Azaroth & Sefalin

PREAMBLE

Blood poured from yellow skies to form crimson seas, and upon such an ocean of blood the last three surviving knights rowed hard under that lurid sky.

The rowboat rocked dangerously in the scarlet surf. It threatened to capsize them with ruddy foaming rollers while overhead, every horizon was a screaming nightmare of the distorted shapes of things which had flown right out of the very pages of the book. The book they now had. The book they took with them, gained at long last against impossible odds and incalculable cost.

They had the book wrapped in newborn baby's skin, the sacrificial flesh of sweetly scented innocents blessed by their clerics to withstand the temptations and the titanic power of the book called the Coda Uma. For extra measure they bound it in chains like a living thing, locked it thus shackled in an iron box thickly reinforced with adman-tine straps, layered with prayers and binding spells, but still they knew only terror, desperation, not hope but fateful resolve.

Despite all their actions against it, the book rejoiced from within the iron box at the bottom of the bobbing cork of a boat. The beings that were inside the very pages of the tome howled with unholy ecstasy on this, the last night of the Twilight of the world, a kaleidoscope of grotesque monstrosities and relentless annihilation.

Under that swirl of madness and destruction, with spontaneous volcanoes rupturing the livid lemon skies and megalithic monstrosities breaching the waves of blood, the trio of surviving paladins forged an oath.

We take the Coda Uma, this book of the damned, this abomination, this procreator of abominations and we will bury it for all eternity. We swear this, now and for all generations to come. We cannot destroy it, but we will consign it to an everlasting tomb. Closeted, secreted, guarded for all time against any and all interlopers, that it may never see the light of a new day.

We swear! they roared in unison, working the rudder and oars furiously in the red foam amidst yellow lightning flashes and world shaking thunder claps.

None shall ever find it, the stoutest bellowed into the maelstrom. Never! came their chorus. We shall hide it where it cannot be found, and guard it for all time.

Thus was the Twilight finally brought to an end. Thus was the Knighthood of the Holy Protectorate founded, there in seas of blood in the world's fading gasps. No effort was spared to scour the whole of the earth to scrub all reference or recollection of the Coda Uma or its last known whereabouts, and thus no record of it existed anywhere afterwards. In this way the knighthood ensured that the Coda Uma was spirited from sight or memory and hidden in a place remote, secret and utterly impenetrable. For generations they kept their oath, each to the next, and stood vigilant watch. It lay there in a place protected yet forgotten where as the ages came and went, no one would ever find it, much less get to it.

Almost.

CHAPTER 1

They will stretch you on the rack, feed your eyes to the birds and your bowels to the crocodiles.

I don't care. Let them! The little orphan boy was crying, and why not? His mentor, the court wizard Voshnil, had just been dragged off to the torture chamber in the imperial dungeons and now the youthful empress wept as she held the boy at arms length.

You must run if you are to live.

Why?

My adultery, the Empress said, sagging with the disgrace, with the impossibility of expressing the complexities of her illicit love affair and its consequences to a sickly, trembling little boy. What your guardian Voshnil and I have done, our love, it is forbidden. My husband the Emperor has sent Voshnil to be tortured and, I fear, killed. The same fate awaits you if you do not get away. Do you understand?

No! said Azaroth, his tiny face white as flour paste, his eyes sharp green stones. He cried harder, balling his tiny fists against his belly as he curled up on the stone floor at the Empress's feet. Don't let them kill Voshnil! he wailed. "I will die instead of him! Let them take me!"

They will only take you both, and solve nothing the Empress said. She pitied this vagrant street urchin that Voshnil had adopted, more so because now, he would be just one more outlet for the emperor's wrath against her, and her lover, the court wizard Voshnil.

I don't want to go away! Mucus ran down his thin face. I won't abandon Voshnil! If you won't save him then I will!

The scrawny boy made to run somewhere, to rescue his protector, but iron hands gripped him – the guardsmen of the Empress.

I am truly sorry, little Azaroth, she said as they lifted him wailing and thrashing. My husband will torture Voshnil, if only to torture me. Probably he will die. As will my heart. But, little innocent, you must be spared. Voshnil could never forgive me if I did not see to your safety.

