The Scholar,

The Sphinx,

and the

Threads of Fate

The Scholar and the Sphinx Book 3

A.R. Cook

The Scholar, The Spinx, and the Threads of Fate © 2016 by A.R. Cook

This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the publisher.

Cover design by Keith Robinson

Dragonfire Press

e-Book ISBN: 978-1-958354-46-9

Originally published by Knox Robinson Publishing in 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Glossary

Moments of History

About the Author

Prologue

This is a mess. This is a horrid, horrid mess.

Panicking isn’t going to fix this. Keep spinning.

This is irreparable! The blasted, evil, selfish, murderous—

Calm yourself. You don’t see our third mind getting into a tither, do you? This can be repaired. It will take time, but time is all we have, isn’t it?

Our third mind never gets into a tither, because it came to terms eons ago that we were all going to perish. You don’t care because all you think about is what’s already happened. I worry about what’s happening now, and this…this is disastrous! What if the entire Curtain unravels? What if we have everything from our world spilling into the other, or vice versa? Humans finding out there are minotaurs, dragons, sea nymphs, everything they’ve believed to be in their imaginations alone. What if—

If all that were going to happen, I’m sure our third mind would know. And therefore, it would be pointless to even be fixing the Curtain, knowing if our efforts were all going to be for naught. But look, she keeps on weaving as well. So hush up.

It’s all because of that boy—

The boy had nothing to do with this. It was Lord Nyx’s doing and you know it.

Lord Nyx just wanted the wolf. It’s because he wanted to make sure that boy didn’t interfere that Nyx started shredding the Curtain, looking for the boy’s threads. What does a mortal have business doing meddling in the Night God’s affairs? Causing trouble, that’s what. Trouble for all of us.

But you know what our brother wants the wolf for. Do you think the ability to devour all the worlds is somehow less malevolent than tearing up some of the Curtain? We can mend the Curtain. It’s the mending of devoured worlds that is out of our capability.

Nyx just wants the power to do so. Destroying worlds would also destroy the followers he wants. As long as everyone pledges their faith to Nyx, he won’t actually use Fenrir’s power.

And you know this, how? You’re the second mind, not the third.

Look at this! This was one of my favorite tapestries in the Curtain. All frayed around the edges. It’s hers, you know.

I know. I helped make that too.

Poor, poor girl. So much loss and suffering over the millennia. Sphinxes have never had it easy. But it’s her fault too. She brought the boy into our world, all because of some silly prophecy that the old Nyx told her.

It was more than just for that.

What, because she was fond of him? Please, just a whim. She’s been in love before.

Your sight of the past is skewed by the present. I remember all her “loves.” Not like this one.

So what? Bringing him through the Curtain, tricking him into seeking out the singing stone to free her from Madam Nyx’s shade, giving him that bloody dagger—that dagger! How does one have a dagger forged from the fang of the Great Wolf Fenrir for hundreds of years and not know what it is? Wait, where is that now? And the sword? I don’t see those threads anywhere.

They were tied to the boy’s threads. I assume Lord Nyx hung on to those.

Marvelous. Nyx has the Sword of Order, the Fang of Fenrir, and Fenrir himself. All those threads, missing. How are we going to repair the Curtain without them?

Huh. I don’t remember these pieces being sewn together.

Which ones?

The witch, the shapeshifter and the Master Huntsman. Did you do that?

That sort of…happened.

See, your panic is causing you to weave haphazardly. Focus. Maybe, maybe we can use this part as an anchor. Yes, this is a good solid tapestry. We can stitch other pieces around it and expand out from here.

Too bad we don’t have Baba Yaga here. We could use a fourth set of hands.

The witch has her tasks to finish. She’ll be more useful to the Huntsman and the shapeshifter.

What of the Teumessian? What of his threads?

He gave up the value of his threads when he pledged himself to Madness. Those threads burn my fingers, and they always find a way of unraveling and reweaving themselves into some morbid design. Leave it for now. His threads will spring up like weeds, I assure you.

This is so confusing. I used to know exactly where every thread went! Now there are hanging strands, whole pieces dangling, mortal and immortal tendrils braided together when they should be separated…the only exception being Hypnos, who should be tied to every human’s sleep patterns but now he’s not tied to a single one! One loose thread undoes the whole thing. We’ll never fix this!

Please, please quiet yourself. I don’t know how you can be this whiny when we’re all of the same mind. It’s very distracting.

Wait, what’s that?

What’s what?

Are those… our threads?

They’re all our threads.

No, no, I mean…OUR threads? The ones we put away in the sewing box?

No, that can’t possibly be…oh my…I…I haven’t seen those in…I forgot what colors they even were.

Did you put those there?

Of course not. And by the shock in your tone, I assume you didn’t either.

I put those there.

…

Gracious, she said something.

Why did you put our threads in there? We agreed, we don’t put our threads into the Curtain.

We are going to have a new spinner.

What? When? Who?

No one touches the Curtain but us! Well, us and Baba, of course. Who are you speaking of?

All in due course.

You need to stop it with all the blasted ambiguity—

He will come. He doesn’t exist yet.

That’s helpful.

Nyx may have burned his tapestry, but veins of his threads still reside in the tapestries of others. A shard of his soul was claimed by another. Whoever owns his soul, owns his fate. As long as his fate is bound to another’s, he can exist again. He can be woven again.

