Heretic of Set

by J. Steven York

  Anok had ridden horses and mules a time or two in his life, but never a camel, and he was somewhat daunted by the prospect. The youngest son of Havilah made introductions to their camels, demonstrated a few simple commands (kneel, stand, go, and stop). “Most of the time,” he explained, “there will be a rope between your mount to one of our camels, so there will be little to do but sit and enjoy the ride, if you can. Many city dwellers do not appreciate the beauty of the desert.”

  “I’m not one of those people,” replied Anok, “though I find it easier to enjoy the view when the desert isn’t trying to kill me.”

  Moahavilah raised an eyebrow but resisted following up on the comment. Instead, he showed Anok how to climb into the saddle. First he ordered the camel to cush—that is, to kneel until it was resting on its belly. Once it was down, Anok climbed into the saddle. Camels were curious creatures, and his mount turned her long, flexible neck to watch him with large, brown eyes.

  He returned her gaze and tried to be reassuring. “Easy, girl. Let’s be friends here.”

  He found himself high on her hump, straddling the tall, wooden saddle horn in front and leaning lightly against its twin behind him. Moahavilah showed him how to hold himself in place by crooking one knee around the horn and locking his foot under the other leg.

  He felt off-balance, and awkward, and was totally taken by surprise as Moahavilah patted the camel on its flank and shouted, “Up.”

  The camel stood up with startling speed, lurching violently. Anok tried to hold on, but found himself tumbling through the air. He landed hard on his shoulders, his fighter’s instincts keeping him from hurting anything but his pride.

  The camel lowered its head and nuzzled him, giving him a faceful of putrid breath in the process. Teferi roared with laughter, as Anok tried to pat the big animal’s muzzle and push it away at the same time.

  “You must lean with the camel as it rises,” said Moahavilah, “or you will surely fall.”

  “I’m glad,” he said, pulling himself up out of the dirt and brushing off his robe, “that you told me that before I got on the camel.”

  His second try was more successful, and having learned from his mistakes, Teferi seemed to have little trouble at all. Though the camels were large, smelly, and fearsome-sounding, they seemed to be curious and intelligent beasts. To Anok their temperament seemed more like that of a large and somewhat friendly dog than a skittish horse.

  By the time they’d gotten accustomed to their mounts, the sun was well above the eastern hills, and Anok wondered what they were waiting for.

  From the far end of the plaza, a trio of camels appeared. The lead two were ridden by men with pointed, neatly trimmed, beards. They were tall and slender, dark, of Turan ian blood most likely. By their dress, they were servants, but high servants of some noble. Their clothing, though subdued in colors was elaborately embroidered in bands around the sleeves, collars, and hems. Everything about their camels was ornate and expensive-looking. Tassels woven with gold thread hung from the reins and saddle, and their saddlebags were ornately embroidered.

  They led the third camel with a rope, and it was unusual in several ways. First, it was white, an expensive rarity, and the largest camel Anok could recall ever seeing. On its back was not a saddle, but a platform surrounded by four outward-facing corner poles draped with colorful silks, forming a tent of sorts.

  Through the translucent silks he thought he could see a variety of pillows, and a reclining woman inside. He couldn’t see her clearly, but she seemed to be asleep.

  As he tried to get a better look, one of the Turanians rode between them. “Do not disturb the mistress. She sleeps off too much celebration.”

  Teferi raised an eyebrow. “Celebration of what?”

  The Turanian’s mouth twitched slightly at the corner, as though he suppressed a smile. “The mistress does not need a reason to celebrate.” He rode on past to speak with Havilah.

  Teferi grinned at Anok, and he grinned back.

  The caravan was soon under way, twenty camels total, eight paying travelers, including Anok and Teferi, Havilah and his three sons, and two young Shemite boys who both drove and tended the camels.

  As they climbed the winding road up the hills that separated the ocean from the desert, it was all familiar to Anok, who had traveled this road once before not long ago. He recalled that day, wistfully, when he had gone on what Teferi called Usafiri, a journey into the wilderness to find one’s purpose.

