The Croning

by Laird Barron

  The local denizens were a queer lot—the folk dressed archaically and spoke with an accent troublesome to his ear, such that he missed every third word when they conversed slowly in normal tones, and lost the gist entirely when they muttered amongst themselves, which was often. On the whole, the population was homogenous as a pod of toads. Not counting the wanton barmaids, who’d been born outside the valley in a more populous area, the women wouldn’t speak to him. The women weren’t shy by any means; they smiled and winked and brushed him in passing, but simply wouldn’t exchange words. Many of them were pregnant, but the Spy was surprised to see no other children in evidence. The youngest person he noticed was old enough to shave.

  A half mile north of town lay a bluff upon which loomed a temple built in ancient times. On the Spy’s first evening ensconced at the inn, he witnessed a commotion in the taproom. Proprietor, staff, and guests set aside mugs of ale and haunches of roasted goat and gravitated outdoors into the square. A procession of villagers marched from the square and up the lane to the temple, lighting the path with torches and lanterns. They marched in absolute silence, led by a trio of figures garbed in rust-colored cassocks and frightful pagan masks that resembled no beast of fact or legend familiar to the Spy.

  Once the stream of petitioners had disappeared into the distant edifice, its exterior remained cold and dark for the better part of two hours, whereupon the procession returned to the village square and dispersed. The innkeeper was one of the bizarrely robed leaders of the ceremony. He removed his unpleasant mask that appeared to be a waxen hybrid of an eel and a predatory insect, and stamped about the taproom, stoking the hearth and clearing flatware as if nothing unusual had transpired. Later, the serving wenches kept their eyes downcast and deflected the Spy’s queries regarding the incident with inelegant, but exuberant ministrations of love.

  The next morning, he ate a hearty breakfast and decided to visit the site. The dog followed him with a decided lack of enthusiasm. The dog had communicated through growls and groans and baleful glares at every villager who passed that he didn’t like this place one bit. The mountain air agreed with his canine sensibilities not in the slightest.

  The temple on the hill was by far the grandest monument the Spy had seen since departing the capital; extravagant beyond the wildest imaginings for such a remote province of the kingdom while also existing in a fabulously decrepit state; certainly a relic from an ancient era. A forbidding structure of granite blocks and carven pillars, the whole shot through with cracks from age and earthquake (a massive shaker had hit the region about ten years ago, according to the innkeeper— The Worm turned, he quipped with a sour grin) and covered in unwholesome northern black mold and thorny vines.

  Instead of the traditional crucifix, a massive ring of hammered brass hung above double doors the likes of which belonged to a fortress. The ring was broken in the upper corner, much as the monstrous symbol he’d encountered in the burgher’s cell, and it canted at an extreme forward angle, presumably as a result of the earthquake. The effect was that of a giant torque poised to descend, literal hammer of the gods style, on petitioners shuffling through the gates.

  The interior was dim and cavernous, reminiscent of Roman and Greek temples of the Hellenic; naves and altars to a dozen gods were arrayed in alcoves. The Spy recognized Jupiter and Saturn, Diana and Hecate, and busts of the Norse pantheon, in particular a feral depiction of Loki undergoing torture for his crimes against Baldur, and another of Odin weeping gore from his plucked eye socket. The Spy’s father was a learned man despite toiling as a simple miller, and his sister a supremely ambitious woman, and between the pair it was books and lessons in classical history throughout the long, bleak winters.

  There were other gods represented that he did not recognize, however. Situated deeper inside the temple hall these statues were much older and the writing upon their placards was foreign to him. Upon reflection, he concluded this place had been constructed or renovated piecemeal over the centuries, with the modern additions, gods and architecture alike, tacked on near the entrance. Thus, proceeding into the torchlit gloom was to travel backward into antiquity.

  His hunter’s senses were sharp and he knew a hostile gaze had fallen upon him. On several occasions he caught movement in the corner of his eye; small shadows moving inside the larger ones of the pillars and arches. Low and thin and fast; at first he thought it must be children, whatever the pagan equivalent of altar boys were. He soon decided this was incorrect, although he couldn’t quite name how or why. He recalled what the farmer said of the alleged “limbless kin” of the Dwarf, and shuddered.