No! Azaroth squealed, his eyes blazing emeralds. Tears jumped from him. A bag went over his head and the guards wrapped him in a blanket, spun to constrain him.

Where shall we hide him, Empress?

She didn't know. Where could an orphan adopted by a condemned court wizard be hidden from an ageing Emperor enraged by his wife's adultery?

If you cannot find a place to hide him, she whispered to her guardsman, find someone far, far away who would take him in.

And if we can find no one?

She kept her voice low, trying not to let the struggling child overhear, Then take him in secret and give him a clean death.

If Voshnil lives, he will never forgive you, a bony lich said. He stood off from the light, an unliving skeleton with gorgeous robes and the saddest expression his ancient skull could convey. His name was Talnosh, another court wizard in the imperial service, although he was very ancient; his soul was kept imprisoned by the emperor, so that he could serve forever, as an undead slave.

She nodded, round eyes glittering with emotion. What you say may be so. If Voshnil survives he may never know, if we can all agree not to speak of this; at least the orphan boy won't have to suffer the sorts of tortures Voshnil must be enduring now. Little Azaroth would only be made to suffer unimaginably. Fire, branding, dismemberments and crushed bones, miseries like my heart now feels...take him. Do what you can for him, or else do what you must. Either way, he can never be seen here again. Ever.

The empress of Gaer's hand shot out to grasp the captain of her guards. Do you understand these instructions?

He nodded. Completely, Empress.

Good luck, she said, downcast.

The captain and his men, who were all in awe of her and each in some way in love with her, or at least enthralled by her sensational beauty, felt the utmost devotion to their empress. The adopted son of a disgraced court sorcerer, on the other hand, meant nothing to them, and they held no pretences as to their true course of action.

They would ferret the boy out of the empire, and execute him in a remote waste where not even his discarded remains would be seen again.

The little boy's muffled howls went on and on as the men-at-arms made to shift his negligible weight onto their shoulders.

They secreted him out of the imperial palace, a wriggling child wrapped and suffocating under tightly bound layers of coarse wool. Arriving at the border of the Bone Realm, a cold place, a dead place, they threw their burden onto the ground. One of them was chosen to perform the mercy killing.

The small bundle wormed. It made little noises.

Just get on with it, one of the guardsmen said.

A spear was hafted above the bound boy, aim made for his defiantly thumping heart.

The guards felt a sudden breeze coming off the ground.

A sorcerous wind...

It blew fiercely in an up-whoosh of wreathing, compact tornadoes that swept away their clothes, stripped off their armor in yanks and twists, wrenched out their hair by the roots in a funnelling gust, warbled and flayed their skin in a tidal swirl of blood so that they fell from their saddles bloodied and dieing, the horses bolting off.

A mutilated man emerged from the Bone Realm, hardly able to stand, struggling to reach the bundle. He leaned on a giant femur for a crutch, limping, his face badly burned, his eyes gouged out, his cape unable to conceal the extent of his injuries.

He whispered something and the knots which bound the small package undid themselves.

Azaroth squirmed loose and rolled free.

Hello Azaroth, the tortured man rasped.

Hello Voshnil! he said, running to embrace the wretched sorcerer. I knew they couldn't hurt you! The little boy brimmed with adoration as he clung to his adoptive father, ignorant of the magnitude of his misfortune.

Voshnil said nothing. He patted the beaming youth on his tiny head with a bloodied hand, slid down onto his backside, painful because he'd been castrated, a fact he hid with an agonized sweep of his cape, a rag of a cape he'd been given along with swift kicks and vicious laughter when he was expectorated like phlegm from the gullet of the empire.

No, they couldn't hurt me, Voshnil said, drawing the boy near in spite of the physical pain. If you are safe, then there was never anything they could do to really hurt me.

The boy understood enough then, however, and as he grew to manhood he understood full well.

Azaroth came to understand what was needed in this world. Pluck, luck – he had those. Someone to love, a thing to mourn and a something to live for. He had those also. What he lacked were means to his intentions.

