by Неизвестный
“There is one more thing,” the forgotten priest said.
Without looking up, the emperor exclaimed, “Leave me to my grief!”
The priest spoke as to a peevish child. “There is one thing more.”
“You have killed my beloved, get of Typhon! Leave me, or join him in death.”
“The god dies in order to live again, to grant new life to the world, but there is one thing more.”
Enraged, the emperor lunged to his feet. Unafraid, the priest stood his ground. In one hand he held Hadrian’s own pugio, his dagger of keen Noricum steel, in the other the golden phallus that had counterfeited Osiris’s beard.
“No,” said Hadrian, shaken. “I will not violate him so. You will not.”
“Lady Isis and her sister Nephthys of the Lamentations discovered every fragment of the dismembered corpse, one in each of the kingdom’s forty-two nomes—every fragment but one. The god’s severed penis had been tossed into the river and eaten by fishes. The lady fashioned a new phallus for her husband, by which the dead god was able to father Lord Horus upon her. You know this. You know your catamite’s sacrifice is useless, senseless, ridiculous, if this last act is not performed.” Besa’s acolyte took a breath. His next words sounded uncertain. “You need not do it yourself, the cutting.”
His tears dried by bitter knowledge, the emperor turned away. The body of Antinous lay serene and lovely on the barge’s deck. “No,” Hadrian said again, but he was speaking to himself, and he turned farther, lifting his eyes from his dead beloved, from perfection about to be spoiled, to the serene Nile of stars flowing across the heavens. After some moments, he heard a small grunt and then a tiny splash far out on the Nile of waters.
Unable to prevent himself, Hadrian looked. The Besa priest knelt by Antinous’s corpse. Pushing the base of the stiff golden phallus into the open wound, he appeared to be pleasuring the beautiful youth with his hands. It seemed the thing would not stay where it was meant to stand and the priest bent closer. Now it appeared he intended to perform an act only the most depraved whores consented to take money for.
The most depraved whores and the most devoted lovers: it was a thing Antinous had done for Hadrian and Hadrian, in dark, secret silence, for living Antinous. Horrible, grotesque—the emperor felt his own flesh begin to stiffen, to rise, as he witnessed the counterfeit of lovemaking between the priest—a eunuch, surely—and the emperor’s dead beloved.
The eunuch priest shrieked when dead hands shuddered on cedar decking, jerked up to clasp his skull. The shriek was muffled when his mouth was forced onto the golden phallus—muffled abruptly enough it seemed one heard his teeth shatter.
“Antinous!” cried the emperor. The prophecies were true. The vile priest deserved such punishment for the violation he had performed. “Beloved!”
Flailing, the priest had broken free. Blood and animal noises flooded from his ruined mouth as he seemed to protest the rite had gone wrong. He still held the false phallus in his hand, like a weapon, bloodied at both ends. Clumsy, he bashed with it at the grasping hands—he lacked the sense to reach for the discarded pugio or attempt to scuttle away.
“Antinous!” the emperor called again when his beloved fastened strong fingers about the priest’s throat and lurched half upright.
The body, the fatal hands, the face were Antinous’s, but the expression was not. Grey lips parted, teeth bared, the corpse lunged forward and up—for a moment, it seemed the monster meant to kiss the priest like a lover, but savage teeth bit the nose from the priest’s face. Before bursting blood masked it, Hadrian saw no intelligence in the adored features, no awareness, only brutal hunger. Bloody jaws champed at flesh and cartilage. Dead or swooning, the priest fell against the corpse, knocking it flat again, but the teeth kept chewing, biting at cheek and eyeball, and clawing fingers scored welts in the skin of the priest’s shaven skull.
Sickened, the emperor bellowed, “A sword!” His guards were out of sight but he had commanded troops in battle: they would hear. “Bring me a sword!”
Strangely calm, Hadrian kept his distance from the one-sided battle for the moments until legionaries with bared steel arrived. Well before revivified corpse smashed its victim’s skull open against the deck there was no doubt the acolyte of Besa was himself dead. Making vile slurping noises, the monster that was no longer lovely Antinous nuzzled into the shattered skull, licking and biting at the grey mush of brains.
