Alhazred

by Donald Tyson

  “A man is following us,” she murmured close to my ear as I lounged with my hip against the well and my arms crossed, watching her.

  I glanced around the plaza but saw no one who appeared interested in my existence.

  “Where?”

  “Look the way we came. That beggar with the bad foot and the wooden stick.”

  I let my eyes slide in what I hoped was an unobtrusive way over my shoulder, and saw a beggar with ragged gray hair and a long gray beard, supporting himself on a forked stick propped beneath his armpit to relieve the weight from his twisted left foot. His head was wrapped in a rope of dirty white cloth in place of a turban, and he wore only a tattered shirt that ended midway down his thighs. While I watched, he asked all those who passed for money, and one merchant took a bronze fil from his purse and tossed it carelessly through the air. The beggar caught the coin with the skill of long practice and pushed it between the folds of his headdress. At no time did he glance my way.

  “What makes you believe he follows us?”

  “He was walking behind us when we went into the house of the dead.”

  “It is a public street.”

  “He was still walking behind us when we came out.”

  I pondered this information. It was possible that the beggar had happened to stop just as we entered the place of embalming, and had happened to continue just after we left, but I agreed in my mind with the girl, it was suspicious.

  “Is he one of Farri’s men?”

  She shook her head.

  “I haven’t seen him before, and I know everyone Farri works with, but he may be someone Farri hired to watch us while we are in Memphis.”

  We continued onward to a stable near the western gate of the city. On the way I found pretext several times to stop, but the beggar did not show himself. If he still followed us, he was a master at his profession. I hired two mules that had a healthier look than the horses in the dirty stalls, and bought enough food and water for the girl and the beasts to let them survive two days in the desert. Martala claimed the tomb was no more than a few hours’ ride beyond the walls of the city, but I decided to take more provisions than needed. It was wise to be prudent when dealing with the desert, and the desert was never far in Egypt, as I saw when we rode through the gate and into the low hills. The ground soon became dry and the grasses and low plants few. It was still a paradise compared with the Empty Space, but to the girl it must have appeared a wasteland.

  “Are you certain you remember the way to the tomb?”

  She gave a short laugh of contempt.

  “I know these hills as well as I know the streets of Memphis.”

  There was no trace of anyone on the path before us or behind. I stared around at the crests of the hills, feeling disappointment. I had no intention of leading the beggar to the tomb of Nectanebus, and hoped to waylay and murder him in the hills. It would ensure our privacy. Without the certainty of his death, the best I could do was keep watch for any movement, and trust that no one could follow us without being seen. I told myself that I worried without cause. It was likely the beggar had not followed us at all, and that we aroused no interest when we left the city. Even so, my unease would not sleep.

  The rising sun beat upon our heads with waves of heat that reflected from the rocks and dazzled my eyes. It is not often that I regret the lack of a turban, but this was such a day. The girl soon led me off the traveled path and into the hills themselves. We rode over ledges scarcely wide enough for a single human foot, and up steep inclines. I was glad I had resisted the impulse to hire horses. Few horses could follow this invisible trail, but a mule is more sure of foot than a man.

  The girl often lifted the leather strap of her water skin off her shoulder and drank deeply from its spout, indifferent to my disapproving gaze. She drank too much, too quickly. Even so, I resisted the urge to criticize. What else could be expected from a child of the river? She had never been without water, and could not even imagine what it would be like to thirst and have nothing to wet her lips.

  She drinks too much, Sashi said, echoing my thoughts.

  “I know, my love,” I murmured. “She is foolish.”

  The girl turned in her saddle and looked back at me with a frown on her face, as though she feared I was losing my mind.

  “Who do you talk to?”

  I hesitated, but saw no reason to be untruthful.

  “I have a djinn living in my body. She speaks to me, and I answer.”

  The girl looked at me for a moment, then broke into peals of laughter. She laughed so hard I feared she might tumble from her saddle and roll down the steep slope that fell away from the narrow path on one side. I said nothing. After a time, she wiped the tears from her eyes and looked back at me.

  “A djinn inside you!”

  She slapped her thigh and began to laugh again, and continued to laugh for some distance. Whenever she stopped, she would glance back and begin anew. I marveled that my condition was so amusing, but it was clear that she thought I lied. Whether she believed me mad or possessed was of no importance, but for some reason her laughter irritated me.

  “What is that mark?” I asked.

  We rode past a boulder that had a small scrape upon it, such as might be made by rubbing its surface repeatedly with a stone. It was weathered but distinct.

  “A marker to show the men of my family the way to the tomb,” she said, barely glancing at it. “I don’t need the markers. I know the way in the dark.”

  There was a chance that I could follow the invisible trail myself, now that I knew how it was marked, and I wondered if I needed the girl any longer. It seemed prudent to let her continue to lead, in case the markers ceased or the entrance to the tomb was difficult to find.

  This proved a wise decision. After a time, she stopped her mule and looked at me with triumph, excitement shining in her ice-gray eyes.

