DO NOT FEAR, FOR THE WORK WILL BE PURE

DO NOT FEAR, FOR THE WORK WILL BE PURE, by Michael Johnstone, artwork by Karolína Wellartová, audio by Karen Bovenmyer.

For all that his Rat Quarter Cycle conferred upon him deserved esteem in Elsidor, leading to a flourishing period of commissions from the highborn, Zayal’s now justifiably celebrated statue of King Rolan I, shaped from the indigo-veined marble of the southern Argenfels, furnished him with genuine renown. The statue’s fearless, precise rendering of the King’s worn, temak-ravaged body at first scandalized Elsidor, forcing Zayal to abscond from the city. Yet Queen Dorota’s proclamation that the statue was her husband’s dying decree brought Zayal back to Elsidor, triumphant. To this day, the statue endures in the Hall of Kings ….

— Emun Orvir, Steward of the Royal Gallery, Chronicle of Art and Artists During the Reign of King Rolan I

“Dirna’s shrivelled teats, the cold has burrowed into my bones,” Deonoro Zayal mumbled, brushing snow from his beard. He longed for the warm fire and flagon of Sulean red he should be relishing in his studio in Elsidor so many days away to the south.

Cresting the hill, he brought his horse to a halt beside the mount of his guide and guard, Kig Adsel, who had already alighted and regarded the land before them.

The snowfall was light but constant, and in harmony with the grey sky bestowed upon the craggy terrain a torpid character. Deonoro could barely discern the path that continued into the Heng Tors, and he mused once more that he had assented to a fool’s errand, though truly he had been afforded scant choice. How could he have anticipated the Baron would be so eager to declare Deonoro’s untimely death satisfactory recompense for the wife’s indiscretions?

“They are close,” Kig said. “Try not to panic when you see them.”

“I have met my share of horrors. I am not so easily flustered.”

Kig cast a dubious look at Deonoro. “Resentful, city-bred husbands are insufficient preparation for the Heng.”

In the next breath, four figures rose and stepped out from behind nearby clumps of tall brush and clusters of mossy rocks.

Deonoro gasped, causing his horse to snort and strike the ground with a front hoof.

“Compose yourself,” Kig said. “Falter here, and your pencils will be of little use.”

The shock of seeing the Heng for the first time was compelling and unnerving. As they drew closer in graceless movements, Deonoro spied that three had crude bows knocked with arrows and a fourth held a small axe in each hand. They wore ragged, filthy furs and tattered trousers, but nothing on their misshapen feet. These four appeared to have retained more than a vestige of humanity, though their temak were frightful. One’s skin was covered in cracked red scales, another had awkwardly stunted legs, another suffered from a spectacularly large growth on its neck, and another’s jaw jutted out severely to expose yellowed fangs.

“The Mother weeps,” Deonoro whispered, pressing a hand upon his chest.

Kig grunted.

“You go no farther,” said the Heng with the scaly skin.

Facing Deonoro, Kig tilted his head and shrugged. His expression did not impart confidence.

Deonoro nodded and commenced to dismount.

The Heng archers raised their bows, and Kig put up a hand to stay them while keeping his gaze on Deonoro. When he touched the ground, Deonoro rummaged through a saddlebag until he found the slender tube containing the parchment that had plucked him from his studio and brought him to the boundary of civilization. He held the exquisitely crafted silver tube above his head as he came to stand next to Kig. The archers did not lower their bows.

Suppressing a shiver, Deonoro stared at the three slate grey arrowheads aimed toward him. Kig had been correct. He was not prepared for the Heng, and he had quite deluded himself since leaving Elsidor to presume otherwise.

“I am Deonoro Zayal,” he began, tentative in this bleak place.

“You are far from home, dark man,” sneered the Heng who had spoken before. “Best you sail back to warm and sunny Sulea.”

Briefly surprised, Deonoro soon sighed, admonishing himself for musing that the Heng might not abide by such distasteful sentiments. Yet the Tors lay within the bounds of the Kingdom of Tamerlar, and why should a Heng relinquish the convictions he had known from birth? Deonoro considered a retort alluding to the hearts of Tamerlarans complementing their pallid complexions, though Kig set a hand upon his shoulder as a caution. He cleared his throat with a low cough and began again.

“I am Deonoro Zayal, renowned sculptor of Elsidor, and I have journeyed here to discharge a royal commission.” He lifted the silver tube higher. “By request of the King’s High Steward, I seek an audience with Grothag the Unmerciful to make sketches of your dread chieftain for a sculpture to be exhibited to all of Elsidor. My companion and I hope you may escort us to Grothag the Unmerciful or direct us to the path.”

Once he finished, Deonoro nearly laughed aloud. Heret’s soiled ass, the whole venture was absurd. An irregular response to an unremarkable scandal, even if Deonoro appreciated the lure of crafting his first truly notable work since his statue of a dying King Rolan I, some ten years gone. Surely three arrows must now fly at him and Kig in response to his declaration.

Yet the Heng did not loose the arrows. Rather, all four glanced at each other, their disagreeable faces manifesting uncertainty.

