Ancient Curses, Shambling Monsters, and Hungry Demons

Death In Harmony: Part Four of Twenty-Nine

Death In Harmony is the fifth in the Tales of The Lesser Evil and this is the fourth chapter.

Skip to the story by clicking here.

This is a fantasy series—not quite grimdark, but dark nevertheless—with complicated and believable characters doing their best to survive in a world simply indifferent to their existence.

To read an introduction to this novella, and the backcover blurb, click here.

If you love the story too much to wait each week, you can also buy the ebook of the novel, as you can the preceding four Tales (available in an omnibus edition).

If you enjoy this story and aren’t already subscribed, please consider doing so:

share this with those you know,

or like, comment, or restack on Substack Notes.

Ancient Curses, Shambling Monsters, and Hungry Demons

The present: somewhere, north of The Pit

Dawn came faster than she thought or hoped it would. After running for almost a full day, her feet were aching, her throat raw, lungs gasping and her legs screaming. The only good thing was that the baby had slept almost all the night, waking to be changed and fed twice, quickly lulled back to sleep by the movement when she started running once more.

Flin had not eaten all night. From bitter experience she knew she could go for many days without eating a thing, as long as she could rest and drink enough to stay sufficiently hydrated. She would eat when she found enough food, when she had the time and was not being chased, or risking life or limb foolishly releasing wolves. When she would rest, she did not know.

She had heard nothing from her pursuers since shortly after turning north. One solitary bay of a hound, then nothing more. She hoped she had lost them, dogs and men following the wolf’s trail. She had crossed and recrossed another small stream, drinking deeply and refilling her flat canteen, before moving away from the water and deeper into the trees. She knew she would need sleep soon, her steps were increasingly stumbling, smaller and less sure. Just a little further.

Most of the trees were different to those she had grown up with, but every so often there was something she would recognise. These were all clues, of sorts, small hints as to where she had come from. One day, perhaps, she would walk into a forest and find old friends everywhere, welcoming with branched, familiar embrace.

Beneath her feet the ground was warm, the air cooler against her skin. The temperature at night had been tolerable, but the new day was already heating up. In her dehydrated and exhausted state it would soon be more dangerous to continue than to pause, to rest through the hotter hours of the day, find some water, stay in the shadows.

Something loomed out of the forest gloom, unnatural, a patch of darker-than-normal, something that was not meant to be there. Flin slowed and came to a stumbling halt.

It was a monolith, clearly erected in ancient times and standing as tall as some of the trees, many times Flin’s height. Strange creepers and familiar ivy enshrined it within a tight, green embrace, but the stone stood strong.

She walked closer and could see where the surface was carved, gaps in the strangling vines revealed dark stone speckled with pictographs and what might have been script. Moving further forward, Flin brushed away the forest detritus from just such a space and traced words with her finger, wondering who had carved them, what they meant.

Rharsle had never taught her to read and write; he had told her the performer did not need to know, just remember the songs and the stories, that the skill had meant little to him. Yet, every night, he would take out a pen and write.

For months after his death she had carried his collection of worn notebooks from village to village, town to town; then, one morning, they were no longer in their leather pouch. Instead, in their place, she discovered a square of rough, thick paper, bearing the stylised chained book of The University. If the fabled librarian-assassins existed, they had left her alive when they had taken the books. As with most stories, Flin suspected there were truths wrapped within other truths and a myriad of lies. Clearly someone did collect books and writings for The University, but it was also obvious they did not kill everyone. Still, it had added to her own tale, and she had twisted the events into a new story, one to be told around a fire on a dark and stormy night, hushed, whispered, saved for when she knew her audience could read and write.

Flin had not missed carrying the books, but she had wished she had found someone to read them to her, to see if they contained clues as to the whereabouts of her home.

She looked up, wondering how something so tall had not fallen. As she lowered her gaze, it was pulled further, beyond the stone. Up the slope she saw other structures, too shadowed to be distinctive, but clearly constructed by long-dead hands. Before them, however, she saw something else.

