Oblivion Hand E-Book

Adrian Cole

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Voidal
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 384

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Sword & sorcery at its best -- the first of the Voidal trilogy, assembling Adrian Cole's sword & sorcery series for the first time. And don't miss Volumes 2 and 3, also available from Wildside Press.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Copyright Information

Books by Adrian Cole

Dedication

Exordium

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Copyright Information

Copyright © 2001 by Adrian Cole.

All rights reserved.

Published by Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

*

“Well Met In Hell” is a fully revised version of The Coming of the Voidal, a chapbook published by Spectre Press in February 1977. “The Universe of Islands” is a revised version of the story published in Airgedlamh magazine in Autumn 1980. “First Make Them Mad” is a revised version of the story published in Fantasy Tales, volume 2, no. 4, in Spring 1979. “The Ocean of Souls” is a revised version of the story published in Fantasy Crossroads 15, January 1979. “Astral Stray” first appeared in a slightly different form in Heroic Fantasy, DAW Books 1979. “Ever the Hungry Night” is a revised version of “All Things Dark and Evil” which appeared in Weirdbook 13 in 1978. “The Lair of the Spydron” was originally scheduled for Phantasy Digest (1979), and “Urge And Demiurge” for Weird Adventures (1980) but sadly both magazines folded before the tales saw print. They are published here for the first time.

Books by Adrian Cole

The Dream Lords

A Plague of Nightmares

Lord of Nightmares

Bane of Nightmares

Madness Emerging

Paths in Darkness

Wargods of Ludorbis

The Lucifer Experiment

Moorstones

The Sleep of Giants

The Omaran Saga

A Place Among the Fallen

Throne of Fools

The King of Light and Shadows

The Gods in Anger

Star Requiem

Mother of Storms

Thief of Dreams

Warlord of Heaven

Labyrinth of Worlds

Blood Red Angel

Storm Over Atlantis

Dedication

Originally the components of this saga were written as short stories and in the main they were either published or scheduled for publication in the small presses that flourished around the late 1970’s, and I am indebted to the enthusiastic support of the editors and artists who first brought the Voidal to the light of day. This volume is dedicated to them and their own heroic endeavours:

Jim Pitts

Jon Harvey

Wayne Warfield

Dave Sutton and Steve Jones

Jonathan Bacon

Robert Fester

Gerald Page and Hank Reinhardt

Paul Ganley

And to the fond memory of Dave McFerran

Exordium

During the countless millennia of my exile I have been able to ruminate extravagantly, though not without exasperation, upon the more esoteric laws of my fellow Deities. Perhaps, in the spirit of accuracy, I should say my former fellow Deities, as I have no doubt that they would take exception to any presumption of mine to claim equality with them now. As an exile I am not entitled to the status I once enjoyed, though in reality I remain as I was. A god is a god is a god. I simply live apart.

It is an unwritten but embarrassing fact that certain things cannot be destroyed. Certain powers are eternal and remain so, resisting all other powers. I am one such power, but what I have begun here is not my story. No, my personal history would make dull reading and would scandalise no one. I make no secret of the fact that my reputed avarice for knowledge earned me the insular existence that I now endure. The pain of loneliness, like all other pain, atrophies and decays eventually. But no one wants to be ignored. And it has been a long time since anyone did so much as acknowledge my presence, even with a curse.

I feel it is time I caused a stir of embarrassment again. In case I really have been forgotten.

So then how do the gods put an end to the aforementioned eternal powers when they consider it in their best interests to do so? Since we are talking about immortality, death is not an option. Imprisonment? As a temporary measure, but all prison walls crumble as the eons slide by. One could suggest the application of unending pain, but I have already commented on the deterioration of pain. Constant pain dulls and earns the victim’s contempt, though I would not wish the theory put to the test in my own case. There is always the bestowing of madness, but madness is relative, and being largely unpredictable, is never easy to control. Besides, madness is something I would only recognise in someone else.

Since my exile so frustrates me, you will understand that few things give me as much pleasure as those which frustrate my tormentors. Thus my history, this partial revelation of secrets, this presentation of indiscretions. I refer to a repressed power: the gods have decreed it a sin even to contemplate this ejaculation of darkness. Ironically I was exiled for less than the injudicious study of this particular entity.

I refer to the enigma known as the Voidal.

Few will know the name, but for those who do, it is synonymous with nightmare and deep unease, which is why it is so beguiling. This dark entity could not be destroyed, though the gods had set their corporate powers to reducing it to nothing, motivated, if you have not already guessed as much, by their fear of it. They took from the Voidal his memory, and with it his understanding of his powers, his soul, his identity, and the greater part of his sanity, as you shall discover in the history that follows. There was little of his own will left to him, but they could no more wrest it from him than they could his life. He could go nowhere unless he was summoned, and yet the gods placed upon him such a mantle of terror that only fools dared call him, as you shall also learn. And they set him adrift in the fathomless deeps of his own nightmares, believing he would be lost forever in their paradoxical inconsistencies and could never rise.

