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Spirit Breaker – Sergeant Janus

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Night of the Demon (1957)

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Psychomanteum #8

EDITORIAL

I’ve been fairly consistent in my attempt to prune my social media to the bone over the course of the last few years. Some of that was a sincere belief that less was more; some of it was simple contrarianism; but a lot of it was down to a lack of headspace.

I used to have a lot more room for that sort of thing, back at the beginning of this gig. It may surprise you to learn that I used to have a modestly expansive online presence – my Klout score was pretty high, folks. Anyone remember Klout?

No? Just me?

Anyway, as you peruse this month’s newsletter you might notice that I’ve added some social media links. I’m not a big believer in platforms these days, but as things have become more siloed on the internet I’ve started to wonder if maybe I ought to rebuild mine, if only to stake out my territory as my audience scatters to the four corners of the digital world.

The days when a writer could get by with a blog and Twitter are long gone, and I suspect we were all just kidding ourselves about that anyway. The fact is, us mid-list writer-types got complacent and now we’re all scrambling to remember how we used to do things.

So, I’ve got a Tumblr now, and an Instagram, and a few other things. They’ll largely be placeholders, but I’ll do my best to keep them updated with interesting stuff. I don’t expect you to follow me, but if you’d like to do so, I’d be grateful.

NEWS

I took a break from the usual routine this month to work on some short stories. I dug into some new research books, including Robert Lebling’s Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar and T.C. Lethbridge’s Gogmagog. I started a new Artemis Whitlock story, as well as a new Baron Vordenburg tale – more on both of those later, hopefully. Other than that, it was a fairly quiet month.

New Audio – “The Swelling Season”

The fine folks over at the Oldhammer podcast have turned my Turnip28 short story into an audio. Head over to their Spotify or tune in below and give it a listen.

New Novel – A Bitter Taste: A Daidoji Shin Mystery

My newest Legend of the Five Rings novel, A Bitter Taste, is now available in print in the US, and digital everywhere. I would be eternally grateful if you ordered a copy in your preferred format. I’m convinced that the Daidoji Shin Mysteries are the best things I’ve written thus far, and I’d really like to continue doing so…but that’s down to numbers. So, please grab a copy and please review and, most importantly, please mention them to anyone you think might be interested in the adventures of a louche aristocrat and his long-suffering bodyguard.

New Sale – Cosmic Horror

Drivethru Fiction is having a cosmic horror sale – which includes my Arkham Horror novels, Wrath of N’kai, Shadows of Pnath and Song of Carcosa. Check it out, and maybe grab yourself something to read, hunh?

New Social Media – Novellea

I’m giving Novellea a try. Apparently, I get paid if you ‘Like’ a story, which seems simple enough. I’m posting some Royal Occultist stories at the moment, but if it proves worthwhile, I might branch out with some of my other series…or even something new. Download the app and get to reading, if that sounds interesting. Here’s a link to one of my stories to get you started.

New Social Media – Tumblr

I’ve staked out some Tumblr space for myself. It’s more in the way of a precaution than anything else, but I’ll keep it updated. If you’re on Tumblr and want to give me a follow, please click the button below and do so.

Tumblr

New Social Media – Instagram

Apparently I’ve had an Instagram for some time and just not realised it? What can I say – I’m old. Anyway, I figure I should use it if it’s there, so feel free to click the button below and give it a follow.

Instagram

Reminder – Ko-Fi Shop

I have a Ko-Fi shop, and it has several PDF compilations (and one novella!) available for you to purchase for a buck apiece, should you wish to. Take a look.

Site Update – The Zorzi Investigations

The site has a new hub page for all Alessandra Zorzi related material. Hopefully, new sections will be added to in the future.

Site Update – The Vordenburg Papers

I posted a new Vordenburg story – “A Test of Fortitude” – this month. It finds Vordenburg and an old friend hunting for a cannibal homunculus beneath a Venetian palazzo, and gives us a little peek at the baron’s childhood. It’s free to read, for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

Site Update – Miscellaneous Writing

I’ve added new entries to both Nightmare Men and Silver Screams this month, if you’d care to read them. They’re free to read, for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

MONTHLY STORY

“Mordiggian’s Due” was published way back in 2014 in the first volume of the sadly short-lived Libram Mysterium anthology series. It marks the first appearance of Amina Algol, servant of the charnel god Mordiggian, and her ghoulish siblings, Bera and Arif. The trio has since gone on to feature in several more stories – though fewer than I’d like – and you can find links to them on the Creator-Owned Fiction page. The stories are obliquely Lovecraftian, being set in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, but owe more to Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber in terms of tone…

“They say that Mordiggian is a just god, who claims only the dead and has no concern for the living, save those who would violate his law and profane his temple,” Amina Algol said, pricking Aramash’s unshaven throat with the tip of her curved sabre even as she kicked the door to his room shut behind her. He blinked in surprise and his jaw sagged. She went on, “And then his wrath is all-consuming and relentless.”

Dark, like all the folk of Khem, Amina was neither tall nor short, and she wore no helm or hood, so that her dark hair, tied in serpentine braids, spilled across her shoulders. She was clad in rattletrap gear—a banded cuirass scavenged from a battlefield and hastily repaired with bits and bobs of other armour, and stained travel-leathers made from zoog-hide. She had neither gloves nor boots, both to make for easy climbing and because she found such things uncomfortable and cumbersome.

Aramash, by contrast, was a Dreamer, and his origins ambiguous. He might have been from Meroe or Carcassonne or any one of a hundred places, and by his dress, might have been confused for a trader, if one did not notice the scars on his fingers and the muscles that bespoke hard graft. His face paled as her dark eyes met his and he swallowed thickly, trying to dredge up some form of vocal protest.

“But then, you knew that, did you not, Aramash?” Amina smiled, and, seeing his distress, answered for him. “That was why you fled Khem on a fast horse, and then Meroe, and after that Ulthar before finally finding your back against the Southern Sea, here in Dylath-Leen.” Amina’s smile faded. “You knew that Mordiggian would claim his due, one way or another. Where are they, Aramash?”

Aramash stumbled back, and Amina padded lightly after. The tip of her Khemish blade never left the ridge of his Adam’s apple.  The blade was a gift from her father, to make up for her lack of claws and fangs. Her family had never made an issue of her deformity, though her brother Arif mocked her when he thought he could get away with it.

She had fed from her mother’s teats, the same as her brothers and sisters, and learned how to pry open tombs and sarcophagi from her father. And it was her father who had given her the name ‘Amina’—it meant ‘charnel-blossom’ in the meepery of the ghouls. She did not think the name suited her, for she was hardly a delicate flower, though she had never said so.

“Where are they, Aramash? If you do not find your tongue, I will bite off your fingers and eat them like candies,” Amina said, lifting his chin with the flat of her blade. She grinned, showing off her teeth. She had filed some of them as a younger woman, to fit in. They ached sometimes, but the effect on the unprepared was worth it. Aramash grew even paler and began to stutter. Annoyed, she took in his lodgings at a glance.

It was the best room in a canal-front inn, meaning it stank of mould and rot, but showed no evident signs of either. The stink did not trouble her overmuch. Noisome scents were her birthright, and compared to some, the bouquet offered up by Dylath-Leen’s recesses was as sweet as rose water. The room was empty, save for a lumpen mass that approximated a bed. Through the lone window, the shapes of the black basalt towers of Dylath-Leen rose over dark, uninviting streets.

