Heart of Shadows

by Martin Ash

  ‘Do not leave the Serpentine Path, not even for a moment. It will take you safely to your destination. The Serpent will reveal the way.’

  The wind grew in volume. Meglan was buffeted, could hardly stand, was lifted off her feet and carried from the earth, up into darkness, helpless as a leaf in a gale, then down, down, rolling over and over, no notion of direction, drawn irresistibly into a void, everything closing in around her, absorbing her, an overpowering fear as she was hurled into the unknown.

  She opened her eyes.

  She closed them again, tight, quickly, stabbed by light shifting on and off with no rhythm. She jerked back her head, opened her eyes; the dazzle passed.

  A monstrous sight confronted her. A head, filling almost her entire vision, armoured in hundreds of small scales coloured in bright shades of red, gold and white. A huge wide maw hung half-open, displaying twin rows of pointed ivory teeth and moist, pink, glistening gums. A purple tongue was curled inside into a compact ball. From snout to crown ran a row of hard fleshy barbs, and on either side of the broad skull a pale blue eye bulged, globular and heavy-lidded. The eyes blinked slowly and swivelled, each independent of the other.

  With a gasp, Meglan thrust herself away. The world focused and re-assembled into its proper perspective. The armoured monster became a lizard, barely larger than a rat. At her movement it flipped around and darted off. Spatulate feet raising tiny spumes of dust, it vanished into a cranny in a clump of rocks.

  Meglan sat up in a daze. She pushed back her long hair from her face, noting that she was in the shade of a tall cypress, in a grove of cypresses. The dazzle was the low morning sun, lancing sudden beams through the aromatic green foliage, dappling the sandy earth. Jans lay nearby, his head on a rolled blanket. He appeared to be sleeping. Their horses were tethered to a bush a few paces off, close beside a small spring.

  Meglan leaned back against the trunk, unsure of where she was.

  ‘Jans! Are you awake?’

  Jans stirred and opened his eyes, blinking. He sat up. ‘Mistress Meglan.’ He peered about him. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I don’t know. I- ‘ She looked out beyond the trees onto an arid landscape of blasted sulphurous rock that stretched to the horizon. Bare, ragged hills, scarps and declivities characterized the land, scarred with deep rifts and gullies, wild upthrusts of rock, and sparse growths of hardy scrub. The sky was pale azure shifting to glaring yellow, without a cloud.

  Slowly Meglan stood. ‘Jans, do you recall how we got here?’

  Jans shook his head.

  ‘Have we slept here all night?’

  ‘I honestly don’t remember, Mistress. The last thing I recall, we were at the roadside, waiting. There were bandits…’

  ‘Yes. And then…’ She stared about her. ‘Where is the road?’

  Jans rubbed his eyes. Meglan walked to the horses. Their saddles and bridles rested on the ground close by. She checked her saddlepack. Nothing had been removed. Inside, she found a package containing cakes wrapped in leaves, bread, preserved meat and other foodstuffs which she was sure had not been there the previous day.

  ‘This is all strange,’ she murmured, and walked back through the shade of the trees to the other side of the grove. The same harsh landscape confronted her, baked by the sun, bearing away endlessly in all directions.

  Putting a hand to her neck, slowly rotating her head to ease a tension there, she recalled her bruises. There was no pain.

  ‘Jans, am I marked here?’ she said, turning as Jans moved up beside her.

  Jans stared, not quite believing. ‘There are no bruises. Your skin is perfectly clear.’

  Something moved, glinting in the sunlight, at Meglan’s wrist. She saw a tiny metallic, globe-eyed snake dangling on a leather thong. She frowned, trying to remember. ‘This isn’t mine.’

  She lifted the snake and placed it on the palm of her hand. An image flickered briefly in her mind. She touched fingers to brow, closing her eyes, trying to recall the image, to build into something meaningful. But it had come and gone. A single, isolated picture remained, perplexing her.

  ‘Jans, do you remember a cottage, here, at the edge of this grove? White, with an orchard, vines and other crops?’

  ‘I recall nothing.’

  Meglan took off along the line of the cypresses, convinced that somewhere here the cottage must lie. She had gone almost full circle and found no indication of a cottage or anything associated with one. But something brought her abruptly to a halt. She took a step back, her heart beating wildly, staring at the thing that rested on the ground before her.

