The Magpie of Souls

David Tallerman

Crux Kulhain looked up at the double doors, down at the pommel of his sword. The former were high as a village church, profoundly black, veined with silver that drifted like mercury. The latter was plain and worn. With its blade, Kulhain had killed eighty-seven people that he was sure of. He had never, to his knowledge, killed a sorcerer.

He wasn’t afraid. Fear had died in him long ago. Yet something held him back. Kulhain glanced again at the sword, where it hung at his side, and found no comfort there. Nevertheless, he raised his fist and hammered upon the black doors.

The veins of silver skittered and gleamed, like agitated worms. That was the only result.

What had he expected? Death, perhaps. If it came now, at least it would be quick; a moment’s stink of sulphur or the flicker of lightning. Quicker than some of the deaths he’d dealt out. He thought of a gut-wounded boy sprawled in a field of mud, of a fair-haired woman curled on a bed of straw. Kulhain had lived long enough to know what grace a quick death could be.

Abruptly, the doors swung inward. Their unhurried pace seemed to imply that the motion had nothing to do with Kulhain’s blows; that this situation was not his to control. Still, he thought, power was a complicated thing, and a warrior might be lucky — given a good sword.

When the old man had begged this favour of him, Kulhain had seen the desperation in his eyes. The old man had thought Kulhain would kill him, there and then, and still he’d asked. Something had shifted in Kulhain in that moment, too small a thing even to acknowledge. Yet it had wrapped like a skein about him, and somehow made words in his throat — a promise he was following even now, all these hours later.

He hadn’t thought about the promise since, or the old man, or why he was doing what he was doing. He had imagined hunting the sorcerer through gloom-thick corridors, unimaginable dangers, and a quick, bright death, for one of them.

He hadn’t expected to find Ambon Lensh waiting in his own hallway.

Kulhain hid his surprise well. Then he saw the thing behind Lensh.

It stood — hung, rather — a little behind the sorcerer, and though it was fully twice as tall, it seemed more deferential than threatening. Its form was vaporous, mottled with more tangible patches of silver and grey-green. Its head was something like that of a stag beetle, topped by spreading horns of purest gold. Its arms, ending in long, liquid fingers, hung limp at its sides. It was both terrifying and pathetic.

“Look at him!” exclaimed Lensh, following Kulhain’s gaze, a note of mocking pity in his voice. “Would you believe he was once a god?”

“What?” asked Kulhain. He felt altogether lost.

“Oh, long ago. Not much of one … but nevertheless, a god. He isn’t even a good servant.” At this, the thing behind Lensh hung its antlered head still further. “You needn’t worry,” added Lensh, “he won’t hurt you. I had him neutered.”

“Is he to be your champion?” Kulhain’s voice didn’t waver, though he knew there was no way he could defend against such a monster.

“Aren’t you listening?” complained Lensh. “Zubotl couldn’t crush the smallest flea.”

“Then will you fight for yourself?”

“What’s all this talk of fighting?” Lensh chucked softly. “We haven’t even been introduced.”

“My name is…”

“Crux Kulhain, last of the Grey Lake Kulhains. Yes, I know.”

“And you are Ambon Lensh, whom they call the Magpie of Souls.”

“Do they?” asked Lensh. “How fanciful. Will you come in, or must we talk in the hallway like two peddlers?”

Anger flared in Kulhain’s heart. “They tell me you have the blood of hundreds on your hands. I come here to avenge those dead, and to keep safe all who remain. Will you fight me?”

“Not now,” said Lensh, “it’s almost time for dinner. Come in or get out, the choice is yours.”

Kulhain hesitated. Then he stepped across the threshold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The monster, god, or whatever it was, stayed close through the maze-like passages. The creature smelt strongly of wood smoke, faintly of aniseed. Unable to tear his mind from its presence, Kulhain hardly noticed the succession of corridors, windows, and arches, none of which seemed to fit together with any concession to reason. And Lensh swept along too quickly for him to catch more than the vaguest impressions — so that the dining hall was the first room he gained any real sense of.