Are you taking about…?

Oh dear. Well, better start tidying up the place. We haven’t had a human here since…when was the last time we had one here?

Never.

Oh. Well, then, I hope he likes soup. I haven’t had a chance to go shopping yet.

Chapter 1

Le Havre, France. 1854.

“Professor Shakpana’s Eccentricities Emporium: A Menagerie of the Mind. Illuminating Lantern Show at sundown.”

That was what the sign stated above the platform. The platform unfurled like a tongue from the side of a blood-red wagon, a pop-out theater, with small oil lanterns dotted along the edge of the stage. The wagon itself was not so impressive, a rickety, wooden box upon spiderweb-spoke wheels, but behind the platform, the display within the wagon was a curious collection of bottles, jars, cases, potted plants, jewelry, and wrapped bundles. A roll of white linen hung at the top of the opening in the wagon’s side, ready to drop down as a makeshift screen for the “lantern show,” and the special projective lantern could be spotted next to the exhibition of exotic oddities.

The most striking aspect of the emporium, however, was the staggeringly tall man in the blue-and-gray suit with the cerulean top hat accentuated by a long obsidian feather. A necklace of seashells and animal teeth dangled from his neck, a bizarre adornment for his otherwise sophisticated appearance. He held a polished, black cane, topped with the ivory carving of a human skull. Despite the macabre details of his attire, he had an enticing smile of brilliant white teeth, set in a slender dark face. Slick ebony hair was tied back by a blue ribbon at the nape of his neck, and penetrating brown eyes—although, one or two of the passing onlookers would swear his eyes appeared a deep wine-red—looked out among the gathering crowd, ensnaring everyone’s interest with his hypnotic gaze.

“Welcome, one and all, to my emporium of secrets and revelations,” the man announced, his voice resonating with the depth of a kettle drum. “Come, come, don’t be shy. Marvel at our wares from around the world. From the farthest reaches of the East, to the mystical lands of the deserts and savannahs, we have collected the rarest commodities of your dreams, and your nightmares. Bones from the man-eating Bunyip of the waters of Australia…oil from the glands of a corocotta, a creature with the head of a hyena and the body of a lion…the feather of a griffin, said to cure blindness…even bottled lightning collected from the Impundulu, the great Lightning Bird. As the sun sets, we will present our light show, recounting tales of wonders and mystery, set to the melodies of our finest musician. I promise you, you have never seen a show like this before, and you will find yourself viewing the world in a whole new way afterwards.”

The man’s proclamation was enticing a crowd to gather around, curious eyes and ears hungry for the oddities he offered. The people of Le Havre had witnessed many new merchants and entrepreneurs from all over Europe come through their city in recent years, in response to the incredible industrial growth the northern French city had experienced. Only six years earlier, in 1848, the railway had opened Le Havre to a whole new world of travel and imports, as well as the docks and warehouses. This was the dawn of a prosperous age for the city, attracting all manners of men: Anglo-Saxon, Polish, Italian, and North African, which the gathering crowd assumed the man on the stage to be.

The man smiled as he beckoned the interested clientele to come up to the wagon. “Tell Professor Shakpana what it is you seek, what miracle you require--no matter if your problem is trivial or dire. Or, if you prefer a more tender hand, the lovely Lyssa is at your command.”

With that, the professor flourished his hand to his right, and from around the back of the wagon, a tall lithe woman, with flowing curls of russet hair and alabaster skin, glided forth. Her image was strikingly different from Professor Shakpana—perhaps it was because his darker tones made her lightness all the paler by comparison—she was a walking, breathing marble statue. Her dress was off gold with flecks of brown, a gauzy mockery of a serval’s skin, and a similar feline intensity glistened in her chartreuse eyes.

Those eyes captivated all men who dared to look into them and filled every woman with inexplicable envy. Lyssa had a craving for capturing eyes. While some might say they are windows to the soul, eyes were doors to the soul for her, allowing her complete access into minds and hearts—and twisting them into whatever knots of distortion she devised. This was why, when her eyes fell upon one in the audience who refused to allow her entry—a young man who was looking distractedly away—she felt a ravenous hunger to know what was behind that boy’s ocular door. She passed right in front of him, pausing ever so slightly and tilting her head as to shake him from his reverie.

The young man glanced up at her, and his eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. He was surprised—no, he was confused, as if her awareness of him was unexpected. He must have been about eighteen years in age, unless his lean frame and head of thick dark-brown hair made him look younger than he truly was. Lyssa gazed into his chestnut brown eyes, hunting for the youthful innocent, the lovesick poet, or the over-eager adventurer so common in these naïve fawns.

She was surprised to find absolutely nothing. Empty eyes holding no path, no direction, no passion or wonder. Perhaps this one was already broken, drained of his exuberance by hardship, loss and pain? No, because that would have been reflected in his eyes. Sadness and anger were more palpable than happiness and bliss. But this boy’s soul, it was nothing, startlingly nothing. After all, any living thing has something, no matter how meek or small. It was almost as if…this boy wasn’t complete…a vacant vessel.

How unusual, she thought. Oooh, I do think the professor will like to cure this one.

