The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy (40 page)

Ophiria heard more than one such comment, and was greatly gratified to discover that her performance was appreciated. Never one to proceed by half-measures, she decided to carry the masquerade through to its limit. When the cart reached the pit and Remy Brousse’s body was thrown in on top of a hundred others, she cast herself upon the ground and beat the turf with her fists. When the priest of the parish and the town’s mayor decided that the pit could hold no more and would have to be filled in, she hurried to the rim for one last lingering look at her beloved—and when the spade-men began to seal the grave, every clod that fell wrung a moan from her emaciated lips.

Nor was that enough for her; unlike her late husband, Ophiria believed that if a job was worth doing it was worth doing properly. On the next day, the widow went to the church on the hill above the place where her late husband and a hundred others lay, to join the throng of mourners. Like the wives of other men, and the mothers and grandmothers who had lost children, she was clad entirely in black, with no shoes on her feet. Like these others, she went after hearing mass to kneel upon the freshly-turned earth, directly atop the place where she had seen her husband’s dead body set upon the terrible heap. Like all the other widows, she cried and cried and cried.

Even Ophiria’s energy began to flag in the end, but she carried on regardless, forcing more tears to come in floods by surreptitiously pinching her tenderest flesh between her sharp fingernails. Her voice was very conspicuous in lamenting the vile injustice of the world, and the awful cruelty of the demon which had sent the plague—but within her secret thoughts, she made her apologies and gave abundant thanks to the Visitor of Decay, who had taken such care in answering the most fervent of all her prayers.

On the first and second days after Remy Brousse’s death, this performance proceeded exactly as his widow had planned, and won more than a few admiring and sympathetic glances from those fortunate enough to witness it. On the night that followed the second day, Ophiria paused to wonder whether she might now have done enough, not merely to allay suspicion but also to establish her worth as a potential wife for some unlucky widower—but she liked to do things properly, and she decided that a person as completely lacking in indolence as herself owed it to her audience to continue the pantomime for one more day.

The following morning, Ophiria got up bright and early and put on her black dress. Leaving her shoes beside the hearth, she walked yet again to the church, where she heard another morning mass sung by a sadly-depleted choir. Afterwards, she went to the grave which Remy Brousse shared with so many of his erstwhile clients and friends. She knelt down on the darkened earth, exactly as she had done twice before, at the very spot where Remy Brousse’s buried body lay. When the tears did not begin to flow spontaneously, she carefully mustered her resources, and pinched herself bruisingly, sobbing in a heart-ending manner.

The other mourners who had taken up their stations immediately after hearing mass looked sideways at the sound of Ophiria’s sobbing, but they paid her little enough heed. They had seen and heard it all before, and they had their own aching grief to nurse. No sooner had Ophiria begun to moisten the earth with her false tears, however, than the earth sealing the mass grave was disturbed by a horrid churning and wriggling.

Ophiria recoiled in dire alarm, but she was too late to regain her feet. She turned heads readily enough when she screamed—and this time, once the eyes of the other mourners were fixed upon her, they could not easily be torn away.

It seemed to the dizzied Ophiria that a monstrous earthworm had coiled itself around each of her wrists, holding her tightly and making certain that she remained on her knees. Another graveworm appeared, and then another, each one longer by far than any she had ever seen before—and then the worms began to crawl upon her body, climbing up her prisoned arms to her shoulders, neck and face.

The sensation of having such creatures crawling on her flesh filled Ophiria with the purest horror, and she tried to scream even louder, but she could not do it. She discovered that she was already screaming as loud as she possibly could; there was no further margin to be exploited or explored when the worms began to extend themselves over her terror-stricken face, around her skinny neck, and into her thin blonde hair.

Had she been less confused, Ophiria might have been able to feel, if not to see, that the worms that had arranged themselves about her head and shoulders were combining their bodies like the threads in a cord or a rope. The resultant amalgamation was further entwined into the shape of a bridle and rein. More worms—many, many more—were winding themselves about her waist to form a girth-strap, while a huge mass of them was accumulating on her bent back to form a kind of living saddle.