  He’d only half believed, if that much. His greatest purpose had been to cast his father’s medallion into the desert, to be rid of the curse he believed it had become. But as Teferi had predicted, his Usafiri had taken Anok’s life in a totally new direction. He had returned with the medallion and a new purpose, to seek the very heart of Set and destroy his cult from within.

  “I think she’s a princess.” Teferi’s camel pulled up next to him, and at his command, took pace with Anok’s.

  Anok glanced at the camel, curiously. “You seem to be learning very quickly.”

  Teferi shrugged his broad shoulders. “I have heard that my ancestors rode camels. Perhaps it is in my blood.” He nodded toward the white camel with its elaborate cargo. “So, a princess? Wandering granddaughter of Stygia’s puppet king?”

  Anok chuckled. “I will give you this, Teferi, you have a vivid imagination. Probably some fat noblewoman returning to her husband in Kheshatta after a month’s shopping in the Great Marketplace and a quick dalliance with an Argossean trader in Akhet.”

  It was Teferi’s turn to chuckle. “And you accuse me of imagination!” His expression turned more thoughtful. “But I do not think so. See that bundle on the side of the white camel?”

  Anok looked. Though it was bundled in colorful silks, its size and shape suggested that it might contain a war sword. “It might belong to one of the servants.”

  “The Turanians wear scimitars, by their style more for show than battle. I do not think they are strong fighters who would wield such a blade.”

  Anok considered this as they crossed the hills into the desert highlands beyond, and the beginnings of the caravan road proper. There were few dwellings here, small farm buildings clustered around wells, with herds of goats and skinny cows searching for anything edible among the rocks and dry brush.

  Finally, he had considered enough. Following Teferi’s methods, he urged his camel forward. The beast charged right past the white camel, attracting a curious glance back by Havilah, who evidently decided it was no concern of his.

  But as Anok managed to slow his camel enough for the big white camel to catch up, again the servants rode up.

  “I told you, the mistress sleeps!”

  Anok smirked. “I’m sure she does.” He leaned around the nearest servant. “Fallon! Wake up, barbarian!”

  There was stirring behind the silks and a throaty moan.

  To Anok’s surprise as much as anyone, he was able to guide his camel around the servant and pull in close to the white camel. “Fallon! Wake up, trollop!”

  There was a rustling behind the silks, and he caught the outline of a woman, tall, broad-shouldered, and bosomy. The silks parted a bit, and strong hands grabbed his sleeve, pulling him right off his saddle. He could only imagine the look of surprise on the servants’ faces as he was yanked up to vanish behind the flowing silks.

  He found himself spun around, a supple arm crooked around his forehead to pull his head back, a dagger held to his throat.

  It wasn’t quite the greeting he had been expecting.

  He couldn’t see much of the powerful woman holding him, and not much of what he did see reminded him much of Fallon of the Smoke Clan. The nails of the hand holding the knife were filed and polished red in the style of Stygian no blewomen, and the sleeve of the garment she was wearing was multicolored silk woven through with silver thread. A thin and elegant golden bracelet hung loosely over her wrist, and the fragrance of some exotic perfume filled his nose.

  It was almos
t enough to make him think that he had wrongly identified the woman.

  Then she spoke.

  “Anok Wati,” a familiar voice roared, “you Odji gutter trash! Do you not know that only a suicidal fool would waken a hungover barbarian woman with his bellowing!”

  There was a silent pause, then she began to laugh, deep and hard. The blade parted company from his throat, and he was abruptly pushed away, twisting so that he landed sitting with his back against one of the carved wooden corner posts.

  Fallon was immediately up on her knees. She leaned forward and planted a hard kiss on his lips.

  It was not unpleasant, and he felt a sudden pang of guilt.

  Somewhere in the middle of the kiss, which went on rather for a time, Teferi rode up next to them. As Fallon’s lip briefly left his, Anok glanced over and saw Teferi watching them through the now-parted silk drapes, a bemused look on his face. “Do you require rescuing?”

