“Tara, bring the rope, and the satchel of chalks and oils!”

“Yes, Father,” said Tara. The maiden, raven-dark hair haloing creamy skin, leapt from the wagon’s seat. She ran to the back, threw back its protective oilskin, and rummaged through bags and baskets. A gust blew a wisp that had escaped her braid into her face. She shook it from her gray eyes even while she shivered.

Meanwhile, her father Theophobus stiffly climbed down and tethered their horse to a stunted tree. He looked backward, ignoring his long whiskers blowing under the wind’s grasp, over the overgrown track they had followed across the moor. Nothing moved but the wind thrashing the scrub and the first clouds darkening the sky.

Then he turned forward and looked at the knoll, at whose foot their wagon stayed, and above a storm newly brewing. From around the wagon came Tara, who when she reached Theophobus, stopped. Wide-eyes she stared at the knoll and the lumplike stones that crowned its peak. Her brow wrinkled and shook.

Swiftly Theophobus turned to her. “Give me those,” he bade.

“What?” she stammered. “Have we been here before, Father?”

“No time for questions. Now fetch the candles, and also the bundle of faggots. And quickly!”

While she ran back and obeyed, the older man settled the rope and pack on his shoulders. He then opened a small case, wherein a coal glowed red when he blew on it. From its ember he lit a torch, which he raised against the fading daylight.

The gray-eyed maiden again came to his side, bearing with hardship the bulky bundle and bag. “Are we here to work a spell?” she asked.

Theophobus ignored her and instead began climbing the knoll. Tara scrambled to catch up.

They clambered up a slope strewn with odd shapes and tussock-covered stones, as if a giant had stricken a building and scattered its shards. Before they were halfway up, the old man was gasping breath. He handed Tara the coil of rope and bade her hasten upward while he toiled along. She raced to the crest, where stood a jagged, wall-like ledge that might once have marked a foundation, and laid their burden. Then she skipped back down the rough hillside, took the last pack from her father, and carried it up as well.

At the peak Theophobus shortly halted and caught breath. He eyed the storm building overhead, and the sun dying behind scudding clouds. The wind bit harsh and coldly. His torch guttered and almost died.

From further along the peak Tara came back. “Is here where we are going?” she pointed whence she came.

Theophobus lifted his pack and the rope and followed the peak’s uneven ridge until he came to the spot she had shown. Not waiting for her to bring the rest, he started tying the rope to a stone like a broken shaft. By the time he finished the knot, Tara had brought the other things.

Together they looked downward into a broken stairwell whose buckled steps twisted with weeds. “We have been here before,” said Tara, accusingly.

“Quiet,” he growled. “I want us below and under shelter before the storm hits.” He tossed the rope down the hole.

With the rope to steady them over crumbling steps, they clambered downward into the knoll’s dark heart. The daylight faded even while the storm spread its reach overhead. Just when they reached bottom, the first raindrops pattered. Theophobus led her under an overhang, where their only light came from his torch casting shadows on the stones.

“Come, girl,” he led the way forward. Under his torch the shadows hardened into a burrow, though one made with with flat floor, straight walls, and arched ceiling overhead. Hand and tool had carven this stone, which had stood long ages even while whatever stronghold or city atop the knoll had fallen and eroded. Here the wind did not penetrate, the rain did not reach, and the only light that pierced this hollow’s blackness was borne by those who sought this place’s secrets, such as themselves.

They trod a doorway whose lintels writhed as serpentine forms straining in anguish while upholding the earth’s weight above, on whose almost-manlike shoulders lay a lintel carven as unnatural gargoyles; their twisted lips and fangs a warning against what waited beyond, or as guardians to its secrets. Tara stared at these zoomorphic shapes, overtaken by weirdness. Her father shoved past her and stepped within.

Beyond, the doorway widened to a hall-like room whose reaches faded from torchlight. Yet taller than any man-wrought space it domed. Though the floor lay flat, what walls they could see showed rough and cavelike. Even if man had touched this place, it was older than any who had ever come. All had left their mark on this place, and all had forgone, leaving something timeless down through the eons.

Tara followed her father into half-cave hall. Under the torch’s flickers its shape swam before her eyes. Timelessness smote, and she saw more than merely now…

…Wild, groveling shapes, stooped in height and thick in brow and jaw, faces painted in blood and soot, danced caperingly in a ring, around something seemingly taking shape within fire and smoke…

…Dark-eyed, haughty men with waxen beards and ancient glyphs embroidered on their robes, mighty sorcerer-kings of dead Acheron, whirled golden staves and chanted mighty prayers while slaves led coffles of wailing women within the cavernous hall, and who danced, despite their screams, under their overseers’ whips…

…Her father Theophobus, younger but not young, less gray in his beard, lighting candles in a ring, while in their midst a shackled woman crouched and wept…

Tara blinked the phantasms from sight. “Father, how did you know?”

