Filled With Emptiness
by Dan Crawford
Dan Crawford is older than he used to be. He thinks his three novels, published in the 1990s, are about due to be rediscovered, although they were not all that discovered at the time.
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The Order of the Forbidden Tomb was not a boisterous group, but when Sor Tellamek rapped her knuckles at the head of the long, dark table, the room went more silent than the Tomb had been in three millennia.
The Archon looked around at the faces appearing and disappearing as candles flickered and shadows moved. Eyes were raised to her under the dull grey chain mail hoods–the only spot of color in their uniform robes of shadow. Eight tall guardians sat around the scarred and ancient table, dwarfed by the high ceiling which seemed to reach above them forever among dark walls with darker fissures marking the last time The Foul One had tried to break free. Fra Evenar had paid for his carelessness then with death, if you could call it that, since small screaming bits of him still turned up now and again.
Tellamek took a deep breath. Was it her imagination, or was the air fresher now, even this deep underground? Only one level sat below this, and that was the Tomb itself. She caught herself checking the candle smoke for faces indicating The Foul One’s presence; best get on with business.
“The day none thought was coming has come,” she intoned. “And…it is over.”
“Offerings have dropped to nothing.” said Sor Vesko, as usual ruining the solemnity of the moment. “One pot of honey and a crock of turnip preserves.” She jerked her chin up in contempt.
“I caught three boys from the village scratching a vile limerick about The Foul One on our gatepost.” Fra Mynyro shook his head. “Not bad versifying, but I cast a spell that put fear of the Order in them, and made them scratch it out again.”
“I hope you jotted down the verse for the annals,” said Fra Sibelli, leaning forward.
“Four of the Seven Towers are now completely deserted save for the guardian spirits,” Archon Tellamek told them. “We trusted our minions too far.”
Mailed heads bobbed in gloomy nods: each member of the Order had recruited minions. One group had gone so far as to pretend to be members of the Order and, declaring a New Peace, had tried to set up a modest reign of terror around Needleburg. Sor Nopelene caught up with them and dealt with the problem, leaving their hands and heads on spikes in a little fenced in area marking the spot where the rest of their bodies had been consumed, alive, by fire. Not the best advertisement for the Order, Tellamek thought, but Sor Nopelene always had been a trifle showy.
The job of the Order had been to guard the tomb of The Foul One, an undead princess, and keep people from waking her to start again her evil dominion. Tellamek and most of the
members of the order had grown up in that forgotten world, where the sun burned and the wind froze at the same time, where nothing grew easily but mold which rotted almost immediately, and even death held no comfort. She had traversed vast wastelands inhabited by nothing but sentient and evil echoes, and pushed her way into cities where people were so crowded that the upper classes were those who got to sleep on top of the group at night.
“The blades in the Hall of Gallows have been dim for days, and the flails no longer rise from their brackets when the door is opened.” Sor Baffie sighed. “It’s hardly worth getting up in the morning to check them,”
In the rolling, blistering explosion which devastated the dining room where the Foul One was confronted as she ate from dishes that were living body parts carved from prisoners, The Foul One had fallen, and certain members of the Order in the direct blast from the Amulet of the Bull and the Dog, enchanted by Fra Gergyk as he coughed out his last breath on the floor, had had their lives extended so they could guard the tomb, once the writhing corpse of The Foul One was forced into it.
Fra Sibelli set a large metal column on the table. “There has been not a glint of light in the Beacon of Warning…nothing of any color.”
“I haven’t lit the candles in the Deepest Altar for days,” noted Fra U-Falik, his scarred hands folded before him.
“Good.” Sor Vesko nodded. “The way things are going, we’ll run out of candles soon.”
There were plenty of candles: Sor Vesko saw nothing between feast and famine. But heads nodded glumly again around the table.`
Three thousand years of vigil had followed: each member of the Order spent eight hours at the tomb, eight hours at research or office work (mendicants, questers, and minions made for constant complication), and eight hours of fitful sleep in a stone cell. Rituals were conducted to seal The Foul One away ever more securely, and a network of seven towers with enchanted hourglasses tended by minions safeguarded the spells and amulets which held her down, asleep and unaware.
