by Brian Godawa
It was a Shining One.
And just like Marduk, it took the goat and sank its teeth into the animal to suck whatever blood was left in it.
The emperor remained prostrate.
The Shining One stepped down from the altar to a throne of gold and jewels below. It would be the emperor’s own throne had not this creature been here.
Then two other similar-looking Shining Ones materialized from the bush behind the throne to stand as silent sentries. Antiochus knew these must be the Three Pure Ones.
Pure evil, he thought.
Huang Di scrambled off the altar and knelt before the great being. He said, “Mighty Jade Emperor, Yu Huang, I worship you and offer this sacrifice to plead for your help.”
When the being spoke, it sounded like many voices and sent shivers down the backs of the hidden spies. “Why do you summon me?”
Huang Di trembled in his voice, “My lord and god, a revolt has occurred at the Long Wall. I have sent my general with an army to address it, but it is already out of control. I need the power of the Dragon to quench the rebellion.”
The Jade Emperor remained quiet.
Huang Di added nervously, “I have not sought your intervention since the conquest of the six kingdoms.” The Dragon did not reside in Tianxia, though he made plenty of visits during key moments in its history.
The great creature said, “You are unaware that this chamber has been defiled by foreign prowlers.”
Antiochus looked fearfully at Mei Li and Balthazar. They had been found out. He had to think fast.
He whispered, “Balthazar stay here.”
Balthazar said, “You need me.”
“Give me your magic. If I fail, stay hidden.”
Balthazar refused.
They heard the voice of Yu Huang from the throne. “Or are there two of you?” He must have had preternatural hearing.
Balthazar whispered to Antiochus, “I am but your servant.”
Antiochus grabbed the satchel and stepped out of the bush into the clearing. Mei Li followed him.
They saw the shocked look on the emperor’s face. Enraged, he blurted out, “I will skin you both alive.”
Antiochus pulled out a clay tablet from the satchel. He read the incantation, “I adjure you by the gods. May the poison and venom of my enemies, the evil of your lips and deeds return to you. May your traps and snares bind you.”
The booming voice of Yu Huang interrupted his words. “You think you can bind me with an incantation? I created those for the Babylonians.”
Antiochus noticed that Yu Huang had transformed back into the Dragon. He shimmered and again became the humanoid figure.
Mei Li threw two spheres at the feet of the divinity and the emperor. A cloud of grey dust filled the air, enveloping them both.
Antiochus moved speedily after her, using flint to light the dust cloud on fire.
The divinity moved immediately, drawing his cape out and covering the emperor in its folds–just as the cloud ignited into a wall of fire all around them.
But just as suddenly, a wall of water exploded outward from Yu Huang and drowned the flames.
Antiochus and Mei Li stepped backward in fear. The deity had transformed again into the Dragon and had wound his way up to Antiochus, glowering into his face. His eyes were reptilian and cold, his teeth, frightening. “Western fools. You cannot capture spirit with matter.”
He rose up, a snake floating in the air before them. From behind the Dragon, the emperor blurted out, “She is the daughter of the high priest of Shang Di!”
The Dragon’s eyes went wide. He circled them once more and stopped before Mei Li with a snarl. “You must know where the priests of Shang Di are hidden.”
Mei Li would not speak. She glowered with hatred at the being. He did not frighten her any more.
The Dragon flowed around them like a ghost in the air, the ten foot long body encircling them like a living, twisting, writhing ring. It stopped encircling them and came to rest as a humanoid again. Now he was looking down at Antiochus, his thin serpentine eyes drawing the human into their darkness. Antiochus felt his very soul stripped naked and weak before the creature.
The emperor said, “Shall I torture her? Perhaps she will talk.”
“No” said Yu Huang. “She will surely talk— if you torture him.”
Balthazar wanted to jump out of hiding with sword swinging, but he held back. He knew this Shining One was powerful beyond anything he had ever encountered. More powerful than Marduk, king of the gods of Babylon.
