A wooden rung slipped under his questing foot. He found purchase and climbed down, because he had no other place to go. Others led him, passing him from one hand to another down a shaft and down a second until it seemed the rock itself pressed around him, whispering of its age and of this violation of its secret parts. Now again he smelled burning oil and a gasp of smoke. Once he slipped into a ditch full of streaming water.
At length they chained him to stand on a curved wood walkway that was a huge wheel. They prodded him until he realized that they wanted him to walk and, by walking, turn the wheel beneath him. Water gurgled and sloshed, riding up from the depths and spilling away in a rush above him. The steady groan and rumble of other wheels turned above him under the tread of other feet.
He walked, chains rattling, and after a time got the hang of it, more sure of his footing, not fearing that he would stumble and fall and plunge endlessly into the darkness that lay everywhere around him. The wood slats of the wheel slid smoothly beneath his feet, worn down by the countless measured steps of the hapless slaves who had gone before him.
Had they died here, too?
Yet he found it so hard to think because his head hurt. It never stopped hurting.
It was easier just to walk.
After a very long time, they unchained him and led him to a hollow in whose confines he smelled the sweet gangrene scent of mad Robert. Curses echoed through the darkness as the madman was chained into the place he had just left. Here on this hard rock he was allowed to sleep, although Robert’s ravings chased him through troubled dreams.
They woke him, fed him gruel, prodded him up, and chained him once more to the wheel where he walked again, forever, silent and in darkness.
3
“THERE,” said Marcus. “That is what we seek.”
The ruins of Kartiako boggled Zacharias. Never had he seen such magnificence so spoiled. They walked half the morning away from the garden city of Qahirah into lands that ceased bearing life across a line so stark that on one side irrigated fields grew green and on the other, beyond the last ditch, lay bare ground. On three hills rising on the promontory that overlooked the sea rose the remains of a great city, now vandalized and tumbled into a shambles that nevertheless left those who approached it gaping in wonder at the columns and archways, the broken aqueducts and fallen walls, the intricate layout of a grand city that had once ruled the Middle Sea
“You’re looking the wrong way,” said Marcus to Zacharias as their party turned aside from the dusty path that led across the barren flats toward the hills and the city. Grit kicked up by the mules clouded the air. The locals hired by Sister Meriam pulled the ends of their turbans across their faces to protect themselves from the stinging dust. “That way. Do you see?”
That way lay a low hill outside the crumbled wall that had once ringed Kartiako and, beyond it, the crumpled ridgelines of rugged country, rock and sand and not a trace of living things. On that hill bones stuck up from the hillside, but as they came closer, he recognized that these were rude columns set in an elongated circle. The flatland disguised the distance; they walked with salty grit in their teeth for the rest of the morning and did not come to the base of the hill until after midday. A narrow trail snaked up to the crest, and Zacharias blinked twice before he realized that the dark creature scuttling down the track was no insect but a man dressed in black desert robes and grasping a staff.
“Not one stone has fallen,” said Meriam.
The innkeeper had hired out his eldest son to guide them to the ruins, and this young man gestured for silence. He knelt, and the other locals knelt, heads bowed, as the old man of the hill halted before them. The robes he wore covered all but his eyes and hands.
He spoke in a surprisingly deep bass voice for one so small of stature. Meriam translated.
“Who are these honored ones? What do they wish, to come to this holy spot? I am guardian here. I can answer their questions.”
“I admit I am curious why the stone circle lies in good repair,” said Marcus. “All of the others we have found needed at least one stone raised to complete the circle.”
By no means could Zacharias interpret any emotion in the old man’s stance or face, because both were hidden. His eyes gave away nothing, narrowing now and again as Meriam put Marcus’ questions to him and added, no doubt, a few explanations of her own.
When she finished, they waited in silence as the caretaker considered. Far away, beyond the dusty flats, green fields shimmered like a mirage.
“Come.”
