The House of Names I

[Jentos 9425]

THE HOUSE OF NAMES

I

 

Mistah Lazlo, ay - I understand you, but what if ‘e was dead? D’ythink if God were dead he’d be angry at us for killing ‘im?

 

What drew him there he never knew. But as the stars peaked from amongst unclouded heavens, a single chimney drew smoke in the silent, dreaming town of Rubern. Despite the few furtive individuals that still crossed the streets under shadow and crook, the settlement by all means was dead. The black prince has left his hall, and so had the dogs, the carpenters, smith - all but the baker who sat, brooding in his home. 

 

He curled a lip back, blue eyes drawn to the night sky from his window. He decidedly exited his above, door opening in a most comical fashion - followed by the eyes of the poor sod who soon flashed left and right amongst the trodden streets. Returning to the place had not been easy - the gates had found their way shut, the very air itself stank with an uneasy spirit. The baker had resolved himself to try the house further along the eastern wall. That house, with it’s dried, cracking walls and yawning windows. 

 

The worst of it was the rats, the rats and birds - onyx and shiny like some patch of star amongst the already dread-ink sky. There was a fearsome look to the household with it’s tower and mouldering bricks. But the very aura that surrounded the place had a somewhat fantastic feel to it, a freshness and chill that caught the very air in one’s throat. Shadows cast over his features from his hood, the man looked spitefully on the building that leered before him. Birds crowned it’s façade, droppings vested it’s walls and yet not a sound was heard, as if the world itself was staring down at him in silent appall, haunted in legend and whispers of demoniac poems and sinister cabals. A stray cat let out it’s whine in the distance. A man cursed from his abode. A woman shrieked. 

 

The baker turned the thief thread down the path, up to the doorframe of the building, chilled fingers clutching hard at the handle with remorse, eyeing with near hate that thing that stood before him, vacant and careless, the silent guardian; the door. The thief had once regarded the place with a sort of silent jealousy at it’s elegance and homeliness, though now as the two doors swung open, unlocked, forgotten - it was nothing but a throbbing sucking at his heart that told him otherwise, a disturbing lack of envy and for a brief moment it appeared his greed had displaced itself, though forever lurking. 

 

The song of the hinges was a painful shriek, and the floorboards of the place let out a great creaking as the man stepped inside. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The man thought as he silently paced down the hallway. There was a stillness to the room - flakes of dust sprang in and out of the light, so cast down from one of the high windows which let in moonlight. Like ashes those flecks danced and spun about, losing themselves to the turmoil the swinging of the door had cast open, the flecks of dust spinning loosely and vanishing in and out of sight. He would light no candle - he would not cast life into his rusty lantern he kept home - everyone knew the very place was filled with all sorts of trinkets and old antiquities that had come from scorching Korvassa, letters and old stones from that pale city, Mordskov. Things holy said to come from Gamesh. And other things of Laria - of bygone places of Aeldin. And other relics, from places that by all rights, should never exist. But by all rights, Rubern had become a cursed place. Yet haunted by the stories of wanton tribes and thieves, of slumbering vampyr and golden-eye’d men. Of green-coated occultists and those two, haunting grim men, with whispers forever haunting their lips. What forlorn truths, what dark things had the Black Prince of Rubern carried in his grave? None should know. 

 

If he were to bring light into this sorry place, all would know. All would come. If he were not yet dead then whatever treasures this place kept would be robbed from his frame, and he himself would be mangled and twisted by whatever crooks remained. There would be no light. For perhaps there layed shadows in this place that were better to remain. The ceiling of the room was high, the place near empty but for old furniture - no cobwebs. The moonlight cast down over his frame, painting him in that pale light - and he gazed out the old, ornate window panes no children had dared break. And he cast his eyes over that horrible, horrible thing. 

