Closing In on the Black Mountain: A Name to Conjure With Chapters 15-16
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Back to the Road
The group crawls out of the ruined tower to find the oasis destroyed. The Shurva wrecked everything. Vegetation is blackened scraps and ash. Only the fortress survived, protected by whatever ancient power lingers in its walls.
Uskban leads them east. Zhadnoboth complains that cutting northeast would be shorter. Uskban shuts him down. They’re not birds. The roads he knows will get them there faster. The sorcerer fumes but follows.
They find two bodies on the trail. Uskban recognizes them as the cutthroats Haz sent to alert the Zalkrings. They killed these two and two more. Uskban thanks the Goddess for making Haz a “doddering fool” who split his forces.
Sandy Gets a Theology Lesson
Sandy rides beside Uskban and asks about the Goddess. He needs to understand this world to survive. And the Goddess keeps getting more involved.
Uskban calls him a “poor excuse for a demon” but talks anyway. The Goddess is the supreme deity of Zarathandra. She’s called the “Seven-In-One.” Her face is always veiled or hidden by shadows. Some say seeing it means death. She beat the other gods in a war ages ago and rules alone.
A thousand years ago, Kels Zalkri challenged her. He lost but was too strong to destroy. His followers worship through fear. The Goddess is different. Worshipping her “expands your self.” Sandy nods along and thinks she sounds great. But he suspects she can be ruthless when it suits her.
The Zalkring Camp
They find Pognak waiting near the Zalkring camp, surrounded by pale white moths the size of doves. Moon moths. Desert tribes believe they signal the Goddess’s favor. The Zalkrings have moved north, so the group cuts through their abandoned camp.
That’s when they find the campfire. Blackened bones. A small skull smashed at the base, brain extracted. Thigh bones split for marrow.
The Zalkrings are cannibals.
Sandy stares in horror. Pognak screams and shakes his fist at the sky. Even Zhadnoboth turns away. Uskban speaks through gritted teeth: “They say they eat their victims as a way of honoring Kels Zalkri. I say they do it because they like the taste of tortured meat.”
Zhadnoboth’s Workshop
The sorcerer gets to work while the others sleep. He needs Sandy’s hair for spell components and yanks some out while Sandy is sleeping. Rude awakening.
First spell: cook a hair in an iron pot with salamander essence. The pot turns white-hot, the lid shoots into the sky, and Zhadnoboth gets engulfed in steam. The iron wasn’t pure. He goes on a tirade about the woman who sold it to him.
Second spell: a detection ring made from a corroded copper ring. He expands it by running his finger around the edge while chanting a nonsense verse about porridge and pie. He fills it with exotic ingredients and blows Sandy’s hair through. A taloned finger from beyond writes Sandy’s full name in beautiful Gothic script. Problem: Zhadnoboth can’t read Gothic. He screams at the being to rewrite it. The script crumbles. The ring breaks.
Third spell: a scrying mirror at the foot of a standing stone. This one works. Images from Sandy’s past flash through: church choir, first kiss, boot camp, catching his first fish. The sorcerer leans forward, waiting for a teacher to call Sandy’s name.
The Stone Beast
The standing stone transforms. A twelve-foot troll creature with flaking shale skin charges them. Zhadnoboth runs, leads it straight at Sandy, and vanishes in a puff of smoke. The creature targets Sandy instead.
Sandy runs for the magic mirror, hoping to lure the beast in. First try, its long strides carry it right over the mirror. Sandy twists his ankle. Zhadnoboth reappears and blasts the creature with lightning. It goes down smoking. Then gets back up.
Zhadnoboth vanishes again. Sandy, hobbling, lures the creature back. This time it stomps right in the middle of the mirror. The explosion is catastrophic. Sandy has visions: drinking with skeletons, racing on a steed of fire, playing chess with a headless king. The last vision is the most important. His dead body on a bier. A lady cloaked in shadows kisses his cold lips. Life surges through him.
He wakes up fine. Ankle healed. The creature is rubble.
Something Has Changed
Sandy’s sixth sense is stronger now. The brush with death and the magic mirror changed him. He feels things he couldn’t before.
The Goddess watches through her Pool of Gygongarian and confirms it. Sandy is “becoming the sword she needed.” He’s harder now, physically and mentally. More aware of the spiritual realm. She compares him to a late-developing wine: “unremarkable tasted young, but tasted at full maturity…”
She turns toward the darkness of Kels Zalkri and says: “Watch your shadow, dark one. Maybe your doom is stalking you and you know it not.”
These chapters mark a turning point. Sandy isn’t just a confused guy from Baltimore anymore. He’s becoming something more. And the closer they get to Tham Og Zalkri, the faster that transformation accelerates.
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