The Venom of Luxur Page 7

  Teferi tossed aside the knobkerrie and drew his sword, grimly prepared to fight, to make them pay for Anok’s life, and his own, with as much blood as he could spill.

  Ramsa Aál shouted. “Wait! I will talk with this inferior, if he can speak.”

  A captain of the guardians appeared from behind the massed soldiers, a look of confusion and rage on his face. “This outlander left one of my man with a busted head and a cracked jaw! Let us make him pay for it!”

  Ramsa Aál waved him away. “Your fool was likely sleeping at his post. That he lives is probably more than he deserves.” He look to Teferi. “I know you, Kush, from past times we have met. Anok painted you as a muscular fool to be his bodyguard, and I was all too willing to believe that. But my acolyte is far cleverer than that, is he not?”

  Teferi glared at him. “He is now more dead than clever, as you shall be soon enough!”

  “I see. You come to rescue your master?”

  “I come to rescue my brother!”

  Ramsa Aál laughed. “A barbaric Kush, even one so unusual as you, is no brother to any man of Stygian blood, even a poor half-breed such as this one. But have no fear. The snake that bit him had been fed mystic herbs and milked until its venom was weak. He will recover in time. But you—!”

  “Pray you speak the truth, as it is worth your life!”

  Ramsa Aál looked around at the circle of angry guardians, all aching to fight. “I think that is not an issue. I won’t be foolish enough to waste magic on you again.” He chuckled. “Clever, clever, Anok is.

  “Just when I think I have his measure, he surprises me. To take a Zimwi-msaka as his bodyguard! Ingenious! And I had heard your kind were all dead! Had I but known earlier, your blood might have served in my counterspell against the protectors of the tomb. But it is too late for that now.”

  Teferi frowned. The name sounded something like the native language of his people. It might mean something like “spirit hunter” or “demon hunter,” he couldn’t be sure. But he had never heard the exact word before. How did a Stygian priest know it?

  Ramsa Aál studied the look of confusion on his face and laughed. “Even better, a Zimwi-msaka who does not know he is a Zimwi-msaka!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anok must know. Ask him when he returns from his communion with Set. Or ask your friend Sabé! The blind scholar can tell you—if he will.”

  At that moment, Anok coughed, a bit of pink foam on his lips. But although he stirred, he remained unconscious.

  Ramsa Aál made a gesture, and the two guardians carrying Anok lowered him facedown onto the floor and stepped back.

  “If you want your master, take him. We are done here.” He snapped his finger at a servant, who watched, cowering, from behind a curtain. “You! Find two fresh camels for my acolyte and his servant, with extra water and provisions to return to Kheshatta.”

  Teferi thought of saying he had no need of these things, but to do so would hint that Fallon still waited for them in the desert. Better to keep some things to himself. Forcing a calm on himself he did not feel, he again pretended to be the good servant. “My master would thank you, if he could.”

  Ramsa Aál nodded. “That’s more like it, Kush. Your loyalty is admirable, but remember your station, and that each breath you take from here on out you owe to my mercy.”

  Teferi swallowed his anger, and the taste was bitter indeed. I do this for my brother’s life. He put away his sword and moved carefully to attend Anok, kneeling at his side.

  Trickles of blood ran from the fang marks on his neck. His skin was cool and damp, his pulse fast and weak, his breathing slow. His eyes were opened a slit, showing only their whites. He looked up at Ramsa Aál accusingly.

  “He communes with his god. If he is judged worthy, he will return. If he is weak, then none can help him.”

  “My brother is not weak!”

  Ramsa Aál nodded. “No. I do not think he is.”

  5

  TEFERI LEANED AGAINST a heavy wooden case stacked with ancient tablets of slate and stone, part of the greatest library of ancient knowledge in all of Kheshatta. The man who owned the library paced angrily back and forth across the room of the little house.

  Though the man, Sabé, whose eyes were bound with a ragged cloth blindfold, could not see, he moved with vigor and confidence. He knew every crack and corner of his home, and there was little danger he would bump into anything save a misplaced visitor.

