As we were driving home from school today, my brother asked a question of my father.
“Dad,” says he, “why do some people like to drive around in, like, big seven-and-nine seater jeeps and things?” My dad thought about this for a moment.
“Image.” he answered at last, almost mournfully. “They like to do it because they think it's 'cool'.” That is, I believe, characteristic of his entire mentality. My dad doesn't care what the world thinks about him. He kept bull's eyes in the fridge, sets his lab on fire periodically, and went through a phase where he didn't wash himself. The world can go screw itself, says he: image is not important.
And there is the crux of it. 'Image is not important.' Is it? Allow me to furnish us with another example. I happen to be in the possession of a rabbit, who lives in a small box in the back garden. I also love the goddamn furry white bundle of love to bits. Why? Well, let's take a look at this empirically. (Incidentally, if anyone could actually define 'empirically', I would be very grateful to them if they posted it in a comment. I suspect I have misused it. Anyway...)
Rabbits and humans have locked... er... ears, so's to speak, for generations: we have an built-in animosity towards each other. Rabbits, for their part, breed like... well... like rabbits, and fuel this growth on human crops, to the point where they have to build, for example, a rabbit-proof fence across half of Australia. In return for this, humans consider rabbits to be irritating pests and, occasionally, a delicious dinner.
Add to this the costs of keeping a pet. The aforementioned small wooden box is, in fact, a sizeable and well-appointed hutch which my father and I built with the collective sweat of our brows (metaphorically speaking). She goes through carrots like nothing you've ever seen and the rabbit food is hardly better. Add to that her complete and utter lack of hygiene which, apart from the revolting job of clearing out the hutch after her daily, costs us a newspaper, a handful of straw and scented sawdust every day.
And, as if that wasn't enough, this 'furry white bundle of love' is a spoilt bitch. I have more bites than an apple, my mother won't touch her for fear of her, she periodically urinates on my trousers (not a pleasant experience, believe me) and her ladyship will, when being held, only accept chocolate to eat. She particularly likes Aero bars.
So then, empirically (sic?) speaking, getting a rabbit was a very foolish decision and one I was guaranteed to regret within a very very short space of time. Yet I love her to bits. Why? One answer: image. Shave a bunny wabbit and no-one wants it any more. Ever wonder why the plain brown one always gets left behind in the shop? It has all to do with image.
And the same applies to human beings, which is what I was getting at if I've left you behind by this point. It has been scientifically proven that women especially judge people on their first sighting. It's wrong: unquestionably so. Yet that is how people are: they judge people not by their performance after a year's work or whatever, but by image. That's why you dress smartly going to a job interview or on a first date. If you don't look snazzy, no one'll want you, and trust me, in the world of capitalism, no-one wants to be the plain brown bunny left behind in the shop.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Introducing...
...Cyrus' one and only rival for the title of protagonist, Janus Ardashir. Only very very loosely based on the character of Janus that I had not really bothered to come up with for that abortive RPG-type thing.
Janus' bow moved elegantly and measuredly over the violin's strings, providing a gorgeous, exuberant soundtrack to the sharply contrasting buildings of Caragean that towered, sooty and rickety, over the narrow cobbled streets. Few people, save the odd patrolling Lanciar, scampering street urchin, or homeward-bound vendor, passed to make his busking worthwhile. Nonetheless, he was determined to squeeze every penny out of it he could.
He knew, if he didn't find somewhere to stay, that he'd die of some sickness soon.
However, at this stage of the evening, with the moon peeking over the pocked roofs and every self-respecting citizen gone to bed, Janus reasoned that, at this time, it'd be a good time to start looking for a dry spot to curl up for the night. He packed up his violin, his only really valuable possession, and looked around for a suitable alleyway. His eyes alighted on a small shop specialising in Farhighter foods and perked up – the heat off its ovens should keep him warm for the night.
It was a long way for a rich merchant's idle third son to fall.
But, Janus reflected bitterly, as he walked past the yellow square of light that was the Farhighter restaurant's door, he had the rich merchant's oldest son to thank for that.
As Janus headed for the alleyway, wrapped up in his vengeful thoughts, another pair of eyes fastened onto him. Gregory's avaricious, bloodshot eyes eyed the rich violin case and the jangling purse of small change the busker brought with him and, unconsciously, his huge ham-fists clenched and unclenched greedily. A further evaluation of the busker himself was more comforting still: beneath the carefully frayed red robe, the busker was merely a small, nondescript-looking man of average Lain height, complexion, and build. In fact, if he wanted to, he could probably blend into the crowds of Caragean effortlessly if he wanted to.
There were, however, no crowds at this time of night, and no-one to hear the unfortunate little man scream.
Janus pushed his way into the Farhighter restaurant, where an enormously fat, incredibly bored-looking Farhighter woman leaned on a crummy bar, wattle-draped face rested on the bubble of lard that had probably begun life as a hand. Even looking her would have put Janus off of his food, back when he had the money to afford such luxuries.
“Vot you vont?” she asked him in heavily accented Kamarean. Janus cast a glance at the stereotypically misspelt menu tacked onto the roof above the bar, then at the array of foodstuffs assembled beneath the dirty glass comprising the bar. Both looked equally unappetising.
“Err... Two Akarean sausages and a plate of chips, please.” That said, Janus sat down at one of the few tables the restaurant offered and looked around, depressedly, at the restaurant. Its most salient feature was its yellowness: yellow walls, yellow-tiled floor, yellow grime on the windows. Even the supposedly-reflective steel of the tables and chairs showed the yellow of the surrounding room, as if they had spent so long in the restaurant's overwhelming yellowness that they had absorbed it into them.
“Enjoy meal.” The fat woman set a plate of food in front of him, pocketed the change he put on the table, and wandered off. Idly, Janus wondered how the plate had managed to escape her gravity well. The Akarean sausage was dreadful – but then, that was the meaning of Akarean sausage. It came being an uncultured and impoverished people – it was comprised whatever you could get your hands on (not necessarily meat, either) rolled into a rough cylinder, then stuck on a hot thing until it didn't fall apart when you picked it up. Its one virtue was its invariable cheapness.
Janus sincerely hoped the green was the inventive addition of a cabbage leaf.
Two probably meatless conglomerates and a plate of greasy cardboard later, Janus was fortified against the night. He pushed the door into the alley open and stepped out into the chilling Caragean night, dreading the comfortless night spent on the cobbles.
“How are you.” a gravelly voice growled into his ear.
Something hit the side of his head and as he fell, he vaguely registered the sound of the restaurant door slamming shut, cutting off all possibility of help – not as if the fat Farhighter woman would have been much help. Where's a Lanciar when you need one? he thought groggily.
Gregory and his two henchmen chuckled moronically to themselves as they observed the prostrate musician, sprawled helplessly on the ground. Gregory had always thought that to “jump out of your skin” was a figure of speech, but Janus had jumped so high it had nearly looked like there were two of him. There was, however, most definitely one of him, and that scrambling away from the muggers at top speed.
“Stop!” Gregory growled, pointing a meaty finger at a spot on the ground. Obediently, Janus froze, babbling almost incoherently.
“Please... take anything you want. Just leave my violin alone...”
“Money. Throw it there.” A pathetically empty wallet sailed out of the dark and settled with a jangle on the stones. “And the violin.”
“No – not the violin!”
“Give me the violin!” Gregory started towards the prostrate musician, and tripped into hell.
The thug's face impacted hot, scorched, crumbling earth, leaving a face-shaped imprint in it. What the hell? He rolled over – and made a little whimpering sound as he saw the red, striated sky laced with bands of brooding cloud and lashed by bolts of lightning, which stretched endlessly until finally it hit the edge of the vast black plain he was lying on. The air itself burned, a sulphurous concoction that seared Gregory's throat on the way down. There was nothing in sight save the carbonised acres of earth and the unsettled sky.
Janus stepped out of the air.
“Wha – how – eh - ”
“Do shut up. I neither want nor need your feeble-minded thoughts.” Janus dismissed his assailant's babblings almost nonchalantly, examining the strange place. “I have to say, not even I'm quite sure where we are. I don't think I've been here before. As for how, you failed to notice the magical trap I set around the sack of gold and you... haha... can-tripped into a whole new world.” The mage's gaze turned back to his terrified opponent, prostrate in the dirt.
“Nonetheless! I'm sure you'll do well here... though there's nothing to build a house with, and no food, and no-one to talk to – not even the flesh-rending, blood-drinking, murderous demon-type people you usually find in these type of places. You should starve to death in about a month.”
“Eh... but I don't deserve this! I have a wife...”
“That you beat mercilessly every time you go home. She will be glad now you're gone. Anyway, I didn't deserve to have my money and violin pilfered by you and your cronies, but that never stopped you, did it. Give you something to think about, at least, when while you're rotting away up here. Now! I really must be going, though comparative to here, literally no time has passed back in Elleria. Enjoy your stay!”
Janus winked cheerily, flashed a huge grin, and left Gregory to a fate worse than death.
* * *
He flashed back into the real world, and time resumed uninterrupted.
“Boss?”
“What'd you do to him, you rat?” Janus decided to toy with these buffoons a little more.
“Nothing – honest! I didn't do anything!”
“He's right, Uji. He's just an idiot.” The other man diverted his attention for just a second, which was all Janus needed. Instantly, he initiated the formula required to take possession of another's mind. Rows of magical symbols scrolled in front of his eyes, arcane glyphs scribing themselves into existence at the edges of his consciousness and rushing across his field of vision to vanish, well-heeded, at the other edge of his vision.
You summoned me.
“Kba'j'righrt'ashka'ghur'yurt'bana'madarius? Is that you?” Janus said inside his own head.
I told you... just call me Kba. The spirit's projected thoughts conveyed a faint sense of irritation and Janus smiled delightedly. He liked nothing better than winding his personal genie up - save making some thug pay for his idiocy. What may I do for you?
“Find me that man's mind.”
Consider it done.
No sooner than Uji had registered his companion's words than the man suddenly... thrashed, was the best word for it. Almost as if he had been kicked in the back, he bent backwards, arched into an unnatural, almost-crab shape with a strangled grunt.
“You alright?”
“No, he's not.” Janus told him from the shadows. “Better off than you though.”
The man spasmed forwards, a murderous light radiating from his eyes.
Janus sat on the cobbles, complaining to himself about how wretchedly uncomfortable they were, as he watched the possessed man hack his friend apart and then take his own life. When he was done with that, he curled up against the Farhighter restaurant's oven wall and dreamed peacefully.
Janus' bow moved elegantly and measuredly over the violin's strings, providing a gorgeous, exuberant soundtrack to the sharply contrasting buildings of Caragean that towered, sooty and rickety, over the narrow cobbled streets. Few people, save the odd patrolling Lanciar, scampering street urchin, or homeward-bound vendor, passed to make his busking worthwhile. Nonetheless, he was determined to squeeze every penny out of it he could.
He knew, if he didn't find somewhere to stay, that he'd die of some sickness soon.
However, at this stage of the evening, with the moon peeking over the pocked roofs and every self-respecting citizen gone to bed, Janus reasoned that, at this time, it'd be a good time to start looking for a dry spot to curl up for the night. He packed up his violin, his only really valuable possession, and looked around for a suitable alleyway. His eyes alighted on a small shop specialising in Farhighter foods and perked up – the heat off its ovens should keep him warm for the night.
It was a long way for a rich merchant's idle third son to fall.
But, Janus reflected bitterly, as he walked past the yellow square of light that was the Farhighter restaurant's door, he had the rich merchant's oldest son to thank for that.
As Janus headed for the alleyway, wrapped up in his vengeful thoughts, another pair of eyes fastened onto him. Gregory's avaricious, bloodshot eyes eyed the rich violin case and the jangling purse of small change the busker brought with him and, unconsciously, his huge ham-fists clenched and unclenched greedily. A further evaluation of the busker himself was more comforting still: beneath the carefully frayed red robe, the busker was merely a small, nondescript-looking man of average Lain height, complexion, and build. In fact, if he wanted to, he could probably blend into the crowds of Caragean effortlessly if he wanted to.
