by Jim Melvin
However, the water was dark enough to provide concealment. Torg wasn’t in the mood to wander around naked the rest of the night, so he stripped off his clothes to protect them from the eels, wound them around the leather scabbard and stepped into the moat, holding the scabbard above his head so that his black outfit would not be chewed to shreds.
Instantly, the eels attacked his exposed skin. While most other beings would have been bloodily devoured, Torg was unharmed. It felt like goldfish were nibbling and tickling him, especially on his penis.
Torg walked into the chilly water up to his chin and then swam one-handed until he was able to stand again. The eels continued to gnaw at him, unsuccessfully. He veered to his right and waded in the direction where he believed the drawbridge to be, which was his best—and perhaps only—chance of continuing his mission. He couldn’t conceive of any way he could scale this wall without being discovered.
The crescent moon had long since set in the west, but at least half the night still remained. Torg would need every bit of darkness. He hoped to be back at the inn by dawn. Otherwise, he might have to hide in some hidden cranny, while his four companions fretted over his unexplained disappearance.
Torg shuffled through the water for what seemed like a very long time before the drawbridge came into view. Blessedly, the great wood bridge was lowered. But it also was heavily guarded. He could see more than twenty Sāykans in plain view, which meant twice that many were hidden.
There was a dry area beneath the bridge on the far bank. Torg lay there on his side and dressed, while the eels flopped and snapped in the shallow water just beyond.
The soldiers on the bridge talked among themselves, sensing no need for discretion. Torches lit the twin towers that framed the gateway. To enter undetected, Torg needed a diversion.
The iron bands that secured the wooden planks of the drawbridge provided handholds. Torg slithered beneath the bridge over the deepest area of the moat—and waited. Boots thumped above him. He heard laughter, one soldier teasing another. As quick as a snake, Torg reached around the edge of the bridge, grasped an ankle and yanked one of the women over the side.
The soldier screamed as she fell. The dark water broiled. The others raced to the edge of the bridge but were too late to save her. Meanwhile, Torg slipped through the gateway, a silent black shape.
For a moment, Torg’s mind was elsewhere. Sister Tathagata wagged her skinny finger at him, scolding him for his cruelty. He argued back that anyone who sided with Invictus was his enemy. But did the soldier have family? Friends? How much suffering would her death cause? It would take many lifetimes to cleanse Torg’s karma of this violent act. Torg tried to ignore his guilt, but he could not ignore that killing left him feeling dirty. He found himself envying Rathburt.
The gap between the fifth and fourth walls was the narrowest of all, containing rows of wooden barracks that had been built and rebuilt thousands of times while the nine walls had magically resisted disintegration, requiring little repair.
The majority of the Sāykans must have been asleep, but hundreds still wandered the pathways between the barracks. The cramped conditions worked to Torg’s advantage. He slipped from shadow to shadow, approaching the fourth wall in just a few quick steps. This wall was only ten cubits tall and unguarded. Torg vaulted over it.
Within the fourth wall stood the quarters of all nonmilitary personnel who resided permanently in the city—grooms, maids, cooks, kitchen helpers, servitors, heralds, minstrels, stewards and other laborers. Of these, most were women, while men, the inferior species, occupied only the lowliest positions. Any male living permanently within the fourth wall was either a eunuch—and not by personal choice—or a man used as a breeder.
Torg moved through this area easily. Almost everyone was asleep, and he saw few soldiers on the streets. The third wall was the same height as the fourth and contained many gates left untended to allow residents to enter the temple complex.
Strangely, the top of the third wall was lined with thousands of multicolored candles. Torg had never seen or heard of this before. Tendrils of wax coated the stone. Torg slipped inside an open door. The temples were dark. He noticed a lone woman in white robes standing on a ladder, replacing old candles with new.
Torg stood still and watched her for twenty long breaths. She appeared to be the only person in the immediate area. He came up from behind, kicked the ladder out from under her and caught her as she fell, suppressing her yelp with the palm of his hand. When she struggled, he compressed a pressure point behind her right ear. The girl went limp.
Torg carried her into a nearby thicket and held the Silver Sword against her throat. Her face was pale with fear, but when he removed his hand from her mouth, she did not scream or struggle.
“If you do as I say, I won’t harm you,” Torg whispered. “But if you cry out or try to run, I’ll kill you. Do you doubt it?”
She nodded, almost coolly.
“Good. Answer my questions quietly, and I give you my word you’ll live to see the morning.”
She nodded again, this time more vigorously.
“Why the candles?”
In a steady voice, she whispered, “There’s a special ceremony . . . inside the ziggurat. The candles are to entrap the spirits. They cannot pass beyond the holy light. At least, that’s what the witches tell us.”
“What kind of spirits?”
“The witches do not say. But whenever the witches perform their magic, the spirits are aroused.” And then she whispered, even more quietly: “And I’ve overheard the royal priestesses speak of undines.”
This stunned Torg. Undines were creatures that normally dwelled in the demon realm. When summoned into the world of the living, they entered flesh and multiplied until the host body swarmed with them. The result was a grotesque ruination of the mind and body that created a cannibalistic fiend capable of infecting others with their bites.
