Lost Is The Night

  Lost is the Night

  By Greg James

  Copyright © Greg James 2014

  Published by Manderghast Press

  London, UK

  First Edition published November 2014

  All rights reserved.

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Any reproduction, resale or unauthorised use of the material or artwork herein is therefore prohibited.

  Disclaimer: The persons, places and events depicted in this work are fictional and any resemblance to those living or dead is unintentional.

  Dedication

  This one is for the Emperor of Dreams and Nightmares, gone but not forgotten.

  Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961)

  Chapter One

  Khale wandered through rain and storm, aimlessly crossing plains and wilderness, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the ruins of Colm. The weight of blood bore down upon him and the dead shrieked inside his skull. Rain battered his forehead until he felt the skin was about to split and bleed; its pounding did nothing to quiet the trapped, hideous voices of his pain. He cared not for the people of Colm, but the memory of Milanda and her dismal death was still cast in a bitter fire behind his eyes.

  Some things cannot be forgiven.

  Hate, emptiness, and despair tore through him—an internal storm that once more made his eyes prickle. But he would not weep, not again. One tear shed in grief was enough for a century, or more.

  As the storm within his breast began to calm, the natural storm spat a ferocious downpour from the heavens, soaking him until he was numb to the bone. It churned the earth into slurry and drenched his flesh with cold. He ached for a few simple things: something hot to eat, something cold and well-brewed to drink, and a woman who was soft and warm to lie with.

  But as he thought on it, so the pain was reborn in his mind. He saw the young witch who had cursed him as he raped her, heard her screams, felt her scratches and bites scarring him, and saw again Milanda’s face—empty-eyed, pale, dead.

  Khale the Wanderer knew why those few simple things were denied to him.

  Knew why he would walk the earth, through storms such as this, until he was the last being alive. He would outlive all things; such was the nature of this damnation—to be broken again and again on Life’s red wheel without respite, or hope of death.

  He could not know what was to come for certain, but he had an understanding of things, formed from experience over the centuries. However, he had not expected his men’s betrayal, nor recognised that the mirror-beasts were stalking him, until they were almost upon him; these situations he should have foreseen, but did not. He felt some disquiet at the thought. It made his oldest scars itch.

  The land around him was growing steeper and darker as his thoughts became more morose. He must have crossed a border somewhere. He passed dense copses of pines, and glimpsed the occasional wolf dashing among the trees. As he went on, the copses grew in density, becoming tall, dark woods that flanked him on either side until he reached a forest boundary that stretched away to left and right, as far as the eye could see. The path through the trees ahead was shadowed, and rich with the fine scent of pine needles and moist, ripe undergrowth.

  Yes, he thought, this must be Lord Barneth’s country.

  The brigands who once served Khale had carried word of the place to him. The lands of Lord Farness were to the west of Colm—the earth there was swampy and treacherous, while Lord Barneth’s territory was further to the south and east—clinging to the higher ground that skirted the mountains known as the Crown of the World.

  Khale sighed heavily, realising that he had not strayed into lands where he could rest and recuperate with ease. He was known as the brigand-chief whose men waylaid coaches and wagons of bastard-lords, and Barneth was the fiercest of those lords. Khale had seen his hand in the desolation of Colm. The man was said to be as dark of temper as the forests that surrounded his holdings. His sigil was a grim thing to behold: the Red Wheel of Barneth, with some poor, tortured soul lashed to its spokes.

  The forest would afford Khale some shelter from the storm’s misery though and, so thinking, he trudged on under the damp shroud of bows and branches. Though his skin was numb as death and so drenched that his muscles ached, the relief from the rain felt like a small blessing once he was under cover. Fallen needles and ripe earth crackled beneath his boots.

  He peered watchfully at the shadows that gaped like mouths between the trees. The world was overrun by darkness these days, but some places seemed more touched by it than others. Lord Barneth’s forest was such a place. It deadened the winds of the storm, the rain was made gentler by its passage through the pines’ high branches. The only sounds in the forest became the crunch of Khale’s footsteps and the rattling echoes of falling water.

  The Wanderer could feel eyes out there in the darkness, watching him, waiting, and observing; wolves, perhaps, hungry for flesh and blood. Although he could feel the eyes of another upon him, and he could hear her voice in his head: harsh and accusing.

  “I will kill you for this, Khale. I will find you and I will kill you.”

  Leste Alen.

  He had cast her through the shadowglass mirror into the Thoughtless Dark. His arm had not felt like his own at the time. He could have slain her with a gesture, or strangled her, broken her spine, burst her heart, but he did not do it. Was she out there in the world somewhere, nursing her hatred of him?

  She thought he had taken only Milanda’s life, but how much fiercer would she be when she learned that Colm was also gone? There had been something in that one’s eyes. The need to be a hero. What would happen to that something once hatred consumed her heart?

  He did not know.

  But, she would need to train long and hard to be able to best him in battle; he was sure of that. It was the simple fact that he had cast her through the mirror rather than killed her that bothered him the most. He had told her that since he had become immortal something else was his master. It had mostly been to impress her, to make her fear him, but now, as on other uncertain occasions, he wondered as to the truth.

