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Tuesday, August 19, 2014

The Spellcaster's Heiress -- Chapter 15

By Christopher Leeson

 
FROM DYAN'S JOURNAL

All my life I had been hearing stories about the Formoru, told in a way meant to frighten children. These bogies of nightmare were sometimes called the Dark Gods.  But except for the certainty that they were dangerous and exceptionally evil, no one had described in very much detail.  Going faithfully to ritual did not illuminate a child on the subject; the parish druids said not a word about these ancient ones. Yet, it was said that our gods, the Daanan, had defeated them, thereby giving their tribe its greatest victory.

Since those days that are lost to me, and which I cannot now claim as my own, I have learned much that only the high wizards and druids are permitted to know.  It is the kind of knowledge that I would cheerfully forget -- if only it were safe to do so.

“What are these Dark Gods?  Are they truly dead and gone?” Those were the inquiries that I once put to Cawdour when I was about seventeen.

He looked at me in an odd way.  I wondered if he was taking stock of me, trying to decide whether I was ready to receive an answer to the questions that I had asked.

“The Dark Gods are ancient creatures of immense power,” he said.

“So the stories tell us. But are they true gods, or are they monsters?” I asked.

“Both. Or neither. It is a matter of definitions.”

“How would you define those terms, Sire?”

The old wizard shrugged, as if I were being irrelevant.

“Most are colossal in size,” he stated. “Their memory lingers, though they were gone from the world before Mankind walked it.”

“How can that be?”

“Because they refuse to be forgotten. They mind-touch certain mad and half-mad persons in dreamtime.  From the visions reported by these mad savants, they Dark Ones continue to be worshiped by the most depraved of human cults. And not only human cults.”

“Sire?”

Some believe that those which lurk at the edges worship them also.”

“Edges?” I echoed.

“The edges of human habitation, the edges of the seasons, the edges of Time and Forever, the edges of dark and light, the edges of dreaming and wakefulness. The edges of life and death. A few of these are found in our folklore -- the undead, the lycanthropes, the beings of the sea. Others have been forgotten, or, in their remoteness, have never become known.”

I blinked. I knew of such creatures from hero stories, but was the wizard implying that they were real?  How could one so wise hold such an idea?  For myself, belief in monsters had slipped away from me along with with childhood.

“The Dark Gods are held in abeyance by forces even greater than they are,” my foster father continued. “But this power is not immense enough to snuff them out of existence, so they abide like prisoners awaiting their release. The stars say that their day shall come again, but this is not their day. No one can prognosticate the hour when they will rise again; let us hope that it shall not be ere Mankind has withered and turned to dust.

“Is it the Daanan who hold these demons in check?”

Cawdour shrugged. “Most believe that the Formaru were routed by the gods. Others hold that their banishment came about gradually, part of the natural progression of the Cycles.”

I could not help but frown. What were the cycles that he referred to?

“According to the first theory,” Cawdour pressed, “the Dark Gods held sway in realms where our gods hold sway now. There was a great war between the gods of the natual world, led by Nudens, and the Dark Ones. It is said that nearly all of the Formoru and gods were slain.


"But the Daanan, legend tells us, held a secret. They knew the way back from the Pit of Death, and so sacrificed themselves in wild attacks, so that the enemy could be driven into the deep darkness along with them. The Daanan returned by virtue of their secret wisdom, but Death's Hall still holds the Dark Gods captive in its bowels.”  He shrugged.  “This tale is only a metaphor, the truth, we must assume, was something that our ancestors could not conceivably understand.

“Be that as it may, the Dark Gods are not truly dead; instead, they await the time of their release, eager for revenge against those who discomforted them.”

This was, in the main, the same story that parents had been telling their children for centuries.

Now Cawdour frowned pensively. “The second supposition holds that the Old Gods are dormant only due to the effects of cycles, the universal order to which even the mightiest of gods must yield. To understand this, look at the seasons of the earth. Just as some animals hibernate through inclement winter, so too must the Old Gods slumber so long as the prevailing cosmic cycle endures.


"These cycles are like the magical clock in the famous story, the one which made a sound to awaken its master whenever the time came for him to rise. While the Dark Gods sleep, life as we know it go on.  But when they wake.....”

“When they wake, what happens?” I asked.

Cawdour drew a deep breath through grim lips. “By the time they rise, their thirst for destruction shall surely have grown as bottomless as the pit that had imprisoned them.”

