by J. J. Adamson
in Issue 97, February 2020
There were two reasons I had never visited The Sunset House. The first, and some will say the most obvious, is that Sunset House is nearly inaccessible, situated on a cliff, nearly overhanging the oceans. Inland swamps of black mud and stinking sulfur keep out foot and cart traffic, and beyond these swamps are woods full of thorny undergrowth, and vines with poisonous leaves that reach out to passersby like children begging for a sweet.
The second reason was that never before had I been a traitor. I never cared much for the king, or the emperor, or whomever was in control wherever I lived–obeying a man simply because he wears the richest silks, and has plenty of sycophants to surround him–that’s as foolish as praying for the victory of the hometown runner in the games. Until he’s truly proven himself, why should I bet on him, simply because we come from the same village? But at the same time I am a wiser man than my youth would suggest, and I know that sycophants with swords are more dangerous, and that most men only care where their bread and salt come from, not about right or wrong, so I’ve kept my head low, and stayed out of those affairs.
But as I trudged over the barely raised berm, the so-called Sunset Road westward, it seemed to me that my life had come to meddling in those affairs, and making a politician of myself, as much as that sickened me. Twelve years before I had entered the academy at Euthock Kelly as the most highly anticipated find of the last hundred years, but by five years hence my penchant for disobedience and questioning had disappointed everyone in the enormous place, even all the poetic friends I’d made outside my discipline.
There was only one person who still respected me by then, but this wasn’t meant to be her story if I could avoid it. It was to be mine when I sat down to write, but at this page my quill is shaking, leaving drops of ink between the lines, and I am inescapably drawn to the conclusion that I’m telling you this story just to tell you that I, Rajak Velsen of Taramenu, am no one special.
But let us forget all that, and those of you interested in what transpired that night can read this tale for what it is, for the pure events.
The first queer thing that happened–aside from the utterly unforbidding nature of the thorny forest–was the unimpressing sight of Sunset House itself. It was a scene that should have provoked all manner of distress and foreboding, but I suppose a numbness to scenery is all I can expect from my desperation. Thunderclouds swirled over the ocean, threatening rain that would trap the inhabitants and douse the great bonfires over the towers (despite its name Sunset House was a castle in the old days, first of timber and then of stone, and had stood for a hundred generations as the seat of an ancient kingdom, before either sorcery or weather had destroyed the land around it). Lightning crackled over the sea and thunder rolled over the house and past me, shaking the spongy marsh ground under my boots.
But I cared little. Despite months of foot travel and a weariness about lodging when the autumn turned cold, my boots were holding up, and my cloak was still in the shape it was when Jherika finished it, years ago. She was my wife–and saying `was’ ought to give you an idea of why I was so numb to the awesome sight of Sunset House. A woman I’d given my precious time and love, second only to my explorations of alchemy and drestima, now lived in comfort with those three children in a place I was banished from forever. And on her word. It was as if I’d harmed them, but no, all I’d done was fail to impress those at the academy who held the keys to my arts becoming a livelihood. She’d stood by me until the embarrassment of that failure grew too much. And moved back in with her mother. Behind walls too high and impenetrable for my skills. And what would it have benefited me to break in? The times of love were gone. If I were to gain any sort of time with those people I loved again, it would have to be by impressing them, gaining favor, and patronage.
My newest patron was to be the owner of Sunset House, who was, as I’m sure you know, a traitor against all rule, order, and wisdom. He was even rumored before that night to be a Dréa, one of those long-forgotten sorcerers who once advised every king in the land, before they spelled its destruction. As I stepped closer to the switchback stairs leading to the gate, I was sure the idea of Varet as a Dréa was simple bluffery, legend meant to scare the foolish and impress those who would serve him.
And then my foot struck something. A thin piece of metal in the black marsh mud, between the twigs that would have been sedges if this were not a roadway. However, as I knelt to examine it, I could see that rain or tides had washed away any recent foot prints, and I was just as alone as I’d been in the wood. Nevertheless I took an extra look around, as even in the scant twilight I could already see the shape.
“Zheresh!” I snapped my fingers and a ball of fire lit over my palm. It was the most basic cantrip, but me not being a dancer, I didn’t move my hand out of the way fast enough, and my palm seared (I didn’t use this sort of thing often as, a year past, my constantly singed hands and lower arms gave me away and I was driven out of three taverns over three nights). The flame flickered as it floated near my shoulder; it was far too hot, and I had to move away without extinguishing the flame, and the whole process delayed me in picking up the amulet.
