From: simon leo barber <simon@brithund.demon.co.

uk>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.cthulhu
Subject: Shoggoths and Swashbucklers (Andrew Nellis, repost)
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 1996 19:17:50 GMT

From: bs904@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Andrew Nellis)

Subject: STORY: Shoggoths and Swashbucklers
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 10:00:27 GMT

WARNING: Rated PG (Parental Guidance suggested)

After reading the recent multi-part sotry by Darcthyus in this

newsgroup, I found myself annoyed that the protagonist of hsi story should
be able to operate without challenge from a single brave, noble, etc, etc,
hero daring to stand up to him.

I must admit that I am something of a romantic, and while I'm sure

most of you tend to side with Wil Whately and will be most annoyed at me
for tossing a wrench into the works of your twisted imagination, I think
someone has to stand up for the good guys and be counted.

For those unfamilar with 17th century France, it was a time of great
political upheaval, and of course great swashbuckling and daring-do. Most
people are not aware that while the specific events in The Three
Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas are fictionalized, the people and politics
he wrote about were very real indeed.

If you enjoy this story please let me know. If you don't enjoy this
story, well, I guess you can still let me know, but I won't we anywhere
near as happy and i can't promise you a card at Christmas.

I give you a warning that it does take a while for the story to enter
the "sex/cthulhu" genre, but I believe it is well worth the wait. If it's
not quite as hard-core as you'd like, sorry but you're stuck with it until
someone gets around to creating alt.romance.cthulhu.swashbuckling ;-).

Special thanks to Dracthyus for the inspiration, even if it was by

negative example. 8-)

One final warning that there is at least one graphic sexual scene,
and several graphic violence scenes described. If you are likely to be
offended by this, please do not read any further.

Now, tie on your tabard, strap on your sword belt, and get the
popcorn ready, because it's all for one, and one for all! On with the show!

------------------------

Had there be anyone there to see him, they would have been quite surprised
at the lithe and utterly silent grace with which the large man crept
through the darkened coridors. Walking on the balls of his feet, he
advanced with one hand extended, for he dared not carry light and the dim
starlight ghosting through the very ocassional narrow-slitted window was
not enough to see well. His other hand rested lightly on the gasket and
pommel of the sword that hung at his side, for he was neither an expected
nor a welcome guest.

At an intersection in the hallway, he froze, his head slightly cocked to

one side like a hare scenting danger. Voices. At least two of them, he
guessed, and not far away, though it was hard to tell here for the long,
winding hallways played strangely with sounds. Suddenly, light bloomed
down one of the side passages, and he realized that in a moment, whoever
carried the light was going to turn the corner and see him standing in the
intersection.

With a speed that belied his bulk and would have left an observer gasping
with amazement, he darted back two steps down the passage he had come, and
squeezed himself into the shadows of an alcove containing one of the
interminable statues of the Virgin. He pressed himself behind the statue
as best he could, whispering a brief "Pardon, madame," into its cold,
alabaster ear.

Down the corridor, two of the Cardinal's Guard in their yellow-on-red

tabards hove into view, one carrying a hissing flambeaux, and both with
functional-looking rapiers at their side. As they passed his hiding place,
he held his breath, willing them not to turn and see him. Pressed in place
as he was, he would be defenceless to their swords if he was discovered.
Like any good Gascon he did not fear death, but he would not pass from the
world in so ignoble a way if he could avoid it.

"It is a bad business, Armand," said the man with the torch.

"Oui, it is that. I like not the smells from the cellar," said Armarnd
nervously.

"What does he do down there, do you suppose?"

Armand crossed himself as the two passed him hiding place, muttering "I am
sure that I do not wish to know."

After they had passed from sight, he allowed himself to exhale his held
breath explosively. He pondered their words, and wondered what bearing
they had, if any, on his mission. He made himself wait for five minutes in
case they came back, and as he waited, his mind wandered back to the
meeting the week before.

He had been resting in his bunk with a pot of cheap red wine, dozing
lightly but not really asleep, when Arnaud had poked him in the abdomen
with the toe of his boot, saying loudly, "Leves-toi, Isaac, you lazy sloth!
De Troisvilles has sent for you, though the Lord alone knows why. Maybe he
requires someone to slop the stables, eh?"

Opening one eye, he peered at his friend, Arnaud de Sillegue d'Athos. The
man was stroking his great waxed moustaches, as usual, for they were his
pride and joy. "Thigh ticklers" he often called them with a twinkle in his
eye, and Isaac was forced to admit that d'Athos certainly got his share of
the women, and a sizable portion of everyone else's. Perhaps there was
something to the moustache after all.
"Up, up!" continued Arnaud, waving a hand theatrically. Isaac recognized
the impish smile that crinkled his friend's face and sighed inwardly. He
was to be the butt of his jibes again. Or perhaps not, he thought, the
faintest of smiles adding a subtle upward twist to the edges of his lips.

If Arnaud saw the smile he gave no sign, but continued in his loud,
hyperactive ministrations. "Up with you, brute! Here you are slugabed,
while there is work to be done," he went on, and made to jab Isaac in his
broad gut once again with the toe of his boot.

"Yaaaah!" shrieked Arnaud suddenly, in mid-sentence. With a swiftness none

would have believed possible, Isaac grabbed the proferred foot by the ankle
and, standing up, heaved Arnaud upside down so he dangled head-first over
the floor.

"Yah, let me go, you great oxen!" yelled Arnaud, his eyes wide with
surprise. Isaac bellowed in laughter, and shook Arnaud violently up and
down by his foot as if the man weighed nothing more than a rag doll. Coins
from Arnaud's changepurse fell to the floor in a metallic rain, rolling in
all directions, and his rapier slipped from its sheuth to clatter on the
floor alongside his hat.

"St-st-stop th-that! I d-d-demand y-you c-cease or I sh-sh-shall

b-b-become a-annoyed," said Arnaud loudly, trying to be heard over the
great roar of Isaac's barrel-chested laugh, which seemed to shake the very
foundations of the building.

All at once, Isaac dropped him in a heap and wiped the tears of laughter
from his eyes. Isaac de Portau was not a somber man, but his humour ran
more to the broad and physical than the sophisticated word-play his friend
Arnaud so seemed to enjoy. Buckling on his sword belt and placing his
feathered slouch hat upon his head, Isaac swept out the door past a shaken
Arnaud, calling out behind him, "Beware, friend d'Athos, when you hunt the
tiger, for sometimes the tiger hunts you."

It was a short walk to the Hotel de Troisvilles, and the air helped clear
de Portau's head, redolent though the air was with the smell of horse
droppings and the rancid sweat of too many people living in too small an
area. Dodging carriages and avoiding the pitiful bundles of rags which
slept in the street and ocassionally begged him for a few pistoles, he
picked his way through the narrow avenues.

He was admitted past the guards without question, and he finally trooped
into the office where de Troisvilles was instructing a lackey of the
errands he was to run. "You may go," said de Troisvilles, nodding in
greeting to Isaac, who sketched a quick bow in return. Both men waited
until the lackey had left, Isaac closing the door at a motion from da
Troisvilles.

Jean-Arnaud du Peyrer de Troisvilles leaned back in his chair and surveryed

the King's Musqueteer before him. Having been the commander of the
Musqueteers for many years, he was an excellent judge of character. He
knew, of course, that de Portau was brave and capable; that much was true
of every man in the Musqueteers, for they were the very best of France's
foot soldiers, each one selected and approved by de Troisvilles personally.

The problem he faced, however, required also other talents. First and
foremost, he required someone trustworthy. De Troisvilles was not so
foolish as to believe that the Cardinal did not have men within his
organization, as de Troisvilles had men within the Cardinal's. That was
simply a fact of life in 17th century France that went without mentioning.
But de Portau had showed his loyalty and more importantly, his discretion,
in the affair of George Villiers, the english duke, not many years earlier.