“Your intent is obscure,” said the red-scaled Heng.

“Exceedingly so,” Kig muttered. “I shall never be restored to the shieldbearers.”

“Your lack of faith wounds me,” Deonoro chided genially, though apprehensive still. Then he addressed the Heng anew. “We have ridden from Elsidor, dear friends, to meet Grothag the Unmerciful so I may return there and craft a marvellous sculpture of your chieftain, whose dire repute is known throughout all the kingdom. Can you conduct us to where Grothag the Unmerciful resides?”

“You will interest Grothag. Follow.”

“Splendid.” Deonoro pressed enthusiasm into his tone. Leaning closer to Kig, he observed, “Heret’s ass, their temak are appalling.”

“Erlaren the Father’s light shield us.”

 

#

 

Struggling with the coarse rope that bound his wrists together, Deonoro attempted to stretch his cramped, chilled body as he lay on the leaf-covered ground of the crude hut. Early light nudged through the spaces between the hut’s branches and moss. His breath made small clouds that eddied up among the thin beams of light. Grunts and snarls sounded outside, but Deonoro could see only shadows that fleetingly impeded the beams and dimmed his current regrettable lodgings.

“Did your balls freeze and fall off during the night?” Kig said.

“They did not, by the Father’s grace.”

“A shame.”

Before Deonoro could respond, the door flung open. He raised an arm across his eyes to ward off the sudden blaze of light, and Kig spat a curse.

“Grothag summons you,” said the red-scaled Heng. His name was Sivin.

“At last.” Deonoro rolled onto his pleasingly robust belly, then stood up clumsily from his knees and elbows.

“You have lived too comfortably,” Kig said.

Deonoro put his hands on Kig’s offered arm to steady himself. “Hence why you are here. I do not doubt your prowess, my friend.”

“Neither do I. It will be insufficient if you are rash. I would prefer not to meet my end defending a mere sculptor who whittles his days away tutoring the children of highborn and amusing himself with their mothers.”

“Have faith,” Deonoro smiled. “How could this Grothag the Unmerciful refuse?”

When they emerged from the hut, Sivin and the Heng with the prodigious growth on its neck — a female, Deonoro suspected — waited for them. Deonoro shuddered, for the two Heng seemed to appraise them as if selecting the portions they might feast upon. Mother’s tears, if the tales were genuine, he had journeyed to a grisly fate.

Their escorts led them through the settlement, which was a disorderly collection of huts and tents occupying a meagre grove of trees at the bottom of a small valley surrounded by rocky hills. All the Heng watched, and several stalked them. Though uncertain, Deonoro suspected he heard grumblings of “oppressor” and “cut” and “snakes” and “bleed.” A Heng, one arm shortened with the stubs of fingers sprouting at the elbow, stepped close to Deonoro and motioned as if to clutch his throat. Alarmed, he stumbled and nearly fell to the cold muck of the path. Sniggering among the trailing rabble followed.

“Heret’s rotten cock,” Kig said.

“Silence,” Sivin snapped. “No words with Grothag unless granted.”

Kig strained against the rope wound about his wrists, yet laboured to keep his expression impassive. A shieldbearer, sworn to protect Tamerlar from the Darkness in Its myriad guises, he would sorely rue his circumstances. Yet during all the days since Elsidor, he had not disclosed the disgrace that had prompted his dismissal from the shieldbearers. Deonoro lamented not having inquired.

Soon, they arrived at a clearing, the ground of which was a stew of mud, grass, leaves, and snow. A large fire pit occupied the centre, a chaos of charred wood and bones — some human? — and ashes. Ribbons of grey smoke coiled up to the sky, and embers popped and hissed. Debris and the carcasses of hares and deer were strewn around the fire pit. Beyond the fire pit was a wide and high heap of stones covered by a confusion of furs, blankets, clothing, and other odd items. Atop the stones sat an impressively hideous figure gazing at them with a mix of contempt and haughty interest.

As they circled the fire pit and approached the stone mound, Deonoro grew increasingly astonished. Grothag the Unmerciful so enthralled him that he considered only vaguely the inconvenience of the mire of the clearing.

 Her temak were ghastly. The skin on the right side of her face was shrivelled and scabbed, as if burned. Paltry tufts of black hair were scattered across her scalp, and one such clump adorned her chin and fell to her chest. Though a thick, filthy fur mantle was draped over her shoulders, her breasts were bare. The left breast, ample, appeared charred and to be seeping a white pus, while the right, withered, sagged to her stomach. A twisted spine forced her left side higher than her right, and rashes and blemishes mottled her skin. To Deonoro, she conveyed an impression of physical power not to be misjudged, but also a mind and soul unsettled.

He would indeed craft a magnificent sculpture for all Elsidor to commend. A yearning not felt since King Rolan I swept through him.

When at last they stopped a horse’s length from Grothag, she addressed them. “I pondered having you burned. Some claim you are assassins.”

“We are not, my Lady,” Deonoro said. “As the royal commission expl —”

Grothag laughed lustily, a succession of gravelly coughs and wheezing snickers. As she ceased, she said, “No one has called me ‘my Lady’ in many years. I am no lady now, and such ceremony is repulsive here.”

