Dennis McKiernan - Once upon a Spring morn

They passed more alleys, more wrecked buildings, of which some had been dwellings, others once establishments of one sort or another. And the air wept among the dark ruins.

From the gloom came more of the beings, living corpses who once had been human. Some had shreds of clothes yet clinging, while most were completely exposed. Many were nought but fleshless beings, while others had tissue hanging on their frames and straggles of long hair stringing down from their pates. Some still had eyes in their skulls, the lids gone, the skin flaked off, leaving behind huge glaring orbs, somehow not shrunken away. Lips were stretched tight, drawn back from yellowed teeth in horrid, gaping, rictal grins. Most were wasted men-with long bony arms and legs and grasping taloned fingers, their ribs jutting out, their groins bare, their manhoods blackened and withered, some of which had rotted away or had dried and broken off-

but many of the beings were gaunt women-flat dugs hanging down, tufts of hair at their groins, their woman-hoods shriveled and flapping-and Celeste shuddered in horror at the sight of all.

“Liches,” muttered Roel. “The walking dead.”

“How can this be?” asked Celeste. “Some are nought but skeletons, and yet they move.”

Roel shook his head. “I know not the ways of the departed, but surely these are cursed, for did not Chiron say that for the Cymry this is the dreadful place where the souls of those who commit the most heinous deeds go when they die?”

“All of these committed heinous deeds?” asked Celeste, looking ’round. “But there are so very many.” Roel nodded but said nought as on they rode, a crowd of corpses shambling after, and the farther they went, the more of the living dead joined them, all snuffling, as if to inhale the essence of life that this man and woman and these horses had brought into their world.

And in the distance the leaden sky bloomed red and the ground shook, followed long after by a grumbling roar.

Now they came unto the central square where the once-stately buildings stood.

“Which is the temple?” asked Celeste, gazing about.

A ghastly laugh greeted her query and echoed among the ruins, the wind twisting it about so that its source could not be found.

As Celeste’s and Roel’s gazes searched the square, again the eldritch mirth resounded. Celeste said,

“There,” and pointed. High up on the wall of one of the buildings, in an array of dark niches stood torchbearers, yet none of their flambeaus were lit.

“We seek the temple of the gray arrow,” called Roel.

The macabre beings looked down with glaring eyes and once more there came nought but a hollow jeer, and one called out in a ghoulish voice, “Death awaits.

Death awaits.”

Again the dull sky flared scarlet afar, and the ground shuddered, and a rumble rolled across the dark land.

Roel turned to Celeste and said, “Mayhap that is the temple, for it is the only place so warded.” And they rode forward toward a set of wide steps leading up into the stately building where the torchbearers stood high above. Beyond the stairs and between columns and across a broad landing a doorway blackly gaped onto empty dark shadows within.

And behind Celeste and Roel the dead shuffled close.

And as the princess and her knight came to the foot of the steps and stopped, outstretched hands reached for the pair. And one of the living corpses laid a skeletal palm on a gelding, and the horse screamed. A dead being grasped at Celeste, and as its desiccated fingers clutched her leg a deathly chill swept through the princess. Shrilling, Celeste kicked at the creature, and its arm cracked off and fell to the ground, the brittle bones shattering on impact.

“Roel, ride!” Celeste shrieked, and she spurred her mount forward. But Roel had cried out a warning at the same time, for one of the living corpses had touched his mare, and at the squeal of the horse, Roel swung Coeur d’Acier and took off the undead thing’s head.

Straight up the steps Celeste galloped, Roel coming after, and the torchbearers in the niches high above shrieked in rage, for living beings were defiling the empty hall below. And one of those corpses put a horn to its lips and sounded a thin call, more of a wail than the cry of a clarion, and the moaning wind carried it throughout the ruins of the city, and beings shuffled forth through the dark.

Across the landing galloped Celeste and through the gaping portal, and just inside she leapt from her mare and shouldered one of the doors to. At the other door, Roel did the same, and- Boom! Doom! — the massive panels slammed shut. On the back of Roel’s door a beam rested in a pair of brackets; with a grunt Roel slid it across to mate with a like set of brackets opposite and bolted shut the entry.

Corpses outside mewled and hammered at the doors, and scratched the panels with their talons.

And even as Roel and Celeste looked at one another, from above dim light came streaming down as portals at the backs of the niches opened, and the skeletal torchbearers, now holding their unlit flambeaus as cudgels, stepped onto a walkway high above.

Roel’s gaze swept the great chamber. Across a marble floor inlaid with arcane markings, to left and right and in the shadows at the far end stood open doorways to rooms beyond. To the back of the hall on either side stairwells rose up to the walkways above. Also in the darkness at the rear of the chamber a statue of a woman stood on a pedestal, but what she signified Roel knew not, nor at the moment did he care. “Celeste,” he called,

“the stairways afar, the liches must come down them to reach this hall. I will take my stand at the one on the right; take the left and use your bow to keep any from reaching the main floor.”

Celeste nodded and ran toward the left-hand stairwell, and she reached it just as the first of the torchbearers started down. Celeste took aim and loosed, and the shaft flew true and struck the creature in the chest. And it looked at the arrow jutting out from its ribs and laughed, and continued on downward.

Celeste flew another shaft, and it shot completely

through the dead being, leaving nought but gaping holes fore and aft in the taut, yellowed, parchmentlike skin.

Again the creature jeered, even as a second one of the beings reached the landing above and started down.

My arrows are useless. Oh, why did not the Fates warn-?

Of a sudden Celeste laughed, and she called out, “To kill and to not kill, that’s what Lady Lot said. I thought it only applicable to Cerberus and Achilles, yet here it is more to my liking.” And she nocked one of the blunt-tipped arrows, and taking careful aim, she let fly at the descending creature’s exposed pelvis. Whmp! The arrow struck, and brittle bone shattered into fragments, and the creature toppled over to come tumbling down the stairs, and when it reached bottom, nought was left of it but the rags of its garments and the cudgel it had borne all lying in a scatter of shards, and clattering down after came her arrow as well. A thin wail sounded, and an ephemeral gray twist in the air rose up from the splinters of the sundered being, and Celeste wasn’t certain whether it was a spirit rising or simply a whirl of motes lofted up from the fragments.

Celeste flew a second blunt shaft at the pelvis of the next torchbearer, and that creature, too, fell and tumbled down the stairs to become nought but shattered bone. Again and again Celeste loosed, each time slaying a torchbearer, and each time a faint keen and a wisp of gray mist arose from the strewn shards. Fifteen blunt arrows she loosed, and fifteen corpses died; no more were left on her stairwell. Quickly she turned to help Roel.

But he stood amid a pile of fragmented bones and rags and cudgels, and no torchbearers were left on his stairs either, and he looked over to see that Celeste was hale, and he grimly smiled.