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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 4892237" data-attributes="member: 3285">Castle Ambrose: Part 21 – The Ring of EibonTo Sebastian there came privily the marshal of Alar, together with the abbot Theophile, whose worn features and bowed form displayed the ravages of mortal sorrow and horror and humiliation. And the two, albeit with palpable hesitancy, asked Sebastian advice and assistance in the laying of the beast."You, Phantom," said the marshal, "are reputed to know the arcanic arts of sorcery, and the spells which summon and dismiss demons. Therefore, in dealing with this devil, it may be that you shall succeed where all others have failed. Not willingly do we employ you in the matter, since it is not seemly for the church and the law to ally themselves with wizardry. But the need is desperate, lest the demon should take other victims. In return for your aid we can promise you the Ring of Eibon that you seek. The Bishop of Alar, and the Archbishop of Hastur, are privy to this offer, which must be kept secret.""That will suffice," replied Sebastian, "if it be in my power to rid Yhtill of this scourge. But you have set me a difficult task, and one that is haply attended by strange perils.""All assistance that can be given you shall be yours to command," said the marshal. "Men-at-arms shall attend you, if need be."“All doors, including those of the abbey of Yhtill, will be opened at your request,” said Theophile in a low, broken voice. “Everything possible will be done to further the laying of the fiend.”Sebastian requested two stout horses, which the marshal was able to procure presently.  Vlad and Beldin rode forth from Alar toward Yhtill, taking a direct and little-used way that ran through the werewolf-haunted forest. Sebastian flew over the treetops. Swiftly they rode, while the sun sank in a redness as of welling blood among the tall trees; and soon the darkness wove its thickening webs from bough to bough, closing upon them like some inexorable net of evil. Deeper they went, into the brooding woods; and even Sebastian, the master of sorceries, trembled a little at the knowledge of all that was abroad in the darkness.Undelayed and unmolested, however, they came to the abbey at late moonrise, when all the monks, except the aged porter, had retired to their dormitory. The abbot returning at sunset from Alar, had given word to the porter of their coming, and he would have admitted them; but this, as it happened, was no part of Sebastian’s plan. “I have reason to believe the Beast will re-enter the abbey tonight,” said Sebastian told the porter. “We will wait outside the walls to intercept it.”After committing Vlad and Beldin’s mounts to the porter's care, they returned to the space before Theophile's window and began their long watch.Pale and hollow as the face of a corpse, the moon rose higher, swimming above the somber oaks, and pouring spectral silver on the gray stone of the abbey walls. In the west the comet flamed among the lusterless signs, veiling the lifted sting of the Scorpion as it sank.They waited hour by hour in the shortening shadow of a tall oak, where none could see us from the windows. When the moon had passed over, sloping westward, the shadow began to lengthen toward the wall. All was mortally still, and they saw no movement, apart from the slow shifting of the light and shade. Halfway between midnight and dawn the taper went out in Theophile's cell, as if it had burned to the socket; and thereafter the room remained dark.Unquestioning, with ready weapons, Vlad and Beldin stood by Sebastian’s side in the vigil. Well they knew the demonian terror that they might face before dawn; but there was no trepidation in their bearing. The warriors stood nearer than Sebastian to the forest, facing it perpetually according to a strict order that he had given. But nothing stirred in the fretted gloom; and the slow night ebbed; and the skies grew paler, as if with morning twilight. Then, an hour before sunrise, when the shadow of the great oak had reached the wall and was climbing toward Theophile's window, there came the thing Sebastian had anticipated. Very suddenly it came, and without forewarning of its nearness, a horror of hellish red light, swift as a kindling, wind-blown flame, that leapt from the forest gloom and sprang upon them where they stood, still and weary from their night-long vigil.Beldin was borne to the ground, and Sebastian saw above him, in a floating redness as of ghostly blood, the black and semi-serpentine form of the Beast. A flat and snakish head, without ears or nose, was tearing at Beldin’s armor with sharp, serrated teeth. The teeth clashed and grated on the linked iron. Sebastian cast a spell, blasting the Beast with a bolt of energy. The Beast relinquished Beldin on the ground beneath it, and writhed back like a burnt serpent. The body and members of the Beast were loathfully convulsed, and they seemed to melt in the manner of wax and to change dimly and horribly beneath the flame, undergoing an incredible metamorphosis. Moment by moment, like a werewolf that returns from its beasthood, the thing took on the wavering similitude of man. The unclean blackness flowed and swirled, assuming the weft of cloth amid its changes, and becoming the folds of a dark robe and cowl. Then, from the cowl, a face began to peer, and the face, though shadowy and distorted, was that of the abbot Theophile.Vlad, who had yet to join in the fight, turned suddenly. Vlad struggled mightily as the beast threatened to overcome him.  First he shuddered towards Beldin, then towards Sebastian, lifting and then lowering his blade, sweat dripping from his brow.  The Beast sought to control the Milandisian when it could not reach the dark-kin’s mind, but mighty Vlad fought it with all of his being.  Gathering his will, Vlad shook off the effects and struck back at the thing with his blade.The face melted again into waxy blackness, and a great column of sooty smoke arose, followed by an odor as of burning flesh commingled with some might foulness. And out of the volumed smoke there came a single cry in the voice of Theophile. At last, the sable fumes began to lift, ascending and disappearing amid the boughs, and a dancing golden light; in the shape of a will-o'-the-wisp, went soaring over the dark trees toward the stars. The stench of burning passed from the air, together with the mighty foulness; and of what had been the Beast there was no longer any trace. Beldin rose, unharmed beneath his mail, and he and Vlad stood beside Sebastian, saying naught. “The Beast came upon us unaware,” reported Sebastian to the other monks. “It gained the abbot's cell before we could prevent it, and had come forth again, carrying Theophile with its snakish members as if to bear him away to the sunken comet. I exorcised the unclean devil, which had vanished in a cloud of sulfurous fire and vapor; and, most unluckily, the fire had consumed the abbot. His death is a true martyrdom, and will not be in vain: the Beast will no longer plague the country or bedevil Yhtill; the exorcism I used is infallible.”The Brothers, who grieved mightily for their good abbot, accepted this tale without question. And for his efforts Sebastian was granted the Ring of Eibon.The ring had come down from ancient Hyperborea, and had once been the property of the sorcerer Eibon. It was made of a redder gold than any that the earth had yielded in latter cycles, and was set with a large purple gem, somber and smoldering, whose like was no longer to be found. In the gem an antique demon was held captive, a spirit from prehuman worlds, which would answer the interrogation of sorcerers.“Do you think they would believe the truth?” asked Beldin.“Thin is the veil betwixt man and the godless deep,” said Sebastian. “The skies are haunted by that which it were madness to know; and strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies. Unnameable things have come to them in alien horror and will come again. And the evil of the stars is not as the evil of Carcosa.”“Ever since you’ve started wearing that mask, you talk very strangely,” said Vlad.</blockquote>

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