The Verse of Sibilant Shadows: A set of tales from the Irrational Worlds

by JM Guillen

  “Fact enough.” I clawed for him again, sinking my nails into his flesh.

  A wailing, crying cacophony of bent sound sung through my mind. The sound was so… wrong that I winced back, clenching my teeth against the pain.

  “Seen,” said another of the cultists with a greasy sheen to his face, then he spoke a single hateful word. Crafted of barbed fire, that angry, broken word was only spoken in the land of the dead.

  My mind shifted and swam as the word coursed through me. Hearing it was like holding rotting flesh in my mouth. I stumbled, retching. The word burned and melted in my mind, and I felt darkness eagerly closing around me.

  The cultist loomed over me, his hand extended to cover my face. He was speaking again, but I couldn’t understand what he said.

  “No.” I hated how tiny my voice sounded, how helpless I felt.

  In the gloom, something insectine twitched madly on his palm.

  I fought against the encroaching dark, struggling to see.

  He bore a scar on his palm, large and deliberate. It twisted in my sight, blurring like the rest of existence, but at last I put the shape together: a mad, scarlet eye that wept blood. I could see through it to vast reflections of infinite eternities, each darker and more blood-wrought than the last.

  I began to screa—

  12

  Awakening, darkness and mildew greeted me.

  “Tupping scut.” I opened my eyes and raised my head off my numb arms, blinking muzzily. The smooth, gray, stone walls went suddenly blurry as a warhammer symphony began in my head.

  “Forsaken Einholt.” I swore, lifting a hand to touch my brow. I rubbed my temples, and the pain seemed to subside.

  I sat up on the hard stone floor.

  The room was empty, only smooth, gray stone met my gaze. This place had been melted rather than chiseled into the earth. I must have been deep underground, for the very air smelled damp. I snorted my disgust and searched the room.

  Gray stone… gray stone… gray stone… door… gray stone. The ceiling held a single lantern, bolted fast.

  “Door it is.”

  I pushed to my feet and stumbled, dizzy. Lurching forward, I caught myself with both palms squarely on the smooth, metal surface.

  Locked. Of course.

  “Oi!” I yelled. I pounded one fist against the slick, gray door, staring at the iridescent sheen. “You seem to have accidentally locked an innocent woman in here!”

  Silence.

  I studied the room, hoping to find any shred of assistance. In child’s figments, such cages always held some overlooked tool or hidden path…

  “No such luck, Ysabel.” I sighed, turning back to the door and leaning against it. “You’re in this—”

  (Farrell Barlow—)

  I gasped.

  When the alien memory coursed through me, I’d jerked from the door. Cautious, prepared, I leaned into the door again.

  (—found this door, hanging on its hinges by the barest thread of metal, near the Silent Minaret halfway across the city from his home. After three days of effort, he finally managed to pry it free with a mop, a stick, and a bucket of pig fat that had cost him a week’s pay. Selling it to Cobb the Seer to pay off his debt—)

  “This is quite the gift, mother.” I spoke to the room in general. “First legacy, wasn’t it? Knowledge?” I placed my hand flat on my forehead.

  (Naturally Cobb had no true need of an ancient door, but Farrell had been on the ledger far too long, and relics were always in demand somewhere. It was all a matter of knowing who to poke.

  Cobb always knew who to poke.)

  “Men always do.” I grumbled, shaking my head. “This isn’t really—”

  (—time he was poking a “lady” by the ostentatious name of Grand Archduchess Sutton of the Golden Manner, a name she had given herself when she was yet a child, in preference to her birth name of Clar Senchar.)

  Faster and faster, the dizzying river of memories crashed through me like rapids.

  (Whatever she styled herself, she was an absolute fanatic for antiquities. She had been droning on about her “collection” not a week before.

  Cobb paid her a visit, and after unloading the ancient door unto the grateful Grand Archduchess, he unloaded all his daily woes unto her as well, spending far more time in her flagrant presence than he’d allotted for the trade.

