The Venom of Luxur

by J. Steven York

  He stood there for a moment, then laughed. “I—I had you fooled, did I not!” He laughed again, and it rang hollow in Teferi’s ears.

  “You thought me weak and out of practice. I surprised you, didn’t I?”

  He turned back, a half smile on his face, but it was a mask, hiding the receding bloodlust, and something else.

  Fear.

  Some part of him knows, even if he will not admit it to himself.

  Anok turned and walked hurriedly back into the house. “We must do this again soon. But not today.”

  Then he passed into the house and vanished around the corner.

  ANOK LAY ON his bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what had happened in the garden earlier. What madness had possessed him?

  He tried to remember the last time he had been in such a fight, one with swords, not with magic. He supposed it was during their trip by caravan, when they had been attacked by bandits and forced to fight for their lives against and overwhelming force of mounted Kushites.

  But even then, when all had been lost, he had ended the battle with sorcery, and that was different.

  To fight with arms was a fight of passion and emotion. One felt anger, fear, the fever of battle in one’s blood. But fighting with magic was different, less of emotion, more of intellect and will. In a way, even at its most desperate, its most violent, it was—cold.

  In that, fighting with arms was different than what he had become so used to. He realized now that it was more than the sum of swordsmanship, speed, and skill. It was emotion. And in this case, rather than too little lust for battle, he had succumbed to too much.

  That was all. He was simply not used to such primal, animal combat anymore. His emotions had gotten the best of him. That was all.

  It would be better next time.

  He would remember.

  He lay there, quietly, watching the shadows through the window grow long, the light orange, and still he could not entirely convince himself.

  This was getting nowhere.

  He had to stop brooding, to find some distraction to lift his spirit. Perhaps just this once he could leave behind his robes of Set, dress as any common man, and slip out into the streets, find a tavern, and get happily drunk.

  When was the last time he had done that?

  Just then, he heard Teferi’s voice in the room outside. It had been quiet for so long, Anok had assumed he was long gone. Evidently, he had been mistaken.

  “Fallon, you have returned.”

  Anok quietly stood and moved closer to his door in order to listen.

  “I have been prowling the bars for gossip, and I overheard a camel driver saying a caravan of fifty fresh troops arrived at the east garrison this morning by the Pteion road.” Her voice was just the tiniest bit slurred.

  “You’ve been drinking again.”

  She chuckled, a throaty sound that Anok found appealing.

  “Just a little. I had to keep up appearances, and even watered drinks have a cumulative effect.”

  He heard Teferi grunt. He sounded only barely satisfied. “About the troops then. Replacements?”

  “Reinforcements. When we were there yesterday, you saw only the forge compound. I thought little of it at the time, and you gave me no chance to mention it later, but I got a look inside the stockade itself. Already it is crowded with guardian troops, busy drilling as though practicing for some coming battle.”

  “Why would they be massing troops? It would take far more than that to take Kheshatta, yet it is far more than they need to defend the temple and their garrison. That many guardian troops would never be tolerated in the city. In fact, there will be grumbling when word gets around that they are even close to the city.”

  Anok had heard enough. He swung open the door and stepped out. “Perhaps they are going in search of the third Scale of Set.”

  Teferi frowned at him. “I thought you said Ramsa Aál already had two?”

  “I was wrong about that.”

  “But the power of his Scale was able to overcome yours at the first venom ceremony. Is his more powerful than yours?”

  Anok looked down. “I do not think so. I think they are all equal. But I assumed he used the power of two against one. Since that is not the case, there must be other reasons. Perhaps the Scales are more readily commanded for evil than for good.”

  Teferi just stared at him, as though he wanted to say something but was holding back.

  “You have something to say, Teferi?”

  “You have found yourself drawn back to the ritual of venom. Perhaps that day, some part of you wanted it, wanted to surrender yourself to Ramsa Aál’s evil.”

  “That is absurd!”

