by David Ferguson
in Issue 107, December 2020
The room was small, with a homespun quilt thrown across the door. Orinia pushed it aside as she entered. Inside the room, Kev sat on his haunches, head turned away from what lay on the floor in front of him.
She cleared her throat uneasily. Kev looked up with a jerk. His face was pale and drawn, and he looked like he was going to be sick. “What?” he asked tiredly.
She hated seeing the misery in the face of their group’s de facto leader. She knew Kivarvik Smraius was a kind, selfless man, and while she sometimes found it hard to believe that Kev was as pure of heart as he pretended, she could see the distress in his face, and it made the carnage here even harder to take. It made her feel hollow.
She resisted the urge to look directly at him. “We should leave. The Shadarin might come back.”
“Shadarin?” Kev looked at the corpses on the floor, a woman and her son. The blood had been drained from their bodies, and lay in finely sprinkled crystals around their white bodies. “I don’t believe in ghost stories. Whatever did this was no spirit of death. A Demon, maybe.”
“Some distinction. What does it matter? Ghost or Demon, whatever did this is gone. We’ve searched the entire village!”
Kev got to his feet, and pushed past her without a word. Orinia followed him outside.
They’d searched, but everyone in Halshire was dead. The four of them had arrived in the village an hour ago. Orinia had spent most of the morning insulting Rovigo, or “Rooster” as she liked to call him. The pompous wizard was new to their group, and Orinia had found his snide smugness and superior attitude unbearable. Everything he said seemed like a stone in her shoe, and she had been planning all morning the song she would write about him and his idiocy. She knew that her songs would decide how he would be remembered years from now when her adventures were told and retold, when her fame spread. She was a Teller, and that was the power of her profession – they told the stories that would become history.
Preoccupied, she had been the last to notice anything was wrong. There was livestock in the fields, smoke came from a farmhouse’s chimney, and countless other signs of normal life. It wasn’t until they reached the mill that they all realized that they hadn’t seen a single person yet. No sweaty farmers tilling their fields, no-one feeding the animals, not even children playing games along the road. Not a soul.
Every house was the same. In their beds, at their tables, on their porch and in their fields, people lay dead. Murdered — some unaware, some surprised, some terrified, but all dead, all slain by magic. Man, woman and child, something or someone had killed everyone in the town, one by one. Some buildings were burnt down, some collapsed, others untouched, but they all had one thing in common. The dead.
Rovigo waited outside the farmhouse, looking out across the village square with a sick expression on his face. Gailen came up to them, a scowl on her face and her hands resting on the hilts of the long knives sheathed at her waist. “Time to go.”
“Somebody has to pay,” Kev insisted, perhaps to himself.
Gailen shrugged. “You find them and I’ll make them pay. In the meantime…”
Orinia took a step closer to Gailen. She was easily a foot shorter, but she threw back her head to look up into her face.
“We can’t just leave them lying around like this. They need to be placed on a pyre, so that their souls can return to the Cycle!” It was the custom of those who worshiped Orone, the Lord of the Air, and the patron of wanderers.
Gailen snorted. “You want to burn all these corpses? You know what a stink that’ll make? Their souls will find their way just fine without us, and without the Sky Lord’s help as well, I’ll wager. There’s nothing left to be done here, and I for one don’t plan on replenishing my supplies, or spending the night, in a mass grave. We’ve got to move on now, before it gets too dark.”
“Gailen’s right, much as I hate to agree,” Rovigo groused. “We’ll learn nothing here. We’ve got to leave before nightfall. Before the Demon that did this comes back. We need to leave now.”
Gailen snorted in disgust. “I’m not afraid, Rooster. I just meant I didn’t want to sleep in a charnel house.”
Rovigo was surprised when Orinia grudgingly agreed. Secretly she was relieved to have lost the argument and to be away from here. She’d already been mentally kicking herself for suggesting it, and the back-breaking work it would mean.
“We’ve got to find out what did this,” Kev announced.
“Says who?” asked Rovigo.
“We’ve already looked around,” added Orinia. “There’s nothing left to learn. We don’t even know what did this, or how. Shurcove is only another day’s travel. Maybe when we get there, we can organize something. Talk to the local lord.”
