Krygon

The Last of the Wvorgi

This story contains some mature themes to do with human trafficking and is not suited for younger audiences.
Editor’s Note

The crooked flats of Arondzei, the Village on the Steppe, were a series of plains carved across the northern ridge of the Alt’Rhazia Range, stacked together like neat vertical zigzags. Atop each shelf were shaggy, lush grasslands, the interweaving roots of the grass as thick as handwoven rugs, dotted here and there by small, modest homes of earth and stone, their roofs near indistinguishable from their surroundings, covered as they were in the same grass-woven sod. At a distance, the town was all but invisible, which was how the villagers liked it.

Then, one night, the window of the old mage’s tower was illuminated by a small candle. The overgrown dwelling had been empty for decades, its stone walls heavy with dirt and snaked over with vines. Creeping weeds and climbing foliage all but obscured the front of the building from view. If not for the candle in the window, the place would be all but invisible to the undiscerning eye.

Yet, the next day, the weeds and vines were cleared away. Not long after that, a new frame was set in the doorway, and a fence went up, creating a small corral for a cadre of goats. By then it was clear to the villagers that whomever had traveled to this place had intentions to stay.

Brodin, a young man from the village, elected himself spokesman to approach the dwelling. The rest of the village huddled in a group fifteen feet away or so, muttering amongst themselves as Brodin approached the building to find out whether the new arrival was friend or foe, warmonger or deserter. Striding to the door, his back ramrod straight, Brodin knocked brusquely.

“I come to discuss your intentions in this village,” Brodin said loudly, loud enough for the others watching to hear.

The door opened. The person inside could not be seen from where the villagers stood, but after Brodin spoke, the door opened a bit wider to admit him. With a brief hesitation and backward glance at those gathered behind him, Brodin ducked his head and went in.

Not ten minutes later he came out, his face as gray and heavy as autumnal storm clouds. Straight to his own home he went, where he closed the shutters and locked the door. From the secret place above the transom, he pulled parchroot beer and drank it late into the evening. When asked the next day, he told the other villagers the new resident had the right to stay but elaborated no further. Continue reading “The Last of the Wvorgi”

Pages: 12

The Sins of the Mother

By Malcolm Schmitz

Malcolm Schmitz is an autistic author who writes about queer people, eldritch angels, nebbish unicorns, and lace-making orcs. His fiction has been published in Crossed Genres, Fusion Fragment, and Sword and Sorcery Magazine; his short story “The Captain’s Sphere” made the Long List for the 2015 Otherwise Award.

Lady Lutisse climbed up the Assassin’s Steps, her baby heavy on her back.

She squinted and shaded her eyes. The Altar was half a day’s walk up a rocky hill, hidden in a huddled clump of trees at the peak. With every step, she could make out a little more of the simple slab, half-hidden by leaves and a fallen tree. It was only when she got closer that she could see the faint stain on the stone: the dull-rust mark of blood.

In the ancient days, when her mother’s mother’s mother was a girl, the Nemethan assassins gathered at this Altar. They’d spilled the blood of man and ‘mar upon the stone. With every drop, the Altar drank the anima of the dead.

Now, it was long-forgotten, a relic of the ancient past. The gods’ grand altars dwelt in Gymalg G’mai and His now, far across Lutisse’s homeland of Krygon. The memory of the Altar only lived on in the whispers of women, women who were too trapped and desperate to see any other way out. But, forgotten or not, this was still a place of power.

Pray here, and someone would answer. Bargain well, and someone would die.

Lady Lutisse stopped at the altar.

Behind her, her son stirred in his sleep. She took a deep breath. She’d come here for his sake. For him, she’d do far worse. A mother must always do what is best for her children.

She knelt; the leaves crumpled beneath her. Cold mud oozed through the hem of her skirt. She clasped her hands.

When praying, there was always the question of which god to address. Petitioning a god for something outside their purview was a fools’ errand. Petitioning a god for something in another god’s purview was worse than foolish.

All gods knew death, some more intimately than others, but not all gods would kill, or let their worshippers kill in their name. If Lutisse was fool enough to pray to Shen-Bahan for her husband’s death, she’d be struck down for her impudence.

Carro, the Paladin God, might kill her husband for justice’s sake. But her husband wasn’t cruel to her: not the way that one might expect. He’d never raised a hand to her, never shouted, never cursed. That would require him to speak to her.

Sar’Kata, the Trickster God, might kill her husband for the sake of a good joke. But there was nothing funny about her situation, and a prank would change nothing. The power her husband held would simply pass to her son. Sar’Kata wouldn’t care for that.

Sirillon, the Burning God… now, that had potential. Sirillon gave life and death alike, with little care for justice or mercy, just as the Sun did. He might help her, if she promised Him what He wanted.

Lutisse bowed her head and began to pray.

The words of the prayer were strange, passed down from some long-forgotten time. In the village where Lutisse had grown up, it was an old legend, passed down quietly from mother to daughter; her mother had told it to her the same way she’d told her the recipe for pennyroyal tea. If you’ve married a man who shouts at you, or hits you, or makes you feel worthless, the legend said, here is a way out.

Lutisse had always thought it was an old wives’ tale. The gods didn’t speak to mortals, much less take orders like a common demon. But in desperate enough circumstances, she’d take any tool the world offered her. And her foremothers’ old prayer was a powerful tool indeed, if it did what the legends said it would.

She knew the gist of what the prayer meant: an invocation given to the god, a conjuring rite, a binding promise. It was a complicated spell, one that even a Temple-mage might have fumbled. But the power of the Altar was so strong that even a child could cast a spell of death here.

When she opened her eyes, a woman sat upon the Altar.

Lutisse blinked. She’d expected a bearded, brawny God, a God with a grim face and a smith’s hammer. But the gods sometimes chose to take different forms. The ‘mari saw the gods as ‘mari; the Little Folk had small gods.

But the Assassin’s Altar was a sanctuary, now, for women in pain. Perhaps Sirillon had chosen this form to make her more comfortable.

The woman’s black hair brushed the ground. Her green dress blended with the forest; Lutisse’s eye was drawn up to Her pale, pointed face. A dark burn scar curved over the woman’s left eye, taking the shape of a sunburst. Her gaze was dark, sharp and commanding; Her back, straight. For a long moment, all Lutisse could do was stare.

“You invoke me?” The God’s voice was cold as the altar’s stone. “What do you seek, and what do you offer?” Continue reading “The Sins of the Mother”