by Donald Tyson
Some impulse made me search the cupboards and boxes in the wagon. In her jewel case I found what I sought, the pendant I had given her as a token of our undying pledge. Holding it in my hand, I studied the large sapphire within its circle of smaller diamonds. It seemed impossible that less than two years before, we had gazed together into its blue depths with a single hope and happiness. Now I felt nothing as I looked upon it. My confusion and doubt were replaced by a vast emptiness of the soul.
Cupping my hand to the lamp, I blew out its flame, then slid the pendant into a pocket of my thawb. I worked my body through the gap in the curtains and walked across to Belok, who stood over a small pile of valuable things gathered from the opened packs. His brother and son were beside him.
“Are they asleep?” Belok asked without glancing at me.
“They sleep.”
“We take nothing from the wagons,” he said. “Only from the sealed packs. If we are lucky, it will be days before anyone notices that anything is missing.”
“That is wise,” I told him, fingering the hardness of the pendant through the side of my thawb.
“Why did you light the lamp?”
“I was curious to see what the wagon held.”
He grunted. Rakk laughed and smirked at me in his usual way.
“You were quick,” the boy said.
His father hit him in the side of the head with his open hand. The boy gave no indication that he noticed the blow.
I left them opening the sealed leather packs and investigating their contents. None paid attention to me when I walked from the dull red glow of the sooty hearths into the night. I moved as I used to move in the Empty Space, pleased to see that my old skills had not deserted me. The fancy came into my mind to keep going away from the caravan camp, away from the Thugian thieves, away from Martala, until nothing but the cleanness of the desert surrounded me. I rejected the impulse with impatience. It arose from weakness. A ghoul was not permitted the luxury of being weak. I stroked the smooth dome of Gor’s skull beneath my cloak and continued to hunt through the rocks until I found what I sought.
Returning to the camp, I saw that my absence had caused no concern. Belok and his brother packed away the precious articles of gold and silver into the sacks tied across the rumps of the little horses. I had wondered about the purpose of the sacks. The boy carried armloads of loot from the diminishing pile on the ground and stood waiting while it was lifted with care and fitted away so that it did not make a sound. They worked efficiently but without haste, secure in the power of the sleep charm.
I entered the gilded wagon, but did not bother to light the lamp. The princess slept as I had left her. An impulse made me arrange her arms more gracefully across her breast. I smelled her perfume while bent across her body, and could not resist kissing her softly on the lips. They parted at the pressure from my kiss. Her breath touched my face as I withdrew.
Looking around the dark wagon, I located the oblong shadow of her jewel box and opened it. From a pocket I took a rolled rag and unfolded it with care. As its last fold fell open I released one side of the rag. A black shape the length of my finger dropped into the jewel box with a soft click and remained motionless for a moment. In the dimness I saw it turn its body and open its claws, its envenomed tail curling up in preparation to strike. Smiling to myself, I closed the lid of the box without a sound.
When I emerged once again, the three thieves had the loot of the caravan stowed onto the backs of the horses and were making certain that the large leather packs of the camels were closed in such a way that no one would notice that they had been opened. Belok studied the arrangement of the piles of packs with a critical eye, and directed his brother to move packs this way and that until he was satisfied that they looked as they had looked before being disturbed. Rakk loitered beside the horses, holding their reins in both hands. Evidently Belok intended to leave the caravan before morning. Such unannounced departures of stragglers were probably common enough.
The sound of stumbling footsteps in the darkness turned the four of us to stone. A man staggered into view and approached the horses. He wore a puzzled expression. I saw that it was one of the slaves responsible for handling the camels. The boy dropped the reins of the horses, and as they milled around in unease he confronted the slave. Belok and his brother covered their ears with their hands. Realizing what was about to happen, I imitated them. Rakk spoke the charm and made the gesture. The man, who was evidently drunk, blinked at him, looking around at the four of us. The boy repeated the charm, but without effect. He looked at his father in puzzlement as Belok lowered his hands.
The eyes of the slave settled on the fat packs across the backs of the ponies and his eyes widened with comprehension. He began to make loud but inarticulate noises with his throat, rolling his eyes. He stared at Rakk, then stumbled away from him and ran toward a sleeping guard. Picking up his javelin, he brandished it in a menacing way, still lowing and bellowing like a bull with cramps in its belly. Before I could react to this extraordinary display, Belok rushed across and knocked the wavering point of the javelin aside with his foot. He nodded to his son.
The boy drew out a yellow kerchief from inside his shirt and twisted it into a rope, as I had watched him do in the game played with his sister. Belok grasped the spear and tore it away from the deaf and dumb slave, while his brother wrapped his arms around the slave from the front, pinning the slave’s arms to his sides at his elbows. Rakk stepped behind the slave and looped the yellow noose over his head. He drew it tight. The eyes of the drunken slave bulged. Saliva gurgled deep in his throat. He tried to throw off Ell’s grasp, and Belok came to help his brother while Rakk finished the task of strangling him.
