The Alchemists of Kush

by Minister Faust

  13 And so the boy commanded his belly to silence so that he might marvel at the tiny bird, which sank its beak into his finger. And he threw down the eggling bird, about to crush it beneath his foot. But it cried to him, hroo-hroo, hroo-hroo.

  14 So in his mercy the boy sucked upon his wound to draw forth blood, which he fed by droplets into the falcon’s opened beak.

  15 Then before him was a wild boy with hair mud-plaited like the upright ears of jackals, and seven jackals were behind him as his train. And he declared, “I am Yinepu, apprentice of the Sorceress, the boy who prowls the swamp lands and hunts what he chooses and is not hunted. Who are you, boy who feeds a falcon from his finger, boy who trespasses upon my hunting grounds?”

  16 And before the boy could answer, his falcon called out, hroo-hroo, hroo-hroo. And so the boy said, “I am Hru, the boy who revolted against murderers in the night of fire, the boy who stole a fang from the mouth of the Devourer, and with it killed a crocodile in the Swamps of Death to avenge a child, the boy who walks where he will, and fears not jackals or their boys.”

  17 And brandishing his captured fang, he retreated from the jackals and their boy until he found his nest, where he fed his falcon with his blood while he went hungry, and beneath a night sky dark without a moon.

  The Fourth Arit,

  also called Ancestor~I

  The ancestors send a mentor

  as a channel for their wisdom

  1 Nights passed and days passed, and the moon grew full, and Hru tended to his falcon chick, suckling it from his finger after foraging for himself. But the two boys in the Savage Lands were never far from confrontation, stalkers in turn stalked, weakened by their constant fear and rage, while ever more determined to annihilate the other.

  2 And on the night of greatest moon, the rangers met in darkness, shadowed Hru with monster’s fang fastened as a spearhead, and Yinepu with hungry jackals, teeth a-gleaming.

  3 And as they ran towards each other poised to render death, between them stepped a man who spoke a word-of-power, and the boys fell silent, and the jackals stilled, and they walked with him until they found the summit of a cliff, whereupon he invoked words of even greater might, and the boys beheld in wonder as the sun was born.

  4 Around them rose a cry: an academy of baboons chattered praises to the rising Glory. And the man whispered to them, “Fight with each other no more, but learn beside me how to tend a garden, so that you might one day raise up a world.”

  5 And they were dazzled by this man of wondrous magic, whom they then called “Master.” At his home he fed and clothed them, welcoming the falcon chick and band of jackals.

  6 The moon revealed and hid himself once, twice and many times. With lengthening bones and thickening muscles, the rangers grew in craft of making mud-bricks, baking them beneath the sun triumphant, while their Master taught them arts of measurement for the laying of the bricks and the expansion of his house into a larger compound and a garden.

  7 And the Master said to them, “The ancestors scatter their wisdom like a sower his seeds, and those who would feast must first sweat beneath the sun.”

  8 Foraging for their daily meals, the rangers found abandoned children wandering, mad from drinking water from the Swamps of Death, and they brought them to the Master, who chased the poisons from their bodies with herbs and fruits and words-of-power.

  9 And watching their Master, Hru tended to his falcon chick, and taught it flight, and Yinepu taught his jackals to be sentinels in the darkness while the compound slept.

  10 So the Rangers and their juniors grew their walls and inside them raised their garden. The Master counted bricks and time to make and cure them, and counted children as they came inside the garden for their labours, and counted days and nights and lessons yet to teach, measuring all so all could be made right and true.

  11 Through their raising of the first fortress and their rescue of the lost and weak, while one and two years passed, Hru and Yinepu transmuted rage to calm, and enmity to union, and became brothers.

  12 Children pulled from savagery but not yet civilised challenged Yinepu, demanding, “Where is your vaunted Sorceress, Apprentice? Or are you just like us, a wretched jackal-pup who begs for scraps from madmen?” His belly screamed for him to strike them down, but grasping for the Master’s rays, he left the fortress and was gone for days and nights as was his way.

  13 Hru, who did not know his brother had departed, asked, “Who are you, Master Measurer, who saves children lost in these Savage Lands?” The Master said, “A Measurer once saved me in these lands, who was himself saved in his time by another, and before him too, and ever since the first sunrise. My mission is theirs, for my ancestors and I are one.”

