As Kulira’s sorcery spirals toward disaster, Astropho alone may forestall calamity. But how…?
In the shrine chamber the ritual had progressed, running amok, a reaction broken from all chains of restraint. The shadowchantress, sat as a lotus still, levitated far above the gravel, her robes flowing wild like black sails torn in a hurricane, her white braids whipped about like flotsam, her arched eyes locked unblinking upon those of the idol, while round her orbited the twelve discs of the zodiacal houses, a ring about a saturnine moon. Sinuous filaments of energy streaked from out her core, touching, prodding, testing: wall, floor, chains, men, as if in desperate yearning, feelers groping blind for a desired savour they could not source.
Astropho watched on, caught between woe and wonder. Not those luminous, vibrant transmutations of the more familiar seelie magic, this, but instead tenebrous, umbral sorcery, mired in dire calumnies aeons steeped. Having studied the rune-graven Ritual of Scarab, well he knew what catalyst those fell sorceries were seeking, and knew that it could not be obtained here.
“No use, Kulira,” he cried. “The Ritual of Scarab is heathen craft from the Dark Age. The inscription is quite specific. The price for immortality is chaste blood, drawn from an unspoiled maiden, her life sacrificed to the thirst of Arkunagash. None here fit the bill! You cannot culminate the ritual. Now relent from this foolishness, you stubborn woman, ere you kill yourself, or others. Or me!”
Kulira paid no mind to his warnings. Power such as she had never before felt coursed through her every cell, as if each one of those twelve metal discs wheeling about her were a fulcrum, channelling energies of untold magnitude out the cosmos and pouring all into the vessel of her being. And through her eyes, locked in union with those of the idol, that accumulated energy siphoned forth deep and draining to Arkunagash herself, wherever in the Outer Dark she lay hid, dormant and nigh forgot, yet eternally ready to awaken again. And in return for such transfusion, revelation.
“Magnificence!” exulted Kulira in ecstasy. “Endless pattern! Limitless meaning!” Her eyes widened yet, as if lighted upon those mysteries few mortals dared see, the warp and weft of the fabric of infinity, the unified design of the Gods themselves.
Yet she could not wield such massive forces without a purpose. And more urgent those long inky fingers flickered out from her body in yearn of consummation, caressing cleft and crag of cave wall, teasing the gravel, exploring each man in turn, the petrified diggers, Amileo, Locaon, Astropho, and thence to Hanno.
“Hexery!” yelled the quaking pirate, high and shrill, like a babe bawling for his mother. “Take it off me! Get it away!” And in alarm he began to duck and dodge, swiping at the shadowy filament, his dirk cleaving its incorporeal substance clean yet ineffectual, steel no threat to sorcery.
“Hanno, calm yourself!” insisted Astropho, sensing awful danger.
“Be still!” cried Amileo, “lest it strike you!”
But the pirate had passed beyond persuasion. Panicking in dismay he slashed at the tendril, which clung and enwrapped him, growing thicker, darker, angrier. From the idol of the Sick’ning Scarab tolled a noise most foul, a lunatic growl coughed up from some abyss of nightmare. The inky tendril quivered with a thrill of rage, and with neither sound nor spasm Hanno toppled to the gravel, dead, his skin entire a weal of livid purple, his blood burnt to ash inside his very veins.
“By the Gods! But we are done for!” wailed Locaon in terror.
“Be silent, all,” said Astropho with clear and calm authority. “Do nothing. Do not resist. It is a dark magic which feeds upon its own. Rage, ire, fear, hate. Remain at peace, and it will find no weakness with which to assail you.” Most convincing he had sounded, as he almost always could at need, yet he was in no wise certain that the counsel he had given them be true, or indeed whether aught could spare them now, if the shadowchantress would not relent from her reckless course. He watched as the filament which had slain Hanno groped on, searching amidst the fossil corals, then off up the cave wall. “We must get ourselves out of here, if we may,” he said. “Amileo, you are nearest. See if you cannot reach his keys.”
For there hooked upon Hanno’s belt were the keys to their shackles. A chance at freedom. Amileo crouched and edged closer to the corpse, his chain at full stretch, his fingertips feathering the keyring, not quite in reach. At once a tendril of midnight energies coiled across to examine him. Amileo froze. It explored him a moment and immediately moved on. For there was nothing of the negative in that young man upon which it could feed.
