Ward Krancel
Dry wind stirred tarry leaves, scenting the warm air. Insistent buzzing punctuated the darkness, scattered declarations of amorous insects singing their own praises. An uncanny din stilled their chorus, the night holding its breath—not the call of a wolf or the shriek of lion’s prey, not a human cry.
Conspicuously centered, a mound interrupted a broad bowl of earth. Below this making wooden chests, filled with scrolls and locked with curses, sat in niches lining a black chamber. Under a thick blanket of dust, a wrapped figure rested on a stone plinth. Poking out from resinous bindings, a skeletal hand gripped the end of a chain hanging from the ceiling, the faintest luminescence climbing upward.
At the other end, a creature wreathed in flickering glow stood guard. So long as mastery flowed through the shackle, it could not leave, could not rest, could not even die. The one thing left it was feeding on anything foolish enough to come within reach. The eerie howl rose again, lament of an imprisoned demon.
#
Smoke from a burned city receding in the distance, a young man fled into the wasteland, memory, perhaps, not all that pursued him. The road became a track and then a trail and soon disappeared altogether. Camping in a thicket of brush, sleep holding at a stubborn remove, he began a silent chant, his mind eventually dissolving in the incantation.
Uncertain what had awakened him, he held motionless. From a distance a deep‑chested moan floated over the desert, unlike anything he’d ever heard. Again, the unearthly noise echoed through rocky hills. Abandoning hope of sleep, he got up, resolved to find the source of the complaint.
Following the baleful voice, watching his feet to avoid falling in the dim light, he topped a low rise overlooking a wide circular hollow, a hump disrupting its floor. Atop the mound something stirred, an indistinct nimbus. He seated himself on the sand, and after a few minutes of preparation, let his mind pour out of his body. Like water seeping through cracks in the rocks, he probed, feeling for a disturbance. In time the nature of the problem became apparent.
#
The sun’s blazing disk finally dipping below distant crags, fever released the earth. He lifted his pack, bundles of sticks gathered from the thicket he’d been sheltering in secured to its sides, and walked back to the hollow in the hills.
Circumscribing a course around the mound, he made piles of the sticks—one in the direction of the dawn, another opposite; one pointing toward the center of the Ox Wheel, the final at its antipole. At moonrise he put spark to the heaps of tinder. When they had burned to embers, he tossed on fragrant, stiff‑needled weeds he’d found growing nearby. Each time he repeated the circle, he also repeated a spell, the meaning of its words lost but its purpose preserved.
Keeping vigil throughout the night, he waited to see if the force beneath the earth would move. The stars were fading when it began to slacken, the last wisps of power floating off with ashes in the morning breeze. But then fear came to him, and he wished to be away from the thing on the mound.
Back at camp he gathered up his belongings and struck out again into the wilderness. Pausing at midday, he heard a sound from the direction he’d come, one rock slipping off another. Weaving through the boulders, a large dog with a squarish head approached. It stopped, sniffing the air. Though now the color of dust, its long, matted hair had once been white. Heavy bones showing through loose, emaciated skin, it turned its nose, spotting him.
The young priest slowly undid the flap of his pack, took out a piece of dried meat, and set it on a flat stone. Before departing, he also left the end of bread he’d been chewing, pouring out water from his flask, soaking it like a sponge.