Should a door be opened...close it. Pt.2
This is part 2 of what is now going to be a 3 part story and my submission to the Short Small and Scary/Big and Beastly event. I've started...so I'll finish.
Previously in Part 1
Corbis’s head drooped and then he shook it. He reached for the mead and filled himself a glass and drank it down.
“I shall have no more need of my vows, eh, Vastus, if I read your game right. Will I keep my head upon my neck at least, once this task is done for you? Will you tell me that and let me make my peace?”
Vastus placed the papers on the table. “Tell me what these are; what they mean, and of course you shall live. We are family. Now give me your hand and swear the juramentum.”
Part 2…
It is the second day of Guyzance the Inquisitor’s Hand of Days. His body has been cleansed; now begins a day of prayer. Twelve Sisters:Always come to claim him; this time with a crisp white linen shroud which snaps as it is unfurled. But, as the body is drawn from the niche, there is consternation; it has wasted –visibly shrunken in on itself –the skin is mottled with darkness; the face distorted as if the bones of the skull have softened. The Sisters:Always are hesitant to touch it.
The man may be dead, but the sickness lives!
A purge of fire is decided and volatile oil misted upon the body until it glistens; the winding sheet is soaked in boiled water ready to douse the flames. First the front of the body, then the back shimmers with the blue flame of the distillation before the damp sheet extinguishes the curling tendrils of cleansing fire. The Mortuarium fills with the scent of amber. The ritual performed, the twelve Sisters:Always, muttering and exchanging questioning glances, lift the corpse in its sheet but it has lost the stiffness of morbidity; it feels like a wax effigy, soft and yielding.
In the Secret Chamber, Belsay, now Inquisitor, enjoys the silence of the room after the pageantry of the investiture ceremonies. He dislikes the company of others outside of the Librarianship; exchanging platitudes with nobles and foreigners tires him, and, more than that, he has a desperate curiosity to satisfy. The black circle of the artifact taunts him and he picks up the journal again…
13th Day of the 4th Month - 2nd day of St. Nicholas’s Hand.
Inquiry: the Fourth.
This day I took rods of four elementals: wood, ice, iron and stone, one forearm in length and with gloved hands again, I did probe the secrets of the artifact. It is a magic that I cannot comprehend - each rod could be pushed its full length into the artifact, each would fully disappear, but could be withdrawn whole and intact, seemingly unchanged. It is a wondrous sight but confounding. The Ice rod, which had begun to melt, slipped from my grasp and fully disappeared into the void, instinctively I grasped for it my hand disappearing partly through the black interface before my senses returned and I pulled it back. My hand was unhurt but the ice was gone.
Emboldened and having broken the Order of Inquiry, I was compelled to abandon caution and discipline and plunged my hand into the consuming darkness. What a bafflement of the senses! By all rational perceptions, my hand should have appeared within the Sacris below, but as I watched through its open doors and pushed my arm further and further into the unknown, I saw nothing appear. The strangeness of this did bring forth my laughter, until, plunging my arm past the elbow I did suddenly feel at my fingertips the coldness of the ice rod, which I could then withdraw from this other place. One by one I dropped each of the rods into the void and was able to reach in and retrieve them. I explored the confines of the space beyond further with sweeping arm and suddenly it became clear to me! The artefact was a doorway which opened up into a Sacris somewhere else.
I have called for Rasthemonesi the Wanderer to return. I must enquire if he knew more of the provenance of this curious thing. From where did it come? From what is it made? Which sorcerer crafted it?
14th day of the 4th Month; 3rd day of St. Nicholas’s Hand.
Inquiry: the Fifth.
In truth a most horrifying day. On my return to the chamber there was coming from the Sacris the sound of something within. Something moving about. Thrashing! I realised that I had not closed up the artefact within its mirrored box! Of course! If I could push my arm into that other place beyond and withdraw it, then… the realisation shocked me! Quickly I replaced the 2nd mirror upon the artefact and instantly the sounds within the Sacris ceased.. I tapped at the door, but there was silence.
On opening it, a most incredible sight - the head of a serpent-like creature lay within the Sacris, deep blue ichor seeped from it - the cut was cleaner than the sharpest blade. I realised that covering the artefact must close the doorway, severing anything that was in that moment betwixt our realm and the one beyond.
Donning gloves, I took up the creature - clearly some form of serpent, but yet at the same time different from any I hm. He had paid the furnishings of it little mind since first entering, the Sacris chest commanding ad seen in the Vivaria, and with blue blood, not red. I placed it within a specimen jar. I will seek advices from the Zoologistium.
