An extract from the Journal of Elijah Richter
As we had arranged, we rose early and gathered with all our equipage beside the portal which led from the Dwarf-barrow to Færie. Imogen and I had decided to leave our firearms behind and to put our trust in our bows and cold steel. Instead we took extra victuals, not wishing to partake of such provender as we might find in Færie. Our small group stood for a few moments in silent prayer and meditation, finding such solace as we could in contemplating the glory of God. But surely, if ever there was a group of damned souls it was us, wilfully denying ourselves His goodness and His grace.
Then, one by one, we passed quickly and quietly through the portal into Færie, which is surely but an antechamber of Hell. Soon we were in the twisty maze of rocks and boulders that surround the entrance, and which somehow seem to shift and move when they are just out of sight. Briefly Imogen slipped her hand into mine and squeezed it, her fingers feeling impossibly small, soft and gentle in my tired, calloused, wrinkled hand. As ever, her touch brought peace and consolation to my troubled soul. But the path was narrow and we must make haste, so we parted, but dear God, would that I had held on to her!
Somehow, without any real sensation of it thickening around us, we were suddenly enveloped in a dense mist. As from a great distance, though she had been at my side but a moment before, I heard Imogen cry out, more in surprise than fear, “The Eye!” I reached for her, but she was gone.
The Eye! Two simple words, but they awoke some of my darkest fears about this God-forsaken place. Though five years or more have gone by, the memories are fresh and clear. I was standing in a small, roughly circular room, with a stone floor and a deep well or pit in its centre, unguarded by any wall or rail. Apart from one entrance, the walls were lined with shelves. And on these shelves, covering them completely, so that the walls behind could not be seen, were skeletons, rows and rows of them, all taken apart and fitted together into a dense mass of bones. On closer inspection the skeletons were not quite human. The jaws were too large, the skulls slightly misshapen; these were the remains of hobgoblins, not men. But this was not yet all. Another memory; the same room, but as seen by my disembodied spirit, rather than the two eyes with which the Good Lord intended a man to view the world. The shelves and skeletons were still there. But from each skull there stretched a soul; anchored to its mortal remains, but drawn out into a thin thread which disappeared into the pit. And worse yet, each of them was faintly, unchangingly, eternally screaming in pain and torment. That hobgoblins should have souls at all was shock enough, but surely even they, abominations that they were, did not deserve this fate? We never did find out what wickedness had been done in that room, nor to what end. But it was part of the complex beneath the ridge to the East of New Jerusalem, on the South bank of the Jordan, which had served as a Fortress to both the Catholic Empire and the hobgoblin armies, and as is well known, both Catholics and hobgoblins are given to the practice of the most foul and evil sorcery. Though what right do I have now to judge them, I who have practised necromancy and trafficked with dæmons?
The pit, the centre and focus of that evil place, existed also in Færie, as many portals and places of power are wont to. In Færie it was a pool of still, black, brackish water, choked with unwholesome reeds and other water-plants. It was at the bottom of a hollow, and reached by climbing down steep rocks. In one of my forays into Færie I had scrambled down the rocks, but had not ventured into those noisome waters.
And another memory. I am standing in the same room, the rows of skeletons eerie and menacing in the flickering lamplight. MacGregor is handing me a ring, suggesting that I put it on, suggesting that I try a summoning, something that he is unaccountably reluctant to do himself. MacGregor, the half-wild Auslander from some distant barbarian island at the western edge of the world. In Helstadt men say that the world is a globe and that the Sailors of the King of Spain have found new lands beyond the western ocean. And even stranger, less than a hundred years ago here in Poland, Niklas Koppernigk, a scholar-priest from Frauenberg, had written in his book that the sun stands still in the vault of heaven while the globe swings around it. But Frauenberg was then a Catholic town, and Catholics are superstitious fools who will believe any silly nonsense. But in the New Jerusalem of old the world was different, and there was nothing beyond the storm-tossed western sea except whirlpools and waterspouts and leviathans bellowing in the deep.
Later, I am still standing in the room. Heavy footsteps approach rapidly along the corridor outside, followed by the sounds of a scuffle and a sudden scream. An ogre bursts into the room, wearing as best he can a suit of antique armour far too small for him, and carrying a struggling Imogen in his arms. He shambles hurriedly towards me. I stand my ground and raise my rapier. We collide, and in the impact, horror of horrors, Imogen is pitched into the pit! Then there is MacGregor again, bent in concentration over his harp, fingering the strings, though no sound issues from them.
