《D.L. Schindler's Dark Ages》


 Army Of The Dog

    "Rape, theft and murder are all that you Northmen believe in." Godwine repeated his very opinionated opinion for the last time.


    Harald, the chief Viking on Njord''s Fjord, the Vikings'' longship, had drawn his sword. The weapon was made of inferior steel and had no tip or edge for it''s blade but Godwine had seen him chop up victims with it, never-the-less. It just took a few extra whacks to sever a head or an arm at-the-shoulder using such a dull and crude sword.


    "I told you we believe in Odin." Harald spoke back in Godwine''s language. He had been learning it during the long drift-voyage. They had been lost somewhere in the Mediterranean for many-more-than forty-days and had long-since run out of food and water. Only the rain barrels and the fishing had sustained the Vikings and even with such nourishment most of them had already died including all of the prisoners from the Njord''s Fjord''s last raid.


    "Odin!" one of the Vikings cried out. Godwine hardly noticed when they did that since they did it often.


    "Then where is help from your god, Odin?" Godwine hoped the Viking chief would kill him and spare him another raw-fish meal.


    "Perhaps Odin is busy. Where is your God? He has not delivered you as I have. You further my studies of your language so when we arrive on your shores we will be able to negotiate our passage." Harald could sense Godwine''s desire for death and refused to grant it. Nobody gets to die easy, not someone who has seen such nightmares take flesh, rot and remember screams...the screams...


    "Then kill me." Godwine said after a moment of consideration. "For you may already speak so well in my tongue."


    "Not yet." Harald sheathed his sword.


    He stared up at the burnt mast of the ruined seadragon-prow past the remains of the central mast. Fire damage was evident elsewhere on the damaged craft. It had been a swift battle for the Njord''s Fjord which had been cast aside on a riptide from a single fire-arrow. It was from the spark carried upon the fire-arrow that the rest of the blaze had spread while the men then rowed in retreat from Edward The Confessor''s new ships.


    The other ships of the Viking fleet had finished the battle, lost sight of the Njord''s Fjord which had been carried adrift, and presumed they had sank. The other ships had gone home and the Njord''s Fjord had been adrift at sea for too many days to count.


    "Land! Thank Heimdal, I see land!" a Viking stood and pointed. Others looked and with some effort they manned the oars. Godwine was forced to row as well. Prisoners usually did not have to row, but the crew had been decimated again and again first from battle and then from starvation.


    They rowed toward the land and beached their ship. Thirteen men went ashore, lean from starvation. They lay around, the strange trees and dunes of grass and large boulders were all that was there to greet them. Then someone saw the smoke of a fire and they all got up and followed it to investigate. A small camp of two large tents was there and a shaggy beast like none of them had ever seen. They were spotted and some warriors presented themselves. The strange natives wore only loincloths and each carried a spear and a club.


    Among them was one woman and she seemed to be in-charge. She ordered her warriors to stand down when she saw that the Vikings were scarcely armed and were famished and weakened. After the woman examined them and asked them in Coptic who they were and who among them was their leader, they were invited into the camp with the strange people. Only Godwine knew how to speak their language and he spoke for the Vikings, politely asking to be treated as guests.


    "She is a princess. Her name is Nehkem and she is the rightful heir to the throne. Her uncle Paeser claims the right, however and now she lives here near her city and her palace is under his occupation. For lack of more warriors she cannot drive him from her home and take the crown which, by decree of their gods, is hers."


    "New gods." Harald breathed with awe. "What land is this, priest?"


    "This is the Kingdom of Aegypt." Godwine replied sagely. Princess Nehkem listened to the holy-man speak to the leader of the barbarous giants and understood his words. His Coptic was weak but she was among the best educated in the world and already knew the language the holy-man spoke.


    "I am Princess Nehkem, daughter-heir of King Ahmed the Third who was ruler of Upper and Lower Aegypt at the time of his burial. There is no true contest for the throne of my kingdom. My uncle, the High Priest Paeser, is an usurper and a villain. He has lain waste to several of my villages and even now he plunders my holy city of Thebes and has taken by force my home, the palace. Only men-at-arms determine who wears the crown."


    "Princess Nehkem, allow us to die in battle. We will serve your cause to go home to Valhalla." Harald spoke for himself and his warriors without any further hesitation. An opportunity to die bleeding, swept away by Valkyries, was infinitely preferable to a death at sea, lost and drifting and shamed. At the name ''Valhalla'' all of his men agreed to whatever he was saying in the strange language.


    "Very good. Feast on my supplies for my exile ends when you are ready." The princess told them. They were given the tent of her few warriors. After the Vikings had ate and slept their strength seemed to return of some unnatural enthusiasm for battle. They awoke in-time as rested men and retrieved at a run all of their shields and weapons from their ship, which was left upon the beach, anchored loosely to some rocks as the only memorial they preferred to leave in this desolate kingdom so far from home. "What are your names so that I may remember my brotherly-friends who are strangers?" Princess Nehkem greeted them upon their return. She had changed from her white garments to a tight-fitting suit of cloth-armor and a red helm shaped like a winged serpent. She wore two bronze daggers in her belt and carried a hide shield stained blue and a scepter-cudgel with an ornate serpent''s head with protruding fang-blades. The kohl that lined her eyes was painted blue instead of black. She was going to lead everyone into battle for her throne. The princess was a warrior among her warriors and strange allies.


    "I am Harald Thyrason the Dog." Harald replied. In turn he introduced each of his warriors, excluding Godwine who sat on a rock witnessing all silently. "Gorm the Jotun, Thane the Archer, Olaf and Don and Bjorn the Berserkers, Loki the Throat-slitter, Tyre and Sige the Swordsmen, Wulf and Gard the Ax-throwers and lastly Karl the Hammer-man." Harald introduced all of his warriors. Each made a loud barking-bellow at their name and struck their weapon against their shield or made a similar demonstration with their preferred tool-of-battle.


    "Do you warriors pledge your loyalty to me: rightful God-King of Aegypt?" Princess Nehkem asked.


    "We do pledge to fight and die here in your battle." Harald spoke in his own language and then in their common tongue of Godwine and the princess: "We came here to die in battle instead of the sea. You now have our pledge!"


    "Good." She responded. "It is to be known then that my uncle has publicly denounced me for fleeing his armed wrath and has called me ''The Dog'' as well. A dog may bite as well as flee. Now he finds himself at my mercy on this day!" Princess Nehkem held her own weapon in the air and swore.


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    At this her redoubled band of warriors marched towards Thebes which was not more than an hour''s march away from her desert camp. Thebes was a vast city built upon a lush and verdant water-front. Princess Nehkem did not lead them into the markets or the suburbs of her city but rather the parade route through the Temple District and strait to the waterfront swimming pools and private docks behind the palace. The whole way they went largely unobserved and unchallenged. Nobody dared defile the sacred alleyway that belonged to the elite and it was not guarded, not even by a cautious tyrant.


    "My uncle will not expect our untimely assault and he will certainly have no idea I have alien-reinforcements eager to die in battle against his mercenaries and temple-guards." Princess Nehkem told her crouched warriors quietly. "I want surprise and silence to be our way until we reach the throne-room where most of his warriors will be waiting without a chance to prepare. We are grossly outnumbered yet and surely victory means as much as death-in-battle."


    "It is true that victory will please mighty Odin who has sent us to these shores to test our courage. Loki the Throat-slitter is efficient at killing in silence. He and your best assassin should go and murder each of the look-outs before we proceed."  Harald was smiling and his eyes now twinkled with affection at the woman who was providing him with a heroic ending.


    The party of Vikings and Aegyptians made their way into some shallow reeds and walked out into the Red Nile and around a short wall that offered little more than privacy to a bather. They waded into a shallow pool built right into the waters of the river. No person was in sight and they splashed to the dark pillars that led into the palace.


    "Wait, what is that?" Thane asked. He aimed a notched arrow on his short-bow at the species that had disturbed him. All looked and beheld a nightmare more than fifty hands in length if not sixty for it was difficult to know since half of its draconian body was submerged in the neighboring wading pool. A carcass of a human lay upon the steps, which the beast had obviously killed boldly.


    "That is Sobek. He is a crocodile. Never has he dared approach the palace but right now during such dark days it is his right. When I have reclaimed the throne I will have him driven away by crocodile hunters." Nehkem told Harald. Harald repeated Nehkem''s words to the ready Vikings in their own language, although some of them had learned a little bit of the priest''s language already:


    "That is the crocodile named Sobek. He is unafraid to trespass because of the turmoil in the palace. I guess he is of no concern right now." Harald spoke only loudly enough that his men might hear what the beast''s nature was. Thane lowered his short-bow and arrow as did all the others who had prepared a hand with a throwing ax, a spear or a handy brick as Olaf had. Olaf examined the brick and carried it with him as he followed everyone else into the darkened corridors of the palace.


    The dogs'' army trod the palace with both hallowed and unhallowed footfalls side-by-side. The shadows seeped into the eyes of the warriors as unlit passages shone cold soot. Tapestry, peacock and palm tree silently concealed massive warriors in a place so large it easily swallowed the sounds of their numbers. Paeser sat wearing the crown of Upper Aegypt upon the throne of his brother Ahmed. The crown of Lower Aegypt sat upon the chair to his right and the Pharaoh''s Staves of Sun and Law and Air laid resting upon the chair to his left. Half of a dozen guards of large size and black skin and strange colorful markings upon their bodies stood silently and sinisterly behind his throne. The front entrance was guarded by a score of Aegyptian soldiers armed with spears and clubs guarded in a relaxed fashion. Their appearance was indistinguishable from the warriors loyal to the princess Nehkem to the eyes of the Vikings.


    The scouts returned to where the intruders waited like furniture in the abandoned harem. They looked around noticing everyone without proper concealment. At first glance the room appeared empty but the eyes easily discovered every man who lay motionless. They all stood as the scouts gestured that the prime victim of the intrusion had been spotted.


    "He has six black giants near him." Loki reported in a whisper.


    "His guards are great black warriors. Who are they?" Harald repeated to Nehkem. She frowned and thought for a moment.


    "They must be Maji. They serve as temple guards normally. He was a high priest until recently, there is no doubt he brought his personal bodyguards here. Maji are fierce fighters, bred for a thousand generations to be the ultimate warriors. They are more deadly than Achaean Spartans, Persian Immortals or even Roman Praetorian."


    "I know nothing of those warriors. Do they still master battlefields?" Harald asked.


    "No. But Maji do. Maji have been here since before Aegypt and will remain even afterward. Even your great warriors will become fables while they still stand vigil. They are not natural men, therefore. At least not like the great warriors who died before them. There is an account that they sought and defeated all great generations of armies that rose and fell as they remained."


    "Strange legends. I do recall hearing of the Praetorian, now that I think of it." Harald mused. "I look forward to becoming a part of their Valhalla."


    "Valhalla." Some of his men muttered the word as their chief had. "Odin." the rest responded.


    The Vikings followed Princess Nehkem to the throne room and suddenly burst into the place from an entrance to the rest of the palace. They poured into the great room, devoid of courtesans and representatives, for-the-moment, and found the Aegyptian soldiers. The enemy numbered twenty and caught by surprise they were annihilated by the ferocious assault of the roaring Vikings. The melee was swift and merciless. Bodies were impaled and limbs severed. Axes flew to strike skulls and Aegyptian clubs were brought crashing down upon Viking helms. Soon the first blood had been spilled and drenched the floors of the throne-room.


    "Paeser I arrest you for usurping my throne!" Princess Nehkem stood over the two men she had slain, spattered in droplets of the gory mist that still turned the air crimson from the fresh carnage.


    The Vikings idled in battle-enraged breathing. Many of them had been slightly wounded making them even more frenzied.


    "Kill them all!" Paeser ordered the Maji.


    "With honor!" The Maji spoke in their own language, the air narrowing with the mighty depth of their baritone voices that said this in perfect unison. They walked towards the Vikings with their curved swords ready, one in each hand.  The Vikings charged at the Maji warriors and the battle clash brought instant death. The walking Maji skillfully slaughtered one Viking each, half of them suffering ghastly wounds.


    The second wave of barbaric Vikings finished the deathly Maji but took serious losses equal to half their remaining number. Princess Nehkem counted the remaining Vikings. Only Harald and the archer, Thane remained as well as their slave, Godwine.


    Thane limped away from the Maji that remained alive. The lone warrior climbed halfway to his feet and lifted one of the Viking axes. Thane shot him in the neck with an arrow and the Maji threw the ax at the same time striking the Viking in his ribs and into his heart.  Thane grunted and grinned, blood pouring from his lips as he coughed and fell. His eyes met Nehkem''s gaze. He was glad to die for her, to die in battle.


    "Valhalla!" Harald shouted and ran towards Paeser. Harald bled from wounds all over his body and was set on-fire by the Pharaoh¡¯s Staff of the Law, which Paeser wielded as a weapon. As he burned he approached the throne and grabbed the staff and took it from the high priest''s hands. Then the last Viking died.


    Paeser stood trembling in terror at the sight of all the death and destruction which had happened so quickly that there were still droplets of blood dripping, squirting and splashing in liquid testimony of how perverted time becomes during battle. When he realized his senses could tell him no more, then Nehkem had taken the Pharaoh¡¯s Staff of Law and held the magic weapon in her free hand.


    "It cannot kill without the crown''s blessing." Paeser objected. She sounded too happy to be surrounded by death and she said in a voice that made the whole world turn one shade darker forever:


    "Do you not recognize the niece you doted upon?" and then: "I hold my Wadjet''s Scepter. I can kill you with this instead. It will hurt more." And the sight of this girl, this woman, this warrior, filled Paesar''s heart with utter dread. She had the cold acts of battle upon her countenance and her uncle feared her.


    "Spare me your scepter." He said in defeat and handed her the crown. She took it and touched the Pharaoh''s Staff of Law to his forehead making his execution painless and instantaneous.


    "Now I am God-King of Aegypt!" Nehkem proclaimed over all of the dead who bowed, prostrated in puddles of their own blood, in her court.

 Older Than Stories

    "Ask yourself then: what is time? What is love? What brings out or cows evil? What cows time, or love, for that matter? Are these merely stories you bring down to this darkened place? Are they stories, or are they riddles?"


    "What?" the dying, drowning boy asked.


    He asked this of the laughing demon, as it removed its mask.


    "Before Nankyoku" The robed, half-human thing spoke. One side of its face was light crimson and the other was cornflower blue. A single horn grew from between the divided colors on its forehead. It had the long thin mustache and beard that the mystics of this oriental world often grew. "Before your time, that is." It finished saying something with no meaning to the boy. He was dreaming, drowning.


    "I don''t understand." He said in response to the demon''s concerned gaze.


    "You are tainted. You smell, you stink of love. You have a strong and unconditional love for...that girl I see. Her image is in your eyes. Would it help you to die in my water, without polluting it? Would it help if I told you she is the lover of someone else and doesn''t even know you exist?"


    "I''d still love her. I''d be happy for her. I''d wait for her, possibly in vain." He spoke back to the demonic creature.


    "You are no good to me. I must decline your offer. Go back to the surface of the water, unswallow the brine. You are not welcome in my realm. Your flesh isn''t even fit for my sharks. Undie, you wretched and rotten thing." The demon sounded angry. The dream, the drowning, it was fading.


    The Portuguese had left him on a single floating piece of a shipwreck.


    When you spread evil it comes back in unusually atavistic ways. This one was a discovery. What worlds can be contained within other worlds?


    He floated helplessly on the single floating piece of wood from a Portuguese ship. He kept holding on. He was only a boy but he had been in love. A kind of love adults forget how to feel, the kind that humans may draw upon for unlimited reserves of endurance, regardless of the physics of exhaustion.


    His eyes fluttered open. Two of the local fishermen were standing over him. They had rescued him from the circling sharks that had not been given permission to eat this one, not yet. Sharks obey their own gods.


    Back to the fishermen: one of them said to the other - what he really said the boy couldn''t really understand very well but it sounded like it went something like:  "Watashitachiha kono gaikoku hito no sh¨­nen to nani o subekidesu ka?"


    Although that is only how he recalled it. The exact words might as well have been jibberish for how closely they have been quoted from memory.


    To which there was no decision. Instead the other man looked at the boy and recognized that he lived only because he was on a quest to return home to the girl he loved. That stare...there was only one thing that it meant. It transcended all cultures, languages and times. True humans know it at a glance.


    Again he barely caught half of what was said but it went a lot like:


    "Kare wa koi ni ochite irunode, kare wa ikite ite, oborete imasen."  The other fisherman thought this was hilarious and laughed on impulse but obviously felt it was merely a sentiment, hardly a fact.


    The boy knew they were discussing not only his fate but the meaning of his survival. Although his memory at retelling this moment made it hard for him to repeat words he didn''t know the meaning of with any kind of grammatical accuracy. It was close enough. He knew enough to comprehend they were both on his side. He spat some seawater and asked for water.


    They discussed his request and determined that some sake would suffice and gave him some of the wine they were drinking instead of fishing, that day.


    "-benz¨®ico." The sentimental fisherman that could tell the boy drew his strength from Love''s holy quest. He asked again, still crudely butchering the concept of language on that boat that day: "-benz¨®ico."


    "Watashi wa Porutogaru-go o hanasanai" The boy revealed he knew their tongue, after all. Interesting.  "Watashi wa anata no kotoba no ikutsu ka o shitte imasu."


    It took both fishermen a minute or two repeating his poor dialogue to each other to figure out what he had just tried to say.


    "He knows how to speak. We should just talk to him plainly." The drunk fisherman said.


    "He came from our waters. It is just the sea talking. We need to dry him out if we want to find out what happened." The wise fisherman replied. They looked at him. The sake had revived him and he had sat up, listening to them.


    "I am not Portuguese. I am German." He told them in their own language.


    "German. It is the same thing." The drunk fisherman had rosy cheeks that the boy liked. He smiled, despite the insult.


    "I want to get home. My...friend...I miss her." He said without guile. Disappointed sharks missed him. Who missed who and why hardly mattered on that boat.


    "We both have wives. We understand." The wise fisherman got it. "But there is no way to get you home. Sorry."


    "I am glad I am alive, but not if I must live without her."


    "Such is life, young man. You can learn to fish and stay with us. Be bright, it will win you the friends you need. I promise you this." The wise fisherman smiled as he would smile to his own son. The gaze of this boy was a reflection of noble purity that was so very rare.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    And so he stayed.


    Fished.


    A year passed.


    Another.


    Another year after that.


    He grew to manhood and his enslavement ended when the local lord gave him a home. This came to pass one day, a strange day.


    Lord Kansha was riding one day upon a steep embankment. The other edge was a cliff known as the Widow''s Wake. The white man that he had allowed to live in the fishing village on the northern end of his property was the one who risked his life and rescued the lord when his horse plummeted and a fig tree stopped the man from dying with his beast on the rocks below.  "You saved my life." Lord Kansha told the young man.


    "My lord I only did my duty, please forgive me for touching you and knowing you fell." The white man showed grace.


    "Of course. In fact, I want you to come and live with me. Come and live as the one who cares for my horses, no, what am I saying? I am old and my retired wife gave me no son. Come and be my son." Lord Kansha lifted the man''s chin and saw surprise. "You do not believe this is your fate now? How can I believe I did not die, just now?"


    "My lord, I struggle to exist here in this strange land. How can I know what my place is if I am your son?"


    "You cannot. That is the beauty of it. All of the other lords will be jealous that my son is brave and humble. Theirs are not. I will be the envy of the land."


    "A land I have wished to leave since I came here."


    "I see. Come and let all know who you are. Then you can go, when I have shown you off first. Then you must go, I suppose, for I see something distant still calls to you. I can see it in your eyes."


    "My eyes, lord?"


    "Your eyes are the eyes of my son. A father always knows what his son desires."  And so it went. He lived there for more years. Those years were ones when honors and luxury were heaped upon him. Every distraction was offered. He learned to write kanji, he met the nobility that Lord Kansha answered to and they accepted him. All that knew anything, could see that there was some kind of unknown-royalty in this man.


    One day the Emperor requested his presence in Miyanoshita. War threatened to explode across the countryside. Times were changing and the presence of a white man inheriting Lord Kansha''s property could create a scandal. It was inexplicable that he was told not to show any kind of formality to the Emperor. He did anyway, it was instinctive.


    "Stop that. I need to talk to you man-to-man." The Emperor spoke after the man had done some crawling and such.


    "My lord I do not presume that I can speak in such a way to your divine grace." This weird creature spoke the true language as a second tongue. Like the Portuguese did.


