by Grey Durose
The local people had believed the stranger was a representative of the God Enki, the protector of the city and a God of wisdom, the sea and of life itself, who dwelt in a great subterranean ocean. George had his own suspicions about the stranger.
The other two tales were second hand to say the least, one was set in pre-dynastic Egypt five thousand years ago, where a ruler of the region around Nubt became entranced by an evil monster. The monster compelled him to torture and maim his own subjects for its amusement. There was also mention of human sacrifice again and of the inevitable arrival of a hero who cast the beast in to the waters of the Nile, freeing the people from their suffering.
The final of the three tales was a record of a story told by a particular family from Carthage. They were descended from a long line of Phoenician merchants and had been among the first of their people to colonise the, now Greek, island of Thassos. When their ancestor had arrived there, he'd discovered a terrible cult had taken hold of the people on the mainland. The tale told how he assisted a Greek stranger from the South, as he attempted to send the vile beast at the head of the cult in to a place of blackness, a place of nothing.
It was a starting point; three legends and three chances to unravel just what this thing was and, perhaps, discover the means to be rid of it, if necessary.
George looked at his watch and noted that midnight had come and gone and it was time to get some rest. He was still unsure which of the three legends offered the best opportunity for progress. Greece was the most recent, and hence the most likely to offer clear evidence, but Iraq, despite being home to the oldest legend was the only one that offered a first-hand account. Master Giovanni's voice echoed in George's memory, 'When in doubt shrouds your path, let the Stone of Sleep be your guide.' he'd told him.
The Stone of Sleep was one of the most used of the vaulted items. In appearance it was nothing more than a smooth, polished, jade-green pebble. It could easily be transported in luggage and it was even easy to use (all you had to do was fall asleep with it in your hand). Its purpose was simple: if you held it while you slept, it would seek out the quandaries that burdened your mind and send you dreams that would help you to resolve them. The price for this ability was also simple, the dreams wouldn't just answer your problem in a clear and definite way. Dreams, by nature, are bizarre and cryptic and the ones sent by the Stone of Sleep were no exception, most of the time. They required interpretation and if you made a false judgement of their meaning it could be very misleading. It was also said of this artefact, that the user could carry wounds from its dreams back in to the waking world but George had never experienced this side effect and nor had Master Giovanni.
George decided to spend the night in his own bed, it would be easier to hang on to the stone whilst lying down and the quality of his sleep would be better. Settling down was easy enough and it was nearly half past one, so he was plenty tired enough to drop off. It wasn't long before he got his wish.
He awoke with a start, there was a stinging sensation in his right leg and something was writhing beneath the sheets. George sat up and whipped off the sheets, revealing a long, black, snake-like appendage, which had attached itself to his calf. George could see no evidence of eyes or the structure of a skull but he could feel the bite of its tiny, needle-teeth sinking in to his flesh, locking themselves in place. George grasped it and pulled, trying to break its hold, but his grip slipped across its slimy mucus coating. In the dim light he could see its body continued over the edge of the bed and across the floor to the doorway, where his gaze was met by a wall of blackness. George rolled over in the bed and dragged himself to the bedside cabinet, fumbling at the top draw and reaching for the blade stored inside. As his fingertips reached the grip, the creature coiled itself tightly around his leg and, with one almighty jerk from his attacker, he found himself landing on the floor, kicking and grabbing at anything in reach. George was pulled slowly but inexorably in to the blackness beyond the door.
The pulling stopped. George lay on the floor for a few moments, then shot to his feet, frantically looking for the creature. It was nowhere to be seen but, checking his leg, he found he was still bleeding from its bite. He tore off a strip from his pyjamas and used it to bind his wound while he looked around.
'Where the hell am I?' he asked himself.
The light in the room was dim but not as gloomy as it had been in his bedroom, and it had changed from blue to orange in nature. The floor was mostly earth but partly covered with bits of straw and a mat woven from reeds. There was a table to one side, crudely assembled from pieces of thick wood, rough ceramic bowls and a jug sat on top of it. The wall had a hole in it, which served as a window, covered over by another example of reed work. A doorway was blocked by an ill-fitting, wooden door, beams of bright sunshine, speckled with hanging dust motes, burst through the gaps. It was warm in here too, hot in fact, far hotter than it had been before when George was snugly tucked up in his bed.
He limped up to the window space, his leg was quite sore, not just from the bite but from the good effort the creature had made at dislocating his hip. George pulled back the window covering and peered out, he immediately drew his head back as his eyes reminded him it had been night time a few moments ago. He gave his eyes a few seconds to adjust, then tried again, this time more of the scene was revealed to him. Beyond the window, was a narrow, unpaved street, mostly made up of hardened mud and dung. Across the way he could see the street was lined with huts, caked in the same mud as the road, presumably similar in construction to the one he was currently inhabiting. There were people outside and, from time to time, a woman would walk by, carrying a large jug on her head or a sack of something in her arms. There were sounds and smells now, too, mostly dung in the case of the smells but the sounds were many and varied: chattering voices, grinding, scraping, the clack of a distant axe at work and the rhythmic thumping of wheat being pounded. Another sound began to draw George's attention, it was in the distance, perhaps on the edge of the settlement, but still unmistakeably the screams of distressed human beings.
