Aflarien
The soldiers had been ordered to hide in the forest on its southward
side. Their faces smeared with mud and
their green robes streaked brown with dirt.
An order of silence was signalled through the canopy of branches. Beneath the autumn leaves, Aflarien wandered
along a hidden avenue of oaks and searched the secrets of the forest. He didn’t notice the soldier, a mere dark
silhouette behind him but for a glint of the blade that reflected in the
sunset.
The Storytellers were usually paid in the mushroom for their
stories. From out of the memory of the
old race those stories stemmed and the oldest stories Aflarien loved the most. So as he stooped and bent to the
leaf-littered ground to pick up the occasional clairvaric and put them in his
pocket as he mused about the story of the dragon and its’ slayer, the mighty
Yeric. Yeric was worshipped in some
isolated shrines and temples on the plains of Meringal as a God. One day soon Aflarien had decided he would
take the pilgrims’ route to Ket where there was a great statue of Yeric and the
holiest of shrines and a festival where the enactment takes place. One day soon, he thought, as he
wandered. He would be glad to get out
of this forest on the edge of the world and learn something new instead of the
names of all the different mushrooms. He had thought in his idle moments he would be
picked to be a priest or that he might be chosen to go to Ashenmoire, but this
was but a dream. As the figure detached
itself from the deeper recesses of the forest, stole up toward the young man, a
black darkness fell over Aflarien and for a long, long time he plummeted
down. After that day he would never be
the same again.
Aflarien stumbled from the sea of sleep out of one starlessness into
another empty dark. He grasped at the
blackness about him like a blind man searching for his dreams. The cell was all there was and he howled
once more as he had done each time he’d woken in the stench filled prison; no
one heard. None listened to his wailing
anymore. He got up and slid in a pile
of shit he’d left the night before and Aflarien fell again into the wall, his face
soaked by pools of piss. It was so
quiet but for the racing of his heart, empty but for the desperate smell of his
sweat, dank with fear.
Then the young lad heard the laughter of the guards. He began to remember – they took me. Bile gushed onto the cell door from his dry
mouth. They took me and they burnt me
Oh Yeric of the graces let someone help me.
The cell door was pushed open like a cloud revealing a desert sun. Garek, the warder, pulled him up from the
vomit and piss then dragged him from the cell down the parched prison corridor
to the door of Berengar’s office.
Berengar sat hunched over his desk, a large plain table strewn with
papers and invoices. At the corner behind
him a long sword, intricately filigreed with gold and ruby, leant against the
wall. The obese bald man seemed unaware
of the presence of Aflarien and the warder.
He eventually put down the papers he was reading concerning troop
deployments around Meringal and sniffed at the foul air they’d brought in with
them. Berengar turned his eyes to his
underling.
“You’re dismissed.” As Garek
quickly scampered from the office Berengar forced himself from the chair and
walked towards Aflarien. The youth couldn’t
move, weary with hunger and despair, yet somehow he reached his hand to the
uniformed man as if he was his best friend, his only friend in the world. Berengar took the hand, despite his distaste
of the long, dirt encrusted nails and the awful stench coming from the
boy. Why the nak the countess would
want this one he had no idea. She lived
on her whims and liked them young, and Berengar, her faithful servant, always
delivered that which she required. The
soldier took his hand and lifted him from the stone floor and led him to a
chair, wise enough to put some old parchments on it before the boy sat. Aflarien met the gaze of his captor for the
first time.
“Look at the nakkin’ mess yer in,” he said with a jealous contempt. “There’s a washroom down the corridor.” He went to the closet where he kept his old
uniforms, relics of the thinner man he’d been.
“Wash yerself and put this on…I want it back mind,”
Aflarien stood up again, trembling.
“The Countess wants…she wants to see you.” He remembered the nights he had spent with
Krostic when Grannald, the old Count still lived and he could still see the old
man’s stark threatening eyes as he stuck him with the Countess’ silver blade.