    "Nobody is with us. You are the son of Lord Kansha. I order you to stand and face me, speak to me with the boldness that your father knows to use when I call for his council here."  He stood and with effort he remembered how to raise his eyes and met the steady gaze of the Emperor. "Now that wasn''t so difficult, now was it?"


    "I suppose it was not." He agreed.


    "You may not stay in this country. You must go. But you are the son of my beloved Lord Kansha. I love him as he loves you, and as you love someone far away from here."


    "My lord?"


    "It is true. You are strong beyond all reason because of it. Think not that I cannot tell. I am a god, after all."


    And so the boy found himself in command of not one, but three ships.


    They sailed forth, handpicked sailors, many of them Portuguese that had been released by royal decree to take home the son of Lord Kansha.


    But they never made it home.


    It was the frozen shores where another story begins, that they found.


    "Nankyoku" They called it.


    No true story could be so strange and remain untold, except here it is:


    The ice claimed their ships one by one until all three had become trapped.


    Ashore meant leaving the ice for the rocks and snow. One of his men fell and they hurried to his side. The shivering and the fear had claimed his life and his spirit flew back towards Nippon to answer divination about the failed voyage.


    A great tragedy always proceeds a great adventure. This was no tragedy, destiny had designed each moment on purpose. This was no adventure, fate had other plans.


    Mountains that towered mightily, even above the height of divine Qogir Feng, stood like stern primordial gods. The mountains were awake and whispering, mocking the handful of the representatives of mankind that stared up from the shore below the mountains. They had called this particular man to them, caring not for his insignificant motives or even the temporal power and command of those who had sent him. These mountains had never before been seen by human eyes, and they had chosen now to reveal themselves. They needed to be observed; it is part of existing.


    The mountains were evil, noble and ancient. They had watched every great race come and go. In mockery of such alien-races that had accidentally created humans, warred among the stars and worshiped themselves, the old and grumpy mountains now brought forth mankind. They brought mankind to them, to see them, to know them, to become a part of the annals of all great races, most of them with more disgusting origins than humans.


    The mountains laughed in giddy humor, having played a cosmic joke upon the various antique species that called themselves the masters-of-eons, by including man as one of the witnesses of Creation. Witnesses to the embodiment of wisdom, weird-old-gods, elder thoughts, ancient words blown onto the earth by even greater beings. They could have simply been a range of impossibly massive mountains, except that is not what they really were. They could only be comprehended by human minds, as just mountains.


    The men were on their knees, screaming and cackling. The energy broke the hardened criminals, Portuguese ''pirates'' and the volunteers that had enough courage to sail with Kansha''s son. The oddysey had ended here, in howls of instant, mind-shattering madness at the sight of such an unearthly vista.


    Only one stood examining what was before him with...


    ...with eyes of curiosity.


    The others were in twisting throes of hysterical tantrums. Their eyes were wild and full of unwanted wisdom. Their minds were whirlpools of words that held arcane meaning. Their screams were a song of praise and they ravened sounds that human throats had no practice. Some screams of theirs did burst lungs and as they popped one by one, blood sprayed from their mouths to the snow. Others had smashed their own jaws on rocks or tore out their own eyes, digging with their fingers to prize free the orbs from the sockets. Somehow one of the men had lit himself on fire and stood, arms outstretched and laughing merrily as his skin peeled and crisped. The nightmare orgy was of men confronted with the face of God and finding hatred and spite.


    And yet one stood calm and silent among them as the rest thrashed.


    One stood there just observing, comprehending no less, but unbroken.


    Stood unbroken, unashamed.


    But his soul withered and sickened, never-the-less.


    He couldn''t even hear the tormented voices of his broken crew. His own thoughts spiraled into this unhallowed place, older than most stars. He knew it had drawn him here, somehow. His feelings were torn from him like a garment and so was any kind of innocence that remained. He knew then what no human should ever know.


    The laughter of the mountains that towered into the heavens was a wind of death. The blast of freezing air instantly iced and killed the men. All of the shrieking and chortling crewmen who clawed their own faces, pulled out their hair and writhed on the snow. Their minds had already been destroyed at the malevolent sight.


    All except the one they spared. He would have to be flung away, to remember.


    To walk among other men, ranting and raving. As he would roam and rave: their truths would spill forth, one by one. Secrets that the mountains had never agreed to keep conspiracy for. The mountains loved little mankind, these silly bipeds, so young a race and with lifespans like mayflies. Men were goofy, funny little creatures that offended every fallen great race. It was the offensiveness of mankind that the mountains love the most about them.


    How else could they express the madness of the ages?

 Hunted By The Dead

    Haggard Monstrosity


    The dappled sunlight upon the chimney stones was a condescending reminder of joy. There could not be any more joy. Nor was the sun rising at all, dawn was taking its time in the shadowed forests.


    The screams of her mother had ceased. The sound of a dull knife cutting into her flesh had replaced those noises. The haggard monstrosity from the cellar, a ragged revenant, had a dull-one, a rusted-one, a knife. Eating, chewing and slobbering. It sorta shuffled around a bit.


    "Oh God." the girl, Abbeth, prayed as she hid in the cupboard. It heard her and it shuffled closer, still chewing. The horrid and ragged thing came nearer to the cupboard. It held a stone-cold rusted knife and her mother''s flesh in either of its boney fingers. It started to speak to her in a deep and lifeless voice:


    "Cresil-oh-lik. Saint Barbara, impaled on a cross with a staff-crucifix. Putrid virgin-child, go outside and see your god. It is sunrise, I will kill you when you are ripe." The creature stood near the cupboard and dripped, talking with its mouth full.


    As if it had nothing better to do, the haggard monstrosity descended into the cellar below, into the darkness from whence it had come. The little girl knew it must be the discarded pile of laundry she had not cleaned, come to life to butcher and eat her mother. Or perhaps a draugar, a corpse-monster of some kind, come up from their cellar, buried where she had thrown that laundry. Her thoughts kept coming back to the putrid clothes. It did seem to be partially composed of such material.


    "Abbeth?" A voice called from the hayloft-like second floor, above. It was her brother, Nathan. They had both survived the thing of horror coming out of their cottage cellar. It had killed and cut and eaten their mother.


    Abbeth and Nathan crawled into the flickering candlelight from their hiding places.


    She was on the table, her hands oozing blood from the defensive wounds. Her face had claw marks upon it, also oozing blood. Her eyes were closed, part of her neck cut out, her head mostly off. Abbeth was not crying and Nathan had not wet himself at the horror. Not until they saw their plates had portions upon them, set aside from the haggard monstrosity. That is when Abbeth shrieked and began to cry, falling to her knees and loudly saying:


    "Oh God!"


    "Her on my plate." Nathan decided and kicked it over, but then wet himself. Thereafter both children ran outside. It was the darkest hour, the hour before the sunrise, the dawn. The sun had already shone the first rays, hills and the endless shadowed and now silent forests of the medieval landscape held onto the night. The shadow of a mountain might prolong darkness, well into morning, but here there was an ever-present darkness.


    "We made it, Oh Lord save us from this haggard monstrosity. Please, I pray in the Name. Amen." Abbeth knelt and prayed. She looked up and saw a man was there.


    "I am lost in the forest, I mean no intrusion." He said calmly. He saw their cottage sitting warm and smoking peacefully in the prelit dawn.


    "She was on my plate! She is still on yours!" The boy suddenly exploded with anger at his older sister and pushed her over, grabbing ahold of her nightgown and punching the back of her head. The girl fell over under the boy''s assault.


    "Wait, stop!" The man dropped his ax and bow and grabbed the boy, pulling him from atop his sister. He was hysterical and clawed at her frenetically and clutched her gown. Then with his other hand he got a hold of her braided hair and pulled her by that until the man dropped the boy and went for his hands instead. He freed the girl from the attack and then restrained the boy.


    "Our mother is dead. Eaten. It tried to feed us part of her neck." The girl, Abbeth, pointed.


    "Bloody uncooked meat. Twain raw bits on the floor to spoil, drying for the rats" the boy, Nathan, said and laughed madly.


    The strange man felt a compulsion to simply snap his neck as he held him restrained, seemed the merciful thing to do. He didn''t of course, and was revolted by his own instinct.


    "I must dispatch this creature." he said to himself. "Or I must take these children to safety, if it is an unliving thing it won''t endure daylight. I could return with help."


    "Take us from here!" Abbeth urged him. She doubted that even this strong and armed man was a match for the horror in her cellar.


    Hunted By The Dead


    "Come back, wait!" the bloodied up and limping woodsman lingered and called through the dawn forest.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    It was behind him in the lit green. The forest was green and morning as it had followed. It was smart and had covered its skeletal remains in a cowl of discarded refuse of clothes. A bunch of wet rotting clothing was pasted to it in heaps, protecting it. It also had its weapons now, a bow, some arrows, its rusted, dried blood, stone cold knife and the man''s ax as well. Its teeth were grinning, the skull its face, an undead thing of utter evil and dread. It had license to walk the earth, and so it did.


    It fired an arrow keenly and it whistled the maximum distance and struck a tree''s wood near the fleeing man''s face.


    He looked back and there it was, all hunched under its pile of gray and brown and moldy green rags, grinning with a face only of the white skull teeth under the shade of its cowl.


    "Dear God!" he whimpered. His mind wandered in defiance of the awfulness he was staring at. The damn thing, the haggard monstrosity had thrown him out of the cellar and then proceeded to defeat him and take all his weapons. It had turned out that the woodsman was no match for such a foul demon, after all.


    The creature advanced and promptly vanished behind trees, leaving only glimpses of its approach. It was quiet as it came, slow and quiet but not silent. It was listening to the birds, to their songs, it understood them.


    The woodsman was looking at the haggard monstrosity as it tilted itself, apparently listening to two crows calling at each other. He looked up and saw a juvenile crow in the branch above him. He started forward, then broke the arrow and took the shaft with him.


    The juvenile crow decided that the woodsman''s activities needed to be reported to mom and dad and called out. This awoke the elderly owl above which disturbed two sparrows. They all went different directions.


    "Why are there so many birds in that tree?" the injured and fleeing woodsman was praying aloud. He doubted he was going to get last rites, at this rate and then having been slain by an undead he would rise again himself: a draugar of some kind. "May my armies be as the birds in the air?" He memed-medievally.


    The ax came hurtling at the woodsman from nowhere and stopped him in his tracks, struck the trunk in front of him directly. The woodsman tried to pry it from the tree as the haggard monstrosity advanced.


    "Your prayers are weak-as-hell" the haggard monstrosity caught him up as he prized the ax.


    The woodsman used the ax on the haggard monstrosity to little effect. The creature chuckled and held him pinned to the tree by his chin with one hand. It collected the ax from him with the other. Then it head-butted him with its skull forehead, which was quite thick and although bare bone, a dark earthy color, stained by the ground of the cellar and embedded with clay. The hollow eyes of the haggard monstrosity held a pool of darkness, untouched by sunlight.


    He broke free from the creature and fled again from it. As he went he gained some distance, as though the haggard monstrosity were just walking casually. The woodsman collected his wits and tried to travel into the sunlight, hoping to throw it off.


    The haggard monstrosity appeared in front of him. It had flanked him and cut him off so that it faced him with its hooded back facing the sun. A hood made of decaying clothing and leathers and tunics and such. Just a matted lump of fly-attracting laundry covered in patches of green mold with white rings, giving the haggard monstrosity a natural camouflage as it hunted the woodsman expertly, herding him, stalking him.


    Then the woodsman arrived upon an old forest road and his decision was to follow it in one direction it went. So he did and soon the steeple of a village chapel was ahead. The village also had a monastery nearby.


    The woodsman fell to his knees under the open blue sunless sky. The town stood neatly and he knelt in the muddy wagon ruts, some with standing water in them. A fly landed on him and buzzed as it took off. No shadows.


    The woodsman hated evening for this effect. No shadows, twilight. No light either.


    The ax was at his feet on the ground, tossed from nearby to land harmlessly on the ground.


    "Pick it up." the unearthly voice of the haggard monstrosity commanded.


    It had a rusty knife that somehow caught the flash of sunset through the trees in a strange and forlorn way, only on part of its surface uncaked enough to cast the light. It was as it the former use of the blade, the arm, the body that held it were protesting the hideous use.


    That was a blackened skeleton full of thick hard clay and wielding the knife like an expert combatant. Its pile of putrid laundry it wore was discarded nearby along with the bow and arrow and a spear it had fashioned while it had followed him.


    The woodsman went for the ax but fell over. The skeletal variant of the haggard monstrosity advanced on him and began stabbing him without further delay.


    As he died it looked down on him. Three crows circled above.


    "I followed you as you prayed to reach safety." It chuckled in its evil voice, thinking it was more clever than the woodsman''s god.


    It looked at the town and lifted the ax. As it stood there it heard the footfalls from the forest. The two children. It had not forgotten them. They went into the town as the haggard monstrosity watched. Then it donned its garments and took the body of the woodsman into the forest where it planned to make a camp. It stopped at a small lumberjack''s shed and found nobody home. It took some ropes.


    A fire would be nice, but it really lacked the courage to spark one so it waited. It made up the campsite it wanted and then proceeded to clean and skin its kill. It saved the woodsman''s outfit, deciding it might be fitted with a hood and used later as part of a disguise.


    To this effect its skull turned and it examined the skins it had begun to tan. Indeed the haggard monstrosity had found a good place to begin an infestation of undead. The skinned corpse of the woodsman hung by ropes upside down was only its second recruit.


    By morning the first one arrived at her master''s calling. Her head hung from her body as a begging dog looking up from its paws. Many wounds adorned her and were now dark colored, even in the night''s last hour.


    "Welcome. Your children are safe in warm beds, yonder. Night will fall again and we shall sally forth." the haggard monstrosity spoke to its firstborn crypt-thing.


    She stared back at the horror that had killed her, only able to obey it. The movement of the corpse had built up enough force to squirt some fluids from the open veins of her mostly removed neck. Her unsupported head just sorta hung heavy, eyes turned upwards.


    The haggard monstrosity carved a piece off of the dead woodsman and offered it to her and said:


    "Hungry?"

 Oubliette

    In silence, a final, tranquil silence the village of Kaledane sat. This wasn''t so remote, really, only miles from the seat in Lincoln. And near enough to the sea for the nice fog of misty translucence, a blue light. This way the place was in the morning.


    They had back at least one of the missing villagers, the youngest, Mina. She had come home after vanishing months before. It was a miracle.


    Saint Martin stood over this village. People thanked him for returning the child. A strange buzzing agreed.


    Was there a voice that spoke from the roof of the chapel when people thanked Saint Martin? That was also a miracle. Somehow the darkness was here with her, had followed Mina home. Saint Martin wasn''t buzzing and responding from the roof of the chapel. Mina shuddered to think of who, or rather what, it really might be.


    They would put her back into the asylum in Lincoln. She didn''t want to go back there.


    Mina stared out her bedroom window and wondered if she should try a different god, if God was okay with that thing sitting on the roof of the chapel. Nobody could see it up there, it managed to stay well hidden from sight, but it was up there, ne''re unrest. Mina knew it and it made her tremble in fear.


    There was a boy at her window, two of them. Boys from the village, they believed her because they had seen something awful when they stared too long at the chapel from a vantage point. Something was there, that was not right. She had said so and they had come now at dusk to ask. They had a lantern for the way home after dark.


    "You want me to tell you what happened to me? The whole story?" Mina asked them.


    Her audience said nothing. They had sneaked out from their cottages with that thing out there, needing to know. The risk was worth finding out what it was. It was talking to people and had done so for weeks now. Ever since Mina had first returned - strange things had happened. Now that she was back from the asylum the strangeness had escalated.


    Was it dangerous?


    "My tale is simple." Mina told them her story. She wasn''t a good storyteller, but her story was true and true stories are always good.


    In terror the boys fled home with their lantern blazing an orb of light.


    Mina stared again at the chapel of the village, a vigil in the silence.


    In night, ever changing. The moon and stars swing round and round, but it seems slow to Man. Not to others. Not to Them.


    She had gathered berries, green-blue old berries. Very sweet ones that grew in this primordial vale still. Some things were leftover here, next to a frontier forest. The village itself was by no means remote.


    The whole world was simply locked amid the domains of Man, encroaching where even his own foot hath not fallen. And it was a simpler, more unexplored region of a slightly quaint realm. Therefore unicorns, white sleek shades of the forest did remain. Those that were quiet enough could see them here.


    A gentle woodsman, unarmed, might see one. Unarmed was important, for a bow they knew, despite their untamed and innocent corner, surrounded on all sides by Man''s farmlands and castles. They were intelligent, could speak if they chose. They lived very long lives, an old species of the world, as old as a time, Antediluvian. Or in this case, just a girl picking berries.


    She tried to follow it into the dark bowers of its domain, the cool and silent forest. The trees here were ancient and untouched. She was already in the forest before, but a much younger forest where people had come and gone for thousands of years and there were berries and game.


    "Go back." the voice of the creature was not human, it was a whisper, and it was feminine, but it was not a human voice. The unicorn stared at her, its presence like a cold splash of water, so surprising. It was not entirely pleasant to behold, however. Time and destruction had tainted it and its single horn was a twisted alacorn, spiraling and straight like a sword from its forehead. Its shadow was a light gray as if it didn''t entirely catch the light, dust motes sparked around it, unable to touch it and its eyes glimmered discreetly as it shimmered like a white veil and was then gone.


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    "Unicorn." Mina said after it. She ate some berries then turned to go back, as it had commanded.


    It was already too late. She wasn''t sure how fast or cruel or from what direction, but a blow struck her and flung her against a tree. Not a happy camper, this denizen of the domain, huge and brown, a flat face and intelligent eyes. It could eat her but had witnessed the unicorn interacting with this human and chose to do no further harm. She might die, but it was not going to try any harder to kill her. It scooped up the basket of berries to take with it, holding it in its claws. With restraint it lumbered away, growling almost poetically, bear-like and massive.


    Mina''s eyes closed. She heard none of the calls from the villagers as they searched for her. Old Seth the Miller found her and instead of returning her he took her body home, thinking she was dead.


    When she was not dead, he didn''t have the heart to kill her, so he left her laying in a pit in the cellar of his cottage. Then he resumed his normal functions around the village the next day, telling nobody he had found her.


    Then Old Seth kept Mina in his cellar and each night he would come to see if she had died of starvation yet. He grew impatient.


    One day he brought in the body of Brennar, dragging the man down the steps. From the pit, Mina could see part of this action.


    Then she heard the most awful noises, grunting and slurping, squishing noises. Something very terrible was happening.


    One day a chair fell into the pit from above for no apparent reason. She started to climb out then heard all those terrible noises, the same gurgling sounds all squishing and bumping the table that was with the chair she had used to climb out.


    Mina was afraid; what could it be?  She peeked up and it stopped making noise. She wasn''t sure what she was looking at. She gathered her courage and climbed the rest of the way out of the pit.


    Then she crawled weakly towards it, to see what it was. A vague dread was in her heart of what it might be, so strange as it sat there on the floor pulsing and throbbing evilly.


    A moment of severe terror gripped Mina and she was speaking of what it might be, before it tore her mind apart in such awfulness as what she was seeing. She said:


    "I of the pit as witness to this. As they eat the body as a larva, transparent, hard, translucent shell, but with the glowing greenish-yellow golden-brown crust soupy-mess skeleton-bones and inside it grows to this huge gross cocoon."


    But her mind did break after that. For she was running wildly around the cellar of the cottage when Old Seth came home.


    And it began to hatch. Both humans watched in fascination as it hatched into a red wasp with white stripes. It stretched its wings, flicking embryonic substances and then began hovering.


    "Not your day. Not your day." it spoke to the man and the girl. It looked at them and it could speak. Its evil insect face had great vicious mandibles and merciless wet compound eyes that dripped a black syrup.


    "You used to say that too me!" the girl said, laughing.


    "Quiet!" the man ordered. He felt for his keyring, they were all locked in down there in his cellar. He then went for his dagger, but the wasp was quicker.


    It tackled him and with an insect appendage that looked oddly like a human hand, it took the dagger and stabbed him with it in the shoulder.


    "The acid! Use the acid!" the man told the girl. She got a beaker of acid from the table with the cutting implements. She threw it onto the creature, burning it. Some of the acid got onto the man.


    "That was fun!" Mina laughed. The steam of the corrosive reaction was a cloud around its thorax.


    "Why won''t you just die? Why won''t you just die, already?" the creature wondered in repetition of what the man had frequently said to the girl.


    She walked over and took his keyring.


    "Goodbye." Mina squinted playfully at him.