Theophobus paused amid withdrawing vials from his pouch. “What?”

“How did you know there would be a storm upon the first new moon after the equinox?”

Theophobus gaped. Then his eyes flashed fright, which swiftly he quelled. “Hush, girl. On your life, on both our lives, you must do exactly as I bid and not stray or even think to question until all is over. Do you understand?”

Tara’s eyes shone bright, fear stilling the doubts in her mind. “Yes, Father.”

“Good. Now I need your help to draw a circle,” he told her. “First, doff those robes. Then you will take my knife. Do it now!”

Misgivingly, Tara shrugged off her cloak, followed by her wool traveling robe, leaving but her thin linen shift barely hiding her slim, nymphlike body. She drew it over her head and cast it against the wall with her other clothes. Mindlessly her arms tried to shield her breasts and loins.

Her father, who was pouring a line of oil along the floor, barely noticed until she came close, and only to give her his knife. “Take it,” he bade thoughtlessly. “From that stone that stands at true north,” he waved at a shaft like stalactite: “three drops of blood at each point of a pentagram, precisely and with heed not to spill any more anywhere upon the floor. Do so now!”

Tara took the knife. She ignored a breath like breeze raising bumps on naked her skin. Before the stone shaft she slit her finger and bled three drops. Then she followed a path widdershins along the floor and let fall another three drops where a star’s arm should be, and again at its left leg. Twice more she repeated the rubric, squeezing her finger to bleed more, and in exactly the spots along the same line where her father was drizzling oil, almost as if she knew the very spots that shaped the pentagram.

Outside thunder boomed dully within the knoll’s heart as the storm reached full strength. At Theophobus’s bidding, Tara grabbed the candles, dipped from virgin’s tallow, and set each one upon the same spots she had bled. Her father followed with his torch and lit them.

Thoughtlessly Tara came to the ring’s midst; nakedness forgotten while she gazed about the hall-like crypt. Ghostly dreams still warred before her eyes…her father standing with knife in hand, the maiden shackled and bound to this very spot while candles flickered just as they were now doing…her mother? …Shadows hid everything and mocked her until she forced sight back to reality.

“Father…” she stammered.

Thunder rumbled again while Theophobus touched torch to oil. The line flared to life, a blazing ring linking all the candle-steads. He cast the torch outside the ring and joined Tara at the center. “Ashna gazul ir khomnagh thraka-tuumn…” he began a chant. It was an invocation in dead language she had read in her studies, intended to call something to this world. But what?

“Father…” repeated Tara bewaringly.

“Swiftly, girl!” he broke in. “We dare not dally!”

Tara blinked wide eyes. “Father, we didn’t bring an offering,” she warned. “He will be unhappy when He comes, and we have no offering!”

Theophobus stared at her reckoningly. “Take my knife,” he answered. “Slash your palms enough to bleed.”

She scowled. “Why?”

“Maiden’s blood, the same as you spilled under the candles. He will smell, and it will please Him.”

“But that is not an offering!” she hissed.

“You are right.” Theophobus said, “but you must trust me. The only way we survive tonight is if you follow my word.”

Tara met his gaze. Fingers shaking, she raised the knife, laid its blade across her palm, and cut a sharp line over her skin. She hissed while she flipped the knife to her already bleeding hand and did the same to her other.

“Ashna gazul ir khomnagh thraka-tuumn…” resumed her father: “Ferghna hlaki ir fegogna! Ferghna hlaki ir Alkiir!”

Again dull thunder boomed, and this time the earth quaked. Tara looked around, foreknowing its rightness, though not why. “Father,” she asked half-fearfully: “what are we doing here?”

Theophobus plucked the bloody knife from her hand. “Fulfilling an oath I made nineteen years ago.” Then he swerved and lightly slashed the upper slope of her breast. Tara stared at him in shock. Blood spilled over her soft flesh, joining that from her hands that was already dripping to the floor.