“That makes sense, I suppose.”
“Of course it does. We can stop in Norville, maybe get some fresh horses. That’ll speed us up, not to mention that we can tell them about what’s happened here.”
There was no further argument. They saddled up, glad to be leaving the dead behind them. No-one spoke as they trotted along the single road that led through town.
On the outskirts of the village they passed a large stone church dedicated to Thadarin, the Mother of Life. The door to the church was ajar. Somehow, the church felt defiled – what had been a testament to life, now surrounded by the dead, men and women who had once come here to worship. Kev stopped his horse, a chill running down his spine. The others paused as well, and then, as one, they dismounted. The inside of the church was dark despite the sun, as if the sunlight was afraid to enter the half-open door.
As they came up the front steps, Kev heard the soft rasp of metal. Behind him, Gailen had drawn her long, curved daggers, and Orinia held her short sword in both hands. Rovigo looked terrified, but prepared to cast a spell. He clutched his athla, symbol of his magic, tightly in one hand.
None of them met Kev’s eyes. They all could feel the church held danger. He felt it too, deep in his stomach. He drew his sword, the legendary Nar-Tharesh, and pushed the door the rest of the way open with its tip. The enchanted sword glowed with a faint red light, but not enough to illuminate the darkness very much.
The church was quiet. The candles were unlit, for no-one had been alive in the morning to light them. There was a strange smell in the air that Kev couldn’t identify, perhaps some sort of incense. In the darkness, Kev could see row after row of high benches, and an indistinct altar at the church’s head.
Orinia moved to the windows and drew open the shutters.
The pews were empty. Sprawled near the altar were two bodies, an older woman and a middle-aged man. They were dressed in plain white robes, and their skin was waxy looking and pale. Their eyes were closed peacefully. They had fallen together, and the man’s arm was still around the woman’s shoulders as she lay on her side.
“Why the tattoo?” Rovigo asked. Both bodies had a single tear tattooed under their left eye.
Orinia knelt down beside the bodies. “Priests of the Mother. The tear symbolizes their recognition of the necessity of death. Their acceptance of the Cycle.” Her voice choked for a moment. She gently touched the dead woman on the shoulder, to roll her onto her back.
With a soft crunch the robe caved in, most of the woman’s shoulder and torso collapsing into a fine powder. With a startled yelp, Orinia leapt back, almost knocking Kev over. He put a heavy, comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right.” Orinia swallowed her irritation at his reassurance. He meant well.
Gailen cleared her throat. She stood by the altar, staring at the wall behind it. Rovigo looked over her shoulder. On the wall was a mural of the All-Mother in a grassy field. Flowers sprung from her footsteps, and small animals and birds followed her. A bird was perched upon her outstretched hand.
The face in the painting was obliterated with a charred hand print, and across the mural was written in a neat, precise script, “Two by two and four by four.” Rovigo didn’t want to guess what had been used for ink.
“What does it mean?” asked Gailen.
“Sounds familiar. Like part of a song or something,” noted Kev. He held up his hand comparing it to the charred hand print on the mural. The other hand was smaller, with long fingers.
“Two by two …,” recited Orinia thoughtfully, glad to think of something besides the dead. “… and four by four. It does sound familiar, but I can’t place it.”
There was nothing else in the church. They turned to leave and stopped in their tracks. One of the double doors they had entered was still open. Across the back of the other was written, in the same script, “ille”.
Gailen slowly shut the other door. Together, they read, ‘Norville’.
The figure was swathed in long robes that would sweep the ground where it walked, if indeed it could walk. It had not moved for a long time, and could have been mistaken for a statue or scarecrow, but no scarecrow had ever been dressed in such a manner. The long robes were unadorned, plain cream colored cloth, tightly woven and doubtless warm on even such a cold night, for the figure did not shiver in the harvest night air. Its face was turned up towards the sky and covered with a strange azure mask.
The mask was smooth, and carved from some sort of shiny, light blue stone. It was, perhaps, made from a large shell, polished and carved, for it resembled the inside of the large blue shells that fishermen of the Broken Sea sometimes brought back for their children. It almost shone with a pearly, iridescent gleam in the sickly moonlight. The azure mask had thin slits for eyes and no mouth at all. It appeared to almost hang unsupported in the recesses of the figure’s hood.
