by Mark Anthony
“And we spent all this time trying to find the murderer,” Aryn said. “Why didn’t you just tell us, Sareth?”
The Mournish man gave a bitter smile. “Wagons are not so swift as ships, fair lady. You arrived in Tarras several days before us. I did not reach the city until the day the Scirathi attempted to harm you, beshala.” He said these last words to Lirith, his eyes intent.
Lirith did not meet his eyes. “The Scirathi. You mean one like the sorcerer who attacked Grace and Travis on their world.”
Sareth nodded. “Although there was something strange about the sorcerer of Scirath who attacked you, beshala. What, I cannot say—but that he was Scirathi there can be no doubt. Only they wear masks of gold.”
“Masks,” Grace murmured. She met the questioning gazes of the others. “The masks are the focus for their magic. We saw that firsthand.”
Beltan cleared his throat. It was the first sound the blond knight had made since they had gathered around the fire. “All right, let me see if I’m following this. These sorcerers—the Scirathi—they’re the ones behind the murders of the gods?”
Sareth hesitated, then nodded.
Melia clenched small hands into fists. “They will pay for this!”
“But how?” Falken said. “Even a sorcerer should not have the ability to slay a god.”
The Mournish man looked down, silent for a long moment. Travis realized he was gazing at his wooden leg. At last he looked up.
“It is a demon,” he said.
Vani clamped a hand to her mouth in an expression of open horror. Clearly she knew what Sareth’s words meant, and by their grim expressions Melia and Falken did as well. But Travis had no idea.
“A demon?” he said.
“Yes,” Sareth answered. “A relic of the War of the Sorcerers long ago. When the sorcerers rose up against the god-kings of Amún, they created the demons as their greatest weapons. A demon could lay waste to an entire city, destroying every last grain of its walls, leaving only bare sand.”
Aryn shuddered. “Just like Madam Vil’s hostel.”
“But the demons, what were they?” Travis said.
“They were morndari made incarnate. The morndari were ever bodiless and hungry spirits—that is how blood could be used to draw and control them. But a few of the sorcerers found a way to bind the morndari, encasing them in bodies of stone. These were the demons. Incarnate, they could walk across the land, but their hunger was not lessened in their physical form. They consumed everything in their path, and they were never sated.”
These words sickened Travis. He could almost see them—vague, shadowy creatures opening vast maws to eat entire cities as people tried in vain to flee.
“If they were never sated,” Grace said, “then how were they stopped? Why didn’t they consume everything in Amún?”
“They very nearly did. It is because of the demons that the lands of Amún are now the Morgolthi—a wasteland of bones, dust, and death. However, in the end, the sorcerers who created them realized their folly and managed to undo their magic, destroying all the demons.”
“But not all of them,” Falken said. “Not if you’re right.”
Sareth turned toward the bard. “We can only guess that one of the demons crossed the Summer Sea, to the shores of Falengarth.”
“But why didn’t it destroy things here?” Lirith said.
“It was bound somehow, imprisoned in a chamber beneath the very hill upon which Tarras was later built. Although who bound it there we do not know. It must have been a sorcerer of vast power.”
Travis forced himself to stop biting his lip. “But if it took such a powerful sorcerer to bind the demon the first time, how can it be locked up again?”
“The demon is not free,” Sareth said. “Not completely, for were that so there would be only a void where Tarras stands. Its prison has grown weaker, yes, due to the actions of the Scirathi. But I believe the sorcerers have found a way to use the demon for their own ends without releasing it.”
“Their own ends,” Melia said, her voice rising with fury. “You mean to murder the gods!”
Sareth regarded Melia with solemn eyes. “No, great lady, that is not so. To murder the gods is not the reason the Scirathi are using the demon. Instead, the deaths of the gods are merely meant to appease the thing—an attempt to sate it—so that they might safely pass by it.”
“You mean,” Falken exclaimed, “the Scirathi are sacrificing gods to the demon just so they can get past it?”