But Torg knew that summoning undines from the Realm of the Undead was difficult and time-consuming. Only powerful and learned beings were capable of the undertaking, which took more than a full day of undisturbed incantation. If a single step in the process were interrupted, the summons would halt their entrance. In the Realm of Life, undines appeared as black specks resembling tiny tadpoles, and—outside of living flesh—could survive only in cool, clear water. If a person or animal drank the water, they became infected. If enough undines were unleashed into the Ogha River near Senasana, the entire city could be endangered.
Torg believed he now understood what was happening, but he didn’t understand why. Turning Senasana into a city of fiends made little sense . . . unless . . . someone planned to unleash the newly formed monsters on nearby Nissaya?
Torg needed more information, but the girl in the white robes—probably a lowly apprentice—would not have the answers. He pressed his face against hers and breathed blue-green vapor into her mouth and nostrils.
“Niddaayahi,” he whispered. The girl went so limp it was as if she were pretending. Torg laid her near a hedge and covered her with fallen leaves, leaving just the tip of her nose exposed. While under the effects of the magic sleep, she probably would not awaken until the next day.
Torg left her and proceeded toward the second wall.
29
Soon after the wizard was gone, the girl sat up and smirked maliciously. Then her pale body twisted, shrank and blackened. In its place a raven appeared—and it fluttered into the sky, following Torg’s progress from above. It stunned Vedana how easily she had fooled the father of her latest child. However, she was disappointed to discover that the poison she had magically spewed into his flesh during their lone sexual encounter in the bowels of Mount Asubha somehow had been removed. She could have controlled him more easily if the poison were still in his body. But this was not the end of the world. Her plan was proceeding well enough, regardless.
In order to achieve ultimate success, she needed to keep the Death-Knower alive—at least, for now. His crazy
wanderings inside Kamupadana were threatening her plans, so she would have to lend a hand—or wing, if necessary—to make sure he didn’t stumble into something that was too big for his britches.
This batch of undines wasn’t her idea, anyway—though what Invictus planned to do with her wicked little creatures was beyond her comprehension. Of course, the spoiled little Sun God hadn’t asked for her opinion, now had he? Why was everyone always stepping on her turf? If they would just move aside and let her run things, then the worlds would be a better place. With Vedana as queen, life would be one big party. Why was she the only one who got it?
30
As Torg headed for the second wall, he fretted over how much time remained before daylight. Was it enough? He wasn’t sure.
At thirty cubits, the second wall was the third tallest and third most heavily guarded. While the ninth wall was ten miles long, the second was only a mile long with each side of the square measuring eight hundred and eighty cubits. Torg had a mind for numbers and remembered this even centuries later. The royal priestesses, ancient rulers of Kamupadana but now eager servants of the Warlish witches, occupied four castles within this wall.
The royal priestesses were lore masters. Their magic came from spells and incantations, not from innate ability. Stripped of books, talismans, wands and weapons, they became quite ordinary. But the extent of their knowledge was not. The priestesses had the lore—and the witches the power—to summon the undines. Together they were a formidable pairing.
Three iron portcullises, suspended by chains and lowered into deep grooves, defended the only visible gateway through the second wall. Torg lay in the shadows and explored his options, admitting he had few. Scaling the wall would be difficult if not impossible; it was too smooth and sheer. And if he tried to force his way through the gateway, he would attract far too much attention. A pair of guards stood outside the first portcullis, and he knew many more would reside within.
A paved road extended a thousand paces from the third wall to the second. From his hiding place, Torg watched the approach of a group of soldiers, each bearing a silver pentagram on her breastplate. The soldiers escorted a covered litter carried on long poles by sixteen eunuchs, who wore brown cloaks and straw sandals and whose heads were shaved. A Sāykan captain blew three blasts on an ivory horn. In response, the first portcullis creaked upward. Several soldiers emerged to greet the captain. Torg was close enough to hear their discussion.
“We must be permitted to enter,” the captain said. “We bear evidence of a conspiracy.”
“Ur-Nammu has ordered that none shall pass within the second wall tonight,” one of the guards said. “Something big is going on in the ziggurat, but it’s all hush-hush. What’s your conspiracy?”
“See for yourself,” the captain said.
The guard lifted the curtain and peered into the litter. Then she stepped back, amazed.
“Pass through. We will lead you to the front steps of the temple.”
Just then, one of the guards on the wall walk above the gateway let out a shout. A large black bird had streaked from the sky and taken a chunk out of her ear. Torg heard more shouts as the raven attacked again, prompting laughter. The guard drew her dagger and slashed at it, cursing. The eunuchs didn’t seem to notice when the weight of the litter increased by more than twenty stones; they too seemed to be enjoying the unexpected entertainment, though they did not laugh.
Archers took aim at the bird, but its movements were so frenetic they could not even loose an arrow. As if losing interest in its quarry, the raven swerved away, flew down along the wall and zoomed past the litter, cawing loudly before soaring back into the sky.
More laughter followed. Finally, the guards ordered the eunuchs forward, and they carried the litter through the gateway. Torg hung from its underside, clinging to iron bands. His view was limited, but he could see the lowest steps of one of the castles about a hundred paces to his right. Soon they would pass within the first wall and approach the most ancient edifice in the known world.
