Amaleth (Test Draft)
Testing 1, 2, 3
I here submit a glimpse at my upcoming attempt at a high fantasy novel. It’ll obviously be a longer form project than my current fiction and more indulgent of medieval/high fantasy elements rather than my customary forays into pulp storytelling. The inspiration draws from my Anglo, Czech and Scots-Irish heritage and their corresponding mythologies and folklore. Kind of a pallet cleanser for me. I don’t know whether I’ll serialize it here yet. I do feel like the pacing is a little wonky in this prologue, so if anyone has any suggestions, do let me know how it could be improved.
“Ope thy word hoard, o scop, honored windbearn. Pluck, for me, the jewel of Amaleth, the Swyrdcynn of the highland vales, who sought a sepulcher to plant therein his bone-house wearied, haggard, thin whence immortal tempest wind and age’s ghastly, maggot grin nevermore could him assail.”—
—The Lay of The Last Man (Leoth thaes Eindstmann)
Prologue
The hoofbeats of the rain sounded the clash of green clouds above. The crystalline drops did not shower lightly on that gray morning but lashed viciously at the heath. Any passerby would’ve thought the stranger mad to plumb such torrents without a steed to bear him.
Yet the man knew he couldn’t trust the nerves of any beast to bear him through the storm. No beast would obey his command like his own, two feet. With his cloak drawn tightly about him, he could weather any storm. Yet the thunderclaps stirred scattered thoughts, overturning rank memories in the darkest corners of his mind. He must find shelter, and soon.
Through the gale emerged the black silhouette of a great hill. As he drew nearer, he saw a hollow, like the mouth of a cave, cut into its slope. When he reached the mouth, he found it supported by a frame of old, oaken beams hewn along their length with rough runes he couldn’t read. Some twenty feet distant, he felt a gust of warm, pungent wind from the cave mouth. Its echo was resonant, deep, and guttural, like a ghastly sigh.
His fingers darted to the basket hilt of his long rapier. He had heard the dread tales of great wyrms that coiled like serpents in dark places. He heard grimmer tales still of the tombs of dead gods and the dread curses of the wordhoard that echoed eternally within.
Steel seeped into his veins, and his heart was whalebone at the thought of some challenge therein. Wickedness of ancient ages often opened the maws of earth and vomited forth their miasma. The cairns of fell beings so often tainted the creeping things and turned the soil into ash. It was the duty of any devout man to banish forth that evil.
He threw back his cloak before the icy gale that wet his stubbled face and chilled his bones. The rapier sang forth from its sheath and made a silver line before him. “Ho! Forth, damned shade! If any end you plot, then be it for me a hallowed requiem. Thy cold embrace I meet with colder steel!”
A groan like timbers in the wind trembled forth in answer. They shook until the very soil showered with veiny roots from the earthen ceiling. A voice like the bending of trees echoed in the man’s ears. “No more damned than you, swyrdcynn of the aged hills. Darker things dwell in clouds than rest in peace beneath thy feet. Thy name—reveal it me.”
A fire was in the man’s mind, yet a chill like ice settled in his heart. Yet the tip of his blade never wavered, but he stretched it forth further like an accusatory finger. “You know something of me, shade? What demon bought you that? I’ll buy thy name from you.”
“The wind, swyrdcynn,” answered the voice dreamily. “The wind betrayed thy steps to me. Smite at it if you must, but I think it will afford you little good. Reveal thy name, and I shall give you mine.”
“I fear no wind nor shade, nor that which lives nor dies. I have lived too long for that,” answered the man stoutly. “My name is Amaleth—Amaleth of the Lowland Vales.”
“Well met, Amaleth of the Vales,” replied the voice softly. What would you have of me?”
“Show me thy face. Be you man or devil, I will know by thy eyes if you be true.”
A bellowing sigh issued forth, and Amaleth felt the warm air again. It spun through the gale like a corkscrew, making a dry path through. He felt and heard the voice tremble along his blade, humming weirdly in his ears. Then he noticed a figure lingering in the shadows. He had no idea whether the man had just emerged, or if he had been there all that time, watching from the mouth of the passage.
The figure was barely visible in the shadow but appeared stooped and lean. His pallor glistened ghostly in the dark, and his face was partly hidden beneath a waterfall of long, white hair. The man, for man it seemed, crouched spiderlike just behind the edge of the cave. His long arms stretched out, bracing against the sides of the entrance. Amaleth saw the long, unkempt nails of lithe fingers that dug into the grass of the hillside. Lean and wolfish though he was, the man did not appear gaunt.
