Читать книгу Weirdbook #43 - Darrell Schweitzer - Страница 9

It was not Shango’s custom to meet with strangers in the dead of night.

Evil spirits of seventeen kinds were known to roam the Forest of Heavenly Streams, but a lone traveler was more likely to meet one of the three bandit tribes who called the forest home. Shango had walked the woodland path without company all day, but he was not alone. The blade of his great-grandfather kept him company, nestled in its scabbard of fine leather at his waist. Sometimes he spoke to the sword, as if to his great-grandfather. He asked it many questions, but so far it had never answered him.

Now the naked blade gleamed silver and orange across his knees as he sat before the campfire. A roasted squirrel simmered on a spit above the tiny flame, but Shango let it burn and blacken. A tree bole guarded his back while his eyes searched the darkness beyond the firelight. Whoever or whatever spied on him from that darkness would see the drawn sword. Perhaps the mere sight of it would frighten away any bandit or spirit who crept near. Shango did not want to kill anyone in this place. To spill blood in the forest was to invite the intervention of its spirits.

A soft wind made the dried leaves rattle as three men emerged from the dark. They wore the robes of swordsmen and masks of painted wood. The masks showed the grinning faces of red demons with golden tusks. Each man carried a sheathed blade similar to Shango’s, yet they were forged of newer steel by less expert hands.

Shango grinned to see that they were neither spirits nor bandits.

“Sangzara knows you are coming,” said the middle swordsman. “He offers you one chance to turn around and go back to Huan-gao alive. Will you accept his generous offer?”

Shango stood up now, the sword of his great-grandfather steady in his right fist.

“I cannot,” he said. “There is a man I must kill in Huan-zuo. I am aware that he serves Sangzara, but this does not concern me.”

“It does now,” said the middle mask.

The three men drew their blades in a single motion, but Shango was already leaping over the campfire, his steel sweeping wide before him. As his sandals hit the earth and his legs bent low, blood sprayed from three necks. Each man was slashed from ear to ear below the pointed chins of their masks. They clutched at their spewing necks, dropping weapons to lie among the dead leaves. Shango whipped his blade twice to clear it of gore, then slid it back into the scabbard. The twitching bodies of his assailants hit the ground a second later, and soon they grew still inside puddles of red.

Shango carefully removed each dead man’s mask. He set the blackened squirrel carcass aside and fed each mask to the campfire’s flame until all three were charred to embers. He was about to try and salvage some of the burned squirrel-meat when an unexpected voice startled him.

“Why do that? Why burn their masks?”

The voice spoke in his own language, flawlessly and without accent, not even a trace of the twelve regional dialects. It was almost too perfect, marking the speaker as an outsider who had mastered the formal tongue, probably from books. Shango turned and drew his blade, holding it at arm’s length. It pointed directly at the stranger standing at the edge of firelight.

His face was that of a young man, his odd eyes and dress unfamiliar. He could not be from Huan-gao or Huan-zuo. He was an outlander with a ludicrous robe of gaudy colors that flared to points at the shoulders. His dark hair was unbound and longer than most women of Shango’s people, windblown and disheveled in a blatant dereliction of style. Yet Shango was entranced by his eyes, which gleamed and swirled in every possible color.

Shango stood with his blade between them and felt compelled to answer the stranger’s question. The man seemed in no way dangerous or threatening. He carried no sword or any other visible weapon. Most of all he seemed entirely out of place in the Forest of Heavenly Streams.

“These men are the disciples of Sangzara, the cruel wizard who governs Huan-zuo,” Shango said. “They are murderers sworn to evil gods. If their masks aren’t burned, their souls return to Sangzara and serve him from beyond the grave.”

“You have slain many such men.” It was not a question. “Far more than these three.”

Shango lowered his sword. “They gave me little choice,” he said. “How do you know these things, Vagabond?”

The stranger laughed. “I suppose I must look rather bizarre to you,” he said. “I am a long way from home…” He lifted the multi-colored robe from him as if it were a light cloak, and cast it on the ground before the campfire. Now Shango saw that it was a thick-woven rug, not a cloak or robe at all. The stranger, dressed in a simple buckskin tunic, sat down on the rug and motioned for Shango to join him.

“My name is Magtone,” said the stranger. “Formerly of Doomed Karakutas…may she rest in peace….”

