“You want to take that chance? Why hasn’t he shown you the Pipe? Cut me loose.”
The bandit looked at Gathelaus, then toward his chieftain’s ox-hide tent. “That I cannot do. Khalem Khan will sacrifice you in the old ways. If I went against him, my dog-brothers would cut me across the manhood and leave me staked to an anthill. Accept your fate. Farewell.”
“Then why do you fear the ghoul? Why does your voice quaver at their mention?”
He struck Gathelaus full across the face, splitting his sun-burnt lips. “Do not insinuate that I am a coward. Khalem Khan is my Shah and I will not betray him.”
“Even to your own doom?”
“Fate is fate.” The dusky bandit walked away after a few choice curses in his native tongue.
“I thought for sure that would work,” muttered Gathelaus.
Tisha looked on, her mute screams were dammed at the horror of the words she had just heard.
21.
The Mad Song
The moon rose and shadows materialized on the canyon walls and Gathelaus thought he recognized the mythic gathering foe. Leprous, gray movement along the cliff face gave awful images to his mind’s eye, and he wondered briefly if he was letting his imagination run away with him in this terrible place.
The chieftain, who Gathelaus now knew as Khalem Khan, left his tent as the moon stood out strong, hanging above the coarse canyon walls.
The bandits huddled close, for Gathelaus was not the only one who had noticed the monstrous gesticulations in the gloom.
Calming their fears, Khalem Khan shouted, “Fear not! For I have the power to rule over them.”
Vashti appeared beside him. When she saw Gathelaus and Tisha still bound she grew visibly disturbed. She mouthed, You should have been free by now.
Khalem Khan strode up to the elevated outcrop. The bandits moved closer as he revealed the Pipe. “With this I shall take back what has been stolen from us!”
The old, dusky bandit looked back toward Gathelaus, fear etched between the lines across his face. “My Shah, no!”
Khalem Khan grinned. “There is no denying my power!” He brought the double-pronged Pipe to his lips and blew an eldritch song. A song unlike anything heard in millennia blasted forth.
After a brief few resounding notes, some of the men shook as the haunting music pierced their souls. Some vomited at the resonating power of a low rhythm that was far too powerful for the size of the instrument in the Khan’s hands.
Gathelaus saw the ghoul lurking in the shadows, creeping forth, taking tentative steps outside the gloom. It wasn’t a slow, ponderous gait; no, these were creatures of speed and cunning purpose, they merely waited for the shadows to stretch so they might be covered awhile longer from the harsh gaze of moonlight. The speed with which they moved along the cliff walls would put a panther to shame.
At least it should be a speedy death.
Gathelaus struggled at the bindings, but though the dried rawhide gave, it wasn’t nearly enough. He stretched to reach with his teeth that he might gnaw his way to freedom, but he was held too closely behind.
Beside him, Tisha strained. She had at least spit out the gag but had even less success at worming her hands free. Tears streamed from her eyes as the panic washed over her like a drowning wave.
“They’re coming, they’re coming,” she wailed.
But Gathelaus paid scant attention. He wasn’t ready to die. Barzelai’s words echoed in his mind, Better to die with the hot steel of a bastards tulwar in your guts than in the guts of some foul beast. If he could just go down fighting instead of as food.
In the surrounding chaos, Vashti ran with a stolen falcata and sliced through Gathelaus’s bonds and then Tisha’s. “I have seen the outcome! Only you can stop this! It is your fate!” She dropped to her knees at the ominous, powerful sound, retching.
“Damn fate!” argued Gathelaus, as he took the falcata from her.
Tisha rolled in the sand screeching, trying to cover her ears with her hands.
Glancing toward Khalem Khan, Gathelaus saw that he still blew upon the Pipe, but something was wrong. Khalem’s face was turning blue. It looked as if he could not stop blowing.
“Cover your ears as best you can,” Gathelaus ordered the women.
