Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 6 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parallel Universe Publications
Published: 2023-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

GOLDEN WITCH OF ADZELGAR

Scott McCloskey

I know her, though we have never met.

Even now she rides down from the Verst Highlands, where for seventy years has stood a magnificent city once known to me as a shanty village. Even now she glances over her slender shoulder for a last look at the golden spires of home, only to find the impotent sunshine swallowed up by grey folds, pregnant with deluge. Even now she turns her roan charger from the post road, following what she believes to be the last recourse of a civilization whose survival means nothing to me.

I wait patiently to receive her, the very incarnation of time.

Her name is Cyrilia Anst Dourdan, third of four daughters to the grand vizier who stands at the right hand of the sultan. She has lived a life of opulence in a society made soft and decadent by plenty, whose enemies stand on the brink of genocidal conquest. Her days upon the grand concourse of Adzelgar consist of wine, song, and a parade of swarthy suitors more interested in the dowry of her heiress elders. Her moonstruck nights are a silvery void, spent poring over ancient texts by candlelight while the socialites murmur. She has more than once skinned her knees against sealed slate tombs of forbidden grimoire, but she lacks by no means in comeliness, and has long since learned from her coquettish sisters how to turn a man’s eye. Thus armed even the elder lorekeepers were no match, and it was but a fortnight ago that she learned of me. In her bag she carries texts considered ‘cursed’ by the ignorant, and ‘forbidden’ by those who find abhorrence in the truth behind a history they have so sought to overwrite.

She dips into the lowlands as a ladle into thick broth, picking out a path through cloying humidity that settles over her like a second skin.

She needs me, though she is my sworn enemy.

The marsh waters stir; I hear upon the grassy berm the irregular patter of feet. There is grunting beyond the cairn wall, as a haughty man seeks to undo the very crust of the earth by flesh alone.

“Stand back,” says she in an unfamiliar vernacular. As a salamander crawls over my remains, I wait for the words that will set me free.

“X’ith knacth ga, alum ore ga ta no, nothie. Nothie, nethie, nachtulas. Garman eict ga. Nothie, nethie! Garman ga! Garman ga! Achtulame!”

My sinews knit. My corded thews weave. My eyelids crack, taking on the soggy air like rain barrels filled to bursting. My fingers jerk like the twitching movement of horseflies.

I was alive. I am alive.

“Come!” she commands. “Heed my call!”

The deceased torches that line my damp chamber spring to life as I rise. The sigils give way, and daylight springs into my eyes for the first time since I crushed the land beneath my feet with her forebearers.

She is there, and for a millennial instant, there is nothing else. Courted by the croaking of bog toads and drips of water through the eroded cracks of the cairn, she glares at me with fettered interest.

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