Why? Why did they do this? What did they fear? The question haunts him throughout his bleak quest. As it has me. It is a fragmented history and much of it remains dark and obfuscated, for I have woven it from whispers, myths, hints and rumours. And my work has been hampered by the shadows that ever seek to close in over the grim traveller himself. They may yet be your companions.

—Salecco the Esteemed, of Escaloc, Author of The Extrapolation of Exactitudes, Towards the Cognizance of Random Creation, Nascent Darkness: Our Responsibilities and various other Works currently invalidated under the Divine Sedition Acts.

Chapter I

WELL MET IN HELL

The demon who gave me the bones of this story was in a state of advancing lunacy on the occasion of its garbled narration. It was told to me long before my exile, but in my enthusiasm for such choice morsels of grotesquerie, I secreted the unexpurgated details among my private collection. It is, I believe, the first reference to the Voidal after his own banishment. In retelling the tale I have found it necessary to remove surgically much of the demon’s verbosity, together with a number of references that would serve only to confuse rather than to enlighten the reader. I trust, however, that I have retained something of the mood and flavour of the original, repellent though it is.

For in prefacing my history with this tale, I begin at the very depths, where darkness coils upon darkness.

—Salecco, once Esteemed

* * * *

There is a world that even the most audacious demons fear, where sane Gods do not tread, whose shifting landscapes ebb and flow like dark tides of the mind, ever restless, ever haunted. Beyond natural laws, at the far reaches of reason, shunned by all but the perverse in spirit. It has many dimensions: they twist and fuse, baffling the mind itself with their deranged patterns, their layer upon layer. A veritable universe, unique to itself, enclosed, locked.

This is Phaedrabile.

It has known many empires, spawned many wars, its demigods rising and falling over the eons, careless of life, of pain, delighting in the dark cloak of entropy that is its only true god.

At the time of the Csarduct Dynasty, many of Phaedrabile’s dimensions toppled to the relentless crusades of these self-styled overlords, their vast armies swarming, driving before them a veritable tide of refugees, man and demigod alike, who sought ever darker places in which to secrete themselves from the contagion of conquest. The Csarducts may once have worshipped at the grim altars of the gods of Phaedrabile, but at the height of their greatness they had supplanted them with their own images.

Among those who fled was the sorcerer monarch, Rammazurk, a creature of limitless lust, a slave of extremity, whose hunger for forbidden knowledge exceeded by far the depravities of his contemporaries. Into the very entrails of Phaedrabile he wriggled, creating for himself the nether hell of Sedooc, a labyrinthine kingdom of sorcery. With him he took his repulsive entourage, and they burrowed like maggots in the charnel house of their creation. Far from the eyes of the Csarducts and their own sorcerers they wallowed in new depths of chaos. Rammazurk the Omnipotent, as he called himself, ruled subjects to whom clung only the faintest vestiges of humanity.

Rammazurk trafficked with terrible powers: they bestowed upon him their awesome gifts, and he used these to strengthen his defences against intruders, locking himself and his corrupt empire deeper within itself. He distorted the elements themselves, enslaving monstrous storm elementals and binding them to him, wrapping them about his haven, Windwrack, the stronghold at the heart of his empire. The Screamers raved incessantly about the upper turrets and parapets of the huge castle: no one came near, man nor god. And while the winds of madness fumed outside Windwrack’s walls, hell seethed within.

Far down in the echoing halls of Windwrack’s labyrinths, a world away from the guardian Screamers, in the Hall of a Thousand Joys, other shrieks and howls reverberated, though this was no storm, unless it were a storm of passion. The obese monarch had decreed that for a month there would be a feast, a brazened orgy that would celebrate his glory and mock not only the Csarducts but also the very gods of Phaedrabile itself. For Rammazurk had lately breached a trove of hitherto undiscovered lore, sorcerous powers previously shunned by even the most adventurous or foolhardy of mages. And he felt himself a step nearer divinity, immortality.

He filled his halls with a veritable flood of sycophants, all of whom were too terrified to deny the monstrous ruler the slightest whim.

And such a feast! There were strange and vile foodstuffs brought forth for stranger quasi-human appetites to consume. Many were the night-spawned denizens that whispered and susurrated at the edges of the festivities, hovering between light and darkness, and they were summoned and cavorted with obscenely under the bleary gaze of the vast monarch. Humanity had lost its shape, its path, in the seething, cacophonous revels.

Rammazurk himself presented a grim spectacle, a bloated maggot atop a mound of sprawling acolytes, his naked folds of flesh dripping with sweat and wine, his bloodshot eyes sunk deep in the immensity of his face. Depravity epitomised, he snarled his derision for all gods but himself.

He was gloating over his new secrets for a particular reason: they gave him power over a principal wife, of which he had many, and whom he had long sought to destroy and toss into the abysses of limbo. He had favoured her years before, for she was only partially human and possessed sorcerous powers that he had yearned to savour at the time. It was said that her mother had mated with several of the slime demons of the Mudwastes (an area notorious for failed expeditions) who themselves were reputed to traffic with the devils of the astral realms.