“What did you tell him?” Marcus asked as they climbed the hill with their retinue walking behind them. Meriam rode one of the mules, led by a manservant.
“That we have come to see the crowns. He is an educated man. In this region, most of the people speak the local language and few have been educated in the priests’ tongue. That he can speak it as well as he does means he knows more than we might otherwise imagine. He is no ordinary caretaker, sweeping and fussing. Be cautious. Be respectful.”
Marcus snorted.
“If you are not minded to respect him because he is an infidel, Brother, then I pray you be polite for my sake.”
“Very well, Sister. For your sake. I have no trust in the education of infidels.”
“You must bide among them many months more, Marcus. Beware that your arrogance does not provoke them to turn on you.”
He chuckled. “I will be discreet, and silent where I see fault.”
As they reached the crest of the hill, the wind off the barrens began blowing in earnest, and Zacharias was pleased to imitate the Jinna hirelings by covering his mouth and nose with cloth to keep out the dust. He had never tasted anything so salty, mixed with grit that ground between his teeth. Up on the hilltop they could see through the haze as far west as Qahirah and northwest to the bones of Kartiako.
The old man strode into the center of the circle, opening his arms and turning slowly to encompass the entire scene. As he spoke, Meriam translated.
“You wonder why this holy place lies not in ruins. That is because the Jinna magi have kept it in repair. It is a holy spot. An ancient battle was fought here, a great battle against the invaders, the Cursed Ones.”
“Can it be that the story has lived so long among the infidels?” Marcus asked.
“Hush,” said Meriam. “I wish to hear what he has to say.”
The old man walked to the eastern slope of the hill where it tumbled away sharply into a hollow that then folded up into the barren rock ridges that ran all the way to the eastern horizon. The nearest ridge side was pockmarked with holes.
“Down beneath the hills lie caves. The old ones lived there in the ancient days for a time, but now it is all ruins. Cursed. They worshiped idols and sacrificed children.”
The old man looked each one of them in the eye, as if delving for evil. Zacharias started back when that gaze met his; all his sins seemed to swarm up out of him, naked in the light. But without flinching the old man looked away to examine Marcus, and then Elene, and finally Meriam.
He nodded. “All of these abominations Astareos enjoins us from committing according to the laws of heaven. Do you respect the laws of heaven?”
“Ai, God, Meriam, does he expect us to swear some heathen oath? We worship God in the proper manner. I will not suffer his maundering further, if you please. If the stone crown needs no repair, then there is no reason we cannot make our final calculations tonight and send you and Elene on your way tomorrow evening. The heavens will not slow their workings to accommodate our human frailties. There is much to do—and less time than we need, less than eighteen months until the day we have so long prepared for.”
“Do not be hasty, Marcus. What he knows may be of value to us when we least expect it.”
But although she spoke to the old man for another hour at least, in the end she admitted to Marcus that she had learned nothing beyond local legends of monsters, sandstorms, and lost caverns filled with eyeless snakes. The servants s
et up tents to shelter them from the winds, and as dusk came, the air quieted, the haze settled, and the stars shone with such brilliance that they looked close enough to reach up and steal.
Marcus took his stylus and wax tablet and sat cross-legged upon the ground, on a blanket, with a lamp burning at his right hand. He scrawled hasty calculations across the surface of the tablet before wiping it clean, muttering all the while.
Zacharias crouched beside him. “Can I learn to do this?”
Marcus replied without glancing up. “Can you write? Have you knowledge of numbers and sums and geometry? No? Then you must wait. I can only teach one step at a time. You must play Brother Lupus’ part now.”
“What is Brother Lupus’ part?”
“Cauda draconis. The tail of the dragon. Least among us. Be still.” It was hard to be still. He wanted what Marcus possessed so badly that his desire was like the grit: everywhere, rubbing in the folds of his skin and at the creases of the corners of his mouth, caught in his eyebrows and worked deep into his hair. Each time he shifted his clothing shed grit, and it filtered through his leggings and his boots to grind between his toes. He had a blister, too, although he had thought his feet too tough to develop anything but calluses.
