The Venom of Luxur

by J. Steven York

  Teferi finally broke the silence. “What were you doing back there? You could have gotten us killed!”

  She laughed harshly. “What was I doing there? What were you doing there?”

  “Investigating the caravan of enchanted armor sent from the Tomb of the Lost King.”

  “And how did you manage to find where it went? By following my trail perhaps?”

  Teferi grimaced and looked away. Finally, he said, “Yes, but I didn’t expect to find you there. Your path led through so many taverns—”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So you assumed I would have drunk myself into a stupor before ever reaching the forge?”

  Teferi frowned and averted his eyes. “Perhaps,” he finally said.

  “Then you have judged me wrongly, and badly. I was doing fine, until you came along and stirred up the smiths so I had no choice but to hide in this carriage. I would be fully justified taking my revenge out of your hide!”

  “Perhaps you would.”

  The silence returned, and again they stared at each other.

  Fallon parted the gloomy cloud with a sly smile. “I cannot claim I was not tempted by drink. Sooner I would face the guardians’ entire garrison armed with but a pointed stick, than to pay good silver for watered beer. And yet I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew, if I came home drunk, you would be there to judge me, and your harsh assessment would not have been wrong. Too long I have mourned the great Cimmerian warrior I may never be and drowned my sorrows in drink. Yet if I continue, I will never be any kind of warrior—any kind of Cimmerian, at all.”

  She bit her lip, and looked out at a needlelike galleon rowing swiftly across the lake. “I have faced pirates, bandits, and monsters from beyond the veil without yielding, but this monster frightens me most of all.”

  “Then I will stand with you. Despite our differences, I always have.”

  She smiled sadly. “You are a good friend, Teferi. What would wretched creatures like Anok and I do without you?”

  He frowned and sighed at the mention of Anok’s name. “I fear I have not been a good enough friend to my brother. I have been thinking, of late, that he might have been better without knowing me at all.”

  Her eyes widened in disbelief, and she laughed. “How can you possibly say that?”

  “It was I who convinced Anok to go on the Usafiri, the journey into the wilderness. It was there he had the visions that put him on this mad quest.”

  “Who are you to say this was not his fate all along? Who is to say the Usafiri did not save him from an even darker path? I hope you have not given up hope for our friend. These are difficult days, but his fate is far from sealed, and his spirit is yet strong.”

  She shook her head in puzzlement. “This is strange to me, you people of the south, always looking to gods for answers and guidance, assuming they know better how to guide your life than you do yourselves.”

  “Cimmerians don’t pray to—Crom is it?”

  She nodded. “Crom. He is called by some the Lord of the Mound, for he lives in a great mountain that bears his name. By our birth, he gives us strength, bravery, will, and passion. That is all Cimmerians need. He does not hear our prayers. He does not want our worship. He does not care for our sacrifices. He will not live in our temples. He is a stern and distant god, but he troubles us not, and I have heard it said, that whenever a Cimmerian emerges bloody and victorious in a battle, that Crom may smile—just a little.”

  Teferi chuckled. “Perhaps that is not so bad.”

  He watched as they passed beyond the edge of the city, where the houses grew taller and closer together. A group of squealing Kushite children ran through the street, chasing a young goat that had slipped its rope. “I wonder now even about my own Usafiri, when my visions told me to leave my family behind, so they would have one less mouth to feed, and seek my own way. It told me nothing of my true destiny, my true birthright, or whether it was shared by my brothers and sisters. Perhaps I should be with them still.”

  “Did you not say yourself that your god, Jani, only gives the traveler what he needs? That is different than Crom, but not as different as the more meddlesome gods of so-called civilized men. Why should Jani tell you what you will discover for yourself? Perhaps he sent you to Anok, and perhaps even to me, because he knew you were what we needed.”

  He laughed. “Jani sent me to a Cimmerian whose own god will not care for her?”

  She shrugged. “It is a theory.”

