Dam stepped closer and took account of the priest. His face was shrunken from starvation, and a wiry gray beard had grown in during his exile. In all respects, he had become decrepit. His priestly braids had withered to spindly shoots of colorless hair.
He had managed to raise himself to his elbows on the matted fleece that was his bed, but his wasted limbs lay enervated. Wheezing breaths rose up from his chest. His aged skin, the color of wash-water, clung to his bones. This was the man who had commanded an army of priestly followers and brought crowds of peasants to their knees when he decreed the commandments of Poseidon.
As diminished as the priest was, Dam kept his guard up. It was a miracle that Zazamoukh had survived so long in his remote den. Dam crept up to the foot of the man’s bed, displaying his raised blade.
“What gods do you pray to?” Dam said.
The priest’s reptilian eyes sparked. He looked over Dam’s amulet with a delicate longing, then his gaze came back at Dam, returned to its haughty authority. “Not death, then, but a boy who wants to be a hero. Put down your weapon.” He nudged one bony shoulder toward the glowing bucket. “Help me to a drink.”
“I’m not a boy. And I’m not your caretaker.”
The priest fell victim to a hacking cough that made Dam shield his face with his blade arm to avoid the spray of the man’s foul breath. Zazamoukh spoke hoarsely. “What are you, then? That churlish tone plucks a familiar chord. My mind does not hold all that it used to.”
Dam’s disguise could have figured as an advantage, but his pride preceded any strategy. He had suffered as the priest’s assistant for three years.
“Shall I joggle your memory with another bludgeon to the head?”
The priest’s eyes widened. Then, horridly, his toothless mouth stretched open in a ghostly cackle. When he recovered from that fit, he looked Dam over. “By the gods’ grace, Damianos lives. Fashioned so gallantly. A soldier are we now? The survivors must be in dire straits. The only trade I recall you being good at was getting buggered by noblemen’s sons.”
Dam crouched beside the priest and pressed the tip of his xiphos into the man’s brittle throat. “Shut your wretched face. I’ve business with you.”
Zazamoukh looked up at him. “I suppose the Fates have woven together a comedy at the expense of both of us. The kingdom’s least sent to bring justice to the kingdom’s greatest traitor. Be done with it, then. I’ve no defense. As easy to finish off as a fish flushed ashore by the tide.”
Dam hesitated. He hated his predicament. No shred of sympathy held him back from murdering the priest. He could avenge the many beatings he had received at Zazamoukh’s hand. More importantly, he could avenge what Zazamoukh had done to Hephad and Attalos and every person he had kidnapped, including the dying prisoners. But Dam needed the priest’s knowledge of the stone. He had promised Calaeno he wouldn’t hurt the man, and if he killed Zazamoukh, the spell that linked the amulet to her would break.
Zazamoukh’s penetrating gaze beheld that dilemma. He gasped out a laugh. Dam noticed that the man’s ugly gob was blackened and chafed from some sort of vile consumption. “You haven’t come for my death,” the priest said. “It’s something else. Say it. There’s barter I could use.” He looked at the amulet hanging from Dam’s neck.
Dam caught that look and hovered over Zazamoukh ferociously. “You’re going to tell me how to claim the stone.”
He bent his sword arm and braced himself to deliver a blunt, shattering blow to the priest’s nose if a taunting word came out of him. Oddly, Zazamoukh fell silent. His face was washed of thoughts and emotions, but Dam knew him too well to trust that ploy.
“You’ve traveled far to find me and must have stories of your own,” Zazamoukh said. “Let’s trade one for the other. I’ve been apart from the world for longer than I can know. News is all that I require for currency.” He glanced over to his bucket. “News, and a drink.”
*
Dam took up the bucket. It contained a red, glowing substance as thick and shiny as yolk. Mori-mori. The blood of the earth. Dam did not comprehend its nature, but he knew the prisoners had mined it for the New Ones, and it was all the giant serpents fed on to survive. The Oomphalos had been forged from the substance. Dam supposed that Zazamoukh had subsisted on the stuff while hiding, though it hardly looked like it was doing him much good. Without the life-giving energies of the Oomphalos, the priest’s aged body had been claimed by the laws of nature just like the freed prisoners. Zazamoukh had to be about the same age as the prisoner Silenos, who had died.