There were, however, no crowds at this time of night, and no-one to hear the unfortunate little man scream.
Janus pushed his way into the Farhighter restaurant, where an enormously fat, incredibly bored-looking Farhighter woman leaned on a crummy bar, wattle-draped face rested on the bubble of lard that had probably begun life as a hand. Even looking her would have put Janus off of his food, back when he had the money to afford such luxuries.
“Vot you vont?” she asked him in heavily accented Kamarean. Janus cast a glance at the stereotypically misspelt menu tacked onto the roof above the bar, then at the array of foodstuffs assembled beneath the dirty glass comprising the bar. Both looked equally unappetising.
“Err... Two Akarean sausages and a plate of chips, please.” That said, Janus sat down at one of the few tables the restaurant offered and looked around, depressedly, at the restaurant. Its most salient feature was its yellowness: yellow walls, yellow-tiled floor, yellow grime on the windows. Even the supposedly-reflective steel of the tables and chairs showed the yellow of the surrounding room, as if they had spent so long in the restaurant's overwhelming yellowness that they had absorbed it into them.
“Enjoy meal.” The fat woman set a plate of food in front of him, pocketed the change he put on the table, and wandered off. Idly, Janus wondered how the plate had managed to escape her gravity well. The Akarean sausage was dreadful – but then, that was the meaning of Akarean sausage. It came being an uncultured and impoverished people – it was comprised whatever you could get your hands on (not necessarily meat, either) rolled into a rough cylinder, then stuck on a hot thing until it didn't fall apart when you picked it up. Its one virtue was its invariable cheapness.
Janus sincerely hoped the green was the inventive addition of a cabbage leaf.
Two probably meatless conglomerates and a plate of greasy cardboard later, Janus was fortified against the night. He pushed the door into the alley open and stepped out into the chilling Caragean night, dreading the comfortless night spent on the cobbles.
“How are you.” a gravelly voice growled into his ear.
Something hit the side of his head and as he fell, he vaguely registered the sound of the restaurant door slamming shut, cutting off all possibility of help – not as if the fat Farhighter woman would have been much help. Where's a Lanciar when you need one? he thought groggily.
Gregory and his two henchmen chuckled moronically to themselves as they observed the prostrate musician, sprawled helplessly on the ground. Gregory had always thought that to “jump out of your skin” was a figure of speech, but Janus had jumped so high it had nearly looked like there were two of him. There was, however, most definitely one of him, and that scrambling away from the muggers at top speed.
“Stop!” Gregory growled, pointing a meaty finger at a spot on the ground. Obediently, Janus froze, babbling almost incoherently.
“Please... take anything you want. Just leave my violin alone...”
“Money. Throw it there.” A pathetically empty wallet sailed out of the dark and settled with a jangle on the stones. “And the violin.”
“No – not the violin!”
“Give me the violin!” Gregory started towards the prostrate musician, and tripped into hell.
The thug's face impacted hot, scorched, crumbling earth, leaving a face-shaped imprint in it. What the hell? He rolled over – and made a little whimpering sound as he saw the red, striated sky laced with bands of brooding cloud and lashed by bolts of lightning, which stretched endlessly until finally it hit the edge of the vast black plain he was lying on. The air itself burned, a sulphurous concoction that seared Gregory's throat on the way down. There was nothing in sight save the carbonised acres of earth and the unsettled sky.
Janus stepped out of the air.
“Wha – how – eh - ”
“Do shut up. I neither want nor need your feeble-minded thoughts.” Janus dismissed his assailant's babblings almost nonchalantly, examining the strange place. “I have to say, not even I'm quite sure where we are. I don't think I've been here before. As for how, you failed to notice the magical trap I set around the sack of gold and you... haha... can-tripped into a whole new world.” The mage's gaze turned back to his terrified opponent, prostrate in the dirt.
“Nonetheless! I'm sure you'll do well here... though there's nothing to build a house with, and no food, and no-one to talk to – not even the flesh-rending, blood-drinking, murderous demon-type people you usually find in these type of places. You should starve to death in about a month.”
“Eh... but I don't deserve this! I have a wife...”
“That you beat mercilessly every time you go home. She will be glad now you're gone. Anyway, I didn't deserve to have my money and violin pilfered by you and your cronies, but that never stopped you, did it. Give you something to think about, at least, when while you're rotting away up here. Now! I really must be going, though comparative to here, literally no time has passed back in Elleria. Enjoy your stay!”
Janus winked cheerily, flashed a huge grin, and left Gregory to a fate worse than death.
* * *
He flashed back into the real world, and time resumed uninterrupted.
“Boss?”
“What'd you do to him, you rat?” Janus decided to toy with these buffoons a little more.
“Nothing – honest! I didn't do anything!”
“He's right, Uji. He's just an idiot.” The other man diverted his attention for just a second, which was all Janus needed. Instantly, he initiated the formula required to take possession of another's mind. Rows of magical symbols scrolled in front of his eyes, arcane glyphs scribing themselves into existence at the edges of his consciousness and rushing across his field of vision to vanish, well-heeded, at the other edge of his vision.
You summoned me.
“Kba'j'righrt'ashka'ghur'yurt'bana'madarius? Is that you?” Janus said inside his own head.
I told you... just call me Kba. The spirit's projected thoughts conveyed a faint sense of irritation and Janus smiled delightedly. He liked nothing better than winding his personal genie up - save making some thug pay for his idiocy. What may I do for you?
“Find me that man's mind.”
Consider it done.
No sooner than Uji had registered his companion's words than the man suddenly... thrashed, was the best word for it. Almost as if he had been kicked in the back, he bent backwards, arched into an unnatural, almost-crab shape with a strangled grunt.
“You alright?”
“No, he's not.” Janus told him from the shadows. “Better off than you though.”
The man spasmed forwards, a murderous light radiating from his eyes.
Janus sat on the cobbles, complaining to himself about how wretchedly uncomfortable they were, as he watched the possessed man hack his friend apart and then take his own life. When he was done with that, he curled up against the Farhighter restaurant's oven wall and dreamed peacefully.
Friday, 12 November 2010
Cereal Killer
I hate cereal.
I really do.
However, I being me, my deep-rooted hatred of cereal comes not from the fact that it tastes like cardboard no matter how much chocolate, sugar or milk you put on it, nor from the fact that it's actually those twirly things that come out of a pencil sharpener when you sharpen your pencil. No, cereal is a sign of today's world. Mass-produced, quickly-prepared, tasteless, no-one in their right minds would touch a bowl ofcardboard cereal unless they had a boring modern job in a boring modern office to go to, and all they had to look forward to was a boring modern life. Cereal could not exist in a remotely interesting life. It is the dreary spawn of a dreary life, and it warps the space-time continuum around it, transforming the land around it into Plath's "province of the stuck record", ensuring the times are tidy. History's beaten the hazard, and now we can all have boring cereal for breakfast. Whoop de bleedin doo.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm a hypocrite, and if I were dropped somewhere I would deem interesting, I might, within five minutes, be ardently wishing to be sitting here whining. I certainly cannot tell for sure. I do know one thing though. Whatever the deeper meanings of it all, I bloody hate cereal.
I really do.
However, I being me, my deep-rooted hatred of cereal comes not from the fact that it tastes like cardboard no matter how much chocolate, sugar or milk you put on it, nor from the fact that it's actually those twirly things that come out of a pencil sharpener when you sharpen your pencil. No, cereal is a sign of today's world. Mass-produced, quickly-prepared, tasteless, no-one in their right minds would touch a bowl of
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm a hypocrite, and if I were dropped somewhere I would deem interesting, I might, within five minutes, be ardently wishing to be sitting here whining. I certainly cannot tell for sure. I do know one thing though. Whatever the deeper meanings of it all, I bloody hate cereal.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Watch This
Set this chronologically wherever you like.
Watch This
“Watch this.” Darken told Hel, his infuriatingly superior smile playing across his lips.
“What is it, Darken? I've been sitting in this damn pit of a catacomb for three hours and still nothing has happened!” Hel punctuated his sentence with a frustrated bash on the enchanted railings separating him from the chamber beneath.
“Sssh... don't do that. He'll hear.” Darken admonished, as he began to back away into the dark.
“Who'll hear?”
“Just watch.”
* * *
The necromancer's boots crunched on the gravel. Irritatedly, he cast a spell to mute them.
As he descended the ancient marble stairs into the Catacombs of the Dialusian Order, the light gradually faded away from his gaunt, grey face, leaving its ancient patchwork of scars and wrinkles bathed in shadow. The practically compulsory black necromancer's robes left eddying trails in the old dust of the catacombs, thoroughly concealing the galvanised, desiccated flesh beneath that was technically still just about alive.
But not for much longer, if Julian the Bloodless, the necromancer extraordinaire with magic for blood, self-proclaimed greatest magician in the world, and would-be lich had anything to do with it.
As the moonlight faded away completely, he cast his thoughts back to the conversation that had prompted this eccentric little trek of his. Who would have thought that the dirty little inn could have yielded such treasure? Though it hadn't been the inn, really, but chance, that Julian should have bumped into the stranger: the nobleman slumming it in the poor clothes. They had been forced to share a table in the packed inn.
“Good evening.” The adventurer had flashed Julian a white-toothed grin which never touched his mocking eyes. “Can I buy you a drink?”
And they had gotten talking, and the adventurer had let slip that the necromancer Tatula, the only person living (or not, as it were) who knew the secret to lichhood and – the adventurer had confided with an infuriating, knowing smile – that she had taken up residence in the Catacombs of the Dialusian Order, just up the road, and that he was personally going to eliminate her and the threat she posed.
Julian wondered idly which one of the corpses that littered the lightless hallway was his.
They were everywhere – old and young, rich and poor, old and new. But, Julian noticed, there were only incomplete or unhealthy bodies left – a sure sign of a necromancer's presence. Tatula had surely raised herself an undead army to protect against the likes of him.
That wouldn't be a problem, though... - unlike...
A morningstar on a chain, burning with magical flame, swung down out of nowhere and -
* * *
“That looked like it hurt.” Hel remarked, squinting into Darken's divinatory orb.
“You don't say.” Darken answered sarcastically. “I have to say, I was expecting a better show. Look at the way his skull caved in – no wards at a...” Darken stopped.
“What?” Hel, who had turned away, inquired.
“Well,” Darken replied, maintaining his composure admirably, “I have to say I wasn't expecting that.” Hel peered into the divinatory orb again.
“You said something about his head caving in, didn't you?”
“Yes...”
“So why's he walking away without a bother on him?”
* * *
The last tendrils of magic sucked their way back into Julian's veins, leaving his face exactly as it had been. So his previous experiments in phylactery had paid off to some extent.
He rounded a flesh-strewn corner and -
He couldn't believe it. It had been so easy – because, on the pedestal in the middle of the towering, circular chamber in front of him, there sat a slight, bone-white girl with a deadpan expression on her gaunt face.
Tatula.
Julian grinned savagely, walking forward. She might look like a woman, but he could smell the death off of her!
“My lady!” he began. “I have come as a supplica - ”
“Look.” she said. “A butterfly.”
Julian looked. Incredibly, so there was.
* * *
“Tatula won't be able to defeat him.” Darken stated confidently. Now that Julian was in the chamber below them, they could merely peer through the railings. “They're too alike and he's too powerful. She may weaken him, but without my aid – or yours – she will not defeat him. Still... no sense coming in too soon. Let's see how things play out. In fact, this can be part of your training.”
* * *
The lightning bolt slammed Julian into the wall, leaving a trail of popping sparks where blood should be. He slumped to the floor bonelessly, legs scrabbling to get up.
