The Temple of Skulls

Magan pressed onward through the jungle darkness, bloodied and exhausted, his body aflame with a dozen lesser wounds. The undergrowth ripped and tore at him, and he used his sword to hack at the vines that barred his path. The moon was high, and though the vaulted canopy of trees he saw the glow of it like silver whenever the branches parted enough to let it through.

Weariness dragged at him, and he ached to stop and lay down his body on the steaming forest floor and rest. He dared not, for he knew they were coming behind him. He did not hear them; he did not see them, only the blood-scent on the night wind bore any warning of their approach. The huntresses of the black jungle, the shapechangers, the Shanjama.

He did not know how long it had been since the ambush. A day? Two? The days were filled with mist, and the rains that fell at noon obscured the sky. He wandered in among the mighty trunks of the ancient trees, ever watchful for the many dangers of the highland rainforest – the snakes and venomous insects, the hungry reptiles and stalking leopards. Now he was far from the places known to men, deep in the trackless jungle, and he knew worse than vipers awaited him here.

Yet he dared not turn back, for fear of the certain death that followed behind him. He had entered their taboo lands, and they would not turn aside. The witches were on his scent, and he knew he would not easily lose them. He sought a river or a stream in this hellish, humid place. Here where water dripped from every leaf and vine, where it ran down his black skin, mixed with his own sweat and rotted his scaled armor from his body hour by hour – here he would gladly slay for even a rivulet of a stream that he might use to hide his scent.

He fell back against a root-bole as tall as a bull and panted for breath. The night was alive with the sounds of the jungle – the screams of insects and the howls of apes. The ground on his path sloped upward, and he knew he was being driven higher and higher into the mountains from which no man returned. He prayed then to Maklanjalu that he might live to see the Golden City again – to stand before the king and tell this tale.

Magan fought on through a veil of vine-growths, and he was suddenly assaulted by the stench of dead flesh and the sudden sawing of thousands of flies. He shrank back, straining to see in the darkness, and by the faint moon glow he saw a stone pillar, twice as tall as a man. It was covered in blood, and at the top were wooden stakes, set in sockets on the ancient stone. Each stake bore a crown of human skulls, some ancient and stripped bare, some new and red, dripping with flesh.

He saw there, on the moss-grown black stone, the demon face of the most terrible race – the Ungogo. The blood-drinkers and the stealers of heads. This was their mark, the sign left at the gateways of their country. Magan felt his belly churn within him, and he staggered away from the awful marker, retching. The smell of rotted blood was heavy and rank in his lungs, and he almost turned back. What could be more awful to face than the Ungogo?

A scream came from the lowlands he left behind, a high shriek that sounded almost like a woman, but was not. It chilled him underneath the sweat and heat of the jungle. The Shanjama were still hunting him, and he was caught between one horror and another. He turned and peered into the uplands, toward the dim shape of the Blood Mountain far away. If he turned back, the witches would murder him in the night. If he went on, he might at least use one horror to slay another before he died. And he might find away to die cleanly, like a warrior.

Another scream made his decision for him, and he turned his path back toward the slow upward climb. Sword in his fast, teeth clenched and every sense straining for danger, he pushed onward into the night.

o0o

He woke not realizing he had slept, a dream of the ambush ripping him awake in a tumult of screams and bestial cries. The caravan had thought to avoid the bandits of the coast roads with a cut through the mountains, and then the flooded bridges drove them deeper into the uplands, looking for a route. It was the rainy season, and in this place that was a season of death.

Magan gasped for breath, his heart racing, and he staggered up from where he leaned against an outcrop of rock. He had only stopped for a moment’s rest, but his weariness betrayed him. He gripped his sword and held very still, breathing softer and softer. The jungle was silent around him, devoid of even the normal cries and buzzes of night animals. Something was here, something close. He looked around him, trying to see anything in the breath before dawn, and then he thought to look up.

The trees above stood like sentinels, arms spread over him to make interlaced shapes that fooled the eye, but then he saw a glow, and fear ran through his blood like poison. A green light flickered and delineated a shape like a man, and it moved, swaying in the shadows, form limned with foxfire. He heard a whispering, like a song so soft it could not be heard, and he had the impulse to go closer, to lean in and hear it, what it said.

The shape folded and contorted, not like any human has ever moved, and it climbed down the trunk of the great tree with spidery movements, each limb seeming to move of its own. Magan saw eyes now, alight like the greenish phosphorescence that wreathed the body. It watched him, eyes never turning away no matter how it moved as it climbed down, down like a spider coming to hunt.