De Portau had other assets as well. He was a Gascon, and de Troisvilles

did not trust these Parisian dandies, with their lace and ruffles. De
Portau was also likely the strongest man in all the Musqueteers. Standing
over six feet, he towered over everyone else, and his solid muscle
stretched his blue tabard tautly across his great bull chest. De
Troisvilles had once seen de Portau split a Spaniard from the top of the
head to nearly the midsection with a slash from his rapier during battle.
And while de Portau did not have the scientific skill with a sword of,
say, Henri d'Aramitz, he did possess a kind of animal cunning that made him
a dangerous fencer indeed.

All these things de Troisvilles had known already, but he knew that the
truth of a man lay in his eyes, and his cool gaze met de Portau's own,
probing and measuring. If de Troisvilles' eyes were flecks of ice, de
Portau's were blazing coals, reflecting a fiery passion deep in his broad,
muscular chest. Somewhat to his surprise, de Troisvilles felt a measure of
the same probing from de Portau that he himself was engaged in.

Both seemed satisfied with what they believed they saw in the other, and
someone else in the room would have instantly felt the release of tension.

"Please," said de Troisvilles, motioning to a chair. The chair creaked

alarmingly as de Portau sat his bulk upon it, but God had decreed that it
should withstand his weight this day.

"I am sorry to disturb you Isaac," began de Troisvilles, "I know it is your
off day, and I would not have robbed you of relaxation without great
cause."

"I am a soldier," rumbled Isaac, dismissing it with an airy wave of his

meaty hand. "I live to serve God and the King, whatever the day may be.
Duty takes no holiday. If I'd wanted a life of ease and laziness, I'd have
joined the Cardinal's Guard."

De Troisvilles had to smile. He knew then that he had picked the right man
and launched immediately into his story.

"Four days ago, a boy arrived here in my office and sat in the very chair you
now occupy. His eyes rolled like a horse's at the scent of blood and the
sound of battle, and his face was white with terror. He could have been no
older than twelve, and he was dressed in the Cardinal's livery.

"He told me that his name was Richard, and that he was the only son of
lackies married in Richilieu's service. He was almost incoherent with
fear, and babbled a long, nonsensical story about some kind of horrible
monster that had killed his parents."

De Portau raised a single ponderous brow, but remained silent.

"He said that his family lived in the servants' quarters of Notre Dame, and
that his father was a wine steward. Of late, he said, there had been
terrible smells in the cellars, and his father did not like to go down
there. The common belief was that an animal, perhaps a cur, had found its
way down and died in some dark corner.

"He said that it had been his father's custom to take a glass of wine in
the late evenings before retiring, and that this night he discovered his
last bottle empty. Though he disliked the smell of the cellars, he did not
fear them as many did, for though they were dark and shadowy, and caked
with nitre and old cobwebs, he had been safe enough in all the years he had
spent tending to the Cardinal's wines.

"Taking a lamp with him, he had left to get a fresh bottle from the cellars
and never returned. His wife thought it odd that he should spend so long
there, especially as the foetor in the cellars had seemed so much worse
recently. Though she was far more fearful than her husband of the dark and
ancient cellars, she had imagined him sprawled at the bottom of the stairs
with a broken leg perhaps, and rose to go to him, taking their second and
last lamp.

"She had left a candle burning in their rooms for the boy, for he had
awakened from the disruption, and lay listening on his pallet with the wide
ears of children. After some time when his mother had not returned and the
candle began guttering low, the boy grew nervous.

"His fear gave him the strength to light a new candle from the remnants of
the old one, and, dressing quickly, follow in the steps of his mother and
father to the cellar to see what was become of them.

"Here his story grew confused, for he was alternately sobbing and shrieking
in terror," said de Troisvilles, growing thoughtful. "I shall tell you
though, Isaac, there were times when I thought those sobs sounded like
hideous laughter, and I am not ashamed to tell you that it prickled the
hairs on my neck."

De Portau crossed himself without being aware of it and shifted

uncomfortably in his seat, provoking a new series of creaks and groans from
the tormented wood.

"As best I was able to determine," continued de Troisvilles, "the boy says
he crept down the stairs to the cellar and found the door ajar. Peering
around the corner, he claims he saw some kind of beast devouring the bloody
remains of his parents. When I asked him to describe this beast, he just
shuddered.

"He said he made to creep back up the stairs but when he turned around, the
Cardinal himself was standing on the riser above him, glaring down at him."

"Monster enough for any boy," chortled de Portau.

De Troisvilles shot an annoyed look at de Portau and continued. "The boy

claims the Cardinal grabbed him and was going to drag him into the cellar
with the monster, when he balled up his fist and let the old man have it
right in the sweetmeats."

De Portau howled in laughter, his great form shaking with mirth as the
chair threatened to collapse once more. De Troisvilles tried to look
angry, but could not keep himself from chuckling.
"I'd trade a month's wages to have seen that," averred de Portau, trying
to catch his breath.

"I'd not be averse to seeing it myself," admitted de Troisvilles. "In any

case, the boy said he made his escape while Richilieu lay on the stairs
moaning, and dashed from Notre Dame before the guards could be alterted.
He said he spent hours hidden in a stable nearby, watching the Cardinal's
Guard look for him, and later made his way here, the only place he felt
could protect him from both the Cardinal and the monster."

De Portau scratched his chin and pondered for a moment. "How much of the
boy's story do you believe? Obviously there is no monster lurking in Notre
Dame other than the good Cardinal himself, but the story has the ring of
truth to it to my ears. Mayhap he saw some evil of the Cardinal's befall
his parents?"

De Troisvilles nodded in agreement. "I wasn't sure what to make of it, but
the boy was in mortal terror that was too complete to be feigned. At the
very least I could make a few inquiries and easily ascertain at least a few
of the details of his story. I gave him a room and a pallet here, and saw
that he was fed.

"He said that he did not believe he was seen or followed, but to be
certain, I placed two good men at his door with orders to admit no one but
myself. That evening, when I went to visit him and clear up a few details
of his story, I discovered him unconscious. I summoned a surgeon
immediately, and I was told the buy was suffering from a brain fever,
extremely rare in one so young unless he had experienced something which
caused emotional upset in extremis.

"He hovered at the edge of consciousness, raving and screaming for two
days, until finally he grew quiet and his condition seemed to improve.
That was last night. This morning, when I went to check on his condition,
the boy was gone."

De Portau blinked in surprise. "What of the men guarding him?"

"They swear that they neither saw nor heard anything all night, and that
there were no visitors. Neither, they say, did they see the boy leave.
Since there is no window to the room, I would have had little choice but to
believe the men liars, traitors, and possibly worse besides, save for the
fact that when I arrived, we had to bash the door in, for it would not
open, and the boy would not answer and we feared for his safety. Some time
during the night, the boy had levered his chair against the door, and made
a wedge to jam it shut from the straw of his pallet."

De Portau frowned. "Damned strange," he muttered, a shiver of supernatural

chill pimpling his back against his will.

"It is that, I'll grant you. Truthfully, Isaac, I just am not sure what to
do. I'm beginning to doubt my own sanity in this matter. It's as if the
boy never existed. My instincts tell me that this is no small matter, and
anything that places Richilieu in a bad light is of interest to me. I wish
you to look into this matter."

De Troisvilles reached inside his tabard, and pulled out a folded rectangle
of parchment which he slid across his desk to de Portau. He remained
silent as the big man scanned the paper, his eyebrows lifting slightly and
then shooting straight up on his forehead like frightened cats.

"This paper," said de Portau, gesturing with it. "It is real? What I mean
is, the seal affixed is what it appears to be, and it says what it seems to
say?"

De Troisvilles nodded. "As you well know, that is the seal of His Royal
Highness, King Louis XIII, and that is his mark above it. And as you have
no doubt gleaned from the cautious political wording, I am permitted and
required to allow myself or my agent carte blanche in investigating this
matter."