“You should not have come here.” Tatula told him, her big, sincere eyes drilling into his mournfully. “You know that there can only be one lich in the world. You know I hunted down all others. Why then, did you come to me seeking such forbidden wisdom?” She settled herself so as, arms crossed, she towered over him, all five foot of her, supported on the boots planted firmly either side of his outstretched legs.
Julian coughed. A stray blue spark flickered out of the corner of his mouth.
“I thought you would be wise enough to share your knowledge with posterity.”
“Wise?” A hint of disbelief coloured the edge of Tatula's speech, the first sign of emotion he had gotten from her. “I have hunted down and slain necromancers greater than you by far. Why should I fear you?”
“Because,” and Julian paused to grin evilly, “they didn't have one of these.”
* * *
“Did you see that coming?” Hel asked Darken sarcastically.
“In fairness,” Darken sighed, “no. I did not.”
* * *
“A Neromantic Nullification Matrix.” Julian explained to the helpless lich, indicating with a half-smile the white, plastic-like net he had cast over her. Her eyes, the only part of her with locomotive ability, glared at him accusingly. The rest of her lay sprawled on the floor. “Extremely rare, since they require co-operation between the Order and the Eaghlosh of Dia to create. They are, however, very useful against the likes of you and me. Now, Tatula, you are going to answer my questions.”
“Somehow,” a booming, dramatic voice announced from the shadows, “I think not.”
“Do you?” Julian asked disinterestedly as the adventurer from the tavern strode jauntily down through the air, kept afloat on a platform of magic.
“Because, you see,” the adventurer announced grandiosely, “you have had the misfortune to cross Darken, crusader against necromancy, scourge of the Order, vanquisher of the Goblin King. And now, you are going to release my companion and then, you are going to die.”
“I'd love to oblige you, but I'd rather die in a manner of my choosing. Otherise, it can be very detrimental to the health.”
“Well, if you shan't, then I shall. Be free, Tatula!” Darken gestured imperiously, and a wave of searing red arced towards the Matrix – and passed through it. Tatula's eyes widened in a soundless scream.
Julian held up a tiny, white key to the light between two taloned fingers.
“This, my obscure friend, is the only means of opening the Matrix. You will have to kill me to get it and, as I am sure you will find, that is a very difficult proposition.”
“Well, I am sure that will pose no problem for Darken, finest mage in the land! Have at ye!” Another flick of the fingers, and a wave of fire flashed at Julian, knocking him to the ground. Fire flashed up the necromancer's robes, carbonising his clothes and skin – but the magic flashed out, fixing it all up and allowing him to retaliate. A lance of crackling blackness stabbed out at Darken – but he caught and quenched it in a splash of blue in the palm of his hand.
“Oh dear.” Julian said to himself. Now, it was Darken's turn to grin evilly.
“Goodbye, necromancer.” said he. And he snapped his fingers.
A ring of fire popped into being around his fingers, burning with the brightness of a concentrated sun, and expanded drastically, slamming into the walls and dropping to the floor, covering Julian in a layer of sticky, napalm-like mana that burned through his just-fixed flesh like so much dry firewood, and he screamed, oh how he screamed -
And Darken slumped, visibly exhausted, but exhilarated.
“Did you see that?” he screamed up to Hel. “I won, against Julian the Bloodless, self-proclaimed greatest magician in the world. Not so great now, is he?”
“I think you may be forgetting something.” a rasping voice whispered into his ear.
“No way...” Darken squeezed his eyes closed, acutely sensing with dread the utter void of mana inside of him. Slowly, with small, halting footsteps like a dancer might use, he swiveled himself around until he he was facing the voice.
And opened his eyes.
Hel had to give Darken credit: in the face of the horrific abomination he had unwittingly created, he remained remarkably calm. He looked the scorched skeleton with the glowing phylactery gem for a heart up and down, and said.
“Aha. I have to smash the gem.”
“Much good it will do you now, now you have – finally – ascended me to lichhood.” A scorched-bone arm shot out and grabbed Darken around the throat, lifting him effortlessly, chokingly into the air. “I now know the secret. Even more embarrassingly, I had it all along. Silly me.
“Now, as a new lich, I have much to attend to. Not least the manner of your death. Now how would you - ”
“Oi!” The lich half-turned, fixing its blazing coal-eyes on the hugely muscled young man striding into the chamber. “You!”
“I prefer Julian. Stand back, imbecile, or I shall have to kill you first.” And the lich turned away, disregarding Hel.
Arrogance, Hel thought. Nearly killed Darken and now it's going to kill him. A quick thought summoned up a spell of strength. Hel drew back his fist -
- and Julian screamed, a reedy, whistling cry, as Hel drove his fist effortlessly through the lich's carbonised ribcage and wrenched out the glistening phylactery gem.
“Y – you're a mage too?” Julian gasped through what was left of his vocal chords.
“Well done, imbecile.” And Hel rammed the phylactery gem into Julian's head. This time, his skull stayed caved in. A flash of electric blue, a nearly-perceived scream, and Julian the Bloodless flashed into the void, bound for whatever served Dia's Realm as a hell.
Darken picked himself off the ground and brushed all the bits of Julian off of himself.
“Thank you, Hel, but there was really no need.” he coughed. “I had everything under control.”
“Don't talk shit.” Hel told him bluntly. “Watch this indeed.” A moment, then Darken slumped.
“Yes.” he said. “Yes, you saved me. I could have defeated him – but I underestimated him.”
“You forgot something.”
Darken sighed. “Thank you.”
“Good. Now, let's get this thing off of Tatula.”
Watch This
“Watch this.” Darken told Hel, his infuriatingly superior smile playing across his lips.
“What is it, Darken? I've been sitting in this damn pit of a catacomb for three hours and still nothing has happened!” Hel punctuated his sentence with a frustrated bash on the enchanted railings separating him from the chamber beneath.
“Sssh... don't do that. He'll hear.” Darken admonished, as he began to back away into the dark.
“Who'll hear?”
“Just watch.”
* * *
The necromancer's boots crunched on the gravel. Irritatedly, he cast a spell to mute them.
As he descended the ancient marble stairs into the Catacombs of the Dialusian Order, the light gradually faded away from his gaunt, grey face, leaving its ancient patchwork of scars and wrinkles bathed in shadow. The practically compulsory black necromancer's robes left eddying trails in the old dust of the catacombs, thoroughly concealing the galvanised, desiccated flesh beneath that was technically still just about alive.
But not for much longer, if Julian the Bloodless, the necromancer extraordinaire with magic for blood, self-proclaimed greatest magician in the world, and would-be lich had anything to do with it.
As the moonlight faded away completely, he cast his thoughts back to the conversation that had prompted this eccentric little trek of his. Who would have thought that the dirty little inn could have yielded such treasure? Though it hadn't been the inn, really, but chance, that Julian should have bumped into the stranger: the nobleman slumming it in the poor clothes. They had been forced to share a table in the packed inn.
“Good evening.” The adventurer had flashed Julian a white-toothed grin which never touched his mocking eyes. “Can I buy you a drink?”
And they had gotten talking, and the adventurer had let slip that the necromancer Tatula, the only person living (or not, as it were) who knew the secret to lichhood and – the adventurer had confided with an infuriating, knowing smile – that she had taken up residence in the Catacombs of the Dialusian Order, just up the road, and that he was personally going to eliminate her and the threat she posed.
Julian wondered idly which one of the corpses that littered the lightless hallway was his.
They were everywhere – old and young, rich and poor, old and new. But, Julian noticed, there were only incomplete or unhealthy bodies left – a sure sign of a necromancer's presence. Tatula had surely raised herself an undead army to protect against the likes of him.
That wouldn't be a problem, though... - unlike...
A morningstar on a chain, burning with magical flame, swung down out of nowhere and -
* * *
“That looked like it hurt.” Hel remarked, squinting into Darken's divinatory orb.
“You don't say.” Darken answered sarcastically. “I have to say, I was expecting a better show. Look at the way his skull caved in – no wards at a...” Darken stopped.
“What?” Hel, who had turned away, inquired.
“Well,” Darken replied, maintaining his composure admirably, “I have to say I wasn't expecting that.” Hel peered into the divinatory orb again.
“You said something about his head caving in, didn't you?”
“Yes...”
“So why's he walking away without a bother on him?”
* * *
The last tendrils of magic sucked their way back into Julian's veins, leaving his face exactly as it had been. So his previous experiments in phylactery had paid off to some extent.
He rounded a flesh-strewn corner and -
He couldn't believe it. It had been so easy – because, on the pedestal in the middle of the towering, circular chamber in front of him, there sat a slight, bone-white girl with a deadpan expression on her gaunt face.
Tatula.
Julian grinned savagely, walking forward. She might look like a woman, but he could smell the death off of her!
“My lady!” he began. “I have come as a supplica - ”
“Look.” she said. “A butterfly.”
Julian looked. Incredibly, so there was.
* * *
“Tatula won't be able to defeat him.” Darken stated confidently. Now that Julian was in the chamber below them, they could merely peer through the railings. “They're too alike and he's too powerful. She may weaken him, but without my aid – or yours – she will not defeat him. Still... no sense coming in too soon. Let's see how things play out. In fact, this can be part of your training.”
* * *
The lightning bolt slammed Julian into the wall, leaving a trail of popping sparks where blood should be. He slumped to the floor bonelessly, legs scrabbling to get up.
“You should not have come here.” Tatula told him, her big, sincere eyes drilling into his mournfully. “You know that there can only be one lich in the world. You know I hunted down all others. Why then, did you come to me seeking such forbidden wisdom?” She settled herself so as, arms crossed, she towered over him, all five foot of her, supported on the boots planted firmly either side of his outstretched legs.
Julian coughed. A stray blue spark flickered out of the corner of his mouth.
“I thought you would be wise enough to share your knowledge with posterity.”
“Wise?” A hint of disbelief coloured the edge of Tatula's speech, the first sign of emotion he had gotten from her. “I have hunted down and slain necromancers greater than you by far. Why should I fear you?”
“Because,” and Julian paused to grin evilly, “they didn't have one of these.”
* * *
“Did you see that coming?” Hel asked Darken sarcastically.
“In fairness,” Darken sighed, “no. I did not.”
* * *
“A Neromantic Nullification Matrix.” Julian explained to the helpless lich, indicating with a half-smile the white, plastic-like net he had cast over her. Her eyes, the only part of her with locomotive ability, glared at him accusingly. The rest of her lay sprawled on the floor. “Extremely rare, since they require co-operation between the Order and the Eaghlosh of Dia to create. They are, however, very useful against the likes of you and me. Now, Tatula, you are going to answer my questions.”
“Somehow,” a booming, dramatic voice announced from the shadows, “I think not.”
“Do you?” Julian asked disinterestedly as the adventurer from the tavern strode jauntily down through the air, kept afloat on a platform of magic.
“Because, you see,” the adventurer announced grandiosely, “you have had the misfortune to cross Darken, crusader against necromancy, scourge of the Order, vanquisher of the Goblin King. And now, you are going to release my companion and then, you are going to die.”
“I'd love to oblige you, but I'd rather die in a manner of my choosing. Otherise, it can be very detrimental to the health.”
“Well, if you shan't, then I shall. Be free, Tatula!” Darken gestured imperiously, and a wave of searing red arced towards the Matrix – and passed through it. Tatula's eyes widened in a soundless scream.
Julian held up a tiny, white key to the light between two taloned fingers.
“This, my obscure friend, is the only means of opening the Matrix. You will have to kill me to get it and, as I am sure you will find, that is a very difficult proposition.”
“Well, I am sure that will pose no problem for Darken, finest mage in the land! Have at ye!” Another flick of the fingers, and a wave of fire flashed at Julian, knocking him to the ground. Fire flashed up the necromancer's robes, carbonising his clothes and skin – but the magic flashed out, fixing it all up and allowing him to retaliate. A lance of crackling blackness stabbed out at Darken – but he caught and quenched it in a splash of blue in the palm of his hand.
