The Two That Came To Ilarnek

Chapter 10

“Thieves! It is a plot! I will blast the flesh from their bones!” thought Xaltos, livid with fury. A fiery madness lit the deep set shadowy eyes that burned in his lean haggard face, wolfish eyes that brooded beneath heavy steel-grey brows. But it was not the idol of Bokrug with which Xaltos was concerned. He was a man used to seeing plots within plots. He knew that things were rarely what they seem, and being a veteran of a thousand plots, and a man much given to a covetous nature, he deduced much. Xaltos suspected, as much by paranoia as by experience, that a thief was even now in his home.
    The king and his men stood staring in awe at the living incarnation of nightmare and lunacy, as it breached the surface of the lake. Men and women shouted and fled in stark terror. Xaltos looked at the dumb fear written on the king’s face, and sneered, then stormed off, not in fear, but in a silent, perilous rage. He walked with a quick swinging gait, toward his own estate. He felt little doubt that he would find a thief, probably a wizard, stealing his precious things, things of power. Power was the thing that Xaltos most coveted.
    Despite Xaltos’s uncanny age and gaunt frame his legs propelled him with great speed, as much the product of his powerful will as of his muscles. He climbed the hills and stairs of Ilarnek, and crossed the city upon its great raised walkways, passing the columns that lined them without heed.
    Ilarnek had many such raised highways and raised stoas, for the use of pedestrians. The walkways were lined along each side with fluted stone columns, each crowned with carven faces of the city’s past kings and heroes, or the strange countenances of her ancient gods. A few were headless, their stone faces having once depicted gods whose worship was now outlawed, such as Lobon and Nodens.
    Xaltos crossed over the labyrinthine alleys, and broad cobblestone streets, past parks and gardens, apartments, and shops never turning this cadaverous face to pay them any heed. He raced like a windblown cloud, bent on his destination. At last he quit the high walkway, and crossed through a park-like garden to stand facing his home.
    As Xaltos crossed into his house, his senses, natural and præternatural, alert to a possible intruder, found his suspicions were quickly confirmed. His thin gash of a mouth curled into a taut grimace as he saw his dead pet. A scent, like that of ozone and burning hair, still pervaded the corridor as he stared down in silent rage at the charred husk of the dead spider.
    For long years the sorcerer had raised the creature by hand. Many year before he had stolen the tiny mewling thing, still just an infant, from a web in the blackest part of the Myrkenwold. He mused that he had risked much in entering that dreaded and shadow haunted forest that lay, like a blight, between Rascagaard and Vasaaria. Xaltos had nearly become prey to the huge spiders of Myrkenwold in the attempt. For years he fed the creature and trained it, first upon rodents, then upon somewhat larger animals, and in time, upon grislier meats. But now his pet was dead. Even the blackest heart can approach love, and if the heart of Xaltos has ever come close to such tender feelings, it was in regard to the horror that now lay smoking at his feet. His bony hands clenched with rage and a touch of grief alien to the sorcerer's nature.