“Charming,” she murmured.

Aramash finally found his tongue. “What—what do you want?”

Amina made a face. “The canopic jars you stole from the temple of Mordiggian, Aramash. You haven’t sold them yet, I trust, because if so…”

“No, no!” Aramash yelped, raising his hands. “I haven’t!”

“Good. Where are they?”

“I—I can’t give them to you,” he said. “I promised them to a man.”

Amina growled. It wasn’t half as good as one of her siblings could manage, but it got the point across. Aramash’s face went the colour of whey.  “I can’t!” he said again. “He’ll kill me—no, worse than kill me.”

“Who is he?”

Aramash hesitated. She growled again and he blurted, “N—Nosomo of Thul!”

Amina cocked her head. “Ha. Now there’s the meat of it,” she muttered. There was only one sort of person who’d buy something stolen from the house of the god of graveyards, and they were not the sort to be trifled with. “Nosomo the necromancer,” she said. Aramash’s head bobbed.

She frowned. Necromancers were a dirty business; something beyond the pale—a monstrous evil, whose presence no sane man could tolerate for long. For her folk, they fell somewhere between poachers and thieves, which was almost as bad. Nosomo was reputed to be one of the worst of a bad lot; he was rumoured to have learned the secrets of the Vaults of Zin, and made compact with Vulthoom in his red prison. If he was involved…She looked around the room again. There was no place to hide the jars, except…

“You’ve got a loose board,” she said. Aramash’s eyes flickered to the side, instinctively showing her what she wanted to know. It had been a bluff, but he was too nervous to realize that. She stepped back, extending her arm and pressing the tip of her blade hard to the hollow of his throat. “Pry it up,” she said.

“He’ll do things to me—I didn’t know who he was, I thought he was just a collector—I can’t…” he trailed off as he saw the look on her face.

“Mordiggian is a just god,” she said, “But wrathful.”

Aramash swallowed and stooped, prying at the board. As he worked, she said, “Where are you meeting him?”

“Here,” he said hesitantly. “I thought you were him at first,” he added, half-accusingly. “That’s why I let you in…”

“Then you’re blind as well as foolish,” she said. He didn’t reply. The board popped loose after a moment of wiggling and he reached down into the gap to retrieve a duo of shapes swaddled in sack-cloth. “Careful,” she said.

“I got them here from Khem didn’t I,” he spat, forgetting his fright for a moment.

“That you certainly did. Though I’m sure you’ve had cause to consider the wisdom of that little adventure since then. Uncover them,” she said.

He did as she demanded and carefully peeled away the sack-cloth to reveal the two canopic jars, with their painted animal faces and identical torsos. She did not know who—or what—was in them. It did not matter. They belonged to the charnel god and she would see them returned. “Wrap them back up, carefully, and give me whatever satchel you used to bring them here.”

Aramash clutched the jars to his chest, and made as if to protest. Before a single word could slip his lips, however, the door thudded in its frame. They both looked at it, and then at one another. Aramash’s jaw sagged and he whined, “He’s early…”

“His bad luck,” Amina said, stepping to the side of the door. “Let him in,” she added, and then pressed a finger to her lips.

Aramash hesitated, but only for a moment. Whatever his other faults, the Dreamer wasn’t slow-witted. He well knew what the price for violating the sanctity of Mordiggian’s temple was, and he probably hoped to escape that fate while Amina dealt with the necromancer.

He wouldn’t, of course. He had been marked, and they had his scent now. Wherever he went, however far he ran, they would catch him and crack his bones. But here and now, the necromancer was more important. She clutched her blade tightly, readying herself.

Aramash opened the door, the jars still clutched to his chest, and hurriedly staggered back as a tall, thin shape bent and sidled through the door. Beneath the heavy black cloak it wore, its proportions were all wrong. It was too thin and it stank of preservatives and mouldering spices. It wore a waxen mask beneath it voluminous cowl and its fingers were wrapped tight in yellowing bandages. It loomed over Aramash. With a negligent gesture, it tossed a heavy pouch of coin onto the floor, and gold coins spilled out. Then, as silent as a tomb, it extended its hand.

Aramash licked his lips, his eyes darting from the coins to the thing’s hand. Amina elbowed the door shut and slid behind the newcomer, her blade raised. “Hello,” she said. The thing span about, far more quickly than she’d expected. Nonetheless, she reacted instinctively. Her blade swept up, and she carved through the thing’s waxen mask and sent it reeling.

As the two halves of the mask fell away, a mummified horror was revealed; a snarling, leathery visage, punctuated by two, burning beast-orbs. Amina had seen worse, but not of late. She ducked beneath a looping blow, and her blade caressed the dead thing’s chest through its robes, releasing a spray of incense and dust rather than blood. It brought a fist down on her shoulder, dropping her to her knees in a burst of pain. The old dead thing was far stronger than it looked.

She hurled herself aside as it groped for her. Aramash had risen and pressed himself to the back wall, the canopic jars held to his chest. The thing whirled as Amina avoided it, and reached for Aramash, who yowled in fright. Bandaged fingers fastened on the Dreamer’s skull. Bone and flesh popped and tore with an unpleasant sound. As his body slid down the wall, his killer snatched up the jars and hurried for the door.

The mummy fled down the stairs, moving with awkward speed. Amina hurried after it, not sparing a glance for the ill-fated Aramash. She cursed herself as she took the rickety, damp-warped stairs three at a time. If it got outside, there would be no way she could keep up with the dead thing’s lolloping gait. The dead travelled fast.

The common room of the inn was in an uproar. The mummy staggered through the room, upending tables and slinging patrons aside as it made for the door. She bounded up onto a table and jumped from it to the next, trying to get ahead of the thing. But to no avail. The mummy struck the entrance to the inn and tore the door off of its hinges. It staggered out into the street and began to run as if its feet were aflame, scattering the afternoon crowd that clogged the streets.

Amina hurried after it, using her elbows and shoulders to carve a path through the crowd. As she ran, she fished around inside her cuirass, digging for the finger-bone whistle dangling around her neck. She blew the whistle as loudly as she could, as she pursued the mummy through the labyrinthine streets, racing along the perpetually damp stones with the surety of one who’d hunted sweetmeats in tombs slimier than any back-street. But she could not keep up with her quarry, and she was fast growing tired. Her muscles burned with effort and her breath rasped in her lungs. It was all she could do to keep sight of the thing’s flapping robes.

Then she caught the rasp of her siblings’ paw-pads behind her and felt a flicker of relief. They had been waiting nearby, in hiding, so as not to unduly disturb the folk of Dylath-Leen. Ghouls were not unknown in the city, for there were many ghouls in the Dreamlands, for wherever man went, ghouls soon followed. Sometimes out of curiosity, but mostly for other, more material reasons. And it was for those reasons that many failed to find comfort in the presence of children of Mordiggian.

Her siblings had accompanied her from Khem, as was proper. Ghouls travelled in packs, especially when hunting. The Dreamlands were dangerous, even for the eaters of the dead.

The two heavy shapes shouldered past her and bounded in pursuit. They knew what needed doing. They could smell the miasma of necromancy that followed their quarry better than she.

Her siblings were hairy where mould didn’t crust their piebald flesh, and had lolling doggy jaws set into their sloped skulls. They moved low to the street like hyenas, their heavy forelimbs hauling them along with rapidity as their back legs propelled them forward.

