Demon Night by David C. Smith & Richard L Tierney
Author:David C. Smith & Richard L Tierney
Language: eng
Format: epub
PART II:
The Earth-folk
Woe unto this great city!âand would that even now I might see the pillar of fire that shall consume it!
For such pillars of fire must come before there cometh the Great Noontide. But this hath even its own time and fate.
âNietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra
Chapter Eight
They were not dead, neither were they alive. Existing timelessly in that limbo reserved for demonic forces trapped upon the earth, man-conjured or god-sent, the Earth-folk swelled and contracted invisibly, emotionlessly, inhumanly. Not wind, yet they were invisible as the wind; not alive as humans know life, yet they had thoughts and intelligence of an unhuman sort. In a vacuum between one form of being and another they existed, waiting for the summons of the moon and the stars, the planets and the sacrifice and the Nameâ¦
We existâageless, fleshless, unchanging, without voices or hands or faces. Our thoughts move like the wind, but we are not wind. We hungerâwe await the time to devour. We do not hunger foreverâwe await the time of the Moon and the Feastingâ¦
Saureb sensed them as he paced thoughtfully in his chamber within the mountainside, while Sonja and Tiamu slumbered in the outer cavern. Blue incenses curled about him from bronze tripods, reflecting murkily in the silver mirror that hung from the rock wall.
He could feel the existence and the waiting of the Earthfolk because he was their keeper, could sense their subtle unliving vibrations because he was a master of arcane arts. He knew that the darkness before dawn holds more truth than either the broad daylight or the blackness of night; he knew that sometimes living men were phantoms, and dreams more real than men imagined. The pulsing life of rain he could sense, as well, and the breathing of flowers, the sounds of eroding rocks, the voices of growing trees and their shrieks when harmed by men. He understood, too, how the Earthfolk, and all demonic things, could wait out the aeons alive yet not alive.
âHark to them, O Zarutha!â exclaimed Saureb suddenly, a strange anguish in his face. âCan you hear me, even as I can hear the Folk stirring in the stone and the air? Would that it could be so, and that you could answer, for I have need of your great wisdom.
âSometimes in my loneliness I weep, O Zarutha, because I am trapped by my humanity and know that even mine will be a human death. O you who came to hate man because you loved life, how were you able to laugh and dance, knowing that man is the worm gnawing at the corpse of earth? Not all of your great wisdom did you teach me, O Zarutha!â
Only silence answered Saurebâs outburstâthat and the soundless stirrings in the stone and the air.
Alive but not aliveâ¦
âO Zarutha, the time has come for magic,â said Saureb into the murky mirror, âeven as you foresaw. Would that I were like the warrior who handles his sword and does not question the swordâs existence; for I handle my magicâbut question it always.
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