    "Help me!" Seth begged.


    "Nobody can hear you. Nobody can hear you down here." the creature reminded him. Then it stung him.


    Mina started to walk past the pit. Seth gripped her ankle as the venom coursed through him. Mina swung down into the pit, tripped.


    She still held the keys. Seth had a death grip on her ankle and held her there, dangling face first. His arm hung down into the darkness of the pit.


    Above the creature had paralyzed him, but he was not dead, and he could still feel its attacks. The wasp started to dissect him with the dagger; and it was buzzing evilly as it did this.


    Then when it found the organs it started to chew with its mandibles violently. As it ate him alive the body jerked like a steak getting sawed by a dull steak knife. Mina felt the biting and pulling and tugging and jerking as the arm swung and thrust her into the dark.


    Would the hand release her ankle?


    It did and she plummeted face first into the pit and then she knew no more.


    When she awoke, she felt the cake of dried blood on her crown. She climbed free of the muddy pit, again using the chair knocked into the pit, and found that blood from the body had dried on her head. She had no mark, but the fall had restored her by taking her recent memories. She ignored the body in the dark, too disoriented to really note it. Some part of her was unconcerned for Old Seth for some reason.


    Curiously the wooden door had gotten smashed through with tools found around the basement. Smart enough to use tools but not to find the keys? Maybe it was just having too much fun smashing stuff.


    Whatever it was. Parts of her memories that made no sense. Flashes and feelings. Starvation, weakness, suffering and then...something terrible down there in the darkness.


    Mina walked home.

 The Naked God

    Faces were glistening with sweat in the gathering gloom and firelight. A storyteller reminded the new warriors of good things, but even those good things were now tainted with the reality of the world they now knew. She finished her story by saying:


    "I remember when I was still just a little girl, these canyons were full of the blossoms of beautiful plants and the berries of juniper were the color of sunset. My sisters and I would play there beside the streams that ran clear and cool. There was never a fear of any kind of enemy then, in those times. It was still a long time until the sad times and the time of migration. The sad times; that is when the songs-that-are-stories became silent and the mothers had no babies to sing to in the night. Before the silent times. You see, before then, these valleys were all filled with the music of human voices and everything was peaceful." said Sihu, grandmother to the gathered boys. They could not be boys any longer. Their fathers and uncles were dead, fallen in battle, and new warriors were now needed. But she could see in their eyes that they were still just boys and they were not ready to join the Qeleteqe.


    Of the three the oldest was Tcivuv-tame, then Kwewe-bous and the youngest, far too young for battle: Tsay-sikya. Upon each of their faces the Black-handed Woman put her mark with her drenched fingers. They were no longer sons and boys; receiving the Nayawa meant they were licensed to kill and to say prayers to the Naked God. When the moon rose the men of the Qeleteqe would come and claim their new warriors. Their mothers were weeping in the shadows.


    This was a time of shame and despair: when men slaughtered each other and there was no more peace.


    The Black-handed Woman was none-other than Sihu''s last surviving sister: Pekyewo. She wore no mask for the ceremony. Masks made for this ceremony were made to look like the face of Pekyewo; wherever the original Black-handed Woman was not available, in distant fortresses. Everywhere the last of The People lived in fortifications built in the shelters of the earth, cliff sides. As she left a dark stain on their faces she said their new warrior names and took from them their boyhood names given by their mothers. She called them from oldest to youngest:


    "Deer-fang" as she marked Tcivuv-tame. Then she wiped the scalding darkness on Kwewe-bous and called him: "Wolf-eyes"


    But even the callous witch known as the Black-handed Woman hesitated before she burned the dark substance onto the skin of the youngest: Tsay-sikya. Her hesitation let some of it drip from her pinky finger to the earth and there it let a curl of steam where it hit the dust. The other boys made a pained face as the Nayawa scalded their skin and left a mark that would last for many years as stained their flesh, heating painfully as it mixed with the moisture of sweat from the firelight. Then she branded the boy and said his new name:


    "Snake-color" she called him. But his name sounded childish and unintimidating. The other two boys, despite the pain of getting marked, tried not to laugh at the little warrior''s name. It rhymed with ''yellow-runner'' and meant he was a coward and weak and it sounded much like his child-name of Tsay-sikya. The Black-handed Woman had given him a weak name. Then the ceremony was over and they had to leave the comfort of home and wait outside for the warriors of the Qeleteqe to come for their new recruits. When the moon rose they would follow the secret path up the cliff. The boys stood there with their faces cooling and waited.


    Snake-color felt a tear break free of his eye and scald his cheek anew. It would be a permanent blemish to his warrior-paint. This made his shame even worse as he stood with the others and waited. He said his first prayer to the Naked God, in his thoughts:


    "Dear God, make me strong and brave. I know my people are suffering, but if I am brave enough, strong enough, then I can help end the war. Help me fight so fiercely that I can somehow make the fighting stop. Make me a man. Thank you God. Thank you for hearing my prayer."


    The moon began to climb through the canyon''s cleft and into the air. Beneath it the secret path to the cliff fortress was lit up and the warriors of the Qeleteqe could be seen moving like shadowy figures. They had spears and bows and daggers made of sharpened bones. Some of them carried axes and others had clubs. So heavily armed that they carried little else but weaponry. These warriors, seen in the firelight that bathed the rocks behind the walls, had faces scowled with violence, to replace their fading Nayawa paint. The leader wore one gold earring, a ring that was gauged into his left ear. The symbol of a temple guard, before the times of strife had escalated. The leader spoke to them slowly and with malice in his voice. He was deadly serious when he said to the boys:


    "I am Hawk-smiling. This is my division of the Qeleteqe and tonight we come for warriors from this place: Cricket Village. Who answers this call?"


    "I answer." Deer-fang said loudly.


    "Me too." Wolf-eyes tried to sound manly, but his voice squeaked.


    "I do too." Snake-color, the youngest, said in a voice that betrayed his youthfulness. He was but a child. They all were, but he was obviously too young.


    "Is this all the men you have here?" Hawk-smiling was not happy sounding with his new recruits.


    "Take them and go, or take me instead." Pekyewo used a charming and feminine voice to make this trade, from the shadows.


    "Of course." they were murmuring. The warriors of the Qeleteqe all looked up to behold some vixen; but instead they were greeted with the sight of the original Black-handed Woman stepping forward from the entrance of the cliff house. She stood there in only her shawl, her hands still steaming in fresh Nayawa and dripping the burning substance onto the steps. The warriors gasped in horror at the sight of her face. It was no mask but a ruin of warfare atrocities and a twisted nightmare of violence.


    "I think not." Pekyewo laughed witchily. Her cackling and giggling continued as they shuffled their steps away from her and nervously turned and left, taking the boys with them. They could hear the echoes of her real-voice as they fled at a terrified pace, walking with urgency to escape the Black-handed Woman of Cricket Village.


    None of them had the courage to take that woman, so they had accepted their recruits instead. Hawk-smiling grunted at the shame of his men, fleeing from a woman who had offered herself to them, but could say nothing. He had felt the most fear of all: as the first among them.


    The boys did not understand what their great aunt had done. She had found it funny somehow, so it must have been a joke. So they were smiling. They all had seen her enough times to have grown accustomed to her ruined face, although in the firelight and when she scowled she could still frighten them. They walked at the pace of the grown men with longer legs and the boys struggled to keep this pace. Back down the moonlit path and out of the canyon they went with their new brothers of the Qeleteqe.


    Hissing and rattling, Brother-snake was coiled and they all stopped. The warriors had no animal friends. War had corrupted their spirits. A rattlesnake barred the path up ahead and Hawk-smiling told Wolf-eyes to fight it. Obeying orders Wolf-eyes threw rocks at the serpent until it fled the rain of stones. Wolf-eyes felt shame at hurling stones at Brother-snake, but he knew he had to do whatever was commanded by the leader of the Qeleteqe.


    "Very good. No enemy must stand in your way, boy." Hawk-smiling put one hand on Wolf-eyes''s shoulder and assured him. His feelings about the animal changed and Wolf-eyes looked proud in the setting moonlight. He easily could have killed it, but driving away the rattlesnake was enough.


    For the rest of the night they continued to walk until they reached a silent and mournful kiva. Here were the supplies and the encampment of the entire Qeleteqe. Warriors from two more divisions were gathered. All together they formed an army of over sixty warriors. There were new recruits in the other divisions from other nearby places: Juniper Village and Grasshopper-creek Village. Hawk-smiling said to his new warriors:


    "We once numbered in ten times this amount. But we have fought to the last of us, and this is all that still stand against the awful priests of the Sun God. No desert deity smiles on our clans and no true god smiles upon theirs. Blood will continue to drench the desert sands and the fertile canyons until only one way remains."


    "What does this mean?" Wolf-eyes felt bold enough to ask.


    His question was met by silence until another man spoke up. He was not of the Qeleteqe and he was not even of The People. He was tall and in the morning sunrise his shadow was even taller from where he stood atop the beams over the pithouse near the abandoned kiva. He therefore cast his shadow over the gathered Qeleteqe, quite deliberately. They could see he had the feathers and the robes of a priest of a nomadic tribe called the Pocoteli.


    The Pocoteli were well known to those of The People whom had left the old ways of the Sun God and now lived outside the laws of the desert. The strange people, the Pocoteli, had come for a long time before the strife began. They were traders from far to the south that brought gold and goods and also the Naked God. They had given the Naked God to a man called Hoota. He was now a prisoner of the old priests of the Sun God. The priests of the Sun God dared not execute Hoota or release him as long as the Qeleteqe was still banded. It would bring the old ways crashing down if they made a martyr of Hoota.


    With his arms outstretched to extend the darkness against the rising sun he said to those in his shadow:


    "The Naked God is here and now is the time to rise up and take back what belongs to everyone. No more will the old ways obfuscate the truth and oppress The People. All of the land will be green and verdant when the desert deity dies with the last of the old priests of the old religion. Let this day be the one where your sacrifices bring forth the new and powerful Naked God!"


    The warriors thrust their weapons up into the rising sunlight. Then they followed Hoota''s second-in-command, a man who now commanded the entire Qeleteqe. His name was Little-light and he introduced himself to the new recruits brought from three different villages to this place. Then he introduced the Pocoteli priest of the Naked God as Mentiroso. He had with him several of his Pocoteli friends. They all wanted to see Hoota rescued and the priests of the Sun God destroyed. It was explained that they were devoted to the Naked God and had given their faith to Hoota who had spread it to many villages in the early days of the drought. Now Hoota was a prisoner of the priests of the Sun God.


    "In the House Of The Sun. The kiva of the Sun God. A pilgrimage has begun and we shall go there as well." Little-light told all of his warriors.


    They set out and found one of the many roads by afternoon under the terrible heat. It was as if the Sun God were trying to kill them with high temperatures. The boys were very thirsty and Hawk-smiling told them they could go into the canyon nearby to find water. They were given water-skins to fill and they had to carry them back full of water for the other warriors.


    "I will kill any pilgrims of the Sun God with my spear." Deer-fang told the other two. Only he had a weapon, the other two had to carry the water skins back full. The shade was cool and they soon found a stream there.


    Snake-color, the youngest, had set eyes on someone bathing in the water while the other two did not notice. She was very beautiful and had white blossoms in her hair. She looked up and froze in terror at the sight of three Nayawa covered faces. She was alone, nude and defenseless. Somehow this made her a shimmering beauty to Snake-color. In his heart he felt far more terror at the sight of her. He thought she must be a nameless goddess he had heard stories of.


    They talked of their own bravery as they filled the water skins, but then they looked up at the sound of a splash. She had retreated unseen by the other warriors.


    "What was that?" Wolf-eyes had thought he had seen a nude girl disappear into the bushes.


    "Someone bathing?" Deer-fang wondered also.


    "A spirit." Snake-color stood there and said, the flash of his eyes startling the other two as they looked at the youngest warrior. He was not known to say things that were mistakes and so they took his word and made no pursuit or investigation.


    They took the water-skins with them but Snake-color looked back and saw her watching from where she hid. Their eyes met across the stream and it felt like that instant lasted for a very long time. Snake-color did not want to look away from her gaze. He felt strong and brave as she stared at him. Her fear had become something else as she heard him and saw the warriors leave. He had raised her spirit and now her eyes flashed in a startling way. Then the moment was over and he had to leave her and follow the others away.


    When they reached the top of the bluff there was dust and screaming. Some pilgrims were caught and being slaughtered by the warriors. The boys stood and watched in horror. Wolf-eyes fell to his knees and wretched into the dust. All around the warriors straddled their victims. They were punching them, strangling them and smashing in their heads with rocks. All around there were many dead bodies with arrows and spears in them.


    The last of the pilgrims was held to his feet by Hawk-smiling with a shard dagger to his throat. He slit the man''s throat then and blood sprayed all over the place. Then the violence was over. The Qeleteqe had found these men and women and children and killed all of them.


    Deer-fang stood with his mouth open. He had peed all over himself in terror at the sight of carnage. Never had they seen such a thing. All the killing was so vicious and ruthless and happening like it could not be stopped. This all was observed by Snake-color but he did not react except to pray again to the Naked God, quietly in his thoughts and muttering:


    "Dear God, so this is battle? I do not like it. There is no strength and no bravery. Instead you showed me something just a little while ago and I felt strength and bravery then. But is this what you really want? I am doubtful. Show me again what you showed me before and take this from my sight. I know I am a man now, but what are you, my God? What are you? Thank you, I guess. Yes, thank you, though."


    "Deer-fang, that woman there is not dead. Use your spear and kill her the rest of the way." Hawk-smiling told one of his new warriors. There was no obedience. The boy just stood there trembling. He dropped his spear. Hawk-smiling grabbed the crawling wounded one by her hair and slit her throat and her blood shot out and covered each of the boys in red.


    Wolf-eyes was crying and said:


    "I want to go back to my mother!"


    "You are not going to do that. You boys are not ready for this, but you will be soon enough." Hawk-smiling promised. He walked over to them and smeared more blood on them. Only Snake-color didn''t flinch.


    "I am ready to be a warrior and kill." he said.


    "See? Very good. The little boy is ready. You older boys should be more like he is. You deserve his name instead." Hawk-smiling admonished them.


    "I wasn''t finished talking." Snake-color looked up and met the warrior''s cold eyes.


    "Oh?"


    "I will kill for the Naked God but I see no reason to murder women and children. I will fight warriors who stand against my god. But there is no reason to kill these kind. These are still of The People and they were innocent."


    "No. You are wrong. These are the enemy and this is how our war is being fought. You imagine battlefields with warriors bravely dancing but war is about fear. Fear of supporting the wrong god. This is to end that god and bring about peace and fertility. The rain will come and the drought will end forever if the Naked God stands without the rivalry of the Sun God. It is the heat of the sun, the orb of the Sun God, that is killing us all."


    "Then take some of the water we have brought." Snake-color was strangely calm. The other warriors were of the new recruits and shocked by the brutality of the massacre or of the veteran Qeleteqe and panting with the exertions of murder. Only Snake-color was calm, among all of them.


    It was time to leave the dead there and continue to the nearby pithouse of Charcoal Village. But before they left Hawk-smiling and his warriors stopped to see a warrior being admonished by Little-light:


    "What have you done? You stole turquoise and Ooqey and precious offerings they carried to the Sun God? These things must be left on them."


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    "I only took stuff that is valuable. They are dead and they don''t need it."


    "You stole from them! That is not what we meant to do. Leave all of that stuff!"


    And so nothing was taken from the dead. Apparently it was wrong to steal any of their offerings the dead carried to their god. Murder was justifiable but not theft. The purpose of the killing was not to rob them and so there had to be a difference. And the difference was made clear by Little-light. In his anger he walked over and kicked all of the things that were stolen out of the warrior''s hands and it all went everywhere and landed back on the ground where it belonged.


    At sunset the band of warriors approached Charcoal Village. There was music and dancing as they arrived and nobody saw the warriors surround the place and wait in the darkness watching and awaiting orders.


    It was a wedding.


    Snake-color''s eyes flashed in the sunset and firelight at the sight of the girl he had seen bathing earlier. So the Naked God had listened and now he saw her again. She was standing like an offering dressed all in blossoms of white and the petals of flowers and the silver grass woven into her skirt. Her long hair was being braided to the rope of the wedding pole to be cut free by the groom. The groom was across the fire from her and he looked handsome and nervous. She was smiling at him with such a wondrous gaze it made Snake-color feel even more proud of her. She was so brave and beautiful and he loved her without hesitation. His heart swelled with pride as he remembered she had seen him and loved him. And this was her, a girl of such strength and beauty that everyone could see and she had loved him back. Snake-color felt very proud as he watched the wedding.


    Dancers and musicians filled the night with a joyful sound and scene. Then Snake-color felt a kind of awful dread inside and he realized they were The People but the wrong kind, they were ones who still worshiped the Sun God. The girl had a necklace of the gold disc of the Sun God and so did her groom. When the Qeleteqe were ready, would they kill all of these too?


    Horror was felt by Snake-color. He himself was part of the Qeleteqe and these were his enemies. Then the moment of celebration and peaceful gathering was finally interrupted. Little-light and Hawk-smiling and the other warriors showed themselves. The music stopped and so did the dancing. At first, in the silence, nothing happened.


    Warriors started to eat some of the food and stare at all the beautiful women. Snake-color could not bear to see what he thought was going to happen and he stepped forward as well, between the bride and Little-light.


    "Don''t harm her!" Snake-color stood in defiance. Then he felt the powerful grip of the warrior''s hand on his neck lifting him.


    "Stop!" the bride ordered, her voice a trembling sonnet of fear. She did love Snake-color and he could hear it in her vocalization, loud and immediate. There was silence then. Everyone was watching this central thing unfold itself.


    "You tell me this? To stop?" Little-light looked at the girl, the bride of this wedding and then said:


    "I was going to let everyone here live, I thought. This is a confused place in a confusing time. Should some of you join the Naked God and abandon the Sun God? We are not savages. We have just cause." Little-light insisted, still holding the boy in the air with one hand gripping the neck. He sounded sincerely defensive. He really didn''t want her to think he and his Qeleteqe were savages and moreover the guests of the wedding and the residents of Charcoal Village.


    "Then that is how it should be." she begged the powerful warrior. Now she sounded insistent but submissive. She was helpless to do anything but speak.


    "Oh?"


    "I am the daughter of the high priest. This union should make this into a village of the Sun God. They pray not one way or the other. Show mercy, show the strength of the Naked God by showing mercy." she spoke up and at these words there was a lowering of the young warrior he held up with just one strong arm''s grip. He was still choking him inches above the ground.


    Little-light made a commanding gesture to lower weapons and step away and all of his warriors did that; vanishing out of sight and back into the night. All except Hawk-smiling who had his shard dagger to the throat of the groom. The young man had yet to speak but his spirit insisted he do so and he said:


    "Don''t harm her, she is Taalawa. You might harm me and free her of her pact, but do not cut her hair!" he spoke, despite the bite of the blade.


    "Don''t say that Koongya!" the bride, Taalawa cried out to her groom. He looked deep into her eyes with love, knowing his words had cost him his life.


    Then Hawk-smiling slit his throat and his blood did mistily gush out. His body fell and the smell of blood met Snake-color''s nostrils. Little-light laughed and dropped the choked boy to the ground. Then it went dark for Snake-color.


    He awoke some moments later to all sorts of wailing and cries of anguish at the slaughter of the groom. His body lay nearby.


    "What have you done?" Taalawa was screaming. Her voice was hoarse. She could say nothing else over and over. Her weeping and tears wet her face and it was like when she had first turned and saw Snake-color at the stream. But that is not where they were anymore.


    Little-light wrapped his arms around her, holding her. Then without ceremony Hawk-smiling walked to her and cut her hair with the same blade. For a moment the horror of what they were doing to her silenced all of the wedding guests. Only the sound of the sharp object sawing through her hair and the wedding rope that braided it to the pole. Then the shrieks of horror of the women screaming at them to stop their brutality.


    Hawk-smiling finished cutting her hair and she struggled free of Little-light and went to her fallen groom. For another moment she knelt by him, trembling hands reaching out to touch his remains that lay dead on the ground.


    "You killed him!" she protested, glaring up at Hawk-smiling. He and Little-light just stood there by the wedding pole. They both realized they might have gotten a little carried away.


    "Get her, she is coming with us." Little-light noticed the young warrior, Snake-color getting to his feet shakily. Then they too vanished into the darkness around Charcoal Village with the rest of the Qeleteqe. Snake-color had no choice but the make her a captive. He walked to her reluctantly and touched her shoulder. She was sobbing and crying as somehow a maiden and a widow at the same time.