Kulhain could only stand and stare. The chamber was long enough that he struggled to focus upon its farthest wall. The distant ceiling was a mosaic of multicoloured glass; the walls and floor were tiled with black stone, faintly reflective, and along the centre of the room ran a table of dark wood. Yet strangest of all was the multitude of flickering shapes — gauze-winged, insectile, each no bigger than his hand — that disappeared from view in the moment he entered.

Kulhain forced his attention to the concrete reality of the room. Two places were set at opposite sides of the table, at the nearest end. Tureens of food sat between them, their steam hazing the air. Lensh moved towards the farther seat, and tutted. “Where’s the wine? What useless servants I have! Zubotl, go to the cellars and bring back a bottle.”

The thing called Zubotl wavered, as though caught in a stiff breeze. Then it drifted towards a narrow archway.

“You should go with him,” Lensh told Kulhain. “He has no taste at all.”

It could only be a trap. It occurred to Kulhain that he might leap upon the sorcerer before the demon god could reach them; a quick enough blow and perhaps Lensh’s magic wouldn’t protect him. But the thought only flitted through his mind. Kulhain watched as the thing Zubotl pushed through the archway, angling its head so that its great, golden horns didn’t tear at the masonry.

Could it be curiosity that bound him? Could he really be curious?

Zubotl was vanishing around the turn of a descending spiral of stairs. It didn’t look back at the sound of his feet. Nevertheless, Kulhain kept his distance, ready for the thing to turn and gore him with horns or mandibles.

They continued to descend. The walls glistened, as though with moisture; yet when Kulhain reached a hand out he found them dry. Just as his head was beginning to spin with their corkscrew motion, the passage ended. However, the space it opened onto was no less dizzying: it had something of a cavern about it, something of a wine cellar, but its precise characteristics defied either. It was vast, unruly, ordered by some logic which created pools of similar-coloured glass, of certain striking labels, of strange, fluted bottles kept together. But there were no markings, and if there was a system it was beyond Kulhain’s comprehension.

The god-thing, too, seemed disoriented. It drifted through the stacks and alcoves, swaying its vast-jawed head from side to side, the golden horns often coming perilously close to breaking a leaded flask or dust-caked pot. Kulhain fell in behind it, trying to fight the sense of wonder boiling in his gut. There might be a million bottles there. This was a treasure trove, as entrancing as any heap of gold.

After a while, it occurred to him that there was light to see by. Though he felt as if he were underground, as though great weights of earth pressed from above, there was sunlight slanting through gaps in the walls and ceiling, muddied to a burnished orange by its passage. Kulhain inspected a rack of bottles where a beam fell directly. On impulse, he plucked one out, drew the cork and sniffed. The odour of spoiled wine was so extreme that he dropped the bottle. The thing Zubotl turned at the sound of its shattering, and Kulhain tensed. But it looked away as quickly, returned to its aimless wandering.

Kulhain followed. He moved as it did, drifting between the musty racks, hunting for he knew not what. How could he choose one bottle from another? The very range of possibilities was paralysing. He felt a sudden sympathy for Lensh’s pitiful servant, a swell of hatred for the sorcerer himself. What greed could compile such wealth, only to hide it in a mouldering cellar, to be soured year on year by the penetrating sun?

Then, without looking, without any conscious thought, his eyes fell on it: a square bottle of blue glass, with burnished pictograms in place of a label. Something he’d never dreamt of seeing, yet knew instinctively. The wine had been brewed three generations ago, by the foremost vintners of his clan, at the height of its civilisation. No bottles remained in the world, nor could remain; they had been lost to the inferno, on that black day of cataclysm — without a doubt.

Yet there it was.

Every nerve in Kulhain told him to turn away; that here was something too precious for the likes of him. It was a sense of spite, and maybe a little of reverence too, that made him call to Zubotl, “Here! This one.”

He regretted it as soon as he’d said it. But by then it was too late.

Zubotl moved with startling speed. One moment it was a distant blur, the next its odour was thick in his nostrils. Though he’d done nothing to identify the bottle, nevertheless, Zubotl grasped it with wormy fingers. When it pressed past, Kulhain wanted to gag, felt at the same time a sense of awe.

By the time he’d recovered himself, Zubotl had already disappeared.