I suddenly wondered if the savant was only trying to test me, to assess my canniness when told a false tale, even if by one whom I had always placed at the highest level of trust.  “Wherever they presently lay,” I began carefully, trying not to sound naive, “will the world of man be left in peace for the next thousand thousand years, or should we fear?”

Again he regarded me, his glance challenging.  Was it intended to admonish me -- not for my gullibility, but for my skeptical tone?

“We should fear,” he finally declared.


* * * * *

Chapter Fifteen

The Dark Ones

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Revenge: A Story of Pleasure Island


  

    By Christopher Leeson

    Version date 01-03-15

    Dean Fontain was too wild for his sedate parents to control. But their neighbors, the Boelkes, recognized what their friends were going through and told them about the secret that had changed their lives: the secret of Pleasure Island. What the Fontains learned that night astonished them and they couldn't help but think that their neighbors were playing a bad joke. They were actually saying that their pretty and well-behaved daughter Carla used to be a very bad boy, Carl.

    "That's ridiculous," said Mrs. Fontain. "I remember when you brought that precious little girl home from the hospital eighteen years ago."

    Mrs. Boelke shook her head and almost smiled. "There's magic involved. The first time you saw Carl as a girl, the enchantment he brought from Pleasure Island put false memories into your mind. We remember what really happened because the island people give parents a protective charm, but everyone else sees no change when a boy comes back different. Because of the spell you can't remember how badly Carl behaved, and even that you complained that he was tempting your Dean into so much trouble.”

    “No,” replied Mr. Fontain curtly, “we certainly don't remember anything like that.”

    "It's all true," said Mr. Boelke. The neighbors then offered to let the Fontains wear their charms overnight, telling them that the enchanted metal would take away all their false memories. Dean’s parents thought the idea was silly, but still something made them both go along with the joke. But by morning they knew that it was no joke. The charms had worked like, well, like a charm. They had awakened up knowing everything about Carl Boelke. The pair immediately went over to their friends’ home.

    Carla was there with them, finishing the breakfast dishes. She was a pretty, upbeat teen who usually dressed in a way that would catch the attention of the neighborhood boys. It was hard for the Fontains not to stare, now remembering what a sour loudmouth Carl Boelke had been.

    To get some privacy for her visitors, Carla's mother gave the girl some money to spend at the ice cream shop. A minute later, Carla had gone out the door and the four adults were left free to confer.

    "How did you find out about Pleasure Island?" Mrs. Fontain asked.

    "A friend at the hospital told me," replied her neighbor. "She had a boy who was hooked up with drug dealers and she had found out about Pleasure Island just in time to save him. Now he's a cheerleader who's doing well in school."

    Mr. Fontain reached into his pocket and handed back the charms. "These things took the wool away from our eyes. We'd give almost anything if Dean were just as well behaved as your Carla is, even if it means that we have to exchange a son for a daughter. But can't the Island people fix a boy's bad personality without changing his sex, too?"

    "All I'm sure of is that there's a good reason why they don’t want to do it that way. A sexual reversal gives off an energy that they call mana and they're able to capture and store it for use later. A gender change is actually not what they're after; it’s just a by-product of the mana-harvesting."

    Mr. Fontain frowned. "What exactly is mana?"

    Mr. Boelke looked at him very seriously. "All we know is what we've been told. Mana is what magic is made of, and it's also the energy that makes some babies develop into males in the womb. Developing infants who don't have the mana-absorbing gene are born female. Have you see films about how a boy and girl fetus look exactly the same until after a period of development? They develop into different sexes because the baby with the mana-gene is drawing in mana that enables its development into a male. 


    "Remove that energy from a male, even when he is fully grown, and he will go to the human default form, female. Younger males have the most potent mana, so the wizards do all they can to recruit mana donors at a young age. But not at too young an age, because exploiting children is against another one of their rules. With parental consent, they can take the mana from an older child, because Pleasure Island has a law that says that a child is not a legal adult until twenty-one. If on Pleasure Island, a contract with the parents or legal guardian is makes donation without the boy's consent legal to to that age of maturity. They are not very much interested in taking mana from males over twenty-one for some reason."

    "Hiring wizards must be expensive," Mr. Fontain suggested.

    “Not very,” said Mr. Boelke.

    This surprised the other couple. “Are you saying that they don’t care about money because because what they are really after is the mana?" asked Mrs. Fontain.

    “It seems so. In fact, I've heard that they can make gold out of lead; money means little to them. They want mana."

    "You're lucky that Carla turned out to be so pretty," Mrs. Fontain said. "I felt so sorry for the homely girls at my old school. They always seemed either angry or sad. A lot of the angry ones became feminists."