While she spoke, Deonoro saw the scorn in her expression.

“My apologies.” He stopped himself from bowing.

“I have perused your royal commission. An eccentric undertaking. Where would your sculpture be displayed?”

“Doubtlessly, in the Royal Gallery.”

Her grin revealed blackened and jagged teeth.

“The mewling highborn would see the sculpture?”

“My renown would ensure it.”

“Then they would know to fear me. They would know what my family’s cruelty has wrought.”

Kig sniffed.

“Ha!” Grothag barked. “Yes, shieldbearer. I speak truth.”

“Humbly,” Deonoro said, placing a hand upon his chest, “I presume the High Steward intends for the sculpture to convey the devastation of the Darkness and to prod reflection upon the consequences of evil and blasphemy.”

Grothag the Unmerciful glowered at Deonoro, and he reckoned that now she might kill him.

“So you are led to believe.” Her voice was raspy and menacing.

For many heartbeats she said nothing further. She scowled at Deonoro and Kig, shifting on her seat of furs to fold her legs in and cross them over each other.

“What do you require for your sculpture?” she said at last.

“To observe you, converse with you, and sketch you. No more than two days.” Deonoro prayed his relief and eagerness were not obvious.

“Unbind them and return their belongings, but not the weapons,” Grothag announced. “You will make Grothag the Unmerciful famed in Tamerlar and among all the Heng.”

“Unquestionably.”

 

#

 

Later that day, Deonoro sat upon a tree stump before Grothag’s throne, as she styled her mound of rock. Kig stood behind him, grim.

Deonoro’s sketching had progressed from a full view of the Heng chieftain and her perch to detailed studies — her mouth, her chin, her left breast and then the right, her scalp, her eyes. He went swiftly, learning her form. While he sketched, she talked.

“Do you know who I was?”

“I do not, though I confess to curiosity.” Deonoro began a new page, concentrating upon Grothag’s eyes.

“I often forget, but you help me remember. I was Olonora Dumal, oldest daughter of the first cousin to the Duke of Oslin. Yes, dark man, I am highborn, and I was to wed a son of an illustrious family of Elsidor. Do you doubt me?”

“I have no cause to.” Glancing rapidly from Grothag to his page, Deonoro endeavoured to reproduce the fleeting wistfulness of her expression. He registered her blithe slur, yet deemed it prudent to refrain from comment. “Did you wed this son of Elsidor?”

“No! That scheming minx of a maid batted her eyes at him and favoured him with her smiles. He was meant to court me. She suffered for her impudence.”

Deonoro almost dropped his pencil and pages as Grothag pounded her furs and blankets with her fists. When the outburst passed, she panted heavily.

Cautious, Deonoro ventured, “What did you do?”

“A torch to her face so no man would ever desire her!”

For several breaths Deonoro halted his sketching, enthralled by Grothag caressing the shrivelled skin of the right side of her face. Assuredly, her first temak and testimony to Erlaren the Father’s censure. She had not repented for her treatment of the maid. The decree would have been exile to the Tors.

“They all quake at the name of Grothag now, and they flee when I raid their lands,” she said. “They can never atone for their viciousness. I will rule Oslin and remind them each day of their treachery.”

She straightened her back and raised her chin, attempting a scornful expression that instead distorted into a lascivious leer.

“The blame is hers alone,” Kig whispered, derisive.

Deonoro could not contest the shieldbearer’s charge, yet Grothag’s admission had suggested a tactic he might pursue.

“I, too, am acquainted with the cruelty provoked by temak,” Deonoro said, commencing another page, sketching instinctively as he closed his eyes and permitted the memories to unfold. Soon, he felt amana tingling through his arms and hands, but just mildly and gently. Magic, most in Tamerlar would call it. To him, amana was truth, understanding, spark.

“How?”

“My sister Nemi and I came to Elsidor when we were children. Our parents secured passage for us and a family servant on a ship bound for Tamerlar, to save us from war in Sulea. The servant perished on the journey across the Miris Sea. We were brought to the Suleans in Elsidor by a sailor who pitied us. Two years later, Nemi was seized on her way to a market. I never saw her again. I discovered that a merchant who traded in children with temak had taken her and sold her to a highborn. I still do not know that highborn’s name.”

When Deonoro opened his eyes, he stroked his beard and regarded the portrait of Nemi he had sketched so often since losing her. Nemi singing, which was her deepest happiness. In Sulea, her songs would charm even the birds.

“Plain to see why she was grabbed,” Grothag said. “Did you kill the merchant?”

Deonoro danced his pencil over Nemi’s face, refining the shading. He was gratified that he had recalled unerringly the sagging of the left side of her face, which pulled that eye lower than the right and which lengthened and swelled that cheek.

“I could not. He met his end before I was able.”

“A misfortune. You do know the wickedness of Tamerlar. Temak must not be seen, or your security is forfeited. The Heng do not hide from each other. Here, we are free.”

His intuition had served him well once more. To craft the purest art, he required the subject to unveil their soul to him. Often, for the unveiling to transpire, he had needed to give something of himself to his subject in exchange. Nemi’s story had before proven fruitful.