One struck a drover’s cart and bounded onto the wall of a building. He ran across the surface of the wall for a moment, like a giant spider, before vaulting across the street to the buildings on the other side. The first fell back at her wordless exclamation and allowed Amina to catch up. She snagged a hank of greasy hair and hauled herself onto her sister’s broad, rubbery back as she put on a burst of speed. “Well met, Bera,” Amina meeped.

“Well met, Amina,” her sister growled. She glanced back at Amina and the setting sun caught on the ring of gold set into one delicate nostril. “Never fear; Arif will catch him. No dead thing has ever yet outrun him.”

“Arif can’t handle that thing on his own. It was raised by necromancy. Besides which, I only want him to harry it. I want to find out where it’s going!” Amina said urgently. Bera growled in understanding.

“It will lead us to the necromancer,” she said, “Clever, sister.”

Arif had pulled far ahead of them, bounding from building to building with simian agility. As the caught up with him, their quarry burst from the tangle of streets into a plaza crowded with merchant’s stalls and street-vendors. The smells of foreign spices, strange foods and tightly-packed humanity mingled into a pervasive miasma.

The mummy burst through the crowd without slowing. Men and women were trod upon or swatted aside, and the crowd began to churn and splinter as the realization that something untoward was occurring filtered through its collective consciousness.

Arif sprang onto a water-spout and vaulted into the air. The ghoul struck like a pouncing ape, bearing the mummy off of its feet. The two rolled across the cobbles, Arif’s growls punctuated by the scrape of the mummy’s robes and wrappings against stone. Then, suddenly, the mummy bobbed to its feet with what might have been the remnant of a warrior’s grace, and backhanded the slavering ghoul, sending him flying into a fruit-seller’s stall. The tent collapsed in on the squawking merchant and the yelping ghoul. The mummy paused for a moment, as if to survey the scene. Then, in a flare of ragged robes, it was gone.

Amina and Bera could not pursue it. The crowd bobbed and squawked, and the sight of a woman on the back of a ghoul did not help matters. People fled in all directions, yelling and screaming. Bera snapped at a few who got too close as Amina slid off of her back and hurried towards the thrashing shape struggling with the fruit-seller’s tent. With a careful swipe of her blade, she slashed a hole in the tent and a blunt head poked out, eyes blinking.

“Did I get him?” Arif meeped as he pried himself out of the tent.

“Oh yes, and then he turned into a flock of crows and flew down my gullet,” Bera growled.

“He did?” Arif looked around, wide-eyed.

“No, greedy-guts, he knocked you a-tumble and got away!”

 “Good, it smelled bad,” Arif meeped. He clawed at his snout for emphasis.

“No worse than any burial chamber and you’ve rolled in those often enough, brother,” Amina said, smiling slightly. The crowd had thinned out. There had been stranger sights in Dylath-Leen, and even the fruit-seller wasn’t squawking overmuch. Arif’s teeth were even bigger than Bera’s and he was uglier to boot.

“It does smell worse,” the ghoul protested. He straightened. “I smell like shit.”

“How is that any different than any other time?” Bera hissed, exposing her curving fangs at her brother. “Stop complaining!” She looked at her sister. “Well, Amina? Where do we go now?”

“We follow our noses,” Amina said, tapping her own. “As he so eloquently put it, mummies stink worse than Arif.”

Arif bristled at the teasing and grumbled unhappily. “Why are we bothering with this anyway, eh? What’s one more or less necromancer?” he grunted. “What does the matter have to do with us?”

It had everything to do with them, of course, and Arif well knew it for all his complaints. They had a duty to the god and to their folk, who were the guardians of Mordiggian’s halls. What had been stolen would be returned, and those who had stolen it would pay the price.

“Go home then, if that’s how you feel. You know the way,” Amina said, letting an edge creep into her voice. She loved her brother dearly, but he was, and always had been a lazy creature. Effort—the merest hint of effort, even—pained him as surely as fire or steel. “But we have a duty, and I, at least, intend to fulfil it.”

“We will honour Mordiggian, sister, and he will have his due,” Bera said, glaring at Arif, who quailed in mock-fear.  “Arif is simply being petulant, as always.” She snapped her jaws at their brother and he yelped.

“Can you follow its scent,” Amina said, snapping her fingers to catch his attention.

“It stinks,” Arif barked. Amina grabbed his snout and swatted him between the ears with the flat of her sword.

“Stop whining and pick up the scent, brother. You have the best nose this side of the Vale of Pnath,” she said. “Find that mummy!”

Arif growled sullenly and sank into a crouch. His pink-tinged nostrils flared and then he was off, his snout perpendicular to the cobbles. Amina shared a look with Bera and then vaulted onto her sister’s back once again. They loped after Arif.

The mummy had left a definite trail—bits of bandage and incense and dust marked its path. As fast as it had been moving, and as carelessly, that came as no surprise. The trail led them to the docks, where the sheer number of strange vessels momentarily unbalanced the trio.

Amina, perched on her sister’s back, was struck dumb for several seconds. Never before in her life had she seen so many ships and of so many different designs, bearing so many different flags. A hundred nations were represented in the great stone quays of Dylath-Leen and men of those nations and more, including some that didn’t actually exist, flocked to the city.

As the sun sank below the horizon, casting an orange wash across the dark waters and across the vessels in dock, Arif gave a bark and loped to the edge of a quay. “I think I found it,” he said, pointing.

Amina followed the gesture and saw a black sailed, low-hulled galley of the kind used by the men of Sarkomand slowly slipping towards the outer quays. “I think we’ve arrived just in time,” she said. “We need to get on that ship.”

“How do we even know it’s the right one?” Bera said doubtfully as she glared balefully at the water. Ghouls were strong swimmers, though they did not, as a rule, enjoy the water. Still, a strong stroke was useful when retrieving a water-logged corpse.

“Offhand, I’d say it’s because it’s sailing without benefit of oars or a favourable wind,” Amina said, stripping off her armour and flinging it aside. “Ready for a swim, Arif?” she said.

Arif growled irritably, but trotted towards the edge of the quay. Bera joined him. The two ghouls looked at each other doubtfully. Amina snorted and dove in. The cold water was like a shock to her system and her teeth immediately began to chatter as she drove towards the galley. She heard a tremendous splash behind her as her siblings followed suit.

She had learned to swim in the warm, turgid rivers of Khem, where you only had to be faster than a few over-fed crocodiles. But catching a moving galley was another matter. She wouldn’t even have contemplated such an attempt, had she not feared that they would lose the galley in the Southern Sea. Her muscles burned with exertion, but she ignored the pain and kept swimming. Her siblings paddled beside her, keeping pace, their yellow gazes locked on the galley. “It’s not moving very fast,” Arif burbled, snorting water out of his nose as he paddled.

“Thank the gods,” Amina muttered. Neither of her siblings seemed the least fatigued; yet another reminder of her deficiencies. Arif glanced at her and, as if knowing what she was thinking, he ducked beneath her so that she slid onto his back.

“Hold on to me,” he said gruffly, “You’re too slow.”

Amina gratefully did just that, smiling slightly. “Thank you, brother.”

“You’re ugly, too,” he retorted.

Before she could think of a reply, Arif reached out a long arm and sank his claws into the aft hull of the ship. Bera was already scrambling up and as Arif followed suit, she reached down to grab Amina’s hand. “Up sister,” she said.