Kulhain spat a curse and hurried after. This time he hardly noticed the endless, winding stairs. In no time at all he was back in the great banquet hall. Lensh already had the bottle open, was pouring its red-golden contents into two thin-stemmed glasses. The sight twisted Kulhain’s stomach. He felt like a criminal for placing so sacred a thing in those gnarled hands.

Lensh looked up theatrically — he couldn’t have failed to hear Kulhain clattering up the stairs — and said, “Not a bad choice. A wine of fire and blood, without a doubt.”

“No one has ever made a better.”

“There are wines in my cellar that would drive you mad with joy, or wonder, or fear. But this — isn’t so bad. Sit, will you? You’d make a man nervous, always hovering.”

Kulhain sat.

He had thought Zubotl would serve them, or that the flitting, half-real things would reappear. It was far more surprising when Lensh himself opened the nearest tureen and began to ladle out the odorous stew within. He proceeded to each bowl, serving their various contents first to himself and then to Kulhain — the man who had come to kill him.

It made no sense. The food might be poisoned; but Lensh could have taken his life in a hundred easier ways. And it smelled wonderfully good.

Kulhain hung on to his caution. By the time Lensh had finished serving, there were portions of a dozen dishes on his plate. Kulhain’s eyes roved, as though he were assessing the landscape of a hostile territory. Some of the ingredients he recognised; others he knew by type. He could say, for instance, that the frilly slices of grey were mushrooms, though he’d never seen their kind. Some of the vegetables, however, were completely alien to him. And the meat … something about its bruise shade and marbled texture told him that here was flesh of no animal that had passed his lips before.

His mind offered no shortage of possibilities. Yet guessing would accomplish nothing. His choices were to eat, or to try and kill Lensh over this dinner table.

“Are you suspicious of me, Kulhain?” Lensh asked.

“Of course,” Kulhain said.

“As you should be. But the food is nothing unsavoury. Not all of it from this Earth, but not unsavoury. I offer you only what I’d serve myself on such a night as this.”

Nothing in what Lensh said inspired confidence. Yet Kulhain was very hungry. First, though, he made a point of sipping from his goblet. The wine was overpoweringly rich. He had tasted blood before now, and this wasn’t altogether different. He struggled to swallow it down, felt its fire flash through his limbs.

Lensh, too, took a sip. He smacked his lips with enthusiasm that might or might not have been mocking. “Not bad, not bad.”

“The finest wine ever vinted by the hand of man,” said Kulhain.

Only when he was sure Lensh wasn’t about to disagree did he begin to eat.

The food was magnificent. Kulhain had eaten splendid meals before, once or twice had sat at the tables of kings, but none had so perfectly fulfilled every possible culinary requirement. The meal was light yet satisfying, vivid yet delicate, its flavours endlessly various and never clashing. He struggled to hide his pleasure — for Lensh ate with only the mildest interest.

The wine, Kulhain found, was too heavy for the food. He didn’t so much as empty his first goblet.

Kulhain might have eaten all night. But Lensh pushed his plate aside after only a few minutes, and after that, Kulhain found himself increasingly uncomfortable. He felt something radiating from the far side of the table — a sense of anticipation. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Kulhain shoved his own plate aside.

Lensh responded immediately, as though the gesture were only another step in an ongoing conversation. “I have so few guests. Many visitors, but rarely guests. Why don’t I show you a little of the place? Would you indulge me in that, Kulhain?”

“Indulge you?”

“Why not? How can it hurt?”

Kulhain could imagine near endless ways in which it might hurt. However, he had all but accepted that he was living at the ancient sorcerer’s tolerance. In a way, it was liberating; the responsibility for a life, even his own, was a weight he’d borne for too long now. The price, he thought, of surviving — of always being the one not to die.

“I’ll see what you have to show me,” he said.

Lensh clapped his hands. “Excellent. Fall in, Zubotl.”

Kulhain had almost forgotten Zubotl’s presence while he was eating; the realisation that it had been waiting behind him all the while made him spring to his feet with a shudder.

Lensh walked with his hands tucked together like a broken bird, his dark eyes fixed upon the distance. Though he must be less than half the sorcerer’s age, Kulhain struggled to keep up.

