Ahriman: Sorcerer Read Free Page A

sensation of wrinkled skin moving over whipcord muscle. Then he was being pulled up the cliff, and into the mouth of a cave.
    He lay still, breathing hard, not caring that it was not real air filling his lungs. Firelight flickered against cave walls. The howls of the wolves were a distant murmur. He could hear logs crackling and popping as they burned. Wood smoke filled his nose. He flexed the fingers of his left hand. They were empty.
    Ahriman’s head snapped up and he began to rise.
    The figure standing above him straightened. A tattered robe the colour of rust hid its form, but could not hide its bulk. Muscled shoulders slumped under the worn cloth, and Ahriman saw scarred arms vanish within wide sleeves. A shadow-filled hood pointed briefly at him, and then back to the golden threads hanging from its fingers. The threads twitched and squirmed like snakes.
    ‘A long way to come for such a fragment of knowledge,’ said the figure, in a voice that crackled like the logs on the fire.
    ‘Give it back,’ said Ahriman softly, but there was a sharpened edge in the words. The figure shrugged, and held the threads out to Ahriman. He took them, noticing the pale skin stretched over the long bones of the figure’s hand. The threads folded back into his grasp again, warm and writhing against his skin. The robed figure began to shuffle away towards the light of the fire.
    ‘You will live,’ said the figure, bending and folding until it sat on the cave floor. Ahriman remembered the wound to his leg, looked down, hands reaching to clamp shut over bloody scraps of flesh. He stopped. His leg was whole. No blood marked the cave floor. He looked closer, probing with his fingers. As the firelight shifted he saw it: a pale mark on his skin, like a ragged white scar. It was cold when he touched it, but there was no pain.
    He looked up. The figure was watching him. ‘The marks of their teeth will linger for a while, but they will fade in time.’
    Ahriman ignored the words, his eyes scanning the cave, taking in the texture of the rock, the glint of crystals in the water-worn walls, the smoke-darkened roof, and the patch of night sky beyond the cave mouth. He understood the symbolism of each part of what he saw, but he was still surprised his mind had led him here.
    ‘You are thinking this is still a dream,’ said the cloaked figure.
    Ahriman said nothing, but looked into the dancing heart of the fire. The wolves had almost had him, had almost pulled him down. No matter whether he felt the pain here and now, he would feel it later. They were getting closer each time he came to this land.
    ‘Perhaps it is still a dream,’ chuckled the figure. Ahriman tried to ignore it. ‘But perhaps not.’
    ‘It is,’ said Ahriman, and looked up at the hooded figure. The firelight caught the glint of a blue eye within the tattered hood. ‘This cave is a refuge, a metaphor of a sanctuary built from memories and scraps of imagination. It is a reaction of my mind to danger, nothing more.’ He reached down, lifted a handful of dust from the floor, and let it trickle slowly through his fingers. ‘This cave is like one in the mountains of Prospero. The stars and moon of the sky outside belong to Ullanor, and this dust is the dust of the land of my birth.’
    ‘What then am I?’ said the figure.
    It was Ahriman’s turn to laugh.
    ‘A hooded stranger who asks questions, but hides his face?’ Ahriman pointed at his own bright blue eyes. ‘You are part of me, a part of my subconscious, which has broken free because of the trauma.’
    The figure nodded slowly, stirring the embers at the edge of the fire with a blackened stick.
    ‘But the wolves…’ said the figure softly, and shrugged. ‘They were real enough to kill you, weren’t they?’ Ahriman looked up, his senses suddenly tingling. The stranger’s voice had changed, had become something he had not thought to hear again. The figure turned his head slowly to look at Ahriman, the hood