“Kulira, dear lady, lay down this power,” soothed Astropho, with a fellow feeling which to many another listening mayhap seemed misplaced, given the evils she had done, was doing still, yet well aware was he that only through honest compassion could he hope to reach her and sway her back to sanity. “Kulira, you can glimpse the fulfilment of your life’s grand endeavour close before you, but it remains beyond reach, for now. Do not with haste jeopardise all at the last. Lay down this power, I beg you. Together, we can study the sigils. Learn more, know more. Do not throw it all away.”
“Too long have I waited, in the cold, in the dark,” intoned Kulira. And yet, to the dread of those watching, her lips moved not, and her voice sounded not from her own body, but from within the metallic carapace of the idol. “Too long, to turn aside now, at the fulfilment, the securing of my craved return.”
Astropho in that moment realised the price he had scarce dared guess. For boons unnatural were never granted without an equally unnatural sacrifice. Saeculoth aeturnos, indeed. But not everlasting life for the petitioner. Instead, for the petitioned. Were the ritual to complete, Kulira’s body would become Arkunagash, or, rather, an avatar of that cruel and wicked devil, a conduit whereby she might again walk free amongst mortal men. What atrocities she would wreak, granted such liberty, beyond any conception. And for the reward of all her many efforts, the priestess would receive only the annihilation of her own individual soul.
“Kulira, heed me, please,” he implored. “You must lay down this power. It is consuming you. You will be undone.”
But whether anything of Kulira yet endured, plain it seemed that she no longer remained in control, possessed by an entity whose malevolence dwarfed her own in boundless measure.
“I will not turn aside so close,” she intoned, her drawn lips still, her wild eyes pinned wide. “The door between, stands open.”
“So close, yet you are destined to fail,” cried Astropho, roused to anger by that droning wickedness, despite the danger. “There is no one here to sacrifice as wergild for your malign intent. No maiden chaste! No unspoiled blood! Your exile will endure!”
It was at that moment Aona entered the shrine chamber, brought from a sprint to a sharp halt by the terrible spectacle that greeted her, which wrung from her a loud and piercing scream drawing to her every eye, mortal and otherwise.
“Oh, what blithe jest is this!” exclaimed Astropho, his eyes cast heavenward. Yet his heart sank to his boots, for he sensed at once the odds tilted askew, his gamble run sour. For he doubted, in that instant, if the whim of the Gods had not rolled against him at the last, while the wheel would hold all to a most unbearable debt.
“Aona!” cried Amileo, hearing her. He broke off from his effort to seize the keys and began to pull against his shackles, as if he would wrench off his own wrist in order to come to her.
“Amileo!” wept Aona, overjoyed beyond her terror, and started forward to come to him. But she did not get far.
For a filament of that dark and terrible energy snaked about her, touched her, and found in her the catalyst needed. At once all those yearning tendrils enwreathed and enwrapped her, seizing her like tentacles of a kraken of the deep. She made no sound, no struggle, all life gone from her in a moment. The energies bore her up, holding her aloft, a prize most cherished. And then, from the idol, the voice of Kulira growled again. The ritual incantation, begun anew.
“No!” howled Amileo, tears fallen upon his face, as he pulled, useless, to be free of his chains.
“Amileo, the keys!” exclaimed Astropho. “You are the only one near enough to reach them. By the Aether, man, gird you courage and grab those keys!” But the young fisherman was too far gone in his anguish to pay heed.
The incantation droned on, half through, and Astropho knew when it reached its concluding phrase all would be done, and they would all be dead. For Arkunagash would be here, and she had never been known for her clemency. He looked about, for aught that could avail, desperate in hope. Yet there was nothing to seize, nothing to wield, no recourse. Only faith. And to this he fell.
“Great Goddesses all, hear this humble fool, I beg,” he prayed, in a whisper frantic. “I beseech thee! Please, let it not come to this. I beg you, in behalf of all your children. Mercy!” An ornate hymn of profound solemnity he might have composed, given time, however there was no moment to offer more. And what use words now, in any case.
Yet movement at the cavern entrance caught his eye.
For there stood Elgwid, a knave ever so mean and base, pirate and plunderer, freebooter of the wild main. And clutched in his hand, a rapier of Illyrian steel.
“Elgwid!” cried Astropho in hope. “For the love of the Goddess, man, help us! Help her!”