Whistling low in appreciation, de Portau's eyes narrowed and shot de

Troisvilles such a look of cunning calculation that da Troisvilles was
momentarily taken aback, and had to remind himself with a mental kick that
he was dealing with no slab-sided mountain of beef with brain to match,
regardless of the man's appearance.

"This paper must have cost many favours owed to you," said Portau, almost
as if he were thinking aloud. "Surely the fate of two lackies and their
penniless son cannot be of such great value. If I am to accomplish what is
required of me, I must know all, monsieur."

The commander of the Musqueteers sat for a moment and weighed matters in
his mind. He sighed as if coming to some answer in his calculations that
displeased him, though thrice-checked.

"As you know, Isaac, His Emminence has been in failing health for some
time. It is sinful to pray for the death of a man, especially when that
man is a cardinal of the church of God. And yet, I know I for one shall be
thankful when he breathes his last, for while he lives he is an
unpredictable danger to us all.

"The Pope has sent a man to replace him, as you know. Jules Mazarin, a
mere abbe dressed up in cardinal's robes, and an Italian besides. I have
made no secret of my dislike for the man, and I do not wish to see France
fall into the hands of an Italian as it has been in the hands of Richilieu
who is at least a Frenchman.

"I am out of favour, and I have run out of objections. I fear that unless
I find some way to impugn this upstart Italian, I shall be numbered among
his enemies when he comes to power, and Richilieu cannot live much longer.
When Mazarin controls all France, as he surely will, the King's Musqueteers
will be disbanded as a danger to his power."

A shadow seemed to pass over de Portau's solid features. "I have spent my
life defending France from her enemies, within and without. I risk death
at every turn by sword or cannonball, and I have asked nothing in return
save the small pay I earn, and the honour to serve with the finest soldiers
in all of France. You may rely on me to do no less than my best to deal
Richilieu a solid slap to the face and send this Italian puppy racing home
to the Pope with his tail between his legs."

De Portau had outlined his plans, and de Troisvilles nodded approvingly.

At last, the two had clasped hands and wished each other luck. De Portau
was officially on leave, and would remain so until such time as he had
completed his investigations.
Five minutes of waiting passed as slowly as the movement of glaciers, but
at last it was over, and de Portau eased himself out from behind the
statue, stretching cramped, painful muscles.

"I thank you for your kind assistance, madame, and pray forgiveness for any
liberties," he whispered, doffing his hat and bowing to the Virgin. He
thought perhaps that the statue wore a wry smile that had not been there
before, but then upbraided himself for allowing his imagination to run
wild. Still, as he padded down the hallway, he could not resist shooting a
glance back over his shoulder at the Virgin who continued to smile her
ancient, cryptic smile.

He arrived at the winding stairs down to the cellar without encountering

another soul, which struck him as odd. Even at this time of night, there
ought to be servants about. And after what happened yesterday, he had
expected a solid cordon of guards here...

He paused at the top of the stairs, took a few steps down, and paused
again, wrinkling his nose. The stench was unbelievable. If the smell grew
worse towards the bottom of the stairs, he thought, I shall surely smother.
As he made his way down the staircase, the foetor did indeed increase by
leaps and bounds, and several times he gagged.

Holy Mother! he thought, no mere dead cur could produce such a foul miasma.
Surely every dog in Paris must have rolled in dung and arrived in great
packs to fall dead by the hundred down there.

At the bottom of the stairs, at the huge iron-banded door that barred entry
to the cellars proper, he could stand it no longer, and fell to his knees,
retching up his dinner of roasted chicken and cheese. He wiped the bile
from his lips with his sleeve and felt better, if a little hollow. The
smell grew no kinder for the rancid vomit on the floor, but at least he had
started to become somewhat accustomed to it.

He kneeled there on the floor, an arm against the wall to support him, and
tried to breathe through his mouth. Thoughts strobed randomly through his
mind like shooting stars. Inevitably, his mind turned to the events of
yesterday, and those that had led up to it.

He had been walking alone through the Bois de Boulogne with his thoughts,
staring up at the dappled sunlight between the treetops and trying to fit
the jigsaw pieces of information together.

A wine steward had disappeared one night along with his family; the
official word was that he had been stealing wine and selling it on the
black market and had fled when he feared discovery. It had not been hard
for de Portau to find proof that the man had, in fact, been doing just
that.

But then, why had the man left behind accounts to his favour unsettled with
the dealers? It had taken some persuasion - and not a few broken bones -
for Portau to convince the black market dealers to speak with him. In the
end, they had revealed, cursing and cradling limbs that bent in directions
other than the ones nature intended, that the wine steward was still owed
for several orders of wine and had not collected it. Surely a man in
desperate straits would need all the money he could lay his hand on.

To that fact, de Portau added the many mysterious visits to the Bastille by
the Cardinal, sometimes accompanied by his men and sometimes not. There
was also the matter of the Cardinal's strange new fascination with the
ancient, nitre-caked crypts of the church. For a matter of some weeks, he
had spent inordinate amounts of time down there amongst the dead, and
several priests admitted to feeling uncomfortable with this behaviour.

So wrapped in his thought was he, that de Portau failed to hear the sound
of stealthy footsteps around him until they were almost upon him.

"Halt in the name of the King!" thundered a voice from behind him. De
Portau spun around in a long-practiced move, his cape flying to the side to
cover his sword arm and the top of his scabbard as if by accident.

Before him stood a man in the red garb of the Cardinal's Guard, rapier
bared in his hand. From the trees around him, several more arrived like
phantoms; one on each side and he sensed more than saw the one immediately
behind him.

"Surely," said de Portau with a cheerfulness he did not feel, "there is no

crime in a man enjoying the fresh air of the woods."

"You will throw down your weapon, monsieur, and come with us," said the
speaker, one Jean-Phillipe de Mars. "Perhaps there has been some
misunderstanding, eh? Come with us and we shall clear this up. When all
is well, I shall buy you a pot of wine in recompense and we shall laugh of
this in some congenial tavern."

"I am afraid, monsieur," said de Portau, still cheerful, "that I only do my

drinking with friends, so I shall have to decline. Besides, I have a
sensitive nose, and I fear your breath is not improved with proximity."

"Musqueteer dog!" snarled de Mars. "You shall serve as a lesson to others

not to demonstrate their contempt for His Emminence by sniffing at his
heels like an ill-behaved cur. Take him!"

With that surprising speed, de Portau's rapier whispered from his scabbard,
as he drove sharply backwards with his elbow. There was a satisfying
impact with something soft behind him and a breathless grunt of pain,
followed by the unmistakable sound of a body crumpling to the ground.

De Mars stood stunned for a split second by the amazing, blinding speed of
the big man before him, and it was long enough for de Portau to spin and
thrust at the man to his left, plunging the blade through his chest with
bone-snapping force, and pinning the body to the tree in front of which he
stood.

De Portau cursed, for the blade was stuck in the tree, and he dared not
take the time ot free it, for de Mars and the other swordsman were already
moving against him. Rolling acrobatically to the side, he barely avoided
a slash from de Mars which would surely have disembowelled him an instant
before.

Leaping to his feet, de Portau drew his poiniard. It was designed

primarily to turn a slash, but it could be used as a weapon in a pinch.
His reach was longer than most men, but even that could not begin to make
up the difference in length between their rapiers, and his short one-foot
dagger. And there were two of them.
The two swordsman moved warily now, having seen the serpent-like speed that
this deceptively large man could use. Nodding to each other, they
attempted to surround him so that at least one would have a chance at his
back, but de Portau moved quickly to keep them both in front.

