Bram Tan Heth
If I had a tail…
if I had a tail, I would swat the flies…
but I don’t… so I must endure their whispering, whispering about what they’ll do… they came all the way from the Witchlands and they tell me the most horrible stories of monstrous flesh, infernal musculatures that not even they would dare touch with their vile proboscis…
They say I’m much like them. But of course; I’m simply a fly, a minor nuisance, buzzing and biting and whispering the awful things I have seen… but the true insidiousness I bear is the deadly disease, the disease that rots my soul…
Poor foolish Immuraz. Naught but a camel-herd playing at power, trying to cage Magus Bram Tan Heth the Mad.
nothing can hold me, nothing can hold my mortal frame…
“Bram, I don’t think you should do what you’re planning to do,” Avaxenon said.
He was sitting outside of the wicker cage, the wicker cage I had languished in since our arrival at Fort Dovr-kain. We sat above all, above everyone, atop the roof of the main keep. We were that much closer to the sun, who beat down on me day after day. I was at its mercy; burning in the day, shivering in the night.
“Why not?” I asked.
Avaxenon didn’t answer. I never looked over to him; I was afraid to see what had been done to him by the rending beaks of the buzzards. He was always there, just in the corner of my eye, out of view, a dark and formless figure.
The wicker cage was cramped. I could only sit cross-legged inside; I could not stand. Once a day they sent a goblin to give me water and a scrap of hard flaxbread. Sometimes the goblin would taunt me with the bread, tossing it down just out of reach. But I paid him no heed; once I started laughing he would scurry away.
“Because last time…” Avaxenon mumbled. “Are you well enough to try again?”
“Oh, I am, I am. I just want to leave,” I replied. “Would you rather I die under the sun’s cruel gaze, dear friend?”
There was silence for a time. Silence but for the buzz of flies. I swatted them away. They wanted to eat my eyes.
“Of course not, Bram… I only want you to survive a little longer…” Avaxenon rasped.
His shadow was becoming unbearable – the dark spot beside me, his silhouette; I knew he was there but I dared not look over. But how else could I dispel this spectre?
“Did it hurt?” I asked carefully.
“Did what hurt?”
“Dying.”
The vague shape of Avaxenon shifted in my peripheral vision. I had to look, I had to, but I could not, I could not…
Slowly I turned my head. I knew he could not truly be there – I buried his corpse in the sand, felt his lifeblood leaking out, closed his deadened eyes; and the buzzards, the buzzards!
I looked over. There was nothing there.
Of course there was nothing – Avaxenon was dead.
Suddenly, once again, I was alone; terribly, terribly alone. Alone in the wicker cage on the rooftop, withering beneath the glare of the sun. Damn those desert rogues! And curse my warping mind – every moment my grip on the real world was loosening, becoming increasingly tenuous. Was it the heat? My thirst? The Black Laughter?
I wanted to scream, to shake the cage until it fell apart; but I was too weak. Too tired, above all; I felt I could drift to sleep, sleep forever.
But I had to stay awake. I had to stay alive.
If only I could survive a little longer; I felt my reservoir nearing its apogee, almost full to the brim. My general weakness and the magickally famished landscape had made the regeneration of my reserve very slow. But soon; tonight, perhaps.
The sun was at its zenith. I could see out into the dry plains, even into the dune-ridged desert beyond. Beneath me was the courtyard of the small fort. The walls were made of little more than mud brick; it was more an outpost than a bastion. Merchants and caravans came and went. I watched the dromedaries and the mules and the horses with their bent backs and lowered heads flick their tails in the stagnant air. They flicked their tails, swishing back and forth, swatting away the fat black flies. There were flies everywhere; they buzzed around me.
If only I had a tail… if only. I would swat the flies.
Every day, twice a day, which was more than I was fed or watered, Immuraz would call up to me. He would speak aloud in that foreign desert tongue, likely mocking me. His words drew laughter from the gathered folk below who tended to their beasts of burden.