Thus Issylla was born with her mother’s seductive wiles and her father’s features and peculiar astral powers. Her relationship with Rammazurk had been a tormented one, but he had profited from it in the doors it unlocked for him. He had added to the grotesque components of his court.

But Issylla had nothing fresh to offer him now. And she was no longer the pliant, obedient creature she had once been. Until only recently she had held his powers at bay: this was soon to end. He had found the means to dispose of her.

Now, with the month-long feast waning about him, his countless courtiers sated, the obese one rose sluggishly to his feet like some beast of the ocean, dragged from its natural element, and gestured at the thralls who yet danced and sported across the hall. Slowly they turned until all watched the towering mountain of flesh, relieved to see the ghastly smile, the hint of new pleasures. The monarch was evidently not yet so full that he could not savour one last act of indulgence.

“Where is Issylla, most beloved of my wives?” Rammazurk belched.

The momentary silence was broken as the queen stepped forward voluptuously, her painted breasts thrust out invitingly at the swaying tower of blubber that was her husband. Her open audacity was clear for all to see.

“Ah,” burped the monarch. “My jewel! Unparalleled sorceress of my halls. Most delectable of my treasures.”

Issylla revelled in her hold over the monarch. She knew well enough that he had become bored with her long since and that he loathed her, but she knew he was powerless to destroy her. But somehow, in his wicked eyes she saw something new, and within her a sliver of cold fear twisted. She smiled beguilingly as Rammazurk gestured to the inner rooms of the palace.

“Let us momentarily leave our devout followers,” he breathed. “We have not indulged ourselves in intimacy for too long, my jewel. There are depths to our needs as yet untrammelled. Let the people feast in our honour while we pleasure ourselves.”

Issylla could think of nothing more repugnant to her, but she maintained her seductive pose. She knew the deceit of which her obnoxious spouse was capable. And she knew of his recent delvings into power: she dared not fob him off until she knew what new secrets he had dredged up.

“But first,” he said, “let us clean away the filth of the past few weeks.” He clapped his podgy hands together and at once six muscular retainers stepped forward, each bearing a huge ewer of beaten gold. Their biceps strained as they raised them.

Issylla’s smile evaporated, but it was too late to spin out a curse or weave a protective charm.

“I am sure you will not mind cleansing yourself for your liege!” laughed Rammazurk, with a nod to his men.

Immediately they cast the contents of the ewers over the queen, and as the sparkling liquid cascaded over her, she began to scream, the pitch rising as the steaming concoction bit into her like acid. She stumbled to her knees, beating at herself, her palms slamming into her already molten eyes. The laughter of the king rose above her terrible wails. Her skin was sloughing off like a reptilian coat, dripping to the floor in a thick, viscous stream.

“The slime demons no longer protect you from me, you whore of a thousand beds! They tramp their stinking realm at my whim now! You’ve lost your protection. Your magical aura is of no avail. Feel the revenge of Rammazurk the Omnipotent. I have only just started!”

Other retainers rushed in upon the unfortunate Issylla, thrusting at her flesh with barbed javelins, ripping and tearing while the onlookers cheered like demons. The stormhounds, chained to the pillars, leaped up, straining at their chains to get at the flesh, anxious to sink their fangs into that rich meat. And Rammazurk tittered uncontrollably as the disgusting scenario unfolded.

Satisfied that the former queen was dead, the king waved the stormhounds forward and they were let loose on the spoiled flesh, snapping and tearing, their wild eyes daring anyone to interfere with their grisly work. When they had finished, dragging away the last of the dismembered bones, they had left only a steaming, pulpy mass. Rammazurk smiled contentedly at the congealing pool of blood.

As the torchlight played upon that dark pool that once had been his queen, other light seemed to shimmer there, strange light that was no reflection, but that seemed to have its source within the reeking pool. Rammazurk’s features melted and became a stare shaped from foreboding. Mutters and murmurs rippled through the assembly. Something was coalescing, using the blood as a sickly medium in which to sculpt a bizarre form, drawing upon the very air for its substance.

Rammazurk knew intuitively what amorphous mass it was that suddenly drew itself up like a column of mud and excrement: it was powered by the undead will of Issylla. From a black orifice where a mouth should have been issued a faint, sombre voice. A limp, dripping limb flapped out and gestured at Rammazurk, who drew back onto his throne in horror, while his houris ran screaming from the foul apparition.

It was a voice that insinuated itself throughout the entirety of the Hall of a Thousand Joys.

“Rammazurk the Omnipotent! Slayer of children, destroyer of the weak, defiler of beasts! Hear me, most accursed of men! You have spat upon the gods for too long. Know that I, Issylla, invoke my last curse upon you, granted to me by the demons that already prepare to suck me into their scalding embrace. The masters of the unknown dark curse you, and grant my invocation! Though I can never reach your realm again, I pass to you my final execration. I send you your bane, Rammazurk.

“I invoke the Voidal!”

