Gog (Lost Civilizations: 4)

by Vaughn Heppner

  Keros cut his hair and shaved his head. Such was the required Shurite practice for divine healing. He selected garments, mantles and fashioned a close similarity to a Jogli’s outfit, even to a hood and veil. He took the sack of shekels, a princely sum. Maybe that would be just as cruel as killing the fence. He dearly hoped so.

  He crouched beside Yeb, and gripped the fleshy arm. “If you’ve moved by the time I return, I’ll castrate you. Nod if you understand.”

  It was difficult, because he was tied down so tightly, but Yeb nodded, and once more, the cot creaked and groaned.

  Keros squared his shoulders, slipped back the crossbar and stepped into a murky corridor. Paint peeled from the walls, showing the knotted oilwood behind the paint. He closed the door and hurried for the stairs. He had only taken seven steps when a door opened, and a thin-faced man peered at him, trying to pierce his disguise. Keros glared the way a Jogli would.

  “Oh!” said the stranger, a young fellow whose cheek twitched. He shut the door and slammed down the bar.

  Instead of sandals, Keros had taken a pair of Yeb’s best boots. They were of cured bosk-leather, with brass buckles along the sides. The heavy-bladed dagger he kept hidden under his billowing robes. He hurried down rickety stairs, stepping over a broken one. He strode through a smoky tavern, the floor covered with sawdust. In places, there were rusty splotches. City men sat at the low-built tables. They poured from jugs and slurped from wooden saucers. Three musicians sat near the sandpit, playing cymbals and pipes. Two women writhed in the pit as their anklets clashed.

  “Nomad!” shouted a man.

  Keros ignored him as he climbed stairs and stepped into sunlight. He glanced both ways, and then strode for where Yeb had told him he could find a disbarred priest. Perhaps thirty paces later, the gray-haired attendant, the man with a burn scar, strode toward him. The man had a distracted look. Then he looked up.

  The veil hid Keros’s features. The hood covered everything but his eyes. He stared boldly at the attendant, the way a Jogli would. The old attendant reminded him of shrewd One-Eye.

  The attendant slowed. Suspicion swam in his eyes. He opened his mouth.

  Keros put his hand in his robes. His stomach tightened, and he wondered if he would have to kill the man and run.

  A loud-voiced man shouted, “Naaman!”

  The gray-haired attendant peered past Keros.

  Keros glanced back. The Enforcer of earlier today hurried up the lane. The Enforcer brushed smaller people out of his path. “Naaman!” he shouted.

  Keros passed this Naaman. A spot between Keros’s shoulders-blades itched. He forced himself to stride slowly, easily. He turned a corner. After a few more strides, he heaved a sigh of relief and hurried toward the Goat Bridge.

  Chapter Seven

  Lod

  “Twenty long years at the weighted oar and fire blazed in his eyes.”

  -- From: Lod’s Saga

  Lod lay on stone in blackness, in terrible confinement. The claustrophobic ceiling was an inch from his face, and the narrow walls squeezed his shoulders. Because of the tightness—his hole was the size of a coffin—his knees were forced up, and he bumped against granite.

  Lod shuddered. His chains clinked. Iron manacles bound his ankles and wrists. The heavy links lay upon his tortured body. Gog had buried him alive, deep underground, in a hideous and seldom visited chamber. His living tomb was plugged with an unmovable boulder. There was no escape.

  In life under the sun, he had been Lod the Seraph, some said prophet, madman and champion, too. Lod breathed the close air of his confinement. He tasted the granite dust. Whenever he swallowed, tiny grains abraded his teeth.

  They called him a prophet, because in the past, he had seen visions, foretold the event and they had come to pass. He had foretold the union of Tarag of the Sabertooths and Jotnar, the Father of Giants. They called him a madman because of his desperate schemes. He had sailed to Poseidonis, and crossed swords with Gibborim. Not so long ago, he had slipped into Shamgar and roused pirate-captains chafing under Gog’s tyrannous reign. They called him a champion, because sometimes his desperate schemes bore victories. Sometimes, he slew evil brutes, monsters and villains. Lord Lamassu, the Gibborim, had died on the Serpent of Thep. In a wheeling chariot battle, Lod had faced the Jogli nomads, those sons of Cain. He had fought their warlord, and with a deft thrust, while wielding a twelve-foot lance, he had slain the warlord and left him dead on the grasslands for the vultures to feast.