I do not recall how many sunrises I had seen from my torturous perch; how many sunsets had cast their long shadows before me. Each day melted into the next.
I tilted my head back until it touched the wicker cage. I closed my eyes.
Tonight – tonight I would leave this desolate, sun-scoured place.
* * *
I was jolted awake as a boot kicked my wicker cage.
I opened my eyes. Immuraz was standing over me, fly swatter in hand.
I envied that fly swatter – I envied his ability to stand.
The sky was dusky; the sun had set. There were fires in the courtyard and the low murmurous sounds of camp life rose up from the ground.
“Are you thirsty, wizard?” Immuraz asked gruffly.
I looked up to him slowly. His arms were crossed. Behind him was the servant girl from his tent; as before, she held a clay jug in one hand and a cup in the other.
I did not reply. I looked back out over the desert.
Immuraz kicked the wicker cage again.
“Swine! When I speak to you, you answer!” he spat.
I frowned. I had been expecting to leave tonight; expecting to leave without incident. I was going to leave without dispensing justice; without getting revenge.
And yet this foolish camel-herd simply had to present himself.
Perhaps it was simply providence. And who was I to deny fate?
“Yes, I would love some water,” I replied.
Immuraz smiled cruelly and squatted next to the cage.
“Oh, I did not offer you water, wizard. I only asked if you were thirsty…” he said.
I continued to ignore him. He sneered and turned to bark some command at the servant girl. She came forward, head bowed, and handed Immuraz the clay jug.
Immuraz took the vessel and poured some water out onto the dusty rooftop. Just a trickle; I could hear it splashing. I was so thirsty… but I would not bend to this wretch. Bram Tan Heth does not yield.
Every moment Immuraz stood there, I strengthened my resolve to punish his cruelty. I would only have to spare a little magick for the punishment I envisioned.
“Does your servant girl speak Urvish?” I asked.
Immuraz stopped pouring.
“No, of course not. I bought her from nomads. Life is cheap out here; and I am wealthy…” he mused, rubbing his chin. “I think you will find out just how cheap life really is soon enough…”
“I don’t believe that will be necessary. I will cooperate,” I said.
Immuraz squatted next to me again.
“Oh, really? And why should I allow you to escape my wrath for your insults, wizard?” he asked.
I turned my head slowly to face him. Very carefully I began effusing a spell to manipulate his emotions; subtlety was vital to such spells, for if one is too abrupt, the subject can tell they are being swayed against their will.
“Because, if I die, you will never know the secrets that lie just beyond the veil of this waking world… with only a touch I can reveal so much to you; wondrous things you have never even dreamed,” I whispered.
Immuraz narrowed his eyes at me – but I could tell I had more than simply piqued his interest. I had his clear attention; the alluring magick was doing its part.
“Oh…?” he asked vaguely.
I nodded solemnly in affirmation of my claim.
He seemed to contemplate it for a moment, but I already knew what his answer would be. He was already under my thumb; his will was wea
k. This was what he had wanted all along; he wanted me to be his servant, just like the girl behind him, just like the caravan below.
“These secrets you promise… you can show them to me? With just a touch?”
“Indeed,” I replied. “With just a touch.”
Immuraz looked around, ensuring the coast was clear. He scowled at the servant girl and gestured for her to turn around. Then he sat down in front of me, legs crossed.
“Alright,” he said. “Show me. Show me the secrets you know, wizard. And I will release you from this cage; you will join me.”
The poor fool.
I reached my hands through the wicker cage and held them out. He seemed to understand; he leaned forward, forward, until his head was between my palms. I gently pressed my hands to his temples.
Then, all at once, I showed him everything.
His eyes opened wide, practically bulging out of his head; his mouth opened into an excruciated ‘O’ as he screamed, screamed, screamed into the night. He jerked away from me, clasped his hands to his head.
I laughed.
