As he walked back, Bessus said, “Purity in everything.”
Keros nodded, although he loathed these statues. This place honored degradation. He struggled to hide his hatred as he pitched his voice into a solemn tone. “You were a priest once, yes?”
“I am a priest!”
“Your pardon, O priest of Gog.”
“…Yes. Except…”
“Is something wrong?” Keros asked.
Bessus pursed his lips. Then he shook his head.
Keros rubbed his chin. Bessus was a madman, or he gave a perfect performance of one. Yeb had tricked him, and it galled Keros that he might never repay Yeb for it. Could he salvage something out of Bessus?
Keros said, “This is a delicate question, as I do not wish to offend you.”
“I understand what troubles you.”
“You do?”
“Oh, indeed,” said Bessus. “You spoke to Yeb. You must, therefore, wonder why I serve the wild ones and not in the Temple.”
Keros made an offhand gesture.
“I serve the wild ones temporarily.”
“Naturally,” said Keros. “Now Bessus—it is all right that I call you that? I am not dishonoring you if I do?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether you serve Gog,” said Bessus.
Keros didn’t want to lie. But could he afford the truth? He split the difference, saying, “…Oh Bessus, if you only knew what I planned.”
“You’re evading the question. Do you serve Gog? Is he your patron?”
Something in the ex-priest’s intensity alerted Keros, the way Bessus’s fingers fluttered more than ever. “Is he your patron?” asked Keros.
Fear entered Bessus’s eyes. He squatted, and nervously plucked at yellow strands of grass that grew like bristles between the cobblestones. He pocketed what grass he pulled, stood and paced in a tight circle. Finally, he regarded Keros. “It’s obvious you’re no Jogli. Oh, you fooled Esau perhaps—are you from the Temple?”
“You once served in the Temple.”
The bony fingers fluttered and trembled.
Keros decided to tempt fate. He was running short of options, and time. “Tell me, Bessus, do you remember the Temple layout?”
“…I know where the Oracle lies.”
“Yes,” said Keros. “But do you know where the prisoners are kept?”
Bessus’s eyes narrowed. He ran his fingers through his thatch of wild hair. “You’re testing me, is that it?”
“What do you mean?”
“They are sacrifices, not prisoners. They are chattel devoted to Gog.”
“Just so,” said Keros. “Where would they—” he cleared his throat. “Where would we keep Lod?”
Bessus furrowed his brows. “Under Gog’s Chamber, of course.”
“Do you mean the Oracle Room?”
“Certainly not,” said Bessus. “Deep under the Master’s Chamber—or the one they call master.” Bessus’s eyes widened. He seemed to wait for a blow, the way a bad dog might from its owner. Then his brows furrowed. Thoughtfully, Bessus said, “Lod and his fools will be stored in the holes, in the Catacombs, the plugs of granite sealing them until they are needed, or until they die. The Catacombs lie under the Chamber of Beasts.”
“I see that you have an understanding of the dungeons. Could you draw a map of what you know?”
Bessus laughed in a brittle way. “I would never betray my trust so. You may assure Gog of that.”
“I thought as much,” said Keros, keenly disappointed. He gazed over the canal as he thought about Lod deep in the dungeon. He noticed a bold rat that swam at something floating. Only the triangular head showed and the ripple of water that the beast made. Then, a second rat exploded before the offal or meat, clutched it with its teeth and submerged with the prize. With a squeal of outrage, the first rat dove after it.
Bessus grabbed Keros by the sleeve. “You’re not from Gog! In fact, you don’t even belong to the Temple or to the Order.”
“So you say,” said Keros, shaking free his arm.
Bessus sneered. “I hinted that Gog is not the master, and you said nothing. One who belonged to the Order would have struck me. Even earlier, you called me a priest of Gog. Anyone from the Temple would know that I am not.”
“I was told that you were a priest. You act like a priest. Tell me truthfully, Bessus, are you, or are you not, a priest?”
