He had heard of Noble Hiermun’s contract. And he wished to boast of his wisdom in educating me. Again. He still believed I owed him each time I wrote.

On another day I would have made juice, and let him boast, and eaten with him after. But today I was very tired, my eyes stung, and my arms were heavy. I could not give the patience. So I asked him to change the subject.

“What did you say?”

“Could we discuss something else, Father,” I repeated. “I don’t want to talk about this. Noble Hiermun was very gracious. I don’t want to demean his generosity.”

“And how would paying heed to your father ‘demean’ him?” His voice rose at once. My ears began to ring. I had chosen the wrong words. “What disrespect is this? I take time to congratulate my son for his achievement—which he would not have if not for my guidance—and you repay me with insults? Have you no respect for your father?”

I could not think of an answer. My mind clouded as surely as fog poured in my ear. This only made him angrier. “What? Have you no answer? Do you keep something from me, boy? Speak your thoughts!”

I recoiled. He had not called me ‘boy’ in years. Curse my eyes forever, for at that moment they damned us both by flitting to the scrolls and tablets gathered on my writing table.

My father saw. “What’s this?” He reached the table as I stood, and snatched up the Scrolls laid there. ‘Symbols…what is this you write? Where does this come from?”

He glared at me, eyes hard. He pointed one of the Scrolls at me as if to rebuke my life’s career. I opened my hands to placate while I thought with speed.

“It is magic,” I told him. “I received a dream. Lady Ashla said I should write it down to send it away—”

“You practice magic?!” My father’s voice burst at me like cannon. The blood came hot into his face. “So it is true! You have become a sorcerer! My teachings have left you. I must tell my friends of this. They must know not to ask you for writing. You would poison their minds!”

“No, father, wait!” I put out my hands. But he had thrown down the Scroll and raced for the door as though he must guard himself against me. I made a fist as his shadow left. My teeth were locked. He would ruin me now. He would tell all that I was no longer a writer, and make them afraid. Because I was not groveling before him, he would soothe his injured pride by taking away my career.

I grabbed up the Scrolls, my hands white and my chest tight. Red foamed around my sight. One scroll rolled open by my fingers. I put the others down so I could roll it up. I faced the window while doing this. The afternoon sun shone on the paper.

Something moved within it.

I stopped rolling the parchment. Symbols. What I wrote before. Their lines seemed to drift under the sun rays. Like dark branches exposed to wind, they swayed side to side, graceful undulations of ink. I watched in rapture. My anger somehow broken by this dance of signs.

What I did not know then was that my anger was not broken. It had found a way out. While I stared, my mouth betrayed me. From those very symbols, from their mystic sway, came the forgotten speech of their sounds.

I became able to recite the symbols.

And in scorching testament to the naked dangers of such lost knowledge, I did. Scrapings of rock. Predators’ growls. My throat made noise unheard in an age.

=====

The next morning a messenger-boy came to tell me of my father’s death.

I ran with him to my old home, the home of my mother. A neighbor, Good Zechairus the Potter, bent with age, met me at the door. “I have called for the priests,” he said to me, gesturing to soothe. I made past him to get inside.

What I saw, no man should ever see of anyone he loves.

My father lay on his back before the fire-pot. His hands lay beside his head. Each finger bent so cruelly back that bone had broken open the skin. Gouges lined his body, their edges gnawed as though scavengers had their play with him.

But scavengers could not make the deep blood-pooled holes in his stomach. His body was lesser; his killer had feasted on the flesh.

His face held such terror, I could only pray the fright killed him before he was fed upon. Both eyes stuck open, stained red, left for glass facing upward.

It was as though he pushed against a murderous beast atop him.

The priests arrived as I stumbled outside, sick from the sight. They made prayers, and wrapped my father, and took him to the temple. One stopped to look at me while I sat against the wall outside. My thoughts were far louder than Good Zechairus’ comforts.

The priest’s face was as drained as my spirit.

=====

I remember nothing until I returned home that eve and found a woman waiting for me.