Reading this, Maestre Belsay looked about him in the room. He had paid little attention to its furnishings as the Sacris chest had taken all of his attention; and…there it was, on a shelf: a glass specimen vessel and within it, the milk-eyed head of the serpent, distorted by the spiritous fluid in which it was preserved and the curvature of the jar, but indeed, unlike any serpent known in the realm.
Baron Chollerford was losing his patience “Come on man! What does it say!? You must have gleaned something from these papers, you’ve had half the day. Do not think to deceive me; I will have a second opinion if you give me any cause to doubt your translations.”
Corbis looked up from the writing desk. He was chilled with fear which he struggled to keep hidden. He had learned the provenance of these papers almost immediately, and their content soon after. Baron Chollerford had stolen the letter from the Inquisitor, a letter addressed to Maestre Belsay, his successor. A letter of warning. What occupied Corbis more than the content of the letter was the realisation that he would not be allowed to live beyond this day, despite the promise given. He transcribed as slowly as he could, all the while trying to think of how he might escape this trap.
“Patience, prey lend me; this is not an easy task and I am but two years a Discipulus.”
Baron Chollerford hammered a fist onto the desk, “Tell me what you have learned thus far. What manner of papers are they; what do they speak of? What value can be had from them?”
Corbis saw in this his chance: The man seeks gold, not wisdom; that shall be my saving.
“It is a letter from the Inquisitor, Maestre Guyzance to Maestre Belsay; that, I am sure, you did glean for yourself by the wax of the seal alone...”
Baron Chollerford ignored the accusation and Corbis continued, his mind spinning out a threadbare story he hoped would cloak his ruse sufficiently well to disguise his true intent. “...but in addition there are pages, torn from a certain book. The Inquisitor is imparting secret knowledge to Maestre Belsay; it seems to be alchemical practices. There is mention of Orum, and other elementals; of transmutation; of the Fornax Magnus Artifex –the Forge of the Great Artisans –It hints of gold, my lord Baron. The Inquisitor has entrusted to Maestre Belsay a critical part of the treatise –in these letters and the torn pages –so that the whole secret might not fall into covetous minds and hands.”
“Gold, you say? What of gold?” The Baron’s tongue thickened with greed.
“Lord Baron, if I may seek the remainder of the book from whence these torn pages come…if I may have a little more time with the letter, and my Ancient texts…I may be able to proffer you a fuller exposition…” and now for the gambit… “...But I shall have to return to the Librarium…”
In the Hall of Sending, the Sisters:Always gather around the dais on which sits the body of the dead Inquisitor, Maestre Guyzance. They stand, swaying, in concentric circles, hands joined. On each side of the corpse stand six of the Twelve who have carried him, and Matriarch Hexamanene, head of their Order, has joined them to lead the ceremony. The shroud is unwrapped, the hideous shrunken corpse revealed. Before their eyes, patches of sickly brown and yellow spread across the skin and the corpse droops and flattens like it is melting into the stone. As one, the Twelve inhale in shock and pull back. The Matriarch, hands poised to touch the corpse’s head and heart, pauses too and in that pause the dead skin begins to split and tear open all across the cadaver.
Maestre Belsay had lost track of time, drawn into the revelations of the dead Inquisitor’s journal. He returned time and again to kneel and stoop over the Sacris, staring into the implacable bright blackness of the artefact on the altar stone, unable to overcome a sick fear that kept him from dipping his own hand into its mysteries. The sting to his cheek throbbed and the discomfort of it gave him pause from reading; he had forgotten to call the Sisters:First to treat him, so distracted had he become. Deciding that rest would best serve him now, he descended to his chambers with the Journal and retired to his cot, pondering on what the Journal had revealed to him.
He had read that Inquisitor Guyzance had made many more experiments to fathom the workings and the magic of the artefact. He had dropped a calcis lamp within it –no light from it was returned. He had had narrow trap cages made that were left within, seeking to tempt more things from the other side –they remained empty. Rasthemonesi the Wanderer had come and recounted details of the provenance of the artefact. It was rumoured to have once been the possession of a great Wizard, Telsantus. Famed for powerful magics with lodestone and cuprum, he was said to have conjured lightning from the heavens and brought down an angel. The angel had gifted him talismans and devices from the Gods; but, not satisfied, the Wizard had sought to follow when the angel departed. He had never been seen again.
