#alzabo

"I have seen the eyes of many of these creatures that are supposed to have come from beyond the margin of the world ... but their eyes are the eyes of beasts only. The red orbs of the alzabo were something more, holding neither the intelligence of humankind nor the innocence of the brutes" - Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor

Image © Wayne Barlowe

[We’re now venturing into the territory of monsters from books I haven’t read. So these adaptations may not be 100% accurate. The Barlowe’s Guides (to Aliens and Fantasy, respectively) were major influences on me growing up, and I previously adapted several of the monsters from them into D&D. The gek-a-gek is the one I’ve used the most and adapted the most frequently, but the alzabo was also one I remember statting up when I was in high school. Those original statistics are lost. This art is more in tune with Barlowe’s design preferences than the actual book’s description (there’s no indication I could find that the alzabo is magenta, has eyes in its lower jaw and clawed knuckles), but it’s the version I’m most familiar with.]

Alzabo CR 8 N Magical Beast This hulking reddish quadruped is roughly bear-like and bear-sized. It has hooved digits, but large sharp claws protruding from the knuckles. Its red eyes peer from its lower jaw, and have a disturbing glimmer of intelligence.

The alzabo is a carnivorous creature native to cold and rocky terrain. Although they are born unintelligent, their most disturbing characteristic is the ability to absorb the memories and personalities of sapient creatures that they eat. Over time, an alzabo becomes a composite creature, motivated by the desires and quirks of its component minds. Alzabos vary in alignment as humanoids typically do, but these may change over time based on the people they eat.

An alzabo hunts by a combination of endurance and trickery. They are tenacious and sure-footed, able to scamper up cliffs and perch on ledges with ease. They can mimic the voices and sounds of the creatures they have eaten, and may use mating calls to attract animals and cries for help to attract humanoids. No two alzabos are likely to use exactly the same tactics, as they have the skills of the intelligent creatures they eat, and so may vary widely in what feats they have available.

Horror stories abound of a single alzabo eating an entire family one at a time, motivated by the desire to reunite the personalities and memories into a single entity as much as by hunger. This does happen, but not every alzabo is so driven. Some alzabos make their first meal of a paladin or other strong force for good, and thus shun eating other intelligent creatures and stick to non-sapient prey. Others may eat a villain first, and become evil themselves, their new mind reveling in the power that comes from a strong and durable body. A few alzabos even exist as living repositories of accumulated lore, associating with a community and feeding on their dead in order to help keep their memories and experiences alive. 

“‘You cannot bar me from my family forever.’ From the mouth of a beast, it was the voice of a stern, stamping, honest man.” 

I’ve consumed what little flesh

Was left of you, and now

Stand corrected by a second

Voice in my head, with

-

Some further thousand echoing

Through every self-ruling action

Spread across all times; searching

-

For white fountains that might

Successfully drown cold Urth’s

Ten fifteen  Waiting on a Chinese Tomorrow PIP  Not pleased  But it’s only Will Pop him like a zit Into his comfy coffin  I chose your allotment  Lead you there, spinal shotgun My will greater, I will victor Last longer take a picture  That’s why I make these sex tapes  It’s part of my endurance  I am very alluring  Every boyfriend curious  Why their wife likes me  Three words:…

Casdoe nodded. "I closed the window just in time. It has never come so early before. It may be that the storm wakened it."

"You don't think it might be your husband?"

Before she could answer me, a voice higher than the little boy's called, "Let me in, Mother."

Even I, who did not know what it was that spoke, sensed a fearful wrongness in the simple words. It was a child's voice, perhaps, but not a human child's.

"Mother," the voice called again. "It is beginning to rain."

"We had better go up," Casdoe said. "If we pull the ladder after us, it cannot reach us even if it should get inside."

I had gone to the door. Without lightning, the feet of whatever it was that stood on the doorstep were invisible; but I could hear a hoarse, slow breathing above the beating of the rain, and once a scraping sound, as though the thing that waited there in the dark had shifted its footing.

"Is this your doing?" I asked Agia. "Some creature of Hethor's?"

She shook her head; the narrow, brown eyes were dancing. "They roam wild in these mountains, as you should know much better than I."

"Mother?"