I cleaned my father’s home a little. Good Zechairus said I burned some clothing and smashed some tablets, but I know not why. My parents’ home now stood as a cave, empty, meaningless. It had no purpose. To me or to others. I hung a curtain from its door and trudged away. If any tried to speak with me I did not hear or see them.

For I knew this was my doing. The spells I wrote down, for the shaman’s benefit and Ashla’s grandeur, had come into terrible being. They used my voice to speak them. My will to fuel them. Untold ages, and they had once again found a voice. The spells had trapped me.

As they trapped the Dreamed Shaman.

Now I understood his eagerness. It was not peace he sought – but escape. In my helping, I was ensnared.

These thoughts, and the shackling doom inside them, rattled within my head. The only sound I could hear.

Until I arrived home.

The woman wore servant’s dress, with an unpainted face and cascades of black hair. She knelt as I entered, for she had come inside without my permission. “Forgive me, good sir. I came to speak on behalf of Lady Ashla and found your home open.”

My hand bid her rise while my mind stewed of other things. Those hateful spells, murdering my father…!

Ashla’s servant-girl rose. She did not smile or meet my eyes. Seeming to keep distance as well. “She commands me to say she has heard the news of your father. She sensed a great spellworking last night, but couldn’t tell its purpose. She gives her sympathies.”

A pouch rattled in her hand. She placed it at my feet while I stared across the chasm in my skull. “Gold,” she said, “for your loss. Lady Ashla wishes to see you when you are well again. She hopes this tragedy will not cause you to stop what was discussed.”

Since I made no response, she left. As the sun melted away and darkness crept back in, her words sank into my thoughts. And provoked them.

All that mattered to Ashla were the spells. She must know of their potential now. She would want them all the more. Perhaps she would torture me to finish the rest of them. Perhaps she would trick me by offering herself. She would give me whatever I wanted for such power.

Was that all then? Was I Ashla’s plaything, stuck between her ambition, a dead shaman’s plea for release, and a mutilated corpse I somehow engineered? I felt my fists clench. They felt strong. Eager.

Mighty.

This startled me. I pulled them open and looked down. And on one hand, the palm of my left, I found a symbol. Drawn in black, an exact copy of one of the Dreamed Shaman’s spell-symbols.

They failed to protect us. But they may protect you.

This was not the Charm of Stone. How had it come onto my skin? I scratched, but nothing came of. I tried again and again. My fingers scratched so hard blood appeared. Still the symbol displayed its unbroken black lines.

I half-ran to my writing table. I threw the scrolls open at once and searched. There, on the third, lay an empty place.

I gasped.

The spells had begun to enter me!

My breath left in shudders. Was I doomed? Could I escape? Or was this the curse laid upon the shaman, to wait after death until I could pass on this malice?

No.

In his shimmering nether-body, the Dreamed Shaman appeared. His face bore great sadness.

I would have struck him, had his body any weight.

I am sorry. I had hoped we would finish before the spells could affect you. But they were too eager. It has been too long.

“What has happened?” I hissed at his ghost.

The spells are not of this world, but of another. Jurrecz exacts a price from whoever uses his power. It has always been so. The magic must feed in order to grow. I used it to save us. It took my life in return.

The ghostly old man gestured at himself.

It left me in this empty existence. Until I could ensure the magic would have others on which to feed, I would not rest.

“You’ve condemned me old man!” I shouted so hard at him, my throat tried to force him back. “It has taken my father. It has begun taking me! Damn you!” I shook with rage. My hands reached for his spectral face, needing to attack despite it being futile.

No! There is still a way!

The ghost held up both his hands.

The magic has fed. It sent a creature from its world to your father. It has gone back. There is nothing we can do now about it. But if we finish the last Scroll, and then bury them all before it awakens again, you will be safe.

“Are you mad?!” I roared at this bodiless intruder in my life. “You expect me to finish writing now, after those scrolls caused my father’s death?”

The Dreamed Shaman lowered his hands.

I am sorry. It is the only way. Otherwise, it will consume you as it did me.

I sat down hard enough to make the chair move. Long moments passed. Under dim stars I stared at my polluted hand. The ghostly shaman waited beside me, silent.

