by Donald Tyson
“How could you get yourself into such a situation?” I demanded.
“The man I killed was a cheat. The dice were weighted.”
“Did you need to kill him?”
“He left me no choice. When I objected to his cheating, he came at me across the table with a knife. I acted on instinct to defend myself, and stabbed him through the heart with my dagger.”
“If that’s how it was, there must be others who will testify and support your account.”
He smiled without mirth and shook his head. “No one has come forward. They all claim that I stabbed him in a fit of rage because I was losing money.”
“And that’s a lie?”
“I was losing money, that’s true enough, but I don’t get angry when I gamble.”
For a time, I turned my back to him and studied the scratchings previous prisoners in the cell had made on the wall, while I considered what to do. The name “Durga” appeared more than once, and the words “blood moon” and “dance of death.” There was an odd little drawing of a stick-figure of a man racing away from something large and poorly delineated.
“All we need to do is find two witnesses to support your story,” I told Altrus. “If they are reluctant to come forward, a bribe of gold should make them more inclined to do their duty as honest citizens of the city.”
“Find them quickly. I go before a judge in the afternoon.”
“So soon? The Satrap did not mention that.”
“There may be other things the Satrap is not saying.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I went to the tavern, it was to get a sense of the tone of the city. Something is going to happen soon, Alhazred. They were keeping it secret from me with sly winks and knowing glances, but when I pretended to be drunk I heard two talking about the festival of the moon.”
This quickened my interest. “Did they talk about the moon of blood?”
He nodded.
“What about the Dance of Durga? Does that mean anything to you?”
Altrus shook his head.
“What do you think they are really up to?”
“I don’t know, but a city that keeps secrets is a dangerous place for the uninitiated.”
The girl and I spent the rest of the morning going from tavern to whorehouse, seeking anyone who had witnessed Altrus kill the gambler. No one admitted to being in the tavern when the fight occurred, but I saw many sly sidelong glances cast from one man to another when they thought my attention was elsewhere. It was clear to me that something was being hidden.
When we returned to the jail, we discovered that Altrus had already been taken from his cell for trial. The proceedings were in progress when we arrived at the courthouse. There was no jury. A single nobleman sat in judgment, an elderly lean man with dark shadows beneath his eyes. As we entered at the rear of the chamber, an officer of the city guard was giving an account of the incident. Altrus sat upon a bench, flanked by two armed guards, a cynical smile on his scarred lips, the sear on his cheek he had received in childhood as red as a flame.
“This stranger to our city struck down the merchant Abd Al-Burza without warning as he was reaching to pick up the dice cup. He had no time to defend himself.”
“That’s a lie,” Altrus said quietly. “He attacked me and tried to kill me.”
“Silence!” the judge roared. “This is a court of law. The accused shall not speak.”
Altrus shrugged.
“Have you witnesses that will support your account of the crime?” the judge asked the officer.
“There they are,” the officer said, pointing at three poorly dressed men who stood together nervously blinking and staring around.
“Do you concur with this account of events?” the judge asked them.
One of them stepped forward and cleared his throat self-consciously. “We do.”
“Then there is no need to waste further time on this affair. I find the accused, who gives his name as Altrus, guilty of murder. The punishment is execution by beheading, to be carried out in seven days.”
He stood and left the chamber through a side door. The guards jerked Altrus to his feet and began to guide him toward the rear door.
Martala and I looked at each other.
“Swift justice,” I said.
“Swift, but not just.”
As Altrus was led past I pretended to stumble against him. “Be ready,” I murmured in his ear.
He caught my glance and nodded as a guard shoved me out of the way.
4.
“We must prepare,” Martala said. “They watch him day and night, and even if we get him away from the city there is still the desert.”
“We’ll need water and food, at a minimum. Camels would be useful.”
“What did the Satrap say?”
“He refused to see me. I called on his chambers yesterday morning and again in the evening, but was turned away at the door by his servants.”
“Did you manage to talk to Altrus this morning?”
“Only for a few minutes while I argued with the warder. He had been given orders not to let me close to his prisoner, but I managed to whisper a few words through the grille on his cell door. He had his ear pressed against it.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him not to act in haste, but to wait for us to prepare our provisions.”
“We only have three more days before the execution. I saw them setting up the block in the marketplace.”
“It will have to be enough.”
The door of my sitting room burst open, and to my surprise the Satrap entered, followed by his scribe and his bodyguard. His broad smile made his fat face beam like the sun at noon.
“Friend Alhazred, good news for you, excellent news. Your unfortunate servant is not to be executed after all.”
“Good news indeed,” I said. “How comes this about?”
I did not bother checking the spell of glamour that still covered my face. Had it not been there, his emotions would have been quite different.
“Well, I did not want to raise your hope falsely, but over the last few days I have been working with the city counsel on a way to save your friend.” He stopped and cocked his head to the side. “Do you know any of the customs of our good city?”