The earth quaked again. The stones overhead rumbled, and the candles guttered out. The fiery ring too died low, though kept on as a blue-green glow. A heavy wind huffed through the cavern, stopped, and stirred breath like while an ash like smell filled the loft. The only sound else was her father’s chant, a litany that had somehow survived the fall of purple-towered Acheron when the barbarian Hybori had toppled that fell empire, three thousand years ago. He spoke words meaningless to the uninitiate, unless one had learned them as he had taught Tara, or had heard them spoken in a bygone age, and had answered.

Tara shuddered and stifled a whimper in throat. She realized she had shut her eyes. Despite her fear, she opened them. Time past and present again gathered as one, with no difference between then and now. Her father stood in the same spot as he had nineteen years ago. Her shackled mother crouched at her feet even as at his. Acheronian sorcerer-priests stood to left and right and joined their voices with Theophobus’s chant, even while stunted witchmen capered around the ring’s edge.

She looked upward and already knew what she beheld crimson eye like slits, six of them set too close for more than one face, cruelly slanted. They glared downward at her.

“Father,” she whispered, barely making any noise above the breathy wind and her own heartbeat: “He’s here!”

Her father did not answer. His chant, along with his ghostly participants, had faded, and even also the blue balefire. Only the crimson eye-glows remained.

Suddenly her body flew upward. She shrieked and thrashed, but won only in twisting in mid-air. Her feet found no purchase, her hands nothing to push against.

She floated in darkness and spun right before those six glowing eyes. From the darkness, barely illumined by those eyes, a clawed hand reached forth. Helplessly she watched it encircle her waist. A giant, talon like thumb scratched her ribs, just below her breasts. Her skin caught and broke, and she felt hot wetness run down her belly, onto her thighs. She grabbed the wrist entrapping her, though it did not yield.

Something stroked her calf. From the gloom a tail-like limb wrapped her leg, around her knee until it squeezed her thigh. A second one did likewise to her other leg. Even already helpless, they stretched her wide and vulnerable while the claws pricked her back and scratched her breasts.

Tara swallowed her fear. She gazed forward and met the six eye-slits’ crimson gaze. The claws and tail-limbs upon her body stilled, almost as if it acknowledged her. Then an ivory gleam split the darkness just below the eyes, as if something grinned from a mouth full of fangs.

Something soft, wet, and hot nudged her loins. She already knew what came next.

Tara whimpered but did scream when the thing invaded her maidenliness. If she tensed, she no longer fought the grips that bound her. She let the rope like limbs stretch her wide to help ease the wriggling girth’s passage, even as her tightness filled, widened, and tore, letting the unseen flesh slide within. It did not thrust, so much as crawl inside her, a throbbing, heaving, slime-ridden length. Prickles wracked her insides, as tiny claws scraped against her sheath’s walls and dragged itself further in. Then it nosed against her womb, hunched, hunched, and scrabbled in newfound wildness, like a beast seeking its burrow. Tara gritted teeth, squeezed tears from her eyes, and screamed into her own throat.

Then the cavern flared to life while the candles and fiery ring blazed up. Despite her eyes shut, Tara beheld the eldritch monstrosity clutching her: six eyes within a bulbous head, the lip-less mouth full of fangs, a body in black scales, swarthy despite the light, impossibly huge with corded thews set upon a wagon like chest, and the claws and limbs that held her helpless, cut her skin, violated her body. Her mind fought back madness.

Then all faded: the light as the flames snuffed out, the monstrous body, and even the limbs that held and impaled her, as if they were nothing more than mist. Tara fell to the floor. She wallowed once, and then curled around herself, clutching her belly. There she lay within a pool of blood and filth leaking from her thighs…

…Sometime she knew not how long later, she startled awake. Wildly she looked around at the cavern. Only melted puddles remained of the candles. Yet a small fire burned, built and fueled from the faggots she had carried. Her father Theophobus slept leaning against a stone; mouth open over his tangled beard. She saw he had thrown her cloak over her wilted body curled aside.

Then she realized she was staring down at her own body, snarled hair covering her face. She peered down at her toes transparent floating just above her cloak-shrouded self. Frightfully she watched her bodily, until a slight rising of her chest showed she was still breathing. Whatever her ghost was doing disembodiedly, at least she still lived. Her awareness rested within the astral realm.

She looked about the cavern and found she could see, unhindered by the shadows. Yet one shadow stayed in the hall’s far corner. Unthinkingly she turned, floated toward it, and peered inside.

From the shadow’s depths the six red eyes glowered back. The mouth of fangs grinned again. Ere she could flail backward, the mouth spoke words deep and wrong, of things beyond this world, unholy. At the obscenities her mind quailed…

…Tara awoke coughing, throat cracking with thirst. She was lying in chilly sweat on the cavern floor. The fire had long since burned down. Instead, weak light shone through the cavern’s doorway, hinting daylight above. The clammy cloak still covered her filthy body.