  At the opposite end from the main doors were two huge pillars of basalt and a thick curtain of crimson. On the other side was a nave, larger than its neighbors, and a crude altar of primordial black stone, hewn from the spine of the Earth herself, and roughly fashioned into a pyramidal shape, flattened at the apex in the manner of certain jungle civilizations. The ziggurat was nine feet tall, and approximately twelve feet broad on a side. A shallow depression was carved in each face at eye level.

  Above the altar and inset at the heart of a soot-streaked tile mosaic was another broken ring symbol the diameter of several men standing on one another’s shoulders; this version was constructed of countless pieces of interlocking bone aged to a decayed black. Dragon’s-blood incense wafted from wrought-iron braziers and mingled with the torch smoke in a haze that caused the ziggurat and the effigy to distort and bend like reflections in stained metal.

  The Spy took a torch from a sconce and raised it high to better examine the broken ring and the mosaic of murky imagery that enmeshed it—a hunt or revel in a forest; maidens with babes in arms fled dark figures whose eyes blazed red and who grasped with elongated arms and spindly, clawed hands. He saw, as his light glanced from surface to surface, that the bones of the broken ring symbol were real human skeletons of all sizes, mortared and fused to create a piece of unholy art.

  Upon determining the sheer numbers of corpses involved, and inevitably recalling the burgher’s collection of children’s bones and the tavern wenches’ pillow talk of a cave carpeted with baby bones, his knees shook and he nearly lost his resolve. The Spy was by no means a pious man, nor afflicted by undue superstition. Even so, this sight quickened in his breast a chill dread and reminded him that he was a man without friends, far from home.

  “Welcome to the House of Old Leech,” a woman said. She stood in an alcove, watching him. Clad in a diaphanous gown, a crimson diadem at her throat, she was dark of hair and eye and lushly proportioned. Older than the Spy by a rather wide margin, her flesh was taut and she radiated carnality as voracious as fire.

  A priestess, he assumed. Instantly smitten, only a sliver of his fevered brain was capable of rational thought. “Hullo, priestess,” the Spy said. He affected an archness of tone. Beautiful seminude women jump out of the shadows at me every day, cheerio! He tried not to stare at her breasts, focusing instead on her eyes, and that seemed equally dangerous for she appraised him with a measure of intellect and cruelty that even his sister the Queen could not match. It was the kind of gaze to flay a man’s soul, and it reminded him that not so long ago he’d mucked horseshit in a stable, far from the good silver and polite company. He cleared his throat and said gamely, “This is an unusual church, if I may say so. I confess surprise that such blasphemies are openly conducted. And the coin required to maintain the roof. Ye gods…”

  “And you missed the orgy, too.” The woman approached with a slowly widening smile. Thankfully, she possessed legs, and nice ones. Up close she smelled of perfume and pitch. Her eyes were painted in a soft glitter and her lips were the deep red of the diadem. “These lands are administered by Count Mock who is fond of the old ways. He’s filthy rich and the crown seldom pays heed to the doings along the frontier. Left to their own devices are Count M and his people. You may find the Valley exists under a different set of traditions and customs than you are familiar with.”

  “Yes, if
by different you mean uncivilized. The Count must’ve paid off the diocese as well. Yours is the only place of worship I’ve witnessed in the entire valley. That is passing strange, my lady. Surely there are Christians dwelling among you pagans.”

  “Christians are welcome. All are welcome. All flesh is food of the god.”

  “Who is Old Leech? The name isn’t one I recognize.”

  “You’re surprised? There are in excess of twenty thousand gods acknowledged to exist. Unless you are a scholar or a master theologian, you’d be hard-pressed to name a hundredth of them. You don’t carry yourself like a philosopher. A mercenary, perhaps.” Her accent was more foreign than that of the villagers. While the peasants spoke with a rustic twang, hers hinted of a cosmopolitan education in a distant land. There was a nearly imperceptible lag between her words and the movement of her lips; the sound of her voice echoed in his head an instant before it issued from her mouth. He wondered exactly what was in that incense…

  “I’m an ignorant clodhopper, which means I should feel right at home here. Are you a caste of healers? A gaggle of old leeches?”

