Relics of the Desert Tomb

by James Derry

  Jamal and Nemeah were oblivious. The young lady murmured, “Oh, Jamal. I am in so much trouble.”

  Sygne stopped crying out to Jamal. In the rapidly dwindling rational part of her mind, she knew that Jamal would never be able to hear her. This version of him was a memory—a part of an event that had happened probably more than ten years ago. The thing was, that didn’t matter to the Lurker in the Void. Time and space meant nothing to the Ancient Ones.

  The Lurker had always existed in that moment. It was still existing in that moment. Every moment. It wasn’t that Sygne was just now noticing it. It was that the Lurker had deigned to notice her.

  ‘Please. Please. Don’t look at me.’

  Then the Lurker in the Void spoke, only to Sygne. Its voice was less like a sound and more like a putrid taste in her mouth, combined with a sharp blow to her temples. The Firstspawn articulated itself with notes of pain and revulsion. Its words were incomprehensible, but its meaning was clear.

  NOTHING. NOTHING ENDS. YOU WILL SEE.

  ‘I don’t want to see!’

  YOU WILL SEE.

  Sygne’s attention was drawn to a flash of metal among the subtropical shadows of the garden. The Lurker had nudged her into seeing it. A long, curved blade swept aside a palm leaf, and then three armored soldiers slipped through the flowering jungle. Elite Guardsmen.

  The soldiers weaved between tufts of undergrowth that swirled lazily on the viscous breeze, making stealthy progress toward Jamal and Nemeah’s gazebo. The two lovers were kissing again; they had no idea that they had been discovered. Vice-Commander Eiglon stalked at the lead of the trio of guardsmen. His eyes were wide and gleaming.

  But Sygne was drawn past that gleam, to the black hole of Eiglon’s pupil. She was drawn down into it, into the deep, bottomless black. Into the Void—a yawning chasm where nothing had ever mattered. Where nothing would ever find her or save her. Just an eternal void. A lack of everything, except despair.

  NOTHING ENDS. YOU WILL SEE.

  ‘Please!’ Sygne screamed again. ‘I’ll do anything—let me out!’

  Jamal’s eyes snapped open, and he recoiled from Nemeah. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Hear what?”

  “I…” Jamal glanced around the gazebo. “I think someone’s here.”

  Nemeah hurried away from the banister. The burning luminary fell forward and tumbled into space. But it was attached to a piece of silk that caught the breeze. The fabric puffed open into a hemispherical canopy that lifted away from the hillside. It floated through the air, descending with the graceful ease of a fallen leaf. All across Gjuir-Khib, other flaming luminaries were drifting down toward the center of the Sjayl Valley. It would have been a beautiful sight—the Tribute Celebration for the dearly departed of Gjuir-Khib—except that, in the presence of the Lurker in the Void, it took on an air of chaotic disintegration. An entire city burning and collapsing in a downward spiral. The inevitable deterioration of time sped up and illuminated by flame.

  YOU WILL SEE.

  Jamal’s armor and his sword were propped against a cedar column. He dove for his blade and came up in a fighting stance. Eiglon had reached the threshold of the gazebo. His eyes flashed in triumphant outrage.

  “I knew it! As always, rumors prove true.”

  The two other guardsmen swept in at Eiglon’s sides, effectively blocking any means of escape. One of the warriors was Kalil. Eiglon shouted, “A half-slave! For you to touch a lady of royal blood… it’s a high crime.”

  “This is no crime,” Nemeah declared. “We are in love.”

  “Love with an Ardhian! There is no such thing!”

  Jamal stepped backward. He asked, “Kalil?”

  Kalil’s face remained grimly still. He showed no sign of offering help—no sign of even wasting breath on answering.

  “So it’s like that,” Jamal said.

  Nemeah whispered, “Jamal, please. Don’t do this…”

  Eiglon’s face broke into a grin. “I never get tired of saying this next part…” He took a deep breath and bellowed, “Guards! Seize him!”

  12 – The Abyss Gazes Also

  “Hell. Hell. We’ve fallen into Hell.”

  “Will you be quiet?” Jamal hissed. He had his hands planted on either side of Ohbo’s fat backside as the cameleer eased himself off the eave of the mausoleum and toward the sandy floor of the necropolis. It had taken Jamal a full minute to shake Ohbo back into consciousness, but since then, Ohbo had spent every second complaining or moaning about something.