There was a shuffle of feet—with that fretful question, the thing outside had turned from the door. One of the shutters was cracked, and I tried to look through the slit; I could see nothing in the blackness outside, but I heard a soft, heavy tread, precisely the sound that sometimes came through the barred ports of the Tower of the Bear at home.

"It took Severa three days ago," Casdoe said. She was trying to get the old man to rise; he did so slowly, reluctant to leave the warmth of the fire. "I never let her or Severian go among the trees, but it came into the clearing here, a watch before twilight. Since then it has returned every night. The dog wouldn't track it, but Becan went to hunt it today."

I had guessed the beast's identity by that time, though I had never beheld one of its kind. I said, "It is an alzabo, then? The creature from whose glands the analept is made?"

"It is an alzabo, yes," Casdoe answered. "I know nothing of any analept."

Agia laughed. "But Severian does. He has tasted the creature's wisdom, and carries his beloved about within himself. I understand one hears them whispering together by night, in the very heat and sweat of love."

I struck at her; but she dodged nimbly, then put the table between herself and me. "Aren't you delighted, Severian, that when the animals came to Urth to replace all those our ancestors slew, the alzabo was among them? Without the alzabo, you would have lost your dearest Thecla forever. Tell Casdoe here how happy the alzabo has made you."

To Casdoe I said, "I am truly sorry to hear of your daughter's death. I will defend this house from the animal outside, if it must be done."

My sword was standing against the wall, and to show that my will was as good as my words, I reached for it. It was fortunate I did so, for just at that instant a man's voice at the door called, "Open, darling!"

Agia and I sprang to stop Casdoe, but neither of us was swift enough. Before we could reach her, she had lifted the bar. The door swung back.

The beast that waited there stood upon four legs; even so, its hulking shoulders were as high as my head. Its own head was carried low, with the tips of its ears below the crest of fur that topped its back. In the firelight, its teeth gleamed white and its eyes glowed red. I have seen the eyes of many of these creatures that are supposed to have come from beyond the margin of the world — drawn, as certain philonoists allege, by the death of those whose genesis was here, even as tribes of enchors come slouching with their stone knives and fires into a countryside depopulated by war or disease; but their eyes are the eyes of beasts only. The red orbs of the alzabo were something more, holding neither the intelligence of humankind nor the innocence of the brutes.

So a fiend might look, I thought, when it had at last struggled up from the pit of some dark star; then I recalled the man-apes, who were indeed called fiends, yet had the eyes of men. For a moment it seemed the door might be shut again. I saw Casdoe, who had recoiled in horror, try to swing it to. The alzabo appeared to advance slowly and even lazily, yet it was too swift for her, and the edge of the door struck its ribs as it might have struck a stone.

"Let it stay open," I called. "We'll need whatever light there is." I had unsheathed Terminus Est, so that her blade caught the firelight and seemed itself a bitter fire. An arbalest like the ones Agia's henchmen had carried, whose quarrels are ignited by the friction of the atmosphere and burst when they strike like stones cast into a furnace, would have been a better weapon; but it would not have seemed an extension of my arm as Terminus Est did, and perhaps after all an arbalest would have permitted the alzabo to spring on me while I sought to recock it, if the first quarrel missed.

The long blade of my sword did not wholly obviate that danger. Her square, unpointed tip could not impale the beast, should it spring. I would have to slash at it in air, and though I had no doubt that I could strike the head from that thick neck while it flew toward me, I knew that to miss would be death. Furthermore, I needed space enough to make the stroke, for which that narrow room was scarcely adequate; and though the fire was dying, I needed light.

The old man, the boy Severian, and Casdoe were all gone— I was not certain if they had climbed the ladder to the loft while my attention had been fixed on the eyes of the beast, or if some of them,

at least, had not fled through the doorway behind it. Only Agia remained, pressed into a corner with Casdoe's iron-tipped climbing stick to use as a weapon, as a sailor might, in desperation, try to fend off a galleass with a boat hook. I knew that to speak to her would be to call attention to her; yet it might be that if the beast so much as turned its head toward her, I would be able to sever its spine.

I said, "Agia, I must have light. It will kill me in the dark. You once told your men you would front me, if only they would kill me from behind. I will front this for you now, if you will only bring a candle." She nodded to show she understood, and as she did the beast moved toward me. It did not spring as I had expected, however, but sidled lazily yet adroitly to the right, coming nearer while contriving to keep just beyond blade reach.