Amina vaulted upwards over the rail of the galley and as one, two dozen dead men turned to look at her. She froze, fingers pressed to the hilt of her blade. The men were newly dead; she could tell as much from the smell as from the state of them. Broken necks and burst bellies were the most obvious signs of dispatch. They started towards her, blind eyes staring, hands reaching. Behind her, Bera and Arif huffed and grunted as they hauled themselves over the rail to join her.

“Necromancers,” Bera chuffed, “No subtlety.”

“They don’t need subtlety when they’ve got walking corpses,” Amina said as she drew her blade. She didn’t see the mummy anywhere. Her eyes found the captain’s cabin at the fore of the galley. There was a strange light flickering behind the windows. “We need to get through them.”

“Ha, this part I like,” Arif said, jaws set in a doggy grin. His claws gouged the deck and he inhaled deeply. “They smell…delicious.” Bera grunted agreement and the two ghouls sprang forward. They crashed into the dead like twin thunderbolts. The zombies were numerous, but that simply added to the fun for Amina’s siblings. As they romped through the dead, they opened a path, and Amina darted towards the cabin. She hit the door with her shoulder and it sprang open, sending her sprawling. She rolled aside as a dried, withered foot slammed down mere inches from her head.

The mummy had divested itself of its robes, and wore only a tattered loincloth and a wide, heavy-looking bronze torc, gone green from verdigris. She could just make out the faint spider-webs of faded tattoos curling across its leather flesh and the weird shape of the star-sign of ancient Mnar beneath the verdigris on the torc. As it raised its foot to stomp again, she pushed herself to her feet. Her sword sang out and the mummy jerked back as she carved a chunk from its shrunken belly.

She looked around, searching for its controller. He wasn’t hard to spot. The necromancer was of no race of men she was familiar with, but she recognized him as the man the late, unlamented Aramash had feared easily enough regardless. His face had been painted to look like a skull and he wore ratty furs over stifling robes that were stiff with the effluvium of the necropolis, and bracers made from the flayed and dried faces of men. The skulls of rats, cats, zoogs and other small creatures dangled from around his neck and he wore iron rings on his fingers.

He sat in a circle of smouldering braziers, chanting slowly and weaving his fingers in complicated gestures that resembled the movements of a leaf caught in a high wind. He was obviously moving the galley with a conjured wind. Beside him sat the canopic jars.  

“Nosomo, I presume,” she said.

“Who are you to speak the name of Nosomo of Thul so blithely,” Nosomo rasped. His urine-coloured eyes narrowed and he smiled suddenly, displaying blackened teeth. “Never mind; I shall learn all of your secrets directly. Kill her, Ousigos!” he screeched. “Bring me her scalp for my belt!”

Ousigos moved to do as he was bid. Arthritic looking claws snapped towards her, impossibly fast. She ducked and scrambled aside. She struck at him again, and the mummy swatted aside the blow. “You cannot defeat him,” the necromancer cackled. “Ousigos was the greatest wrestler of sunken Sarnath in life, and in death he is even greater still.”

“Is he greater than Mordiggian?” Amina barked. Nosomo blanched, but recovered with a sneer.

“If he is not, then I certainly am!” he yowled. “I am a true master of death—moreso than any old god of Khem!”

The mummy lunged for her. One palm slapped against her blade and its fingers closed. With a jerk, it was yanked from her grip. She followed it, grabbing the hilt even as she rammed her elbow into Ousigos’ throat. The mummy jerked back, as if it had been hurt. The necromancer’s eyes widened slightly as the mummy’s fingers brushed the torc and then jerked back as if they’d been burnt.

Her blade reclaimed, Amina danced back, towards the door and Ousigos followed. He was strong—far stronger, even than her siblings, and tougher than any lump of ambulatory jerky had any right to be. Her eyes were drawn to the torc and, at a whim she jabbed at it, twisting between Ousigos’ grasping hands. The tip of her blade glanced off of the torc and Ousigos jerked again and his fleshless jaws gaped in a soundless snarl. His eyes blazed in something that might have been…hope?  Her eyes narrowed.

“Kill her Ousigos,” Nosomo said, rising to his feet, the jars in his hands. “I have summoned a wind to carry us safely from these waters with our prize. Kill her and I shall raise her and make her dance for you, as women once did in fair, cursed Sarnath!”

That did not seem to please Ousigos, from what she could tell, but he attacked again regardless. Amina, with instinct born of experience, focused on the torc. It was not of one piece, but was held about Ousigos’ neck by a bronze clasp. The dead could be bound by any number of means.  But something as old as the mummy appeared to require powerful bindings indeed, and no symbol was more potent in the Dreamlands than the star-sign of Mnar. The thought, when it came, quickly crystallized into deed as Ousigos’ arms looped around her, and she allowed the mummy to jerk her forward.

Her blade slid up quickly, sliding between the torc and the mummy’s chest. With a burst of strength, she twisted back, out of the mummy’s grip, and dragged the sword back, ripping the torc free from the mummy’s neck with a screech of popping metal.

Ousigos loosed her immediately, letting her topple to the floor. He turned slowly, beast-eyes blazing. Nosomo had ceased chanting now, and his face grew pale. “What,” he said.

“Whoops,” Amina said, lifting her sword to show him the torc hanging from it. The unbound dead were more dangerous than the other variety, especially to those who had enslaved them.  “Mordiggian is a forgiving god. But Ousigos, I fear, is a different matter.”

“No!” Nosomo howled. Ousigos lunged, long arms reaching, and the necromancer stumbled back, flinging up his hands. The canopic jars span from his grip and Amina scrambled to catch them. Ousigos snatched up Nosomo and swung him about in a grisly gavotte, knocking over the burning braziers in his fury.

Fiery coals scattered across the cabin, and some struck Nosomo’s filthy furs. Flames caught and spread hungrily as the necromancer screamed and writhed in Ousigos’ grip. The smoke filling the cabin seemed to hunch and crouch like a waiting beast and Amina felt a thrill of fear as some vast shape seemed to uncoil within it. Ousigos wasn’t the only one looking to take a bit of Nosomo’s hide. Mordiggian’s wrath had been invoked, and it was as inexorable as the creeping fire.

Amina didn’t wait to see what would become of either the mummy or his former master. Holding the canopic jars and her sword, she hurried out of the cabin. She caught sight of her siblings herding the remainder of the corpses towards the mast. Body-parts littered the forecastle and limbless torsos wriggled across the deck, champing their jaws mindlessly. “Time to go,” she shouted, as her siblings turned, “Stop playing with your food!”

“Back in the water, you mean?” Arif whined, backhanding a bo’sun. “But we just got on the boat! And there’re all these corpses…”

“The boat is on fire!” Amina said, sprinting past them.

“Good reason to get back in the water,” Bera said, removing her jaws from the skull of a twitching zombie. She tossed the corpse aside and bounded after her sister. Arif grunted and followed after only a moment’s hesitation, his greed warring with his common sense.

The water was just as cold as the first time around. As they swam back towards the inviting quays of Dylath-Leen, Amina paused and turned to see the ship drifting into the setting sun. As she watched, something tall and impossibly thin stepped out onto the deck in a plume of fire and smoke. It held something dull with verdigris in one claw-like hand as it swiftly stepped to the rail and vanished over the side. Of Nosomo, there was no sign.

The smoke rose above the burning vessel and twisted and coiled, becoming a blotch of darkness that seemed to draw in the light of the creeping flames and the sun both. The blotch briefly took the semblance of some daemonic giant and Amina fancied she saw a tiny shape, struggling in its clutches. And then, leaping and spreading up into the darkening sky, it was gone.

