by John Shirley
Only then did Zolamin notice the man in yellow robes and strange tattoos marking his shaven pate. He locked eyes and approached her, bowing. When he spoke, his accent was not one Zolamin knew. “A thousand pardons, lady, but this humble supplicant begs a moment with you.”
She glanced at Amarkosa, who shrugged. “One moment,” she said, before asking him if they could use the private room curtained off at the rear of the building.
Once there, she’d listened as the priest, who called himself Nin Zaggadolh, related his story, in that guttural accent.
He came from a place called Dhaq Maqqun, across the great central plains, in the shadows of Tscho Vulpanomi. His people had been at war for decades with a rival clan, the Dulambri, who claimed to share blood with the Voormis, the half-human savages who had once roamed Hyperborea before civilization had begun to claim the continent. The Maqqi and the Dulambri both worshipped the same god, Y’n-Tharqqua.
“I know that name,” Zolamin said, searching back through half-forgotten conversations, overheard snippets. “They call him the Mad God.”
Nin Zaggadolh smiled wryly. “Do not the actions of all gods seem mad?”
Zolamin, who bowed to no god but money, had to agree.
The priest told her that his clan had lived with the god for decades, until the Dulambri had staged a surprise attack one night and, in the midst of chaos, had taken Y’n-Tharqqua. Maqqi efforts to reclaim the divine prize had so far been unsuccessful, and had resulted only in the deaths of many young warriors.
“The Dulambri are skilled fighters, then?”
Nin Zaggadolh shifted in his rough wooden chair, uncomfortable. “No, they’re primitive and lack leadership. But…”
She had to prompt him to continue. “Yes?”
“Y’n-Tharqqua is powerful. He sleeps, but occasionally rouses…and those times can be dangerous for any who are not trained in serving him. These moments are no more than a sigh for Y’n-Tharqqua, but they provoke madness in men. We priests spend years training in mental disciplines to resist these…disruptions, but ordinary men – like our warriors – have no such defenses. We tried to instruct our brave soldiers before we sent them off, but they were unable to develop the necessary protections in so short a time. They all succumbed.”
“So,” Zolamin paused, thinking, before continuing, “you want to hire me to recover something that will, in all likelihood, drive me mad?”
“Note, please,” Nin Zaggadolh said, holding up a finger for emphasis, “that I referred to our men. Women are less vulnerable to Y’n-Tharqqua’s delirium.”
“’Less vulnerable’?”
The priest nodded. “The god’s visions target men’s most worldly ambitions. Women possess different ambitions, and so will experience some of Y’n-Tharqqua’s effect, but it will be more akin to…a dream that one awakens from, remembering.”
Zolamin almost dismissed the priest right then. She knew that she’d never shared her male companions’ dreams of glory and vast wealth – she wanted only to retire alive someday, and not to a palace – and so perhaps she would be protected from Y’n-Tharqqua, but she disliked the idea of stealing a deranged being that could force its way into any head. It seemed like a violation, and one that she, as a non-believer, had spent her life avoiding. She wanted no part of it now.
Nin Zaggadolh must have sensed her irritation. “We know of your reputation, and are prepared to offer you two thousand djals to start with, plus an additional two thousand if Y’n-Tharqqua is returned safely to us.”
Zolamin blinked once, in shock. Two thousand djals? She’d just been paid fifty djals for a month of risking her life to guard a rich man’s treasures. Surely rescuing a stolen god was no less offensive.
“Do you have the money with you?”
Nin Zaggadolh nodded and reached inside his robes, producing a large leather bag. He untied the bag from around his neck and set it before her. Zolamin emptied it out and found twenty hundred-djal pieces within. She examined them briefly to be sure they weren’t counterfeit. When she was convinced, she returned the money to the bag.
“We leave in the morning,” the priest said.
“Of course,” Zolamin answered, as she slipped the bag’s long tie around her own neck.
~*~
As dusk fell across the Hyperborean plains, Zolamin sought a safe place to pass the night. Amarkosa had told her that the Dulambri possessed extraordinary night vision as a result of their Voormis blood, and that her best strategy would be to hide from sundown to sunrise.