The bandits were driven to their knees, clutching at their ears as Khalem Khan blew relentlessly upon the Pipe despite his dusky skin bruising to a sickening purple. What appeared as a fine blue mist wafted from the Pipe and held the bandit chieftain like a dominating lover.
“Your promise,” struggled Vashti. “Slay me… that I should not… become ghoul.”
Tisha screamed, rocking her head to and fro as the reverberation of the Pipe rocked the canyon.
Gathelaus held the short falcata, but he could not yet bring himself to strike down the suffering women.
The Pipe’s mad song seemed to inflict awful pain on everyone but Gathelaus and the myriad encroaching ghoul.
Gathelaus bolted at Khalem, slashing several of the bandits as he strode past.
Khalem Khan himself fell to the ground, still blowing the terrible artifact, though his lungs contained no more life-giving air. He glanced up at Gathelaus with wide eyes full of maddening fear and desperation the seemed to beg for death.
Gathelaus raised the falcata high and slammed it against the Pipe.
The blow knocked against Khalem’s body but the Pipe would not break, it would not be cast from his lips.
The hollow notes grew in strength and the ground shook. He struck again and again, beating the chieftain across the ground for the power of the hits, but the Pipe was unbreakable.
Then the ghoul were upon him.
Savage faces twisted in a mockery of what were once men.
They tore with clawed fingers upon Gathelaus’s back and snapped their gaping jaws, famished for his flesh.
Gathelaus struck back in a whirlwind of Damascus steel, slaying several before realizing these were the transformed bandits. Men made into monsters of an eldritch muse because of the still-blowing Pipe.
The few bandits left were then augmented by naked savage forms, more monstrous than their own. These true ghoul looked feral and primeval beyond reckoning, like unholy hybrids of jackal and man. Elongated mouths and drawn-back ears with eyes that were slits of cold fire. Taut muscle writhed beneath grey, mottled skin as the monsters leapt.
Gathelaus screamed in fury, slashing across the black-blooded demons.
He hammered at the foes, crushing skulls and raining what could only be entrails of the long dead, and still the dread music played.
Knowing the ghoul had no end in their legion of slathering jaws, Gathelaus turned back to the Pipe itself. He was sure that his only hope lay in that relic’s destruction.
Khalem Khan’s face was nearly black from asphyxiation, yet he still blew upon the Pipe, as if the blue mist wrapped about him was a demon-god forcing air through him as a mere vessel to be toyed with. His hands, too, were black, clutching each barrel of the Pipe in a death-grip.
Ghoul roared and launched upon Gathelaus, only to be cut away and cry their grief and hurt.
Gathelaus’s righteous wrath brought his blade down again and again in brutal assault. Instinct born in the frozen north landed here in the boiling south and fought a battle as old as time.
Granted the slightest respite, Gathelaus launched against the Pipe yet again.
Bringing the blade down with all his possible strength, still gave nothing but heartache.
The Pipe played on, indifferent, if not perhaps taunting.
All Gathelaus saw turned to brown and red as the dead further surrounded him.
Khalem Khan’s pained eyes still looked out, begging forgiveness, begging for an end.
The ghoul held back in full circle about Gathelaus. He had not enough strength left to slay them all, no strength left to slay ten of their damned number.
Tisha and Vashti now stood among them, in terrible counterfeit of their former selves; on
ce-graceful, lilting hands now bore claws with death written upon them, beautiful lips had given way to slathering jaws.
The malevolent song of the Pipe played on.
Gathelaus looked down at Khalem Khan’s blackened body, raised his falcata one last time, and chopped the hands from the Shah’s body, freeing the Pipe from undead lips.
The song which had been burning through the night, shaking the ground, swirling sands into the air—abruptly stopped. The blue mist faded.
Without the mad song echoing through them, the ghoul screamed and dropped in fetal positions on the ground—writhing, howling like damned souls before they, too, went silent and still.
Gathelaus dropped to his knees, spent.
Khalem Khan’s lips moved silently until Gathelaus looked at them head on.