Ousigos had claimed his due. And Mordiggian had claimed his.

“Sister,” Bera called.  

Shivering slightly, Amina swam on.

And that’s it for this month. If you made it this far, thanks for giving it a read and possibly even subscribing. I hope you enjoyed this back-to-basics newsletter. Check back next time for more new releases (hopefully) and a new (old) monthly story.

But for now, to paraphrase the estimable Carnacki – out you go!

Subscribe to stay up to date on all of Josh’s current and forthcoming work, as well as get sneak-peeks of his future projects!

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Haunted Wanderer – Kirowan

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A Test of Fortitude

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Son of Frankenstein (1939)

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Psychomanteum #7

EDITORIAL

Hey, look at that, I won a Scribe Award! That’s exciting.

If you’re not familiar with the Scribes, they’re an annual award handed out by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, of which I am proud a member. I’ve been nominated quite a few times, and previously won a Scribe a year or two back for my work with James Swallow on my sole contribution to the Watch Dogs universe, but this is my first time winning solo. To say I’m pleased is an understatement.

Truth to tell, I have something of a fraught history with awards. It took me years to figure out why getting nominated for one was a good thing. I blame my Protestant work ethic. What have I done to deserve an award, I would ask myself. Why can’t they just give me money? What’s the point of a chunk of glass or a tiny rocket-ship?

But eventually, a few kind editors sat me down and explained that awards contribute to the notability of a book and a series, and an author. On its own, an award is just a paperweight. But taken as part of the whole, an award is another cog in the marketing machine. It helps.

Every little bit helps.

These days, humble midlist authors like myself need all the help we can get. Social media, which has always been a tire fire of one kind or another, has only gotten worse. Even the best promotional efforts often sink without a trace on today’s internet of things. But awards, interviews and reviews can help buoy a book above the waterline, even if only for a short time. Like it or not, they’re necessary.

Without some help, even the best book will never be read.

Anyway, I won an award, and I’m very pleased. If you’d like a copy of my award-winning novel, Three Oaths: A Daidoji Shin Mystery, why not grab one from Aconyte Books? I’d be obliged.

Remember…every little bit helps.

NEWS

This month I finished up work on the first draft of Return of the Monster Men, and wrote a couple of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. I’ve also been eyeing some future writing projects. Even so, I’m in a bit of an uncertain place at the moment. Things are ending, new things are beginning. I have a lot I want to do, but not much of it will bring in steady money, which means I also need to scrounge up paid work for next year. If I’m lucky, I’ll manage both. Anyway, if you’d like to help, please spend some money on the things mentioned below.

Oh, and if you’re interested in interviewing me about anything I’ve written, feel free to contact me via any of the social media links below:

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New Novel – A Bitter Taste

My newest Legend of the Five Rings novel, A Bitter Taste, will be hitting the shelves next week, at least in the US. You can still preorder it, if you’re interested and I would be eternally grateful if you did so. I’m convinced that these books are the best things I’ve written thus far, and I’d really like to continue doing so…but that’s down to numbers. So, please preorder and please review and, most importantly, please mention them to anyone you think might be interested in the adventures of a louche aristocrat and his long-suffering bodyguard.

New Novel – Return of the Monster Men

My forthcoming novel, Return of the Monster Men, based on the comic by Mike Wolfer, got announced by Edgard Rice Burroughs, Inc. at San Diego Comic-Con last week. I just turned in the first draft of this one, but I’m quite pleased with it. Click here to check out the swell cover art by Brian LeBlanc.

New Short Story – “The Dark of the Cave”

I’m pleased to say that here’s a new John Bass story in RJ Roles’ new anthology, Hootenanny Horrorshow. Bass is my tribute to the characters of Manly Wade Wellman, and in this tale, “The Dark of the Cave”, he finds himself up against a primeval ghost with a hunger for living flesh. While the anthology is only available in ebook at the moment, a trade paperback is forthcoming. Grab your copy from Amazon or its subsidiaries.

Site Update – Miscellaneous Writing

I’ve added new entries to both Nightmare Men and Silver Screams this month, if you’d care to read them. They’re free to read, for subscribers (subscribing is also free).

Site Update – The Vordenburg Papers

As you might have noticed, there’s a new section on the site – The Vordenburg Papers. Go over and check it out, when you get the chance. The first story, “Devil’s Bridge”, is now available for subscribers. These stories will be appearing with much the same frequency as the Nightmare Men and Silver Screams entries, i.e. fairly regularly until I run out of pre-written material, then irregularly after that. And if you’re on Tumblr, I’ve set up a Vordenburg Papers Tumblr as well, which you can follow if you’d prefer.

MONTHLY STORY

“Soothes the Fire” is, I think, one of the best stories I’ve ever written. It started out incredibly complicated, with call-backs to some earlier stories, and I wound up rewriting it multiple times, pruning away all the excess ideas until I had what you see below – something which has become my standard method of writing, these days. I like to think that I captured the weirdness of the older Arthurian tales, but you be the judge. Enjoy!

Three days after Bedivere’s death, I took the saddle from my horse and set him free. For all that he was loyal to me, the animal was obviously glad of it. He galloped north, away from Mongibel and the horrors that awaited me. I watched him go, and felt some regret. The horse had been the last of my companions, ever since Sagramore had gone mad.

It had happened just before we reached the foothills. He’d begun screaming in the night, when something he saw in our campfire had called out his name. Whatever it was had unmanned the young knight so utterly that he had gouged out his own eyes in an effort to erase it from his sight, despite my best efforts to stop him.

I do not know what it was that he saw, nor do I wish to know. Blind and witless, he could no longer even be trusted to ride a horse. Certainly he could not wield a sword, or couch a lance. I left him in the care of a local friar, and continued on alone, though I was no longer certain as to why, or what I hoped to accomplish.

There had been twenty of us at the start, led by battle-diademed Bedivere, all that remained of the company of the Round Table, after Camlann and Mordred’s uprising. Young Safir had fallen in Vosges, bewitched by fae-lights and drawn into a bog. In the Alps, Priamus had been snatched from his horse by a hag-wind, and as we watched helplessly, he was drawn up into the starless skies until he vanished from mortal ken. The others had fallen in their turn, lured by enchantments or slain by sorcerous means.

By the time we reached Sicily, only three of us remained – myself, Bedivere and young Sagramore. Bedivere was the best of us, and Sagramore, the hope of our future. And then…there was me. Neither the best, nor the worst. Not kind or pure of heart. My heart and soul were heavy with fetters of my own forging, and I was not even sure I was still a knight – for that matter, I was not sure I had ever been a knight.

Bedivere had perished near the City of the Elephant, slain by a strange knight with a surcoat the colour of ash. I recognized him, though he did not speak. Ziliante, a knight of Florence, sworn forever to the service of his lady, Morgan le Fay. Even death would not sway him from her command, no matter how he might wish for it.

The knight had departed with nary a word as Bedivere gasped his last. We buried him in a grove of citrus trees, and pressed on – we had sworn an oath, and though I might have turned back then, Sagramore convinced me to go on.

But now Sagramore too had fallen, and only I remained.

Sir Marrok, the Cursed Knight.  Sir Marrok, seven years a wolf. That is the song the troubadours sing, and like all such songs there is some truth to it. I closed my eyes, as red images filled my mind. Of hunting beneath the moon. Of clawing corpses from the cold earth when I could not find enough flesh to satiate me.