Once Aflarien had drunk deeply from a water basin and had scrubbed himself
as best he could, until the water was black, he put on Berengar’s old uniform
baggy on his skinny frame. The officer
paced impatiently in the corridor until the kid emerged from the washroom. Berengar motioned for him to follow as he took
off briskly from the basement of R’thera, up the steeply graded stone stairway,
worn away by hobnailed boots and the red stains that were all that remained of
long dead prisoners. Finally, they
reached Countess Krostic’s arbour where a cool fountain and scents from the
gardens of the Keep refreshed him of his weariness and light-headedness after
the endless race to keep up with Berengar.
He continued through the silk drapes that led to the garden where
torches of red flame hung from the walls that enclosed the arbour on all four
sides. It’s garden seemed so bright in
the darkness of the heavens that it seemed a place of perpetual day. Beyond the line of elms which Berengar raced
through where broken and fallen statues of old Gods and Kings lay scattered
like carrion on a battlefield. Then in their midst stood a woman so slender,
her pale face bathed in the firelight and her lustrous dark hair aflame in the
red light Aflarien stumbled in awe and
knelt at her feet as if by some others’ volition. She stood as still as the statues yet she
was neither flawed nor broken. While he
knelt his wet hair anointed her bare feet- she turned and glared at Berengar. He shrugged off a bow and told the boy to
get up. Aflarien lifted his head and
felt her gaze like a thousand fingers massaging his brain.
“Looks good in a uniform, doesn’t he Berengar? You can go now, have some dinner you look a
bit peaky,” she laughed coldly and took Aflarien by the hand and led him into
the deeper recesses of the garden
Aflarien accepted to be her slave. What choice had he? She had tethered his
will to hers. She led, he followed. Behind
the black mist of his desires he foresaw a day when he’d walk equally by her
side. He kept these secrets to himself and obeyed his mistress at all
times. More and more often Krostic
treated him well, yet tested him time after time. She trusted him now; after all there was no
escape from her. She led him, that night before the war, once more to the
walled garden, high walls hiding the stars. She opened the gate into the garden
and whispered into Aflarien’s ear.
“There is such a world beyond these walls, walk beside me and I will
show you its wonders.” He let her guide
the way under the hanging bowers of the overgrown trees beyond the Countess’
door. Through the screen of trees, breaking through cobwebs, and snagged by the
braches they saw ahead a vast lawn spread out under the sun. She was dressed in
black with a silver sash falling down her shoulders and over her breasts. The sash
gleamed like moonlight and as he stepped on the lawn Aflarien thought in fact
her heart was a star trying to burst radiantly from the confines of her flesh.
She walked ahead of him stepping lightly as he feet passed over the fragile
mushrooms. They were of all variety, those poisonous and wholesome. She came to a rise in the lawn and soon she
was dancing and cavorting to some inner dervish sounds of the voices of the
mushrooms. Aflarien bent to inspect
them, to his surprise there were a few he had never seen before. When he stood
up again he found Countess Krostic was standing beside him, a youthful grin on
her face, she seemed a teenage girl – the weight of time fading from her.
“Why don’t you eat one?”
“What are they?’”Aflarien asked
“O,” she laughed, bent to her knees. “They are very poisonous. They will
kill you eventually....” she picked a mushroom Aflarien had been studying. She handed it to him. “Eat.”
“But, may Lady...” Aflarien hesitated, his hand hovering over her pale,
slender hand, her blue veins visible.
“Eat. Take it, Aflarien.” Krostic’s eyes were now hard and stern. In a second he took the mushroom, shrugging
his shoulders and popping the mushroom in his mouth. There was silence for a long time in the
walled garden. The stones of the red walls were trellised in spidery veins. The
red rock was embedded with the blood of the long dead slaves that had built
R’thera. Over these walls into the free lands rolling away in waves Aflarien’s
first scream echoed.
Tonight was a night of nightmare as if a chasm had split open the World
and from its ancient bowels fresh evil issued.
Aflarien became a wolf. He looked
about him and howled in the night. He howled for his pack, he yearned for their
company. But they were beyond the walls and no matter how high he jumped he was
always thrown back into the garden, on this side, the side where laughter was eaten.