The magus would wait for the right moment. He slinked away into the darkness and made his way back through the long dark tunnels that led them here.
CHAPTER 22
Balthazar burst through the doors of the alchemy laboratory in the Academy of Scholars, out of breath.
“Where are Melchior and Gaspar?!” The scholars and magicians stopped working on their alchemy and stared at him.
Chang met him.
“What is wrong, Balthazar?”
Melchior and Gaspar arrived.
Balthazar looked around. He saw scholars gaping at him, and he tried to calm down. He said in a low hush, “Antiochus needs our help.”
Melchior asked, “Where is he?”
But before Balthazar could say, the doors of the laboratory smashed open again.
A contingent of twenty royal guards with glaives burst into the laboratory. They lined up in menacing fashion, blocking the door’s exit.
Balthazar thought, He found out. The emperor knew I was there, and now he is going to arrest me and cut off my head.
The emperor strode in with fury, accompanied by the steely-eyed Wu Shu.
Balthazar backed up in fear.
The emperor shouted, “Where is my elixir of immortality?” He looked around the room, a madman surrounded by fools.
The scholars and magicians froze in fear, staring at the emperor. Some of them looked around questioningly. All of them were mute.
The emperor grimaced with pain and held his head. It was getting more difficult to disguise his malady. He gathered his wits and screamed out again, “Where is my elixir of immortality?!”
Chang was the one who had the liver to stand up and speak. He bluffed with utmost humility. “Your greatness, we have not found the proper formula yet. But we are close. Very close.”
“You have been working for years! Why have you nothing to show me for your labors? Are you conspiring against me?!”
Chang bowed lower to the ground. “My lord, we are your loyal servants! Xu Fu has not yet returned from his expedition. And the rest of us are working many hours in constant shifts. Some of us have not slept in days.”
“I am sick of your excuses!” The emperor stomped up to the closest table full of scrolls and devices. He howled and heaved it over with a crash to the floor. Scrolls scattered, alchemic devices crashed and broke into pieces.
Scholars backed up reflexively.
Balthazar watched Wu Shu and the armed soldiers. They awaited commands to attack.
The emperor suddenly became calm. His madness left him. He looked over all the scholars in the room and said with a cool, reptilian repose, “If you do not produce the elixir for me by week’s end, you will all die.”
Then he turned and left the room with Wu Shu and some of the soldiers. A squad of a dozen stayed guarding the door. No one was going to get out until they were finished.
Chang looked darkly at his western magi friends.
A scholar in the back of the room said, “We are no closer than we were when we started.”
Chang whispered, “We are all going to die.”
CHAPTER 23
The sound of screams echoed through the stone hallways of a dungeon beneath the palace grounds. The emperor engaged in all the fine arts of torture available to the Ch’inese. Ling chi was the most popular. It meant “death by a thousand cuts.” Extremely sharp knives were used to make tiny non-deadly incisions all over the body, making sure not to ble
ed the victim too much so that they would stay alive as long as possible to experience a maximum of pain from a thousand tiny cuts.
There was of course, flaying, the art of peeling a man’s skin from his body and pouring salt on his exposed flesh. But one of the most creative and distinctly indigenous was the bamboo torture. Bamboo grew rapidly, like a weed, sometimes as much as three feet in a day. So victims would be tied down over a group of newly planted bamboo shoots whose tops were cut sharp. As the bamboo grew, it would slowly penetrate the flesh and grow through the body of the victim, causing a slow increase of extreme pain.
The torturer had decided to go back to basics with Antiochus. He was spread out on a rack device, with all limbs exposed. The torturer was so opposite from the Greeks’ own ugly monster back in Seleucia. Like yin and yang. It almost made Antiochus smile, despite his painfully unfortunate situation. This torturer was a small person of only three feet height, a dwarf—and a woman, not a man. The gods work in mysterious ways, he thought as he watched her heat a red hot iron in a small furnace of coals. She was going to perform on him the “Five Punishments of Ch’in.”
