Heretic of Set

by J. Steven York

  Anok looked ahead and behind. All the guardians were down. Only the priests and acolytes remained. He reached for his swords, as Kaman Awi crouched down behind the shield of the chariot, his face red with anger. “The lazy bastards of Ibis! I told them to maintain the spell till we were at the palace!”

  Suddenly the trees and shrubs around them all seemed to rustle and part at once. Armed men, rough, dangerous men, emerged from every side. They were surrounded by a hundred or more soldiers, swords drawn. One among them, a tall, dark man with a pointed beard and shaved head, stepped forward and sheathed his sword.

  He smiled up at Anok. “I am Sattar, Lord Poisoner of Orkideh Plantation. I bid you welcome.”

  18

  KAMAN AWI PEERED over the shield of the chariot, his eyes blazing at Sattar. “What is the meaning of this? We come on business, in good faith, and you strike down my guardians with your trickery, for no cause at all!”

  Sattar chuckled, a rumble deep in his chest, like the stirring of a volcano. “No, there was purpose, just as there was purpose in you coming in golden chariots, with fine silks and flags flying to your beloved serpent god. You hoped to make an impression.” He smiled slyly. “But I know I have made an impression on you!”

  “By killing my soldiers?”

  Sattar laughed. “Stand like a man, priest. We will not harm you. This was but a demonstration.”

  Kaman Awi cautiously stood, casually raising his hands as he did.

  “Your great magic will not work here. An underground river runs under this place, and salts dissolved in it drain most of the magical energy from it down to the lake far below. It is ironic, that the very thing that makes you so weak here may be part of what makes your master Thoth-Amon so powerful in his stronghold.”

  Anok’s eyes widened. He could feel that it was true. Even the Mark of Set felt cold and dead upon his wrist. Only the slightest of magics would work here, and that meant that the acolytes had not been careless in their spell. The magic had deserted them when they entered this place. No wonder the Lord Poisoner’s ancestors had chosen to build their palace here.

  Sattar grinned. “Ironic, also, that this stream and its salts are the source of the rare elixir that you seek.” He signaled his men to put away their weapons. For the first time, Anok noticed a separate class of soldiers who stood behind the others, Kushites, thin as posts, and taller even than Teferi. They had no obvious weapons, other than a long shaft of polished bamboo decorated with feathers on the end and a leather bag that man each wore around his neck.

  Sattar stepped up to their chariot, carefully reached up to one of the fallen men, and plucked a tiny bronze dart, terminated with a tuft of feather, from the man’s neck. He held it up for them to see. “My special brew. These men will awaken in an hour or so, refreshed, rested, and happy. If you wish, you may then whip them for their failure.” He made another signal, and a soldier stepped up to each chariot. “My men will drive you the rest of the way to my palace and tend to your guardians until they awake. Have you eaten? My people have prepared a breakfast for you.”

  THE INTERIOR OF the palace was a surprise to Anok. In most of Stygia, wood was rare and expensive. The homes of the wealthy were made of stone, those of the very poor of mud-bricks and stucco, and those in between of fired brick and cast blocks. Wood was used for doors, shutters, decoration, reinforcement where nothing else would do. Bamboo was rarer still.

  Here, the entire interior was covered in rich hardwoods and bamboo, all oiled and polished to bring out the beauty of the grain. Through every window, vistas of green could be seen, and pots filled with strange and exotic plants lined each windowsill, stood in every sunny spot, and hung from hooks on the ceiling. No castle, no temple, had ever struck him as being quite so splendid.

  A banquet had been spread for them on a long table, strange and colorful fruits and vegetables were artfully sliced and arranged on trays, a rainbow of green, yellow, orange, and red.

  Blank-faced servants stood behind the table with fans to shoo away flies and insects. In fact, most of the servants Anok had seen on their way into the house had the same vacant, blissful expression. They looked drugged, and Anok suspected that they were.

  The servants of Set looked curiously at the array of food, but none was willing to partake.

  Sattar looked at them for a moment. “Are you not hungry?”

  Kaman Awi stared at him. “You are a poisoner.”

  Sattar roared with laughter. He pointed at one of the acolytes. “You, pick something from the table, anything, and I will eat it. Go on!”