He saw the Countess with his sharp eyes; she was on her hands knees chewing at
the grass like a goat. He pressed his long face to the grass, watching her,
waiting for her to turn. When he saw her fear he would attack. When she was
shaking and frozen to the spot he would rush forwards and rip out her throat.
He’d drink the ruby fountain of her blood as she twisted beneath him, rolling
in an orgasm of death. But as she turned to look at him, the huge, slavering
wolf, Aflarien quailed like a beaten dog. Pulses of purple orange and reddish
lights flowed from Krostic’s eyes. The light blossomed and encompassed the garden,
swamping him. Aflarien lost his footing and began to drown in the sea of light
which had become his world.
The wolf stalked.
He had struggled to the surface
of the sea of light and saw on the horizon an island, barely ten feet across. As
he struggled forwards all he could was a see a figure on the island looking out
at him. The figure waved. He swam faster.
She became clearer. It was her. She drew him like a magnet as his eyes
rested on her hands with which from the invisible air she pulled fruit of different
variety and wheat. She devoured them, quick with hunger. As he pulled himself out
of the water, a dishevelled, half drowned cur, water gushed from his soaking
fur.
Countess Krostic dragged from the
aether about her great slabs of meat, halves of cows and a flock of birds:
chickens, geese and ducks and rarer birds that fluttered their wings in terror as
she enlarged her mouth opening it huge and wide, swallowing every bit of them.
He cowered afraid of her, whimpering at the rocks at the edge of the sea. She
grew larger and immense with power. With a shriek of delight her hands fought
an invisible adversary. Into the sunlight a couple, a blind man joined at their
shoulders with a blind woman.
They were embracing, kissing each
other, aware of nothing but their kisses.
These too she devoured. She ate rock and shale. The wolf watched her eat
a mountain and so became so huge he could not see her head above the clouds.
The wolf knew that she would eat the Moon the Sun and also the stars lost in
the uninterrupted dark. No doubt soon she would be so strong enough. She would
be the ultimate power. She would always feed.
Krostic felt the presence of her slave far, far beneath her. Reaching
down for him, cupping him in her hand like a precious egg, she lifted him high
into the nightmare sky, and up still further. She took him to the shadows of
stars far beyond the confines of Menerth leaving him to howl there alone.
Then he fell. The howl fell into a scream and he fell into his human
form. Aflarien Omelyn. Screaming. Falling and landing on the lawn of the walled garden. The
colours of the water changed and solidified. He b lacks out. The long scream
ends.
He awoke, or perhaps the dream changed to another and he was lying in
the sweet smelling grass of the lawn. She was beside him. Would she always be there? He wondered and
closed his eyes against the heat of the sun. She cradles his head and smiles
reassuring at him. He nestles there in the Krostic’s bosom, so warm. He looked
out across the lawn, but the grass was scorched and denuded of beauty by
stinking mounds of bodies, the long dead of a thousand wars called his name,
demanding his attention, but he did not know what they wanted.
But her voice filled his head. Krostic kept telling him all he had to do
was not to worry. So he lay back again and she looked at him. In the reflection
of her eyes he saw a man exactly like himself rise from the grass holding aloft
a great spear. He listened as the Countess told him just to lay back and close his
eyes. Sleep. And he did.
Chapter
4
Misha’s Tale
Jon Esierk had
retired with his glass to the company of the warm fire, his pale eyes glinting
with flames, turned to Misha and said,
“Tell us the tale
you told me on our way here, young clever one.” Misha, tall, his black long hair sticking to
his face with the sweaty heat of the tavern, his wine untouched upon the bar,
turned to his audience whose laughter was silenced as he opened his mouth.