He grew, learned magic under Voshnil's tutoring and when he was old enough, Azaroth went out into the world. He didn't just wander, though. He sought. What he sought was specific to his mind but consistently elusive to his grasp. Nonetheless, Azaroth was determined. And Azaroth was a loner to his core. However, his obsession, and all of its mind boggling consequences, are famously entwined with that most unlikely of accomplices, as opposite to himself – but opposites attract, do they not?

Azaroth was seeking the Coda Uma, which in theory was impossible to find, foremost because it was lost to myth. Secondly, considering all which was to follow, that much mayhem really is a two person job. Therefore Fate, that divine frolicker, saw to it that what Azaroth found first, was a friend. This most singular of pairings came about as only the rarest and most extraordinary friendships can; without intention, and entirely by surprise.

In a monastery of zealots high in the Gargarum mountains, Azaroth was leaping out of a window. This window, in a tower perched over a twisting mountain road, was a significant drop. Not as significant as the freefall to the right. He was lucky, then, to land with a groan onto a passing cart, and not over the cliff, which would have been a long and fatal fall.

The cart had a single driver. A tall man, or hardly a man, a youth, twinkling eyes, amused rosy cheeks.

I don't usually take on passengers. Not like this, he said, still flicking the reins as the two horses pulled the wagon and two men along.

I am being chased, Azaroth said.

Why are you being chased?

Azaroth rubber necked behind them. Monks with maces and angry faces were teeming out of the tower, climbing onto horses.

I stole something, he admitted.  Indeed, having only just stolen a rare map, Azaroth found himself confronted, attacked and pursued. This map was useless to Azaroth, but needed because on the flip side there was a cryptic poem which made reference, supposedly, to a suggestion of a possibility, that is, a potential fragment of a clue as to the whereabouts of that which he was seeking.

His thievery was bungled, sadly, by an alert dog. Polymorphing the luckless canine into a chicken was also bungled, however; he sneezed, the words came out wrong and the feisty little guard dog became a gigantic rooster. So we has running from that, and the alerted owners of the map, when he jumped out of the window – big enough for him, too small for the cock - and landed with a thump and a groan onto the young man's cart.

What did you steal?

Something they want back.

Who are they?

They, Azaroth said with mounting alarm, are gaining on us.

Should we stop?

No, let's go faster.

This is as fast as we can go in a two horse wagon.

No, Azaroth said, casting a transformation spell that turned the horses into fire elementals that flared into a bonfire of rampaging hoof beats. "This is the fastest we can go."

The fiery steeds vaulted at breakneck speed, yanking the hurtling wagon forward in a blazing streak that instantly outpaced the pursuing riders they left behind in their smoking wake.

Duly impressed, the youth yowled with glee. He lashed the blazing steeds with wild eyed abandon, asking, Who are you?

I am Azaroth, apprentice to the sorcerer Voshnil.

I am Sefalin. Where are we going?

Where were you going in the first place?

I'm a prince. My father, the king, was sending me on an errand.

Shouldn't you attend that then?

Probably, Sefalin laughed. but don't worry, he'll forgive me.

How do you know?

I am a Nedlin, Sefalin said.

What's that?

Physic abilities, the temple priests claim. Mostly it's all brouhaha.

And you can foresee that your father the King will forgive you if you neglect your obligations?

Actually, that's more of a guess. So, Sefalin put out a hand to shake, where are we going? and in that shared grip their legend was born. Together they travelled widely and plundered frequently, a gleefully carefree swordsman and a wizard consumed by an obsession. From their exploits they gained fame – sometimes infamy, too. And enemies. Stealing this, taking that.

In prince Sefalin's case, he was only avoiding the hard work of being the eldest son of King Lozane of Rowender, a harsh man to face, an impossible father to please. Sefalin found in these expeditions with Azaroth, a means of hiding from his royal responsibilities and the criticisms which always seemed to await him at home, where he could do nothing right. In time he felt closer to Azaroth than to any other. Amusing exploits - that is all they were to Sefalin, what real purpose could they have?

That much Azaroth never confided. Azaroth kept on gathering what he needed, gleaning what he could, sometimes just a whisper, a hint of a notion, a fumey scent of a clue. He left no hideaway unexplored, no rumor untested in his relentless search for what he sought.

