The long reach of night, p.23
The Long Reach of Night, page 23
part #2 of Voidal Series
This came like the sounding of a sentence, a rejection of any appeal, and it was like a physical blow. It omened further torment.
“Where is the Oblivion Hand?”
For the first time it was possible for the dark man to speak, though it remained difficult. The words laboured to form themselves, as though he was under water, or in a dream. “Lost on Vyzandine. I cut it from me and gave it to Krogarth.”
“Did you think so little of my charge?”
The Voidal tried to force out a curse, but such an action was denied him.
“I see that you did. However, you must find the hand. It was never yours to dispose of.”
The Voidal closed his eyes in revulsion. He knew that he could not fight this overwhelming power. Whatever it decreed, he must do. Must he bear that foul member once more? Yet he would never ask for pity, never demand release. They could not take from him his pride.
The Dark God spoke again. “I have observed that you carry your own hand. It grows there as though it had never been taken from you. You went to remarkable lengths to win it back, as we guessed that you would. But, of course, that served a purpose. As you have come to understand, all things serve a purpose.”
Suddenly the God leaned forward and the Voidal felt that he would be engulfed by what was to be revealed, but he saw nothing, only starless night. “We are the gods of punishment. Did you think we were without mercy?”
A chord of hope rang within the Voidal, but its pealing quickly subsided as if muffled by a landslide. Mercy? Their mercy would have its price.
“There is something you must do with that returned hand,” went on the God, drawing slowly back. “I will decide if you are deserving of its keeping. So, reach down into that well before you. There is something there which must be rendered up to me.”
Once more there was no question of disobedience. To obey was the only course of action possible. No matter how odious the task, the dark man must submit. He had no free will while he sat before this omnipotent being.
Slowly he reached out into the space in the well with his right hand. He felt as if by doing so he betrayed himself and all that he had fought for. He moved with the desperation of a beaten gambler, casting down the last doomed card.
His reach seemed to go on forever, lost in time and distance.
“You said Vyzandine?” breathed the God.
The word seemed to sink into the well and introduce a new element into it. Heat. It grew in intensity. Molten heat. The Voidal felt his right hand being scorched by sudden blasts of hot air. It sank down into a white cauldron of fire. Magma.
“Continue,” said the God.
“Krogarth?” murmured the Voidal through billows of searing agony. “I thought that - “
“His volcano erupted and he was dismembered in the explosion. He was evil. His fate was earned. You served us well there. But the hand you cast away was sucked down into the very core of Vyzandine. Now you must find it. Bring it up to me.”
The Voidal was not permitted to collapse or sink into oblivion. He was made to endure the impossible agonies of the magma as his hand clutched ever downward. Its components boiled, made molten themselves by the heat. But he would not allow himself to cry out with the torturing pain. His left hand gripped the stone edge of the table, and the stone splintered where his fingers bit into it.
“Bring me the hand,” repeated the God impassively.
Something snatched at the Voidal’s fingers down there in the star-hot core of Vyzandine. He tried to shake it loose, but it had fastened on him, its fingers intertwined with his own, immovable. Now he was able to draw back his hand, inexorably slowly.
Up through the fire, then at last air, then space, his arm came, blazing with pain. He felt himself reeling, every nerve screaming, but he shook his head angrily, tears of sweat and anguish trickling from his gaunt face.
The tabletop was once more an expanse of polished stone. The well had closed. Bemusedly the dark man saw that his right hand was grasped across the table in the right hand of the Dark God, as though the well had, after all, never existed. Yet that shrieking pain had, and still did. For a moment he thought of the frightful incident on Intercelestis when he had played Bulgarst at the Grip Game. He stared down at the linked hands with a surge of renewed horror and nausea. Many incidents of this past came back to him like waves breaking over a rock. The destruction of Ugnarg and the Slaughterer, the fall of the Deathmare, the events at Icehaven, Krogarth’s doom. The hand that yet clutched him could wipe him away in the blink of an eye.
