by Mark Mills
in Issue 133, February 2023
“It’s so close, so close.” Goni bit her lip until blood trickled down her chin. “Down the hole, just down the hole. Jump down the hole and run out the cave.”
She had no need to elaborate the obvious, Pechi thought. They all knew how close they were to escape.
“Down the hole–” Yes, simply open the trapdoor on the far side of this guard’s chamber.
“Down the hole–” Yes, just drop from the trapdoor, down to the tunnel below.
“And out the cave.” Yes, the exit of the caverns would be close enough to see.
Well, at least it would be close enough if you could keep your eyes open long enough before the troglodytes ripped them out of your sockets.
Distance was not the problem.
“So close, so close,” Goni moaned again.
Yes, we know, we know, thought Pechi. Close but with at least three dozen of troglodytes in the way. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? How do you make estimates in the dark?
“So, so close.”
Enough, Pechi thought, but she didn’t dare say it aloud. No one with an ounce of brains would tell an eight-foot, 700-pound ogress to quiet.
“Oh, bless you for your great insight into the distance to the egress. Without your sagacity we never would have suspected.” Kreggs spat out words like a disgruntled camel. “Apparently, the rest of our eyes have fallen out.”
Well, Pechi thought, that establishes the weight of Kreggs’ gray matter.
“Shut your mouth, high rider.” Tibura’s hand was on her dagger. She and Kreggs had quarreled ever since the Council assigned them to this mission. A few more minutes of bickering might deny the troglodytes their chance to eat living flesh.
Pechi wedged herself further in the corner. If the others began swinging, even hiding against the wall, she’d be the first to go down. She opened her sack and sat the troglodytes’ idol on the cavern floor. The little figure was the cause of all the trouble. If only it could resolve those problems as easily.
“Do you think that our small friend has any real magical power?” Emberly sat down beside her but spoke loud enough for the others to hear.
“Absolutely. I just need to figure out what it does.”
Pechi continued studying the idol until she realized the others had frozen and were now studying her.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Tibura said. “That after we’ve ran for miles from the trogs, fighting until our arms turned to jelly, and stuck in this hole that you could have summoned a god any time you wanted?”
For the last few hours, they had been surrounded by dozens of flesh-eating maggot creatures, but now Pechi suddenly felt more frightened than she’d ever been before.
“N-no, this type of idol doesn’t summon the god but allows the god’s magic to flow through it. I could have tried to activate its magic, but without knowing how it works, I might do more harm than good.”
“The trogs going to eat us alive.” Goni loomed over her. “How you think it can get worse?”
“You don’t know magic,” Pechi replied. She tried to sound wise and confident, but she wished she knew more magic herself.
The others had no time for a rebuttal. The wooden beams on top of the trapdoor leading down to the troglodytes’ tunnels exploded and a stream of white, hairless monstrosities billowed up from the depths.
Spitting, hissing, mad hissing.
Pale, damp skins like a grub, dozens of stringy arms, blank faces with huge gray eyes. Maggot men of Hell. Eaters of death. Troglodytes.
Emberly was the first to act, drawing his blade, but the others were right behind him. Pechi continued to hunch in the corner.
The trapdoor in the floor was too narrow to allow for more than three of the trogs to ascend at a time but that did nothing to slow their bloodlust–troglodytes have no concern of being hacked and slashed, they would continue to charge until their numbers proved overwhelming.
A troglodyte arm, severed from its torso, slapped the surface of the cave yet its owner continued charging. Goni crushed their skulls, one after another, but the tide continued. Tibura screamed as one of their toothless maws latched onto her arm. Pechi knew what that meant–in minutes, her body would grow weak and numb, worthless in a fight.
Hissing, mad hissing. More troglodytes crawled up into the crowded room.
“If you know magic, show it now,” Emberly shouted.