The figure held in its left hand a long, thin staff of polished wood, capped with silver, but it did not lean upon it. The hand that clutched the staff was the only bare flesh that could be seen. The fingers were slender with slightly long fingernails. It could have been a woman’s hand, except that that the flesh was mottled gray and lumpy, giving it the appearance of melted wax.
The figure stood perfectly still, azure mask staring at the bloated and orange harvest moon almost at its apex. The night air was still, but not quiet. An owl screeched somewhere in the distance, and small vermin rustled in the grass as if in fear. Less than two hundred feet away from the figure was a barn, and beyond that a farmhouse, marking the outskirts of Norville, and the figure could feel life there, throbbing obscenely.
Long ago it had a true name, but that was gone. It would have called itself Azura now, but even the idea of a name no longer really meant anything, it was just a lie people told themselves in the endless darkness. Cut by cut, it had discarded such things, as it had discarded everything – pride, hubris, love, emotion, and in the end, its sense of self. All that remained was the hunger for death.
No matter how many died, it was not enough. Each death felt smaller than the one that preceded it. As each soul returned to the Cycle it seemed to dwindle, a pebble dropped down a deep well to splash with barely a sound. The first death had been so deeply satisfying and now a score of deaths was as meaningless as grass crushed underfoot.
Two by two was nothing, too slow. More was needed, she knew. Much more. Soon, soon the moon would rise, and the bodies would fall like wheat.
Several ponderous minutes passed, and the moon finally reached its apex. As if it was a signal, the figure finally moved. It began to walk forward with a surprisingly fluid grace. It looked neither right or left. Ahead, the village lay and waited for what the figure brought. As it approached the barn, its fingers tightened around its staff in anticipation.
A farm dog, startled by the intrusion, loped out of the barn and stared at the figure. It did not bark. The figure didn’t break its stride. The dog whined and took a step back. The figure did not speak, but gestured, and a faint orange glowing sphere enveloped the dog’s head. It whined once in pain and fell heavily to one side, unmoving. The glow abruptly vanished and the dog’s head rolled free. The figure continued onwards towards the farmhouse.
They rode as fast as their horses could manage along the road to Norville. The sun had set hours ago, and the horses’ sides were wet with sweat as they labored along. The moon was full and a dull orange – a harvest moon, Orinia noted.
Thinking of the harvest, the line she had read on the wall of the church finally clicked into place. It was a line from a children’s song:
Ring a ring round and down the rows
The Old Lady sneaks and creeps
Two by two and four by four
Shk! Shk! Down goes the wheat.
It was a macabre rhyme for a children’s song. It was about how Grandmother Death ends lives, returning them to the Cycle. It had an even more disturbing context now, as she could see the dead townspeople of Halshire in her mind. The killer had written the name of Norville at the church – a village they should be reaching soon. She dreaded to think that they would be too late.
They saw a farmhouse as they thundered over a hilltop overlooking Norville. The night air was still and quiet. The entire village consisted of little more than a half dozen farms gathered around a stream. They reined in the horses as they approached the first farmhouse.
“What if nothing has happened?” asked Orinia as she dismounted.
“Not much chance of that,” grunted Gailen as she he drew her twin daggers. “Door’s open.”
The single door to the house was half-open, and a chair lay on its side just inside the doorway. There were no lights in the house. They gathered outside the door nervously.
Rovigo looked pale. “We should get out of here,” he said in a low voice. “You saw what that thing did – it wiped out a town. How can we fight something like that? We don’t even know what it is. Why are we chasing it?”
Kev’s enchanted sword glowed faintly in the darkness. His face was uncharacteristically cold as he turned to face Rovigo, but he did not speak. Rovigo looked away and muttered to himself. Kev turned to face the door. “We do what we must. What is right,” he added, talking to no-one in particular before gingerly pushing the door fully open with the tip of his sword.
As the door creaked open, a sudden scream echoed through the night.
“It was from over there,” Orinia said, pointing across a field thick with corn to a neighboring farmhouse. Even as the words left her mouth, Gailen had already dashed past her, plunging headlong into the corn. The rest followed.
