by Robin Jarvis
Summoning his dark strength, he reached up with his claws and his eyes were shot with his own diabolic, blighting flame. Throwing back his head, he let out a hideous string of words and the jerboa cried out in alarm.
For a terrible moment the two powers grappled with each other. Around the High Priest, black lightnings burst into existence, clashing ferociously with Simoon’s blistering forces and the prophet yelled in anguish as though tormented with great pain. On they battled and the room erupted with both brilliance and absolute night—but in the end, it was the High Priest who had the mastery and with a piteous wail, Simoon fell back defeated.
With a spitting of black sparks, the tip of the silver-spiralled staff split asunder and even as the jerboa clutched at it for support, the magical device withered and crumbled into a heap of ashes upon the floor.
Darkness returned to the Lotus Parlour and Woodget stared at Simoon in despair.
Out of breath, his strength and power spent, the prophet wilted and fell senseless to the ground—leaving Thomas and Woodget to face the High Priest alone.
The sable laughed, but it was a hollow, mirthless sound and the mice shivered before it.
Licking the blade of the dagger, Ma Skillet eyed them hungrily and her stomach rumbled.
“Curb your appetite,” the High Priest warned. “These two unpledged morsels who have carried the ninth and final fragment must be given over to Our Lord at his renewal. Their blood shall slake his age-old thirst. Take them!”
Obediently, his followers scurried forward to seize Thomas and Woodget by the wrists and with a triumphant leer upon his imperious face, the sable tore the leather bag from the fieldmouse’s paws.
“You can’t have that!” Woodget squealed, but it was no use.
Violently the High Priest struck him across the face and even as Thomas flew at him with his fists raised, they were gripped by the three scar-faced weasels and the fieldmouse was held by two great bilge rats.
“Bind the stupid fools and take them to the boat,” the High Priest said coldly, “and be certain to bring the poor, infirm prophet along. I should like him to witness the magnificence of this night.”
And so, kicking and struggling, the mice were dragged from the Lotus Parlour, then one of the bamboo rats cut the straps of Simoon’s pack and hoisted his unconscious form onto a bony shoulder before following the others outside.
Alone with Ma Skillet, the High Priest lifted the fieldmouse’s bag and, closing his eyes to savour the moment, reached inside.
With a sudden livid radiance, the sickly light that glowed from the jade fragment shone out within the room and the sable let out a great, glad sigh as it flowed over his hatchet-like features.
Languidly, his eyes opened and he gazed enamoured upon the meticulously crafted segment in his claws.
“So, little Dahrem was right,” he murmured. “He did indeed discover the whereabouts of that which our enemies have long kept secret. It is well he perished in Hara for never would I have permitted him to claim the honour of finding this most beautiful thing. Now it is my name that shall be written in blood above the pillars of black marble, my name that Suruth Scarophion shall praise above all others, for now I am the instrument of his deliverance.”
At his side, the bloated, white-powdered rat took a wondrous breath as if trying to inhale the loathsome loveliness of that most miraculous sight.
“Now the tally, it complete,” she uttered. “The Black One—he return.”
A foul grin split the sable’s crow-black face and he stared out of the door into the shadows that lay beneath the wooden pier, then beyond to a patch of the clear ebon night.
“Nine bright stars from out the void, shining up on high,” he chanted in a whisper, “whose banished soul do they call back and augur in the sky? Despoiler of the ancient lands, who baked the deserts dry. Scarophion, Scarophion—the demon is close by.”
Mother Lotus hung her head respectfully. “This night he come back,” she murmured reverently. “The Dark Sovereign, he return.”
“Yes,” the High Priest answered, caressing the gleaming gold traceries with his claws, “after all this long, lonely time, the ages of his exile are complete. The fate of the world is set and a new darkness is about to commence. Come, to the Black Temple!”
Swirling his cloak about him, he strode into the night and, stealing a final glance at the place she had endured for nearly forty years, gathering information and claiming the itinerants whom no one would miss to feed the sacrificial altars, Ma Skillet waddled after.