Melia was shaking with rage. “That’s … that’s utterly perverse!”
Travis’s heart rattled in his chest. Something was wrong—and not just the existence of an ancient monster or the pointless deaths of three gods. Then, with a chill, he understood.
“Sareth,” he said, “you told us that the Scirathi are sacrificing gods to the demon in order to sate it.”
“That is so.”
“But you also said demons can never be sated, no matter how much they consume.”
“No, they cannot.”
“Then what’s to keep it from getting stronger as it feeds, strong enough to escape completely?”
Sareth gazed at his wooden leg and said nothing.
71.
It was Vani who broke the silence.
“Brother, you have yet to tell us how you learned of the demon beneath Tarras.”
Sareth bowed his head, and he seemed to be murmuring something. Was he gathering his thoughts? Or was it a prayer? Before Travis could decide, the Mournish man looked up, his dark eyes haunted.
“It was two years ago that I learned of the demon—not long after you left us, Vani. A dervish came to our caravan where we were camped, at the foot of the Mountains of the Shroud.”
“A dervish?” Falken said, and this question surprised Travis. He had always thought Falken knew everything about the people and history of Eldh. Evidently there were limitations even to the ancient bard’s knowledge.
Sareth glanced at the bard. “The free working of blood magic is forbidden among the Mournish until the time we regain Morindu the Dark, lest we become like the Scirathi—covetous of power. However, there are those who have chosen to forsake this law, and who strike off alone to master what secrets of sorcery they can. These are the dervishes. Most of them are mad—that is the price they pay for their solitude and the secrets they learn—and this one was no exception.
“He was dying when he stumbled into the caravan. I think that was the only reason he spoke to me, to boast of the mysteries he had learned before death took him. He was dry and thin as bones left in a desert, and his face was a mask of scabs and flies. He said he had come from the Morgolthi, the Hungering Land, and I did not doubt him. He said he had dug there, in the burning sands, and he had found … this.”
Sareth drew something from a pocket. It looked to Travis like a thick, wedge-shaped piece of pottery, covered with angular markings.
“All that night, as I watched over him, the dervish babbled in his sleep. He was burning with fever, and little of what he said made sense. But a few words I heard over and over. The Dark shall rise again, he said. And, His blood is the key. At dawn I watched the life leave him, and we buried him there.”
Vani reached out, took the shard of pottery from Sareth. “What is it? What did the dervish give his life to dig from the sands of the Morgolthi?”
“It’s a piece of a tablet,” Sareth said. “That I knew at once, although I could not read it. However, Mirgeth could when I took it to him. It is written in the ancient tongue of Amún.”
“What does it say?” Falken asked.
“Very little. A few fragments of words, enough to let us know it was written during the War of the Sorcerers, that was all. I was prepared to forget the dervish and his ravings when, accepting the shard back from Mirgeth, I dropped it. It struck the ground and …”
Sareth took the shard back from Vani. Carefully, he pulled the shard into two halves and drew something out. It was a thin circle of go
ld.
Vani sat up straight. “A fa’deth.”
“Yes.” Sareth glanced at the others. “It is a fa’deth, a message-disk, used by the high sorcerers of Morindu to send missives to one another.”
In the crimson glow of the coals, Travis could make out fine engravings on the disk. “What does it say?”
“Make it speak for us, Sareth,” Vani said, her eyes as bright as the golden disk.
He shook his head. “To do so requires blood. Once the elders let me use the fa’deth, but once was enough, and I must not shed more blood for it carelessly.”
“You mean that it can speak to you?” Grace said.
“As I said, it is how the highest sorcerers sent messages to one another. Even if the disk were intercepted, the thief would not be able to hear the missive.”
“Unless the thief was a sorcerer as well,” Travis murmured, not realizing he had spoken until he saw Sareth gazing at him.
“What did it tell you?” Vani said.
Sareth drew in a breath. “That a demon had been imprisoned in a mound of white stone north across the sea—a mound, from its description, I knew to be the very hill upon which Tarras now stands. And it also told how something else was entombed with the demon. A relic of Morindu the Dark.”