She looked over her shoulder at the Professor, who was already eying the odd young man. He sensed the peculiarity too, and a crooked, wolfish grin was twisting the corners of his mouth upwards.

“You, young man,” he called, pointing the skull of his cane at the boy. “What mysteries do you seek answers to? What curiosity ails you that the professor can remedy?”

The young man glanced back and forth between the professor and Lyssa, while his hands remained buried in his pockets. His eyes fell to his shoes, soiled with the thousand stains of traversing the wasteland of poverty, and he shook his head.

“Perhaps a thief has stolen your tongue,” the professor said, to which the crowd chuckled. “But I say, what one loses can be then replaced by something all the better. How about the tongue of an Akaname? Five feet long and can clean a floor spotless.” From his display of wares, he snatched and brought forth a sealed jar with a warty pink coil inside, certainly reminiscent of a tongue but the murky greenness of the liquid that it bobbed in made it difficult to tell.

“I think he has a tongue, but it is shy,” Lyssa replied. She brushed away a strand of hair from the young man’s face with one of her slender, flawless fingers. “My expertise is curing shyness.”

The young man narrowed his eyes at her. He did not find this medicine show amusing, these shysters pedaling facetious fibs. If anything, he felt more ill by standing there, these strangers snaring him with their greedy gazes—he knew they had pinned him as some fool who would be willing to part with his money. The joke would be on them, however, since his pockets were as empty as their promises. The only reason he had joined the crowd as the flashy red wagon had rolled by was because something about the wagon itself, the blood-painted vessel that carried the bits and pieces of supposed “enchanted” entities, plucked at a resonating string in his otherwise silent mind.

Two weeks. That was how long, he figured, he had been in Le Havre since he had awoken on the shore of the English Channel a few miles outside the city. Had he been shipwrecked? Kidnapped? Simply taking a stroll, then he fell and hit his head? He couldn’t recall. Indecipherable fragments of memory wafted in his mind for the first few hours as he had trudged along the road towards the city—dark eyes burning into him, an agonizing female cry, birds in cages, demonic shadows—but they had been swept away as he blended into the hustle and bustle of Le Havre. Finding a place to stay and something to eat took priority over wrestling with his wayward mind to retrieve lost memories, so he decided to ask around if anyone needed a worker, as he would do any labor in exchange for shelter and meals. Since the young man couldn’t remember his own name, he chose to introduce himself as Degare, meaning “lost one.” At least his memory of the French language had not disappeared.

Everyone’s reaction to him—or lack thereof—confounded him at first. Degare did his best to be cordial and upstanding, despite his appearance; his clothes were thread-frayed and sullied, yet there was hint that they had once been of fine quality, fashionable even. He also didn’t reflect the misfortune-stricken poor that harbored much of Le Havre’s alleys and docks; aside from being plagued by amnesia and weariness, the young man was healthy and in perfect condition to work. Yet to everyone he spoke to, they would stare blankly at him for a few seconds—or, more accurately, stare right through him—and then turn back to whatever they had been doing, as if blatantly ignoring him. He figured people did not want to bother with him, and as the day wore on he became desperate for someone to acknowledge him. When he walked into a baker’s shop, with warm, fresh loaves sitting on the countertop, Degare picked one up, expecting the baker to ask for payment or to assist him somehow. But the baker, to Degare’s amazement, looked at the loaves, counted them, recounted them, and then called to a back room,

“Marie, didn’t we have twenty loaves out here? Did you sell one and not tell me?”

Degare held out the loaf towards the baker, but still the flour-dusted man did not seem to know he was there. He spat a sharp, “Hey!” to the baker, who finally lifted his eyes towards Degare—and then looked away again, instantly forgetting. Hunger rumbled in Degare’s stomach with a ravenous ferocity, so while the shame of thievery hung around his head like a noose, he turned and left the shop, devouring the loaf as fast as dogs pick meat bones clean. As night trotted in on hooves of darkness, he made his way to the nearest church, hoping that they would take in a lost soul for the night. Again, no one at the church seemed to be aware of his coming or going, so he nestled in among the other homeless who were staying the night in one of the foyers and fell into a light dreamless sleep.

That was how it was for the next two weeks, as Degare could help himself to anyone’s food or wares without consequence and could sleep anywhere without question. He became bold enough to stay at one of the nicer inns, occupying unused rooms for the night by helping himself to the innkeeper’s keys (and putting them back where he found them) and “borrowing” some food and drink from the kitchen, not too much to cause a stir since Degare did not eat much. It gnawed away at him to take advantage of people and leave them confused and sometimes even frustrated and not knowing how they lost things, but it kept Degare’s stomach full and his body warm at night. As Degare traversed the city searching for answers about his predicament, he got a close view of his fellow forgotten and destitute that shivered in the corners and shadows of the slums. While so much of Le Havre was thriving from incoming trade and industrial improvement, the lowly suffered fever, the siren call of alcohol, and gut-grinding hunger. Thus why, when presented with a gaudy medicine show designed to deceive customers out of their hard-won money for nothing more than frivolous fabrications, Degare was less than entertained by Professor Shak-whoever and his angelic assistant—whom he was sure was far more devil than angel. But he was somewhat relieved that someone, finally, acknowledged his presence, and because these two people did, the rest of the crowd was noticing Degare as well.