This complex dance of death might have gone on indefinitely had de Portau
not made a single mistake. Mind focused on the two before him, he had
forgotten the man he knocked down, who had now recovered enough of his
breath and his wits to see the situation. When de Portau backed towards
where he lay on the ground, gasping for breath, he lashed out with his
boot, hitting the big man unexpectedly in the back of his knee, and
toppling him to the ground.

Unfortunately for the kicker, he had misjudged the effect, and de Portau's
huge bulk landed like a toppled tree on top of him, snapping one arm and
several ribs like twigs. His shriek of pain was high and shrill.

De Mars and the other swordsman leaped for the kill, swords extended before
them. Desperately, de Portau grabbed the screaming man bodily, and lifted
him into the air in front of him. Unable to check their lunges, their
rapiers plunged right through the chest of their comrade, and out his back,
their tips quivering a half-inch from de Portau's throat.

His living shield gurgled once and went limp. With a grunt, de Portau
heaved the body away, ripping the blades from the hands of his opponents.
Both backed away quickly and retrieved their rapiers, giving de Portau
enough time to leap to his feet, and snatch the dead man's rapier from the
ground where it had fallen.

Not waiting to be flanked, de Portau rushed to the attack, using the

element of surprise to beat down the second man's rapier and flick his
blade almost casually across the man's throat. The man crumpled, dead
before his body hit the ground.

With eyes narrowed to steely slits, de Portau smiled grimly and turned to
his last opponent. "Well, Monsieur de Mars, it is just the two of us.
Shall we dance?"

"I need no help to deal with such as you," sneered de Mars, raising his
rapier in a salute. De Portau returned the salute, and a second later the
battle was joined in earnest.

Blade rang on blade, striking blue sparks. Like snarling beasts, the two
circled each other, seeking weaknesses, feeling for footing, trying to
force the opponent to make a mistake. From time to time each would sally a
lunge or a slash, and would be turned aside by the other.

Suddenly, and with magnificent speed, it was over. De Portau's footing

slipped, and de Mars lunged in a fleche to run him through. Too late de
Mars saw that the slip was a feint. He tried to pull himself back, but he
had already committed himself. With a single smooth slash, de Mars' head
toppled from his body, a look of pure astonishment forever frozen on its
face. The body stood for a moment, took a tentative step forward, then
thought better of it, toppling forward into the leaves.

De Portau tossed the bloodied sword aside and with a strong tug freed his
own from the tree where it still impaled his erstwhile opponent. The body
fell to the ground with satisfying thud, and de Portau cleaned the blade on
the man's cloak.

He knew now that he must bring this investigation to a close very soon for
his own safety. Once he had reported, his finding would go straight to the
King's own ear, and Richilieu would not dare to move so openly then.

Taking a deep breath, de Portau stood and inspected the lock. It was far
more sophisticated that was warranted by a wine cellar, he saw. He weighed
the risk of noise against the risk of taking too long to pick the lock and
being trapped at the bottom of the stairs. Removing his hat, he laid his
ear against the door and listened. He could hear nothing.

He stepped back from the door and made a swift rush at it, setting his
legs solidly against the floor and the far wall, applied his full strength
and weight to the door. It shuddered in its frame, the four inch thick,
iron-banded oak resisting his whole strength, but still the door sagged
open. De Portau noted with amusement that both the door and the stout iron
lock hed held, but the brass hinges had been torn right out from their
settings.

De Portau hefted the door in both arms and lifted it entirely aside - and
nearly passed out from the unimaginable stench. It hit him in waves, each
more potent than the last, washing over him and making his eyes burn and
water.

"Good Lord in heaven," he gasped, crossing himself. He stood there for

almost five minutes, eyes streaming, and danger be damned. Worse than the
smell of this unholy stink was the taste it left in his mouth. The odor
kindled a memory in him; once, as a young child in Gascony, a great storm
had washed fish, squid, and jellyfish ashore for a hundred yards inland.
The corpses were knee deep in places, and for the next two weeks the smell
from the beach had been similar to this. It was sweet and deep, and almost
salty.

"Sweet Jesus," marvelled de Portau. "The air has been fouled by the
Devil's own farts."

When he had recovered enough to move again, he took a hesitant step into
the darkness inside the door, and felt for the torch he knew he would find
on the wall. He took flint and steel from his belt pouch and struck a
spark, and instantly regretted it. A huge blue ball of flame bloomed,
enveloping the torch, his hands, and his head.

For a moment, de Portau stood very still while his eyebrows burned merrily,
unable to believe that such an indignity had been heaped upon him. The
feather from his hat fell to the floor in front of him, burned to a
blackened curl of ash, which broke his stunned inaction.

For the next minute, de Portau displayed a talent with profanity that would
have amazed all who knew him, for none would have believed he possessed
such eloquence, much less known such obscure words of such raging,
hand-waving vulgarity in several major and a few minor patois'. He also
extinguished his eyebrows.

Still grumbling to himself, he laid a finger aside each nostril and blew
out a wad of sooty snot. The torch was burning extremely well ("As well it
might," he grumped.) but he noticed that the flame was much larger and
hotter than he would have expected, and tinged with blue.
As he held the torch up to look around him for the first time, his blood
ran cold. Torch light flickered in a thousand beady eyes. Rats of all
sizes sat and stared at him.

De Portau crossed himself, and looked all around, feeling the weight of all
those eyes upon him. "Saint's balls!" he goggled. Moving slowly, he took
a torch from the other side of the doorway and sent it flying at one of the
rats that sat atop one of the wine barrels. It hit with a thud, and the
rat fell to the floor. Seconds later, it clambered back on the barrel. De
Portau imagined he saw a look of indignant anger in those little black eyes
and looked away.

Whispering a brief prayer, he pulled the small silver crucifix from beneath
his jerkin, kissed it, and let it dangle in the open from its silver chain.
As if on cue, the rats scrambled from their perches and vanished into the
shadows, their nails scratching a tattoo like hail on a marble roof.

Swallowing his dread, de Portau glanced around the large room, and decided
on one of the arched tunnels that led off from it based, as little as he
liked it, on the fact that the odor seemed to be emanating from there.

Though there were some cobwebs on the ceiling, it was evident that this
tunnel was in use, for the dust on the floor was so well-disturbed that no
individual tracks could be discerned. The tunnel twisted and turned until
de Portau could no longer even guess what part of the church he might be
under.

He stumbled and almost fell over the pile of masonry scattered across the
floor at a bend in the tunnel. He crouched to examine it, and realized
that a solid wall had once stood here, and had only recently been
disinterred. Beyond was small alcove, with a trapdoor set in the floor.
The wood was very old, but dry and set with a bronze ring so old it was
encrusted with a green patina.

The trapdoor swung open easily, and de Portau noted that it had been
well-oiled within recent memory. By lowering the torch into the square of
inky darkness, he could see a stout wooden ladder set in the wall, and the
crumbled remains of a much older ladder on the floor below. Taking a deep
breath, he lowered himself down.

Looking around, he realized that he was now in the crypts of the church,
but doubtless one walled up long ago for whatever reason. As he walked
along the corridor, he saw alcoves along both sides, each containing a
single bier with a corpse mouldering its way to dust within. He shivered,
and pulled the collar of his porte-manteau higher.

He had reached a point where he began to consider turning back, for his
torch burned faster than he anticipated, and with even more blue in the
flame, he noted. If he waiting long to turn back, he would risk losing the
light and he did not favour the idea of wandering blindly amongst these
dead. He cursed himself for not taking the second torch, but he had not
forseen a labyrinthe of crypts to be explored.

As he pondered his choice, he became aware of a sound other than the

pounding of his own heart. He turned his head slowly from side to side
trying to determine from what direction the sound came. Hesitantly, he
picked one tunnel, and had to turn back when it stopped at a dead end.
His second choice was more accurate, and he crept silently up to a large
wooden door. The door was very old, and it hung crookedly, leaving a wide
gap beneath, through which weird, eldritch green light pulsed and a
throbbed.

