Daughter Of Her Silence And His Solitude by Fermn Moreno Gonzlez

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Daughter Of Her Silence And His Solitude

Fermn Moreno Gonzlez

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Once there was a time of hopeful quietness in Memphira. It was then that its
yoke-enslaved denizens dared to look up at the unmoved divinities of the sky and
downwards at the yearning deities deep down buried into the underground with a
grimless smile, unlike it was their custom. Rumour had it that the ivorish witch
had grown fond of Lirannus the necromancer in an unexpected nightly meeting.
Lirannus left this once his well beloved damp-oozing vaults emerging from his
dwell to stride along Memphiras graveyard in the light of the alight sun. Had the
watchmen been courageous enough to stand by, they would have noticed Lirannus
was not in quest for decaying corpses, but for gladioli, rhododendron and
bougainvillea, whose liveliness formed a sharp contrast with the necromancers
emaciated lividness.
Alarainar dwelled anywhere in the witches broom of the wych-elm forest,
fearfully avoided by Memphiras townspeople, for it was known many a lustful man
pretendedly on errands abroad had wandered from his path just to have a look at
the elusive sorceress of childlike face. Now that she was being wooed by the
master of the restless dead, such daredevils fate was awkwardly ignored even
when gossiping.

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Alarainars lofty beauty did not need any fixed abode, she herself being a heathen
scholar of the alchemy of the elements. The weather excepted her from its windy
rainy claws, bent as it was to her will. The earth itself transmuted into gasping
sheltering caverns, the sun but kissed her gently despite the chilly wintertime, and
bonfires spared her their flailing touch.

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So for a yearned while, the crystalline chalice of love blessed their unlikely linkage
with the luring smell of a thickened summer wine. Then the chthonian winewaiter
slipped up on marbled tesserae adorned with libidinous motives pouring off the
stenchy fetor of rotten venomous vinegar.
Whenas Lirannus wanted to pay visit to his eluding lover, he would turn up at
Alarainars worship shrine, which had been raised on a glade into the elm forest.
Therein the tortured trees reached out for the obsidian altar, as if in tongueless,
perennial cult.
As it was her custom, she was knelt down to Khorabras solitary altar, cobra-like,
paying tribute to the obscure ambiguous goddess of the elements, of whom the
cult was neither barely spread nor known due to its selfsame crypticness, even for
one used to commanding the dead if necessary.
Turned her back on though she was, murmuring aloud a sharp ahuman litany, the
clad in sable gown necromancer delighted himself foretasting her snow-white face,
bejewelled with two brownish tourmaline eyes niched shyly-slyly beneath a
goddess-like broad forehead, which would bemire Lirannus willpower once and
again. She was carelessly dressed in a manner which made stand out captivatingly
her callipygous beauty.
"Lirannus."
"Its me, oh Khorabras maiden," he spoke, addressing her the way she liked to.
"The ceremony cannot wait. Prithee you to wait."
Then Alarainar faced Lirannus. She was an inch taller than the necromancer. For a
while she gazed at the awkward bunch of flowers offered. Next, she gave him a
smile and went back to her duty.
Lirannus stood aside forestwards to sit himself down on a fallen trunk and waited.

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For many an afternoon, Lirannus met Alarainar that way, not returning until dusk
to the cosy solitude of his dwelling down below both the humble ash tree tombs
and the imposing granite mausolea. So many were his silent comings and goings,
indeed, and so much neglected he his own heathenish delving into the graves that