Once there was a city, eternally wreathed in smoke and fog, and there
dwelt a vampire called Dalrosse who lived alone in a piano shop, a long way
from the centre of the city. The
leaders of the Council of that city were cruel folk who left in the street the
old, the vagabonds and the destitute to die rather than feed or bury them with
dignity and into the endless night, once the sound of revelry had died down,
Dalrosse would prowl upon the palsied flesh and the bitter, unsatisfying blood
of these people that it seemed were left, as offerings, to placate his blood
greed. Then he would return once more
to his dusty piano shop, alone, loved by none, and listless, as he never
slept. It seemed sometimes he wept for
those he killed, mourned for them because none in that dismal city cared for
them. Yet, his tears were for himself.
One evening, he dressed himself in a seemly form of a gentleman and went
into the town and milled in the crowds of the young and exuberant, tipsy with
youth, their work left behind as they streamed into the street from theatre
houses or taverns and built bonfires about which they danced. That evening, as he watched the frolicking
crowds Dalrosse fell in love for the first time. A flaxen haired buxom girl, Gabrielle, stood
alone, conspicuous by the lack of people about her. She, it seemed, could find no enjoyment from
the dance and drink, her face a frown of scorn to the merriment. She placed her bonnet upon her head and
turned her back upon the bonfire and started for home. Dalrosse followed her.
She turned into the shadows of a side street where nobody could push and
pull her, her skin dirty from the
smoke of the fires and she could still hear the songs of the people who would
dance until another false dawn. Her
tenement was just around the next corner and for a moment she thought she could
hear a light footfall but put this down to the scurrying of a rat and didn’t
look back. As she turned into the last
corner she heard a slight cough and felt a hand on her shoulder and as she
twisted her head round she saw Dalrosse.
“Miss,” the dark man said, his accent foreign, the words unwillingly
coming from his mouth as if with nervousness.
“I’m lost in these alleyways.
Could you direct me back to the centre.”
Ill at
ease she kept walking forward.
“Just follow the alley back and head for the sound of the hullabaloo.” Yet
he continued to follow Gabrielle to the archway of her tenement so she turned
to face him squarely, the yellow glow of her landlady’s flat light on his
face. How beautiful he was. Not like the pasty faced city dwellers but
erect with vitality and she gazed into the double blue of his eyes. Breathlessly she asked,
“Who are you?”
“What does it matter what my name is Gabrielle. Will you not show me the way back to the ‘hullabaloo’
and we can dance together?” He took her
cold hand and led her back the way she had walked. Gabielle replied a minute or so later.
“I do not dance.”
Dalrosse laughed.
“Then I will show you, my
sweet.” With his free hand he stroked
her hair then untied her bonnet and it fell to the cobbles behind their soft
stepping feet. He moved to her dry lips
as if to kiss her but lifted her head and pointed to the sky. She looked above the dark tenements where
the smoke and fog had cleared and followed the arrow of his pointing finger.
“What is it?”
“It is the moon. Have you never
seen it before?” a tear of pity left frozen behind his eye.
She could hardly speak, then in
a gush of exclamation.
“The moon, no, no, never. This
moon is the only light I’ve ever seen above this heartless city.” Then as she stared, craning her neck, her
hand in his, the vampire took her beyond the passed out, songless revellers and
ebbing embers of the fires, down hills and then up to the piano shop. Then as the smoke drifted back to obscure
the moon she stepped into the threshold of her new and the last home she would ever
know. Gabrielle slept in the embrace of
the sleepless vampire, dreaming of the moon.
He killed Gabrielle three weeks later and ate her flesh; Dalrosse could
do no other. A bliss of a honeymooning
couple, the lovemaking of their days together were like sonic booms over the
city that seemed to grab and gust away the smoke and clouds of the city and the
bemused citizens sat under the blue of an endlessness day, the sun, a new
friend, to laugh and play beneath unfretful and inebriated by the heat and
light. One morning, Gabrielle, as
Dalrose tinkered on an old piano, cut her finger, the scent and sight of the
tiny rivulet of blood wrenched the beast he was, back up his throat and his
glamour fell away. Then he came as a
storm over the city, intoxicated by her fresh essence, and he fed upon the
citizens as they lay in glory beneath the thing called the sky. The starless moonless night fell again over
the city like a mourning shroud. And
once more the citizens and Council became wary and fear was doused with
drunkenness and the sacrifice of the poor to Dalrosse.