De Portau pressed his ear to the door, and immediately, jumped back as if
burned; the door was not just cold as a hangman's heart. It did not
matter. Even though he could make out no details, he could tell that
someone was chanting in a sing-song voice on the other side of that door.

Occasionally, the voice would rise and a single word could be heard, and
though de Portau did not recognize the words they made the hair on his
bull-neck bristle.

For a long time, he just stood there, his hand poised over the handle of
the door and a single drop of sweat beaded on his upper lip despite the
arctic cold that emanated from the wood. He knew that whatever lay within
was nothing natural, and that if he opened that door his life would change
in ways he could not now understand. All this he knew, while those strange
words continued from within, and it is testament to his stout Gascon heart
that he silently consigned his soul to Christ, gritted his teeth, and
flung open the door.

Whatever he had expected to greet him within, it was not what he saw. The
door swung open and de Portau stepped boldly over the casement, rapier in
hand. Within was a large chamber of ancient, crumbling stone blocks with a
high, vaulted and butressed ceiling lost in shadow above. The walls were
done in fresco reliefs, showing strange creatures to beggar the imagination
of the authors of medeival beastiaries and haunt the dreams of a thousand
mad poets - or a single mad Arab.

The centre of the room was taken up by a put ten feet around which appeared
to de Portau as merely a circle of utter blackness. From out of the pit
wafted the unmistakable odor of decay. At the far end of the room was a
squat black altar, carved from a single piece of glistening obsidian, and
behind the altar stood a wooden lectern carved with cherbim and the holy
cross, onviously a recent addition. Atop the lectern was a book, a very
large book, turned open to a page and held in place by a leering human
skull.

These things de Portau noticed momentarily, along with the glacial chill
that froze not only his flesh but his soul. But first, and most shocking,
was the sight of Cardinal Richelieu, holy vestments lifted to reveal a
shrivelled, wizzened old-man's body and a huge, throbbing erection topped
by a great purpled head the size of a fairish plum, which hovered scant
inches from the bare pubis of the girl chained upon the altar.

The two men stared at each other for long seconds, in stunned silence. De
Portau felt the presences in the room, the beings he could not perceive
with any sense he could name, yet knew they lingered here. It was de
Portau that broke the impasse. "Emminence...?"

The Cardinal snarled like a rabid animal, and de Portau shrank before the
weird light that played in his eyes. "No!" screamed the Cardinal, "I am
too close! I cannot be stopped now!"

Releasing the hem of his robe with one hand, he gestured in the direction
of the pit and shrieked a litany of words profane before Man crawled from
the primordial slime of his seas. "Ia Cthulhu! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui
mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'Lyeh wagh'nagl fhtagn! Ia! Ia!"

From within the pit came foul sucking noises, and slurpings, and
crunchings. De Portau felt his nerve endings go numb as something,
something horribly liquid, began squelching up the side of the pit. A
liquescent black pseudopod oozed up, over the side and began to grow as
more of the flesh which was not flesh came up. Foot after foot it came,
unknowable tons of malleable foulness. And with it came the stench that
had pervaded all the cellars, but ten thousand times worse. It was the
stench of dead things, and of ancient secrets festering in the dark like an
open sore, and of creatures beautiful in their mind-blasting ugliness that
lay hidden beneath black, stygian waters.

When its full bulk hove into view, it was nearly twelve feet around and
eight high, small for a shoggoth. And out of its gently ululating flesh
formed a pustule nearly a foot across. This pustule tore open, and an eye
the size of a dinner plate - not the eye of mindless beast, oh no, but
rather an eye full of dreadful alien intelligence and malice - turned its
full gaze upon de Portau.

He felt his sanity slipping away. He saw blackness forming at the edges of
his vision in spots, coalescing into larger spots, and felt an eerie calm.
In a moment, he knew, what was truly de Portau would be gone, and nothing
this abomination could do to the meat that used to house his spirit would
hurt him.

And yet. And yet, somewhere deep within him, a voice he scarcely
recognized called out. "Stay, Isaac!" it called. "You must stay, for you
are not weak. It feeds on your weaknesses, Isaac; your fears, your doubts,
your lack of faith. It grows strong on your weaknesses. But you are not
weak! You are a Gascon and you are made of sterner stuff than the average
man. You are one who has always lived as you wished, never in battle with
your spirit and that has made you strong. Perhaps you shall not prevail,
but you shall die as God intended, on your feet with a sword in your hand
and a song in your heart!"

Dimly, he recognized the voice as his father's.

De Portau shook his head as if to clear it. The shoggoth, which had been
rolling slowly towards him with its peculiar amoebic gait stopped, suddenly
perceiving things it had not expected. It formed tongues and fnasted the
air like a serpent. It extended strangely-shaped pseudopodia that, among
other things, measured brainwaves, heard heartbeats, scented pheromones,
and read electro-magnetic fields.

The creature had sensed a Presence briefly, of a sort it had not not before
encountered and that made it wary. It double-checked its analyses and
found that the meat creature prey before it possessed slightly denser flesh
than what it had previously encountered, but of little import to a being
that could chew and consume ingots of iron. No exceptional teleplasmic or
ectoplasmic mass which could indicate the possession of Power. Its brain
and circulatory organ were still functioning, and while it was unusual for
this to occur subsequent to encountering one of its kind, it had happened
before and merely made for a more pleasurable kill.

Up and down wavelengths and bandwidths that a physicist would have given
his soul to merely have knowledge of - and some, one day, would do just
that - it scanned its prey carefully, for it was a wary creature by nature,
and taking chances with a life that spanned the millenia was unthinkable.
Satisfied at last that this meat creature posed no threat beyond its
primitive weapon, it closed for the kill.

While the shoggoth analyzed its senses, the blackness cleared from de
Portau's vision, and the terror that transformed his heart to a black of
ice melted in the fiery passion of a new emotion: rage. A great, righteous
fury gripped him with a strength that sent power surging down his limbs and
burned away the last of the darkness in his mind.

"I am Gascon!" he thundered, causing the shoggoth to extend a huge

malformed ear. "And I fear no man or beast before God!"

Richilieu ran his hand over the delectable young creature bound and gagged
before him, and slammed his grotesquely huge member home up to the hilt,
uttering a profane "mea culpa" in the extremity of his lust. In and out,
in and out, he thrust, his time-worn heart pounding against its paper-thin
walls. He turned his head to see the shoggoth close with the awesome speed
of its kind with the bellowing Gascon and chuckled.

Thrust. Thrust. "I have a new God now, Gascon," said Richilieu a satisfied
smile on his face. "The old one offered me an unknowable heaven beyond
this world, or a fiery hell beneath it. I choose to stay in this world and
make of it my own personal heaven - or hell, if that suits my pleasure."

De Portau's eyes widened at the speed of the massive shoggoth as it rushed

toward him, and hurled himself away in a diving roll just fractions of a
second before the creature slammed into the wall where he had been standing
with enough force to shatter the stone and shake the ground.

Thrust. Thrust. "I found a book in the crypts, Gascon, the very one you
see upon the altar. It was written by a disgusting heathen arab, but I
have gleaned from it the secret of immortal life. Life eternal!"

The shoggoth emitted a piercing shriek at its failure like the sound of a
steam whistle. It did not even seem to change direction. It simply began
picking up speed once more in the direction of its prey.

De Portau knew it was faster than he by a good measure, and that while he
could avoid it with careful timing a few times, it would likely become wise
to his trick. When that happened, he was a dead man. And so, as he leaped
aside once more, he slashed viciously at the creature's side. It barely
penetrated the thick hide, but it did sever an eyestock which the creature
had been projecting for trinocular vision.

Thrust. Thrust. "The rituals require sacrifice. It was no difficult matter

to obtain harlots and young female debtors from the Bastille. There were
none to complain of the disappearance of creatures so unimportant, and as
you can see, the sacrifices are not totally without their own rewards." He
reached forward with a hand to pinch the girl's nipple painfully.