Bessus’s features shifted from madness, to a lonely and tattered dignity, and then back and forth. He finally broke the strange tableau by burying his face in his hands. “In my youth, I was a fool, and now I am one again.” Bessus looked up to stare at the idol of Magog. “When I became a beastmaster, I saw the truth.” He groaned. “Purity is the essence! They threw me out because I saw deeper than the others.”
“Deeper how?” Keros asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
Keros groped for an answer. What could he say? Finally, he spoke with authority. “You claim to serve the truth.”
“No, not truth, but I saw with clarity what those in the Temple missed, or maybe what they once knew, but then conveniently forgot.”
The man was a broken reed, surely, but he had priceless knowledge. Keros decided on boldness. “What if I told you I planned to slip into the dungeons?”
Bessus frowned. “You do not look like a beastmaster.”
“I’m not.”
“Then, even if you could pass the outer guards, you would die to the beasts of the lower levels.”
“The dreaded beasts of Gog,” said Keros.
“No!” Bessus’s eyes shone with fanaticism. His lips quivered.
“No?” asked Keros.
Bessus kneaded his hands. He glanced about. Then he stepped near, and whispered, “The beasts of Magog.”
Keros noted the grim and towering idol of Magog. Magog was one of the bene elohim, formerly of the Celestial Realm, but descending to Earth to rule as gods. Long ago, the Shining Ones had followed, and after a thousand years of war, they’d dragged the bene elohim to off-world prisons. During their stay, however, the bene elohim, the gods, had relations with the daughters of men. The legacy of that time was First Born. Gog was a First Born, and his offspring were Nephilim.
“Is this your deeper clarity?” asked Keros. “You serve Magog.”
“The Old One,” whispered Bessus. “Do you not know that Magog built the Temple? He originally fashioned Shamgar. He sired Gog. The Old Ones from the ancient days first taught humanity how to control beasts. But those frauds in the Temple crawl to Gog because they lack purity. Gog is mighty and fell indeed. I will not dispute that. But the truth is that spirit is above flesh, as Magog is above Gog.”
“So they cast you out?”
“They feared the truth, because they fear Gog,” said Bessus.
“And you don’t?”
Bessus hunched his head. “I am a worm. Any can crush me. Notice how Esau and his pirates tormented me. So it has been ever since they cast me out of the Temple and out of the Order. Men mock who once they would have feared.”
Keros hid his disbelief. Who could have ever feared Bessus? And yet…what if an older man was stripped of his tools and thrown down, as if from a great height? How would such a one survive in Shamgar? Perhaps, as he once had, as a cripple and a leper, the butt of jokes and crushed to a shell of what he had once been.
“Oh, I am mad, they say,” said Bessus. “I am a fool. But I don’t despise Gog as you’ve suggested. He is mighty, and none may challenge him, certainly not I. Still, I shall whisper the truth now and again, when friendly ears care to hear. I will dare crawl to Magog and beg him for deliverance. Perhaps, someday, he will hear me and once again, I will be a beastmaster in power and not just in name.”
“He will restore you?” asked Keros.
“Oh, yes, yes.”
Keros nodded. Perhaps here was the lever. He asked, “Will Magog take you to the Temple himself, or do you think you wil
l have to walk there?”
“Do you mock Magog?”
Keros spook soothingly. “Surely in the Temple there is an altar to him.”
“Long unused, yes,”
“Perhaps Magog awaits your sacrifice from that altar before he restores you to greatness.”
Bessus stroked his chin. “You do not serve Gog or Magog. Why then, should you wish to enter the Temple?”
Here is was. Keros plunged ahead. “Lod the Seraph did me a favor once. I mean to repay him.”
“And you ask for my help?”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Keros.
Bessus stared. “I would be damned for helping you.”
“Damned by whom? By those who threw you out of the Temple? Listen to me, Bessus. You can languish with your wild ones, sinking into madness until at last they drag you to the canals. What good then is your purity? Or, you can dare to act on your convictions. Think of it. Once more you will see the beasts of Magog, and for all I know, they will obey you. You can show those who threw you out what it means to trifle with Bessus. You can stand again before the altar of him you serve. What do you say? Will you dare this madness with me? Will you join me in a fool’s quest?”
