The Venom of Luxur

by J. Steven York

Ramsa Aál nodded. He pointed at the cask of blood, which sat just outside the door. “Have two of your men take this down—carefully. I have studied maps of the tomb. There is a large chamber at the end of the tunnel. Have your men form up there. We will be along presently.”

  He saw the look of disapproval on the officer’s face. “There is no danger until we reach the front chamber of the tomb. Go!”

  He turned to Anok. “Tell me, acolyte, do you remember how to use those swords of yours?”

  Anok’s eyes narrowed, almost wondering if this were a trick. Ramsa Aál had always treated Anok’s attachment to his conventional weaponry as a weakness. Still, there would be little point in lying. “I’ve kept in practice, master.”

  Ramsa Aál nodded. “That is good. Your magic will do you no good in the temple. Our foes are immune to all spells, save one, which is why they have remained untouched until this day. Now, give me your hand.”

  With the almost unthinking obedience that had been drilled into him back at the temple at Khemi, Anok extended his right hand.

  Ramsa Aál held his fingers for a moment, then Anok saw a dagger flash in his other hand. Quick as the serpents their cult worshiped, the point of the dagger was drawn lightly across the back of his hand, drawing a line of blood drops.

  Ramsa Aál then sheathed the dagger and removed from a belt pouch a small, oval crystal sized to fit in the hand. He drew it across the blood, leaving a smear. As he did, the crystal began to glow from within. In the sunlight, it was barely visible, but in the dark, Anok knew the illumination it provided was considerable.

  Ramsa Aál released Anok’s fingers, and Anok shook them. They felt like they’d been trapped under a heavy stone.

  “You have your Jewel of the Moon?”

  Anok nodded. He removed a similar crystal from his shoulder bag and rubbed it in the blood, then sucked the wound, the blood coppery in his mouth. Though it was a small indignity, it angered him to be used so. He couldn’t be bothered to shed a single drop of his own precious blood!

  He had other reasons to feel used as well. As they climbed down the stairs into the gloom below, Anok realized that he was feeling disappointed. It had not been long since he had sealed the ancient Band of Neska to his right wrist, an anchor against sorcerous corruption that he believed gave him control over the evil Mark of Set on his left wrist.

  But since that day, there had been little opportunity to test that theory, and he thought it foolish to risk great magic for the sake of doing great magic. Here, he thought, there may be a foe worthy of its use. But he had just been told that even great magic would not serve. Never before had he resented the opportunity to use his swords.

  If I am nothing but a strong sword arm to him, then I shall prove myself a mighty one! He’ll give me respect one way or another.

  Yet even as he thought that, he knew it was wrong. If he faltered at the right moment, allowed Ramsa Aál to be struck down by the temple guardians, then the priest’s conspiracy plans might be thwarted. Even if he only allowed the contents of the flask being carried down the steps behind them to be spilled, it could delay them for months, or years, until more of the elixir that was its most important ingredient could be brewed.

  Then they would still have to secure it. After their last encounter, Lord Poisoner Sattar would not hold the Cult of Set in high favor. Anok had seen the way Sattar had looked at him when they’d faced each other down.

  Something in Anok’s eyes, in his voice, something he didn’t yet understand, had given one of the most feared men in Kheshatta a taste of his own medicine, so to speak. Sattar had known fear, and for those few moments, he had been willing to give Anok anything he asked. Sattar would never allow that humiliation to happen again.

  They found the guardians waiting in formation for them in the chamber below. In the flickering light of the torches and the cool blue light of their jewels, the stone walls of the chamber were revealed as rough and unfinished. Elegant, tapered columns supported the ceiling, but they had no carvings, no decorations. Some stones even bore the chalk marks of the stonecutters and masons who had ages before built the tomb.

  The laborers, eyes wide with fear, set the cask upon the floor at the base of the stair. Ramsa Aál looked at it, then the captain. “These cattle lack the courage to carry the cask where it needs to go. Assign two of your men to the task. They should be strong of limb and steady of nerve. Only the most courageous will do.”