  Teferi was careful to keep out of his way. He liked Sabé, the two having become friends since Teferi had come to Kheshatta as Anok’s bodyguard. But he kept some distance from him now.

  Sabé was infamous as the “blind scholar of Kheshatta,” but they had recently learned the old man was not blind at all. In his youth he had been a follower of Set, and magical corruption had turned Sabé’s eyes into the eyes of a serpent: evil eyes that twisted Sabé’s vision of the world.

  He chose to live as a blind man rather than allow the terrible vision of evil guide him.

  Learning that had only increased Teferi’s respect for the old scholar, but still he shuddered when he thought of those eyes, and he shied away whenever the old man came a little too close.

  Sabé stopped his pacing and turned toward Teferi. “I have heard of this thing, though it was not done in my time. The priest candidates are infused with repeated and increasing doses of snake venom. The snakes themselves are fed rodents, who in turn eat only magical herbs, giving the venom special properties. Those so treated have powerful visions. Some say they commune with Set himself.”

  “Wait,” said Teferi, “did you say ‘repeated’? You mean, they will do this to him again?”

  “As I have heard it, the cobra is but the beginning, to build his immunity to the venom, and to train his body to resist the poison with magic. Later will come the venom of the sons of Set, the most sacred serpents of the cult.”

  “Madness! What purpose can that serve?”

  Sabé frowned. “To break his resolve. To destroy his resistance to corruption, so that he will fall totally under the influence of Set’s cult.”

  “But he has the Band of Neska. Won’t that help him?” Sabé hung his head. “You have said it yourself. Anok places too much faith in that ancient object. It is an anchor to sanity and reason, nothing more. It gives him something to hold on to in the dark times, a reference point to guide him through evil places, but he must find his own way, he must pull himself back from evil. These treatments are intended to weaken just that kind of resolve. He is in terrible danger.”

  “Then,” said Teferi, “let us go to him! Even now, Fallon sits in vigil at his bedside. He did not waken during the journey from the Tomb of the Lost King, nor has he wakened since.”

  Sabé’s mouth hung open in surprise. “Go? What can I do?”

  “You can be there to guide him when he awakes. If he has visions, you must be there to tell him what they mean.”

  Sabé looked unhappy and confused. “Go? I can’t leave all my ancient texts—”

  “Your house is guarded by a thousand magical traps and snares. They will be safe for a time.”

  Sabé sighed, and suddenly looked like an old and frail man. Teferi wondered how long it had been since the old recluse had left his house.

  Never mind that Sabé was even older than old, preserved by dark magic long past his natural lifetime, and never mind that he was more than a little frail; his power of personality had always made him seem younger and stronger than he was.

  This momentary glimpse at fragile reality was somehow as disturbing to Teferi as seeing Sabé’s dread serpent eyes.

  Teferi tried to make his voice reassuring. “Anok needs you, and he cannot be moved. You must be strong, and go to him. We will not be gone long.”

  Sabé licked his dry lips. “Yes, you are right. Of course.” He pointed to a stool on which assorted clutter was piled. “Get my satchel, cloak, and walking staff. We will go.”

  Teferi handed him the
cloak and staff. He carried the heavy satchel himself. “I could summon a cart.”

  “It is but a few streets away. I am old, not dead!”

  They stepped out of the house. The door clicked shut, and Sabé fiddled briefly with the strange and complex brass lock mechanism. Teferi had a feeling that it, like so much of their surroundings, was fraught with hidden sorcerous danger for anyone who would trespass upon this place.

  Sabé allowed Teferi to lead him down the flagstone walk, through the fence gate, and out into the busy streets of Kheshatta. He pulled the old man aside as an oxcart, laden with large casks of poison and guarded by fierce-looking Shemites armed with axes, rolled by noisily on the cobblestone street.

  Kheshatta was famed as a city of sorcerers, but it was also the city of poisoners, Stygia’s famed masters of potions and powders, both terrible and, occasionally, beneficial.

