Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  The turmoil had awakened the prophet Dzardrusha from his reverie, and he now faced the assembly of his enemies. He looked long and hard at the face of Isfendir and then shook his head sadly. He turned to the Karpan. "Zuvanosha, slave of the darkness and leader of the ignorant, wind tightly your turban upon your deathbed, for long is the fall from the Bridge of the Separator to the House of the Lie."

  Zuvanosha still held the sword, dripping with the blood of Jamnaspa, and as he walked toward Dzardrusha he raised it above his head, saying, "I shall pray that the daevas catch you when you arrive, you old fool." And then he swung the sword around in a vicious arc and severed the head of the prophet.

  Zuvanosha stared down at the corpse of his enemy, reveling in the moment of victory and vengeance, and then turned to the Turanian khan. "Kill the Magos, and then let us depart."

  "But no servant of the daevas," Nushak smiled, "for he is of a noble lineage, is he not? His family will pay much gold for his life."

  Zuvanosha shrugged. "As you wish, Nushak. It is of no matter to me."

  The Turanians and the Karpans parted company after leaving the great Temple of Balkh, the Karpans returning to their own daeva temples and the bandits returning to their nomad settlement. It took the Turanians three hours on horseback to reach their camp in the wild hill country north of Chorasmia. They had bound both Isfendir and the traitor hand and foot and had slung them over the backs of two horses. Isfendir spent the three hours in prayers of shamed repentance, trying to calm his nerves by telling himself that he would neither fall from the horse and break his neck nor be tortured by the Turanians; and he tried to soothe his conscience by telling himself that Dzardrusha was an old man and would have died soon, even if Zuvanosha had not cut his head from his body. But neither effort was availing, for his fear remained and his shame remained.

  When they reached the Turanian camp, a motley nomad village of campfires and yurts, redolent of offal and unwashed people, Isfendir and the traitor were pulled roughly from the backs of the horses and, still bound, were cast into the same yurt to await the morrow. For Isfendir, the sunrise would see a message carried to his clan, to the Magaya. For the traitor, the morrow would see his wrists and ankles and head tied to five horses, which would be whipped to run in different directions. Or so all thought, save the traitor, who sat in the yurt and stared at Isfendir with an expression of bizarre merriment on his tired face. Isfendir tried not to look at the traitor, but he could not avoid listening as the other man asked, "You are priest?"

  Isfendir nodded nervously. "Yes." The man’s accent was peculiar and Isfendir could not identify it.

  The traitor laughed. "I too am priest. Was priest. No more. Was priest in Egypt far from here, long time ago. Was Aton priest, Pharaoh Akhnaton priest." The man laughed bitterly.

  Isfendir could not keep himself from looking over at his fellow prisoner who sat, bound as he was, upon the earthen floor of the yurt. "You are not a Turanian?"

  "No," the traitor replied. "Egyptian. Aton priest, long ago. Horemheb come, Akhnaton killed, old gods return. Aton priest Menereb become Amon priest. Help Horemheb kill Akhnaton, help Horemheb kill Aton priests." The man leaned forward and said earnestly. "You remember, Ahura priest, you remember words of Menereb. Important, important! You remember, Ahura priest!" Isfendir turned his head away and tried to ignore him. The fellow has lost his reason, Isfendir thought to himself.

  Soon it was night, and as the campfires of the Turanians grew dim and then went out, the full moon floated in mute majesty in the dome of heaven, bathing the world with its cold light. Isfendir could not sleep, and thus it was that he was awake to hear the traitor scream in pain. He looked over at the other prisoner in the yurt and strained his eyes to see in the dim lunar darkness. Isfendir blinked his eyes, for he reasoned that he could not possibly see what he thought he was seeing. But his eyes were not deceiving him, and a few moments later, as the Turanians entered the yurt to investigate the screams, Isfendir watched in speechless horror as a werewolf rose to its feet, snarled viciously, and then attacked its erstwhile captors.

  The creature carried the battle out of the yurt and into the dark camp. Isfendir struggled against his bonds, trying to free himself and escape before the creature remembered him and returned to the yurt, but the ropes were too thick and the knots were too tight, and he strained his hands impotently against them.