  “The graves… And ghouls… This place has been turned into Hell!”

  “Ohbo! Shut up! I’m taking you to—”

  The cameleer let go of the edge of the mausoleum roof and fell into Jamal’s grasp. Ohbo wrapped his arms tight around Jamal’s neck and nearly choked him.

  “Ahh! My leg!” Ohbo cried.

  “Quiet. Please! Those mummies are going to hear you.” Jamal set Ohbo down on the ground, and the desert rat winced as he jarred his broken right leg. Jamal turned and let Ohbo jump onto his back. He carried him in a piggyback style toward the tunnel where he’d left Sygne.

  “Oww! Gently! My leg…”

  Jamal suddenly broke into a dash, weaving around a raised stone coffin. Ohbo flailed so badly at the abrupt change in direction that he nearly caused Jamal to lose his balance. Two blue-gray lizards scuttled across the sand, and Jamal stomped one and then the other before they could bite him—or, even worse, alert the zombies in some way. There was a satisfying crack and pop of tiny bones under Jamal’s feet. He glanced back to the mummified corpses gathered around their bonfire. They hadn’t noticed him. He hopped off of the lizards and hurried onward.

  “There are undead vermin living here,” he explained to Ohbo. “Well, not living, but you know what I mean. Lizards and spiders and snakes…”

  “This is Hell… This is Hell… Oh look, there’s a rope.”

  Jamal turned his neck, and his shoulder muscles cried out in protest. The desert rat was right; they had passed by a pile of Windsplitter’s dropped supplies. A coil of rope, a bow, and a quiver of arrows.

  “Ohbo! Good job. Maybe I’m not going to regret saving your life.”

  ***

  Sygne awoke in a smoky, red-hued space. For a moment she thought she was back in Tallasmanak, back in the present-day. But no—she was surrounded by mundane walls of loam brick. There was none of the usual Gjuiran aesthetic here; even they realized it was counter-productive to spruce up a dungeon. A flaming brazier squatted in the center of the room. The flames stretched high into the air, but they move languidly, like leafy stalks of seaweed undulating on a gentle tide. Sygne knew then that she was still immersed in the Lurker’s influence.

  Young Jamal lay on a slab of rock, stretched out before the dreamily slow fire. His wrists and ankles were chained. A wide leather restraint was cinched tightly around his midsection. Thick lumps of salve had been applied to battle wounds that ran across his deltoid, his forearm, and his thigh. Besides that, he was naked.

  Sygne remembered the fight in the aviary. Jamal against three of the best fighters in all of Gjuir-Khib. Outnumbered and unarmored, Jamal had put up a good fight. But he had focused most of his ferocity on Eiglon, and that gave Kalil and the other Elite Guardsman an opportunity to methodically deliver blows that left Jamal bleeding and slow. Finally Kalil tackled Jamal to the ground, and Eiglon knocked him unconscious with a stomp of his sandal. Sygne’s vision had blacked out as well.

  Now they were both in this dungeon. And they were not alone. Sygne could feel the presence of the Lurker in the Void, just out of sight, among the cobwebs in a corner of the room. It was a mote of deepest shadow. A speck, really. Barely more than an arm’s length away. A realization crept into Sygne’s mind that you couldn’t judge the Firstspawn by human metrics like size and distance. The Lurker in the Void still cloaked itself in all of the same celestial magnitude that Sygne had sensed in it when it
had dominated the entire night sky.

  NOTHING ENDS. The Lurker pressed its formless voice into Sygne’s head. YOU WILL SEE.

  She felt it stir. Was it coiling up to pounce—a brilliant black predator among the cobwebs? No, it was winding itself inward, twisting a hole in the weave of reality. She didn’t dare look at it, didn’t dare draw its attention any more than she already had. There was danger in gazing into the abyss, especially when the abyss was gazing back.

  Jamal groaned into wakefulness, straining groggily at his manacles. “Where? Who? Who’s there?”

  His eyes struggled to focus. He glanced past Sygne, toward that corner, into the void.

  ‘Nothing!’ Sygne shouted. ‘Nothing is there! Whatever you do, don’t look at it!’