Lensh hardly seemed aware of Kulhain’s presence, yet he continued to talk. “Do you realise how long I’ve lived here? In this — you would call it a castle, wouldn’t you? Do you think they know — those who asked you to come here? Oh, they’ve heard what their parents told them, and their grandparents. They have their stories. But do you think any of them really know?”

Kulhain felt sure he was being mocked. “They know a leach when it’s fastened on their neck.”

For the first time since they’d finished eating, Lensh turned his gaze upon Kulhain. He looked irritated — but more, disappointed. “You’re a little wiser, though, aren’t you, Kulhain? You’ve seen things.” His tone was insinuating. “Things you’d rather not have seen. It’s there in your eyes.”

There was no use arguing it. “I’ve done what I needed to do.”

“Well, so have I,” Lensh said.

Kulhain couldn’t help a choking sound, not quite a laugh. “You’re a plague on the world.”

“And what are you? Its saviour?”

The words stung. He thought of the old man’s expression, all those hours ago — of his lips beseeching whilst the rest of his face framed itself for suffering. If Kulhain had ever believed himself a hero, the illusion had come crashing apart in that moment. Will you help us, Crux Kulhain? They say you help people. But Kulhain knew then that whatever they said of him, it wasn’t that.

However much the old man had feared him, though, he’d feared Lensh more. Lensh had done things that made the thought of pleading to someone like Kulhain almost palatable. If only for that reason, he mustn’t submit.

“Maybe I am,” he said.

They’d reached the end of the vast dining hall. The passage beyond was inlaid with mosaic whorls of ebony and amber. Lensh kept ahead, seemingly bored of conversation. Kulhain kept his distance, conscious of Zubotl hovering behind him — of its rich smell in his nostrils. Even now, he expected the thing to tear his head from his shoulders at any moment.

Lensh stopped abruptly. He turned, and made a sweeping gesture with one hand. Kulhain tensed, thinking this must finally be the moment — but Zubotl only drifted through an arch off the main passage, into darkness so pitchy that it seemed to consume the light. The arch was capped with a block of gold the colour of the god-thing’s horns, and although he had no reason to suspect it, Kulhain felt certain that the space was a cell.

“He needs his rest,” said Lensh, with definite amusement. “What about you, Kulhain? Do you weary?”

“Show me want you wish to show me.”

“Of course. We’re almost there.”

Beyond the embedded archway, the corridor grew wider. Its ceiling reached to a sharp peak above; its walls changed subtly from stone to crystal, an almost-matching ivory at first and then other shades, delicate greens and blues. Further on and the colours abandoned all subtlety, exploding into rich, bloody reds and sunrise yellows. It was hard to believe that these bright, crystalline passages were still part of a castle.

As though reading Kulhain’s thoughts — and it was likely enough that he was — Lensh said, “Yes, this is something far more than a fortress. The work of a dozen lifetimes, and of all their accumulated projects.”

Kulhain felt tired — from the food, the walking, the nagging pressure of death against his back. “Show me,” he said, “what you want to show me. Get it over with.”

“Very well,” agreed Lensh cheerfully.

The timing was perfect — as though all Kulhain’s anger had been nothing more than the result of jerks upon invisible strings. A doorway in the passage wall opened upon… what? A room, a cavern maybe, though he felt certain they’d been climbing all this time. A space that could have housed dragons by the family and never felt crowded. Kulhain was awed, though against his will; he despised himself for giving Lensh what he seemed to so desire.

They had reached the end of a sliver of pathway. From it, other walkways veered, like twigs from a branch. However, these too splintered into other conduits, sometimes narrower but often wider. Kulhain suspected that if he could somehow have seen the chamber in its entirety it might look like the pattern in splintered ice, though cast into every possible direction. More, he felt a certainty that any of those paths would have held his weight, or at least Lensh’s, regardless of their angle.

If the pathways were disorienting, worse were the doorways. Kulhain had no doubt that was what they were, though their shimmering facades were like nothing more than disturbed puddles, if water came in every imaginable shade. Wherever a path ended, there was always a door. Another intuition: he was certain the doors defined the paths and not the other way round.

