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    Black Hole, White Fountain: Book Four of The Ferryman Pentalogy
    Black Hole, White Fountain: Book Four of The Ferryman Pentalogy
    Black Hole, White Fountain: Book Four of The Ferryman Pentalogy
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    Black Hole, White Fountain: Book Four of The Ferryman Pentalogy

    By Wayne Kyle Spitzer

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    The hologram faded away and a silence fell over the glade as Dravidian reseated himself upon the rock. Sthulhu remained respectfully silent. In his mind's eye Dravidian saw Pepperlung on the deck of their great dragger, The Vorpal Gladio, saw him glance over his shoulder at the prefect as his tone became grave: "Beware, Dravidian. The bride is just sightseeing but Asmodeus is here for you. You are the only ferryman up for elevation this year. Watch yourself. There will be a test, surely."

    The ground trembled suddenly and the remnants of the cage rattled as a minor Ursaquake shook the glade, and the sun orb went from gold to orange. A horse whinnied in the distance and Dravidian looked out across Parvus’ homestead to see a great steed leap up in its corral. The slightest push against the dilapidated boards would have freed it—but the creature either did not know or did not care. The horse, however mighty, knew its place. It knew in its primitive yet tamed wiring what Dravidian, in his advanced and now liberated own, did not: that nothing lay beyond its cage that did not already exist in abundance within.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWayne Kyle Spitzer
    Release dateJan 8, 2018
    ISBN9788827548325
    Black Hole, White Fountain: Book Four of The Ferryman Pentalogy
    Author

    Wayne Kyle Spitzer

    Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.

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      Book preview

      Black Hole, White Fountain - Wayne Kyle Spitzer

      Hole

      Prologue | Luminis Sub Omne

      When Dravidian awakened , he found the temperature had dropped still further and that he could now see his breath. He also found one more thing—which was that Shekalane was no longer by his side ... and, realizing the implications of this, he sat up with a start.

      But though he scanned the chamber thoroughly, he saw no sign of her—although he did observe a darkened recess in the cavern wall that could have been a doorway. It was curious he hadn’t noticed it before.

      He put on one of the great fur coats, shivering, and investigated—found that it was, indeed, a passageway. Moreover, it was a warm passageway—strangely, a hot wind blew through it—equally strange, it was illuminated, although the source of its red-orange light was clearly at a distance.

      He hadn’t progressed far when he came upon Shekalane’s shoes and fur coat, abandoned on the passageway’s rough-hewn stone floor. He stepped over them and continued, coming next upon her green shawl ... then her camisole, then her garter belt and emerald stockings, until at last he rounded a corner and entered a large chamber and beheld her standing naked before a Cyclopean, rounded, vertically–positioned grate, beyond which, in the inky blackness, burned a red-orange disk, itself as tall as one man standing on the shoulders of another.

      And yet Shekalane’s lithe, beautiful form was not the only figure in the room, for all around stood statues depicting humans of every size and shape, posed just as she, with their arms spread wide and their palms turned up, their fingers splayed, some upon the floor and others upon alters and inside coves, and scattered among these were baskets of fruit now withered and fallen to rot. So, too, had someone piled Jamais’ finest pelts and textiles all about. Had Dravidian been pressed to explain what he saw, he would have offered that the red-orange disk was some ancient device tasked with regulating the temperature of the world, similar to the great warming vent they had passed upon entering Cuniculum Amoris, but a thousand times more potent. And as for the statues, they were representations of worshipers, perhaps, and the fabrics and baskets of fruit, offerings.

      He read the words chiseled crudely into the stone above the grate: ‘Luminis sub omne.’

      The light ... under all. He looked at Shekalane as she turned around. What does it mean?

      I’m sure I don’t know, she said. But I feel something has changed ... something in the mechanics of Ursathrax itself. What blew cold last night now blows hot ... as if the world has ... corrected itself. She turned and gazed at the inscription. Perhaps it refers to a kind of mirror image of what Montair calls the demonic sublime—are you familiar with that?

      Yes, he said, then shook his head, shirking off the fur coat, allowing it to crumple to the floor. And no. In truth, I have never really understood that aspect of his thought.

      "It refers to ... a dark intent ... that underlies all things. What my father used to call sub umbra, the shadow behind."

      I’m afraid I don’t understand.

      She turned to face him again, then glanced him up and down, appearing to admire how he looked in only his boots and trousers. You have a demonic sublime. It ... shows through ... not only through your musculature and how it forms fearful and compelling patterns, but in how you are looking at me right now.

      She took several steps toward him, utterly confident in her nakedness, her chin held high, her dark eyes full of resolve. What would you do with me, Dravidian? My own demonic sublime ... it calls to you. Can you hear it?

      She lowered to her knees before him and pulled on the thong that secured his trousers, then loosened the laces and pulled the sturdy, black garments down just enough to free his metal, which rose to meet her mouth almost gracefully, its beautifully-formed, dead-blue head crested with a dewdrop of precum.

      I feel as though we commit a sacrilege, Shekalane ...

      She paused, looking up at him. Then let us commit it.

      And she pulled him down upon the pelts and fabrics as he gave into the seduction, realizing he could no more resist taking her than he could change the fate the Lucitor had given him.

      He could not lie.

      The truth was that from the moment they hit the bed of sumptuous textiles, and he knew her sultry face and languid body would be his to ravish, the question of where they were no longer existed in his mind. Carnal selfishness overrode all else. He wanted her, and he would have her. There was no room for questions of honor, ethic or duty in the equation.

      Perhaps sex is a divinity, as some would say, he thought.  For do not divine configurations always function above the confinements of right and wrong?

      She traced her fingers over his face as he pecked at her lips and pulled back, repeatedly, roughly. You are youthful-looking for a man of thirty-five, she whispered, then

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