The boy kept the noose tight until there was no doubt that the slave was quite dead. Without a word between them, Belok and his brother picked up the corpse by its wrists and ankles and carried it out of the camp. The boy put away his kerchief, took up the javelin, and returned it to the sleeping guard. He glanced at me as he came back to gather in the reins of the horses. Pride glowed in his face. The beasts had not run far. Perhaps this was a common event for them. From Belok’s saddle he drew forth a short pickax with a broad blade and carried it casually in the direction the men had gone with the dead slave.
I followed out of curiosity, although I had little doubt what I would see. Behind a low hill some distance from the road we found them. I saw in the faint starlight the dead slave lying naked on his belly, his clothes and shoes in a pile. Belok took the tool and dug a shallow grave. When it was two cubits deep, his brother and son tumbled the corpse into the hole, and helped him cover it with earth by kicking in loose stones and sand with their feet. He took a few minutes to smooth the ground and scatter the excess dirt around. After the wind blew, there would be little trace to show that anything had been buried. Ell gathered up the clothing of the murdered man in his arms.
Belok saw me watching him. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his tunic and grinned fiercely, showing all his teeth like a wolf.
“We do this in honor of our goddess, who ensures our good fortune in perpetuity.”
“Why did you let your boy kill the deaf mute?”
He slapped the grinning Rakk on the back and gathered him close with an arm around his neck.
“He is no longer a boy, but a man.”
“A’ai y’gatu l’il ro’kanah Shub-Niggurath!” chanted his brother in a voice of exultation.
The father and the boy repeated the chant. Not wishing to feel like an outsider at this emotional moment, I said it with them.
Chapter 52
The sun had not yet risen when we returned to the wagon, but the sky glowed with the chill light of early morning. Martala squatted beside the cooking fire, encouraging it to burn by poking it with a crooked stick. When she heard the approach of our horses, she stood and peered anxiously throu
gh the grayness. Her face relaxed into a smile as she recognized me.
Belok called out in his deep voice and roused the women and girls from the wagon. They milled around the horses while we dismounted, chattering their questions. Little Leti, who had not yet dressed herself, clung naked to her mother’s cloak, shifting from one foot to the other in her excitement. Rakk said something in their language, and groans of approval came from Naleen and the old woman, who took the boy’s face between her hands and kissed him on the lips. I left them untying the heavy sacks of stolen goods from the saddles.
“I didn’t know if you would come back,” Martala said as we walked together back to the smoking fire.
“You were right. There was nothing for me in the caravan.”
She remained silent to encourage me to speak, but I had said all I wished to say. Belok came over and slapped me on the back with good humor, his bristly face beaming.
“I told my wife you bring our wagon good fortune.”
I felt tired, and was ill disposed to be jovial. He did not seem to notice my dullness.
“I thought your goddess ensured your fortune.”
“So she does, but we can never have too much luck.”
Laughing, he left us and returned to his son, who talked in their language with much animation, his mother and sisters for an audience. They made approving sounds at appropriate pauses. Ell unsaddled the horses, and the old woman tended to the morning meal.
As we continued to make our way along the road in the days that followed, the attitude of Naleen changed toward me. Whereas she had barely spoken a dozen words before the raid on the caravan, she now sought me out in the early evenings after making camp, eager to acquire what techniques of necromancy I could teach, for she was always seeking to enlarge her power. I learned much concerning the history and beliefs of the Thugians, and their tribal pact with Shub-Niggurath. In return I taught her what small charms I knew. I thought she might desire to learn the names and nature of the Old Ones, but she was indifferent to this knowledge because it could not be turned by her to practical advantage.
Martala resented this apparent intimacy between me and the witch. She need not have concerned herself. It was based on nothing more than mutual gain. If Belok shared her resentment, he gave no expression to his feelings. I believe he knew his wife well enough not to feel jealousy. In any case, it was not his place to criticize her actions. He respected her authority, and more than this, he feared her wrath. They all feared her, even the boy, who obeyed without a word when his mother ordered him to do a task. Perhaps they loved her as well, but their love was not as evident as their fear.
For ten dinars, I persuaded her to show me the mystery that was kept hidden behind the closed doors of the sandalwood shrine. This she did on a misty morning when the men hunted rabbits in the hollows, and the children were occupied outside the wagon with Martala and the old woman, washing soiled undergarments in a wooden tub. As she closed the door at the back of the wagon, I saw Martala cast me a troubled glance. I made a gesture with my palm downward behind Naleen’s back to show that she had no reason for alarm.
“That girl guards you like a brooding hawk,” she said as she turned.
The flame of an oil lamp lit the sharp planes of her angular face, severe and beautiful at the same time.
“She is a faithful servant.”
“Is that all she is to you?”
I indicated the holes of my missing nose and ears.
“What else could she be?”
She shrugged and moved further back into the wagon to the shrine. It rested on a low table, its arched roof on the level of my heart. The peak of the roof was surmounted by a wooden ball, in which was carved a lidless eye turned on its point. Winged beasts like dragons, but with the beaks of birds, entwined on its front panels, their claws upraised in warning. They seemed to move in the flicker of the lamp.
