The Year Two Hundred & One,
The flesh of mortal men burst into flames at the merest touch to the Sands of Syn, but the black skeleton walked through the blood-red dunes as though it was strolling a garden. The sand slipped away beneath its feet like slimy stones on the seafloor, thwarting its pace, but impartial time saw the determined skeleton at last reach the western coast. It could travel no further in pursuit of the light, save by marching into the sea itself. The skeleton stood next to a large, green archway as the sun set.
In the morning it swept its forked tail over the crimson ashes, for there was a fiery power latent in the desert which the skeleton could sense as surely as the heat of the sun. As it sifted through the dunes next to the green archway, the skeleton discovered vast piles of gold coins, but it let them fall back into the sand, disinterested. It stood at the edge of the shoreline, neither sitting nor sleeping, only waiting for those hours of the day when the sun was strong.
Countless ships passed by; if they noticed the sand-swept skeleton, the sailors either assumed it was a statue—like the green archway—or a demon, and then they sailed away as quickly as they could. But men are each one greedier than the last and sooner or later a ship was bound to pass with a captain whose love of gold outweighed his fear of devils. When such a captain saw the piles of treasure littered beside the river, like clockwork his mouth began to water. The crew of his ship, informed that to touch the red sands with their bare skin would bring instant death, lifted the gold coins into their ship with the flat ends of their oars.
After all the gold had been loaded the crew threw chains around the unmoving black skeleton—thinking it a relic, and therefore of value—and dragged it aboard before returning to sea.
Months later, when the unlucky boat reached the western shore of the open sea, the captain and his crew were dead to the last man. Those who had dared touch the skeleton’s body were burned as if by Syn itself, and when the skeleton began to stir and pace about, the rest of the crew lost their nerve and dove overboard, making fine meals for a host of hungry wool fish in their wake. With burning sails and a hull charred black wherever the skeleton set its feet, the ship crashed into the rocky coast and sank. The skeleton crawled its way out of the shoals and up to the shore, steam rising off its body like smoke from a doused bonfire.
It walked west, as always, but it was not long before a familiar sensation overwhelmed it—it was close to home. It could feel the heat from the lake of fire under the earth. When it returned to the hollow mountain the skeleton picked up the three red eggs, still lying where it had left them, and huddled close to the well for solace after so tedious a journey.
The skeleton had traversed the Land of Lin from one side to the other; it had experienced the river, the mountains, the desert, and the open sea; most importantly, it had learned of the existence of mankind. Revitalized by the well, the skeleton grew again, but not in the fashion it had before. It grew like a man. A crack split across its skull—a crude mouth—and it uttered harsh language in imitation of the sailors’ speech. When it cursed, flames licked out from the core of its skull.
It ventured out of its cave for days at a time, exploring to the north and south; it never tried to follow the sun west again, for where had that brought it but back full-circle to its home? The skeleton stalked through the roads of distant villages in the dead of night; it hid in shadows by the side of the road and listened to the stories of weary travelers. It learned more and more of men and their ways, and of fish, and of magic, and of the Land of Lin itself. Lastly, it learned of Syn, who had turned the sky to ash centuries ago. In the ever-burning fires inside the skeleton’s skull a plan was forged.
It had heard people say that fish love nothing so much as a fresh apple. It knew from experience that men love nothing so much as gold.
The skeleton pulled down apples from the orchard that lined the west side of its mountain. Though it was blind, the apples were easy to find, for they grew like the seeds of the sun, blazing as red as hot coals. Then the skeleton crossed to the other side of the mountain where the open sea lapped against the rocky coast and cast the apples into the water. It never took long for those mermen that lived among the sunken ships there to find the skeleton’s tasty treats. It fed the fish everyday until they grew so dependant on free apples that they would have crawled out of the water for one more bite.
When the skeleton stopped feeding them the mermen nearly tore each other apart in their wild hunger. “Gold,” the skeleton said to them—its first true word.
The mermen understood; there were vast piles of coins in one of the sunken ships below the sea. They brought the recovered treasure to the skeleton and it threw them more apples in exchange. When all the gold had been salvaged from the seafloor the skeleton returned to its mountain, ignoring the pleas of the fish to feed them once more, and once more after that. It never returned to the coast and those mermen who had grown so addicted to the earthly fruit were driven to ever deeper depths of hunger and depravity.
The skeleton took the gold to the villages north and south of the river, but men are less forgiving of appearances than fish. They barred their doors and windows and would do no business with the man of bones; that is, until it bought a dark cloak with which to shroud itself, covering its terrible, inhuman face. After that the skeleton’s coin was as good as anyone else’s and people lined up far and wide for the chance to do business with a demon that no one had to look in the eye.
“Dig,” said the skeleton to a group of poor workers who would do anything for money. They followed it back to its mountain. It pointed to the ground below their feet. “Dig,” it ordered them all.
The workers did not dig so much as they excavated. The bedrock of the mountain was virtually impossible to chisel away, but there was an ancient network of tunnels under the mountain filled only with loose rubble and sea-cement; the workers spent the vast majority of their time clearing out these tunnels, though none dared ask the skeleton to what purpose it put them to this task.
As the workers toiled, the man of black bones brooded in its lair above them, forever hovering over its prized eggs and basking in the power of the well, which it would permit no one else to approach. The skeleton’s affinity for the power of the sun grew with the passing years, reinforced by the light that flooded down through the top of the hollow mountain every day. In time, drawing on the power of the well, the man of bones found it could create sparks from the mere idea of fire.
When the diggers uncovered the foundation of the well deep under the mountain, the skeleton bade them clad the stone structure in iron and rebuild it into a running furnace. Years later they discovered a subterranean lake of liquid fire far below the surface of the earth, marking the end of the tunnels. The black skeleton set the workers to a new task: hauling wheelbarrows full of magma from the lake of fire to the furnace they had helped fabricate. The skeleton gave them a new name, too: tunnel-minnows.
Its ability to speak progressed quickly. In time, no one in the tunnels could remember a day when their master had been no more than a mute monster. Now, shrouded in a sable cloak, spewing curses like a sea captain, it was impossible to tell he was not a man at all.
When his hoard of gold was finally depleted he persuaded the tunnel-minnows to keep working by other means. If anyone abandoned their position, the skeleton put a bony hand around their neck and reduced them to a heap of ash. The cowering slaves began to refer to their cruel master as the Magician, and none defied him.
The black skeleton led the strongest, most able-bodied slaves back up to the light of day and forced them to endeavor a new project: the construction of a tower atop the hollow mountain. It took decades to complete, but when the soaring tower was as tall as men dared build, the magician climbed to the top and felt nearer the sun than ever before, amplifying the latent power that seeped through the marrow of his black bones. He raised his arms to the sky as if praying to the source of all heavenly fire. The sunlight condensed around his body and the magician, like a living conduit, redirected the power from above into a blazing red beam that he swept back and forth across the far horizon, setting fire to all it touched.
The magician banished his broken-spirited tower-builders back below the earth to replenish the dwindling number of tunnel-minnows. The slaves lived out their days confined in the dark. There were even those who bore children in the godless labyrinth. Entire generations of their sons and daughters were delivered, endured, and died without ever seeing the world beyond the walls of their cave.
When their numbers had fallen to a handful, the magician selected the smallest and weakest one among them to come up to his lair, a child too small to fight back. He said he needed a beating heart close at hand. From that day on the child would live in fear of unholy fire.
As the years rolled on, a rumor spread over sea and land claiming the resurrection of the Son of the Sun.