  In his tomb, Lod dug his fingernails into the fleshy part of his palms. His hands shook. A soul-deep moan welled up past his constricted throat.

  He had slipped into Shamgar, had crept in disguise to the various pirate strongholds. There, he had harangued the proud captains, those eagles of the seas, even as he’d searched for Irad the Arkite. Gog had over-reached, he said. The First Born had demanded obeisance from the pirates. Would they now creep to him who played at being a hidden tyrant? Would they lick his boots? How was it that Gog demanded two parts out of every ten pieces of their treasures? Did Gog risk his life storming galleys and plundering spear-protected towns? How did they, the independent captains, allow themselves to bow and scrape before this overweening, overbearing potentate?

  Captains had united and risen up. Lod had sent messages to his allies across the waves, but they hadn’t showed. There had been quarrels among the strong-willed captains, disputes that had weakened their strategy and united resolve. Gog, meanwhile, had gathered his Enforcers, his terrible Defenders and hired hard-bitten mercenaries. Some captains had lost their nerve. Then, Gog had used spells—he had summoned Nidhogg, the awful serpent of the deep. The captains had retreated into the swamps. There, Gog’s mercenaries and Nebo allies had met them in desperate battle. There, Lod had drawn his sword and led the free pirates to death or glory. The bitter fighting had been galley-to-galley, deck to deck and blade to blade. He should have gone down fighting. He knew that now. He should have died with a sword in his guts, laughing at Gog, with his dying strength hewing a Defender. Instead, he was entombed, buried alive.

  Lod closed his eyes and tried to shut out the sounds of the pirate lords entombed in nearby cells. Some cried out. They pleaded for mercy. They wished someone, anyone to go tell Gog that they knew now they were wrong. Some moaned because of their terrible hurts.

  “No,” Lod whispered. “Listen to them. You led them here.”

  So he listened to their sobs, their cries of despair and their wretched hopelessness. They were poor, unenviable men. He called upon Elohim to give the pirates strength so they could endure this last torture with a smattering of dignity.

  Later, he heard a noise. Lod strained to understand. Men… stood outside his tomb.

  “Heave!” he heard.

  The granite boulder to his tomb shifted. Torchlight poured through a crack. His eyes watered from the brightness. Lod twisted his head, holding his eyelids to mere slits, trying to accustom them again to light. Slaves grunted as they drew the plug. With heavy breath and straining fingers, they lowered the boulder to the floor. Callused hands latched onto his legs and dragged him from the womb of stone. They dropped him onto the floor.

  Priests with torches circled him. The trident tattoos on their foreheads seemed to suck the light. The tattoo was a blot to their humanity, a perverse symbol of their degradation. Several held leashes, at the end of which strained whining cave hyenas. The beasts’ evil eyes glowed eerily in the torchlight. Each spotted hyena had a carrion stench, powerful shoulders and bone-crushing molars.

  A thin priest thrust claw-like fingers into Lod’s hair.

  Lod snarled, and with cat-like speed, he sank his teeth into the bony forearm. The priest shrieked. Lod dragged the priest down and whipped his chains around the priest’s throat, throttling him. Let them kill him. He would take at least one more into death.

  For precious seconds, the others gawked. Then they drew swords. They shouted. They yelled at him to let go. One struck the flat of his bade ag
ainst his face. Lod only tightened his hold. The priest’s face had turned purple.

  The chief priest shouted at the slaves, the movers of boulders. The big men fell upon Lod. He bit and clawed with hand and teeth. The other fist kept hold of the throttling chain. A slave yanked his long white hair. Another wrestled against his arms. Priests dragged free their purple-faced, gasping brother.

  “Mad dog!” shouted the chief priest. He wore a long red gown, and lashed Lod with a flexible steel whip. He left marks on Lod’s hands, shoulders and face.

  Lod snarled, ducking his head.

  The chief priest finally stepped away, panting. The slaves wrestled Lod upright.

  “Gog has summoned you,” said the chief priest. “You are to talk with him.”

  Lod regarded the low stone ceiling. He listened to the pirates trapped in the wall around him. Torchlight flickered on bones scattered across the floor. Earlier, slaves had hand-swept the Catacombs, and shoved a pirate into each vacated tomb.