  The screams of pain and agony which arose from the nomad village were terrible, and an hour passed before the cries ceased. Isfendir lay shaking upon the dirt floor of the yurt, not knowing what had transpired without, not daring to roll his body to the door flap and look out at the now silent camp. And then the yurt itself was lifted high into the air and thrown aside by the werewolf, leaving Isfendir lying upon the open ground in the midst of a hundred shredded human bodies. He whimpered as the creature dropped to its hands and knees and rushed over to him, its jaws dripping with blood and flesh, its talons dark red in the moonlight. Isfendir faced an unspeakably horrible death, and he wept and whimpered and trembled.

  But the werewolf did not attack. It knelt over the helpless young Magos and stared at his forehead for a long while. And then, without warning, it snapped its bloody fangs shut on Isfendir’s shoulder and bit deeply, crunching bone and muscle and sinew between its powerful jaws. Isfendir screamed in pain and jerked his body in a mad, irrational attempt to free himself from the inhuman vise, and then the creature released him. The werewolf gazed at him for a long moment, and then ran off into the darkness.

  The next day the Turanian camp was found by the soldiers of King Vishtaspa, who had sought them out to avenge the death of Dzardrusha. They released the wounded young Magos, who told them all that had happened the previous day and night, leaving out his own role in the assassination of the prophet. The soldiers concluded that Ahura Mazda had sent an avenging angel to destroy the Turanians, and this explanation became the official one at the court of King Vishtaspa. The soldiers took Isfendir back to his people where he was welcomed as a hero and a true servant of the Great God Ahura Mazda, and he accepted the adulation and hid his shame.

  Zuvanosha and the other Karpans were seized by the soldiers of King Vishtaspa and were beheaded. Of the Turanians, only one was left alive to be captured and executed. This was the traitor himself, who could have saved his life by saying that he had sought to save Dzardrusha, for Isfendir could have supported his words; but Isfendir could not look upon him, for he knew that this was the creature that had destroyed the Turanians and had attacked him, and he grew faint at the thought of seeing the man again.

  Nor did the traitor make any attempt to save his own life. Indeed, when the executioner’s blade swung high above his head, the man laughed and wept with happiness. He was smiling as his head was severed from his body. His head was placed upon a pole and left outside the walls of the city of Balkh, as a lesson and a warning, but the face which gazed down at passersby from the elevated head wore an expression of joy. No one could understand the happiness of the traitor, not King Yishtaspa, not the Magayan priests who now sought to continue the work of the dead prophet, and not Isfendir.

  But when one month had passed, and when the full moon rose again in starry sky of Chorasmia, Isfendir began to understand. As the young priest of Ahura Mazda went out from his people to meditate alone in the hills, seeking somehow to master his shame and guilt, he looked up at the moon and felt a sudden, stabbing pain in his stomach. In an instant the pain spread throughout his body as if it were a fire on the grass of the steppes in the driest and hottest of summers. The pain assaulted his bones and his muscles and his hands and his face, and he fell to the ground and screamed. His vision blurred and everything around him became indistinct, but he seemed to see a creature crawling towards him, a creature such as guarded the gates of the House of the Lie, a fiend filled with lust for blood and violence and murder, a beast that had no reason to its rapacious mind and no thoughts but the thoughts of hatred and hunger, anger and cruelty, and when Isfend
ir realized that this monster was not approaching him but rather was arising from within his own being, his human mind fled from its own darkness, and he knew and remembered nothing of what next transpired on that fateful night of the full moon.

  When he awoke on the morning after his first descent into hell, and he saw the torn, mutilated body of the child which lay beside him, and tasted the blood in his mouth and picked the strands of human flesh from between his teeth, he realized that the Egyptian priest Menereb had visited his own plague upon him, and after much bitter weeping he concluded that death was his only release from the monstrous horror which had arisen from his own soul.

  But when he attempted to take his own life, when he cast himself from the highest peak in the hill country of Chorasmia, when he tried to thrust the dagger into his throat, when he drank the poison, when he threw himself before the stampeding cattle, he found that he could not die.