  “Is it? I can no longer be sure.”

  They stared icily at one another. Finally, Teferi looked away and turned toward the door. “I must go speak with Sabé. He will want to know of this.”

  And you will tell him of my doings as well, will you not? But he said nothing, just watched Teferi walk out the door. “I may be late,” he said to Fallon. “I may be very late.”

  Fallon, confused, turned back and looked at him, her eyes wide. “What devil has possessed him this day?”

  “We were sparring in the garden earlier. He lost. Badly. I think it angered him.”

  She grinned and laughed in surprise. “You beat Teferi? In a fair fight?”

  “In a fair fight.”

  “No magic? No sorcerous trickery?”

  He casually took a step toward her, noticing how beautiful she looked in the light of the setting sun. “Nothing but muscle and blade. Oh, and he picked up a stick at one point, but I quickly relieved him of it.”

  She giggled. “A stick! Tell me it is not so!”

  He pointed out into the garden. “It is still there, with my sword marks upon the wood. Go see for yourself.”

  She giggled again. “I will take your word. It is just so funny, to imagine Teferi fighting you with a stick.”

  Anok smiled, slid a step closer. The sunlight glistened off her hair like a halo of fire. She smelled like flowers and honey.

  She caught the look in his eyes and seemed surprised. Without thinking, she let the tip of her tongue slide along her upper lip. Her smile faded, laughter gone. She looked at him, and her eyes fluttered in surprise. “Anok, what is in your heart this late day?”

  “Us,” he said.

  “Us? As in, you and me?”

  Anok looked around mockingly. “I see no one else here. Yes, you and me. It is well past time that we talked.”

  She looked nervous, averting her eyes, but she did not step away. “Long there have been things I wished to say to you, but I have held back. Though we have lain together several times since leaving Khemi, always it has seemed a matter of lust and convenience, and little has been said afterward.”

  He smiled slightly. “And you did not share that lust?”

  “I did, I admit. But I was not always so sure of you. Always it seems I was the one coming after you. There was some reserve, something held back. And I did not question it, did not challenge it.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “there is some truth to that.”

  “I know that your heart belonged, perhaps still belongs, to another, now gone. And though time has passed, I know those wounds are still fresh.”

  He stepped closer. “Sheriti is dead and gone, I know that now. Once, perhaps, that stood between us. No longer.”

  She looked up and met his gaze, her eyes wide with wonder. She looked open. Vulnerable.

  He reached out and took her hand. “If I have held back from you, my heart, my passion, then you may find that things have changed. That they have changed very much.”

  He jerked her toward him. She gasped, too surprised even to feign resistance, finding their bodies pressed together.

  He put his arm around her waist, yanked her hard against him, hungrily found her lips.

  She made a muffled cry of protest that turned into a moan, her lips yielding
to his tongue.

  He spun her around, pushed her back, slamming her against the wall next to the bedroom door. She gasped as he instantly was on her, his hands roaming over her body, his teeth biting her lips, their hips grinding together.

  He felt a powerful lust wash over him, and growled, low and deep in his throat. He unbuckled her sword belt and threw it aside. “You are defenseless now,” he whispered.

  His open hand slid up her chest, between her breasts, until his fingers curled around the yoke of her tunic. His hand clenched tight around the cloth.

  He yanked, hard. There was a hesitation, a ripping, and then the garment came away in his hand, leaving her half-naked before him. He threw the tattered rag aside, drinking her with his eyes as she shrank against the wall.

  He pushed himself against her again.

  She pushed weakly at him with her hands, but he subdued her with the power of his kisses. His hands gently slid down past her heaving breasts, his fingers counted her ribs, gently caressed her soft flanks, until they found the waistband of her skirt.

  He grabbed it with both hands, pulled until something ripped, until he could pull the skirt down over her hips, so that it fell, useless, around her feet. She gasped.