  She laughed into her cupped hand and watched him sidelong. “Curiosity killed the cat.” She boldly hooked the chain of his crucifix with her nail and its silver chasing reflected in her eyes. “Good Christians should not seek knowledge outside the Holy Book.”

  “Really, there’s very little good in me,” he said, trembling at the heat of her skin close to his own, the swirl of exotic perfume that clouded his mind.

  “I bet.” The priestess glanced down and seemed to notice the dog for the first time. “Oh, cute dog,” she said and patted him on the lumpy head.

  The Spy opened his mouth too late to warn her—the dog was a savage and had chomped off the fingers of more than one person who’d come too near, but now the brute whimpered, cowed, and shivered in ecstasy or terror at the woman’s touch. The Spy understood the emotion. He said, “Priestess, are we alone? On my way in I could’ve sworn there were children moving in the shadows.”

  “Kids are in short supply around here,” she said. “Unless we’re talking the kind with floppy ears and an ivy fetish. What spooked you was probably a few of the limbless ones creeping up. Don’t worry, they won’t brave the light just for a taste of city dweller flesh.” A gong sounded through the alcove and the air rippled and his teeth chattered. She stepped away from him. “By the way, I’m not a priestess. I’m a traveler.”

  “Your manner of speech…Where are you from?” He chose to completely ignore her reference to the limbless ones.

  “Wouldn’t mean a thing to you, handsome.”

  “Ah, a woman and her secrets. What are you doing here?”

  “I am undergoing an initiation. A croning, of sorts.”

  “The rite of passage. Maidenhood and fertility giving way to wisdom.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Mum was a druid.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I’ve shagged a pagan or two, though. When is the rite? Will it happen here?”

  “It’s already begun, and no. All of this,” she gestured to indicate their surroundings, “is for the hicks. The real action is at the castle. Your turn. Why have you come to this charming nook at the ass end of the kingdom?”

  “I seek the wealth of the mountains.”

  “All you’ll find here is shit.”

  The gong sounded again; a bone-rattling vibration that caused dust to sift from the upper reaches of the chamber. She flinched and fear and exultation flickered in her expression. He grabbed her arm and stepped in and kissed her. It seemed the thing to do, under the circumstances. Her lips tasted bloody and hot.

  She caught his forearm in a grip far more powerful than her stature belied and pushed him back with the ease of a mother fending off a child. “That’s quite enough out of you for today, Miller’s son.” She turned and moved quickly into the darkness. She called, or perhaps he imagined that she did so, as the echo was as from a canyon bed: “Go back, go back. There are frightful things. The stables never prepared you for this.”

  The Spy remained before the altar, dazed and rubbing his arm where the woman left her black and blue fingerprints. He’d traveled incognito, yet she’d known him and, by her own words, so did the Dwarf. This frightened him until he mastered himself and banished that futile line of conjecture. Every dram of his blood was property of the Queen. Danger was immaterial—he was in no position to abandon the quest regardless of what awaited him. As for the cryptic warning of the lovely petitioner, that wasn’t anything to dwell upon or invest with greater merit than it warranted. Word in such small communities traveled like fire in dry grass. There was no mystery here. He truly hoped that thinking it made it so.

  There are frightful things.

  He glanced from the dog who yet cowered and skulked to the great effigy of Old Leech. Feeling as an actor highlighted upon a stage, an instant of dark epiphany assailed him, permitted him a glimpse of a vast, squamous truth of the universe as it uncoiled. Nay, despite its myriad constituent skeletons this abomination wasn’t a dragon, or a serpent, or the Ouroboros with its jaws come unstuck—this was a colossal worm that had swallowed whole villages, cities… A leech of nightmare proportions, a constellation rendered against granite, and it had shat the populations of entire worlds in its slithering wake through the night skies.

  He left the temple and kept his hand on the dagger hilt all the way back to the inn.

  4.