The Five Punishments consisted of first tattooing the face. That one would be skipped because it had to do with the victim surviving to become a slave. The second one was more apropos. It involved cutting off the ears or nose. The third was cutting off the feet. The fourth was castration. The fifth was quartering, which meant amputating all four arms and legs from the torso. The vile little torturer was going to use the hot iron to cauterize each wound she made so that Antiochus would not bleed to death before the punishments were completed. The Five Punishments were truly an example of a fate worse than death.
And Mei Li would have to watch it all, firmly held in the grip of a soldier by the wall.
But before Antiochus was to be dismembered, he was being given one last chance. The deity Yu Huang stood over him, in the human form of the bronze Shining One. Those piercing reptilian eyes were about the only thing Antiochus had ever seen that frightened him. They were unearthly, cthonic. Superior beyond his imagination.
Yu Huang said, “The bastard son of Antiochus the Great. Trying to win your daddy’s affection, are you? That is the problem with humanity. Your devotion to family blinds you to the greater fate of nations. You seek justice because you think there is some kind of higher law of the cosmos to which kings and princes are also subject. But in the end, he who reigns makes the laws. Because power is law. Justice can only come through power. You know this, Antiochus. You have said so yourself.”
Antiochus said through gritted teeth, “How would you know what I have said?” It was not a challenge. Antiochus had said so. He truly did not understand how this creature, so distant from Antiochus’ homeland, could possibly know such things.
“Marduk told me,” said Yu Huang. “The high prince of Babylon.”
The Greek word for “high prince,” was archon.
Yu Haung continued, “Or, as he is known in Greece, Zeus.” He leaned down close to Antiochus. But he was no longer cold and kingly, he had turned strangely warm and personal. “You see, we archons are legion. We have many names across many nations. Isis, Ba’al, Ishtar, Shiva, Amun-Ra. I am known in the west as Nachash.”
Antiochus had heard these things before from Balthazar, but he had never taken them seriously. Now, he could not deny what was plainly, if not supernaturally, before him. Balthazar had explained to him that the word Nachash in Hebrew meant “serpent.”
Yu Huang explained, “When Shang Di confused the tongues at Babel and divided mankind, he created the nations and their territories. Out of those, he allotted one simple people for his own inheritance, the vile people of Jacob and their despicable land of Canaan. But the other nations and their territories, he allotted to the Sons of God as an inheritance.” He gestured to himself as one of those inheritors. “We are the Watchers, the principalities and powers behind the destinies of the nations.”
Antiochus’ mind was racing. Sons of God? Where did they come from? Why were they in rebellion against Shang Di or Yahweh, or whatever his name was, the Creator of the cosmos?
Yu Huang wasted no time. “I could do for you what I did for Huang Di. He too was an illegitimate heir to the throne, born of common seed, without royalty. I gave him the world.”
So it was true. Antiochus and the emperor were one and the same.
Yu Huang said, “You share his seed. The blood of this people runs in your own veins, does it not?”
This divinity, this Watcher knew everything.
“Do you not want the world, Antiochus the Younger?”
Was Huang Di the ultimate end of Antiochus’ own fate? Was he looking at the mirror image of his soul, twisted and depraved by power?
“Join me, Antiochus. Join me, and you will have your Dragon. You will return to Babylon as Emperor of the West. As Huang Di is Emperor of the East.”
Antiochus knew there was an inevitable condition. A condition that he could not abide. The original temptation.
“All you have to do is obey me. Fall down and worship me and you will have the power you need to achieve all the justice you so desire. You will be a god, knowing good and evil.”
The words of Balthazar came back to Antiochus, Human power leads to tyranny and madness if it is not under the power of heaven.
This creature and its power were not of heaven, but of hell.
Antiochus spit in the face of the great being.