Magan felt his body drifting away, as if the pieces of him were plucked away by that soft whispering. Arms and legs and body unstitched and raveled until he was only a head, only eyes watching the unspeakable come closer, ready to whisper dark secrets into his ears, into his mouth. To lick his tongue and bite his heart. He saw it clearer now, the long arms and legs, the large head slung low between the shoulders, the long jaws that bared long teeth as it hissed and muttered and came to the ground. It hunched there for a long moment, and then came towards him, arms reaching out to pull it forward. One long hand closed on his leg, and he convulsed to life.

The revulsion of that touch hurled him from his lassitude, and he hacked down at the thing with a cry of disgust. He snatched back its hand and scuttled back from him, body low to the ground, head at an unnatural angle as it watched him. It hissed and Magan shook off the spell of that sibilant voice and gripped his sword hilt in both hands.

It still glowed, light coiling and crawling across the skin like worms. He saw the long claws on its fingers, the feathers and bones twined in the shaggy hair. It gaped jaws in a wide grin, dripping glowing slaver on the loamy earth.

He attacked, and it was too swift, jerking back from him, then darting in to swipe at him with long claws. His armor was falling apart, but it still turned the blow aside and he struck back viciously, calling on all his old prowess, and his sword bit into the thing’s arm and laid it open to the bone. Blood gouted forth and the creature gave a terrible, clawing hiss, but Magan gave no quarter. He lunged in and stabbed into the thin, glowing body, ripped his sword loose and drew it back for a killing stroke.

The thing was too quick, hurled itself on him in a suicidal attack, and he was sent crashing to the earth with the snarling, spitting thing on top of him. Claws raked at his shoulders and he saw those teeth coming for his face. In desperation he brought up the hilt of his sword and plunged the crossguard into one glowing eye. The thing howled and drew back far enough for him to smash the pommel into its head.

He shoved it away, but it was inhumanly, enormously strong, and he could not get entirely free. It clung to his legs and began to clamber back up his body, hissing as it dug claws into his flesh. Magan set a foot on that vile face and shoved, sending it back. It twisted to bite at his leg and in that moment he brought his sword down and clove the thing from shoulder to heart.

Blood poured out, and the creature’s torso flopped apart. He ripped his blade free and the thing crawled off him, mewling and wheezing. He did not wait to see if it would die; he reeled to his feet and chopped at it, severing an arm, and then a leg, and then he swept the head from the neck and staggered back to watch the body twitch and flail on the earth.

When it was still he stood and breathed for a long time, feeling the sting of many small, new wounds. His sword was thick with dark blood and he grabbed a fistful of leaves and cleaned it as best he could. The day was coming, and even through the layers of mist, the sun gave enough light to see by.

The body lay still, the glow fading from the dark flesh. He went closer to it and turned the head with his boot so he could examine the features, and it made him shudder. His mind reasoned that this might once have been a child of the race of men, but it was a dark thought. He could not look at the lengthened limbs, the clawed fingers, and the bestial jaws without imagining the nighted ages of twisted existence that had made this from a human form.

This was an Ungogo then. One of the blood-feasters, the race of devils who worshiped forgotten gods with human sacrifice. He was in their country, and now he knew they were not a legend, not some forgotten tribe who used fear and skulls to keep enemies from their lands. They were real.

He looked back, through the trees, and saw the land descending away toward the coastlands. Mist cloaked the vistas, and made the distances seem greater than they were. It looked green and tranquil. He knew it was not. He knew he was hunted, and his pursuers followed and would not be easily turned aside. If he waited to see if they still followed, they would surely slay him.

Magan offered a silent prayer, and went up into the hills, deeper into the country of demons.

o0o

In legends there had been a city here once. A place of great buildings of stone, carved with ancient skill like no man now possessed. Once this was a land of men both brilliant and brave. Now it was a tomb, the jungle growing upon the ruins like fungus upon a corpse. Magan saw the ruins as he made his way through the highlands. He saw ancient stone green with moss and lichen, marked with ancient relief and symbols worn away by time.

The nature of the forest changed, and the mist became ever-present, shrouding everything like smoke. The huge, heavy trees gave way to flowering plants and ferns that towered over him, like relics from some elder age, before men walked on the earth.

He saw monuments draped in whitened bones and marked by blood turned black with time, and he watched everything around him, wary. The sighing of insects and the chitter of birds was reassuring – it told him he was not hunted, not this moment.