Maestre Guyzance described what Rasthemonesi had demonstrated for him: that, by the employment of lodestones and slivers of finely milled mirror-glass, the artefact could be manoeuvred or even shaped; that it would bind itself to whatever surface it was placed upon, and, like mercurium, would always form itself into a circle.
And then there was the most startling entry yet; Maestre Belsay fetched out the journal to read it word for word again:
20th day of the fifth month. Lords’ Mourning Day
Inquiry: Extra Ordinarius
On seeking to withdraw the crucibles that I had deposited into the artefact the day before, I felt upon me a sudden and powerful grip - the grip of another hand about my wrist! I tried to withdraw my arm, emitting at once a bellow of surprise. I reached for the artefact instinctively, but then recalled what had befallen the serpent, the head of which graced my specimen collection. I stilled all motion lest the portal be displaced and my arm severed. Then, I felt something pressed into my palm and the fingers of another hand curl my own fingers about it. The grip upon my wrist relaxed and slowly, I withdrew my arm, not knowing what I might be holding; it was a folded parchment, and on it writing! At first I could not make out the script, but then it struck me - here a word, there a word –was it not a form of Ancient? I found that I could discern some vague meaning and quickly took up parchment to fashion a response…
Maestre Belsay struggled to believe the journal from that point, but he had seen with his own eyes the artefact, the serpent’s head. Would Maestre Guyzance fabricate a tale such as this? It was so strange that surely it was beyond the imagination of any man; and yet, could it still be true? He recalled the words of Guyzance’s Last, words that to him had sounded so much like a warning:
“Should a door be opened, close it…”
Maestre Belsay resolved that, come the morrow, he would steel himself to pass an arm into the void and test the veracity of the claims. If there was an intelligence beyond …what had Maestre Guyzance said they called themselves? “Scientisti” was that it?... then he would speak with them also.
His thoughts were disturbed by clamouring voices and a crescendo of footsteps in the corridor outside his chambers. His door burst inwards and the shock startled him up in his bed. An unfamiliar, desperate-looking young man, dressed in the habit of a Discipulus and a travelling cape and hood clasped at his neck, ran into the room, closely followed by a spluttering aide and a sanctum guard, fumbling to unsheathe his sword.
“Maestre!” gasped the stranger, “I am Corbis, Discipulus and cousin to the Baron Chollerford. I bring information meant for your eyes; information from our late Inquisitor which the Baron has intercepted. I beg sanctuary! The guardsmen of House Chollerford seek me; they mean to kill me, or worse! And…I have a message, meant for you but stolen from the Satchel by the Baron. You must have it!”
“Do you know the price of a guard as skilled as the one you maimed, Nephew?” Count Otho’s whispered words slid, hot with menace and wet with spit into Baron Chollerford’s ear, punctuated by the Count’s deliberate grunts.
The Baron snorted through his nose, head down, jaws clenching and unclenching. He strained against the massive grip of the two guards that held him; the weight of his Uncle’s sweating belly pressing on him. It was not the act itself –that was common enough, sometimes even enjoyable –it was more that the Count saw fit to punish him thus, in person and in the company of serfs. It was a humiliating debasement and all the more dishonourable to be made the equal of those smirking concubines who looked on, tonguing their painted lips. And for what? For the maiming of a Guard? A serf who had failed the simple task he had been set?
“I can tell by your resistance that you do not…No…you… do…Not!” Count Otho panted, groaning out the last word with a shudder, then leaning over to hiss in the Baron’s ear again. “You do not even have estate enough to afford a single guard of your own. I am Lord in this house and you are as much subject to my Right of Lordship as any serf under my roof. Besides, my beautiful boys here liked that guard better with his hands and his tongue, didn’t you?” He reached down to pat the concubines’ heads, then stood back with a final grunt of satisfaction.
The Baron broke, “They disobeyed my Order! Mine! A Baron! You hold a serf above a Baron? Above the family?”
“SILENCE! Dog of a Nephew. That man was mine, not yours to waste; that is the wrong you have done me! A disobedience that cannot be ignored; you must know that. And we are family only by marriage, a marriage that I took because it suited me better than to slay the entire nest of your family.”
The Baron stood straight and rearranged his robes as the guards released him from their humbling grip. He turned to face his Uncle, eyes bulging with hatred. The concubines dabbed at their master’s groin with towels, lifting the folds of his paunch to do so and holding open his silk robe. The Baron felt the warmth of his Uncle’s punishment trickle down his leg. He held in his rage; yet, it burned so furiously in his eyes that his Uncle saw it clearly and smiled back, nodding, slowly turning one thick ring about his wedding finger, toying with it as the concubines wiped him clean. “Speak your mind, Nephew,” he said, closing his robe about him.