It did not matter that Ophiria could not feel or see any of this, for she could not possibly have given further expression to the horror of it. She had exhausted her capacity for screaming now—and also her capacity for weeping, moaning, crying and groaning.

While the looping graveworms bound her hands to the moist brown earth Ophiria could not even stand up, let alone run away—but that was a temporary inconvenience. The worms that held her down were quick to release their grip as soon as their multitudinous kin had crowded a sufficient wormy mass on to the makeshift saddle to depict the form of a small but conspicuously well-rounded rider.

By this time, it did not matter that Ophiria Brousse was no longer able to scream, because the other mourners at the mass grave had seen and understood what was happening. Even those who had been grieving the longest had plenty of screams still in reserve.

Where Ophiria’s peculiar rider took her, when it began lambasting her with its whip of worms, no one ever discovered—but she was never seen in Coramdram again.

Her neighbors shook their heads, and speculated as to the reasons for the Widow Brousse’s fate. What judgment the church’s historians might have delivered must remain forever unknown, because none of the scribes in the troubled convents of Aquitania ever found the time to write it down, so we are free to speculate that they would probably have proffered the incident as evidence of Satan’s continuing war against the devout. Ophiria’s illiterate neighbors, however, were inclined to whisper different interpretations, confident that the opinions would vanish on the wind and never return to haunt them.

Some of these whispers suggested that Ophiria Brousse must have been driven mad by grief, and brought by her extremity to curse the god of pestilence far too loudly for his liking, with the result that he had taken a cruel revenge. Others, equally numerous, hazarded the guess that she had simply cried a little too loudly and too long, and that some other member of the pantheon of peers who was less fond of the sounds of grief than the god of pestilence had become so irritated that he had improvised a means to shut her up. Whichever side of the argument the doubters favored, however, the great majority were prepared to agree that, although it is a perfectly understandable error for a widow to grieve too much for the husband she has lost, it is an error nevertheless.

Once the plague had passed on and the death-rate in Coramdram reverted to its normal pedestrian pace, the affairs of the town soon reverted to their ordinary course. Although the strange flight of Ophiria Brousse was not forgotten, it became a thing that people did not care to discuss, and her name was never mentioned again by anyone in the neighborhood. Remy Brousse’s name, on the other hand, was often heard on the lips of those who remembered him regretfully—of which there were many, for he was sorely missed, not only in the town but in the surrounding districts.

Remy Brousse’s favorite maxims were often quoted in the course of such remembrance, and they continued to be quoted long afterwards, although—like all the most precious elements of oral tradition—they were gradually detached from any attribution to their source. His name was not entirely lost, however; it was separately preserved as the core of a self-contained item of folklore.

Long after all those people who had ever seen him alive had gone to their separate graves, there were men in Coramdram who did not hesitate to express the firm opinion that there never was an artisan in all of Aquitania who was cleverer with his fingers than Remy Brousse, nor any man in the entire world who could weave useful harnesses out of such unpromising materials.

THE SECRET OF KRALITZ, by Henry Kuttner

I awoke from profound sleep to find two black-swathed forms standing silently beside me, their faces pale blurs in the gloom. As I blinked to clear my sleep-dimmed eyes, one of them beckoned impatiently, and suddenly I realized the purpose of this midnight summons. For years I had been expecting it, ever since my father, the Baron Kralitz, had revealed to me the secret and the curse that hung over our ancient house. And so, without a word, I rose and followed my guides as they led me along the gloomy corridors of the castle that had been my home since birth.

As I proceeded there rose up in my mind the stern face of my father, and in my ears rang his solemn words as he told me of the legendary curse of the House of Kralitz, the unknown secret that was imparted to the eldest son of each generation—at a certain time.