The professor tucked the tongue-filled jar under his arm. He rubbed his chin, his performance-ready smile melting into a calculating grin. “Tongues, boldness…such commodities are valuable only to gossips and braggarts, no? But when confronted with an intellectual mind, ah, there is the true power. I can bottle brains, but the mind would be a terrible thing to lose, wouldn’t it?” He leaned forwards on his cane towards Degare. “But then, you would already know that.”

Degare snapped his gaze straight up at the professor.

With a flick of the hand, the showman produced a strip of green paper from the air and held it out towards Degare. “Perhaps I can shed a little ‘light’ on what ails you. A free pass to my light show this evening. I promise that you will find it enlightening. It might even guide you on your way, eh, lost one?”

Degare tightened his lips. There was no way this professor would know his name, let alone that he was memory deprived. Unless…was this medicine man responsible for Degare having lost his memories in the first place? What was a light show supposed to “enlighten” him about?

Lyssa went over to the stage, taking the ticket from Professor Shakpana and delivering it to Degare with an ivory-shine smile. “Do come to the show,” she cooed. “We love having a captive audience.”

With a beat of hesitation, Degare grasped the ticket with his index finger and thumb, as if he was touching a snot-soaked handkerchief, and slid it out of Lyssa’s hand. The crowd pressed in closer to the stage, eager to inspect the curious jars and request tickets for the light show, but Degare was oblivious to it as he turned and walked away, stuffing the ticket into his pocket. For the next few hours until sunset, the penetrating eyes of Lyssa lingered in his thoughts, and yet he was acutely aware it was not because he found her pleasing or beautiful. It was because she had rooted herself in his conscious and refused to release him until he returned to the Eccentricities Emporium.

More bizarre than that was how this notion of someone invading his thoughts seemed as familiar to Degare as the skin on his bones.

He should not go back. Whether those two were just clever frauds, or truly did know something about him, Degare knew there was something unnerving about that medicine wagon. But this was the first time in two weeks that he had found something that could help him discover who he was and what had happened to him. He could either keep living as a food-pilfering phantom, or possibly unlock the crypt of his mind.

The wagon looked different in the fading light of dusk, its bright red color decayed into the bruised maroon of a rotting passion fruit. The stage had somehow grown larger and was now cloaked by a gauzy tent with a small flap that allowed anxious show attendees to slip inside. Degare spotted a group of somewhat intoxicated boys coming to see the show, so he slipped in among them as they entered the tent. Rows of stools were set up in two sections, with a large black box-contraption in the middle aisle. A drapery of white linen stretched across the full length at the front of the tent. Degare picked a stool in the back row to sit on, figuring he’d go unnoticed among the full audience.

“I’m so happy you decided to join us,” came the saccharine voice of Lyssa, who had appeared on the seat next to Degare without his notice. Her hair was done up in a loose bun, accentuating her long, slender neck. “Do you like magic lanterns?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Degare replied. “If I have seen one before, I don’t recall.”

“It’s quite a fascinating device. Do you see those three brass cylinders sticking out in the front? Those are lenses, and each one has a door behind it to place a candle. There are slots behind each lens for circles of glass, which have painted pictures on them. When the light of the candles passes through those painted glass circles, the pictures will—”

“Project onto that screen in front of the box. It is designed to tell stories with a series of images, like a picture book,” Degare finished for her. Wait, how did he know that?

Lyssa gazed into his eyes. “You’re smarter than you look. Well, I can promise that you won’t forget this show. They say Professor Shakpana’s light shows are life-changing.”

“Shakpana…where does he hail from? From across the sea to the south?”

“Oh, much farther away than that, but also as close as the hairs on your head.” She combed his bangs with her fingernails, but he jerked away from her. She giggled. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, David. I’m really quite nice, if you are nice to me.”

Degare’s jaw went limp for a moment. “What did you call me?”

“The show is starting soon. I must take my place.” Lyssa stood and glided away to stand beside the white drapery at the front of the tent.

Degare was prepared to get up and follow her, demanding for her to tell him what she knew, when the boisterous voice of Professor Shakpana boomed in the tent.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and curiosity-seekers of all kinds!” the charismatic voice reverberated, as Shakpana entered the tent with a dramatic glide. He wore the same blue-and-gray suit, although the colors seemed brighter now, and his necklace of seashells and teeth had been replaced by a collar of vulture feathers that gave the impression of a tufted mane. The same kind of ivory skull that was on his cane was now attached to the front of his feathered trim, but this one had red rubies in the eye sockets that glistened like moonlight on fresh blood. “Welcome to the Eccentricities Emporium’s Illuminating Light Show. I warn you, this is not the same fair you may have seen from your traveling lantern men, or some crude shadow puppetry as children play on the walls. They say that light can play tricks on the eyes, so what you may believe are mere illusions could become far more real to you than you think. People have been known to contact the spirits of the dead with magic lanterns, and while I make no promises of conjuring ghosts, you may see more tonight than your brain is willing to handle. So those who are faint of heart, and sleight of mind, you have been warned.”

Degare could not help but snicker. All that over a simple light show? This professor was certainly charging up the audience’s anticipation; hopefully he could deliver what he promised, or otherwise face an onslaught of disappointed customers demanding their money back.

