Chateau Cascade Page 5

  He looked very much like a young sellsword as he strode out of the castle and onto the Cascadian bridge, the pike-wielding gate guards letting him pass without incident. The sun was casting its first rays of light onto the castle, reflecting a rainbow of colors off the giant stained glass windows. Standing at the white stone saw-tooth battlements and looking out toward the falls and the end of the world was a tall, thin man. He stood there – overdressed in his usual accoutrements – and smirked as though he owned the whole world. It was Quentin Gold.

  Jak did a double take. “You're coming with me? Since when do you work with anyone?”

  Quentin turned around with a flourish of his cape and pointed rudely at Jak as he spoke. “Actually, farm boy, you're coming with me.” He put great emphasis on the word “me,” as though he felt that he was the most important person in the world. “I'm on babysitting duty again, only this time it's a little longer term. Woe is me. But hey, it's good for you. Maybe if you're lucky I can at least show you how not to piss yourself around the whores we meet on the road.”

  Quentin abruptly walked off toward the west, away from the castle. Jak moved to follow. “Wait. Hold on. I don't even really know what we're doing yet. What’s going on?”

  “Mhm, yes, of course, questions,” Quentin said, hastening his gait as if to deliberately annoy Jak. “We're being sent to solve a problem in the Imperium. It is a sensitive situation that may have been caused by rogue – or perhaps not-so-rogue – Affiliation wizards. We're meeting with an Imperium agent to discuss the details, but the long story short is that we're going to solve a problem.”

  Jak increased his pace to keep up and replied, “Wizards? What sort of problem are they causing?”

  “Just be patient, farm boy.”

  They kept walking until they reached the end of the bridge, where mossy white stone turned to the sandy earth at the easternmost edge of the Ourolo desert. Jak squinted and then shielded his eyes with one hand in order to block the bright morning sun. There, leaning next to an old, dilapidated caravan hooked to an old, tired camel, stood a whiskered middle-aged man in a ten-gallon hat, slowly sharpening the edge of a wide-bladed hatchet with a whetstone.

  The Hangman

  In the cities of the Imperium of Virtue, crime was rooted out with brutal alacrity by the Enforcers. This was done with such methodical efficiency that one could easily get the impression that there had never been any crime or poverty to begin with. All such cities stood as a testament to the culture of the Imperium, with well-kept lawns, picket fencing, and attractive hard-working families as the norm. Innates – rare as they were – were welcomed here, as it was discovered that their unique gifts could be used in miraculous and synergistic ways with the Imperium's technology. Because the power of the Innate seemed to be an exclusively human phenomenon, the Imperium took it as a sign that the power was morally acceptable. Of course, commoners could scarcely tell the difference between a wizard and an Innate. Using such powers in public could therefore easily result in a commotion or even an arrest for disturbing the peace. To avoid such problems, Innates were required to register for a license within the Imperium. This mandate ensured that the Imperium was able to keep a list of almost every Innate within its borders.

  Magic was another story entirely. Unlike in the freewheeling Eastern Affiliation, magic was prohibited as a degenerate and antisocial influence – in its place, gem technology was the basis of their society. Criminals were treated harshly within the Imperium, but magic users and smugglers caught with magical contraband were dealt especially harsh punishments. The reach of the Enforcers, however, didn't always extend to backwater settlements – there, a local sheriff or two might have to keep the peace without much assistance from the main government. Magic sometimes flourished in these places on the edge of civilization.

  This place was named Woodswood, and it was an out-of-the-way township built around a logging camp. It lay in the shadow of the massive forest at the end of the world, tucked away in the southwestern most corner of Genesis. A stout boy was born here, and before long he grew into a stout young man. His birth name was Karzt Coffington, but to many of the townsfolk, he was, like his father before him, known only as the Hangman. It was not without a sense of irony that he was called the Hangman, for his grim work was done with an axe and not a noose.