The shoggoth screamed its fury, and extended a sucker mouth to devour the
severed eyestock. Its whole body suddenly bristled with razor sharp
appendages atop pseudopods which whistled through the air to slash at the
surprised Gascon.
So surprised was he that only the instincts gained from a dozen
battlefields saved him. The air was suddenly alive with sharp, slashing
death, and he arm moved to parry blow after blow with dazzling reflexes
that were not entirely conscious. Again, without conscious thought, he
turned the defence into a counter-attack, and slashed at one of the
pseudopods, severing it entirely.

Thrust. Thrust. "Soon, I began to acquire true Power. I summoned forth

your playmate there, though he very nearly cost me a great deal. I allow
him to run free in the crypts at night to feed on rats and such when I have
not enough political prisoners to sate its appetite. That damned steward
and his wife should have known better then to be down there at night. It
might have been alright if it had eaten the boy too, but no, the blasted
urchin injured me and escaped. It took a great deal of sacrifices to send
the shoggoth forth across dimensions and snatch the boy from beneath your
very noses, but oh, how it must have rankled de Troisvilles! Hee hee. I
assure you, the urchin's death was neither short nor painless. I did,
however," he cackled with a leer, "discover how delectable a tight little
boy could be."

A thin, brackish liquid trickled from the stump where the pseudopod had
been before it healed over, and the shoggoth writhed with its fury,
slamming the ground around it blindly with with pseudopods that packed the
punch of sledge hammers, but missing the wily Gascon. Once more, the
shoggoth devoured its severed pseudopod.

De Portau rubbed his arm, trying to get some feeling back into it. The
force of the blows he had turned were unbelievable, and his arm was numb
with their force. He realized that he was constantly giving ground, and
now stood nearly back to back with the rutting Cardinal, whose insane
babble continued even as he subjected that poor girl to his less than
tender ministrations.

De Portau longed to spin around and plant his rapier in the man's foul
heart, but he dared not take his eyes of the shoggoth for even a second.
It was simply too fast. So far he had been lucky, but he was tiring. And
if he was even the tiniest instant slower than he had already been, he
would be dead, or worse, in an eyeblink.

The shoggoth quivered silently for a moment. It had never in its long
existance met any that could withstand it as this creature had, who did not
also possess the Power. It carely extruded a phallic-looking sensor and
scanned once more, but could find not the tiniest femto-erg of Power within
it.

It was not truly hurt, of course. It had lost no mass; it simply devoured
the amputated flesh. It could systain ten million times the damage it had
taken and not be reduced to one ten millionth its power. Yet it was
infuriated, if such an emotion could be escribed to so alien a creature,
with its failure.

Cunningly, it flicked a pseudopod at de Portau, who slashed at it and

severed it. But this was as the shoggoth had intended, for a second
pseudopod wrapped itself around the blade and twisted it from de Portau's
hand. The sword slithered towards the shoggoth, which extruded a huge
mouth filled with flat grinding teeth, and crushed the hardened steel
rapier to powder, which it ingested.
Thrust. Thrust. "Thirteen rituals are required to obtain the Power. I
have completed twelve ere tonight. This shall be the thirteenth. After
tonight, I shall not need king, country, or God. I shall be a power unto
myself, and I shall live for an eternity. At the moment of climax, and at
this delicious creature's apex of terror, I shall still her heart. Her
soul shall be forfeit to the Great Old Ones, and I shall be as a god!"

Suddenly weaponless, de Portau cursed resoundingly and drew his poiniard.

He almost laughed at his own foolishness as he compared the short parrying
blade to the seemingly endless tonnage of the shoggoth. With blinding
speed, the shoggoth threw itself towards its now helpless prey.

Desperately, de Portau heaved the poiniard at the creature as he rolled for

cover behind the lectern. The shoggoth ingested the poiniard without
slowing, and slammed into the fall immediately beside the Musqueteer.
Before he could recover, it grabbed him by the legs with two lightning-fast
pseudopodia, and nearly dragged him from his feet towards its waiting maw.

Only by hanging onto the heavy wooden lectern did de Portau remain errect,
and when it toppled, so did he. He felt himself dragged along the floor
towards the creature, and new that he had breathed his last, but would not
die quietly. Unable to kick for the strength that held him, he grasped for
any object around him that he might use as a weapon.

His hand stumbled across the skull which had sat upon the book on the
lectern, and hurled it into that waiting maw. The mouth closed briefly and
there was a horrible grinding noise. When it opened again, the skull was
gone, and Portau was dragged up to he knees into the creature's tooth-
filled mouth.

Screaming what he knew to be his last battle cry, de Portau snatched up the
heavy leather book and brought it down with all his might against the
tentacles which enfolded him. To his shock, the shoggoth screamed in
apparent agony, an ululating sound he had not heard it make before that
caused his teeth to vibrate in sympathy in his skull.

The shoggoth shrank away from him as if burned, leaving a smouldering

pseudopod on the ground before him. Surprised beyond words at finding
himself alive, de Portau examined the heavy leather-bound book he held, and
realized that the cover was engraved and picked out in gold with the design
of a five-pointed star, within which spidery marks and sigils of dire
portent seemed almost to twist slowly into ever more dire shapes.

He also realized that the elder sign, for such it was, was pulsing and
strobing with a weird, eldritch green light than he had seen from beneath
the door to the room.

De Portau smiled a savage grin that would have made anyone seeing it doubt
his sanity. "So, servant of Satan, you can feel pain. Let us see if you
can also feel fear."

Holding the book before him like a shield, de Portau advance on the
creature. Desperately it tried to flee, but the light which now blazed
from the symbol appeared to pin it in place. It lashed out in blind panic
with its pseudopods, all shaped into slashing blades, stabbing spikes,
crushing balls, but all retreated before that hateful green radiance.

Fearless and towering with the fury of a righteous Gascon, de Portau raised
the book over his head and brought it down hard against the flank of its
glistening flesh. A shiver ran through it, and a maw of monstrous size
formed in its body from which a piercing keen wailed, as if every key on
the world's largest pipe organ was being simultaneously depressed.

"Bon appetit," said de Portau jauntily, and tossed the book into its mouth.
He had been expecting some final awful death throe, some kind of last
attempt at vengance, but it was nothing so dramatic. The shoggoth simply
vanished, as if it were nothing more than an inflated pig's bladder which
had sprung a sudden and disastroud leak. Once moment it was there, and the
next it flickered away to nothing. The book landed with a thud on the
ground, its light dimmed to a faint shimmer.

Then from behind him was a ragged cheer of triumph, and de Portau knew he
had won too late. Richilieu stood half-naked and covered in blood. An
obsidian knife rested in one hand, with which he had stabbed the girl first
in the groin to produce the maximum pain and terror, and then slashed her
throat to kill her instantly at the peak of her agaonies. His penis, limp
and angry red with over-use, dripped a few last drops of semen upon the
floor.

"I have the Power!" exulted Richilieu. "I am God. You have caused me some
trouble, for you have banished my shoggoth. It is no impediment, for now I
can summon ten, nay, fifty of them. I shall summon a veritable host of
shoggoths, for they shall be my angels, and they shall mete out punishment
to all who defy me. I shall have to summon one to clean up this mess, of
course. Or perhaps I shall take care of this one myself, to celebrate."

To de Portau's horror, the Cardinal bent over and bit off several of the
dead girl's toes, which he chewed gustily. "Delectable," announced the
Cardinal, now quite mad.

"Emminence," said Portau, as he drew the musquet from his belt, "may God
have mercy upon you, for I have none."

There was a loud report, and the Cardinal's eyes opened in suprise as a
perfectly round, red hole materialized in the center of his forehead, and
what brains remained to him exited his head through a considerably larger
hole in the back of it. The Cardinal crumpled bonelessly to the ground,
and there was complete and utter silence after the report of the musquet
had died away.

