This is one of my oldest remaining stories, and one I'm rather proud of. A homage to the works of the late Roger Zelazny, a superior writer, it was improved by the help of Sgian Dubh, who beta read it for me.
It was dark, and the firmament was a mass of clouds -- racing, tattered gray shapes glowing softly in the moonlight. All around us, the rustling, brittle leaves still clung to the gnarled old trees. The billowing fields of glossy grass were almost invisible in the muted moonlight that came in soft, swirling rays, carried on the damp cold fog that savaged my face. My mount nickered uneasily as he lost his footing, his clattering hooves dislodging small stones from the slope, and I had trouble calming him.
The icy wind, so calm earlier in the evening, was picking up now. My mantle was a damp woolen rag hanging heavily, pressing at my shoulders. It fluttered in the wind, and the tiny sound was like a small animal scuttling away at the sound of my passage. It should be hereabouts, I sensed -- that great rift in the larger feel of things that was not heat, nor cold, nor even entirely belonging to the mundane world.
I licked my lips, wishing I knew what I looked like this time around. As though I saw myself through a distant blur, I could almost picture the visage that I now wore. It had dark skin, and fur. . .but no, things like that were meaningless now. I felt a sudden assault like an elemental river roaring through the tissues of my body. I threw my head back to face the rushing sky and lost myself to the Beckoning.
A brief surge burned into me and marked me forever like a storm of molten feelings against my poor diminished senses. Again I felt the sensations, stripping part of the old me away to make room for the new one being greeted/born/changed inside of me, as was and is always the way…
…a feeling without comparison. I slid to the ground and landed softly, then let my mount go.
He had no comprehension of what was happening, and I lacked the words with which to explain. Even if he had been my loyal manservant, I could not have explained anything to him except that it was there and it had a capacity for hurting anyone who did not understand its ways.
The mist rippled in ghostly colors around me as I walked on in silence, following an unmarked trail in a sea of nothingness. Smoothly, rhythmically, I repeated the movements over and over until I was detached from the worries and thoughts I’d once had.
There! There was the opening, like a dark slash, black against the mottled rock. It had appeared suddenly before me as I walked, almost as if it was solidifying itself into being amongst the layers of swirling white. I opened myself to the Beckoning, letting a trickle slide through my mind.
It was here, yes, and it was growing stronger. Stronger, in fact, than I had felt the last time, even stronger than the time before that – a sensation that was beyond description.
Tearing my gaze from the entrance, I broke the chokehold on my mind by brute willpower and then made a quick survey of the surrounding area. The entrance was several dozen paces away. I no longer feared any mortal, for such was the change coming over me. But I knew of the guardian here who waited with sharp and insatiable hunger, and I feared it. It had never told me its name, nor I mine before, as neither of us would foolishly relinquish the power to strike or to defend. Names are power. Its name was Rhakash. If the Well was stronger now, then it would be, too.
On silent, wary feet, I made my way towards the entrance's direction. My blade was a gleaming, razor-edged shadow riding by my side, its pommel shifting slightly under my hand with each step. I passed a curious, desiccated-looking rock, then another. The cave-mouth loomed darkly before me. Sensations wafted towards me, all but staggering me…
At that instant, the beast struck. I felt my flesh split apart above my right hip, almost before the blow had time to register. The blade sheared deep, driving me back and smashing me against a rock-pillar with shattering force. When the pain of the attack finally did register, I was laying in a crumpled heap, bleeding profusely. The savagery of the sudden strike left me gasping and breathless with no time to shed this fleshy husk that was my body – at least not yet.
A shadow of menace and deadly power leaped toward me like a blur. My lips were almost unable to pronounce the syllables of its name, and yet I managed to speak them. Then I sprang to my feet and beheld my adversary for the first time. Of all of us, I am perhaps the only one to have ever seen its true visage.
It was cloaked and hooded in black garments that hung still and heavy around it. It made no movement at all, but stood there in silence. The apparition whose true name I had spoken earlier now stood there waiting, seemingly like any ordinary man. I did not understand the reason for the sudden unease that gripped me, but then the chilling realization slowly came to me. What I saw beneath the folds of the cloak was not fabric… rather, a great dark emptiness that seemed deeper than the blackest night sky.