Wherever they went, regardless of what they did, Azaroth never lost sight of his true objective, and being tenacious, secretive, well companioned by the worthwhile but oblivious Sefalin, he finally felt he'd found it.

And that is where friendship, destiny and disaster collided.

CHAPTER 2

BLACK IS ITS BINDING and heavy to the hand does it weigh, the Coda Uma, captured in the last feeble glimmerings of the Twilight Wars and carried off  by an order of warrior knights who had by then destroyed all the lesser works of the Necromancers of Va' Rayn. I believe it too was destroyed by them, although in truth, its fate is lost to recorded history.

—fragment from Pannon's Twilight Chronicle (Chronicula Vastu e Pannon)

The moon was full, though wisps of tattered blue-gray cloud fleeted past. It was very late in the evening.

Two lifelong friends, Azaroth and Sefalin, sat at a table in an open air tavern, with Azaroth sipping armlit and Sefalin paying even less attention to his glass of costly Elven wine.

Sefalin, a Nedlin and a Prince in his own strange land across the slumped shoulders of the Gargarum mountains to the west, wore silks of red-and-blue under a coat of boiled and studded black leather with a steel breast plate molded to fit his long and lean, muscled frame. His face was gentle and spoke of a lenient if not forgiving character. That he was not human could not easily be detected: a tinge of purple in his thin lips, a hint of gold in his narrow eyes.

To do this, we will need more men, Sefalin was saying.

Nonsense.

Nearing thirty, the wizard Azaroth was middle aged now. He had a ghoulish appearance due to his skeletal frame of pale skin drawn taut over visible bones and knobby joints, his long, delicate hands ending with fingers like ghostly spider's legs. His robe was a dull shade of gray with hints of silver threading at the seams. Only his starkly black hair and his eyes, green and glittering, lent any color to his appearance, at once striking and frightful under his perpetually knitted brow.

The palace is built within a fortress. Prince Sefalin traced a line on the unfurled map with his index finger. A fortress assaulted by invaders a dozen times in as many centuries, all failed. This impregnable fortress caps the plateau of an island. The island, again he pointed, "is like an oval rock with sheer cliff walls which plunge eighty feet into the Lonesea. Even if by strong magic one could ease the fall, the surf would hurl one's body against the rocks with the force of a juggernaut.

The palace is guarded by soldiers, yes, but as well it houses the chief barracks of the Knights of the Protectorate. Oh, and let us not forget His Holy Eminence's personal guard, no small trifle, any one of them.

Azaroth listened but the die was cast. He knew his friend wanted to try it as badly as he himself did. For the Prince of Rowender it was an opportunity for booty. Greed was not what motivated Azaroth. He had known abject poverty and he had lived in splendor and abundance, and felt an equal disdain for both extremes. His cause was one of retribution, of restoring what had been lost, of repaying something of what he owed from gratitude for love while seeing justice done, dignity renewed and the guilty brought to terrible account, and he believed that in Ithrock an ancient means might be found. Ithrock, the sunken isle, whose roots were well beneath the sea, but were accessible through a forgotten passage. Or so their research into the legend and its supportive documents led them to believe. The island itself was the primary base for the Protectorate, a nation ruled by its clergy. A nation of warrior knights of continental renown.

What about the passage to the lost city? Azaroth inquired.

What about it? If it's not there, if the whole thing is a myth, a fiction, a fabricated jest, then we are truly ruined. The Protectors won't follow us down out of superstition, but if it doesn't exist then we've no place to run and no hope of getting out of the palace alive, let alone off  Ithrock. And even if it does exist, we cannot know where, exactly.

Azaroth sighed and sipped from his glass. Armlit is harsh but its bouquet can be sweeter than lilacs, and he held it close enough to breathe in its perfume.

Sefalin continued. At best we have an approximate idea as to where, if the passage is real, it is. At any rate, I expect we'd spend some time searching for it.

Do you know how the passage is guarded?

The Prince of Rowender pushed back his chair in disbelief. How can you expect me to know everything? Some things can only be learned in the instant in which the information is no longer useful. I am not a God.