  In a world of meat-and-bone puppets, am I the one who can see the strings?

  Again, he did not know, and he was not sure if he cared much. He was Khale, and his way lay onwards, ever onwards, with nothing and no one able to stay on the path with him for long.

  The trees thinned. He found himself in a clearing where the pines rose around him, stabbing skywards. He was not alone in the clearing. There were three before him and they were women, all sat around the stone-enclosed ashes of a dead fire. The ground was dry here. Rain did not fall on it, although Khale could still hear the wet roaring of the wind.

  “Who are you?” He adjusted his weight and position, readying to draw the two-handed sword that crossed his back.

  The women laughed: a shrill, unsettling sound.

  “Who comes?” asked one.

  “A great man comes,” answered another.

  “Does he come in peace, or for war?” whispered the third.

  “He comes for what he always comes for,” said the first. “He comes for blood, and he will not leave without it, no.”

  They laughed again.

  “Address me, or I will kill you,” Khale said.

  “Will he do it?” asked the second.

  “He will, assuredly,” said the first.

  “He was born a killer,” whispered the third, “and the blood of men, women, and children stains his soul; what little there is left of it.”

  The women stood, turned. And Khale knew who they were. The first was a hunched, wizened creature; the ends o
f her lank white hair made dirty where they dragged along the ground. Her eyes were puckered wounds, little more than sores, and in one hand she held a cracked pearl made of glass. She wore a peasant’s habit and boots of crude leather. She could have been a mere beggar or wandering cripple, if she were not in the company of the other two women.

  The second was a striking middle-aged woman dressed in a robe of plain make but rich hue, crimson as the hair that tumbled over her shoulders. Her rounded face was coloured by the blossoming of motherhood, and her plump hands caressed the pregnant swell of her abdomen. Her boots were the same crimson shade as her dress.

  The third was barely a woman. She was a maiden with ebony hair and unspoilt skin. Her white shift did nothing to hide the slight curves of her figure or the budding roseate tinge of her areolae. He imagined the hair of her cleft was as fine as Spring-down. She was barefoot, but he could see no dirt stained her as she trod through the undergrowth.

  Khale relaxed his sword-arm and began to think of incantations instead; only sorcery could protect him from these three creatures.

  “Welcome, Master Khale,” said the old woman, turning the glass pearl between her malformed fingers as if it were a seeing eye.

  Khale nodded. “I think I am not, Crone.”

  She laughed at his words. “You know me and my sisters?”

  “Demeia, the Crone of the Peaks and her damned kin? Tamrea, the Mother, and Shea, the Maiden. Aye, I know you.”

  “Damned is something you know much about,” said the Mother, smiling. “Much more than we do.”

  “I have no quarrel with you,” Khale said. “Leave me be and let me by.”

  “Why should we?” the Maiden replied in a lilting voice. “This land is ours, not yours. Though nothing on this earth is truly yours, is it, Master Khale?”

  Khale took a step forward. He felt the force of the three women stand against him. He could not go around it. If he left the clearing, it would extend around him in each direction indefinitely. Knowing such creatures as he did, until their counsel with him in the forest was done, it would enshrine him.

  “What do you want?”

  “One of mine has been slain by your hand,” said the Maiden.

  “One of yours,” Khale said, “yes. But Milanda was not the first. You cannot deign to hold me guilty for that and excuse all the others.”

  “Be careful with your words, Wanderer,” the Crone croaked. “The innocent can know a deep rage, even fiercer than those who are as experienced and wearied by the world as you are.”

  Khale could see a coldness burning in the Maiden’s eyes.

  “Milanda’s death cannot be undone,” Khale said, “not by I, and you know she was all ready defiled and raped before I touched her. Her soul was lost. I gave her flesh mercy with my blade.”

  “Small mercy,” the Mother said.

  “It was mercy still,” said Khale.

  “Perhaps,” the Crone replied, “but she was ruined and spoiled all the same.”

  “Aye. You may not believe it, but I would have undone it if I could.”

  “And another will fall to a similar fate this night,” said the Maiden.

  She was close to him now, the youngest, and Khale could see how the cold made her small nipples hard and firm. The shift clung to her as lightly as a ghost; it could be torn from her in a matter of moments. He knew she was tempting him, trying to see what he would do. She knew his dark nature and wished to provoke it.

  She is indeed young, unknowing of the true danger in being so close to me, he thought, noticing how the Crone and Mother kept their distance from him.

  He could take her here on the forest floor and fuck her until all the fallen pine needles were driven into her skin. Her dark hair was lustrous, and the virgin milk of her skin was invitingly soft.

  “The fate of this other is no concern of mine,” he said, recovering himself.

  The Maiden walked back to the company of her kin. “It is now.”

  “It is not, woman. You will let me by,” he said.

  He reached out with his thoughts, searching for a fragile point in the warding woven by the three creatures, but none could he find. He swore and the Mother smiled at him.

  “Of course, we will let you by. Come, Master Khale, pass through here. We shall not molest you.”