De Portau sat for a long time on the floor, not thinking of anything at
all. It might have been minutes or hours; he was never quite sure.
Finally, his tired muscles began to cramp and his mind returned from the
grey land it had wandered.

Idly, he kicked the leather-bound book towards him, and held it in his
hands. Picking a page at random, he made to turn to it, but the end of a
gnarled wooden staff pushed the cover of the book shut again.

"I wouldn't," said the Wanderer.

***

De Portau and the Wanderer sat together in a great hall that looked as if
it might once have held thousands. Two huge tables a thousand feet long
ran the length of the hall, with wooden benches on either side. Evidently
the place had not been used in a very long time, for dust and cobwebs lay
heavily across everything.

The building itself was made from heavy timbers, and de Portau imagined
that whole forests must have been denuded in its making. A hundred feet
up, the roof was made from shields laid side to side and sewn together. In
a few places, the shields had been damaged or blown away, and sunlight
streamed through in bright shafts to dispel some of the gloom.

The tables of the hall were still strewn with jugs whose contents had long
evaporated away, and the heaped bones of whole chickens and boars. Clay
and wooden plates sat on the tables by the thousands, and here and there
was the gleam of gold or silver mugs. Those last to use this hall had left
in some considerable hurry.

For some reason the hall produced the same unreasoning sadness in de Portau
that the Wanderer himself did. They both gave the impression of existing
long after their purposes had been served. Though he could not have said
why had hot coals been applied to his feet, de Portau felt as if the hall
was a fairy tale which had long ago ended and ceased to have any meaning.

Once again, de Portau essayed to examine the Wanderer. Since he had

appeared so mysteriously in the crypts of Notre Dame, de Portau had been
trying to get a look at the man, but he wore a simple loose robe that
disguised his body, and a very large and disreputable slouch hat that
disguised his features save for the long white beard that well to his belt,
and his long, fine white hair that fell in a cascade down his back. That
and his bony hands as gnarled as the staff they held, which de Portau
noticed had curious puckered wounds on their backs.

When the old man had introduced himself as simply the Wanderer and offered
to lead de Portau safely from the crypts, he could not argue with the man,
but he almost balked when he saw what mode of egress the old man intended
to use.

At first blush, it appeared to be a horse, but it was much too massive to

be anything but perhaps a heavy draft horse. It also appeared to have six
legs, rather than the four more commonly found on equine species.
Furthermore, it had no head as such. Instead, it had a ring of think, ropy
tentacles which surrounded the crushing sphincter that passed for a mouth.
Though it didn't seem to have any sense organs, it had detected de Portau's
presence in some way for it hissed a warning when he arrived, and had to be
calmed by the Wandered, who ran his hand gently among the grasping
tentacles as a man might stroke the nose of a real horse.

With much cajoling, de Portau mounted the beast behind the Wanderer, and it
began galloping towards a wall. Just when de Portau thought they must
crash with bone-jarring force, the world seemed to snap out of focus and
slowly shimmer back into existance in a new arrangement, the hall in which
the two now sat, with the Wanderer's strange clopping docilely from the
hall in search of forage.

The Wanderer was apparently in no hurry to explain himself, or anything

that had happened, so de Portau, never a patient man at the best of times,
broke first. "Who are you?"

"I am the Wanderer, as I have said."

"Yes, so you have said," quipped de Portau sardonically. "Mayhap you would
kind enough to tell me then where we are and to what end I have been
brought here. Not that I do not mean to be properly grateful for your
assistance, monsieur, but I have had, er, rather an eventful day."

The old man raised his head suddenly, as if scenting danger.

"What? What is it, Monsieur Wanderer?" asked de Portau nervously, his hand
reaching automatically for the rapier which wasn't there.

"The Dark Man comes," said the Wanderer, angrilly. "He dares too much!"

A man emerged from a corner of the hall, where only shadows had been
before. De Portau noted that he had not so much appeared suddenly as
seemed to shoulder his way from the line of demarcation that indicated
where the angles of the wall met.

"Ia Cthulhu," said the Dark Man, a thin-lipped smile on his strangely
unremarkable face. De Portau could not tell whether the man was black or
white, or whether his nose was large or small. He had a curiously average
appearance that frightened him more than a ravening monster would have, for
this was a face you would not notice even if it passed you in the street.
You might well pass on unaware of the danger that lay in wait for you; for
indeed, de Portau sensed great malign power within him.

"Get thee from my hall, herald! Thou art cast out!" raged the Wanderer,
who raised his staff as if to beat the Dark Man with it.

"Now, now, old man. No need to get testy. I am here to warn you that we
know of your plans. This... man," said the Dark Man, gesturing at de
Portau with evident contempt, "is no match for one with the true Power and
you well know it. You have not the power you once did, old man, and you
risk much by placing it within the fragile vessel of this Powerless mortal.
You have been warned, old man. Do not interfere with what does not concern
you. Or we shall see just how weak you have become." His eyes narrowed.

The Wanderer seemed to grow taller, and more powerful as he grew angry. He
removed his old slouch hat to reveal a face hard and chiselled, with a
single eye, they other covered by a patch. His eye began to blaze with
light, and his staff stretched and straightened, and grew a sharp blade at
the end, until it was a massive spear of burnished hardwood and intricately
worked blue steel.

"I have power yet to crush such an insignificant ant as thyself,

Nyarlathotep!" Arcs of blue lightning played about his single eye, and de
Portau realized with great surprise that the Dark Man was cringing and
backing away from this awesome being, terrible in his majesty.

"By the Power of They Who Live Above In Shadow, and by the Power of the
mighty spear Gungnir, and by the Power which yet resides in this body, thou
art cast out, Herald, whose True Name is Nyarlathotep! GET THEE FROM THIS
PLACE!"

These final words came from the Wanderer not as the voice of a man, even a
powerful man, but rather as elemental thunder itself, reverberating through
the hall and through the sky. He raised his spear high into the air, and
lightning crackled at its tip, too bright to look at. It arced through
space and coruscated in a shower of blinding blue sparks across the body of
the Dark Man, who screamed once, agonizingly, and vanished.

The Wanderer turned his single furious, blazing eye upon de Portau, who
found he could not look away. That eye held the power and secrets of the
universe, and pierced the brave Gascon through his very soul. Then, all at
once, the light went out like a candle, leaving only a dim, red sputter
within that socket, a reminder of what those banked coals could become.

And then the Wanderer collapsed.

For a moment, de Portau could not believe his eyes, but with that
incredible speed, he rushed forward to catch the old man before he could
hit the ground and carried him to the table like a limp doll. He was
amazed at how light and frail that body seemed, and was further shocked to
see blood dripping from the old man's head.

The Wanderer sat up slowly, despite de Portau's demand that he remain

prostrate, at least until he regained his strength.

"This is as strong as I will get, I'm afraid," said the Wanderer. "You are
a kind man, Isaac de Portau. I have chosen well."

"Please, monsieur," said de Portau, "If what you ask of me is possible

within my sworn oaths to God and the King of France, I shall do what is
within my power to do. But I must know the facts. I must know who you
are, where I am, and what is expected of me."

"I have been known by many names in many places, Isaac da Portau. I have
bee called Woden by some, and Odinn by others. I have been called Moses
and Merlin and Vainamoinen. To some I was Zeus, and to others
Qetzalcouatl, the Feathered Serpent. I am the last of the Elder Gods upon
your world. I serve They Who Live Above In Shadow, who are to me as I am
to you in Power and mystery. I and my kind are what you and your kind
shall become if you survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great Old Ones
who are our ancient implacable enemies. To such as the Elder Gods and the
Old Ones, time and space is but an agreeable illusion that masks a truer
reality."