‘Shit,’ she said, and walked forward a short distance.

There was a bridge, a single arch crossing from one side of a ridiculously deep chasm to the other. She carefully leant forward to look down, but failed to see the bottom in the diffuse early morning light.

‘Shit,’ she said, again. At this rate, assuming she survived, the child would grow up with a rich and well-considered vocabulary.

Flin turned her gaze to the bridge itself but a closer inspection did nothing to reassure.

As old as the monolith was, this appeared even older. Worse still, it looked in a much more decayed state. Ivy had pushed, probed and pulled, cracks were everywhere, gaps where whole stones had long since disappeared yawned, opening into the void below. Yet, even in the decay, Flin found solace. The very plants that had torn it apart also held the structure together, a living sheath, a wooden suit of armour for the stone. Perhaps it was stronger than it looked.

She chanced another look down. Trees were growing from the walls of the gorge, so far below as to look like florets of broccoli. A very, very long way down. She looked back at the bridge.

‘I’m sure it’s perfectly safe. Don’t you agree?’ she whispered, but the baby did not reply.

Flin moved forward, taking a careful but confident stride onto the structure and instantly freezing when it vibrated, her movement shaking loose leaves and a cascade of dust. She took a slower step, then another.

Approaching the centre of the bridge a thought pushed its unwelcome way into the front of her mind and she voiced it aloud.

‘What if this is the only way back, and it falls after we cross?’

She looked behind her, back the way she had come, then forward once more.

‘No. This is a good place to hide.’ She needed to rest, needed to regain her strength, to feed the baby and feel, if not safe, then at least something approaching it. The structures ahead offered a chance to do exactly this. ‘Besides, if I’m scared to cross, then anyone following will be too.’

She took another stride and the bridge groaned, the pitch low and unnerving. Another step and the groan began to climb in pitch, higher, accompanied by the loud retort of creaks, cracks and snaps. The bridge vibrated and shook, almost causing her to lose her balance.

Flin ran.

She cleared the bridge just in time to turn and see the stones she had been walking on tumble into the deep below. Some remained, where the creepers which had not snapped still held them in place, but she did not fancy making the crossing.

‘Shit.’

She turned and looked ahead and a new realisation dawned, her immediate thought being that she had made a terrible error; she had crossed over into a graveyard. A vast graveyard.

Tombs, monuments, statues, and mausoleums seemed to be placed with little coherence in their planning. Some were large, some smaller, others truly huge. Doorways could be seen in some of the buildings and Flin felt a small shiver of fear. What if this was where the ghosts lived? A city of the dead, in a forest long avoided because of their presence?

‘Well, if that’s the case it should scare off anyone following.’ Sometimes, Flin knew, speaking aloud helped conquer fear, a trick she used perhaps too often.

This was not one of those times. Try as she might, she could not shake the cold tendrils that kept running along her spine. She checked the straps on the baby and held her spear out in front of her. ‘There might be animals here too.’ The baby gurgled agreement and Flin smiled to herself—finally, a response. One simple baby noise and she immediately felt slightly less foolish for talking to herself.

Once, near the beginning of another long walk sixteen years ago, she had disturbed a lion. She had been carrying a bow and the animal knew the sight of the weapon, disappearing silently into the bush. Another time it had been hyena and she had been forced to kill it, before spending an uncomfortable night in a tree to escape the others in the group. Even further in the past she remembered an enraged, injured bear, rampaging through the sheep enclosures one night. It had been a crisp, late fall, and she held a distinct memory of the taste of low-lying chimney smoke, mingled with that of the apples her mother had made that evening, stuffed with raisins, buttered and baked. It had taken the whole village, armed with long poles, pitchforks, slings and bows, all working together to bring the beast down. They had lost seven sheep and old Eriq had gained a broken leg, leaping over a wall in a hurry to escape.

She hefted the makeshift spear—it always paid to be careful.