  Despite his profession he was a bright-eyed young man with a cheery disposition; he had only taken on his father’s mantle out of a strong sense of duty and a desire to support his aging and sick parents. His services as both sheriff and executioner were rarely required outside of the trading season, so he normally worked as a logger. He was well-liked by the other townsfolk and was known to willingly lend a hand whenever there was a need.

  Once cowled in his executioner's hood, Karzt became another person entirely. Stern, unbending, emotionless. He became a stone whose sole purpose was to enforce the harshest penalties that justice can offer. His small community became a trading hub for produce in the summer months. While there was not much homegrown crime, the influx of travelers virtually guaranteed a local murder or that some poor woman would be assaulted. Karzt found himself chopping off hands more often than heads, as theft was exceedingly common among the worse-natured of traders. He had also performed castrations, a punishment reserved for a very particular type of crime. Once in a while he suffered the unsavory task of decapitating an adulteress; a wanton wife in the Imperium could easily expect to come to a bad end. Almost all of these punishments came with a choice, not unlike the Outsiders' Choice. Those who broke the laws of the Imperium were considered to have lowered themselves to the status of a demihuman, and thus they might choose thralldom over whatever punishment they had earned. Few took this option. Losing a hand, or worse, was often considered preferable to such a degradation of one's social standing.

  When men and women fell to Karzt's massive axe, his well-muscled lumberjack's physique never failed to deliver a swift, clean decapitation in one stroke. He'd wash the blood from his hood and move on. Time had marched on, the rote regularities of his life churning like the gears of a meticulous machine. He was already thirty. Indeed, he might have continued at his grim routine forever if not for a fateful run-in with the supernatural. When a mysterious traveler known as Kanderu came to town, Karzt's path was irrevocably altered.

  For two months, it went like this: once per week, every week, a trader or villager would be murdered. The crime always took place at midnight on the final day of the week, like clockwork. The culprit would be a local, more often than not a well-known friend of Karzt's. The evidence against them would be unassailable, the murders taking place in public venues with many eyewitnesses. Karzt had no choice; he would execute the culprit, tears stinging his eyes beneath his hood as he wondered what dark force could have corrupted the minds of his friends. His true heart began to grow as stony as the facade he put on whenever he donned that hood.

  A rider had been sent to the nearest Enforcers' adjunct office, but it might be months until someone was sent to investigate the madness that was overtaking the town; Karzt prayed that an expert in such matters would arrive soon. The people of Woodswood began to believe that their home had been cursed by some sort of dark magician, and that this killing madness would go on forever until the place was exorcised of some unknown evil. The locals began burning sage in their homes at night, hoping that it would offer them some protection.

  It was the middle of the night, three months after the first killing. Karzt woke up to the sound of local militia pounding on his door. He had been placed at the scene of the latest murder, a massive axe in his hands, chopping up one of the local whores in the town thoroughfare. Looking to his mantle, he saw that his axe was missing from its stand.

  The next several days were a blur. He was kept in a dank cell – the same one he had used to house criminals awaiting sentencing. He was chained up and fed nothing but gruel as the authorities decided what to do with him. A week passed, and there was no murder. The town was ab
uzz with the news – people who had been his friends a fortnight ago now cursed the Hangman's name. A mass hysteria had consumed the village; they were now convinced that Karzt alone was the source of all their woes. It was said that the Hangman had come to lust for blood and had corrupted himself and the town with magic in order to slake his unholy thirst for carnage. Now that he was locked up, the curse was ended.

  Karzt was delirious, angry, and confused at his predicament. He wondered if he really had killed that poor woman and simply did not remember it. When his jailers told him of the town's suspicions, he simply swallowed hard and did not move from the corner of his cell. He couldn't understand why the people would be so quick to blame him. Didn't they know that he was their protector?

  By the next day, he was filled with doubt. Could it be, he thought to himself, that I was the one what did all this?

  On the ninth night of his imprisonment, he heard a strange, tittering laugh in the darkness. Kehehehe, it echoed, high pitched and lilting. It seemed to be coming from somewhere in his cell.