“Outlander… outlander… outlander.”
Some weak color returned to the crippled Khalem Kahn and Gathelaus looked down at his pathetic form. “Last words, dog?”
“How… did you… resist… the power… of the… Pipe?”
“I’m deaf.”
A Friend on the Road
Nothing survived the mad song or the emergence of the ghoul, not the bandits, caravan folk, or even the horses, but the bandits still had supplies. Hunting through their gear, Gathelaus took several water skins and began his long trek toward KhoPeshli. Out beyond the canyon walls, luck smiled on him.
A horse with a fine bridle chewed at a stunted bush in the shade of a high canyon wall.
Gathelaus gingerly approached the animal, hoping it wouldn’t startle. “Easy, I have water. And with you we can carry a little more.”
The horse snorted, knickered and backed away.
“Hold on,” he said, opening one of the water skins. He poured a little on the ground before him, so that the horse might smell it. It stamped its foreleg twice then skittishly approached.
Gathelaus held the skin up and helped the animal drink, while simultaneously taking the reins. Soon he was mounted and riding back to gain a few more of the water skins. Then in less than an hour he was riding on to KhoPeshli. He guessed he could reach the city within a week, if he could find another well.
***
Swift of wing, the summons was answered. Lucifugis manipulated his quarry to be held and dominated. It was not easy, but thanks to the eclipse and blood moon, his power was strong and inexorable as the tides. He just had to focus and hope that the malefic stars which he channeled his focus would allow him to enter into that gargantuan green body. He would breath flame and titanic strength to possess what was his.
Revenge would come in a blast of burning flame and cold talons.
He was free and inside a humongous new body. That took getting used to, but instinct and natural bodily function would make do. He wondered why he knew no tales of other sorcerers attempting such a feat. It was dangerous, but he had succeeded beyond his wildest hopes. He had the cunning and wiles of a thousand-year-old enchanter along with the incredible force of a newborn leviathan. He would be unstoppable.
***
After several uneventful days of riding through a deserted red wasteland, the dull roar signaled that his hearing was returning. It was somewhat akin to the drowning pressure of being underwater, a heavy throb and ringing in which occasional sounds made passage. At least it was not permanent, and he would have some return to his regular senses.
The road he took was narrow and would have barely fit a standard wagon, let alone two side by side. The dusky red painted across these peaks made the land seem all the hotter and more desolate. He took to watching the shadows and black crevices in the many rocks and gorges he passed by for he could not evade the feeling that something was coming, something malevolent. But anything associated with the Pipe was dead by now, wasn’t it? He couldn’t be sure.
Gathelaus guessed he was but a day’s ride from the pirate city, when a familiar tune being whistled caught his burning ear.
Pausing in the saddle, he strained to listen beyond the rumbling din his ears caught. A horseman approached from around the bend with a steady clip-clopping horse, whistling a tune Gathelaus recognized.
“Captain Niels? At attention!”
Niels rode around the bend and shouted in exclaim! “Gathelaus! You’re alive!”
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
They dismounted and gave each other a brotherly embrace before punching one another in the shoulder.
“The others?” asked Gathelaus.
Niels shook his head. “We escaped the corsairs without incident. But once I found Hawkwood, he chose to betray us and forced me off near the northerly coast in a sinking rowboat and I made my way here as swiftly as I could.”
“Where are the others?”
“Hawkwood has kept them as hostages. I slept for a full day once I drug myself from the sea. And you?”
Gathelaus beckoned over his shoulder. “I tried to escape on a ship in Mankares but barely escaped the city with own neck, then I’ve travelled south these long weeks for there was no other way to sail on.”
“Well, let us journey back to KhoPeshli and fetch a ship to carry us north again. How I have tired of this hot land.”
“I as well.”
Niels asked, “Anything else happen worthy of a song?”
The black Pipe was in Gathelaus’s belt pouch but rather than relate that horror at this point, he shook his head. “No, no songs.”