  He laughed again, but his frown soon returned as he thought of Anok. “Still, my brother grows more distant from me by the day. He keeps secrets from me.” He sighed. “He has always kept secrets from me, but in the past, I always felt that he was trying to protect me. Now I feel he no longer trusts me. He believes the Band of Neska has relieved the dark influence of his sorcery, but I fear it has only blinded him to his downfall. I do not know how to help him.”

  “Nor do I. I have heard it said, no man can be helped who will not ask for help. But I vow I will stay close to him.”

  Teferi smiled slightly. “You care for him, do you not? You make a great show of being a wanton tart—”

  She laughed. “And well I was!” He expression turned serious, and she looked away. “Yet I fear this warrior’s heart softens. This, too, I fear, for if it is broken, Crom will offer me no solace, nor even pity.”

  Teferi nodded in sympathy, then looked south, up above the city’s skyline. A dark cloud twisted angrily amid the broken overcast, casting a dark shaft of shadow down into the streets below. There was a rumble, and he could see a shaft of lightning dance across its dark surface.

  Fallon looked at him. “What is wrong?”

  He shook his head, uncertain. “I do not know, but I have a dire feeling.” He turned around. “Barid, please hurry us back to the villa. We must learn what has happened to Anok.”

  AS ANOK STOOD in the center of the alley, rain suddenly began to fall, washing the blood from his face and robes. He stepped over the body of a fallen worshiper of Hanuman, feeling ribs crack under his feet, toward the snarling Hyborian who watched him with wary, yellow eyes, like those of a feral dog.

  The man muttered some incantation. As Anok watched, he began to transform: hair growing from his exposed limbs, his nose and jaws thrusting out into a snout filled with deadly fangs, his ears becoming large and pointed, his fingers shortening, and growing long, curved claws.

  He was becoming the very image of his beast god.

  The beast creature moved forward, growling, foam dripping from his black lips, then pounced with sudden fury.

  Anok dodged to once side, not quickly enough to avoid the claws that shredded through his robe and raked his side just above his left hip.

  He spun, laughing, licking the mixture of rainwater and enemy blood that ran down his lip.

  The beast crouched, a rumbling growl coming from deep in its throat.

  Anok smiled. “Come,” he said quietly.

  The beast’s body launched itself like a thrown spear, arcing toward Anok, claws out, fangs bared.

  He did not dodge. He held up his hands, feeling the power coursing through him, through the Mark of Set.

  “Stop!”

  The creature’s eyes went wide with surprise. It floated in the air above Anok’s head.

  He reached up, putting his hands, one above the other, around the beast’s neck, feeling meat and bone beneath the wiry gray fur. One last time he summoned the power, even as he pulled his two hands apart. “Rend!”

  There was a sound of tearing flesh, ripping tendon, and cracking bone, followed by a syncopated plopping sound, like someone pulling a large string of beads out of the mud.

  Anok laughed as hot blood splashed down on his face, and he drew forth the creature’s head and spine, holding them high as he let the headless, hollowed corpse splash to the rain-soaked cobbles at his feet.

  Anok held his prize overhead and shook it at the black sky, cackling with joy, though there
was no one there left living to see it.

  10

  THE GATE GUARDS stared wide-eyed at Anok as he approached the temple gate, his robes ripped, wet, and bloody. He ignored them and marched across the forecourt into the temple entrance.

  Acolytes and servants stopped to look as he walked by.

  He could see them whispering when he was out of earshot, and he could easily imagine their words.

  It was becoming annoying. He reached down and touched his wounded side through a ragged slit in his robe. Though he was still sticky with blood, the Mark of Set had already healed the wound. He sighed. He did not have a spell to fix his damaged clothing (perhaps he would have to work on that), but at least he need not look half-drowned.

  He stopped in the center of the temple’s central dome, a busy crossroads of traffic through the temple, and casually spread his arms.

  “Desert wind!”

  A warm breeze whipped around him, faster and faster, until it began to howl. A group of young acolytes watched from a doorway, both admiration and fear visible in their eyes.