“Give me that,” Hadrian snapped when a young, unhardened legionary quavered, “Augustus?” Grabbing the soldier’s sword, he said, “Stand back, all of you.” As he stepped into position, he heard one of them moan and retch.
The gladius was a stabbing weapon but Hadrian felt certain stabbing would not halt a thing already dead. Holding the sword like a one-handed hatchet, he could only trust the steel was true and the young legionary kept its edges keen.
By some horrible chance, the corpse of Antinous paused in its gluttony and looked up as the blade came down, looked into its former lover’s eyes. Hadrian sobbed aloud. Two necks were severed by the single blow though only one fountained fresh blood, two heads bounced across the deck, the young legionary’s gladius lodged immovable in hard cedar. Hadrian released it, his hand stinging, and tried to dance back. “Another!” he howled, reaching out blindly. “Give me another sword.”
For an unnaturally vital dead hand had clasped his ankle with savage, agonizing strength. The other dead arm scrabbled at the properly dead body of the priest that pinned it down and both legs flailed, drumming heels against the deck. These were not death throes: the thing had been dead already over an hour. “Damn you all, somebody give me a sword.”
The hilt of a different soldier’s gladius was gingerly proffered. Taking it, the emperor commanded his legionaries to stand: this was his task. He hacked the grasping arm off its decapitated body at the elbow, then at the wrist. The severed hand would not release his ankle, but the emperor bore it, limping about the deck hacking and hacking, taking no care as to which corpse he broke up, the one that moved evilly on its own or the one that was still. When the fragments were so small and broken—save the hand attempting to crush his ankle—as to be harmless, if still jolting, he came upon the head of his dead beloved.
The immortal features were fouled with blood, the eyes dimmed, but the face made vile grimaces and stained teeth chewed at its own tongue as if it were the dead priest’s flesh. Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus Augustus used an anonymous soldier’s sword to split Antinous’s skull open. At last it seemed to die again. The emperor fell to his knees. “Go,” he commanded with breaking voice, “all of you, go away.”
Long before dawn he had managed to prise the clutching hand off his bruised ankle and crushed all of its knuckles with the blunt head of the golden phallus so it could not grasp again, and then he wept and howled like a hired mourner, shrieked like a woman, kissed his beloved’s ruined hand again and again though its continued twitching horrified him.
In morning light, he crawled about the deck of the imperial barge, separating bits and gobbets of one corpse from the other. The priest’s remains were merely dead meat, unmistakably so. Hadrian tossed them into a heap, uncaring. The flesh of Antinous, latest incarnation of Osiris, was unnaturally chill, dead but implicit with uncanny vitality, and the emperor made sure not to allow one fragment to touch another. When he was done, he counted. There were, as he had somehow expected, exactly forty-two.
The Middle Ages
The Hyena’s Blessing
Alex Jeffers
In old tales, it’s said the great king Harun ar-Rashid was wont to dress himself in merchant’s or beggar’s robes and wander the streets of Baghdad to learn the mind of his people. That was not the practice of Abu ‘Ali, who ruled Cairo and Egypt and all of Africa and all the Levant—all the world in the eyes of those who acknowledged him al-Hakim bi Amr al-Lah, King by God’s Command. All the world knew the caliph was in the habit at unpredictable intervals of riding alone into the desert
at night, not returning to Cairo till morning. Simple people believed he consulted with angels in the wilderness—followers of the heretic ad-Darazi claimed he spoke with God Himself—some of his enemies said he went to meet with Iblis while others said it was not the evil one he consorted with but a she-devil, his lover.
I remarked to the man who wished to hire me it was a wonder Abu ‘Ali had not been followed and killed before.
“Perhaps he has been,” that man muttered. He was still perturbed, I believed, a person of my reputation could be so very slight and small.
“Not killed,” I rejoined.
“Obviously not,” was the snapped reply. The man’s Baghdadi accent was strong but I did not know whether he was an agent of al-Qadir or of some other enemy of al-Hakim. There were so many: the Sunni caliph in Iraq—the Qarmatiyya dervishes of Bahrain—the kafir king in Constantinople—in Egypt itself, Abu ‘Ali’s jealous elder sister, or quarrelling factions within his army, Turk and Berber ever jousting for advantage. Ad-Darazi’s disciples, too, for all they proclaimed al-Hakim the earthly manifestation of God, were said not to forgive him for having their heretic sheikh executed.
