Voices in Crystal

by Mary R Woldering

  “I am Marai, son of Ahu of Ai. My birthplace was in Ai, but this place was my home since I was a child. My sister lived here...with her husband Sheb and two half-grown boys. There were a dozen and a half more and eight children.” Marai droned, trying to control the increasingly murderous thoughts from forming in his head. “I have no battle with you. I just need water. Tell me if you know of the clan that was once here and I will move along.” The shepherd wanted to fight.

  Against four I could be victorious, but nearly thirty? Marai r realized he wasn’t going to get anything resembling a true answer from them. They knew it too, and continued stalling.

  “Hmm...lying again, in front of so many?” N’ahab-Atall chortled in his disbelief, wagging his head sarcastically while fingering the obscene blade with his left hand. A different knife, drawn by the thief’s right hand, suddenly found the shepherd’s tight belly. The opponent’s rat-eyes stared up confidently.

  What!? Twin-handed?...fast, too Marai realized the knife decorated with the ravished goddess was, in his case, a perfect distraction. His gifted life could have come to an end right then if the leader had intended to kill him. Knowing he was still being toyed with, however, didn’t soothe him. N’ahab-Atall inspected the shepherds’ new garments and the handfuls of jewelry his lackeys had taken from him moments before. Marai noticed Urzeb never offered to show the bag containing the “Children” to his leader. Perhaps he could turn one man against another if he mentioned that.

  “Pardon me if I don’t believe you, but you’re not something we see every night.” the leader paced, almost nervously, eyes down most of the time, feigning disinterest. “With all this finery on you, you just might have men camped over the hills waiting to take us all...” the brigand mused half-aloud.

  Marai wondered if he could, instead of reading these men’s lives, send them the thought that he had dropped out of the sky ...that he was indeed a god who had come to punish them for their lives of cruelty. He felt the laughter building in his belly for a moment. It was dark, sonorous and evil.

  I am he who lurks in the dark night...your souls are mine... his thoughts whispered, half in jest.

  The tall Kush enforcer, who had been standing half a couple of paces behind the leader, stiffened in a sudden, unexplainable panic. He began to yammer words of an incantation of protection, as if he had become possessed.

  “Petbe walks! Kill Him! Demon!” The Kush raised own curved blade high for a downward thrust.

  Marai whirled, instinctively blocking the blow with his crossed forearms. A sizzling crackle of dark lightning leapt from the stone beneath the surface of his brow followed by a red thunderbolt that growled out to the flat of his arms.

  The man screamed in horrible agony. His blade, having never reached its mark, fell to the sand. He whimpered in pain, praying to his goddess as he tried to protect his gore dripping hands and arms but both of them had been snapped backward and twisted several times into bleeding knots with white juts of broken, exposed bone showing. Every bone in both of the man’s’ hands and in his lower right arm had been shattered.

  The loose ring of men convulsed backward in shock for a few stunned seconds, staring at their companion. Two men near him scurried the tall man away to his tent.

  Marai stared, horrified.

  When the man tried to strike him, his thoughts cried out “no”. Just that thought turned the force of the enforcer’s attack, and his forearms, inside out.

  N’ahab-Atall’s face flinched once and set. He’d seen plenty of mayhem and battle in his life. Marai sensed the leader was afraid of him now, but couldn’t let his men know it. As the prickle of lightning around him faded, the shepherd continued sensing the leader’s thoughts.

  Sorcery! N’ahab-Atall’s thoughts flashed his confusion over why his skilled enforcer had stupidly attacked this big prisoner without any reason or plan. Now what set old Chibale off? Did he panic, when the advantage is clearly ours? Sorcery! He took a step in toward Marai, knife firmly gripped and pushing, daring Marai to hit him with another thunderbolt before he found his words.

  “Oh...You’re a sorcerer, then?” the leader tried to quiet the growing rumblings of worry and superstition in his ranks.

  Some of the men grabbed their own amulets and began to look around for ways to escape the inner press of men closing in on the prisoner they has taken. Others wanted his blood.

