by Donald Tyson
“Lift this stone and dig beneath it,” I told the fat workman.
He studied the stone and grunted to himself. Most of his drunkenness had departed. Drawing an iron bar from amid his bag of tools, he fitted its pointed end under the edge of the stone and began to pry. His brother lent his back to the effort, and the stone groaned protest as it lifted and was levered to one side several inches. The stone was too heavy to lift, but by repeating this prying action the brothers contrived to slide it away, revealing the raw earth that lay beneath it.
They began to dig, and I saw that I had chosen well, for as limited as their minds were, they were skillful at their tasks and did not shirk the labor even when the sweat began to stream from their naked torsos. Early in the digging they stripped to the waist. The moonlight gleamed on their slick backs. The bite of spades and picks into the soil was the only sound. They worked at a measured pace without pausing to speak.
“Hakka said the oracle was hidden by the priests at a time when Egypt was invaded, but he did not remember who the invaders were,” I whispered to Martala in Greek.
“My nation has been invaded many times,” she said with a trace of bitterness.
“The ghoul said the oracle was not deeply buried, for the priests worked in haste.”
Even as I spoke one of the spades clinked against something harder than stone. Yamas waved his younger brother aside and tapped around the spot with the tip of his shovel.
“Have a care not to damage it,” I told him in Coptic.
He glanced at me but did not bother to answer. Gesturing for his brother to resume digging in a certain place, he began to gently scrape away the loose soil and small stones that turned up.
The statue lay on its side, no more than a cubit beneath the surface that had been covered by the paving stone. It had the gleam of gold, and its feet were attached to a small pedestal of the same metal. It was man-sized, human in both the shape of its limbs and the features of its face.
Han scraped away the dirt from its belly, and broke into loud, braying laughter. His brother also laughed, but with more restraint. Leaning over the pit, I saw the reason for their amusement, and heard Martala draw a noisy breath. The recumbent god had been uncommonly well endowed by the artist who made it, with a prick almost as long and thick as my forearm. It also gleamed with gold, but I saw that in places the gold had flaked off, exposing bronze beneath. Yamas saw the same thing.
“It’s not gold, it’s only bronze,” he said in Coptic with disappointment.
Han continued to giggle to himself as he dug, until his older brother cuffed him on the back of the head with his open palm, knocking off his turban. Han bent and replaced it.
“It must be the god Amun himself,” Martala breathed. There was both terror and wonder in her voice.
“How do you know? He has no ram’s horns.”
“Amun was the creator of all life, or such was the belief of those who worshiped him.”
The brothers grasped the statue by its head and shoulders, and worked it from the dry soil. As it tilted upright on its pedestal, the dust fell away from its face, and I saw that it still possessed eyes. They were finely crafted of obsidian and lapis lazuli. With effort, the workmen rocked the statue from the hole and some distance away from its edge, then continued to dig. I did not tell them to stop. There might be other treasures buried beneath the god. With the lust for buried gold alive in their hearts, they paid no attention to me or the girl.
Walking slowly around the statue, I studied it and wondered how to go about asking a question of an ancient oracle. Perhaps whatever god or djinn had animated it in past times had faded away to nothingness while buried under the ground for so many centuries. My gaze returned to its eyes. They were so lifelike, I expected to see them move. They regarded me with tranquil indifference. How did one activate an oracle?
Martala reached out and timorously laid her fingertips on the phallus of the god. She caressed its length wonderingly, then suddenly drew back her hand.
“It’s warm.”
With a curious awkwardness, I laid my palm on the bronze prick. It was warm, but the heat faded quickly under my touch.
“Put your hand back on it,” I told Martala.
She rested her fingers beside mine, and the warmth returned and strengthened.
“It is drawing nourishment from your body,” I told her. “Keep your hand there.”
Releasing the phallus, I returned my gaze to the obsidian eyes of the god. Something stirred in the depths of my mind, a presence or awareness that was both distant and powerful.
Oracle, I have a question, I said within my mind.
Ask.
The word came like a sigh of wind in no language that I could identify, yet I understood its meaning.
Are you familiar with the poison used by the Order of the Sphinx?
There was a pause as the intelligence within the bronze considered the matter.
It is a concentration of the venom from the black scorpion of the wastelands.
Do you know its antidote?
The poison is brewed by the shamans of the Besari tribe, above the Second Cataract. They also concoct its cure, for their own protection.
My mind raced. Was this enough information to locate this people, I wondered.
How shall I find the Besari?
Again the pause, briefer this time.
They dwell in villages along the west bank of the river. They are traders.
Martala continued to keep her hand upon the prick of the idol, but an expression of pain gathered in her face. I saw that wisps of steam arose from the shoulders of the idol, and touched it on its bare chest with my fingertips. It was hot—not yet hot enough to burn, but with the heat of new bath water, or freshly spilled blood.
Words walked through my mind, tickling like an insect on my skin.
Where are the priests of the temple?
The oracle was asking me, its humble petitioner, a question. At another time, this might have aroused amusement, but the pain beneath the words removed any impulse to smile.
Dead, and fallen to dust.
All of them?
Yes, all.