    "Come on. You are a hostage now. You have to come with me." Snake-color said to her. There was very little force in his young voice. She looked up to him and this time she saw him as her enemy. The love was gone.


    Snake-color felt his heart break. He offered her his hand and she took it and got to her feet. She was taller than him and looked down. Their eye-contact was locked and they were saying something to each other silently. Everyone saw this but knew not what it could be that they were saying.


    Taalawa followed her captor to the waiting warriors and they continued their march to the House of the Sun where her father would not be pleased to see her among his enemies. She was a precious hostage and with her they could make an exchange of prisoners. The question was, would this work? Was she worth Hoota to the priests?


    Snake-color prayed again as they walked:


    "Dear God, you have put her in my care and by my side somehow, but it is horrible, now she hates me and she is among enemies. I was there when they killed her new husband and then they cut her hair. Why is this happening? I am happy she is with me but the circumstances are as terrible as they can be. Why God? I mean to say thank you, so I guess I will: thank you."


    As the sun rose above the distant hills they were nearing the House of the Sun God.


    "Will the war soon end? Will there be peace? Maybe that is what I should have prayed for." Snake-color thought. He was very tired. The Qeleteqe stopped in an arroyo and rested there out of sight. Taalawa slept by his side and sometimes sobbed and sniffled in her sleep. Snake-color watched this and eventually he too fell asleep, surrounded by all of his brothers: her enemies.


    They shared a dream that night. In this dream:


    Alone they stood ankle deep in a stream of cold water. Birds flew around them in a swirl. They turned around and each other were there. Then they played in the water, laughing and splashing. They became the birds and flew away. In a distant and verdant place they stood side by side and many of The People were there. A hole opened up in the sky, which was like a cliff wall, it looked natural and fertile, like a belly-button. Sorta a naval of the whole world. The People each held the hand of another person and together the couples jumped merrily into the hole. Taalawa asked her companion:


    "What is your name?"


    "Tsay-sikya." Snake-color told her.


    The girl was then suddenly dressed as a bride again, her hair long and braided and with white blossoms. She laughed and smiled and her eyes flashed and then she leaned down and kissed the boy''s forehead.


    "I love you Tsay-sikya. Together?"


    "Yes" he agreed and they took each other''s hand and ran to the hole-in-the-world and jumped through it together. They both looked back and saw the world behind them was entirely dead, none of The People remained. They were in a new world and there was no sun, just warmth and there was certainly no war because there was no Naked God.


    Then Snake-color awoke and saw her staring at him. She whispered in the early light of dawn:


    "I had a strange dream. Is your name Sikya?"


    "Tsay-sikya." he whispered back to her.


    Then Taalawa sat up a little bit and leaned over him and gently kissed him on the lips. It sent a strange feeling through him. He felt loved again but this time it was not a proud feeling, it was a sad feeling. A kind of happy feeling that was lined on the edges with profound sadness.


    The sun was rising and all the warriors were well rested and as they got up they looked upon their prisoner with unmasked lust and hatred. But they could not harm her, she was an important hostage and Little-light had need for her so they could trade her for Hoota. She was safe among such cruel warriors. Only Snake-color was trusted with guarding her. He was obviously in-love with her.


    And the cruelest thing was to make him her enemy. He could not set her free but had to be the one to walk behind her as they marched. Under the hot burning orb they walked directly across the desert until they found another pilgrim road much closer to the House of the Sun.


    Then the Qeleteqe stopped and took up hidden positions as a scout signaled that someone was on the road ahead. Many of The People were walking slowly and Snake-color left Taalawa in the shade of a big rock. He climbed it enough to see over and beheld these ones:


    They walked with grim slowness and many of them wore only rags and sorrowful faces. Some had dried wounds and others broken limbs and burns. All were victims and refugees and they had covered themselves in dust and ashes. They were walking the road and leaving the lands of The People.


    "Not again." Snake-color worried that another massacre would befall these poor wretched wanderers. But instead the Qeleteqe hid and many of the warriors covered their eyes or their ears, as though afraid of these of The People.


    "We don''t attack?" Snake-color dared ask, relief evident in his voice. Hawk-smiling had his back turned to the walking crowd as they shuffled past hidden death-dealers.


    "Ghost Folk" Hawk-smiling said quietly and then he shuddered in fear.


    Snake-color took another glance and felt a chill of dread at the awful sight of them. They were alive but not one warrior anticipated killing them. They were free to escape and migrate away. No harm would come to the Ghost Folk; whom had safe passage to leave all the horrors they had experienced behind them. It didn''t matter what god they had prayed to. They walked away from it all.


    That afternoon the Qeleteqe reached the House Of The Sun. The place was built of many houses and rooms in the shape of a rising sun and had served as the capital of The People and was where the priests lived.


    For nearly a thousand years, it had stood countless droughts, many worse than this one.


    But Hoota had taken power from the Sun God when he spoke words to so many rural villages on behalf of the Naked God. A foreign deity that promised no more Sun Priests and that fertile seasons would come always. This had begun the early troubles and those had escalated into warfare. Now many of The People lived in fortified cliff dwellings in canyons guarded by towers and watched over by either god.


    It seemed that nobody was in the House Of The Sun. The Qeleteqe wandered around unchallenged until they found just one warrior waiting for them on the road towards the sunrise. Of course, the Sun-dagger Temple would be the final refuge of the priests.


    He stood alone with a stone club, an Omaha. He had his earring of gold like the one worn by Hawk-smiling. A gold ring gauged into his left ear.


    Taalawa was standing before all of the warriors, refreshed with some water as they all were. Dark rings under her eyes shown she was feeling ill from the strenuous journey and heat and dehydration.


    "I am going to go with him, he is Clouded-might. None of you can beat him in a warrior''s duel and what honor would you have if many of you fought him together? See how brave he is to stand alone and claim me? You would be cowards and the Naked God would not listen to your prayers if you did not fight him one of you at a time." Taalawa held her hands up and said these words loudly to all of the Qeleteqe. They shuffled their feet nervously. Not one of them wanted to fight Clouded-might and so she simply walked from them to him.


    "She is right and also I am the temple guardian and I stand in your path. The same thing will happen and you cannot go past me as long as I stand here." Clouded-might told the many warriors.


    "I will fight him." Hawk-smiling said, knowing he must or he would no longer be first among his warriors.


    "So the traitor will be the first to die." Clouded-might chuckled. He had seen Hawk-smiling and recognized the temple guard that had become a believer in the Naked God.


    They fought a violent duel and soon Clouded-might had beaten Hawk-smiling to the ground. He did not spare the life of the fallen warrior and raised the Omaha for a killing blow. Hawk-smiling let out a terrified scream and then it was over. His head was smashed by the heavy club.


    "Is there not one among you who can fight me now?" Clouded-might pretended that his wounds were painful and that he was tired.


    Two warriors suddenly rushed at him at once and he killed them both as they reached him. Then another tried to run at him while letting out a warcry. Clouded-might picked up the spear and threw it heartily into the crowd of warriors where it found a home in someone''s leg and went clean through.


    "I have courage!" Deer-fang charged with his spear aimed at Clouded-might. He died with that courage frozen on his face.


    "Who can fight me? Are you all just boys? I see Nayawa but not one warrior with courage!"


    This time it was three warriors that came at him and in a blurry dance he struck them each aside and as they lay gripping broken parts he showed them no mercy, raising his bloodied club in a death blow for each of them.


    "You die!" one of the leaders of a division of the Qeleteqe, named Scorpion-star, shouted as he fired an arrow into Clouded-might''s leg in retaliation for the spear he had thrown. Then he sent five warriors to finish the lone temple guard.


    They charged at him and cut him with their spear points, adding to his wounds left by Hawk-smiling''s shard dagger. There was dust and sprays of blood as he surprised them with the same shard dagger and slashed open a wrist and kicked dust into another''s face. He struck one alongside his head and that warrior staggered away. He had taken a spear and spun it around and knocked one from his feet. He clubbed that one in the same movement. Then they stabbed him with their spears.


    Grunting in pain the big warrior still held the fight and crushed another skull. He picked up the shard dagger and as one of those five warriors tried to stab Clouded-might again he threw it and stuck it onto the eye of his enemy. He took the spear and turned with it and put it into the next warrior. Then he smashed the other that he had injured and followed the staggering and stunned warrior and split his skull from behind.


    Clouded-might had many wounds but he stood there still.


    "I will fight you now." Scorpion-star walked boldly to go and fight the panting lone warrior who dripped blood from many wounds. Then he too was struck down.


    The warrior with the spear through his leg was crying out and moaning horribly. It was the only sound as everyone stood there unsure what to do. Little-light became frustrated and went and killed his own warrior with an ax to silence him.


    "Someone slay that warrior." Little-light commanded and pointed at their enemy. He stared down each member of the Qeleteqe until only Wolf-eyes met his gaze. The boy picked up a stone and walked close to their enemy.


    "Is it you that finishes this? You are just a boy! Send me a warrior!" Clouded-might bellowed.


    Wolf-eyes felt only a little bit of fear as he prayed in his thoughts:


    "You, God, see me standing alone before this terrible warrior. I have thrown a thousand stones that hit their mark. Only when I meant no harm was no harm ever done. Dear God, make my aim as true as my courage as I stand here. Thank you, God."


    "What do you wait for?" Clouded-might asked his only willing foe left among the Qeleteqe.


    "No enemy will stand in my way." he recalled with words he spoke and with sincere accuracy he threw just one stone which struck Clouded-might in his forehead.


    The warrior fell backwards and died with sunlight in his eyes and golden left earlobe.


    It was at that moment that the Qeleteqe looked up and around for their prize but she was gone. Somehow during all of the fighting she had fled. Only Snake-color had seen her go back into the House Of The Sun. It was in vain that they searched all around for her and found no trail of her. She had doubled back and hidden herself very well.


    The remaining warriors regrouped and were about to leave after an entire day was gone searching for her.


    Snake-color had deserted the Qeleteqe during the scattered search and when they left to go to the Sun-dagger Temple. Surely they would find the priests there and kill them all and rescue Hoota. Or maybe something else would happen. Snake-color did not care. He was tired of war and wanted to find Taalawa.


    He took a bow and some arrows from where Scorpion-star had left the weapon and also his own spear. He knew that with the Nayawa he must be armed or die whenever he was seen by any enemies. But he had abandoned war. He doubted that the Naked God cared.


    Wandering the halls of the great place, that had once held many festivals and thousands of The People, he felt very alone and afraid. Darkness and echoes were all that remained. For days he explored the derelict House Of The Sun and eventually he gave up finding her there.


    A light shone at night atop the cliffs of Sunlight Canyon where all pilgrim roads led. No more tribute came here, but perhaps the Sun Priests were not so long gone?


    Someone had the brazen stance to remain overlooking the place.


    And so he thought that Taalawa had gone to the lights up there. And he made the ascent up steep paths. When at last he came there he found strangely dried up dead bodies posed and decorated as Pocoteli upon pallets that sat overlooking the House of the Sun below. The mummies were very old and shriveled and sat with empty staring eye sockets. The voice Snake-color had heard when he started his journey spoke from aside where he hadn''t noticed him there:


    "They are living-ancestors. They will live here with us and the Pocoteli will have their home here. A home for us, a wandering tribe from so far away. Now we have our very own land, as the Naked God promised us." Mentiroso was sitting there. A red and green bird was on his shoulder. It spoke too:


    "Where are the Sun Priests?" the bird asked. "Parrot want an eye. Give pretty parrot an eye. An ear?"


    "Your bird speaks?" Snake-color sounded amused. He almost forgot the creepy ancestor-mummies.


    "He does. Parrot speaks the words he heard when I met my new bride." Mentiroso smiled back, bemused at the attention towards his colorful bird.


    "New bride?" Snake-color looked around and saw that the curtain of the pithouse was drawn. His dry throat suddenly choked him. A dreadful feeling was gnawing at him. A very bad feeling.


    "She was very beautiful."


    "Was?"


    "Just a moment, I will show her to you as she is, joined with the Pocoteli." Mentiroso left the bird there and stood with eagerness. He skipped to the pithouse and went inside.


    "She was." the bird said. It didn''t seem amusing anymore.


    Then there stood Mentiroso and he stood in hideous glory shouting the kind of prayer that the Naked God really heard. He wore a strange new costume of a stretched hide as a robe and a crown of amaranth and a mask of another human''s face.


    "All for you, my lord, Yacatecutli! We, no longer of the Pochtecas, were cast out again and again and now we have come at last to our great home! Thank you for this that is now ours!" the priest of the Naked God danced as he shouted this prayer with wild eyes. He held the leg bones in his hands and shook them as scepters with many strips of colorfully dyed leather, feathers and golden bells.


    Snake-color stared unblinking at this spectacle of horror; seeing that Mentiroso was quite mad. Bile and rage welled up inside him as the horror of the moment beat in his heart like a drum. He stared directly at what Mentiroso was now wearing.


    He was wearing her skin.


    Without any further hesitation Snake-color aimed the bow and shot an arrow into him. Then another arrow and another. The priest was still moving until the spear was pushed downward into him. Then he was as dead as his ancestor mummies.


    He untethered the bird and it flew away saying:


    "All for you! Thank you!"

 Aphshai

    The long stone hallway held the sound of the footfalls like dry ground drinking spilled water, the walls of silence sipped the sounds.


    A dry torch guttered in this darkened place. There was light in the cell with its thick wooden doors. The lock on the latch was opened and the visitor was allowed to see the prisoner. Then the hunched and shadowy jailor skipped away and vanished, keys jangling like a sound from everywhere.


    His visitor, a nun, said a prayer and tried to give him some water before she was asked to leave by the shadowy figure in the door.


    "Will you rot in here? Don''t you wish to again see your home?" The torturer who worked for the powerful local deacon asked. The deacon''s rank in The Church was disproportionately low to indicate the man''s wealth and subsequent power. He owned four mines and two villages: Nerohall and Shalen, where the ore was made into weapons and armor and tools. He also had a torturer on the payroll.


    "I know what kind of man you are. I will never make an agreement with you." The beaten villager spoke, finally. It earned him the gauntlet''s kiss and he spat out a tooth and drooled blood.


    "If that is true then maybe it is time to carve you into fishbait while you are still squirming and alive. But the deacon wants to see you. He has a deal for you. He plans to set you free. I said ''what for?'' but the man is just too compassionate I guess." The torturer summoned the mean-old, one-eyed, hunchbacked jailer; who nimbly bounced into the jailcell and promptly unshackled the prisoner.


    Despite having a mean reputation, the jailor was very enthusiastic and always complimented the prisoners:


    "That was very brave: I can tell you that few are." The jailor stroked the hair of the beaten prisoner with meanness in his eye. Then he helped him up without damaging him further, but still with a mean attitude about it. Then, glaring meanly he let the prisoner have a few sips of water, chilled to make it more mean.


    "Are you finished coddling the prisoner, jailor?" The torturer complained about the mean treatment.


    The two of them took the prisoner to two of Deacon''s Cathedral Guard, paid soldiers in archer''s uniforms with some chainmail. They also wore tunics with crosses on them. Hired thugs.


    They took the pulverized prisoner to the deacon, mostly having to help him along and making brown stains from his lips onto their white tunics. They resented this but couldn''t rough him up without killing him so they simply dragged him the rest of the way amid grunts and undignified hugging and limping along.


    There he sat on a clerical throne in a study where a massive fireplace was warming the great room to a comfortable temperature.


    "I am the deacon." An ogre of a man spoke from the table. He wanted something and then took his time asking for it.


    A butler served him a meal that he ate in front of the prisoner. He offered the man some food that was met with a desolate stare. The wine was not so blatantly declined. The prisoner sipped this with trembling hands and difficulty through his split lip, bleeding gums and swollen cheeks. Much of it spilled instead.


    "Tell me what I want to know. Where is the cave full-of-treasure? My men have searched everywhere. When Sir Jeren arrived they were fine and spoke of a cave where they found jewels and gemstones, silver coins minted from Roman times. They found a wealth of treasure in a cave. They had Merlis with them and that is a man I greatly trusted. They brought you from those people they found living in hovels near the cave entrance. Dwarves you people are, they said. So who are you? You are no dwarf. And you won''t talk: so there is something that you are hiding. People, most likely. I doubt you value the treasure or else you would have spent it and bought an entire kingdom. No, you are a simpleton; but you know something I do not. Give me the words that tell me where to go."


    Then the deacon added. "I won''t blame you that all of them died of some poison. I don''t know that you caused that. I need you to talk." He said. Then the prisoner talked:


    "Af Sha Aye. Af Sha Aye. You will die on the same day. Go to the sea and cast a feather. It will lead you no matter the weather. Away, away and then comes Af Ah Say, Af Ah Say." The man seemed drunk or mad, smiling and speaking in a busted voicebox, then he coughed.


    The deacon''s guest kept coughing until blood came out of his mouth. Then he started choking and eventually fell over dead. The deacon gestured for the body to be removed and it was.


    Alone, he pondered the words of the dead man who had tried to protect his dwarven kin, although the man was clearly not a dwarf. Why Sir Jeren and Merlis had insisted they be dwarves, and this was not, must be irrelevant. So dwarves lived there in poverty and had raised a man as tall as any. The deacon planned to have them removed from his path, one way, or the other.


    He went to the kitchen where he found the cook and the scullery maid. "I want some feathers from the chicken I just ate."


    "Here my lord." The scullery maid provided the feathers.


    The deacon took the feathers then gathered all twenty of his soldiers, his own private army. They rode from the cathedral''s stables all the way to the sea.


    There the deacon tossed the feathers from a cliff and watched them scatter uselessly. He growled when he realized that no indication was made of where to go. Cheated by a dead man: "How unfair!"


    They started to ride back when he felt as though something stood beneath. He looked down at the sand dunes on the other side of the cliffs, also meeting the shore. A single black feather stood there where the dunes were.


    He went to it as his men rode their horses behind. The sand was deep and hard to climb and they had to leave their horses: to graze and frolick on their own near the slope that led to the earlier bluffs. On foot the men trudged the bridge of packed sand as it soaked up the tide, dissolving eerily behind them.


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    Upon the other side they stood at its base ready for a climb to its top under marbled storm clouds. The ascent revealed that they stood on an old stone structure, indeed it was a small step pyramid, half in-ruins and sunken on the sands. From the top the cascading sands revealed a golden crown atop the pyramid. This certainly meant great treasure would be near!


    But instead the structure was no tomb, it was a beacon, shining only in daytime and across the water where the waves left. Under their dark clouds only light from above spilling in shafts through the clouds could show the way. From here, at low tide, a rocky island could be seen, and a path could be seen in the bright shaft of daylight, just under the water.


    The deacon led his men wading through this. And as they clambered over the sharp mussels and slippery kelp and jagged stones they came to the other side of the rocky island. They stood in dripping chainmail and seaweed, the proud Deacon''s Cathedral Guard. Thousands of tiny flies as vast clouds made the men feel small in their numerous relentlessness.


    They went on, gradually wishing for rest and finding the rocks to be a sanctuary from The Fly''s bite.


    Here the afternoon sunlight shone into a grotto where small cooking pots clung over fires and ragged hovels stood miserably repaired from the last raid. A colony of small people living otherwise unmolested by the medieval world nearby.


    "Drive them away. Beyond them, in that cave, we shall find our treasure!" The deacon bellowed. They looked up at the second intrusion to their home in recent moons. They offered no fight, but instead The Seapeople took to their rafts and retreated, leaving their unexplored caves for the soldiers of The Church.


    The deacon had the torches they had brought lit from their smoldering campfires and cruelly, some of their hovels set fire to.


    Then they started down the untouched stone steps, seeing the glitter of treasure below and crossing the threshold that the first to encounter this place had not. They had come by boat and said nothing of the pyramid.


    Air was being forced out of the cave as some massive cycle of seawater roared below.


    They reached the bottom of the stone steps and found no treasure, only a deep darkened cavern beneath the waves. Great salty stalactites glimmered all around and the roar of seawater falling as a massive undersea waterfall continued perpetually from some ancient time.


    The physics of such a place seemed unearthly, impossible. The Deacon''s Cathedral Guard had a great uneasiness. "Could this be Hell?"


    They turned back then found only the branching paths, stone walkways that stood above bottomless cold winds from below. And so for miles in the darkness the way twisted around until they were descending ever deeper below.


    Icicles of frozen seawater heralded the cold as they descended ever deeper into the catacombs and caverns, both carved and full of bones. These were great and empty and formed by some twisted force of nature.


    A frozen, sunken temple.