  N’ahab-Atall knew if he didn’t calm his mysterious captive soon, someone else would try something equally stupid.

  “No, I’m not.” Marai frowned, pursing his lips firmly. He felt the lightning inside him gathering and circling like eddies of a great storm beginning to build. It was a hidden thing, foreign to him at first. Wolves like these men wouldn’t dare strike as a team in a windstorm, but the leader’s thoughts were right. One by one, some of the men might try to find that weakness so the others could fall on him once he was wounded.

  The changes the children had made in him had merely refined his former instincts. He was a shepherd defending his lambs from wolves and nothing more. The darkness was imagined...or was it?

  “Look...” Marai began again, still shaken from everything he had just seen. “This djin follows me...an unwanted guardian” He attempted. Words had never flowed easily from his shy and halt lips. The Children of Stone hadn’t changed that about him. “I don’t even want this station now. I’m on my way to Kemet...a place called White Wall where I will find the stronghold of the god Ptah. “I tell you, this was once my Father’s place, but l know you have it fairly. I’ll just trade a few things and be on my way.” Marai battled the disgust rising in his heart.

  One inner voice shouted for him to fight and kill them all...to honor his sister and her family...to let the injury of the enforcer be the starting point of vengeance. Another voice insisted on peace and avoidance.

  “You expect me to think all you want to do is slip though us? After you’ve fed me a story of having been brought up here with your family? N’ahab-Atall laughed, wanting to show his foe he was still at ease.

  The outer perimeter of men were returning from having examined the enforcer’s ruined hands. They were shaking their heads, an expression of doom and horror on their faces that said the man’s blood would be fouled by his marrow and his arms now needed to come off if he was to live.

  “You’re lying and worse yet, you’re not even a skilled liar. I’m amazed you got this far without more of your sorcery.” The leader stroked and fingered his amulets in selfprotection. He signaled men to grip Marai a little tighter and begin moving him further from the center of the encampment to a place where his men would have easier access to him if he tried to “attack” again. “No man could have resisted taking this beautiful place...” N’ahab-Atall suddenly crouched back with his hands on both weapons as if he anticipated movement. “What we do is as honorable as what goes on any day. If a man doesn’t have balls enough to protect his place through either guile or goods, he loses it to someone who can protect it and produce the tribute the king wants.” The leader paused, framing his thoughts. “The trade with the people here was firm, as I recall, so whatever you think happened to them, they deserved it for breaking their word. Besides... it happened a long time ago...What amazes me, is now you come out of the wilderness all by yourself after five years to look for your sister?” N’ahab-Atall’s voice almost purred in delight. “Can you come up with a better lie?!” He took another step back, just so he would be better surrounded by his men.

  Five...Marai jumped, feeling the earth start to yawn beneath him. The leader of the thieves sensed his shock and continued to goad him with greater intensity. He knew his men were paying attention by this time. He just needed to give them a signal.

  “Oh...and I do think I remember that woman.” The leader paced a step or two then turned sharply. “And what if she was here? What even if I kept her for a while til I got tired of her?” He mused, half under his breath. “You know... she liked us, she did. I think I remember she was gasp
ing for a real man.” N’ahab-Atall turned with a little laugh, stroking the mount of the goddess figure knife on his hip. He spat near the shepherd’s foot. “Most women do, you know but, I let her run off when we were done with her...looked the other way when she took her worthless boys and that poor excuse of a man with her. I really don’t know of her after that. You may as well look to the wind.”

  Marai started to fall on him without a second thought, but saw the signal given, just as if it had been broken into several pieces of frozen time: eyes up and then right. A man who had been standing behind him suddenly pierced himself with his own sword and fell, twitching and gurgling, to the sand. He died with his long, bronze blade sticking wetly from his back.

  Marai had seen the man move, almost imperceptibly, and sent the thought:

  Turn it back on yourself... Turn back your blade!

