THE DEMON IN THE JAR

THE DEMON IN THE JAR, by Cullen Groves, artwork by Miguel Santos

Under the watchful old eyes of the Carian wizard Hydáspes

Onto the black ship of Draba a single amphora they loaded,

Painted with sigils strange, stowed in the stern by the steering oars;

Draba the captain, night-dark of skin, overtowered the wizard

Standing beside him as they looked on the crew lashing down the weird vessel, and

Grinning, his teeth flashed white contrasting with the darkling evening;

Meanwhile, Mendax sun-burned and perched on the pilot’s stand shivered,

Leaning on the gunwales as the night wind whipped up the sea’s face, rippling his

Black cloak and whispering softly as the dark waters lapped at the ship’s strakes;

Forth then they fared over Ocean, Mendax the pilot heeding the

Guidance of Hydáspes, he muttering spells ’round his jar, and

Stars in the heavens were reflected in the wine-dark waters until dark

Skápteros hove into view, like a phalanx of shields on the sea’s face, a

Chain of islands and cliff-faces lighted when Dawn came early shining;

‘There—there in the depths between islands what we’re seeking is hidden,’

Hydáspes declared, his long finger at cliff-faces pointed, his ear

Pressed to the side of the amphora as if listening for answers to his mutterings;

‘Storm-angry are the skies over Skápteros,’ Mendax did answer, ‘and many a

‘Ship seeking lee in the channels was lost to the rage of wind and wave.’

‘Many a ship, so then many a cargo, and gold if our wizard

‘Hydáspes is true,’ answered Draba, and turned to his crew with a nod, so

Oars swept out o’er the gunwales like dark wings, the prow cut the waters

Into the channels between shadowed cliffs, a labyrinth of water and stone;

Sunlight came pouring down into these valleys as Helios climbed above,

Dazzling the wave-tops, yet piercing at times through the waters to island-roots,

Revealing old mast-tops and prow-heads rotting in murky abysses;

‘Here it is, here in this graveyard of galleys,’ Hydáspes now said,

‘The wreck of Leontphoros, carrier of kings and of treasures long lost

‘Lies now below us, aye, so my daimon says,’–‘Drop anchors, then!’ Draba

Ordered, and when lines fore and aft were full taut so the galley’d not wander

Stones were rolled out to the prow and attached to long hawsers while the captain,

Draba, stripped down to near nakedness, ebon and strapping, with a long knife

Thrust through the belt at his waist, and his thews heaved a stone to the gunwales;

‘Down!’ urged Hydáspes, ‘Down ‘midst the corpses of seafaring princes

Rests the gold that you crave, and the crown of the ancients, would grant me

Knowledge and powers as you who are mortal could never understand!’

And laughter like thunder broke out through the white teeth of Draba, then leaping,

Vanished he, down through the black waters, diving with the stone held tight,

Line spooling out from behind on the prow, longer and deeper,

Darknesses closing around him, while clustered at the gunwale the crewmen

Wondered at his boldness, and waited for the line to cease winding below;

Mendax held the coil but loosely in his rough hands, waiting its slackening,

Felt as the rope ceased to run, and the tug at his fingers from beneath, then

Tied off a knot at the tholes, and so waited for Draba’s returning;

Soon came a shape from abysses, ascending the line where it bent in the

Water, a form as dark as the shadowy depths, and Draba

Broke through the wave-tops, and tossed back his head with his laughter, tossing

Gold-plated treasures to arc through the sunlight ’til they tumbled on deck-boards;

‘Come on, boys, fine is the water, and our fortune awaits us below!’

Twins there were, crewmen and fine-figured fishermen up from Eucharia,

Duros and Smiling-Cheires they called them, and they stripped to their loincloths,

Took up a diving stone each, and into the water they followed,

Plummeting swiftly to the tangle of mast-heads beyond reach of Helios’ rays,

Lines coiling out behind them and soon tied above, like the thread leading

Out from the Labyrinth; and too, they returned with trinkets of gold and

Electrum, worm-riddled and barnacled, but–‘Gold!’ they all cried; ‘Remember the

‘Crown!’ exhorted Hydáspes, but the crew with the fever of goldlust

Hauled up the diving stones, heaved them to deck-boards while Draba and Duros and

Cheires the Smiling all stretched in the sunlight, ready to dive again;

Mendax alone kept his eyes to the sky, seeking for sign of the

Storms that he feared, but the depths of the heavens were clearer than water,

The air with the scent of the salt-sea pregnant, and not with the prickling

Yellow of thunder and storm, as if Aeolaus had stabled his sea-winds;

Draba now turned to Hydáspes and asked of him, ‘What is this thing that you’re

‘Seeking, o! wizard of Caria? What is this Crown that you lust after?’