No man was permitted to build a fire atop the sacred hill, and a cold night wind off the desert wicked away the day’s heat. Zacharias shivered under his cloak as he paced under the moon’s light. To the east distant pricks of light marked the walls of Qahirah, and he saw, surprisingly, the unsteady waver of a campfire in the ruins of Kartiako, briefly glimpsed, then lost. Had he only hallucinated those flames, or had they been extinguished? The barren flat lay so dark and featureless that it seemed more ocean than land. Their position out here, so far from human haunts, seemed precarious although Meriam had hired fully twenty retainers to accompany her. If bandits skulked in the lands hereabouts, surely they did not roam so far into the wasteland.
What was there to kill?
His boot scuffed the ground, and a small object rattled and rolled away from him, coming to rest where the ground sloped slightly up again.
Were those finger bones?
He shuddered and turned back toward the lamp in whose wavering light Marcus sat, with Meriam beside him, making his marks and wiping them clean while the old woman whispered comments. Elene paced among the stones, lifting a staff not longer than her arm and measuring it against the stones and the stars. All of them glanced frequently at the sky.
An unholy cry rose from the east, a moaning that trembled through the clear night air. Meriam’s servants leaped to their feet, but the locals shouted hysterically one to the next and grabbed staves and axes. One man wept.
That moan chilled Zacharias until he shivered, and yet he broke out in a sweat, staring into the darkness. There was nothing to see. A scent drifted over them, borne by the wind: stinking carrion steeped with the sweetness of honey, so reeking and foul that he gagged.
The caretaker appeared from the shadows that half drowned the stones and hurried over to the blanket where Marcus and Meriam worked their equations. He called out to the others, and the locals rushed in a group to huddle within the stones, deathly quiet and obviously frightened.
“No light! No light!” The words came in recognizable Dariyan, and the rigid mask of terror that tightened the caretaker’s eyes could be understood in any language. “Go! Go!”
Too late Marcus pinched out the wick. Meriam’s servants ran to fetch her and carried her within the stone circle as Marcus and Zacharias hurried after. An awful grinding, slithering noise rose from the east.
“Where is Elene?” cried Meriam.
The old man shouted words Zacharias did not know as he lifted his staff above his head. Light sparked from the stone columns. Threads danced between stars and earth to form a shimmering fence woven around the columns, and by that light Zacharias saw, sliding in and out of the light’s verge just beyond the stones, a massive shadow writhing and twisting, first a woman and then a monstrous snake.
The men clustered behind him moaned in terror, crying out “Akreva! Akreva!” and cast themselves on the ground as though prostrating themselves before the Enemy.
“By God’s Name, Meriam, what is that creature?” demanded Marcus.
“Where is Elene?”
A figure darted forward from the hillside where it had strayed, but the hideous woman-snake slithered faster than any earth-bound creature could move and cut off Elene’s retreat. The girl was stuck beyond the safety of the encircling spell, easy prey for the monster as it closed. She raised her staff, but it was a frail stick with which to fend off death.
The choking sound of grief and horror that came from Meriam’s throat catapulted Zacharias into action. He would not stand by as he had when the Quman had attacked the party guarding Blessing outside the walls of Walburg. He would not run away.
Better to die than find himself a coward again.
He grabbed a staff out of the hands of a cowering servant and dashed past the glimmering net of the spell. The threads burned where they touched him; cloth blackened; his skin stung and turned white.
The monster reared up before the stunned girl, its tail lashing. Its scales were coated with a noxious substance that gave off a phosphorescent glow. Its tail bore a barbed stinger, and it whipped its tail forward, and struck. Elene darted sideways. The tail thunked into the ground. Dust spattered. The monster opened its mouth to trumpet its rage, a high, horrible scream echoed off the distant hills and vibrated the stones. The threads of light sparked and wavered. Behind their net of safety, men shrieked in terror.