Mist gathered and dripped into heavy leaves, and he paused long enough to drink. He had not eaten for perhaps a day, maybe longer. He kept watch for fruits he might eat, but these plants were strange to him, and he did not trust them.

The first low sound made him pause, listening, watchful. Then he heard another, and another. A drum, a great, heavy drum beating somewhere ahead, above him. Hidden in the mist. It was a deep, rolling, inimical sound that made him clench his hand tight on his sword-hilt. He saw in his mind a hundred, a thousand creatures like the one dead behind him, all gathering to come for him. He was in the heart of their lands, and they knew. They knew he was here.

He turned and looked back down from the slopes of the mountainside, saw the jungle rolling like the sea as it faded away into the mist. If he turned back now, would the Shanjama be waiting for him? He could imagine them crouched in the trees, waiting for him to return.

Magan shook off his fantasies, and he determined he would only follow what was real. He looked at his sword and the dried blood on it, and that was real, as was the steel, and his hand gripping it. By that he would live.

He fought on through the jungle, and the undergrowth became heavy again. He had to cut his way through, chopping off the heavy fronds and vines that blocked his way. The light of the sun as it grew high filtered down through layers of mist and verdure, until the light was a hollow green all around him, and so when he saw it first, he was not certain it was real.

What seemed an uprising of the soil, or a ridge, was revealed as a wall, or the remnant of a wall. The stone was stained green with moss and rain, vines crawling over the battlements and cracks in the ancient stone. Beneath his feet the road emerged from the soil, a path of broken stone choked by weeds that led into the arched gateway. Magan followed it, listening, watching. All he heard now was the steady pulse of the drum, beating like a heart. All else had fallen silent.

He entered through the gate of ancient ruin, and stepped forth beyond into a place of dark wonders. The trees here were immense, and he saw that each had erupted through a stone tomb, bursting apart the masonry and leaving it scattered on the ground. The tree-trunks wound and coiled, and each one bore bones and skulls knotted in the wood, carried upward from the earth by time.

Another sound came from beneath the low throb of the drum, and it was a moment before Magan could be sure what it was. It was a whispering sound, a rushing sound, and it was only in between drum-beats that he heard it at all. It seemed to breathe around the still forms of the grave trees, and then he realized it was the rushing of water. It was the sound of a great cascade, muffled by distance, but not too much distance. It was close.

He moved more quickly among the trees, around the great tumbled blocks of stone from the destroyed necropolis, and then he began to see them. They stood on branches and in the forks of the trees above him, and their bodies glowed with the same phantom gleam. The watched him with their glittering eyes, and it seemed more appeared with every drum-beat, as if materializing from the air itself.

His flesh crawled, and he almost broke and ran, but he felt in his belly that if he ran, he would be instantly rent to pieces. He felt the weight of their attention, watching him, weighing him. They wanted something, and that was more hideous to contemplate than any lesser death. He made his way through the forest, the rush of water growing to a roar, and then the trees fell away and he looked upon the temple of the Ungogo.

It stood on the edge of the forest, against a sky of eternal mist. The pillars and stones that shaped it were long hidden by festoons of skulls, bound in place by mud and sealed and drenched in sacrificial blood. Magan smelled the black stench of the gore, long rotted in the oppressive heat of the jungle; he saw the clouds of flies that swarmed over the fresh outpourings. The gateway was open, beckoning him, and his guts twisted inside him.

He turned and looked back, and the Ungogo were there. They stood upright on the ground like men, gathered in a great arc to hem him in, so there was no path to escape. They breathed in time with the thudding of the drum, coming closer, pressing him on, and he knew they meant him for some sanguinary rite of their blasphemous worship of dark powers.

In that moment he wondered why they would allow him to approach their dark fane with his sword in hand, and with that thought he looked up in time for two of them to drop upon him from the high branches of the trees. He cut savagely at one and it dropped to the earth with entrails spilling out, howling its agony. The other one fell on him and sought to grasp him with its talons, and he fought to get free with terrible, desperate strength. He thrust the thing away from him and saw the mass of them come for him, screaming.

He ran for the temple of bones, death howling at his heels. Green light shone down through the mist, and he threw himself through the doorway and would have turned at bay, but he saw a figure rise up within the roofless shrine, and he faced it.

One of the Ungogo waited for him there, taller than the others, arms marked by ritual scars and bound with copper and bone. It was old, its hair white and strung with teeth, its eyes pallid and blind-seeming, yet they still glowed. It held high a long knife like a jagged fang, the hilt bound with strips of leather and vines. The other Ungogo would not follow within the temple, and alone he faced this gaunt figure of depthless savagery.