  ‘Jans!’

  He ran up from between the trees.

  ‘Look!’

  He stared at the object she was pointing at. It was elongated and had an irregular tubular form made up of thousands of tiny, semi-diaphanous hexagons, like scales. It appeared as delicate as a spider’s web, but dry, friable, translucent, thinner than paper. Its colour was predominantly greenish, mottled, with a black, zig-zag diamond pattern running along its length. Except for four long protrusions branching off the main body, like fragile sheaths for limbs, it resembled nothing more than the sloughed-off skin of a huge serpent, complete with head and eye casing.

  Meglan gazed at the empty head. It was like that of a snake, yet not. An aspect of otherness, perhaps even a suggestion of humanness, imbued the dead expression of the face. It unsettled her. Again, something almost rose to consciousness, something she felt to be profound, disturbing, poignant, which she could not quite grasp. Without knowing why, she felt tears welling behind her eyes.

  ‘We should leave this place,’ said Jans. A breath of a breeze shifted the dead skin slightly, causing it to give off a dry, barely audible whisper.

  Meglan tore her eyes away from the snakeskin, struggling with emotions that rose unfathomably from the core of her being, a place she had never reached before. She gazed out into the distance. ‘Yes, but where to?’

  The serpent will reveal the way.

  Her eyes were drawn back to the snakeskin, then to the talisman dangling from her wrist. Her brow furrowed. She took the tiny snake again and placed it in the palm of her hand. Then she began to walk out of the trees, slowly, into the full glare of the sun. She had covered perhaps a dozen paces when the little snake, with no help from her, began to swivel upon her palm.

  Holding her hand steady before her, Meglan changed direction, moving in the direction the snake’s head was pointing. As she did so the little talisman shifted again, pointing back in its original direction. Meglan stopped, nodded to herself. She walked off sharply to the left. The snake turned again so that its head faced in the direction she had previously followed. She stood for one moment, feeling the sun beating hard upon her skin.

  She had briefly lost sight of Jans, but as she made her way back, deep in thought, she saw him watching curiously from the fringe of the trees.

  ‘I know the way,’ she called.

  ~

  The route was slow and arduous, the pace dictated by both the harsh terrain and Meglan’s need to keep her eye on the little snake that guided her. She found she could safely leave it suspended by its thong, which was preferable to holding it constantly in the flat of her palm. The snake kept its head pointing always in a specific direction, altering from time to time as the invisible pathway looped and twisted, bearing them deeper and deeper into the untracked wilderness of Dazdun’s Despair.

  Midday came and passed. The sun was indiscernible, lost in a sheet of glaring white, blazing down mercilessly to parch the earth. The tortured landscape shimmered and blurred as if striving to escape the inescapable, offering no comfort and scarcely any shade. Yet despite the obvious heat, unrelieved by all except the smallest, infrequent breath of arid breeze, neither Meglan, Jans nor the two horses suffered severely. To Meglan it seemed that they were partially shielded, making her wonder if the Serpentine Path, through some unknown property, formed a barrier which fended off the harshest effects of the surrounding e
nvironment.

  Early in the afternoon they came upon a spring which bubbled out of the slope of a low rise. Rushes, clumps of strong green grass and a few bushes grew around it, which seemed further evidence that the Serpentine Path was a way that offered survival to any who knew how to tread its indiscernible course.

  They paused to rest and eat while the horses drank from the spring and cropped the grass. Meglan expressed a concern that had been growing within her throughout the day: that the Serpentine Path might be leading them further from civilization, deeper into the no-man’s-land, on towards some end they knew nothing of.

  ‘Where is Dharsoul? How can we know where we’re going?’

  Jans squinted at the sky, then into the distance. ‘I’ve been trying to answer that question for myself. From the movement of the sun I’d say that Dharsoul lies somewhere in this direction.’ He pointed. ‘The Dharsoul Road will be that way, south. We’ve swung to a position somewhat northwest of the city. At some point I would expect this path to veer, then, towards the south or southeast if it’s to take us to the capital.’

  ‘We’ve covered such a short distance,’ Meglan observed glumly, glancing back the way they’d come.