    None of this was the description of Merlis and the others. This place was darker and colder than any Hell. The cool breath of the frozen temple glimmering in sheets of ice before them, the cool breath burned their cheeks with frostbite.


    The carcass of a massive insect-like thing lay folded on its back nearby. It was larger than a man, a wasp of some kind, the size of a horse, its sting like a dagger.


    "What on Earth is that?" A soldier asked. The lights of the torches shone on its red body with white stripes. It had died of arrows and lay there dead and undecayed, preserved in the frozen realm of death.


    "What are we doing here? There is no treasure. It''s so cold we will soon freeze to death." The captain of the deacon''s men complained. "We are going back."


    "You would mutiny? Go then, no treasure shall be yours. You will be lucky if I do not cast the lot of you out for leaving me in this darkness, alone." The deacon was begging his men to stay, afraid they really would abandon him.


    They did.


    Their torches began to climb back the way they had come. They then disappeared back where the sea was falling from above in some impossible terrain. Up there was a cavern so vast and terrible that it was swallowing the ocean one gulp at a time as the tide reached some height. And all the way down had seemed like miles in the darkness.


    The deacon was alone and then he heard the shrieks and chilling cries of his men where they had gone. When the noises ended he went his way towards them slowly and trembling in sheer terror.


    Something had come and gotten them. Some demons of this frozen pit. Some horror of the cold and darkness that guarded this forbidden place.


    Then he found them. All their bodies lay severed into chopped up bits and among them were the heads of ants the size of the skulls of dogs. Among his severed men were severed ants. But one body of a dead ant shone that the ones his men had killed were mere worker-drones. Soldier ants of even greater size and ferocity had come and battled his men. Some of them were mutated and their bodies lay with the arms of men instead of mandibles. Myrmidons or something from myth. Insects with the hands of men, and the power of speech.


    "Affa Shay, Affa Shay..." The insect-thing chittered ridiculously. The deacon drew forth his sword and drove the point of the blade into the unholy, speaking devil. All dead now, all of his men and all of the ants. He followed the way they had come, hoping to find the real treasure: sunlight.


    But the path led deeper and the place smelled of the dead. A catacombs and more cold greeted him. Worse he had found the larder of the ants and had to fight two of their workers alone in the dark. By shouting and swinging his sword and torch he drove them away, severing one antennae from one of them.


    The deacon tried to go back the way he had come and again took a wrong turn.


    The sweet smell of wine greeted him: ahead was a great face, a great human face like some kind of sphinx. The deacon stood in awe, unable to look away. He dropped the torch and sword, his hands ready to receive Communion.


    It grinned with wisdom and from its lips was mead of honey. The deacon tasted it and was delighted by the tincture. He drank of it and became a reveler, drunk and merry by the flickering light of his discarded torch and it began to gutter out.


    The glow of the honeycomb all around, dripping thick sweet resin as the man below danced naked. He howled and sang hymns with the words in ad-lib with profanity and the names of insect gods buzzing in his skull.


    Thousands of eyes watched him spinning and laughing below.


    Then with a golden mask of the face of Man: their god came forth. Sweet something before it, to preserve and to savor for a very long time. It caused an echoing silence, vibrating the gaze of so many millions of almost-still insects. A praying, laughing and mad sweet part inside the god''s digesting belly is what the deacon expected to become.


    The creature was like a queen bee of massive, gargantuan, elephantine size. Its sage, old design never forgot anything and it was eternal. The gold-ringed antennae moved in slow silence above and its mask glimmered in the honeycomb glow.


    "Aph-shai, Aphshai!" The deacon laughed hilariously. He stood naked before the god. Then he fell to his knees and began to vomit. Then he wept miserably.


    It lifted its mask and shown its hunger to him. Then it took him inside to become a part of it, its jaws closing around the deacon and engulfing him. Alive he was swallowed into it, still breathing and praying. Its fleshy insides conveyed him snugly and hotly into its horde chamber. There its young awaited this sacrament.


    He could feel them crawling onto him in the wet blanket of darkness. They were speaking to their mother in their insect language. Having digested the honey of their wisdom, he knew what they were saying, before they began to feed:


    "Thank you."

 Opal-Eyed Queen

    The Second Siege of Prim-Constantinople:


    "Princess where are we going?" Brea asked her mistress as she struggled to keep up. The princess had already told her handmaiden to stay behind. She made no short step to let her short servant keep pace with her as she hurried through the underground corridors beneath the keep. Outside, the cannons of the Ur-Turks continued to befall her father''s mighty walls.


    Prim-Constantinople was finally being taken by the vicious Vice-Christian hordes. The last stronghold of the Goddess-Mother would soon be defiled by the innumerable Ur-Turk crusaders.


    "Do you really believe my mother? She is going to stay in her chambers with my sisters and the concubines. Eighteen of my father''s knights will not save them from those Ur-Turks. You do realize what their Saracen mercenaries will do to them when the knights are dead and the doors to the queen''s chambers lie in splinters?" The princess replied as she swapped torches for a fresher one and left the lit one behind. She still hoped another girl besides Brea would disobey and abandon the fool queen. Princess Atheyu had taken her miniature crossbow and a dagger and sneaked away. If Brea was caught, she would be executed. The princess would be in worse trouble for abandoning the queen.


    "Of course, I do. But this way leads to the sewers, doesn''t it?" Brea held up her dress and ran behind the princess.


    "It does eventually. If we meet any rats, I can shoot them before they can bite us. I doubt a fifty-handed draw would even seriously injure a soldier in armor. I will take my chances with the rats." The princess claimed. The two young women eventually did find the sewers and the torch had begun to burn low. They had to descend a ladder into the filth. They were knee deep in slime as they waded towards the sea. Although the climax to the siege had occurred around midnight of its first anniversary, it was dawn when the only women to escape Constantinople emerged from the city''s sewers. Both were noble and one of them was royalty. In the burning city behind them noblewomen and common women had found themselves equals as subjects of Saracen enslavement.


    "We made it." Brea sighed in relief as she beheld the rising sun. Behind them columns of smoke were mixing into a black pillar above the city.


    "Whoa there." A man''s voce caught them. At least it was Indo-Greek. Brea cringed immediately, believing that pirates had caught them. The princess did not make that realization as quickly. They turned to find six men standing above them on the mounds above the estuary.


    "Look at them. From the palace and the sewers at-once."


    "Don''t run off ladies. We will let you go unmolested. Would you point us to the palace? Grimaldie here says that this leads up into it."


    "What assurance do you offer us that you will not try to harm us?" Princess Atheyu aimed her tiny weapon. It could potentially do some damage if any of them got closer. These men were not pirates, after all, but common shift swords.


    "I, Grimaldie, master swordsman, do swear on my prestige that we will not attack or capture you. We merely see that you have obviously escaped this one tunnel and do ask if it leads back to the palace."


    "You know that it must. Now ignore us so we may leave." Princess Atheyu demanded.


    "Not so fast." The second shift sword growled. He alone had not unsheathed his own short blades yet and as he stepped forward the princess released her shot at his heart. He instantly unslung a blade and batted the blurred crossbow bolt from the air with impossible speed. Shift swords were renowned for feats of swordplay, but this gesture stunned both women into standing there dumbly as he approached them with malintent.


    "Stop right there, Frace. I gave my word."


    "You can die for it then. These are noble virgins. They are worth their weight in silver." Frace objected.


    The two treacherous men were suddenly squaring off in the shallow mud of the splash-swamp. The footing seemed to favor the younger, faster Frace. He seemed confident that he could quickly kill this fool Grimaldie. As he made his drawing move Grimaldie swiftly darted out of the way of the forceful and elaborate lightning attack and neatly lopped off the interloper''s head with his own, already drawn sword.


    "I apologize for his manners. He usually listens to me. Perhaps next time he will keep his head on straight and remember his place." Grimaldie turned and gallantly gestured at his slain comrade with strangely mirth.


    "You killed him." Atheyu was amazed. She had never seen a decapitation up close before. She had secretly watched executions before, but those had been different, lacking in violence and such a heartbeat.


    "He tried to break my words." Grimaldie explained. His remaining men had dropped into the mire and filed into the tunnel entrance. Grimaldie saluted the women again then followed.


    "We must go." Brea reminded her mistress.


    "Who was that man?" Atheyu asked her friend.


    "He said his name, but I forgot. He is a common shift-sword. Barely better than a pirate. We got lucky now let us not squander our luck."  The noble women fled along the boulder strewn beaches, safe from pirates. All the pirates were circling the ports of the city. The Saracens were greedy plunderers, but much would be left for the lesser scavengers. The ports of the massive city were filled with boats helplessly laden with fleeing refugees and the treasures of the city. There was so much chaos that the pirates sailed among the ships of the Ur-Turks.


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    All day Atheyu and Brea clambered along the shoreline over slime covered boulders and around tidepools of quicksand. The black sand grew warm and then hot as they reached the dunes by midafternoon. By then both women had completely lost their palace slippers and their dresses were dirty and torn. Each of them was exhausted and hungry and had no idea where they were going. Twice Brea looked back at the burning city. The Ur-Turks would not be able to keep the city without torching out the residents. Constantinople was being razed after the long siege. "My lady, where are we going?'' Brea asked her mistress. The princess said nothing but finally sat down with her back to two massive tear drop shaped boulders that leaned upon each other with the beach-slime draped between them.


    "Here." Atheyu sighed. She had absolutely no strength left. The palace life had left her too soft to continue more than a few miles from the city''s walls. Brea shook her hands and cried for a moment in defeat and fear. They had nowhere to go. They had escaped their fate at the palace only to get covered in sewage, their clothes and slippers ruined and at the mercy of the elements and starvation.


    "What is here? We have to go on. To a town or something." Brea said after she had regained her own courage.


    "There are no towns, no villages. Not for many miles. You forget the Ur-Turk hordes have lived off the local kingdom during the siege for an entire year." Atheyu was tired and spoke very slowly, trying to remain alert and brave. "But there is a city, it is very far, and belongs to Vice-Christians."


    "We will be found by hunger or pirates out here." Brea pointed out. At last Brea sat down near the princess. They sat resting and quiet for a few minutes before something happened.


    A low growl sounded from the direction of the waters of the sea. A large dog missing half of its face was watching them. The dog suddenly darted forward barking and snarling menacingly. Both women leapt to their feet and backed up to the boulders. The beast had them cornered. The dog stopped its charge a few feet away and pranced around barking and growling. It seemed that the animal would come to them and tear them apart at any moment as it grew more and more frantic and mean. The princess got her crossbow and readied it. She aimed and shot at the dog but missed. It suddenly lunged at her, and she threw the weapon at it, striking its wounded face.  With a yelp the angry dog retreated a few steps back but continued to herd them against the rocks. Its eyes held a fierce pain and hatred. The creature had become a monster because of its festering wound. Pain had driven it mad.


    The women were both crying and screaming in terror at the dog as it danced back and forth getting ever closer like a pendulum. When it was close enough the dog leapt through the air at Brea who placed herself between the dog and the princess at the last moment. The teeth were flashing as the deadly bite flew for her throat.


    The dog''s head kept flying directly past Brea''s face and splatted harmlessly after it had been severed from the body. The glint of a four-foot-long steel razor sword introduced one of the shift swords from earlier. He was dressed in black and wore a black thawab, often effected by a shift sword''s apprentice.


    "Ladies, I thought you might have needed some help with that mutt." He said "But where are my manners? My name is Afriel. Afriel the Queer, they call me for my capricious nature." He spoke quickly, with an odd inflection. Both women stared in shock and fright, trembling now at the blood and drawn blade. He swung it clean, polished it without a smudge on the cloth and sheathed it. He walked away from them facing the sea and then started eating something. Atheyu led Brea closer. He offered them some dried fish he was eating. They gobbled it up forgetting in one afternoon of hunger a lifetime of palace pleasantries.


    "You are both very brave. I couldn''t resist seeing what becomes of you. I have never seen such a strange escape. I myself have had to fight my way out of danger before, but I am a soldier. What are you? Handmaidens? Never mind. I am not trying to ransom you. I was only curious." Afriel mused, not looking at them but at the gathering storm out at sea. A few gulls cried. The women sat again and held each other near him but still very frightened of the deadly shift sword. He was probably a pirate, really, Brea thought. She still wasn''t entirely sure there was a difference. "I guess if you intend to just lay here and die under rain and wind tonight, I will have to miss out on witnessing your fate. I am going back to Lud, where I live." He told them and began crossing the sand dunes.


    "We must follow him." Atheyu said quietly to Brea.


    "Are you mad? Did you see how easily he killed that dog?" Brea objected.


    "Dare you speak to me..." Atheyu replied without any emphasis. She was far too exhausted to properly chastise her servant. Instead, she climbed to her feet, straightened herself out and set afoot to follow the trail to Lud. Brea reluctantly followed as well.


    It was growing dark. Weariness had overtaken both women, yet they plod onward, barely able to see the shift sword. Ahead in the distance were the lights of Lud. They both collapsed some miles from the city of the Saracens, unable to walk another step. Chill winds were catching up to them from the storm that had come from the sea.


    Afriel the Queer stood there in the winds, so desolate and silent that he was as a tattered visage beside his gout of flames. The wind blew his fire sideways and hot. He had made it somehow from the driftwood that sat petrifying where the sea met the dunes.


    They sat by his fire.


    "Couldn''t go further. See those webs? A Mosest - giant sandspider." Afriel watched the darkness for any signs of movement.


    "Would it come to the fire?" Brea asked, shivering but getting warm near the blazing heat.


    "Yes. But I will kill it if it does." Afriel told her. "And it probably knows that."


    "So, you triumph without a fight?" Atheyu asked.


    "Indeed. It is the correct way to win, if you think about it."


    Then they rested but it was in the night that the daughter of the queen found herself, as herself, but amid these moments of her life:


    The queen and all her handmaidens and many of the women of Constantinople stood with jeweled eyes and silence. They were dead, slain by the queen''s command by the eighteen knights. Then the knights fought against the invaders to the death and joined their queen. They were there also, and their armor was stoned with opals. Their faces were as skulls.


    "My queen what have you done?" Atheyu stared in bewilderment. The queen had left nothing but cold bodies for the Ur-Turks. The princess realized she was now the only one of royal blood left and also that that the queen would forever haunt her.


    She awoke before dawn and the visitants had gone.


    Lud awaited and Afriel dressed the women in the appropriate hijab worn by most of the women in Lud. Now the princess was only a pair of eyes in a brown covering. Her eyes were haunted and bejeweled, a sinister white sheen and dark unsleeping rings under her eyes:


    For every night the visitants returned, staring at the one that did not die with so much vanity. Atheyu had escaped and the dead resented her, staring in silence, the white-eyed handmaidens, the black eye sockets of the skull faced knights and the queen with eyes of opals.

 The Candlemaker

    Such a weapon was brought out from the creek and found to be soaked in the blood of the villagers. They tested the blood for magic, of course, life''s blood, uncontaminated by living things feeding on the dead, maggots and such.


    It was indeed the blood of druids on N''mirilium and she had thrown it into the creek to preserve the proof. It saved her life, the Order intervened and had her locked up instead of killed again. She was bewildered, saying they had taken her to some other realm and it was so good to be home, even if she had to now spend some time in an asylum.


    So an expedition was to be made, except there was one more source of reinforcements.


    One of the newer members of the Order, a young man of another village. This one they did allow to pray for my return as he delivered his own blood to anoint my white bones. Then he died amid the bloodied bones. I am sure it was awful to behold the change from death to life, taking all of what was once a man, now a martyr, to make me whole again.


    There I stood. They wanted me to tell them what it was, what they were up against. And one more thing, they wanted me to lead them, for they had no leader anymore. My rebirth had taken much from me, going from the state of a spirit to the living body again. I was very confused, physical reality is quite sensational and it took me days to return to a coherent state.


    Then I led them to their doom, but insisted that I would not open the way into the darkness below. Not the place men should not tread. There is nothing safe to tread upon, for those that live in the airless frozen darkness Outside, they simply go from place to place and let their bridges down there in the night fall from brick to brick.


    But they tied me to this old gray tree and made me speak by uttering magic at me. I eventually failed to resist them and I spoke the incantation that they wanted me to speak.


    Then the gray clouds came and found me and rained on me and I realized I had stared for a long time into the darkness that they had gone down into. It reminded me of something that had happened before I died and I remembered from my life before, many different things and I gradually became myself again.


    It was raining upon me and my hair grew very long and gray and the rain made my skin all wrinkled. I simply remained tied to the tree, unmoving. I had only my memories to accompany me. I was entirely powerless to escape or to die again, doing what I was there at that tree. I was there and I grew very old and gray and strangely mutated in my growths against the tree, of hair and brow, and of my skin and bones and my nails and my insides, all changed and shriveled and writhed until I was certainly some kind of very ugly creature. It had all certainly hurt a great amount.


    Then I realized that this was the torment of being unable to go into that darkness below and pursue the meaning of my memories of my past life, and of the strange thing it reminded me of, then thing before I died.


    In the memory it was night and I had gone to my home after I had studied at the place of confessions. All the voices echo there forever and teach what nobody wishes to say, all the important facts of life. As one who has learned the difference between a student of life and a teacher of life, I had too much knowledge of death. That was before I died for the first time, when life seemed temporary and precious. I had not learned our place in the cosmos, not yet.


    Suddenly there was something attacking my neighbor''s chickens and it was snarling with a catching rancor voice as it killed chickens. I was going towards the shadowy darkness and realized that what had gone in there was injured. Bleeding already. It was somewhat large also, much larger than a fox. How it had squeezed into the coop I wasn''t sure yet. I opened the door, not realizing that it was already opened before. Then something of monstrous proportions greeted me. My neighbor had already responded, also not noticing the opened door.


    The beast was an old forest creature, some fur covered, primal animal with claws and teeth. It was shot with an arrow and had come galloping out of the woods and bounded to our village. It killed me next.


    Presumably it killed more before it was stopped. But I was dead for a long time after that. The village became a town, the Order grew. My bones became white relics and I prayed over those that kept them.


    I wanted to be the hero, but instead I just got killed as soon as I opened the door. Some farmer''s wife with a huge heavy oven board bludgeoned it to death later on. But not before the creature rampaged and killed several more villagers.


    I wondered if I had become entirely mad.


    Then I realized that but a night had gone by and morning brought a fresh torment. The buzzing I had not noticed before, it was gone. They had come.


    "Oh what fresh morning Hell?" I screamed at the mishaped drones. These foul concoctions bore the wings and eyes of insects, the parts of mythical things protruded, they had on them stingers and pincers and also like legs of grasshoppers or the parts of a bombardier beetle, shooting boiling venom at its victims. It was not the chimera of insect parts, on these new gods from below, it was the parts of men that were there, plain in the daylight.


    I found the sight of them so repulsive that I thought my head might burst from the pressure of containing such an awesome sight as this. These horrid monstrosities, insect abominations, diabolical stuff of nightmares, they saw me and discussed my fate.


    "We must now leave this one to die." Thremex said.


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    "I want to eat it, let me eat this human." Spexem spoke.


    "We shall not do either of those. We shall make it follow us, it is quite mad." Phexet decided. They claimed to be gods and who was I to argue? I doubted my faith then, in sight of such horrors.


    So the gods led the way after they freed me. I needed to find some part of my humanity and I followed the buzzing that gave it to me. The buzzing of bees. The hum of the gods as I walked along behind them, their prisoner.


    I dreaded to know the definition of their chittering. It was their laughter. These gods were lesser gods. So they were lesser gods, or Lesser Gods of Aphshai, for a queen bee, a top god, this bug called Aphshai. They said the name of this demon with strange amount of treachery, for their voices are like voices a person could make.  It is the main way they communicate, forsaking their pheromones and other insect ways of communication. They grow human limbs and speak human language.


    It is more than that: they have strange agendas. They had the treachery of one Mirkin go rewarded with a release, and a treasure of gemstones.


    They showed me his image with the uniformed and perfectly cut stones of many colors all in a heap before him. The image could move and I watched in horror. It showed all in a way that seemed to skip time, only telling the fate of the gemstones and what they really were.


    It seemed that this was the joke that the monsters had played on the man.


    The gemstones could whisper evil things, making men covet them. They called to be fed, called to become something more. First it was blood for the taste to whatever a man might desire, the hum would start. The gemstone became a gelatinous jewel, something taking shape, somehow becoming whatever it is that the man wants, promising, swearing to grant the wish to become the object of desire. I watched in horror.


    Mirkin sold one of the gemstones and it then did happen. The money changer did not have enough blood he could give. He knew he must feed it more but he knew not what. Animals, pets, neighbors. It grew and grew, but it hummed louder too.