  “I can handle it,” said Anok, just as Fallon kissed him again.

  Then she leaned back and looked at him. She plucked at the sleeve of his nomadic robe and smiled. “This looks good on you. Certainly better than those foul cult robes I heard you were wearing. Surely you’ve given up that madness by now?”

  “Not exactly,” he replied.

  She frowned.

  He really didn’t want to talk about it, especially not here where anyone in the caravan might listen in. Havilah certainly had no love of the cult, but he really had no way of knowing who could be trusted. He decided to change the subject.

  “You accuse me of madness? Look at yourself! Perfumed, dressed in fine silks, face painted—Are those flowers in your hair?”

  She reached up and touched a slightly wilted blossom woven into the ornate braids in her long, dark hair. Her lips pouted slightly. “You don’t like this?”

  “Well . . .” In truth, she looked rather fetching, if a little incongruous, in her new finery. He merely found it difficult to reconcile her delicate dress with her coarse barbarian mannerisms and his knowledge of what the woman could do with a sword. “It’s lovely. Really.”

  She laughed. “Well, don’t get used to it. As a rich woman, I’m merely trying new things.”

  “Rich? What happened to your scheme to—” He hesitated. Realizing that this subject was no safer than his own plot against the temple, he lowered his voice, and leaned closer. “—smuggle poisons out of Kheshatta?”

  “Abandoned for lack of need. While you were off playing with your snake-god, I was in the back rooms of Odji gambling with the gems your friend Dejal paid me to deliver his magical trinket. Luck favored me well, and over several days, I doubled my stake several times over.” She spread her arms dramatically. “And so, the proud barbarian plays at being a noblewoman.” She leaned forward, and whispered mockingly, “It is overrated.”

  Anok frowned slightly but said nothing. There had to be more to the story than that. There were few men in Odji with that kind of money to gamble, and most of them were gang lords. An outlander, especially a woman, who won that kind of money . . . Well, even if she won it fairly, it was doubtful she’d simply be allowed to leave with her winnings.

  Still, it was a long trip across the desert, and he would let her tell it in her own time. In fact, they had nothing but time, and he was not without his own secrets.

  “But you’re still going to Kheshatta?”

  She shrugged. “I’d heard so much about this so-called city of sorcerers, I grew curious. I thought I’d see it myself.”

  He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “You’re going to Kheshatta—because you’re curious?”

  She frowned. “I am a wanderer, an adventurer. I have traveled from the Cimmeria of my childhood, through far Aquilonia, through many other places to get here, and I will travel farther yet before I am through. I need no reason to go to a new place. I just go.”

  “And you aren’t afraid to go to a city full of wizards and dark magic?”

  She tsked. “I have no fear of magic. It is all smoke and trickery, trickery and smoke.”

  The Mark of Set on Anok’s wrist itched. “If you say so,” he replied.

  8

  IT WAS A long day in the desert. Before the sun was high in the sky, they passed the Black Pyramid. He could sense the dark magic in the ancient place, and as had happened last time he was here, the Scale of Set began to call to it, even from within the iron prison of the medallion. He was relieved to know that only he could hear the metallic ringing sound, evidently a result of his enhanced sensitivity to magic.

  But he had not expected that the Mark of Set would respond to it as well. As they came closer to the pyramid, it began to itch and burn, and he suffered the uncomfortable illusion that the snake tattoo that circled his wrist was actually squirming, like a living snake.

  His left hand began to twitch as well, much more powerfully than ever before, and he was finally forced to jam the offending appendage between his thigh and the saddle, literally sitting on it to keep it still.

  It was with great relief that he watched the Black Pyramid disappear behind the jagged hills behind them. As soon as it disappeared from sight, his hand relaxed and returned to his control, though the mark continued to tingle for hours afterward.

  They stopped several times through the day to eat, drink water, and rest both themselves and the camels. To Anok’s surprise, their pace was a leisurely one, and he suspected he could have walked just as fast. He said so to Moahavilah at one point.