Shango had never heard either name. Yet custom and manners dictated his response. His head bowed slightly as he introduced himself, and then he sat cross-legged again before his fire. The carpet was soft beneath him. It had been a long time since he had felt anything so soft.

“How is it you speak the language of Huan?” Shango asked.

Magtone produced a flask of wine from somewhere on his person, popped the cork, and offered Shango the first drink. His smile alone convinced the swordsman that it was not poison but hospitality that he was offering. The flask was made of black glass and shaped by clever hands into something resembling a woman’s body. On Shango’s tongue the vintage was of extreme quality.

“It’s a long story,” Magtone said. “Language is never a barrier to me. Suffice to say I’ve been the victim of a few wizards myself. One in particular.” His eyes stared at the stars above the treetops, as if looking into the past.

“Did a wizard’s spell send you into exile here?” asked Shango. “Is that why you are so far from home?”

Magtone took back his flask and drank deep. He wiped his lip with the back of a lean hand and his magical eyes flared against the firelight.

“Not exactly,” Magtone said. “I’m looking for the great and ancient city known as Odaza, where gods walk among men. Do you know it?”

Shango nodded. “Only from legends. Do you seek a legend?” He took another drink from the bottle, which calmed his growling stomach. “Only madmen seek legends as if they were realities.”

“Ah, you may call me mad if you wish,” Magtone said. “But at least I have a goal. How many madmen can say that?”

Shango drank a last sip of wine and turned the bottle upside down to show his guest that it was all gone. “I don’t know,” he said. “You are the first madman I’ve ever met.”

Magtone laughed. “I’m a poet actually,” he said. “Or at least I was…”

Shango grinned and was about to ask for a poem. A sound from the darkness stopped him. He put a finger to his lips, and Magtone nodded at his request for silence. Something dark and heavy moved among the trees, sniffing at the air, coming toward the dead men in their pools of cooling blood.

A long arm, apish and purple with a black claw on every finger, reached from the shadows and grabbed a swordsman’s corpse by the hair. It pulled the body into the dark, where the sound of gnashing teeth and ripping flesh drowned out the crackle of the campfire.

“It’s only a forest demon,” Shango whispered. “The bodies will appease its bloodlust as well as any sacrifice. Stay near to the flame and we have nothing to fear.”

Shango and Magtone watched the arm slink back again, then again, as each corpse was devoured in turn by the skulking beast. Afterwards it slipped off into the moonlight and disappeared. Only pools of red mud and a few bones remained of the cadavers.

“This forest is quite a nasty place,” Magtone said. “Yet I hear there are two great settlements at either end of this path. I’ve been lost in the wilderness for so long that I crave civilization. I know your language as I know all languages, but I do not know your customs. I thought perhaps to travel in your company awhile.”

Shango shook his head. “You do not want to travel with me,” he said. “There will be only blood and death where I am going.”

“You told the masked ones you seek to kill a man.”

“Yes,” Shango said. “And I can accept no man’s help in this endeavor.”

“So you will not turn back, you will not accept aid, and you wish no company?”

“You begin to understand me,” Shango said. “Perhaps you truly are a poet.”

“And perhaps you truly are a killer,” Magtone said. “Is this the sum of your ambition?”

Shango turned away from his campfire guest. He did not want to lose his temper and break the bonds of hospitality. He spoke without looking at Magtone.

“The man I seek is named Shira Zo, Master Swordsman of the House of Zo. He leads the masked ones who serve Shangzara, and by their ruthless skill the wizard rules this province. Six times has war come to our lands during my lifetime, six times have the soldiers of Huan-gao and Huan-zuo matched blades in the sorrowfields, and six times sixty men have died. The last of these wars nearly destroyed Huan-gao, which lives now under the subjugation of Sangzara and the Zo swordsmen.”

“I see,” said Magtone. “You’ve come to slay the wizard and his champion for the good of your people. You are a hero, Shango of Huan-gao.”

“No,” Shango said. “That is not why I march toward death.”

“Well, if you’re not doing it for your people, then you must be doing it for yourself.”

“You are unusually perceptive, Poet.”

“You wear simple robes, affect a martial demeanor,” Magtone examined Shango with shimmering eyes. “You travel in humble style, with no need of comfort. You wear no jewels or golden rings. It is not treasure you seek…so it must be revenge.”

