Tales of the Hidden World (17 page)

Soulhunter

I
was back down
in the sewers, and let me tell you the stink was pretty bad. I waded quickly through the scummy waters to reach the junction marked on my memory, and then pulled myself up onto a crumbling stone ledge half covered with slime.

I reached into my haversack and taking out the fetus in its glass case, I placed it gently down beside me. The huge head and goggle eyes made a vivid picture of the midway point between life and death, human and abhuman. It was hard to think of a thing like that having a soul, but that was why I was here.

The Hags have a thing about sewers. Whether it’s the darkness, the stench, or simply the claustrophobia, I don’t know, but that’s the way it is.

The Hags, in case you never heard of them, are what sit in the stars and eat souls. Reaching down through the long night, they specialize in souls from stillborn or aborted babies, souls without egos. Without an awareness of yourself as a separate and distinct entity, the soul’s edges are what you might call hazy, not so well pinned down. And then it’s up for grabs.

Now the Dragons (sluggish dark things that squat in the deep down caves), they’ll eat anything: man soul, woman soul, child soul. But the Dragons are few and far between these days, and they sleep a lot. A few more centuries and they’ll be extinct.

The Wolves (fat and furry, haunt the forest with fang and claw), they’ll have a tear at anything that passes, but we’re slowly weeding them out. Wolfsbane and holy water help.

The Hags are something different. We’re not too sure what they are, though our espers say they live Out There somewhere, basking in suns you can’t always see. But they have their hungers, and what they want is souls. Being so far away, they can’t just reach out and take them like a Dragon or a Wolf, but a stillborn or aborted child soul hasn’t any real defenses. A snap of the fingers, and there goes another baby screaming into Hell.

The main problem with Hags is getting in touch in the first place. There’s no way I can fly out to a star I’ve never even seen, but all the Hags have a place somewhere that’s their individual hold on Earth, that tells them where it is all the time they can’t see it. Dragons like caves, Wolves like forests; Hags like sewers.

I’m a Soulhunter, first class. What I do is go after the Demons (Hags or Wolves or Dragons) and recover the lost souls. Or die trying.

The soul’s center is a darkly insane place, where in an endless night owls flutter in a deserted barn and childhood horrors peer from shadowed corners. I know; I’ve been there. When as Demon rips through to your soul’s center, there are no more locked doors to hide behind, and all your nightmares come swarming out. That’s how a Demon feeds.

Of course they aren’t really Dragons, or Wolves, or Hags. That’s just the way my mind sees them. Scarecrow, an old friend of mine till a Wolf chewed on him, called them Snakes, Rats, and Spiders.

To each his own Nightmare.

I stared into the fetus’s goggle eyes and let my mind drift up and out, searching. From star to star, I swam, spreading thinner and thinner over the empty dark, and finally I returned, shivering, to my body. It’s cold out there. I shook the frost aside and tried again, throwing my net wider. The Hag screamed and slavered, and something red and sharp sliced into me, before I could break contact. I fell back into my body and clutched at the foot-long rip down my arm. The attack was purely mental, but my body’s stupid; it can’t tell the difference. Psychosomatic stigmata.

I’d found my Hag. Back in the old days, they called places like this genius loci. Of course that was back before espers and Soulhunters. Makes me shiver when I think of all those people without any kind of protection, not knowing about all those hungry soul-thieves hanging around them.

As I tightened a bandage around my arm, I could feel the Hag easing into its foci; my earthly surroundings. The stench was suddenly worse, and I emptied my gut in two quick heaves, like I’d been taught. Cobwebs formed on the walls, hanging down from the ceiling in long strands. (I know why Scarecrow called them Spiders.) The water turned blood red and swirled sluggishly up around my ledge. I drew my feet back from the edge as something curled sinuously through the water toward me. Mortar trickling onto my shoulder alerted me to the falling bricks, and I blasted them aside with a quick PK bolt. On the edge of my mind, I could hear a howling, a screaming, a hunger . . .

The cobwebs were thicker now, long, ropy strands that hung in twisted creepers and tattered shrouds through all the tunnels as far as I could see. Streamers brushed against my face, though no wind blew. My electric lamp sputtered and went out. Didn’t bother me; I can see in the dark, like a cat. Only clearer. The thickening cobwebs hid the curved walls and trailed into the murky waters. Directly across from me, something stirred under the scum. As I watched, a rubbery tentacle writhed up out of the water, waving lazily back and forth on the stinking air, searching for me.