No sooner had the grim words been uttered than the shape began to dissolve, slopping down into the pool of blood from which it had so odiously formed. In a moment nothing was left save a dark stain. In all the hall, not a sound was heard. Slowly all eyes swivelled to Rammazurk as he gazed from his silken seat. Even the feeding stormhounds had fallen silent, afraid to offend forces they could not see, but felt all too palpably.

Rammazurk hardly noticed his vassals. He frowned in puzzlement. It was no surprise that his dead wife should curse him. He had expected it, even if it had been a trifle dramatic. But she had disturbed him. She had invoked something alien to his knowledge. The Voidal. Although he searched his memory for a hint of the name, nothing came to light. He was not afraid: Issylla could be no match for his sorcerous defences, and yet he was uneasy at hearing an unfamiliar name.

He drew himself up slowly and waved at the silent watchers. “Why so solemn? Continue the feast! Issylla is no more, her curses hollow. Enjoy the feast!”

He left them and their renewed revels and made his ponderous way to remoter parts of Windwrack. Down through evil-smelling tunnels he went, through slime-walled pens where winged familiars skipped about his feet, crimson eyes gleaming up at him, anxious to serve. The monarch held out his hand and winged things alighted, cloaked in strands of sooty web. Through a maze of spell-hung corridors went the huge figure, careful not to disturb the mantle of conjurations he had woven here. At length he reached a high grotto hollowed out of the obsidian rock, and here he stopped at the shores of an oily expanse of phosphorescent mire.

A cloud of the familiars thickened the air above his head like miniature imps, but his whispered words to the little beings made them subside, settling like a cloud on the rocks and fanged stone of the cavern. Rammazurk made cabalistic passes in the stagnant air, reciting a mournful and rhythmic chant that echoed back softly from the walls. The very stone seemed to throb and pulse to the arcane chant, the vibrations increasing in cadence and the first ripples appeared on the oily surface of the mire.

A vague, saurian form broke from the surface, rivulets of slime cascading back into the lake. Two baleful eyes gleamed like lamps across the expanse of dark mire, and the shape of the awful head began to move sensuously in time to the echoing rhythms of the chant, hypnotised by its suggestive pulse. Rammazurk ceased his cantillation, though the echoing sound prolonged the sounds. He looked across at the awesome, wavering shape.

“Eldereth, traverser of the pits, wallower in the entrails of time and knowledge!”

The huge thing in the mire inclined towards the monarch, recognising the familiar summons, the call of a master to his servant.

“So it is Rammazurk who disturbs my slumbering voyages,” came Eldereth’s basso profundo. “What secrets do you wish to drag from my storehouse? And more important, Omnipotent One, what will you give me in exchange?”

Rammazurk glowered in the half-light. “You’re in no position to bargain with me!” he snapped. “Or would you enjoy the company of the denizens of the Mudwastes?”

A reptilian hiss of anger sounded from the mire, like the escape of steam. Rammazurk was master here.

“The slime demons no longer overawe me. So let’s not bandy threats,” said the monarch.

“What do you wish?” came the sibilant retort.

“A curse has been placed upon me by my now departed spouse, Issylla. No doubt I can shred this trivial cantrip, but its exact nature is for the moment outside the boundaries of my memory.”

“Surely nothing eludes the mind of your omniscience, O divine lord—”

Rammazurk ignored the mocking tone. “What do you know about a creature called the Voidal?”

The monarch studied the gloomy silhouette, confident that the powerful elemental, infamous for its astral delvings, would shortly disgorge the necessary counterspells that would enable him to blast Issylla’s curse. But the weaving shape fell silent, brooding a while. This was most unusual.

“Come now! Your answer! Satisfy me in this and you shall be rewarded.”

“It is rare knowledge you seek, Omnipotent One. Perhaps the answer lies outside Phaedrabile itself.”

Rammazurk looked annoyed, but then an expression of avarice stamped itself on his sweating face. “Outside Phaedrabile? Power from beyond it? How intriguing. But wait! How could a worm such as Issylla traffic with such powers?”

“All beings are mere vessels, Rammazurk, catalysts.”

“Don’t fob me off with riddles! Speak candidly. What do you know?”

“Certain astral currents are forbidden to me, indeed to all but the Dark Gods. I know only that your late spouse was a bridge between you and your destiny. Some believe that the divinities mould all our destinies. Yet you, Rammazurk grow in power and perhaps will wrest your destiny back from the very Gods.”

Rammazurk seemed mollified and nodded pompously.

“As for the Voidal,” added Eldereth, “my own knowledge is strangely clouded. I can give you little more than pieces of a picture.”

“Yes?”

“He is a complete enigma. From where he comes and on what mission, the Dark Gods alone know. They mask that secret jealously. But I recall a conversation I once had with Juxatl of the Million Ears, who dwells in the heart of Thaumatand, the most potent of the Spellworlds, and he spoke of a being who once offended the Dark Gods, a man who perpetrated so heinous a crime against them that they flung him on a wanderer’s course, devoid of soul, identity or fate.”

