Glade's Edge: Part IV - Swords of St Valentine
The grand oaken double doors of the sanctum were splayed in welcome. The bard had been just as welcoming. Rhainyr sensed some recognition and mirth in the man’s eyes when Eloise presented her case for his enlistment. He now followed Vaerjio the Bard of the Twelve Kingdoms through the doors of the ritual sanctum. Behind him was Ilsis and Eloise. The sanctum was open to the stars with high walls pierced by slim windows and taller pillars supporting no roof. Atop the pillars were broken faced and limbless statues of molding marble.
Stringed melodies, thrummed drum beats, and choral chants spilled from the sanctum out over the lake. Scattered about the sanctum were revelers chanting, dancing, and playing macabre instruments. The chanters bayed like wolves on heels and knuckles, twisting in gyres. The dancers spun in coils as they orbited the chanters. Each limb was a serpent snaking around a spinning tree. On the outer rim the musicians played lutes of skulls and horns accompanied by thin drums of bone and skin. They stood among a black cloaked solemn congregation wearing ivory masks of various beasts as they gazed up at the stars. There were seven of these circles of differing sizes. Some of these circles would intersect and weave together methodically like an orrery of human motion.
At the center of the sanctum was a crescent dais rising over a great brazier of scarlet roaring flame. On the dais a woman of indiscernible age wore a tiara of dangling stars, a blood gold armored gauntlet, and a draped amaranthine sash that wound from cowl to hips. Eloise, Ilsis and the bard accompanied Rhainyr up the stairs. He saw the fire blaze with licking flames faster than any imaginable. Yet as they drew closer the flames slowed their prancing flutters. The contortionists slowed and the flames dragged through the air as if time were a wave and the whole congregation bobbed on its surf. Rhainyr noted none of his companions were there. Somehow they had been delayed, either in search of him or by more of the bard’s machinations.
The sorceress atop the dais faced the brazier’s flame. She raised a ringed studded ram’s skull over her head and turned to Rhainyr. Then she motioned for him to kneel. Eloise and Ilsis took their places at her side. The sorceress turned the skull to face the brazier and placed it in his hands. From behind him, Vaerjio fastened a leather collar about his neck. A coin sized brass ring was stitched to the middle. The twin sisters had their hands bound in steepled prayer with a mass of corded catgut. It was far more than necessary for binding. When the binding was complete, the sisters’ hands looked like large spools of cord. The sorceress took the ends of the cord in each hand and held them aloft. When she let go of their ends they stayed exactly as they were, weightless. At this sign Vaerjio left the dais and signaled the twins. They closed their eyes and began to sing. With ghost’s disembodied touch, the sorceress weaved catgut through the rings studding the ram’s horns. The binding cord wound over Rhainyr’s fingers tethering his hands about the skull and to the leather collar.
The sorceress began her incantations. The twins sung eyes shut as if in great concentration. Eloise was dressed in a gauzy white gown. Ilsis wore criss crossed bands of black leather over ebon silk. The twins were tethered to Rhainyr in a ritual triangle with the sorceress at its center.
The witch’s incantation burrowed at the edges of his mind. Then a glamour washed over his steely defenses drowning him into trance. He was submerged but could still breath within a bubble of grit. A form appeared in the smoke streaming from the great scarlet fire. A gigantic mummified corpse rose over the congregation from the brazier’s flames. The edges of its dark leathery skin trailed off like swirling sands in the wind.
The mummy thing gestured and signalled as if it were an astral usher. The cord wound over him vibrated like a strummed string, yet its reverberations echoed apart from the material into some other dimension. The strained focus to remain vigilant in this realm flipped his insides. Rhainyr withdrew to remain in control of a fragment of his mind. The witch used him as a vessel and an aegis to wend their way through the abyss in search of an ancient spirit. The twins would be the siren’s to beckon the spirit from the depths of the abyss. Rhainyr was the skiff and the witch his navigator. Before the night ended the three would be sacrificed, calling forth Bel Amon who would usher in a new age.
Oh, how exciting... The dark timbre of this ritual was quite unexpected and jarring, but the way you filled with life seems to make a harmony out of the discord. I particularly like your starting the chapter in medias res, preferring not describe how Rhainyr, the sisters and the bard got to the sanctum really elevates the otherworldly quality of the ritual. Can't wait for the climax!
Much thanks! This is sort of a protoype for a novel I hope to release in the fall. The novel will fill in all the little bits. Here it's raw and to the point using an old pulp short story formula Bryce Beattie, from Storyhack, dredged up from a Writer's Digest from the 40's.