“Oh dear.” Julian said to himself. Now, it was Darken's turn to grin evilly.
“Goodbye, necromancer.” said he. And he snapped his fingers.
A ring of fire popped into being around his fingers, burning with the brightness of a concentrated sun, and expanded drastically, slamming into the walls and dropping to the floor, covering Julian in a layer of sticky, napalm-like mana that burned through his just-fixed flesh like so much dry firewood, and he screamed, oh how he screamed -
And Darken slumped, visibly exhausted, but exhilarated.
“Did you see that?” he screamed up to Hel. “I won, against Julian the Bloodless, self-proclaimed greatest magician in the world. Not so great now, is he?”
“I think you may be forgetting something.” a rasping voice whispered into his ear.
“No way...” Darken squeezed his eyes closed, acutely sensing with dread the utter void of mana inside of him. Slowly, with small, halting footsteps like a dancer might use, he swiveled himself around until he he was facing the voice.
And opened his eyes.
Hel had to give Darken credit: in the face of the horrific abomination he had unwittingly created, he remained remarkably calm. He looked the scorched skeleton with the glowing phylactery gem for a heart up and down, and said.
“Aha. I have to smash the gem.”
“Much good it will do you now, now you have – finally – ascended me to lichhood.” A scorched-bone arm shot out and grabbed Darken around the throat, lifting him effortlessly, chokingly into the air. “I now know the secret. Even more embarrassingly, I had it all along. Silly me.
“Now, as a new lich, I have much to attend to. Not least the manner of your death. Now how would you - ”
“Oi!” The lich half-turned, fixing its blazing coal-eyes on the hugely muscled young man striding into the chamber. “You!”
“I prefer Julian. Stand back, imbecile, or I shall have to kill you first.” And the lich turned away, disregarding Hel.
Arrogance, Hel thought. Nearly killed Darken and now it's going to kill him. A quick thought summoned up a spell of strength. Hel drew back his fist -
- and Julian screamed, a reedy, whistling cry, as Hel drove his fist effortlessly through the lich's carbonised ribcage and wrenched out the glistening phylactery gem.
“Y – you're a mage too?” Julian gasped through what was left of his vocal chords.
“Well done, imbecile.” And Hel rammed the phylactery gem into Julian's head. This time, his skull stayed caved in. A flash of electric blue, a nearly-perceived scream, and Julian the Bloodless flashed into the void, bound for whatever served Dia's Realm as a hell.
Darken picked himself off the ground and brushed all the bits of Julian off of himself.
“Thank you, Hel, but there was really no need.” he coughed. “I had everything under control.”
“Don't talk shit.” Hel told him bluntly. “Watch this indeed.” A moment, then Darken slumped.
“Yes.” he said. “Yes, you saved me. I could have defeated him – but I underestimated him.”
“You forgot something.”
Darken sighed. “Thank you.”
“Good. Now, let's get this thing off of Tatula.”
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Small Pleasures
As winter settles in, I find myself enjoying the smaller things in life more, like warming my hands under the hot tap, sitting down to my favourite dinner, or waking up on Saturday. It doesn't matter that within minutes, my hands will refreeze, or that I will pay for my indulgence in later life, or that I will while the weekend away, bored. Just for a moment, the world is perfect.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
One-off first?
I have noticed that the pattern of most writers' careers begins with either a single novel or a less well-known series that they use as a springboard to their magnum opus (though exceptions do exist, don't they, Mr. Feist?). As such, I was thinking of putting together a single novel before I begin work on "Interval's End" afresh. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Sunday, 10 October 2010
1200 words
I found a competition last week, so I, naturally, entered. Observe my entry. (N.B. I was limited to 1200 words.)
The heavy, bruised sky loomed threateningly over the once-majestic city of Sudgard, sending down little puffs of white to disguise its blackened ruins.
“So... five Kamarean bezants? Done.” Ex-Generalleutnant Maharbal handed the human wizard the money, shook on it, and melted back into the desolate, threadbare crowd. He hurried through the frosted streets, ice in his beard and ground into the wrinkles in his ruddy, angry face. His non-descript black cloak was wrapped tightly around his shoulders, shielding him from the gaze the columns of tall Brass Legionnaires marching through the streets in their bright armour and opaque masks. Soon he would be where he wanted to be, and he wouldn't have to tolerate the eyesore of those foreigners marching down his streets.
He turned down a grimy side alley, mournfully contemplating the state of his country. Graylin was a nation that hadn't age or culture to glorify her – her greatness had been carved from the flesh of her enemies, etched in smoke across the skies of her subjects. But now, her cities burned, her people were beaten, and what was left of her armies were reduced to shadow-boxing with the Ostings, who had conquered her, and the Graal, Ostmark's secret service. In fact, it was about the Graal that he was meeting his contact.
He sidled up to a grimy, nondescript door and, making sure no-one was following him, knocked sharply three times. A peephole opened and a bloodshot eye peered out.
“Who are you?”
“Not the Brass Legion.”
“Come in.” A balding, filthy old slob admitted him into the stinking, dirt-painted den he called a house. Few would suspect that Irman was one of Graylin's most ardent nationalists and co-ordinator of the newly-formed Arkani paramilitaries.
“He's waiting downstairs for you.” Irman told Maharbal. “Keep on going down.” Maharbal nodded and, cautiously, set his foot on the creaking, crazed stairs spiralling squarely down into the unlit blackness of Irman's basement. Steadying himself on the oozing earthen walls, Maharbal planted one foot in front of the other carefully, dust, dirt and beetles crunching under his heels. As he turned the last battered corner, his eyes quested vainly into the darkness in front of, discerning only a few shelves and bags of coal. He squinted – and was nearly blinded by a burst of light in front of him.
“Hello.” Adolphus Hannibal smiled disarmingly at him from behind his flickering torch. That smile had won him his reputation as Graylin's greatest hero, rivalled only by Maharbal himself. “Sit, Maharbal. Please! Partake of an old friend's hospitality.” He gestured towards a rickety wooden chair on the other side of the table he occupied.
“I never thought we were great friends, Adolphus. As I recall, we never got on.”
“Ah yes,” the dashing young princeling explained, “but now we are in the same boat, Maharbal. There is – was – a great divide between us: I am noble, you are common; you rose through the ranks, I was given my post straight away. I daresay, in fact, that the only thing we share is our genius.” Adolphus winked laughingly at Maharbal. “But we are, as I clarified, both in the same boat now. An uncultured Osting squats in my house, same as yours; that same uncultured Osting clothes his fat wife and lazy children with our hard-earned money – collecting rent is hard work, Maharbal!” Adolphus looked hurt at Maharbal's disbelieving expression. “It doesn't matter now, anyway. Our country is gone, ground to dust under the heel of the Brass Legion. Tell me, Maharbal: do you believe it can be restored?”
“Yes.” Maharbal answered instantly. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, but invaders never win. We will get our own back.”
“Well,” Adolphus smiled winningly at him again, “that's fortunate, Maharbal. Because, you see, I happen to think the same way and, to further our political agenda, I have put together a... society, if you will, of like-minded individuals.”
“Cut the crap, Adolphus.” Maharbal barked. “I know all this!”
“My dear Maharbal,” the lordling shook his blond head disapprovingly, “it's all about play-acting. How do you think I managed to avoid the Brass Legion this long? Everyone in the country knows my face. Acting is essential. But I digress.” Not once did Adolphus' sickly grin slip. Maharbal was reminded again of why he disliked him so.
“You and I share the same views, Maharbal and, so: I would like to extend an invitation to you. A clandestine one, naturally... offering you membership in the Arkani, who would see Graylin free. Do you accept?”
Maharbal leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands under his nose.
“Yes, Adolphus. I accept.”
“Excellent, Maharbal. Excellent.” Too late, Maharbal spotted the treacherous glint in the shadows. Two Graal operatives stepped forward from the cellar's deep recesses where their black-and-silver armour had concealed them, the sooty insides of their Gatling guns drawing the corner of Maharbal's eye.
“I am sorry, Maharbal. Honestly. Actually, no, I'm not. I'm delighted.” Adolphus gloated, the smile on his face now thoroughly evil. “In case the Brass Legion didn't ram the news through your thick peasant skull, Graylin is dead and gone. Such is life, Maharbal. Those who adapt, who evolve, survive. Like me. I adapted to our... new allies. In all honesty, for a while there, the Arkani were genuine... the Graal kept refusing my surrender. But then they realised how much more valuable I – and the Arkani - could be to them alive rather than dead, for catching idealists such as you, Maharbal. You could have lived, too, if you'd been smart enough... but you weren't. You are going to die in this cellar.” Adolphus looked languidly at his pocket watch. “After any last words you wish to share with us, naturally.” Maharbal considered for a moment.
“I suppose, Adolphus, you were right – especially about the play-acting.”
“What? Stop talking drivel, you fool.”
Maharbal pulled out the exploding scroll he had bought from the wizard. “You never expected me to have this, did you, Adolphus?”
“I – what – shoot - ”
“I might not see Graylin free, Adolphus, but I'll see it free of scum like you.”
And it was Maharbal's turn to smile evilly as he muttered the words on the scroll and consigned the cellar and all its occupants to the fiery whiteness of oblivion.
The heavy, bruised sky loomed threateningly over the once-majestic city of Sudgard, sending down little puffs of white to disguise its blackened ruins.
“So... five Kamarean bezants? Done.” Ex-Generalleutnant Maharbal handed the human wizard the money, shook on it, and melted back into the desolate, threadbare crowd. He hurried through the frosted streets, ice in his beard and ground into the wrinkles in his ruddy, angry face. His non-descript black cloak was wrapped tightly around his shoulders, shielding him from the gaze the columns of tall Brass Legionnaires marching through the streets in their bright armour and opaque masks. Soon he would be where he wanted to be, and he wouldn't have to tolerate the eyesore of those foreigners marching down his streets.
He turned down a grimy side alley, mournfully contemplating the state of his country. Graylin was a nation that hadn't age or culture to glorify her – her greatness had been carved from the flesh of her enemies, etched in smoke across the skies of her subjects. But now, her cities burned, her people were beaten, and what was left of her armies were reduced to shadow-boxing with the Ostings, who had conquered her, and the Graal, Ostmark's secret service. In fact, it was about the Graal that he was meeting his contact.
He sidled up to a grimy, nondescript door and, making sure no-one was following him, knocked sharply three times. A peephole opened and a bloodshot eye peered out.
“Who are you?”
“Not the Brass Legion.”
“Come in.” A balding, filthy old slob admitted him into the stinking, dirt-painted den he called a house. Few would suspect that Irman was one of Graylin's most ardent nationalists and co-ordinator of the newly-formed Arkani paramilitaries.
“He's waiting downstairs for you.” Irman told Maharbal. “Keep on going down.” Maharbal nodded and, cautiously, set his foot on the creaking, crazed stairs spiralling squarely down into the unlit blackness of Irman's basement. Steadying himself on the oozing earthen walls, Maharbal planted one foot in front of the other carefully, dust, dirt and beetles crunching under his heels. As he turned the last battered corner, his eyes quested vainly into the darkness in front of, discerning only a few shelves and bags of coal. He squinted – and was nearly blinded by a burst of light in front of him.
“Hello.” Adolphus Hannibal smiled disarmingly at him from behind his flickering torch. That smile had won him his reputation as Graylin's greatest hero, rivalled only by Maharbal himself. “Sit, Maharbal. Please! Partake of an old friend's hospitality.” He gestured towards a rickety wooden chair on the other side of the table he occupied.
“I never thought we were great friends, Adolphus. As I recall, we never got on.”