Despite all these things, The Foul One made a major attempt to break free every six hundred years; her leer and her song of blight and despair would be known again for a while until the chaos could be put right. Each time she did this, she called forth acolytes who worshipped her darkness in memory, who sometimes waited decades after the outbreak to attempt the guardians of the Tomb and free her by force.
“There are bats moving into the Tomb, preparing to hibernate, I’m sure” said Sor Yam-Ah-Shah. “That has never, ever happened.”
“No. nothing went there of its own free will except us,” said Fra U-Falik. “And….”
And then one day a jaunty flute player had found a way in, apparently in quest of a little excitement, and, as the Order rushed to capture him, accidentally woke The Foul One and, to his surprise and hers, killed her finally. The prophecy about the tube of silver had been nothing but true, and the long vigil was over.
Archon Tellamek set her hands together. Rough to be out of a job at three thousand and sixty-three.
“Rogarn brought in seventeen shields with The Foul One’s emblem,” Sor Nopelene noted. “Another company of her undying skeletons apparently died on the way here.”
Tellamek could simply disband the Order and let the members go free to pursue life outside the Tomb. The Treasury would provide ample funds for each, with much left for faithful minions. She looked around the table. The thought of wandering outside among the populace after three thousand years made her shudder. After three thousand years of committee meetings like this, the idea of some of her followers set loose on an unprepared world made her shudder the worse.
“Are there no duties left for us here?” Sor Nopelene demanded. “Or do we scatter to the winds and become wandering wizards?”
“I can’t go for at least a week.” Sor Baffie gestured behind her. “I have a crop of striped mushrooms due soon; it should be a cross with those minty spores we found under the trees in Tersonlond.”
“The library can’t just be left here to moulder on the shelves.” Fra Mynyro himself had collected roughly three quarters of the books in the library, working on his compilation of poetry about the misdeeds of wicked ghosts. His own notes filled nearly as many volumes as sat on the shelves, and he had made no move to put the notes in order yet.
“And we are still getting wagers deposited on the Spring season,” said Sor Yam-Ah-Shah, who had spent the last two centuries organizing the minions into scrums and setting up the tournaments among the Seven Towers.
“That’s just the nose of the bugbear in the tent,” said Sor Baffie. “It may be falling apart, but there’s the whole network of minions: eavesdroppers in taverns, wandering sages, brewers who stock the Towers….we can’t just abandon them without a leader. You saw what can happen!”
“And what of the less human side of the Order?” Fra U-Falik put in, tossing up a hand to wave long fingers at the shadows above. “There are eldritch creatures in the Tomb and in the Towers, some of them hers, some of them ours.”
Fra Mynyro leaned back, hands behind his head. “Clean them out before we go,” he suggested. “The Foul One is gone, so it shouldn’t take many months.”
Sor Nopelene turned to Fra Sibelli. “And we can finally pitch all that trash you’ve gathered in the reception room.”
Snorting, Fra Sibelli tossed his head. “Three thousand years, and I haven’t convinced you how valuable….”
Tellamek reached down to rap the table again: that discussion had broken into too many meetings. Before she did, though, Sor Yam-Ah-Shah raised her hands to wave the argument away herself. “When do we go?” she demanded. “There is much to be done, and if we are….” She paused. “All to stay here until the place is clean, we’d best prepare for another winter in this pile of rock.”
“True.” Tellamek nodded. There were many rituals and procedures involved with the onset of winter. Some were practical and some traditional: putting up the applesauce (so many peasants paid their tribute in apples), checking cheese for storage, performing the rituals against the year’s shortest day, baking fruitcakes…. She felt a faint, untidy longing. She rather liked the
winter here: fewer adventurers or minions with reports and false suspicions, nothing to do but eat cracklings and read all the old books over again.
Fra Sibelli and Sor Nopelene were arguing about empty cider jugs in low tones. The hissing stopped, though, when Sor Vesko demanded, “But should we leave?” The candles, which were her make, flared dramatically on her words.