But that’s what it was. A piece of solid metal that looked like gold (but was something only the alchemists of Euthock Kelly could create), in a warped rectangle, flared at the corners, with a large loop for a chain at the top. This loop was broken, and the chain was gone, but the shape still held, roughly like a tiny human shape, something scrawled by dwarves of the past on cave walls. Holding it closer to my flame, I cleared away the grime of the salt marsh, and further confirmed my identification: it had bowed lines engraved on the surface, pointing to the corners, which stood out as full of black mud. The loop had been deliberately cut with a sharp tool of some kind.
It wasn’t lost. It was buried. Which was odd to say the least since such an amulet was worth more than ten times its weight in gold, to the point where the metaphor breaks down. Only certain magisters at Euthock Kelly had them, and ambitious men (better known to you as “politicians”) often considered them weapons. In fact, I had only ever seen five of these, and only one on someone I knew: Meredyth Carpenter, Magister of Drestima had one, but I never saw her use it.
I let my flame flicker out. Meredyth would not approve of my mission here. She would never have even approached a place like this: I doubt she even knows what goes on in such a place. The idea of her marrying and legally consummating was such a bizarre idea that I kept it as a lewd fantasy for those private moments after our impromptu meetings, when Magister Meredyth would rush down the hall to me, giddy over a new formulation or spell. Her hands would be stained by ingredients, dyes, and soot, wisps of gray hair (she was only thirty?) jutting from the sides of her head, dislodged from the loose bun on the back of her head. The idea of her giving over to passion for anything other than the most academic of topics was silly enough to make me laugh right there kneeling in the muck.
Perhaps I had what I needed. With this amulet I could gain more reputable patronage somewhere else…except that I was expected. The twin bonfires were for me, and if Varet could find me and furnish the invitation I carried in my cloak pocket, he could find me again. I wasn’t worth not killing, and even if I revealed right away that I had the amulet, I doubted anyone would speak to me. Even if I could get within ten miles of Euthock Kelly without being seen, Meredyth wouldn’t speak to me. Not after how I left.
So I wrapped the amulet in concealment with another simple spell–one of the guards had been watching me from the top of the stairs, and he’d forget he saw anything–and put it in my cloak pocket. Worse than a lighthouse, Sunset House was at the top of one hundred and seventy two stairs in rough switchbacks over a sheer rock face, and many of the steps were missing or loose. Some were platforms of rock and some were rotted wood, but I made the top faster than I expected, and came face to face with two guards at the enormous door. A pair of eyes watched me from behind a slit in the door. Was it supposed to look secretive?
“I believe I’m expected,” I said cordially, and the door snapped open before the guards had time to move.
“What you believe has very little to do with what’s true!” shrieked the man who burst through. He was lean to say the least, far too tall, far too pale. His voice didn’t speak, it crackled and cackled, and his hands struck out, his wrist snapping like a very short whip. “We’ve been watching you. You think you’re having fun keeping our master waiting. Invitation. Now!”
“Zheresh!” I repeated my trick from earlier, even though the torches were light enough, just to prove who I was. In case they wanted any more, I brought out the invitation. The majordomo looked it over, tsking while my flame flickered (he tsked at that, as well), and the light revealed a hideous line of sores from his jaw up to his left eye.
“Very well,” he said. “I am Denly. I’ll take you to our master.”
He visibly rolled his eyes and shook his head. He was going to tolerate me long enough to obey his master. I knew I’d encounter people like this at Sunset House, but nothing had prepared me for actually seeing it.
Just as nothing had prepared me for what I saw inside.
Sunset House was roughly cross-shaped, the main floor of two long, broad corridors at right angles, with low ceilings that made Denly stoop. As he led me through, we passed room after room full of people, doors ajar, and candlelight showing through. The sounds were of male laughter, feminine giggling, moaning, and cheering encouragement. The smells were just what I would call the smell of exerted bodies. There was sweat and alcohol, the wave of which hit me as soon as I came in the door, and didn’t relent for my entire visit, but there was another smell, sweet and full-bodied, with a subtle undertone of intestinal rot, sulfur from a dog’s arse, that I’m sure no one in this house noticed (I noticed the smell of Meredyth’s cats the few times I visited her, but even when my children impolitely mentioned it, she would never acknowledge it).
Denly brought me into the round central chamber, and stopped me with his hand on my chest. “Wait here, kitten. Don’t get into trouble.”