Shango said nothing.

“If you wish to travel with me, we leave at dawn’s light,” he said. “Get some sleep.” He rolled into the grass and rested his head on a mossy root, his back toward Magtone. The wine had made him terribly sleepy. He clutched the sheathed sword to his breast like a lover and closed his eyes. He could not speak to the stranger of what he had lost. Not here in the Forest of Heavenly Streams, where spirits often listened to mens’ conversations and took the forms of dead loved ones.

Magtone curled up with his back to Shango, wrapping the carpet about himself like a blanket. “I’m told there is a fine library in Huan-zuo,” he said.

“There was one in Huan-gao as well,” Shango said. “But not anymore.”

There had been so many wonderful things in Huan-gao.

So few of them were left now.

Despite his request to travel with Shango, the stranger was nowhere to be found when dawn broke. Shango stamped out the remains of his campfire and followed the forest trail toward Huan-zuo. Singing birds filled the trees, and the wind brought cherry blossoms like tiny fairies dancing through sunbeams.

Shango walked the better part of the morning until he topped a rise and saw the blue stone towers of Huan-zuo Citadel rising beyond the treetops. The ancient fortress crowned a steep hill rising above the town proper, which sat walled and gated, surrounded by miles of working farmlands. Shango walked a few more hours until the forest thinned out, and he followed the river that flowed through the center of town. Huan-zuo looked much as he remembered from previous visits, a collection of peaked roofs and painted temples gathered at the foot of Sangzara’s high stronghold. River boats with blue and yellow sails glided east or west, moving produce and livestock to and from the city’s crowded wharves.

Shango drank from a public well after he left the forest shadows. He walked in the sun like a man unworried and in no pressing haste. He did not stop to speak with any man or woman, although peasants dropped their baskets as he approached and fled to the side of the road. In the huts of field workers women drove their children inside as he came down the river road, staring out their windows with wide eyes. The men stood their ground with spade and pitchfork, as if they would stand a chance against a swordsman of Shango’s experience. He ignored them and entered the city gate, which stood open to evening traffic.

The guards eyed him warily and waved him through, moving aside their long spears.

“Shango of Huan-gao!” One of the spearmen called to him as he passed. “Master Zo awaits you in the Pit of Vipers. Seek him directly and none else shall contest you. That honor is claimed by the master.”

Shango gave a slight bow and resumed his walking. The townsfolk wore brighter clothing, but they were just as frightened as the country folk. They hid behind the doors of shops and hovels, children clinging to their knees and shoulders. Guards on every corner wore the demon-masks of Shangzara’s service, yet they made no move to stop Shango as he went deeper into the city. As the sun fell behind the nearby hill, the governor’s fortress became a mountain of darkness, a shadow that lay over the entire city. Perhaps the people who lived here no longer felt that shadow because they had grown used to its iron weight.

Shango avoided the blinking eyes of children as he passed by.

The Pit of Vipers was a staging ground for gladiatorial events and ritual combat. Such violent delights were popular in Huan-zuo as they never were in Huan-gao. Many things were allowed here with the wizard in power, things that used to be forbidden and unholy. The smell of rotting meat came to Shango’s nostrils as he walked the lanes below the high castle.

A crowd stood gathered into a circle ahead of him, most of them swordsmen wearing demon masks, some of them well-dressed noblemen making bets with one another. All eyes turned to Shango as he entered the plaza and approached the pit. The swordsmen and spectators together must have numbered in the hundreds, and they spread wide before him as he progressed. Finally he stood at the edge of a deep square hole and saw Shira Zo sitting cross-legged on the far edge. Between them lay the open space of the pit, and the mass of crawling, hissing serpents that littered its floor.

Shira’s long white hair was tied in a traditional top-knot, something Shango had forsaken years ago. Shango wore his dark hair in a single long braid now, like a southern-born barbarian. A drum began to beat somewhere in the crowded plaza, and someone played melodies on a wooden flute.

Shango sat down on his side of the pit, laying his great-grandfather’s sword upon his knees. Directly across from him Shira sat in the same position, naked steel gleaming across his lap. His eyes were closed as Shango approached, but now they opened. Shango hated the deep green of them, eyes so bright and yet so empty. He longed to see the light go out of them as Shira’s head rolled across bloody ground.