An unusual quiet descended within the bar; the place which normally buzzed and seethed with the dark underbelly of Singapore life was silent and still. Only the candle flame as it guttered in the breeze which streamed through the open door made any sound, its wax dripping a steady tattoo upon the floor.
Then, at the rear of the dim, lantern-lit place, a movement stirred the ragged curtain and from the rancid kitchen the face of Kiku emerged and fear was frozen upon her features.
Hiding in the back, forgotten by all, the rat maiden had heard everything that had transpired and, peeping through a rent in the curtain, had seen the nightmarish and frightening events that had occurred since the arrival of the High Priest.
In paralysed terror she had remained out of sight and mind but now she roused herself and crept through the bar, mortally afraid.
Even in Morocco, the country of her birth, she had heard the rumours and legends of the serpent cult and though she did not understand everything that she had heard tonight, she had wits enough to piece the meaning together.
Warily, she pattered to the entrance and peered out, pulling her head smartly in again as she saw a long rowing boat being pushed down the mud towards the river’s edge.
Out onto the Singapore River the vessel was drawn by the great bilge rats until it was caught by the tide and lifted upon the water. Before Ma Skillet’s considerable figure, the High Priest sat, his dark form already invisible in the murk and at the front of the craft, trussed up with many ropes and cords, were the small outlines of Thomas, Woodget and Simoon.
As the bamboo rats took hold of the oars and dipped them into the dark water, the boat pulled away from the muddy banks. Into the dim distance it sped and the doom that awaited them all gathered each one into its grim and terrible charge.
When she was certain the danger was past, Kiku looked about her, wildly wondering what she could do and where she could go. It was plain that her brief existence here was over and after everything that she had witnessed there was nothing that could have induced her to stay. Then as her mind raced, she noticed the jerboa’s large pack lying on the ground and cautiously, she scurried over to examine it.
Presently, the prophet’s precious and peculiar belongings were scattered about the bar, as she hauled each new piece of mystical paraphernalia from the pack to scrutinise and speculate on its esoteric function.
Draping a length of richly-embroidered material about her shoulders and inspecting the pictures drawn on Simoon’s cards, she shuddered to think to what terrible end his uncanny profession had ultimately guided the unfortunate jerboa.
In spite of her urgent fears, Kiku wondered what her life would have been like if she had been granted with the divine gift of foreknowledge. The rat maiden drew the patterned cloth about her, assuming a superior, all-knowing pose as though she were cloaked in a mantle of mystical power and sorcery—possessed with the fathomless wisdom of the ancient magicians.
Then the fantasy ended and the embroidered fabric fell from her shoulders as she stood stock still for she was struck by a sudden revelation and in that instant everything became clear to her.
To all intents and purposes these marvellous things belonged to her now. It was no use expecting the jerboa to come back for them, not where he was heading. She could take off with them and who would decry her? Her life could blossom anew; this was her chance to start again and her blissful destiny would soar to staggering heights. The map of her life sprea
d out before her and she knew the path she must tread. A fortune teller she would become, no one could possibly know that she was ignorant of such arts for now she had all the apparatus she needed to fool them. With her sharp wits she would be able to bluff her way through anything and, if the fates were kind, perhaps one day she would be given true power.
Hastily, Kiku stuffed as many of Simoon’s magical possessions as she could into a sack, then hurried to the entrance.
A pang of guilt rankled her conscience as she saw the vague shape of the boat dwindle in the distance. But what could she do for the three prisoners it held? In this savage place there was nothing but brutality and though for a brief moment the wild fancy entered her head that she could follow her former mistress and rescue those unfortunates by herself, with a click of her tongue she dismissed the thought as madness. To add to the captives’ deaths with her own would achieve nothing. No, Kiku would flee—escape that friendless and barbaric region where the fork-tails lived.
