abi-simti wandered the streets of Telelee, too fretful to sit still, a cat crossed her path. It was a moggy with white fur, and a black patch on one eye. This cat rubbed itself against her leg, as cats do to mark their territory. To be precise, it chose her left leg, which ended in a hoof, and thus stood as proof that even her power had limits. Abi-simti was not minded to receive this lesson. In fury she cried,
"May the Crone turn the water of your bowels to ice, O cat! Your lordly self-satisfaction shall not go unchallenged. You who have claimed territory shall instead be both conquered, and the means of greater conquest". Saying this she picked up Artemisia (for it was her), and made her way home with great speed. Abi-simti was in despair no longer, but had a cunning stratagem.
First she brought forth creatures of a far star, who looked like shadows, but had substance, and who obeyed her commands, though not willingly. She bade these creatures to go forth, and gather the cats of Telelee. This they did, with silent and terrifying efficiency.
Having dismissed the shadows, Abi-simti then found with her arts an island that had no name, and no-one living there. She summoned a djinn of the air to carry her there, along with her feline captives. There she bound spirits of the water as her slaves. They worked day and night for many months. Nigh every tree on the island was felled, the rocks in the streams were cut and shaped, and even the sand on the beach was fused into glass. At the end of this time, there stood a huge harp. It was higher than three elephants standing one atop the other, and had hundreds of strings. There were metal fingers to pluck the strings, hundreds of fingers for hundreds of strings, so that the harp seemed to be caressed by a centipede of prodigious size.
But the strangest part of this harp was the music it made. For the strings brought forth no sound. Instead, when the mechanism was operated correctly, the metal fingers would pluck a string. This plucking would cause cogs to turn wheels and wheels to turn cogs, and at last a lever would fall. At the end of this lever was a nail, and at the end of the nail was a cat, which would yowl in pain. Abi-simti had arranged the cats so that the cry of each one was the exact pitch that the corresponding string should have made.
Having made this harp, Abi-simti caused it to play. It played night and day, for as many months as her djinn-slaves had toiled to build it. It was more strident than nails scratching a blackboard, more revolting than the sounds issuing from a communal latrine during an outbreak of dysentery.
At last the music reached the ears of the god. He said to the Snake-Wearers,
"In two worlds and millennia uncounted no sound more strident or unmusical has defiled my ears. This cacophony, surely, is the very embodiment of discordance, which I hold dear. Therefore, O ten-taloned witches, go forth and find its author, that you may bring them before me and I may praise them."
This the Snake-Wearers did. They found the nameless island, and Abi-simti.
"Are you the architect of this device, and the music thereof?" they asked, and Abi-simti averred that she was. "Then explain to us its construction," they demanded.
Abi-simti showed the witches the levers by which she worked the fingers. She showed them the fingers that plucked the strings, and the strings themselves, and the cogs that the strings caused to turn. She pointed out the wheels that the cogs moved, and the cogs which were moved by the wheels. Finally, she discoursed upon the lever which responded to the wheels. Lastly, aglow with pride and ambition, Abi-simti showed the Snake-Wearers the nails, and the cats who were prodded by them.
"O Abi-simti," the Snake-Wearers said, "did you not know that all witches are cat-lovers?" Having spoken, they tore her apart.
What happened to the witches, whether they returned to the god, and if so whether he slew them or forgave them, is nowhere recorded. Yet it is told that there are untrod places in the world where it is doom to play a harp.
In Telelee wise and venerable cats still tell kittens of the time of their great-grandparents, when the shadow of Death lay across the city.
The harp now lies in rusted ruin, and the trees have all regrown. Through the wreckage, it is said, wild cats prowl. Some have white fur with a black patch over one eye, and all have an unmistakable air of smugness.
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The Enemy Within
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br /> The foreigners were everywhere. It was extraordinary, when one took the time to look, how many one saw. It was like the dirt in the house of a man who lives alone. The piles of clothes build up and crumbs remain unswept, seen but not noticed. Then one day company will be expected, and one will see as if with new eyes.
Yet, he thought, surely a diamond in the muck shines all the more brightly. There could be no greater contrast than between his actions and theirs. Where they were cunning, deceitful, and clever he was straightforward, blunt, simple, direct. He epitomized the contrast between his people and theirs in actions as simple as eating. He could not walk the street without any number of exotic concatenations of oils, spices and flavors beckoning to him. He disdained them all, choosing the hearty, simple and satisfying food of his birth.
Even his appearance, his very clothing, marked him as obviously local. Yet many of the foreigners wore the same as anyone else, almost like a disguise, so that one might not notice until they passed close. And, he thought, if a foreigner might be mistaken for one of us...could one of us be mistaken for a foreigner?
It was a strange thought. Yet once thought, it could not be un-thought. His beard, for example. What could be less foreign than that beard? It recalled the wizards of mythology--or, more historically, the pioneers and woodsmen who had carved this land from the wilderness. Yet the foreigners, too, often wore long beards. It was like one of those disturbing pictures which was a candle-stick one moment and a pair of faces the next. In certain lights, from certain angles, a foreign face seemed to look out from behind his own. It was sometimes hidden and sometimes seen, like a gang lurking in the shadows of a church.
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