She passed a narrow gully hidden by a rock outcropping; it was just wide enough for the cart, and she should be invisible with a minimum of camouflage. She released the gastorns to graze, ate a small meal of salt pork and bread, and spread her furs out on the ground near the wagon. She knew it would be safer to sleep in the wagon, but she preferred putting distance between her and the thing in the box that dreamed.
The stars faded in overhead, the temperature began its nocturnal plunge, and Zolamin pulled her furs tighter…but sleep refused her invitation.
She lay staring up at the ribbon of night sky framed by the sides of the gully, and she thought about what had brought her here, even before she’d made the deal with Nin Zaggadolh.
She remembered her mother, forced into a life of prostitution after her parents had traded her at the age of ten for a pair of oxen. Zolamin’s mother had borne her while still a teen; her father could have been any of dozens of men. Determined that her daughter would not follow in her footsteps, mother had done her best to disguise the child’s gender and raised her as a boy; little Zolamin had learned how to brawl and curse better than any other child before she’d begun to bleed each month. When her mother died at the age of twenty-nine, the bordello madame had given Zolamin a choice: She could leave, or she could take over for her dead mother. Zolamin had chosen exile, but soon found her fighting skills served her well; a few years spent scuffling on the streets of Uzuldaroum prepared her for life in the local warlord’s army. She quickly rose through the ranks despite her sex, but left when she realized she could make more as a private mercenary for hire. Money mattered a great deal to Zolamin, because while she may not have possessed her male friends’ vast ambitions, she still kept her own goal: She wanted to buy the brothel that had employed her mother and where she’d grown up. She’d buy the brothel, release all of the whores with enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, and turn the two-story building with many bedrooms into a school for girls who had no interest in becoming wives or mothers. Or prostitutes.
She’d always assumed that she’d be working for decades to save the amount of money she needed; she’d pictured herself taking on the new life when she was gray-haired and scarred from too many battles. But with 4,000 djals, she could quit soldiering now and settle down. No more risking herself every day for wealthy men who cared more about jewels and mad gods than mere warrior women.
Lulled by her simple dream of leaving war behind, she finally drifted into sleep.
~*~
The attack came several hours before dawn.
The high-pitched cries of the gastorns brought Zolamin abruptly awake. She instinctively reached for her sword and had just unsheathed it when the first Dulambri hurtled towards her.
She made out only a dark shape blocking out the stars above, but it was enough – her sword arm swung up, and she felt hot blood rain down. She rolled aside, swinging the sword, and something parted beneath it. Satisfied that the first attacker was dead, she crouched with her back against a rock and waited for the rest.
Amarkosa had been right about the Dulambri’s night vision – the first attacker had lunged directly at her in the dark, while she’d relied on guesswork as much as input from her senses. She could only hope now that chance still favored her, even as her ears strained for sound, nostrils flared to catch an approaching scent.
The next two Dulambri made no attempt to disguise their attack – they screeched in the night as they
leapt into the ravine before her. Zolamin caught the glint of moonlight on raised spearheads, then she threw herself to the left. Something sharp pierced her right calf, but the sudden solar flare of pain didn’t slow her down – she threw her sword arm out in a wide arc, and her blade met with a descending spear shaft. She heard the shrieks of more Dulambri; she had no idea how many now filled the gully around her, but it didn’t matter – it wouldn’t take many of them to kill her. She would die here, in a crevice in the earth, the mad god reclaimed by the Dulambri while her body was left to feed scavengers and windstorms.
She stabbed blindly in the darkness, determined to at least put up some sort of fight even as she knew she had seconds of life left.
Whether it was the sound of clashing metal or the smell of blood that stirred Y’n-Tharqqua, she didn’t know, but…
She stood tall, victorious, still clutching a dripping blade, above a field littered with Dulambri bodies / she rode back to Uzuldaroum on a saddle ornamented with gold and emeralds / the barbarian from the frozen north stood before her, stripped, bound, erect, and she took him on a bed covered with the finest imported silk / she sat on a throne carved with skulls and monstrosities, as all of Hyperborea bowed beneath her –
Zolamin jerked out of the vision, panting, heart pounding, trying to orient herself to the concepts of here and now. Now: Late morning, with the sun high, the ground beneath her already warm to the touch. Here: The bottom of a plains gully –
– and a man with a shaven head standing over her, dagger uplifted, ready to plunge it into her heart.
