Shadow Lords, The Thirteenth Room

CHAPTER 1

A shadow peeled away from the darkened corner and slowly followed after the man who stumbled along the street. Its shape was that of a man but it moved with such smoothness along the street that it was difficult to say that it took any steps, that it moved like a human at all. It seemed to flow along in the darkness.

But slowly. It went slowly making sure it held back away from the man so that it could not be seen. It followed him keeping to the shadows.

The man came to a street. He looked to his right and then, with a bobbing head and swaying body, looked slowly over to his left. Then he stumbled across the street.

Coming to the curb on the other side he stopped. That presented some difficulty and, after a few passes at it, he was able finally to step up and onto the sidewalk.

This sidewalk ran around a square. That square was in the middle of town. The city center.

The man looked again from his right to his left and then staggered across the sidewalk to the square itself.

Was it moving? It felt like it was moving. Everything felt like it was moving.

He stopped and tried to figure it out.

Yes, the whole world felt like it was moving and he was the only thing standing still.

An earthquake maybe?

He wet his finger for some reason and held it to the wind. What that would tell him about an earthquake was not known but it seemed like a good idea to him.

Nothing. He could still feel the earth moving around him but couldn’t tell what it was.

No matter. He resigned himself to this fact and stumbled forward a few more paces until he came to the statue in the middle of the square.

He gripped the edge of it for support but found that it was moving too.

Everything moved.

When will it stop?

He sat down on the edge of the pedestal and brooded drunkenly.

***

The shape behind him stopped and moved back into the shadows. It was patient. There was time; all the time in the world. There always had been.

***

The man shifted and looked out at the night world. He was solemn. He could hear his wife’s voice in his ear lecturing him, hectoring him for being so drunk. She wasn’t there—she was a long way away—but he could still hear her voice in his mind.

Well, so what if he had a few drinks. It was only a few.

Plum wine. That was just punch to a man like him.

And beer.

What was beer if not the drink of a man who was thirsty?

Like water.

Only he never touched the stuff. Water. Not to drink anyway. Take a shower, yes. Not that he took one all the time. There was something to being too clean. A man needed hard things to be a man and to bathe all the time, to perfume himself all the time, to comb and prissy himself up all the time, well, that wasn’t being a man.

Hardness. Toughness. That was manly.

Taking too many baths?

No.

So no water except sometimes.

But plum wine was punch.

Now vodka! That was a man’s drink! One glass down, two. How many did he have? He didn’t remember. There weren’t many in the end. It’s not like they had bottles and bottles of the stuff.

The others, they’d chase it down with something. Usually some bubbling sweet something. You’d think they didn’t like the taste.

But him? Not him! He took his without anything. Straight up. Pure unadulterated fire going down, burning its way into his vitals, burning away all the impurities that were there, that had settled there, and leaving the pure man behind.

Vodka gave him strength; vodka gave him toughness. It was as a refining fire that coursed through his veins clarifying the blood and purifying him when it was done, leaving the essence of man.

All man.

He bent over and vomited. The contents of the evening, the undigested bits of it, splattered heavily out onto the pavement.

The man wiped his mouth and gripped the statue some more to steady him.

He looked around. He hoped no one saw. He was glad it wasn’t his own village because he’d probably have met up with some of his friends by now and they would have been around for the humiliation.

He would comfort himself with the knowledge that it was the impurities that were being purged from him but others might not understand. They might think him weak—probably would—that he couldn’t take it, and had left it all out on the ground.

Not strong. They would think he wasn’t strong.

And they would laugh.

He tried to steady his world again and was able to do that some. The world was settling down now, some. It wasn’t reeling anymore, not like it had been. And the ground wasn’t dancing like it was. Not anymore.

He could still hear his wife‘s voice in his ear. She was nagging. All she could do was nag. Nag, nag, nag. But he had to be a man and men wouldn’t take that from women. He had his fishing and his time away with the boys. His friends. They’d go off to the lake, drop their lines in the water and then sit and talk and laugh and drink.

And be men.

His wife didn’t like that. But he didn’t care. He’d do it anyway. Even if she objected.

And she always objected.

To his being a man.

She beat him once. Took a broom to him. It was nothing at all. About like the tickling of a flea to him. He had come in drunk one night and had broken something or other—he couldn’t remember now what it was—it wasn’t anything important—and she had taken a broom to him.

But he grabbed it from her and turned the tables on her. He swung it until his arm got tired. She was the one who went to bed hurting.

Because he had acted like a man. That would be a lesson to her. She would think twice about coming at him again. Sober or drunk.

But she still nagged. Like when he left. He had to travel to town for some business he had to take care of, some documents he had to file for his land, and he had looked up some friends of his. From school. They had gone to work at the factory in Osorhei.