  The captain nodded and selected two men from his ranks. They reluctantly sheathed their weapons and took up the cask by its rope handles.

  In the center of the room sat a waist-high block of stone. Ramsa Aál walked over and brushed his fingers over the top, examining it.

  “This,” he said, “is the burial chamber of the Lost King, where his sarcophagus would have preserved his mortal form and all his worldly riches, so they could reclaim them in the afterlife. Now, it holds nothing but the dust of shattered dreams.” He glanced at a tall, narrow doorway near the far end of the chamber. “We must go this way.”

  A stone seal that clearly had once covered the opening lay on the floor just inside the chamber, and they stepped over it on their way out.

  They filed through a long, narrow, tunnel, triangular in cross section, wide at the floor, just wide enough for a man’s head at the top. All but the smallest men had to duck their heads and turn their shoulders to make passage. Anok could not see the men with the cask, but he could only imagine the difficulty they faced.

  “There was another, larger, entrance,” said Ramsa Aál, “where the king’s body and treasures would have been brought into the temple. But it was sealed shut by his traitorous family after his murder. This was to have been used by the last workers leaving the temple as it was sealed, those responsible for securing the burial chamber itself.”

  Anok looked over the shoulders of the men in front of him, and was surprised to see what appeared to be a dead end. In fact, the tunnel turned and doubled back on itself. Perhaps the intent was to hinder tomb robbers in their ability to quickly remove the king’s treasures.

  Ramsa Aál leaned close to him. “I am not ready to share the full nature of our plan, acolyte. Have faith that it will unfold as a wonderment before your eyes, and that in time all will be clear. But know that what we do will transform the Cult of Set, and that is but the beginning. The lost glory of the Stygian Empire will soon be restored, then surpassed. Our master Thoth-Amon will sit on the immortal throne of this empire, and those of us who have served him well shall be his lords of power. Ours will be an empire such as never has been seen.” His voice grew cold as ice. “Let the world tremble before it.”

  Anok shuddered. The words were madness, of course, though said with such conviction that Anok could not dismiss them. He had met Thoth-Amon, and the man’s thirst for power was such that he would dare aspire to such a thing.

  Yet what, in this empty tomb, could lead to such power? Perhaps nothing, directly, but there were many elements in play here that he still didn’t understand. There were the three Scales of Set, one of which he still held in his possession. He had seen hints that the three Scales, if ever combined, were somehow far greater than the sum of their parts.

  There were still the bones of Parath, the lost god of Stygia, which Ramsa Aál and Dejal had recently brought to Kheshatta. Yet Parath was a declared enemy of Set.

  There were also still the secrets of his own past, which seemed in some unknown way to be part of this puzzle: the reason for his father’s murder, where he’d gotten the Scale, what his relationship to Parath had been, and to the Cult of Ibis. And what about his mysterious sister, of whom his father had spoken only in his dying moments?

  Anok was tormented by the thought that, by striking at Set too soon, he might destroy his only chance to unravel his past. If Ramsa Aál died here, what secrets would die with him?

  No, things had come too far for him to become clouded with uncertainty. He had acted once too often in the true cause of Set’s service
. Today he would hinder the path of the serpent, not aid it. Opportunity would choose which, but this day he swore, either their quest would fail, or Ramsa Aál would die!

  The tunnel doubled back on itself once more. Upon the unfinished walls, Anok occasionally saw graffiti, written in old Stygian, left by someone, possibly workers who had built the tomb. Most of it was meaningless to him. He could read the words, but without any context, they meant nothing.

  A pox on Sebishai, for he is unjust

  The mother of Sokkiw lies with a donkey

  The stonework of Nebie is without craft or skill

  It was a sobering reminder that the concerns of men rarely outlived them, if they mattered even that long. Anok wondered it he should take a lesson from this and forget his obsession with the past. He resolved that if Ramsa Aál died, taking the secrets of Anok’s past with him, so be it.