“When?” I had asked my father as he lay on his death-bed, fighting back the approach of dissolution.

“When you are able to understand,” he had told me, watching my face intently from beneath his tufted white brows. “Some are told the secret sooner than others. Since the first Baron Kralitz the secret has been handed down——”

He clutched at his breast and paused. It was fully five minutes before he had gathered his strength to speak again in his rolling, powerful voice. No gasping, death-bed confessions for the Baron Kralitz!

He said at last, “You have seen the ruins of the old monastery near the village, Franz. The first Baron burnt it and put the monks to the sword. The Abbot interfered too often with the Baron’s whims. A girl sought shelter and the Abbot refused to give her up at the Baron’s demand. His patience was at an end—you know the tales they still tell about him.

“He slew the Abbot, burned the monastery, and took the girl. Before he died the Abbot cursed his slayer, and cursed his sons for unborn generations. And it is the nature of this curse that is the secret of our house.

“I may not tell you what the curse is. Do not seek to discover it before it is revealed to you. Wait patiently, and in due time you will be taken by the warders of the secret down the stairway to the underground cavern. And then you will learn the secret of Kralitz.”

As the last word passed my father’s lips he died, his stern face still set in its harsh lines.

* * * *

Deep in my memories, I had not noticed our path, but now the dark forms of my guides paused beside a gap in the stone flagging, where a stairway which I had never seen during my wanderings about the castle led into subterranean depths. Down this stairway I was conducted, and presently I came to realize that there was light of a sort—a dim, phosphorescent radiance that came from no recognizable source, and seemed to be less actual light than the accustoming of my eyes to the near-darkness.

I went down for a long time. The stairway turned and twisted in the rock, and the bobbing forms ahead were my only relief from the monotony of the interminable descent. And at last, deep underground, the long stairway ended, and I gazed over the shoulders of my guides at the great door that barred my path. It was roughly chiseled from the solid stone, and upon it were curious and strangely disquieting carvings, symbols which I did not recognize. It swung open, and I passed through and paused, staring about me through a gray sea of mist.

I stood upon a gentle slope that fell away into the fog-hidden distance, from which came a pandemonium of muffled bellowing and high-pitched, shrill squeakings vaguely akin to obscene laughter. Dark, half-glimpsed shapes swam into sight through the haze and disappeared again, and great vague shadows swept overhead on silent wings. Almost beside me was a long rectangular table of stone, and at this table two score of men were seated, watching me from eyes that gleamed dully out of deep sockets. My two guides silently took their places among them.

And suddenly the thick fog began to lift. It was swept raggedly away on the breath of a chill wind. The far dim reaches of the cavern were revealed as the mist swiftly dissipated, and I stood silent in the grip of a mighty fear, and, strangely, an equally potent, unaccountable thrill of delight. A part of my mind seemed to ask, “What horror is this?” And another part whispered, “You know this place!”

But I could never have seen it before. If I had realized what lay far beneath the castle I could never have slept at night for the fear that would have obsessed me. For, standing silent with conflicting tides of horror and ecstasy racing through me, I saw the weird inhabitants of the underground world.

Demons, monsters, unnamable things! Nightmare colossi strode bellowing through the murk, and amorphous gray things like giant slugs walked upright on stumpy legs. Creatures of shapeless soft pulp, beings with flame-shot eyes scattered over their misshapen bodies like fabled Argus, writhed and twisted there in the evil glow. Winged things that were not bats swooped and fluttered in the tenebrous air, whispering sibilantly—whispering in
human
voices.

Far away at the bottom of the slope I could see the chill gleam of water, a hidden, sunless sea. Shapes mercifully almost hidden by distance and the semi-darkness sported and cried, troubling the surface of the lake, the size of which I could only conjecture. And a flapping thing whose leathery wings stretched like a tent above my head swooped and hovered for a moment, staring with flaming eyes, and then darted off and was lost in the gloom.

