Lwazi knew all was lost. H’aaztre’s demons would be upon him in seconds and would tear him apart in a terrible frenzy. Even if he could fight them off, there was nothing that any mortal creature could do to withstand the gargantuan horror that had begun to rise beyond the horizon — surely now there was nothing that could stop that awakened devil from passing into the realm of man and wreaking unspeakable evil across Africa and all the lands beyond. Lwazi knew he had failed, and just as Mandlenkosi had feared, the two suns would rise over Zululand.
Yet even here, where all hope had fled, Lwazi could not countenance any course of action that did not involve him fighting with all of the strength in his mighty sinews, of selling his life as dearly as he could. The scream that burst forth from his lips was not one of the traditional Zulu war cries, but something much more ancient and primal that sprang from the core of his very being, as he spun his iklwa around in his hand so that he held the weapon with the blade pointing downward. The winged legions swooped down to attack, but Lwazi ignored them and leapt forward, toward the last of the original four monsters that had slaughtered Sizwe and the others, drawing back his iklwa as if he intended to hurl the spear rather than stab with it. The creature threw back its wings and surged forward to meet the Zulu’s charge, just as Lwazi let his spear fly. The demon jinked to one side and the iklwa darted harmlessly past its shoulder, but the evasion had been unnecessary — the monster had not been the spear’s target. Lwazi’s aim was true, the iklwa thudding into the wooden idol cradled in Rafferty’s arms and shattering the bone whistle into a hundred shards.
The whistling instantly stopped, replaced by an even more nerve-wrenching, discordant noise — anguished screaming the likes of which Lwazi had never before heard. Lwazi had managed to block out the whistle and the chant during the battle, but even he could not close his ears to the earthshaking screams of pain and frustration that poured from the entity that lurked beyond the towers. Lwazi collapsed to the ground and wrapped his arms around his head in agony, feeling as if his brain would explode from the sheer pressure of the noise that assailed him. The flying creatures were not immune to their master’s woes, and they too howled in torment, clawing at their own faces as they fell from the sky to break upon the hard surface below. The young Zulu added his own cry of pain to the tortured chorus, but his comparatively puny voice was lost among the unimaginable suffering of a mercifully forgotten god… but then there was nothing but silence.
Not quite silence, though. As he slowly opened his eyes, Lwazi began to notice other sounds that must have been drowned out by H’aaztre’s scream. The first was his own ragged breathing and the frantic pounding of his heart. Next he realized he could hear the crackle of burning wood, the pop of gunfire, the war shouts of the Zulus, and the screams of the dying… all sounds that would have been a terrible onslaught on the senses normally, but they were nothing to that which Lwazi had just endured. That he could hear the battle at all could mean only one thing — the Zulu staggered to his feet and was amazed to find himself back in the hospital room at Rorke’s Drift. All around him lay the ruined corpses of his comrades, hacked to bloody lumps by the claws of the winged devils. When they stood before the city of H’aaztre, the four warriors had been far more spread out, but now reality had reasserted itself, the bodies lay close by Lwazi’s feet, just where they had been before the bone whistle had sounded. Rafferty too was where he had been before the statue had worked its vile magic, sitting in the linen cupboard mere feet from Lwazi. He still clutched the effigy of H’aaztre to his chest, but now the carving had an iklwa protruding from it, the blade buried several inches deep into its body. There was no trace of the bodies of the creatures Lwazi had slain, not even a splash of their purple blood. Nor was there any sign of the fragments of the shattered whistle.
Not daring to touch the statue itself, Lwazi picked up the idol of H’aaztre using the spear, as he would meat spitted on a cooking skewer. Rafferty did not try to prevent him from taking the idol this time, for the Englishman was quite dead. Moments earlier, Rafferty’s eyes had been two balls of blazing amber; now he had nothing but two empty, bloody sockets, as if the eyes themselves had burst under the pressure of the forces that had been channeled through his mortal body. He lay slumped against the side of the cupboard, with his face still contorted by the pain that had consumed him during his final moments. Lwazi offered a quick prayer to his ancestors that whatever remained of Rafferty’s soul was beyond the reach of foul H’aaztre, and then he slipped away through the burning hospital to return to the Zulu lines.
When Lwazi finally found Mandlenkosi, squatting alone beside one of the many night fires in the Zulu encampment, the old Sangoma barely looked up at him. He simply nodded from the thing impaled upon Lwazi’s spear to the flames. Lwazi did not need any further prompting to drop both the carving of H’aaztre and his iklwa into the fire. He then sat down beside the Sangoma to watch the accursed item burn, along with the trusted weapon that he feared might be tainted by the idol’s evil.
“Should have done this a long time ago,” muttered Mandlenkosi. “Some of the other Sangoma insisted it was still a holy item, even if it was dedicated to a fiend like H’aaztre, and so should be preserved… not all Sangoma are wise men, eh?”
Lwazi did not reply. He was too busy watching the fire lick around the dark wood. The flames that touched the figure’s surface danced and flickered in different shapes from those that sprang from the normal fuel — here and there Lwazi could make out shapes that resembled the impossible structures of the alien city, or flecks of ash that fluttered like the bat-winged killers leaving their lairs to spill the blood of terrified mortals. Some of the flames even twisted and writhed as if mimicking the immense tendrils of the dark god himself, reaching out to try and drag the world of men into its unearthly domain beneath twin suns…
“I’ll fetch some more wood, shall I?” said Mandlenkosi, springing to his feet with a rattle of bones and trinkets. “Looks like that thing will take quite a while to burn.”
Lwazi nodded. The carving would indeed take a long time to be consumed, and he was determined not to take his eye off it for moment. He would sit by the fire as long as it took to make sure that nothing remained — only then would he be confident that his foe was defeated and that the twin suns would never rise over Zululand. Only when a lonely yellow orb crested the mountains to the east and the effigy of H’aaztre was nothing but ash and dust did he leave the fireside.
A Circle That Ever Returneth In
Orrin Grey
As you sit at your usual table in a dark corner of the Jeweled Remora in Lankhende, greatest metropolis in the West, you spy three unusual figures making their way into the establishment: a Sell-Sword, a Cutpurse, and a Doll Mage, by the look of them. They order their drinks and take a table near the hearth, though it is the Year of the Fly and the night outside is sticky and close. Perhaps they hope to disguise their voices with the crackling of the fire, for they are holding what appears to be an animated conversation, but one that their hunched postures and furtive glances show they would rather not share with outsiders.
You are not just any outsider, however, and Nathor of the Guild once said that your ears were keen enough to detect a flea breaking wind. You edge closer and cock one of those impressive ears toward their conversation. You are not disappointed.
They speak of a treasure, a jewel. They call it something that sounds like the “Shining Trapezohedron,” but you’re unsure what kind of stone Trapezohedron is, so it’s possible that you may have misheard. Regardless, it sounds quite rare and, as rare things often are, quite valuable. It seems that each of the three possesses one portion of a riddle, map, or clue meant to lead them to the jewel, but there is some disagreement as to how these tidbits should be shared. Each one believes their portion to be the most pertinent and therefore of the most value, which in turn should, to their thinking, award them the greatest share of the bounty.