Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute

‘We seek something that goes formally by the name of the “Phobic Animus”, but you may know of it by some other name. It is the spirit of fear, the epitome of terrors. It dwells somewhere in the Dreamlands. Do you know where we might find it?’

‘You seek the spirit of fear?’ The voice Ercusides spoke slowly, disbelief evident in its tone. ‘Phobic Animus: that is a good name.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bose, before being punched in the arm by Corde.

‘You are fools to seek it. You will all surely die.’

‘Yes, well, be that as it may,’ said Cabal, trying hard not to retaliate with a comment upon Ercusides’ own current state. ‘The fact is that we still need to know where it is. Can you help us?’ He paused, but the head said nothing. ‘O great and wise philosopher,’ he added flatly, an unconvincing attempt at flattery and shameless buttering-up.

Being dead, fortunately, had done nothing for Ercusides’ perceptiveness, and when he spoke next, it was with unwarranted smugness. ‘Oh, I can tell you where to seek it, all right. But whether you will want to, now that is another matter.’

Cabal bit his tongue, and consoled himself with a mental image of punting the recalcitrant head clean across the temple with a well-placed kick. ‘Quite so, O celestial sage, but let’s assume that we’re going to ignore all warnings and go anyway. Where might we find it?’

‘The Frozen Heart you seek,’ continued Ercusides, plainly enjoying saying sooths so much that it was affecting his sentence constructions. ‘Look you to the distant Island of Mormo, deep in the Cerenarian Sea. Far it is from the sail-roads of mortal men. Unseen it is by living eye. Unmarked it is in book or chart.’

‘Hold on,’ interrupted Cabal. ‘Do you mean to say that nobody knows where it is?’

The head paused, a trifle testily. ‘Far it is,’ it repeated, ‘from the sail-roads of mortal man. Unseen it is—’

‘Annoying it is to hear you talking in such a ridiculous fashion,’ retorted Cabal. ‘To get straight to the point, you don’t know where it is? Nobody knows where it is?’

‘The Frozen Heart you seek,’ Ercusides said, starting from the top. ‘Look you to the—’

‘Distant Island of Mormo. Yes, yes, I got that gem of information. But knowing the name of the place is not of much help if I cannot then look it up in an almanac. Where is the verdammt Island of Mormo? And if you say it’s deep in the Cerenarian Sea, I shall not be responsible for my actions.’

‘The location of the Island of Mormo is unknown and unknowable, a secret of the gods themselves, and one that they guard jealously, for how much of the adoration of their worshippers comes from fear? But . . .’ Ercusides added quickly, for he had heard Cabal’s grunt of hot exasperation and had suddenly experienced a psychic glimpse of a possible future that involved travelling at great speed and height across the temple to smash into the wall ‘. . . But . . . that does not mean the island is unachievable. Once, the great sorcerer Hep-Seth of Golthoth was minded to seek the island. Not for the Frozen Heart, but for the great weapons that were said to be stored there by the gods against a future in which even gods may war. With even a single such treasure, none would stand against him, and even the gods would fear him, for he could strike them down with their own weapon. It was a fine plan, but a vain one, for he did not consider everything that might befall him before he gained such a weapon.

‘He bragged that he knew how to reach Mormo and spoke of a seven-sided gate that would guide the way.’

‘And then?’

‘And then . . . nothing more is known.’ Ercusides managed to give the impression that he was shaking his head without moving an iota. ‘That is all that is known.’

‘Golthoth.’ Cabal drew his notes from his bag and flicked through them. ‘Oh, by all that is holy and many things that aren’t . . . I feared as much. We must go back the way we came and . . .’ He was silent for a few moments while he read some more, and then he shoved them back into his bag with an expression of violent exasperation. ‘The Brothers Grimm can have this abominable place,’ he said finally, when his temper was under some tenuous form of control, ‘and I hope it chokes them.’

He replaced the test-tubes in their case, and then in the Gladstone. ‘We should make our plans to escape this place,’ he said quietly. ‘Something colossal, wooden and remarkably dangerous this way comes.’

‘My colossus?’ said Ercusides. ‘You are mistaken. It has not yet been animated, and even when it is, it will obviously not attack men. That would be ridiculous. I have trained the dreffs to attack only wamps.’

Cabal picked up the head and looked into the gaping eye sockets. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘your training techniques leave something to be desired.’

‘I . . .’ Ercusides faltered. ‘What happened just then? The floor . . . Where is the floor? Why can I not move?’ He sounded curious and inconvenienced rather than scared, as if a rather outre practical joke had been played upon him. ‘Why can I not see?’

‘Ah,’ said Shadrach, entering his professional mode in which he was adept at dealing with the recently bereaved, and those deep in denial.

‘You’re dead,’ said Cabal, whose professional mode employed a very different set of skills, even if they also applied to the dead. ‘Your creation pulled off your arms and legs, threw them around the place willy-nilly, then cracked your skull. Look on the bright side: it didn’t damage your head anywhere near as badly as it has those of the wamps we’ve seen around the city. I think the dreffs may have been gentler with you because you had looked after them and trained them.’

‘You speak nonsense, man!’ cried the head. ‘I taught them carefully! I even wore a wamp costume I’d made so . . . Oh. Ooooh . . .’ Ercusides thought about it for a moment, during which the others looked looked uncomfortable and somewhat embarrassed. Finding out that one is a decapitated head is a private sort of experience. ‘No. No! They wouldn’t misunderstand what I meant. They couldn’t . . .’

‘They would, they could and they did. They were probably a little bemused that you wanted them to kill you – if they even understood that that was what they were doing – but training is training. They saw a wamp, but they also saw a man, and gained the impression that you wanted both species dismantled on sight. You’re talking to me at the moment only because I am a necromancer. You can work out the ramifications of that for yourself.’