“Some of them. I have been reading at night in your library.”
“Splendid. Then you probably know that on irregular occasions we hold a festival in the streets. This celebration only takes place on the rare nights when the full moon is partially occluded by shadow, and turns a blood-red color.”
“You speak of the night of the blood moon.”
“Indeed I do. The astrologers of the city can predict when this momentous event is to occur in advance, and it seems that we are to have a blood moon tomorrow night. It is the custom of the city to conduct a rite of expiation on these nights by which the accumulated sins of the people are washed clean.”
“The dance of Durga,” I said.
“Exactly. You have read of it?”
“What role would Altrus play in this festival?”
Amjad El-Amin put his fat finger to his lips in thought. “The most important actor in the festival is the one we call the Bearer of Sins. This is a man or a woman who has been judged by the council the most sinful in the city. Upon this actor’s head are heaped the sins of the entire city and he carries them in the procession. By participating in the Dance of Durga, all these sins are washed away by the blood of the moon, including the actor’s own sins, and he is made clean and innocent.”
Martala came forward. “Are you saying that if Altrus takes part in this procession through the streets that he will not be executed?”
He laughed and the scribe tittered along with him. The bodyguard did not smile.
“My dear woman, after the festival your friend will be innocent of all sins. How could we execute an innocent man?”
The girl looked at me for guidance. I hesitated. Something about the plan troubl
ed me. It was too easy, and the timing of the arrest and sentencing so soon before the festival seemed more than coincidental. On the other hand, it offered an alternative to a prison break and a reckless flight through the desert, pursued by the city guard.
“You must put this matter before Altrus.” I told him. “It is his decision.”
The Satrap laughed with good humor. “So I did, friend Alhazred, but he told me that he could not agree until you had given your opinion on the matter, so highly does he hold your judgement.”
“He said that he would agree to it if I allowed it?”
“He did.”
I glanced again at the girl, but what choice did I have?
“Very well, release him. I agree that he shall serve as the Bearer of Sins.”
The Satrap threw up his fat white hands. “Alas, that I cannot do. Until after the festival, your Altrus is still a convicted murderer. We can hardly have him wandering freely around the streets of the city, can we?”
“But you will release him after he takes part in the festival?”
“Of course, it will all be quite different then. His sins will be washed clean and he will become an innocent.”
After the Satrap said his closing pleasantries and left my rooms, Martala turned to me.
“This makes no sense. Why would they release a convicted murderer?”
“If you expect to extract reason from religious customs and city folklore, you will be forever disappointed. The Dance of Durga has been conducted in this city for centuries.”
“What exactly will Altrus have to do?”
“That, I am not certain about. I will do more research in the library, but I fear I have exhausted our host’s reference books on the topic.”
“You could simply ask him.”
“And he could simply lie to me, if he wished.”
“We need to be near Altrus during the festival, so that he will have help should he need it.”
I rubbed Gor’s skull thoughtfully with my thumb. “Agreed. Whatever happens on the blood moon, the three of us are leaving this city together.”
I did not tell the girl where the Satrap’s talk of expiation of sins had led my mind. It reminded me of the ancient legend of the Hebrews concerning what they called a scapegoat, a beast that was selected to carry the sins of the city beyond its walls and into the desert. The fate of the scapegoat was not certain—by one account the goat was released into the wasteland to be prey to a demon, but by another account it was driven off a cliff to its death. Perhaps the Dance of Durga was a more innocent festival, but my heart felt heavy with my misgivings.
5.
All the day of the blood moon there was singing and dancing in the streets to the sounds of drums and flutes. The women bared their breasts and the men gashed themselves on their forearms with knives and held up their arms to let the blood trickle down into their armpits, all the while chanting the name “Durga” in a kind of building frenzy that became wilder as the afternoon wore on.
I had learned from Amjad El-Amin that the procession was to start on the hour the moon was predicted to darken and redden. It began at the steps of an ancient and disused temple of Durga and wound through the streets to the central square of the city, where a great open fire was to be lighted beside the city well as the moon regained her normal brightness. It all sounded innocent enough. I was not reassured.
The Satrap had readily given me the weapons and clothing of Altrus, who was to be dressed in a white undershirt to represent purity, covered by a black robe, which stood for his sins. Martala and I had already tied his sword, dagger and travel clothes on the back of one of the camels that were being held at the ready for us in a stable behind an alehouse, not far from the city gates. If we needed to make a hasty departure from fair Xandakar I wanted us to be prepared.
As twilight darkened into night, torches were lit all along the route of the procession. The people of the city had dressed themselves in black robes. I presumed they had white garments beneath, and would tear off the black robes at the dramatically appropriate moment of renewed moral purity. They danced and chanted in the streets in a kind of mindless ecstasy and seemed not to notice me as I made my way toward the old temple of Durga.