  Jamal could not hear her. She reminded herself, ‘This is my dream. Jamal’s memory. It cannot reach him here.’ But she couldn’t even convince herself. The Lurker had smeared the boundaries between dream and reality—between past and present. Who knew what was possible?

  A man stepped around the brazier and stood before Jamal, silhouetted against the flames. Sygne recognized Eiglon’s voice. The vice-commander nodded to Jamal. “Young Demon. Let me be the first to welcome you to Hell.”

  “Where is Nemeah?” Jamal pulled futilely at his chains.

  “She will have her own examination,” Eiglon said. “Don’t you worry about that. Other kingdoms brag about justice being blind. In Gjuir-Khib, justice is a voyeur. She inspects the case from every tawdry angle.” Eiglon bent and cocked his head, assessing Jamal’s nakedness.

  “You bastard. Where’s the Inquisitor? You shouldn’t be here.”

  “The Inquisitor was more than happy to step aside and let me handle this interrogation. After all, I am a vice-commander, and hierarchy has its perks.”

  “I want the Inquisitor! I deserve a fair hearing…”

  “Oh-ho! Now you speak of propriety? You were caught redhanded molesting a lady of the court.”

  “I wasn’t molesting her!”

  “Ah. Is that your testimony? Do you say that she was a willing participant in these perverse acts?”

  “No. Leave her out of this.” Jamal fell back against the slab. The coppery smell of blood rose from the scarred stone, along with urine and vomit and worse odors. There was a slot in the ceiling that would allow smoke to vent out, and rain to fall in and sluice away the fluids of the formerly ‘inquisited.’ At the moment the skylight only let in the icy light of the stars. Sygne wondered if Jamal was thinking about his gods looking down upon him.

  “Yes,” Eiglon cooed menacingly. “Take a moment to breathe it all in. The smoke, the offal, the piss. You tried so hard to outshine me, and yet look at our positions now. You’re chained down in filth—where you belong, slave!”

  Jamal shook his head without looking at the Gjuiran. “I never tried to outshine you.”

  “That’s a lie! What was all that grandstanding you did at the Bazaar?”

  “I was trying to save lives.”

  “‘Save lives?’ You killed eleven free citizens, by the official count. And maimed Gozir-knows-how-many others!”

  Sygne saw a tear trace its way down Jamal’s face.

  Eiglon let the silence linger. He stepped to the side of the brazier, where a set of tongs protruded from its edge. He lifted the instrument, which was clamped around a flat, circular piece of viciously hissing metal. Sygne felt the Lurker convulse, as if it was titillated. The sensation insinuated its way into her head like the start of a foul head cold.

  Eiglon considered his options. “I might cut out your tongue for whatever foul offenses it has visited upon the Lady Nemeah, but that wouldn’t do. You will be a key witness in her trial, so you must keep your tongue. But measures must be taken—immediately—to ensure that the foul beast is muzzled.”

  Jamal craned his neck to see, and Eiglon turned the metal so that it was silhouetted flat against the fire. It was a mask. Eyeholes, nostrils, and a series of vertical slots that formed a death’s head grin.

  Eiglon brought the smoldering metal close to Jamal’s face. He turned it this way and that, as if Jamal might want to admire its hammered bronze surface. The mask had a high forehead, cloven at the top with a widow’s peak; thin, arched brows; and a straight, aquiline nose. Instead of idealized lips, the mask’s bottom section was formed from vertical slots that stretched down to form a long chin that would allow room for the wearer to move his jaw. Nothing but liquids and thin morsels of food would fit between those slots, but at least the wearer wouldn’t starve to death.

  “What do you think?” the vice-commander asked. “It’s quite a bit more handsome than the muzzle you wore when they carried you into the city.”

  Jamal snarled, and that made Eiglon fly into a rage. He jabbed the hot bronze at Jamal’s face. “I could sear this to your flesh right now! Graft it to you permanently!”

  Then, just as quickly, Eiglon seemed to settle into a beatific calm. He held up the mask so that he could study it himself. “Maybe that would be a blessing. You will finally look like a proper Gjuiran. Quite handsome, compared to that arrangement of lumps that you Ardhians call a face.”