I thought of burning the scrolls. Or handing them to Lady Ashla and asking her help. Even hurling them into the sea ten days from here.

But in the end, I did what the shaman asked. If only to rid myself of his violating presence, I told myself. If only to be rid of all of this.

In the hour before dawn two days after, in a silent field far from my city, I buried these scrolls deep in a hole. I laid stones upon them to keep them hidden.

And I have left this warning. You who read this, place the Scrolls back in the hole and cover them anew. Tell no one of their existence. These spells must forever starve. They will bring doom upon you, and all of your peoples, if they are allowed to feed again.

–Unan the Writer

If you have read the warning, then the spells must have been unearthed. So, ponder this…where are the Enoth-Ikul Scrolls now?
~Lord Glanbrin

You must write for me. I beg of you. If you do not you risk the Dreaded coming.

I felt more able to respond this night. As though the gold and good company strengthened me. I tried to form thoughts as the voice did, tried swirling images up from the waves in my mind.

Leave me.

Something heavy leaped into the waves. It stabbed down like a brand-iron, thoughts clouding over with steam. The voice spoke again. It rang out like a bell-sheet.

You would abandon your people to the Dreaded? Send all your neighbors to mangled death, their spirits swallowed, their hands left red and wet? I will show you what comes! Yes! You will see the Dreaded!

And my mind was overtaken by the purest madness ever contained in man’s thought.

It was white. As the white of an eye, stretched hard and frozen from the inside. While slick spidery legs thick as man’s arm stepped hungrily past their pupils.

I saw a land of burning rock. Remains of men, animals and plants lay shattered in between gaseous cracks. A limbless sheep lay atop the body of a woman, both twitching as a nameless abomination, a many-legged monstrosity clawed out nourishment from their flesh.

Then it glanced up – I thank the gods I saw it from behind, and not what its jaws had taken. It vomited out a gruesome cry. It dashed off the corpses behind larger rocks. Above it came a sound. Like scraping, like blades on stone. Many blades. Coming closer, growing louder. More numerous.

I saw the shadows of arms, vast impossible numbers of grasping arms, before a sheet of lightning fear jolted me out of sleep.

You must…you must…

I sat up gasping. My breath came hot in my throat. Flickers of the dream came and left. Horrors even the foulest story had never summoned.

Or had it? Was there such a time, where men fell to monsters so fully we do not remember? How much of a such a terrible history is lost, if no one remained to carry it on?

I rose and walked to the window. The breeze washed my skin. I let it chill me. There was one I could ask, I thought, starlight grinning at me. She might know.

Ashla Kiri’ori was famed for her gaze. Some said it was the source of her magic. Their mythic lights were the reason her spells assured the King of his military victories.

Now I had the gaze drilled into me. She lay on a feather-down seat eyeing up at me from within a pool of copper silk. I looked, trying to avoid the flames of her stare—trying also not to think of the gleaming-skinned body more sensual the finest pleasure-woman.

“Writer,” she said, voice like slow-poured honey wine. “You capture speech. A talent few possess. Some have compared you to me.”

I shook my head. “Such a comparison isn’t right, lady. I could only write a shadow of your magic.”

Ashla gave a snake’s smile. It provided fertile reminder of how dangerous she could be. “How flattering. As if I needed my magic to see your thoughts.” Some silk shuffled; the vaunted sorceress sat up. Revealing more sun-dappled flesh.

“Now. Tell me why you come.”

I glanced up. That spear-like gaze knocked my eyes away again. My hands shook.

I could not lie now, I knew. She would know. So I told her everything about the dreams. About the shaman’s voice, his request, the cruel vision he forced me to see. It ended with the question I had for her.

“Lady Kiri’ori, is it possible another people existed once that no one remembers? Could such an evil work so completely? Or am I going mad?”

During the tale, Ashla’s face had changed. She at first watched me in pliant amusement. Then as I came to the vision, interest grew keen in her features. When I asked my question, deep thought creased her brow.

I waited until she spoke. When she did it was with earnestness in her voice. “You know little of the world. There are places in it no man has seen with his eyes and lived. None can travel to worlds deep in the jungle, beneath the seas, deep within the ices of the north. I have seen them only from afar.”