  The poisoners, in their palaces in the green, forested hills west of the city, guarded their secrets, and their powers, as jealously as the sorcerers did.

  The two main power factions of the city maintained an uneasy truce, each trading with the other, each making use of the other with not a grain of trust between them. It was an interesting and colorful city, but Teferi could not say he would be sad to leave.

  They walked in silence for a while, until he felt Sabé hesitate, and they stopped on a street corner in front of one of the city’s many museums of mystical relics.

  “I’m sorry,” said Teferi, “I walk too fast.”

  “Not a bit, young friend. It’s just that I sense something troubles you, something beyond your concern for Anok.”

  Teferi hesitated to answer. His concerns didn’t seem very important right now. Still, he did not know when he might next find himself alone with Sabé.

  “I had a troubling encounter with the priests of Set at the shrine. Several of them tried to use magic to harm me, and their spells all failed. At the time, I thought perhaps it was fear that had caused them to misspeak their incantations. But the priest Ramsa Aál said it was something else. He said I was a—” He paused, trying to remember the term exactly. “A Zimwi-msaka.”

  They began to walk toward Anok’s villa again, slower this time. “I have seen this term in some of the old texts.”

  “You once told me that some souls are drawn to magic, and some are anathema to it, and that I was the latter. You told me I could read aloud from the dark texts forever and ‘not raise enough magic to turn a grain of sand.’ Is that all it is?”

  “So I thought at the time, but perhaps there is more to you than this. You say your family fled Kush to escape the magical corruption of the dark lands to the south?”

  “So I have been told. Dark forces of sorcery and bewitchment came south out of Stygia into Kush and the lands beyond, and corrupted the souls of our people. My forefathers fled north, but were captured, and kept as slaves in Stygia until most of the slaves there were eventually set free. Then they lived in exile and poverty, scratching out their lives in this evil land.”

  “Did you ever question this? If the evil that corrupted your people came from the north, why flee north? And if it corrupted all your people, how were your forefathers spared?”

  He felt a flash of anger. “Are you saying my father lied to me?”

  “I am saying the story may have become twisted after countless retellings through the generations. I am saying that certain facts may have been left out to protect their daughters and sons—you—from the secrets of your own origins.”

  “You talk in riddles. What is a Zimwi-msaka? You know, don’t you?”

  “I know what I have read in the texts, and know that it could be as twisted and suspect as what you have told me. It is said that in the ancient times, the Zimwi-msaka were a clan of warriors that appeared in Kush. They were great fighters, and great hunters, but they were more. It was said that no magic could be used to harm them, that magic rolled off them like raindrops off a goose. Even their blood was resistant to magic. Some of the old texts list blood from a Zimwi-msaka as an ingredient in the most powerful counterspells, and it was said that it could be used to poison demons and supernatural monsters.”

  Teferi shook his head in confusion. “You think I am one of these warriors? How could I be? I was born in a Stygian slum, eldest son of a poor family. I am nothing.”

  “I have always known you were far more than nothing, my young friend, though I could not have dreamed how much more. It is said the power of the Zimwi-msaka is passed down the line, to all of pure Kush blood.

  “But most of the texts say that the Zimwi-msaka are no more. All agree that they could not be corrupted by the dark forces that took Kush, Darfar, and the Black Kingdoms beyond. Some say they were killed to the last woman and child during the dark times. Others say they remained in secret, fighting against the dark forces for generations, until they were all killed.

  “Perhaps, instead, the last survivors of that noble line came to Stygia, to live in secret and rebuild their numbers. Perhaps, in time, they even forgot who they were.”

  They approached the gate in front of Anok’s rented villa. Teferi paused. “You are saying then, that it is my destiny to return and liberate Kush from the evil forces that ensnare it?”

  Sabé shrugged. “Who can speak to the destiny of one man? But of your bloodline, perhaps yes. Perhaps one day your children, or your children’s children, shall reclaim your lost homeland.”