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Memphiras denizens almost became forgetful about his own grim penchant. Their
offspring were allowed to have a furtive glimpse from behind closed windows of
the lonely pale figure wandering around somber alleys who seemed, if anything, a
grinning, ungainly revenant gone yet after his maidenly betrothed. They did this
way until they noticed a sad look in the twilight walker. It was then that they
forbade children to come out, and devil-fearfully started chanting age-old
forgotten prayers.
That night, it was an eager Lirannus who was invoking Aphorgomon, the sullenest
oracle of the dead, by oozing his own blood from his sternum into an orichalcum
vat amidst a dozen undesecrated corpses. It was not until he had his feet
ankle-deep in that Aphorgomon deigned to become apparent. His words echoed
out of the exhumed congregants scraping vocal chords, struggling their way
through phlegmatic ducts already forsaken, and their thunderous pitch filled the
lower cavern in which such impious ceremonies had to be held. "Who hath called
on me?" the corpses screamed.
"Lirannus, Death and Decays servitor."
"What is thy pleading raised for?"
"I beg thee, oh Aphorgomon, for Gyar Vlamuult to be officiated at on the morrow
overnight," Lirannus uttered, still upon the blood-stained vat.
"The dead shall claim revenge for this whimsical rebirthing," thundered the
corpses.
"I do revere their righteous wrath."
"So may it be."
Aphorgomons footmens fading words echoed throughout the underearth domains
of the bleeding, yearning necromancer.
The following afternoon she presented herself at the graveyard to see its guards
fleeing animallike, vaguely perceiving the impending maelstrom of ungodliness to
be unchained at the main crypt of the impious cemetery.
The cave floor was bare except for a naked townswoman, tied down to a lambdashaped stake firmly put in. Above her an iron cage crammed with unclothed

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children was hanging over the maiden. The whole scene was lit by oil-burning
torches niched up aloft all around the cavern, spreading their dim glow over the
twelwe laid supine cadavers.
That sacrilegious awaiting night, Alarainar stood beside her enamoured Lirannus so
as to witness so secretive aberrant a rite, by virtue of which the dozen cadaveric
left-overs would be breathed back into a blasphemous life. Gyar Vlamuult was to
be held for Alarainars sake. Without any delay, Lirannus stepped forth, bronze
curved dagger in hand, towards the trembling captive. Once close by her, he
started intoning the pagan litany of revival, and age-old words out of a dead
language not to be heard of reverberated athwart the stony cave. Simultaneously,
he was brandishing his blade, carving a shallow blood stream upon the maids
umbilicus. Her screams beyond hysteria mingled with the necromancers psalmody
and the living-to-be began to quiver in the dim torchlight.
Even as they started to sit up, Lirannus, close by the rough wall, reached out for a
greased lever half hidden in it and lowered it. An ominous creaking toiled up inside
the wall to meet the hung iron cage. Then it began slowly to shrink by gnashing
and fitting the cutting edge of its heavy bars in an abyssal jaw-like way. The inside
blood was aforethought to drip down the overbulging-eyed womans own blood.
The most precocious corpse, a former catamite dismissed from Memphiras distant
court, knelt up to grope its way along the surrounding cavernous uterus towards
the womans detached legs. Once arrived, he knelt down to crawl beneath her
vulva. Therein he waited for a while until the crimson dripping sprinkled him, and
it rose again amidst both woman and childrens whining, frenzied moan.
One by one, before the silent gaze of both lovers, the rest of the bodies
underwent the sinful initiation rite. The blood ran out just when the latter
abhorrence had completed its snaking along.
Later on they formed up in a clumsy semicircle and staggered to the sorceress.
So much surprised was then Lirannus that he froze while she reacted to it. The

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pagan witch of the elements invoked unthinkably chilly gusts out of nowhere in the
rancid air of the cave, and the deads joints stiffened. Natheless they still moved
grimly on. Alarainars alabaster fingers made a brisk gesture, following aptly
arcane airy pathways, and their sinuous dance resulted in a sort of living
conflagration from the former oil torches. Lirannus controlled himself finally, and
met Alarainars hazel eyes. Aught in his gaze warned her to restrain herself. "Get
thee behind us!" Lirannus told them sternly. "We want our mother," a dozen
deafening throats replied, still slowing down against the unnatural wind. "Do take
the bloodstained one, who really and truly has just given birth to thee. This done,
you will leave." So the dead did, and left the graveyard cave, amidst cool winds
and raging flames on the watch for their departing. Then Lirannus looked once
more at the sorceress, in a silent apology. Notwithstanding, Alarainar appeared to
be pleased in a certain unfathomable way.
After that, the flustered necromancer did try his best so much so that bare liches
danced before her the phrenetic ball of the nine desecrated maidens, in the light
of unknown stars, and better shunned weird semihuman breeds strongly related to
bone-gnawing cults came in to pour her out amaranthine liquor in carnelianincrusted ambergris chalices obtained by late skindivers at the tempestuous
Nigrescent Sea. An army of demoniac manhunters was told to devastate both
Memphiras and the neighbouring cities quarters and be back with the most
beautiful slaves for her to immolate in Alarainars own unwholesome masses. She
remained distant, discourageously aloof, although flattered.
Gradually, she went into seclusion, wrapped up in both her own sullen gods and
maddening scholar silences, although their relationship was not broken off, but
disregardingly frozen and put aside, and briskly dusted down for Alarainars own
sake. Then she would demand the most from a lover, to give naught in return.
It was after two years of rare scattered passionless meetings filled with overdone
inhuman exigencies that the necromancer sent one of his thralls to the elm forest.
Lirannus, lord of the dead, who spoke evenly with the charnel gods of decay and