  The young nomad just smiled. “Camels can run quite quickly, but here in the desert, they pick their own pace. Yes, you could walk as fast, but you would use three times as much water as you do now and need more food as well. The camel need not drink at all until we reach the next oasis, and can live without food as well, if need be. A caravan is not about speed, it is about water. In the desert, everything is about water.”

  The caravan road had, for several hours, run just along the edge of the Sea of Sand. They were usually within sight of at least of a few of its towering dunes.

  Anok could not help but reflect on his own journey there. He asked Havilah if had had heard of the great spiders that hunted in packs, like wolves.

  Havilah had laughed. “Of course I have! Tales told by old women to scare children! Where did a city man such as yourself hear such a thing?”

  Anok was not amused. “I saw them.”

  The old nomad just roared with laughter. “And what bottle did you drink from to see such a thing? Did you see some pink camels also?” He rode on ahead, still laughing.

  Anok frowned after him. He had seen them.

  Hadn’t he?

  He had been delirious when Teferi and Rami had pulled him from the desert. What if it had all been a fever dream? The spiders, the giant skeleton of the snake, the voice of the Parath, all of it—

  No! He’d seen the spiders, fought them, killed them, eaten their bitter flesh and drunk their foul blood to survive! That was why he’d been delirious: the poison in their flesh. It had all been real. He was sure of it.

  Almost.

  He hung his head. What was truth? Was there even such a thing? Was truth what you believed, what you experienced, or what others told you was real? He had seen things, done things, experienced things, all so unbelievable. He immersed himself in lies, deceptions, and half-truths. Was it any wonder he could no longer separate fancy from reality?

  And if he drove himself into madness, what of it? But he dragged his friends along with him; Teferi, Fallon, even Rami. And beautiful, sweet, Sheriti. His folly had cost her her life.

  He tried to convince himself that it wasn’t so. Dejal had killed her in the name of the cult, and Dejal’s decision to become an acolyte of Set had nothing to do with Anok, nor did his bloody betrayal of Sheriti’s trust. Yet if Anok had been there, instead of at the Great Temple getting this cursed mark on his wrist, he might have stopped Dejal, might have saved Sheriti.

  Perhaps.

  But the most bitter notion, the
one that haunted his night-mares, was that Dejal had used Anok as bait to lure Sheriti out of the safety of her home on Festival night.

  He imagined Dejal arriving at her door. “It is Anok, Sheriti! He has been injured at the temple! He lies dying, and he calls only for you.”

  How else had he lured her onto the streets that night? How else had he lured her to her doom?

  IT WAS LATE in the day, and many times along the road, Anok had seen Havilah eyeing him from a distance, an enigmatic half smile on his face. Finally, the old man dug his heels into his camel and trotted it over to ride alongside Anok’s mount.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “I was too hard on you today when you spoke of the spiders. I have seen you brooding over it, and I meant only sport. It is our way to tease those new to the deep desert, to test their knowledge and will. Most men would have simply become embarrassed at their tall tale, or angry at my jabs, but in you, I sense I have touched a deeper nerve.”

  Anok looked off at the red rock formations in the northern distance, carved by wind into strange and twisted forms. Nearer, outcroppings of blindingly white chalk pushed their way up through the sand. Yet strange as this landscape was, he was sure it was real.

  He glanced back at Havilah, who waited patiently for his reply. He had no desire to discuss his sanity, or lack of same, with this relative stranger.

  Finally, seeing that no reply was forthcoming, Havilah again spoke. “Though I have never seen these spiders of which you speak, or heard of them from credible men”—he grinned—“yourself excepted, of course, I know there are many strange things in the deserts of Stygia. Things both fantastic and terrible, natural and unnatural. This sand”—he swept his arm dramatically—“hides countless secrets of the past. Once this land was green and wet, home to great civilizations long gone. Relics of the forgotten past are everywhere.” He pointed at a low, rounded hill just ahead. “Come, I will show you.”