Dismay washed through me, radiating from the face of the idol. I felt the awareness of the being within the bronze expand in every direction, as for the first time it came fully awake after its long sleep. Martala grunted with pain but did not remove her hand from its prick.
Desolation, desolation, the end of days; the glory of god is put out like a reed torch in the river water, and the roof of the house is fallen.
Something thin and white flew up from the crown of the head of the statue with a wailing sound like the cry of a distant night hawk. Martala released the prick of the god with a gasp and pressed her palm to her dress to cool it.
Yamas looked up from his digging.
“What was that?”
“I heard nothing.” I turned to the girl. “Did you hear anything?”
“Me? Nothing at all.”
Yamas stared around with uncertainty. He met the vacant eyes of his brother.
“Well I heard nothing, either,” Han said.
With a grunt, Yamas resumed his digging. I allowed them to continue for the space of a quarter hour. When the hole was up to their breasts, and they had still found nothing other than the bronze statue, I ordered them to stop, and told them to return the statue to its place and fill in the hole. I wanted no sign that the floor of the temple had ever been disturbed when the morning light shone between its pillars. They obeyed without reluctance, having satisfied themselves that nothing more was to be found, and that their only treasure of the night would come from my purse.
We had barely enough time before dawn to get back across the river and return to the inn. The wife of the proprietor was already awak
e and working in the kitchen. I persuaded her to reheat the bath water that had cooled from the previous night. The warm water felt so soothing as I washed the dried blood from my skin, I almost fell asleep in the round copper tub. Martala woke me from my stupor to demand her turn in the water. As she stripped, I was glad that the innkeeper’s wife had placed the tub behind a folding wood-panel screen in the corner of the kitchen for our privacy. Her slender body was a mass of bruises and tiny crescent-shaped cuts. As she sat leaning forward in the tub, washing her long hair, I knelt behind it and used a rough rag to wash her back and shoulders. I described what the oracle had told me.
“Have you ever heard of the Besari tribe?”
“No.” She frowned in thought. “I know little about what lies above Thebes, only a few fables my mother used to tell me.”
“What were the tales about?”
She shrugged her slender shoulders beneath my hand.
“It is said to be an evil land, having many sorcerers. Those who go there suffer misfortunes.”
“At least we won’t be troubled by Farri. His power doesn’t seem to extend above Memphis.”
“He has no need,” she said. “He knows we will have to come back down the Nile eventually.”
This was something I had not considered, but I saw the sense in it. Above Thebes lay only a wilderness of black-skinned barbarians, so anyone who traveled up the Nile must eventually travel down it again. The south offered no escape. Farri could afford to be patient.
Before returning to the ship, we went to the valley of the dead to retrieve the scroll. I felt confident that we would not be attacked by wraiths in daylight, and Sashi agreed with me that it was unlikely. As I expected, the bodies had been removed by the ghouls, along with their weapons. The scroll lay where I had dropped it. I opened it to be sure it was undamaged, then returned it to my inner coat pocket. The sun stood just above the uneven rim of the hills, but the shadowed floor of the valley retained the coolness of night. Gazing around, it was difficult to see any threat in those steep slopes. I wondered how many travelers had been lulled into complacency by their benign appearance in daylight.
We arrived at the dockside well before noon, only to discover Critias preparing to leave the dock. The gangplanks had already been drawn up, so we were forced to leap from the dock into the boat, a jump of no great distance.
I found the familiar deck of the Elephant’s Foot strangely comforting. While aboard the ship, we were safe from the agents of both Farri and Feisel, since it was unlikely that Feisel would attempt another fire arrow attack after the first had failed and made us wary of small boats, even if he had additional assassins following us up river.
Without regret, I watched Thebes diminish behind the ship. Travel along a river, I had discovered, was much like moving through time. Ahead lay the unknown future, and behind, the past sliding into oblivion. Only the river itself seemed real. The rest of the world was a carnival of illusions, of pleasant dreams and nightmares best forgotten. The poison in my blood began to sing to me. I heard it in my ears as a high whine, rising and falling like the wings of an insect that at times drew near to circle my head. The remaining term of my life was brief, yet the length of the river could not be diminished by any art of necromancy. It required a full day and night of sailing to reach the First Cataract, and another two days to travel from the First to the Second Cataract.
I closed my eyes as I held on to the rail of the ship, feeling its gentle roll beneath my feet.
Sashi, can you control the poison for another three days?
Her beautiful face formed upon the darkness, her expression sad. I asked the question three times but she refused to answer.
Chapter 29
Someone shook my shoulder. Pain lanced in hot needles along my spine and through the sockets of my hips. I groaned and made the effort to force my swollen eyelids open. The brightness of day scalded my brain, but I kept my eyes parted as memory slowly returned.
We had left the Elephant’s Foot at the base of the First Cataract, since a ship of its vast bulk could not be drawn past the roiling white water, and had hired a smaller boat above the turbulence to take us to the Second Cataract. It was then that the poison began to show its strength, in spite of all efforts of Sashi to quell it. I lay awake at night, unable to sleep from the pain in my limbs and vitals, only to doze fitfully throughout the day as I shivered and sweated in the bottom of the boat.