In all these lands, like ours, there exist evils. The King has fought many. So have I. More surely live beyond.”

She stood. The silk spilled over her arms, slinking her chest, every curve a woman’s. She touched my cheek. It felt as warm wax.

“You are not mad. This dream is real. Do as you were bidden. With such knowledge, we could defend against greater evils. Become greater ourselves. Bring me the scrolls when it is done. I will show them to the King.”

She never did, of course. But even if she had known the result of her command, I doubt she wanted the knowledge for anyone but herself.

That night we began.

At first I wasn’t sure whether to sleep or wait. I waited. After the moon rose, I was rewarded by becoming sudden witness to a ghost!

The old shaman appeared out the moon-shadow in my doorway. Rock-gray, his body never quite there, only a drawing of many lines where nothing was before. I could tell him mostly from the wild excitement on his misty half-present face.

“I cannot appear like this for long,” he said. “We must hurry.”

So we did. We started on the first scroll with me sitting, him beside my left. His finger, only clear enough to see the stone-color tip, would trace a symbol on the paper. Which I swiftly copied into ink. Line by line, pictograph by eldritch pictograph. What took shape was a closed-packed series of symbols–”spell-touches,” he called them. All crude, brick-like. No group or line appeared much different than another.

I could see no meaning. No great wisdom.

After the moon passed overhead, the shaman out of time announced an end.

“This is all I can do tonight,” he said. “I will return in two nights. Bring more of this papyrus.” So demanding, he walked into the moonlight at the window, joined with its rays, and ceased appearance.

I must have fallen asleep after that. But I didn’t remember moving to bed. Nor did I understand why the scroll lay rolled up below the window, and not the writing table, when I awoke.

Here I have copied a line from that first scroll. Only one line, so no evil eye should come upon you by seeing more.

I know not what it means. Do not try to learn.

Two nights after the shaman’s ghost appeared again. I managed to buy two more scrolls, but no more. I also bought four clay tablets.

The shaman’s gray-bearded head nodded to me. “This will do,” he declared, his voice like the rustling of dead leaves on a dry field. And we continued.

He spoke of the why behind his magic through the night. I have tried to collect what he said here.

At first they were simple magics – ways to bless the land, anoint warriors, divine the future. But they quickly fell to a darker nature.

The human greed for victory in battle.

The offering of children’s eyes. Or hands, to some ghastly purpose.

The Blade Dance, done to compel demons of madness to emerge.

Even ways to force the future, and to shape the past. Through horrid mutilation of living prisoners – doomed to agony as spiders were poured into their opened chests. Or insects forced into their mouths.

My foolish brothers. They sought to change the very fabric of our world—without even knowing what results they would achieve! They could have done so much damage that blood would pour from the sky, themselves torn to shreds like old cloth…and yet still they performed the magic!

While he spoke and pointed and my hand traced that night, I felt uneasiness grow within my chest. Doubts came. Doubts of whether I should continue these symbols. We finished one scroll and began the next. Ashla said it was powerful to know. But if the shaman’s people knew, and it did not save them…how would the knowledge help us?

Could it hurt us?

Then the shaman began telling stories. He bade me write them in my language. I did not understand why then. And so I foolishly agreed.

His first story involved the meeting of a man with a lizard that walked like a man. I thought it was a silly story to tell children. It was all backwards – the brave walking-lizard warning the man of great danger ahead! And the stupid man walking proudly into the doom of an animal’s den.

Next the ghostly bearded shaman told of how his people’s great creator Jurrecz took of his own body to make the land and forests. I whispered a prayer of forgiveness to Most High Inanna for writing such falsehood.

Finally, when he reached the end of the third tablet, the shaman bade me inscribe six final symbols on its back. Tracing, as before, in his language. At this I could no longer restrain my unease, and I asked the shaman what those last symbols meant.

He said, as his last words that night, “They are the Chant of the Stone Planes. They failed to protect us. But they may protect you.”

To be concluded…

When it was done, I wished I had never learned to write.