Outside on the street, the full power of the sun hit George like a brick wall, it was like stepping off a plane on to the tarmac of some tropical destination. The stony ground was no fun either, he was still barefoot and the sharp edge of every chipped pebble seemed to find his sole with unerring accuracy and baked ruts threatened to turn an ankle.
George limped along the road, occasionally being passed by a local dressed in simple woven clothing and hides, with dark curly hair and deeply tanned skin, none much taller than five feet. The cries were getting louder and George turned off the alley he'd appeared on and joined a slightly broader, smoother, road.
He could now see a far more significant structure ahead. It was tall, with several stepped levels to it and a long stepped ramp leading up to a grand entrance, a ziggurat. In front of the ziggurat was a wall and gateway. Inside the enclosure wall, George could see other smaller buildings. As he approached the temple complex, he noticed there were fewer and fewer townsfolk around, clearly they were staying well away from the temple. He could see the smaller buildings more clearly now and some of them were not pristine stone or mudbrick structures but rather hastily built wooden cages. Occasionally a pleading arm would reach out between the sturdy wooden bars toward a passer-by but with no response. Theirs had been the screams he’d heard.
George passed through the gateway unchallenged and slowly made his way to the stone steps of the ziggurat. The sun was getting lower in the sky and the steps were shaded to one side and, having already done some damage to his feet, he decided it might be wiser to take this route up the stairs to the entrance.
Inside the ziggurat, it was much cooler, trails of incense-laden smoke swirled their way towards the opening. It would have been a far more pleasant place to spend a few moments, had it not been for the sight which welcomed George. There were alcoves all along the side walls. In front of them, channels were cut in to the stone floor, leading further in to
the temple. In each alcove one of the captives had been suspended, upside down, naked and their throats cut like slaughtered animals. The blood which had gushed from their necks had poured in to the channels and flowed in to a large bowl-shaped indentation in front of the altar at the back of the room. One of the victims had been strung up not long ago (a few minutes George estimated) and the blood was still dripping from his hair and anguished face, and trickling down the channel.
George followed the flow down toward the bowl, the smell was quite foul, despite the liberal burning of the incense. Some of the bodies had clearly been hanging here for a few days or even longer, the heat hastened decomposition and the flies added their eggs to the mix. Maggots squirmed near the surface of the putrid flesh. He reached the bowl, his limp no longer hindering him in his haste to get away from the stench. The bowl was carved from the same stone as the steps of the temple but all in one huge block. The surface was darker than the other masonry, where it had been oiled to prevent leakage. In the bottom of the bowl sat a thick pool of fresh blood, nearing the stage where it would begin to form clots.
George was alerted by a groaning; something was coming his way. The sound of a slow, lumbering, shuffle approached from behind the altar. George, fearing his discovery, moved quickly but silently to one of the alcoves, pushing the bloated belly of the corpse to one side, so it might offer him some cover. The stench was far worse close up and George was forced to breathe through his mouth, affording the flies the opportunity to crawl in at the corners. He resisted the urge to wave away the flies and peaked around the edge of the alcove towards the altar. There was still nothing there at first, then gradually a shadow began to creep across the altar from one side. A head appeared, cobra-like with long fangs and its tongue flicking at the air, a shimmer of scales, gold and green, eyes red and slit with black. George had expected the rest of this huge snake to follow but the next thing he saw was more like the enormous paw of a lion, its sandy fur hiding huge hooked claws. As the creature edged further in to the room, its full form was revealed: it had three heads, alongside the cobra was the head of an eagle: deep brown feathers, with the front of its neck plumed with pure white. Next to that, the head of what appeared to be a man but far larger than any human George had ever seen, with dark hair and eyes, a hooked nose and a sneering, lipless mouth. These three heads converged upon the body of a vast lion, perhaps twenty feet in length, with the wings of an enormous eagle stretched out on its back, the feathers of its great wingspan brushing against the walls and columns of the ziggurat.
The creature reached the bowl, examined it with its many eyes then tasted the air above it with the cobra's tongue. The eagle head screeched with delight and a smile of satisfaction formed on the face of its human head. The creature stooped, as if to drink, but stopped short of the bowl, its heads and chest overshadowing its meal. As it crouched there, its chest parted, a long gash appearing, like a grotesque vagina.
George looked on in amazement as the blood itself began to move. Swirling around the edges of the bowl at first then rising in to waves, which lifted in to the air and became plumes like the smoke above a bloody flame. The plumes intertwined and were drawn in to the chest of the beast. George had never seen the like of this before and, for a few moments, he forgot about the flies on his face and the maggots on his hand trying to make their way up his sleeve. He was truly transfixed by the image before him.
He snapped out of his stupor with a jolt, disturbing the corpse he was hiding behind. The swollen belly of the corpse split, spilling its rancid entrails across George's feet. All three heads of the beast turned toward him, its six eyes searching for what had dared interrupt its feeding. The plumes of blood collapsed back in to the bowl and some slapped on to the floor between the creature’s front paws. George knew he was found.