City of the Dreaming Dead
The spires of KhoPeshli were a magnificent sight. Turrets and towers rose into the surreal blue like knives of ivory, amber and gold stabbing through a perpetual charcoal haze. The city was situated in a deep valley between towering mountains with a small bay that allowed for a fleet of pirate ships. In days long past this had been a hidden harbor, but as the Union of the Snake gained power, their daring grew as well until they feared no other force at sea and proclaimed themselves openly as the Cutlass Empire. There were indeed infighting and struggles amongst the captains of the various crews, and their infamous Black Armada under Captain Aisha did recently have a terrible defeat at the hands of the Sen-Toku admiralty, but that did not dampen the power and prestige within their own city.
A whole network of support for the pirates and their families had turned a one-time hideaway into a thriving rich city that even now had select merchants who upon the pirate’s good graces could come and barter with them. After all, grapes for wine did not grow with any respectable representation in the dry sub-continent of Dar-Al-Hambra, and the pirates consumed a great deal of wine. Rum it was said was only good enough for the dogs that were not allowed to join the Union of the Snake.
KhoPeshli had no outer walls for they feared no attack from land, nor did they fear anyone from the sea, it was a cosmopolitan city with very little crime—considering it was founded and run entirely by criminals. They had their own set of strict guidelines mirroring the maritime laws of the admiralty about what was allowed, and everyone knew very well that the consequences for any breaking of those laws would be terribly harsh.
So long as no one stole from another, nor harmed anyone else, everyone was free to do as they pleased. While this partly made KhoPeshli a seemingly free city—for the Pirate King of the Union of the Snake was a magnanimous ruler more akin to a republic figurehead than an actual king—the city did have its problems beyond the usual vices. Opium use was rampant enough that retired and wounded pirates would live out their lives on a stipend provided by their grateful crews, sleeping dreamily in a stupor of the drug. This became so common that KhoPeshli became known far and wide as the City of the Dreaming Dead, for the addicts would laze about all day as if dead, only venturing up once in a while to eat, fish, or drink. The addict would eventually become skin and bone, but as many began with crippling disfigurements or other horrors brought on by a life of savage piracy, it was deemed a respectable end to a career serving as a valuable crewman.
As Gathelaus and Niels rode into KhoPeshli, they couldn’t help but notice that t
he city was littered with bodies of dreamers, laying just out of harm’s way along the streets. No longer were they only the old and infirm but also the young and capable. The temptation to experience the dream was taking a terrible toll upon both the city and pirate lifestyle.
“What did I tell you?” said Niels.
“I’d not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself,” answered Gathelaus. “Even the Lotus-eaters in the north know there is a time and a place for such.”
“I dare say this lot make Lotus-eaters look busy as bees about a hive.”
“Mark my words, if this doesn’t change, the Sen-Toku or someone else will come in and wipe them out,” said Gathelaus. “They built the Cutlass Empire on steel and blood, but when they no longer have any teeth, they will be put down.”
The setting sun cast a magnificent red hue over the horizon, making the red mountains all the more crimson. A rousing bawdy tune came from a saloon nearby, they tied their horses’ reins in front and went inside to get food and drink. Folk were packed inside enjoying the show, but even here dreamers were asleep against the walls and people were forced to step over them in places.
Gathelaus and Niels found a table near the back of the establishment while a comely bar maid brought them ale and meat after they showed her coin.
Niels whispered, “All of the women in this city are beautiful.”
“On the continent,” agreed Gathelaus.
“That will be ten coppers. What else can I do you for?” asked the bar maid.
“Have you any idea on ships going north?” asked Gathelaus.
She looked them over and with a broad smile and swagger said, “What kind of ride are you looking for?”
Gathelaus chuckled. “I need a return trip home to the north, nothing more.”
“There are plenty of ships coming in and out, but if you change your mind about a personal yachting trip, let me know.” She sauntered away, giving him a come hither look over her shoulder.
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