  “The tomb of Nectanebus,” she said.

  I looked around. We sat on our mounts in a small canyon between two hills, facing a rocky cliff. There was no way to ride further without climbing one of the hills, which would be impossible even for the mules, sure of foot though they might be. The cliff reared like a wall high over our heads, unbroken and unclimbable.

  “Don’t you see it?” she asked with amusement. “It’s right in front of you.”

  She obviously enjoyed my inability to see the entrance to the tomb. Taking a breath, I calmed my irritation.

  “Do you see the entrance, Sashi?”

  There is an opening part of the way up the cliff. It looks like a shadow.

  I searched the featureless face of rock, and for a time still could not see the opening, even though I stared directly at it. Then it seemed to leap out from the cliff, and became obvious. I pointed with my finger.

  “There.”

  The features of the girl registered disappointment. She would have enjoyed emphasizing my dullness by pointing out the entrance herself, but I had robbed her of the pleasure.

  “You have good eyes, Alhazred,” she said, pouting.

  It was possible to reach the slit of the entrance by standing on the saddle of my mule and pulling myself up with my arms. After hobbling both mules with short ropes tied around their forelegs, I balanced on the saddle of my beast while Martala held its bridle to steady it. I discovered a narrow ledge in front of the cave mouth, hidden from the ground. The girl had some trouble ascending, since there was no one to hold her mule, but I was able to pull her up just as it flinched and darted out from under her feet. We stood together on the ledge, peering with a mixture of eagerness and caution into the dark interior.

  The girl took a tallow candle from the embroidered sash that girdled her waist, and I used my tinderbox to light the wick. Its flame flickered, almost invisible in the bright sunlight. We shielded it with our cupped
hands, looking at each other.

  “I will go first, if you wish,” she said.

  I nodded. It was possible that the tomb had pitfalls to catch the unwary.

  Ducking her head, she carried the candle in front of her, and I followed close at her heels. Once we passed beyond the entrance, its flame became steady in the dead air. The tunnel was not entirely natural, but had been widened and smoothed with tools. Not far in, it sloped downward so steeply it became almost a vertical shaft. A stair that was really nothing more than a series of notches in the stone allowed us to descend with caution. One false step would have precipitated us to our deaths. The air smelled dry with the dust of ages. No rain had found its way into this passage for a long time.

  “My uncle discovered this tomb by searching out landmarks mentioned in an ancient legend of Nectanebus,” Martala said over her shoulder as she crept carefully downward. “He found it had been robbed centuries ago, but said it had not been entered in his lifetime. He knew this from the dust.”

  “Have you never seen the tomb yourself?”

  She shook her head.

  “I saw the entrance years ago, never the inside of the tomb. My uncle said it contained nothing of value. Everything had been stolen but the mummy of the king, and even that had been defiled.”

  “Defiled? How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. My uncle told my father it had been defiled. My father came to look, but they carried nothing away with them.”

  “They didn’t touch the body of the king?”

  She stopped and looked up at me, her face in its head wrap shadowed from the flickering flame of the candle in her hand.

  “Are you mad? If you disturb the body of a king, you are cursed for eternity.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Yes, as did my father, and as do my uncles and their sons. Nobody has moved this mummy, Alhazred.”

  The steep shaft ended upon a wider passage that inclined down at a more gentle angle. Its stone floor showed scratches under its layer of dust, as though something heavy had been dragged down its length. The upper part of this passage was not shaped but natural—only the floor had been leveled. The taps of our boots and shoes echoed from the roof like gentle laughter.

  At the end of the passage a doorway led into a square chamber in which I could stand upright. I straightened my back with relief. I had unconsciously been hunching my shoulders and bowing my head. A scent reached my nostrils, the same scent I had smelled in the house of the dead at Memphis, but much more faint. The room was empty save for a stone sepulcher that occupied the center of its floor. Its heavy lid lay shattered in three pieces on the floor beside it. Across these broken stone slabs lay a coffin lid of carven wood that had also been broken into pieces by the blows of a hammer.

  We approached the sepulcher with small steps, alert for any traps. There seemed little to fear, since the robbers in ancient times who had broken the lids would have sprung them and died, had such traps existed, yet no skeletons were evident. As Martala raised the flame in her hand, I leaned forward to peer into the stone box. Within it was a second smaller box of carved and painted wood, and in this lay the linen-wrapped corpse of a man. The wrappings had been stripped away from his feet and his hands, which were crossed on his chest and appeared to clutch the air in frustration.

  “Bring the light nearer,” I said, frowning.

  The candle revealed that all the fingers were missing from the right hand of the corpse, and that only the thumb, index and large finger remained on the left hand. Similarly, all ten toes were gone from the feet. Peering closely at the toes, I saw that the stumps showed the marks of teeth where they had been gnawed off.

  “Rats,” the girl said.

  “No rat has teeth that large.”

  I pointed at the marks on the feet, and she drew a nervous breath.

  “What monster would do such a thing?”