I was born in the city of Cren in Sumer, in the fourth age of Enoth, under His Greatness High King Kiresh-Thal. My parents lived just inside the city wall in a strong-walled home facing sunrise. My father made bricks. He did well. So did my mother with her weaving, until the day she pricked herself, became ill and died. This was 7 years before I would reach the age of manhood.

My father traded a year’s labor for the sponsorship of Mec-Sineth, a very old nobleman. His beard was so long it covered his chest. But he was kind, and he provided for my instruction into a new invention. A way to imprint learning in such a way as to make it last. It is called writing.

I was fascinated with this at first. To remake speech, to place it in clay and parchment so that words outlast man? I remember asking Mec-Sineth if it was sorcery. He laughed and said, “Writing is not what makes us kings. What we write does.”

He was correct.

Mec-Sineth died the year before I reached manhood. Even though I was not yet a man, the others allowed me to attend his celebration. His grand-daughter stayed close to me seeking comfort. She was betrothed to Noble Heirmun’s son a month later on her mother’s swift order.

My lessons ended, and I soon was spoken of as a ‘writer.’ Friends treated me differently. A Sorcerer nodded to me on the street. I gained respect from my skill.

My father reveled in the respect paid to me. He told nobles and merchants of my skill. They contacted me to write down matters of business, orations, pledges and other such things.

This became my life. I left my father’s home and built my own, a small house at the edge of the city of Cren. My days became solitary. I would carefully inscribe pottery, or tablets, or parchment when I could acquire it. On many days I did not leave my home at all, nor receive guests. I sometimes became lonely. No mate. Few friends. I did what I could.

Then the dreams came.

That first night I struggled to sleep. My bed mat was at first too cold, then too hot. I tossed side to side as if rolling between ice and fire. My body refused rest, pinpricks and sweating on every limb. The moon rose over me in vigil. My thoughts vaguely registered her behind the fog crawling in the window.

Just when sleep began to drown me, just when my body spent its last and succumbed, he came. It was as though a crooked cavern reigned within my mind. At first it was far away, below a gasp, like a faraway voice in a chasm.

You who hear, listen!

My sleepy mind didn’t know what to do. As though my body, it shrank back. Is this a dream? How could this be otherwise? Who speaks?

Then the voice came as close a stalking wolf. My mind, as though my body, shrank.

You who hear, listen. You must help me. I have waited too long past my death. I cannot go forth without passing on my knowledge. You must use your skill, your ‘writing’ for me.

My writing? In this deep fog, my thoughts drifted. I could not remember myself, not what this chasmic voice sought. Sleep coiled about me.

I will come again before next moon. We will speak again. I was Kaala once…

I slept.

The next day I rose with a terrible sense of difference. The window appeared differently placed. The ground had a tilt. I lack words even now to describe the seeming strangeness.

A vivid dream following a restless night. Surely that was all.

I set to work for the day. The writing went quickly. My hand glided true across the fresh tablets. Its sureness pleased me, as did the clear pictographs I created. I fired the tablets, set them to cool under the window, and decided to visit one of the pleasure-women before last meal.

On my way through town I saw Noble Heirmun come towards me through the mill of buyers. He raised a ringed hand to me. I smiled, thinking how much more beautiful his golden robes were than my white tunic.

“Unan!” he said, his beard splitting with a grin. “It is good to see you! How fare you?”

He offered his hand. I took it. My skills afforded me a certain respect, but Noble Hiermun was of good nature to almost everyone. He had well earned his nobility through trade of metals.

“I fare well, Noble Hiermun. How is your family?”

“Oh, very good!” Hiermun laughed. “My eldest daughter is soon to wed! It is a good time. In fact, I was coming to see you. I have need of your ability.”

“Of course, good sir. What do you need written?” Much as I wanted to go on to the pleasure-den, a noble offering work was not to be refused.

Noble Hiermun gestured high to his left. He pointed toward the High King’s stone palace. “I must make a speech to the King’s advisors in five suns. I would like to leave the speech with them on parchment. Can you do this for me?”

I blinked. My skin became warm. To my knowledge, my writing had never been brought to the palace. Noble Hiermun offered me not just work—but a great honor!