I forced the memories back into their cages and turned to study the cruel shape of the mountain rising above me. Mongibel, the demesne of Morgan le Fay. It loomed over the surrounding lands, a pall of smoke rising from its summit.

My hand tightened about the hilt of my sword. I glanced once more in the direction my horse had fled, wanting to follow, but knowing that I could not. I had made my decision the moment I set out with Bedivere and the others. I would follow the road wherever it led, whatever the cost. I had sworn an oath, and would see it through. For Arthur, and the fading dream of Camelot, I could do no less.

The climb was not an easy one, or short. The higher I went, the harder it became. The sky was the colour of blood by the time I neared the summit, and I was exhausted. The air was hot and dry, and smoke intermittently cascaded down from the summit, enveloping me like a poisonous shroud. I endured it, where other men might have succumbed. My experiences had toughened me inside and out.

Sweat beaded beneath my mail, and my gambeson stank of my exertions. My tabard was stained and torn by travel. I carried only my sword and shield, and a single skin of water, slung across my chest. Everything else, I had been forced to abandon in the foothills. I did not expect to need it, for the likelihood of my survival was not great.

I did not fear death. Indeed, I welcomed it. I yearned for the soothing fires of Hell, where I could be exculpated of my sins, one lash at a time. How many had died by my teeth and claws? Worse, how many had I damned by my callousness, my myriad cruelties? I had been a wolf in spirit long before my wife, my dear Heledd, had cursed me – I knew it, though I often wished to forget it. Now she lingered in a cloister, praying for forgiveness and I was here, seeking my own penance. And if not penance, then at least an ending.

As I climbed, the mountain trembled and at times threatened to give way beneath my very feet. I could barely breathe and I could not see – yet I persisted. Despite these obstacles, despite the fatigue that threatened my steps, I reached the top. At its summit, the mountain boasted a great, fuming crater, filled with the clamour of Hell.

A field of stakes spread before me, along the crater’s smoke-shrouded rim. On them were mounted the skulls of a hundred men or more, not all of them Christian. I saw the horsehair plumes of Romans, and the spired helms of Saracens. The dead of centuries, left to rot beneath the indifferent sky. Bones littered the rocky soil, and carrion birds danced among them. The birds hurtled skyward at my arrival, croaking ‘tekeli-li’ in voices too much like those of men.

Merlin had told me of this place, and its history. He’d told me why Morgan had set her keep here, and what lay sleeping within the fiery heart of the mountain. She’d always been one too keen to interfere with things best left buried.

There was a smell on the air, drifting beneath the sulphur stink of the mountain. A sour odor that I had smelled before. The stink of dark magics, of old magics, the kind that sit like stagnant pools in forgotten places. Whatever Morgan intended, it would end poorly for all of us, if she were allowed to see it through.

Bedivere and the others had been of similar mind, that day on the bloody field of Camlann. Barely hours after the last echo of battle had faded, and Arthur’s sword had vanished beneath the water, Morgan had appeared to escort the mortally wounded Arthur to Avalon. But it was not to Avalon she had spirited him; rather she had brought him here, half a world away from Camelot. For what purpose, none of us knew. We’d known only that we must follow, and return Arthur to his resting place.

My memory of that day was still hazy – I had fought until my limbs were leaden, and my pulse pounded in my ears. I had slain men I had once fought beside, all in the name of the only man not to look at me with fear – with disgust. Arthur alone of all men had seen the wolf that was Marrok, and known no fear. It was Arthur who had reinvested me with my lands and tithes when I shed my wolf’s skin. Arthur, who had made me a man once more, where once there had only been a beast.

It was for Arthur that I pressed on, and for Arthur I would see thing to its end.

When I reached the summit, Ziliante was waiting for me, as I had known he would be. He sat on an outcropping, his sword thrust into the soil at his feet, and his helm discarded carelessly nearby. The dead man’s armor was stained with ash, and his tabard was the colour of dried blood. He seemed weary, for which I could not fault him – eternity was a tiresome thing, even to the strongest of men. Thin hair whipped in the wind, and his rictus smile greeted me. “Marrok.”

“Yes.” I threw off my own helm, hoping for a taste of clean air, but only the stink of sulphur met my nose. “You slew Bedivere.”

“It was you my blade was meant for.”

I did not know what to say to this, so I said nothing at all. Instead, I peered upwards. Something wavered in the sky above – a vast edifice of incomprehensible angles and impossible beauty, its turrets pointing downwards. It stretched as far as the eye could see, but was only visible to one standing directly in its shadow, as we were now.

Many knights had laid siege to its enchanted walls, but none save Lancelot had ever breached its gates – and even then, only at the whim of its mistress. I was no Lancelot, and Morgan le Fay held no love for me, but I was determined to try.  

“Is she up there?” I asked.

“That is not for me to say.” Ziliante stood and retrieved his helm. Up close, I could see his bones through the frayed parchment of his flesh. “I have but one task, and it is not one I welcome.” He pulled on his helm, and wrenched his sword free of the ground.

I raised my hand. “I am tired from the climb, Ziliante – I would beg a moment’s grace of you. At least let me have a swallow of water.”

He paused. Whatever else, Ziliante was a knight – or had been. I drank gratefully, clearing dust and sulphur from my mouth. “You know what she has done,” I said, dropping my water-skin to the ground. “Arthur is dead, and she has taken his body. I would see it returned to its people.”

Ziliante nodded. “I know.” He gave a sudden rattling laugh. “Do you fear she will make him like me, then?”

“I do not know what mischief she intends. I know only that I cannot allow it.”

“Who are you to deny her, Marrok? After all that she has done for you?”

I stiffened. “I am a knight of the Round Table. The last knight of the Round Table.”

“Yes. Have at you, Sir Marrok.”

I barely had time to draw my own blade as he attacked. I parried his first blow, and caught his second on my shield. He fought lazily – what did a dead man have to fear, after all? Ziliante had always been skilled, and death had not dulled him. He had slain Bedivere handily enough, and I knew a moment’s doubt as we traded blows. Was my quest to end here, on the slopes of Mongibel? Would my skull join the others on a stake?

A part of me hoped so. There was relief in such an end. I had tried and failed. Perhaps God would see, and know and forgive. But a greater part of me knew better. There was no forgiveness in defeat, and precious little in victory.

So I fought. And as I fought, I grew wilder. Something in me snarled in fury and battered at the walls of my heart, driving me to greater lengths. Suddenly, I was once more on the field of Camlann, watching my king fall. I had felt it, in my bones. I had howled my grief to the sky, and in that instant wanted nothing more than to become again what I once was. To shed this frail flesh, and leave the world of men and all its madness behind.

But I could not. Not while my oath held. Arthur had made me a man, and I must remain so for a while yet, at least. With a sudden burst of strength, I shoved him back. Surprised, he staggered and I struck him on the hip. He sank down to one knee, and I hit him again, nearly cleaving his head from his shoulders. He fell in a heap, sighing. I made ready to bury my sword in his withered heart, when I heard a voice call out, “Stop.”

I turned. Morgan le Fay stood behind me, wreathed in smoke, raven-haired and black-eyed. She was as beautiful as I remembered, but it was not a human beauty. She had always been other – alien and unpredictable. It was said Merlin had taught her, or perhaps she had taught him. Regardless, she was a power in the world unlike any other.

I swept my sword out, and made my voice firm. “I have come for the King.”