    So then the man gave it the wrong thing, but the right thing it swore to him.


    His wife came home and found all of the wrongness. She found the huge digesting mass of cocooned and translucent vileness in her home. Her little baby girl was gone. She looked and saw what he had done.


    "What have you done?" She screamed at him. She raked at him with her fingers and she clawed at him until she had his eyes out. There was plenty of blood everywhere and then it burst open, hatching quite quickly, this one.


    It was smaller and less developed than the Lesser Gods I was with. I watched the image that they showed me of this newborn god, its name Vermilex. It was some gigantic wasp-like creature hovering, its flesh red and its stripes white. Black ichor already seeped from it, but not in the quantities that the Lesser Gods polluted their path with.


    There were more but I cannot recall any after that, not with enough clarity to give such details again and again twenty or more times. I do assure you that the violence and cruelty and perversions only increased. Mirkin delivered the tokens of death, the gemstones that were really just the gods themselves.


    The demons wrought destruction and horror throughout. It was not enough to torture and eat and slay many people. The demon insects also called themselves Aphshai''s Children and forced the worship of their demon god throughout the lands.


    Mirkin was a human that was given a change inside, to become the speaking part of Aphshai. Right now, Aphshai is in many parts. I can understand that.


    These Children of Aphshai grew in their numbers until their spread from one village to another found the armored knights of the Church coming to destroy them. Battles were fought, but in the end the monsters were never defeated, only driven away.


    And Mirkin goes on to become Millken. Bishop Millken. He is Mirkin.


    This is why Bishop Millken has halted the knights of the Church from attacking villages. Not to put an end to bloodshed because of a religious difference. The Children of Aphshai are an evil religion. They worship a false, demonic creature that calls itself a god. And Millken, this man rose to power not too long ago, from the position of a monk.


    But all the while he preaches that non-violence is the answer and that the time for the raids to stop, has come. So the raids stop and the insects return, an infestation even more prominent. The traitor is the leader that we have come to depend upon. We are led, as sheep, to the slaughter.


    So then the gods took me down into the darkness after showing me all of these things. I wondered at time, the strange convoluted meaning of time becoming a strange perception, while with these beings. It was indeed cold, but not airless. The air was very damp and smelled of rot and the frozen horrors of the bottom.


    And all around us the sacks melted flesh inside and glowed. Amid them there was a foxfire of the gasses. The waxy ichor dripped down among that place all around.


    I saw then that so much of the stuff had congealed that at the top of many black spirals stood such splendid glowing colors of witch-light. And there, amid all of its rainbow auras, a maker of the gems, the hive-thing, the very god Aphshai.


    So I saw at last the demon enemy. It saw me too. And Mirkin was there, having brought more dead for them to feast upon, their young ever growing in that place, unable to take form without desire.


    I had much desire, to be dead, to be rid of the nightmare, to find my humanity, in general. I knew then why they had kept me. Death, disguise and the very core of their lusts: humanity itself.


    Aphshai welcomed me and fed me the honey. The stuff changed me. I became as their mad little puppet, always as they asked. I chopped the dead brought by Mirkin and not even that treacherous fiend stayed to watch such butchery. Then as the keeper in the cold dark nest I went and began to feed the little monsters, one at a time.


    But I got the death I wanted, or at least part of it. As Mirkin had a part of Aphshai inside, I too obtained a part of Aphshai. In my madness I ate one of the gemstones, unable to bear the agony of my tasks any longer.


    It did no go down easy. The gemstone was large and cut into my throat as I rammed it past my windpipe. Finally it was inside me. Maybe now I could die.


    Instead I did somehow digest the gemstone, coughing blood, however. I was again changed. I could see how the great wax lights were made, how the gemstones were made, how the humming, the honey, the horror, how it was all made.


    It was laid bare for me and I could see it all. Aphshai among the great wax cathedrals. Each hexagon a candle tower of all the skeletons in honey. The choir of insects sang like angels as the light shone upon the candles of Aphshai.


    Then I threw it back up, along with a lot of blood. I was still changed and I started to escape. I fell down and laid there with blood coming out of my mouth. Then I got up on my hands and knees and started crawling that way.


    It took long through the darkness on my hands and knees, blood from my mouth as I went. I then saw daylight and emerged on a beach somewhere, a different place then where I went in.


    It was not long before Bishop Millken''s knights found me, but in such an unexpectedly distant place that they instead took me as the one from the asylum. There I was to remain, listening to the stories of those who loyally served the Order and slowly forgetting my own.

 More With Honey

    A stream was crossed by three men in armor, with weapons and the torches they carried, from the darkness of the forest, as the first light of dawn seemed to make it darker still. They had such eyes that glimmered in countenance of conscious glaring of devious plots against the souls of humanity. The buzzing was inhuman and it was felt, not heard. It was known, this unknowable ancient horror that had taken this place.


    Kaledane, a village like any other. A place of beauty. A place infected, infested, controlled by an evil. An insect-evil, an evil as old as all life.


    Where morning light was once a beautiful mist of dreams and devotion, now it was only a veil. The morning star beside the light of life, through the clouds of dawn, a ball glowing dimly, weakly. The sun didn''t know it was daytime. A dreamy sublight prevailed, like almost waking to find a insect staring evilly. This was no insect.


    Torches flung at it, dropped, replaced with arrows on their bows in their hands. It easily dodged the torches that spun through the air. It hovered there, the silhouette of nightmares.


    "Who doth dare, who doth dare my home?" it spoke to them, a voice like a human''s voice, spoken from the mouth of a demon. A mockery.


    Their names they spoke, as it bid them say who they dared to be as they entered.


    "I am Aethelwyrd." one of the professional slayers gave a word to the pain he offered, hesitating not, as he fired an arrow into the shade of the winged thing.


    "And this is from Mouldewulf." the second man also stung the creature with a whistling spike of pain, the steel-tip entering its thorax.


    "A promise of death," Ghargan grunted "with love from Ghargan." as his handax sailed at an angle and took from it a twitching leg. It had five more, and wings and a pair of human arms protruding unnaturally from its massive body.


    Light betrayed its frame, showing itself in all its awfulness. Their eyes were wide, never before seeing this particular kind of monster. Nothing they had fought before was like this. Nothing so unnatural had ever called a challenge to the Faith that held the realm together.


    A wasp the size of a man, with red shiny carapace and white stripes. They saw it now, dripping its ichor, a black syrup. Its eyes bled this also, like thick wax-like tears, compound eyes that saw all at once. It spoke, now sounding angry.


    "To harm a god, this it to make a noise and to come here and to find what must be worse than death." it said in an almost human sounding voice. But an almost human sounding voice used by such an insect-like monster. A creature born after the youngest human in this village, and still as old as sin. It was born again and again, a cloned copy of each of its people. A race shunned and in the shadows of Creation. A living horror.


    It retreated saying just one word that must be its own name for itself:


    "Meristhrex" buzzing and vanishing and bleeding, stuck with two arrows and a severed limb convulsing on the ground. Its ichor continued to spill from the air it trod, leaving a trail easy enough for them to follow. And follow they would, these were not ordinary men, but crazed slayers of monsters. Courage could falter, but their eyes were wild with a lust for the blood of demons. God''s very own madmen.


    To its strange speech, alien thoughts and will proclaimed without explanation, Aethelwyrd said his own darkening thoughts:


    "To enter a place like this, a quiet place, a silent place, a place without the presence of the echoes of life. To enter a place like this is to know the meaning of fear. Here, in this place, a fate worse than death has grown. Death was only the beginning of the suffering of those that were here."


    "Yes and now we shall go and discover what is the meaning of the horror it has promised." Mouldewulf sounded fairly excited as he readied another arrow. To die was to live, to die was to be Mouldewulf, and to live he always sought such a death.


    Ghargan picked up his ax and carefully cleaned the toxic syrup from it, tempted to lick it, but instinctively knowing it was a venom. "For the love of death, in the name of Christ, Amen."


    These three such men then with their armor and weapons and fervor began their entrance into the dead place. All around they saw what had become of the villagers that once lived in Kaledane. Not all villagers, though. Soon they found the ones that were less lucky.


    Meristhrex had crucified the ones they saw first. Flies danced silently around them in small black halos. Doors barricaded against the intrusion of an evil siege were kicked in by the men who came to avenge. They found that something had come from below in the homes and eaten the rest. They were digested alive by the disgusting blobs, such cocoons that were transparent enough to see the bones inside of the cocoons, of women and children, none were spared.


    "Another species burrowed up from below." Aethelwyrd noticed the small antmounds in each earthen floor. "Meristhrex must have summoned her people."


    "You always know their ways, Aethelwyrd." Mouldewulf complained about the uncanny talent of his comrade.


    "Yes but it is you they always like to bring their parley to." Aethelwyrd pointed out.


    Then the three stood in the center of the village and stared at the festooned church. The cross still remained, but decorated in the white streams of silk they had strung all around.


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    "Must be the nest." Ghargan was ready to go in and raise Hell on the holy ground.


    "Wait." Aethelwyrd told him. "It is a trap."


    "Where has our prey gone?" Mouldewulf looked away from the church in white, to the other shadowy places. They had lost the trail of the wasp. It had stopped bleeding, its ichor congealed like a black wax.


    "Listen." Ghargan could hear it buzzing from somewhere nearby. It was watching them and they could all feel its eyes on them. Now it was hunting them, apparently.


    "I hear nothing." Mouldewulf said and thought about his mother for a moment. It was an odd thought, in the midst of such atrocity.


    "I feel something. Something like love and trust." Aethelwyrd looked worried and sounded worried.


    "We are safe, even though it intends us harm. That is what it is trying to do." Ghargan wasn''t impressed.


    The buzzing intensified and so did the sensation of peacefulness, of love and other positive feelings, all mixed together like the notes of a song. A song with only one note, a note no human song would ever play, humming evilly and relentlessly. It was Meristhrex doing this, somehow, from somewhere nearby.


    "Resist it or we will become like it wants us. These people were under its power, afraid and unable to do more than make themselves prisoners. They succumbed to this vile willpower." Aethelwyrd knew and said.


    But the buzzing continued and one by one they each dropped their weapons to the ground and began to walk away from each other.


    Aethelwyrd was its first victim. That same day it erected a cross for him, its myrmidons with human parts, a bit of a man, but mostly just enormous and very strong ants, they helped. Then it caught him and covered his mouth with one of its hands. It had gotten more and more efficient and powerful as it annihilated the people that had lived here. It had matured and now knew its craft well.


    Aethelwyrd tried to scream for help, but it held him and stung him. Paralyzed by its injection he had not the ability to withstand it as it nailed him to the cross. He saw it had removed the arrows they had shot it with and its wounds were scabs of molten ichor, now dried to dark spots on its red body with white stripes.


    The warrior Aethelwyrd felt the pain of its hammerings as it used manmade tools and nails to fasten him by his wrists to the cross. Then it left him there to die in agony, wishing for death. Making a wish to die, so that his suffering would end. This was a fate worse than death, worse than just getting killed.


    "Come down off that cross. Come down, little one." the thing in red spoke, its voice conveying something like twisted sardonic mirth. The cruelty was so primal that it was like it had inherited a loathing and passion for destroying humans. This was not so, it actually loved mankind very much, and its cruelty was experimental, servicing its master''s curiosity. It wanted the soul of mankind, to be first in Creation as they were.


    Aethelwyrd moaned and a breeze then came and some of the fogs of the dying place of reason lifted.


    Ghargan loved his ax more than anything, despite the fact that his primary attack was to throw it. It was Ghargan''s ax and it made him happier than anything. It even said so on his book of life. Let us all stare at where it is writ upon Ghargan''s book of life that he loves that ax and it is like a mother, or better yet, a wife. It literally describes that he chose to take note of this and didn''t go very far before he retrieved that ax, seeking the source of the buzzing.


    Meanwhile Mouldewulf had sought the source of the buzzing, that forgotten source. He wandered into the shadows, but was not the first to be caught by Meristhrex. He wandered until nightfall and as if mesmerized, hypnotized, under a spell of the buzzing. It was his mother''s voice singing a lullaby and he could clearly hear it. Nobody but he could hear this siren song. They each felt compelled to seek their greatest love or joy or hopes, whatever that part of their mind affected by the buzzing of Meristhrex was touched. A memory of love so dear, of whatever would bring them the most joy or happiness to find.


    This is why Ghargan''s idea of his ax was important, because he just coincidentally loved his ax. It became relevant now as he rearmed himself and was ready again for battle, for he also loved to use his ax, of course, and not from his book of life, but simple logic. So the breeze of Aethelwyrd''s dying breath came with a bit of reason, after all.


    But although Ghargan had his weapon and was ready to fight, three of the ant-men came for him. He did kill one by throwing his ax to its head. The other two charged him very fast and he tore the ax free of the creature''s dead skull and used it like a normal handax. This was enough to behead a second of the deadly enemies. But the last one, with its scissoring sword-like mandibles did manage to do the same to him. Then it replaced the head of its companion with the man''s head, for whatever reason such a creature would do such a thing. It dragged the other dead ant away, as well.


    A wandering nun of nightfall was saying that Meristhrex was raised by an evil cultist, a season ago. The buzzing was away, underground and beyond a distance. It was a sound, after-all.


    "Then there is something here, that can kill it?" Mouldewulf asked her.


    "You could." she told him.


    "I shall do so, but how did you come above and find me?"


    "I put wax in my ears. There is some down here in the cellar."


    "And do you happen to know where it hides, in the daytime?"


    "Very cleverly upon the top of the church."


    "Then you are right. I could kill it. I will do so when it is alone atop the church, with wax in my ears and a bow in my hands" Mouldewulf swore.


    He went out just before the next morning could shine and could not find his bow.


    Not until two ants came out of nowhere and shot arrows at him, using human arms and hands that grew from them.


    Mouldewulf exclaimed in agony and his blood shot out of him as he tore the arrows free from the shallow wounds. He rushed at the ant-men and stabbed the two arrows into the first one. It used its swift insect legs to carry itself away.


    The second ant-man shot another arrow, this time through one of Mouldewulf''s hands. Out of nowhere another ran up and tackled him to the ground. He was surrounded!


    They swarmed on him and pinned him. He noted that the two sentries had used the bows they had dropped, he and Aethelwulf.


    Meristhrex came hovering.


    "Tonight is a special night. My younger siblings will all hatch tonight. They fed well." Meristhrex spoke more.


    "What are you?" Mouldewulf realized it was giving him parley. He went for the monologue and got it:


    "Ancient gods that envy your ungrateful attitude in your role as first in Creation. I serve those gods, I am Meristhrex and I am the first born here and now, although we come again with each age of man, sooner or later. I was raised by a greedy man that believed my promises when I was but a gemstone. Then I grew into what I am now, as he fed me and taught me. Now I am before you, am I not a god?"


    "You are not a god."


    "Then die." Meristhrex cursed. It produced the hand ax in its human hand that grew from its side and chopped off one of Mouldewulf''s arms, the one with the arrow through his hand, leaving only his left one. He bled and fell unconscious after a long and agonized scream of pain and horror.


    The impaled arm flopped around like a dying thing and then stopped.


    They took it with them and left him there for dead.


    And then the sun began to rise.

 Revenge Of The Burned Queen

    Beautiful young women were chosen from, for the Sundan king¡¯s new bride. The most beautiful was chosen, but she was not merely the most beautiful of all women. Hester was no ordinary bride; she was not just a royal concubine to birth an heir. She was the daughter of the high priest of Elyte, patron deity of Sundan.


    Hester became the queen of Sundan, empowered by a long lineage of priests. The great temple of Elyte, of Sundan, stood at the mouth of the Living River. Even the opulent palace of the Sundan throne was simple and small by comparison to the ancient basalt pyramid. The temple of Elyte had stood since the beginning of civilization.


    The two armies of Sundan were of the king¡¯s and of the high priest¡¯s. With two armies there was a balance of power. With such power Sundan could not be threatened by foreign kingdoms.


    All of the lands of Javarta paid tribute to the kingdom of Sundan and were under their protection. Sundan ruled over the tribes of primitive hunter-gatherers and crude villages of the surrounding jungles, the smaller kingdoms of Pada and Gung and the Living River. All of it was ruled in the name of their lawful king and also their benevolent god, Elyte. For hundreds of years their dynasties continued, unopposed.


    The Sundan kingdom held the most wealth and power of all the lands of Javarta. The river ports imported all the finery that could be traded for the copper tools and weapons made in Sundan. Obsidian, tapestries, medicines and alchemy were all exported from Sundan river ports to the Stygian and Borean lands to the north. Even the black lotus and other famous herbs of sorcery had originally come from the jungles and gardens of Sundan.


    When King Azrect¡¯s father died, his heir was made king. The Sundan people were revelers and romantics. He was hailed as a heroic king that could defend them and bring greater prosperity to a people that were already the most prosperous of their time. The coronation was only a small celebration compared to the king¡¯s wedding to Hester.


    The people of Sundan were pious devotees, scholars, musicians, merchants, coppersmiths, surgeons and law-abiding citizens.


    They were also conquerors. Before King Azrect chose a bride, he was a general in his father¡¯s army. He had laid waste to the invading horde of the Phygians.


    The Phygians were a nomadic people, their homeland lay in ruins under a divine glacier. They came from the furthest lands, destroying and devouring everything in their path. They were brutal subhumans, armed with bone clubs and stone axes and wearing masks made of human skin. They ate the dead of the battlefield and burned everything they couldn¡¯t take with them.


    Azrect the Destroyer came upon the Phygian Horde and did not fear their vast numbers. A vicious and blood-soaked battle ensued. The carnage stretched over a great distance as the horde charged again and again against the stalwart ranks of Sundan soldiers. When the fighting ended, most of the disciplined and armored soldiers of Sundan were still standing. Azrect had led them to victory and stood atop a pile of dead Phygians.


    The Phygians all lay dead by the copper arrowheads and spear points. Their corpses were hacked to pieces and piled high by the blades of copper axes and swords. The heads of the Phygians were mounted on poles and left to line what was then named the Road of Skulls.


    Then came the boat building people. Where they had come from and who they were was lost, even to them. They had come from the coastlands to the west of Javarta, a people that were erased from history by the advance of the Phygians. They walked the Road of Skulls and arrived at the Living River. There they built new boats and unfurled red sails brought with them as they wandered, starving and knowing only thievery and murder. They became raiders and plundered the villages along the tributaries of the Living River that flowed from Sundan.


    When the red sails raided along the Living River, the high priest Muthlim demanded that the king take action. The sleek craft of the red sail people moved swiftly upstream and attacked by surprise, marauding and slaving. Their boldness had to be punished.


    King Azrect left his trusted and wise queen with the throne of Sundan and took his army to punish the invaders. They marched out in armor made from copper plates and with an ax, a sword and a spear of copper for each soldier, as well as the woven cloaks of the king¡¯s army. At the front of his soldiers marched King Azrect. He would not return unless the red sail people were all destroyed. His soldiers would follow him to their deaths. He called his army: ¡°My sons¡±.


    As time passed and the king¡¯s army did not return, the high priest became confident that they would not. The army of the temple looked upon the palace, anticipating that Muthlim would seize power. He made no secret of his ambitions, saying to everyone that he would soon be king, because there was no heir. There was only one problem, he needed proof that the king was dead, making the queen a widow.


    Whoever she married would become king of Sundan.


    The few soldiers that returned spoke of a horrible battle in which both the king and the enemy were annihilated. Instead of arresting them for leaving their king behind, Queen Hester allowed them to keep their honor. They became the only guardians of the palace, for the king¡¯s army was gone forever.


    The high priest, his true nature revealed, denounced his daughter¡¯s decision publicly. Muthlim proposed that a new king should be chosen by Hester, following the laws of Sundan. When no suitors defied the high priest¡¯s ambitions, Muthlim demanded that she accept him as her husband.


    Hester refused his advances.


    The high priest did not accept his daughter¡¯s scorn. He used the army of the temple to assault the palace, intending a coup, in the form of a forced marriage. When the palace siege was ended, Queen Hester stood before her father, High Priest Muthlim, on the holy day: Elythian.


    She would not submit to him and used her fingernails to scratch his face. Muthlim, dripping blood, demanded justice. He had her arrested and sentenced to disfigurement by burning. There was no trial.


    The queen was tied to the pillars of her own throne room and stripped. Copper swords were heated in the braziers used for burning the incense of Elythian. Then the acolytes took the swords and seared her skin with them. They drew patterns on her body and marked her beautiful face and sliced away her hair. The smell of her burning hair made many of the witnesses flee in horror, for it overwhelmed the fumes of the sacred braziers.