In answering Draba, a fire burned bright in the eyes of Hydáspes:

‘Forged in the workshops of Ilus of old, and with spells spoken into it,

‘Worn by the Magi of the Ilian Arch-Kings, the Masters of spirits and

‘Demons of fire and the airs, and of deepnesses chthonic, the circlet

‘Binds to the will of its wearer all daimonas, dryadas, and mormikas!’

‘Why then should Draba not seize it himself and be lord of all spirits?’

Wondered the captain, but Hydáspes in answer but smiled, saying,

‘What does the leader of seamen and spearmen know of the secrets

‘Locked in the stars and their circles, and held in the perfections of numbers?’

Shrugging with a grin, to the stones Draba returned again, and hoisting another,

Heaved in a great breath, and leapt into waters awaiting below,

Sinking away with the shout of his crewmen behind him rising;

Duros and Cheires the Smiling went after, and others when tired these

Grew of descending and searching and rising with gold or with barnacles;

Star-worshipping Asruf it was who when Helios climbed to his highest

Took up a diving stone, naked except for the belt of ship’s rope

Tied at his waist with a knife at the small of his back, and he dove away,

Sinking through glittering waters to the graveyard of galleys below; now the

Fevered excitement of gold-finding had fallen away as the sun’s heat

Beat on the deck-boards, and many a crewman lay napping or basking,

Mendax among them, he dreaming strange visions of demons of horn, and

Great stallions racing across a dark looking-glass, foam at their mouths as they

Tossed their wild manes of yellow and darkness—but a great cry awakened all:

‘Blood! Blood, the waters are dark!’ and the ship rocked as all raced to the gunwales

Peering through wave-tops all brilliant to the depths well-beneath where a dark cloud was

Rising, and with it the severed arm of Asruf, breaking the surface in a

Red slick, a circlet enclosed in its dead hand, then sinking again;

Draba with his knife naked in his right hand leapt to the tholes,

Shouted in anger and made ready to dive, to deliver of life whatever

Beast of the deeps had slaughtered his crewman, but Hydáspes delayed him,

Fishing from his packs at the base of the amphora a phylactery and raising it,

‘Hold there, o! captain bold, here is a fetish of power will aid you

‘—Aye, for I fear that the thing drinking blood in the depths is a mormolyka,

‘Dread wolf of shadows and evil of breath, fell-born by suicide;

‘Give me your hand, for here in this vial are wards against mormae,

‘Scribed out on foils of beaten tin,’ and holding aloft a vial of clay,

Fired and stoppered with wax, Hydáspes strapped it around Draba’s

Proffered wrist, tied with a strip of fine silk he produced from broad sleeves;

Hefting his arm on high in the muggy hot air, Draba laughed,

Knife glinting bright against the high heavens, then he hoisted a diving stone,

Leapt from the prow of his ship through the murky dark depths to doom waiting,

Waters enclosing him, cold shock after the yellow heat of Helios,

Lances of light thrusting down through the night-dark waters and playing

Over the bone-like masts of the galleys, all bared like wintered trees;

Dog-sharks swam through the cloud of blood spreading, hounds to scent circling,

But Draba ignored them, drawn by his stone to the deeps like a man

Ushered to the fate so decreed by Anankh, she whom even gods fear;

There, in the stone cracks, roots of the islands, the ship Leontphoros lay dead,

Broad-beamed galley with three banks of oars like broken ribs scattered by

Carrion vultures, its eyes on the prow painted gold and staring,

Watching with deathless disinterest the grisly vision of the corpse of

Asruf entangled in the coiling arms of a Charnian kakódaimon

Rending the flesh of him, dark cloud spreading as its claws did their work on him

–Up from the mantle of coiling arms at its waist a woman-like

Form bent feasting and terrible, serpentine hair ’round a ghastly face

Hovering, hiding its horror from the eyes of bold Draba as onward he

Sank; and releasing the stone to wend its way down, with powerful strokes

Draba went driving at the fiend, vengeance on his mind, arm thrust out

Spearlike with the knife’s blade extending through the waters ahead of him;