And he sped off down the corridor, leaving me to watch my own back. The chamber was domed in such a way that the ceiling reflected whispers from across the room straight onto the back of my neck, which prickled mightily, but it didn’t bother me as much as my only company: a ring of velvet-upholstered couches held little groups of three or four people each, the men and women only clad in jewelry, all of them with blackened lips and fingertips. I mentioned preparation above, and I must say that as many times as I enjoyed my wife’s intimate company, or even as few times I had indulged in women since leaving her behind, I was not prepared to see people naked and fondling each other giddily, openly for all to see. Any of those other times I was with women I had affection for–an infatuation, you could call it, if not love–and I had chosen to see them and dismissed anything untoward. Here all the sagging stretch-marks and wrinkles were visible without preparation, all in the same torchlight. Fat men next to horribly skinny women, unwashed bodies with shaking hands, curvaceous hips beneath wretched faces, overmade with carmine and kohl, twisted by constant pleasure that looked painful from the outside.
Each group was clustered around an apparatus consisting of a silver bowl above a flame, with small silver pipes running out of the sides of the bowl. Each bowl was filled with tiny polished rocks that shone dully like black iron ore, and when heated they gave off blue smoke, the source of the sweet but sulfurous smell. This was klarush, the purified sap of a tree that grew in the south on enormous plantations, and was the source of a huge amount of controversy at Euthock Kelly. Were its hallucinations signs of divine influence, were they a way to the meditative truths that we sought so hard, were they even a way of touching the beyond without madness?
Of course not. I watched the naked men and women greedily sucking up the smoke, and recognized the truth. I had seen men and women under the influence of klarush before, but I had never seen it smoked this way. There was one thing everyone agreed on at Euthock Kelly: klarush had very quickly replaced everything in the mind of many a famed alchemist and deadened their work to the point of incomprehensibility. Good men and women did not partake, since once you started, there was no way to understand life without it.
The fat man opposite me beckoned, pointing to the klarush smoker before him, not noticing the gray-haired woman next to him, smacking her bare chest with limp hands. I pointed down the corridor, smiled, and mouthed “I’m expected,” and turned my eyes away. I touched the amulet in my pocket and thought of Meredyth. She would never abide me in a place like this, but I was far beyond the disappointment of people I once respected affecting my choices now. I needed to curry favor with someone, and someone powerful. For whatever purpose Varet had contacted me, he seemed to think I was worth something when those I had trusted with my training did not.
The fat fellow with the klarush waved me over again, and I squinted, letting a little irritation show. The gray-haired woman smiled at me, and I started: suppose you found a diamond in a sack of coal, or a precious toy in a maggot-infested midden heap, what would you think? You would think the klarush smoke had drifted your way, and that you were hallucinating already. So I looked again, and my eyes did not deceive me: it was Meredyth, my old colleague, the one person who believed in me when Pelin had abandoned me, dressed only in strategically-placed cloth-of-gold and silver chains, her gray hair unwashed and hanging about her face and over her naked breasts. Even though her lips were black, it was her unmistakable smile, the one that brought orphaned cats in from the rain, and I stepped closer, just to see if I was mistaken.
There seems to be a limited number of faces in this world, and I had been mistaken before, but as I stepped around the couches she stood, shakily, her ribs visible even in the scant light, and her nose wasn’t too long, her chin was just as prominent, and there was nothing to mistake her. I would never forget her face, and this was it.
“Of all the people!” Her arms were around me before I had time to recoil from her naked breasts and the kisses she put on my cheeks. “What are you doing here?”
“I was summoned. From Taramenu.”
She looked at me as if I’d just told her I’d visited the Sunset House. And before I could recover from my incomprehension at having a conversation with a naked woman who I’d always thought went to sleep fully clothed, she asked the question on the tip of my tongue.
“What happened to you?”
“I couldn’t take Euthock Kelly anymore. Not that I just couldn’t be there. Did you notice how I was always there? I never traveled the courts, never followed up on any accusations of Dréa.”
The giddy look–the same one she’d have when she’d adopted a new stray cat–left her face, and she invited me to sit, shooing away the fat man and everyone else clustered around the smoker. She even took my hand, something she’d never done before except in excitement before. As much as I had wanted her to, I was a married man. And now I wasn’t. Touch was unfamiliar, and I cherished it, but the place where we sat was too distracting. I was in Sunset House, and I wasn’t going to forget it just because a woman I’d longed after for so long was touching me.