Bessus shuddered, and he began to shake his head. Repeatedly he shook it. Until at last he said, “Yes, I’ll do it.”
Chapter Ten
Mammoth-Fur Jacket
“He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”
-- Naram the Prophet
“You can’t wear those rags,” said Keros.
“They’re all I own,” Bessus said.
They sat cross-legged at a low wooden table deep in a tavern. Low wicks in ship’s lanterns provided the illumination. Slave-girls danced in a sandpit, while two Nebo pipers half-heartedly blew their reeds. Low-grade ruffians, drunken sailors and broken-down rat hunters provided the clientele. Here and there shuffled escaped rat-bait as serving boys, bringing platters of ale, leeks and stringy mutton. Despite his thinness, Bessus had already put away two helpings.
“It doesn’t matter what I wear,” Bessus said querulously. “This night, we both shall die.”
“A beastmaster must look the part,” said Keros. “That’s only common sense. And I will pay for your new attire.”
“Well… if you insist.”
Keros paid the score, and they strode down a lane to a bustling wharf. There, they searched for clothiers. Bessus soon tugged Keros’s sleeve and pointed at a fat woman holding out fur garments. She bellowed about their excellence. Inside her booth were racks of jackets and various breeches. A large hound was chained in back, although presently, it was curled in sleep.
They squeezed past two women arguing about their preferred style of whips and about the laziness of slaves.
“What does a beastmaster wear?” whispered Keros.
“Leather and fur,” said Bessus, “but never wool or linen. Darker colors are better, with black superior to brown. White would be an outrage and yellow, a joke of the worst sort.”
The booth-woman eyed Bessus and sneered at Keros. “I don’t serve Jogli,” she said.
“The garments are for him,” said Keros.
“The fool with the slaughter-yard stains? Bah,” she said. “Scurry away, before I call an attendant.”
Bessus tried to fade into the crowd.
Keros grabbed his wrist. “Don’t move,” he whispered. He reached into the folds of his robes. The woman lifted meaty elbows off the counter and grabbed for something underneath the shelf, a bat, no doubt. Keros thumped his coin sack onto the counter.
“Desert shekels, I’ll grant you,” he said, “but made of honest sliver.”
“What do you want,” she growled, “headgear?”
The ex-priest of Gog leaned over the counter. “I like that bear-cloak in back. The one your hound guards.”
“Come now,” she said, “you? No. A lout needs to know his place. You’re no priest or son of a Nephilim.”
Keros jiggled the coin sack.
She scowled, shrugged and retreated into the booth.
“Will she bring it?” whispered Bessus.
“Stand still,” said Keros. “Don’t twitch so much.”
The woman brought the bear-cloak. It was silky in its smoothness, and large, with silver clasps. If Bessus tried wearing it, half of it would drag on the ground.
“It’s too big,” said Keros. “What about that?” He pointed at an otter-fur vest.
For the next fifteen minutes, they haggled, until Keros counted ten silver shekels, pushing them across the counter.
Bessus strolled away in pterodactyl-leather pants and a mammoth-fur jacket that reached to his knees. After visiting a cobbler, he clumped in rhinoceros-hide boots. Keros bought him pigskin gloves and a square leather hat with earflaps. Each installment changed the manner or the length of Bessus’s stride. He began to square his shoulders and shed some of his rabbit-like tension. A hint of haughtiness appeared. That lasted until a pretty slave girl smiled at him. Bessus doffed his hat, but as she passed, she wrinkled her nose and hurried away.
Bessus thereupon announced, “I need a bath.”
Perhaps ten minutes later, they exited a harlot’s den, a place of prostitution. Keros had trickled coins into an amused madam’s hands and guarded the door. Bessus entered a bath closet and came out a new man, one who no longer smelled like a pig. They strode from the establishment, to the laughter and bewilderment of several girls.
Bessus peered about with new calculation. They stood near a barge where slaves hefted black melons, and staggered over the gangplank to waiting donkey carts.
Bessus inhaled deeply. “I recall a fact that—It’s at the edge of my memory, but simply refuses to reveal itself.”