He brought the bucket to Zazamoukh and tipped the rim to the man’s lips. A fingerbreadth of liquid was left. Zazamoukh gulped greedily for it. He could not raise his hands to help himself. As the mori-mori seeped into his mouth, he winced and tears sprouted from his eyes. The light from the substance spread out from the priest’s throat, illuminating every blue vein and capillary in his pale white flesh. That strange rush of magic was brief, and it faded away once it had reached his belly. Dam put the bucket back in its place.
Zazamoukh gasped and sputtered like a drowning man surfacing for air. He calmed after a while and spoke. “Must be amusing for you.”
Dam said nothing.
“It is the way of the world that boys come to loathe their masters.” Zazamoukh strained to slide his elbows out from under himself so he could lie down on his back. “You won’t have long to wait to see my final breath. That should make your boyhood trials worthwhile.”
“Won’t the mori-mori sustain you?”
Zazamoukh cleared his raspy throat. “Only until my body refuses it completely. It is not meant to be taken by our kind.” Dam wondered how much the mori-mori had corroded the priest’s throat and stomach already, and whether it would be better to bring him more or to starve him of it.
“Shall we begin our bargain?” the priest said.
Dam sat down on the floor beyond the priest’s reach. He posted his blade at his side.
Zazamoukh called to him. “Host’s privilege. You go first. I want to know how the survivors fare.”
“It’s your turn. I fed you your meal.”
Zazamoukh snickered. “The agreement was news for news.”
Dam bristled over what to do. As helpless as the priest was, Dam had no way to coerce him to speak first and reveal how he had stolen the stone. Zazamoukh had the advantage, and everything Dam knew about the man told him he wouldn’t honor the bargain he had concocted.
“I haven’t long. Speak to me.”
Dam frowned. He had to tell Zazamoukh something, and rather than try the priest’s cunning, he decided on the truth, even though Zazamoukh didn’t deserve it. Dam told him about the theft of the stone, the expedition to stop Calyiches’ party, the ambush, and the tremor that wracked the mountain pass.
“Your turn,” Dam said. “How do I get the stone from the New Ones?”
Zazamoukh lay feeble in the cast of the trident amulet’s glow. Dam was certain he was silently exalting. That information created a pitiable position for him. Dam attuned to the weight of the sword in his hand, A thrust of the tip into the left side of the priest’s chest would be the cleanest way to kill him. Then his delay in searching for Hanhau wouldn’t be completely fruitless. Justice dangled before him. Could he really do it? Dam had never done anything so violent.
The priest spoke. “The New Ones will reclaim the city. How many did you say devised the ambush?”
“I didn’t. I said, it’s your turn.” Dam leaned forward so he could see the priest’s face. “How do I get the stone?”
Zazamoukh smacked his lips in an irritating manner. Maybe it was because his mouth was burned and dry, or maybe he was putting Dam off to get underneath his skin. At last, he spoke. “The New Ones have taken haven on the other side of that mountain pass. I traveled through those parts on my way down here. There’s an abandoned mill-worm hole that leads to their nest. They must have found a mori-mori lode nearby to settle in that area.”
Dam waite
d for more. The priest closed his eyes, and his mouth went still.
“You haven’t finished,” Dam said.
“I have. You asked how to get the stone, and I told you where to find it.”
“You know that doesn’t do me any good unless you tell me how to steal it from the snakes.”
Zazamoukh coughed. “You must be more precise with your questions. The questioner’s privilege returns to me. Tell me, how did you know where to find me?”
A furnace of indignity rose up in Dam. Zazamoukh was playing a child’s game. The only thing that buffered Dam’s anger was not wanting to give the priest the satisfaction of seeing him unsettled.