  They passed though an archway into a wide, shallow room. Pedestals lined the wall behind them, spaced roughly an arm’s spread apart. Anok imagined they were intended to hold statues, perhaps even of the king’s traitorous family, but they stood empty.

  On the wall ahead of them, a series of arched doorways, one in front of each pedestal, opened into what seemed to be an even larger chamber beyond.

  “This chamber,” announced Ramsa Aál loudly, “is where our adversary awaits.”

  The guardians stared at him in alarm.

  “They cannot hear us, or sense us, until we walk through these portals and cross a line defined by a certain spell. By my studies, that line will lie five paces within. Once we step beyond that line, we shall not be allowed to depart alive unless they are stopped by my spell. Protect me, and protect the cask, with your lives, for they depend on these two things.”

  Anok drew his two swords from the scabbards on his back. He wondered how much of Ramsa Aál’s speech was to be believed. He had no doubt that the priest would sacrifice the lives of all these men, and Anok’s as well, if it served his purposes.

  No, if the spell were interrupted, there would be another way out, and perhaps a better chance of survival if their only purpose were to escape.

  “Two lines to the fore,” ordered Ramsa Aál. “Strongest swordsmen first, torches second. The rest shall stay back to protect the cask and me.”

  Anok caught Ramsa Aál’s eye. “I should stay close to you.”

  The corner of Ramsa Aál’s mouth twitched up. “Have your skills fallen so?” He studied Anok’s face for a moment. “I thought not. You shall be front and center to lead our advance.”

  And where I won’t be tempted to stab you in the back.

  Anok tried not to frown, but he did as the priest instructed, shouldering his way between two broad guardians, arms hard as tree trunks, each carrying a sword almost twice the size of Anok’s twin blades.

  Anok stepped through the center archway, and the line followed. He stopped three short paces inside, careful to remain behind the five paces that Ramsa Aál had identified as the point of no return.

  Anok stared into the darkness ahead. He could just make out something there, an even row of shapes just a little lighter than the rest of the gloom, that stretched across the room in front of him and away in either direction.

  Anok glanced back, and as he did, something on the wall next to the arch caught his eye. At first he thought it was simply more graffiti, but then he noticed the brown, crusted appearance of the ancient Stygian symbols and realized it had been written in blood.

  To the thin blood of usurpers

  I leave only this curse

  To all those whose greed

  Leads them to aspire

  Live as kings

  Die as kings

  Sleep eternal in the tombs of kings

  With the blood of the true king

  To decorate their daggers

  Curse your undying spirits

  Guard this empty tomb forever

  While our king feasts in paradise

  As he read the words, Anok felt a tingle that made him shudder. These were no idle words. They had the taste of magic, most dark and terrible. He felt the Mark of Set stir, as though hungry for a share of that blackness, but there was none to share.

  Those cursed were long dead. But as Anok considered the blackness ahead, he wondered if they were truly gone.

  One more step into the darkness, perhaps to see what danger waited there.

  He could just see the yellow glitter of polished metal armor, identical back plates engraved with arcane symbols, and helmets adorned with unique decorations.

  There was a creaking, as, in one identical motion, all the hunched figures stood straight up, dust cascading from their shoulders and helmets.

  He had caught Ramsa Aál in his first lie. Four steps in, and there would be no turning back.

  Again, as though driven by an identical clockwork, the row of armored figures spun, swords and spears and shields at the ready, booted feet landing upon the ancient stone of the floor in perfect unison.

  Though their armor was only dimly visible in the torchlight, beneath the helmets, faces could be seen.

  Green, slightly luminous, gaunt faces of the dead, mouths drawn open, teeth bared, eyes vacant orbs of green fire. They were phantoms of a sort, spectral and translucent, but from their movements, from the way the heavy armor rested upon them, they had some kind of weight and substance.

  One of the men recoiled in terror, dropped his torch, and turned to run.

  A dead knight stepped forward with a clanking of chains and threw a metal hook. The hook struck the man between the shoulder blades with a wet chunk. The man made a gurgling scream, and the chain attached to the hook was instantly pulled tight, yanking him off his feet.