Glancing once more at the darkness that lay over the river, the rat maiden left the bar and scampered away, filling her remorse-ridden mind with anything she could think of in order to blot out the awful thoughts that were forming there. A hideous fate awaited those two small mice and the jerboa, but she tried not to dwell on such horrors, for she knew that they would only torment her. So, concentrating instead on the new life that she envisioned for herself, she hurried into the gloom—dreaming up impressive sounding titles for this excellent vocation.
Her real name she would keep, even though Mother Lotus could never pronounce it correctly. But although it was exotic enough, her title needed extra flourish and flair, a grandiose term to impress her clients—similar to the distinctive ‘Mother Lotus’.
“Gypsy?” she muttered, running under the rickety pier’s shadow and scuttling along the shore. “Sayer of sooth? Ack—no. Lady, Witch, Princess, Madame? Hmmmm... yes, Madame—it sound good.”
And with that, Madame Akkikuyu disappeared into the night, leaving the terror of the Scale behind her as she embarked upon her new and lifelong career.
As the rowing boat journeyed out of the river, into the bay and onto the sea beyond, Thomas looked up at the foul face of the High Priest and was engulfed in despair.
At his side, Woodget was sniffling, thinking about how bitterly they had failed. Everything they, Mulligan, Chattan and the entire population of Hara had striven for had come to nothing. The battle to keep the fragment from the disciples of Scarophion had ended calamitously and as Thomas’s forlorn gaze travelled upwards to the black, cavernous night, his desolation and hopelessness deepened.
Overhead, glimmering in the heavens, shining wanly in the radiance of the bright full moon, nine points of pricking light were gleaming in a twisting, serpentine constellation that he had never seen before.
The stars of Sarpedon were already beginning to blaze, heralding the return of the Dark Despoiler’s spirit to the living plane and in that bleak hour, Thomas’s spirits were utterly vanquished.
The cult of the snake had beaten them all.
16 - The Black Temple
Over the waters the rowing boat sailed and when they were far from shore the High Priest unfurled his cloak and gazed lustfully upon the ninth fragment once more, imagining the glory that awaited him under his unhallowed sovereign’s slaughterous regime.
Into the night the lurid glow pulsed, flickering in the gentle waves that surrounded the small craft and, by its ghastly light, Thomas saw the sable’s hideous face flood with an expression of supreme, malevolent delight.
Unable to look upon him any longer, Thomas tried to turn away, shifting his bound body onto its side and in that uncomfortable position, with the ropes that bound him biting into his arms and wrists, he peered over the prow of the boat and stared curiously ahead of them.
Beside him, in a meek and fearful voice, Woodget asked, “Where they takin’ us, Tom? I be real scared. There bain’t no hope fer us, be there?”
“No, Woodj,” Thomas replied sadly. “None at all this time, we’re reaching the end of our voyage at last. I’m sorry I let you down.”
The fieldmouse wriggled his nose. “’Tweren’t your fault, Tom,” he lamented, “even old Simoon weren’t no match fer that there villain. Does you think he’ll recover before—before whatever they got planned?”
Thomas looked across him to where the jerboa still lay in a swoon and muttered under his breath, “It’s probably better if he doesn’t.”
Directly behind them, the bilge rats continued to heave on the oars and the boat shot unerringly through the dense night until Thomas began to see black shapes appear in the shadowy distance. As they drew closer, he saw in the soft moonlight that they were jagged spears of rock which reared up from the ocean bed, clustering in a lethal, bitter reef.
Yet straight towards them the rowing boat sped and with every pull on the oars the danger swept nearer. Such was the hazard of the barbed, biting rocks that many of the outlying perils lurked just below the surface of the waves, as if they were deliberately waiting to rip and tear into an unsuspecting hull. But beyond them, others reached from the water in deadly, spiked pinnacles; some were so large that they were almost like craggy islands and upon their ridges and within the gaping clefts, sea birds nested.
Up to the perimeter of the submerged stone teeth the rats steered the boat, yet this was a journey they had made a thousand times and their wicked, cunning minds knew the location of each murderous rock. Skirting around the edge of the unseen snags and spines, the craft veered in a wide circle until, with a sudden raising of the starboard oars and straining upon those of the port side, they jolted to the left and shot into a natural channel which divided the reef in two.
