The Red Road Home
Prologue
Doors that had remained sealed for decades were heaved open. Etched against the burning white daylight stood the silhouette of a man.
Before him light banished darkness like the cure for a disease, revealing a double-row of pillars in a wide, tiled chamber, dominated by a looming black altar.
Above the altar hung a corpse.
The decayed husk was tethered to the rafters by a noose, its head cocked at a grotesque angle. The garments had rotted to leave nothing more but an emaciated, maggot-white sack of bones; a grim after-image of life. Worst of all was the face, where in a feat of horror the eyes were perfectly intact, and stared with an intensity that was withering. These were the remains of one of the world's last great sorcerers.
Through the doors strode the silhouette. He was tall, his stride confident; a man whose every gesture suggested he was the master of his environment. He approached the corpse torn between both fascination and disgust, but chose out of prudence not to disturb it. For a moment he stared, as if to clarify some mystery, and then made an impatient search of the chamber, looking among the pillars and beneath the obscene tapestries that lined the walls. The room was barren and he found nothing.
“Another hollow myth,” he spat, returning to the altar and peering up at the cadaver. “This man is long dead.” He moved toward the door.
“I am not dead,” whispered a gravelly voice, “but nor am I alive.”
The man froze where he stood but did not turn. The words had been on the very edge of hearing--he was not sure whether or not he had truly heard them. Yet he felt suddenly cold. Dead men do not speak, he told himself.
"You know less than you think," chuckled the same low voice.
He whirled. The corpse still hung limp land motionless, but now the black-gummed mouth was open where previously it had been closed.
The man gathered his composure, cursing himself for his fright. Had he grown soft? He had witnessed darker and more horrible things than this. But this perversion of the laws of life and death still troubled him.
“Yes,” the corpse replied, the word little more than a hiss. “And you are Valoc Oreon, a man trapped in an alien world."
Valoc Oreon managed to ignore the petty sorcery. He had encountered it before. Yet Unundu's repertoire of the arcane clearly extended beyond such simple tricks.
"Your craft is famed. I have heard tales of your capacity for both nightmares and miracles. Tell me--are you able to open a gateway to another universe?" asked Valoc. It was a concept that he and his ilk considered heretical, and a part of him cried out in dismay, as if he were falling from grace; as if by contradicting the ideals of his old life he was driving it away forever. But his inner turmoil was quickly forgotten with the sudden eruption of Unundu's laughter, an unnatural rasp so dry and harsh it hardly seemed laughter at all, but with such gusto that his limp body rocked grotesquely back and forth.
"I understand," Unundu said with mockingly transparent compassion. "In your plight you sought Unundu the Charitable, acclaimed for his generosity!" Another burst of nauseating laughter struck, and when this subsided the sorcerer regarded Valoc with a rotten, taunting grin. “I am curious, traveler: in your strange, faraway land, do blacksmiths forge swords for pauper knights? Do harlots, Valoc Oreon, spread their legs for stinking, undesirable men out of the kindness of their hearts? Is that the utopia you hail from?"
Valoc endured Unundu’s baleful tirade with calm patience, silent all the while; he was little troubled by the warlock’s venom. Words were of little concern to a man who traded in steel and blood.
“You've made your point. What do you want in return?” he asked.
A foul grin twisted Unundu's face.
***
This is a revision of something I posted a few weeks ago, and have only just had time to work on. The rest ought to come more quickly.
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