It had only taken a moment. It had only taken a moment to transfer every awful thing I had ever witnessed from my mind to his; he saw the Witchlands, eternally night-bound, and the sickening horrors that slunk beneath its haze-choked skies; he saw the gnashing teeth of chittering aberrations as they skittered across cauchemardesque landscapes that pulsed as if made of breathing, heaving flesh; he saw the sinister courts of the Bologg, the Farogg, the Molangogg, the Vyranogg, and the Ombrogogg gathered in their malevolent covens as they plotted expansion beyond their borders, beyond the known realities; the sutured gargantuans of the Molangogg looming above the sloped mountain-rings of their flesh-pits; the screaming soul-engines of the Farogg that sucked in their fabricated lungs; the insidious slime-soaked broods of the pestilential Bologg, who seek to slough away resistance with the foulest plagues of unimaginable rot; the babbling, shambling legions of the Vyranogg that writhe and squirm beneath the lash of those vile masters; and the ancient Ombrogogg, oldest of them all, elder keepers of the Shade and all horrid things that slither within its pulsating, maternal womb of darkness…
And last of all, in opposition to this slurry of awful visions and hellish vistas was the endless Void, the gaping maw of the Nothing, neither hungry nor cruel nor kind; an unfeeling expanse so filled with emptiness, so barren, so complete, that no unprepared mind could glimpse its expanse and remain unbroken…
Immuraz staggered to his feet. The poor mind of this petty desert tyrant was shattered, traumatized beyond all hope of repair; I watched him stumble backward, hands clasped to his head, eyes wide. He screamed. He screamed. He screamed.
The servant girl looked back to her master and did the same; she screamed in confused terror as he gyrated upon the rooftop, clawing at his eyes and beating his temples with balled fists. He babbled wildly; flecks of spittle caught in his beard. His contortions were silhouetted against the bruised evening sky; he looked like a worm that had been exposed from beneath the underside of a rock.
In his spasms he neared the rooftop’s edge. He tripped over the clay water jug, but made no effort to catch his fall; he tumbled over, falling off the rooftop, screaming as he went.
Then, there was silence.
Throughout I never moved. I laughed, but it was not my own. The servant girl was weeping, hands to her mouth.
I looked over to her, fighting off a grin that was creeping its way onto my face. I held my finger up to my lip and shushed her.
Then I closed my eyes. I had a long journey ahead; many countless aeons would pass within my consciousness before my form reconstituted itself somewhere far away from here.
I wondered how much more my mind could bend before breaking, how frayed the edges of my sanity could become before unravelling all the way…
I smiled. It did not matter.
I reached out into unorganized space, to the threshold between the endless Void and all creation -
and then I disappeared.
42
Dawn
I crawled through the roots of the Blighted Tree, my hands and knees in the mud. It was gloomy; I could barely see at first. But once my eyes adjusted I perceived the knotted walls, the thick fungus growing all around as I followed behind the rat-faced boggart. He was muttering to himself, shoulders hunched. He was so small he could walk upright through the tunnel with no issue.
The smell of the tunnel was loamy, like wet earth. The air was cool. I felt on edge as I crawled forward; the tunnel was going downward, deeper into the earth.
Eventually I could see a soft, orange glow up ahead. We neared until the tunnel ended, opening up into a high-ceiled chamber; the walls were pocked all over with tunnels of every size. Fungus glowed iridescent orange and hung in random places along the wood and in the soil.
And in the centre of this chamber sat a monstrous, bloated toad.
He occupied a stone pedestal in the centre of the cylindrical room; his rough, dark flesh was mottled and flabby as he squatted upon his raised throne. A lectern, made of a twisted grey root, coiled up before him. Upon it lay a huge, open tome that I could only guess was the Book in the Dark.
I stood up and wiped my muddy hands on my dress. I was aware of the many eyes that gazed upon me from every hole and crevice inside the ancient oak; faeries and small folk of every malevolent description watched me, whispering, snickering. Many were masked or dressed in black cloth, some burdened with bags and implements at whose purpose I could only wonder.