Grothag looked at Deonoro with unfeigned assurance. Beneath that assurance, he comprehended, lay a firmer certainty of … betrayal and abandonment.

 

#

 

After a fitful night dreaming of Nemi and their parents and Sulea, disturbed by visions of Grothag and Heng and a frozen land, Deonoro woke aching and weary. The aftermath of amana, and he had not sketched Nemi for many years. Telling of her brought forth the old, heavy sorrow. The old seething rancour, too.

“I have heard of such merchants,” Kig said from the other side of the hut, still in shadow. “The depravity of the Darkness is boundless. May the Father’s light shield your sister’s soul.”

“Yet by the laws of Tamerlar, she was a blasphemy. Grothag spoke shrewdly. Nemi was never free in Elsidor.”

“A child does not merit such a fate, no matter her temak.”

“A better fate is for Erlaren the Father’s pristers to seize newborns with temak so their evil shall not blossom?” Deonoro could not stifle his resentment.

Kig did not reply.

“Your pardon,” Deonoro said, subdued. “My dreams have saddened me.”

“This place pains the soul.”

“Ours and theirs.”

Deonoro then felt he might attempt a question he had refrained from posing since they had departed Elsidor.

“Why have you come?”

For a long while, Kig remained unmoving and quiet. Deonoro feared he had been discourteous.

“Last year, in the campaign to turn back the Heng incursion,” the shieldbearer said finally, “a captain of another company maligned my commander Lord Langel and all our men owing to reports of some sacrilege committed by his wife in Elsidor. I encouraged the captain to reconsider his words. He repeated them. I wounded him heavily. The resolution was indefinite dismissal. If I bring you back to Elsidor alive, I may be restored, for service to the throne.”

“I am sure the captain deserved your ire.”

“He did and would again.”

 

#

 

An extra layer of furs could not prevent Deonoro from shivering, and he strove to steady his pencil as he sketched Grothag. With no clouds above, the midday sky was an unrelenting bright blue, causing Deonoro to squint when looking up from the page.

While Grothag spoke, Deonoro attended more diligently to her gestures and expressions, to her adornments and markings. She and the other Heng were terrifically grotesque, and he was always restless. Yet for all the proof of her perversion, he apprehended that Grothag held desires and fears and sorrows. Could he intimate this aspect of her in the sculpture, faint as it was?

They had moved to considering the matter of temak.

“The Blessed Illuminations tell that all temak are manifestations of the soul’s surrender to the Darkness,” Deonoro said, reciting the customary doctrine.

“I spit on that foul tome and would crush the skulls of all the Father’s pristers!”

Grothag’s vehemence startled Deonoro. Spittle spurted from her mouth, and her neck bulged and flared scarlet.

“The Pator of Oslin pronounced it Erlaren’s compassion that I must be exiled, and my father assented, as he must. Do you call this compassion?” Sitting straighter, Grothag opened her fur mantle to expose her breasts. She turned her head better to show the shrivelled skin of her face. “I caught them ready to rut like animals. But everyone mocked me. Even my own mother.”

“Your temak, you caused by your own sins, did you not?” Deonoro sketched hurriedly to capture the expression of irritated, perplexed thought that furrowed Grothag’s brow.

“The Heng,” she said, “are made. Banished, forsaken. Harassed, maltreated. Do you wonder that we hate and torment you?”

Deonoro sat still, beguiled by the fleeting clouds of his breath drifting in the glaring, biting air. He had not ever wondered such a thing.

“Do they judge temak the same in Sulea?” Grothag said.

“No. A birth temak does not settle a child’s fate. One is useful or one is not. Marriage for those with temak to those without is unexceptional.”

“Have you a mate?” Grothag leered at Deonoro.

Kig, standing behind Deonoro, said, “The last one had him driven from Elsidor to this misery.”

“Ha! You ploughed a field that was not yours to sow, dark man.”

“Regrettably, some husbands are less forbearing than others,” Deonoro replied, seeking levity. Heret’s rotten cock, how heedless Tamerlarans were with their epithets.

Then he thought of someone he had not contemplated for many years. Rina, the only one besides Nemi to know what he concealed. He pressed a hand lightly upon his chest as a memory of their parting formed. The Sulean ambassador’s daughter, she had sailed back across the Miris Sea to wed one of the princes, unable to refuse the arrangement agreed to by her father. Playfully yet earnestly, she would reprove Deonoro for his secrecy, claiming Tamerlar was unworthy of his talents.

Absorbed in the memory, feeling again the rough winds at the docks of Elsidor on the dreary morning she left for Sulea, he set down his pages and pencil. Rina had spoken wisely, though she knew his discretion ensured his survival in Tamerlar. He pulled the fur mantle more tightly around his shoulders and gazed upon the ground, preoccupied by the past.

“I did have a mate, very long ago,” he said. “Other than my sister, she was the only one who kn —”

Yells erupted from the trees at the edge of the clearing to Deonoro’s right. Scuttling into the clearing came a band of eight Heng, led by Sivin. They carried a frame of branches woven together, atop which lay a heap of slain animals. A large stag with majestic antlers, two foxes, several hares.