Pechi had held back, still clutching the idol. She had so few spells and cast them so poorly, it seemed hopeless. Cyman’s Spell of Blinding Light would drive the trogs back, but Pechi had never successfully performed the spell. Mouthing the words, she felt a wave of energy pass through her frame. Her eyes failed her, and she nearly lost hold on the idol.
Sensations of falling, pain, then relief.
Her legs buckled; all she could hear was a buzzing.
Buzzing?
The trogs! Twitching in agony, their shrill cries echoed like the buzzing of angry hornets, but they’d lost their sting, writhing, twisting in the intense brightness. The light hung in the air above the tunnel, blazing so intensely that the troglodytes’ skin burnt and peeled from their faces. Those crawling from the tunnel dropped back to the darkness, the wretches that had already fully emerged were cut to pale, bloodless slabs of meat.
When the last of the troglodytes fell, Goni and Emberly piled the remains of the wooden beams, flat stones, and even dead trogs over the trapdoor, yet it looked far from impregnable.
Kregs made no attempt to help. “They’ll be back when they want.”
The light continued to beam; if she’d cast it right, the illumination would linger in the room for hours. To Pechi it was a trophy of her success–she’d saved the mission, she’d saved the others, she’d–
“Why didn’t you do that earlier?” Far from grateful, Kreggs shoved his face inches from Pechi’s, spewing salvia with every word.
“I didn’t know–”
Goni yanked Kreggs back and cocked her fist. If Emberly hadn’t intervened, Kreggs would never have spoken again.
“Before we do the trogs work for them, why not check on our comrade?” Emberly gestured towards Tibura.
“I’m fine,” she grunted but clearly that was not the case. The bloody gash from the troglodyte’s bite was now oozing a yellowish pus.
Emberly gave a weak smile. “Perhaps our definition of ‘fine’ are not in mesh.”
“Enough of that.” Kreggs wriggled out of Goni’s grip and pointed back to Pechi. “Why didn’t you use that spell sooner?”
“Before now, in my entire life, I’d never been able to cast it. I don’t know why it worked this time. It might have been the idol giving me strength. Maybe there’s something about this place that affects magic. Or I might have just been lucky.”
Kreggs snorted. “My money’s on the idol. But before we were interrupted, you were boasting about being able to utilize its power.”
“Well, yes, sort of. Using this type of idol is simple. Anyone can do it. Any of you, in fact. Simply read the incantation from its inscription on the base correctly and you activate its magic.”
“You said that already, wizardling.”
“Sorry. Idols of this kind open a doorway to their gods, a door granting a massive surge of power. The trouble is that in this case, we have no way of knowing when we open the door, what’s going to come out. We don’t know which direction the door swings or if it will hit anything when it opens. Usually, the gods grant strength or invulnerability. Some make you invisible or immune to poison, but I’ve heard of idols that cause a man to sprout leaves or changes him into a woman. And most importantly is if you misspeak the inscription, you can die or worse.”
Emberly pointed to the runic inscription at the base of the idol. “You mean you can read this?”
“Oh yes.” Pechi carefully set the idol on the ground. “It says “To receive my aid and favor, call out ‘caileesh invull latcor.’”
The others stared.
Pechi stared back.
“So.” Emberly broke the silence. “Why didn’t anything happen?”
“I wasn’t touching it. To draw the magic, you must have physical contact with the idol while speaking.”
Tibura was barely able to stand but her gaze was steady. “So that is all that is needed? To hold the idol and say the words?”
Pechi thought she’d been clear but decided it was safer to remain polite. “The trick is saying them correctly, but yes.”
“Then give it to me.”
Pechi picked up the idol but made no move towards her. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.”
“I’m dead weight in a fight as is. No matter what aid and favor this god grants, I can use it. If he strikes me down, so be it.”
“But- I- you.” Pechi drew a deep breath to end her stammering. “Knowing so little about it, the idol is likely to kill or curse you.”
“Then that will only speed up my timeline. No more arguing. Give it to me.”
Pechi clutched the idol and considered refusing, but what good would that do? She handed the idol to Tibura.