I threw myself forward as jaws snapped shut behind me, only just hanging onto the narrow ledge I was perched on. Behind me, the stone wall had split into a pair of ugly blackened lips and jagged teeth. As I watched, the lips writhed in a grimace that was smile and scowl and petulant sneer, and then it was just a wall again. Something tapped me on the shoulder, and I threw myself at the wall this time, but the tentacle snagged me anyway. I must be getting old. It was fat and blubbery, without much muscle to it (that’s why they prefer child souls; can’t fight back), and I broke free with only a few bruises.

I opened my mind again, to give the Hag a taste of my own strength, when fat, furry fangs and claws ripped into me like a knife through butter. I screamed and fell back into my body. Pain shook through me as blood soaked my back and shoulders.

There was a Wolf down here somewhere.

I’d heard tales of Demons so badly hit by Soulhunters that they hunted prey together, but I’d never believed it possible till now. Vicious cold shivered through me, as I drew my silver dagger from its sheath. If the Demons were teaming up, we were in for some interesting times.

(Old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.)

I pulled myself together in time to cut at a probing tentacle. It jerked spasmodically as flesh ripped under my blade, and then recoiled beneath the murky waters with a faint slurping sound. And then something nasty boiled up out of the water, big and hairy with white shiny fangs and clawed hands. (See why Wolf to me, Rat to Scarecrow?) I yelled and sprang at it, my knife seeking its throat, and then we were rolling back and forth on the narrow ledge. I slid half a foot of silver into its throat, and elbowed the kicking corpse back into the water.

I sat back and waited. Things were getting rough.

Of course that last bit didn’t really happen. Wolves have no real physical existence on Earth, any more than a Hag or a Dragon; I’d just killed an image it created out of my surroundings. I’d hurt it, but it wasn’t dead. Not yet. I reached into my haversack and pulled out a jar of wolfsbane.

(That’s one part herb of the name, one part holy water, one part human blood.)

I rubbed the thick gunk over my hands and dagger, and waited patiently for the next sending, batting the probing tentacles away as they slithered up out of the water, reaching for me. The Hag was getting impatient.

A bubble formed on the scummy water, swelling up to some seven feet wide, and I could see something fat and dark huddled inside it. I didn’t wait for the bubble to burst, just jumped it, slashed through with my dagger, and wrestled with something dark and slimy. Had an eye that looked at me. Fangs and claws. But it screamed and screamed when it felt wolfsbane on my hands and blade.

I stabbed and hacked, feeling it writhing under me in pain and fear. I was hurting pretty badly myself, but I concentrated on cutting deeper, until it suddenly convulsed and threw me back into the reeking waters. I staggered back to the ledge and hauled myself out of what was now a waist-high bloody soup. I huddled up in a ball, sobbing as much from fear as pain. I didn’t know if I could take another sending. Finally, I quietened and looked out on the water. The bubble was gone with its creature, and I knew that Wolf was running with its tail between its legs. But it would soon be back. I had to rip the Hag to pieces and recover the lost soul, before the Wolf returned, or it would be over for both of us.

I glared at the bigheaded embryo in its glass case. Mother too old to bear the kid safely, Doctor had to abort it: no choice. Result, one soul up for grabs. Call in the Soulhunter. It still gives me the shivers, to think of all those babies neverborn in the old days, aborted for convenience. No wonder the Demons grew fat again, just like in the days of blood sacrifices.

I scowled at the embryo and then at my watch. Time was running out on me. I had to snag that Hag and rip it. But if the Wolf was still around, opening up my mind was death. Souldeath, too, maybe. My mind raced wildly as I smeared fresh wolfsbane on my blade, and then I had an idea. If it worked, no more Hag or Wolf; if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be enough left of me to bury. I shuddered once, quickly.

I’m a Soulhunter. It’s what I do.

I gathered my remaining strength and sent my mind soaring. The Hag howled, and long claws reached for me. I lay still, mind blanked, as the Hag sliced into me again and again, the pain gnawing at my barriers.

And then long, lean, and deadly slammed into the Hag, Wolf images of blood and fear mixed with killlust and a maddening hunger. The Hag screamed and lashed out with a terrible fury, but the Wolf hung on, rending and tearing, hunger driving it even against its ally. I’d guessed right: helpless prey was the one thing neither Demon had expected, and faced with a soul for the taking, there was only the endless hunger that drove them.

I closed my mind against the whirling kaleidoscope of alien savagery, riding out the storm. When it was over, there was only the Hag. It tittered, ripping through my mental barriers like cloth, and I felt a coldness in my soul, like the first ice of a deadly winter. I screamed, bloodlust roaring in me as I threw my alternative self at the Hag’s throat. My mind image isn’t human; it’s big and scaly, with fangs and claws and berserker rage. It’s an image I have of myself as a fighter, and I threw it screaming and slavering at the Hag, which gibbered and clawed in terror, and then was gone. Maybe dead, maybe not. Hell, don’t even know if it’s alive in the first place. But it left behind a soul.