“Good. You’re awake,” spoke Theophobus, standing stiffly beside the stone. “I’d begun to worry you had taken fever.” He came to her. Yet she flinched away, clutching the cloak around her shoulders. “Easy, girl,” he chided. “No more harm will come to you.”

“Yei saathra ivn vshtash hui ynshedhroth-” Tara snapped back, but then froze, witting she spoke no mortal tongue. Instead, they were the words He had yesternight spoken to her astral self.

Theophobus likewise froze. He stared at her; face pale. A bead of sweat glistened on his wrinkled brow. “Do you understand me?’ he asked warily.

Wordlessly she nodded, not trusting her cracked throat, nor the words that might come forth.

“Good,” he nodded. “You’ve your wits after last night, at least,” and then added: “You’re already doing better than your mother did.”

Tara stared at him, almost feeling again as if her ghost again stood outside of her body.

He handed her a drinking skin, which she found held not water, but lukewarm broth. Despite its coolness, she had never tasted anything so good as its salty meatiness, and sucked it down, even when her weakened stomach threatened to retch it back up.

Her thighs and loins screamed hurt when she straightened. She stood on shuddering legs as wobbly as any newborn foal, gritted teeth, and hobbled to where her clothes lay on the cavern’s side. She studied her meager belongings and picked up her undershift. With no washcloth or bowl she used it to cleanse the dried filth and blood from herself as best as she could. But once she glanced backward, reckoning the lone room and Theophobus waiting at her back. Then she shrugged off the cloak and stood, baring her naked backside to him while she donned her robe.

The old man stared a breathtide at his erstwhile daughter’s slim waist and the cuts on her soft haunches. Then he cast eyes downward and turned away.

“Come,” said Tara after she dressed and found her tongue could once make spoke human speech. “This is no place we should tarry.”

Slowly and wearily she made way up the rope and broken stair. Where yesternight she had skipped ahead of Theophobus, now the old man out-climbed her. At the top she fell upon the ground and fought for breath. Theophobus crouched nearby, watching but not too near.

“So,” she began hoarsely, “you said my mother had died at my birth. Tell me the truth.”

“She did die shortly afterward,” he answered softly. “I beneeded all I could to keep food down her throat and harm from herself. Once she bore you, I had you to mind. I could worry no more about someone who had no will to live.”

Tara showed no reaction to this tale. “Who was she?” she merely asked.

“A slave I bought in the market of Shamar.” He shrugged. “A half-year’s wages she cost me, and a damned fair pouchful of gold, for she had to be both virgin and enough years to be ripe.”

“And she was your offering,” she stated. Her voice was dead, empty of even accusation.

He nodded. “She was,” his voice wavered, “or at least the first. I took her down into the pit and offered her, just as I offered you, bore her back out and cared for her until she had you.” He paused. “For my offering, your sire gave me the power I had craved for many years, the great sorcery, not the petty enchantments wherewith mummers cow the witless crowds. Since then, night-waifs come at my beck, and the dead yield me their secrets. Also,” he added: “I left here with your mother under promise of further payment, that I should return with you hither, on a night same as I had brought her and offer you in her stead.

“And not only have you survived,” continued Theophobus, “but unless I mistake, you have gained His favor.” He nodded knowingly. “By your words this morn, He whispered you something otherworldly, amidst your throes or sleep. The only question remains then, what will you do with it?”

Tara’s gray glare hardened on him. “I gather you want something, old man?”

“Be my apprentice and heir,” he offered. “I am old, at the peak of my power, and have few years left in life. Yet I can still teach you magics. In time you will outstrip me. Yet I can set you on the road to true mightiness.”

Tara cocked her head. “And what’s in it for you?”

“I have made a lifetime of blasphemies,” he outlaid. “For a handful of magics, I have more stains upon my soul than I can easily count. My demon-waifs have slain victims or driven them mad for blood-money, and more than one haughty lord has owed me their throne, and would worry if I ever call the debt.” He sighed. “After all, you, girl, are the closest thing I have to family. Before my shade leaves my corpse, I can only leave you as my legacy upon this earth.”

Tara studied him. “Very well, old man.” Achingly she heaved herself afoot. “I accept. We shall continue the pretense that I am your daughter.” She limped to the downward slope, and toward their wagon.

