by Donald Tyson
“Are you a witch?”
She cackled. “I have the sight, and you do not, for all your study and book-learning.”
The intensity of her gaze upon me was disquieting. I resisted an urge to make the sign for warding off the evil eye. It would not have been polite.
“What do you wish to say to me?”
“Only this, necromancer: your company is cursed. A dark shadow follows behind the tails of your camels, and it will not be satisfied until you are all dead.”
I wondered if anyone had spoken to any of the tribe about the leopard that hunted the caravan road.
“Cursed in what way, old woman?”
“You are hunted by a shape-changer.”
“I do not understand you.”
“You understand more than you will admit. A shape-changer, who has pledged himself to a demon in return for the power to become a predatory beast, bears your company a deadly malice that will only be sated by your blood.”
“What kind of shape-changer are you talking about?”
She narrowed her eyes and squinted at the red light that lined the western horizon. The sun had already set behind the hills.
“I see teeth, a snarling snout. I see claws that drip with blood. I see fur sleek and shining beneath the moonlight. It stalks you even now. It will come while you sleep. Beware, Alhazred, for the Old Ones will not protect you from its wrath.”
“Is this shape-changer human during the day?”
She nodded. “It has the power to change at will, but its power waxes greater with the moon, and is at its height when the moon is full, as it is this night.”
“Tell me this, witch: how may we recognize this fiend?”
She nodded at me and chuckled softly in her throat. “It will bear the mark of the beast it becomes somewhere upon its body.”
“How am I to know this mark of the beast?”
“It takes the form of the footprint that the beast makes when it walks.”
I did not reveal it to the old woman, but this information eased the worry in my heart. I had seen no such mark.
“How may we kill this creature?”
“Cold steel will kill it, if the injury is severe enough. It is best to sever its head from its body.”
“Why have you told me these things?”
She grinned, revealing her toothless gums in the red light of the dying day. “There is one who concerns himself with your life, necromancer. He asked me to bear you this message.”
“Who is this?”
But she had already turned her crooked back to me, and was walking away with the aid of her staff.
I did not pursue the matter. She had told me what she wished to tell me, and I had a sense that nothing I could do would make the old hag say more. It is true; I sometimes had dealings with the ancient gods and with the Old Ones, who were greater than the gods, but I could not imagine any of them caring enough about me to warn me of danger. If anything, the opposite was true—some of them would have enjoyed watching my violent murder, particularly the one I do not name aloud who is sometimes called the Crawling Chaos.
I entered our hut.
“What did the old woman want?” Altrus asked.
“She warned me that we are under a curse, and that a shape-changer will come tonight.”
“A shape-changer? So that is what is hunting us.”
“What have you heard of such things?”
“Only what is said in alehouses and around campfires. Men who can transform themselves into beasts to hunt and kill other men.”
“Only men?” I murmured.
He glanced at Thylissa, preparing her bedroll in a corner of the hut. “Women also, according to the tales I’ve heard.”
I nodded. We understood each other.
6.
“You get some sleep. I’ll sit the first watch.”
He went to his bedroll and stretched himself upon it to sleep.
It was not generosity that caused to me take the first watch. I knew Altrus, who was a battle-hardened mercenary, could sleep anywhere and at any time, whereas it would be impossible for me to fall asleep until I was reeling with fatigue, the old woman’s words had set my nerves so on edge.
I sat upon my own bed and, as the last light of day left the sky, watched out the open doorway of the hut. The hut had a door that could be closed, but it was made from flimsy woven reeds and would not stop a leopard. I wanted to see what was outside.
One by one, the stars appeared. The small animal sounds of the desert reached my ears, carried by the night breeze. Altrus and Martala both snored, although the girl’s snore was soft and intermittent. Thylissa did not seem burdened by this affliction. It was now so dark inside the hut that I could not see any of them. Outside, the rising moon seemed to frost the sand. Nothing could approach the open door without me noticing it.
As I shifted my legs to keep them from becoming numb, a pebble clicked against a stone outside. I stood up as quietly as I was able and drew my sword slowly so that its steel would not rasp against the brass guard of its scabbard. Listening, I waited. Again I heard a tiny click no great distant away from the hut.
I eased out the door and looked around. I even looked above me to the roof, but nothing lurked there. Wondering whether it was worth waking Altrus, I stood irresolute. When nothing occurred, I finally returned to the hut and resumed my seat on my bedroll, which had seemed soft at the start of the evening but now felt as hard as stone against my bruised buttocks.
It must have been almost an hour later when a scream cut the night. It did not come from a human throat. I ran in the direction of the sound with my sword in my hand. It came from the camel yard of the Bedouins. One of the beasts lay on its side, making sporadic efforts to get its legs under it. Several Bedouin men had come from their huts and stood gathered around the agonized beast with daggers in their hands when I arrived. I saw that the belly of the camel had been torn open. It was dying, its life-blood spreading slowly over the sand. One of the men used his dagger to cut its throat while another man held its head. When they became aware that I watched them, they glared at me with hatred.