  He thrust the tongs and the mask back into the brazier so that they sent up a flurry of embers. He shrugged. “But maybe not. There’s a chance—I am told—that you might die after the mask is applied. Blood loss and ill humors and all that. No…” Eiglon pulled another instrument from the fire. “I think we’ll leave the mask for now. And carry forth with a procedure that’s far safer and probably more effective.”

  Eiglon showed Jamal a stout, curved blade. It glowed with an ominous dark orange color. Jamal groaned and growled through clenched teeth.

  “Castration.” The vice-commander cocked his head in mock disappointment as Jamal cursed at him. “Don’t act so outraged. You had to know this was a likely resolution.”

  NOTHING, the Lurker muttered.

  Eiglon continued, “In fact, this probably should have been done long ago.”

  Sygne shrieked, but no one heard her. Jamal bucked against his restraints.

  NOTHING ENDS.

  Eiglon pressed his weight down upon Jamal to hold him still. “Do you know what the clergy call castration? ‘Divinity’s cure for man’s ills.’”

  With that, Eiglon pressed the sizzling blade to the tender webbing of skin where Jamal’s pelvis met his loins.

  ***

  Ohbo inhaled sharply as he saw Sygne lying unconscious in the tunnel. Jamal decided to take this as a sign of comradely tenderness instead of an accusation of abandonment and neglect. The ache in Jamal’s spine was already seeping away as he set the cameleer down onto the floor. They could get out of here; Ohbo would help…

  Ohbo shattered that goodwill in a moment by asking, “What did you do to her?”

  “What?” Jamal shook his head. “I didn’t do anything… A lizard…”

  Ohbo patted Sygne’s cheek. She looked gray in the dim light. “She’s been poisoned?” He corrected himself, “Venomed?” He called out in shock, “Look at this!”

  Jamal bent close and put a hand over his mouth. Three warts rose from the skin of Sygne’s forearm. They were taller than they were wide, and—like all warts—they were repulsive. They were veiled in a thin layer of a callous-like substance that gave them a stony appearance. Jamal thought of the tumorous rocks emerging from the undead of Tallasmanak. “Dammit. It’s the you-know-what.”

  Nothing but stark terror and blank incomprehension showed on Ohbo’s face.

  Jamal reiterated, “The You. Know. What.”

  “I know what now?”

  Jamal rolled his eyes. “The L. E. R—”

  “The Lurker?” Ohbo clapped his hands over his mouth, obviously horrified that he had been stunned enough to speak its name.

  “Yes.” Jamal patted the air, hoping the gesture would keep Ohbo quiet.

  Ohbo’s round face went slack. “Will she turn into a m
onster like those fiends out there? I couldn’t stand to see that!”

  “No. That’s not going to happen. I’m going to get her out of here.” Jamal trotted to the bend where the tunnel rose vertically. He stared up to the blue light of the sky. “Once she’s away from the you-know-what, then maybe the illness will fade. I’ll—”

  Sygne snapped into an upright sitting position. Her eyes popped open, and she shrieked loud enough to hurt Jamal’s ears. For a good five seconds the sound seemed to reverberate around the tunnel.

  Awareness slowly dawned in her eyes; then she focused on Jamal and said, “I understand now…”

  “What do you understand?”

  “It was horrible… What they put you through…”

  “Sygne,” Jamal gripped the scientician’s shoulders and shook her gently. “Where we are right now is very horrible. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Maybe it’s the you-know-what,” Ohbo said.

  “Yes.” Sygne registered that Ohbo was there. “The Lurker. But that’s not all. What I mean—”

  Jamal was irritated that Ohbo had butted in and interrupted his line of questioning. “Sygne. Are you talking about a dream? A vision?”

  Sygne shook her head and licked her lips. “It’s… I don’t know how to say it without…”

  “Try to focus.”

  Ohbo added unhelpfully, “The ghouls might have heard your scream.”

  “I… I…” Sygne stammered. “I know why… You say you lost a part of yourself…”

  “We need to—”

  “I know why… You say you can’t love anymore.”

  “Sygne. What do you mean? Just say it.”

  “Your… manhood. They took your manhood.”

  Jamal gripped Sygne tighter. Her blue eyes were brimming with tears. He glanced to Ohbo who seemed alternately horrified and titillated.