In the darkness, the corn rows were impossible to see through, and it was all they could do to keep at least one companion’s back in sight as they dashed along the rows. The scream had stopped as quickly as it had started, and the only sound was the rustling of corn stalks and the steady thump of their running footsteps. Unbidden, a snatch of the children’s rhyme echoed in her head, “*Ring a ring round and down the rows…*”
The rows of corn ended suddenly, revealing a wide field in front of a farmhouse. Gailen reached the end of the corn first, before stopping abruptly with a curse and dropping into a fighting posture.
On the wall of the barn was a young man, several feet off the ground. Three fist-sized burns had been stitched across his chest. They still smoldered. On the wooden wall underneath him his feet was inscribed. “Two by two and four by four. Shurcove.”
There was no sign of his murderer.
“More of that ‘two-by-two’ shit,” grumbled Gailen. “Shurcove – do you know how many people live there? It’s a port town.”
“It’s a song. A children’s song,” explained Orinia. She sang it quickly once through. “I told you it was a Shadarin.”
Kev sheathed his sword. He looked tired. “In the stories, the Shadarin always claim the life of someone that cheated death. This,” he paused and looked around, “… this is something else. All these people, all the people at Halshire. Someone murdered them. We can’t let them kill any more, Shadarin or no.”
“I say we find the person that did this, and give them a taste of their own medicine,” grunted Gailen.
“I say no,” said Rovigo. The mage fiddled with the trim of his sleeve while he spoke. “Whatever did this could kill us all just as easily.”
“Shut your mouth, Rooster,” growled Gailen.
“No! I will speak. We were fools to chase it here – we just missed it! This man was killed just minutes ago! It could have been us, if we’d been faster. It’s foolish to die fighting something that can destroy entire villages!”
“We just missed it. That’s why we must hurry. Maybe we can prevent another massacre.” Kev’s voice was surprisingly calm.
“What!?! Prevent it how?” Rovigo asked angrily. “It killed everyone so easily! The sort of power it must have …,” he trailed off.
Kev’s voice was calm. “I don’t know. We won’t know until we come face to face with whatever did this. And perhaps we won’t be able to stop it. But we must try. How can you sit by and let others die?”
“How? It’s not like I’m killing them. I’m a good person; I try to help people when I can. But this is suicide!” Rovigo looked around for support. The others clearly sided with Kev. “What? Do you all want to return to the Cycle so badly? To the Void with you all then.”
“Rovigo…,” started Orinia. The others mounted their horses without a word. Rovigo stopped and looked back. She paused, as if thinking better of her next words. “Be careful, Rooster,” she added finally, in a tone that sounded almost sad.
He looked surprised. “I will.”
She nodded. Normally she knew she could barely stop talking. As a Teller, she’d always seen her talent for words as a gift, but at this moment, words failed her. Finally, she added, “Until next we meet then, Rovigo.”
He paused for a moment, looking into her face. His own face was waxy and pale in the moonlight, but hers was resolute. He looked again, seeing the same expression on Kev and Gailen’s faces. Finally, he shook his head, slapped his horse’s neck and galloped away.
The walls around Shurcove had been built just after King Fallon the Tall’s death 150 years before. He had been the last king to rule Alora with complete power. After his death, his son was forced by the nobles into forming a council that reduced the King’s taxing and spending powers. Fallon’s son was crowned High King, but that was just a name. By controlling the kingdoms’ resources, the nobles controlled the king. Shurcove was seen as a key economic site, and so had undergone large amounts of construction and had reduced taxes. In more recent years, Shurcove’s importance as a port had diminished somewhat, but it was still one of the larger ports on the Astloran coast. The manor of Lord Grissing, who governed Shurcove and the surrounding areas, lay well within its walls, near the center of town.
The walls themselves were timber, simple logs taken from the nearby Dregal Forest. One end of each log was buried deep, the other sharpened into a point. Several gates opened into the town, but at sunset they were closed to all except those with special passes. That point the guards had made very clear.
“For Ethani’s sake, you’ve got to call your captain then, if we can’t see Lord Grissing! Something is on its way here – it has already killed everyone in Norville and Halshire!”