Altrus and Martala ran up behind me.
“What’s going on?” he asked me.
“The leopard came into the village and killed a camel.” I looked behind him. “Where is Thylissa?”
They both looked about.
“Maybe she was frightened and stayed behind in the hut,” Martala said.
I looked at Altrus.
“I’ll go back,” he said. “You and the girl look for the leopard.”
We searched the edge of the village but saw and heard nothing. By this time most of the Bedouin men had returned to their huts. I saw the old woman standing by the dead camel, watching me. Our eyes met, and she made the sign of warding away evil with her hand. I almost laughed. If anyone was casting the evil eye it was that vile old woman.
When I returned to our hut, the oil lamp burned inside, filling the little structure with a yellow glow. Martala and Altrus were there with Thylissa, who wore a bewildered expression. I shut the door behind me when I entered, and examined her closely. Her hair was disordered and her dress wrinkled, but that was to be expected so soon after rising from sleep.
“Did you leave the hut?” I demanded.
She shook her head, her eyes wide. “Something woke me, I don’t know what. I called out your names, but no one answered. I was too frightened to move; I just stayed on my sleeping mat.”
“She was here when I came back,” Altrus said.
I was in no mood to let things pass this time. Some hellish abomination was toying with us, stalking us, hunting us.
“Bring me your scissors,” I told the girl.
“My scissors?” she repeated.
“Yes, your scissors. Get them.”
She rummaged in her pack and brought forth a small pair of steel scissors.
“Bring the woman over to the lamp,” I told Altrus.
He did not question, but
grasped Thylissa firmly by her upper arm and forced her toward the lamp, which burned on a small projection of rock on the wall.
“What are you doing? You’re hurting me.”
“Help him,” I told Martala.
She took the woman’s other arm and pulled her nearer the flame. Ignoring her protests, I began to cut off her hair close to her scalp. She screamed and babbled and wept, but none of us heeded her. I did not stop until all the hair on her head lay scattered about on the hard-packed clay of the floor. Casting aside the scissors, I took her head in both my hands and examined every part of it, holding her skull only inches away from the flame. When I had satisfied myself that no birthmark was hidden there, I released her and told the others to let her go.
She crawled to a corner of the hut and folded herself into a ball, weeping like a small child. I ignored her and related to my companions what the old woman had said about the mark of the beast.
“It may still be there, hidden in some crevice or fold of her body,” Altrus said.
“You look,” I told the girl, who nodded silently.
We dragged Thylissa back near the lamp and held her flat by the wrists and ankles while the girl went over her entire body from the front, and then from the back.
“I can find no mark on her,” she said.
Only then did we release her.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, cringing back to the far side of the hut and trying to cover her nakedness with her hands.
I told her the words of the hag.
She snatched up her dress and quickly pulled it over her body. Her face was reddened and streaked with tears, but there was anger in her eyes. “The old woman is mad. How could I kill the camel? I never left this hut.”
“You could have distracted me by tossing small pebbles out the window,” I told her. “When I went out to look, you could have slipped out the door behind me. It was too dark inside the hut to see if you were missing. After you killed the camel, you could easily have come back into the hut when Martala and Altrus ran to investigate the noise.”
She shook her head. “You are mad as well. You’re as mad as the old woman. How could you cut off my hair? How could you shame me in this way? If my father were still alive he would have you whipped to death for this outrage.”
I looked around the floor of the hut at the scattered strands of her dark hair. “I had to be sure.”
“And are you sure now that I’m not a shape-changer?”
“No.”
“I will go no further with you on the road. You are all mad. You all saw that I was the prey of this beast, yet you accuse me.”
Martala went over to try to comfort her.
“Stay away from me. Don’t touch me. You are as bad as they are.”
We stopped trying to talk to her and let her sit in silence for the remainder of the night. I don’t think any of us slept.
7.
“You must go, all of you,” the headman of the Bedouin said.
The men of the village stood around us, their hands on their daggers at their waists, their eyes hard and cold.
“We will go,” I agreed, making placating gestures with my hands. “Yet it would be best for the woman if she stayed with you.”
“No,” he said emphatically. “If you leave her behind we will kill her.”
“Please let me stay,” Thylissa begged him. “These people are strangers to me, and they are all insane. They think I am a leopard. Don’t make me go with them.”
He ignored her as though she were silent and invisible. “There are your camels. We should take one for the camel that was killed last night, but we give them back to you. Take them now and leave this place. If you do not go at once we will kill you all.”
“I beg you, don’t send me away,” Thylissa said with tears streaming down her cheeks. “They are mad, and they will kill me. My family has great wealth. You will all be rewarded if you let me stay.”
The headman might as well have been deaf.
We strapped our belongings back on our camels. The Bedouins allowed us to get water from their well, but they watched us narrowly the whole while. After her outburst, Thylissa appeared to resign herself to leaving with us. Her face bore a fatalistic expression of despair. She allowed Martala to help her up on the back of her camel.