“Is it certain he goes alone? Al-Hakim—”
“Do not grant him that title!”
“He is not known as a swordsman,” I continued mildly, “or any kind of fighter.”
“Perhaps he is guarded by jinn! Are you afraid?”
“A wise man is cautious.” I looked the Baghdadi in the eye. “You will have been told my history or you would not seek me out.”
He lowered his gaze. “All our agents swear he goes alone. He is too proud not to go alone, just himself and his donkey.” Raising his eyes again, he attempted to appear stern. Seated, he was a foot taller than I, slow, well fed—succulent. “You may hire assistants—you need not face him alone.”
I smiled. “Perhaps.”
“Half now,” the man said, unnerved, “half when you succeed.”
“The entire sum now,” I said agreeably. “A generous additional gift if you see me again.” I did not intend to look for him. There was a man in Beirut needed an introduction to sharp steel.
“You will simply take it and ride away from Cairo.”
“Perhaps.” I smiled wider.
After some moments, the Baghdadi grunted and passed over the purse. Weighing it in my hand, I determined it was near enough the agreed amount I needn’t count the individual coins, and pushed it into my sleeve. “I will do this for you,” I said. “Be assured. The next night al-Hakim ventures alone into the desert.”
A grimace twisted the man’s face as if he had smelled a foul odor. “See that you perform the task,” he said through his teeth, rose, and went away. It was he who stank, of human fear.
“Go with God,” I said to his back.
When he had passed the door, I requested another cup of tea. It was a Berber shop so the tea was brewed with mint, something I’d taken a liking to. I had not previously been hired to murder so exalted a man as a caliph, false or not. An interesting prospect. I pondered whether it was a feat I might add to my clandestine legend or if it was best left unspoken. Then I recalled the money in my sleeve. Added to what I had already hidden away, I believed, it would be more than sufficient for my return to the Lebanon, where my legend was not a thing I wanted known, and to hire an assassin there. I had failed killing him once. Attempting yourself to kill the man you loathe is never wise.
Having finished my tea, I left the city and walked into the desert. Not as al-Hakim would set out one night soon, for it was morning daylight and I did not ride. Horses, donkeys, camels, mules—they do not like me: I do not like them except, now and then, to eat.
My way led past al-Qarafa, the city’s vast necropolis at the base of the Muqattam Hills, a centuries-old city in itself. I made sure not to approach very near. It was a place I found oppressive—ostentatious, offensive. At the Hour, all persons will be raised again to flesh for judgment whether the mortal body was or was not buried, with or without pomp. Until then, the person should be remembered, mourned, celebrated, but the body is not the man: the corpse is simply meat, human carrion.
I am not a scholar. My belief may be misapprehension or heresy. I do not apologize for it. Almighty God will judge me at the Hour.
All belief aside, I skirted wide past the necropolis—its hazards were not a matter of belief. At times one thought more conscious beings dwelled there than dead. Besides custodians and guards, there were entire colleges of sufi saints and acolytes, grave robbers, bandits, displaced fellahin inhabiting tombs far grander and more solid than the shacks they had left behind. The feline tribes mostly avoided the place, but foxes, jackals, wild dogs, and feral dogs denned in sepulchres and roamed the cemetery’s avenues. Hyenas, though of course I am not fearful of hyenas. Kites, carrion crows, vultures—I despise vultures. Of direst concern, any site where the dead are laid attracts that ravenous variety of jinn called ghul. Cowardly, they prefer to wait till night to clothe themselves in the flesh of the recent dead and hunt down helpless sleeping prey, but I have met those shambling nightmares in daylight more than once. Not yet at al-Qarafa, if only because I avoided it.