“You have been given the opportunity to avoid this death,” Shira said. He did not move a finger or a muscle, but he caught Shango in the grip of his emerald gaze.

“I have,” Shango said. “I refused it.”

“I see,” Shira said. “You are impervious to reason.”

“To seek revenge one must be impervious to reason and oblivious to fate,” Shango said.

Shira smiled. “You quote the Book of Elder Wisdom well. Yet your fate is to die here, today, at my hand. Can you be so oblivious to this fact?”

“The spirits of the murdered dead bring me here,” Shango said. “The children you hacked to pieces in Huan-gao…the women…”

“Your child…” said Shira. “Your woman. I remember them well…”

Shango winced. “You have no honor, and I have forsaken mine to face you. So I will gladly die to sink this blade deep into your heart. With my dying breath, I will rip out your life and offer it to the Gods of Hell. If that is to be my fate, then I cherish the unfolding of it.”

Shira grunted. His head turned sideways a bit.

“Then follow me into the pit,” he said, and jumped.

Shango followed him immediately, his sandals crushing the coils of several angry vipers. He swept the blade about his feet and legs, sheering off the heads of the nearest serpents, dodging their swift fangs as he cleared a tiny space for himself amid the slithering mass.

Shira stood calm amid the serpents, his blade poised. The snakes glided about his feet like kittens, raising not a single fang to molest him. Shango had known it would be this way. Pit-viper venom was deadly, but Shira had raised these snakes and weaned himself on their venom. This was his way of ensuring a victory—the murderer of innocents doubted his skill. He feared the kiss of Shango’s sword, or he would not have met him here. With a pit duel Shira could preserve his honor while giving himself an unfair advantage.

A viper dug its fangs deep into Shango’s heel as he leaped across the pit floor. The two swords clanged and silver sparks flew. Shango guessed the viper’s poison would begin to kill him in seconds, so he must take his revenge quickly. There was no time for anything but a killing blow.

The two men danced about the pit while their clanging blades sang a discordant song. The bored noblemen cheered at the lively entertainment, but the demon-faced disciples of Sangzara merely stared. Perhaps they would leap into the pit and finish what the vipers had started if Shango struck down his foe. He did not care. Let them slice him to bits, let the serpents live among his bones. He had come for only one reason: To kill Shira Zo.

Shira’s blade sliced Shango’s chest. Shango answered the hit with a shallow slice across Shira’s abdomen. The Swordmaster of Zo paused his attack to tear off his sliced and bloody robe. Two more serpents dug their fangs into Shango’s lower legs as he lunged for a killing stroke. Shira swirled and parried his blade, then scored a deep cut on Shango’s left shoulder. If it had been his sword-arm, the fight would have been over in that second.

Shango dodged a swipe that would have taken his head off. He sliced again and again at Shira’s defenses but drew little blood. The longer they fought, the more viper venom slowed his blood, made his limbs grow heavy. Death rose up from the earth like a black fog to cloud his vision. He fought on, dancing through a swarm of blows, the shock of each one shivering his arm bones. Sweat poured from his brow into his eyes.

No longer could he feel his legs at all. He countered a downward stroke but fell backward into the incensed vipers. They latched onto his body with curving fangs, at least a dozen more sending their poison into his blood. Shira stood above him now, grinning, bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts, sweat and blood glimmering on his naked chest.

Shango released all the energy of his dying heart. It flowed into his numb legs and burst like a flame from his eyes. He leaped to his feet trailing a cloak of serpents that would not let go of his flesh. For one brief moment, he saw the fear shining in Shira’s eyes. The snake-breeder had hesitated a moment to make his deathblow more dramatic for the crowd. In that moment, Shango’s blade flashed through his exposed neck. Shira’s head tumbled into the viper’s nest, and Shango fell to lay beside it.

Shira’s headless body stood for a few seconds, spewing crimson across the masks of the observers about the pit’s edge. Then it collapsed into the snakes, hand still wrapped about its useless sword. Shango’s limbs had gone completely numb. He bled from twice as many cuts as he had given Shira, and the venom of multiple bites overpowered his blood. He lay in the squirming pit but felt as if he were floating on the surface of a warm pond. The red demon faces staring down at him slowly withdrew. He turned his head and found himself looking into the face of Shira’s fallen head. Now the green eyes were truly empty, and the mouth wore a child’s expression.