  14 In awe of Master’s wisdom, Hru asked the Measurer, “Why did the Destroyer kill my father, force my mother to flee, and bring misery upon the land?”

  15 The Master whispered unto him, “The truth is like the sun: with the same rays a bringer of life and yet a champion of death. Sustainer and annihilator, it grows the one plant full and sweet, while it shrivels the other one into crackles. The time to know will come when it is right, but it is not right yet.”

  The Fifth Arit,

  also called Father~Brother~Son

  Hru tracks Yinepu to the City of Dogs

  and learns his origins

  1 When the moon had shrunk and swollen and Yinepu had still not yet returned, the Master sent the ranger Hru with aid of falcon ward to find his comrade, for Hru was eldest of the Measurer’s clan, the bravest, most intelligent, the one to whom he’d taught the strongest words-of-power.

  2 And with those words young Hru traced Yinepu’s path by following scent of heart-smoke while the sun was overhead, then slept inside his own-spun shadow while Falcon drank the night with gold and onyx eyes.

  3 On second day, the ranger found a town with animals slain and blackened houses sacked and smouldering, where no child played, no father built, no mother ground their grain.

  4 On third day, Hru and Falcon beheld mounds of severed hands a-swarmed with flies and stench revolting. And Hru said, “Who is this Destroyer, who dismembers thousands, turning fingers, thumbs and palms to hills?”

  5 Finally on the fifth day, Hru, the boy who revolted against murderers in the night of fire, who stole a fang from the mouth of the Devourer and with it killed a crocodile in the Swamps of Death to avenge a child, who ranged the Savage Lands with only Falcon as his guardian, found a city of brick and stone, where dwelled ten thousand dogs, and one boy Yinepu, who cried while jackals stood their guard.

  6 “Why did you not return?” asked Hru, to which Yinepu said, “I went to find my teacher-Sorceress, to hunt as she dispatched me for the prizes she does seek. Yet where she is, I do not know.”

  7 Together they left the City of Dogs, and in the night, when shadow-magic of exhausted Hru did fail, a crocodile yearning vengeance for his brother crept towards the sleeping ranger’s body.

  8 Yinepu and his jackals leapt upon the monster, none strong enough to best the beast alone, but as a force united battling it until Yinepu’s fingers blinded it. And Hru said, “Truly, you are my brother.”

  9 When they returned, the Master Measurer embraced them, and they told their tales of rescue, to which the Master said, “Now is time for you to learn of the Destroyer.”

  10 The Master said, “Thirteen years ago returned Lord Usir, who’d ranged the world to spread his wisdom, to guide and teach the people of the Blackland once again, in justice and in wisdom with his Lady Aset, throne of power, at his side.

  11 “At banquet’s height, Warmaster Set, with flattery and with guile, bore a present, a glorious pyrite chest, in which he tricked the Lord to lie. Latches fastened, molten metal poured, stilled quickly, and blades chased guests who scattered in the night like chaff from scythe.

  12 “Lady Aset’s words-of-power slew a phalanx of the warlord’s murderers, but Set’s accursed pyrite charms crushed her speech to silence. His soldiers, slick w
ith blood, took Lord Usir’s body to the west, and butchered him in the north, sowing sacred members in the swamp, in soil, and in sand. And Lady Aset cried, wandered lost, and swore reckoning.

  13 “You, Hru, are son to widow Lady Aset and her martyred husband, our Lord Usir. Warmaster Set, who rules our Blackland with wickedness and terror, is your uncle, known to you as the Destroyer.

  14 “And you, Yinepu, Apprentice of the Sorceress, ranger of the Savage Lands, who hunts and is not hunted, jackal-guardian who raises of a Measurer’s fortress, you are the Destroyer’s son.”

  The Sixth Arit,

  also called Mother~Sister~Daughter

  Hru discovers the Sorceress

  whereafter he sins and suffers greatly

  1 The brother-bond was sundered by the Master’s revelation, and Hru retreated to the Savage Lands to find his souls.

  2 Once-faithful Falcon, ever braver in his flight and ranging ever further, one day flew beyond Hru’s vision and did not return by setting of the sun.