When the man spoke again, his voice echoed again, not deafening, but like the rumble of thunder above. His croak had subsided, and a voice like water issued forth, “You see enough of me, Amaleth of the Vales. You have sought and found. Is there a point such as that for me?” He stretched his arm forward and pointed a long finger to the tip of the proffered rapier.
“I am but a wary man, beordwen—barrow dweller,” replied Amaleth in a measured tone. He lowered his rapier and shifted it to the side, but did not sheath it.
“Cautious that you have found your quarry?” pondered the beordwen. “I see not thy face, but I take you for no elf, and certainly no dwarf. Thy voice is rough and thy bearing tall.” He placed a hand on his chest. “I am called Ospero. Mayhap in tempest, you thought to catch me unawares. Well, no cornered rabbit am I, yet meek as a lamb if you but answer my query. Am I to be a cushion for such a pin?”
“Again, I say no,” replied Amaleth, beginning to wonder if this man was some mad sorcerer or escaped convict. “Not if you mean no ill will. No quarry directs me, friend, and did I not say that I am a man?”
“Ah!” Ospero’s cry was short, and yet trembling. Amaleth couldn’t tell whether from relief or disappointment. “My will is weak, my body strong, yet the canker lies in my spirit.” He beckoned with his long fingers. “Come then, Amaleth. A guest is balm if not a harbinger.”
Amaleth stood a moment, undecided. Then he felt the chill in his bones that oft preceded the burning of fever. If not warm, he should at least be dry. He held the rapier at his side, but angled forward, and cautiously approached the hollow. Halting just beneath the entrance, his eyes narrowed at his host. He still could see little of his face through that mess of hair. Yet despite the croak of his voice, the eyes of his host were young, vibrant, and flashed strangely with a kind of kaleidoscopic brilliance.
Ospero turned, averting his eyes, and skittered ahead of Amaleth. Then, he caught himself as if in some act of embarrassment. Keeping his head lowered, he turned aside and glanced at his guest, whose hand lingered over the hilt of the rapier. “Please you, sir…to walk astride me? Would that put thy heart at ease?”
Amaleth stared enigmatically at him for a moment, then approached and stopped beside his host. He tried to see through the tangle of hair, but only caught the eerie shimmer of those eyes that seemed a kind of silver. Despite the stooped bearing, he perceived the man was wolfish, broad of shoulder, and not at all gaunt. He was naked but for the woolen goat pelts that served as a kilt. “It would,” he answered shortly, holding the rapier forward at his side.
Ospero did not seem to notice or mind the rapier, turning forward again and gesturing ahead. “It is but a short walk thence.” He walked alongside Amaleth, making sure to not permit himself to move ahead or fall behind.
Amaleth kept his fingers tight upon his basket hilt, his eyes ever moving around while keeping his guide in focus. He did not speak, but strained his ears to the sound of their footsteps, wary if they should suddenly duplicate. He felt the passage abruptly broaden, the air grow heavier, and the clumsy, cobbled floor give way to seamless flagstone. The sudden change startled him enough to stumble. His free arm flung out to grab Ospero and steady himself. Yet the hermit was not there. He staggered forth, barely able to keep his footing, swung around, and leveled his sword in a broad arc. “Ospero!” he shouted, heedless of who or what might hear. He half considered a mad dash back down the passage.
There was a hiss and sharp pop, and he whirled around in time for a sudden flash like lightning. He staggered back, swinging his sword impulsively, cutting only air. When his back struck the wall, he blinked his eyes to see smoke curling up and dissipating above a circle of marked stones in which a white flame glowed eerily.
“I do apologize,” said Ospero with a meaningful tone. “I am unaccustomed to visitors, and I forget others may be equally unaccustomed to spell craft.”
By the light of the weird flame, Amaleth could now properly see his host. He saw by his smooth features that Ospero appeared quite young indeed. Hardly twenty summers, by his reckoning. His eyes, he had initially thought to be silver. Yet now they appeared sapphire. “You are no mere sorcerer,” he observed solemnly. “You are stromcild.”
Ospero smiled and motioned for his guest to sit. “Indeed,” he replied smoothly. “You did not know this?”
“I knew only that a seer was said to live here.”
“I see. You are in need of a seer, then?”
“Yes.” Amaleth was less nervous and more curious now. He had never seen a stromcild before, for they were a rare and solitary people. Like berserkers, they were touched by the gods, yet in blessing or curse was anyone’s guess. “Can you render me this service? I will pay well?”
Ospero scratched his chin thoughtfully. “It is true. We read signs in the storms. We might even call down their elements as you saw me call forth the lightning. Yet signs are never clear. The language of the gods is hard upon the human tongue.”
“Then you cannot do it?”