“More than a thousand gates,” Lensh confirmed from beside his elbow, “onto as many worlds. Can you imagine? A world in no way similar to your own? Some have no air. Some have no heat. Some would drive you mad at first sight. I’ve explored all but a dozen, Kulhain — and brought prizes back from most, slaves from a few. Thus did I furnish my home.” Lensh stretched a crooked finger towards one distant, coruscating lens. “See there? Zubotl’s long-absented abode.”

A note in the old sorcerer’s tone revived Kulhain’s hatred. “What about that last dozen?” he asked disdainfully. “Were you afraid?”

“Those remaining twelve are antithetical to all life,” replied Lensh, as though responding to the question of a child. “I see you aren’t impressed, Kulhain. What are the wonders of the multiverse to you, eh?”

Kulhain was impressed, of course. How could he not be? Yet confessing or denying it both seemed like weakness. “Is that it? What you wanted to show me?” he asked. “Or is there more?”

“Oh, more. Many lifetimes of more. But there are only so many hours in the day.” Lensh turned away from the impossible chamber, with its glistening doors onto a thousand worlds. “A couple of things, though, you simply must see.”

Kulhain followed gratefully. He was exhausted with the room and its awesome, terrible contortions. It was absurd to have ever thought he could kill Lensh. Surely that was the sorcerer’s point. Kulhain was merely a man, a man steeped in too much blood; he might as well shoot arrows at the stars as set himself against a foe who had seen existence beyond his imagination.

It was a relief to be back in the crystalline tunnels, and more so when their texture returned to something like stone. He had hoped Lensh would spare him from further talk, for conversation felt too much like another fight he couldn’t win — yet even that hope was in vain.

“You didn’t answer my question, earlier,” Lensh said. “Do you tire, Crux Kulhain?”

Kulhain was weary to the depths of his marrow. “Not slightly. But if you wish to rest your own corrupted bones, I’m sure I can help.”

“You sadden me. After all you’ve seen, still playing the hero.”

“Better a hero than a monster.”

“At least monsters are real.” Lensh sounded unimpressed. “Heroes live only in stories. Who’ll remember you?”

“Those people, perhaps. Down in the valley.”

“As their saviour?”

The way Lensh said it, it sounded absurd. “Perhaps.”

“Yes, perhaps. For a month, a year. Even a hundred years. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Kulhain only shrugged. There was no bite in the old man’s mockery, and he wasn’t certain Lensh had meant there to be.

In any case, they had reached their next destination. He knew by the change in light, the renewed sense of space. Yet his eyes registered this new chamber only dimly. He could make out a large, pear-shaped cavity, and the glow of something within it… like a sculpture of ice, if ice were made up of endless, moving, flowing parts. His ears, too, registered only the faintest hint of sound, a shriek on the edge of hearing. The smell was one of burning, though what was burning he couldn’t have guessed.

He could feel it, however, like a shivering in the deepest meat of his body. And though he had never experienced anything similar, somehow he understood. “Souls.”

“Souls,” agreed Lensh.

“So many.”

“Enough.”

Kulhain wanted to feel indignant. However often he’d killed, he’d never drawn out torment unduly. But listening to that faint keening, that hymnal of lives spent, he couldn’t help wondering whether, in the moment of dying, time might become elastic. How long would the last instants of a gut wound seem to its recipient? Seconds? Hours? Millennia? “Why torture them like this?” he asked. “Isn’t murder enough?”

“Every life is a shred of experience,” replied Lensh. “Every life, however drab, dull or wasted, possesses a little of the unique. Every man, woman or child can answer at least one question no one else can. Thus, they are fit to be cogs in a machine. Together, they know more than they ever did alive and apart.”

“They were people!” Kulhain spat.

“They were. People, and other things besides. All of them more or less worthless. Under my care they’ve scoured the stars and probed the depths of reality. They’ve solved problems that baffled philosophers of every age. They have given me the answers I sought.”

“And that justifies it?”

“Don’t you think so? Anyway, isn’t it beautiful?”