The only eyes that did not lay upon me were the toad’s. His eyes were milky white and it was clear that he was blind as a stone. Yet still he scratched away at the Book in the Dark with a tattered quill, dipping every so often into an inkpot.
“Mm…” he grunted, and placed down the quill.
“Mm. Princess Dawn, is it? Of course it is… welcome to the humblest abode of the Wizened Eye,” he said in a baritone, husky voice.
He shifted his considerable, corpulent bulk. Blindly he turned his head to me as if to see.
“Come, now. Don’t shy away from old Bildurog… I mean no harm, none at all. Come out into the light so I might hear you…” he said, words resonating.
I had never seen so strange a creature. A giant, speaking toad…from what strange land, what bizarre time did he crawl? Certainly not one that I knew.
I stepped forward. He cocked his head, sensing my movement. A wide smile broke across his lips; translucent needle-teeth bristled inside his mouth. He sniffed the air and the hidden small folk snickered.
“No need to be frightened, dear princess. Old Bildurog means no harm… I would even like to help you in your struggle against the Twin Pillars of Woe…” he said.
“The twin what?” I asked.
“The Twin Pillars of Woe. The veiled threat of the Empire of Un and the Witchlands; the two warring hands that share the same body, the two winding rivers that descend from the same mountain and empty into the same sea… the Void-worshippers and the Witches…”
He put a hand to the Book in the Dark and flipped slowly through its pages. Then he seemed to find a spot – how, through his blindness, I could not tell – and pressed a finger upon the page. He smiled with a hint of menace.
“Ah… ah, yes… in times best forgotten their war began… I still recall the fevered whispers, how the one saw the other and trembled in hatred and fear… they have warred ever since, locked in endless combat… nothing less than enslavement or death awaits this world and all its denizens…”
I frowned.
“How can you know?” I asked. “No one knows the future.”
“Oh, I do not see the future… but I have seen many pasts, heard many rumours, and collected infinite secrets. It does not take a fortune teller to sense the creeping chill of a long winter…” he murmured, clasping his spindly hands together. “But this is not why you have come. You seek to escape them – to hide yourself away…”
His tone seemed almost accusatory. As if my hiding from those who were chasing me was somehow wrong; as if I could make a difference, but was choosing not to.
“I’m not hiding. I just don’t want them to capture me,” I replied.
“And what do you think the Mad Magus Bram Tan Heth will teach you, dear princess? Nothing less than the finest art of hiding oneself so completely that not even your own sanity will find you…”
I wanted to ask him how he knew about Magus Bram. I wondered how much other secret knowledge this great toad had amassed.
I shook my head. Bildurog was toying with me.
“That’s not what this is about. I was told you could direct me to the being who watches from the cleft in the rock,” I said.
“Indeed I can. But I would be remiss if I did not warn you that for every secret, I require an offering. And for this ancient secret, I will require quite an offering indeed…”
I frowned. Lyrèlie hadn’t warned me about this… but I wasn’t surprised. Majira hadn’t given her much of a chance to explain the finer details. And neither of them knew I was even here.
Suddenly a sharp pain stung the back of my neck. I slapped my hand against the spot and my fingers brushed against something soft as it sprung away from me. A sprite zipped out from behind my head, a long thistle in his hand. His eyes were smiling but his mouth was concealed by a black cloth; he flew to the lectern of the great toad.
“Hey! What was that?” I demanded, rubbing the spot he had stung.
“It is the way to the being who watches from the cleft in the rock,” replied Bildurog. “The way will come to you in your dreams.”
“But I thought you said I had to give you something in return?” I said, sensing deception.
Bildurog smiled.
“Of course. No secret is without its price.”
“I never agreed to it though! I don’t even know what you want!” I said, backing away.
All around were the giggles and hisses of small folk from the shadows. I should have known there would be treachery. How foolish I was!
Day of the Hunt (The Faun Quartet Book 2) Page 36