He gave a quick account of Calaeno’s release from Zazamoukh’s curse, her bestowing her amulet to Aerander and then to himself, and her instructions on where to find the priest. Zazamoukh had shown he recognized the amulet. If he hoped for more detail on what his former love had told him, Dam was happy to let him suffer with the scantest of facts. As it was, the story softened Zazamoukh’s demeanor. He pushed himself up on his elbows and gazed at the amulet. For a strange moment, that sight recalled to Dam Calaeno’s description of the young, pained man with whom she had fallen in love.
“Did she speak of me with contempt?”
“You’re not playing by your own rules,” Dam said. “I answered you. It’s my turn again.” Dam composed his question carefully. “How do I get the stone from the New Ones?”
Zazamoukh frowned, and then his eyes twinkled as though beholding a very amusing vision. “You cannot. It would take magic well beyond your knowledge to overpower the snakes. Even then, you would need to understand the stone’s nature so you could use it to protect yourself in escaping from their den.”
Dam bristled. Answers in bits and pieces. Meanwhile the snakes were preparing to storm the city in the shelf above them.
“Your turn,” Zazamoukh said. “Tell me what defenses Ysalane holds in her city.”
“Why do you want to know that?” Dam blurted out.
“You haven’t answered. If that’s your question, it will have to keep until you pay me with your reply.”
Dam’s mind stumbled a bit. “No. That’s not my question.” He had to be more careful to not fall into the priest’s traps. He thought over the city plan. “It’s moated and walled. There are archer outposts at the drawbridge, and the tunnel gates have a vaulted door a yard thick and solid iron.”
Zazamoukh grinned. Dam did not know what mischief he was being drawn into, but he was anxious to be done with the priest’s infernal game. He arrived at the most specific question he could think of.
“How did you steal the stone from the snakes?”
The expression on the priest’s face soured. Dam stared at him keenly.
“Beyond the lava molehills, there is a black embankment of rock. Atop that shelf, there is a well that flows from the very pith of the earth. This was told to me by a pair of ancient warriors. They were twins, banished by their tribe.”
An eerie hand clutched Dam’s heart. Hanhau had spoken of such twins, abandoned to the backcountry, though he had said the story was a folktale.
“I ventured to the well on their advice,” Zazamoukh went on. “If a man is willing to dive into its pool of blood and drown, he will be reborn with the power he most desires to master. That was how I was able to take the stone from the snakes. You see that even that sorcery would not allow me to claim the stone for long. The well’s magic wears away with time, and it will only allow a man to take from it once.”
Dam worked through that story quickly. He had seen the embankment. He knew what to do. He got up from the floor to go.
“Not yet,” the priest said. “I’ve more questions.”
“We’re even now. It’s a good place to end.”
“But you have no idea what power to ask for from the well.”
Dam ignored him. He had wasted enough time tugging answers out of the priest. He looked to the passage down to the waterfall and the crater field.
The amulet lifted itself from his neck and fluttered over his head. Dam grasped for it, but it had somehow sprung to life with motives of its own. He jumped to catch it, but it was like trying to clasp a bird in his hands. The amulet flew to the priest, hooped over his head, and nested itself on his chest.
Zazamoukh chortled. “I’ve life yet. I can still command the things that belong to me.”
Dam dove to the floor beside the man and reached for the necklace’s chain. Invisible sparks stung his hands as though he had been struck by frozen needles. Dam threw back his sword arm to plunge his weapon into the priest’s heart. He stopped short.
The priest gazed up at him. “You know that if you kill me, you’ll break the link to Calaeno. And if you break that link, you’ll never know when it’s safe to come aboveground. Your countrymen will be imprisoned in the underworld, unless they want to try their luck swimming from the bottom of the ocean.”
Dam shoved himself off Zazamoukh’s limp body. He didn’t even want to look at the hateful man.
“Now we’ve got real barter to trade,” the priest said. “Take that bucket to the well. You keep me alive, and I’ll tell you how to get the Oomphalos from the New Ones. Mind yourself very carefully on your errand. That region around the well is a favorite spot for fire scorpions.”
Chapter Seven
Dam crawled and stumbled his way down from Zazamoukh’s den, silently cursing himself and Calaeno. Why hadn’t she told him that the priest could command the amulet? Had it been her plan all along to deceive Dam into bringing it to Zazamoukh so she would be reunited with her lost love?