Elgwid stood shivering, terrified beyond any scope of fear he had ever credited possible. Following after that fay vision of loveliness who had gifted him the rapier, against his better judgement and in spite of his overwhelming dread, he had battled back to confront his oppressor. Kulira, who had belittled and demeaned him at every opportunity these last years, who had cowed and maligned him at any turn, and made of his days and nights a wretched misery. The priestess, who had authored the death of his friends and shipmates to the sickness, and wept not a tear at their loss. The witchwoman, who now seized that beautiful fay creature, intent to crush her of her sweetness as if she were a honeycomb under a press. He heard Astropho’s plea above the din of the concluding chant, but he did not act for his countryman, nor for the Goddess, nor for justice, nor even for the fay, not for anything but himself, for the assuagement of his own grievances. At least, so he believed. For who can know the infinite devisings of the Gods? Be all however it may, he drew out the rapier, let fall its scabbard, and strode forward.
“Witch!” bellowed he. “Long have you dogged my stars! Have at you!” And braving those whizzing, whirling sigils and the writhing ejections of wreathen darkness, he pounced near and plunged the rapier deep between Kulira’s shoulderblades.
Bright steel pierced the priestess through at the heart, transfixing her, to emerge from her breast, whence she glared down upon its unbated point. Her chanting ceased. Aona fell to the floor, released. Elgwid withdrew his borrowed blade and stepped back. Levitating still, Kulira rounded to face her assailant. Magic emanated off her, throbbing in waves, like a heartbeat. Her eyes narrowed in glacial hate.
“What in the Nether are you doing, you foul oaf?” she demanded, arch, remonstrative, borne against pain by power.
“What a one such as I does,” roared Elgwid, his terror dwarfed by his rage. “Cut and rip!” And without qualm he sank the rapier a second time through the witch’s malevolent heart.
With a scream unearthly, which stilled the blood of all who heard it, Kulira grappled her vanquisher. She seized him by his cheek and jaw. Her fingertips fizzed and crackled with hateful might, hissing like hot steel hard quenched. Elgwid withered under her onslaught. But she had been mortally wounded, and the expense of her magic only hastened her demise. Her hands fell away, and she collapsed to the floor at the foot of the pedestal. The floating sigil stones fell clattering, as the last filament of sorcery bled away, banished from a reality where such enmities could not exist unaided. A groan shook the chamber, rumbling off below to the bowels of the earth, like a tremor of those forgotten forces which had upraised this isle and its extinct peaks lost ages gone. The idol of Arkunagash loured down, thwarted, cheated at the clinch of triumph.
Elgwid staggered. The rapier fell from his hand, and down he too fell, slumped beside the shadowchantress, a bedfellow in death.
The chamber rang quiet, but for the groans of the shackled men, stood helpless witness to all that had befallen.
Astropho it was first found the will to speak. Again he bade Amileo seize the keys. Out his grief the lad finally realised that it was the only way, and returned to his effort. Pulling the corpse of Hanno closer, he grabbed the ring and freed himself, then, shoving the keys to Locaon, dashed to his beloved’s side. Once freed himself the poet knelt beside his fallen countryman, cradling his head from the gravel. And to his shock, Elgwid’s eyelids flicked open.
“Is she done for, mate?” Elgwid gasped. And from the uselessness of his burned and bloodied eyes, plain it appeared that he had been blinded by Kulira’s ruinous assault.
“Yes, she is dead,” said Astropho, knowing from the rasp in the buccaneer’s breath that he would not be long in joining her.
“‘Tis good,” he coughed. “A blight on all as knew her, were she.” He coughed again, failing plain. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it. But I did as asked, I did. Did right, by the fay spirit as visited me. I hope I may answer well, when belowdecks I go. What says you?”
“I believe you shall,” said Astropho. “You go as a good man.”
“‘Tis more than I deserve,” he sighed. “A boon may I ask o’ thee, countryman. When next you be in Amotine, light up a candle in the Temple of the Goddess on that shinin’ hill, in remembering of me. And drink a glass, if you would make so kind.”
“I shall,” mourned Astropho.
“Oh,” he breathed, “but I could murder a man for a tot o’ rum.”
Elgwid heard no reply, that breath his last, and no more he knew of this mortal world. With tender touch Astropho sealed shut the eyelids of his fallen countryman. He stood, picked up the familiar rapier, that weapon his own, which could only mean that Rhoye was somewhere nigh. He moved over to the fallen girl, Aona he guessed, for he knew her not, held fast in Amileo’s tearful embrace. The young man looked up, pleading, heartbroken.
“She is not waking,” he wept.
For the girl lay pale and wan, and breathed not, as one dead.
Continues Tuesday. If you enjoyed this instalment and would like more of the adventures of Rhoye of Khetaine, you might consider taking a look at my book ‘Man of Swords’ available from Amazon as a paperback, hardcover and ebook, or free to read via Kindle Unlimited.
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‘The Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab’ Copyright ©2023 Robert Victor Mills. All rights reserved.