She sank cross-legged to the ground, cradling the idol in her lap. “Now, what are the words?”
Pechi spoke slowly and clearly. “Caileesh invull latcor.”
Tibura nodded and repeated. “Caileesh invull latcor.”
For a moment nothing happened. Then Tibura slumped to the ground.
“She’s dead!”
Goni grabbed Tibura, letting the idol tumble from her lap. Emberly touched two of his fingers to Tibura’s neck.
“No, not dead. Merely unconscious.”
The mad hissing!
Another pounding from beneath the trapdoor and another burst of troglodytes shoved their way into the chamber. Goni clubbed the first of them, but the rest recoiled against the spell’s remaining light. A few moments of buzzing and they fell back.
Goni kicked as much rubble as she could over the hole. It might have stopped a charging rabbit, but it was the best that could be done for now.
“Now, I wonder what brought that on?”
Pechi wasn’t sure if she should tell but didn’t think the situation could get worse. “They must have sensed the idol being used. They owned it so long that they’ve developed a spiritual connection to it. They want it back.”
Emberly sniffed. “Tibura stole it fair and square. It would seem ungrateful to return it now.”
When she was finished patching over the tunnel, Goni picked up Tibura. She shook her, pinched her arms, and even tried to pry open her eyelids. Nothing worked.
Pechi watched, unsure of how to help. “I’ve never heard of an idol’s punishment to be unconsciousness, but I don’t think we’ll undo it easily. She may sleep a day, a week, or forever.”
They stared at the slumbering Tibura until Emberly broke the silence. “I suppose I should try next.”
“No.” Pechi grabbed the idol. “You don’t understand. This isn’t a game. The idol must be malfunctioning. There is no point in trying again.”
Kreggs sneered. “You play at wizardry but what good are you? If only you knew a single wit about this god, we would already be outside this hell hole.”
That’s not true. I do recognize the god. He is Nudd, the Eklar god of moon and shadows. The Eklar people were exterminated eons ago, but his worship lives on in neighboring regions. The troglodytes do not pray to humanoid gods, but they must have recognized the idol’s power. I doubt if they knew how to use it but clearly they treasured it, on some level realizing that this idol was constructed as a conduit to Nudd’s power. There’s not much else to understand except what type of power Nudd grants.”
Kreggs’ sneer grew wider. “And its type of power is the only point important to understand, wizardling.”
Emberly again moved between them. “Then another attempt will bring up closer to that understanding. What other choice do we have?”
“No, I’ll do it.” Goni reached for the idol.
Pechi wanted to argue with the ogress, but her voice refused to sound. Emberly had no such problem. “No, Goni, you might not be able to beat all the trogs but you’re the best chance we’ve got. Tibura must have slipped up somehow. Pechi, is there another way to pronounce any of these words?”
Pechi frowned. She didn’t think so, but, as she ran her fingers over the inscription, she thought of something.
“Well, I know this rune translates to a ‘c’ but I don’t know if it’s a hard ‘c’ or soft. ‘Kuh-aileesh’ or ‘suh-aileesh.’ Tibura said ‘kuh-aileesh’ but something that minor shouldn’t have made a difference.”
“Obviously it did. These words are power.”
“I know a thing or two about magic, and nothing is obvious. Invocations on the base of an idol are the simplest aspect of tapping its power. The source of magic is from the god. As long as you treat it with proper reverence, it should work. Completely mangling the words will damn you, but mispronouncing a single letter by mistake shouldn’t matter. It must have been something we haven’t thought of.”
“Let’s see.” Emberly cleared his throat. “Suh-aileesh invull latcor.”
A moment of stillness. Then Emberly dropped to the floor.
Kreggs prodded Emberly with the toe of his shoe. “It looks like a three-way split on the reward.”
“You think this funny?”