  “Go,” said the chief priest.

  Lod hesitated. Fight to the death here and now, or go and speak with Gog? He nodded, and surrounded by wary slaves, he shuffled in his chains.

  The tunnels turned, twisted and ramps led upward. They passed openings with animal odors. From those tunnels, came savage roars. Out other corridors, came demented screams. In time, they entered a huge vault with an evil floor-mosaic of myriad tortures. The nervous priests slowed their step, and they pushed and prodded Lod toward a door.

  “Am I to go in alone?”

  “Silence,” hissed the chief priest. “None dare speak here.”

  Lod shuffled toward the door. At each step, his heavy chains clinked and clanked.

  A pale priest hurried ahead. He unlatched the door and the hinges creaked. Coughing, holding his mouth, the priest staggered away.

  Lod peered into the dreaded lair of Gog. He entered, and the door closed with a boom. He waited in pitch-blackness and yearned for a sword, a spear or even a stone to lift above his head. Instead, chained, bound, a captive was how he faced this awful test. He licked his lips. He dreaded dying without a fight.

  From behind, he heard the creak of armor and the rustle of cloth. Hands latched onto him, and someone immense lifted him into the air, with a hand on each arm.

  “Gog?” asked Lod.

  Someone shoved a wet cloth against his mouth. He struggled. Something whistled and struck the back of his skull. Lod blanked out.

  ***

  Lod shook his head—pain, pain—blackness all around. No. He wiped his eyes and brushed something sticky. Hurtful light blazed. It exploded on his eyeballs. He tried to speak, but croaked instead. His tongue was swollen and he raged with thirst.

  Then Lod realized he lay on hot sand. It burned his back and the back of his thighs. He struggled to his feet. He squeezed his eyelids, blinked and blinked again. He shaded his eyes and gazed on desolation. Sand swirled everywhere.

  Something was wrong here, dreadfully not right. He wore boots, a loincloth and a rag over his head. The sun cooked his sunburned flesh. Far in the distance, he saw that there was a mountain, a black, bleak peak. There, he knew—although he didn’t know how—he would find sanctuary. He staggered over dune, and down. He slipped and slid. The wind stirred grit. It blew it in his hair, his ears, eyes, nose and mouth.

  A sudden chill between his shoulders—he glanced back. The sand… it rippled like water, as if a giant creature swam just below the surface.

  “Sandworm,” Lod whispered.

  He broke into a run. Sandworm, the devouring monster of the desert, it must have smelled the water in his body. He ran. He panted. His side knifed with pain. For how long he ran he couldn’t tell. It was torture. Thankfully, the mountain drew near at an incredibly swift rate. It was a sheer chunk of black rock with a house halfway up.

  Not understanding how he could outdistance a sandworm, Lod reached the vertical wall. He scratched and clawed for purchase. He sobbed in rage and tried to jump higher. From behind, he heard the sand slide over the creature. It made an awful hiss. The creature would suck and drain him of water, spitting out hair, bones and skin.

  “No!” Lod howled, jumping, scratching and desperately wishing to survive.

  “Lod!”

  He looked up. A man peered down the cliff. The man was tall, with long red hair. He held onto a rope. “Lod, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” croaked Lod.

  “I’m going to throw you the rope.”

  “Hurry!” shouted Lod, holding out his hands in an age-old imploring gesture.

  “First, you must tell me,” shouted the man.

  “What? Tell you what?” shouted Lod, hoping from foot to foot.

  “Whom did you heal?”

  “What?”

  “On the street, whom did you heal today?”

  “What street?”

  “There isn’t any time for games, Lod,” shouted the red-haired man, the one holding the precious rope, he with arms that looked strong enough to pull up an ox. “Look! The sandworm is almost upon you.”

  Lod glanced back. The sandworm barreled underground like a shark. The earth rippled. Particles of sand flicked up from each wave.

  “Tell me, and I’ll throw you the rope! Tell me, and you’ll live.”

  Lod frowned, looking up at the man. The sun blasted heat onto his face. It was like a furnace.

  “Whom did you heal in the street today? You must say.”

  Then, out of the gritty desolation, the sandworm exploded. It was a vast, yellowish monster, with a gaping mouth of crystalline teeth. Several glittered like diamonds. It roared. Its breath was hot and dusty. It reared up over twenty feet.

