The Black Shrine

On a dark day a mist rolled in over the sea before dawn, and those who rose to greet the sun saw nothing but the dark, and heard nothing but the waves. Lights gleamed eerily in the fog as the city of Samzarah was enveloped, and the dawn did not come. The city had grown into a wealthy crossroads over many years, filled with gorgeous architecture, streets paved with marble, and the domes and towers of the temples and palaces sheathed in silver and gold. An eternal flame blazed in the highest tower of the palace of the king, lighting the way for pilgrims by land and by sea. From all the corners of the earth supplicants came to give gifts at the sepulcher of the Sleeping Emperor.

The greatest tomb in the empires of the earth stood at the heart of the city, the walls gilded with ivory and jewels. The dome that rose over it was carved blue stone, and the plaza around it made from red tiles in honor of the Goddess of Fire herself. With the coming of the sun, acolytes came forth and paced the great circle around it, bearing lanterns and torches, welcoming the greatest fire of all.

This day they saw no sun, only a heavy fog, and there was no light. The sky and the stars were hidden, and men made mortal signs to protect themselves from evil. They whispered of old magics, long forgotten, and of the malignant legend of Nathigu, the God of Darkness. Ever did he covet the fire, ever did he seek to destroy the light.

Upon the walls of the city, close to the sea, the guards and watchmen heard the sound of the waves, and then they heard other sounds. They heard the clangor of chains and shields, they heard the beat of drums and the sweep of oars. They looked out over the dark waters, seeking to look through the mist, and then they saw fires.

A hundred, and then a thousand points of fire kindled within the dark, and then the mist drew back on the morning wind, and it reared up like a wave of the sea, poised and dark as a storm, and from it burst a great host of ships. Ten, then a hundred, then a thousand. Great, heavy ships with their gunwales sheathed in iron and their ram prows plated with bronze. Shields swarmed the sides, and from each ship rose the battle calls of hundreds of warriors.

The alarm rose slowly, for the men of the richest city in the world – well-fed and sleepy from decades of peace and tribute – could barely believe they were under attack. Only when the first wave of warships ripped through the waves and plunged into the great harbor did they understand, and the screaming began.

A hundred ships crushed into the harbor, rams tearing lesser vessels asunder and sending them to the bottom. Burning arrows sheeted from the decks of the warships, and before the defenders of the harbor could rouse themselves the docks were crowded with burning craft and the water was filled with desperate sailors who leaped into the sea and then were ground under as the invaders forced their way ashore.

The warships drove into the shore and warriors began to flood onto land, swarming down from the high castles and forming their ranks. Iron shields and iron spears filled the dark, and they did not hesitate to begin their push into the city itself. Death and fire marked their path, and the city guards roused from sleep and hastily armed were no match for them. These sea-raiders were hard men who fought like devils, and upon their dark shields they bore the device of a tongue of red fire.

More ships came, and more, sending forth more men before they drew back to make room for the next. Even as the sun began to show through the clouds at the edge of the horizon, smoke rising from the city began to obscure the sky. A ship greater than all the others rode through the burning sea and ground upon the land, and on its prow stood a great warrior. Sheathed in iron armor, she had braided gray hair and bore tattooed marks upon her face, and the palms of her hands were dark with ancient burns.

o0o

Asherah set foot once more on the lands of her enemy with a curse upon her lips. At her side was sheathed the sword of fire, and at her command was an army of twenty thousand fanatics who would die for her at a word. Twenty years it had taken her, from one end of the world to another. From the cold gray lands beside a nameless sea where she found a simple people who fished and lived their hard lives. Years to become a warlord, a chieftain, a queen by the strength of her arms and the fire of her blade. She had crossed mountains and deserts, sailed over two seas and now, at last, she had returned.

Her picked warriors rallied around her, forming a wedge of steel, and she led them into the city. She had seen it last in the midst of a battle, and it was much changed since then. She found the wide streets clean and polished, the buildings clad in alabaster and beautiful mosaics. Gardens carried the scents of exotic flowers and fountains gushed with clean water. The people were fair and richly dressed, and they fled before her like sea birds before the storm.

They climbed higher onto the hills, and wherever the guards gathered to try and resist them, her men cut through them and left the white stone running red. The city was rich and soft and beautiful, and it was helpless before the spears and swords of her army. They climbed higher, through the wide plazas and the streets filled with opulent temples. They killed and burned, but they did not plunder. Asherah had not crossed the world for gold.

They climbed the great hill to the palace made from marble and gold, and in the shadow of the towers and the domes she had the king dragged from his sleeping chamber among his slave girls and cast at her feet. A young man with a soft chin and soft hands. He wore so many rings he could not close his fingers, and he shied away from her, as away from a searing flame.

Asherah laid her hand upon the hilt of the sword of flame, and she felt as ever the burning heat that came from it, unceasing and merciless. She would not draw it for such as this man; he was not deserving. “Years ago, long ago, a man came to this city, and he bore in his wake a great wheeled tomb. In that tomb was the body of Druan, the Great Emperor, stolen from the lands in the north where I was born.”