"Rhakash I am, and rightly you have named me," the voice that issued from the folds of the hood spoke in soft, inflectionless tones.
The voice held no emotion at all as it continued. “More blood will not be shed if you turn back. Your wound is not fatal, and you will live should you choose to do so."
My sword arm was aching with the strain of holding my blade up. I felt the sweat break out beneath my shirt, itching in my beard and hair. Nevertheless I managed a grin.
"I know the Beckoning." It was as much explanation as apology. The sentinel whose true name was Rhakash nodded.
Memories came back to me… of evading this silent death, ducking under its blade, mocking its feeble attempts at harming me. My eyes flicked back to the silent Rhakash, and I nodded as well, to myself. Much, much stronger.
"You have multiplied since times past," that voice mused dispassionately, perhaps in answer to my thoughts. "My powers have accordingly increased… to weed out the weak."
"Increased?" This was unforeseen, I thought with interest, even as my strength flowed out down and soaked redly from my right thigh. A few moments more, and my strength would be gone, and I knew that I had to act soon.
But then I paused as a thought struck me. "This implies an agency behind this. An agency that controls you… grants you your not-inconsiderable power."
"Aye. I guard the Well. It is what I am, what it made me to be."
"You are a construct?" I queried. "Are you alive?"
"No. You see me as separate, a single being among beings, but I am not. In a sense, I am the Well.”
The sentinel of the Well raised an arm, and the edges of his cloak were like a billowing frame to the complete darkness within. "We tarry too long. Approach, and be slain. Or turn, and remain alive."
I saluted, then moved.
He had a fancy cloak. I had a plain one. We met each other halfway, and I sliced cleanly through his cape with my blade, feeling nothing but air in its way. I spun around soundlessly to face him. But with the grace of a viper, he struck again, and I parried his stroke just in time. I had not yet laid eyes on the weapon he wielded, yet I knew my death would come should my attention stray from the battle.
Red blood streamed across my thigh and stained the ground. Blow after blow was struck, deflected. I felt myself weakening. Though I knew my blade had passed through the being, still it remained standing -- a specter that could strike without being struck, kill without fear of being killed.
It feinted and then flipped its weapon under mine. Orange trails of sparks sprayed along the edges as I blocked it in the last instant. I would not long survive this.
Came the slash, fell the blade, sparked the steel.
Silence rolled. The whiteness of the mist coiled and swirled around me, like the softest reflection of the sea. I felt it touch me with a cold hand, little more than a dream-image, substance-less and of ice.
My left fist clenched around the cloak that I now held. The dark one with the many cuts. . .the one that even now was growing indistinct and translucent, crumbling to dust between my fingers. The robe that had been the sentinel named Rhakash, brave fighter that he had been and would be, the next time he returned. I dropped it, smiled. No longer fully human, and ready, soon…
My siblings waited. Very calmly, I opened my senses to meet the Beckoning of the Well.
I was a flame roaring through the eternity, a fire that consumed nothing but itself as it burned. Like lightning captured in a fragile figurine, I approached the entrance with measured steps. Fire…
The pressure was building rapidly, but I was controlling it. For now.
And then I was through the cave-mouth, padding down the rough-hewn steps. What I had been this period, this century, came sloughing off of me like old snakeskin. With it came other memories – memories of my siblings, and what we had accomplished, and what was yet to come.
Alive, bursting with joyous power, I entered the Chamber. The Well was dark and burning beneath the surface, vibrant with the glow. And I heard a voice, the composite voice of all those that I knew, and it called out softly to me:
"Come, brother! Shed your skin!"
And the man that had been young once, a man of strength and of character who had never truly known his hidden soul… that lifeless body fell. Now as dry as the desert's sand, it landed against the marble floor. Instantly, it crumbled into powder that blew away on the winds and was gone.
Bodiless at last, I raced forward. I had no mouth. I had no voice. I screamed, I shouted, I sang out.
In rapture, I joined my siblings for our rebirth.