    All the time they were burning her, she did not scream. Her hatred for her father silenced her and fed upon the pain. There was a look in her eyes that had learned to deny mercy. She became someone different during her ordeal. When they had finished with her: Queen Hester was banished, naked and suffering from the torture. She went to the Living River and her followers went with her. There she resided in agony as her wounds slowly healed.


    Muthlim became a usurper, a self-appointed king and still the high priest. His temple army abandoned their barracks and moved into the palace. They despoiled it, treating it not as their new home, but as a conquered place. No repairs were made from the siege and most of the servants fled from the abuse.


    While civil unrest weakened Sundan: the remaining red sails came. They were bold, expecting that the king¡¯s army was the best defense of the rich kingdom. When they met no resistance, they continued all the way to the mouth of the Living River and found the great basalt pyramid undefended. The temple of Elyte stood unguarded and full of treasure.


    The red sails left their boat and plundered the temple, touching all of the golden tears of Elyte. When the priests tried to stop them, warning them of the curse of their god, they were ignored. The chief of the red sails, Berek, grabbed one of the priests and asked:


    ¡°What do you mean this gold is cursed?¡± Berek asked, holding a handful of the teardrop shaped gold.


    ¡°When it is touched, a day and a night of agony will be yours. Only the absolution of the highest authority of Elyte can lift the curse. Undying pain will be yours for each moment you held the gold and for each tear of Elyte.¡± The priest, Amolthol, told the chief of the red sails.


    ¡°You are either a fool to believe that or a liar that thinks I am a fool.¡± Berek laughed and shoved the priest away.


    ¡°I am neither. I think you and your warriors will suffer in vain. The curse is not meant as a safeguard, it is simply a test from our god, Elyte.¡± Amolthol spoke from where he had landed on the floor.


    ¡°I see. You have a very clever wit. Perhaps there is something suspicious about all this unguarded gold. You will come with us, as a hostage.¡± Berek told the priest. He made a gesture and two of his men helped Amolthol to his feet and held him by his arms, taking him prisoner.


    The red sails finished stealing as much gold as they could carry and left the temple. They began to head back the way they had come, when the first sensations of the curse began. One by one they became uncomfortable and then they became distressed. Finally, their bodies began to ache and hurt all over.


    As the red sails succumbed to their distress, they grunted and growled and moaned. Their complaints needed no explanation. All of them had touched as many of the tears of Elyte as they could and most of them carried handfuls of it in their pockets and pouches. None of them had handled as much of it as their chief, Berek. He was soon in the throes of misery and with his voice strained and his face contorted, he again grabbed the priest, Amolthol.


    ¡°What is happening? Tell me again, the curse! What do we do? Rid ourselves of the gold?¡± Berek gripped the priest.


    ¡°That would be a wise first step. Take it back to the temple.¡± Amolthol told them.


    The red sails, hoping to end their torment, returned all of the stolen gold in a pile at the foot of the great basalt temple. Then, taking their hostage, they fled. Some of them writhed and others sought to end their suffering by throwing themselves upon their copper swords.


    Bruises and impalement only added to the pain. They were undying and their wounds did not bleed or bring death. They were screaming and cackling, being driven mad by their wretched state.


    It was then that their boat landed where Queen Hester and her followers were camped along the Living River.


    In her presence the red sails¡¯ horrible state was greatly reduced. Her holy devotion to the god Elyte was like a soothing aura. While they still felt pain all over their bodies: it was no longer unbearable. Amolthol told the red sails:


    ¡°You are in the presence of the queen of this land and the daughter of the high priest of Elyte. That is why your suffering is lessened. If she were restored to her destined position then she would be the highest authority of Elyte. She could absolve you.¡±


    ¡°Then that is what she must do.¡± Berek said. He staggered towards her tent, pushing aside her followers. He flung it open and found her in a more pitiful state than even his cruel warrior¡¯s heart could ignore.


    Berek stared at the burned queen, her legendary beauty stolen, her youthfulness gone from her hate-filled eyes. He had never seen anything so awful and pitiful before. Many were the villagers he had killed or enslaved and he was an otherwise pitiless man, but his own suffering was mirrored a thousand times on the young queen he stared at. In a strange way he felt that he loved her.


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    Berek, instead of making his demand of her at sword point, knelt and offered her his sword across his upturned hands.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± Queen Hester asked.


    ¡°Berek of the red sail people. I stole the tears of Elyte and I am cursed for it. I seek absolution, but I will do what I must for you, on my honor.¡± Berek swore.


    ¡°Your honor? The honor of a marauder? A slaver? I cannot give you absolution. My father holds both the throne and he also speaks for our god. If he were deposed then it would be me who holds the right to say you are forgiven.¡± Queen Hester told the red sail chief.


    ¡°I will prove the honor of my people. They will follow me to death, as the army of your king followed him against my own father, so too will my warriors follow me. I will follow you; I will give you my honor if you will lift the curse.¡± Berek swore to Queen Hester.


    ¡°Know that my father is the one who did this to me. He tried to force me to make him my husband and I refused. That is why I am without a kingdom and that is why I am scarred from burns. He did this to me when I drew his blood, giving me no trial. I was the most beautiful of all women. I was a queen and I was constant. This is my punishment for adhering to the most basic dignity a woman can expect. Look upon me, Berek. My pain is yours until you have fulfilled your pact. There is no other way!¡± Queen Hester spoke and her words were heard by all of the red sails, as they gathered behind their kneeling chief.


    ¡°All of us swear. Swear to this pact of suffering, all.¡± Berek said in the old language of the red sails. Long ago they too had a civilization, fallen from grace. It was not merely redemption for their dwindling tribe, but also for their ancestors. They all spoke his words aloud and with sincerity.


    ¡°There is no time like this moment, for our battle. What rest is there, for ones as wicked as you?¡± Queen Hester addressed all of the assembled warriors. ¡°Stay close to me and your pain is much easier and your wounds cannot cause you to die, for your suffering is cursed. You have undying pain for the duration of your curses.¡±


    ¡°This we have learned. Before we knelt before you, the magnitude of our agony was excruciating, wilder and more savage than any torture could inflict. The cruelty of your benevolent god is ironic.¡± Berek replied with the honesty of a man with purpose.


    ¡°You have no idea.¡± Hester said under her breath, speaking to the thoughts in her mind of what she was going to do to her father when she had him at her mercy. ¡®Cruelty¡¯ would not cover the meaning of what she intended to do to him.


    ¡°Which way is it to your palace?¡± Berek asked.


    ¡°I will lead the way.¡± Queen Hester said with admirable resolve. Berek had felt a strange admiration, adoration, even a kind of love for her. When she led him and his warriors it was more than just a feeling. He had never followed a woman before, but Hester was more than just a woman. She was, in his eyes, his queen.


    It was almost dawn when the band of red sail warriors arrived at the smashed and unguarded gates of the palace. Inside was the entire temple army. They didn¡¯t bother to have a sentry.


    ¡°We cannot enter through the front gate.¡± Hester decided.


    ¡°Why not? It would be easy.¡± Berek pointed his drawn sword at the smashed gates.


    ¡°Because my father might escape. We must find him before the fighting begins.¡± Hester explained. Berek nodded as he realized that she was right.


    ¡°Truly you hunger for revenge.¡± Berek said with a strange tone of voice. Hester blinked at him, surprised. He sounded like he wanted her. She could not believe such a thing, for her beauty was entirely gone, her face and body were covered in patterned sword brands. As she turned from him, she could feel his eyes on her. Her heart was telling her that Berek desired her and not for her beauty.


    ¡°I shall have my revenge, Berek. It will be my legend, more than my beauty ever was.¡±


    ¡°And I shall see you.¡± Berek told her, walking behind her as she led him and his warriors around the palace.


    ¡°This entrance leads inside, directly to the royal chambers.¡± Hester pointed to a small door on a patio. The steps of it went down into a pool of water that was connected to the Living River. It was a royal bathing pool, disused.


    The warriors hesitated as something massive stirred in the dark water. A human torso, with the head and limbs chewed off, lay on the steps. The massive reptile watched the warriors with impunity.


    ¡°What is that?¡± Berek asked Hester.


    ¡°Sarganki. A giant crocodile. Normally he would not be so bold, but the chaos and disorder have given him license. When all of this is over, I shall have him driven away by professional hunters.¡± Hester mused.


    The warriors and the queen went inside the forgotten entrance and straight into the heart of the palace: the royal chambers. Tapestries of King Azrect were defiled and the queen paused and glared at the vandalism.


    While she stared, Berek walked up behind her and spoke quietly:


    ¡°Your king was a brave man and a great warrior.¡± Berek said to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. Hester felt a shudder at his touch, but she did not admonish him or pull away.


    ¡°We have work to do.¡± Is what she said.


    A female servant came around the corner and spotted them. She was about to raise the alarm when Hester suddenly grabbed the girl and drew her copper dagger across the servant¡¯s throat and killed her, dropping the body onto the floor. ¡°Show no mercy. Kill everyone you find, except Muthlim. He is to be taken alive, no matter what. I will invent justice for him and it will not be death.¡±


    The warriors moved together, near her. If they got too far from her then their pain quickly became too much and they would collapse, writhing on the floor and crying out. Instead of that happening they stayed close, tethered to Queen Hester by their curse.


    As they found the temple guards they killed them, stabbing them repeatedly with their Sundan-made copper swords and chopping them with stone axes. Some of the raiders had black bows, obsidian daggers or spears with bone tips that they used.


    Then the alarm was raised.


    The army of the temple came flooding towards the intruders from every corridor. The sound of battle rang out, copper on copper and screams of war. Their weapons broke in the clash and they took new ones from the dead as they went. Whenever a red sail warrior was struck down, he simply got back up and kept fighting, despite mortal wounds.


    The soldiers of the temple had never fought in battles. They were numerous and well-armed and trained, but they had never known the life of a warrior. They fell as fast as they came, dying wherever they met a warrior of the red sail people. Their death cries were like music to Hester. She stood in the center of her warriors and they protected her.


    Copper swords bent against helmets and broke as they cut through flesh and struck bone. Spears snapped and axes with stone heads shattered into ribcages. There was so much blood that it formed a red spray, a mist that could be tasted in the air.


    The fighting continued, the temple soldiers were pressed towards their killers by those behind them in the narrow halls and the corridors of the palace. Every room and every staircase was filled with scattered corpses. Blood dripped from the stone beams and ran down the columns. The paved floors were stained with the blood of Hester¡¯s enemies.


    The red sail warriors could feel pain but they could not die, not as long as the curse remained. Instead, they fought on with swords driven into them, their hearts pierced, arrows sticking out of them and even with a hand or a foot cut off. Nothing could stop the cursed warriors.


    They fought on, the battle raging. It continued until the bodies were piled high in the corridors and the temple guards and acolytes and disloyal servants were each found and killed. None were spared.


    There was no escape for Muthlim.


    Muthlim sat in dread, upon the stolen throne. The fighting seemed to be all around and the sound of battle came from every direction. The screams of the dying froze him in terror. He sat upon the throne and was still there when his daughter and her unkillable warriors came upon him. He stared at the blasphemy.


    Never before had anyone in penance, the curse of Elyte, known battle. It was sacrilege, but at seeing it, he feared the cursed men and their bent and bloody copper swords. They limped and dragged themselves towards him, most of them already dead from so many mortal wounds, and yet they could not die, sustained as they were by the curse of Elyte¡¯s tears.


    The high priest had finally realized that the red sails were cursed by the tears of Elyte, but only when it was too late. The temple guards, the whole army, was slaughtered to the last man. The red sails had killed them all without mercy. Muthlim was alone and he was surrounded by unbleeding warriors with ghastly and horrifying injuries. They should be dead, all of them, but the curse would not let their suffering end until their penance was complete.


    Muthlim raised his hands to absolve them in prayer. That is when he saw who had led them. His traitorous daughter, Hester. He forgot what he was doing as he looked upon her.


    ¡°Hester.¡± He snarled.


    ¡°It is I, father. I am the true queen and you are a false king, a false man. You betrayed me and all of Sundan.¡± Queen Hester accused him. ¡°I denounce you as the high priest of Elyte.¡±


    ¡°You have no power to do that!¡± Muthlim yelled.


    He was thrown down and his priestly vestments were stripped from him.


    Hester went to him and took from him his priestly vestments and then she put them on and went and sat on the throne.


    ¡°Go ahead, say your prayers.¡± Queen Hester told him confidently.


    Muthlim stood in his loincloth and prayed over the undying warriors that held him at spearpoint. The prayer was long and he repeated it several times, to no effect.


    When they did not fall dead from their wounds, he grew grave. Hester was the new high priest of Elyte and she was also queen of Sundan. Muthlim had no power left.


    He expected mercy from his daughter, believing her to be weak.


    ¡°What will you do with me? Exile me?¡± Muthlim asked. He did not know that the warriors surrounding him would not harm him. He stared at his daughter¡¯s cold and merciless eyes. She had learned something horrible when he had punished her by burning her. Muthlim began trembling as he realized he was at her mercy, and that she had none.


    ¡°Bind him and I shall give you absolution.¡± Queen Hester told her warriors. They obeyed and when Muthlim was helplessly bound in ropes, they all knelt to receive a blessing from her god. She spoke the prayer over them and their pain was no more. Almost all of them bled out and died, their honor replenished.


    A few of the red sail warriors still remained and their honor was to remain as her soldiers. Among the dead or the living, she did not see Berek, when she looked for him. She worried that he had fallen dead among the carnage of the palace when she had prayed for him.


    ¡°I have work to do.¡± She told herself. Muthlim heard her speak and asked, his voice weak and pathetic:


    ¡°What work will you do?¡± He whimpered.


    ¡°Amolthol!¡± Queen Hester yelled loudly. Her voice carried throughout the silent and blood-splattered halls of her palace. She waited and soon the priest arrived. He had stood, during the battle, outside the front gate and gladly obeyed her summoning.


    ¡°Yes, my queen.¡± Amolthol had seen the carnage and felt ill, but hid his feelings, in the name of justice.


    ¡°My justice will be revenge.¡± She told him.


    ¡°What form shall be seen as such?¡± Amolthol asked her.


    ¡°I sentence Muthlim to be the eternal vessel of all the tears of our god.¡± Queen Hester told the priest.


    ¡°My queen?¡± Amolthol trembled with dread at the realization of what she meant. The horror of it was almost unbearable.


    ¡°Carry this sentence out at once. Only you may touch the tears, so it is up to you to do my will and bring them here and fill this vessel. I shall wait and when you arrive: I shall watch him feast upon the tears of this ravaged kingdom. My justice, my revenge.¡± Queen Hester spoke in elaboration.


    After he left, Muthlim begged her and pled with her and tried to sing to her. She just sat and stared with the same look that was in her eyes as when the burning of her flesh had taken her beauty and taught her about suffering. There was no mercy in her gaze, only cruelty and hatred.


    It took until later in the day for Amolthol to return to the palace with all of the gold from the temple. The boatload of gold greatly outweighed the man who was to become its living vessel. It was carted into the chamber set aside for Muthlim.


    Amolthol had everything ready to carry out Muthlim¡¯s sentence. He looked to his queen for reassurance that it was her will to inflict such merciless justice. He hesitated and then forced open Muthlim¡¯s mouth and inserted the first of many golden tears of Elyte.


    Muthlim¡¯s screams went on and on until he was filled to the brim. Then Hester instructed that the remainder of the tears be heaped upon him, leaving him trapped beneath their weight, forever. When the grim work was done, the chamber was sealed.


    Amolthol set to work directing the removal of the many carcasses from the palace halls. Hester¡¯s followers worked hard, wishing to restore their queen¡¯s happiness and thinking that restoring her home would do. The buckets of blood were taken and poured upon the hill of dead temple soldiers before it was made into a great fire.


    The red sails put their own dead upon their last boat and watched them sail away, downriver.


    When Hester was satisfied that her vengeance was worthy of her hatred, she retired to the royal chambers. A dark and cold loneliness found her there. She felt empty and lost as she stared at the tapestries of King Azrect.


    There was a stillness. Things were quiet and balanced, but also broken and ruined. She realized that her husband had known such moments after battle. She reveled in in, in her own sullen way.


    There was someone with her, in the dark and lonesome royal chamber. She heard the footsteps approaching her and she didn¡¯t turn around. She just stood there with her head low. Her head lifted as he spoke to her:


    ¡°Will you live alone, here in your palace?¡± Berek asked her.


    She turned, seeing that he had survived the battle intact. Most of his warriors had fallen, but he and a few others had survived the deadly fighting. She thanked Elyte that he had not died when she absolved him of his blasphemy. Her god was merciful, in strange ways.


    ¡°My god has spared you.¡± Hester sighed.


    ¡°No, your god has preserved me for the worst agony of all.¡± Berek held his hand over his heart, as though he were wounded.


    ¡°And what agony would that be?¡± Hester stepped towards him, intent on helping the wounded man.


    ¡°I am in love.¡± Berek said plainly, opening his arms.


    ¡°With whom?¡± Hester hesitated.


    Berek moved to Hester, reaching for her, saying: ¡°Of all women, I find her to be the most beautiful.¡±

 Rattle Bones

    There was a time when the people told stories in the long nights of winter. The stories were sacred and nobody would leave or interrupt while the storyteller spoke. If someone had to stop the story for any reason, then everyone would have to wait until they returned before the story could be finished. In the silence and darkness, they would imagine how the story would end.


    The stories must end, for there is magic in the story, as the gathered listeners wait for the conclusion. No such stories were told in the warm days when they would occupy the people when they should be working. Stories were never told outside, because the stories often depicted animals and nature being outwitted by the people. If the trees or the birds heard the stories, then they would become smarter, and impossible to trick.


    There are some stories that are so evil that they must not be told, and certainly they must not be heard by anyone. These stories are true stories that contain the darkness and the coldness of winter. To know such a story is to have the cold night of everlasting winter in your heart. This story, the story of Rattle Bones, is one of these stories. If you begin this story, you must finish it to the end, or else Rattle Bones will still be alive, and she will follow you, hungering for you.


    In the coldest and darkest of winter nights, there was a quiet time when the old people had fallen asleep during a very long story about the men who had gone hunting and caught many animals. It was the kind of story that made the old people fall asleep, despite their efforts to politely stay awake. So when they began to snore, the storyteller had to pause the story, and it was just a quiet time and everyone had to wait for them to awaken and say "I am awake and listening." so the story could be concluded. During this time, one young couple became restless and chose to go outside, seeking an adventure together, instead of the dullness that was making their bodies tingle with unspent energy.


    They wandered away too far, intent on spending the rest of the night in a shelter in the woods. But they were lost out there, as it snowed and the night was too long. It was very cold and the young woman said: "I will make a fire, go out and get something to eat. Surely you could hunt an animal while it sleeps. Bring it back and we shall have a meal."


    He did not want to disappoint her, and filled with overconfidence, he went out into the nearby places and searched for an animal in its den, sleeping in the winter. The animals were already too smart for this, and he found none. He was gone for so long, and the night seemed to go on forever, that the young woman was alone with her hunger and restlessness. While she tended the fire she began to play with it. The fire became angry at her teasing and it burned her hand with such sudden reprisal that she didn''t even really feel the burn.


    Her shelter filled with the smell of cooked flesh and a strange feeling of lonesome wickedness overcame her. This is something that can happen to someone when they are alone in the longest nights of winter and they have already broken the spell of a good story. She got a bad idea and she bit into the roasted part of her own hand. She chewed a bit of it and then she began to feel the most awful and insatiable kind of painful hunger, as though she were starving. It was like a kind of feverish madness and she began to cook her own arm and bite into it. When it was just ragged flesh and dripping bones she looked wildly at her other arm. This too she cooked and fed upon.


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    As she ate she only became more and more famished. Her legs did not satisfy her, nor did her belly or her ribs. She cracked open the bones and sucked out the marrow, leaving them hollow. For a short while the living marrow did sate her hunger, and to celebrate her gruesome feast she took the pebbles around her shelter and began to put them into her hollowed bones. Then she stood and danced to the rattling of her own bones. This is why she is called Rattle Bones.


    Now the young man who was her lover became weary of the game of hunting animals he could not find. He followed his tracks back to the shelter, for he could not find his way home, as they were stranded from their runaway adventure. As he neared the shelter where he had left his girlfriend, he heard the macabre music of Rattle Bones, the creature she had become. He saw her as a butchered skeleton, all of her flesh eaten away and dissolved into something no longer human. Then he saw her dancing in the firelight, and he stared in horror, unable to look away.