She beckoned, and her men dragged the terrified king up to his knees, and she took his braided, oiled beard in her hard hand and pulled it to be certain she had the fullness of his attention. “Far and wide, over many lands, this city is known as the place where the great emperor lies in state, buried in his silver crypt. I have come because I was born under an oath, and I intend to fulfill that oath, or die in the pursuit of it.” She glared into his face. “Take me to the sepulcher.”

o0o

At last they came to the great red plaza, the tomb at the very center rising like a dream carved from ivory and silver and an ocean of jewels. Her men fell down and prostrated themselves, and she walked across the wide open space to where the door of the crypt stood shut by a door cut from a single piece of green jade taller than a man. She could not read the marks upon the stone, but she saw the figure of the great king worked there, and she knew this was what she sought.

She turned and looked as her men dragged the terrified king across the plaza, until he knelt before her, shivering and weeping. His soft feet and knees were bruised and blooded, and his eyes were wide and stared at the tomb as though it were a den of devils.

Asherah gestured at the great edifice. “Tell me of this,” she said. “When was it made?”

“It was the temple of fire,” the king said, shuddering. “The temple of old. Men had turned away from the worship of Ajahe, and begun to bow before the altars of Nathigu. The sacred flames were extinguished, and the priests driven into hiding. Then came the day when the sorcerer brought the tomb to the city, and he brought it here.”

“And is it here still?” she said, her voice dangerous.

“I do not know!” he sobbed. “I was only a boy then. The temple was accursed after, and those who entered were slain by an unseen power. My father commanded that the temple be sealed. The doors were shut, and the great sepulcher was built over it. It is the tomb of the great emperor, and the source of all our wealth and our prestige, but it is an evil place. Some say the emperor himself walks within, and destroys those who trespass upon his resting place.”

Asherah grunted. She left the weeping king behind her, and with a small gesture of command, the fall of a sword ended his cowardice forever. The blood of a king stained the red stones as she looked up at the door, and then she drew forth the red sword of fire.

Her men cried out and chanted their war songs at the sight of it, calling on their ancestors to look upon them. The great stone doors were held shut by a knot of wax-bound cord, and she touched it with the blade and it flamed and fell away in pieces. She smote the golden lock with her sword and broke it apart, and then she took the great handles in her hands and pulled, and slowly, slowly, the doors opened, revealing a mouth of utter blackness.

She raised her sword and her hand. “Do not follow me. I go within, and if I do not return, then remain here and guard this place for all time. Here lies the emperor of the earth, and I will look upon him once again. Remain.” The hundreds of men gathered here bowed their heads as one in reverence to her – their war queen, their lady of fire and steel. She smiled grimly, and then she turned and went into the dark.

o0o

Her sword was her light, and by it she crossed the inner chamber, and came to the gates of the shrine. Once before, she had seen them in the light. Now in shadow, they were green with age, the wood shrunken and withered. Bones lay upon the polished floor, old and dark and fleshless, and she smelled something that was not decay, yet not life either.

She struck one terrible blow upon the doors and splintered them apart. The broken doors swung slowly inward, and she looked into the temple itself. The floor was still littered with the bones of the men she had slain on that far-off day. The stones were stained black with ancient blood, and at the center of the room she saw the tomb itself, still glittering in the dark like a hidden treasure. Asherah crept toward it, moving slowly, and she mounted the dais where the old sarcophagus lay.

The blackened sliver was broken, the latches burned and burst, but she lifted the sword higher, and there she saw the face of the emperor, sunken and desiccated, black as ages, still as death. His hands were still held before him on his chest, fingers open from the moment when the sword had been pried from his hands, and she almost placed it back in his grasp, but she heard a sound.

A low sound, a slithering in the dark, and she turned slowly, sword held up to cast light as far as possible. The heat of it burned her hands, but it was a slow burning, and she was long accustomed to it. It was another of the pains she bore. She listened, hearing the sliding noise, and then something came into the faint edge of the illumination, and it stood like a man’s shadow.

She saw a form like a man, but it was shrouded, as if in a long cerement of blackened silks, so there was no feature or sight of flesh, only blackness that slid and shifted, and then she saw the form of a face beneath the shroud, as if a skull were pressed beneath fabric, and there was a long-drawn sigh, an exhalation filled with cold and time.

“You have returned, as I knew you would. I hoped it would be sooner, rather than late, but I have had time to pass and count the years and wait for you.” The voice was a whisper, like wind over bones in a charnel pit, and she felt the hair on her neck stiffen at the sound of it, but she gave no sign. She had fought worse many times; she would not cower before some apparition.

“And do I know you?” she said. “Are you more than an unclean spirit who dwells in shadow? Come forward, and speak.”