Kreggs hadn’t the intellect or humility to fear Goni. He still hadn’t lost his sneer. Pechi wondered if he slept with it. “I admit I am amused. I regret the Council ever paired me with you base degenerates. After all of your imbecilic bickering and incompetence, I found myself looking forward to your deaths. The only thing better would be if I had been able to kill you myself.”
Goni snorted. “You hardly killed one trog. How you think you fight me?”
Pechi slipped back to the corner.
“I have killed more than my fair share of ogres and other lumbering beasts and I wouldn’t mind adding one more to that number.”
Goni stepped closer to him. Pechi blurted out, “Do you really want to fight us and the trogs?”
No sane man would welcome into such a fight, but Kreggs twisted his sneer to superhuman proportions. “I give you fair warning–if we survive, if we escape these tunnels, I brand the lot of you as enemies of my house. You will find me more capable a foe than the gentle troglodytes.”
With Goni beside her, Pechi felt the nerve for back sass. “Are you expecting us to watch your back as we fight our way home?”
“I expect you to do nothing but cower in the shadows, wizardling. You should have determined the solution. It was obvious after the first fool put herself to sleep.”
For the first time, Kreggs’ words stopped both Goni and Pechi in their tracks.
“Wha-what do you mean?”
“As I said, the solution is obvious.” Kreggs yanked the idol from Pechi’s grasp. “The idol is rigged so that reciting the words correctly springs a trap. The god expects strangers to pronounce the words correctly and strikes them down for it. Deliberately mispronouncing them is the key.”
“I’ve never heard of an idol working that way. Accidentally mispronouncing a word just a little shouldn’t matter but deliberately distorting the inscription is guaranteed for failure.”
“Watch me, fool.” Kreggs held up the idol and let out a final smirk. “Cappy leaky inbull cracker.”
A pale green energy crackled about Kregg’s frame, mere wisps at first but growing in intensity as he began to scream. It started as a full, deep bellow but, as his body began to melt and ripple, his voice grew higher and garbled. Kreggs, his body, his gear, his armor, all dissolved and spilled into an oily sludge, the idol plopping into it, sinking into the black puddle.
Pechi stared at the pool of liquified man flesh. She gingerly plucked out the idol, doing her best to wipe it clean. “I’ve never seen anything as horrible but at least now we know what an incorrect invocation looks like.”
Goni nodded. “I will say the words right.”
“No! You can’t be serious. We’ve had nothing but failure.”
Goni sighed. “It probably won’t work, I know, but what can we do? Trogs won’t stop coming. Your magic light burn out soon. We can’t fight all them. They sit and wait until we starve. We nothing to eat here but each other.”
She handed Goni the idol. The second the big ogress brought up cannibalism, Pechi’s will to argue crumbled.
“I’m sorry, Goni, but I can’t figure out what is going wrong. I wish I could help.”
“Maybe if I say it slow, it help.”
“I can’t see how.”
“We’ll see.” She sighed again. “Caileesh. Invull. Latcor.”
Pechi had to leap out of the way as Goni’s body slammed to the floor. The idol dropped beside her. A few slivers of stone chipped off it, but it was otherwise unharmed. The moon god’s clerics had built these things to last.
Now that she was out cold, Goni didn’t seem so fearsome. Pechi remembered back when the Council brought together the team, she’d considered quitting rather than work with an ogress. What an ass she’d been. This was her first mission–infiltrate the troglodytes’ tunnels, steal their idol, and return. Well, two out of three complete.
How long ago that Council session seemed. How naive she’d been. How fearful. She had felt ill, thrown among seasoned veterans. She’d shied back from the exotic dress of Tibura and Emberly’s foreign accent. Funny, she hadn’t a negative first impression about Kreggs.
Hissing.
The floor shook.
Hissing, mad hissing.
The troglodytes were pounding on what was left of the trapdoor again. Cyman’s Spell of Blinding Light was fast fading and Pechi had no weapon except her ceremonial dagger. She remembered her childhood, how she feared the dark in her bedroom, imagining something hideous in store for her, although nothing her childhood brain could fathom was as terrible as being slowly devoured by troglodytes.