Dam could not reconcile it. When the princess had been set free from her exile, Calaeno had given the amulet to Aerander, not Zazamoukh, which seemed to show she was honorable. But unless she was dim-witted, which seemed unfitting for a goddess, she had deliberately sent Dam on a fool’s mission to squander the one device that could bring her countrymen back to the above-world. Shouldn’t she have told him to hide the amulet from Zazamoukh?
He pushed through the misty waterfall and out to the lava-baked field. He had no amulet for light and instead a bucket for the loathsome task of fetching mori-mori for the priest. The lava-capped molehills showed him the way back to the place where he had started. He remembered the direction to the bulkhead of black rock. Traveling around the crop of lava-spouts, Dam came up on that tall, impenetrable barrier. He decided to have words with Calaeno when his misadventure was over. Now, Dam needed to somehow hatch a plan to outwit the evil priest.
Dam shouted with a force to deafen the underworld with the injustice of his situation, and he batted his sword against the face of the high ledge of rock with a mighty clash. Using a path of footholds, he mounted the shelf. Farther above, he found a ledge trailing along the face of the escarpment, making the climb easier.
He reached the top of the mount and gathered his breath. It was a flat plateau that stretched onward for an undecipherable distance. The caps of the lava molehills below were miniscule, like stars on a hazy night. Some yards inward on the plateau, Dam sighted a cloudy source of light that seemed to breathe up from the floor. That had to be the mori-mori well which Zazamoukh had spoken of.
The priest had mentioned fire scorpions. Dam was too consumed by his anger to worry over such things. He strode toward the well with the bucket swinging in his hand and scraping against the ground. If the Fates decided to send fire scorpions as a finishing stroke to his disastrous detour, he would welcome it. His pent-up fury might just get him through an encounter with the deadly monsters.
Dam came up on the strange aura of the well. Its pit wasn’t more than the length of a man across. Shiny mori-mori filled the reservoir up to a hand’s reach from its lip. As he looked down upon it, a gentle reverberation passed through his body.
He thought at first it was merely hunger. But the thrumming energy passing through him like the perpetual rhythm of a tide was specific and familiar. Within the rising glow of the mori-mori, e
thereal wisps swirled and drifted lazily toward the ceiling where they disappeared in the darkness. The well’s mysterious radiance was not as strong as the Oomphalos, but they were unquestionably alike.
Dam set the bucket down and idled in the exquisite pain of anticipation. The magic in the well might be the solution to his predicament. Truly, what other option did he have? He could dive into the well and emerge with the ability to fight the snakes. He could claim any fantastical power that his mind could imagine.
But what if Zazamoukh lied? The glowing well looked poisonous and hot. Zazamoukh could have meant to tempt Dam into diving into the well in order to be rid of him. After all, if Dam truly could claim magic from the well, wouldn’t the priest want to keep that secret to himself so Dam couldn’t use magic against him?
Dam fell back on his original instinct. What else was he to do but try? If he didn’t, he would be indentured to Zazamoukh again. He could not abide that. Death would be better than being beholden to the bastard.
Dam stared into the well. His thoughts traveled to the twins. Zazamoukh had mentioned them. Was that a clue? It stood to reason that being born of the underworld, the twins would have known which powers were best to master in order to navigate the backcountry’s dangers. There were two possibilities: light or sound.
The shiny skim of the well held no answers, but its glow dandled warmly at his face. It was a beckoning, whether good or evil. Either way, he would drown in the well’s thick marrow. Dam looked to the ceiling and prayed to the ancestral mother Pleione to look after Aerander, Hanhau, Hephad, Attalos, and all the others.
Before panic or reason could hold him back, Dam dove into the well.
*
He could not change his mind once he sank beneath the surface. The well engulfed him. He tried to reach one side to climb out, but he kept sinking deeper. Terror set in. Dam would feel every agonizing moment of his death as the mori-mori filled his lungs, choking him from the inside out.
Banished Sons Of Poseidon Page 21