The ziggurat towered more than three hundred cubits above the ground and was shaped like a pyramid with receding tiers built upon a square platform. When Torg had first seen it centuries before, he had remarked that it resembled a gigantic layered cake. The witches had not been amused.
From the outside, the ziggurat contained only one known opening—a massive set of double doors on the ninth story. A wide stairway led up to that entryway. Further enhancing its exotic appearance, the ziggurat had no windows. In their place, thousands of fist-sized holes punctured the walls. When the double doors were bolted shut, the building was impervious to attack from anything other than an army of snakes. Even so, it had not been designed to be a fortress. Whoever built it had intended it as a place of worship—to gods long forgotten, even by the Sāykans.
Torg’s grip on the underside of the litter had been precarious from the start. But if he let go, hundreds of soldiers would discover him. Just when he thought he could hold on no longer, the party passed within the first wall, rejuvenating his resolve. The base of the ziggurat loomed just a few dozen paces away. When they started up the stairway, Torg let out a silent sigh of relief.
Finally they reached the ninth story, and the iron doors creaked open.
“We must see Ur-Nammu,” he heard the Sāykan captain demand.
“No one may enter,” a female voice answered.
“We wouldn’t be so rude if the urgency of our mission did not require immediate attention,” the captain said. “If we cannot see Ur-Nammu, then allow us to present our evidence to Jākita-Abhinno or one of the other witches.”
Whoever greeted them turned and spoke to someone inside the edifice. After a heated exchange, she allowed the caravan to enter a chamber containing hundreds of lighted candles.
Just before the doors clanged shut, a burst of wind swirled through the opening, though the night was otherwise calm. This extinguished the candles and caused the room to go dark, except for dim pricks of starlight peeking through the fist-sized holes. Panic ensued, and the eunichs dropped the litter to the floor with a loud thud. But Torg had already used the confusion to his advantage, rolling out from beneath the litter and then crawling unnoticed to the far wall. Once a few of the candles were re-lighted, swords were drawn. But Torg now crouched in a corner, unseen.
“Hold . . . hold!” the captain said. “We are not enemies . . . hold!”
“What happened?” the woman who had greeted them shouted. “What devilry have you brought with youuuu?”
“None of which I am aware,” the captain said. “But even without devilry, my tidings are not good. Look within the curtains and see for yourself.”
Torg recognized the greeter’s voice. It belonged to Jākita-dEsa, one of the hag servants of Jākita-Abhinno, whom Torg imagined was now the most powerful Warlish witch in the world now that Chal-Abhinno was missing. All Warlish witches used the surname Abhinno, which meant witch in the ancient tongue. Their hags used the same first name as their assigned master along with the surname dEsa, which meant servant.
This Jākita-dEsa was the most powerful of her master’s brood. She also was the most attractive, locked forever in a state of beauty—which is why Torg remembered her so clearly. To those outside the coven, this would have been considered a stroke of luck, but to the hags, neither eternal beauty nor ugliness was superior. Beauty had the advantage of seduction, but ugliness inspired fear. Both were powerful weapons.
Jākita-dEsa peered into the litter, but Torg was not in a position to see what lay within.
“How did they die?” Jākita-dEsa said.
“The merchant appears to have ended his own life,” the Sāykan captain said. “The hag was struck in the back by a dagger. I might be wrong, but the force and accuracy of the throw has the feel of a Tugar.”
The merchant? So you are brave, after all.
“Issss it possible a Tugar is in the city without our knowing it?” Jākita-dEsa said.
“O
ur contacts believe the desert warriors haven’t ventured north of Senasana,” the captain said. “But a single Tugar—perhaps an Asēkha—might have been sent to spy on us. If that’s true, they might know more than the witches or priestesses believe. Do you still desire to thwart us?”
“Thwarting the Sāykans has never been my desire,” the beautiful hag said. “What you do not sssseem to understand is that the witches and the priestesses are—how shall I ssssay it?—indisposed. I could not interrupt them, even if I wanted to.”
“Very well, sister,” the captain said, with an air of concession. “Nonetheless, I will triple the guard within the first gate. The ill wind disturbed me. This would not be an opportune time for the ziggurat to be breached.”
“I agree,” Jākita-dEsa said. “Let ussss rush to our duties.”
As their banter was coming to an end, Torg moved quickly downward and soon had descended to the sixth floor. In his wake, one witch, a pair of hags and four soldiers lay dead on the smooth stone steps of a winding interior stairway leading to the bottom of the edifice. To Torg’s dismay, he had found no place to hide the bodies.
The walls of the dark stairway were lined with marble statues, alternating between gorgeous women and hideous crones in a variety of poses. These were relatively new to the ziggurat, the witches having placed them there after taking control of the ancient edifice. Torg took a liking to them, but not for their artistry. Instead, they provided numerous nooks and crannies for him to hide. And yet he already had been twice discovered: first by the witch and hags, who had stared at him with puzzled expressions before their heads left their bodies, and second by guards striding up the stairs to relieve others stationed above.