 

The moon looked down. Round and grotesque, silent and watching. It loomed and it basqued in the very echoes of the night. Undying and beyond age. Why was it alive? Why dare it watch? By what right? That white… Wretched… Beating heart. Clouds began to advance, like a host - an army of charging clouds to overwhelm and cross the moon, black was their embrace as the clouds slid like fingers over the surface of the very thing. And then the pitter, patter of rain that drummed over the top of the household. The man walked on, and he edged towards a looming, three-pointed thing on the top of a shelf. The candelabra looked old and worn, and to the dimness of the place the thief could barely make out the very coloration of the object - that sweet, worn yellow which might have been gold. Beeswax made red covered the sconces, like sap that had bled from a tree, leaving him with the soft smell of wax. He once more turned, and gazed out at the high window - but there was only shadows, shadows that clouded the very moon - the ghost of clouds. And the man dared wonder at the very clouds - things eternally twisting and passing, innumerable, fading in and out of existence. Were they truly inanimate, or in a sense - did they live otherwise, with their lifespan simply too large to comprehend. Clouds. He must be going insane. 

And then. What of the moon they so hid in their embrace? From the sight of what he himself - man that he was - considered living. Did the moon wax and dance in some wild folly, when these creatures down below could not stare? Only the pitter, patter of the rain gave an answer. He inched ever further, a hand going to his knife - why his knife? There were no devils here no-no-no! No prowling fallacies of the world. There was only him. Him and the house… The House of Names. Him and that old, glimmering gold - yellow gold. He had forgotten that candelabra, sweat coated his left hand as he slowly loosened his grip over the item, and went forth, with a candelabra with no candles, up the shivering steps of the staircase. Everywhere were old things, scraps of papers left to rot on the floor, nails on one side, chairs and seats of worn wood. Stacks of candles set against a wall, like pale, silent silhouettes. A chessboard with only a king. And a red door, that stood beyond the upper room. Pitter, patter went the rain. But the man could not understand the rain. The door was ultimately locked, and solidly at that. No forcing he could muster without alerting the vicinity would prob open the great, mocking lock that held the red door tightly in place. He slid his fingers over the grain of the door, feeling those strange indentations that marked it, and could not devise those inscriptions his eyes turned into unbecoming syllables as he strained them. He wordlessly kept sliding his fingers unto the door with the confusion that the shadows gifted, and before he knew it, he was attempting to read the wall. He stepped back, and cursed. 

 

Perhaps the strange fellow that had lived here had left with his most precious belongings ? It was a most plausible explanation, but it would never excuse the strange passing of the man that had previously lived here, and the threat of his return. The other rooms had little to offer but for scrolls he could not read and beds which the rats had been at - though none were to be seen. He took up one dusty tome whose title he believed read The Second [he did not know the word] of Men, opened it at random and glanced dimly at some strange design, blinked and cast it down to rot. 

 

Pitter, patter. But that was not the rain. Why, that was the sound of soft footsteps, lurking, coming. The rustling of a frame, and a voice too low to be heard along with a strange smell. The thief froze. He held his breath and his right leg came to a sudden shudder under the duress of his plight. He stared back towards the staircase - something was amiss. But what was he to care, for there came again that unmistakable, pitter, patter of legs which did not hail from the rain. And then he saw it. There came mellow light from the room bellow, light that was cast past those high arches of the main hall, so small and yet ever present, in the drowning shadows of the House of Names. And then he saw it, illuminated ever so slightly it sat against the wall in all of its splendour, everywhere. It filled him with fright as it littered the very walls, and he began blinking, half expecting it to vanish - to be banished - and for a moment he thought it did. He barreled towards the wall, brought forth his weight against a window and crashed into the dusty thing, frame sprawling against the mud of the streets, scampering back up to his feet, glancing back - glancing at the high window and skirling, moldy cloth before losing  himself to the depths of the streets, launching himself against the side of a nook, the rain casting it’s orbs of rain down the against the small roof that hid him from the clouded sky, clutching a candelabra that would emit no light against his chest. It was yellow. 

Pitter, patter.

[Callistus 989]

“A wretched hamlet.. abandoned, all but forgotten. See you the things that clamber on its roads? Yes, yes- you thought right. . . 

A hearth now only to the damned.”

said a man who knew very well the corners, dim monuments, and pale memorials of the riverside province.

[Axelu 4333]

A woman recalled the Province, once prosperous and beautiful – laden with lush fields of wheat and its namesake, an ever sprawling river. Intrinsically, however, it was a den of madness and sin. A foul bastion for the damned.