She acted instinctively, simultaneously rolling to one side and lashing out with a leg. She connected with his ankle and sent him sprawling. In that time her hand found her own sword and she rolled, coming to her feet. Her opponent stood as well, took one look at her, and fled. She started after him – and stumbled over a dead body. It was only then, as she struggled to her feet, that she saw the dead Dulambri. There were at least a dozen; two were still alive but whimpering, minds gone. One was beheaded, and she thought she’d done that; the rest seemed to have slain each other. A survivor crouched in the shadows of the gully, gnawing on one of his fellow’s arms, and Zolamin took grim pleasure in ending his macabre feast along with his life.
She heard the sound of wagon wheels and gastorns’ claws overhead just then, and stood stunned for several seconds, trying to understand what had happened: The man who’d nearly stabbed her must have moved the cart out of the gully before she’d regained consciousness. Now he drove it, urging the great birds on, the sounds already dulling with distance.
“Gods, NO!” Zolamin sheathed her sword, ignored the pain of a wound in her leg, and looked for the way up out of the ravine. Her mind was sluggish, still wrapped in Y’n-Tharqqua’s visions of conquest and triumph. She pushed aside thoughts of armies bowing before her, of gleaming palaces and muscled slaves, and clawed her way up a narrow cleft. Some of the Dulambri dinictis stood about, restless at the scent of spilled blood; the heavily-muscled predators unnerved her, with their gleaming tusks and yellow eyes, but she had no choice. She approached the nearest, warily, ready to defend herself if it turned on her…but it remained still as she mounted. It felt odd beneath her, not like the slender, tufted sides of a gastorn, but it responded to her kicks and sped off, following the trail of dust kicked up by the wagon.
Zolamin tried to think about the man she now pursued – not Dulambri, too tall and hairless, familiar – but her own thoughts flew from her more quickly than her steed’s swift paws. Logic and comprehension were buried beneath wants and ambitions which she’d never had before. Desire – for money, for power, for sex, for worship – flooded her head. She had forgotten why she chased the man who’d stolen the wagon, but she relished the anticipation of what she’d do to him when –
It hit her, abruptly, a single coherent thought slicing through the vortex in her skull: These notions were mad, she was mad, just like all the Dulambri she’d left behind. Y’n-Tharqqua had invaded her mind and replaced her own ordered thoughts with lunatic fantasies. The priest Nin Zaggadolh had lied to her when he’d said women…what exactly was it he’d said again? She tried to remember…tried to recall the priest, and –
Of course. Nin Zaggadolh…that was why the man she was riding after seemed familiar. He had the same shaven head and sunflower-tinted robes that Nin Zaggadolh had worn. He was younger than the other man, but there was no question that he belonged to the same priesthood. But what was he doing out here? Why had he tried to kill her, then stolen the god Nin Zaggadolh had hired her to return?
Sanity returned as Zolamin saw the truth: She’d been defrauded as surely as any city dweller with a backache hopefully passing djals to the traveling salesman perched on the backboard of a gaily-painted wagon. Nin Zaggadolh had never meant to finish his payment to her; the promise of an additional two thousand djals was as illusory as one of Y’n-Tharqqua’s visions. She hoped the money he’d already paid her was still safe with Amarkosa back in Uzuldaroum, and that the treacherous priest hadn’t slipped into her friend’s sleeping chambers and slit his throat in the night.
Fury over the possibility of injury to her friend – already mutilated by his time at war – drove Zolamin, and she spurred the dinicti. It responded with a burst of speed, and within seconds she was nearly abreast of the slower wagon. She drew a throwing knife from her boot, took aim, and the blade buried itself up to the hilt in the driver’s back. He clutched at the dagger, releasing the reins, and the gastorns began to slow. After a few seconds he tilted forward and fell. Zolamin saw the wagon bounce as the rear wheels rolled over him.