Lyssa brought forth—from where, Degare was not sure, as it seemed to magically appear in her hands—a beautifully carved lyre, shaped like a horseshoe with two horse heads on each side. The strings shimmered bronze, and as Lyssa began to caress them, they sung with gentle, calming notes—a mother’s lullaby. Professor Shakpana stood beside the magic lantern, producing three painted glass disks from his coat pocket and sliding one into the slot for the topmost lens. A pastel picture of a man and a woman, both in classic Grecian togas, dancing in a lush forest while the man played a lyre much like Lyssa’s, flashed onto the screen.

“Orpheus and Euridice, lovers so true,” Shakpana spoke in a lyrical, half-singing voice. “She a nymph of the trees, he the son of a muse. His music was so sweet, it could tame the wildest heart. So deep was their love, they could never be apart. But on the morn of their wedding day, a bite from a snake took Euridice away.”

Another slide rolled into place, this one of the woman from the first slide being bitten by a winding, black-scaled snake…

Degare blinked, feeling a slight wooziness. Why was that snake two-headed? He could’ve sworn it was a regular snake when the image first appeared on the screen. Not only that, but whoever painted this slide had gotten the story wrong. It was clearly Orpheus, the man, being bitten by the snake, not Euridice—although why hadn’t that been apparent to Degare right away? And why did Orpheus look so different in this image compared to the first? He looked…sort of like…

Degare looked down at his weather-beaten clothes, then back up at the slide. Orpheus was wearing the exact same clothes as he was, but in their best state, clean and pressed. Degare shrunk down on his stool. Was the rest of the audience noticing these things? No one said anything about the strange errors in the picture—in fact, they seemed oddly, immersively captivated.

“To regain the precious prize he had lost, down to Hades Orpehus went, no matter what cost,” Shakpana continued—somehow, as he was no longer visible in the tent.

Another image flashed on the screen. This one was of Orpheus—now a withered, old man still wearing Degare’s clothes—speaking to Hades, who for some bizarre reason had been depicted as a massive, brown lobster.

Not Hades. Geras. Old age personified.

This was not the story of Orpheus and Euridice.

Degare looked across the tent to Lyssa, who began to play her lyre faster, more urgently, and the music had taken on a more chaotic, sour voice. It sent a prickling sensation up the back of Degare’s neck, but his eyes returned to the screen—not because he was trying to make sense of the strange imagery he was seeing, but because he couldn’t resist.

“To bring his love back from death, he must prove his worth and pass a test.”

The screen flashed the image of now young Orpheus—Degare—holding a glowing, turquoise stone in his hands, while he kneeled next to the body of a—lion?—lying on the floor, dying. No, not a lion. A lion’s body, yes, but the head, the face, was human female, gorgeous but feral, with flowing dark hair and eyes of gold. Two rumpled wings were folded against her shoulder blades, feathers of violet-black.

This story was out of order. But this had happened. Degare could feel, in his gut, that all of this was true. This was his story. Or maybe this was all some dream, the first he had had in two weeks. But it had to mean something. Who was he kneeling next to in the image?

“With his music, his God-given gift, the veil of death from his love, he did lift.”

An image of Degare playing—a violin? It was larger than a violin; a viola?—surrounded by an atmosphere of spiraling mists of rose, gold, and blue, while the lion-woman had regained her health and luster, although she was wearing a grand peach dress in this image, and her shape was more human than lion.

That moment had been a dream. When he had saved her, with the song he had composed—

This was crazy. Degare needed answers, right now. But he couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the screen.

“But just as he believed he had saved the girl, she was stolen away, back to the dark world.”

The story was not on the screen anymore. It poured through the room, as the visage of the lion-woman, animal-bodies and winged again, howled while being confined in a large cage, reaching her paws out to Degare. Not Degare in the image, but the real Degare, sitting in the audience. But the cage was stolen away as a giant shadow, a monster with the moonlight pale face of a man shrouded by long midnight-black hair and raven wings that encompassed the room, stared down at him, burning loathing and revulsion into Degare with his solid obsidian eyes.

Degare wanted to run. He wanted to scream and tear his way out of this tent. But he was pinned, while fear consumed him with a sinister glee, while the visage of this giant death-like creature hung over him.

“Having lost his love, his music was tainted by sadness. And the song of Orpheus’ lyre filled everyone who heard with madness.”

Orpheus’ lyre…Degare forced his head to look back at Lyssa. Her music had become manic, the notes whirling out of control as her fingers plucked so furiously, she threatened to snap the strings.

The music was making Degare feel sick again. But now he could see he was not the only one. The people in the audience started to squirm, some moaned pitifully, others began to clutch at their hair and growl. One woman fell out of her seat and withed on the floor, mumbling something incomprehensible.

Degare felt the urge to go help the woman, but as he leaned forwards to stand up, he saw them. He saw all of them.

Hovering above the heads of every single person in the audience were ethereal shapes, translucent but indigo in color. They seemed human in form one second, then more like vultures, then more like dogs, and they continued to shift except for their eyes. Red, shining, ruby eyes.

And every one had a smiling mouth of jagged, pink-stained teeth.