  Around him, everyone stopped. They watched, mesmerized as a visible column of wind, like a dust devil, snaked up from his feet to the skylight in the center of the dome.

  Anok ignored them, casually pulling off his head-cloth and shaking his dark hair free, letting the dry wind lift it up and greedily leach out every trace of moisture. He looked down at himself, and his bone-dry clothing. So total was his mastery over the elemental magic that it took an act of will to end the wind. Enough!

  The wind faded, even more quickly than it had come. Many eyes watched him as he replaced his headcloth and straightened his robes, then marched on through the central chamber and out into the temple’s courtyard.

  People still looked at him, but he no longer drew the kind of attention he had upon entering the temple. He checked the chambers assigned to Ramsa Aál and was told that although the Priest of Needs had returned to Kheshatta, he had left the temple on an errand and would not be back until later.

  At loose ends, Anok realized that he was hungry.

  From across the courtyard he could smell fresh bread, and some kind of stew or soup cooking in the temple’s dining hall. Sorcery, he realized, exacted a physical as well as a spiritual toll.

  He loaded a platter with flatbread, fresh fruit, sweet cakes, and a large bowl of meat and vegetable stew. He found an empty table, sat down, and started using the flat-bread to scoop large mouthfuls of stew. He had cleaned the bowl, was finishing his last grapes, and giving thought to going back for more when he spotted a red-faced Kaman Awi marching directly toward him.

  Anok looked up at him as he approached. “Greetings, master. Would you care to join me? The stew is very good today.”

  The High Priest just stood at the end of the table, his hands clenched into fists. Finally he managed to speak, almost spitting the words. “What did you do?”

  Anok tilted his head innocently. “What did I do?”

  “Just ask anyone in Kheshatta. The rumors are traveling across the city faster than a man can walk. By nightfall, everyone will know that a follower of Set killed the entire Cult of Hanuman!”

  “Not the entire cult, just the entire cult here in the city. They were a small cult. Not many at all.”

  Kaman Awi snorted. “Twenty-seven, by the reports. Twenty-seven! ”

  Anok picked up a last corner of bread and wiped the inside of his bowl to pick up any gravy that might be left there. “I only counted twenty-five. Perhaps I missed a few.”

  “You missed no one! You simply can’t be bothered to count all the men you’ve killed! Not just killed, ripped their heads and spines from their bodies.”

  Anok looked up at him, suddenly aware they had a large audience. He played to that.

  Anok chuckled harshly. “Their manner of killing was in accordance with their own customs! I spilled their blood in the name of our god Set. How can that be bad? Have you not claimed countless victims by your own hand in the name of our glorious lord Set?”

  Kaman Awi’s hands shook. “That’s different!”

  “Is not their cult an enemy of Set?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Please,” Ramsa Aál’s deep voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and the crowd of watchers suddenly parted to let him walk through, “Tell us, Kaman, how it is different? Young Anok has done us a service. I only regret that I did not do it myself.”

  Kaman Awi turned, a look of pure exasperation on his wide face. “You do not understand, Ramsa.”

  Ramsa Aál’s eyes narrowed at the mention of his name. “You do not understand, master.”

  Kaman Awi blinked in surprise, then bobbed his head in submission. “As you wish, master. But this is Kheshatta, not Khemi, not Luxur. Set does not rule all here. The city exists in a state of equilibrium, of balance between many powers. Your”—he gestured at Anok—“student has upset that balance! The Cult of Hanuman is a small one here, but there is an unspoken truce between the cults. There are disputes, even murderous ones, among the followers of various sects. But there is not open war, no wholesale slaughter, no desecration of temples.”

  Ramsa Aál looked down at Anok in mock surprise. “Acolyte, did you desecrate their temple as well?”

  “If,” said Kaman Awi, “there is truth to what is said on the street, the bodies of the slain are spread across its interior walls, reduced to little more than paste.”

  Ramsa Aál turned back to Anok. “Is this true?”