  The Grand Archduchess Sutton of the Golden Manner wasn’t quite as pleased—)

  “This is useless!” I cried to the walls. “What does it matter? How can I possibly—?”

  (—with her new door as she had lead Cobb the Seer to believe, but she had been more than delighted with their rendezvous afterward. So taken was she with her new beau, in fact, that the Grand Archduchess didn’t even pay attention to which of her many clients bought the door off her.

  That was all to Dagan’s good. He knew exactly where this door would be of the most benefit. He could install it and present it to Okkal, the Vigilant Eye. They might even promote him and teach him some of the forbidden secrets he had been longing to know!

  It was install—)

  “Stop!” I wailed, teary eyed. “I don’t care! This doesn’t matter! I need help!”

  The memories faded slowly, for no particular reason. Before they did, I learned that the door had stood flush with the wall for long years. In fact, the last time it had swung free on its new hinges, a girl with white-blonde hair had been carried into the room it guarded. She had been left there in the semidark of one lone lantern, which had been bolted to the ceiling in much the same fashion as the door had been bolted to the wall.

  Outside, a lone man named Valter guarded her.

  “What the scut-eating, pox-licking pig tup was that?” I stumbled away from the door. “And why did it matter?”

  The knowledge had just poured into me as if it were my own memories tumbling through my head like a slide-whistle. I had felt every day of its history as if I had been there.

  As those foreign thoughts faded, the melody of the universe sang in my mind.

  I eyed the door as if it had sprouted tentacles. I didn’t want to touch it again. Depraved paragons, what if the saga of that door’s travels started over?

  Is this the way everything would be from now on? It had been a pinch helpful in the street, but I hadn’t exactly understood what was happening.

  “I’ll tell you what would help.” I held my hands in front of my face. “A little hidden lore about this piece of meanness.” I grasped the collar.

  I waited.

  Nothing.

  “Of course. That would be altogether too easy,” I muttered darkly. It seemed as if my mother’s first legacy wasn’t something I could call on at a whim.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to. It had indeed told me something I actually needed to know. Valter stood outside my door.

  “I know you can hear me!” I yelled. I paused, waiting for a response.

  None came.

  “There’s no use pretending you can’t! Say something, pox-licker! You can’t keep me in here, I’m purchased property! That’s theft an’ you know it!”

  Nothing.

  “You think you can defend yourself against the legists that Cap—my owner’ll bring ’gainst you on that charge?” I barely remembered in time that Captain Argent was particular over who knew his name in the city.

  Oh, they know. They know all too well. I scowled.

  “Or maybe you think the bashers he’ll charge in here with are pushovers?”

  No response. I’d had better conversation from the door than the man guarding it. Fine. I’d play my card.

  “Oh, come on, Valter!” I threw in a bit of scorn. “You’ve been standing in an empty corridor for three candles now with nothing but stone to stare at. You can at least talk to a beautiful woman, even if you can’t see her!”

  (—eyes widen as he turned toward the door. She is a witch! How else could she—)

  “Shut up!” He hissed the words through clenched teeth. “Shut
up, shut up, they’ll be here soon.”

  “They?” I pounced on the word. “They who?”

  “None know all which they conceal,” Valter whispered.

  A chill ran down my back at the same time as what could only be described as a cold burning ignited in my chest. It was part of a cantos, one of the rhyming couplets. This one spoke of Orahiel, the All-Seeing Eye.

  “They see all things, through and through; darkened shadows drink of you.” His words echoed from the hallway outside.

  I shuddered.

  “Seek them here, seek them there, broken eyes are everywhere.”

  I swallowed.

  “None know all which they conceal,” he intoned with bitterness.

  I joined in, my lips moving soundlessly over the hated syllables.

  “Orahiel, Orahiel.”

  I had to get out of here.

  Orahiel’s cults were vicious and incomprehensibly cryptic. Their true aim, no one knew. I recalled the man that had captured me, the one with the scarlet cloth ’round his eyes and the moving, eye-shaped scar on his palm. Eyes on hands, they look at you. I shivered as whispers of another cantos of the Shadows of Orahiel echoed through my head.