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the worms of the earth, had discovered, to his dismay, that there were words he
could not even utter before her extraneous words of love, quarrel and grief,
words of flesh and desire he could not bear incomprehensibly. She virtually had
retired into herself, but these hushed up words still lingered. And hurt.
Elphiria, the liche-woman, sneaked about the nightly town of Memphira
forestwards. There were few townsmen under the moonless sky who would dare
even to peep through a window now, on the assumption that they could notice the
things muffled footfalls.
Once Elphiria made her furtive way to the wood, she edged out to the glade to see
Alarainar knelt down, fully lost in her self-abusing cult of silence, only broken by
her quiet droning on behind the slate lectern of Khorabras shrine. Engrossed in
the cryptic lore whose impious enchantments had always been her true and
unbeatable betrothed, Alarainar did not catch Elphirias approaching around the
edge of the forest. Neither the viper-demon the liche-woman freed upon the
cotton grass. The serpent snaked along hisslessly, unnoticed, and buried its fangs
in the sorceress alabastrine ankle. Alarainar crumpled up. The liche-woman
picked up both the devilish snake and the corpse, heading for the wizards abode.
For many a night, deep down into a drill vaulted mausoleum, whose former
dweller had departed from his marble carved coffin following the necromancers
will--, protected by its airy vaults, Lirannus slept lovelornly with Alarainars
corpse, deluding himself eagerly, childe-like, with her silent willingness which
easily was taken for a lovers desire by a lovesick sorcerer. The silken profound
bottom of the bier, a long while back uninhabited, witnessed both his desperate
caressing and the blaming, still acquiescence of death. Lirannus mind was slower
than his body to accept that it manoeuvered the limp Alarainar marionette-like
night after night.
Once the raw revelation grew up, Lirannus raving rose reverberating athwart the
gloomy tomb. Then, ere decay took over her, he transmogrified her into a lyche,
and sealed Alarainar into an orichalcum urn.

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For a while, Lirannus did delve dementedly into the ominous mysteries of his own,
secluded and detached from everything in his pestiferous catacombed domains but
deadlore. Still, his bereavement imposed itself, like a huge bloody-winged vulture
hovering round uncontested maggoty carrion, and eventually he must release the
captive lyche-sorceress out of her confinement. The heinous transmutation had
rendered a pristine eldritch pallor unto her, so much so that the slightest glow
seemed to originate in her, halo-like, as though a pagan goddess in a banned
reredos. Alarainar stood again, loftiest of the loftier, even in this spoofed death.
From then on, Alarainars deadness presided at Lirannuss hewn-rock study,
ever-straight, never weighed down, like an impending hex, watching on and on the
necromancers getting absorted in his own frowsy dusty incunabula. She would
behave herself liche-like, almost exquisitely, staring at him continually with her
lidless mien, paying absolute serfdom to his will but for one thing she spake not,
to Lirannus great and baffled vexation.
It did not last long for the lovelorn hermit, driven by a maddened unquenchable
lovesickness, in the gnawing loneliness of his catacombs, to throw down his archaic
voumes, succumbing to his former loves deadpan reproach, and conceive the
morbid idea of engendering a son born from the mute liche that was now his
beloved. A well-nigh impossible intention, liches being infertile, however yearning
their paramour is. Aught Lirannus foreknew was not going to obtain from
Aphorgomon.
Late in one ill-fated night, Lirannus was toiling along athwart the wych-elm forest,
fearfully shunned by Memphiras denizens but the late ones. The ones Lirannus
had risen. Khorabras shrine still stood on the grassy glade, its obsidian altar
tarnished, its prie-dieu empty as if for ages untold, and the tortured trees still laid
out their branches, more twisted than ever, towards the solitary heretical chapel.
The mournful necromancer was on the point of leaning his scrawny lovesick frame
upon the prie-dieu when he heard the muffled footfalls of an ominous throng. A
score of scraggy people was approaching him with the relentless tranquillity of the