  “Only a necromancer,” I said, excitement building in my breast. “To a necromancer, the flesh of a wizard possesses power, and this force can be absorbed when the flesh is consumed.”

  She made a sound of disgust in the back of her throat.

  “Why did they only take the fingers and toes, and leave the rest of the corpse?”

  “The will and magical force of a wizard remain locked within his flesh after death. To eat of his flesh is to gain his power, but to eat too much is to risk being possessed by his spirit.”

  “How do you know so much of these dark matters?” she asked, staring at me with a trace of fear.

  “It is a study of mine. I read it in a book.”

  “In Egypt, you can be burned for reading such books.”

  “As you can in Yemen.”

  She pointed to a medallion of carved green stone that lay over the groin of the mummy. It was the only ornament on the corpse.

  “Perhaps we should take that trinket, so that our trip will not have been wholly wasted.”

  Glancing at it, I recognized the Elder Seal. It was the same symbol that had been carved in the middle of the disk of green stone in the star chamber of the nameless city. I caught her hand by the wrist before her fingers could touch it.

  “It is bad luck to disturb the mummy of a king, remember?”

  “Yes, but that disk is just lying there.”

  “It is not the disk that concerns me, but what it might uncover were it removed.”

  She leaned over to study it, and I saw her lips moving.

  “Can you read the inscription?”

  “These are the ancient writings of my people. I have some skill. Let me try.”

  Extending the candle above the stone sepulcher, she puzzled over the strange symbols for several minutes. Then she read the words aloud:

  The bone and flesh which possess no writing are wretched, but behold, the writing of Nectanebus is under the Great Seal, and behold, it is not under the Little Seal.

  “There must be a scroll beneath the seal,” she said. “I wonder what it contains?”

  The ache to know its contents burned in my heart, but I resisted the impulse to snatch the medallion aside. Some deep instinct told me it would be suicide, and since being cast into the desert, I had learned to trust my instincts. Instead, I quickly bent my head and caught the longest finger on the left hand of the corpse between my teeth. With a savage twist and bite, I severed the finger, its bone cracking like a dry stick. The girl shrieked with surprise, but I paid her no attention. Grasping the finger between my hands, I tore at its desiccated flesh, which was like ancient leather, and swallowed the bits. After sucking clean the finger bones, I put them safely away in a pocket of my thawb. When I found the chance, I would powder them and add the powder to my food.

  The girl still crouched in the corner of the burial chamber when I finished, a look of mingled horror and disgust on her features. The tallow of the candle dripped unnoticed over her fingers.

  “How could you do that? Truly, you are not human.”

  “I am a ghoul of the Black Spring Clan.”

  On another occasion, she might have laughed at this declaration, as she had laughed when I told her my body harbored a djinn. Her revulsion removed any impulse to mock me. She licked her lips, and I saw that she fought the urge to vomit.

  “Drink some water,” I told her.

  She straightened her back and set the stub of the candle on the corner of the sepulcher, then uncapped her water skin to suck at its nipple, eyes vacantly staring down at the corpse.

  “The others who came before us,” she said, her gaze upon the stump of the finger I had eaten.

  “Seventeen of them,” I finished her thought. “All necromancers. I am the eighteenth.”

  “Do you feel its power within you?”

  Holding my breath, I turned my attention inward. I felt nothing
at all.

  I shook my head.

  She forced an unsteady laugh.

  “Then my uncle was right, this tomb really is worthless, and we were fools to come here.”

  Picking up the candle, she left the chamber. As she progressed up the ramp and the light faded behind her, I looked around one final time to see if there was anything worth stealing. In the gathering darkness, I noticed a curious blue glow from the sepulcher. It came from the corpse. The entire body shone, but the light was brightest on its bare feet and hands, and brightest of all on the ends of the bones projecting from the stumps of its toes and fingers. Had the glow always been there, obscured beneath the brighter light of the flame, or was this the first sign of power acquired from the consumption of the wizard’s flesh?

  I waited for some other sign, but the glow continued as before, constant and unvarying. The only feature of the corpse that did not radiate light was the green stone disk on its groin. The temptation came again to snatch it up and see what lay beneath it. All parts of a great wizard were fabled to contained potency, but none so much as his sexual organ. I thrust the temptation away. Having eaten his finger, I could not even consider consuming his prick. It would be too much flesh, and I would be possessed by his angry spirit.

  The irritated voice of the girl echoed dimly down the passage.

  “Alhazred, I am at the shaft. Do you want me to leave you to climb it in darkness, or are you coming out?”

  So adept had I become at moving through darkness, I knew I could climb the steep stair of the shaft with my eyes shut, but there was nothing to keep me in the burial chamber, so I left it and walked up the incline of the ramp to where Martala waited at the base of the shaft. She gripped the candle stub between her teeth and began to climb. I followed her without speaking, feeling vaguely dissatisfied. I had expected more after consuming the finger of the mummy. Perhaps the others who had gone before me in previous centuries had experienced the same unrest.