David Wise - Tales of Ravenloft

"Immortals," Stezen interrupted. He coughed into his hand. "Well, immortals of a sort. They're still very much alive, I assure you. But they've all been freed of their flesh and embodied now in stone. That's the best immortality I can offer to the common cut of man."

"All of them? Every last one of them? From Krimean, the oaf in the first room, to. . to this one standing here now?"

Stezen just shook his head. His face wore a look of feigned surprise in mockery of me, and he said," Of course, all of them. In the room of classic sculptures, didn't you notice those women clustered about in mourning? Remember them from the table, clinging to each others'arms? You yourself studied the monolith in the first room, studied it in great depth — commented on it even. Didn't you recognize that the statue you studied was Krimean? "

"You've killed them!"

"No. "The response was curt. "No, I did not. I've told you, they are alive, only in bodies of stone, which will last them millennia, if not forever. " "But why, why did you do it? "

"They asked me to," Stezen replied simply. "You think you were the only one to come here seeking the fountain of life? Of course not. I sent the word out myself — carefully, restrictedly — to just the sort of people who would covet it and would have the stuff to make it this far and drink. But only you made it."

"Only me."

"Only you."

My avarice — my compulsion and passion for immortality — began again to take me over. At first I'd been shocked to discover the fate of my fellow revelers, then stunned in an attempt to puzzle out just what had happened to them all, then confused. . Now all my qualms fell away, as the hunter's twinge of sadness departs when the pangs of hunger set in.

"Only me," I muttered again stupidly.

Stezen nodded. "All the others sought immortality for fear of death. They feared the rending of their flesh, the ending of their minds. But you know immortality is more than that."

"Yes," I moaned, though I did not really. "I know."

"You know that immortality is about soul and being. You, like me, would sacrifice body and mind for it."

"Yes."

"For the others, it was a fashion. For you it is a faith. I gave the others the immortality for which they had asked. I offer another immortality — a higher, better immortality — now to you."

Already I was walking toward D'Polarno, toward the hissing, thundering fountain. He turned about and led me there, producing a leathern cup from within his vest, unfolding it, rounding it, and seating himself on the fountain's rim. I did the same.

The next words he spoke were almost lost to the roar of the water. "This libation will give you everlasting life, free you of the ravages to the flesh, free you of the frailties of the mind. It will transform you, fill you, allow you to transcend all that is petty and mortal. Will you drink?"

I nodded in mute reverence.

He dipped the leathern cup into the bubbling water, a strangely crude vessel for so empyreal a drink, and lifted it, dripping, up to me. When a few drops struck my knee, the water felt cold and clear and magnificent.

"Drink," said he.

I drank. The taste was like nothing I had ever had before. The water was very chill, and when it went down my throat, it caused a sensation that I can only call an ecstatic burning. The feeling spread rapidly through me, reaching the tips of my fingers and toes, making my skin flush with its intense heat. It felt as though sparks were flying through my body, transforming it into a vital, trembling, invincible form.

I laughed out loud, and my voice was carried into the fountain and it merged with the water that had brought this unbelievable joy — merged and circulated and bubbled and danced. I was alive, as though for the first time ever.

"Welcome," said Stezen," to the brotherhood of Immortals. "He leaned toward me and, in the custom of his land, kissed me upon the lips. Then he raised his hand, brushed my jaw for a moment, and jabbed a steelhard forefinger through my cheek.

There was a moment of horrible tearing, and I glimpsed my flesh splitting away like the shirt ripping from a man's shoulders. Then the ruptured skin of my forehead dragged over my eyes and brought crimson darkness to them. I staggered for a moment, feeling Stezen peel my body from me like the skin from an orange. Everything was violent jolting and liquid sloshing and lacerations rubbing. Flesh and bone and marrow, torn away from my soul.

Then it was over. It was that sudden. In a rushing cascade of slippery mortal flesh, I was defrocked of my body. But I — my soul — remained.

Though my mortal shell, my fleshly existence, has been removed, I am still here, a disembodied mind — the ghost in the gallery. All my time has been like this now, bodiless and eternal. I could not scream my rage to Stezen. I could not even see him to hate him. I have no eyes to see with. I have no ears to hear with. I have no skin, no tongue, no nose, no heart, no hands, no bone, no flesh at all with which to sense or affect the gallery around me. I am utterly alone, and utterly indestructible.

Since that time — how many centuries or minutes, I know not — I've realized how truly Stezen spoke. I was mortal and wished not to be. To become otherwise, all that was mortal in me would needs be purged. He did so. And now I know it was mortality, not immortality, that I had once loved.

So I tell my tale, in the vain hope that if there are others like me in this gallery, others whose beings have been stripped of their bodies, they might perhaps hear and let their souls weep. But mine is a vain hope. For I, myself, cannot hear their cries.

He burst from the dark forest, a twisted, ragtag figure frantically running along the rutted gullies of the old dirt road. A man fleeing for his very life.

In every direction, tremendous granite mountains dominated the horizon, looming large above the wooded valley. Sharply silhouetted by the star-filled sky and waning crescent moon, the somber, jagged monoliths stood silent and uncaring of what occurred below in the world of mortal men.

Though dressed in tattered clothes, the body of the running man was perfection: the limbs and chest of a young Adonis, strength and masculine beauty personified. But when a shaft of moonlight pierced the thick cover of trees and illuminated his face, it was clear that nature, which had so richly rewarded his body, had definitely not done so here. His grotesque features were the essence of nightmares.

Mottled, discolored skin. A flat, slit wound of a nose, like that of a rutting boar. One eye was three times too large, sans lashes and set above the other, with no regard for balance or function. His bulging forehead extended in irregular patterns as if the pressure inside was simply too much for the bones and his head was likely to burst apart at any moment. One ear was human enough, though of disproportionate size; the other was delicately pointed like that of an elfin child, a tiny pink flower growing on the side of the crumbling, moldy ruin of his face.

His hair, a dozen shabby hues, grew in tufts along his ragged widow's peak, and his crown was partially bald. He lacked a top lip entirely, and the bottom was too full by far, easily exposing his broken, gap-filled teeth. Even the jaw appeared to have been melted in a furnace, then randomly recast.

It was a face of horror, and that was what it radiated now. Raw horror.

Wheezing for breath, the grotesque mockery named Anatole the Freak glanced over a slim shoulder and stumbled into a rut in the hard-packed soil. Down he fell, gashing his lopsided chin on a sharp rock. The small pain went unnoticed as the deformed hermit scrambled to his feet, just in time for torches to appear over the low rise behind him.