Grothag stood and shouted a greeting.

“Fiend,” Kig muttered.

Deonoro snatched up his pages and pencil, then began sketching briskly. Grothag’s unseemly legs. The awkward gaits of the hunters.

When the Heng arrived at Grothag’s throne, they dropped the frame of branches and became silent.

“We feast this night!” Grothag proclaimed. With unexpected vigour and dexterity, she leapt from her throne and landed between it and the hunters.

Sivin pushed the hares and foxes off the prodigious stag. He then stabbed a knife into the stag’s gut and sliced the animal open. As entrails poured out, Deonoro nearly retched from the reek. Thrusting a hand into the stag, Sivin soon wrenched it back out, clutching a red-purple mass dripping blood that steamed when it splattered upon the cold ground.

Striding forward, Grothag snatched the stag’s heart from Sivin. She held it aloft, blood spilling down her arm and onto her breasts. The Heng shouted her name. Promptly, she brought the heart to her mouth and bit into it eagerly.

Deonoro trembled.

Still, he sketched Grothag, his hand moving instinctually as he kept his attention on his subject. Blessed Mother, he would craft an extraordinary sculpture. He had not been so stirred for rather a long while and craved returning to Elsidor to begin the work. How complacent and dull he had become these past many years. Yet what should one do after a statue such as King Rolan I and severance from one’s beloved?

While Grothag consumed the stag’s heart, she looked to him.

He halted his sketching.

She did not in truth devour the heart. She merely put her mouth upon it and pressed it to cause the blood to stream out. In her eyes, for a breath, Deonoro perceived … shame.

 

#

 

The clamour of the Heng’s feasting persisted far into the night, thwarting Deonoro’s hope for sleep. Often, he fought the urge to flee the hut and the settlement. Once, a dispute occurred outside their door, and they were spared an intrusion by one Heng threatening, “They’re Grothag’s, lest you wish to lose your heads.”

Mother’s tears, he had become an indolent man, conducting intrigues with highborn women and courting the displeasure of their husbands. Though he had revived his inspiration in this loathsome place, coming here was decidedly an unjust atonement for an unexceptional dalliance.

“The Darkness corrupts their minds,” Kig said.

“Perhaps.” Or, did feelings of treachery and desertion warrant ire and spite?

“What was her name?”

Deonoro apprehended whom Kig alluded to.

“Rina. She sailed back to Sulea, a circumstance neither of us could oppose.”

Kig made no reply, and soon Deonoro supposed he had fallen asleep.

“You regard temak very differently in Sulea,” Kig said suddenly, though without accusation.

“We do.” Deonoro sensed he must be cautious. “Even those with temak gained by their acts are thought capable of redemption.”

“Grothag?”

“I cannot say if she would choose it now.”

“We must leave this place soon. Her influence is unreliable.”

Deonoro nodded.

 

#

 

When Deonoro stepped out from the hut in the morning, the snowfall was profuse and the settlement hushed. He could see only grey and dim white everywhere, trees and huts scarcely silhouettes. He heard only the sighs of snowflakes as they pattered upon the ground.

Closing his eyes and turning his face up to the sky, Deonoro relished the caresses of the snow and the stillness of the world. At first he recalled Rina and how her dusky skin would redden faintly in the candlelight, and then there were Nemi’s sparkling eyes as she sang on the ship taking them away from Sulea, and then Grothag’s blood-smeared mouth mimicking gnawing upon a red-purple lump of flesh.

In his next breath, Deonoro comprehended what his sculpture must be.

Grothag seated on her throne. She peers forward, as if involved in conversation. One hand holds an animal’s heart. Her fur mantle has slid off a shoulder, revealing her breasts. A dreadful figure to behold, her temak terrible and her defiant pride indecent. Yet shrewd attention might discern the remorse and discontent in her eyes, which may then intimate that her sinister grin disclosed instead misgiving and sorrow. Every feature meticulously correct, not the haziness of form fashionable now in Elsidor. Cast in bronze, the metal permitting him precision and gradations of tint and hue.

It would be the fittest portrayal of the devastation of the Darkness, as the High Steward demanded. It would be the most genuine rendering of Grothag’s truth. What might be feared most, Grothag’s hideous figure or the spectre of humanity in her eyes?

Entering the hut, Deonoro went to his belongings and gathered his sketching materials. When he sat cross-legged upon the furs and set the board on his knees, holding the pencil a finger’s width above the pages, he slowed his breathing and steadied his thoughts. After a few heartbeats, the familiar, blissful tingling in his skin commenced.

He said, as if chanting, “I would be grateful if you kept watch and let no one enter the hut or disturb me. I am entering amana, and I will be vulnerable.”

Kig stood up from his furs and moved to the door of the hut. “Amana?”

“A Sulean expression.” Deonoro’s voice grew fainter, as if he would sleep. “To craft the purest art, you must unfetter yourself from your desires and judgements. I … channel a power akin to magic.”