Degare craned his neck back to look straight up. A pair of ruby eyes was looking down at him, but the smiling mouth immediately shut into an uncertain frown. The phantom cocked its head at him, and then brought a wavering hand around towards him.

“STAY AWAY!” Degare screamed with such force, his lungs nearly exploded.

The music ceased into dead silence. Every pair of ruby-red eyes turned to Degare, staring.

Degare’s breath caught in his throat, and tears of terror stung in the corners of his eyes. I guess this is the end of the story…

Chapter 2

“It’s rude to interrupt a performance, Mr. Sandoval.”

The indigo creatures were gone. The audience was gone. The tent, the magic lantern, the images, were gone. It was all replaced by a small room, ten feet long and eight feet wide, with two plush red chaise lounges placed across from one another. Bottles of various colors, straw dolls, mobiles of bones, and dried herbs dangled from the ceiling on braided ropes, and jars of the advertised oddities of the Eccentricities Emporium were scattered about the room. It was amazing how much could fit into such a small space, and despite the cramped surroundings, Professor Shakpana looked positively at ease as he sat on one of the chaise lounges, tapping his fingers on the head of his cane.

Degare blinked, as his conscious scrambled to make sense of what was going on.

“Where…how…what were those…?”

“You are wondering about the Obambous?” Shakpana said with a grin. “Spirits of insanity. Invisible to the naked eye…at least, the naked eyes of the living. I didn’t think you would see them either, since I always considered not existing different than being deceased. But that might be splitting hairs.”

“Not…living…are you saying I am dead?”

Shakpana sighed. “If only. It would make things so much easier. But first, if you don’t mind…” He started scratching around the edges of his face. “This illusion is irritating me. The things we do for show business, eh?”

He then peeled his face off.

Degare’s tongue jumped backwards down his throat as Shakpana removed his facial skin like a later of fabric, and beneath it was a featureless, smooth surface like marble, with black and white vertical stripes painted on it. He hung his “face” on a hook on the wall behind him. “Ah, much better,” he said, despite no longer having any visible mouth. “Now, where were we?”

“I…I…” Degare could barely urge his lips to move.

“You’re much too tense. A little liquid courage should make you more conversational.” The lovely Lyssa was at Degare’s side with a tray carrying a bottle of deep red wine beside three glasses of the crimson liquid.

Degare took one of the glasses with a shaking hand but didn’t drink. “Wh…where am I? You called me Sandoval, do you know—”

“Don’t be so fidgety. I like fidgety only when it’s a symptom of my work. When it’s a perfectly stable person doing it, it’s annoying.” Shakpana helped himself to one of the other wine glasses, while Lyssa took the remaining one. “Now, the problem is, I would personally prefer you to be dead, Mr. Sandoval. Bringing back the dead is simple. Bringing back a nonexistent, now that’s a trick. Nyx did quite a number on you. I would think that fool was delusional for being so concerned with you, if my Ilomba hadn’t witnessed firsthand just how troublesome you are.”

“Nyx? Ilomba? You’re not making any sense,” Degare retorted.

Shakpana and Lyssa turned to one another and laughed. “That comes with the job,” he replied.

“Frankly, you’ve had me working mental muscles I haven’t used in ages, trying to unlock your brain,” Lyssa said to their guest. “Your eyes were so empty at first, but the longer I pried, the more little leaks of secrets began to drip out of your subconscious. Which is unusual for a nonexistent. Most nonexistent have nothing at all, even less than spirits of the deceased who continue to haunt for whatever reason. Something about you lingers, David. Something that Nyx couldn’t destroy.”

“Which is why I wanted you in the first place,” Shakpana said. “By the way, when you sliced off my Ilomba’s second head, I felt that. No one has ever wounded one of my snakes before. That made me very…unhappy.”

Degare wiped a hand across his forehead. “You must be mistaking me for someone else. I don’t know what all this is about. Spirits, the dead, snakes…snakes…” The images from the magic lantern returned to him, particularly the one of a two-headed snake biting him. The feeling of teeth sinking into his arm echoed in his skin. “That story, in the tent, that was all about me, wasn’t it? Who are you people? What happened to me? You said someone named Nyx did this to me?”

“All your questions are pointless, Mr. Sandoval. The fact of the matter is, in order for you to be dead, you have to exist first. Presently, you do not, which should be evident from the fact that everyone forgets you the very moment you present yourself. As long as you are nonexistent, you are without a destiny, without a life, without an afterlife. What we need to do is get you to afterlife status.”

“Wouldn’t I rather have ‘life’ status?” Degare asked, feeling awkward to even be having such a discussion.

“Probably. But I do not. Unless, of course, you were to pledge yourself to me as a living mortal? I tend to find that much stickier than just resurrecting you as my permanent undead servant, but I admit my current minion has been disappointing. Plus, a living one has so much more to lose should he cross me.” Shakpana leaned back in his seat. “I like that kind of leverage.”

Degare felt a chill ripple throughout his veins. “Are you serious? Are you…can you…raise the dead? Those ghosts I saw back there, weren’t just some illusions made by the magic lantern?”

“Control the dead, inflict smallpox, invent sesame seeds, he’s quite talented,” Lyssa said. “I, however, merely drive people crazy.”

“Just like every woman,” Shakpana said.

“Oh hush, you love that I can do that,” she replied with a honey-dipped sweetness.