“And this is the Voidal?”

“So it would seem. But he is man you need not fear, for he cannot kill.”

Rammazurk looked puzzled. “Cannot kill?”

“So Juxatl had heard. The Voidal cannot kill. The Dark Gods have denied him that power.”

“Then why should Issylla have invoked him? What powers does he have?”

“As I recall, he is a Fatecaster. Whatever warped powers the divinities have bestowed upon him lie in his right hand. No other knowledge of him exists, for a cloud of forgetfulness follows him. To recall too much of his passing is forbidden.”

Eldereth again fell silent. Rammazurk had to content himself with the dubious morsels of information. As he reflected on them, the shape in the mire drifted closer.

“Even this little I have told you is indiscretion, Omnipotent One.”

“So now you want a reward for your outrage? Well, you shall have it. Today I am generous, having cast aside the yoke of that vampiric bride! As to the nature of your reward, I have an army in the field this very moment: it is drawn up outside the walls of Hakyarkuff, citadel of the fleshmen of Vybo, an old adversary of mine. Soon Vybo’s minions will be annihilated. I will have their corpses cast into the Lagoon of Grey Movement. I am sure you know of it. Feed well.”

“You are indeed a generous master,” boomed the voice of the huge elemental as it subsided. Rammazurk grinned and withdrew from the ophidian depths of his fortress.

Shortly after his discourse with Eldereth, the monarch was again seated amongst the velvet and silk splendour of his divans, surrounded by the dirge of his subjects, who now sought to divert his attention with even more debased vigour. Rammazurk indulged them in their excessive outrageousness. But he was thinking of the curse, waiting for news that any stranger had arrived in his domains. He had set his familiars to watch, and they missed nothing, either in the realms of earth or astral.

At last, from high up in the cobwebbed, dust-laden vaults of the roof, came a flutter of thin wings. A gathering of membranous beings dropped down and hovered about the ears of the monarch, delicate as butterflies. The messengers, minute but humanoid, chittered and gibbered like excited children. Two dropped daringly to the shoulders of the monarch and pressed their tiny heads to his ears. Rammazurk listened avidly to their words, nodding, visualising the events they were describing: a strange being had indeed appeared outside the gates of the city, enquiring after the fortress of Windwrack. This must be the promised Voidal.

In spite of his preparations, a clammy kiss of dread touched Rammazurk’s skin.

“Tell my storm elementals, the Screamers, to abate. Let Windwrack seem a haven to this intruder. But once he enters, have them seal the skies anew.”

Rammazurk’s harbingers rose in a tiny cloud and were soon lost to view. The monarch beckoned to one of his revellers. “Go to the Scarlet Tower. Fetch me Dennizor and Nazzim,” he snapped and the pale retainer dashed away.

It returned soon after with two tall, gaunt figures, almost identical in their spectral regalia, a cloying air of decay heavy about their shoulders as if they had come fresh from a graveyard. Their devil eyes looked hatefully at Rammazurk, though he sneered at their expressions.

“Ah,” smiled the reclining monarch. “The two necrophiles—”

“How much longer will you chain us to your service for sins long forgotten!” spat the first of the skeletal figures.

“You exist only to serve me! One day I may release you, but for the time being I require your metamorphic skills. I am expecting an unusual visitor. See to it that the court is liberally interwoven with the Werespawn, those particular demons that serve you like hounds. Let them sniff out any tricks that this Voidal intends to unleash. Go, perform your arts at once.”

The twin sorcerers faced the apprehensive throng and began selecting victims for the possessions.

Outside the odious fortress of Windwrack, the city of Npandil sprawled unevenly across a score of hills, in parts dressed with crumbling, antique temples, in others a bizarre jumble of hovels, raised up in a parody of architecture where the debased and retrogressive servants of empire lived. It was at a remote gate of this festering city that the stranger had appeared. Behind him was an oddly silent sandstorm that obscured the land for many miles, and he recognised in its shifting currents an element of sorcery.

Already the newcomer had begun his enquiries in the city, calling at the first inn. He asked bluntly for Windwrack, saying he had business there, but at mention of the fortress at the heart of the city, the tenants drew into themselves and offered only brief directions.

“What do you seek in the palace of the Omnipotent One?” said one ancient inhabitant.

“There is someone there who will help me.”

The oldster spat into the fire, which hissed back at him. “You are a fool. You’ll find no friends there. Only pain.”

The stranger left the inn, noticing now the tiny darting shapes in the air between the roofs, sensing their fiery eyes upon his every step. Beyond them the skies were shifting uneasily, the air moaning to itself, a huge beast stirring on the edge of wakefulness.

Rammazurk fed excessively, glutting himself. His twin sorcerers had done their work well, drawing forth the Werespawn. These were transmogrified revellers, sub-human, drooling things, barely controlled by the sorcerers: they hopped about like huge fleas, tendrils flicking out like obscene tongues, both caressing and flagellating the ecstatic mass of other revellers. Rammazurk delighted in the array of ghastliness, bound over to him in chains that were virtually unbreakable. Together with this he had ensured that the oldest and most protective of charms and cantrips hung his walls like black drapes. Let this Voidal come to him!