  He realized that he had become a slave of Angra Mainyu, a slave of the dark power of the universe, a slave of his the dark side of his own tortured soul. He realized that his sin had issued forth, not in only in damnation, not only in a destiny of eternal misery in the House of the Lie, but in a life in death, a life of ceaseless, unending violence, a life of bestial lust and cruelty and bloodshed. And great was the misery of Isfendir the son of Kuriash, who now had his life safely in his keeping, who now needed not fear death, who now wanted nothing else but the ability to die.

  And the months faded into years and the years faded into centuries, Isfendir wandered the roads of the earth, seeking help, seeking someone, anyone, who could lift the curse from him, who could help him end his life, who could help him to understand what had happened to him. He travelled through the vast steppes of the north and climbed the great mountains of the roof of the world, he sought out the magicians and the priests and the shamans and the prophets of a hundred nations, and he came at last to Babylon in the land of the Chaldeans to seek out the astrologers who were said to possess all wisdom. But they could give him no aid.

  And as two centuries faded into three and three centuries faded into four, Isfendir began to forget, began to forget who he was and whence he came. His memory of the past grew indistinct and murky, and soon all was confusion and emptiness, and he could no longer remember a time when he was not slave of the moon.

  And there he stayed, in the land of the Chaldeans, devoid of hope, until one day he saw some travelers passing through his village, people whose words sounded familiar and whose dress touched some long forgotten memory. And he followed after them, followed his distant cousins the Magi of Persia, the Zoroastrian priests who were heeding the ancient injunction of the prophet and were travelling to the birthplace of the Christ.

  But the man who now called himself simply Chaldaeus, the Chaldean, did not know that once the prophet had given to him that very same injunction, did not know that he himself was a Magos, a priest of the Great God Ahura Mazda, for his mind was burdened with a life of a thousand years, and the weight of that thousand years had crushed his memory into the darkness.

  And thus it was that when he saw the symbol of Angra Mainyu glowing upon the forehead of Claudia Procula, the same symbol which had once been seen glowing upon his own forehead by the apostate Egyptian priest Menereb, the werewolf Isfendir, Ianus Chaldaeus, Janus Chaldian, Janos Kaldy, had absolutely no idea what it was.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There was silence in the dank cell in the dungeon of the RagoczyPalace in Budapest, and the gray sky of the approaching sunset added an atmosphere of eerie gloom to the words which Janos Kaldy had been saying. When he had finished his strange tale, neither Claudia nor Louisa nor Blasko knew quite what to say. Claudia turned away from him and walked off a few feet to gaze at the far wall in pensive melancholy.

  At last Blasko said. "Janos, I have listened to your words, but I still do not understand."

  Kaldy locked over at Claudia and said softly, "But Claudia understands, don’t you, Claudia."

  "Yes," she replied, "I believe I do. But I do not understand why you were there in Jerusalem to see me on that night."

  "I was there for the same reason that I was in the company of the Turanian traitor a thousand years earlier," he said. "Coincidence. Happenstance. Accident."

  Louisa shook herself, for she had grown cold and weak as she listened to Kaldy’s newly discovered memories of the past. "I feel the same as Blasko, Herr Kaldy," she said. "I don’t really understand the significance of your story. I think that we had all assumed that you had been bitten by a werewolf at some point in the past, but…"

  "Claudia?" Kaldy said. "Would you like to clarify the point of my tale?"

  "Angra Mainyu," she whispered, her voice distant and contemplative. "The mark of Angra Mainyu, the Spirit of the Lie."

  "Yes," Kaldy said, his tone urging her to continue.

  "The werewolf..." Claudia said softly. "The werewolf... the apostate Egyptian priest Menereb...he saw the mark upon your forehead that day in the temple of Zoroaster three thousand years ago, even as you saw the mark upon my forehead at the trial of Christ in Jerusalem, two thousand years ago."

  "Yes," Kaldy said.