“The King is dead,” Morgana said. “And the world is poorer for it.” She was clad in green, with a cloak of fur and feathers. A bejewelled slughorn hung from her belt, and something in me curdled at the sight of it.

“You stole his body away.”

She stared at me a moment. Then she gestured, and the infernal smoke of the mountain thinned, revealing a crystalline bier situated at the edge of the great crater. Within the bier lay a familiar form, still clad in his battle-torn mail, hands folded over his unmoving chest. Arthur, King of the Britons, ruler of Camelot. I saw that his features were peaceful in death, as they had never been in life and felt a flicker of envy that I quickly quashed.

“Is this what you wished to see?” she asked, as she turned to face me. “I have not harmed him. He is beyond harm. Beyond everything.”

“He would not want this.” I took a step towards her, closing the distance. Behind me, I heard Ziliante pick himself up, seemingly none the worse for wear. I wondered if he would strike me down, as I spoke to his mistress. But I did not turn. Could not. “Whatever it is you are planning, he would not wish it…”

She glared at me. “Who are you to say what he would want?”

“I was a knight of the Round Table.” The words felt as hollow now as when I had said them to Ziliante earlier. They were empty of meaning, without Arthur to give them power.

Morgan must have felt the same for she laughed bitterly. “There is no more Round Table. There is no more Camelot. The world burns and now is the hour of wolves and ravens.” She gestured to me as she spoke, and I almost bared my teeth at her.

“And whose fault is that?” I said, stung by her laughter. “Your sorceries were very effective. If you care, the others are dead, or mad, or worse.”

She sighed. “I would have had it differently, but I could not allow you to stop me.” She looked at me. “Ziliante was meant to kill you.”

“So he said.” I paused. “Do you still bear me a grudge, then?”

“You were cursed fairly, Marrok, whatever lies you tell yourself. In undoing your curse, I condemned your wife, and erased the memory of those who you slew.”

“I forgave her,” I said, softly.

“And yet she withers in her isolation, while you went on to serve at Arthur’s hand. Your past indelicacies forgotten, or forgiven.”

“Arthur made enemies into friends, when he could,” I said.

“Even when he should have known better.”

I frowned. “Which of us do you mean, Morgan?”

She sneered, but I spied the flicker of old hurts in her eyes. “Does it matter now?” She turned to the bier and that which lay within. “He is dead, and his dreams with him.” Her expression softened. “But I can turn back time. I can make him live again.”

“How?” The word left my lips before I could stop myself. I wanted it to be true, I realized. Maybe Bedivere had been wrong; maybe we all had.

She looked out over the crater. “The Greeks believed that this mountain was a prison, that it held a beast called Typhon – the father of all monsters. They were right and wrong, as is often the way with these things. Mongibel is not a prison, but a gate – a threshold.”

“And what is on the other side?”

“My mother claimed that it was the realm of my father, though whether or not that is true, I cannot say.” Her smile was cruel and cold as she turned to me. “That is why I set my banner here in this place of fire, so that I might learn the secrets of those who wait on the other side, be they my kin or no.”

“Annwn,” I said, with a sudden chill. “You are speaking of the Otherworld.” Suddenly it seemed as if the smoke around me were populated by unseen gargoyle shapes. Lurking, waiting, watching – I could sense them now, and my hackles stiffened.

“Perhaps. Or maybe it is a different place altogether.” She stroked the slughorn on her hip. “This horn comes from there – one of many gifts they have bestowed upon me over the years. When I sound it, it will stir those who wait at the threshold. I will call my father’s name, then, and he will answer and give me that which I desire.”

“You have not yet blown the horn,” I said. Another step, two, and I would be on her. I did not desire her death, despite all she had done, for I owed her something. Even so, I knew she had to be stopped.  

“But I will. You are too late.” She looked up, at the darkening sky. “The stars have aligned and the grand conjunction is under way. The veil grows thin.” She hesitated, looking again at Arthur, and then at the slughorn. “If the deed is to be done, now is the time.” She turned. “I did not expect you.”

“Would you have preferred one of the others?” I let a hint of bitterness creep into my voice. “Lancelot, perhaps?”

Her gaze hardened and she turned back to the bier. “If you truly loved Arthur, and what he stood for, you would lay down your sword, Marrok.”

“It is only for love of him that I stand against you.”

She went on, as if I had not spoken. “Logres – Camelot – was a foundation stone of the world.” She ran her hands over the facets of the crystal bier. “It has fallen, and so too shall Rome, Jerusalem, and all the rest, in their turn. Unless something takes up the weight.” 

“I do not understand.”

She laughed. “I will do what Merlin could not – would not – do, and I will bring him back. I will make him strong again, and I – not Merlin, not Nimue – will be at his left hand. A new Logres will be born here, on the fiery slopes of Mongibel.” She lifted the slughorn from her belt and held it up, as if it were a sword. “When I blow this horn, a door will open, and our sleeping king will wake.” She smiled then, but there was no joy in it. “He will have Arthur’s face – his mind…”

“What about his soul?”

Morgan fell silent. “What is a man without his soul?” I asked. “You would make a damned thing of him, like me, or poor Ziliante.”

“Not like you,” she snapped. “You were a beast, and Ziliante is a husk. I will make an emperor of a king.”

“Then why do you hesitate?” I took a step towards her, my sword low. “Why did you wait? You speak of stars and conjunctions, but is that the truth, or mummery?”

“I thought it would be Bedivere,” she said, after a moment. “I thought he would be the one to match me. Not you. That is the way of these things.” She looked at me, and her eyes blazed with a revulsion I knew all too well. The same fires burned in me – the fires of hatred, not for the world, but for oneself. It hurt, that fire, but it was soothing as well. When the flames had you, there was nothing more to fear.

Finally, she spat, “I should never have saved you, Marrok.”

“No. You should have left me a monster. It is what I deserved.”

“Arthur thought different,” she said.

“As he thought of you. Consign him to his rest, and do not make a nightmare of his dream.” I took another step towards her, and another after that. “Do not do this, Morgan. Let him fade, if that is God’s will…”

“God? Which god?” she demanded. “Your god? Or mine?”

“His,” I said, not retreating. “The god he worshipped. The god he loved.”

She stared at me, her eyes wild but her face composed and still, like marble. She glanced down at the slughorn in her hand. I stretched out my own hand – I thought perhaps to snatch it from her, before she could blow it.

As if reading my thoughts, Morgan stepped back, out of reach. “You speak of love, Marrok. But I do not think one such as you understands it. If you did, your wife would not have cursed you, and you would not have done as you did. It would have been as the troubadours sang…instead of how it was.”

I swallowed a sudden rush of bile. I remembered a peasant’s hut, and screaming…red rushes of heat, and a sickening satisfaction. Seven years of huts and peasants, seven years of screaming. Tears beaded at the corners of my eyes. Morgan read the sorrow on my face and nodded. “He asked me to help you.”

“I know.”

“And now I ask you to help him. Let me help him, Marrok. Let me lend him the strength of the old ones, of they who came before man and will be here after. He will rise, and Camelot will rise with him. A new Camelot – a stronger one. A better one.”

“All things pass,” I said, softly. “Even kings and kingdoms. Do not taint his memory this way. Do not make a monster of him.”