They stood outside the gate on the Southern Road. The moon was full and high, illuminating the area. On the other side of the gate were a handful of guards. More had been summoned to deal with the foreigners that sat outside demanding to be let in and to see Lord Grissing.
Their spokesman laughed. “Killed whole towns, eh? And you’ve seen this army I suppose? You’re mad. I’ll lose my job if I let you in — lose my job at best,” he added with a laugh. “You’ve no passes, and no proof.”
“I’ve had enough,” Gailen said as she unsheathed her daggers and started towards the gate. Kev put a hand on his shoulder. She shook off his hand, but relented for the moment.
“Please! You’ve got to get your militia together,” he told the guards.
Orinia snorted. “Rovigo was right. We should have left these people to what awaits them.” Gailen glared at her. “Morag’s bowels, I’m kidding, alright?”
“I say we force our way in. We can straighten it out later,” grunted Gailen.
“Wait! Do you hear that?” The sound of a galloping horse grew closer as they drew their weapons. Orinia drew her sling and loaded a good-sized stone into it. Finally, the rider came into sight.
It was Rovigo. He trotted up to where the group waited and dismounted.
Kev smiled. “I knew you’d be back.”
Rovigo grunted. “I just thought I’d be safer in Shurcove than on the road alone,” he lied. He smiled warily, knowing that his lie was obvious.
“Look, he’s seen it too,” Orinia told the guards. “We must speak to the captain. Now will you let us in?”
Rovigo cleared his throat. “Perhaps I can help …,” he told Orinia as he stepped past her and greeted the guard. “Hello. I am the magus Rovigo di Tavolieri. You need to let me and my companions in immediately,” he said with a smile.
He gestured, and the wooden bar on the gate shivered and snapped in half.
The guards swore and jumped back. Rovigo smiled again. “Open the gate, or the next thing to snap will be you.”
The guards paused, unsure whether to call for reinforcements and risk the wizard’s wrath, or to let them pass. “Now, look, let’s be reasonable here. It is the law – you need a pass to enter after sundown….” The head guard paused. “Another?” he asked, pointing further down the road. “Thadarin’s mercy, they’re with you too, I suppose.”
They turned to see. A robed and hooded figure with a staff was walking towards them. It approached quickly, though it did not seem to be running; it seemed to glide more than walk.
Orinia shuffled nervously. A chill passed through her, and somehow, she knew this was the thing that had murdered all those people. Her stomach felt suddenly hollow, and her fingers fumbled for her sling.
The light from the harvest moon outlined the figure as it drew close. It raised a hand without breaking stride, and a bolt of blue light streaked towards them.
They scattered without a second thought. Kev dove to the right, landing heavily. Orinia dove and rolled to the left. Gailen and Rovigo were slower. They barely managed to avoid the blue bolt as it streaked past them and struck the gate with an explosive bang. The gate flew apart, killing and injuring guardsmen as pieces of wood and metal were thrown everywhere. One chunk of wood struck Gailen in the back of her leg and a piece of the gate’s metal bindings hit Rovigo in the upper back. He went down with a grunt.
Orinia rolled to one knee, her sling already loaded and whirring over her head as she tried to find the target. The figure was already in their midst, just feet from the gate. The figure was lost amongst the long robes it wore. Its face was a blur of shiny blue; a mask Orinia realized. The staff was raised overhead in one chalky white fist, while the other hand began to gesture.
Orinia let the sling stone fly just an electric blue glow started to envelop the figure. The stone went straight, striking the figure in the chest, just under the mask. She couldn’t see it hit, but the figure took a half step back and clutched its neck. The blue glow intensified, then vanished in a clap of ozone. Gailen got back to her feet, whipping out her daggers and charging the figure, as did Kev.
“Keep it from the gate!” bellowed Kev. His sword flashed red as he swung it at the figure. It stepped aside nimble, avoiding the sword, and gestured again. A pair of glowing red missiles appeared from nowhere and flashed at Gailen. She swatted at them with her daggers. One missile struck her thigh with a loud sizzle, the other luckily struck her dagger instead of her chest. It knocked the blade from her hand and she growled in pain as a black burn spread across her thigh.
Orinia, who had backed away from the figure, let another stone fly. This one struck the thing in the side. It jerked in pain, swiveling to pinpoint its attacker as Orinia fumbled with another stone.