The deity wiped the spittle from his cheek. “I will say this for you, son of Seleucia, you have spirit. Pity. I could have used you to great purpose.” He turned to the guard holding Mei Li, who cowered under the giant’s gaze. “When she is ready to talk, take her to the emperor.” The guard gave a shaky nod of his head.
Antiochus looked over at the dwarf torturer with red hot poker. When he looked back, Yu Huang was gone. Disappeared into the dank air without a sound.
The dwarf climbed the steps up to Antiochus’ mount and looked down upon him, holding the sizzling iron in one hand and a sharp knife in the other.
Mei Li screamed out, “No! No!”
Antiochus barked, “Do not reveal the priests, Mei Li! Or my death will have been in vain.”
Mei Li struggled against her large jailer.
The dwarf laughed and spoke with her high-pitched voice, “How poetic, undying love in the face of death.”
She leaned up to Antiochus’ face, the knife blade perilously close to his eye, the sizzling poker, not far behind.
She moved the blade down Antiochus’ face, barely a hair’s width from the surface of his skin. Then over the rest of his body.
“Perhaps, I should start with castration instead of the nose. It’s my personal favorite.”
He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and steeled himself for a night of great pain.
“No matter what you see, Mei Li!”
“On the other hand,” said the torturer, “I should build up to the best part. Give myself something to look forward to. Let us start with the nose.” She placed the blade in preparation to cut off his nose.
Mei Li closed her eyes tightly and muttered in anguish, “Antiochus.”
Pfffffft. Churnk! Antiochus opened his eyes.
The nose it was. But not his own. An arrow pierced the nose of the dwarf and went into her skull. She fell back to the floor like a clay statue.
Antiochus stretched his head backward to see behind him.
Balthazar stood by the entrance with bow in hand. Next to him, Chang, Melchior and Gaspar.
The guard previously holding Mei Li had been impaled against the wall with Chang’s spear.
The magi released Antiochus and Mei Li from their bonds.
Mei Li said, “We must get to the priests of Shang Di.”
Chang said, “Where are they?”
“They are hiding out with the rebels at the Long Wall.”
Chang said, “Meng Tian is already on his way there with a force of forty thousand.”
&nbs
p; “We can beat them there,” she said. “But we must leave immediately.”
Chang countered, “Even if we do, they have the power of the Dragon behind them. The rebellion will be crushed.”
Mei Li said, “The priests of Shang Di can stop the Dragon.”
“But how?” said Chang.
She looked to Antiochus. “You must trust me in this.”
She had just proven to him her ultimate loyalty in the face of the emperor and the Dragon himself.
He said, “What are we waiting for?”
Balthazar barked, “We magi are staying here.”
“No,” said Antiochus. “When the emperor discovers your betrayal, you will be executed.”
Balthazar said, “All Ch’inese scholars and magicians are about to be executed. We must help them.”
“But there is no elixir of immortality, Balthazar. What can you do?” said Antiochus.
“I do not know,” said Balthazar. “But we cannot leave them.” He handed Antiochus a three foot long wrapped satchel. “Give this to the high priest of Shang Di when you find him.”
Antiochus opened the satchel and saw a simple primitive staff made from an almond branch.
“What is this?” said Antiochus.
Balthazar said, “It is the staff of Aaron, the high priest of Yahweh,” he stopped. “If the legends are true, it is a weapon that yields an unimaginable power.”
Antiochus smiled. “You are always full of surprises, magus.” He wrapped it back up.
“I am but your servant,” said Balthazar.
“No,” said Antiochus. “You are my brother. You always have been.”
They embraced as the brothers they were.
Balthazar whispered to him, “I learned of your mother’s ancestry when I read the oracle bones in our archive.”
Antiochus muttered back, “Why did you never speak of it?”
“The blood of Babel runs in all men’s hearts, Antiochus. It is the spirit that makes us family, not race.”