She looked back down at Arthur. “I would not. I would guide him. As I always should have done. Merlin was a fool, and in his foolishness he has damned the world to a slow death. Arthur might have saved it, had his strength not given out. Had he not been merely a man…”

“Had you not undermined him, and broken the fellowship of the Round Table,” I said, growing weary of her justifications. She had always spoken so, blaming others for her crimes and mischiefs. “Had you not hated his queen, turned his friends against him, had you not -”

“Enough,” she snarled, rounding on me. “Enough of your yelping. You should not even be here, Marrok. It should be one of the others – that is the way this story goes! My wickedness, matched against their courage. That is the way it has always been. Their humanity, against my inhumanity…against what will come.”

Her eyes widened, and became less human. Her loveliness seemed but a mask for something great and terrible. Her form, once lithe and graceful, appeared crude now – as if it were not the form of a woman at all, but another creature entirely, one as alien to this world as any demon invoked by sorcery.

“All my life, I have matched myself against those who could check my desires. In my own way, I have kept the world safe. But now, those days are gone and I can feel those of the air – the ancient masters of this world – working their will upon me.” She cast a glance over her shoulder, at something I could not perceive. I wondered then if she saw what Sagramore had seen. Indeed, perhaps she had always seen it.

I bristled at her words. “You will have to make do with me.”

Morgan turned, her eyes gleaming. “No. You are no man. No knight. You are nothing, save a beast.” She gestured as she spoke, and I felt a tremor run through me. My stomach lurched and I fell. An old, familiar pain ran riot through me. “Ziliante – take his foul head. Let the company of the Round Table come to its inglorious end.”

“I beg you no,” Ziliante croaked in a harsh whisper. I felt his shadow cross me, and heard the creak of his armour. “I have already slain one knight – do not make me kill another, even one such as him.”

Morgan’s gaze flicked to her servant, startled perhaps by this hesitation, and I seized the moment with as much strength as I could muster. Limbs cramping, world blurring, I lunged to my feet, sword in hand, and spun. The edge of my blade bit into Ziliante’s neck, where his mail was thinnest, and the force of my blow sent his head flying. His body staggered back a step, and for a moment, I feared he might fight on. But then he gave a great sigh and collapsed. Morgan screamed in fury and raised the slughorn to her lips.

I did not pause to apologize for my dishonourable act, but instead turned to lunge for Morgan, hoping to stop her. But I stumbled and fell, as a familiar pain ripsawed through me. My sword clattered away as her spell continued its fell work. I felt the old enchantments fraying and splitting, as something long asleep now hurled against the cage of my soul.

The sound of the slughorn was not as I had imagined it. It was not thunderous, or cacophonic. Rather, it had no sound at all – merely the memory of sound. An echo without a voice to cast it. And yet, I felt something pummel at me, and the mountain spat fire. Mongibel shuddered like a wounded animal, and the smoke grew thick and choking. Vague shapes moved within the pall, lean and a-thirst as they circled like hungry beasts.

Morgan paid them no mind. She had eyes only for the bier. The blast of the slughorn had shattered it, exposing Arthur’s body to the elements. Cinders danced in his hair and beard, and ashes settled on his tarnished mail. “It will be better this way,” she said, though whether the words were meant for me, or for herself, I did not know.

The sky boiled overhead, as if some great entity were squirming behind the veil of smoke and clouds. The birds began to circle in a black, screaming whirlwind, so many and so fast as to form a single shape. Morgan raised her arms, threw back her head and screamed, “Y’AI’ NG’NGAH, YOG-SOTHOTH H’EE – L’GEB F’ AI THRODOG, UAAAH!”

There was a crack, as of thunder, followed by a dull and hideous whine. As the echoes faded, the birds flew down to peck and claw at what lay on the bier. I watched in horror as they squirmed into Arthur’s mouth, and maggot-like through the wounds that had claimed his noble life. Tekel-li-tekel-li-tekel-li, they croaked, as they burrowed into him.

Silence followed. But only for a moment. For slowly, surely, Arthur sat up, his torn mail jangling, his limbs rustling.

Morgan sighed and cast the slughorn away. “It is done.”

Arthur turned at the sound of her voice, and I saw that, as with her, there was nothing human in his gaze. Nothing of the man I had known and loved. Instead, I saw the eyes of a goat or a crow or something fouler still, bulging from bloody sockets. Arthur’s mouth sagged open, vomiting spheres of sickly light. These spheres clung to him like an infernal halo as he spoke. It was Arthur’s voice, but distorted and jagged – like the sound of a broken sword, striking bone. “Morgan,” it – he – rasped. Then, “Marrok?”

I screamed then – a scream that became a howl.

My body felt like a seedpod, newly split and disgorging itself. Something moved in me, and I frantically tore at my armor with unnatural strength. The world changed before my eyes, and my mouth filled with blood and bile. My skin tore like parchment, as stiff quills of hair pierced it, rising and spreading over limbs that broke themselves, lengthening and strengthening. Flensed and dripping, I howled again – a howl for all that I had lost.

Morgan spun as I scrambled to my feet. I saw myself in her eyes – spindle-limbed, hairy and bestial, clad in rags and torn mail – as I leapt forward with a cry of mingled hunger and frustration. My vision was tinged with red, and I saw only her smooth flesh and frightened gaze. But she was not my prey.

Instead, I struck the thing even then rising from the bier. Clouded as my thoughts were, I knew that whatever it was – demon, spirit, or something else – it could not be allowed to rise and settle in its new shell. I had to kill it before it gathered its strength, even if it meant killing the man I had called king. And so I bore it backwards with a snarl.

It fumbled at me, uncertain of its own form, or perhaps surprised by the attack, and I struck quickly, my teeth fastening into its throat – Arthur’s throat – as it tried to speak again. It squalled in an odd, tremulous fashion, and the glistening spheres burned my unnatural flesh, and seared my eyes. They burned me, but I hung on with fierce savagery, biting and tearing until my teeth met bone – or something like it – and I crunched it between my jaws.

Arthur – the thing wearing Arthur’s body – fell back onto the bier. Iridescent smoke boiled from his wasted form, as whatever force had claimed him departed to unknown vales. I howled my bitter triumph to the blistered sky.

A vast convulsion seized Mongibel, and stone and ash began to fall from the sky. To my animal gaze, it seemed as if Morgan’s citadel were aflame and coming undone. Perhaps it was. Perhaps those things she had bargained with now sought to levy a punishment for her failure. I do not know. I cannot say.

All I know is that when I turned from my gory repast, she was watching me. On her face was a look of utter desolation – but also, I think, relief. Or maybe that is merely what I wish to think. “Maybe this moment was yours after all,” she said, in a hollow voice. “Another would not have had the courage – or the fury – to do what you have done.”

I snarled at her, not understanding. She smiled then, but there was only sadness there. “The king is dead. Long live the king.” She turned away, her eyes fixed on the fires above, as if seeking some answer in the smoke and flame.

I howled again, in sorrow this time. Neither of us had gotten what we wanted, and we would both have to live with that, for as many days as were left to us.

I leapt from the bier and loped away from that place, leaving Morgan to what fate I did not know. Nor did I care. I was no longer a man. No more a knight. Only a beast.

Perhaps it was better that way. 

And that’s it for this month. If you made it this far, thanks for giving it a read and possibly even subscribing. I hope you enjoyed this back-to-basics newsletter. Check back next time for more new releases (hopefully) and a new (old) monthly story.

But for now, to paraphrase the estimable Carnacki – out you go!

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Devil’s Bridge

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Lonely Sentinel – Judge Pursuivant

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The Tingler (1959)

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