“I can try, but the image will not be clear,” replied Ospero apologetically. “It is in my power to snare the furies that broil the winds and rain, but I cannot hold them long. While they will not lie, as they are servants of the gods, they are prone to riddles and half-truths. They would reveal as little as possible.”
“I will take what I can,” replied Amaleth grimly. “What payment would you ask?”
Ospero rubbed the back of his neck and bit his lip in deep thought. “What have you to drink?”
“A skin of water and one of mead.”
“I will take the mead—all of it. That is my price.”
Amaleth shrugged, took the meadskin from his pack, and handed it to Ospero. He then watched with some amazement as the seer quickly drained half the skin in a couple of gulps.
This done, Ospero wiped his mouth and focused on Amaleth again. “Now…what do you wish to know, friend?”
Amaleth leaned forward, and his darkly pallid features seemed almost hollow and composed of angles by the shadows of the eerie fire. The dark scruff on his face seemed to deepen the lines of age like a woodcarving, and his red eyes smoldered in the firelight. Across the top of his throat, a long, white scar stretched practically ear-to-ear. “I wish to know where I am to die.”
Ospero raised an eyebrow. “A common query requested most uncommonly. Most wish simply to know how or when they will die that they might prevent it. Think you your death is tied to a place? It will come upon you, come hell or high water. You can only hope to delay.”
“I seek not to avoid the unavoidable,” said Amaleth under his breath. “Yet I will not allow it to steal upon me like a thief in the night. My going is inevitable, and I welcome it. Yet I shall look it in the eye, and I shall be sure it is a noble death.”
“Think you the worm will not glut its fill on thy nobility as well as thy body?” queried Ospero somewhat incredulously. “What do you hope to save? A good name rings hollow in the ears of the ferryman.”
“Nevertheless, I would go in peace rather than despair. I would know that naught was wasted. If I go, let me go a man,” he stared into the shimmering eyes that flickered now shades of gold. “My lot be mine own, yet I shall meet it well, and I shall end a man of virtue—not of deeds. If I die, let me die knowing what I am. Therefore, Seer, where shall I meet it?”
Ospero’s face softened as he stared into the tired eyes for a time, as if reading Amaleth’s future in the lines of his face. At last, with a sigh, he clasped the meadskin in his palms, lifted his head, and chanted under his breath. His body began swaying back and forth with the rhythm of the chants.
When Amaleth looked, the flames seemed to sway with the seer. It was then he noticed eerily that the seer cast no shadow, even by the light of the weird fire.
Ospero swayed around in an arc and then forward again, this time pouring the rest of the mead into the dancing flames. Rather than put it out, the fire reddened and suddenly blazed upwards, high and thin. A musical timbre entered the stromkin’s chant, and he swayed his forearms as if fanning the flames to himself. The flames leaned towards him, threatening to lick at his chest. Then, they melted into black smoke that billowed around his knees. A chill wind swelled down the long passage and swept the cloud around him.
Then, Amaleth saw what truly baffled his senses, for he saw the greater part of the cloud sweep up before Ospero and arch back. Then it took a vague, yet lithe shape of something approaching human. The light flickered coldly from its body, giving him only flashes of the weird scene before him.
The thing swayed upright with Ospero, meeting his eyes with orbs of blue flame. While the seer held his arms outstretched and ceased his chanting, the thing leaned in upon him. Its smoky arms embraced him, and it leaned upon him like a lover.
Then Ospero swung his arms around and clasped his hands together in a sudden clench, like a flytrap. The thing suddenly blazed, its flesh hardening like coal streaked with veins of burning yellow slag. He sprang to his feet, leaning upon his captive and straining the thews of his sinewy arms. His eyes flashed a shimmering kaleidoscope of colors as he wrestled with the fury, shifting his arms around in an indefatigable grapple.
The fury screamed like the crackling whistle of burning wood. Its form warped and changed from humanoid to spiderlike, clutching at Ospero with its many burning legs. Then it writhed and tangled around him like a great serpent, its blue eyes smoldering down at him. Its shrieks echoed louder and shriller, like a knife in Amaleth’s brain.
Yet Ospero would not be shaken. He grappled and writhed with the thing around the room, its form flickering and flashing like lightning. He rolled and dragged it, chanting his hurried spells, to the mouth of the passage that led outside. Down its length, he ran with his captive until he cast himself down just before the mouth of the barrow. Throwing a leg over the fury and reining it back with an arm, he bared his teeth down at it. A hideous shriek burst from his lips that thundered down the passage like a chorus of the damned! The very stones of the barrow shook, and the fury quailed beneath his grasp, resuming its humanoid state.
Amaleth stared in wonder and no small amount of terror at the scene from the chamber entrance far behind. What terrible might was this, which called forth the very flames and brought them to heel? What manner of man was this that could wrestle the furies themselves?