The cobra head hissed loudly, its forked tongue shooting out towards the alcove, grabbing the corpse, tearing it from the rope that suspended it and stripping the feet and lower legs of their rotten flesh.
George blinked as he was showered in foul gobbets of flesh and maggots. He felt exposed and cornered in his current position and decided to make a break for it, heading straight for the light of the entrance. He sensed a whoosh of air from behind him and, with a thud, a great weight came crashing down on him. His head hit the stone floor and all went black.
George woke up the next morning in his bed, sweaty and breathless but a great sense of relief washing over him. The stone of sleep had done its job. He rose from his bed and stood, he could feel a pain in his leg. Lifting the leg of his pyjamas he revealed an injury, roughly circular and formed of many tiny puncture wounds. George went to the bathroom to fetch the first aid kit from the medicine cabinet, as he glanced in the mirror he caught sight of his own face and the large bump topped with grazed skin.
'So the warnings were true.' he realised.
He tended to his wounds; they would heal quickly and without any lasting mark, his injuries always did.
After a quick shower, George set about organising his trip. He used many false identities but documents were getting harder to replace and he feared his presence in Iraq might lead to more interest than he'd like. It would be better if his entry in to the country weren't on record. Master Giovanni had spent some time in the south of Iraq and had an old associate there by the name of Ahmed.
After an hour of research and phone calls, George managed to locate Ahmed. The old man was still alive and dwelling outside a village near Basra. Ahmed had offered not only to be his guide in Iraq but also to arrange a border crossing from Kuwait, for a price. Money was no object. The twenty thousand dollars Ahmed had requested would partly be used to cover the necessary bribes needed to get George to where he wanted to be and any leftovers would be hard earned by Ahmed and his men.
Chapter Six
George carefully selected the contents of his baggage; suitable clothing, lightweight, hard-wearing and airy but with full skin coverage in mind - sunburn could be as much of an enemy as anything else. The last things he selected before he began to fill his backpack, were the artefacts he would take. The Stone of Sleep was a must, as was his favourite weapon, an ancient dagger with a blade crafted from obsidian volcanic glass, whose edge glinted wickedly and whose bone handle and sheath were hand carved with intricate spiral patterns. It was about fourteen inches in length, from butt to tip, and had seen a lot of battle, both in George's time and for many centuries before. The enchantments cut in to the handle were of a lost script, in a language no longer spoken, but their effect was obvious. The blade remained razor sharp, it never chipped or became dull, the hilt would never slip from its wielder's grasp, no matter how oily the hand and it would seek the points on the body of any creature that would kill or cripple, with great accuracy. The combatant would get the distinct impression that their hand was being guided by the blade rather than the other, more conventional, way round.
The third item he selected from the vault, was the compass. Suspended on an ordinary silver chain, the compass was actually a pendant shaped like an eye and about the same size, cast in bronze. In the centre was an emerald and when the pendant was dangled in front of the bearer’s eye it would help them to locate anything they desired, which was otherwise hidden from them, by lighting the destination or object with a soft green glow. It could work across a few miles and George was relying on it to find something which had eluded archaeologists and robbers for many centuries.
Lastly, he selected Master Giovanni's old ivory lock-picks, and carefully placed them in his mouth along his jaw line, one on each side. These were no ordinary picks and - although he couldn't envisage a situation where he would need them on this trip - they had become like a security blanket for George and he loathed to be without them.
Also added to his bag, were the basic trappings of ritual magic, he suspected whatever he was going to find would be buried deep and he didn't have the years to spare to uncover it manually. George selected his Kuwaiti passport for this journey
and his British one for the return. The situation in Iraq had been unstable ever since the war and documents could lose their validity in a very short space of time if things went badly.
At last he was ready, putting his bag in the back of the car and setting off for the airport once again. Sometimes it felt like he was spending more time travelling than he did at any of the destinations. It would be nice to stop and smell the roses for a while but there was never enough time and retirement was out of the question with his vocation. A Master Horrendo had no choice but to work until he dropped, quite literally.
It was five in the afternoon when the plane took off, it was already dark outside and rain was hammering down out of the inky sky. It would be well past midnight by the time the plane landed in Kuwait but George hadn't bothered to make a hotel reservation. The border crossing would only be possible for a few hours that night and he had arranged to be picked up by Ahmed's men.
George decided to get some sleep while he could. The night before had not been very restful and there would be little chance of forty winks once he landed. One advantage of flying when it's dark outside is the improved chances of rest. The muted lighting added a cosiness which a daytime flight lacked, lulling the unsuspecting passenger in to a sleepier mood. George lay back in his seat, put on his blindfold, inserted his earplugs and closed his eyes.
Perhaps it was the residual effect of the Stone of Sleep, or simply that George was genuinely tired and had, for him, an emotional forty eight hours, but he found himself dreaming again. It began in a fairly mundane way: George was at home in the sitting room, reading a news article about an earthquake in the Middle East and sipping on a cup of coffee while the birds chattered outside. Henry was in the room with him and trying to explain something to him but George was too engrossed in his newspaper to focus on what Henry was saying.