It was a squat structure out of keeping with the rest of the city architecture. Whereas most of the city was built of small red stones or clay bricks, the gray stones of the temple were massive. They almost looked Egyptian, they were so large. Another anomaly was the entrance. It appeared much wider and taller than the proportions of the temple would justify. The doors of the temple stood wide, but I could not see within it from my place in the street.
All the leaders of the city and representatives of its most prominent merchants were gathered on the temple steps. Young girls in revealing black dresses danced suggestively at the foot of the steps to the lilting of flutes and the tapping of drums. I counted them and found they were nine in number. Each seemed to express a different kind of sin by her stylized dance gestures. The dance had an ancient look to it, as ancient as the temple itself.
Altrus stood alone, midway down the steps. My heart fell when I saw what he was wearing. In addition to the white shirt and black robe the Satrap had told me about, he was weighed down by plum-shaped pieces of what looked like tarnished silver, each tied to a different part of his body by a silken cord. There were at least several dozen of them. Those on the longer cords dragged on the steps behind him as he moved back and forth like a chained wolf.
His restless, darting eyes fixed on me as I drew nearer. The city guard would not let me go up the temple steps. Above the noise of the music and the crowd he mouthed words, “Where is Martala?”
“She is safe,” I mouthed back.
He nodded and seemed satisfied.
The music ceased and the dancers drew aside as Amjad El-Amin came forward at the top of the steps in his splendid ritual robes. He did not wear the white and black garments of the people. Perhaps he was too exalted a personage to carry sin. He raised his fat hands for attention, and the street became silent.
“This good man, a stranger to our city, has agreed to carry our sins in the Dance of Durga. The silver weights tied upon him are twenty-eight in number after the days in the lunar cycle, and each is tied with nine knots. It is at his discretion whether he chooses to run with the weights trailing behind him, or pause and untie the knots that will release each weight. If he wishes, he need not leave these steps.”
The gathered crowd laughed as though the Satrap had made a particularly fine joke.
He smiled broadly and raised his hands for silence once again. “He has been well informed that when he reaches the city square, he has only to leap across the fire that burns there, and all his sins will be forgiven him.”
Again, the crowd laughed. I wondered how many Bearers of Sins had ever reached the city square.
“Let us all take a moment to thank this brave and civic-minded stranger for his contribution to the well-being of our fair city.”
The crowd applauded and shouted its approval. They were keyed up to an emotional frenzy and actually jumped up and down with excitement. Some of the men smeared the blood from their gashed arms on the exposed breasts of the women.
The Satrap consulted a priest, who looked at the moon and nodded. I glanced up and saw that the lunar disk had gone dark on its edge. It was beginning.
“Uncover the well,” he shouted through the open doors of the temple.
From the darkness within I heard the grate of stone against stone and the clang of heavy iron bars. Four men came running out of the doorway as though their lives depended on it. Brass horns sounded. Drums resumed their tap and flutes began to trill. The nine young dancers executed elaborate dance movements in the street as the council men and nobles hastily followed the waddling Satrap off the steps, leaving Altrus standing there alone.
I looked around the street and saw that the entire population of the city, including the older children, danced to the music, but also pu
lled away from the ancient temple. Altrus had his head down as he studied the knots that bound one of the silver weights to his body. I forced my way forward toward the steps and was not hindered. Even the city guard was moving back.
“Altrus, get off those steps,” I shouted.
He heard my voice but not my words. He tilted his head. I motioned him toward me with my arm.
He took a step, and the weights dragged him back. I realized they were filled with lead. With a more determined set of his shoulders he strode forward, and succeeded in dragging the weights off the temple stairs and onto the cobblestones of the street. Each leaden drop must have weighed at least a dozen pounds. It was like having two dead men dragging on the ground behind him. He could move, but not quickly.
Something shifted in the shadows of the old temple. I heard a kind of sliding sound, the rasp of wet leather on stone. As Altrus shuffled forward along the street, a rounded white mass emerged from the temple entrance. It seemed to scent the night air as it waggled this way and that, before working itself forward onto the steps with a kind of humping motion of its elongated, hairless body. With mounting horror I realized that it was a kind of maggot, but a thousand times larger than any I had ever seen.
6.
Altrus glanced over his shoulder and redoubled his efforts. The crowd of the city that lurked and watched some distance further down the street laughed at him, and the nine dancers resumed their sinuous and sensual mocking dance.
I wanted to rush forward to help the mercenary, but knew that any breaking of the rules of the festival would result in the crowd tearing us both to bits with their teeth and fingernails. This was the ancient faith of their city and not a thing for outsiders to violate with impunity. I was not even confident my sword would hurt the hulking monster that humped and wriggled itself blindly after him—for I saw that the white worm was blind.
An elderly man, his face twisted with maniacal glee, limped behind Altrus and began to leap and caper before the worm as if to taunt the monster. As it extended its gaping mouth forward, he darted back and dodged away from it, and all the while the worm continued to advance at a walking pace along the cobblestones.