It was another five minutes before the birds came to a halt, and Zolamin was able to climb aboard the wagon. She quickly set the brake and checked the god’s box, which was undisturbed. Then she rode the dinicti back to check on the priest.
He was dead, his blood leeching into the tan dust of the plain, his limbs crushed into new shapes. Zolamin searched him, her fingers reddened in the process, but found nothing.
There was no question, though: He was one of Nin Zaggadolh’s men. Aside from the robe, his single undamaged hand had fingers too soft for a warrior, and he had withstood Y’n-Tharqqua’s mental assault while she’d dreamed in the bottom of a gully. He was more muscular than the older man, but that made sense: Nin Zaggadolh wouldn’t have sent a weakling out to take his hired mercenary’s life.
Zolamin rode back to the cart and considered her options. She saw no other signs of pursuit from either Dulambri or Maqqi, so she thought she was momentarily safe. At least long enough to think:
She could return the god to the priest and threaten his life unless he paid her…but she’d be threatening him on his home ground, where he’d be surrounded by acolytes and guards. She dismissed that option.
She immediately ruled out returning Y’n-Tharqqua to the Dulambri.
She could simply ride away, leaving the box and its abominable contents here, to sink slowly beneath the plains dust. But then she saw herself in a year, ten years, twenty, thinking about travelers being driven mad in this area, dying after they’d wandered the plains for weeks lost to everything but spurious visions of glory. Perhaps Y’n-Tharqqua would even dream of her, and the mad ones would die cursing her name.
No, if she was going to spend the rest of her life imagining horrors committed in the name of Y’n-Tharqqua, she would find some pleasure. Money could buy her not just comfort, but more ways to salve her conscience. She imagined outfitting Uzuldaroum’s liberated whores with not simply a converted brothel, but mansions and fineries. She no longer cared if these ambitions were her own; all that mattered was fulfilling them.
Surely a god would bring a fine price. She imagined someone like the ruthless and malicious moneylender Avoosl Wuthoqquan – for only a man like that would be able to afford to purchase his own god – being offered a deity that could induce mass insanity.
It wasn’t enough.
Zolamin, furious with the desires r
aging in her, leapt into the back of the cart and stared at the god’s box as if she could demand an answer from it. Driven by that thought, she untied the ropes holding the box. The lid was secured with a single simple metal clasp, held shut by a polished bone, which she withdrew. She threw back the lid and sunlight hit the interior of the box for the first time. When Zolamin saw what lay within, she gaped; then, as comprehension hit, she laughed.
Ten minutes later, when her hysteria had passed, she closed the box again and hitched the dinictis to the sides of the cart, then took up the reins. She’d need to sell the cart and the animals to realize her plans.
She turned the cart north, smiling as she drove.
~*~
It’d been ten years since she’d last visited the Sleeping Devil Inn, but the place hadn’t changed.
It stood alone in the vast Hyperborean plains, at a nexus where three roads converged and the Eiglophian Mountains drowsed far to the east. Built of thick clay walls and looking more like a fortress than an inn, the Sleeping Devil had gained its name by enduring centuries of dust storms like a drunk napping through a bar brawl. The inn’s cooks and bartenders were unremarkable (although their snake stew had earned them some renown, if not exactly for the taste), but the next nearest stop was a two-day ride, and so the Sleeping Devil was constantly busy.
Its clientele were what Zolamin was interested in, though. The outpost inn drew warriors, assassins, thieves, the occasional nervous merchant on his way to somewhere else, and youths who’d come here looking to make money. Doing what didn’t much matter.
The place would serve her purposes well.
First she sold the cart and the animals. If her plan succeeded, she’d be able to buy far better soon enough; if it didn’t, she’d be dead.
Next, she used the money to rent a room on the second floor of the Sleeping Devil and to buy two messengers. She offered a few djals up front and more when they returned with proof that they’d delivered. She knew timing the messengers was the most critical part of the plan.