As Shango lay dying in the pit of vipers, the faces of his dead wife and daughter came to him like spirits, floating above him as he faded. He spoke their names, but so softly that no one else could hear him. No one but the viper crawling past his cheek.

Suddenly Magtone was there above the pit, sitting on his carpet that floated like a cloud. It lowered him toward the pit floor, and he peered over its edge at Shango.

Shango coughed blood and blinked cold sweat from his eyes.

“Have you come to watch me die?” he asked.

Magtone shook his head. “That depends,” he said. “Are you truly oblivious to fate?”

“I am dying,” Shango said. “This is my fate.”

“If you wish to die, I cannot stop you,” Magtone said. “But I can save you. I have the magic inside me. I know the ancient words that mend the flesh and anchor the spirit.”

“I have taken my vengeance,” Shango said. “Now let me die.”

“Have you?” Magtone asked. “You said Shira Zo served Sangzara. Is that not the same Sangzara who dwells in this hideous castle? Did he not give the orders that sent Shira and the Swordsmen of Zo to Huan-gao? Your wife and child are avenged, but how many others have died in Sangzara’s reign? Will you not defy fate to avenge them too?”

“You…” Shango said, spitting more blood. His eyes grew blind, and he barely heard his own words. “You came for the wizard. You came to face Sangzara…”

“Not at first,” Magtone said. “But apparently he has the only library in town. Plus from what I’ve gathered he’s a terrible governor. Take my hand and live. Deny your fate.”

Shango laughed. Death seemed terribly humorous all of a sudden.

“I thought you had decided not to follow me after all,” he said.

“Oh, I followed you every step of the way,” Magtone said. “You simply couldn’t see me.”

With the last drops of strength in his body, Shango raised his bloody hand to find Magtone’s fingers. Magtone spoke a few words in a language Shango did not understand, and Shango erupted from the prison of his dying body. He stared down at his own mangled form lying among the vipers. He floated now beside Magtone, who stood on the floating carpet.

“Am I a ghost?” Shango asked.

“Not yet,” Magtone said.

“My body…”

“Too full of poison, I’m afraid,” Magtone said. “I’ll have to build you another one. But we’ll have time for that later.”

“You said that I would live,” Shango said. His arms and legs were transparent, and he was a weightless thing now. A cloud of living memory. Was he truly alive at all?

“You will, you will!” Magtone said. “Take up your great-grandfather’s sword.”

“But how?” Shango asked. “I’m only a spirit.”

“Trust me,” Magtone said. Shango reached down and took the blade from his own dead hand. Somehow his ghostly hand lifted the solid blade. Holding it gave his ghost-form more solidity. He almost felt alive again, weighted down with a modicum of mass and substance.

“Why did you do this to me?” he asked Magtone.

The carpet rose higher and higher into the evening sky, until Shango could no longer see his dead body, the Pit of Vipers, or the plaza of violent entertainments.

“I told you,” Magtone said. “I wish to travel in your company awhile. Call me lonely if you must. But first I must gain access to the library of Sangzara.”

“Sangzara will never allow such a thing,” said Shango. He still wasn’t sure if he was a living man or an undead spirit, but he did not want to consider the question too deeply.

“Then Sangzara must die,” Magtone said. “Besides, he wasn’t about to let your soul escape his kingdom after you killed his best swordsman.”

The carpet now floated level with the topmost towers of Citadel Huan-zuo. Shango stared down at the benighted world and a great dizziness overcame him. He was falling, hurtling like a meteor through a sparkling void, the howling winds of infinity assaulting his fleshless ears. He held onto the sword of his great-grandfather as if it were his only link to sanity. Suddenly he found himself in a dark hall standing before a black throne.

On the throne sat Sangzara, wrapped in the purple robes of conjury, a crown of black crystal rising from his bald head. His face was incredibly ancient, a mass of wrinkles with red eyes blazing like a devil from Hell. The nails of his fingers were longer than claws, tipped with poison spikes, and his teeth were black. A massive crystal ball sat before him on a pedestal of jade carved into twining dragon-shapes. A thousand naked skulls lined the walls of his sanctum, and a thousand black candles burned to support his dark arts. The statues of multi-armed devil gods stood behind him, their faces matching exactly the masks worn by his disciples.