  "Your lack of Knowledge is what brought you to this end, Hangman." Somehow, Karzt could tell that the voice meant capital-K Knowledge – a religious concept like gnosis or nirvana. The whisper-voice sounded demented, inhuman. “Let me fix that,” it hissed, and punctuated the statement with another tittering, inhuman laugh.

  Karzt’s eyes swiftly scanned his cell but found nothing. He began to believe that he must be going insane. All of a sudden, he felt a wet, warm thing touching the back of his neck. Acting on instinct, he tried to swing a haymaker at the darkness behind him but found that his muscles refused to respond. His body went limp and his eyes rolled back in his head as darkness took him.

  Karzt found himself suspended in a sort of semi-lucid dream. In this state he was gifted with a series of visions of the traveler Kanderu, a short man with bland features wearing tanned clothes and a yellow domed pith helmet. The man was dressed differently and looked years younger, but Karzt immediately recognized him as a trader who had come to town hawking old statuettes and ceramics. He felt himself floating as if he were some invisible bird, forced to observe the man's progress.

  In a hazy vision, Karzt saw Kanderu exploring the ruins of a long-forgotten mountainside desert temple that had been left in disrepair. He nimbly navigated the crumbling stone floors and collapsed columns of this ancient place and eventually came across a disused fane. There was a hole in the ceiling through which a single beam of sunlight shone brightly onto an artifact resting on a high altar. It was a greatsword, two-handed and massive, engraved with the ancient runes and sigils of Chaos and Knowledge, and these markings glowed with an unearthly dim red light. Below it were glyphs signifying warning and danger, glyphs and runes and sigils in many different languages. Karzt had never seen such script in his life but somehow, in this dreamlike state, he understood the warnings perfectly. If Kanderu could read them, he did not care – boldly stepping forward, he seized the blade’s hilt.

  The result was instant and horrible; Kanderu’s flesh bubbled grotesquely, as if scarab beetles were crawling around just underneath his skin. He began to scream out a horrible agonizing shout, but the scream was quickly choked off by violent gurgling. All at once, pieces of his flesh began to liquefy and drip off, striking the ground with loud wet splashing noises. Soon he couldn't scream at all and just groped helplessly at what was left of his throat – its cartilage now exposed – with his rapidly liquefying hand.

  The man had been reduced to a puddle of fleshy sludge, but that was not the end for him. Moments later the puddle started to writhe. Its surface roiled and bubbled; then, just as quickly as he had fallen apart, he began to reform. First the liquid rose up into thrashing, transient alien shapes: pseudopods, tentacles, vines and even leaves. The shapes were becoming recognizably more human; a hand would reach up from the ooze, then an arm. All were gelatinous at first, then slowly solidified into something more human seeming. Finally, the pool rose up all at once to form a familiar shape. Kanderu was standing there, a nude human man, his pith helmet and other clothing lying on the dusty stone floor.

  He glanced over at the sword, still inserted into a slot on the altar. The runes of Chaos and Knowledge were no longer glowing. Still nude, he walked a few paces away and stopped in the center of the room. He directed his attention to his own hand and raised it in the air, great curiosity painted on his face. The hand shifted, deliquescing and then becoming a hoof, then a tentacle, then a massive eyeball, and then a normal hand again. A wicked grin appeared on Kanderu's face, and he strode back the way he came, toward the exit of the temple.

  Then the vision began to change, the scenery transforming rapidly – Karzt felt his soul grow heavy with the weight of many years passing. He saw Kanderu, older now, riding into his town on a fiery red horse, a knowing smirk on his face. Then, the man's shape began to change. One by one, he took the forms of each of the supposed killers that Karzt had executed. Then, in the shape of Karzt's friends and neighbors, Kanderu committed the killings. Finally, Karzt beheld a vision of himself hacking up a woman in the street with his own axe. His doppelganger was perfect in everything but the eyes, which gleamed with a sinister crimson. Those eyes were full of bloodlust and evil. Upon seeing this, the visions came to an abrupt end. Karzt gasped for air as he opened his eyes, realizing he hadn't taken a breath the entire time. Catching his breath, realization struck, and he began to shout.