  ‘Aye. It’s slow going.’

  She put her food aside, feeling little appetite. ‘Do you estimate us to be far from the city?’

  ‘Impossible to say. We don’t know where we started out from in relation to the capital. If we’d been on the road, unmolested, we could have been there within a day and a half. I’m assuming we are still north of the Tigrant, as the Despair doesn’t extend so far south. The closest I can estimate is that we’re within two or three days of Dharsoul if the route remains fairly direct. If the terrain forces long detours…’ He shrugged and pulled a rueful face. ‘Who can guess?’

  Meglan drained her flask and went to the spring to replenish it. ‘We should move on.’

  Squatting beside the water she gazed back again along the way they had come. She shielded her eyes, squinnying, and stood, leaving the flask on its side at the water’s edge to fill. ‘Jans, look.’

  Jans rose and stood beside her. Their slightly elevated position on the slope afforded them a view over a broad extent of the bleak land. Jans peered in the direction Meglan indicated. ‘Do you see anything, right over there, in the far distance?’

  Jans shook his head. ‘Only heat-haze and barren land. What did you see?

  ‘I don’t know. I thought something moved across the land, quite rapidly. It was far away. I may have imagined it.’ As she spoke Meglan experienced a sudden chill along her spine. She shivered, wondering what caused it. The day was so hot, but this was raw, as cold as winter. It came and was gone in hardly more than an instant, but in that instant its touch penetrated her to the bone.

  They watched for some moments longer but nothing was evident. Presently Meglan shrugged, albeit uneasily. ‘Come. Let’s be on our way.’

  They had crested the rise and were nearing its base on the other side when Meglan remembered: ‘Jans, my flask. I’ve left it at the spring.’

  Jans started to turn his horse.

  ‘No, wait here. I’ll go. In fact, wait with Swift Cloud. It’ll be quicker for me on foot over that short distance.’

  She dismounted and handed Swift Cloud’s rein to Jans, then made off to the spring. The flask was as she had left it, lying in the water. She picked it up and capped it, and was about to return to Jans when something made her look again back the way they had come. A dark shape was approaching. Some sort of creature. She could not tell what it was but it bore down towards her at great speed.

  Meglan stared in sudden fear, in indecision as she tried to make out what it was that came so unusually fast. The thing was a couple of hundred paces off. It was large but she could not define its form. It came in long bounds and leaps, almost skimming over the rough terrain, moving with dogged intent. It was making straight for her.

  She glanced back. Jans and the horses were out of sight, beyond the lip of the rise. There was no time to reach them before the creature drew close. Her heart hammered. She sensed that she was in great danger.

  Had the thing seen her? She could not tell. Was it possible it was making for the spring, not her, simply to drink?

  That seemed just plausible. Meglan was in no doubt that she should conceal herself. She glanced around. A jagged slab of brown rock a few paces away offered cover. She looked back to check the beast’s approach. A dark shape descended like a fleet shadow into a hollow. It was almost here!

  She ran, head low, and threw herself behind the rock. On the lee side the rock was fissured, creating a shadowed nook into which Meglan pressed herself, curling her legs beneath her and drawing her sabre.

  Moments passed then she heard the rapid scrabble of feet upon the rubbly earth somewhere close to the spring, accompanied by a panting breath. The creature slowed its pace. There was silence, then less urgent but equally menacing movement, the intermittent shift of stone.

  Her heart pounded, thundering in her ears. Its sound seemed so great she thought it would give her presence away. She could hear nothing else now. What was the creature doing? Was it drinking? Would it leave when it had slaked its thirst? She wanted so much to peer around the rock to see. The silence, the not knowing, was unbearable, but she dared not move even a hair’s breadth.

  There was a breath, then a soft, prowling footfall. So close! The thing was on the other side of the rock.

  Meglan gripped her sabre hilt with both hands, ready to thrust out hard at even the slightest movement. She almost choked on her fear. Something about this unknown, unseen presence terrified her more deeply than she could explain. She held her breath, praying to all the gods that the thing would move on.

  What was it, this beast that had arrived so suddenly?