  “Lod!” shouted the man. “This is your last chance!”

  Lod stared at the sandworm.

  The gapping mouth crashed down, down, down. It swallowed him whole. He slid headfirst through its dusty gullet, down into darkness.

  ***

  “He is strong-willed, not easily deceived.”

  “As are most Seraphs,” rumbled a dreadful voice.

  “He twisted it, and invented sandworms in a desert. He resisted because it was mythic. He won’t twist the dreams this time. Fear not, Master.”

  “I do not. But you should.”

  There was a pause. Then, “This time he will speak, Master. I have his mettle now.”

  “Good, for he stirs.”

  There came a whistle—thud—darkness. Nothingness. Sinking.

  ***

  The stars glittered in crystalline mockery at the man below. His vessel was a beefwood plank, flotsam tossed on a dark sea of perdition. He’d sailed for weeks into uncharted desolation. The last sight of land had been his damnation, the awful Isle of Poseidonis.

  Black waves hissed as they barreled at him, threatening burial under tons of crushing weight. Instead of a drowning death, however, the sea decided on a subtler torment. Each wave in succession heaved him high to view the hopelessness of his plight. Then down he sledded, into a trough, surrounded by mountains of water.

  That he’d survived this long was testament to his will, to his grotesque physique and fury. Hundreds of leagues ago, he had been an oar slave in a galley of Poseidonis. He had been a legend, a prodigy, drawing the slave oar for twenty long years. Hatred had driven him, a grinding rage to even the score of life. He’d defeated scurvy, plague, the lash and lung rot. He’d pulled the weighted oar until his fingers had become like talons, crooked and superhumanly strong. His muscles had twisted and expanded like oak roots. Whips had ripped his back into evil scar tissue. Hot brands had seared his flesh and heated his soul, until Elohim had sent him visions of fire and blood. In fevered rage, Lod had burst his chains during a sea battle, and he’d floated to Larak. There, his fiery oratory and sheer physical presence had won him a band of heroes, who wished to strike back at the evil god of Poseidonis.

  Weeks later, the isle had hove onto the horizon—it was the last known land in this region of ocean. Beyond, said mar
iners, the equatorial sun boiled the sea, so vapors rose like steam.

  Harsh-voiced pterodactyls had swooped down from the sky. After circling twice, each beast had flapped with disquieting haste for the isle. Several hours later, the waters had bubbled and kraken half the size of the ship had arisen. With lashing tentacles and parrot-like beaks, the kraken had smashed the carrack and devoured the screaming crew. Lod alone had survived and crawled onto a plank. A strong current had caught him, and carried him relentlessly, he believed, toward the legendary boiling sea.

  During the voyage, he’d starved, and had known raging thirst. Yet he’d refused the bitter fruit of defeat that invisible sirens had shrieked at him on the wind. Nor would he drink the mocking wines of futility, which had sounded suspiciously like the hiss of passing waves. He’d endured the burning sun that had peeled his skin in snake-like swaths. With his knife—a most precious possession—he’d cut his belt into strips, and had made a hook out of the buckle. Then he’d lain on the plank one listless noon and lured a gull that must have desired the delicacy of pecking out his eyes. He’d wrung its squawking neck and drank the blood, had devoured most of its flesh and used the heart, liver and spleen as bait.

  He’d sworn an oath that day. If he survived, he would raise an armada, a grand fleet of warriors, and storm Poseidonis. He would topple the brazen idols and shatter the gore-spattered altars. He had not pulled the weighted oar for twenty long years to end his life like this. His mistake had been in thinking too small and outfitting a single ship. His foe was mighty, possessed of eerie powers and offspring of terrible renown.

  Terrible renown… after many weeks, the sea began to live up to its evil reputation. Lod grew aware of it one pregnant morn. Waves slapped across the green waters. Far in the distance—

  On the plank, Lod struggled to his hands and knees. He squinted. He had long white hair, a beard and blue eyes that verged on madness. There was a glow on the southern horizon, a shine, and it wormed dread into his heart.

  Did the sea indeed boil?

  He lay down, fretted fitfully, and drifted into an uneasy slumber. Several hours later, he rose up like a hound with a rabbit’s scent in its nostrils. On the wind, he smelled dirt and wet leaves. He smelled loam and rotted vegetation.