  “They have questions. About yer blood,” Valter divulged in a throaty whisper.

  I wouldn’t simply be questioned this time, I realized. This would be far worse than the inquisitions from earlier in the day. They would tie me down and strip away everything I was, layer by layer, until they found what they wanted to know, and then they would destroy me.

  They would destroy me, and they would take their time doing it.

  I could hear the echoes of my screams before they were ever uttered.

  “No.” I whispered.

  “Soon,” he promised. His voice faded as he walked away. “I’ll tell them you’ve awakened.”

  Burning skies, no!

  I flung myself at the door, beating on its slippery metal with my small, bare fist.

  “No! Valter, you can’t! Let me out! Let me out, Shroud-tupper!” I slammed my clenched hands against the door over and over in my rage.

  Somehow, through my fury, I felt a slow warmth trickling within my right hand.

  Ever more confused, I took a couple of steps back toward the center of the room, peering at my mother’s talisma. It was no longer a ring, not really. With whatever witchery she had used, it now ran in odd, looping whirls of silver through my flesh.

  The second legacy is not your strength yet, but it is a strength I can lend.

  “If there is anything you can do, mum.” I watched the light reflect off the silver, but the warmth slowly faded.

  I sighed. Perhaps old plans were best. I stepped back to the door.

  “Oi! Let’s talk, Valter!” I pounded against the door, frustrated at the silence on the other side.

  If he had actually left, my time might be truly short.

  “Hey!” My anger began to flare again, and I pounded more fervently on the door. He can’t be gone. If he’s really bringing others back—

  The talisma flashed warm again as I pounded the door. This time, I didn’t stop to see what foolishness it was up to but kept hammering at the door—

  —until it bent.

  I froze in place, my eyes wide. For a nonce, that ancient door had some give to it, seeming to ripple away from my fist.

  What was that?

  As puzzlement drifted across my face, the warmth in my talisma faded again. I gave another experimental beating to the door, but nothing happened.

  Wait a nonce.

  The ring had whispered its warmth to me twice. Both times I had been pounding on the door, angry—

  Both times I had been angry.

  “Well, that’s easy enough.” My father had always said that I was meaner than my mother. Perhaps, for once, my temper could be a boon.

  I thought on Royce and the familiar way he had thought to handle me. I thought on his intentions for my father and how the gambol-head had imagined I would be on my knees by now.

  My anger sparked a fiercer flash than mere warmth in my talisma, the sultry heat boiling in my hand.

  I grinned wickedly.

  “Filthy dog-tupper thought he could make me some man’s jilly.” My eyes narrowed, as the warmth spread up my arm. “He would have some poxed-up harrier use me and then leave me to the boils!”

  The heat grew intense now, almost unbearable. I turned back to the door and pounded on it again.

  It shattered in front of me before I even touched it. Huge, jagged fragments of metal went flying outward as I stood, staring at the ruin of the ancient door.

  “Lost gods!’ My eyes flashed wide, quickly followed by a wild grin. Was that all it took? If anger was the root of the second legacy…

  I thought that might be very fine.

  This was no ordinary door, after all. The builders of Eld Calyptia had access to metals that our most highly skilled artisans were unable to scratch, much less destroy. I shouldn’t have been able to dent the taint-damned thing—instead I blew it to pieces parts.

  I stood amidst the rubble, breathing heavily as the talisma pulsed warmly on my hand, and the faint strains of some stirring air floated betwixt my ears.

  After a nonce of open-mouthed staring at the steaming chunks of iridescent metal, I realized I should be running. I darted out the door and down the hallway before it occurred to me that I had no idea of which direction I needed to go.

  (—was worried. Whatever that sound was couldn’t be any good. The witch—)

  I spun to my left, not knowing exactly why except that it felt correct. Naturally, Valter then came pounding down the corridor.

  In the slightest hesitation, we simply stared at each other.