While his awareness waned, Deonoro drifted his pencil slowly in circles, not yet touching the page. His eyes remained open, though they did not see Kig or the hut. Rather, they envisioned Grothag seated on her throne, holding an animal’s heart in one hand ….

 

#

 

Several hours later, Deonoro woke fatigued, as if he had spent a day ascending a mountain bearing a sack of stones.

Kig handed him a mug of water and a wedge of bread. “That is the sculpture you intend?”

“Yes,” Deonoro said after a sip.

“It will be alarming. Doubtlessly reviled.”

Deonoro chewed and swallowed some bread before replying. “It will be my grandest work yet and ensure my fame. We must go to Grothag now.”

Once he ate the last portion of bread and finished the water, Deonoro rolled up the page of the most consequential sketch of all his days and slid it into his worn but trusted leather scroll case. With a grunt, he rose to his feet and, pulling on his furs, gestured to proceed.

His guide and preserver led him out from the hut into a day not far past its midpoint. Smokey clouds loomed overhead, and a modest yet chill breeze swept through the settlement. Deonoro’s feet sunk snow as deep as his calves, and after a few strides he apprehended that he heard no sounds other than his and Kig’s crunching of the snow and the listless call of a bird.

“Be wary,” Kig said. “The conflict continued much of the night. We were mentioned often.”

As they advanced through the settlement toward the clearing with Grothag’s throne, Deonoro’s curiosity heightened. No Heng so far, as if like phantoms they had dispersed while amana had claimed him.

Abruptly, Kig stopped and went down to one knee beside a small mound. Brushing away the snow, he uncovered the frozen corpse of a Heng. Its intestines spilled onto the ground, a hypnotising medley of red, purple, grey, beige, and insipid white. Kig pried a long knife from the Heng’s hand, concealed it beneath his furs as he stood, and resumed trudging through the snow. With considerable effort, Deonoro looked away from the Heng and followed.

Before they reached the edge of the clearing, Deonoro at last heard the Heng. Grothag’s laugh erupted, breeding a chorus of roars from the other Heng. When Kig and Deonoro entered the clearing, they halted hastily. The scene at Grothag’s throne was at first puzzling and then startling. A cluster of dead Heng hung upon stakes, and Grothag directed the piling of wood at their feet.

“Heret’s rotten cock,” Kig said. “We must —”

“At last!” Grothag bellowed when she spotted Kig and Deonoro. “Come! Sit and sketch!”

“All will be well,” Deonoro said to Kig. “Have faith.”

The appalling state of the Heng on the stakes riveted Deonoro the closer to Grothag’s throne he came. Two had skulls mashed in. The chests of two more were crushed, snapped ribs jutting through the skin. A fifth lacked an arm, and an axe remained lodged in its forehead. Deonoro recognised Sivin.

When Deonoro stood before Grothag, she peered at him. “Deonoro Zayal, yes?”

“Correct.”

“I did know your name when I was Olonora. She withers, yet I recall enough. Yours is the statue of King Rolan I, baring his temak for all of Tamerlar to see? His dying bidding?”

“It is.” Deonoro straightened. The statue had brought him deserved renown once the scorn had receded. As Grothag had remarked, temak were not to be seen in Tamerlar. Only Queen Dorota’s approval of the statue had pacified the clamour for his demise and its destruction.

“Not surprising you were commissioned for this.”

Deonoro bowed briskly. “Last evening’s proceedings were spirited.”

“These vermin sought to be chieftain. They disliked the favour I have shown you. They preferred to burn their oppressor to ashes.”

“You are truly merciful.”

“Fools! They cannot see. You will make Tamerlar fear me, my traitorous family most of all. You will make me chieftain of all the Heng. What do you carry?”

Bowing again, Deonoro said, “I have sketched the sculpture I will craft in Elsidor. As a courtesy, I bring it to you for your assent.”

While Deonoro uncapped the scroll case and drew out the rolled-up page, he envisioned his sculpture set in the Royal Gallery, occupying the centre of the Queen’s Assembly, its bronze radiant under the midday light gleaming through the abundance of windows. When he had removed the page entirely, he handed the scroll case to Kig and edged closer to Grothag’s throne. Unfurling the page, he held it up before him, arms extended.

Only a few breaths later, the page was wrested from his hands, and Grothag ripped it apart and flung the shreds of parchment into the air. She glowered at Deonoro, clenching her fists.

“Deceiver!”

Deonoro stumbled backward.

“You lie!”

Clasping his hands as if in prayer, Deonoro said, “I can compose only what I see, Grothag the Unmerciful. This is the purity of my work.”

With disconcerting swiftness and power, Grothag sprung from her throne, landed before Deonoro, and swatted him to the ground as if he were hardly more substantial than a feather.

“Seize them,” Grothag snarled.

Two Heng rushed at Kig.

“For Tamerlar and the Father,” the shieldbearer yelled as he whirled, dropping the scroll case and producing the long knife.

Kig slashed one of the Heng across the throat. The Heng collapsed to the snow, clutching its neck, blood spurting between its fingers. Ducking beneath the other Heng’s attempt to grab him, he kicked its knee, and Deonoro winced at the crunching of bone and the Heng’s screaming. Kig then moved toward Deonoro, knife pointed at Grothag.