  The Spy banished the disappointed serving wenches from his quarters and slept with the door locked and barred and his boots on in case he was compelled to flee through the window in the middle of the night. This took him back to his days of sneaking around the boudoirs of many a married lass in the city.

  A week passed and he dreamed of the woman in the temple. In these dreams a chasm divided the temple floor and she stood on the opposite side, shining with a crimson radiance. She laughed at him. Her eyes and mouth dripped black and she glided across the smoking fissure. When she was almost upon him she grasped her own face and pulled. There was an eggshell-cracking sound and her face came free, and he’d awaken in a sweaty panic.

  By day he tromped through the fields and pastures, interviewing farmers and herders with a scant pretense. Most of the people refused to answer his questions and those few who were more forthcoming provided nothing of substance regarding the Dwarf.

  His perambulations carried him to the moor and its leagues of foggy, marshy vistas. He poked around the foundations of ruined towers and barrow mounds and toiled like an ant in the shadow of the moss- and lichen-covered megaliths. He investigated a large cave on the rocky slopes of Black Bear Mountain, and there was indeed sign a bear dwelt in its depths—bones and scat. The bear itself was absent, however. The Spy was glad of that; he hadn’t brought a spear or bow.

  By night, he took his mead near the taproom hearth and dried his clothes which were invariably sodden and muddy from his excursions, and listened to the yeomen mutter and gossip at the big table. The peasants contended with boars and brigands, crap weather, mean wives, and occasional plague.

  Of course, he knew an answer or two might lie within the walls of Count Mock’s castle. Unfortunately, the Count refused to entertain strangers and without a pretext, the Spy would be clapped in irons or worse. Sneaking in was risky; the Count’s abode was an old fortress after all, and designed to thwart such enterprises. So the Spy fretted and schemed and wandered the valley hoping the gods of light or darkness would take pity and throw him a bone.

  A peddler stumbled in from the wet and cold one evening; a ruddy, lanky man from the capital, and he sat with the Spy and related news of the civilized realms and confessed, in a hushed tone and with many furtive glances around the inn, that the valley and its denizens were not pleasing to him by any means. The Peddler traveled many routes to ply his trade and had visited the region thrice in the past. He always concluded his business in the village and up at the Mock estate as hurriedly a
s possible. The Count extended an open invitation to the trader, desirous as the noble was for certain tobaccos the Peddler was sure to keep on hand.

  Thus, the Spy asked the Peddler if he’d care for company upon the next morning’s journey to Mock’s castle; a strong arm to indemnify against the depredations of brigands and wolves. The Peddler was only too delighted and the pair departed the inn at dawn; the Peddler leading two surly pack mules, and the Spy with his faithful hound.

  The weather was valley-fair, which is to say, drizzly and dreary. Rain led to sleet and threatened to become a blizzard. The men walked until sunset, following a path parallel to fog-shrouded peaks and a small forest of twisted, leafless trees, and arrived in the waning light at the gates of a crumbling castle. The building jutted from a mountainside, its gate accessible only after crossing a gorge via a rickety drawbridge. The drawbridge existed in a state of disrepair and was missing a chain and so remained permanently lowered. The rusty portcullis in the gatehouse also appeared inoperable. These details heartened the Spy who ever prized avenues of speedy retreat when encountering the unknown.

  Standing in the dilapidated courtyard in several inches of mud, he surveyed the mossy roofs, potholes and smashed statues, weedy gardens and algae-choked fountains, and couldn’t discern much difference between Mock’s abode and some of the better-preserved ruins on the moor.

  “Well, crap,” he said. The dog growled in agreement.

  “Aye, this place always gives me the shivers,” the Peddler said as an aside.

  A platoon of evil-looking servants in dark garb emerged to tend the mules and lead the travelers inside the main keep. One of the men made to leash the dog, but the Spy dissuaded the fellow with a cold, sharp glance. Inside they doffed soggy cloaks and were seated at a banquet table in the main hall. Oh, it was a gloomy and ancient chamber, its stones cracked and moldy, suits of armor gathering rust, pennants moth-eaten and rotting. The scents of smoke and mildew were strong.