The Key of Darkness

By Jeffrey Hoy

In this short story, Morauk, a young Warrior, is tasked with escorting Rastar, an irritable old wizard, across a desolate landscape to find and destroy the four magickal devices that control fire, wind, water, and the darkness that causes men to go mad with fear. It is the Key of Darkness, which was thought to have been destroyed a thousand years earlier, that the powerful wizard currently seeks. Enter Balkor, a man turned demon by the possession of the evil black key he found when Banished to the Burned Lands by his people for murdering a shaman. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey Hoy
• Release date: Jun 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227526687

Book preview

Adapted from the Sword and Sorcery trilogy

Tales of Another World

For five cloudless nights, the Banishment caravan wound its way south, far out into the vastness of the Burned Lands. Uncountable stars shone down from a pitch-black sky, giving more than enough light for the solemn procession to negotiate the dry, cracked, tortured landscape after sunset. Sure-footed aurochs carried just enough supplies for those who would be returning when the unsavory deed was done. The party trudged along in somber silence, including the prisoner, who was tied to the back of one of the smelly, rough-haired pack animals.

During the oppressive heat of the day the caravan would seek out a dusty mound and pitch silken canopies, hoping against hope for the slightest of breezes, for anything that might bring even a modicum of relief from the relentless, fiery sun. All would sit motionless and drift off into meditations, waiting for what little relief darkness afforded; all except for the prisoner, who was staked out and gagged to keep his shouts and curses to little more than weak grunts.

The taking of a human life, even a murderer’s, had long ago been strictly forbidden by the tribes, so those few convicted of the most despicable of crimes were taken well out into the vast desolation of the Burned Lands before being loosed. In this way, no human had a direct hand in their deaths, and so could be absolved of the killing of another.

At dusk of the fifth day, they staked the prisoner to the ground with thick, stout cords and left a dull knife and a water skin just barely within reach so their consciences would be clean. They hoped that in this weakened condition the prisoner could not free himself before dawn, and by then the caravan would be long gone, and the tribes could thus rid themselves of one of the wicked without breaking their most sacred law.

Thus, on the morning of the sixth day, Balkor found himself striding purposefully southward as the dawn sky brightened, scuffing up puffs of dust as his cracked and blistered feet slapped painfully on the hard earth. In one hand he held the rough wooden stakes that had been pounded into the dirt, and in the other trailed lengths of cord and twine that had bound him to them. He carried the dull knife in the waist of the only clothing allowed him, a filthy rag that barely covered his shriveled manhood.

Even knowing he would soon be dead, Balkor felt at peace with the world. With only the sighing of wind and the soft hissing of sand and grit moving across the tortured ground, he was totally alone in the world, with only the sun’s blazing countenance an unwelcome guest. Strange as it might seem, he preferred this dead silence to the crying and shouting and yammering he had endured during his many days of confinement before being sentenced.

As the sun climbed into the bright bowl of the sky, its searing sunlight became even more excruciating than the harsh heat. He had known his punishment would be terrible, but the hottest day during the hottest season in his memory had been nothing more than springtime compared to the full force of the Burned Lands. His Banishment was not just punishment for a dreadful crime—it was torture! Would not a spear point through the heart or a push off a cliff have been more humane? Did his people need to be so cruel to him? He looked up at