  Teferi shook his head. It was too incredible. And yet, in his heart, he somehow knew it was true. In some confused way, perhaps he had always known. “Ramsa Aál thought that Anok knew of my heritage. Could it be so?”

  “I don’t see how. Yet great men, be they sorcerers, or warriors, or leaders, sometimes have an almost supernatural way of drawing to them in life the very people that they need. Perhaps your friend has ever needed a champion who can stand against the very magic that corrupts him.” He held out his hand at Teferi. “And there you are.”

  He nodded and turned to go through the gate. “Then perhaps I do have a destiny. If I cannot save my homeland, perhaps I can at least save my greatest friend.”

  THEY TOOK TURNS watching over Anok. Late in the evening, Fallon called to them.

  “He awakens!”

  Sabé and Teferi hurried into Anok’s sleeping chamber, where Fallon sat on the edge of the bed. She wiped his fevered brow with a cloth damp from a basin on the side table, and he moaned and stirred, his eyelids fluttering.

  He flailed his arms weakly, as though fending off some imaginary menace. Teferi caught a glimpse of the Mark of Set on his left wrist. The mark of power, burned into his skin, took the form of a snake curling around his wrist, the tail pointed back up his arm toward the heart, the head running down the back of his hand.

  The mark was the source of much of Anok’s mystical power, and also of his troubles, for use of the Mark of Set inevitably led to corruption. Only recently had they learned that Sabé also bore the Mark of Set, and that it had led directly to the old scholar’s self-imposed blindness.

  Now, Anok struggled to avoid meeting a similar fate, or perhaps one even worse. With Sabé’s guidance, and the aid of his friends, Anok had obtained the lost Band of Neska, now locked around the bones of his right wrist, to help him resist the influence of the dark magic. Watching his friend suffer, Teferi wondered if it had all been for nothing.

  Anok’s eyes opened wide, staring up at nothing. He sat up with a start. “Father!” He stared off into space, panting for breath. Then, slowly, his eyes seemed to focus. He looked over at Fallon, blinked, then blinked again. “How long?”

  “Nearly three days.”

  He looked around the room. “Kheshatta. We are back in Kheshatta.”

  “Teferi brought you out of the shrine, and we brought you back here, seemingly on the verge of death.”

  “I’m not dead.” He almost seemed surprised.

  Teferi smiled. “You look well, for a dead man, brother.”

  Fallon reached
out and touched his face gently. “His fever is broken.”

  Sabé nodded. “His body has thrown off the venom through instinctive use of magic. Were there visions?”

  Anok noticed the basin of water, reached into it, and tossed a handful of water into his own face. He wiped his eyes with his fingers, then drew them back through his dark hair. “There were visions, but that is not what concerns me. Before the trial, more of Ramsa Aál’s plan was revealed to me. We must act quickly. I feel he is close to something. Something very dangerous.”

  “I fear,” said Sabé, “that you may be right. But I am concerned for you as well. You should rest.”

  Anok pushed himself up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I have slept for three days. What more rest can a man stand?”

  He sat there for a time, collecting himself, then looked at Fallon.

  Teferi glanced at her expression and realized she was hoping for something tender from him. It was not to be. “Ramsa Aál loaded a pack caravan with mystic armor that he took from the temple. Did you see it?”

  She looked disappointed but quickly hid the emotion. “I saw it at sunset that day, headed out on the camel road back to Kheshatta.”

  “Then go, try to find out what happened to it when it arrived, and especially what happened to its cargo.”

  She nodded grimly and stood. “I’ll go to the taverns where the caravan drivers congregate. Perhaps someone there will know something.” She headed for the door. “And perhaps while there, I can find a drink.”

  Teferi watched her go with some concern. He and Fallon had their differences, yet he also found he had a growing affection and sympathy for the Cimmerian. She was right when she said they had many things in common, not the least of which was their shared concern for Anok. He knew also that she was a flawed—and, in her way, fragile person.

  Whatever potential she had to aid Anok could easily be washed away by strong drink. Anok had just sent her away to the source of her greatest weakness, with ample reason to surrender to its embrace.