“This outlander steals your soul, Shango!” Sangzara said. Shango stood before the wizard now in the center of an unholy sigil carved into the chamber floor. “But you are mine not his, as the souls of all who die in Haun-zuo belong to me. Spectre born of mine enemy you may be, but the power of my sorcery demands that you serve me. Kill the one who comes now to kill me! Kill him…”

A flash of light and Shango found himself beside Magtone again, atop the flying carpet. The moonlight flashed along his blade as they rocketed toward a broad window in the highest tower of the citadel. Shango’s arm moved of its own accord while the voice of Sangzara boomed in his head. “Kill him!”

Shango thrust the naked blade through Magtone’s belly and out his back. Magtone looked at him with a disappointed expression, yet there was no blood spewing from the terrible wound. Shango pulled his sword free and a mass of colored lights erupted from the hole in Magtone’s body. At that moment the carpet glided through the open window of Sangzara’s tower, crashing into the chamber of skulls with the obsidian throne.

Magtone and Shango tumbled across the marble floor, knocking over braziers and candles, spilling flame among the obscene tapestries and skull-lined shelves. Shango felt his human weight again, but still he was far lighter than he had been. When he leaped toward the black throne, he made it there in a single bound. He was a leaping ghost who somehow wielded a blade of solid metal in his phantom fist. Sangzara no longer sat on the throne, or Shango would have taken his head. The wizard was nowhere to be seen across the gloomy sanctum. Magtone lay on the furled carpet, convulsing and spewing rainbows from his gut-wound. He chanted in a language that confused the ear, and his convulsions grew less and less. Soon he staggered to his feet and closed the open wound with his hand and a final incantation.

“Why did you stab me?” Magtone asked.

Shango stuttered. “He forced my hand…”

“Of course,” Magtone said. “Sangzara commands the spirits of the dead.”

“Not only their spirits,” Shango said. “Their very bones will obey…”

The oaken doors of the chamber burst open, and the stench of the graveyard rushed into the room. A company of rotted mummies and demon-masked skeletons invaded the chamber of skulls. They brandished ancient swords blighted by rust, or battle-axes strung with cobwebs. It seemed the entire population of the citadels’ crypts had been called from their resting places and sent to destroy the intruders.

Magtone waved his hand and sang. A wall of fractured colors like a broken mirror separated himself and Shango from the shambling dead. They beat upon his magical barrier with ancient weapons but could not break it. Their stench was terrible.

“How can we kill those who are already dead?” Shango asked.

“I’m working on it,” Magtone said.

A loping shadow like a great hound dove through the barrier, shattering it with a roar and the gnashing of yellow fangs. The wizard had taken the form of a great black wolf. Shango recognized the cruel eyes of Sangzara in the creature’s face. The beast leapt not at him but at Magtone, who went down beneath its fangs. Shango watched the beast tear at Magtone’s body, which leaked light and sorcery as a man leaks blood. Then both of them were gone. They had landed on the flying carpet, and with dazzling speed it swept them both out the window.

The wizards’ duel was completely lost to Shango’s sight now.

The barrier separating Shango from the dead legion faded like a fog, and the mummies came against him with their flanged maces. He dodged and whirled with his newfound ghostly speed, still wondering if he were alive or dead. Then he realized that if he were no longer among the living, he had nothing to fear from an army of the dead.

So he waded into the stinking, fleshless warriors that sought to cut him down, hacking skeletons apart, taking off the shriveled heads of mummies, slicing dead limb from dead limb. Tomb dust and bone fragments filled the high chamber, and thunder shook the sky outside, where Magtone fought Sangzara somewhere above the world.

Shango sliced and thrust and leaped and cut. Never once did a dead thing’s blade or bludgeon impact his ghostly form. Perhaps he was immune to wounds now, being trapped between the states of life and death. He fought until the last mummy lay in curling shreds at his feet, until the last clacking skull shattered beneath his sandal. Only then did the citadel’s living guardians in their demon masks flood into the room to challenge him. There must have been a hundred of them or more, each one eager to avenge the death of his master.