“Ah yes,” the dashing young princeling explained, “but now we are in the same boat, Maharbal. There is – was – a great divide between us: I am noble, you are common; you rose through the ranks, I was given my post straight away. I daresay, in fact, that the only thing we share is our genius.” Adolphus winked laughingly at Maharbal. “But we are, as I clarified, both in the same boat now. An uncultured Osting squats in my house, same as yours; that same uncultured Osting clothes his fat wife and lazy children with our hard-earned money – collecting rent is hard work, Maharbal!” Adolphus looked hurt at Maharbal's disbelieving expression. “It doesn't matter now, anyway. Our country is gone, ground to dust under the heel of the Brass Legion. Tell me, Maharbal: do you believe it can be restored?”
“Yes.” Maharbal answered instantly. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, but invaders never win. We will get our own back.”
“Well,” Adolphus smiled winningly at him again, “that's fortunate, Maharbal. Because, you see, I happen to think the same way and, to further our political agenda, I have put together a... society, if you will, of like-minded individuals.”
“Cut the crap, Adolphus.” Maharbal barked. “I know all this!”
“My dear Maharbal,” the lordling shook his blond head disapprovingly, “it's all about play-acting. How do you think I managed to avoid the Brass Legion this long? Everyone in the country knows my face. Acting is essential. But I digress.” Not once did Adolphus' sickly grin slip. Maharbal was reminded again of why he disliked him so.
“You and I share the same views, Maharbal and, so: I would like to extend an invitation to you. A clandestine one, naturally... offering you membership in the Arkani, who would see Graylin free. Do you accept?”
Maharbal leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and clasping his hands under his nose.
“Yes, Adolphus. I accept.”
“Excellent, Maharbal. Excellent.” Too late, Maharbal spotted the treacherous glint in the shadows. Two Graal operatives stepped forward from the cellar's deep recesses where their black-and-silver armour had concealed them, the sooty insides of their Gatling guns drawing the corner of Maharbal's eye.
“I am sorry, Maharbal. Honestly. Actually, no, I'm not. I'm delighted.” Adolphus gloated, the smile on his face now thoroughly evil. “In case the Brass Legion didn't ram the news through your thick peasant skull, Graylin is dead and gone. Such is life, Maharbal. Those who adapt, who evolve, survive. Like me. I adapted to our... new allies. In all honesty, for a while there, the Arkani were genuine... the Graal kept refusing my surrender. But then they realised how much more valuable I – and the Arkani - could be to them alive rather than dead, for catching idealists such as you, Maharbal. You could have lived, too, if you'd been smart enough... but you weren't. You are going to die in this cellar.” Adolphus looked languidly at his pocket watch. “After any last words you wish to share with us, naturally.” Maharbal considered for a moment.
“I suppose, Adolphus, you were right – especially about the play-acting.”
“What? Stop talking drivel, you fool.”
Maharbal pulled out the exploding scroll he had bought from the wizard. “You never expected me to have this, did you, Adolphus?”
“I – what – shoot - ”
“I might not see Graylin free, Adolphus, but I'll see it free of scum like you.”
And it was Maharbal's turn to smile evilly as he muttered the words on the scroll and consigned the cellar and all its occupants to the fiery whiteness of oblivion.
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
Interval's End, the Third
This is the prologue of a proposed rewrite of Interval's End (for those who don't know, the book I have been writing, editing and rewriting for nearly a year now). Unlike previous editions, Cyrus is now the antagonist.
The crumbling, decrepit buildings of Caragean, seen through the amber liquid filming the bottom of Janus' glass, made a fine backdrop to his own decay. It was three hours past noon, and already he was drinked – dronk – Janus made a supreme effort of will. He was drunk. Yes, that was it.
It occurred to him through the nigh-impenetrable alcoholic fog surrounding his brain that the foul dregs remaining in his glass weren't worth drinking.
“Marban!” he cried insensibly. “Drink!” The barman sidled over with yet another bubbled pint glass full to the brim with Caragean's least fine lager. Fumblingly, Janus searched in the pocket of his robe for a coin to pay the barman with, and pulled a mixture of worthless golden Kamarean bezants and the acceptable iron Akarean marks. His pale forehead knotted in beery concentration as he attempted the Herculean task of subtracting the pint's cost from his money – before giving up and sliding what he hoped was the right amount across the table to the barman. The barman took pity on Janus and decided not to tell him that he had mistakenly overpaid.
As thoroughly inebriated as he was, Janus completely failed to notice the figure which suddenly walked into the seedy bar and the terrified hush which settled over the place. He was, in fact, so drink-sodden that he only noticed the figure when he sat down right across from him.
“Hello, Janus.” the Lanciar said, not in an unfriendly tone.
Janus recognised his name – barely – and sloughed his head to one side.
“Who're y - ”
They say the sight of an unexpected Lanciar can sober even the drunkest sot. So it was with Janus.
“L – Lanciar!” Janus gibbered, before marshalling his thoughts. “You're a Lanciar!”
“Well done, Janus.” the Lanciar siad, shifting slightly. Janus watched the shifting of the thick cords of muscle beneath the Lanciar's chain mail with terror. “Decanus Cullen, at your service. You are Janus, the famous hedge-wizard, I presume?”
Janus rifled through the memories he had managed to coalesce, then smiled weakly.
“I think so.”
“You're a hard man to get a hold of.” Decanus Cullen said, conversationally, almost as if he was trying to make friends with Janus. But in Caragean, a Lanciar was a Lanciar. “That's always the way with you Kamareans – cunning as foxes. Isn't that right, Janus?”
The beer-sodden wizard decided to take this as a compliment.
“Yesh – yeth – yes. There we go.”
“But we've finally managed it.” Janus got the impression of a smile beneath the face-covering helmet. “Which is why I'm here. I'm here to arrest you, Janus.”
Again, Janus was jolted back to reality. Again, it didn't last long.
“You can't arresht me!” Janus flopped forward, propping himself against the table and pointing vaguely at the ceiling as he declared: “'m invincible! Can't catch Janus, has eyes in the back of hish head! Why they call me Janus!” He fell forward onto the table, laughing uncontrollably. “Could - ” Janus paused to giggle. “Could turn you into a pile of soot! With a finger!” Cullen decided the time for pleasantries was over.
“Janus. I am here to arrest you.” Janus' squeals were cut off by a huge, mailed hand clamping around his neck and forcing his head back, so as he looked at the Lanciar's faceless helmet. “What you just said could be construed, Janus, as resisting arrest. I am now within my rights to kill you.”
A third time, Janus was dropped harshly into reality. This time, he stayed there.
“K – kill me!” he spluttered. “But that's...”
“Unnecessary? Maybe. The way the Imperial authorities look at it, Janus, you have two ways to save your worthless hide.” Janus stared into the Lanciar's helmet with his blue eyes and gulped.
“Go on.”
“One – you come with me to the prison and serve your time. You will be convicted on charges of illegal use of magic, overwealth, and a few others. You should rot in the dungeons of Caragean for the rest of your life.”
Janus had nothing to lose.
“I don't like that option. What's the other one?”
“You work for us, Janus. You repay your debt to society by performing services for the Imperial authorities. Not become a Lanciar, mind – just a...” Cullen searched for the right word. “...hireling. Mercenary, if you will. Odd-jobs man.”
“Why would I work for you?” Janus looked genuinely puzzled. “You Lanciars ruined my family, all but that thieving brother of mine, subjugated my nation, and hounded me across the Archduchy.”
“If you'd prefer to rot in prison, we'd be more than happy to oblige. There are plenty of wizards with more brains than common sense living rough in Lain.” Janus weighed up the two options. In true Kamarean fashion, it did not take him long to decide.
“Right, what's my first job?”
* * *
“The Republic is flawed!” Cyrus bellowed, sweat trickling in floods down his sallow cheeks and exaggerated cheekbones. His lank, black hair practically dripped with it. “The tyranny that the Palatines exert over the whole of the Akarean Empire must be broken! It is the only way to free the Akarean people and all our brothers and sisters in distant lands from the Imperial tyranny! And the only way there is through you, my brother and sisters! We, as Lanciars, have the duty to throw off the yoke of our decrepit elders and gain freedom for ourselves!”
His audience was not impressive – merely a handful of seemingly his seemingly faceless Lanciar comrades decorating the inside of a transport pod.
I say 'comrades' because Cyrus didn't have any friends. Face to face, he had the charisma of a ham sandwich. Yet when he got up and talked not to a person but to people, there was something about him that made you want to follow this underfed, dirty ex-Lanciar no matter where he went. But of course, not even the greatest orator could convince everyone.
Signifer Octavia jumped to her feet, her long, thin Lanciar's sword hissing out of her scabbard.
“You're a traitor, Lanciar Cyrus! Sit down now or I'll run you through!” It was at that moment that Cyrus, for the first time in his undistinguished life, disobeyed a direct order. He did this with a wolfish, predatory smile which, for a split second, opened a window into the chaotic, roiling turmoil of Cyrus' mind.
“Make me.”
Signifer Octavia lost it. She sprang forward in rage, sword raised high to bury it in Cyrus' flesh – but, suddenly, she had bigger problems, such as the tip of Cyrus sword emerging, reddened, from her back. She looked down at the bleeding hole in her stomach, looked up at Cyrus and whispered:
“Why, Cyrus? I never did anything wrong to you...”
“You do wrong every day, Octavia,” Cyrus growled at her, “simply by existing.” He wrenched his sword out, leaving the dying Lanciar to bleed out on the floor of the transport.
“I have struck the first blow,” he shouted, “in the fight for freedom! Who's with me?” Some of the Lanciars drew their swords, ready to kill this traitor in their midst. Others drew their swords to defend their new leader.
As Cyrus watched the carnage unfold beneath him, a faint, wicked smile twitched its way onto his lips.
The crumbling, decrepit buildings of Caragean, seen through the amber liquid filming the bottom of Janus' glass, made a fine backdrop to his own decay. It was three hours past noon, and already he was drinked – dronk – Janus made a supreme effort of will. He was drunk. Yes, that was it.
It occurred to him through the nigh-impenetrable alcoholic fog surrounding his brain that the foul dregs remaining in his glass weren't worth drinking.
“Marban!” he cried insensibly. “Drink!” The barman sidled over with yet another bubbled pint glass full to the brim with Caragean's least fine lager. Fumblingly, Janus searched in the pocket of his robe for a coin to pay the barman with, and pulled a mixture of worthless golden Kamarean bezants and the acceptable iron Akarean marks. His pale forehead knotted in beery concentration as he attempted the Herculean task of subtracting the pint's cost from his money – before giving up and sliding what he hoped was the right amount across the table to the barman. The barman took pity on Janus and decided not to tell him that he had mistakenly overpaid.
As thoroughly inebriated as he was, Janus completely failed to notice the figure which suddenly walked into the seedy bar and the terrified hush which settled over the place. He was, in fact, so drink-sodden that he only noticed the figure when he sat down right across from him.
“Hello, Janus.” the Lanciar said, not in an unfriendly tone.
Janus recognised his name – barely – and sloughed his head to one side.
“Who're y - ”
They say the sight of an unexpected Lanciar can sober even the drunkest sot. So it was with Janus.
“L – Lanciar!” Janus gibbered, before marshalling his thoughts. “You're a Lanciar!”
“Well done, Janus.” the Lanciar siad, shifting slightly. Janus watched the shifting of the thick cords of muscle beneath the Lanciar's chain mail with terror. “Decanus Cullen, at your service. You are Janus, the famous hedge-wizard, I presume?”
Janus rifled through the memories he had managed to coalesce, then smiled weakly.
“I think so.”
“You're a hard man to get a hold of.” Decanus Cullen said, conversationally, almost as if he was trying to make friends with Janus. But in Caragean, a Lanciar was a Lanciar. “That's always the way with you Kamareans – cunning as foxes. Isn't that right, Janus?”
The beer-sodden wizard decided to take this as a compliment.
