by Peter David
And right in the middle of all this, a servant burst in through the back doors, and he was screaming, “Rama! Rama! The river has turned into blood!”
I had, of course, no clue why in the world it was happening. But I did not hesitate to take advantage of it. I stepped forward and pointed as majestically as I could at Clea. I could see that her legs were trembling; she was having trouble remaining standing. “That is but the first of the plagues that will fall upon you! And they will continue until you let the slaves go!”
“Kill him!” shouted Clea. “Kill him and this will stop!”
To my astonishment, it was Lucy Anno who stepped forward and spoke up before any of the guards could follow Clea’s order. “You do not know that! Perhaps he is the only one who can stop it! If you kill him, you could be condemning the entirety of your country to who knows what?”
“You don’t know that,” said Clea, but she sounded uncertain.
“All I know is that as long as I’m here, and my followers are here, we’re as threatened as you are! And I think that gives me some say in the matter!”
Clea could see that not only was Lucy Anno not backing down, but the other leaders were starting to nod as well. Her hands were clenched into fists and she said tightly, “Fine. Return him to his quarters and make certain he doesn’t go anywhere!”
Ahmway grabbed me by one arm and another guard came up beside me. But before they could drag me out of there, the air started to become filled with a distant noise that slowly rose, louder and louder as it drew nearer to us. It was like nothing that I had ever heard before. A steady strumming, like a million strings being caressed simultaneously.
Clea’s eyes were darting left and right, as if she could perceive the invisible source of the noise. Everyone else seemed confused; everyone save for Lucy Anno as recognition blossomed upon her face.
“Locusts!” she cried out, right before they erupted into the room. They dove in through the open skylight above, and there were thousands, millions of the creatures. They were hurtling all over, clearly not having expected to wind up inside an enclosure, desperately looking for a way out.
I threw my arms up to shield my face and dove for the floor, taking refuge under a nearby bench. People were running, screaming, desperate to get away from the creatures. It wasn’t as if they stung or even bit, but the sheer volume of them was nearly suffocating.
The servants threw open the wide doors at the end of the room and the locusts blew through them. The downside was that put them in every corner of the palace, but at least it substantially lessened their number in the great hall.
Clea was on the floor, gasping for air. Her normally bronzed skin had gone ashen, so overwhelmed was she by the assault of the locusts.
I did not hesitate. I clambered to my feet, brushing away the remains of the creatures, and I shouted, “There’s going to be more, Clea! More plagues are going to be visited upon you, unless you—!”
“Go! Go!” Clea was screaming, clearly horrified by the supernatural might that she had just seen unleashed. “Take the Shews and go! Get them out of here! Take them and be damned!”
I couldn’t believe it. I had a feeling that if the Rama Lama had still been in charge, he would have indeed taken his chances with executing me. He certainly would never have been pressured into freeing the Shews thanks to insects and some manner of trickery with water into blood. But I was not about to shrug it off. Instead I bowed and said, “As you wish.”
Simon had emerged from his seat. It hadn’t been difficult because others who had been sitting near him had fled when the locust had assaulted them. He ran up to me and there was pure, unbelieving joy in his face. “I will tell the others,” he said. “We will be ready to depart by sundown.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You will lead us?”
“Of course,” I said immediately. I had no idea why, but as far as I was concerned, I was along for this ride whether I wanted to go or not.
“Good.” He glanced back toward Nuskin, but she was exactly where she had been before, unresponsive to everything. His brow creased in concern and he started toward her, but I grabbed him by the arm.
“Go,” I said. “I will attend to her.”
He nodded, gave her one final glance and then headed out. He had a good deal of company because the room was emptying out rapidly. Clea had vanished behind the great curtain from which she had emerged, the High Priest had likewise taken off, and the leaders of the various countries had also fled. It was obvious to me what was going on. They were faced with something that was clearly supernatural in origin, and none of them had the stomach to deal with it. They wanted to be as far away from all of it as possible.
I slid into the seat next to Nuskin and touched her shoulder. “Nuskin? You need to listen to me…”
“It’s not you,” she said.
“Yes. Yes, it is me.”
She turned and focused her face upon me. “No, you don’t understand. The blood. The locusts. That isn’t you. You have nothing to do with it.”
I glanced around to make sure there was no one near enough to be listening and then I said in a low voice, “I’m reasonably sure you’re right, but what does it matter if it gets the Shews freed?”
“It’s the curse,” she said.
“Curse?”
“The curse of Moomy.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said dismissively. “That’s about the first born son of a Shew. That has nothing at all to do with—”
And the next words she spoke struck a cold chill in my spine:
“He was my son.”
I stared at her, uncomprehending. “Who was?”
“The Rama. He was mine.”
“No.” Slowly I shook my head. “No, that’s…that’s impossible.”