I heard myself accepting a breath after I’d decided. Noble Hiermun’s face brightened anew. “Wonderful!” he declared. “Come to see me tomorrow after morning meal. I will have parchment for you.” He clapped me on the shoulder and made his way past.

I stood there a moment, savoring the good fortune. If my skills were noticed, the King could ask me to become a royal scribe! The highest honor a writer could gain.

If I had known what awaited me in response to these events, I would have felt hand-quivering terror in place of lurid excitement.

That night the voice came again. It stirred a dreamless sleep, like a boat’s prow does still waters.

You who hear, listen. You must write my knowledge. It must survive the scourge which killed us.

My thoughts lapped about in my head, myself a breath of air amid the lazy waves. I wished for peace, for quiet.

Many suns ago my people lived north of these lands. We were not many. Winters were harsh. My rituals protected us from the winds. But they failed against the Dreaded. It came from beyond the veil of night, sending drought ahead of it. We sought to drive it back by numbers. It seized us all and crushed us. Nothing remains of us now.

My murky awareness wafted in ways not bound by direction. The boat continued through.

You must write. I cannot find another. You must…

I arrived at Noble Hiermun’s estate early, finding the streets open to my feet. A servant younger than me brought me to a stately room with tall windows and azure silk hangings. I sat in a chair softer than my mother’s embrace. Noble Hiermun came in a few moments later, followed by another servant bringing tea. I began to think, is this how a royal scribe is treated?

True to his claim, Hiermun has purchased papyrus. Many scrolls of it! Much more than needed, even for many copies. He insisted I take it all, and coin in payment. Such opulence baffled me. Noble Hiermun was a great man.

We set to work following tea. Hiermun would speak, then wait, and then continue. He talked about a proposal to build a new method of bringing water from the river. He called it an “aqueduct.” He even offered some of his own borderland to build on.

Twice he changed his mind, returning to a point and restating himself. His excess papyrus was a boon; we lost many sheets this way. I thanked the gods he spoke slowly.

The sun had come to the end of day by the time we were finished. Noble Hiermun smiled as he gazed down each of the final three scrolls. Even though he could not read. “Very good!” he exclaimed, as servants arrived to light candles. He rolled up the scrolls and tucked them into a pouch. Then he brought out a gold coin.

“Sir!” I breathed, before manners could halt my tongue. A gold coin was five times what such work would normally earn. “That is generous of you. But I could not accept it—”

Hiermun laughed. “Yes you can. Am I not allowed to pay what I believe your work is worth? Worry not, my friend. If the King is as pleased as I am, soon you will command this and more. Now, I insist you join us for dinner.”

I left that night with a month’s earnings in my pouch and belly full of roast boar. I met Hiermun’s eldest daughter and her soon-mate. He shook my hand with the strength of a soldier, and invited me to their wedding. I accepted. I hope in the time since I wrote this, Cehu and I have become friends.

For you see, I carried away the dreaded beginning. A tool with which the dream-haunting shaman ruined my life. Hiermun gave me the four remaining sheets of papyrus. The left-over from his speech.

That which was to become the first of the Enoth-Ikul Scrolls.

There are indeed too many humans on this world. In the past nature was able to curtail them, through plagues and famines and their own deep-seated desire for violence. Now however such methods do not go far enough. Nature waits for the inevitable collision, certain she will then be avenged. Even as she herself is ravaged, she will cry out in victory.

With my next post I will begin a new story. You place much truth in written recordings. It happens that I possess one of the very few written records of Xhol magic. Perhaps its telling will convince you.

How amusing.

I see the yearning for knowledge still remains in my once-brethren.
Be warned though. Your curiosity may prove your greatest mistake.

What? You want more still? You read on, so sure that what comes is within your capacity to weather, despite the braver men who threw themselves in rivers to escape its sting? How…enjoyable.

For that will you have to wait, my young friend. Wait and grow accustomed to this. The surety that one day all of you…the living, the dead, and those who dwell otherwise…must bear witness to the One Realm Coming.

Follow this “website” as you call it. When it is time, you will know more.