They were happy to see him and they went out for a party. To a restaurant. There had been a woman there. Pretty. She had come over with her friends and they had sung and danced and drunk toasts to everyone’s life and health until they had run out of words. And he told this women his hotel and the room number.

And she had said she would come. She had given him those eyes and fluffed her hair and said she would come.

Now he was on his way back to his hotel. He smiled as he sat and the world reeled. She would meet him there. Later. He would go to his room and wait for her.

He felt drowsy. Now wasn’t the time to sleep, though. He would go back to his room and she would be there and he would…would… forget about that shrew he had left back home.

He saw the hotel across the street from the plaza. It seemed to sway some in the light of the moon. The moon was full and shed its pale gleam on the world down below.

On a world that was still moving.

A full moon. That was the night when one had to be careful of werewolves.

The man laughed.

He didn’t believe in werewolves. He was a religious man and believed in the power of the church. He kept the holy days and made sure the priest was fed and he crossed himself when he went past graveyards. He was a pious man but it was more than that. You could never be too careful with any of that.

And, of course, he never worked on a religious holiday. That would be bad not to mention that he’d have to put up with the looks and talk from his neighbors.

He remembered that family in his village. They once worked on a holy day. People came by and told them to stop, warned them to stop, but they just waved them off. The next day, a fire burned down a house a couple of blocks over.

What caused it? The family that worked on a holy day.

The whole village blamed it on this family.

“There it is,” they had said. “You see? You had to do it and now someone is without their home for it.”

And they shunned them from then on. It got so bad, finally, that that family had to move away.

So no working on holy days.

Why did he think of this?

He didn’t know, couldn’t remember. But he had to get to his hotel.

To Sonia.

That was her name.

He stood up and staggered across the rest of the plaza.

And the shape behind him glided along after him.

When the man got to the street, he paused for a moment.

A car passed, a Zhiguli. It sputtered along spewing the smell of raw gas into the night air.

When it was gone, the man crossed the street. Slowly. He tripped over a manhole cover at one point but caught himself. Not too gracefully but at least he ended up upright.

***

Behind the man, the dark shape took another route. It hugged the shadows of the building and went around the plaza to the other side. It went rapidly like some kind of dark bird on the wing, passing along in the shadows. It crossed the street on that side and went into the hotel by the rear entrance.

***

The man came to the curb. It bewildered him. He knew he had done it before, but this one looked impassable. He tried one way, first. Then he tried another way. Finally, he short-hopped it and made it up to the top and onto the sidewalk.

From there it was across the sidewalk and up the stairs into the lobby.

The man accomplished this without any incident though he picked his way slowly and carefully to avoid any problems.

There was no one around but the night clerk. He was reading a book behind the counter and didn’t look up when the man went past.

To the right, down the hallway to his…

He stopped suddenly when he got there. There was a light in the hallway. It was a red light.

A strange red light.

It was late and the only lights on in the hallway were some small ones. These were spaced out at particular intervals to give only the barest amount of light necessary. Too much light at night would bleed into the rooms from the hallway and disturb the customers.

But the man didn’t remember any red lights.

Had they changed them?

No wait, it was coming from…from…there.

“Come and see!”

It was a voice. The man heard it. It was the voice of the man standing at the door of…of…a room.

Where did he come from?

“Come and see,” said the man again and he swept his hand toward the open doorway.

“Come and see what?” the man asked.

“Come and see your future.”

“The future?” said the man swallowing. He always wondered about the future. He consulted with an old woman in the next village often about it. She laid out the cards on the table and told him about the future. He never did anything important without consulting her.

So he wanted to know the future. He needed to know the future.

He walked over to the man who was holding the door open for him.

“How will I know the future in there?”

“Come and see,” said the man.

He smiled, turned and walked into the room.

The man shrugged his shoulders and came lurching in after him.

The room the man entered was something he hadn’t seen in that hotel or ever before for that matter. It was large much larger than his own room a couple of doors away. They walked into the sitting room which was a large living room in actuality—a very large living room. There were sofas and stuffed armchairs in it and a fireplace that a man could stand upright in over against the wall.

It looked like something from a mansion.

The man heard a thud behind him. He looked back and saw that the door was shut. He wondered who could have shut it because he and the other man were both inside the room and he and the other man were the only ones in it.

That other man was now walking to the other side of the room.

There was a table near the middle of the room that drew the drunken man’s attention. He was drawn to it because there were a number of things on it. Fine things. Gold and silver things.

He walked over to it.

If he could just slip a couple of them into his pocket…

“Not there,” said the man who was now on the other side of the room near another door.

“Here.”

The man reached down and turned the knob opening the door.

“I’m supposed to go in there? Why should I?”

“You are a man who was born and raised in a village of this country. Romania. It is a small village with what are only the meager beginnings of the benefits of this age.