I need time to think, Azaroth said. Let us each study the map and try to think of a way to and from Ithrock island, as well as in and out of the palace. In the morning we will discuss strategy.

Sefalin nodded. That is best I think.

Did I tell you I bargained for a new spell at the Wizard's Guild today?

No. Will it help us in our quest?

Azaroth stretched his legs under the table, suppressing a yawn. It can't hurt.

You are up to something with this, Sefalin remarked, his gold flecked eyes glinting in the candle light.

Perhaps.

And you will not say what?

Not just yet.

I feel I may regret this, Sefalin said.

Let us hope not.

THE LONESEA, LANDLOCKED by Gods' magic in the Twilight, was crowned on the eastern shores by Loridar. Loridar was an independent city ruled not by a single Lord but by the Guild-masters of no less than one hundred guilds. Jeweler's guild, armorer’s guild, minstrel's guild, vintner's and weaver's guild—every element of the soaring towers and gleaming domes and shining halls of Loridar were represented in Guild's Council which met irregularly to elect offices and settle the business of the city. It was the richest city in the known world. Her guard wore silk and jewels, were trained exclusively by Zell-en-jet mercenaries and armed with the finest weapons produced by the dwarven city of Mithstaunch. These weapons were selected annually by the individual guards so that weight, balance and appearance varied to suit each man. It was the city of forty faiths. It was the city of merchants who traded everything from tin cups to dragon's eggs. Diverse masses seethed in and out of its cluttered shops. Hooves of oxen, mules, horses and sheep clattered on the cobbled manure grouted streets, bleating, snickering, neighing over feverish haggling and firm orders of beast herders. Ocean breezes carried cool salty air that mingled with that of livestock, flowers, smoked meats as well as a thousand other scents. Seekers met in its pubs to mount expeditions, foreign royalty bargained with one another in its luxurious inns, and here, everything under the heavens could be bought or sold.

Beyond the congested port and crowded avenues of the city proper, the Guilds Council claimed only a few leagues of countryside which yielded grapes suitable for wine making, and a small town named Baloar-by-the-water. So devoted was Loridar to the relentless pursuit of commerce, it entertained no interest in expansion, its elite men-at-arms serving solely to preserve the peace, its border patrols only displayed to discourage any who would contemplate war with them.

They spent four days in Loridar. Azaroth brooded about as he wandered less trodden ways within the sprawling city, the seedy districts more reminiscent of his own home, Fretta, an old city many times sacked and rebuilt, a cacophony of discordant architectures in various states of decay, abandonment and collapse. His mind churned over their dilemma.

Sefalin spent his time fishing in Baloar-by-the-water and gambling with cards and dice in the common halls and 'luxury dens' of Loridar proper. Each afternoon the two met in whichever tavern caught their fancy and talked leisurely over dinner. Afterwards, they would go to the steam baths and discuss the expedition. On the third day a sweat-soaked Sefalin mused, If we could fly, unseen, we would not need fear the huge catapults of Ithrock, nor its sheer cliffs, nor its guarded fortifications.

On the fourth day, again in the baths, Azaroth announced, Early tomorrow we will buy such gear and provisions as we have already agreed upon. Then we will fly to Ithrock.

The Prince of Rowender was incredulous. Fly? In the air?

How else? Azaroth grinned. Have you ever flown a dragon?

A dragon! Where did you find a dragon? And what makes you think it wants to be flown?

I couldn't find a dragon so we're improvising. We will fly on the back of a demon.

Here the Prince drew the line of belief. Absurd. Utterly absurd.

Remember how I told you that I'd bargained for a new spell from the Goat?

Sefalin looked pained. Who, or what, is the Goat?

Who, not what. The Goat is a demonologist in the guild. There is a rumor he is actually one himself, or perhaps just possessed, or a nightshade in human form—don't look so confused, and don't tell me I am out of my head.

Azaroth shifted on the steaming bench. The spell is a conjuring. Tonight, when the moon and the stars compliment each other, I will summon Skurbash, a winged demon, enormous by all accounts. Tomorrow night he will fly us to Ithrock.

Still leery, but wanting to