An ominous boom, the deep note sounded by the immense double gongs at the far end of the Hall of a Thousand Joys, reverberated around the walls. Two gigantic doors carved from single blocks of meteoric stone swung ponderously open as the sonorous notes died, and in the light that flooded in from beyond, a single figure was silhouetted, dwarfed by the titanic doors. It paused to gaze with apparent bland indifference upon the now silent hordes of the orgy, then stepped forward, the sound of its boots ringing back from the high vaults.

Rammazurk heaved himself upright, motioning the throng to open a way for the stranger. Down that long avenue of writhing humanity and sub-humanity the monarch and the stranger stared at one another. Rammazurk’s fiends hissed and grimaced, claws outstretched, but there was a kind of fear in them all. The Voidal gave them no more than a cursory glance of disgust as he began the steady walk towards the monarch of Sedooc. About him was cloaked an aura of darkness: he wore it like armour.

The stranger was a man of good height, his spare frame draped in a dark shirt of nightweb, his legs clad in black leather, his harness studded with purest silver, the accoutrements of the same glittering material, while from an ebon scabbard protruded the fine-worked haft of a sword, clearly no ordinary weapon, though what its talents were remained as yet, like its owner, a mystery. His face was serene, absolutely smooth, pointed and classic in proportions, while the eyes were a piercing green. The hair was silken, black as the midnight cloak that had been clasped to the shoulders.

As the Voidal drew nearer, he moved with the deadly silence of a spider, his long legs striding purposefully yet gracefully. Yet on the serene face was the unmistakable look of a man of melancholy, the look of a man desperately in search of something he might never find.

He came to the foot of the royal dais, eyes searching Rammazurk’s as if for answers.

“I have been expecting you,” said the latter, impressed by the physical presence of his visitor. But he remained outwardly calm. One flick of the wrist would unleash incalculable power upon this dark man.

The Voidal was surprised by the monarch’s remark. “Expecting me? Were you told I was coming? Who told you?”

Rammazurk lifted a hand, a demand for silence. “It is I who will ply you with questions. You are here under sufferance. I expect all those who visit Windwrack to show respect. After all, I am lord of all Sedooc. So, who are you, and why are you trespassing in my domain?” He seated himself, resting his enormous chins on his fist.

The Voidal bowed his head sadly. “I am afraid my story is a strange one. I must apologise for any rudeness.” He bowed to the monarch, who remained suspicious. The Voidal straightened, his every move watched by a thousand pairs of his eyes.

“I am here in search of knowledge,” he said. “No more than that. I seek knowledge about myself, for I have no identity, and my memory is a wretched, broken thing. Of the knowledge that I have accrued, only fragments remain. I neither know who I am or where I am from. The Dark Gods mock me and seem to trifle with me for reasons they do not share. All I know is that here in your palace I will meet with one who will guide me.”

“How did you come to Sedooc?”

“I cannot say. I stood on a plain blasted by fogs: your city materialised like a dream. All I know is that I may find knowledge here, and perhaps a friend.”

“A friend you say?” The monarch looked sceptical. “What friend?” He was thinking of the grim shade of Issylla.

“Until we meet, I don’t know.”

“What else do you seek?”

“No more than I have said.” He seemed almost apologetic.

Rammazurk looked at the black gloved hands of the man, one eye on the shadowed ranks around him. Among the leering Werespawn, the servants of the monarch readied for the task set them.

“I have among my vassals sorcerers and thaumaturges of no small repute. You may learn your fate here. Perhaps my fortress can accommodate you,” Rammazurk smiled, though it veiled a shadow of menace.

The Voidal bowed. “I am indebted to you.”

“Ah, yes. Indebted. But you need not be.” An almost imperceptible nod of the head accompanied the monarch’s words and in swift silence four shapes were at the Voidal’s side, pinning his arms in a serpentine grip. Surprisingly he made no attempt to free himself, though he looked askance at Rammazurk.

“If you are to be my guest,” said the latter, leaning forward ominously, “then you shall deliver to me a small fee.”

“Of course,” replied the Voidal impassively.

“Hold out his right hand,” Rammazurk said to his retainers, and they did so. Rammazurk then took from the folds of silk beside him a razor-sharp sword, the edge of which glowed with sigils, carved there in some remote demon-hold in which the sword had been forged. Rammazurk rose and stepped down to face the Voidal, eager to destroy the source of the being’s power. He unclasped the silver studs of the Voidal’s right hand glove, then drew it off. But his grin of triumph dissipated, replaced by a look of shock.

For there was no hand.

The black glove had covered nothing, unless the hand was invisible. The Voidal, still gripped firmly, could not move his outstretched arm, so Rammazurk tentatively felt for the unseen hand with the tip of the sword. But there was nothing. He was puzzled, having been told that the Voidal’s strength was in this hand.

“You have no right hand,” he said haltingly.