  He took her shoulders roughly, pulling her away from the wall, guiding her backward through the door into his bedchamber.

  “You say I held back from you? Well, you have all of me now. All of my passion, all of my heart, all of my lust, nothing held back. No quarter asked—” He shoved her back onto the bed. She landed on her elbows, her legs akimbo, her mouth parted, from lust or surprise he could not tell, and really did not care.

  He eagerly pulled off his own clothes, feeling the cool evening air against the heat of his body. He climbed on top of her, pushing her back, his hands holding her wrists, pushing her legs apart with his own.

  He pushed his weight down upon her, entering her roughly.

  She cried out, struggling weakly against his arms, her body twisting under his.

  He silenced her with his mouth, and at last, there was nothing between them.

  Nothing at all.

  12

  TEFERI SAT IN the little walled courtyard behind Sabé’s house. It was small, even by comparison to their villa’s garden, and nothing grew here. There were a few pots and planters, but they contained nothing but dirt, a few brown sticks, and dead leaves. Until recently, even the doors connecting to the house had been boarded over by Sabé.

  Fallon had convinced him to open them again. “You live like a hermit in a cave of your own making,” she had chided him. “You are not too blind to feel the rain on your face or the wind in your hair!”

  Sabé had relented, and now, on clear nights, he spent much of his time here, often with Teferi for company. The old scholar sat reading at a heavy table set up for that purpose, his fingers sliding along the writing in gloom so deep that Teferi could barely see the tablet at all.

  Teferi leaned back, watching the sky as the clouds parted like a curtain, revealing a sparkling carpet of stars. “You have nothing to say, Sabé?”

  “What would you have me say? I am reading here.”

  “I’ve told you what happened today. I fear we are losing him, despite all our efforts. I came to you for counsel.”

  Sabé growled with disgust and pushed his chair noisily back from the table. “And I am reading! I am a scholar! That is what I do! That is what you came to me for, and that is how best I can help you!” He rose out of his chair, shaking his finger in the air. “I have forgotten more mystical lore than most men will ever hope to know!”

  Then he sighed and slumped back into his seat. “The problem, my young friend, it that I have forgotten it. Lo, these many years, the evil Mark of Set has kept me whole and of reasonably good health. But it has limits, by flaw or design I do not know.

  “My mind is aging faster than my body now. I struggle even to remember all the volumes and tablets I have here, much less what is in them. So, to aid you, I must constantly review the relevant works. Surely you have noticed that I have asked you to bring me the same tablets again and again.”

  Teferi frowned. “I had, but I assumed you searched them for subtleties that you had missed previously.”

  “Once that was true, and perhaps still, a little. But now I read them so as not to forget. When you told me you were Zimwi-msaka, I dimly remembered that some of my texts referenced that lost clan. I could not find them until now.

  “Fifty years or more ago, I purchased a small store of materials that belonged to a wizard who had studied ancient Kushite magic.”

  “I did not believe that the Kush had magic, that it had all come from Stygia and beyond.”

  “Then you were wrong. There were good sorcerers—so-called witch doctors who aided the Zimwi-msaka—and evil sorcerers or witches who were outlaws and feared by the people. Sorcery was not a part of everyday life, as it is in Stygia, but it was a part of life nonetheless.”

  “Then what do these texts tell you, and what does it have to do with Anok?”

  Sabé lifted the tablet in front of him and put it on the stack with the others that he had read, then put his elbows on the table, far apart, his chin resting on his knitted fingers. “I have learned this of your history. There were many ways that the Zimwi-msaka protected the people from evil, and many tools they used to do so. Among those items I obtained long ago is what I believe is one of those tools.”

  He stood. “Come with me.”

  Teferi followed Sabé into his house, through the large central room, cluttered with tablets and scrolls, and down the narrow corridor into the west wing of the house, where Sabé’s personal quarters were located.