He could not free himself from its fiery grip. The lava had been less painful, and he began to understand the true nature of the suffering that the hand of the Dark God brought. For what seemed a long time they sat motionlessly. A thin trickle of blood ran from the Voidal’s mouth as he clenched it shut, determined not to cry out.
At last the Oblivion Hand released his own and he swayed back. His hand was numb, and he feared that it must be dead, useless. It glowed with angry weals. Was this the price he must pay for regaining it? Even so, it would be better than to carry again the black terror of the Dark God’s hand.
Now the tone of the God changed. It became markedly cold, dispassionate, almost cruel. “Do not think you are released from your fate, Voidal. You have made some amends for your sins, and I will take back my hand. You need not bear it for me again. But remember this much, your own hand is not as it was. Something of my power has passed into it. It will never leave you as my hand has done so often, and it can never perform the grim acts of destruction that the Oblivion Hand performs, but it has power. Some men have called you Fatecaster. So shall you remain.
“Remember this meeting. Remember your duty. Perform it well, Voidal, and you may win back for yourself other lost powers. It does not have to be your destiny to serve us for all time. But we guard your destiny jealously. If you desire to recover it, obey us in all things, the quicker to fulfil this desire.”
After that, the room was empty, save for the fire. The Voidal got up and went to it. He stooped before it, warming himself, for though his hand still felt like rock, there was a chill in his bones that reached deep into his being, almost to the purloined soul he had yet to find.
He stretched out his right hand before the tiny flames. Shocking life pulsed back into the nerves slowly, but the hand was healed. What powers would it have? None that he wanted, he felt sure. But better this than what had gone before. Thinking over this, his eyes grew tired.
The dreams beckoned him anew. It was not long before he had succumbed. Then for a time, there was an end to pain.
* * * *
Thus a cycle ends.
There are, I ought to explain, many more myths, legends, tales, rumours, hints and exaggerations about the exploits of the dark man (and more specifically his familiar) that relate to this Cycle of the Hand, as one might term it.
There are the Lost Parchments of Khnimniec, Valdor Olosor’s Gray Observations and the Technocratic Treatise of Megraphasm, to name but a few, and although thoroughly entertaining in their own rights, I have been moved by the constraints of stringency to omit them here.
In my two-volume history of the Oblivion Hand, I have chosen to select the elements most pertinent to it and have striven to modify the worst excesses of the originals. The veracity of the cycle is, I believe, reasonably sound, though, I admit, colorful.
Furthermore, it would not be difficult to chronicle more of the exploits unique to Elfloq, and it may be that I shall in time attempt this, although it is with these tales that one has to exercise most effectively the prerogative of the editorial role, given the rampant rhetoric that suffuses their original format.
I will content myself with moving on, in due course, to tempt further the wrath of the gods, to record the remarkable events in the Voidal’s history subsequent to those of this Cycle of the Hand. It is they who, after all, have chained me here with little else but the tools of my art and I am forced to cling to the conviction that they must have done so for a purpose!
You, patient follower of these tracts, shall learn of the Weaver of Wars, of Orgoom, of the Dark Destroyer, of bottled universes and of the monstrous Evergreed.
Oh, and so much more.
—SALECCO, thrower of light upon matters dark and obscure, that the omniverse might be enriched.
Table of Contents
THE VOIDAL SERIES
DEDICATION
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
DEDICATION
EXORDIUM
PART ONE: THE PREPOSTEROUS LIBRARY
PART TWO: THE MARCH OF THE DAMNED
PART THREE: A QUESTION OF DEBTS
PART FOUR: ON MURDERERS’ MOUNTAIN
PART FIVE: FAMILIAR TERRITORY
PART SIX: THE BURNING ICE, THE FREEZING FIRE
PART SEVEN: THE EXILE OF EARTHENDALE
PART EIGHT: THIEF OF THIEVES
PART NINE: IN THE PRESENCE OF PAIN
Adrian Cole, The Long Reach of Night