Ospero spoke to the thing, and his voice was not human, but like the hiss and crackle of flames. Like a vulture, he loomed over his prey, whispering to the flames and listening to their terrible secrets. The thing in his arms cringed and recoiled from the heavy shower that threatened to snuff it. For a while they held there, communing captor and captive, their voices lost in the gale or become one with it. Then he stood, bearing the writhing thing above his head, his pallid flesh red, but otherwise unscorched. With a guttural howl, he thundered words of an alien tongue of which Amaleth only comprehended a single phrase, “Ohn Godzai Neiman”—in the name of the gods. Then the seer cast his writhing enemy like a serpent into the storm.
The fury writhed and shrieked terribly with a voice like an infant’s cry. Its body sparked, sputtered and flared, and with a noise like a gasp…it vanished in a wisp of smoke.
Thunder cracked the sky in splinters of lightning like a pane of shattered glass. The air howled in a guttural whirlwind that shook the cairn, the stones groaning again beneath the force. Then the thunder faded, and only the hiss of rain filled the void with white noise.
Ospero stood there a while, his arms raised with his eyes to the black clouds like a ghastly suppliant. His long fingers prodded and wavered like a puppeteer playing at his strings. His white hair billowed diaphanously around his shoulders like a wraith made flesh. Then, the booming shriek pealed forth again. A great sphere of red light swelled in his hands for an instant, and then burst forth in an immense ball of flame that was swiftly snuffed by the rain. Then, even the thunder died away while the rain fell all the harder. Yet no wind blew it.
Amaleth watched in awe and no small amount of fear some twelve yards from the mouth of the cave. He watched the stromkin in the distance, half-expecting him to turn to mist and fly away as legends purported were their wont.
Ospero finally turned and walked back to the cave. As he stepped beneath its ridge, the water was swept back from him as if blown by some alien wind. Then he stood as dry as if he had never left. He sighed and looked upon Amaleth, his eyes shimmering now like diamonds.
“Are you a god?” asked Amaleth in a voice hushed with awe.
Ospero chuckled mirthlessly. “Not a god, Amaleth of the Vales. Only their messenger when they deign to speak.”
“What of that—thing, that—fury?”
“To snare a fury is the work of men with need of a hasty answer—to drag from wights their witness and their news heard upon the ethereal winds of the astral plane,” explained Ospero mildly. “By my arts, I ensnared one. There are so many on nights like these, it was simple enough to lure one. I held him, as you saw, until he told me what I wished to know.”
“And your voice? That terrible roar?”
A wry smile crossed Ospero’s face. “Stromkin are gifted, if one may so call it, with the power of the voice. By my voice I call the storms to me, bend them, shape them, and if need be…destroy them. I dispelled the fury to the four winds and the waters of the sky destroyed him.”
“If he is a spirit of the storm, what need he fear from the rain?”
“While he was indeed a spirit of the storms, furies themselves are not the elements, but merely stir them up. I lured it with a willing heart and presented myself as a vessel. In answering my summons, it took on the properties of the medium of summoning.”
“The fire!” spoke Amaleth in sudden realization.
“Indeed,” replied Ospero approvingly. “I grappled with him and subdued him. I compelled him to tell me what I wished, lest I smite him to pieces and scatter him to his doom in the storm. In such smoky form, I made him vulnerable to the very element that was his nature.”
“Then it spoke to you?” prodded Amaleth. "What did it say?”
Ospero looked gravely at him. The wind and rain bore hard upon him, but he heeded them not. “It whispered many things to me, Amaleth. Yet of thy fate alone, I will speak. Aught else is for the gods.” He waved a hand. Then he lifted his long finger to point directly to Amaleth, his eyes sparkling with a cobalt hue. “Thy mind troubles over the nobility of thy death. I say to you, thy end shall be in the high places where the pillars of the earth bear aloft the Middle World. The wind shall sound thy dirge, the mountains echo their refrain, and the sapling bear you in her arms until both are whole again.” He lowered his hand and sighed deeply. “This I peeked through the curtain of thy play. Yet there too I found another meaning—a malignant jeer from a mouth that cannot lie. The wyrd of you and I are likewise entwined. What part I play or what end awaits me, I do not know. Yet I must see it through.”
“And will it bear fruit?” pressed Amaleth. “Will my end…work to some higher purpose? A vocation?”
“Purpose is a thing ephemeral. Only the gods know it, and even the whispers of shades and furies that pluck at the knotted threads of wyrd can but guess the greater pattern of its tapestry.” Ospero took him by the shoulder and turned him back to the depths of the cairn. “Thy winds are westerly, Amaleth, and thereon thy wyrd is writ into the very stones.”