Degare—or, as these people were calling him, David Sandoval—stood up, as several of the rope-hung items bumped into his head. “You still haven’t told me WHO—ARE—YOU—PEOPLE??”

The professor’s stripes narrowed into thinner lines, and he radiated an air of annoyance. “Being nonexistent doesn’t necessarily mean you get leniency to be stupid. We are exactly who we’ve always been saying we are. I am Professor—well, perhaps that title is a bit deceptive— Shakpana. God of Madness, although Madness itself would be more accurate. You know my friend Lyssa, goddess of the same vein, but more of the aggressive rage variety.”

“And rabies,” Lyssa added, a little too happily.

David stared at the two of them for a long moment, judging whether or not these people truly were entities of madness, or merely mad themselves. But they knew so much, why David had not been seen or heard by anyone, who he really was, his past…they couldn’t be fabricating all of this. “And, you also have the ability to make nonexistent people exist again?”

“It’s…not one of my specialties,” Shakpana admitted. “But to accomplish such an impossible feat, it would take a good deal of insanity, wouldn’t it? After all, impossible is only for those who take logic far too seriously. Perhaps, if we bind you to an already existing being, a vicarious existence…a binding to an Obambou, that might work. Then you would be bound to me as well, but you wouldn’t have any of those bothersome human weaknesses that could pose a problem.”

“You want me bound to one of your…bambis…why?” David asked, as he was scanning the room for a door to escape through. Disturbingly, there were none.

“Because Lord Nyx is infuriating!” Shakpana hissed. “He desires the ability to devour any and all worlds, in order to bring everyone under his control. His pitiful sense of order. As you might have guessed, order is not my thing, nor is having entire worlds devoured just to make a point. Because, in order for there to be Madness, there must be people to inflict madness upon. No people, no Madness. You, however, have proven to be a possible thorn in Nyx’s side—a thorn I will personally lay claim to. You belong to me, then I possess the one thing Nyx fears. Then we’ll see who exactly is dominating whom. Not to mention, if I were to gain power over the Night, oh, how many dreams of insane delusion could I spread! It’s a delicious thought.”

“But I haven’t agreed to anything,” David said. “You seem to believe you already own me. Maybe I’d rather remain nonexistent if the other option is to belong to you.”

Shakpana’s black stripes began to bubble and drip a blackened sludge down his head and along his neck. The white stripes were now a sunset red, bleeding down his front as well. “And you seem to think you have a choice in the matter.”

The glass that David was holding began to pulse. The liquid inside overflowed and a coil, the hue of an overripe avocado skin, grew out of the glass, slithering around David’s wrist and up his arm. David jumped up from the lounge and staggered, slamming into the wall as he tore at the coil with his free hand. The coil lengthened and thickened, splitting at one end into a two-prong fork and producing two reptilian heads with glittering fangs. The python entwined David, tightening into a crushing vice, and David could sense his mind being clouded by fear and confusion.

He had confronted one of these before, if the story of the magic lantern were true. What had he done last time? Sliced its head off? How, and with what? He had no weapon available to him, and he could see Shakpana and Lyssa advancing on him. Shakpana held up his cane to David, and the mouth of the cane’s skull snapped open. Out poured an indigo mist, swirling into a face with ruby-red eyes, jaws gaped open as the materializing Obambou closed in on David…

She despised how dark it was. Always, always dark.

Acacia rested her head on her forepaws, no longer aware of the coldness of the cage floor. Her eyes glanced across the bars of her prison, her teeth and claws unable to leave even a scratch on them. She had given up on trying to break free…how long ago? It felt like weeks, months, but it may have been but a few days. Time was irrelevant here. She had to wait for an opportunity, a momentary lapse of attentiveness from her captor, to strike.

After all, she was a sphinx. Sphinxes were as patient as the sands of the desert.

There was barely enough room in her prison to stretch her golden-furred limbs, or her violet-black wings, but she considered herself luckier than her fellow inmates. Suspended in the darkness not far from her were five more cages, bell-shaped and no larger than mantle clocks, that each held an unusual bird in its stomach. Although they were not true birds, that was certain. Poor Hypnos, reduced to a bizarre little bluebird with wings protruding from his head—although that particular cranial feature was nothing new to the god of Sleep, even in his traditional dream-state form. The other four, Acacia was not so familiar with, but she knew they, as was Hypnos, were the siblings of their captor.

Even thinking of their vile warden sent a hot wave down Acacia’s backside.

She wouldn’t give in to him. Oh, Lord Nyx had certainly come close to making her crack, when he thrust her into one of his shadow pools, submerging her in the freezing void while she was taunted by a legion of his twisted Shades. After having spent the last several hundred years with a Shade of Nyx inside of her—a blight set upon her by the previous Madam Nyx, planted in her belly by her loathsome cousin the Teumessian—and to have every waking moment of her life tormented by the searing pain of it inside of her, there was little else in the universe that frightened her more than a Shade. But she was free of the Shade now, so she withstood the taunting of those nasty wraiths. She focused her thoughts away from the horrid shapes, the shadowy extensions of Lord Nyx’s sinister will, and after what felt like an eternity, she had been pulled back out and tossed back into her cage.