“He never recommended you?”
“No, he did not.”
She stared at me. “I don’t know why you didn’t come to me. I could have been your mentor.”
“You don’t appear to be anyone’s mentor now.”
She leaned back on the couch, and a look of offense came over her face. A look of `I don’t see you doing anything particularly wholesome.’ She crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything, but I could see it all seething underneath her, as much as I could ignore her state, and without resorting to any spell or meditative tricks, I knew what she was thinking. We were both here for the same reasons.
“My husband,” she said finally.
“When did you get married?”
“When did you get divorced?” She shrieked like one of her cats.
“I’m not–“
“It’s just that your wife has all your children, and won’t speak to you, and is embarrassed by your presence?”
“I had no livelihood–“
“I’m sorry Rajak, I have to smoke–“
“No, you don’t!”
Staring straight at me, she took a pouch from her tiny little belt, brought out a flint, and poured four of the black cubes into the smoker’s silver bowl. From a little bit of time in Lower Falls, I knew this was an extraordinary amount. It would have killed some people.
“Meredyth, I found something–“
“There you are!” It was Denly. Not any happier than he was before. “I have been looking for you all over, little squirrel.”
Meredyth took my hand again, her other gripping the flint striker. “Rajak, what did you find?”
“I’m sorry magister,” snapped Denly. “Our young man is wanted by the master.”
She dropped my hand, and turned her attention to the smoker. Fine. If she cared more about that, then why should I care what she does to herself? Denly took me down a corridor and up a stone spiral stair, and to the chamber above where I just had sat with Meredyth. Poor Meredyth. I still think about her, and even as I write this, a tear has smeared the page. But I let her go. My old life was dead, and she might as well be dead.
The chamber on this upper floor was not open, but closed behind heavy iron-strapped doors that only Denly had the key to. He inserted the key in the lock, shifted the door on its hinges, and then turned to me sharply.
“Don’t,” he warned, putting his bony finger straight into my breastbone until it hurt. “Don’t ask about anything you’ve seen, don’t ask about your little friend back there, don’t ask him if he is Dréa, don’t ask him who lights the bonfires.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s what they all say. We’ll see how long you last here. Velsen was it?”
“Rajak,” I said. “You can call me Rajak.”
“He’s going to eat you alive. So sad I won’t get the chance.”
I smiled, trying to tell him I wasn’t sorry he wouldn’t get the chance. Denly stepped back and I entered the chamber, into a scene almost identical to that in the chamber below. The largest difference, other than the circle of torches on standing poles, was the man at the center, surrounded by nude giggling women. Most of the men were standing around, presumably to see what the women would do next to the fellow I took to be Varet. He wasn’t quite human, however: he was fat beyond my comprehension, hard to see how he would be able to move, eat or relieve himself. But he was as sweaty and giddy as the women around him, who ranged in age from girls barely marriageable to gray-haired women with sagging breasts and wrinkled faces. Blue smoke pervaded the room, with that same scent, familiar to me already. I didn’t consider klarush so offensive when it was the province of whores and miners in Lower Falls, but as of that moment, it was getting to be far too much for me. And I hoped to never smell it again.
“You sent for me,” I said. Faces turned to me, disgusted to see me, unhappy with my interruption. It was at this moment that I hoped Varet was not in the tangle of bodies I saw, but was hiding in a corner, perhaps on a throne, and simply watching. He was an experimenter, an alchemist of human emotions, trying to see how far these people would go.
But no.
The sweaty bald man in the center of the tangle smiled, and shushed everyone. “I did send for you, Rajak Velsen, disgruntled artisan of Euthock Kelly.”
“I suppose my reputation precedes me.”
“It bloody well does,” said a man with a goatee. He was young, though not younger than me, with strong shoulders. “What do you want with him, Varet?”
“And what do you want with him, Kerinios?” Varet’s mood had changed. He wasn’t playing around now. “Everybody out! Now!”
Varet shoved two of the women off of him, nearly spilling wine from the goblet he clutched in his hand. Metal clinked like the sound of money, or chains. The women squealed and jumped off the dais on which his throne sat, and people rushed out the doors as fast as they could. And we were alone. And finally I saw. This man, the object of worship of all these drugged-up sycophants, was a prisoner. He was fastened to his throne with gold-plated chains that ended in manacles around his wrists, so thick and broad they were like an archer’s bracers. His flesh had swollen since they were put on, and bulged out from their edges. He was just as obese as he appeared with his hangers-on, and his breathing was labored and sweat dripped down his forehead, whereas with my blouse, jacket, and cloak, I felt a horrible chill.