  Teferi had only rarely ventured there during his visits. Sabé was still intensely private, and this part of the house was still windowless and constantly dark. On the way in, Teferi took an oil lamp from a wall sconce, knowing full well there would be no lighting within.

  The air was stale and full of strange smells, incense, exotic herbs, burned things, decaying things, dead things. They entered a small storeroom full of trunks, boxes, and odd objects. What seemed to be a full-size mummy case leaned in one corner, a demonic mask on the lid suggesting the occupant was not entirely human.

  Sabé ignored all of it, instead pointing to a large chest in the center of the floor. “Push that aside.”

  Teferi placed his lamp on a nearby shelf, put both hands on the edge of the lid, and leaned into it. To his surprise, the chest moved easily on hidden rollers of some kind, revealing a trapdoor in the floor. “Should I open this?”

  Sabé nodded.

  Teferi took the iron ring and pulled. The counterweighted door opened easily, with a rusty creak and a cascade of choking dust. Teferi put his hand over his nose and mouth to keep out the dust, and recovered the lamp.

  By the time he had turned back, Sabé was already halfway down a staircase hidden under the door. Teferi rushed after him.

  They descended into the darkness, entering a cave running under the house. In places, the stone had been carved away to create flat floors and sizable rooms, but the essential form of the original cave could still be seen.

  Teferi held the light out, trying to determine how big the cave was, but passages vanished into the darkness in at least three directions.

  Around them were stacked countless tablets and scrolls, boxes of artifacts, statues, strange weapons. What seemed to be a complete stone sacrificial altar, still streaked dark with blood, leaned in pieces against one wall.

  He looked around in wonder. “How much is down here, Sabé?”

  “More than you can know. You should know that, when I am dead, you must not return here. The first to enter after my death will trigger a spell that will collapse these caves, returning all these secrets to the earth.”

  “All this will be lost?”

  He laughed. “Most of what is here is so dangerous, it should never have been found. But perhaps, there are a few exceptions. Now, where did I p
ut that box?”

  Teferi heard a dry scuttling noise behind him. He turned to find himself looking into the hairy gray face of a spider the size of a barn cat, its eight eyes glowing like emeralds in the light of his lamp.

  He cried out, jumping back as he drew his sword.

  The spider clung to the wall at eye level, and as he watched, it scuttled along the wall toward Sabé. It stopped, turned briefly back toward Teferi, and hissed a warning, then headed on toward the old scholar.

  “Sabé! Look out!” He dashed forward, stabbing the nasty creature through its torso, pinning it to the wall.

  Eight hairy, gray legs flailed at the air, a spray of webbing spewed from the thing’s rear, piling up harmlessly on the floor, and a steam of greenish-black ichor flowed down Teferi’s sword to drip onto the floor by his feet. Then the thing shuddered and fell still.

  Sabé casually turned, reached up, feeling the dead thing to identify it. “I should have warned you,” he said casually. “Those are a problem down here. Be careful.”

  You choose now to tell me!

  Sabé turned, and as he did, his fingers brushed an oblong wooden box with an inscribed lid. He hefted the box and held it out for Teferi. “Can you read it?”

  It was old Stygian. He struggled with the words. “Beware, to he who uses magic. To use these things within, means—dinner.”

  “Not dinner. Death. Which is why I will let you open the box.”

  Inside were a number of objects. Carved stones, like marbles, necklaces and other jewelry, totems made of gold, and a large, heavy wooden object that ran the length of a box. It was a stick, perhaps intended as a scepter or ceremonial club, wrapped with leather and drawn metal wire, decorated with rock crystal and beads carved from bone and shell.

  Teferi looked at Sabé. “This is all Kush.”

  He smiled. “More specifically, they are all Zimwi-msaka. The significance of most of them, I cannot say. Perhaps they are trinkets or trash. Perhaps they are of great importance. I cannot say, but they are yours now. But it is the stick for which the box was made, and it is the stick of which the warning inscription speaks. Pick it up.”