  The acolyte glanced at Kaman Awi, then picked up a chunk of melon and handed it to Sattar.

  Sattar examined the orange chunk for a moment, then tossed it into the air and caught it in his mouth, chewing greedily and swallowing. He grinned. “There, you see?”

  “Perhaps,” said Kaman Awi, “you have an antidote.”

  The grin faded. He looked at the acolyte who had handed him the fruit. “If I wanted him dead, the poison would have been absorbed through your skin. You would be dead already.”

  Eyes wide, the acolyte examined his fingertips, then frantically wiped them on his robe.

  “Surely, if I wanted you dead, you would already be dead a dozen times over. You have come to do business. There is no profit in killing you. Are none of you brave enough to sample the fruits of our plantation?”

  Anok reached down to a platter of green, star-shaped slices, dripping with juice. They were the least familiar items on the table. He took a slice and put it into his mouth carefully. The flesh was firm, tart, but not unpleasant. As he chewed, the flavor turned sweet and musky. It was an interesting experience, and so far at least, he was not dead.

  He realized suddenly that the Mark of Set’s healing powers would likely be useless to him here. If there were indeed poison in the fruit, he had no defense. Still, he was certain Sattar was telling the truth. If he had wanted them dead, they would be dead. “Very good,” he said to Sattar. “The flavor is complex and unusual.”

  The others watched him, then, one by one, took polite samplings from the table. Anok noticed that only Kaman Awi himself refrained from sampling the fare.

  As soon as it was apparent that they were through eating, Sattar signaled them to follow him through a door to their right. “Come. You are not my first visitors this morning. It is time that you met the others.”

  They climbed two steps, and emerged into a much larger room, with many arched doors opening onto a veranda looking out on the lake and the lands beyond. A towering fir tree was artfully situated to block the view of Thoth-Amon’s island stronghold, as though it were a blight on the landscape.

  They walked out onto the veranda, and Anok noticed a cluster of bamboo armchairs facing away from them. Several men sat there, dressed in colorful clothing of silk embroidered with gold. They wore round, flat-topped caps, and their dark hair hung down their backs in neat braids. Anok studied the symbols embroidered into their clothing, and though he could not read them, they were familiar. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

  Hearing them approach, the men stood and turned. Their faces were well-known to Anok. Two were Dao-Shuang and Bai-ling of the Jade Spider Cult, the others the same members of their cult who had been with them on the street.

  Dao-Shuang met Anok’s eyes, and he tilted his head slightly but said nothing.

  Kaman Awi’s face turned red. “First you poison my guardians, and now you bring me here with these”—he sputtered like a boiling pot with the lid on, looking for words—“these outlanders!”

  Sattar tried to look innocent, though it was obvious that he was enjoying himself.

  Anok was beginning to doubt Kaman Awi’s conclusion about Sattar’s appreciation for power. It was his observation that the Lord Poisoner valued power greatly, gloried in its use. It was simply not the same kind of power that Kaman Awi valued or understood. In the poisoner’s world, the priest of Set was clearly outclassed.

 
“You came here to offer a transaction on an item, as did these honored visitors from the East.” The faintest trace of a smile crossed his lips. “Interesting that you should both come seeking the same item. Sadly, there is only one bottle in all the world, and my brewmasters have been years in making it.”

  Kaman Awi glared at Dao-Shuang. “What use have you for the Elixir of Orkideh?”

  “Curiously, I have no real use at all. Perhaps I will use the bottle to decorate my study. Perhaps it can be used to improve the flavor of fish. I have heard only that your cult desperately desires it for use in some grand scheme of power, and I therefore wish to deny it to you. We have doubled your offered price.”

  “Then,” said Kaman Awi, “we will double it again!”

  “We are not a rich people,” said Dao-Shuang, “but we will also offer double.”

  Kaman Awi chuckled, smiling with renewed confidence. “The coffers of Set are deep. We will outbid you then, whatever the price!”

  Sattar looked from one to the other. “There are other considerations.”

  Kaman Awi frowned at him. “What considerations? Our bid is highest. Our offer was made first, was it not?”

  “The Jade Spider Cult’s gold, however, was here first.” He bowed to the men in a gesture of false humility. “A humble farmer such as myself, I could not risk offending either of your powerful cults by choosing one over the other.” He looked at Kaman Awi. “What is gold, if I will not live to spend it? You must settle this matter between yourselves.”