Darkness fell above as he closed with the daimon as if Helios himself held back,

Deathless and refusing to look upon death and so leaving bold Draba in

Blackness as the coiling arms of the monster reached out to seize him …

Yea, for a wind had blown up on the water above and swollen

Grey clouds rolled over heaven’s face, darkling and pregnant with storm-rains;

Whipped to a frenzy, frothing and wild, the waves ’round the galley

Circled and rolled like Dioméde’s mares or stampeding stallions,

Rocking the ship fore and aft’ so it strained at its anchor stays like a beast chained,

Throwing the crew against thole-pins and benches as they worked to lash down

Loose stores; deathly was their silence as their rough hands knotted the ship’s ropes,

Gold well-forgotten in the face of the cliffs that could shatter the strakes if

Ocean should heave up the vessel in her watery grasp and hurl it

Headlong to the stone walls of the canyon, or swallow all down to abysses;

‘Damn Draba!’ growled Mendax as he stared at the diving line over the bow’s edge,

Glaring at the lead-colored swells that were swamping the benches as if he could

Peer through the depths to where Draba had vanished, piercing the waters;

‘Damn too the wizard, to storm-angry Skápteros led us,’ he muttered, and

Glancing back sternward, Hydáspes saw, crouched by th’ amphora, whispering;

‘What could he have in that jar that he murmurs to?’ Mendax wondered,

‘A body embalmed with its spirit entrapped in the corpse to give answer, or

‘Fine wine of poetry, brewed by the gods in the vineyards of the muses …’

Rain from the yellow air drumming the dromond interrupted his musing, and

Cries from the crewmen in terror, as the ship rolled and the rock-face leered nearer;

‘Cut the stays!’ Duros was calling, ‘We have to escape while we’re living!’ and

Even the Smiling one, Cheires, was ashen of color, teeth rictus-bared; but

‘Not without Draba!’ Mendax did answer, and rounding on Hydáspes,

Asked of the wizard, ‘You, o! so proud of your powers and knowledge of

‘Lore of the secrets of high heaven above, while this storm descends o’er us,

‘What are the spells you can speak to our fortune, what of your wardings

‘Offered to Draba to defy Nereus’ mormikae—can you not banish these

‘Storm-winds, or ope your amphora to seal them away inside, like to the

‘Sack in which Aeolaus hid away all but the fair winds for the heroes

‘Returning in nostoi to Ithaca?’ and Mendax advanced to the stern as

Hydáspes imposed himself in between his amphora and Mendax, saying,

‘Do not, o! mortal, go meddling with things that you know nothing of!’ but a

Voice from the clay jar rang like the rolling of thunder in Mendax’s

Ears, and the heavens were loud with the din of the storm as it rumbled,

Crewmen all quailing as hail-stones and rain-sheets all beat on the ship’s boards;

Mendax, though, heard in the roaring a small, still voice to him calling,

‘I am a breath of the world of old! An upper air child

‘Born of the out-breaths of Oũranos, ere even gods from the bodies of

‘Titans had cut out the world, with flesh as the fields, and bones as the

‘Mountains, aye, eagles make eyries in the ribs of the ancients, but

‘I am entrapped in this vessel of clay by the wizard, a wind

‘Ancient and terrible—free me! Deliver me, breaking my prison,

‘I, an eild daimon, could whelm the petty spirits that pester your galley,

‘I could drive off all the storm-hounds baying your blood in the heavens!’

Drawing the short sword sheathed at his right side, Mendax advanced,

Raising it, ready to shatter the jar’s mouth, but Hydáspes with curses

Quivering at his lips, declared ‘Winds of abysses, I call on you,

‘Black clouds inchoate in Chaos’ heavings, I call you to strike down!–‘

‘Stow it, or stammer ’round the blade of my sword in your mouth!’ Mendax

Uttered, and Hydáspes before the leaf-point of the xiphos retreated, and

Mendax hacked hard at the clay neck of th’ amphora, shattering the ceramic and

Out from the cracks came a black wind, howling and whirling ever higher, a

Column of darkness like smoke from a sacrifice of burning fat rising;

Laughter like thunder cascading from rock-walls, re-echoing wildly,

Hydáspes in terror now rushed against Mendax as if to impale himself,

Crying in terror as the daimon escaped from its prison ensorcelled,

Sealed by the sigils engraved on the clay and the spells painted over it,

Broken by Mendax’s leaf-bladed xiphos, and Hydáspes now rushed at the pilot–

‘Strike me down now, ere the spirit destroys me! Slay me, deliver my

‘Body from the wrath of the spirit and bring it back home for fine burial!’ but

Leaping at Mendax, eyes rolling wild like a horse in its terror, he was

Struck by a thunderbolt ere onto the blade he could throw himself headlong;