  She turned to him and sighed. "The mark of Angra Mainyu. The mark of the unfaithful servant, the mark of the priest who abandons his god, the mark of the beloved of the higher powers who sacrifices righteousness upon the altar of the flesh, who values life more than faith."

  "As did I," Kaldy nodded, "and as did you. The prophet taught that life is a battlefield between good and evil, between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, between God and the Devil, if you wish. It is the duality of the universe which rested at the heart of Dzardrusha’s revelation. All men must struggle with the forces of evil, within their own hearts and in the world outside themselves; but to the priest is given a special charge, a heavier burden, a more profound responsibility, for the priest is the mouth of the god and the teacher of the people, and when the priest chooses to save his own life rather than die proclaiming the truth, the example of his weakness and his cowardice and the insufficiency of his faith leads many others with him into the House of the Lie."

  Louisa looked confused. "So if you had not betrayed Zoroaster, you would not have been marked with the pentagram?"

  "I would have been killed by the Karpans, just as Jamnaspa was," Kaldy replied. "I would have died defending the prophet of God."

  Louisa turned to Claudia. "But the crucifixion of Christ was not something you had the power to stop," she said. "Even if you had tried to save him by agreeing to Pilate’s suggestion, the crucifixion had to happen. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross was pre-ordained."

  Claudia shook her head, not looking at Louisa as she replied. "I will not debate theology with you," she said softly.

  "Louisa," Kaldy said, "had I not led the Turanians down to the fire chamber, would that have meant that they would not have killed the prophet?"

  Louisa thought for a moment. "No, not necessarily," she replied at last. "They could have waited until he came back up through the passageway."

  "Precisely.The murder of Dzardrusha and the crucifixion of Jesus were not events which we could have prevented. But the point is that we did not try! Virtue does not rest in the victory over evil. It rests in the struggle against it."

  Claudia sat down wearily on the cold stones. "And so because we turned from selflessness to selfishness, we were cursed with this plague."

  "Yes," Kaldy agreed. "When the full moon rises we become the embodiments of Angra Mainyu, the embodiments of uncontrollable appetite and violence, creatures of murderous, irrational lust. And when we see the sign of Angra Mainyu on the face of another fallen priest..."

  "Or priestess," Claudia said softly, sadly.

  "...then the curse drives us to create another like ourselves. And thus the cycle of death spins on through the ages."

  Claudia turned and faced Kaldy. "So how can we die, Janos? You said that we could die whenever we want to. Well, I want to die. I have want
ed to die for longer than my mind allows me to remember. So tell me what I must to in order to die."

  Janos sidled over to her and took her hands in his. Gazing deeply into her eyes, he said, "All we need do is that which we should have done in the first place."

  She frowned. "Janos, Zoroaster has been dust for thirty centuries. The crucifixion was two thousand years ago. Are we supposed to try to save them now?"

  "This has nothing to do with Dzardrusha or Jesus, Claudia," he replied. "Remember the words of the formula of faith. We must conquer the evil within and battle the evil without."

  She did not speak immediately as she struggled to understand. Then her eyes widened and she shook her head. "No, Janos, no. I can’t. I wouldn’t know how to begin."

  "Janos," Blasko asked, "what are you saying?"

  Kaldy looked at his old friend, his keeper, his victim, and he smiled. "Blasko, in all the years you have known me, never once have you asked me what it is like when the change comes upon me."

  The old man shook his head. "I did not want to know, Janos."

  "But now you shall. You know that there is pain, great pain, horrible, unbearable pain as my body is wrenched and torn and twisted by the spirit of the wolf."

  "Yes, that I know from your screams, Janos."

  "And you know that my human mind is submerged beneath the bestial fury of the monster."

  "Yes. You, Janos Kaldy the man, you cease to be."

  He shook his head slowly. "No, Blasko, no. I am still there, my mind is still there, buried in the darkness, fleeing from itself, unable to face the horror of the dark side of my own being. For me to confront myself when the moon is full would be to invite a madness, a torture, an agony the depth of which no human tongue can describe." He looked again at Claudia. "But that is what we must do, Claudia. We must conquer the evil within."