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The Land of Darkness (The Gates of Heaven Series)

By C. S. Lakin

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Prologue

The traveler wiped a hand across his weary eyes. He looked down at his dust-laden boots as his feet touched upon something harder than the packed dirt he’d trodden upon for the last three days. Stooping, he brushed grit away from ochre stone, puzzling at the pattern of cobbles spreading out before him. He raised his eyes, straining to define his surroundings in the last tint of twilight, and faced a towering, crumbling edifice of the same color stone. He straightened, exhausted, achy, and confused.
As he stepped cautiously across what appeared to be an abandoned lane, the cool night breeze dried his damp hair and sent a shiver down his neck. But it was more than cold wind that caused his knees to shake uncontrollably. Uneasiness had plagued him the moment he entered the shambles of what looked like a once-thriving village. He could make out the remains of finely crafted stonework: corniced walls of buildings, corrals for animals, even a nearly intact archway adorning the entrance to a land that had clearly once boasted a beautiful, wide avenue running the length of its commercial center. In the failing light, he ran his fingers along inlaid scrolling of ebony and oak, polished wood that wrapped doorways in designs of leaf and flower. He smelled the mountains in the north as hints of snow and pine forests wafted down, encircling him in a flurry that made him wrap his cloak tightly around his neck.
The young man knew he was lost, for this place was not on any map. Anxiety clenched his throat; he had hoped to find warm shelter for the night, a hearty meal, and a soft goose-down mattress in an accommodating inn. Instead, he heard eerie, discomfiting sounds carried on the air, flitting around his ears. He stopped, every nerve heightened, and pressed his back against the wooden lintel of a rotted doorway the led to a field of tumbled stones and a tangle of weeds. He closed his eyes and sifted through the sounds, hoping for familiarity: crickets, nocturnal animals, even wolves, whose howling would at least remind him he was still in his world and not some strange aberrant one.
His heart pounded in expectation but was not consoled. A soft voice, high in pitch and achingly sad, drifted on the suffocating night air. His gut wrenched at the anguish underlying the indecipherable words, which tugged at him and made his feet move of their own volition. Confused, he found himself running, his boots clacking against the uneven roadway beneath him.
He passed a broken, waterless fountain at the center of a paved square, saw shadows dart through darkened doorways. On a pedestal stood a robed figure carved from dark malachite rock, missing limbs and a staring blankly from eyes set in a chipped face. A weak voice deep within his mind yelled at him to run, but both the words and the urgency fragmented before he could recognize them as his own.
His feet took him down one constricting lane after another. He lost track of time, of his exhaustion, of his fear. More voices, muddled and pressing, swelled around him like a tide, attacking and receding, entangling him like a fisher’s net. Then, he stopped abruptly.
Before him hung the remains of a wrought-iron gate that swung loosely from a wooden post. Beyond the gate the cobbled street ended, and perhaps the very world itself came to naught, for the young man trembled at the sight unfolding before him.
An impenetrable darkness, so much darker than night, gathered around him, expectantly watching. Shadows like dreams skittered across the ground at his feet. He heard the rustle of branches and took a hesitant step, pushing aside the creaking gate. Wisps of pitch reached out to him, swirled around him, coaxing, urging. A child’s voice startled him by calling his name. He thought he saw a flash of a tiny hand reaching out of the gloom, but the surge of blackness shifting and oozing before him quickly devoured it.
Now his mind raced with a dozen warnings, but they came too late. For he was a stranger to this part of the world. He had never heard of the tales whispered in dark corners over mugs of ale, or told as harsh threats to badly behaved children. He had set out, as many do, to find his fortune. But now he would find only misfortune, for fate or carelessness or stupidity—it didn’t matter which—had led him to the Land of Darkness.
Shepherds from the surrounding hills knew not to venture near the ruins of Antolae—the ancient name given to the once-thriving region. Shamma was the common name spoken under bated breath, meaning “city of destruction” in a long-forgotten tongue. Even if one of their flock strayed near, they surrendered it to a certain fate. They did not worry their herding dogs would follow, for even upon venturing within one league of Antolae, the curs would whine and whimper and slink back to their owners to cower beneath their legs. It was unfortunate that this young traveler had no dog to warn him, and that the sheepherders had only last month moved their flocks farther south, to warmer winter climes. The entire week that he had journeyed across a windswept, barren land, following a rutted cart road, he saw no one who could have given him warning. It was too bad indeed, for all the reassuring promises he had given to his aging mother of his safe return would not be kept. She, along with his younger brothers and sisters, would forever wonder in misery what tragedy had befallen him.
All emotion emptied from the traveler’s mind and heart, leaving nothing but a dim curiosity that nudged him forward. Now, close, he heard bells jingling and sheep baaing, footsteps clacking briskly across stone, a pail sloshing with water, a giggle, chickens cackling. His heart warmed at the sounds of everyday life, sounds that removed any last vestige of hesitancy.
As he stepped into the swallowing blackness, he left no footprint behind, nor any trace that he had crossed an invisible line. Yet, even if there had remained any sign of his passage, what good would it have done him? No one who entered that bewitched land ever came back out.

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