  And then there came another sound, something familiar and yet so shocking, so utterly unexpected that it impelled her into a new intensity of terror. Her innards contracted, her entire being trapped in cold, silent shriek of disbelief as she reeled in both denial and horrified acceptance of what she was confronting. With that dreadful sound, she felt she had been entered, violated, that something was ravaging the deepest core of her soul.

  On the verge of panic, barely able to control her shaking limbs, she grew conscious of a whisper from within her, a command, a warning: Do nothing. Do not move or you will die.

  The sound that had so shocked her was a voice. It was human, or at least, it formed human words. It wheedled, it coaxed. It purred, its pitch ascending and falling again in tones of quiet fervour, obscenely playful. Meglan knew that voice, had hoped never to hear it again. And the words it spoke, the manner in which it spoke them, made her retch through her terror.

  ‘Meg-lan? Lovely Meg-lan? Where are you? Where are you, love-ly, love-ly Meg-lan?’

  Skalatin!

  Meglan pressed herself further back. There was a movement on the ground before her. A shadow had appeared, spindly and grotesquely misshapen. He was above her, on the rock.

  ‘Beauti-ful chi-ld. Come, pret-ty, pret-ty Meg-lan.’

  She heard the scrape of claws. The shadow swayed from side to side. Its form was not human. Not Skalatin. Then what...?

  With a swift movement it was gone.

  Meglan waited, her heart in her mouth. No sound. Then, yes, a stealthy footfall, off to her right around the angle of the rock. She pushed harder into the nook but there was nowhere to go. The rock pressed into her flesh but she was oblivious of the pain.

  Go away! Go away! Go away!

  ‘Oh-h, love-ly. Oh, pret-ty. Meg-lan. Meg-lan.’

  Skalatin stepped into view.

  Or rather, something stepped into view. It was Skalatin, but something other, too.

  He was on all fours. His head pushed forward and up, his snout testing the air. He was part-human in form, yet resembled a huge, hideously deformed hound. The arms and legs were long, ropily muscled, sinewy and powerful. The back was arched, the feet clawed and padded.
The skin was pale pinkish, rough, covered in a patchy layer of sparse brown fur.

  His head was turned slightly, away from Meglan. She could not see his face, but the sight of him, almost a man, yet mingled with a vile and disfigured beast, petrified her.

  ‘Meg-lan? Meg-lan?’

  Even as she watched, Skalatin began to change. The clawed feet bulged and stretched, the body filled out. He stood erect, naked. His head turned. His eyes looked directly at her.

  Meglan stiffened, bracing herself, rendered mute at the sight of that face. The flesh was almost gone. What remained was decayed, greenish, flaking. The bone beneath was visible, pitted and rotting. The gums crawled with worms, the tongue was a writhing, purple mass. And the eyes… these she remembered, dark and depraved and infinitely cold, their inhuman glare seeming to penetrate her.

  He was just feet away.

  ‘Meg-lan?’

  He still peered curiously, still sniffed the air. His malevolent gaze failed to focus on her. It shifted. He took another pace forward. Almost close enough to touch! Then he moved again, but off at a slightly oblique angle away from her.

  ‘Meg-lan? Love-ly, love-ly. Where?’

  He hadn’t seen her!

  Why? How? He had gazed right at her. She had caught the foul odour of his breath. Yet he had not seen her!

  Unbreathing, unmoving, Meglan was suspended in a new dimension of horror and disbelief. He was playing a game! At any moment he would spin around, laughing obscenely, leap on her and wrench her from her hiding place, do with her whatever his desire dictated.

  But Skalatin continued to move away, his head shifting from side to side, still seeking. He continued to repeat her name, over and over, in that sickeningly intimate tone. Now he was ten paces off. Now twelve.

  He halted. He turned. Meglan froze again. But Skalatin merely uttered a sound of guttural disgust, then dropped to all fours. His formed altered again to become the hideously disfigured hound of moments earlier. With a sudden, swift movement he was gone.

  Long moments passed. Meglan dared not move. Presently, a long, shuddering breath escaped her lungs. Her muscles slowly unlocked, for unconsciously her entire body had grown as rigid as bone. She eased herself a little way out of the nook, and craned her neck to peer over the rock. She half-expected to see Skalatin standing there with a gloating, triumphal grin. But there was no sign of him.