“What was done to the guard was justly deserved! The men lost everything that was to be brought back to me. One of them even fell by Corbis’s own hand! They lost Corbis and what he had of mine upon his person. The punishment was just… but yours was not. I shall not forget this… Uncle.”
“And nor shall I!” chuckled the Count, grasping his own balls through his robe in one fat hand and shaking them at the young Baron. “Ah! How your lust for a vengeance grows! Bring it, Nephew, bring it! I shall be proud to have given you some balls of your own at last!”
The Baron strode towards the door, molten rage cooling, setting to a stony purpose. As he passed the most brazen concubine, he grabbed his oiled hair and jerked back his head to growl softly into his ear, “Your master’s heart is weak; I felt the beating of it against my back. Think on that!”
It was only the third day of his office as Inquisitor and Maestre Belsay was in torment. The rude entrance of the Discipuli Corbis in the night and his garbled warnings were unsettling. Belsay was frustrated that his predecessor had left him, not a boon of valuable secrets but an accursed magic that he knew not how to take advantage from. And there was the matter of the poisoned guard in the livery of Count Otho, no less! Whilst the body was turning into soap in a vat of aqua regis, there would still be questions. How he hated politics. At least the Sisters:First had attended to see to the throbbing sting on his cheek. Their medicines seemed to be working, although he felt exhausted and whilst the pain and redness had subsided, the skin now had sickly yellow hue. The Sisters had taken muttering notes of his symptoms in their tractus medicae before leaving him.
He sighed. Who could he turn to for counsel? He was loath to approach any of the Librarians of his former cohort; not so soon after his investiture –what would they think of him? Despite Belsay’s dislike of the old Inquisitor’s flippant disregard for the Order of things and his bending of traditions, Belsay had found in Guyzance a reliable mind and sage words. Then a thought came to him:
Perhaps this Corbis can be put to use…what he knows cannot be unknown, and he has demonstrated a rare quickness of mind to have dispatched Otho’s Guard and escaped Baron Chollerford’s grasp to seek sanctuary here. There is nowhere else he can go, and so like it or not, he is beholden to me.
Maestre Belsay saw the sense in having a confidante whose loyalty was surely bought and paid for with the protection of Belsay’s office alone. He called for his aide to fetch Corbis from his room. While he waited, he opened Maestre Guyzance’s journal once again.
First day of the Sixth Month: Adventus Solsticium
Inquiry: Extra Ordinarius
Today from across the second realm I withdrew a further tract in this hybrid script of Ancient. It becomes ever more accessible to my translation, the more correspondence passes between myself and the intelligence beyond, if a man it be at all. I had bid him tell me something of himself and of the world across the magical juncture. To persuade him, I had passed through a short tract of my own that he might know the nature of the informations that I sought in return.
I was not prepared for what his response revealed. The import of it cast me at once into a terrible fugue of fear and doubt. I paced the chamber, desperate to seek the comfort of another mind with whom to share this burden of knowledge…but who to go to? Belsay? He has won round sufficient of the Cohort, if rumours be true, that he shall wear the carmine when I am gone. The Gods know how he has done it, for I do not; he has the character of a fish and the imagination of a statue. No…I cannot trust Belsay with this; his mind will shut like a clam –this is all far too far from our written Orders for him to reflect any sense upon it.
In such a state of intellectual solitude I fell to instinct and resolved to end my peregrinations into the unknown place so strange and at once, so familiar. I burnt all of the messages that had passed between myself and the “Scientist”, lest this burden of mine fall to another. But no sooner had reduced them all to ash, than I realised my folly: no use could come of running, if what he had written was true. Quickly, whilst the memory of it was firm, I took up pen and quill and wrote down as much as I could recall.
To be continued….in Part 3
I urge everyone that has not yet tapped into the wellspring of horror that is the Small and Scary/ Big & Beastly event to do so - the index is here
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What an excellent part 2, Nick!
It feels like you’ve spent weeks creating this story and I can’t wait for part 3 (what a bonus for it to be longer than intended!). The Gormenghast feel continues…
As a little aside - I’m sure it’s me, but the purge of fire description reminds me of the blue flame of lit brandy on a Christmas pudding - it made me hungry!
I’m so glad I saw these continued! Amazing job.