“Don’t mind Kerinios Tultavestra,” said Varet. “He is just like all the rest of them, only here for certain advantages.”
“And yet you tolerate him?”
“He is a very powerful man.”
“Not as powerful as you?”
Varet lowered his eyes at me, and smiled, on the verge of laughter. “No. Of course not.”
“Then it’s true.”
“Of course. Did you think all Dréa could hide in the woods, eating twigs and wearing grass? I was the most powerful Dréa the world ever knew before these were put on. I could even summon, touch the shroud, without going mad.”
And if he believed he had actually done that, he was already mad. No one could touch the shroud without instant madness, not to mention the creatures they would summon wreaking havoc with minds, bodies, and spirits. If Varet had ever done so, no one within the established authorities had witnessed it, but it would account for much of his reputation, as if Sunset House and its debauchery weren’t enough.
“But what can I do for you?”
“I want a friend, Rajak. Come closer.” He pointed to his manacles. “I need you to find the key to this.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t refuse, because I am going to tell you something very important. Come here, come closer.” Suddenly I realized this man was very very afraid. All these people were not here simply for klarush or the opulent jewels and sumptuous feasts. They were waiting. “I am dying,” he said, glancing about. “And they know it. You are the one to hear me say it. I know you. I know you are not beholden. I know you would love to have the right of things over your former masters.”
“They were never my masters. I hoped to learn from them. They only taught me lessons they never intended.”
“Precisely my friend. All of them here, they know why you’re here–“
“Why put up with them? Why feed them, why spend your treasure on them?”
He looked into my eyes. “I know you. I know you well. And I knew it would come to this. You think you’re a family man, that you won’t be tempted by what I can offer you. Where’s your family now?”
I looked down at the manacles, at the slot for the key, and realized these chains weren’t gold. They were the same material as the amulet in my pocket, and as I traced the shape for the flat key that would destroy these chains, the same shape I had traced in my pocket as I spoke to Meredyth, I knew that for once I had the upper hand in my life. For the first time since I gave myself over to training in the arts, since I turned my back on my growing family, in the pursuit of the higher spiritual, I was at that moment ready to destroy someone other than myself.
“If there are any of these ancient tokens left, they would be with my old masters.”
“Then you do know where to find them?”
“I knew a woman once who had one. A kindly woman who would never hurt anyone. I doubt she would refuse me if I asked her for it.”
“Good man, good man!” He coughed into a balled fist, so hard that blood soaked his palm. “Hurry. Go to it, my good man!”
I bowed, spreading my cloak, and walked from the room so fast the door slapped Denly in the face. He hurried after me down the stairs, spreading out his hands, desperately asking me what the master had said. I ignored his cackling, and didn’t give the central chamber a second look. The first look was enough to tell me Meredyth wasn’t there. I didn’t want to see her again, not until she was properly dressed, and the look I wanted to see in her eyes was back again. But something in that blue smoke told me I would never see it again.
Nor would Varet or Sunset House last much longer. I was far enough away that no one could detect what I was doing, at the other end of the road, the exit of the forest, where it opens on the southern plain. I had learned a few things in Euthock Kelly, as much as I had tried to forget all the real lessons, about how petty people can be, about how fame and association motivate most people, not craft. But there were a few lessons in metals and spirit that I could use, and I used them on the amulet. Summoning my energy, dipping into the motherspace, outside our normal consciousness, I fed spirit into the amulet, and as it warmed, I waited until the heat was unbearable, and at the last moment tossed it into the forbidden wood. At its apogee, it was a ball of flame large enough and hot enough to light the trees. You have heard of this fire, and yes, I am the one who began it, I am not ashamed to say. I watched it from Taramenu as it raged throughout the season, sure that what I saw inside Sunset House was enough to ensure that no one would summon me there again.
So there you have my tale, and if there are any other tales of my life to tell, such as when I next met Kerinios Tultavestra, I will leave it to others to tell.
©February 2020 J. J. Adamson
J. J. Adamson is a fantasy writer and former scientist from Colorado. When he’s not writing, he’s reading, editing, or playing a fretted instrument. He can be found on Facebook and Twitter as @JoelJAdamson, and on his blog at http://joeljadamson.wordpress.com. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.