Kev stepped up beside Gailen, but the thing ignored him. As Gailen swung at it again with her remaining dagger, it leapt up and over them in a high arc, nearly ten feet off the ground at the highest point. The robe fluttered around its feet and arms as it flew through the air like a great bird of prey. It landed lightly beside Orinia.
As the masked figure landed Rovigo lurched to his feet. Blood ran down his face from a cut in his scalp. His face was mask of fear, but he did not run. He began a spell.
The figure began one at the same time. An orange glow pulsed around its chalk white hand as it reached out for Orinia. She turned to flee, but she knew she could not outrun it.
Rovigo finished his spell. The grass under Azura’s feet became as sharp and as strong as knives. It twisted in pain as long needles pierced its feet. Rovigo laughed triumphantly.
The figure threw itself back away from the needle grass. It span in mid-air to land on its feet, and bounded forward, covering the distance to Rovigo in a heartbeat. The orange glow around its hand deepened in hue as it reached out and grabbed Rovigo by the arm. There was a loud crash and he screamed, and for an instant, Rovigo glowed orange as well, bright as the sun. In that instant, his skeleton was visible through his flesh.
Then the glow vanished, and the figure pushed Rovigo aside. He slid bonelessly to the ground, like nothing more than a strangely shaped throw rug. As Azura stepped over the body, both Kev and Gailen came up from behind and attacked. Gailen lunged forward first, plunging her dagger into the figure’s back.
Its head snapped back in pain, though it still made no sound. Gailen wrenched out the blade with a twist, and Kev swung his sword as soon as her hands were clear. Nar-Tharesh sang through the air, glowing red, and struck the hooded figure in the side of the head. The hood caved in under the blow of the magically sharp blade. The mask arced into the air, glittering in the moonlight, and landed several feet away.
The figure’ legs kicked once, exposing pasty white flesh covered with sores and strange protrusions, as if the flesh was melted somehow. Then it fell back and moved no more.
Gailen limped up and looked down at the remains. Her leg was burnt badly, and the second missile would no doubt have burnt right through her armor if it had struck her instead of the knife. “You didn’t leave any for me,” she grunted miserably. She poked the body with the toe of her boot.
Orinia knelt beside Rovigo. His body was strangely formless, and she knew that somehow, the orange glow had destroyed all of the bones in his body, killing him instantly. There was nothing in the corpse that even reminded her of him, he was irrevocably gone. She couldn’t bear to touch the body.
The others came up behind her. “How is he?” asked Kev before he saw the corpse.
“He saved me,” muttered Orinia sadly. “After everything I ever said to him, he saved me. It was coming for me until he attacked it. That would have been me. Why did he do that?”
Gailen’s voice was subdued. “Any one of us would have for each other.”
“One of us? We never treated him like one of us. I did nothing but treat him like a fool, and now he’s dead. He wanted to leave, and we made him a coward for it. But he still came. And that … thing … killed him.”
Kev reached out to touch her shoulder, but stopped himself. His hand hovered there, uncertain. “He saved Shurcove. He saved us. It was so intent on him, it never saw us coming.” His voice sounded weak. “He kept it away from the gates. None of us will ever forget that. Orinia, you’re a Teller. You can make sure no-one ever forgets.”
Orinia shook her head, but he was right. She knew it would be years before anyone dared to settle back in Halshire or Norville, and as the years passed people would forget exactly what had happened here. It would all became just a local legend, twisted until it bore no resemblance to reality. And who would remember Rovigo then?
She hated to think of that. She might not be as good of a Teller as she boasted, but she knew she could not let that happen. She had always imagined herself as the hero of her song, but the thought suddenly made her feel sick. This story was hers alone to craft, and she would spread it far and wide.
©December 2020, David Ferguson
David Ferguson grew up on a steady diet of genre paperbacks, RPGs, and obscure B-Movies. Despite the effects of this on his mind and body, he somehow managed to secure gainful employment in software development, and now lives in Richmond Hill, Ontario, with his beautiful wife and three children. He enjoys writing heroic fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and is working on his first novel, HOTEL FRACTURA. You can follow him at https://karasupress.wordpress.com/