It was beautiful. That was the worst of it. This flickering presence, intangibly real, defied everything he understood of death. How could the sorcerer have conjured such a thing from lifetimes of genocide, when Kulhain’s own deeds had left no more than a trail of broken bodies?

“I see you grow emotional,” chuckled Lensh. “Shall we move on?”

“I’ll kill you for this,” Kulhain said.

“But without seeing all I have to show you? I think not.”

They went down steps, passed through further corridors. One passage was all of glass, bright and paper thin, with nothing but darkness beyond. A tunnel was carved fantastically of wood, every panel a leering animal face. They seemed to be travelling deeper, though the general direction was always upwards.

The room they ended in, however, was a disappointment. It was smaller than the others, less grandiose. It was shaped like the upturned bulb of a plant, the walls tapering to a tube from which light leaked weakly. The space contained no furniture, only a pedestal in its centre. There could be no doubt that its sole function was to house the object resting there.

It was the size and shape of a cabbage, and something like the same pale shade. Sparks swam just under its skin, like tiny fish. Sometimes they dipped and vanished into the interior; sometimes they rose and dissipated, like gas erupting from swamp water.

“What is it?” Kulhain asked.

“Why don’t you take a closer look?”

A trap then. It was overdue. Yet as Kulhain drew nearer, the orb didn’t flare to burn the meat from his bones, nor did it stab lightning at his soul. It merely shimmered a deeper shade. Kulhain moved closer, and closer still. He was near indeed when the realisation struck him: the lights formed images, flickering over and under and upon each other. Again, Kulhain thought of fish; if the orb were a lake, and the lake full of fish, and each shoal a moving picture…

He saw a man: old, scarred, pensive. It took Kulhain a long moment to recognise himself. Then the same face, ancient and white-eyed, laid upon a reed mat. And again, aged almost as now, walking with utter weariness upon a dusty highway, towards the village he’d left all those many hours ago.

It was absurd, impossible. It made as much sense as anything he’d seen. “My future?” he asked.

“The future, yes. Yours in this case. But only because you happen to be the one looking.”

Kulhain shuddered. “Damn you. I’ve no wish to see that.”

“No? Not curious at all?”

“What comes comes.”

“Oh, not at all,” Lensh replied. “I’ve changed my destiny a thousand times. Sidestepped a thousand harms.”

Kulhain tried to grapple with that. He had seen himself as an old man, but what if he were to slash his own throat right now? What if the promise of that distant future led him to some fatal error? If what Lensh said was true, the visions were essentially meaningless. Yet Lensh claimed to have used them to avoid endless personal disasters.

So what if now, right now, Kulhain drew his sword and struck Lensh’s head from his shoulders? Would Lensh, knowing the future, anticipate it? But the orb had told Kulhain he’d live. If he and Lensh had been promised contradictory futures, might either prediction be false?

“Come, Kulhain,” said Lensh. His old eyes twinkled. “We’ve walked far, haven’t we? And for someone of your limited experience, seen so very much. You must be hungry again by now.”

“Aye, I’m hungry,” Kulhain replied. He was, he realised. They’d walked far indeed.

“Then come … if the future interests you so very little.”

 

 

 

 

Kulhain only really became aware again when they arrived back at the great dining hall. The intervening journey was a half-formed blur: a long, cage-like tunnel of wrought metal, a passage walled with black marble, cavernous corridors cut through powdery blue rock. But how long they’d walked for he couldn’t have guessed.

As they entered the hall, Zubotl slipped from the archway that led down to the wine cellars. How he’d escaped his cell, if cell it had been, was yet another mystery. Kulhain saw that the god-thing was gripping a bottle in its elongated hand, which it set upon the table, where two places had already been laid.

Kulhain took the same seat as before. Once again, the range of dishes was astonishing. He recognised nothing from the previous meal.

Lensh picked up the bottle, inspected it, and filled first Kulhain’s glass then his own. “Something different, but still quite special, I’m sure. Zubotl may be a poor judge, but there’s no wine in my cellar not fit for an emperor.”

Kulhain realised he was thirsty; terribly so, as though they’d wandered desert sands rather than the castle’s cool passages. He put the glass to his lips, gulped a mouthful — and spat, the acid flavour still burning in his throat.