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dead.
The manumitted liches paraded to shape a wide circle shutting in both Lirannus
and the shrine. Then Aphorgomon spake.
"Doest thou dare to forsake my will?" the deadmen roared.
"I want but an heir of mine to be taught, oh Aphorgomon."
"A sacrilegious brood of yours to become arch-heretic? That shall not be!"
"It is not thou who I beg from."
"It is me who thou shalt offend against if so," yelled the corpses.
"Agreed!" retorted Lirannus.
Amongst the encircling cadaverous crowd, Lirannus did lean and worshiped
Khorabra, Alarainars abstruse deity, and made the foetid goggle-eyed dead to
become the sacrifice of the heathen mass in a ferocious claw-to-claw, teethto-teeth fight, being they bound yet to his mastery with intangibly grim geases,
before Aphorgomons silence.
The offering done, a ravening chill wind hung over the putrefied entrails
vulturinely, like a lappet-faced vulture asserting its birthright upon the charnelglade. And this wind mumbled what to do for the sorceresss corpse to become
gravid in spite of Aphorgomons warning-- in a yearned voice, luringly, almost
beseechingly. Alarainars. Lirannus bowed down to it.
It was not until after yearlong unheard-of emaciating rites of blaspheme
desecration and horrific self-punishment and atonement involving both Lirannus
and Alarainars pallid body in ways never to be unveiled, that the liche-woman
gave birth without even blinking to a crippled baby into an ebon-carved bier,
before the astonished sight of the weakened Lirannus, whose scarred face, body
and soul would have constituted the nightmare of the most relentless penitent.
Lirannuss daughter.
Strangely enough, eager as he was for a male to be initiated into the deadlore, the
born female did not seem to disappoint him. Much on the contrary, her invalid
beautifulness, her snow-white necropolitan features, so much Alarainar-like, her

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wasted away little limbs, her disquieting languorousness, all were the strains unto
which Lirannus danced, like a hamadryad lured by a sibilant snake-charmer,
delving wildly into forgotten waxed scrolls and papyrus parchments in quest of
healing spells for her, paying no heed either to rest or feed, sustaining himself
with pestiferous phials and pernicious philtres originally intended for the deads
keep standing, before the mute staring of his undead well-beloved. The offerings
to Aphorgomon turned out to be of no avail. Furthermore, Alarainars spellbinding
voice was not to be heard evermore carried by the wind. Slowly, the obsessed
Lirannus, neglecting everything but his haunting daughters care, began to bend
down along the path of the dead, due to his unconscious mortification. The
corpses under his command, which he heeded not, except for Alarainars, started
to rot throughout the necromancers underneath abode, pervading the upper
graveyard with so sibylline a malodorousness that mourners avoided the
unwholesome place, which was sealed, amongst hurriedly whispered prayers.
At an implacably soft pace, the more cadaverous Lirannus became, the healthier
his lame daughter got.
Eventually, Lirannus felt death hovering round his lean bones, and determined to
pay his last homage to both mother and seed. Stumping along, he entered the
private cavernous chamber in which, amidst the miasma, both of them were.
Alarainar remained bolt upright close to the stony altar covered with a thick silken
veil which served as a cot, her sheer voluptuousness preserved against decay by
the heart-stricken black magician. The offspring of her silence and his solitude,
upon the stone, did not appear to notice her moribund fathers showing in.
With wavering gestures, Lirannus strove hard to lay his hands on his up to now still
untouched baby, but fell short and crumpled up to quietus. His healed daughter
glanced at her lidless staring immobile mother. Then descended awkwardly from
her petrous cradle thudding upon her defunct progenitor, to crawl away silently
down the recondite oozing nooks of her brand-new queendom.
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Last Modified: 27 September 2006

Date Added: 31 December 2001
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