“Yesh – yeth – yes. There we go.”
“But we've finally managed it.” Janus got the impression of a smile beneath the face-covering helmet. “Which is why I'm here. I'm here to arrest you, Janus.”
Again, Janus was jolted back to reality. Again, it didn't last long.
“You can't arresht me!” Janus flopped forward, propping himself against the table and pointing vaguely at the ceiling as he declared: “'m invincible! Can't catch Janus, has eyes in the back of hish head! Why they call me Janus!” He fell forward onto the table, laughing uncontrollably. “Could - ” Janus paused to giggle. “Could turn you into a pile of soot! With a finger!” Cullen decided the time for pleasantries was over.
“Janus. I am here to arrest you.” Janus' squeals were cut off by a huge, mailed hand clamping around his neck and forcing his head back, so as he looked at the Lanciar's faceless helmet. “What you just said could be construed, Janus, as resisting arrest. I am now within my rights to kill you.”
A third time, Janus was dropped harshly into reality. This time, he stayed there.
“K – kill me!” he spluttered. “But that's...”
“Unnecessary? Maybe. The way the Imperial authorities look at it, Janus, you have two ways to save your worthless hide.” Janus stared into the Lanciar's helmet with his blue eyes and gulped.
“Go on.”
“One – you come with me to the prison and serve your time. You will be convicted on charges of illegal use of magic, overwealth, and a few others. You should rot in the dungeons of Caragean for the rest of your life.”
Janus had nothing to lose.
“I don't like that option. What's the other one?”
“You work for us, Janus. You repay your debt to society by performing services for the Imperial authorities. Not become a Lanciar, mind – just a...” Cullen searched for the right word. “...hireling. Mercenary, if you will. Odd-jobs man.”
“Why would I work for you?” Janus looked genuinely puzzled. “You Lanciars ruined my family, all but that thieving brother of mine, subjugated my nation, and hounded me across the Archduchy.”
“If you'd prefer to rot in prison, we'd be more than happy to oblige. There are plenty of wizards with more brains than common sense living rough in Lain.” Janus weighed up the two options. In true Kamarean fashion, it did not take him long to decide.
“Right, what's my first job?”
* * *
“The Republic is flawed!” Cyrus bellowed, sweat trickling in floods down his sallow cheeks and exaggerated cheekbones. His lank, black hair practically dripped with it. “The tyranny that the Palatines exert over the whole of the Akarean Empire must be broken! It is the only way to free the Akarean people and all our brothers and sisters in distant lands from the Imperial tyranny! And the only way there is through you, my brother and sisters! We, as Lanciars, have the duty to throw off the yoke of our decrepit elders and gain freedom for ourselves!”
His audience was not impressive – merely a handful of seemingly his seemingly faceless Lanciar comrades decorating the inside of a transport pod.
I say 'comrades' because Cyrus didn't have any friends. Face to face, he had the charisma of a ham sandwich. Yet when he got up and talked not to a person but to people, there was something about him that made you want to follow this underfed, dirty ex-Lanciar no matter where he went. But of course, not even the greatest orator could convince everyone.
Signifer Octavia jumped to her feet, her long, thin Lanciar's sword hissing out of her scabbard.
“You're a traitor, Lanciar Cyrus! Sit down now or I'll run you through!” It was at that moment that Cyrus, for the first time in his undistinguished life, disobeyed a direct order. He did this with a wolfish, predatory smile which, for a split second, opened a window into the chaotic, roiling turmoil of Cyrus' mind.
“Make me.”
Signifer Octavia lost it. She sprang forward in rage, sword raised high to bury it in Cyrus' flesh – but, suddenly, she had bigger problems, such as the tip of Cyrus sword emerging, reddened, from her back. She looked down at the bleeding hole in her stomach, looked up at Cyrus and whispered:
“Why, Cyrus? I never did anything wrong to you...”
“You do wrong every day, Octavia,” Cyrus growled at her, “simply by existing.” He wrenched his sword out, leaving the dying Lanciar to bleed out on the floor of the transport.
“I have struck the first blow,” he shouted, “in the fight for freedom! Who's with me?” Some of the Lanciars drew their swords, ready to kill this traitor in their midst. Others drew their swords to defend their new leader.
As Cyrus watched the carnage unfold beneath him, a faint, wicked smile twitched its way onto his lips.
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Short Story #1
The mana-geysers outside Tarrah threw glowing plumes of bright, electric blue into the orange night sky, painting the stars with the raw magical energy of the land of Kamar. Periodically, a waiter would make his way across the glass window that afforded Zantikus his view of the gorgeous spectacle, delicately rubbing away fingerprints and smudges on the nigh-invisible glass. Aside from his ministrations, the only other blight on the view was the huge, hulking power-station, a jumbled concoction of tubes and cylinders looming blackly in the night, absorbing the blue mana ejected beneath into itself and storing the energy to help power the vast city of Tarrah.
“Isn't the view gorgeous?” his wife, Valenze, asked him. She had been very pretty once, but the years hadn't been kind to her. Zantikus looked out the window on his right, which showed the mana-geysers, and the one on the left, which showed the city of Tarrah. Thin, pointed domes, Gothic arches and elegant towers pierced the night sky, scattered with the embers of a thousand nightlights.
“Yes.” Zantikus agreed. “It is.” As the haggard, off-brown beard and the crow's feet etched indelibly into the flesh of his face said plainly, Zantikus had lived a long time: perhaps, he thought sometimes, too long.
“What's wrong with you?” Valenze asked him, picking at her expensive dinner. “You're not talking at all.” Zantikus sighed.
“I'm sorry, Valenze – we did well out of my job in the Urbans... but I've paid the price. I'm a policeman to the core. And I just can't stop thinking about these murders.”
“Zantikus, you've been retired ten years. Can't you give it up?”
“I'm sorry, Valenze. I'll try and focus on our night.” Resignedly, Zantikus picked at the prawns and rice splattered on his plate. He had paid a significant portion of his life's savings to celebrate his fiftieth anniversary in the Geyser View, the most exclusive restaurant in Tarrah, but to him, the food was completely tasteless. This wasn't real food, he thought; real food was the scrapings, odds and ends that could be scraped up in a policeman's kitchen. And from that duct, his thoughts slid back to the murders.
They were odd, he knew, and as one who had spent forty years in Tarrah's famous Urban Cohort, he could be relied on to smell a fish. Normal criminals, even the gangsters and terrorists, they always killed for a reason: money, jewellery, to make a point. But all the victims were members of Tarrah's immigrant underclass: Markanians, Graylinese, Farhighter peasants, all people who had fled to Kamar looking for a better life and had failed. They had nothing to steal, and nothing to say. There was no reason to kill them; not only that, but the only link between them was that they had all been found in the sewers. Stranger still was the method of killing: guns and knives were Tarrah's weapons, short, efficient and, if the need arose, easy to clean up. These killings were marked for their brutality.
“...Zantikus. Zantikus!” The old policeman drifted back to the real world on the anchor of his wife's insistence.
“I – eh – the prawns are terrible.”
“Did you hear a word I said to you?” Valenze looked at him reproachfully. Zantikus coloured slightly.
“I'm sorry... it's getting too late.” Valenze held his gaze for a moment longer, then shook her head.
“I give up. Come on; let's go home.”
“But this is our night - ”
“Forget it, Zantikus. This is a waste of time. Let's go back to the car.” Zantikus paid the waiter morosely, got his coat to shield him from the gentle rain and followed his wife to the black-lacquered, six-wheeled Jotun-built monster that Zantikus drove around in. Their Markanian chauffeur, a tall Jotun, opened the door for them and allowed the two to slide into the velvet-upholstered, wine-coloured luxury of the automobile's interior. They sat on opposite sides of the car; the radio was in the middle, but that wasn't the reason. The drive back began in near-silence, interrupted only by the gentle cough of the Jotun motor coughing itself to life. The Markanian spun the wheel, and the sleek, big vehicle manouevered silently onto the rain-slicked Tarran cobbles, sliding between the horse-drawn carriages of the middle classes and the bikes the immigrants used.
Zantikus had returned to his ruminations, having given up on a conversation with his wife, when the radio in the middle of the car began to crackle.
“It must be for you.” Valenze told him, a touch accusingly. Zantikus ignored her and picked up the radio.
“Praefect Zantikus?” a familiar voice asked.
“Praefect no more, Nicolas.” Zantikus reminded his own protégé, now occupying his old job. “What's this about?”
“There's been another killing, sir. In the Via Inverta.”
“The Via Inverta...? That's just around the corner. Segericus! Stop as soon as you can.”
“Zantikus...” Valenze pleaded with him. For a moment, Zantikus considered just driving on and going home, having a quiet drink with Valenze and making up with her, going to bed and just having a normal night.
“I'm sorry, Valenze, but I won't be able to sleep if I don't follow this up.” In the interest of common courtesy, Zantikus added: “Please?” After a moment, she relented.
“I married you for who you are. If it makes you happy.”
“Thank you.” The chauffeur pulled up onto the pavement, and Zantikus got out. The drizzle soaked into his cap and coat, and his boots splashed in the puddles as he made his way along the side-street, his one hand in his pocket, the other under his coat, grasping the little safeguard he took everywhere with him. His fist clasped comfortingly around its cold, heavy weight: in his experience, no type of foreign martial art or legendary stealth could stand up to the hard, cruel reality of a good gun.
A gaggle of people around an open manhole resolved themselves into a group of Urbans surrounding the entrance to the Via Inverta, which was slightly flecked with blood. Nicolas' honest, worried face turned to Zantikus as he approached, an island of pale concern in the uncaring, damp darkness of the night streets.
“The DNA tests,” Nicolas explained, “show that it's a young Markanian woman: Rica Hasding.” DNA tests? Zantikus thought. There can't be much of her left...
“Right.” he said. “Let me see.” The Urbans obligingly moved aside, and creakingly, feeling every one of his too many years, Zantikus lowered himself into the primordial darkness of the sewers.
For a moment, the only features of the fetid darkness were Zantikus' wet footsteps, until he found the old electric torch in his pocket. The shaky beam snapped into being, illuminating the dripping brick strata of the ceiling. “There we go.” Zantikus muttered, as he lowered the beam along the wall. “What have we here...?” The beam, followed by Zantikus' eyes, searched the floor until he found what he was looking for. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
He had been right: there wasn't much of her left. The splashes of blood on the walls showed that she had been attacked with a sword or chainsaw; and the distance between them showed that it had been done very violently. What little was left of her on the ground showed that whoever had done it had spent a lot of time trampling her into the ground – and had probably enjoyed doing it.
Zantikus came to the conclusion that whoever was doing this was a raving psychopath.
“Everything all right down there, sir?” Nicolas called down to him.
“Yes – I'm just going to go follow the clues.” There was a pause.
“Are you sure that's wise, sir?”
“I've lived long enough, Nicolas.” Zantikus called back up to him. “I have no regrets. If anyone should be this bastard's next victim, it should be me.” After a moment, Zantikus added: “If I don't make it back, tell my wife I love her.”
“Fair enough, sir. If that's what you want.” Zantikus returned his attention to the dimly lit, dripping sewers. This time, he scanned the place thoroughly: a square chamber made of damp grey bricks which was divided in two by a shallow channel occupied by sluggish waves of viscous brown water. In one corner, the remains of a tiny shanty lay: no doubt, this was where the poor woman had lived. The Kamareans were a rich people, but it hadn't always been so: long ago, before the people of Tarrah had been enriched by the fruits of trade and conquest, the population had had to crouch in whatever squalid space was available to them. Those days were gone: now, the Kamareans live in marble palazzos and ivory towers, and the sewers, stripped of their native inhabitants, now played host only to the horde of immigrants that comprised the city's underclass.