“If you want entertainment, you bring out the bottle and call your friends and you sit out at the table underneath a bower or on a porch or underneath the sky itself and talk all the day long about things that make no difference.

“Or you sit in front of the television watching other people’s lives go by.

“And you earn what little money you have by selling what you produce or by borrowing it from friends and acquaintances.

“In other words, you live a little life. You live a very small life.”

“No, no,” said the man, “I am more than that.”

He puffed up his chest.

“I am much more than that. I am the man responsible for the boiler that feeds the public buildings of the village. I must keep it running so the school can be warm in the winter and so that the village head can meet with the dignitaries he must meet to do the work of the village without the cold of winter coming in.

“If I did not do this the children would be cold and the meetings of importance in our village would be impossible in the winter.”

The other man smiled.

“As I said, small. You from your own mouth admit how insignificant you are.”

“I did not.”

“Oh, yes, you did.

“You see if you did not get up one day there would be few who would miss you even though the boiler would be cold. There would be few inconvenienced by it at all in your little village. The school is small but it is still a big place for such few children as are left. And they get fewer and fewer every year.

“But, even so, there would be someone else to do it, someone else to take your place.

“There are always others to replace little men.

“But in here,” he said pointing to the door, “in here you shall see the future. In here you shall be part of the future. In here you shall be important; you shall be an indispensable man. Your contribution will be immense, your efforts will make the difference between success or failure, the success or failure of the world that is coming.

“That future hinges on you; it will be you and what you bring which shall make the world tremble and kneel.”

Suddenly, the man's face became dark and the smile vanished.

“In here boilerman!”

It was a command and the man seemed to grow before the other one while that other man himself became small, very small, the size of man that actually befitted him.

The man commanded and he obeyed. He obeyed because it was true. He was a little man and he had always been a little man, nothing at all for anything or anyone else.

He had played it up, all of it. He had played at being a big man in the village but it was all as if he had climbed to the top of a dung heap and declared himself king of the pile—as if that were much of anything.

And he hadn't even climbed to the top of his dung heap.

He crossed the room with his head bowed and passed the man as he went through the door.

The door closed behind him.

This chamber was bigger than the one he had just come from. It was appointed with the same kind of antique handiwork that the other one was though this one was much richer looking.

But this one was different in another way. In this one, there was a raised dais in the center of it.

A bier.

And on top of that was a coffin.

It was obvious what it was because of its shape. But this one was like none the man had ever seen.

Strange shapes and symbols were carved into it. And there were strange letters that seemed to flow around it, to be constantly in motion on the outside of it.

It looked old. It looked like the sarcophagus it was.

A blue light surrounded it. That was how he would have explained it anyway. But, to be more accurate, the sarcophagus was enshrouded in a shimmering pale blue light. That light was in the shape of a square, the sarcophagus in the direct middle of it.

“What is that?”

“It is your future,” said the dark man who stood close to the sarcophagus.

He beckoned for him to come near.

The man hesitated. It was all too strange. He was going to go to his room and Sonia would be there and then it would be…

What? A night in another place and then he’d be back breaking off pieces of sausage with his friends and downing shots of vodka while the whole of life, the whole of existence, passed them by.

But here, here was something big, something he could be a part of. He could feel it. There was a throbbing vitality in that room that he could not deny. There was something here, something powerful, something that had endured for centuries. He felt that. And he felt that it was something that would last, something solid, something that could steady his weak and wavering life.

He didn’t know how he knew this and he didn’t know why it was so convincing to him, but he did and it was.

He started toward the dark man standing next to the bier.

“Yes, yes, over here,” said the man grinning.

He slowly walked over until he came up close to the light that surrounded the sarcophagus.

“Touch it, here,” said the dark man touching the exact spot himself. From that spot, a faint ripple started that was immediately quenched.

The man reached out with his hand and touched the same spot with his finger. He pressed it onto what was a hard, unyielding surface. From the spot where he pressed, darker waves of blue light rippled out like those created by a rock thrown into a pond. These flowed out and around the blue field gathering momentum until they finally came crashing back into the spot his finger still pressed.

The man screamed. He tried to jerk his hand back but he couldn’t. His finger was stuck. But, worse than that, it was being sucked in. It was as if something had grabbed his finger—now his hand—and was forcing it, pulling it down, down into the pale blue light, down into the space filled by the sarcophagus.

The man started to shake and screamed louder but there was nothing he could do about it. His hand went down in, then the forearm, elbow, and up to his shoulder. And then with one final movement, the man bent in half and was sucked into the field.

The dark man placed his hands on the blue shimmering field, placed them down on the surface of it, and he lifted his head.

His eyes were closed but there was a grin on his face.

“Stronger,” he said. “He grows stronger.”

He lifted his hands and looked down at the sarcophagus.

“Very soon, my lord. Very, very soon.”

To purchase this book, go to: Shadow Lords, The Thirteenth Room