She grinned and charged at Kig. Too fast for him to respond, she grasped the wrist of the hand wielding the knife and tightened her grip so fiercely that Kig’s fingers splayed open to release the weapon. Grothag then drove her other fist into Kig’s chest, lifting him off his feet and crashing to the ground on his back. Deonoro shuddered at the sound of Kig’s wheezing.

“Take them,” Grothag said. “They are the King’s assassins. Tomorrow, they die.”

Soon, several pairs of hands latched onto Deonoro’s arms and dragged him through the muddy, wet snow.

 

#

 

Soggy and bruised, Deonoro trembled violently. Once the Heng had deposited him and Kig in the hut, they snatched up his sketching materials and left. He had been too dazed to protest. Some time later, a Heng returned and emptied a wooden box of ashes at his feet.

“No more lies,” it had said, sniggering as it exited the hut.

Kig sprawled where he had been dropped, insensible and his breathing faint.

“The Mother weeps,” Deonoro moaned.

The royal commission had proven disastrous at the last. As his teeth chattered, Deonoro contemplated his looming death, despondent that the crafting of his most astounding work yet was now denied him. Though his statue of King Rolan I was indeed a masterpiece, he had been certain his sculpture of Grothag would confirm his genius.

Grothag.

He could not determine the cause of her reaction to the sketch. Amana did not enable falsehood. Occasionally, a subject may refuse to concede the sincerity of what he presented, dubious at confronting such truth. They were accepting, even grateful, in due course. If Grothag would not concede the anguish he had perceived in her, his death was assured.

At the least, he had the consolation that his secret would remain unknown in Elsidor. Perhaps his demise among the Heng would enhance his reputation, over the years turning to legend.

“It is barbarous, this abhorrence for temak in Tamerlar,” Rina would say, tracing a finger along his chest after their lovemaking. “In Sulea, you could do away with your pretence.”

“You know what happened to Nemi,” he would plead. “My pretence ensures I may pursue my art.”

Two days past, Grothag had said that the Heng do not hide from each other. In the Tors, they were free. He could not dismiss her claim. Though they had surrendered to the Darkness, they did live without concealment from each other.

In a heartbeat, Deonoro discerned what Rina had endeavoured to tell him without declaring it directly. All these years, regardless of his stature, he had permitted himself to be a captive in Tamerlar. If Grothag felt remorse and revulsion for the creature she had become, what of him? Must the Heng forever be refused mercy or sympathy, solely for the sake of custom? Was not their fate a mere layer of cloth from becoming his?

Deonoro reached frantically for his rucksack. Opening it, he tossed out the clothing and other items it contained until he uncovered the thin leather wallet at the bottom. From the wallet he removed the folded pages and a pencil.

“You sketch at a time such as this?” Kig said, hoarse. “You have doomed us.”

Without reply, Deonoro strove to subdue his trembling and calm his mind. Gradually, the tingling of amana began .…

 

#

 

As the morning brightened, Kig limped about the hut, furious.

“I did not take the oath to oppose the Darkness so I might die among these abominations playing footman to a witless sculptor,” Kig said, nearly shouting.

Deonoro remained silent. He held affection for Kig after all their days together, and he felt compassion for the shieldbearer’s indignation.

“Have faith,” Deonoro whispered.

Kig stopped his pacing to glower at Deonoro. “Faith did us scant good yesterday. Grothag is raving mad. We will die this day. That I have faith in. I was a fool ever to hope we may survive. By the grace of the Father, at least I killed one of them. There is less of the Darkness in the world.”

Before Deonoro could reply, the door of their hut burst open. The glare of morning light blinded him, so that he saw only shadows barging in to tackle him and Kig. Soon, they were stumbling through the settlement, a biting wind attacking their exposed skin. Heng had assembled along the path to jeer at them, continuing the abuse while following them into the clearing and up to Grothag’s throne.

Two new wooden poles were set firmly in the ground beside her mound of rocks, separated from the five Heng challengers whose bodies now were charred, contorted, and frosted. A pile of branches and logs had been deposited close by. Kig spat.

Looking up, Deonoro encountered a contemptuous Grothag.

“Many want to burn you and chop you apart,” she said, her eyes baleful. “I have impressed upon them that such behaviour is vulgar. Yet should I refuse them the satisfaction of giving their tormenters and assassins the justice they merit?”

Grothag submitted to a prolonged fit of laughter, during which Deonoro heard Kig mumble what seemed an invocation to Erlaren the Father.

Bowing so deeply that his head neared his knees, Deonoro spread his arms wide as he rose and said, “Grothag the Unmerciful, I humbly make a final appeal to your wisdom and discrimination. If we are doomed to perish, there can be no harm in entertaining a man’s dying petition.”

As her laughter ebbed, Grothag looked at Deonoro with suspicion.

“Proceed.”

“I had much time through the night to contemplate all that brought me here and to you. I was inspired.”

“To lie again?”