The Voidal’s face had clouded, as though a dark power from elsewhere had suddenly taken control of him. His features twisted, his eyes rolled evilly and he spoke in a scathing, reptilian hiss. “Since you have asked for it, you shall have it.”

Rammazurk drew back, nonplussed. “Release him!” he snapped, returning to his throne, though he was ready for any attack.

The face of the Voidal changed back and for a moment the strange man looked bemused.

Rammazurk considered him briefly, then waved him aside. “You are welcome, then. Later you shall converse with my underlings. For now, join the feast. I enjoy a celebration. Let us not mar it. Windwrack embraces you. Take what you need.”

The Voidal bowed, picked up the fallen glove and receded into the ranks of the expectant throng. Yet none of them dared touch him, for the stink of fear bathed them all, and even the stormhounds by the pillars drew back, hackles rising as they sensed that about him that spoke of intolerable evils. Rammazurk drew two of his most beautiful concubines close and instructed them to stay beside the Voidal, and to amuse him. They blanched, but they feared Rammazurk’s wrath more than the eerie stranger, so obeyed.

Rammazurk continued to drink himself close to the shores of oblivion, for he could not unravel the enigma set him by the words of the elemental Eldereth. Later, mused the wine-sodden monarch, I will find a way to kill this Voidal and toss him to the slime demons. Let them tell the limbo-lost spirit of Issylla that her curse was impotent. The monarch cackled in his drunkenness and waved for a platter of sweetmeats.

Two servants came to him, bearing between them a golden tray upon which were strewn fruits and assortments of edible leaves; amidst the succulent organs and slices of meat nestled a silver dome, under which the subterranean chefs had entombed the very best of their diabolical cuisine. Rammazurk nodded distractedly as the silver dome reflected a beam of light from the overhead firebrands high above, and he casually reached out to lift the gleaming lid. The food that he was already masticating as he raised the lid burst from his mouth as he saw with horror what lay beneath. The lid clattered down the steps of the dais. There on the tray was a hideous object, putrefying and shrivelled.

It was a severed hand.

The forefinger of the foul thing was extended rigidly, directed straight at the royal person of Rammazurk accusingly, as though still imbued with life. With a strangled cry, the huge monarch wobbled to his feet and smashed the heavy tray from the startled grasp of the servitors, sending food spinning and catapulting the gnarled hand out on to the stones of the floor. The cavorting beings drew back in disgust as the loathsome object turned and again pointed at Rammazurk.

“Destroy it! Destroy it!” snarled the monarch and a brand was quickly brought. When the severed hand refused to be burned, it was snatched up by one of the Werespawn and dropped into a brazier of blazing coals. Rammazurk watched the horrible relic smouldering, then turned away and staggered from the feast, his face a sickly pallor. He was so stunned by what he had seen that he momentarily forgot his grim visitor. The Voidal looked upon the incident with perplexity, as though it should have significance, but he could not understand it. His two seductive watchwomen were mildly disturbed by Rammazurk’s hurried exit, but soon turned their wiles once more upon the strange but handsome Voidal. They drew him away from the throng, and though he made no attempt to discourage their lascivious attention, he was soon deep in private thought.

“What is it that you dwell upon so moodily?” asked one of the sleek-skinned girls.

The Voidal gazed at her, forced a smile, then looked away into the middle distance of the smoke-hung pillars, ignoring the nearby hoots and bawdy laughs of the resumed orgy.

“I can only tell you that I must have offended the Dark Gods. For that they have set me upon a stormy course for purposes I can only guess at. My presence here is as much a mystery to me as it is to your monarch. Yet I know that I am to meet someone familiar here. As I approached your city, I knew it instinctively. When we meet, he will direct me. In my wanderings I pick up small pieces of the mosaic. When I have them all, I will learn what my crime was. By then I may have atoned for it.”

The two concubines listened with dreamy interest.

“And what of your—severed limb?” breathed one of them.

The Voidal’s expression soured, but he was not angry. “Perhaps it was my hand that pointed so irreverently at your king. I am minded of the word, Fatecaster. It has a ring to it. But I don’t recall having lost my hand—”

“So what will Rammazurk’s fate be?” said the other girl, lips beside his ear.

The Voidal drew back stiffly. “Enough questions!”

“You wear a cloak of mystery,” the girl laughed.

He nodded. “What I know of myself is not a matter for pride.” After that he said nothing.

Rammazurk retired to the depths of his labyrinthine boudoir and deliberated between sleeping or pondering his grimoires in search of further information concerning the Voidal. He had thought merely of destroying the man, but on reflection had decided it may not be that easy, nor a permanent solution. No, this Voidal was a vessel for something greater. Irritably the monarch dragged from their hidden seclusion his dustiest and most damned scrolls and tomes, first securing his doors with spells that were old when Sedooc was but a dream. Then he began a systematic and thorough perusal of the blasphemous rituals and lores concerning curses. For two days and nights he drugged himself awake with heady and potent mixtures, losing himself in the deep and catatonic wilderness of sorcerous study.