As Acacia thought about it, she wondered why Nyx hadn’t forced another Shade down her throat to torture her or implanted one in her mind to make her concede to becoming his missionary. Why merely taunt her with the sight of them? She cringed to think what Nyx had done with Tyr—being a god-warrior from his realm of Asgard, Tyr may have been more threatening to Nyx, and the night god might have done something truly awful to dispose of him.

But there was something that writhed in Acacia’s soul even more than that, more than what would become of herself, Tyr, Hypnos, or her dear friends Gullin and Tanuki who had been left stranded back in the human world. It was that Nyx had taken something from her. Something important. Something she cared for. The worst of it was, she couldn’t remember what it was he had taken.

In a way, it was silly to feel such grief when she did not even know what it was. But it felt like a limb had been torn from her, as if an integral part of her was severed. The loss was so great that tears would tumble down her face in her most lonesome moments, and she would irritably wipe them away with her paws, not knowing what she was crying over. Whatever it was, Nyx had taken it, she just knew it. She had questioned the birds about it, but none of them had any idea what she was talking about. The sphinx vowed that once she was out of this cage, she would tear Nyx’s entire adyton apart to recover her stolen…blast it to Hades, what was it?

She caught a sudden scent. She turned her head towards the corner of her cage, where a dish of beef and barley soup had appeared. It no longer caught her by surprise when meals popped into existence in her cage; this was Nyx’s realm, after all, and anything he willed could generate from the all-encompassing night. But Acacia turned away from it, even though her stomach growled fiercely. Better to waste away than accept anything from that coldhearted thief.

“Don’t be a child,” the Night told her, his voice the very essence of winter.

The sphinx didn’t lift her head from her paws, but a snarl escaped her lips.

“It does me no good to have an acolyte who won’t eat.”

Acacia clenched her feline teeth. “I’m not your acolyte, Nyx.”

She could sense him walking around her cage, drumming his pale fingers against the bars. “You know it doesn’t have to be like this. I can force you to succumb to me, but it would be much more rewarding for the both of us if you would come to me willingly. I can be kind to my acolytes, Acacia, if they accept me and do my work.”

“Why bother with kindness? Why not have one of your Shades infest my mind and cloud my judgment to listen to you?”

The room became instantly colder. “That is the one flaw about faith. It needs to be earned through free will—the eternal problem we gods have with gaining followers. I could make you my slave whenever I wish. But your gift, your talent to persuade others with your silver tongue, will be of far more use to me than to make you my personal pet. And for you to garner more followers for me, you must be truly devoted, heart and soul and mind, to me. Hearts and souls are the two things my Shades cannot infect. Yet, I grow stronger every day, so if you continue to defy me long enough, you might find out just how wretched your fate could become.”

Acacia sat up, throwing back her mane of mahogany hair. “I’m sure you will have no issue garnering followers to you if you threaten them with the destruction of their world, once you have Fenrir’s power…” She glanced sideways at the Night. “Speaking of which, for someone who claimed it would take a few days for your Shades to drain the Great Wolf of all of his abilities, you are taking your sweet time with it.”

The moon-silver face of Nyx grimaced, the empty black orbs of his eyes narrowing. “The wolf has proven to be more uncooperative than I thought, despite how you and your friends weakened him.”

“My friends…why will you not tell me where Tyr is? Surely you don’t think a warrior like him will agree to be your acolyte as well—”

Nyx held up a hand to quiet her. “You should be less concerned with the warrior and the wolf and think more about what is best for you. Perhaps I should appeal more to your sphinx nature for your compliance.”

Acacia was disoriented for a moment as the space around her shifted. She now sat upon a great marble throne, the arms carved to imitate two winged lions with open jaws, and before her stretched the gathering room of a grand temple. It reminded her of the Temple of Apollo in

Greece from centuries ago, when she had visited the Oracle of Delphi once for a prophecy. White columns lined each side of the room, and the sight of it tugged at her heart, aching for the grandeur of her mother’s homeland from so long ago. She jumped, startled, at the sight of the whole floor teeming with people dressed in violet-black garments, on their knees, and their heads bowed towards her. She realized they were all droning some kind of mantra—she could make out the words “wisest,” “most divine,” “mistress of riddles,” and the most repetitious, “Great Sphinx.”

“You don’t understand anything!” Acacia roared, and with a mighty swipe of her paw, she broke off one of the heads of the throne-lions and it rolled down into the throng of people. “What makes you think I want to be idolized? That’s your sick desire, Nyx! You don’t know what I want…what I want…” Her claws extended, her fangs bared, and her voice dropped into a deep, predatory rumble. “I want what you took from me.”

The illusion around her dissipated, and she was in her cage again. Nyx was directly in front of her, his expression calm but stone.

“I have taken nothing from you,” he said.

“YES, YOU HAVE!” Acacia thundered, and she lunged at Nyx even though she knew she could not break through the bars. “I don’t know what it is, but I will get it back.” A thought struck her, and she knew what she was about to ask would be a gamble, but she wanted to see what Nyx would say. “You want me as your acolyte. Then I will pledge myself to you, heart, mind and soul, if you give back to me what you took. It’s that simple. And don’t try to trick me by handing me just any old thing. I’ll know what it is you took when I see it. We sphinxes have a way of knowing, you know.”