Deonoro pulled his thick overtunic above his head and dropped it to the snow behind him. He then did the same with his thinner undertunic, exposing his belly and the emerald-green cloth wrapped tightly about his chest. The colour that Rina wore their final night those long years ago, stopping his heart from beating and time from passing as he gazed at her to fix the marvel of her beauty in his memory.

“To tell the truth,” Deonoro said. “It is what art must do.”

As he slowly unwound the emerald-green cloth, the iciness of the air and the wind attacked him, yet he did not shiver.

When he came to the end of the wrapping, he held onto it for a few breaths and then released it into the wind. It snapped and fluttered until it caught upon Grothag’s throne.

Grothag stared. Kig coughed. From behind Deonoro, the gathered Heng shouted, “Temak!”

“Ha!” Grothag said.

Standing as if at attention, Deonoro did not look away from Grothag. All assembled could now see that the middle of his chest protruded unnaturally, the bone thrusting forward to form a blunt point.

Deonoro withdrew the page he had tucked inside the waistband of his trousers, unfolded it, and presented it to Grothag.

She climbed off her throne and strode to him. The foulness of her odour caused his knees to quiver. For what seemed a day, she considered the sketch.

“You vow to craft this and that all Elsidor will see it?” She brought her face so close to his that their noses almost met.

“Yes.”

“You will tell Tamerlar who I really am?” She whispered now. “My family’s wickedness will be known?”

“Yes.”

Her gaze bore into him, and he perceived relief peeking out from behind her wrath and contempt. Then, her eyes widened as if elated by a sudden insight.

“You did not show King Rolan I.” She whispered still.

Surprised, Deonoro remained silent. Yet in the next heartbeat he grasped the import of the matter to her. “No.”

Grothag stepped back, smiling broadly.

“Such a sculpture could be deadly for you,” Grothag said, raising her voice.

“I do not fear, for the work will be pure, no matter what is done to me.”

She presented the sketch back to him. “This is acceptable.”

 

#

 

Once the two Heng who had brought them to the hill where they first met Sivin and his scouts disappeared back into the Tors, Deonoro sighed.

“A remarkable experience.”

“Hand me the sketch,” Kig said, as if issuing an order.

Deonoro reached down, opened the saddlebag, and retrieved the precious page. Unfolding it, he regarded what he had drawn. Grothag on her throne, as he had portrayed her previously, yet now he stood before her unclothed above the waist and arms spread wide.

Mindful that the shieldbearer would determine whether his sculpture might ever come to be, Deonoro passed the page to Kig.

“She was correct,” Kig said, contemplating the sketch. “This could prove deadly for you.”

“Will you preserve my secret until I have completed the work?”

Kig returned the page to Deonoro and guided his horse to face south, where the sky eventually shone blue after a long shroud of pitiless grey.

“I do not comprehend all that occurred,” Kig said. “The Heng are a blasphemy, confirmed by their temak. I am sure you hold no wickedness in your heart, and what you did demanded … courage. I must seek the Father’s guidance for what this all signifies, yet I will keep your secret.”

“My sincerest gratitude.” Deonoro directed his own horse also to look south.

“Why court such risk?”

In the Heng Tors, before the most abhorrent and disconcerting being he had ever seen, Deonoro had found again his resolve as a sculptor. He was awake to compassion — genuine compassion — after a long slumber of distraction and indolence.

“Only the work is of consequence,” Deonoro said. “For all her vileness, and she is tremendously vile, Grothag compelled me to see that if I would expose her truth, I am obliged also to unveil mine. A simple alteration in the angle of the light, and we are not very different.

I am weary of hiding. I must do as Rina always desired.”

“May the Father’s light shield you.”

Deonoro nodded, grateful for the blessing and sensible of the strain with which Kig offered it.

Kig picked up the reins of his horse. “We best go if we are to make Elsidor before full winter arrives there.”

“At last. I have shivered enough for the rest of my days. It is time I sat by the fire in my studio and savoured the flagon of Sulean red that awaits me.”

– FIN –

________________________________________

Michael Johnstone lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and is a lecturer in English Liat the University of Toronto, teaching courses on Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror, and Jane Austin. He is an an avid long distance runner, gamer (boardgames and D&D), and reader. He has previously been published in Stars Magazine (Issue 1), Andromeda Spaceways Magazine (Issue 1) , Fantastic Trains (EDGE, 2019), On Spec (issues 105 and 112), and Compostela: Tesseracts Twenty (EDGE, 2017). On Twitter, he is @mikejwrites.

 

Karolína Wellartová is a Czech artist, painter creating images predominantly with the wildlife themes, nature studies and the literary characters. She’s inspired by the curious shapes and a materials from the nature, but the main source still comes from literature. Check out more of her work at her website.

Karen Bovenmyer earned an MFA in Creative Writing: Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine. She teaches and mentors students at Iowa State University and Western Technical College. She serves as the Assistant Editor of the Pseuodopod Horror Podcast Magazine. She is the 2016 recipient of the Horror Writers Association Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship. Her poems, short stories and novellas appear in more than 40 publications and her first novel, SWIFT FOR THE SUN, debuted from Dreamspinner Press in 2017.