Don’t ask me what it looks like, or how I know it’s a soul. If you aren’t a Soulhunter, you aren’t ever going to know or understand. I touched it gently for a moment, and then we were both back in our bodies—me on that damn stone ledge, it in its glass case. I teleported it back to Base, where they’d hook it up to a synthetic womb till it was ready to birth, and then I sank wearily back against the rough stone wall.

No cobwebs, no scum on bloody waters, no nightmare things stirring under the waters, or in the shadows, or in the walls. Smelled pretty much the same, though. I slipped down into the water and made my way slowly back to the empty street above.

And let me tell you, that homely old sun hanging on the sky looked damn good to me.

This appeared in a semi-prozine called Fantasy Macabre, after being rejected many times. Probably the closest I’ve come to being controversial, but I can see my authorial voice starting to emerge.

Awake, Awake Ye Northern Winds

M
oonlight slides down marble walls as distant laughter spills from brightly lit taverns, and beacons blaze in tall minarets. A single fountain gurgles lazily in the early evening’s heat. Shadows fill the alleyways. Above, blackbirds whirl silently on the night winds as drunken laughter erupts into screams that echo back from an unresponsive night, slowly dying away to an eerie silence broken only by the soft shuffling of shadowy figures as they leave the blood-soaked streets behind them. For this was how the night ghouls danced in Ravensbrook.

1.

The
Revenge
lay at anchor off Ravensbrook, called by some Port Blood. The fat moon hung heavy on the night, and a cool breeze murmured in the slack sails. Varles stalked his cabin like a caged mountain lion, head down, shoulders hunched. A hesitant knock interrupted his brooding, and he glowered at his first mate, Jarryl, for a moment, before raising one eyebrow in query. She nodded curtly, and Varles cursed under his breath, before following her up on deck.

The cold night air was fresh on his cheeks as he stared past the rigging at the shadow-strewn jungle that hid Port Blood. The sullen darkness threw back his gaze as an enemy’s shield turns aside an arrow. And yet past that cloak of darkness lay the treasure that had haunted his dreams for so many nights. Varles pondered a long moment in silence, before a gentle voice broke into his reverie.

“Captain . . .”

“Aye?”

He turned to find Jarryl at his shoulder, moonlight shining in her long blonde hair held loosely in place by a hastily knotted bandanna.

“Captain, you can’t trust Shade.”

Varles nodded briefly in answer, turning back to the enigmatic jungle. After a moment, she left him. Varles smiled slightly. The wind swelled for a moment and a bird’s silhouette hung outlined against the moon and then was gone. The gentle sounds of the night ocean were comforting, and almost hid the approaching footsteps that stopped just behind him. Varles did not turn.

“A cool night, Captain.” The man’s light voice was calm, assured.

“Aye.”

“How long before ye’ll be needing me, do ye think?”

“A few hours more.” Varles nodded at the sky. “It lacks a while yet of dawn.”

“Ye never had a taste for the sorceries of night, did ye?”

“The sorceries of day are perilous enough for me. The ghouls of Ravensbrook sleep but lightly; only a fool disturbs their rest without need.”

Low laughter echoed quietly for a moment, but when Varles turned, there was no one there. He snarled, right hand dropping to the scimitar at his side, and tensed as a slender figure loomed out of the aft shadows. He half-smiled and relaxed as his first mate strode into the light.

“Any orders, Captain?”

Varles nodded. “At first light, we take a landing party ashore. Post a double guard before we leave. I trust the waters of Port Blood no more than the city I know to be cursed.”

“Aye, sir.”

She padded away into the darkness, and Varles stared out across the moon-flecked waters, leaning heavily on the massive bridgework, looted in its entirety from an old Falconian ship, before he sent it to the bottom. Hewn from the wood of a tree that had not grown naturally for centuries, it was studded with gold scrollwork and precious jewels from a dozen lands. It took Varles’s weight with only the faintest of groans as he stared hungrily into the near impenetrable jungle shadows, letting his eyes adjust to the night. In and out of the trees, moonlight splashed across the odd patch of marble wall, sad remnants of what was once the pirate base Ravensbrook. In those days, many a proud ship sailed from her docks laden with spices and copra, musk and fruit, having left in payment loot from a dozen ships and as many countries. And then came the curse of Lord Ravensbrook, and one night when the pirate bands were at feast, there came a company of ghouls that left a trail of blood in their wake and only a few crazed souls to tell of their passing. Since that day, the Brotherhood had chosen other ports for their drinking and wenching, other islands for burying their booty.