  “Ahoy there, Valter.” I walked toward the man, the smallest flicker of anger alight in my heart. “We need to have a chat.”

  (—tension coiled in his legs. He was going to leap at me, going to—)

  “Stop!” I placed as much command as I could into my tone, stalking toward him with fierce purpose. As I did, however, I realized he would not.

  (He’ll leap regardless, even though his shoes made him feel every slight imperfection of the ground. They were only a thin slip of leather twixt his soles and the flagstones. They came up the back of his heel but left his ankles bare to the element—) That melody accompanied the eldritch thoughts, a quiet murmur in my mind.

  His shoes hardly deserved the name. He wore a thin slip of leather that offered him no protection—

  (—fifteen small shards, each constructed of—)

  —from the jagged remains of the door.

  I felt the cruel twist at the corner of my mouth. “Calm yer vim there, Valter. You know what they say about the wyrding-blooded.”

  “So…” His eyes grew wider. “It’s true.”

  “I’ll kill you where you stand.” I kept my tone quiet, my eyes hard. “Don’t think I can’t.”

  (—are four pieces behind me, quite sharp. Another seven lay between us, one of which has a curved, wicked hook—)

  “That hasn’t been seen.” His left hand fumbled with a small charm that hung about his neck. I could see his fingers clench, white-knuckled. “They wouldn’t have left me to die.”

  “You need to think—”

  But Valter wasn’t the thinking type. He hurled himself at me, fingers grasping. I spun away, startled by his sudden attack. So much for the threats of a witch-woman. I sprinted past him.

  “By his eyes!” Valter had worked himself into an absolute froth.

  I rounded the corner, back past the small room, as he tore toward me, howling.

  (—right in his way. It’s just a digit or so away from where he will plant his foot—)

  As the thoughts cascaded through me, I saw a larger chunk, square in his way.

  Well, not quite. Almost. I just needed to move it half a finger’s width, and Valter would plant his face on the stones.

  “STOP!” he bellowed, far too close behind me.r />
  “Er… No!” I yelped as I lurched forward.

  I approached the foreordained chunk and nudged it as I passed.

  A nonce later, I heard a hollow-sounding knock, and then Valter cried out in pain. “Fecking harlot!”

  I grinned and glanced back.

  He scrambled back to his feet.

  “No! Stay down, you puling little doter!” I yelled, turning on him, fury in my heart.

  My talisma burned with wrath.

  In that instant, a sphere of my wrath bubbled out from me, flinging every door piece and bit of detritus with furious force. The shards rushed at Valter as if shot from a sling. They hit him all at once with a wet, tearing sound. Scarlet blossoms exploded around him as the slivers of metal pierced his flesh.

  “It wasn’t seen…” He looked down in horror and then at me.

  “I told you.” I trembled, wide eyed at my own wrath. “I told you I would.”

  He collapsed in silence.

  I scarcely had time to turn before I heard a shout from the distance. I spun back to race down the corridor and reached for my vim.

  It was time to leave.

  The domed hallway that I had been running down opened into something much larger. The ceiling had risen steadily until it was five times the height of a man, and the walls had ballooned out. Soon, I was running along the bottom of an enormous tube lit from above by floating lines of pure light that sparkled and fizzed as I neared, then faded as I fled.

  (—travelled through here, traveled on carts that ran on tracks of light and shadow. They could cross the world in a nonce if they chose—)

  “Sounds perfect.” I muttered at the melodic thoughts. “Think they could give a girl a lift?”

  Only silence answered me.

  I peered about, searching the walls for any sign of stairs or a branching path that might at least tilt upward. No profit. Instead I found remnants of old, broken machines. Giant assortments of cogs and gears, pipes, and metal bits edged with rust sat huddled together, contrivances shoved in an out of the way corner to make room for whatever innovation was due for its shine in the sun.

  (—could gather the sun’s strength if they wished, binding and wyrding it into talisma and construct both—)

  I considered the machines as I fled, but I had not a single whit on what it would take to make them function, so passed by the junk piles.