In spite of his dread, Thomas was forced to admire the skill with which the rats navigated their way through the deadly formations which now reared from the sea around them as they pressed ever deeper into the centre of the rocky continent.
Through narrow waterways, between spires of stone, the little boat went, winding through a maze of secret shallows and not once did the keel touch or scrape against any of the savage, lurking boulders.
With his head twisted to the front, Thomas eventually saw an island of rock, larger than the rest, emerge from behind the surrounding, jagged fences and it was this which they were heading towards.
Like a hill of bare, uneven stone the island appeared; a great and solid mass that sat hunched and immovable in the ocean. Situated at the centre of the vast reef, surrounded by the forest of its inferiors, it was as though that titanic bulk was the grandsire of the lesser formations, as if they had sprung from its vastness.
Thomas hated the sight of it; the island repelled and frightened him. It was as if a dark, malice-filled spirit possessed the very stones of the place; horror and evil flowed across the water from its clefts and crags and, trembling, the mouse hung his head.
Stark and black against the milky moon, the huge, brooding island was crowned with turrets of needling rock that gleamed like the upraised spears of a barbaric host. Over its grim surface, dark caves gaped like sightless eyes and, yawning over the water like a massive, screaming mouth, stretched the entrance to an immense and cavernous interior.
Up to this pitch-dark mouth the rats rowed the boat and as soon as they passed into its sombre shadow both Woodget’s and Thomas’s flesh crawled and they were chilled to the marrow.
Yet under that terrible entrance the little craft journeyed, vanishing into the obliterating gloom as the rock towered over them and all Thomas could see were the eyes of the High Priest glinting with a pale, greedy light.
Deep into the island they travelled and the sound of the oars splashing in the water echoed wildly around the enormous, night-swamped space.
Then Thomas began to see strange shapes glimmering in the darkness. Around them there were the vague outlines of other vessels, all moored to the rocky wall and finally, their own boat sailed beneath a great ship with golden timbers and high ove
r the mice’s heads reared the prow of Kaliya, the ship of the Scale. But its decks were deserted and its glittering anchor cast out upon the rocky bed far below.
“Where are we, Tom?” Woodget’s plaintive voice whimpered.
“Some kind of harbour, I reckon,” his friend answered. “This must be their lair.”
With a jarring bump, the boat drew alongside the roughly-hewn wall and the rats and weasels yanked in the oars.
Then, as the ermine was tying the craft to a rusted iron ring set into the rock, the High Priest rose and his cloak-enfurled figure sprang onto a flight of stone steps which led up from the water’s edge.
Clumsily, Ma Skillet lurched to her feet and the boat tilted alarmingly as her great weight rocked it. Quickly, one of the bilge rats helped her out and with a toss of her pigtail, she gracelessly disembarked.
Ascending to the top of the steep flight, as Ma Skillet lumbered after, the High Priest turned and pointed to the three captives who remained below.
“Bring them,” his shrill voice commanded, and with that the sable spun on his heel and, with his bloated High Priestess waddling in pursuit, he vanished into the darkness and there came a resounding clang of metal.
In the boat, Thomas and Woodget saw the ugly faces of three bamboo rats come leering into view above them and claws as sharp as knives bit into their skin as they were hauled up and flung heedlessly over their shoulders before being heaved up the steps, their heads smacking against the rats’ bony backs.
In single file the rats went, clambering up the stairs, following the path their comrades and their leaders had taken. Along the narrow ledge that ran around the dismal harbour they went; the rat bearing Thomas going first, then the brute who bore Woodget and finally the one carrying Simoon’s limp and senseless body.
“Ha—you poxy maggot!” cackled the green-fanged rat in the middle, speaking in their own foul language and jiggling the fieldmouse upon his shoulder as he pinched him cruelly. “A fine treat yer in fer now, though I don’t suppose it’ll be to your dainty taste.”