Poison! A coward’s tool. A coward’s murder.

Before the thought was clear and whole, Kulhain was crashing across the table, sword in hand. Plates skittered. Bowls vomited their contents. He felt certain the poison would petrify him before he could attack, or that Lensh would cast some spell and turn his muscles to jelly. For here was the instant Lensh must have seen in the orb, the instant he must have long anticipated.

Kulhain had no time for a true blow. All he could manage was to drag the sword between them, to throw himself behind it. He crashed into Lensh and both of them tumbled backward, Lensh’s chair tipping crazily. It took all of Kulhain’s strength to keep from falling onto his own weapon’s edge. He felt it sink into meat — such a familiar sensation — and rolled aside, dragging the dripping blade behind him.

Sickened and dizzy, it took him a moment to locate Lensh’s body. Kulhain’s sword had torn a deep gash across the ancient sorcerer’s chest. It was an ugly wound, deep and messy. Kulhain had killed enough men to know it would be fatal.

If Lensh could die. If a sword could kill such a man.

Lensh chuckled then. Blood drooled from his lip. “Kulhain. Took… your damned time.”

Kulhain stepped back, his chest heaving. He could still taste the foulness of the wine. The future he’d seen had been a lie. “How long do I have?”

Lensh coughed. Fine crimson drops sprayed the flagstones. “You saw.”

“The poison, damn you.”

“Poison? No…”

Kulhain thought then of the cellar: of its crumbling walls, its straying shafts of sunlight. What had Lensh said, as he’d sent Kulhain to accompany Zubotl? You should go with him. He has no taste at all.

Spoiled wine. Zubotl had brought spoiled wine. And Lensh must have foreseen it, foreseen all of it, up to and including these last moments. “Why?” Kulhain asked, his tone almost entreating.

Lensh looked as if he would like to answer. But he only gagged, like a fish dragged from water. His head lolled. Even the trickle of blood from his lips had slowed to nothing.

“Damn you,” Kulhain said. “No hell is dark enough for you.”

There was no reply. Had there been, it wouldn’t have surprised Kulhain. He knew then that nothing would ever surprise him again.

Around him, Kulhain felt the building shiver, like a death rattle magnified and transmitted, made vast. He understood; this place was more than stone and mortar. It couldn’t exist without Lensh.

Kulhain looked up, saw the thing Zubotl. He’d almost forgotten it was there. It was gazing at the torn body on the floor. “You’re free,” Kulhain said. “Go back. Wherever you came from.”

Zubotl tilted its great, horned head. Then it gave a wild, keening cry. It was all the more startling because Kulhain had come to imagine the creature mute.

“He was a monster,” he said.

The god-thing didn’t disagree. Rather, it gathered Lensh’s still form into its elongated arms. Where Lensh’s blood dripped upon it, glimmering patches of lilac spread. Zubotl moved towards one of the arches and disappeared into the gloom beyond.

Kulhain stood for a moment, distractedly watching the scattered tableware jitter. Then he turned and headed toward where the entrance must lie. All around, stray stones were working their way loose from the walls and ceiling, crashing to the cobbled floor amidst plumes of dust.

Kulhain didn’t hurry. He had no need to fear death.

He had seen his future.

 

END

 

 

 

 

Magpie of Souls ©  David Tallerman
David Tallerman is the author of the comic fantasy novels Giant Thief, Crown Thief and Prince Thief, the absurdist steampunk graphic novel Endangered Weapon B: Mechanimal Science and the genre-bending Tor.com novella Patchwerk.  His short fantasy, science fiction, horror and crime stories have appeared or are due in around eighty markets, including Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Lightspeed.  David can be found online at davidtallerman.co.uk

 

“Egil, Thane Uthred’s Huskarl” digital painting © Chris J Kuhlmann
Chris J Kuhlmann Is an artist living in Norwalk, Connecticut, just outside NYC. He works for Melissa and Doug, Inc. illustrating and designing children’s toys. He also freelances in the publishing and gaming industries. He’s can be found at http://www.kuhlart.com/

 

sword courtesy of the stock resources of draco-art at http://dracoart-stock.deviantart.com

 

text illustrations by Omnia