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What words can describe the horror
that even now festers in my mind? Surely no common tongue of Khaldun
is sufficient to the task. Perhaps somewhere, in some musty Kohan
library, buried beneath the dust of Ages, is a secret language made for
secret evils. Perhaps that language could convey a fraction of the
darkness in me. Perhaps if I found that scroll and deciphered its
ways, and wrote those glyphs now upon this page, you, reading it, would feel
the cold work slithering through your spine, the clammy hands pawing at your
heart. And then you, too, would sip the bitter draught of hemlock and
hebonna, and pray that your death would be final, and safe from the
obscenity I recounted.
But that language I do not have, nor
do I have the time for the telling of the entire horror. Even now my
fingers begin to grow numb, the stylus trembles in my palsied fingers, and
the sweet release from memory flows toward my heart.
Before death claims me, and may it
never let me go, I will recount this brief tale.
There were six of us who set forth
from this great university in the Gauri citadel of Channak. Tales had
come to us from beyond the High Reaches, from the savage land called the
Waste. These tales had corresponded to certain ancient texts, and
certain intuitions we had all shared. And we were desperate men,
desperate for the sort of discovery that makes a name last past death.
In an Age of heroes, scholars are the authors of history, not its subjects,
but scholars, no less than heroes, long for immortality. An escape
from death's oblivion.
So we set forth. Monies were
allocated from our stipends, students and apprentices gathered the necessary
supplies and hired mercenary escorts, and we set forth into the Waste,
determined to find there the mysteries of the Pool.
Six left, and the Waste itself
claimed three. For there the sun scorches without mercy, the wind
clots all orifices with sand and grit, and creatures matched to the savage
land prey upon the weak. Our escorts abandoned us. Our
packbeasts bolted. Left without supplies, we wandered.
Of the things we saw in that bleak
land, I could say much -- but I have not the heart for it. We followed
the only path that we could find: the path of corruption. Each of had
at times delved into lore best left unknown -- who has not? -- and each of
us knew arts that were more potent in the Waste. We lost a forth, and
so we were only two, but from his flesh we found our way further into
madness, closer to the Pool.
Oh how we hungered for it, with the
longing of the diseased for death.
We found the Poll and it is here
that words escape me. Its surface reflects nothing, and everything --
inky black, but darker than ink, darker than the void between stars, darker
than the ignorance of the damned. In that black surface we saw
ourselves, what we had become, what we would become. We saw there the
doom of all mortals, even the Immortals, with Shadow washing over the world
and choking the sun, festering its way into the marrow of Khaldun until the
very magma choked on its own dying ash.
As we stared into the Pool, we could
feel it stare back into us, omniscient, but hateful of knowledge, undying,
but hateful of all life, beautiful in its stark purity, but hateful of all
that is beautiful and pure.
My last companion killed himself
then, plunging his stylus into both eyes before burying it in his throat.
The Poll accepted the blood that
flowed from his punctured neck without so much as a ripple.
And then he moved. A shiver.
I thought he lived. I rushed to his side, cradled his head, but it was
lifeless and gray. Beyond lifeless. Already the skin had begun
to pucker, the flesh soften and putrefy. Maggots roiled his corpse and
I hurled it aside, even his body ruptured, spewing forth a host of such
things I cannot dare describe. Though I looked away, the image of that
corruption was burned forever in my eyes.
He moved again. At the edge of
my vision I could see him tremble. Could see his fingers splay and
clench. His arms quiver. His body turn over and then prop itself
upon its knees. By the Creator, how I longed to flee! But my
body was as frozen as his was animated.
Now he stood, his black, empty eyes
staring at me with such a hatred as I had only known in the comfort of my
most secret resentments. His rotten hand unfurled. His fingers
beckoned. Against my will, I stepped closer.
Behind him, on the surface of the
Poll, danced once more the vision of the future, of the revenant dead
flooding forth from this forsaken place, rending life's fragile web with
their very existence. I saw myself reflected there, saw my flesh ooze
from my bones and my eyes burn with accursed fire.
At last my body obeyed my mind, for
my fear was so great it broke even the Pool's sorcery. I fled. I
escaped. Borne by the speed of my terror, I outpaced even the
unnatural predators of the Waste. I returned to Channak, to the halls
of my university, told lies to the Masters, faced down my students, invented
tales of man-eating Drauga barbarians, and whispered sweet falsehood to my
beloved wife. Wrapped in my own mendacity and bolstered by the
strongest of Gauri drink, for that one glorious day I half-convinced myself
that there had been no Pool, no living corpse, no future written upon black
water.
And then, the nightmares came to me.
For the past five days I have
endured, each hour slipping further into the madness I foolishly thought I
had escaped. I could see in the faces of my colleagues, my students,
my wife, that the madness was claiming me. I could see in the cruel
face of the mirror what ravages had already been worked on my flesh.
The decay was upon me. The eyes in the mirror were burning dark.
So I came here, to this forgotten
corner of the university's library. To sip poison and write my last
words, and pray that some living eyes read them, Ages from now; that
some young student laughs at my folly, imagining it a fantasy spun to scare
children at night. I pray that the vision I have seen is my private
madness, and not all Khaldun's to share.
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