The horrors of the dark.
The dark!
With a start, she grabbed the idol just as the troglodytes burst into the room.
Tibura was the first to awaken. She blinked twice then sprang to her feet.
“What happened?” she asked Pechi. “What did the idol do? The last thing I remember was saying the words, then falling into blackness.”
“Yes, the idol didn’t work the way we thought it would.”
“What did it do?” Goni rumbled, shaking the sleep off her. “Where are we?”
“Oh! I thought you’d wake up in the order you went down. I guess you can try to wake Emberly.”
Goni slapped Emberly’s head so hard that Pechi didn’t think that he’d ever come to.
“Ouch! Dammit! What happened?”
“I already say that. But didn’t get answer.”
Emberly rubbed his head and then joined the others in looking at Pechi.
“You two missed what happened to Kreggs. He misused the idol. He’s no longer with us.”
“Methinks the world shall survive his departure.”
“Melted into goo. He thought–”
“I hate to interrupt you, my friend, but if we’re alive, one of you must have figured out how to control the idol’s power. How did you manage to make it work correctly?”
“I didn’t. I did but I, uh.” Pechi took a breath. “I mean, it was working correctly all along. I should have seen it earlier. The idol isn’t a weapon or power source. It grants strength from the moon god, the ancient king of darkness; his gift is of the night. Not a weapon, but medication. It’s a tool for insomniacs. We weren’t doing anything wrong at all. It’s supposed to put you to sleep.”
They wrinkled their brows. Pechi thought she heard Tibura cursing the idol makers.
Emberly maintained his smile. “Did you trick the trogs into using it?”
“No, I just faced the idol towards the troglodytes and recited the inscription. Every last one of them dropped like a blizzard of ugly rocks.”
They all chuckled at that.
“You scared it wouldn’t work, right?” Goni looked concerned. “That it not work on trogs and you be the one to go to sleep?”
“Well, not really. It did occur to me that I might pass out, but I’d rather be unconscious when the trogs got me than awake.”
They laughed again but there was a sense of uneasiness in their tone that Pechi didn’t understand. Emberly finally addressed it.
“When they were all asleep, when everyone was asleep but you, why didn’t you just take the idol and run? You couldn’t have known if the idol acted the same way with the troglodytes as with us, if they’d wake up early, yet you dragged all of us through the tunnels and outside.”
Pechi didn’t want to say that was a silly question, so she picked her words carefully. “I didn’t know what else to do. My spells aren’t strong enough to levitate you and there wasn’t anyone around to ask for help.”
The others smiled although she wasn’t sure why.
Goni finally asked. “Did the trogs wake up when you slit their throats? Or you stab them through hearts?”
“I, I didn’t kill them.” Pechi was able to keep herself from looking down to her feet, but it was a struggle. “I don’t even know if troglodytes have hearts. After they fell asleep, there was enough room to squeeze all of you between them on the way out. It was really hard with you, Goni, but I got through. By now, the trogs will probably start waking coming to before long.”
“Then we should put some space between us while the sun is up. When they wake, they’ll be indignant, betrayed by their old holy idol.”
“Yes, I almost feel sorry for them. I can only imagine their fury, their sense of betrayal and loss.”
“True.” Emberly nodded. “But while we have a long trek ahead of us, they’re going to be snoozing for hours. Dazed, betrayed, battered–but at least, thanks to the Moon God, they’ll wake up from the most refreshing sleep of their lives.”
©February 2023, Mark Mills
Mark Mills teaches composition, literature, film, philosophy, and basic Noa robotic programming. His work has appeared in Grievous Angel, Zooscape, and Tor.com, among other places. You may remember him from such video classics as Satanic Yuppies, Zombie Cult Massacre, Uberzombiefrau, and other cinematic masterpieces. To read his thoughts on fantasy, old horror, and parakeets, visit www.cinrambler.wordpress.com. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.