  He was dragged away across the floor so rapidly that there might have been a galloping horse at the other end of the chain, so fast he had no time to scream before the armored undead surrounded him, and their weapons began to fall again and again. Steel ringing against armor, bone, and stone.

  When they parted, their weapons dripping red with gore, there was nothing like a man there, only a pile of armor, chopped meat, and bone amid a pool of blood.

  Now, thought Anok grimly, I’ve caught Ramsa Aál in a truth.

  There was only one thing to do.

  He dashed ahead of the larger men flanking him. “Get them!”

  With a cry the men came after him, though he could hear the fear in their voices. They were fighting for their own lives, not for the glory of the cult.

  Anok locked his crossed swords with the short sword phantom wearing a hawk’s-head crest. The phantom’s open mouth gaped at him in a silent scream, the black, dried tongue curled within like a piece of charcoal.

  From that undead mouth, and dozens of others, the battle cry of the undead came. Not a wail or a scream, but a deep moan, so low in pitch that Anok could feel it in his chest.

  He struggled against the thing’s sword arm. For creatures lacking flesh and substance, they were strong as a man, though mercifully slower. Around him, Anok could see the others holding their own against the undead knights.

  Faster than his opponent could respond, Anok swept the thing’s sword to one side, drew back his left sword, and jabbed it into the thing’s neck.

  There was a crunch, and a weak resistance, like plunging a sword through a melon. The thing flailed its arms, dropping its sword.

  They can be hurt!

  His greatest fear had been that the things couldn’t be harmed at all by physical means. But as he had suspected, they had at least some substance, some physicality, that could be cut and pierced with a blade. Now he knew that they could also fight.

  He yanked the sword to one side with a rapid motion, rotating it through the phantom neck, and the head popped off cleanly, helmet clanking as it struck stone.

  He heard a crunch of bone on stone behind him, and whirled in time to slice the sword arm off a knight that had been creeping up behind him. From behind it, a guardian’s broadsword took the thing’
s head and finished the job.

  Anok nodded in thanks to the guardian and turned to engage another knight. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ramsa Aál and the two guardians carrying the cask advancing slowly into room, surrounded by fighting.

  The tomb’s protectors seemed to sense that they were the real threat and were attacking their circle of guardians intensely. But still, the phantom knights fell rapidly, and Anok had an uneasy feeling.

  Something moved by his boot. He looked down to see a beheaded knight reach slowly out, grab the helm of a nearby helmet, and place helmet and head back on its shoulders. Glowing, spectral flesh almost instantly healed itself, and the knight began to climb to its feet.

  He was so transfixed, he didn’t notice the sword clutched in its other hand until it was almost too late.

  Steel flashed toward him. He leapt backward, gasping as the sword nicked his right arm. He grunted in pain and brought his left sword down on the thing, chopping its arm off at the elbow.

  Still it moved, rolling over, looking for its lost arm.

  He glanced around. Everywhere, fallen knights were restoring themselves. “Watch the fallen,” he cried at the top of his lungs, trying to be heard over the din of crashing swords and armor.

  The warning came too late for one guardian. A restored knight came up on one knee and thrust its sword under his chest plate straight up into his heart. He coughed a gout of blood and fell over facefirst. There would be no restoration for him.

  It was then Anok understood the terrible nature of these protectors. They were tireless, relentless, and no matter how many times they fell, they always came back.

  If they fell easily now, the men would tire, they would make more mistakes, be caught unaware by their fallen foes, and one by one, they would die.

  Anok fell back, slipping into the circle of protectors around Ramsa Aál. The priest was paying little attention to his surroundings. Instead, he was reading from an ancient book of magic, his lips moving, but the words barely audible.

  Anok knew from experience that it was not the volume with which a spell was spoken that gave it power, it was the conviction and concentration with which the sorcerer read the words. He suspected Ramsa Aál’s concentration was very deep. He couldn’t help but admire the priest’s ability to screen out the noise and danger around him.