    Then she saw him there and her eyes glowed in the firelight. Her hunger overcame her and she intended to eat him and gnaw on his bones for the rest of the winter. She was still clever in her madness, enough that she tried to call him to her, covering herself with their blanket and hoping he would not see what she was. "Come to me, my love. Come and bring me the meat you have brought so that I may feast upon it. I am very hungry."


    Her voice was strange and hollow, and the young hunter was filled with dread. He shook his head and stepped back away from her and the shelter. As he did, she walked forward and the blanket fell away, revealing the terrible thing she had done. He could hear the sound of the pebbles in her hollowed bones, and he knew she was now Rattle Bones.


    "Do not forsake me. Have I not given you all the joy and comfort that I could? Are we not the best of friends and well-matched lovers? Am I not the one you intend yourself for? Come back to me." Rattle Bones spoke to him, pleading with him and appealing to his emotions. He pitied her and hesitated to abandon her.


    While he stood there she got closer and closer, and she would have caught him and overwhelmed him with the supernatural strength she had gained from her dire hunger. When she was almost within striking distance, she reached out her skeletal hand and her bones rattled with such sinister and predatory intention that the young man was shaken from his pity for her. He knew what she would do to him, the same as she had already done to herself, and with his heart beating with terror he turned and fled.


    It was very dark out and he did not know the part of the forest he was in. He kept stopping to catch his breath and look around, but each time he did he could hear her coming for him, following his trail in the snow and it was the sound of Rattle Bones. She was angry now because he was running from her, and she sometimes screamed, and it was an awful and howling noise of a monstrous creature chasing its prey.


    Then the young man came to the river that his people lived on. He followed it for a short distance but realized he could not lead her to their home. Instead, he crossed the freezing waters and stood on the other side of the river, shivering. "I will come across and get you!" The angry Rattle Bones glared at him and her eyes were full of rage and wickedness. He knew the woman he had loved was dead inside, consumed by the fleshless creature Rattle Bones.


    Then Rattle Bones, in her fury and ravenous appetite, made a fatal mistake. She tried to swim across the river that gave life to her people. The freezing waters did not buoy her and so she sank. It was as though the goodness of the clean water was trying to suppress the evil that had emerged from the forest. She drowned then, vanishing into the depths, never to be seen again.


    Only in this story does the creature live on, contained by the details of the circumstances of her existence as Rattle Bones. And so let not this story be half told, nor should it ever be offered, for it is too awful to tell. And never speak the name, or else you might be pursued at night by Rattle Bones.

 Jennifers Dowry

    Gwenivere stood in the doorway, gesturing for me to follow her, and she wanted to go again to the shepherd''s trail. She was wearing her Whitsun dress, the one given to her by our English lord, Cadwallader of Mark. In this year of our Lord, fifteen hundred and thirty-seven, Martin had come home, and he''d take me to the shepherd''s trail, if I wasn''t leaving with Gwenivere.


    I''d stayed and made him cawl, and kissed him with my promise, verily I was his. This is why he complained when I said "Gwenivere is coming."


    "How doth my sweetheart knowest?" Martin scowled. "Every time she is near, thy eyes light up and thou turns from my side, and taketh a place, hand in hand, through meadows a leaping, and with skirts fluttering gaily. It is not fair, to leave me in discontent, as thou goes and calls upon our Cadwallader or to sip mead in the halls of mercenaries near Llanfair? Tis'' the Devil''s Well, and not a Christian woman''s proper footfall. I''d have myself a wife of a Christian baker, except this cawl is of a flavor I cannot regret."


    "I''m not your wife yet. Unlike Gwenivere, I must earn my own dowry, for my father earns never a florin in his rest." I told him as I checked my reflection in the still dark water of my kitchen''s bucket.


    "And that is another thing wrong with thy doings. My lady takes her spun wool and sells it too cheaply, and tithes too generously to a God who is already rich. Would my confession say I took thee under moonlight, without an adulterous license, of a man and his wife, to frolic so? I''d have myself a dancing girl from the caravans of Little Egypt, except Cassia has more virtue than thou hath. Why should a heathen soldier of the English enjoy the laughter of thy evening, while I wait for thee in this hovel?"


    I glared at him and went with Gwenivere, while she called out to Martin: "I''d have her returned to thee with her virtue intact, and depose herself as thy wife, if only it were possible, for I myself have stolen whatever she might have given thee, in such a moonless night as this one."


    We giggled and laughed as Martin growled his contempt, but he was truly my love, and he would marry me, and he knew I was faithful to him, except of course, when I bathed beside Gwenivere, in the fountain, the waterfall near our Devil''s Well.


    "We go ere to Cadwallader''s yet this night to Llanfair. I''d see the minstrels there, they are from Aragon, the Hunchedbacks they call their troop. Isn''t it exciting to see me with the hand of their leader, a rather salty piece of leather, impossible to chew through? I''d tell him my dress is a gift from Cadwallader of Mark, and that if mead were spilled on it, I''d have to remove it and wash it while wearing nothing at all."


    "That''s disgusting." I giggled.


    "I have two florins to buy the Hunchedbacks a round of mead, when we get to the inn of the Divorced Phoenixs." Gwenivere showed me the coins.


    "Thou hast brought thy mother''s tithe to buy mead, and kept it ere, when Whitsun was a Sunday, and another Sunday past?" I gasped in astonishment. Gwenivere grinned mischievously and nodded.


    We arrived after sundown at the inn of the Divorced Phoenixs and Gwenivere promptly made our presence known among our cousins, shepherds, English soldiers and even an old traveling scholar from some Oriental land. I think his name was Djunni, or something like that.


    Even Lord Cadwallader''s captain, Meritus, was there. He came up behind Gwenivere and tried to whisper sweet words into her dark tresses, sniffing her like a lost dog. I laughed at him, because Gwenivere treated him like one. As we left him there, licking the wounds of his manhood, she said a terrible thing:


    "I must treat him as a dog, because when we made love, that is how he approached me." Gwenivere jested with me. I must have blushed, for she frowned at me and left me standing there. She then took the drinks she had bought for the Hunchedbacks to them, and began to flirt with them, even the tips of her fingers to the dappled codpiece of Devon, their leader.


    When she felt they were watching her, she made a show of walking through the inn''s parlor, where the Hunchedbacks were about to perform. I overheard them say:


    "What of this dark maiden, is she not perfectly aligned with all of our interests?" The ugly minstrel asked. In fact, they all looked rather ugly to me, and I could not understand why Gwenivere was so infatuated with one of them.


    Devon was the most twisted of them all, he was scrawny and had a pinched face and short hair and earrings like a sailor. He reminded me of this skinny and twisted old bramble, never bearing fruit or flower, that my father had hacked at with his ax on the day his heart detonated in his chest. To me, it was that kind of evil, the kind that snaps back uncut and takes away the one thou lovest most dearly.


    "Nay, she is the sort that has lain with each stag of her village, kith and kin, and is given such a garment from her English lord who would not let her leave in the rags she stripped off for his pleasure." The second Hunchedback said.


    "Thou and thou dost not see the eye of this maiden. She is wanton - yes, craven - with delight, but her virtue is nay engarbled. She doth like to wear her Whitsun dress, a gift from a nobleman, why not? But thou reckon: I''ve known such vixens, and her pleasure is always at the vex of her suitors, who know her not." Devon insisted.


    At this I spoke up, on behalf of my best friend, Gwenivere: "That is my dearest friend, Gwenivere, ye desperate men speak of without respect. And thou art right, she is a woman of virtue, and not for such braggarts and unfair men as thee! I''d tell her of thy disappointments, but she will see thee flaunted as men of low moral character, and not even the English soldiers in this tavern would tip a florin to thy song. Thou might as well keep thy voices for a crowd of toadstools, for this night thou hath spoken of thy fishy insides, and in opening thy mouth, a stench has escaped, poisoning the air!" I said to them, my voice rising in volume as the warmth of the mead I had sipped emboldened me.


    "Do you see, my friends, the option I have discovered for us? This Gwenivere, she is for us. We''ll take her with us, and she''ll do for us what all the song in the world could never. We''ll have our time yet, it will be wondrous." Devon ignored me and told his cohort.


    They started singing, and their music was of a poor quality, singing about walking through a forest, getting lost and finding their true love, who becomes a tree because she is so ashamed to love a man who is so beautiful and then they must plead with a woodsman to cut down a different tree. I hated their music, it was pretentious and superficial and it smelled of smoke. No, I looked and saw that something burning had tumbled out of the clogged fireplace, and rolled along the floor, starting many smaller fires everywhere. It was like an imp running freely among us, trapping and encircling everyone.


    "Gwenivere!" I took her hand and found the narrow escape, and we alone crawled through the portal. Behind us the others all burned, with only a few managing to get outside in time. Gwenivere was through, but my hips were too wide, and I couldn''t quite squeeze through the way I could when I was younger. I remembered it being easy to get through, all those times we snuck in as younger girls.


    "Ashlin?" Gwenivere looked back and saw I was stuck and she was coming to help me. Suddenly, without warning, Devon and his Hunchedbacks grabbed her and dragged her off into the forest. She didn''t resist them much, instead she just looked sadly at me, and I cried out for help, but everyone else was either on fire or running for their lives. I pulled with all my strength and freed myself, feeling soiled by the portal. I ran after them, but the night was moonless, and I soon lost my way.


    I wandered around all night, unable to find my friend and the Hunchedbacks. Crying and terrified and worried, I made my way home. When I arrived at my own little home, I went in and found that Martin was gone. Perhaps he had left in anger, because I had not returned at an hour he found proper. Indeed, it was already dawn, and I was soiled in filth, my garments sooty and shredded from the sticks I had gone through in search of Gwenivere. I sat and cried, the awfulness of it all weighing heavily on me.


    There was a knock on my door, and I thought it be Martin, so I answered it in haste.


    "Ashlin." Gwenivere stood before me, wearing nothing, her body covered in all manner of bruises and scrapes and deep lacerations. She smelled horrible, like something yeasty and sweet, but somehow disgusting. Her face was covered in blood, and her hair was matted in the syrupy way of so much more blood. All of this was terrible to see, but it was her skinless fingertips, clawing from a shallow grave, the rank of the soil caked on her and the way her eyes just stared at me, like she was considering eating me.


    "Gwenivere?" I took a step back, avoiding her embrace.


    "Help me, Ashlin. Look what they did to me. Thou must clean me, restore me, and feed me." Gwenivere demanded.


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    "What did they do to thee?" I was crying at the sight of her.


    "They." She paused. "Nay, thou can see for thyself. Do my bidding at once!"


    I obeyed her and drew a warm bath, heating my bucket of water and using it to sponge her clean. The grave dirt, the clumps of gore and some kind of sticky filth all over her seemed to be infecting my home, like it was getting on everything, contaminating it all.


    My rooster wandered inside, wondering why he and his hens were not getting fed. She grabbed the cock and broke his neck, and then she tore him with her teeth, drinking, cracking and slurping in too few bites. I gasped in horror at the sharpness of her teeth, the largeness of her mouth in the silhouette of the firelight, for I had looked away.


    I tried to pretend it was a puppet show, but no Punch & Judy was like the nightmare that danced in the early morning darkness by firelight. I tried not to scream in terror, as her claws gripped me and made me look at her. Somehow there was no blood of the chicken on her face, and her naked dripping body had steam arising from her skin. Her perfect skin - as though nothing had harmed her, was restored. All the cuts and bruises were gone.


    "How?" I stared, too surprised to feel the fear I held onto.


    "I must go. Give me thy finest dress." Gwenivere told me.


    "I have only my mother''s dress, and I''d wear it only when Martin calls, and when we marry I''d wear it outside my home, on that day. Thou wouldst deprive me of it?" I was in some kind of nightmare. What more would be stripped from me?


    "Do not be like an actor, with such dramatic words. Thou hath no talent and thou art plain. What use for such a gown, hath thou? Give it to me." Gwenivere held out her hand for the dress and I reluctantly gave it to her.


    "I''d see thou return it, on the morrow?" I asked.


    "When I see thee next, thou shall have no more need of dresses, or Martin, or me." Gwenivere said strangely. For a moment, she sounded sorry, but then she gave me that look that reminded me of how much better than me she was, and then she left.


    I cleaned my home, scrubbing every inch until the afternoon. Then I fell asleep, curled on the ground, beneath the wooden table Martin had made for me. I dreamed of her in the forest, dancing in a circle with the Hunchedbacks, and somehow it was worse than the abuse I had presumed they had inflicted on her.


    Martin was among the men-at-arms called to duty by our Lord Cadwallader. He was on foot behind the great man of English nobility. I admired the strong horse, clean armor and stern fatherly face of my lord as he rode slowly past my home, towards the destruction at the edge of his lands, to investigate and perhaps to pursue the Hunchedbacks. I curtseyed for my noble lord, who had slowed his mighty steed so that Martin could see me momentarily.


    "My love, I see thou hast taken refuge in thy home, and my heart becomes brave, for no fear was greater than for thy safety." Martin said loudly so the soldiers all knew why their master-at-arms had paused his horse in my yard. They respectfully waited while I embraced my man and told him I was intact and well. I could see they appreciated that amid the rumors of total devastation, a comrade''s maiden was spared, and he was brave because he had nothing left to fear.


    Martin rejoined their ranks and Lord Cadwallader looked briefly at me with something like appreciation in his eyes. He tilted his brow slightly, like a nod of approval for my fortifications. I felt looked after, by our master, and prayed for his safety on such a dire day, as I prayed for my own Martin. I watched as the horse-mounted man led my Martin and the other recruited men with spears toward the destruction of the inn of the Divorced Phoenixs near Llanfair.


    "I''ll pray God keeps thy justice, Cadwallader of Mark, and Captain Meritus, and my sweet Martin, and all thy companions beside thee." I said out loud before I began my prayers for them.


    Martin was returned to me later, after no sign of any rogues could be found. I had presumed they were pursued for their misdeeds, blamed for the fire and the deaths, chased for harming Gwenivere. I had assumed this, and I was mistaken. Instead, somehow, they were hailed as heroes, the survivors mistakenly attributing their deliverance to the Hunchedbacks rescuing them each. I was bewildered, disturbed and frightened by the way reality was also what a nightmare would be like.


    My Cadwallader brought them forth, and their pointless poem was made into an anthem of our unity and recovery. They sang in the halls of our English lord, and his florins filled their purse. All the villagers from Hedelstok to Llanfair knew the words to their song, going through the forest and a girl becomes a dead tree and then begging a woodsman to cut down a different tree. I thought the song was stupid and lacked rhyme and reason.


    Twas Gwenivere who stood beside me, looking aged and tired, her hair disheveled and her eyes puffy and sickly. She said, "I thirst, I hunger. Djunni was my feast, you know, yet nobody doth miss the stranger. Should Meritus be my next?"


    I was confused, unsure if I was understanding her correctly.


    By moonlight, I crept after her and found where the Hunchedbacks had made a ritual of her body, not like wicked men might abuse a young woman, but rather praying to devils and then sacrificing her by blades, shimmering in the black starlight. They had tied her down and tore off her dress, when she was dead they had rolled her into a shallow grave. The worst of my vision of her ordeal was that thay had insisted on singing their stupid song at her before they murdered her. She was to be an immaculate victim, but they had misjudged her, or at least Devon had, for I recalled that the other Hunchedbacks had accurately gauged her reputation.


    Meritus was indeed her next feast, and she ate his neck, his head rolling with the same ecstatic grin of meeting her for a rendezvous, never aware of her instant transformation. He didn''t deserve to die, Meritus was not a bad man, and at least his death was too swift for him to know. She plugged his neck like a bottle, draining him of blood.


    I had seen the remains of Djunni discarded and half-eaten in the woods, and horror and silence had gripped me. Then I noticed there were other remains, for she had brought one man after the next to this killing place and let the demon in her feed on their flesh. The cannibal monster became her, without blemish, as soon as she had consumed living flesh.


    "Don''t be afraid, Ashlin." Gwenivere turned and her eyes flashed evilly at me where I hid. I trembled in terror, unsure if it was her or the demon speaking to me, for they were the same creature.


    "Thou art the devil''s puppet!" I stammered.


    "I feel so good when I am fed. Thou sees how I am restored. The Hunchedbacks made a mistake, but they were granted their infernal bargain, a sacrifice was made that night. The body of the maiden must be pure, so that a demon does not marry her corpse, and crawl from a grave. They made a mistake, by choosing this Gwenivere." The demon, or her, or both, spoke to me and described what went wrong with the evil moonless rite.


    "Will thou devour me as well?" I was crying, afraid and broken, unable to run. I felt like the love of my life was taken from me, all over again, and somehow far worse than that same night.


    "Nay, thou would suffer more by my side. My pleasure is to make thee my accomplice. Thou will keep my secret, thou will conspire with me, and thou will choose my next meal, pointing to a man who will die." Gwenivere laughed diabolically.


    "I will do no such deed!" I protested, shaking and afraid, with tears on my cheeks and my voice unsteady.


    "Then a Martin I shall call upon. If he is seduced, he is not for thee anyway!" Gwenivere decided.


    I followed her as she walked across the lands of our county, from Llanfair towards Hedelstok. The flocks stayed far away from us, protecting their shepherds from the demon''s wandering and hungry eyes.


    I felt as a though I were a helpless disciple and meekly went in her shadow. It was only when I beheld Martin in her serpentine embrace that my instincts changed. He had fallen for her charms, even with me standing there watching them together. I was disgusted with his fickleness and weakness, but I knew no man could resist Gwenivere when she was still good, and an evil power had only enhanced her rotten beauty.


    "This be the last straw in my broom, and I have not the grace to spare thee a blow from behind!" I shrieked in rage and snapped the haft across one knee, choosing the sharper break. Then while she began to sip on my man, I impaled her from behind.


    Piercing her heart broke mine.


    "Thou art like a man, in thy courage and violence - with muscle to shame thy Martin''s weak arms. Such a masculine maiden, lacking beauty or charm, thou art plain and dull." Gwenivere hissed at me while I held her there. Then her eyes dimmed to a mortal watering of tears, for we were departing from each other, and the demon had abandoned her to die.


    "Gwenivere." I let my tears fall on her as I held her.


    "My dearest love, I''d taken thee, my kiss was thy first. I loved thee best, and my virtue was always yours, and so should my dowry be." Gwenivere whispered with effort, coughing and slowing, until the light in her eyes was gone. I guessed where her dowry must be hidden, a casket of florins and jewels, her wealth stolen after the murder of men who thought she expected a payment. She''d accumulated it all on her own, without her parent''s wealth, in the few weeks as a demon, while she fed on so many traveling merchants.


    "Ashlin, thou art a murderer in my sight!" Lord Cadwallader had ridden at a gallop and arrived to see what I had done. "Thou shalt remain in my custody, imprisoned, until a penance can be verified by the Holy See. No murderer shall walk the clean soil of my county. I run a Christian land."


    I was arrested by my noble lord, who was surprisingly gentle with me. My imprisonment was as more of a guest, until I had spoken to a special Vatican priest in confession, and the priest recommended to my good sire that I be released and funded with a dowry of clean florins so that I might marry my Martin. Lord Cadwallader looked relieved to release me and grant me an orphan''s dowry, quite a generous sum, and he claimed the right to give me to Martin, standing where my father would have, were he still alive.


    I''d reclaimed the money Gwenivere had hidden, knowing it was hidden where we had once bathed together near the Devil''s Well. I needed no dowry such as hers, with my Christian coins to wed. Instead, I saved it as payment to better men than the Hunchedbacks, but also men of very low moral character. What I could not do, slit throats that sing, anyone touching those coins would do without worry.


    There came a day, long after, when I knew the Hunchedbacks of Aragon were near our lands again. I went to their festival, along the way I was asked where I took Gwenivere''s lost wealth, as bandits eyed the wealth with an easy glare. I told them the treasure was a gift from my true love for the Hunchedbacks, in honor of their final performance. They nodded at me and let me pass as I dropped coins in the mud carelessly.


    I was not to be harmed by men of the road, for I had smiled at them and told them where the same treasure would land. Why rob me and risk the law, when it would be simple to rob scrawny minstrels when they traveled through the forests later? Did they find my shadow to be a suitable shade for their knives? I know they did, for as I went I dropped coins and jewels for them, leaving a sample of Gwenivere''s dowry in my wake as though I were their patroness.


    With assassins watching the gift of Gwenivere''s dowry as tribute for the lousy minstrels, I attended their last song they''d ever sing. I shrugged, deciding the music had grown on me. Devon winked at me, and I winked back.