The Mysteries of the Faceless King by Darrell Schweitzer & Darrell Schweitzer

Author:Darrell Schweitzer & Darrell Schweitzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Horror
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2022-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE SORCERER OF EVORAGDOU

WHEN I WAS TEN, a naked, mad boy came into our village, proclaiming the advent of the sorcerer Evoragdou. I remember how frightened I was of that boy, though he couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than me. He was so emaciated, so filthy, so burnt by the sun that he seemed less a human being than a piece of driftwood inexplicably come alive.

“Evoragdou,” was all he would say, in a kind of delirium. “Evoragdou shall dwell in this place.”

In time the women fed him, washed him, gave him clothes, and took him away.

I asked my father what all this meant, and he merely said, “The sun has destroyed his mind.”

“Who is Evoragdou?”

“There is no such person,” my father said, very sternly. I didn’t think he believed that he was saying. He was hiding his own fear.

Two months later, I wandered out in the night, to answer the call of nature, then to stare at the dark sky and make up stories about what I saw there.

I walked for a ways, across the rickety wooden bridge over the irrigation canal, then between the rows of newly planted grain, careful of my step. The heavens were clear and moonless, the millions of stars like the sparks of some enormous forge, frozen in time. I could never be lost in the darkness, because the Great River was behind me and the desert before me. Besides, I knew my way among the stars.

I was hungry for a miracle. Pridefully, almost arrogantly, I longed to be the special one to whom visions came, who beheld the gods leaning to whisper to one another where they sat seated like vast and looming clouds, behind the stars.

It never occurred to me that the mad boy might have had his own share of miracles, that they had transformed him and could transform me. No, I wanted mine. Now.

But instead of any vision of gods, the stars themselves rippled like lights reflected in windswept water, and a third of the entire sky was blotted out.

Suddenly, I was standing on the doorstep of an enormous wooden building, vaster than anything I’d ever imagined could be built. With a yell, I fell back, then scrambled to my feet and ran a distance off to hide in a clump of tall grass by a water channel. There I crouched, wide-eyed, watching, listening as the fantastic house began to shift and change, its timbers creaking, groaning, shuddering, as if a living monster, not a wooden structure at all, were stirring from sleep.

There, as had been foretold, undoubtedly and undeniably, was the dwelling of the sorcerer Evoragdou.

Towers rose like slowly stretching arms. The windows opened, like eyes, black and sightless. A corner swelled outward, becoming a turret with a gleaming, glass dome on top, sparkling in the starlight.

Truly this was as great a miracle as anyone could hope for, but I waited in greedy expectation for something more to happen.

Toward dawn, something did: A door opened onto a balcony far above, and a silver-bearded man in a flowing robe came out.

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