  N’ahab-Atall whirled in defense, both of his knives drawn against the attack that never came. His weight shifted back again and he toed the sand at his feet. He averted his eyes, wary of looking his strange captive in the eye, in case a spell would be cast on him too. He was wondering why his men were losing their wits to this “fancily dressed stranger. His men milled about, inspecting their fallen cohort, filling the air with a constant din of laments and surly threats. Suddenly, the men holding the shepherd released him, backing away. They were waiting for their leader to signal again, but not willing to go into death over his order.

  N’ahab-Atall urged Marai to come to a more private area near the watering place, disturbed that the “killing” had been so effortless and that the shepherd was numb to all he had done.

  “Very well, take what you need for your journey and be gone. Cost me no more...” The leader sighed. The sunrise had grown into a scarlet slit, like a wound brimming with blood.

  As the two men walked to the water to make a deal, Marai recognized the leader was using the same underhanded courtesy he had seen in his vision of the dealings with Sheb, and before that, poor forgotten Naim. He knew N’ahab-Atall intended to separate him from the crowd. Once the thief calmed his captive, by convincing him the dead man was a drunken fool he had wanted to be rid of anyway, he hoped Marai would let down his guard. He would have a chance to wound him. Then the rest of his men could close in on him like wild dogs.

  The shepherd stroked his smooth, silver beard and turned his attention to the horizon’s growing band of orange. The thought of wanting to be on his way to the next wadi and then to Kemet’s East Gate was beginning to overwhelm him.

  The man said five years. Five...Marai thought. Wadi-Ahu had become as dead to him now as the father who had given it a temporary name. Sheb, Houra and all of the rest of his family were vanished. Some of the tribe were dead. At the moment, he didn’t know which ones were gone from earth. If he thought of the misery and the suffering these men had caused, the shepherd knew he would have to stay long enough to kill every one of them.

  The day will be a hot one for the cool season. If I stay in the hills much of the way...His thoughts darted. Houra and the boys are alive... Sheb, too, I think. Maybe they met up with some of the others. I can feel that much.. He told himself, not listening to the further unfolding of N’ahab-Atall’s plans for him. The leader argued his point, pacing back and forth by the water with the big man.

  “Or....We need a wizard sometimes...Now you have defeated Chibale...the old fool...” N’ahab-Atall suggested, looking almost earnestly into his tall captive’s eyes. “Wealth, women and more could be yours...whatever you wanted...provided you are working for the right men!” The leader took another half-step back, to see if there might be a hint of agreement.

  Marai almost wanted to laugh. If the leader of this ragged band of thieves had thought the shepherd was a poor liar, Marai certainly felt his captor knew nothing of bargaining. Apparently, from what he had envisioned, the man would start under the pretense of a bargain, but quickly threaten anyone who seemed vulnerable by showing off his display of well armed men.

  “I said I’m not or a wizard or a sorcerer...” the shepherd reminded the thief. “If I were ... I wouldn’t even need to trouble you for supplies. Everything could be mine the moment I wished for it.” Marai thought for a moment of the way the Children of Stone had created food, drink, and clothing from the air when he had been on their vessel, wondering if he would eventually learn how to do that.

  N’ahab-Atall’s head jerked back, threatened and quizzing. He wasn’t used to being refused.

  “Even if I agree,” the shepherd continued, “the others could just slit my throat the moment I slept, the way you tried to do with my cousin Naim...” Marai knew the master thief’s hand was tightening on his good stabbing dagger and that he, having learned nothing from the death of his man or the injuring of his Kush enforcer, would try to kill him as soon as he could distract him again. The shepherd felt sick to death that he had even decided to come to his old home at the station in the first place. “I’m sorry. This was all a mistake.” Marai sighed, feeling increasingly ill. Even if he left now the travel to the next wadi would be in the full heat of the day. He shook his head in dismay.

  “Forget the water” he whirled backward from the leader of the brigands, bouncing into a sudden squat. Grabbing a handful of dust, he threw it into the man’s eyes. “Forget you even saw me this morning.” As he flung the red earth, the image of Ilara’s burning bones filled his thoughts again, demanding justice. He still wanted to kill everyone.