“What I show to you now is our most sacred mystery. Belok and the others must never know that you have seen it.”
“I understand.”
The doors of the shrine were not opened by a key, but by means of small studs that projected from the carved panels and appeared to be nothing more than details of the design. She passed her slender fingers over them, pressing here and there too swiftly for my eyes to follow, then pulled open the doors.
The polished black limbs of the stone idol within the shrine were frozen in the posture of dance. She stood upon her pedestal on one foot, the other upraised, her arms askew, her eyes staring with insane glee, her thick lips writhed away from her ivory teeth, and her tongue extended in a silent scream of ecstasy. In the middle of her forehead a third eye glared. An ivory necklace of exquisitely carved human skulls hung from her naked torso below the level of her full breasts. Her hairless and obscenely exposed vulva had been shaped by the artist in complete detail. Inset between its lips glowed a rounded emerald of the deepest green. Her vulva seemed to gape as though about to give birth to the jewel, and this same impression of pregnancy was conveyed by the dome of her belly.
“She is the giver and taker of life,” the witch murmured with awe. “All my powers of divination and spirit vision come from her. So does the favorable luck of my race, without which we would not have survived wandering through these hostile lands.”
“Why do you call her Shub-Niggurath?”
She hissed and glared at me, her face for a moment resembling the face of the idol.
“Be silent, fool. To speak her name is to invoke her. Do you want her to kill you, and me along with you?”
I wondered what the goddess would look like when evoked to tangible appearance. The images of Shub-Niggurath that I had come across in my studies and my wandering did not resemble this dancing pregnant woman. Perhaps she took different forms to different worshippers, as was the practice of Nyarlathotep. It was a question I felt no great haste to answer. A single Old One in my life was enough for this incarnation, and for the last, and the next.
“She is the mother of all births. Were she to break her covenant with my race, our women would become infertile and our goats would cease to breed. The goat is her chosen beast, because it is so ready to copulate at all times.”
“How did the crafty race come to have a covenant with this goddess?”
She glanced at me and seemed to consider whether to speak on this matter, then shrugged.
“At the beginning of the world, the fertile mother tried to give birth to the human race, but each time she sent a man forth from her loins, he was killed by a great monster that dwelled in the ocean. She battled the monster with her sword, and would have defeated it, but from the drops of blood that fell from its wounds it spawned creatures shaped like itself, though smaller in size, that vexed her and distracted her from her purpose. Being wise, she saw that she could not overcome both the monster and its devilish spawn. From the sweat of her brow she formed two brothers, the first of my race. She tore strips of cloth from the hem of her dress and gave them to the brothers, commanding them to strangle any demons that arose from the monster’s blood during the battle. The men strangled its offspring as quickly as they took shape, and in this way the mother was able to send the monster beneath the waves. As repayment, she gifts the bloodline of the brothers with fertility and good fortune for so long as their descendants continue to make sacrifice in her honor.”
“So that is why Rakk strangled the deaf mute at the caravan,” I murmured.
“The men of my people are forbidden to shed blood, for it was from the drops of blood shed by the monster of the sea that its spawn arose. They must strangle a man once a year, or the goddess turns away from them and their good fortune is ended. This obligation cannot be shirked after the sixteenth birthday, but no law prohibits them from taking it up at a younger age.”
“A heavy price to pay for luck.”
“It has other c
ompensations,” she said. “Those who are sacrificed give up their possessions to us. We sell their boots, weapons, and clothing, and keep their gold and silver.”
I remembered the camels laden with old clothes, from which I had bought boots and garments for myself and the girl. The glaring eyes of the black idol watched me with gleeful madness.
“Does the Mother have the power to restore my face and manhood?”
The witch considered my face with a speculative eye.
“I have never heard of such a thing. Anyway, no one may enter the covenant with the goddess but those of my race.”
“Do you know of any spell or charm that can restore a lost limb?” I asked, taking another approach to the matter that was central in my life.
She shook her head, a smile twitching the corners of her thin mouth. My unfortunate state was a source of amusement for her.
“It is beyond my ability. I have heard that the necromancers at Damascus possess strange spells, and have delved deeply into the wellsprings of this world in search of knowledge.”
“It is to them that I journey.”
“So I assumed. They dwell in the northern quarter, in a street called the Lane of Scholars, but they do not encourage the approach of strangers.”
This bit of information I put away for later use. The deep voice of Belok alerted us to the return of the men from their hunt. She shut the doors of the shrine and ushered me out of the wagon.
“Say nothing of what you have seen and heard,” she hissed at my back.
I nodded without turning.
That night we did not camp alone, but in an enclave of five other yellow wagons. It was the largest gathering of the travelers I had seen, and as I learned from Martala, had not occurred by chance.
“There is a ritual tonight,” she told me while we watered and brushed down the backs of the tired horses. “The older girl called it the rite of the companion.”