Maybe there was a clue there. Zantikus sucked his teeth, and looked again. There, he had been right again: she had been trampled into the ground, and her attacker had left footprints, plain as day. So whoever it was was confident. Zantikus laid his hand reassuringly on the comforting weight in his breast pocket and then, gingerly, stepped into the disgusting gunge at the bottom of the passage.
Zantikus ducked under the arch, and his light was suddenly cramped into the cloying closeness of the passage. Operating on instinct alone, breathing as little of the foul sewer air as possible, he edged his way with bent head down the tunnel, his mind working. The dead people were all immigrants, but he was inclined to think that was coincidence: of far greater import, in his opinion, was that they had all been found in the sewers. Someone had something to hide in the sewers, and they were killing anyone who came across it. Once they got out, if they juxtaposed the sites of the killings onto a map, they could work out where the location was...
The tunnel ended, he stepped a way out, and he was rewarded by the sight of damp footprints leading up the mouldy stairs to the pavement on the side. So the killer had come this way -
Wait a minute.
The footprints were facing the wrong way. That meant that the killer had come this way -
A cold, hard hand gripped each shoulder from behind and hoisted him inhumanly high into the air, shaking the torch from his hand. His heart skipped a beat as he was plunged into darkness and, terrifiedly, he fumbled with the gun, fiddling the weight out from beneath his jacket. As his captor advanced up the stairs, he raised it – and dropped it! Fast as a flash, he caught the gun between his knees. Yes! He swung the gun up to his head, pointing backwards, and pulled the trigger -
And the bullet sparked off of unyielding metal.
It occurred to Zantikus that he may be in some considerable trouble.
The clatter of the bullet expending its momentum on the greasy bricks died away to be replaced by the gentle tread of soft-soled boots. In the darkness, he could see nothing, save a tall robed silhouette that told him next to nothing.
The figure seemed to think.
“I'm disappointed.” an educated voice with perhaps the slightest trace of a Markanian accent told him. “You're Praefect Zantikus, yes?”
“Retired.” Zantikus growled.
“Yes, yes.” the figure continued, a slight trace of irritation evident. “You worked for forty years in the Urbans and you fall for a trap as abominably simple as this. Again, I restate: I am disappointed. You know, when I heard you coming, I thought to myself: blast. That's our cover gone; we'll have to kill all of them. But no: like a lamb to the slaughter, you followed the trail. And that leaves you here: an inconvenience which I now have the power to remove.” The figure shifted his attention slightly, to Zantikus' metallic captor.
“Well then. Finish him.” And the figure left. The metallic figure spun him around to face it. In the all-consuming darkness, Zantikus caught a glimmer of crystal and a flash of light before his vision was slashed into blackness.
* * *
Valenze sat at the window of their mansion, looking fretfully at the mana geysers casting their charges into the sky. Their beauty absorbed her, really: she wasn't normally a poetic person, but she had met Zantikus to the backdrop of the mana geysers. They always took her back, to better times when there were choices to be made and smiles to be had.
In this frame of mind, she was nearly startled to death by the knock on her door. As soon as she heard it, she knew it wasn't Zantikus' knock: he always rapped on the door boldly, demanding to be let in. This was soft and apologetic, the knock of someone who had something very bad to tell.
She opened the door to find Nicolas' round, honest face above the policeman's cap clenched mournfully in his hands.
“I'm sorry - ” he began.
“He's dead.” she stated baldly. He kept his composure for half a moment, then seemed to collapse in on himself.
“Yes.” Valenze nodded, understandingly. She had always been understanding: only that kind of person could have lived with Zantikus.
“Well.” she said. “He could never give the policing up, you know – I always knew it would kill him.” She considered a moment. “I suppose he lived a good life and died a fitting end.”
Nicolas shuffled his feet again. “Yes, ma'am... a fitting end.”
“Isn't the view gorgeous?” his wife, Valenze, asked him. She had been very pretty once, but the years hadn't been kind to her. Zantikus looked out the window on his right, which showed the mana-geysers, and the one on the left, which showed the city of Tarrah. Thin, pointed domes, Gothic arches and elegant towers pierced the night sky, scattered with the embers of a thousand nightlights.
“Yes.” Zantikus agreed. “It is.” As the haggard, off-brown beard and the crow's feet etched indelibly into the flesh of his face said plainly, Zantikus had lived a long time: perhaps, he thought sometimes, too long.
“What's wrong with you?” Valenze asked him, picking at her expensive dinner. “You're not talking at all.” Zantikus sighed.
“I'm sorry, Valenze – we did well out of my job in the Urbans... but I've paid the price. I'm a policeman to the core. And I just can't stop thinking about these murders.”
“Zantikus, you've been retired ten years. Can't you give it up?”
“I'm sorry, Valenze. I'll try and focus on our night.” Resignedly, Zantikus picked at the prawns and rice splattered on his plate. He had paid a significant portion of his life's savings to celebrate his fiftieth anniversary in the Geyser View, the most exclusive restaurant in Tarrah, but to him, the food was completely tasteless. This wasn't real food, he thought; real food was the scrapings, odds and ends that could be scraped up in a policeman's kitchen. And from that duct, his thoughts slid back to the murders.
They were odd, he knew, and as one who had spent forty years in Tarrah's famous Urban Cohort, he could be relied on to smell a fish. Normal criminals, even the gangsters and terrorists, they always killed for a reason: money, jewellery, to make a point. But all the victims were members of Tarrah's immigrant underclass: Markanians, Graylinese, Farhighter peasants, all people who had fled to Kamar looking for a better life and had failed. They had nothing to steal, and nothing to say. There was no reason to kill them; not only that, but the only link between them was that they had all been found in the sewers. Stranger still was the method of killing: guns and knives were Tarrah's weapons, short, efficient and, if the need arose, easy to clean up. These killings were marked for their brutality.
“...Zantikus. Zantikus!” The old policeman drifted back to the real world on the anchor of his wife's insistence.
“I – eh – the prawns are terrible.”
“Did you hear a word I said to you?” Valenze looked at him reproachfully. Zantikus coloured slightly.
“I'm sorry... it's getting too late.” Valenze held his gaze for a moment longer, then shook her head.
“I give up. Come on; let's go home.”
“But this is our night - ”
“Forget it, Zantikus. This is a waste of time. Let's go back to the car.” Zantikus paid the waiter morosely, got his coat to shield him from the gentle rain and followed his wife to the black-lacquered, six-wheeled Jotun-built monster that Zantikus drove around in. Their Markanian chauffeur, a tall Jotun, opened the door for them and allowed the two to slide into the velvet-upholstered, wine-coloured luxury of the automobile's interior. They sat on opposite sides of the car; the radio was in the middle, but that wasn't the reason. The drive back began in near-silence, interrupted only by the gentle cough of the Jotun motor coughing itself to life. The Markanian spun the wheel, and the sleek, big vehicle manouevered silently onto the rain-slicked Tarran cobbles, sliding between the horse-drawn carriages of the middle classes and the bikes the immigrants used.
Zantikus had returned to his ruminations, having given up on a conversation with his wife, when the radio in the middle of the car began to crackle.
“It must be for you.” Valenze told him, a touch accusingly. Zantikus ignored her and picked up the radio.
“Praefect Zantikus?” a familiar voice asked.
“Praefect no more, Nicolas.” Zantikus reminded his own protégé, now occupying his old job. “What's this about?”
“There's been another killing, sir. In the Via Inverta.”
“The Via Inverta...? That's just around the corner. Segericus! Stop as soon as you can.”
“Zantikus...” Valenze pleaded with him. For a moment, Zantikus considered just driving on and going home, having a quiet drink with Valenze and making up with her, going to bed and just having a normal night.
“I'm sorry, Valenze, but I won't be able to sleep if I don't follow this up.” In the interest of common courtesy, Zantikus added: “Please?” After a moment, she relented.
“I married you for who you are. If it makes you happy.”
“Thank you.” The chauffeur pulled up onto the pavement, and Zantikus got out. The drizzle soaked into his cap and coat, and his boots splashed in the puddles as he made his way along the side-street, his one hand in his pocket, the other under his coat, grasping the little safeguard he took everywhere with him. His fist clasped comfortingly around its cold, heavy weight: in his experience, no type of foreign martial art or legendary stealth could stand up to the hard, cruel reality of a good gun.
A gaggle of people around an open manhole resolved themselves into a group of Urbans surrounding the entrance to the Via Inverta, which was slightly flecked with blood. Nicolas' honest, worried face turned to Zantikus as he approached, an island of pale concern in the uncaring, damp darkness of the night streets.
“The DNA tests,” Nicolas explained, “show that it's a young Markanian woman: Rica Hasding.” DNA tests? Zantikus thought. There can't be much of her left...
“Right.” he said. “Let me see.” The Urbans obligingly moved aside, and creakingly, feeling every one of his too many years, Zantikus lowered himself into the primordial darkness of the sewers.
For a moment, the only features of the fetid darkness were Zantikus' wet footsteps, until he found the old electric torch in his pocket. The shaky beam snapped into being, illuminating the dripping brick strata of the ceiling. “There we go.” Zantikus muttered, as he lowered the beam along the wall. “What have we here...?” The beam, followed by Zantikus' eyes, searched the floor until he found what he was looking for. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
He had been right: there wasn't much of her left. The splashes of blood on the walls showed that she had been attacked with a sword or chainsaw; and the distance between them showed that it had been done very violently. What little was left of her on the ground showed that whoever had done it had spent a lot of time trampling her into the ground – and had probably enjoyed doing it.
Zantikus came to the conclusion that whoever was doing this was a raving psychopath.
“Everything all right down there, sir?” Nicolas called down to him.
“Yes – I'm just going to go follow the clues.” There was a pause.
“Are you sure that's wise, sir?”
“I've lived long enough, Nicolas.” Zantikus called back up to him. “I have no regrets. If anyone should be this bastard's next victim, it should be me.” After a moment, Zantikus added: “If I don't make it back, tell my wife I love her.”
“Fair enough, sir. If that's what you want.” Zantikus returned his attention to the dimly lit, dripping sewers. This time, he scanned the place thoroughly: a square chamber made of damp grey bricks which was divided in two by a shallow channel occupied by sluggish waves of viscous brown water. In one corner, the remains of a tiny shanty lay: no doubt, this was where the poor woman had lived. The Kamareans were a rich people, but it hadn't always been so: long ago, before the people of Tarrah had been enriched by the fruits of trade and conquest, the population had had to crouch in whatever squalid space was available to them. Those days were gone: now, the Kamareans live in marble palazzos and ivory towers, and the sewers, stripped of their native inhabitants, now played host only to the horde of immigrants that comprised the city's underclass.
Maybe there was a clue there. Zantikus sucked his teeth, and looked again. There, he had been right again: she had been trampled into the ground, and her attacker had left footprints, plain as day. So whoever it was was confident. Zantikus laid his hand reassuringly on the comforting weight in his breast pocket and then, gingerly, stepped into the disgusting gunge at the bottom of the passage.
Zantikus ducked under the arch, and his light was suddenly cramped into the cloying closeness of the passage. Operating on instinct alone, breathing as little of the foul sewer air as possible, he edged his way with bent head down the tunnel, his mind working. The dead people were all immigrants, but he was inclined to think that was coincidence: of far greater import, in his opinion, was that they had all been found in the sewers. Someone had something to hide in the sewers, and they were killing anyone who came across it. Once they got out, if they juxtaposed the sites of the killings onto a map, they could work out where the location was...
The tunnel ended, he stepped a way out, and he was rewarded by the sight of damp footprints leading up the mouldy stairs to the pavement on the side. So the killer had come this way -
Wait a minute.
The footprints were facing the wrong way. That meant that the killer had come this way -
A cold, hard hand gripped each shoulder from behind and hoisted him inhumanly high into the air, shaking the torch from his hand. His heart skipped a beat as he was plunged into darkness and, terrifiedly, he fumbled with the gun, fiddling the weight out from beneath his jacket. As his captor advanced up the stairs, he raised it – and dropped it! Fast as a flash, he caught the gun between his knees. Yes! He swung the gun up to his head, pointing backwards, and pulled the trigger -
And the bullet sparked off of unyielding metal.
