On the Road to
Corwyn
To John Craft,
Loremaster;
Something has happened, so evil and
hideous that I must write to you for aid and advice. I am not ashamed to say I
am frightened, I, Scramasax, Wizard at Large! There have been many evil things
that I have faced, but I always felt more angry, enraged at the wrong that I
faced. But this! Even now my bones feel like water and I find it hard to write.
But write I must. It is as if a geas is upon me.
The tale is simple, and simply told.
Here, in a few words, is what happened:
I was journeying to Corwyn, to
investigate some vague rumors that I had heard in Shillingsbridge. The day was
cold and foggy for early Spring, and a light mist was falling. Grackle huddled
deep in my hood, muttering and hissing at the weather. A chill wind blew,
moaning through the hedges that gleamed in the setting sun with silvered spider
webs. So I was glad, as you can imagine, to come to a small, warm, and
well-lighted inn. The creaking sign read "The Gable Inn."
In the first half-hour of settling
down to meat and drink I was oblivious to the merry company around me. But
after I settled down to my second mug of ale after a hearty meal I began to
take stock of the noisy patrons of the inn. There was the usual collection,
gambling, drinking, talking, singing, jesting happily. In the corner near the
fire the innkeeper's daughter amused a group with a game of Shakers, where one
waves a pendant over an alphabet and sees what words are written.
But the one that really caught my
attention was an old hag that sat mumbling in the corner. She was withered,
wore a black eye patch. An assortment of pouches lined her girdle. I thought
she might be a witch, but many innocent herbal women might answer to her
general description. But I marked the room she went into, nevertheless. After a
time, I too entered my chamber.
I lay on my bed, but sleep would not
come. I tossed, and turned, and yet could not sleep. Something was wrong, I
felt it. But nothing happened through the watches of the night, and gradually
my eyes grew heavy and I slipped toward sleep.
I was hovering in the land between
sleep and waking when I saw it. It filled me with dread, and yet I could not
move. It floated, at the foot of my bed. It seemed to be splotches, stains of
darkness rimmed with red light. It had no definite shape, but pulsed and oozed
and flowed like chaos. Then it seemed to look a little--just a little, mind
you--like a wolf. The more I looked and imagined details, the more and more it
came to look like a wolf, a night empty wolf with boiling black eyes. Then I
was sure, it was a wolf. It stood there hideously wrong, somehow, evil
and savage. It growled ravenously and dripped black venom. I lay helpless; I
knew if I did not move soon, I would be slain as I lay.
I moved. I rolled off the bed, grabbed
up my staff just as the demon leapt and landed slashing into the pallet. It
turned, snake quick, and I raised my staff to ward it off. I raised a strong
binding, the Major Ward [or Word?] of Alu. It blazed like blue shackles of fire
on the beast, held it snarling for a second. Then it broke, as if it were fog,
and the beast leapt forward.
I dodged again, burned a wall of white
flame between us. It held the creature longer, but I could see it was
weakening. I decided to try the Fifth Great Spell, the one we may only use
thrice in our lifetime. The wall broke, the wolf hurled snarling at me. And I
spoke the Word.
Praise the Powers, it held. The wolf
stopped as if frozen, began to fragment. As I intoned the spell, it began to
disintegrate, lose shape, melt back into formless chaos. And then it was sucked
away, into Nowhere.
For a while I could only stand and
stare, giving thanks that I lived. Never had I faced such a power before. And
then I felt anger. Gripping my staff to keep steady, I left my room and went to
seek the medium thru which such an evil had entered the world.
The common room was dark and cold.
Even the fire was dead. I stole to the hag's door and stealthily looked in. The
old woman was asleep and snoring. I searched her mind, found no such darkness
there as could have summoned that demon. I turned perturbed from the door. Then
I saw the cellar door, yawning full of darkness.
I lit my staff in dim moonlight fire,
and, with a feeling of dread, descended into the black maw.
The cellar was dust floored and bare
of life. Not even a spider spun there. It was completely bare. In the center of
the room, seated at a table, was the innkeeper's daughter. On the table before
her was the alphabet and an unlit candle, in her cold hands the pendant hung
motionless. Her eyes stared blindly at nothing.
I came nearer and nearer. Suddenly the
pendant went taut, like a fishing line. It swung first swung slowly then more
and more frantically, almost malignantly.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
It swung and spelled.
"Empty."
"Why are you here?"
"To have. All."
"Go away!" I screamed.
"I command you!"
"No."
"Begone in the Name of the Maker!
I command you!"
It swung frantically "No!"
"I command it! Alu! Elt! Kama
Sharomon! I command it! Depart to your own place! Aman Shazin Yar Lameth!"
It swung faster and faster, more and
more agitated and I continued to resist it, press it. It swung, jerked, danced
till it hummed. Then it snapped, rolled in the corner. A wind from nowhere
flung the alphabet against the wall. The girl slumped forward on the table.
There came the clamor of feet and the
innkeeper appeared with a lantern, followed by others. "Beware!" I
said. "Magics have been worked here!" At first they were suspicious
of me, but finally accepted my story.
The girl is now tended by the old
woman, who was indeed an herbalist. I await now for when she recovers, to see
what happened to her.
I now realize that the unshaped needed
me to give it a shape before it could attack me. As it was, it could do
nothing. It needed the semblance of reality that my imagination gave it.
I now await your advice. Please be
good to Grackle. He has had a hard time these few days. I await here at the
Gable for the next three days before going to Shillingsbridge. Please write
soon.
Yours,
Scramasax
[Notes: This is an epistolatory
story, part of the John Craft/Scramasax Letters that John and I wrote for each
other in the early 1980's or late '70's, in which we impersonated two wizards
in correspondence with each other. The idea was inspired by a similar device in
a short story by Brian Lumley, in an anthology by Lin Carter, The Year’s
Best Fantasy Stories Vol.6. I can detect that I was heavily under the
influence of The Face in the Frost, A Wizard of Earthsea, Lord
Foul's Bane, The Riddlemaster of Hed, and The Exorcist. The
fact that the letters were in John's possession probably accounts for their
surviving The Terrible Termite Devastation of the early 2000's. This letter has
a final page, containing a drawing of the Spell of Sharn. A scramasax was a large, single-edged knife or
short sword used as both a weapon and a tool by early Saxons and Franks in
Northern Europe from before the fall of Rome through the early Middle
Ages. Ranging from small utility knives to lengths approaching sword size,
the scramasax was carried horizontally on the belt and served as a versatile
implement for warfare, hunting, and daily camp chores. I chose it for my
wizard’s name solely on its phonic qualities.]