She continued to speak. It was as if I was no longer there. As if she were instead speaking to herself, reliving moments in her life from the past. “I was pregnant at the same time as the wife of the Rama. The Rama was quite virile, you see. Such virility could not be restrained to one woman. He had had his way with me and impregnated me the same time as he did so with his wife. The result of one drunken night of assignation that he likely did not even remember after it transpired. But he would have had to execute my child because I am a Shew. It would have meant nothing to him, even though he was the father, for the prophecy still resounded within his head as much as any of his predecessors.
“The Rama’s wife felt sympathy for me. I had long been one of her most faithful retainers and so she decided to help me as much as she could in concealing the existence of my child. I dressed in loose fitting clothing to conceal the expansion of my belly. Fortunately Lama was quite small, and the swelling was scarcely noticeable.
“And because the gods have a sense of humor, and because prophecies have a knack for causing odd things to happen, the Rama’s wife and I went into labor at the same time. The Rama himself was not present, of course, but his orders were quite specific. I will never forget that moment, when he stood before me and the other retainers. I had to stand there, covering the fact that I was in labor, forcing a smile upon my lips. And the Rama said to us, ‘Deliver my child safely, or else you will surely die.’ We were to be executed if the Rama’s child was deceased.
“Which is, of course, exactly what happened. The delivery went as disastrously as it could have. Not only was the infant stillborn, but his mother died in childbirth. It could not have been a greater calamity.
“And all the women wailed, because they knew their time was done, and then I was fallen as my own child decided it was time to present itself to the world. It did not take long, for he was clearly anxious to make himself known. So it was that right there, on the floor, lying upon some blankets that were tossed under me to give me some minimal comfort, I gave birth to my son.
“At which point the answer to our situation readily presented itself: Give my son to the Rama. Admit that his wife died in childbirth, and there was no help for that. But he had specifi
ed that he was concerned only about the birth of his child, and ideally he would not dispose of us in the wake of his wife’s death. It seemed unlikely. He had no idea how to tend to children and would require our aid. The infant was presented to him, and he expressed little to no concern over the demise of his wife. Instead as he cradled the child, he declared it to be his heir, which naturally endeared the child immensely to his older sister, who would have inherited the title had a son not been born. Indeed, several times in his first months, Clea endeavored to kill him but was thwarted by the women. Finally we managed to convince her that if she succeeded in her endeavor, her father would doubtless end her life as vengeance for her deed, and that brought her in hand.
“So I raised my son to manhood while convincing his father that he was the son of his own loins…which he was. But he was not born of wife; he was born of me. And I am a Shew. And according to Shewish law, the nature of a child is determined by the mother. Because he was mine, that made him Shewish, despite the fact that his father was not.
“The rest of the women did not know my origins. They had no idea of my Shewishness because I had always kept that part of my life to myself. If they had known, perhaps they would have warned the Rama, but they did not.
“So the Rama raised the child that the Moomy had warned everyone would destroy the entirety of Rogypt as his heir and never had the slightest idea of what he was doing. But I always knew. And I prayed that the Moomy’s curse was just the stuff of legends. But it’s not. The plagues you’ve seen,” and her voice rose in its urgency, “they’re just the beginning. Lama has become a mummy, but he is not just any such corpse. He is alive. He has powers. He is doing all this!”
I took her by the shoulders and nearly shook her. “You’re imagining it, Nuskin! Dead is dead!”
“You fought an undead mummy! You cannot know! You—!”
That was when we heard distant screaming from outside. Immediately I sprang to my feet and made my way as quickly out of the room as I could. Nuskin followed me, doubtless because she had nowhere else to go.
I sprinted across the hallway toward a vast window that overlooked the streets below. I stopped at the window and stared out, unable to believe what I was seeing. Nuskin came in behind me, as did Ahmway and others who resided within the palace. No one said anything; we collectively just looked down at the chaos that had descended below.
The sky was black as night, which was interesting considering it was early in the morning. People were running in all directions as thousands of frogs leaped everywhere. The streets were flooded with them. They were bouncing all over the place, croaking incessantly. You couldn’t walk two paces in any direction without stepping on them.
“This is madness,” I said in a low voice.
Nuskin shook her head. “This is Lama. He is doing this…”
“I don’t believe it,” I told her fervently, except deep down I suspected it was entirely possible. I had witnessed far too many things in my life that any sane person would dismiss out of hand, and so was hardly in a position to do that in this instance. I decided the best thing to do was move forward with the evacuation of the Shews. “Go to your people. Go to Simon. Assemble everyone so that we can get the hell out of here. Do you understand me?” When she didn’t respond, I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her fiercely. “Do you understand me?”
It was as if I was snapping her out of her walking dead state. She blinked several times and managed a nod. “Good. Then why are you standing here listening to me?”
She turned and ran off.
At that moment, for some reason, all I could think of was Germane. If I was going to lead the Shews out of Rogypt, I knew I wanted him by my side. There was only one way I was going to be able to accomplish that: by harnessing the chariot to the horses and enabling him to drive himself out of there. It was going to be hell helping him to his feet, but I had no choice. “Ahmway, with me,” I said briskly. I started down the hallway and Ahmway fell in beside me as we left the rest of the servants and onlookers to stare out at the insanity that had befallen the streets.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To get to…” I almost called him “Germane” but caught myself. I wasn’t interested in explaining who Mane truly was at that moment. “To get to Mane. We’re bringing him with us.”