But at the end of it all he was no wiser. The Voidal remained a mystery.

Grim-faced and despondent, he flung himself down upon his lavish bed and allowed the caressing fingers of sleep to slide over him. His sleep was like the sleep of the dead, and his snores were loud. The embers of the guardian fires burned low, so that only a dim glow suffused the sacrosanct chamber.

Someone tapped gently on the thick, sigil-woven doors. Several times the inoffensive knocking continued, but the monarch was far out across the ocean of slumber, insensitive to recall. However, the doors suddenly bellied inwards as a horrendous blow was struck upon them from without: the thick wood splintered, the panels bursting like pulp and crashing into the room as though mashed by a giant’s fist. Rammazurk stirred fitfully and sat up, rubbing his eyes and gazing vacantly at the open doorway. He cursed vilely as he saw the shattered door, though at first he could see nothing or no one who could have wreaked such havoc.

It was pitch dark throughout the fortress of Windwrack, as though the Dark Gods had clouded the very cosmos. Wan light seeped into the bedchamber from a single taper without, the black candle permeating the air with rich incense. As Rammazurk sat motionlessly, the enormity of this unwarranted intrusion disturbed him, for the spells that he had set in apposition to such sorcery were the most puissant imaginable. He frowned at vague movement. Something had scuttled across the threshold of the room, unclean and verminous.

A single beam of dim light probed the marble floor from somewhere above, and into the beam came the thing that moved, as if taking its cue from the insipid light. Charred, shrivelled, it was a severed hand.

Rammazurk regarded it with utter revulsion, and quickly recited a blasting cantrip. But the hand was immune and continued its revolting scamper towards the huge bed. The monarch called upon elementals and demons from all manner of nether hells, but the host that normally would have rushed to his aid was not forthcoming. The power of the Dark Gods was stronger. Rammazurk leapt up and grasped a rune-coated sword beside the bed, watched as the burnt hand crossed the first of the silken sheets. It stopped, its forefinger pointed directly at his chest. He struck wildly, again shouting some archaic, prehistoric curse, but to no avail. The hand ignored the protests and curses and evaded the sword with ease. Back into a shadowed corner the monarch retreated, his ugly face coated with perspiration as a sheen of terror broke out on those odious features. The hand drew inexorably closer, then pulled with sooty fingers at the hem of his nightshirt.

Rammazurk screamed, calling upon every necromantic guardian he could name. They should have rushed to save him, but they did not. The hand clawed upwards: try as he did, the king could in no way dislodge it or hamper its dreadful progress. He beat at it hopelessly. Paralysed with fear, Rammazurk fell to his knees, gibbering, shrinking into a corner. Those foul, reeking fingers reached up and gripped his fat throat. They tightened. Rammazurk opened wide his mouth to give vent to another bellow. At once the hand moved upwards and the fingers clawed into the mouth itself, so that presently the gurgling monarch was desperately fighting to spit out the hand as it worked its way into his throat. Rammazurk tugged at it, gagging, but it possessed limitless strength.

The screams choked off and the terrible instrument of Rammazurk’s torment slithered down deeper into him, passing to his very vitals. Soon he felt it working at him like a rodent, clutching his internal organs. Nothing he did could prevent its abominable workings. The hand began tearing and ripping and clawing as he twisted madly about, hands pressed to his vast gut. His screams and whines grew in volume, shaking the corridors of Windwrack. He rolled about on the floor, eyes bulging from their sockets.

Two vulpine forms appeared at the shattered door of the chamber and gazed with incredulity on the hellish scene. Dennizor and Nazzim, the twin sorcerers, said nothing as they watched. They saw Rammazurk rolling on the floor in his death agonies, and to their horror they saw presiding over the frenetic form a naked woman, her arm buried to the elbow in his mouth, as though she were ripping from within him his very entrails. She turned a brief, ghoulish smile upon them and at sight of her eyes, they fled.

Down a black corridor they rushed, and towards them from out of the darkness came a single, eerie figure. It was the Voidal. He had spent two days in Windwrack, trying to learn something about himself, hoping to meet someone who could help, but had uncovered nothing.

“By all the hells!” snapped the gaunt man. “What is happening?”

“She has returned,” blurted Nazzim, his face pale as he made to rush past.

“It is the queen—back from the dead,” groaned Dennizor. “She takes an unspeakable revenge upon the king.”

And the terrified sorcerers fled. The Voidal, appalled by the awful screams he had heard earlier, went quietly to the now still chamber of the king. A widening pool of sticky blood had run from the darkness of a corner, where something hunched and motionless slumped against the walls. The Voidal could smell the blood, but he felt compelled to examine the corpse. There was something grimly familiar about the scene.

Rammazurk was sprawled in a broken posture, his robes saturated with blood, his face a horrible mask of agony, his mouth gaping. From the shredded orifice hung the pulped end of an organ.

The Voidal turned, a sudden look of revulsion and recognition on his drawn features. Here was the appointed companion—the unseen, the unattainable yet ever near. Death.