His second wife, Clarissa, was an actress at the Royal Theatre. The enlightened folk of the city had been
wooed by Clarissa with her pale, red haired beauty, sensitivity and passion. She was a living legend and it was not by
mere accident that Dalrosse, once more in the glamour, perched high on one of
the boxes, scrutinising every detail of her form, had come and sought her out. After the performance, as Clarissa removed
her costume and makeup, Dalrosse slithered downward into the form of a lizard
and scurried under the dressing room door.
As she wiped away the makeup from her face she felt a hot breath on her
shoulder, but the mirror revealed no one behind her. Then she felt a cold touch upon her bare
shoulder and turned in fright and there in all his stark beauty the vampire stood. He took her as his own, on the clothes
strewn floor, his blue eyes piercing into her as she clenched around him, and
as willingly as Gabrielle forsook her life in the city and went to live with
him in the piano shop. There also did
she die. His bloodlust was curdled and
once more he ripped through the flesh of the city until his need for sweet
blood was diminished. Time and again he
took wives and each fell and his rampages of grief became more and more bitter
on the city dwellers until the Council employed the holy assassins to remove
the curse from their city.
Dalrosse had taken Rose, a young dancer, as his lover. She, it seemed to the ageless vampire, was
the most beautiful woman, as if she were aspects of all his wives and Gabriele
and Clarissa, perfected by the greatest aspect of Rose herself. He was
determined not to let his blood lust destroy this new love. So he went hunting as he had done before,
while she slept peacefully in the piano shop, and rather than becoming
intoxicated on her blood would prey upon the detritus of the city. He stalked an old woman, a homeless dame who
would scour the city for the leavings of others and try and sell them in the
third hand shops in the morning. If she
was lucky she would find coins that were enough to buy her food or even
lodgings and a place of safety to rest her weary body. As Dalrosse watched her the holy assassins
blessed their blades and waited for the vampire to be lured into their
trap. In vampire form, Dalrosse fell
upon the woman and she offered her neck to him as if yearning death and then
the hunters encircled him, the dull glint of their swords a warning unheeded as
he fed.
A sword hacked off his arm and the old woman, drained and lifeless fell
to the cobbles, steam and fire issued from Dalrosse’s wound and the assassin’s
sword melted as if acid had destroyed it.
The luckless hunter felt the grip of Dalrosse’s other hand upon his neck
and his head was ripped from his body.
Then as the other hunters rushed towards the vampire he ran heading for
Rose and the piano shop. He knew, deep
within himself, that he would die this night and yearned to see Rose’s face
once more.
The vampire was like a bolt of
lightening fleeing through the miserable streets of the city and at times he
would double back and as he did killed two more hunters, slashing and drinking
deep, then fled onwards. However, as he
returned home to Rose and her laughter, three shadows fell upon him and the one
that survived plunged his pure blade into the vampire’s heart. All strength and glamour was stripped from
Dalrosse and even so, in his deformed and hideous form, he came to Rose’s
side. She awoke with a smile as she had
been dreaming of him and even in his true form and almost destroyed, she saw
him for what he was, her love. The
final hunter broke into the piano shop.
“Let me kiss you one last time,” he whispered and took her rose face in
the hand that remained. Their lips
touched and it seemed an eternity that they rested upon each other’s lips. Rose, with all her strength and love bit into
the mouth of her dying lover and sucked the blood from him. Dalrosse died. As the hunter advanced upon the bed Rose
lifted her eyes to him, which seemed to sparkle with all the light of life that
Dalrosse had devoured. Then the hunter
fell to his knees, his sword clattering uselessly upon the wooden floors. He fell into her gaze and was never seen
again.
A thunderous applause filled Erafien Omelyn’s
inn and Jon Esierk smiled drunkenly at his young chelah. At that point the soldiers stormed the
village and attacked the inn. Jon
Esierk fell into a long sleep as the joy of the evening turned into a cacophony of fear.