Two full days we sailed beneath the sun and stars, the banks of the river growing ever more wild, the cultivated fields becoming fewer until they dwindled to nothing and the rank tangle of the jungle ruled unbroken along both sides of the Nile. The boat master steered well clear of crocodiles and the monsters known as behemoths who watched us with deceptively tame brown eyes, the tops of their heads and comical little ears alone breaking the river surface, the rest of their vast bodies hidden in the murky depths. Birds hung upon the air like great clouds of colored silks, their shrill cries making speech impossible until they passed. Each time we tacked near the banks, swarms of biting flies pursued us, only to fall behind when we sailed into the midst of the Nile.
With the aid of a rough walking staff that Martala bought from a beggar for a bronze fil, I was able to walk the path that circumvented the Second Cataract. Above it was only a small fishing village of black-skinned savages who went nearly naked due to the heat. It was unlike the heat of the Empty Space, which is wholesome to a man with sufficient water. The air hung thick on my tongue and clogged my throat, choking me so that at times I thought I could not breathe, and had to stop and gasp while my body was racked with coughing. Even so, I was not warmed by my blue camelhair coat, but trembled with chills that sank to my very bones.
A few of the inhabitants of the village knew Coptic. One fisherman agreed to take us up the river to the chief town of the Besari tribe. Martala paid too much. I saw that his boat was filled with dried fish, and knew he had intended to sail up river to sell them at the town, so it was little cost to him to add us to his cargo. I said nothing. When I talked, the coughing returned. Sometimes it was many minutes before it ceased.
Martala bought a potion against sickness from an old woman in the fishing village before we departed. I drank it, reflecting that it would not kill me any faster than I was presently dying. It seemed to lessen my urge to cough. She also bought a filthy blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. The inhabitants gazed in wonder to see a man shiver under the heat of the sun, though his body was wrapped in wool.
With impatience I thrust aside this tangled confusion of recent memories, and raised my head to look around the boat. I found that I lay upon a mound of dried fish that dug sharply into my back and neck. Martala held her hand under my head and gazed down at me, worry expressed in the vertical line between her gathered brows. I tried to smile, but my lips cracked and began to bleed. The blood tasted sweet on my tongue.
The reed fishing boat was tied to a crude wharf constructed of rough and irregular logs driven into the mud of the river, the bark still clinging to them. The space behind this barrier was filled with stones and sand to make a platform for unloading the small boats that bobbed on the flow of the river, bumping gently against it as the wind shifted. I counted seven such boats, similar in design, with broad beams for carrying cargo and large triangular linen sails for fighting up river against the current.
In the bow of our own boat, a black fisherman, naked save for a skirt of woven grasses around his hips, sat amid his catch with arms and legs extended, eyes wide and jaw slack with terror. I blinked at him as I slowly became aware of his expression, puzzling over what might have caused him such fear, then noticed his gaze fixed unwaveringly on my face.
“You neglected the glamour,” Martala murmured into my ear in Greek.
The urge to mirth arose within me. I tried to suppress it, but had no strength of will. My laughter rolled out, strong and fu
ll, echoing over the river about the noises of the docks.
This was too much for the boatman, who scrambled to his bare feet in the sliding slabs of dried fish, gave a faint scream, and leaped from the boat to the wharf. Without glancing back, he ran toward the gates of the town, arousing curious stares from the other fishermen who worked on their sails or handled their catches.
When my bitter amusement at my pathetic condition exhausted itself, I raised my right hand and weakly made the gestures and spoke the word of the glamour.
“We should leave before he returns. I have already paid him.” Martala said.
She helped me to my hands and knees. In my weakened state, the greatest difficulty was the transition from lying to standing. Once on my feet, I could keep them under me unaided for a brief period. She leaned over and grasped the rough logs of the wharf, drawing the boat slowly inward until the reeds of its side scraped their bark, and held it while I crawled onto the wharf. Jumping out of the boat, she put her arm under mine to help me stand, then returned to the boat for the walking staff I had used at the Second Cataract. I was ashamed to lean on it, but was forced to acknowledge to myself that I needed the aid of its support.
The fisherman had called the town Tyroon. It was little more than a scattering of round wattle huts with pointed roofs of bundled reeds, but it boasted a fortification wall of mud bricks as tall as a man, and crowned with sharpened stakes set irregularly along its top. As crude as this defense appeared to civilized eyes, it was unlikely that it had been constructed without a purpose. Life in Tyroon could not always be so harmonious as it seemed this bright morning.
The wooden gates of the town hung open, facing the fish market on the wharf. As we drew nearer, I saw that the massive log forming the lintel of the gate was decorated along its top with rotting human heads. Whatever its shortcomings, the town enjoyed the rule of law. The solitary guard leaning on his spear eyed us disagreeably as we passed beneath the head-studded log, but he said nothing and made no move to challenge us. He was dressed in a simple skirt of woven grasses dyed with red and green pigments, and wore nothing else except a wide collar of beaten brass disks that rested on his broad shoulders and hung over his chest. Patterns of scars crossed his thighs and surrounded his upper arms. They were not the scars of battle, but some form of ritual marking.