Noon arrived overhead before I reached the place I was going. I heard the calls of muezzins from the city’s minarets behind me and, although I am not a good Muslim, I found a stretch of clean sand, performed tayammum, then as-salah az-zuhr. After my prayers, it was not long before I came upon the den I had scouted and claimed when I first arrived in the vicinity of Cairo. No creature had visited it in my absence beyond the usual bugs and small vermin. The dimness and cool within were pleasant. It would be pleasant to sleep—I have always found it more restful to sleep in daylight than through the night—but for now it was necessary to continue counterfeiting an ordinary man. I dug up my locked chest. It was gratifyingly heavy, heavier still when I added al-Hakim’s unnamed enemy’s gold.
For some while I sat before the open chest, remembering the man in Beirut I intended having killed. He was not a clever man, but wealthy and influential: a merchant who also owned properties within the town and farmland without—who served, unappointed, as neighborhood qadi although his knowledge of the subtleties of law was no better than my own. A greedy, corrupt man for all his shows of piety. He cheated his clients and relatives, demanded ruinous rents of his tenants, issued no legal judgment without a bribe, thrashed his servants, and whipped his slaves. Beirut’s Christians and Jews, native and foreign, it was said, lived peaceably only on his sufferance and paid dearly for the privilege. A kind of living ghul, I thought, preying on the helpless and unwary.
All that to the side. An assassin for hire, I am no model of good action myself. It was not my place to judge him for sins against God or other men—leave that to Munkar and Nakir when he lay in his grave, to God Himself at the end of time. The man had taken something precious to me, spoiled it, killed it. He would die.
I buried the chest again. Leaving the den, I set out back to the city, steering wide again of the necropolis. At the edge of a field rustling with young wheat, I scented the burrow of a family of jumping mice. It had been some days since I tasted fresh kill, so I plunged my hand into the earth and grabbed one of the animals before it or its fellows could wake. The blood was hot and good, the flesh savory, and the tiny bones crunched nicely between my teeth.
Within Cairo’s walls, I made my way to the hammam, for the jumping mouse’s blood had heated my own. The youthful attendant recoiled from my stink until I paid him. Then, knowing me well enough, he bathed me thoroughly, served me mint tea after, and served the needs of my body and blood. He called himself Jabr and, although he was merely handsome and sometimes clumsy, he was a welcome comfort and a consolation when Farid came too much to mind.
Farid! Farid was a rare white rose in a waste of stinging nettles—a springing fountain in the desert—a slender cypress standing tall and straight amid twisted, dwarfish pines—the fragrance of attars, the song of nightingales, the brilliant spark
of sapphires and rubies, the refrain of an incomparable ghazal, the forbidden flavor of wine. Ah, Farid . . . . Farid was dead. Stolen, violated, murdered.
I waited three nights outside the gates of the caliph’s palace—lurking in a dark alley across the way, huddled against winter chill in a black wool jellabiya, my face and the white taqiya on my head hidden in the drapes of a loose black shemagh. I feel the cold more severely, I believe, than men born in human skin, for when snow fell in the mountains of the Lebanon in my youth I never went about in the form of a man but always on four feet, clothed in fur.
I am of the tribe of al-Dabeyoun: that is, I was born in a den in the hills, furred, blind, deaf, toothless. I wrestled weakly with my sister and brother for our dam’s teats, nuzzled and sucked at the carrion bones our sire brought. I was speechless, thoughtless, an animal. Some time after my eyes and ears opened and teeth began to sprout in my jaws, our sire failed to return from his nightly forage. Taken by hunters, I would guess later when I learned to think and reason. They do not generally find our flesh good to eat, humans, but they have always liked killing us. Killing us, and telling unkind, untrue stories about us.
We seldom kill livestock: unlike wolves and dogs, we prefer to hunt and forage alone and none of us is large enough to take down a full-grown sheep easily, let alone a cow. We might scavenge a carcass killed by wolves, dogs, lions, but that’s a different story. We (I wearing human skin the exception) are too wary to attack men until driven to it. We laugh not out of savagery or amusement as men believe but fear, unease. We are not the unholy companions of witches and necromancers—I have never met such a person. We are not a species of jinn. No ghul can adopt the form of a hyena or assume a dead hyena’s flesh—they are hateful, unclean entities which we despise. Very few hyenas can learn to take the form of a living man or woman. Besides myself, in all my travels I have encountered only three.