“We are? Do you think he’ll want to go?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?” Ahmway’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. He couldn’t fathom why in the world Mane would want to join us, and I was not about to go into detail.
“Just a feeling I have.”
Ahmway shrugged. Obviously he didn’t feel it necessary to probe too deeply, and that was probably wise on his part.
And then, just before we got to Germane’s room, I heard a terrified shriek that will stay within my mind for the rest of my life.
I sped up, the lameness of my leg forgotten, but Ahmway was ahead of me. He slammed his shoulder into the door and it exploded open, and when I saw what was inside, I screamed. I actually screamed.
Lama was in the room.
He was not as I remembered him. His body was clothed in the wrappings of the mummified, although pieces of it had been torn from his face so that he could see. His eyes were wide open and there was a cold fire burning in them. He was slowly approaching Germane, reaching out toward him. Germane was trying to throw himself from his bed but was unable to do so because his foot was still lashed up.
“No! Get back!” I howled at the thing that had been Lama, and for a moment he looked at me. He barely seemed interested in my presence. He glanced at me up and down and then turned his attention back to Germane.
I should have run toward him. I should have yanked out my bastard sword, or attacked with my staff, or done something, anything to defend him.
Instead I stood there.
I like to look back at that moment and think that at least I didn’t run away. Once upon a time, that is exactly what I would have done. I would have turned and fled. Without so much as a look behind, I would have been out of there and not given the slightest of damns what happened to Germane. Instead I remained rooted to the spot and I stood and I stared as Lama grabbed Germane by the face.
Lama roared at him then, and his breath, my gods, it was awful. It was a poisonous, gaseous thing, exactly what you would expect to come rolling off a corpse. Even though I was standing some feet away, I still wound up inhaling a sizable portion of it and violently wretched upon doing so.
Ahmway was no longer there. He had fled from behind me. So it turned out that he was a coward in the end. He had departed the room to leave me to my fate. Part of me respected that. Obviously he had his priorities in order, and his own wellbeing transcended any care for mine. It was inconvenient but understandable.
I tried to stride forward toward Lama and Germane. The creature’s breath was far too overwhelming. I lost my grip on my staff and collapsed.
And I watched in horror as Lama’s grip tightened on Germane’s face, and Germane’s face began to dissolve. It rotted away within seconds, transforming from its normal skin tone to blackened, deteriorating flesh. The rest of his body followed suit, although his vocal cords remained intact for somewhat longer since his shrieking continued. His eyes also stayed for a time, and they were riveted upon me, looking to me for help, for some manner of succor. I had none to give him. The son I never knew I had, the son who had hated me, despised me, and now had come to think of me as someone who might perhaps, just perhaps, be worth loving, was being taken from me and I was helpless to do anything to help him.
Then his eyes crumbled away and seconds later, so did the entirety of his body.
I had stopped screaming. Something within me died at the same time as he had passed. I lay upon the floor, helpless, and a deep sobbing rose from within my chest.
Lama stood upright and stared down at me. Then, slowly, he started toward me, his hand outstretched.
All I could think was
, Take me. I don’t care anymore. Just take me.
That was when a flaming arrow thudded into Lama’s chest.
Lama staggered back, clearly astounded, and then a second arrow landed just to the right of the first.
I turned and looked in astonishment. Ahmway was there, a bow in his hand, standing next to the flaming brazier that was illuminating the room. He had a quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder and was shoving the arrow tips into the flames. He was drawing back his third arrow and let fly within seconds of the first two.
The third arrow thudded into Lama’s head.
Lama staggered and from somewhere within the depths of the creature that he had been transformed into, there came a swell of fury. The flames quickly consumed him, or at least seemed to, except it seemed more as if he were absorbing them into his physicality. I shielded my eyes as he erupted into a miniature tornado in the room. Wind blew everywhere, as did the flames, leaping onto nearby curtains and carpets.
Ahmway grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to my feet. “Come on!” he shouted. I grabbed my staff and ran out of the room as the massive winds blew directly past us, knocking us over once more. Fire continued to roar within the room and Ahmway slammed shut the door in order to contain it.
“Now what?” he managed to gasp out.
My head was whirling. I had just witnessed the death of the son that I had not known that I had. Our entire life together that would never be flashed before my eyes and something deep within me wanted to sag to my knees and start sobbing piteously. But there was no time for that. I managed to focus on the situation at hand and something within warned me where I had to go next. “Clea,” I said. “He’s going to go after her next, if he hasn’t already.”
“Clea? Why?”
“Because he’s destroying all connections to his old life. He killed Ger…Mane because Mane was responsible for his death. And he’ll blame Clea for the fact that she never truly loved him. Which is hardly her fault, since I think she is incapable of loving anyone.”