“What relic?” Vani whispered, leaning closer.
“A scarab,” Sareth said. “A scarab of Orú.”
Vani gasped, but by the puzzled looks on the faces of those around him, Travis wasn’t the only one who was confused.
“Isn’t a scarab just a piece of jewelry?” he said.
Sareth laughed, a deep and chiming but somehow mirthless sound. “You might as well say the sun is just another flame like a candle. Of all the secret magics of Morindu the Dark, there was none so powerful as the scarabs of Orú.”
“Wait a minute,” Grace said. “I heard your grandmother say that name. Orú. Who was he?”
Vani rested her hands upon her knees. “For three hundred years, he was the god-king of Morindu the Dark.”
“Nonsense,” Durge rumbled. “No man can be king for three centuries.”
Again Sareth laughed. “Yes, that is true, my good cloud. No man. But a god?”
“Orú was not truly a deity,” Melia said, her expression outraged. “The god-kings of Amún were just tyrants who posed as deities so they could claim a divine right to rule their cities. It was despicable!”
“And yet,” Falken said, “some believe that, without such harsh rule, the first cities could never have been carved out of the deserts of Amún. And certainly it was those fleeing the destruction of Amún who brought civilization to Falengarth. Without the god-kings of Moringarth, Tarras would never have existed.”
Sareth weighed the gold fa’deth in his hand. “It is true that Orú began life as any ordinary man—in fact, he was the son of a beggar. You see, in Morindu, a king or queen did not rule by right of birth but rather right of magic. The greatest sorcerer of each generation was crowned king or queen. And in the thousand years of its history, no sorcerer was greater than Orú. While the other rulers of Amún dared to call themselves gods, only Orú was truly as powerful as a god.”
“But if he was born to such rude beginnings,” Lirith said, her eyes focused on the fire, “how did he become so powerful?”
“I fear the answer to that question is buried with Morindu beneath the sands of the Morgolthi,” Sareth said. “And even when Morindu stood, I do not think many knew the secret of how Orú became as a god. Perhaps his wife and his seven high priests—certainly no one else. But I do know this. If a river of human blood was required to work a magic, then the same magic might be done with but three drops from Orú’s veins.
“Once, the legends say, a hundred sorcerers of Scirath sacrificed themselves at the same moment, driving black knives into their hearts and filling a great pool with their blood—all to work a magic that extended the life of the king of Scirath by ten years.” Sareth’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Ten years—that was what the blood of a hundred sorcerers bought Scirath’s king. And by the time Morindu fell during the War of the Sorcerers, Orú had been alive for over three centuries.”
Beltan crossed his arms. “So if this Orú was such a great king, why didn’t he save his city?”
“He could not,” Sareth said. “For you see, he was asleep.”
Grace hugged her knees to her chest. “Asleep?”
“Yes, asleep. Even as the centuries passed and his power grew, Orú became harder and harder to rouse. Sometimes he would sleep for days at a time, and he would moan and thrash with great violence, as if caught in the throes of dread nightmares, so that his priests were forced to shackle him to his throne. Then the days became weeks, and the weeks months, until …”
“He never woke again,” Aryn finished with a shudder.
Sareth nodded. “Ever after, Orú was called the Shackled God, for he dreamed, chained to his throne, while his seven sorcerer-priests ruled in his name. And in time, the seven discovered a terrible and powerful secret. For they pricked Orú’s finger and drank his blood, becoming great sorcerers themselves. However, they did not consume all the blood they took from him. Some of it they sealed in jewels of gold.”
Understanding crackled through Travis. “Scarabs. That’s what scarabs are. Jewels that contain the blood of the god-king Orú.”
“Yes,” Sareth said. “How a scarab came to be sealed in the tomb of the demon I do not know—only that the fa’deth told of it being there. However, there is no relic of Morindu the Dark that is more powerful. Or more dangerous.”
A piece of dark wood hissed and fell apart, consumed by fire. At last Vani spoke.