After a moment of incomprehension I realized that by its position near the wall it cramped further any attack I might make, and that if it could circle me (as it nearly did) to gain a position between the fire and my own, much of the benefit I had from the firelight would be lost.

So we began a careful game, in which the alzabo sought to make what use it could of the chairs, the table, and the walls, and I tried to get as much space as I could for my sword.

Then I leaped forward. The alzabo avoided my cut, as it seemed to me, by no more than the width of a finger, lunged at me, and drew back just in time to escape my return stroke. Its jaws, large enough to bite a man's head as a man bites an apple, had snapped before my face, drenching me in the reek of its putrid breath.

The thunder boomed again, so near that after its roar I could hear the crashing fall of the great tree whose death it had proclaimed; the lightning flash, illuminating every detail in its paralyzing glare, left me dazzled and blinded. I swung Terminus Est in the rush of darkness that followed, felt her bite bone, sprang to one side, and as the thunder rumbled out slashed again, this time only sending some stick of furniture flying into ruin.

Then I could see once more. While the alzabo and I had shifted ground and feinted, Agia had been moving too, and she must have made a dash for the ladder when the lightning struck. She was halfway up, and I saw Casdoe reach down to help her. The alzabo stood before me, as whole, so it seemed, as ever; but dark blood dribbled into a pool at its forefeet. Its fur looked red and ragged in the firelight, and the nails of its feet, larger and coarser than a bear's, were darkly red as well, and seemed translucent. More hideous than the speaking of a corpse could ever be, I heard the voice that had called, "Open darling," at the door. It said: "Yes, I am injured. But the pain is nothing much, and I can stand and move as before. You cannot bar me from my family forever." From the mouth of a beast, it was the voice of a stern, stamping honest man.

I took out the Claw and laid it on the table, but it was no more than a spark of blue. "Light!" I shouted to Agia. No light came, and I heard the rattle of the ladder on the loft's floor as the women drew it up.

"Your escape is cut off you see," the beast said, still in the man's voice.

"So is your advance. Can you jump so high, with a wounded leg?"

Abruptly the voice became the plaintive treble of the little girl. "I can climb. Do you think I won't think to move the table over there under the hole? I, who can talk?"

"You know yourself a beast, then."

The man's voice came again. "We know we are within the beast, just as once we were within the cases of flesh the beast has devoured."

"And you would consent to its devouring your wife and your son, Becan?"

"I would direct it. I do direct it. I want Casdoe and Severian to join us here, just as I joined Severa today. When the fire dies, you die too —joining us—and so shall they."

I laughed. "Have you forgotten that you got your wound when I couldn't see?" Holding Terminus Est at the ready, I crossed the room to the ruin of the chair, snatched up what had been its back, and threw it into the fire, making a cloud of sparks.

"That was well-seasoned wood, I think, and it has been rubbed with bees' wax by some careful hand. It should burn brightly."

"Just the same, the dark will come." The beast—Becan— sounded infinitely patient. "The dark will come, and you will join us."

"No. When all the chair has burned and the light is failing, I will advance on you and kill you. I only wait now to let you bleed."

There was silence, the more eerie because nothing in the beast's expression hinted of thought. I knew that even as the wreck of Thecla's neural chemistry had been fixed in the nuclei of certain of my own frontal cells by a secretion distilled from the organs of just such a creature, so the man and his daughter haunted the dim thicket of the beast's brain and believed they lived; but what that ghost of life might be, what dreams and desires might enter it, I could not guess.

At last the man's voice said, "In a watch or two, then, I will kill you or you will kill me. Or we will destroy each other. If I turn now and go out into the night and the rain, will you hunt me down when Urth turns toward the light once more? Or remain here to keep me from the woman and child that are mine?"

"No," I said.

"On such honor as you have? Will you swear on that sword, though you cannot point it to the sun?"

I took a step backward and reversed Terminus Est, holding her by the blade in such a way that her tip was directed toward my own heart. "I swear by this sword, the badge of my Art, that if you do not return this night I will not hunt you tomorrow. Nor will I remain in this house."

As swiftly as a gliding snake it turned. For an instant I might, perhaps, have cut at its thick back.