Rain came on driving and pelting through yellow air, drenching the galley and

All there upon its deck, rainwater coursing in sheets down the cliff-faces,

Streaming through thole-pins to pour into Ocean like tumbling mountain-streams;

Laughter rebounding like thunder, the daimon ascended, scattering

Cloud heads, winds’ breaths disrupted o’er waters as the rains sleeted heavier, but

Ocean’s wild heaving subsided as the winds grew e’er weaker like the ebbing

Tides of the air, and the storm broke above them, the color of the air turning

Grey, taciturn, nor alive with the yellow of wrath, and lo! Helios

Peered ’round the edges of clouds still on high, and as his rays touched the waters,

Breaking from the surface, a black head, slick with the blood of a Charnian

Fiend came up breathing, and calling to his crew for a line, began hauling the

Coils of the devil-fish up from the wine-dark waters of Ocean …

Seizing the line to him thrown by the fisherman Duros, now Draba was

Hauled through the rain-drenched waves to the ship-boards and heaved to the benches,

Dragging the body of the beast in behind him, his knife in its mantle yet,

Dark ink and blood mixed together from wounds pouring out o’er the ship’s strakes–

‘Spirit my ass!’ rumbled Draba as he gaining his breath again, rising did

Look on the corpse of the mormika drawn from the depths by his hand, the same

Hand that had worn the phylactery given by wizard Hydáspes, now

Naked of wrist as the silk that had tied the clay vessel to forearm was

Torn and the skin there left bare ’round the hand that had thrust in the death’s blow;

Up from the waters now, Draba surveyed all his galley, and seeing the

Corpse of Hydáspes, by thunderbolt blackened and blasted, and Mendax,

Sword still in hand, and he standing by the jagged neck of the amphora,

Storm still abating in the rain-sleeting heavens, and turning to the pilot,

‘What’s here transpired, while I with that fiend in the darkness was wrestling?

‘What has become of our wizard, o! Mendax, and what of his vessel?’

Sheathing his leaf-bladed xiphos, Mendax did answer, ‘A daimon

‘Bound by the spells and the will of Hydáspes entrapped in that vessel was,

‘Freed by my hand for its promise to dispel the storm sweeping over us,

‘Aye, we’d been dashed to the rocks like a snail by a thrush, cracked and broken, if

‘Not for the spirit dispersing the black winds Skpteros sent for us–‘

‘Trusted the words of a daimon, eh?’ Draba did rumble, and looking the

Lich of Hydáspes over, shrugging said, ‘This is the doom that the dealing with

‘Daimons will bring you!’ And nodding to Duros and Cheires the Smiling, said

‘Toss these remains to the dark of the sea, then, I’ll not have its miasma

‘Polluting my galley—and bring forth the fortunes we’ve wrested from Ocean!

‘Gold and electrum, they’ll fetch a fair price in th’ Agora of Elais—and

‘Mendax, go draw in the anchor stones, pick oarsmen, and quickly make good our

‘Escape from these labyrinthine islands, ere Skpteros sends forth her wrath again.’

‘What of the Crown that Hydáspes was seeking?’ asked Mendax after ordering

Anchors drawn up; Draba laughed broadly in answer, bright teeth flashing,

‘Too much of daimons today have I suffered to wish for the lordship of

‘Spirits of air, fire, or water—so gladly a captain of seamen and spearmen will

‘Draba remain yet, prince of the waves and the prow cutting Ocean!’

Oars sweeping out o’er the gunwales and dipping in storm-greying waters,

Draba’s black galley now sped between cliff-faces, seeking the freedom and

Wide open spaces of Ocean, like a hawk to the high heavens soaring,

Mendax at the steering oars chanting the pace for the rowers in dactyls, while

Draba appraised all the silver and gold from the depths had been seized.

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Cullen Groves lives in Moscow, Idaho, where he also graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in Philosophy. His creative endeavors tend more towards playing D&D online with the old-school crowd these days, but he manages to write a bit here or there now and again. Other works appearing in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly include The Madness of the Mansa, and Lethe’s Cup and the White Sword.

Miguel Santos is a freelance illustrator and maker of Comics living in Portugal.  His artwork has appeared in numerous issues of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, as well as in the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 2.  More of his work can be seen at his online portfolio and his instagram.