And all the while, as I shuddered with fear and loathing, within me was this evil glee—this voice which whispered, “You know this place! You belong here! Is it not good to be home?”

I glanced behind me. The great door had swung silently shut, and escape was impossible. And then pride came to my aid. I was a Kralitz. And a Kralitz would not acknowledge fear in the face of the devil himself!

* * * *

I stepped forward and confronted the warders, who were still seated regarding me intently from eyes in which a smoldering fire seemed to burn. Fighting down an insane dread that I might find before me an array of fleshless skeletons, I stepped to the head of the table, where there was a sort of crude throne, and peered closely at the silent figure on my right.

It was no bare skull at which I gazed, but a bearded, deadly-pale face. The curved, voluptuous lips were crimson, looking almost rouged, and the dull eyes stared through me bleakly. Inhuman agony had etched itself in deep lines on the white face, and gnawing anguish smoldered in the sunken eyes. I cannot hope to convey the utter strangeness, the atmosphere of unearthliness that surrounded him, almost as palpable as the fetid tomb-stench that welled from his dark garments. He waved a black-swathed arm to the vacant seat at the head of the table, and I sat down.

This nightmare sense of unreality! I seemed to be in a dream, with a hidden part of my mind slowly waking from sleep into evil life to take command of my faculties. The table was set with old-fashioned goblets and trenchers such as had not been used for hundreds of years. There was meat on the trenchers, and red liquor in the jeweled goblets. A heady, overpowering fragrance swam up into my nostrils, mixed with the grave-smell of my companions and the musty odor of a dank and sunless place.

Every white face was turned to me, faces that seemed oddly familiar, although I did not know why. Each face was alike in its blood-red, sensual lips and its expression of gnawing agony, and burning black eyes like the abysmal pits of Tartarus stared at me until I felt the short hairs stir on my neck. But—I was a Kralitz! I stood up and said boldly in archaic German that somehow came familiarly from my lips, “I am Franz, twenty-first Baron Kralitz. What do you want with me?”

A murmur of approval went around the long table. There was a stir. From the foot of the board a huge bearded man arose, a man with a frightful scar that made the left side of his face a horror of healed white tissue. Again the odd thrill of familiarity ran through me; I had seen that face before, and vaguely I remembered looking at it through dim twilight.

The man spoke in the old guttural German. “We greet you, Franz, Baron Kralitz. We greet you and pledge you, Franz—and we pledge the House of Kralitz!”

With that he caught up the goblet before him and held it high. All along the long table the black-swathed ones arose, and each held high his jeweled cup, and pledged me. They drank deeply, savoring the liquor, and I made the bow custom demanded. I said, in words that sprang almost unbidden from my mouth:

“I greet you, who are the warders of the secret of Kralitz, and I pledge you in return.”

All about me, to the farthermost reaches of the dim cavern, a hush fell, and the bellows and howlings, and the insane tittering of the flying things, were no longer heard. My companions leaned expectantly toward me. Standing alone at the head of the board, I raised my goblet and drank. The liquor was heady, exhilarating, with a faintly brackish flavor.

And abruptly I knew why the pain-racked, ruined face of my companion had seemed familiar; I had seen it often among the portraits of my ancestors, the frowning, disfigured visage of the founder of the House of Kralitz that glared down from the gloom of the great hall. In that fierce white light of revelation I knew my companions for what they were; I recognized them, one by one, remembering their canvas counterparts. But there was a change! Like an impalpable veil, the stamp of ineradicable evil lay on the tortured faces of my hosts, strangely altering their features, so that I could not always be sure I recognized them. One pale, sardonic face reminded me of my father, but I could not be sure, so monstrously altered was its expression.

I was dining with my ancestors—the House of Kralitz!