Flin walked among the tombs, her senses straining. Scant moments later, she leapt into the air, letting out a small yelp as a sudden movement snaked down her leg, something simultaneously snatching at her shoulder. Heart racing, she spun around to see what had touched her, spear pulled back to lunge. The realisation it was only the strap on her damaged haversack finally snapping, the bag falling to the ground, made her feel foolish but, apart from the baby, fortunately there was no one to witness her embarrassment.

She drew a deep breath and squatted to pick the bag up. She was about to stand when she saw something poking out of the forest loam and bent further, digging into the dark soil with her already filthy fingers.

It was a tiny, perfect carving of a standing figure, wrapped in clothing of hammered gold, a sparkling red gem standing out from a belt woven from thicker golden wire. She had seen nothing like it, barely half the width of her palm, utterly exquisite. She thought the stone might be jade, but she had no idea what the gem was, then she snorted.

‘What do I know about jade? Or any rock, for that matter. This should pay for us for some moons though, if I can find a way to sell it.’ She paused, looking around, and shook her head, ‘Luck. Just simple luck.’

If she had not needed the haversack repairing, she would not have been carrying it when she had been forced to flee the village. If the haversack strap had not finally broken at that precise moment, then she would not have seen the figurine. Sitting in her squat, she tied the frayed material of the strap back together as best she could, patted the bag and stood, placing the figurine in the hidden pocket in her sleeve before she walked on, constantly checking the ground for prints and scanning the shadows for watching eyes.

She saw no eyes, but did find traces of something large, a herbivore of some kind, which seemed to suggest that she was not stuck on a forest island, that she would be able to keep going rather than return to the bridge.

Everywhere she looked there were tombs. Most were still sealed, heavy stone doorways unmoved by time or hands, but some had been broken into by falling trunks and branches, or pulled apart by the roots of trees and penetrating ivy. There were no chipped or smashed stones, no random holes or graffiti that would suggest tomb-robbers had stripped the site, which for some reason made Flin feel uncomfortable.

She herself had proven the tombs were only two or three day’s walk—or, for her, a day and a night’s run—from the nearest village. The ensnared wolf had been close to the trail north, surely local hunters must know of the vast graveyard? Why did they avoid it?

In Flin’s experience and her extensive repertoire of story and song, fear of the dead, or ancient curses, shambling monsters, and hungry demons, only lasted for a certain length of time, before greed and gold-lust took over.

Almost everywhere she had journeyed, young men—and it was nearly always young men—would encourage one another to do stupid things. Climb that cliff. Enter that cave. Cross that swamp. Spend a week in the deep woods hunting something dangerous. Bring back a treasure from that vast necropolis. Things that could get them killed but, for what, she was never quite sure. It did, however, make for good tales to earn a coin or crust and a roof over her head.

She looked around again and shivered a little; maybe the restless dead really did live in the cemetery, it was certainly still home to their bodies.

Finding a suitable spot, Flin paused to feed and change the baby. A giant pair of tree trunks had grown either side of an old tomb, the doorway having fallen inside long ago. The whole felt comfortable and safe, the roof above partially made of branches, partially of vaulted stone, the space cool and insect-free. A good place to rest. She laid him on the ground and gathered more moss nearby, gently teasing it apart to encourage it to dry completely.

Close to the moss she found a small patch of fairy-trumpet mushrooms and ate them raw, casting a longing eye at the low-hanging fruit on the spreading branches they grew beneath. She did not know the species and knew better than to trust to luck when it came to food. Flin had seen people poisoned by eating what they thought was safe, and the memory was not a pleasant one.

The baby seemed happy to lay on his back and gurgle at the leaves above him, and Flin took the opportunity to lean against one of the thick trunks and close her eyes, finally pause for a time. She thought over the events of the previous day, wondering if she was safe yet, then her exhausted mind flickered back to the past, as it so often did. Would she ever drift off to sleep happy in the present, thinking of a joyous future? Strangely, the thought somehow made her smile.

Many thanks for reading.

Go to the next episode here.

Go back to the previous episode here.

Head to the introduction and contents page here.

Or read more about my fiction here.