“I see no reason to stay in this dark heap,” declared Fra U-Falik. “No one knows how much longer we’ll live, now our service is done. Get out into the light while you still have eyes to see it.” U-Falik was the youngest member of the Order, an adventurer who had shown promise and stayed on a mere two thousand years before. One or two heads bobbed in agreement, though Sor Nopelene scowled, as she did every time the youngster spoke.
“But this dark heap can be our greatest asset.” Sor Vesko patted the tabletop. “Properly managed, it could become a major shrine! Tourists from around the world would flock here to see where we worked, and where The Foul One was finally defeated!”
“If they get past the Dragon’s Drawbridge,” Sor Yam-Ah-Shah replied, her tone full of scorn.
“We could replace it with a handsome covered one, now that we don’t need to keep out
her worshippers.” Sor Vesko had obviously given this a lot of thought. “Maybe we could get that flute player to drop in and tell his stories.”
“Not all of them.” Fra Mynyro didn’t sound much more convinced than Yam-Ah-Shah.
Sor Vesko rose a little from her seat. “We could clean him up a little, and make him an example for the younger ones to follow. We’d tell them they could be like…what was his name?”
“Bnuck,” said the Archon.
“I daresay we could come up with something,” Fra Mynyro put in.
Fra U-Falik was thoughtful. “He was kind of cute.”
“We do not,” snorted Sor Nopelene, “Use the word cute.”
“Maybe we didn’t,” said Fra U-Falik, unabashed, “But if we’re going after the tourist trade….”
“He did kill Sor Lonsceval to get in,” Sor Yam-Ah-Shah pointed out. “I’m not sure he’d be the best….”
Sor Nopelene snorted again. “Sor Lonsceval used to chew her fingernails during my homilies.”
“If it would keep me awake during your homilies,” said Fra Mynyro, “I’d chew my toenails.”
“The flute player wouldn’t need to be here all the time,” said Fra U-Falik. “We have other attractions. I could sell my pancakes.”
“And we could make enough money to eat something besides your pancakes,” said Sor Baffie, setting her chin on her arched hands.
“We would be the main attraction, of course,” said Sor Vesko. “We can charge admission to the tomb and tell her story as a warning.”
Sor Yam-Ah-Shah nodded mock agreement. “And an empty sarcophagus would be a huge attraction?”
“There are the skulls,” said Sor Baffie.
“True.”
Tellamek found the idea interesting but not alluring. “Remember what happened to Sor Anaphren? We still haven’t found all the traps she built into the place before we took it over.”
Fra U-Falik patted his palms together. “That could be part of the fun.”
Sor Nopelene scowled. “We do not use the word….”
“Use this,” suggested Sor Vesko, employing an old gesture seldom seen in this complex.
“It needn’t be just a show for visitors,” said Sor Baffie. “We could start a training school for adventurers.”
“I see: we would be the mentors for those facing the fiends of a new age.” This sounded like a more worthy aim, to Tellamek. What all of it sounded like, though, was extra work, and of a kind the Order knew very little about.
“We might have to build new buildings to house visitors, and more for students,” said Fra Sibelli, sounding enthusiastic. “We’d need a museum.”
“All the clutter in the reception room,” sighed Sor Nopelene.
“And a bigger library,” Fra Mynyro put in.
Sor Yam-Ah-Shah nodded. “You could be our first Professor of Obscene Verse.” Sor Nopelene threw back her head to laugh at this, a harsh cackle of derision.
Fra Sibelli and Fra U-Falik opened their mouths to reply, but her laugh was echoed by a rumble, and a ripple of the stone beneath their feet. As the members of the Order checked under the table, the beacon on it flashed red, flooding the room with an aura of blood. Bats, squeaking loudly, flooded above them in a flight of frenzy and panic.
Tellamek rapped on the table to call for order, but the sound was drowned by a rolling voice, or chorus of voices, which shook the very walls. “Did you think the death of our sister
would be allowed to go unavenged? Each of you shall due—slowly and horribly—before we go out to spread death and darkness across your land!”
Candles and beacon were extinguished in a rush of foul air, but the avenging demons were startled into a fatal pause by the Order’s sudden, heartfelt cheer of welcome. “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here!”
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