  “What the...why you...” N’ahab-Atall dodged the clot of dust and lunged to seize his escaping quarry. As he did, one of his hands tangled in his gold and beaded necklaces. With a wide-eyed, faint whimper of shock more than pain, the leader fought to free his hand, but managed to get the other hand caught in the golden chains. He pulled and struggled, but each move tightened and wrung the heavy strands that held his myriads of useless amulets. Each struggle tightened the chains solidly around the leader’s neck. A cruel satisfaction welled in the shepherd’s chest, for just an instant, as he watched.

  N’ahab-atall’s knees buckled beneath him as he realized his plight. His eyes begged.

  Marai envisioned the image of this man raping a screaming and struggling Houra while his men held her down then getting up and beckoning for another of his me to enjoy her. He saw it as clearly as if he had been one of the men drinking and trading her around. He saw the way the men made Sheb and the boys watch what they did, then the way they took turns punching the three of them whenever one rallied enough to try tearing himself loose from his bindings. Marai sent that image into the struggling man’s soul, stamped with his own satisfied grin that before he died, he would feel all of their pain as well as his own.

  N’ahab-Atall pitched, twisting and squirming, to the sand, his eyes bulging and reddening from blood welling up in them. His face mottled purple. In the last moment before the chains cut through his skin, his neck crunched so violently that blood erupted from his nose and mouth in a fine, gasping spray. His black rat-eyes filled with sorrowing acceptance. The rest of the men closed in like a swarm of angry bees.

  The shepherd never understood until the end of his days, why he hadn’t run when he had the chance. He had to stare, locked in a spell of horror edged with delight. His arms flailed into a defensive stance for only an instant. The blackness surrounding his heart descended back out of the sky and through him as if he had become a sucking vortex of energy that blots out all light. He saw all of the attackers strengths and weaknesses at once, turned toward the men and strode into the crowd like an advancing storm front.

  Knives thudded into his cloak and struck his flesh, but never pierced his flesh.

  Marai fell on the men with the grace and savagery of a mauling lion, flinging several of them to the ground. Stomping one foe’s neck, he felt it crunch like dry wood. On the recoil, he swatted another so hard that his head spun fiercely enough to break his neck. Two men who attempted to stab at him, killed each other...their knives found each others hearts. He cont
inued to walk among the men, defending himself. All of his thoughts slowed and separated, second by second so that everything anticipated as if it had been designed like a dance. The shepherd parted the thieves and pushed them away with fatal skill until a dying curse and a rustle of twitching corpses on the reddened sand signaled the onset of the final silence.

  In the very last moment, the shepherd entered the tent where Chibale, the Kush enforcer lay cowering in the corner, nursing his already fatal wounds. The man who had brought him in to bind his hands suddenly turned on him and strangled him, then slit his own throat.

  Leaving the tent, Marai knew the only weapon he had used had been one of his own will: and the feeding of the mens crimes back through their own souls to break them and make them turn on each other. What felt like a vortex of wind, suddenly lifted from him and dissipated. He collapsed, exhausted.

  In a brief, spent moment, a trace of wind tugged at his sweat and blood streaked hair. Through caked, sticky eyes, the man of the sand stared dully at the golden sky now swimming with the circling of vultures. He crawled, drained and weary, from the mound of fly-festooned dead men. He knew he must have fainted. It was hot and near noon now. The tug of wind he sensed had actually been the first vulture’s beak pulling at his clothing to see if he was dead.

  Hyenas chattered, growing ever closer.

  Marai stood on unsteady legs and reeled backward toward the pond. His fine clothing was shredded and hard with dried gore.

  Dead... the shepherd replayed the fight, which had only taken a few moments yet seemed as if it had taken an eternity. And I? Ashera, Oh my sweet Ashera-Goddess, why did you speak to my heart to make me avenger, and not lover? As in the legend, do I earn your bed this way? They deserved an even crueler end... but...