  Anok pointed at a half-full bowl on an adjacent table. “There were chunks,” he said, “more like the stew.”

  Ramsa Aál couldn’t help himself. He chuckled, then broke into laughter, as Kaman Awi looked on with distress. At length, the Priest of Needs calmed himself and wiped a tear from his pale cheek.

  Finally, he looked back to Kaman Awi, addressing the High Priest. “If the peace in Kheshatta is ultimately shattered, it will not be today. What will happen today is that the other cults and sorcerers, even the poisoners, will fear us—as they should! ” He raised his voice, turning to play to all those watching.

  “Rejoice! For today, of all days, the Cult of Set will be treated, in this foul city of heretics, with the respect that it deserves! Know that you may walk the streets, look into the eyes of all you pass, and see fear! Know that this is only the beginning, that our cult’s rule over Stygia will be absolute, and this will only be the beginning!”

  There was an agreeable murmur through the assembled.

  Ramsa Aál reached down, put his hand on Anok’s shoulder, and directed him to his feet. “Witness here the champion of the day, the ideal to which you should all aspire. Raise your voices for Anok Wati!”

  Around them, people began sounding a rhythm, pounding the platters, mugs, even discarded bones, on the tables. “Anok, Anok, Anok, Anok!”

  Anok could not help but smile. Yes, celebrate the heretic of Set, fools!

  But still he smiled and could not help but enjoy their adulation.

  “Anok, Anok, Anok!”

  TEFERI AND FALLON arrived back at the villa to find Anok missing and Sabé pacing the parlor. He stopped as they walked in the door. “He is gone.” There was exasperation in his tone. “To the temple he said, but I heard no carriage come, and I found his swords hanging on a chair in the corner.”

  Teferi looked at the swords in amazement. How could Anok forget his swords? “He is in danger. I must go look for him!”

  Sabé held up his hand. “There is little point. He left long ago. He is either safely there, or danger has already found him.

  “But in truth, I fear he is more a source of danger to others, than in danger himself. He is now more drunk with power than ever, and he cannot see it. I cannot say what he will do next.”

  Teferi sighed. “Then what are we to do? Sit here and wait for our friend to go completely mad?”

  “No, of course not. But he is more tangled than ever in the dark affairs of Ramsa Aál and Kaman Awi. Have you learned a
nything?”

  “We have.” Teferi described the forge, and the melting of the metal from the mystic armor of the Tomb of the Lost King. He went on to recount how the spilled metal had come alive and killed the worker.

  Sabé rubbed his chin and frowned. “This armor was made by the Stygian wizard Mocioun. It is written he had discovered the magic to give metal objects the power of motion when directed by an external will. By Anok’s account of the battle at the tomb, the armor was so sensitive that even the weak will of the undead spirits trapped within was enough to give it life.”

  “Then what happened at the forge?”

  “In its melted form, the metal may be even more sensitive, more volatile. You say the men tending the fires seem as though they are sleepwalking? Then they have had their wills suppressed through some means, hypnotism, poisons, sorcery, or some combination of the three, so that they cannot influence the metal when they are near. When the spilled metal came too near the conscious will of a worker, it responded.”

  Fallon shook her head unbelievingly. “It killed him!”

  But in some way, Teferi understood. “This is sorcery. There is always a cost.”

  Sabé nodded. “It may be most sensitive to those thoughts of self-destruction and self-hatred that eat at the edges of all men’s minds. That is the power of sorcery to consume the unwary. That is why a powerful sorcerer needs no enemies to destroy him. Not when he has his own human weakness of spirit,” he said sadly. “That is the universal flaw of man that brings all good plans to ruin.”

  Teferi found himself angered. “You speak as though we are doomed from birth. I will concede that you are wise in some things, scholar, but this I will not accept! Not while there are still a few men”—he glanced at Fallon—“and women, of good heart and bravery in this world. Though the sand may shift beneath our feet, still may we climb the dunes and cross the deserts wide. No path is closed to one with the will to walk it. That is what I believe!”