It occurred to Zantikus that he may be in some considerable trouble.
The clatter of the bullet expending its momentum on the greasy bricks died away to be replaced by the gentle tread of soft-soled boots. In the darkness, he could see nothing, save a tall robed silhouette that told him next to nothing.
The figure seemed to think.
“I'm disappointed.” an educated voice with perhaps the slightest trace of a Markanian accent told him. “You're Praefect Zantikus, yes?”
“Retired.” Zantikus growled.
“Yes, yes.” the figure continued, a slight trace of irritation evident. “You worked for forty years in the Urbans and you fall for a trap as abominably simple as this. Again, I restate: I am disappointed. You know, when I heard you coming, I thought to myself: blast. That's our cover gone; we'll have to kill all of them. But no: like a lamb to the slaughter, you followed the trail. And that leaves you here: an inconvenience which I now have the power to remove.” The figure shifted his attention slightly, to Zantikus' metallic captor.
“Well then. Finish him.” And the figure left. The metallic figure spun him around to face it. In the all-consuming darkness, Zantikus caught a glimmer of crystal and a flash of light before his vision was slashed into blackness.
* * *
Valenze sat at the window of their mansion, looking fretfully at the mana geysers casting their charges into the sky. Their beauty absorbed her, really: she wasn't normally a poetic person, but she had met Zantikus to the backdrop of the mana geysers. They always took her back, to better times when there were choices to be made and smiles to be had.
In this frame of mind, she was nearly startled to death by the knock on her door. As soon as she heard it, she knew it wasn't Zantikus' knock: he always rapped on the door boldly, demanding to be let in. This was soft and apologetic, the knock of someone who had something very bad to tell.
She opened the door to find Nicolas' round, honest face above the policeman's cap clenched mournfully in his hands.
“I'm sorry - ” he began.
“He's dead.” she stated baldly. He kept his composure for half a moment, then seemed to collapse in on himself.
“Yes.” Valenze nodded, understandingly. She had always been understanding: only that kind of person could have lived with Zantikus.
“Well.” she said. “He could never give the policing up, you know – I always knew it would kill him.” She considered a moment. “I suppose he lived a good life and died a fitting end.”
Nicolas shuffled his feet again. “Yes, ma'am... a fitting end.”
Monday, 27 September 2010
Céard suas, madra?
I apologise for the length of this one - I had a lot to say.
Ever since I've been old enough to speak English, the word 'cool' was one of my favourite exclamations. This is somewhat odd: not only is its literal meaning “not frigid enough to be cold, but too chilly to be lukewarm”, but its slang meaning has never, ever, applied to me. Not once throughout my entire life. So, now we're thinking about it: what is 'cool'?
Ever since I've been old enough to speak English, the word 'cool' was one of my favourite exclamations. This is somewhat odd: not only is its literal meaning “not frigid enough to be cold, but too chilly to be lukewarm”, but its slang meaning has never, ever, applied to me. Not once throughout my entire life. So, now we're thinking about it: what is 'cool'?
Today, the concept is largely associated with the United States of America, the king-sized republic, and propagated through the medium of the television. But I think it's something else, not necessarily connected to our Yankee brethren: namely, the ability to recognise a good idea, or what you think is a good idea. I think its history stretches back a lot farther – even, I hypothesise, as far back as the apes. It's a survival skill, really: Machiavelli says there are three types of intelligence. The first kind can invent good ideas; the second kind can recognise good ideas; and the third and worst kind can do neither. In my experience, most people have the second kind of intelligence: that is to say, when the sabre-tooth tiger is breathing down their necks, they have the good sense to listen to the guy who shouts “Run!”. If it hadn't been for this handy little piece of psychological gear, the guys who invented fire and the wheel would probably have ended their days unemployed and caveless.
But is there a flip side to being able to recognise a good idea? I say that it is, basically, the target of propaganda. Any empire that knows what it's about has been able to force its ideology on its subjects by making it a 'good idea' to adopt it. Take the Roman Empire. If there was one thing the Romans were good at – no, it's not roads or aqueducts: it was integration. Roman culture was, really, little more than a fiddled-about version of Hellenism: there was nothing special about it. So how did they manage to swallow up such doughty cultures as Phoenicia and Egypt? This is because the Romans knew what they were about. You see, when they moved into Carthage, Gaul and Egypt, they send Romans in to govern the disgruntled tribesmen/ancient peoples/glorified apes. Official postings were available to anyone in the Roman world – if you had Roman citizenship. This didn't require Roman ethnicity – this required that, in public, you wore a toga, spoke Latin, so on and so forth. Naturally, the disgruntled chiefs/viziers/least pungent glorified apes didn't really want to give up their leadership positions, so they adopted the act to get their old jobs back. And as the generations wore on, the act lost its falsehood. The provincials became more Roman than the Romans themselves and the not-so-proud owners of their bastardised Hellenic culture became, to use a school-yard metaphor, the kid with the expensive toga, the brand hobnailed sandals and the brush on back-to-front that the provincials so ardently desired to emulate. And in so doing, those provincials lost every vestige of their independence. The ancient cultures of Egypt, Syria and Carthage dried up and vanished (in the case of the Egyptians, ending more than three thousand years of high culture). Perhaps worse still, the nascent civilisations of the Celtiberians, Spanish, and Gauls were blotted out before they had a chance to shine. Gaul, in particular, is an excellent example: they were moving towards inventing democracy, philosophy and even national unity when the Romans stuck their gladius in where it wasn't wanted. From Scotland to the Sahara, the world became boring: everyone wore togas, spoke Latin, and knew who Cicero was. Europe's diversity never recovered: the Celts survive only in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands; Spanish, French, Italian, Romance, and Romanian are all but mutually comprehensible. Even when the cool kid left the school in the 470s AD, it was never forgotten: the last claimant to the throne of the Western Roman Empire only gave it up in 1806, and the Sultans of Turkey claimed the title of Eastern Roman Emperor until the end of the Ottoman Empire. The memory of Rome fuelled the greed of some of history's most avaricious conquerors, such as Mehmet II and Suleiman the Magnificent, or, more recently, Mussolini in Italy. It's arguable whether we are still, today, paying for the Romans' greatest achievement.
And it's happening again. The two greatest weapons the Americans possess are not their nukes or armies; they are television and the internet. English is the Latin of today: from Germany to the West Coast to China, a far greater expanse than the Romans tyrannised, people wear jeans, listen to rock and understand English (and, now I think of it, know who Elvis Presley is. But he doesn't compare to Cicero). Why do they do this? Because it's cool. Because the telly said so. Because that little instinct in our brains tells us that everyone else is doing it, it must be a good idea.
Is it? Remember what happened the last time. Where will England, France, and Germany be in a thousand years?
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
A Loose End
As the title not really very subtly suggests, I find myself at a loose end. For once in my life, I am devoid of thoughts and opinions, which have been sucked down the all-consuming drainhole of my school life. I'm not really sure whether I should put up short stories, as I'm not very good at them, or if I should put something up about music, which will almost definitely be for my own benefit alone. If anyone wants to see anything (from me? I wish) then you may leave a comment. Until then, I leave you at a loose end.
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Remember the Armenians
It was Germany, 1942 - a nation wracked by the death-grip of a tyrannical organisation. For years - ever since they got into power - the Nazis who smeared Germany's reputation have tyrannised the Jewish community, forcing them to wear yellow stars, imposing curfews, and all but making life intolerable. In fact, in Eastern Europe and more lawless regions, vigilantes called Einsatzgruppen had taken to murdering Jews. The German government turned a blind eye, but it did not condone the legal killing of Jews - until now.
The paper detailing the "Final Solution" - the legalising of the Holocaust - was pushed across Adolf Hitler's desk. Adolf Eichmann had done all the paperwork; Joseph Goebbels had forced it down the people's throats; all it needed now was the Fuhrer's signature. This was the culmination of his dream, the rabid anti-Semitism he had harboured since his time as an art student in Vienna. Accordingly, he dipped his pen in the ink, raised it to the paper - and stopped. How would history remember him? If he put his signature to the paper, would history remember him as a murderer? The Fuhrer considered this for a moment - then put pen to paper and scribbled his signature, saying the words: "Who remembers the Armenians?"
People often don't understand history. Which is fair enough: how is knowing that Basil Bulgaroctonus killed 20,000 nomads at the Battle of Kleidion in 1014 going to help anyone, in any way, ever? It's true: alone, that fact is not going to help anyone. In essence, they think - maybe rightly - that history is, basically, for people who like it. The education system, for example, has no business forcing it on the rest of the world.
But my anecdote, I think, proves this viewpoint wrong. Who, in fact, remembers the Armenians? Even those who know that the Young Turks slaughtered thousands of Armenians would be surprised to know that, in addition to the Armenians, thousands of Assyrians and other Eastern Christians were also slaughtered. The reason history is important is that we have to remember and, more importantly, learn from our mistakes.
It's a chilling story. The very ignorance of history alone killed six million people. But, thankfully, today, we are better educated: we have the glaring example of the Holocaust to etch into our memories the terrible, terrible consequences of forgetting our past. Today, we know about our mistakes.
But do we? Everyone remembers the Jewish holocaust, and everyone forgets the millions of Poles, Russians, Romas, gays and others slaughtered by the Nazis. The figure jumps from six million to seventeen million.
It's a sobering thought, and, I hope, an elucidation of why history is important.
The paper detailing the "Final Solution" - the legalising of the Holocaust - was pushed across Adolf Hitler's desk. Adolf Eichmann had done all the paperwork; Joseph Goebbels had forced it down the people's throats; all it needed now was the Fuhrer's signature. This was the culmination of his dream, the rabid anti-Semitism he had harboured since his time as an art student in Vienna. Accordingly, he dipped his pen in the ink, raised it to the paper - and stopped. How would history remember him? If he put his signature to the paper, would history remember him as a murderer? The Fuhrer considered this for a moment - then put pen to paper and scribbled his signature, saying the words: "Who remembers the Armenians?"
People often don't understand history. Which is fair enough: how is knowing that Basil Bulgaroctonus killed 20,000 nomads at the Battle of Kleidion in 1014 going to help anyone, in any way, ever? It's true: alone, that fact is not going to help anyone. In essence, they think - maybe rightly - that history is, basically, for people who like it. The education system, for example, has no business forcing it on the rest of the world.
But my anecdote, I think, proves this viewpoint wrong. Who, in fact, remembers the Armenians? Even those who know that the Young Turks slaughtered thousands of Armenians would be surprised to know that, in addition to the Armenians, thousands of Assyrians and other Eastern Christians were also slaughtered. The reason history is important is that we have to remember and, more importantly, learn from our mistakes.
It's a chilling story. The very ignorance of history alone killed six million people. But, thankfully, today, we are better educated: we have the glaring example of the Holocaust to etch into our memories the terrible, terrible consequences of forgetting our past. Today, we know about our mistakes.
But do we? Everyone remembers the Jewish holocaust, and everyone forgets the millions of Poles, Russians, Romas, gays and others slaughtered by the Nazis. The figure jumps from six million to seventeen million.
It's a sobering thought, and, I hope, an elucidation of why history is important.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Mi Very First Post
Mar is eol do chách, I have quite obviously started a blog. I'm not really sure why I finally decided to take my cousin's advice - probably something to do with the desire to vent my thoughts on an undeserving world. As for the name, it took me all of five seconds to think of. It is actually the name of the world's oldest jokebook - it is Greek for 'the lover of laughter'. Hopefully now, within a few days, I will have something coherent together inside of a few days.
Until then, wait in anticipation.
Until then, wait in anticipation.
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