Weirdbook #43. Darrell Schweitzer

follow Magtone had made him a coward. He should have died and joined his family in the afterlife. Instead he had taken Magtone’s hand and become something less than alive yet far more than dead. What would happen if he sat here in this seat of sorcery long enough? Would he fade away to nothing? Or would he be caught here to haunt this citadel for the rest of time?

      Before he could contemplate an answer to such dreadful questions, Magtone came flying through the window on his carpet. His tunic was ripped to shreds, but his flesh was whole. Sangzara’s severed head, which had taken a man’s likeness once again, hung by its pale hair from Magtone’s fist. The withered face stared dumbly into infinity, the devil-fires in its eyes extinguished, lower jaw slack and dripping with gore.

      “Sangzara is dead?” Shango rose from the black throne.

      Magtone tossed the head into a firepit, where it steamed and crackled and melted into a black husk.

      “I took his head off with a shaft of killing light,” Magtone said. “But his body escaped.”

      “What do you mean it escaped?” Shango said.

      “Exactly that,” Magtone said. “It sprouted a pair of black wings and flew into the deep forest. I could not catch it.”

      “Headless…it lived?” Shango imagined his own flesh crawling, but it was a phantom sensation. He had no proper flesh now.

      “Headless,” Magtone nodded. “This leads me to believe that Sangzara was never human at all. Probably some devil or evil spirit wearing the form of a man. But he is gone now. I’ll set spells upon this citadel that will disallow his return.”

      “How did a poet come to know such arcane secrets?” Shango said. “To wield such power?”

      “As I said, it’s a long story,” Magtone said.

      Shango followed him into the great library at the center of the stronghold. A thousand years of tablets, scrolls, and tomes were gathered here, the accumulated knowledge of sages, sorcerers, historians, astrologers, and poets. Magtone began poring through volume after volume, searching for the secrets of Odaza, City of the Walking Gods.

      Shango burned all the demon-masks he could find and set to guarding the library for weeks, forbidding any of the citadel’s servants to disturb Magtone’s study. He no longer felt the need for food, hunger, or sleep. Magtone did not seem to need any of these things either. He may have once been a poet as he said, but Shango knew the man was a wizard first and foremost. A weaver of miracles. Shango’s post-death existence was one of these miracles. He was not at all sure that he deserved such a gift.

      One day Magtone emerged from behind a stack of books with a mischievous smile and fresh cup of wine. Sunlight flowed through the garden windows, and stray butterflies flitted about the shelves.

      “Well?” Shango asked. “Have you found it?”

      “The sages of Xu Shai all agreed that Odaza, City of Walking Gods, lay far to the east, even across the Sea of Ages. Now I know which direction to fly.”

      “So now you will leave,” Shango said. “After all of this…”

      “Come with me,” Magtone said. “I promised you a living body. Our long journey will give me time to fulfill this promise.”

      “And if I choose to stay?” Shango said.

      “Stay here? With the dead? Well, then I suppose you will eventually fade…perhaps to join the souls of your missing loved ones wherever they are now.”

      “Stay and face oblivion, or go with you and face…what?” Shango asked.

      Magtone smiled and his eyes dazzled.

      “The unknown…”

      “That I cannot do without the ones I love,” Shango said. “I cannot leave them again. I will stay here and hope to join them in the next world. There is nothing left for me in this one.”

      “Are you sure?”

      Shango nodded his head. While late-rising stars glimmered in the sky, Magtone brought him to a small graveyard just north of Huan-gao, where two fresh graves lay side by side. One of them was very small. Shango thrust the point of his great-grandfather’s sword into the green earth and sat down between the graves. He watched Magtone rise toward the stars on his carpet and disappear into the night.

      When the morning sun rose above the graves, only the ancient blade was left between them.

A SUM TOTAL, by Maxwell I. Gold

      I sat behind a cyber wall, looking at the numbers that were the sum total of a world’s existence, assessing their true value, to make way for judgment. While the stars dripped from my eyes, I smiled breathlessly as cities crumbled behind me, in devastation and ruin. With each keystroke, tap and swipe of the screen, Life was no longer measured in paper, blood, or time, but judged by me, with each bit, byte, and metallic shard that fell from my lips. My dark twisted algorithm tortured their neurons and pulled their synapses, leaving them trapped in a sticky web of Sisyphean uncertainty, doomed to forever wander in a replicating plane with a horizon that never bends.

      Peering into the depths, I watched cities fall and worlds crawl helplessly, coming to an awful reckoning with those dubious odds. While my control alternating their dreams, merely forced the task, destroying all functions as nightmare became truth and pixilation became logic; there was no reasonable hope to escape. This was the sum total of their existence, assessed in true value, awaiting my judgement.