  They stepped apart from one another, leaving the way through the clearing open to him. Khale looked to each of them: the Crone turning the glass pearl in her fingers, the Mother caressing the shape of her unborn child, and the Maiden watching him with cool, distant eyes.

  “And what happens after I cross the clearing and leave?”

  “Nothing,” they said as one.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, Master Khale,” said the Crone. “Nothing more for ever after.”

  His lips curled. “I see. I shall turn and turn through these dark pines like a hollow man stuffed full of shadows, is that it? An empty puppet with a play-sword to swing?”

  The Crone and Maiden said nothing. The Mother only smiled again at him, so warm and yet so cold. Their eyes, the living ones and the little glass pearl, said to him: is that not what you are all ready, little man? Are you not the master-puppet? Are you not a plaything of the Gods in Shadow all your days?

  “Fine,” he said, “what will get me through this forest and out the other side?”

  “Her life,” said the Maiden, “only her life.”

  “You have my sword, until dawn,” Khale said.

  “No, Master Khale,” whispered the Crone, “we have you. We have always had you.”

  And with those words, they were gone and rain fell again in the clearing.

  Only her life, Khale thought, only her life ...

  “Who is she? Tell me! Give me a name!”

  But there was only the rain and the storm left to answer him.

  *

  Khale beheld a castle standing before him, or rather standing over him, as he emerged from the depths of the forest into the grounds of Lord Barneth’s holdings which rested at its heart.

  Its four great towers were ornate fingers supported by flying buttresses that swept outwards from each tower like the crabbed legs of a colossal spider. The shuttered windows set in the walls were high and arched, and light seeped through cracks in old wood clasping stone. The mouths of weathered gargoyles gushed black water and their eyes glistened with moisture and knowledge of the Night.

  It reminded him of Neprokhodymh’s vaulted depths and desolate heights.

  It reminded him far too much of recent times.

  Milanda ...

  Did I come here, he thought, or was I drawn to this place, to these dark lands? Does something reach out and guide me, or is insanity finally gnawing away the last traces of my sense?

  An armoured and plated guard approached him out of the gloom. Khale saw fingers grasp reflexively at a halberd’s shaft as the guard took in the bullock of a man before him, and then paled at the sickening yellow of the Wanderer’s eyes.

  Khale was well used to such looks of horror.

  Though tired and sore, Khale would fight willingly enough.

  Some pain and blood might quiet the screams and whispers of the dead inside his head. Unlike the shabby leather and rusting mail of Colm’s guards, this man wore expertly worked metal that had been lobstered and intricately decorated with embossed wheel-patterns.

  It must be an occasion of some kind, he thought, for the Lord to outfit his guard so well for the evening.

  A shame it would do the man no good in the end.

  But the guard did not lower his halberd to charge, instead he swept into an elegant, deep bow.

  Khale’s muscles eased ever so slightly.

  “Master Khale, you are welcome to Castle Barneth.”

  Khale blinked, lost for words.

  “Come with me, if it please you. The feast is begun and Lord Barneth awaits your company.”

  “Awaits me?”

  This was a ploy, though a strange one,
it had to be said.

  “Indeed,” the guard went on, “the feast is in your honour, and you are missed.”

  “Missed? I am missed?”

  He could not remember the last time such words had been said to him.

  With halting steps, Khale followed the guard. This could not be. It was a feint to put him off-guard before they tried to slay him, surely; that had to be the truth of it.

  The guard brought him to the gates, and Khale’s brows furrowed as the guards stationed on either side of the portcullis slammed their fists against their chests in salute. Their chest plates bore Barneth’s sigil: the red wheel with its crucified victim, emblazoned there for all to see, and to fear.

  A man’s chosen mark says much about him.

  As the portcullis ground its way into the arch above and the gates of the castle opened, Khale knew he would do well to remember that on this night.

  Chapter Two

  Cacea Selwen awoke to banging and shouting from outside.

  She recognised the abrupt barking of Bartell, the steward. “Cacea, you lazy slattern, be up with you and make ready. You are needed at table.”

  She sat up on her pallet and winced at where the hard wood had bitten into her back. No matter how much she tried to pad the bed with straw and sheeting, it was like sleeping on so many rocks. She stretched, feeling the aches in her muscles ease a little.

  Many more nights like this, she thought, and I’ll be hobbling about like Old Nathe.

  Each night before going to bed, she refilled a bucket of tepid water in the corner so she could wash in the morning. Some of the girls thought she had airs and graces, but at least the air smelled a little fresher around her than it did around them. After stripping off her nightdress, folding it, and tucking it under the sheets, she bathed her face and hands and wiped the worst of the night’s grime from her body as best she could with a rough washcloth. She tugged a dress of blue wool-cloth on over her underclothes, and then a washed-out white tunic over the top, fastening it at the waist with a belt of frayed leather. She wet her fingers and ran them through her long blonde hair to straighten it. She tucked her feet into a pair of red clogs. She adored the shoes, which she had painted herself a few winters ago. They reminded her of Aarthe, her brother, and the last day she saw him.