We rode out of the village as the Bedouin stood in silence and watched us. Even their children were still and silent. I saw the old woman at the back of the crowd, a malicious smirk on her wrinkled lips.
We rode north in silence, each of us alone with our thoughts. I eyed the crests of the hills, wondering if eyes watched us from one of them, or if the evil was here among us, sitting behind the girl. When Martala’s camel chanced to stray some distance ahead, Altrus rode close beside me and leaned over to murmur in my ear hole. “If we’re going to do it, we must do it before sunset.”
“I know,” I told him.
“The girl won’t like it. You know how sentimental she gets.”
“Martala will do what I tell her to do.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But she won’t like it.”
Morning turned to afternoon, and the sun began to decline in the west. Still I hesitated, uncertain what action I should take. I wished that we had left the woman behind us beneath the ledge, or better yet, that the girl had never found her there, but this was idle gazing at clouds. The truth was that I did not want to take an action that would cause Martala to hate me. The shadows lengthened.
“You must decide,” Altrus said. “If you want, I will do it.”
“No. The decision is mine. I will do it, when I decide it must be done.” I stroked the skull of Gor on my belt, as was my habit when seeking resolve to decide a difficult question.
The sun settled itself behind the hills and twilight came on. We came to a great upthrust of rock that was rounded on the top and seemed to loom over us like a dark cloud. The wall at its base was nearly vertical and provided good protection from any approach from the east.
“We’ll make our camp here,” I said.
We dismounted stiffly and Altrus led the camels away to see to their needs. Thylissa eyed me warily. She had put on her burka, and it was impossible to see that her hair was gone. I met her gaze, and she suddenly turned white in the face and began to tremble. I realized I had forgotten to renew the spell of glamour that concealed my true features. It seemed not worth the effort to do so, now that she had seen how I look. Even so, from habit I renewed the glamour.
“What are you?” she whispered.
I approached her silently. She cringed backward.
Martala stepped in front of her and faced me with a look of resolve that I knew only too well. “What are you doing, Alhazred?”
“We can’t take the risk. It should have been done before this.” I drew my dagger.
“No,” she said. “We don’t know that she is a changeling. She doesn’t have the mark.”
“It could be anywhere.”
“I won’t let you kill her.”
“This is what I was afraid of,” Altrus said, returning to us from where he had staked the camels. “I told you, the girl is sentimental.”
“Don’t kill me,” Thylissa cried. “Don’t let him kill me.”
It was almost full dark. She ran a short distance, unmindful of the sharp stones on the bare soles of her feet, but I had placed myself so that the wall was behind her and she had nowhere to go. Altrus separated himself from me so that she would not be able to escape around us. He drew his own dagger.
“Alhazred, if you do this thing, I will leave your house,” Martala said. There was an edge of steel in her voice and I knew she spoke the truth.
“If we let this changeling continue to stalk us, she will kill us all.”
“We don’t know that she is a changeling.”
“We will know when we are all lying on the sand with our entrails hanging out of our bellies. I’m not prepared to wait that long.”
The girl made her littl
e dagger appear in her hand as though by some magic trick.
I stopped and stared at her. “Would you really use that against me?”
Before she could answer, the yowl of a big cat sounded in the gloom. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck and made the camels bellow with alarm and jerk against their tethers.
“Where did it come from?” Altrus said, turning all around.
“Over there, I think.” I pointed to the west.
He sheathed his dagger and awkwardly drew his sword with his left hand. I transferred my dagger to my left hand and drew my sword in my right.
“Stay behind me,” Martala told Thylissa, who cringed back against the wall of rock.
8.
In the dying light from the west, a leopard stepped out from behind a boulder at the side of a low hill and stood staring down at us. It was larger than any big cat I had ever seen at the palace of King Huban in Yemen, where lions and African leopards and cheetahs were kept as pets. From nose to tail it must have been at least six cubits in length. Its muscles rippled beneath its spotted coat as it shifted and stared at us with an intelligence that was more than animal.
Instinctively, Altrus and I both began to edge back toward the wall, in order to put the great rock behind us. The beast would not have so easy a prey as it had accustomed itself to while raiding the caravan of Thylissa’s father. We prepared to sell our lives at a high price.
“It can be killed,” I said. “A sword can kill it, or a knife.”
The leopard stretched its back and lifted its head. It opened its jaws and made a coughing noise. I realized that it was laughing at me.
“Stand behind me,” Martala said to Thylissa.
I glanced at the woman. She stood with her back perfectly straight, her head held high, staring at the leopard. Her pupils had expanded into pools of blackness that seemed to swallow her eyes. She did not appear afraid.
She met my gaze with her empty black eyes and laughed in a way that was disturbingly similar to the coughing laugh of the big cat. “You fools are so easy to manipulate and so much fun to play with,” she said.
I looked at Altrus.
“You were right,” was all he said.