The scene shifts. We are standing around Imogen, who, wide eyed and frightened, tells her tale in a faltering voice. She had fallen, fallen an impossibly long way through a vast open space. And somewhere, far, far beneath her, surprised but somehow beckoning, was an enormous, unblinking human eye. Then she had felt MacGregor do something and she was on a ledge a few feet below the lip of the pit, from whence we had pulled her out.
The Eye. These memories all passed through my mind in a moment. In a flash of clarity I saw the extent of my folly. I had doubted the power and glory of God, when I had been given the most convincing proof of His omnipotence. When it had pleased Him, not merely had He swept away His enemies, without effort and without struggle, but He had made it, literally, as though they had never been. But that had not been enough for me. I had still fretted and worried, and had to seek out and meddle in old things that should have been left alone. Compared to me, Thomas the Doubter was the most trusting of lambs by the side of its mother. Like Adam, the father of all men, I had insisted on tasting the forbidden fruit of knowledge and as Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden, so I had exiled myself beyond God’s providence, His goodness and His mercy. And in my foolishness I had brought ruination on those dearest to me, making orphans of my children and consigning Imogen, the light and joy of my life, to torment and damnation. In my hopelessness and despair, I cried out, “Imogen, IMOGEN, oh dear God, IMOGEN!!”
The Eye. The mists had lifted as suddenly as they had come, revealing the familiar silvery trees and grass and soft light of Færie. There was no sound, no reply to my shout, save that somewhere out of sight behind me, some Hell-spawned dæmon giggled with malice. I ran to my companions, thinking to seize the rope that Malachi Stark had about him and run after Imogen with it, whilst they held the other end, distances not being true in this place. But the others would have none of this, grappling me and wrestling me to the ground, until I gave up the unequal struggle. Convinced, at last, that the moment for a quick rescue had passed, I gave my companions such an account as I could of the room under the ridge, of the pit and the Eye, that terrible Eye, which was even now claiming that prize of which it had once been thwarted.
Bereft of better ideas, we decided that my companions should attempt to engage whatever dæmon was hiding in the bushes in discourse, to establish what it wanted of us, whilst I would use those necromantic arts with which I am, alas, only too familiar to try to summon back Imogen, as once I had summoned Captain Grimmelshausen in this place. So I set about the summoning, thinking of Imogen as I had last seen her, the curve of her cheek, the sound of her laugh, of sunlight falling on her hair, calling, soundlessly calling, ‘Imogen, Imogen, come, come to me’
Elijah Richter
Distantly behind him Elijah heard his companions calling after some abomination, quite ignoring the fact that a decent Christian woman had been stolen from amongst them. He set his mind and powers to the task and continued calling, forcing their chatter from his mind. There is a feeling of contact, of resistance and resistance abruptly ceasing and a sense of presence before him in the mist.
“Imogen?” Had he landed his fish? He stepped forward through the bushes, then staggers back against them - stumbling, for they were gone and hard rock replaced them. Before him: “Dear God - Mara!”
From its throne the face, a delicate play of planes, shadows and angles, tilts down. “Be still, Catspaw! What brings you back here to meddle again, after the sealing?“ The question appears to be rhetorical for she proceeds to castigate your wisdom, species, interfering habits, and the power you think you represent.
She falls silent a moment, the dim illumination masking somewhat of the hardness of the lines of her body, until she appears as the huge statue of a seated ancient goddess, as the Goddess herself. But awe is crushed by a wave of revulsion for pagan idolatry, and beneath your breath you give thanks for the Lord’s protecting hand held over you even here, though you are the least and surely most sinful of his servants, to shield you from the spell you feel sure she attempted to cast over you.
The moment passes and she is rock again rather than Immortal Form. And she speaks again, more moderately, musingly. “So, the game re-commences. The King of the Maggot-breed makes his play and introduces the pawns first, though he plays the Cloven One in their midst. And one of the pieces is not his, but bait on the hook which another player has taken hoping to land you, at least, in a net - though I have spoilt that, for which you may thank me or not as you please.
“Know these things, small man. Firstly that you are being used. Secondly, but not in the way you may suspect. And thirdly that your fate is of no concern to me. You are here only because it suits me that you are not in others’ power.”