  “You, it was you!” he shouted, “you piece a’ shit!” He screamed incoherently – the primal guttural war cry of a man whose life has been destroyed – and threw wild punches into the dark of his cell. One connected with the wall and he felt pain shoot up his hand and into his arm. He heard more tittering in the darkness – it continued for several seconds, retreating until Karzt could no longer hear it at all.

  Two more days passed without incident. Karzt spent the time mulling over the strange vision he had been given. Magic – that accursed thing borne from the Eastern barbarians – was clearly to blame. He cursed its name again and again, vowing to exact revenge on the man-thing he had seen. Time passed. He ate gruel, pissed into a pot, and wondered why he hadn't been executed yet. By Imperium standards, this was considered exceptionally slow justice.

  Almost two weeks into his captivity, his old deputy came bumbling down the stairs of the prison-cellar. John was a fat, red-cheeked young fellow who had recently married an even fatter bride. The last time they'd met had been on John's wedding day. By that time, the killings had already started, but the wedding had nonetheless been a welcome respite from the dark cloud of misery that hung over their town. Karzt remembered the jovial look on his deputy's face as he kissed his bride. Now he wore a frown on his face.

  “Sorry ta see the state of ye, Karzt,” he said. He held a flickering torch in one hand and a set of keys jangled in the other.

  Karzt looked up, his eyes dilated wide in the darkness. He was unshaven and dirty after having spent so much time in his cell. “So ye’r here. What's it gonna be, John? Hanging or th' axe?”

  “Drawn an' quartered, I'm 'fraid. Th' townspeople is shook. They want t' make sure th' killer gets what's comin' to him. Only... you ain't done it, did ya? Tell it to me true, Karzt.”

  “John, if I told it true, ya'd just think I'd lost my senses.”

  “Ain't look like you got anywhere t' be. Try me.” John unlocked the cell. Karzt looked at him warily and stared into his eyes half-expecting to see a maleficent crimson glow. Instead, Karzt only saw the familiar hazel-colored eyes of his friend, and he felt a deep but momentary shame at his own suspicions. If John noticed, he pretended not to; he beckoned toward Karzt to follow, his jovial nature making the gesture seem friendly and lighthearted even in this dark time.

  Karzt followed John upstairs into the empty office. Some candles were lit, and Karzt saw that the sun had already set for the day. He had lost track of time in the cell beneath the sheriff's office. John brought two steaming cups of coffee and set them down on an o
ld sandalwood desk. The two men sat down and regarded each other in silence before Karzt finally began to speak. His voice went dead and devoid of all emotion as he described the otherworldly vision. He spoke like a man delivering his final testament, his last words before an execution. Perhaps he thought he was doing just that.

  For John's part, he asked no questions as his friend spoke of the supernatural experience in the cell. Instead, his eyes widened further and further until Karzt finished his tale. He asked his old friend to repeat the story from the top, and when that was over, he became quiet. For a time, he simply stared at Karzt, his hand covering his own mouth as the slow wheels of thought churned in his brain. Eventually, he broke his silence.

  “You and me got history, Karzt. Ya didn't have ta make me yer deputy – God knows ya didn't need one. You ain't never done nothin' to make me think you was crazy, or that you'd a gone and kilt that woman. I believe yer story Karzt, I do, and I'll be damned if'n I'm gonna let anyone tie them ropes on ya because 'o what some kinda magician did.” He spat the word magician like a curse.

  Until now, Karzt was staring into his coffee, rarely stopping to sip. He glanced up and ran one of his big hands over the beginnings of a beard on his face. “What are ya saying here, John?”

  “I'm sayin' ya escaped. Nobody never seen hide nor hair of ya ever again.” John stood up and waddled to the door, opened it, and looked pointedly at Karzt. There was a deerhide travel backpack sitting in front of the door, rations and a water skin visible from its opening. A sharp-looking hatchet was leaning against the backpack.