“What does it concern?”
Bessus adjusted his gloves, and he wiped specks of lint from his mammoth-fur jacket. “Once, I had planned to return unbidden to the Temple. But as the years grew, I set aside those plans, and I suppose forgot all about them.” Bessus pursed his lips. Then his eyes brightened. “Of course, now I remember. Follow me.”
***
Bessus paced before a pirate stronghold. It was made of a stone wall. A spear-carrier patrolled along the parapet. Behind him rose a turret and a house of petrified wood. Brass dragon images paneled the top floor of the house, while two other guards stood on the flat roof.
“It was years ago at night,” said Bessus. “I was certain that at any moment someone would knife me. I had just been cast out of the Temple.”
Keros eyed the fortress gate and the three shield-men who watched them.
“A loose brick,” Bessus muttered. “I stubbed my toe against a loose brick.” He frowned as he pinched his lower lip.
A guard elbowed his companion. They spoke together and then laughed brutally.
“Will you hurry,” said Keros.
The former beastmaster gave him a distracted glance. “I don’t think this is the place.”
Keros groaned.
Bessus marched on. They passed sea-taverns and a rat counting shed, where huge, dead vermin hung by their tails. A man dribbled coppers into a scarred rat hunter’s three-fingered hand. Later, they strode past an empty compound. It had probably belonged to one of the pirate captains who had joined Lod, and lost.
Just then, Bessus stumbled. Keros grabbed his elbow and kept the beastmaster from falling. Bessus hardly noticed. He bent to one knee and moved a loose brick. “This is it.” He glanced around. “There!” he said, striding to a rundown wooden dock. The pilings were cracked with age. The beastmaster jumped over an embankment and landed in the mud under the dock. Huge rats squealed. Bessus used his rhinoceros-hide boots and kicked one in the rump, sending it splashing into the canal. The others hesitated, their claws dug into a washed-up dog. “Off with you!” shouted Bessus, aiming another kick. A hundred-pound rat scrambled out of the way. The others fled into the water, submerging.
“Never show fear,” said Bessus.
&
nbsp; Keros arched his eyebrows, marveling at the man’s transformation.
Bessus picked up a broken piece of board and began slashing the dirt. Soon, he scooped mud out of the embankment. He gave a sinister laugh and pitched aside the board. With his new pigskin gloves, he plunged his hands into the mud, tugged and grunted. With a slurping sound, the mud released its grip. Bessus plunked a cracked leather case onto the wharf and fumbled at impossible knots.
Keros drew the Bolverk-forged dagger. “Allow me.”
A moment later, Bessus pried open the case and withdrew a leather sheet. This he unrolled, to reveal an oiled rag, which he unbound. From that, he took a thin copper tube and a small glass flask of yellowish powder.
“What is it?” asked Keros.
A strange ecstasy played upon Bessus’s face as he tucked the copper tube and flask into an inner pocket.
“Well?” asked Keros.
Bessus repackage the old case, and he pitched it into the canal. It bobbed away in the sluggish current. “Beastmasters often preformed guard duty in the lower levels of the dungeons.” He smirked. “I loathed their groveling, their pandering to Gog. I, who knew the real order of power, prayed nightly to Magog, to his spirit wherever it may have been.”
“It’s in the Abyss,” said Keros, “where the Shining Ones took the bene elohim after the Thousand Years War.”
“Some of us know otherwise.”
Keros thought about arguing, but decided to let it pass.
“I abased myself to Magog,” said Bessus, “not to Gog. So although through sheer merit I advanced in the ranks, I never received the tokens of Gog. Such a state was wrong. Why should others profit because of their ignorance and I remain unrewarded? In the end, the spirit of Magog whispered to me. Thus, late one night, as I walked the rounds, I discovered myself before the Treasure Vault of Gog. I had often lingered before those ironbound doors. Oh, others received tokens, but not Bessus, Fifth Rank Beastmaster. Such favoritism rankled. That night, I withdrew the key that I had taken from its peg in the Temple. I used the key, and entered the Treasure Vault of Gog.
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