*******
Pagan rose from his pallet, padded to the door and stepped into the courtyard of the tavern. Glancing up at the early morning sky he took a deep shuddering breath and exhaled slowly. He repeated this several times, then pressed his thumbs against his temples and rolled them in a tight circle.
His head was foggy, his tongue sore and his heart heavy. He had overindulged in the pipe with Casca, and the hagash had opened the halls of his memory. Memories of a bitter-sweet night.
What had been the most wondrous night of his life had swiftly changed into one of dreadful soul-crushing nightmare.
He walked across the tight-packed earth of the courtyard toward the well by the far wall. Dipping the bucket, he grasped a nearby long-handled ladle and took three deep draughts, before tipping the contents of the bucket over his shaven head.
As he spluttered and shook his head, he heard a low deep growl behind him. He turned around knowing it was Aeneas’s hound announcing itself. He grinned as the huge mastiff-wolf cross ambled forward.
Aeneas had found the grievously wounded hound in front of the Philosopher’s Folly a few years earlier. Despite his father’s misgivings, he had taken the beast in, and nursed it back to health. One evening, eyes alight with excitement, Aeneas had told Pagan of Ripper’s sire. The aptly named Killer, was a huge ugly mastiff of particularly bad disposition; the champion dog of the fighting pits. His owner was a cruel brute of a man. One fine day, the beast turned on his master, near-ripping his arm off before running away into the wilds.
Months later, some hunters returned bearing a litter of puppies with decidedly wolf-mastiff aspects. Only one survived. It ended up in the fighting pits, and like its sire, became champion until losing to an even fiercer dog. Of no more use, it was discarded and left to die.
Not surprisingly, Casca had no wish to share his and Aeneas’s home with a part-wolf beast. But Aeneas was a particularly strong-willed boy, and luckily the dog proved to have more of its sire’s temperament than its wolf dam’s.
Deeply unhappy at the situation, Casca had told Aeneas he would have the beast slain at the first unwarranted show of aggression. But the dog responded well to Aeneas’s gentleness and kindness. A deep bond developed between boy and dog, and Ripper, as named by Aeneas became part of the family.
Not wishing to return to his cramped airless quarters, Pagan walked over to a low bench with Ripper padding alongside him. Sitting, he stretched out his legs and scratched the dog behind the ear. Ripper settled down, pushed against Pagan’s legs, and looked up with wolf-gold eyes, a low growl rumbling in his throat. Pagan glanced down, and gently tapped the dog’s cold muzzle with his fist. “Shut up, mallet head,” he said softly. “Let you and I sit quietly and enjoy the early morning peace.” Ripper looked up, licked his hand, and let out another low growl. Pagan chuckled, leaned back against the backrest of the bench, and closed his eyes.
Warnings
Casca sat in a secluded corner of the library, a stack of ancient vellum-bound tomes and rolled up parchments before him. Something had been bothering him for a few days, a sense of unease he couldn't quite grasp. Then he’d had a disturbing dream the previous night.
He was alone behind the bar at the Philosopher’s Folly when a tall figure with a full white beard brushing his chest walked in. The man came up to the bar and fixed him with piercing blue eyes. “Beware, Casca, the Gualich are returning,” he announced in a deep sonorous voice. Casca was about to ask who he was, when the figure’s head and body parted down the middle, his skin peeled back, and a huge, many-tentacled monstrosity with a single lidless eye stood in his place. The eye grew larger, drawing Casca into its black depths. He screamed as agony tore through him, then he woke up trembling and bathed in sweat.
Brushing dust from a particularly old volume, he leafed through it, taking care not to damage the thin, yellow-aged paper. It was an account of the history of Petralis and the surrounding lands, penned by the philosopher-mage, Elander Zucross, about a thousand years ago. A history of a dark time long lost in antiquity.
In typical evocative flowery prose, Zucross described a time of almost cataclysmic war.
Behold the dark times of the Gualich shape shifters, who held Petralis and the surrounding lands in awful thrall, from their night-blighted towers in Tor-Arnath. These abominable beings, none knew from whence they originated – though rumour told they came through a gateway between worlds – fed on the life essence of living creatures. Their awful servants; the Suanggi soul drinkers or harvesters, and their demon hounds – the Bahktak, ranged across the land, leaving it devoid of all life. Their perverted taste was for human souls, but their depraved appetites also included every living creature that walked, crawled, or flew across the face of the earth. In time, even the trees to the tiniest blade of grass shrivelled and died.
Casca read on, shuddering at the illustrations. The chronicler was indeed gifted. He had managed to capture the demonic essence of the Gualich and their minions, as they leered at Casca from the pages like creatures from the darkest drug-induced nightmare of the most depraved necromancer.
These monstrosities defiled the very earth, were the antithesis of life itself, and inimical to every living being. Humanity had to stand against them, or the world was doomed. In time, an alliance of mages and warriors gathered from far-flung corners of the world, assisted by the Elementals of air, sea and land, raised their hands and stepped forth to face the depraved abominations. The very heavens trembled and the ground sundered, as the earth spewed fire and ash. Great winds blew and the waters rose to meet the skies. But the seven Gualich brothers; Beleth, Narok, Kbari, Kalor, Taron, Jakut and Surgat proved too mighty to be slain.
But the Alliance was mighty too. They were led by the sorcerer Castillan, and an awe-inspiring mysterious woman of uncommon radiance, whose eyes blazed like the golden globe that gives life and light to the earth. They drove the shape shifters and their servants wailing back to their desolate, barren world. The portal from whence they gained ingress to the world of man was sealed, and great was the rejoicing as the world could breathe again.
But woe betide all, should the abominations breathe the sweet air of the world again.
Sweat beaded Casca’s brow as he recalled stories told him by his departed father. As he grew older he had tried to dismiss them as mere tall tales told in wicked jest. But a part of him, which he chose to dismiss, had cautioned as to their truth.
Care abandoned, Casca turned the pages feverishly, and wasn’t surprised when Zucros made reference to another volume. An obscure treatise by the Chenghuan sage and clairvoyant, Zou Yan-Tse. He didn’t have to sift through the pile before him, for he knew exactly where it was.
Casca hurried down the stairs of the library as best his unsteady legs would allow him. He blindly brushed past the many acquaintances who nodded greetings to him as he made his way through the marbled great hall. Sunlight shone through the high-vaulted many-hued thick glass ceiling supported by marble pillars. Colourful tapestries depicting heroic figures slaying fearsome beasts hung on the walls beneath high stained-glass windows.
Cunningly fashioned air vents set low on the walls blew chilled air to diffuse the stifling heat. Dust motes glinting with refracted sunlight floated in the air. Casca had always marvelled at the breath-taking beauty created by the clever architecture, but had little eye for it today.
The library had been commissioned by the tyrant king, Serranos-Halbro III, long before Casca’s birth. A project of ridiculous vanity, considering the city had more pressing needs such as poor sanitation that spread disease, the tyrant had spared no costs, bringing in highly skilled craftsmen from as far as Chenghuan. Serranos-Halbro also known as the Scholar King – one of the kinder sobriquets anointed him – cared little for his subjects and their welfare.
Emerging through the huge oak doors onto the wide-paved avenue lined with the imposing red-brick houses of rich merch
ants and Petralis’s grasping city elders, Casca loped down the wide stairs fronting the library. Turning left, he made his way to the stables at the rear. He slipped the hostler a couple of copper coins before vaulting into the saddle of his bay mare.