Alone and abandoned, the marble walls of Ravensbrook fell prey to the ever-moving jungle. Insects crawled where men once lay, the cry of birds replacing the chatter of men. The very name Ravensbrook was struck from the sea charts, replaced with the name that night had earned it: Port Blood.

Varles had first heard the name and its legend from a drunken navigator in Raddorahn, and then again from the bloody lips of a dying man in Meligarr. And there were always the whispers, in as many tongues as there were versions, of the lost treasure of Port Blood, of the hordes that many a bold captain had amassed in his looting trail of blood and destruction, of the treasure left to the jungle on the night ghouls stalked the gleaming marble streets of Ravensbrook.

At first, Varles could not believe and then would not. The Brotherhood had few rules, but they were harshly enforced, often at the end of a sword or a gibbet. After so many had tried and failed, with none come back to tell the why of it, it was decided in Council that Port Blood was to be left to its memories, treasure or no treasure. But Varles’s dreams had been stirred, and he knew that rules had been broken before by those with the guts to sail against the wind. He gathered his crew slowly, one by one, and then he waited. Waited for the one man who could give him his edge, his chance of succeeding where so many had failed.

He found the man called Shade awaiting execution in a prison at Mhule. They struck a bargain: Shade would serve with Varles in return for his freedom. The condemned man was in no position to refuse, and a few days and three murders later, the
Revenge
sailed hastily forth with a full crew and a strong wind at her back.

Varles took a last look at the murky jungle that crept almost to the foot of the tide-swept shore and growled once, deep in his throat, before retiring to his cabin for what little rest he could find before dawn.

2.

The rising sun splashed blood across the sky as the longboat was lowered into the water. The creaking of rope and wood and pulley echoed loudly on the still morning air, mixed with the muttered curses and chants of the crew as they labored. Varles sat in the longboat’s prow and waited patiently for them to settle. His fingers idly toyed with a tiny dagger no more than five inches long, cast from pure silver.

“I’ve never understood what you see in that toy.”

“Good morning, Jarryl.” Varles nodded amicably to his first mate. “It’s served me well enough in its way, and no doubt will again. It is no ordinary knife.” Varles glanced up as he slipped the dagger into his flowing sleeve. Jarryl stood grinning before him, the gold of her hair ruddy in the early morning light. She sank down beside him as he made room and nodded at the grim shoreline ahead of them.

“You’ve long looked forward to this moment, have you not? In all the years I’ve served with you, after all the ports we’ve sacked, Port Blood still fascinates you in a way I never could. Do you even know why?”

Varles chuckled. “Mayhap. I’ll know for sure when this day is over whether the dreams I had were worth all this. But if half the tales are true . . .”

“If half the tales told in taverns were true, you and I would have been rich a dozen times over.” The longboat lurched as the ropes released and the oars dipped into the water. Jarryl threw a glance at the stern, where a spindly figure sat silhouetted against the rising sun. “Why in Mannanon’s name did you bring him along?”

“Shade? He has his uses.”

Jarryl waited a moment, before realizing she’d heard all Varles was going to tell her. She sniffed and turned back to watch the shore pull steadily closer with each stroke of the straining oars. The sea was calm, and the longboat slid smoothly through the water till it jarred on the last reef, and crewmen splashed through shallow surf to haul it up the beach.

Jarryl jumped down onto the muddy sand, disregarding Varles’s offered arm, and looked across the short stretch of beach into the jungle. It was unnaturally quiet; no cries of animals hunting their prey or being hunted, no birds singing . . . the air was still and dry. Varles stood beside her, eyes narrowed at the gnarled and misshapen trees that blocked their path. Jarryl shook her head.

“Do we have to cut our way through that? It’ll take hours to reach the city proper. Why couldn’t we sail right into the port itself?”

“Ye are brave indeed to risk wakening the ghouls of Ravensbrook.”

Jarryl jumped back a pace as the quiet voice sounded beside her. Her hand dropped to her swordhilt. Her lips pulled back in a snarl momentarily, and when she spoke, her voice was soft, calm, and very dangerous.

“Sneak up behind me again, Shade, and I’ll cut ye down where ye stand.”

Shade paused a moment, taking in her lithe musculature and ready fighter’s stance, before nodding amicably. “I hear ye, lady. I will remember.”

Jarryl nodded stiffly and turned back to Varles for instructions. He gestured at the crew lounging patiently by the beached longboat.