It rushed on him with hideous speed, and though he cut at the leathery body it was too quick for him. He parried the strokes of the bloodstained blade that came for his flesh. The priest was quick, and it came for him relentlessly. They fought in a circle, and then it forced him back, and back. A glance showed him the blood-splattered altar, draped in viscera and flayed skin, and step by step it forced him closer to it.

The thing hissed at him like a serpent, slaver dripping from yellow fangs, and he knew that once he was flayed and dismembered, his flesh would be their feast. It was that last thought which drove him to the final effort, and he leaped back upon the altar of death. The priest came for him with dagger keen and hungry, and Magan struck it such a blow that the ancient iron shattered, and in the moment before the thing recovered, he hacked off its head with one two-handed stroke.

Blood poured from the empty neck, splattering the stone, and he heard a terrible how go up from the waiting host of Ungogo. They had slavered in anticipation of his death, and now they were denied, and their wrath overcame their superstitious fears. They rushed toward him like a flood, and he hurried to put his back against the rearmost wall of the temple, and there he spat blood on the defiled stone and prepared to die.

The first of them reached him and he struck as though his arms were made of storm-fire, hewing down two of them and leaving them twitching upon the earth. There were too many of them, and he knew he could not kill them all, could not escape. He wished only to make them pay so dearly for his life that they never forgot it. He slew another one, and then the mass gathered itself to leap upon him in a single inexorable rush.

Into that moment a great scream came down, splitting the dense jungle air, and the Ungogo were suddenly off guard. He heard some of those in the rear screaming in terror and pain, and then the mass of them began to scatter. He cut down another one as it fled him, slashing open the backs of its legs and then splitting open the unclean skull. The stink of spilled brains made him gag.

Another scream, and then something leaped over the wall of the shrine and came toward him. Magan pressed back against the rear wall and watched, trying to see. The shadows were deceptive, and he could not make out a shape, but then he saw it was upright, like a human, but it was no Ungogo.

It stepped into the light, and he saw it was a woman. Naked, she had smooth black skin and long braided hair set with beads and bones. She came toward him with a slow, almost uncaring tread, and he saw the dark tattoos and scars marked on her skin. Her eyes were golden, like molten brass, and he felt fear coil upward into his heart.

She bared a mouth of dagger teeth, and he tried to see a way to escape. The witch came closer, and he heard behind her the sound of her sisters destroying the Ungogo as easily as he might crush a hill of ants. He watched as her skin rippled like shadows under the leaves, and she changed.

Her body flowed and twisted and grew, and she took another step and it was on all four paws, her body a muscled shape of black fur. He saw the golden eyes and the dagger teeth as long as his forearm. Her growl rattled his bones, and he knew his sword was useless. No blade could cut the flesh of the Shanjama, the Black Witches, the shapestealing huntresses.

She crouched for an endless moment, and then she sprang, a blur of ebon death coming for him. He brought up his sword and drove it against her chest, felt it bend as the steel would not pierce, and then her claws lashed for his throat and he flinched aside. Her blow fell heavy on the wall, and the ancient stone broke beneath her weight.

There was a moment of vertigo, and then Magan was falling, out in the misty light. Heavy stones crumbled around him, and he let go of his sword and grasped for a handhold, caught a length of vine and hung there. He looked down and saw the vastness of the drop below, vanishing into the mist that rose from the waterfall. Now, at last, he saw it. A titanic flow, rushing over rocks and plunging down to unmeasured depths. He was dangling over it, at the very edge of the cliff.

He looked up and was face to face with the witch, her bestial face coming close as she prowled over the broken rocks. In a moment she would have him, and so with a shout he let go, and plummeted away, leaving her behind, her golden gaze following him down.

o0o

He did not know how long it was until he pulled himself from the river. The mist lay heavy over the whole world, and he could not see the sky. The rushing of the falls was behind him, and the river flowed deep and slow. He heard the groan of water beasts and saw a serpent as long as a man slice through the surface. This place was not safe for him, and his sword was lost.

But he had escaped the Ungogo, and who could say how many of them survived now. Perhaps the Shanjama would pursue him, but now he had a lead on them, and they would have a harder time following his trail. The river flowed north, and if he stayed beside it, it would lead him out of the wilderness. He did not know what lay beyond these mountains, but he would follow the waters, and he would find his way.