Andrew Offutt: The Tower of Death

“Did ye sound the walls of that niche?” Wulfhere asked.

“Of course . We ‘sounded’ them-with hammers! Solid stone, like the rest of that temple. And ask me not about the floor; it contains no trap door.”

Cormac gritted his teeth. Lucanor gone, escaped, and he had surely initiated the cult and roused the creatures of Cthulhu and… more? He wondered, for a question remained unasked. Meanwhile, he rearranged his mind. Zarabdas, with his strange name that seemed sinister to western ears… a friend and good man who practiced his magicks only on his king’s command. Lucanor, healer with the name of that healer who was said to have followed the Dead God… he was a black magician, a priest or helpful servant of a foul god from off this plane; a murderer of children and misleader of peasants; a practitioner of foul arts who had recruited-

“Ah. And… what of… that woman of whom we spoke earlier, Irnic?”

“Zarabdas knows, Cormac.”

Wulfhere said, “I fault ye not for telling me, Wolf. But I too know of Queen Venhilda’s peregrinations-by-night.”

“Well, what of her?” Cormac demanded without patience. Yet he feared the reply, for he liked Veremund, for all that he was a king.

Irnic heaved a mighty sigh and spoke without pride or happiness.

“She was seen to leave the King’s Hall. She was seen to enter the old temple. And she did not depart. Yet she was not among the cultists, nor of course is she now.”

“By the Morrighu-not with Lucanor, in Behl’s name?”

Irnic shook his head. “Nay, Cormac. I said it: she was not in the temple when we entered. But there, before the altar, the cloak she had worn… was.”

After a long while of brooding silence, four unhappy men began to discuss sadly how much should be told the king. All, they eventually decided.

The reactions and emotions of the King of the Suevi-become-Galicii were mixed. Others were joyous at the news; Veremund was of course pleased at the removal of the murdering sea menace, and even at the discovery and crushing of the cult, for he was king and the tower of death become only a light-tower again. Yet he was skeptical of the full report, and silent.

Cormac knew the man was fearful of the answer that must be a loud voice in his royal brain: Where was Queen Venhilda?

Mac Art slept, and alone, and wondered if Veremund, alone, slept.

Whether or no, the king was up and looking the king on the morrow, with congratulatory words for Cormac and Wulfhere. Too, he would insist on riding down to the shore with them, to see what remained of their triumph, and to survey coastal waters made safe for his realm and its visitors.

So they did. The tower now seemed bright and cheery, container of a beacon to guide seamen in to a shore eager for trade. Yet they found that which was far from pleasant.

Of craft or creatures there remained no sign asea, as though that god from another plane had sucked all down to his drowned kingdom, even in sleep. Yet the tide had brought in an ugly reminder of the battle, and proof of all.

The sea-creature lay on a spit of sand, washed in and abandoned by the tide. It was as hideous in death as it had been in life, and the spear Cormac had hurled still transfixed it. Nor was there any preventing Veremund from seeing: this frog-fish-human creature wore two pieces of jewellery.

Around its almost nonexistent neck glittered a chain supporting the figure of an anthropomorphic yet hardly human creature whose head sprouted tentacles. Though less exotic, the other piece of jewellery, a ring, was more spectacular. Above the joint of a claw-tipped finger, the ring bore a fine prodigious stone that glittered and winked in the morning sunlight. A huge opal it was, besprint within by many flecks of a half-dozen colours.

Veremund stood slump-shouldered, though Cormac knew that the king had known no love for his changed, pallid wife for a year or more, and had no love of her. And too, he had lately consoled himself with Clodia, probably the finest event to befall him since his coronation.

“This… thing ,” the king mumbled, “slew my beloved Venhilda and wears even her own favourite ring.”

That she had of Lucanor , Cormac thought, who could not cure her… of a “disease” he brought on, seeking to create a changeling queen of monsters? But he saw the tense faces of Zarabdas and Irnic, and their eyes bright on him, and he sighed… and nodded.

“Aye, so it must have been. Pride is on me to have taken vengeance for yourself, lord King.”

Cormac did not believe his own words. Vengeance? In a way-but Lucanor was gone, alive, escaped-and the queen was surely dead, of Cormac’s hand.

Though he could not be certain, it seemed hideously likely that Lucanor, while he “tended” the queen, had used his magical wiles and connection to a monster-god of old on her. The result was this ugly creature lying dead on the sand. She never blinked , Cormac mac Art remembered. Because she was changing! Losing her humanity; taking on fishlike qualities and traits. And last night, her cloak alone remained of her in the temple. Perhaps because with a final arcane rite and blood-sacrifice, Venhilda had been fully transformed… only to die among other monsters at the hand of a man in her husband’s employ?

Standing beside the king in the bright sunlight, mac Art could be certain of none of his surmising. But he knew that all of it was probable.

Unconsciously touching the bit of jewellery out of Egypt that he uncharacteristically wore for some reason he could not name, Cormac gazed at another sigil on its chain. It circled the neck of the dead monster he and Irnic and Zarabdas and Wulfhere knew full well had been Queen of the Galicians.

“Kraken,” Wulfhere said, staring at that same sigil with its tentacle-sprouting head.

“Nay,” Zarabdas of Palmyra said. “This is a representation of the ancient demon in the world since its birth… Cthulhu, he who awaits asleep in his house in sunken R’lyeh.” Almost dreamily, Zarabdas spoke on: “When last this demon stirred in his sleep, the world shook and rocked and the oceans drowned land-masses larger than all this Hispania we stand on. No nation but has tales left it of the Great Flood. The kraken… ah! The kraken are but his remote get, his time-enfeebled spawn. And if ever he should awake again, it will be horror on the earth again, and…”

“Ragnarok,” Wulfhere muttered. “The twilight of the gods… and men.”