  3 Hru, fang-wielder, crocodile-slayer, child-rescuer, waited for his ward, but nightsky filled with stars and nothing else. At dawn the young avenger, invoking words-of-power bequeathed to him by Master Measurer’s wisdom, transformed himself into a falcon and cleaved the sky.

  4 Growing weary from his maiden flight but having journeyed far from his community, Hru alighted in the City of Dogs, Yinepu’s capitol, drawn by his Eye as honed by Master’s mind. There inside a knot of vines upon a throne of onyx sat the one he knew must be Yinepu’s Sorceress.

  5 She called to him, “Falcon, to me,” and without choice he fluttered to her, alighting on her arm, and she said, “Precious raptor, do you know me?”

  6 And though two years had passed since last his eyes beheld her face, and though she was disguised with plaited hair and markings strange, he knew at once she was his mother, Lady Aset, and knowledge of it transformed him back to human shape, which she admired.

  7 He demanded knowledge of her last two years, and she allowed his impudence an answer, that she’d been rallying an army, training bands of warriors and of warlocks, and tracking all the butchered members of her murdered husband, raising martyr-shrines at each chaotic grave, towards uniting all the sundry limbs by force divine to resurrect the Lord.

  8 Yet Hru’s belly burned with rage, for he discerned that Yinepu’s many disappearances for days were to aid this Sorceress, his mother, who’d abandoned him and chose another boy for lessons, words-of-power, protection and a mother’s holy love.

  9 “My son,” she said in her defense, “the war with cursed butcher Set divided us. I searched for you and found you not, but never for one heart-chime did I lose the scent of you, my precious child.”

  10 And Hru, his heart defiled by pain of lonely years, his spine bound by betrayal’s chain, slashed out with monster’s stolen fang, and cut off the head of Lady Aset, his own mother.

  11 And seeing the abomination of his crime, the doubly-orphaned matricidal boy fled into the labyrinths of dusk.

  The Seventh Arit,

  also called Replace~Elevate

  Master Jehu grants to Hru an amulet

  1 With ranger Yinepu and his jackals, the Master traced the path of Hru unto the City of Dogs.

  2 He found the fallen Lady Aset, and with apprentice Yinepu and the anointing skills he’d taught to him, uttered secret words-of-power that focused light of Moon to fuse the head and body of the Sorceress to restore her life to her.

  3 “Who are you?” she demanded, and he answered, “Master Jehu.”

  4 “I’ve heard your name, Lord Measurer, as have all the wanderers of the Savage Lands and far beyond. It’s said you harvest children after butchering their parents on the lonely walkways in the darkness. Are you the one who’s trapped my son inside enchantments foul of your accursed prison?”

  5 The apprentice Yinepu was filled with rage at accusations by his former master hurled upon his present one, and so his jackals’ hackles raised to greet the battle that his fury signaled.

  6 But Master Jehu bade him find his calm, like lotus flowers sipping of the morning mists.

  7 The Master said to her, “In my compound, lost, abandoned children find a home, as was offered me so many years ago, and before that by my master’s master, and his, until the time when cosmic egg first splintered and from it emerged the great Original. Your son’s imprisoned by enchantments, aye, but not my own.”

  8 And the Sorceress Lady Aset, with Master Jehu and ranger Yinepu, began the journey back to walled community of Measurer and his children.

  9 But the boy Hru was still not there when they returned. And Master Jehu, waiting for the night, used Moon as Eye to gaze upon the shadowed-blue and darkling world, and found the child trembling on an island in the Swamps of Death.

  10 Descending there, he found the boy Hru and tried to comfort him with news of how he and Yinepu had saved the Lady Aset from the swift decay of death, but Hru, ashamed and stricken, would hear none of it. He cried, “Who was the Destroyer?” And so the Master saw the boy’s devotion to Instruction.

  11 Using Moon as Eye again, the Master peered inside the shadow of Hru, and found a night of fire inside which children screamed and fled into the darkness; a swath of towns whose citizens were butchered inside blackened, smouldering homes; countless men of murderous knives and fingers cruel he’d met and never met who wished to strip his bones of meat; and the body of a headless mother on the sands beside a throne.