Zacharias jumped forward and whacked the monster across the coils as hard as he could. It reared back, twisting to confront him. Its body was massive, as thick as a tree trunk and rippling with muscles, and it was shiny pale and so grotesque that he wanted to cry, or vomit. The stench brought tears to his eyes. The long snake body bloomed into a monstrosity, the grotesque semblance of a woman with round breasts and narrow face but so crudely formed that it seemed an ill-trained craftsman had botched the job.
Elene’s voice rang out. “Hear me, Misael, Charuel, Zamroch. Come to my call. I invoke you, Sabaoth, Misiael, Mioael. Prepare for me a sharp sword drawn in your right hands. Prepare for me seven radiant lights. Drive this evil creature from our midst!”
It struck.
He was slow, unlike the girl. The tip pierced his shoulder. He did not remember screaming. Suddenly he lay on the ground and a cold swift burning blew outward from the sting, turning his flesh to stone. He couldn’t move.
It stared down at him, its youthful face like that of a girl but lacking all intelligence and emotion. It clacked sharp teeth together and drew its tail back for a second strike.
How strange, staring upward, that time should move so slowly. The creature had hair, of a kind, but in that last instant he realized that it was not hair at all but a coiling mass of hissing snakes writhing around its face.
A falling star flashed in the heavens. A burst of fire exploded before his eyes, and its brightness shrouded his vision. The monster screamed in such agony that the sound of it might as well have turned every soul there to stone. He could not move but shivered convulsively as that tail was dragged across him, drawn by what force he did not know, nor could he see, nothing except those heavy gray coils pressing their weight into his chest, the tail dwindling until the white stinger floated before his eyes, a bead of venom dangling from the barbed tip, ready to fall into his mouth.
It would burn off his tongue. He would never speak again.
The ground shifted under him. Hands gripped him and hauled him away over the rocky ground, then let him drop onto the hard ground as voices exclaimed in fear and excitement.
“It was a demon!”
“Nay, it was an angel, you fool!”
“It was a phoenix! Are you blind?”
“Not so blind that I don’t know lightning when I see it! That was no creature at all.”
“Gah, gah, gah,”
he said, but no words came.
“Is he safe?”
“He is stung, Sister.”
They conferred, but he could only stare up at the heavens where light burned just as it burned across his skin. He shivered, so cold. So cold.
“The old one says there is no cure for the sting of the monster?”
“So he says, but I am not so willing to give up on a brave man.”
When had it become so foggy? A haze drifted before his eyes. Yet those words blazed: a brave man.
Those words gave him heart.
“What do you suggest?”
“I am the only one skilled in healing among us. We will remain here while I do what I can.”
“We have no time for such luxuries, Meriam. In any case, the creature is wounded, but not dead. It may return.”
“Even if we go, you will still be in danger.”
“Perhaps. It is easier to protect one man than an entire retinue. You know I must change my plans because Brother Lupus deserted us. I can bide in Qahirah until Sister Anne sends a brace of soldiers to guard me, if that is necessary.”
“Soldiers cannot defeat such a monster.”
“Enough! You and Elene and your party must leave at dusk tomorrow.”
“Will you abandon him to death after he saved the life of my granddaughter?”
“Nay. He can be our messenger to Anne. He can still serve us, and in serving us may serve himself….”
The wind’s moan tore away the rest of Marcus’ words. Sister Meriam had called him a brave man.
It was better to die bravely than to live with shame.
It was better to die, but he lay there not precisely in pain but unable to move or see, with his skin on fire and yet not really hurting. He lay there and felt the sun rise, although the touch of light hurt him. They shaded him with a lean-to of cloth, and he lay in that shade while Meriam coaxed a bit of honeyed water down his throat, but the smell of honey nauseated him. That stench of honey-carrion that pervaded the monster welled up in his memory, in his throat, and he threw it all back up.