My cup was still held high, and I drained it, for somehow the grim revelation was not entirely unexpected. A strange glow thrilled through my veins, and I laughed aloud for the evil delight that was in me. The others laughed too, a deep-throated merriment like the barking of wolves—tortured laughter from men stretched on the rack, mad laughter in hell! And all through the hazy cavern came the clamor of the devil’s brood! Great figures that towered many spans high rocked with thundering glee, and the flying things tittered slyly overhead. And out over the vast expanse swept the wave of frightful mirth, until the half-seen things in the black waters sent out bellows that tore at my eardrums, and the unseen roof far overhead sent back roaring echoes of the clamor.

And I laughed with them, laughed insanely, until I dropped exhausted into my seat and watched the scarred man at the other end of the table as he spoke.

“You are worthy to be of our company, and worthy to eat at the same board. We have pledged each other, and you are one of us; we shall eat together.”

And we fell to, tearing like hungry beasts at the succulent white meat in the jeweled trenchers. Strange monsters served us, and at a chill touch on my arm I turned to find a dreadful crimson thing, like a skinned child, refilling my goblet. Strange, strange and utterly blasphemous was our feast. We shouted and laughed and fed there in the hazy light, while all around us thundered the evil horde. There was hell beneath Castle Kralitz, and it held high carnival this night.

* * * *

Presently we sang a fierce drinking-song, swinging the deep cups back and forth in rhythm with our shouted chant. It was an archaic song, but the obsolete words were no handicap, for I mouthed them as though they had been learned at my mother’s knee. And at the thought of my mother a trembling and a weakness ran through me abruptly, but I banished it with a draft of the heady liquor.

Long, long we shouted and sang and caroused there in the great cavern, and after a time we arose together and trooped to where a narrow, high-arched bridge spanned the tenebrous waters of the lake. But I may not speak of what was at the other end of the bridge, nor of the unnamable things that I saw—and did! I learned of the fungoid, inhuman beings that dwell on far cold Yuggoth, of the cyclopean shapes that attend unsleeping Cthulhu in his submarine city, of the strange pleasures that the followers of leprous, subterranean Yog-Sothoth may possess, and I learned, too, of the unbelievable manner in which Iod, the Source, is worshipped beyond the outer galaxies. I plumbed the blackest pits of hell and came back—laughing. I was one with the rest of those dark warders, and I joined them in the saturnalia of horror until the scarred man spoke to us again.

“Our time grows short,” he said, his scarred and bearded white face like a gargoyle’s in the half-light. “We must depart soon. But you are a true Kralitz, Franz, and we shall meet again, and feast again, and make merry for longer than you think. One last pledge!”

I gave it to him. “To the House of Kralitz! May it never fall!”

And with an exultant shout we drained the pungent dregs of the liquor.

Then a strange lassitude fell upon me. With the others I turned my back on the cavern and the shapes that pranced and bellowed and crawled there, and I went up through the carved stone portal. We filed up the stairs, up and up, endlessly, until at last we emerged through the gaping hole in the stone flags and proceeded, a dark, silent company, back through those interminable corridors. The surroundings began to grow strangely familiar, and suddenly I recognized them.

We were in the great burial vaults below the castle, where the Barons Kralitz were ceremoniously entombed. Each Baron had been placed in his stone casket in his separate chamber, and each chamber lay, like beads on a necklace, adjacent to the next, so that we proceeded from the farthermost tombs of the early Barons Kralitz toward the unoccupied vaults. By immemorial custom, each tomb lay bare, an empty mausoleum, until the time had come for its use, when the great stone coffin, with the memorial inscription carved upon it, would be carried to its place. It was fitting, indeed, for the secret of Kralitz to be hidden here.

Abruptly I realized that I was alone, save for the bearded man with the disfiguring scar. The others had vanished, and, deep in my thoughts, I had not missed them. My companion stretched out his black-swathed arm and halted my progress, and I turned to him questioningly. He said in his sonorous voice, “I must leave you now. I must go back to my own place.” And he pointed to the way whence we had come.