The old man paused for breath, as Isaac de Portau sat spellbound by his
words.

"I alone remain to protect your world, which will in time become my world.
Once, a long time ago, we of the Elder Gods made a great and terrible war
upon the Old Ones, who were banished for an age. But such as they can
never be truly destroyed, and they shall return when the stars are once
more right.

"We contend, those of us who remain. We contend for the minds, bodies, and
souls of humans. The Dark Man, whom you have met, is the herald of the Old
Ones and the least of their number. But I am old, and my power is limited,
and I fear I am no longer capable of dealing personally with such beings as
Great Cthulhu, high priest of the Old Ones, and the greatest of those who
remain.

"You see, I made a decision some years ago let go the reins of my Power,
and let it seek out those who may learn to use it. It made me weak, but
gave your people a strength they had never known before."
The old man held up his hands and showed the perfect round holes in the
centre of each hand, and the ragged tears on his forehead and around his
head, as if torn by a crown of thorns.

"I have," said the Wanderer quietly, "also been known as Saviour."

De Portau could think of nothing to say, but dropped to one knee before the
olf man.

"No, Isaac de Portau. Rise, my good and noble servamt. You and I have
much work to do. For you see, the Old Gods have chasen a champion and set
him lose upon the world. Look into my eye, Isaac, Look and see the face
of evil."

De Portau looked deep into the old man's eye and felt himself falling,
tumbling down a long tunnel walled with crackling blue lightning, the air
redolent of ozone. At the bottom of the tunnel he emerged to find himself
strangely disembodied. It was not altogether a comfortable sensation.

He looked around and saw himself in a black chamber with five walls,
containing four sets of shackles and a squat black altar he thought he
recognized. Two corpses of young women lay on the floor, and one upon an
altar, her limbs bent at odd angles, and with a strangely mashed look to
her. Near him a shoggoth began ingesting one of the corpses on the floor.

Unable to control himself, de Portau floated through the ceiling and into a
bedroom where a young man slept, his face handsome and innocent. Except
that de Portau had seen what horrors lurked in his basement. Narrowing
non-existant phantom eyes, de Portau committed the young man's face to
memory in case they should ever meet.

With shocking suddeness, the boy in the bed opened his eyes, as if he was
aware of being watched. He glanced suspiciously around the room, but could
find no source for his worry. Satisfied that there was no danger, the buy
relaxed again, and sat up in bed. Before de Portau's amazed eyes, the boy
laughed with pleasure and transformed himself into a jet-black dragon with
scales like the plates of a hauberk.

And then he was back in his own body, his flesh feeling like a pair of
over-heavy and cumbersome boots.

"That," said the Wanderer, "is your enemy. His name is Wil Whately, and he
is the champion of evil. His flesh is tougher than the strongest steel.
His strength is twenty times that of the normal man. He can run without
exhaustion for years or even decades if he has to. He has as little need
for sleep, air, or food as I, but has not yet lost their habits. That is a
weakness, and one you might be able to exploit.

"He can transform him body to any shape or form that pleases him, and while
his his use of the Power is yet crude and unshaped, it is strong and he
will have plenty of time to practice for he is immortal.

"His food and drink are now pain and suffering. He draws his Power from
the agony of others, and takes special pleasure in inflicting that agony
with his own hands. In short, he is the as close to the paradigm of evil
as humans can yet come, and he will soon learn new ways to improve upon the
model."
De Portau spread his arms wide. "I am as brave as the next man, Monsieur
Wanderer, providing that man is a Gascon. If it is your will that I throw
away my life in opposing this Antichrist, I shall do so and gladly, only
knowing why I am to die in this manner, for surely there can be no other
result if I should oppose such a creature."

The Wanderer smiled. "As usual, your words speak well of you, Isaac de
Portau. I do not ask you to throw away your life, though it is only fair
to warn you that you are likely to lose your life no matter what the result
of this confrontation is, for the Old Ones are not known for their
forgiveness, or willingness to play by a set of rules.

"I shall give you three gifts, Isaac de Portau, that shall serve you in
good stead in this battle."

With the end of his staff, the Wanderer pointed at the crucifix which hunrg
from de Portau's neck. It blazed brightly for a moment, then dimmed,
thought Isaac could still feel its warmth through the material of his
jerkin.

"By this gift shall you know your enemy, no matter what the form he should
take."

The second gift the Wanderer pulled from a pocket somewhere in his
voluminous robes. It was the most breathtakingly beautiful feather that de
Portau had ever seen, and made him think sadly of the burnt and missing
feather of his own hat. As if reading his thoughts, the Wanderer reached
up and placed the feather in the brim of de Portau's hat.

"This feather is of me, the pinion of the winged serpent, Qetzalcoutal. As

such it carries a part of my essence, and by this second gift shall you be
protected from all manner of magics, large and small.

"The third gift, Isaac, you shall have to choose for youself. I can choose
its substance, but not its form. Its form must be decided upon by you and
only you. It shall be the means by hwich you shall overcome your foe."

The Wanderer drew the end of his staff in a circle, and de Portau noticed
that the old man's hands and forehead had begun bleeding again. As the
circle was completed, an unholy blue light exploded from the circle like a
porthole to Hell itself.

The Wanderer reached into the hole and drew forth a large handful of
glowing blue metal. The hole vanished instantly.

"Now," said the Wanderer, his voice cracking with stress, "take this metal
within your hand. Fear not that it shall hurt you, for my magics have
protected us both thus far, though I reached into the very heart of a
neutron star."

De Portau had no idea what the Wanderer was talking about, and didn't care.
He looked only at that great lump of metal in the Wanderer's hand, and
thought about how hot it must be. Had he known that in fact the metal was
several tens of millions of degrees, he would not have been surprised.

Reaching deep once more into his Gascon courage, de Portau gingerly took
the metal in his hand, and felt it quiver as if it was alive.
"Reach out with your mind, Isaac de Portau. Feel for the shape buried
within the metal. Call forth your avenging arm of justice."

De Portau closed his eyes and tried to think of justice. Of honour and
nobility. Of faith and goodness and all things beautiful. Of lost causes
and of hope. He felt the metal stretch in his hand, and bend and shape
itself to his will.

He opened his eyes and saw he held the finest rapier ever seen by mortal
eyes, and he gasped at the beauty of it. It was truly a weapon of from the
Hand of God. The blade was shiny and true, and light glinted along the
perfect blade. The gasket seemed to be composed of lightly spun gold, yet
it had none of gold's malleability. And set in the pommel was a gem of icy
blue, within which tiny sparks of lightning played and danced.

De Portau made as if to test the blade with his thumb, and the Wanderer
quickly grabbed his wrist in a vice-like grip. "That would be a good way
to lose a finger. The blade is made of collapsed atoms, and weighs more
than the largest mountains on earth. It is denser still then ten million
diamonds crushed into one. Its mass is such that nothing - not even the
most invulnerable of skin - may resist its edge.

"My magics make the blade as light as air in your hands, though none
besides yourself shall ever be able to wield it. And now I set upon it the
runes which I learned hanging from the branches of the Tree of Knowledge to
enoble its spirit and make its cause just."

With the end of his staff, the old man traced strangely familiar symbols
upon the blade which glowed briefly and faded. When he was finished, the
Wanderer smiled at de Portau and explained "You can now sheath it without
slashing a gaping hole in the scabbard.

"And now, brave, noble, Isaac de Portau, we must go and mount Sleipnir once
more, for we must traverse not only the miles but the centuries. Come, let
us leave the sleeping and forgotten halls of Valhalla, and we shall put the
forces of darkness to the test.

"Your destiny awaits."

--
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+ .. "In order to live free and happily .....
| Andrew Nellis | . you must sacrifice boredom. It is .
| bs904@freenet.carleton.ca | . not always an easy sacrifice." .
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+ ...... -Richard Bach, "Illusions" .........