“You know me,” the phantom said, drawing nearer with a hiss over the floor. She saw the shroud go before it, pushing aside the scattered bones. “You pursued me from the farthest north to this very place, and you drove an arrow through my hand. You stole the sword from me, and now you bring it back, too late.”

“You are Gathas, the sorcerer,” she said. “You seem changed from when I last saw you.”

“I am changed,” he hissed, rising up. He reared above the floor like a vast serpent, an umbilicus of darkness seemed to slither from under the shroud, leading back into the darkness. “You did this to me, whelp of the karkahd. I swore an oath to Nathigu, god of darkness, that I would raise the sleeping emperor and make him a slave of darkness. I would make him live with the fire of old, and then I would draw the shadows about him, and make of him a thrall to Nathigu. I was driven to succeed, and I would have paid any price. But when you stole away the sword my master lost patience with me, and cursed me, to this.” It raised a black, skeletal hand from beneath the black shroud and touched the shape of its unseen face.

Asherah pointed the sword at him, her hands steady. “It seems you should have chosen a better master.”

“You relentless, troublesome bitch,” the thing hissed. “Serving an oath laid upon you before you were born! Your fellow karkahd knew the truth. He was exiled, as you were, for less reason. He came to me, and in him I had the means to steal away the body of Druan, the ancient one. I would have ruled an empire of darkness from an immortal black throne. Now I crawl in shadows, a worm of hatred denied all light and all life. You have wrought this, and I will make you pay. I will drag you to dark, and perhaps, in a few decades, I will tire of hearing you beg for death!”

The thing rose up like a rearing serpent, and the shroud seemed to slip away and vanish, and there she saw bared the face of Gathas, or what was left of his face. She saw his white brow and hairless head, and his eyes. But now his eyes were black and featureless, and beneath them his face was a ragged maw of needle teeth and a slithering tongue like a tendril. His neck and chest were black and set with black bones, as though he wore his skeleton outside his skin, and below that he was a crawling mass like the body of some loathsome spineless creature.

He lashed at her, skeletal, clawed hands reaching for her flesh, and she struck back with the sword of flame and he cringed away from it, hissing with fury. She leaped down from the dais and he circled her, a serpent of darkness against the red shard of fire in her hands. Every move of her blade sent the shadows wheeling and shifting around the great dome, as if the very columns danced in the flame.

He lunged for her and she met him with a stroke of her blade, sent him back with a smoking wound even as his claws scarred her armor and stabbed cold into her flesh. He hissed and his inhuman mouth yawned wide, tongue coiling like a snake. She held the sword ready and looked at him down the red edge. Long ago the blade came from the stars, and the fire within it would not die.

Gathas came ravening for her, his shadowy body slithering behind him, and she met his rush with her own. He seized her and lifted her up, jaws wide to drink her blood, but she swept the sword down and severed his arm and he twisted away, screaming, and his bulk struck a slender column and shattered it.

Asherah struck the floor hard and came to her feet, ignoring the pain of old wounds and the stiffness of old bones. She was not a young woman as she had been when she rode her glory road to seek him out. Now she was a hard, gray woman, and she was more iron than flesh.

Her enemy bled darkness, and she rushed upon him in the forest of pillars, and there they fought. He was quick and possessed of hideous strength, while she was relentless as she ever had been, and the sword of fire in her hands carved pieces from the stone and cut the loathsome substance of his accursed form. Again and again she drove her blade into his body, and still he came back at her, claws and teeth hungry for her life. His tongue snapped around her neck, and his jaws came for her.

She beat her fist against his malformed skull, hearing bones break, and then she cut his tongue away and when he reared up in pain she struck a terrible blow where his neck met his shoulder, and the blade of embers cut through his bleak flesh and spilled his shadowy ichor on the stones. He fell gasping and hissing, darkness pouring from his mouth and from the awful wound. He turned on her with hatred and a look of wrath, and then she hacked off his hideous head, and his unnameable body stretched upon the floor.

Asherah waited, and watched, to be certain the wound would kill him. The fire of her sword ate at the edges of his wounds, like burning leaves, and she watched as they devoured his flesh. Slowly his body was consumed, until it was nothing more than a black stain that smelled of burnt blood and spilled carrion.

She left then, following the light of her sword out into the day, emerging with weariness in her limbs and claw marks on her armor. She stepped into the sun, and her men gave forth a great shout to see her alive. She held up her sword, and they fell silent then, as at a command.

The curse has been scourged from this place, and will come no more. Let this mausoleum be torn down, and let a new tomb be raised in its place. The emperor lies within, and for him I will have made a new sarcophagus, and a new crypt. Here it will rise, and here we shall guard it. This city shall be his resting place, and you shall be those sworn to protect him.” She looked at the blade of her sword, and felt the fire within as it seared her. She would not return to the north. The land was not what she was sworn to, nor was it her people. She was sworn to guard the tomb of the emperor, and so she would. Here, in this place, she would spend the days of her life, until her time was done.