“Sareth, there is a part of this story you have not told us. You were … whole when I saw you last.” She gazed, not at his face, but at his wooden leg.
He looked down at his hands. “There is no blood more powerful than that of the god-king Orú. The blood of five hundred sorcerers could not equal that contained in one scarab. With a single drop, wonders could be worked. Or …”
“The artifact,” Grace said. “You wanted to find the scarab so you could use the blood of Orú in the gate artifact and get Vani back from Earth.”
Sareth gave a stiff nod. “It was earlier this year, after we had learned that Travis Wilder was here on Eldh, but before he returned to his Earth. I could not … I could not bear the thought of you stranded there, Vani, with no hope of …”
Tears shone in Sareth’s eyes. Vani reached for his hand, held it tight. “I am here now, brother. But you must tell me. What happened to you?”
Roughly, he wiped away his tears. “The elders forbade it, of course, but I defied them and went anyway. Only I did not go alone. Xemeth came with me.” Sareth glanced at the others. “As children, Xemeth and Vani and I were impossible to separate. We did everything together. He was like my brother. Only, when we were older, the cards—”
Vani looked away. Whatever Sareth had been about to say, he swallowed the words.
“So Xemeth went with me to Tarras. From the followers of the Rat God we learned of a crack that ran from one of the sewers deep into the rock beneath the city, one which even they had never dared follow to its end. We descended the crevice, until at last we came to a great cavern. And there …”
Sareth’s hands began to tremble. He clenched them together but could not stop the shaking. “I cannot tell you exactly what happened in that cavern. Like a nightmare, it is both dim and horribly clear. I saw the scarab, shining like a golden star, resting on an altar. Xemeth started to move toward it. And then … a shadow fell over us. A shadow whose center we could not see.
“I think … I think the demon was still bound by the old magic. Otherwise I would never have escaped. I felt only a great coldness in my leg, and then I could not walk. But Xemeth … he was closer. One moment I saw him, then the shadow grew. There was a great noise, and the ground shook. Then he was … gone.”
Lirith clamped a hand to her mouth.
&nb
sp; “I fled then, like a coward,” Sareth rasped. “I dragged myself up the crevice by my hands. How I returned to the sewers beneath Tarras, I do not know. It was only when the people of Geb found me and lifted me up that I realized what I had lost.” He brushed his wooden leg. “Our people came for me then, and returned with me to the caravan. I thought they would punish me for my foolishness, but they did not.”
“They believed you had been punished enough,” Falken said, flexing his black-gloved hand.
Vani folded her arms. “Poor Xemeth. I never got to …”
Her words trailed into silence, and Travis thought maybe he understood. As the childhood friends had grown older, he guessed Xemeth had fallen in love with Vani. But it was a love she had not been able to return. Something had prevented her … something she had seen in the cards.
“So you think the Scirathi want the scarab,” Grace said.
Sareth looked up, the line of his jaw hard. “I know that they do. Even as we have always worked against them, so they have always sought relics of Morindu—and there is none so powerful as a scarab. With it, there is no telling what sort of foul sorceries they might work.”
“Like raising Morindu the Dark?” Travis said.
Sareth gave a stiff nod. “Somehow, the Scirathi learned of the demon and the scarab beneath Tarras. Two months ago, one of them attacked me and wrested the gate artifact from me.”
“We know,” Vani said.
He gazed into the glowing coals. “I had believed that’s how they were doing it—how they were feeding the demon. I thought that somehow they must be using the artifact to open gates between the cavern beneath Tarras and the temples of the gods. To pass between worlds takes blood of great power—blood such as that of the being of light Vani told me of, the being who came through the gate with you. But the blood of a sorcerer might be enough to open portals within the city.”
Grace frowned. “But wouldn’t that be impossible without the artifact’s prism? And Vani had that on Earth.”
“Yes, I know that now,” Sareth said. “And as it turned out the artifact was taken to Earth anyway. Which leaves only one answer.”