Later, they rode southward, following the track over the windy heath while the mound slowly shrank behind. Theophobus drove. Tara hunched upon the wagon’s seat and shivered chilledly. She drifted in and out of slumber, nodding to their horse’s hoofbeats.

“So we’re not going back to Ianthe,” she observed from their southward trek when once she lifted head.

“Nay,” he answered. “Our high time is come, and awaits in Koth.”

She eyed him sidewise. “You have this all planned out.”

The old man flashed yellow teeth within his beard. “I’ve had nineteen years to plan, girl. I’ve not been idle, to both our welfare. I’ve some gold saved to smooth our way, and also allies. We’ll first to Korshemish, but that is only a waystead.”

“Whereafter next?” she asked.

“Koth has lately reconquered Yaralet from Turan,” he told. “A new prince, a young prince, governs there. He will be eager to prove himself, and also to seek greater power. We will seek him out.”

“Very well,” said Tara. She made to speak again, but then clutched her belly. She twisted and leaned forward with teeth bared.

Theophobus scowled. “What ails you?”

“Nothing,” she whispered. “I’ll be fine.

xxxxx

Ianthe, crown capital of golden Ophir, lay gleaming under a starry sky. Beside the royal palace rose the great temple of Mitra, Bringer of Light. Though greater and holier fanes to the chief god of the Hyborian kingdoms stood elsewhere, non rivalled Ophir’s in beauty. Gold-painted icons graced its walls, and statues of angels stood fierce watch, with eyes of blazing jewels.

A rider galloped Ianthe’s benighted streets until the temple’s side-gate. There he reined his steed, shouted, and banged a staff against. “Open, in Mitra’s name! he cried. “I bring word for the high priest!”

With short delay the gates boomed when their bar was lifted. Then they swung open. Heedless of the porters, the rider charged his horse within, through the courtyard, and even up the portico. Only at the temple’s golden doors did he dismount, and then run headlong through the hallways.

Within the main fane, where the great statue of Mitra stood, carven as a man tall and bearded, with hand raised in warding blessing, and even the folds of his robe looked real unless one touched and knew them as stone cunningly wrought, the rider waited until a spare elderly man came forth: Ramanthese, high priest of Mitra in Ianthe. At his sight, the rider knelt and drew back his hood, baring an acolyte’s shaven pate.

“Peace this night, good Romero,” greeted Ramanthes. “You are welcome, though the hour is late. Only dire news could drive you so. Speak. What is it?”

“I bear word from Mount Golamira,” told Romero the rider. “Upon the new moon, the hermits there took an oracle. Something ill stirred that night, they read, and named it Kirut.”

Ramanthes frowned. “Stand, my young friend,” he bade. “Let us withdraw to chambers, where we will give you relief from the long road while we speak.”

Within the high priest’s chambers, Ramanthes served the acolyte wine by own hand, and a heel of bread. “When I was a boy, the elders spoke ill of Kirut,” he remarked. It is a moorland waste where no man dwells. It was told it once marked Acheron’s northern marches when that evil empire held sway.

“I doubt not this legend,” answered Romero, for such gibes well with this oracle. Also, the seers spoke more, that what stirred upon the new moon stirred before, nineteen years ago.”

“Here is a riddle,” quoth Ramanthes, scratching his beard. “I wonder,” he mused. “But lately we had another word, the day after the new moon, in fact. You have heard of the priests of Asura?”

Romero the messenger nodded, though he scowled and made a hand-sign against the evil eye.

“We hold no business with them, though despite the wives’ tales, they do not dabble in demoncraft and such blasphemies. They too warned that something stirred that night, only they gave it name.”

“What name, Master?” asked Romero.

“Theophobus, a petty enchanter from Koth, who moved here some years ago, purportedly to flee the strife in that war-cursed nation. Our inquisitors have set their eye on him a few times, though they found no evidence of sorcery. Even so, after the Asurites’ word, we sought him out, but found only that he had left Ianthe the month before. His neighbors said he had chosen to return to Koth, along with his daughter.”

Romero nodded. “And this Kirut lies southward, along the way to Koth?”

“Aye, though some ways east of Shamar, away off the Road of Kings, though I reckon not so far as could be reached overland.”

“With your permission, holy father, I will continue southward, seek Kirut, and thence find where this Theophobus has gone.” He lowered head thoughtfully, and then asked: “Of his daughter, what do we know? What age is she?”

“I know little to nothing,” said Ramanthes, “though we gathered she is of marriageable age. What do you think?”

“I know not,” said Romero. “Just an oddity.”

THE END OF CHAPTER ONE