“Take half the men and your women and scout further up the beach; there ought to be a path not far from here.” Jarryl nodded, but Varles stopped her with an upraised hand. “Keep alert; on this cursed isle, distrust even your own shadow.”

Jarryl grinned, shot a last glance at Shade, and led her party up the beach. Varles turned to Shade, who was patiently studying the jungle. “Do ye feel any danger here?”

Shade shook his head. “On Port Blood, ye should expect to find nothing else, Captain. But I can say I feel no immediate threat, if that is any use to ye.”

Varles stared into Shade’s mocking gray eyes, so at odds with his courteous use of the formal
ye
, and then looked him slowly up and down. Dressed in a tunic of gray wool topped with a vest of brass mail and a thick white kerchief at his throat, he made a dowdy figure next to the captain’s flashing silks and blood-colored cloak. But sun-bleached hair and gray eyes gave Shade a dignity and air of assurance that far surpassed his simple dress.

Many tales were whispered of Shade, the man who walked in shadows.

His father was a god, they said, or perhaps a demon. Or mayhap even one of the Elder races that sank with the rise of Man. Wherever you heard the story, the details changed. One truth they all whispered, with eyes a-flicker for unprivileged ears: Shade knew magics no other knew, or would care to. Certainly, his powers were far greater than Varles’s, who knew only the simple spells of the sea that any mariner knows: the arts of wind calling and fair-weather sailing. From what Varles had seen of a sorcerer’s life, he’d stick to his sword and his ship and leave the spell casting to those with a taste for it. He wondered fleetingly what Shade thought of him and his life. He shrugged. He cared not. There was a cry in the distance, and he raised a flounced-silk arm in answer.

Jarryl was standing alone some way up the beach, pointing into the jungle. As Varles watched, a crewman appeared as though from the air itself, followed quickly by another. Shade raised an eyebrow, and Varles hid a grin. Jarryl knew tracking better than any mate he’d ever had, though of course it would never do to tell her so. He set off up the beach with Shade and the others straggling behind him.

The path Jarryl had found was long neglected and overgrown, but it was undeniably a path. With swinging swords and machetes, they slowly cut their way through drooping creepers and heavy vine-strewn branches. Varles and Jarryl struggled side by side, the sweat dripping from their aching arms onto the dusty ground they trod. It seemed as though the very jungle itself was their enemy, intent on keeping them from their goal. They scowled, chewed their tongues to keep their mouths wet, and trudged slowly on. Shade strode unhurriedly at the rear of the party, making no attempt to help.

“What’s the matter?” snarled Jarryl, during one of their infrequent halts. “The work too hard for your dainty hands?”

Shade shook his head. “My talents lie in other directions.”

Jarryl laughed coarsely. “Aye, I’ve no doubt ye’d make a fine addition to a lady’s bedchamber, pretty boy.”

Shade smiled politely.

Varles called for the party to move on, and the slow march continued.

3.

“Baran! Will ye look at that. . . .”

Jarryl’s voice died away as she stared out over the wreck of what had once been a thriving city. The burly sailor at her side shook a clinging creeper from his blade and followed her gaze. Stretched out before them the ruins of a proud city lay sprawled in the morning sun. The lofty walls were cracked and creeper-strewn, and the rusty iron gates lay lichen-pitted among tall grass. Tall watchtowers were holed and scarred by long rains, while weeds and foliage of a dozen varieties choked the narrow streets.

“This was a beautiful city, once,” breathed Jarryl, eyes entranced at the sight of so much marble.

“Aye. But always remember why it fell.” Baran’s voice was low, and he gestured nervously at the sky with a scarred three-fingered hand. Jarryl glanced up at the handful of blackbirds circling over the fallen city and felt her hackles rise.

“The raves still glide over Ravensbrook,” sighed a quiet voice immediately behind her, and she spun sword in hand to face Shade. She spat on the ground between her feet and then his. Shade’s brow wrinkled in polite puzzlement.

“I warned ye not to sneak up behind me again.” Jarryl’s voice shook a little with rage and humiliation at being caught napping twice. “I give ye challenge; put forward your blade.”

Shade chuckled and spread his empty hands. “I carry no blade, nor have I need of one.”

He gestured with a slender-fingered hand and creepers fell from the surrounding trees to cover Jarryl in fold after fold of clinging greenery. She cursed and struggled as the sheer weight forced her to her knees. Remorselessly, the vines wrapped around her, squeezing tighter, ever tighter. Her vision blurred as her sword slipped from numb fingers. . . .

“Hold!” Varles pushed his way through the watching crew and took in the scene. “Shade, release her.”

Shade smiled slowly, gray eyes narrowed. “She gave challenge to me.”