Shango danced among them like a windblown flame. His flickering blade opened skin, vein, and flesh wherever it touched. Men howled and died and lost their limbs to the ghost-warrior’s skill. These were the same men who had slaughtered Shango’s people while he was not there to protect them. Disciples of Sangzara, Swordsmen of Zo, fanatics and madmen with a taste for blood. They would rather die than surrender, so they died in droves, rushing again and again at Shango. He cut them down without mercy, until the chamber of skulls was a chamber of steaming blood and twitching corpses. They lay in scattered pieces among the desiccated remnants of the undead. Shango stood atop the pile of dead without a single spot of red on his spectral robes, yet the blade of his great-grandfather dripped crimson from tip to pommel.

At last he sat upon the black throne and rested. He was not bone-weary or exhausted. He no longer had bones. He no longer felt the fatigue of bodily strain. But his spirit was tired now. Tired of killing. He wondered if his decision to follow Magtone had made him a coward. He should have died and joined his family in the afterlife. Instead he had taken Magtone’s hand and become something less than alive yet far more than dead. What would happen if he sat here in this seat of sorcery long enough? Would he fade away to nothing? Or would he be caught here to haunt this citadel for the rest of time?

Before he could contemplate an answer to such dreadful questions, Magtone came flying through the window on his carpet. His tunic was ripped to shreds, but his flesh was whole. Sangzara’s severed head, which had taken a man’s likeness once again, hung by its pale hair from Magtone’s fist. The withered face stared dumbly into infinity, the devil-fires in its eyes extinguished, lower jaw slack and dripping with gore.

“Sangzara is dead?” Shango rose from the black throne.

Magtone tossed the head into a firepit, where it steamed and crackled and melted into a black husk.

“I took his head off with a shaft of killing light,” Magtone said. “But his body escaped.”

“What do you mean it escaped?” Shango said.

“Exactly that,” Magtone said. “It sprouted a pair of black wings and flew into the deep forest. I could not catch it.”

“Headless…it lived?” Shango imagined his own flesh crawling, but it was a phantom sensation. He had no proper flesh now.

“Headless,” Magtone nodded. “This leads me to believe that Sangzara was never human at all. Probably some devil or evil spirit wearing the form of a man. But he is gone now. I’ll set spells upon this citadel that will disallow his return.”

“How did a poet come to know such arcane secrets?” Shango said. “To wield such power?”

“As I said, it’s a long story,” Magtone said.

Shango followed him into the great library at the center of the stronghold. A thousand years of tablets, scrolls, and tomes were gathered here, the accumulated knowledge of sages, sorcerers, historians, astrologers, and poets. Magtone began poring through volume after volume, searching for the secrets of Odaza, City of the Walking Gods.

Shango burned all the demon-masks he could find and set to guarding the library for weeks, forbidding any of the citadel’s servants to disturb Magtone’s study. He no longer felt the need for food, hunger, or sleep. Magtone did not seem to need any of these things either. He may have once been a poet as he said, but Shango knew the man was a wizard first and foremost. A weaver of miracles. Shango’s post-death existence was one of these miracles. He was not at all sure that he deserved such a gift.

One day Magtone emerged from behind a stack of books with a mischievous smile and fresh cup of wine. Sunlight flowed through the garden windows, and stray butterflies flitted about the shelves.

“Well?” Shango asked. “Have you found it?”

“The sages of Xu Shai all agreed that Odaza, City of Walking Gods, lay far to the east, even across the Sea of Ages. Now I know which direction to fly.”

“So now you will leave,” Shango said. “After all of this…”

“Come with me,” Magtone said. “I promised you a living body. Our long journey will give me time to fulfill this promise.”

“And if I choose to stay?” Shango said.

“Stay here? With the dead? Well, then I suppose you will eventually fade…perhaps to join the souls of your missing loved ones wherever they are now.”

“Stay and face oblivion, or go with you and face…what?” Shango asked.

Magtone smiled and his eyes dazzled.

“The unknown…”

“That I cannot do without the ones I love,” Shango said. “I cannot leave them again. I will stay here and hope to join them in the next world. There is nothing left for me in this one.”

“Are you sure?”

Shango nodded his head. While late-rising stars glimmered in the sky, Magtone brought him to a small graveyard just north of Huan-gao, where two fresh graves lay side by side. One of them was very small. Shango thrust the point of his great-grandfather’s sword into the green earth and sat down between the graves. He watched Magtone rise toward the stars on his carpet and disappear into the night.

When the morning sun rose above the graves, only the ancient blade was left between them.