  12 “Your souls dwell here?” asked his Master, and Hru confessed they did. So Master Jehu took from round his neck a chain forged from heart of distant star. Speaking words-of-power, the Master said to Hru to clutch the talisman, whereupon his souls imprisoned slipped the grasp of all their tortures, and ascended to the palace of the rising sun. And Hru was free.

  13 But Hru, then faltering in his ascent, asked, “Why did Falcon leave me, Master?”

  14 And Master Jehu said to him, “All things meet the wind eventually, my son. For a thousand floods and thirteen thousand triumphs of the moon, I’ve found and gathered children wandering on these Savage Lands, fed them, held them, taught them, lost and grieved them.

  15 “My souls are weary, and if ever I’m to be Triumphant in the House of Stars among the souls of my departed small ones, you, Hru, must build not my humble compound, but a golden fortress, immortal and invincible, to shine at rising of the sun for all the world to gaze upon in awe.”

  16 “How do I begin, my Master?” asked the boy whose spine was yoked with misery of the knowledge of his crime. And Master Jehu answered him, “Remove the rotten reeds and worm-bit wood, and in their stead place gold.”

  17 And so it was that young Hru, ranger of the Savage Lands, rescuer of children doomed by crocodiles, murderer of his mother in the City of Dogs, began to carve a channel with the fang of the Devourer to drain the Swamps of Death.

  The Eighth Arit,

  also called Righteousness & Mastery

  The compound falls to war

  1 While Hru recruited all his might to drain the Swamps of Death, Master Jehu’s well-trained scouts ranged far to measure strength of gathering hordes of killers, for Set, the lord of war, designed annihilation for his foes.

  2 Across the Blackland and the Savage Lands, the Lady Aset’s fighters hid in nests like cobras did, yet cover would not save them from the ravenous inferno that approached.

  3 Uttering words-of-power, the Sorceress instructed Jehu’s children to assemble for the coming war and arm themselves, but the Master said to her, “These innocents must not be sacrificed upon the horror-plains of arrows, knives, and screaming butchery, but cultivated, nurtured, so they might generate abundance for the world.”

  4 And the Sorceress said to him, “When the Destroyer’s stuffed his belly full with children’s hearts, these young ones’ sole abundance will be meat-picked bones upon the tortured earth, or are you blind to this, o madman in the marsh?”

  5 So Master Jehu said to her, “I’ve se
en the wastelands left by soldiers in the villages, the devastated crops and knackered beasts, the starving, sobbing orphans, where the armies of the Warmaster had rested without slaughter. So tell me, Lady Aset, widow of the fallen Lord Usir, Sorceress-bonder of soldier-infants, who in those hinterlands was the Destroyer?”

  6 And the Lady Aset, her belly burning at the Master’s inquiry, fell silent at the sight of Hru the Labourer.

  7 The two killers, son and mother, gazed upon each other seeing all that might have been that never more could be.

  8 “Mother Aset,” said the Labourer, “these Savage Lands and Swamps of Death afflict the body of our people like a poison. I beg of you: Instruct these children in your secret means, so we might drain these Swamps to clear these lands for habitation, and drive the scale-bound butchers to western lands, and carve a channel straight and true for the Eternal River even here.”

  9 And even Lady Aset, fearing growing chaos brought by men of murderous knives and fingers cruel, heard the truth in her son’s words, and took their counsel.

  10 So she Instructed words-of-power to the lost who’d found the Master, and with her son Hru and nephew Yinepu as her two foremen, in righteous labour Jehu’s children carved great channels in the loam and then into the sandlands, and in the months while fetid waters sank to earth they gained their mastery.

  11 And lying at the bottom of the revealed valley was a cavern at whose centre was the sacred skull of Lord Usir.

  12 And Lady Aset wept.

  13 So she dispatched her son, transformed into a falcon, to fetch the members of the martyred Lord that Yinepu’d embalmed and she had hidden. He’d ranged across the Blackland and the Savage Lands to find them all, had even found the severed manhood that the oxyrhincus swallowed from the scattering of the Night of Butchering.