  Kaman Awi looked aghast. “There can be no settlement between us. We must have the elixir, and there can be no other satisfaction.”

  “Well,” said Sattar, in a way that suggested he had been expecting this outcome, and probably hoping for it, “then perhaps you can settle the matter through a contest, perhaps one of magical ability.”

  Dao-Shuang looked at him quizzically. “Magic does not work here. You have demonstrated that to us.”

  Anok wondered if Sattar had pulled anything as audacious on the Jade Spiders as his attack on the guardians.

  “Great magic,” said Sattar. “Some small magics still work here to a degree, and what I propose is a test of skill and concentration, not a sorcerous battle to the death.”

  Dao-Shuang glanced at Kaman Awi, who scowled back. “That might be acceptable. Who would engage in this contest?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps Kaman Awi and yourself, as leaders in your cults—”

  “Perhaps,” interjected Dao-Shuang, “we should test the young warriors of our cult against one another. My student, Bai-ling is quite capable, and I’m aware that your acolyte, Anok Wati, has great promise.”

  Kaman Awi glanced sharply at Anok, obviously curious how the Jade Spiders knew his name. “That might be acceptable, then, if the contest offers no clear advantage to one side or the other.”

  Sattar smiled. “Oh, it is my contest. Trust that there will be no favoritism.” He gestured toward a stairway leading down onto the grounds. “You have chosen your champions. Now, let me show you my garden of pain!”

  19

  THE PROCESSION, LED by Sattar, followed a path that wound through the palace grounds, past landscaped fields of fragrant flowers shaded by fruiting trees, then down a stairway to a flat shelf of land below, perhaps two hundred paces wide, where an assortment of more utilitarian stone and wooden buildings huddled against the mountainside.

  There were still many plants here, but the beds seemed as much functional as decorative, neat rows of exotic flowers and shrubs, some protected by metal and wood fences. The tallest of the buildings seemed to be barns, storehouses, and drying sheds, where various plant materials were collected for processing.

  Through the open doors of the nearest shed, Anok could see large bundles of brown leaves, each as long as a man was tall, handing in rows from the rafters. A strange, peppery smell came from the shed.

  Rows of long, low buildings, their roofs and sides made of some translucent fabric waterproofed with some kind of coating, were filling with growing plants, thus protected from the elements.

  Beyond this were smaller buildings, where scholarly-looking men hunched over workbenches taking cuttings, counting seeds, or grinding and mixing various leaves and roots. In others, they stirred great copper caldrons that bubbled over wood fires, or watched strange fire-heated devices, closed pots made of rolled copper, connected with copper tubing, from which steam and strange odors hissed and dripped.

  As they passed the doors on these places, Kaman Awi always slowed to look inside with a mix of curiosity and envy, but Sattar never allowed him to linger in any one place long.

  They came finally to a tall, narrow, stone building, win dowless, and guarded by a locked door. Anok noted that the roof was peaked and covered by the same translucent material as the growing houses they had already passed.

  They stepped inside into a dark hallway, then up a flight of stairs that opened onto a long balcony surrounding a bright, central chamber that ran the height of the building. Light streamed in through the translucent roof and down to a tangle of waxy, dark green and red shrubbery growing below. The leaves, he noted, had irregular edges sprouting what seemed to be spines.

  At the level of the floor under their feet, the chamber was crossed by stout bamboo poles, evenly spaced about an arm’s length apart from one end of the chamber to the other.

  As they stood at the railing, trying to divine the nature of Sattar’s contest, several dozen of the Lord Poisoner’s guard followed them up the steps, each carrying a long staff of bamboo, and arrayed themselves evenly around the railing. Their mood was jovial, as though they knew what to expect and anticipated enjoying it.

  Sattar called for their attention. “As I said, I call this place the garden of pain. Its primary purpose is to grow the rare shrub you see below, a plant known as fire weed. It is exceptionally rare, and in fact it no longer exists in the wild, having been eradicated by man wherever it was found. The spines are poisonous. On touching the skin, they cause agonizing pain, as though the exposed part had been plunged into fire. Most interestingly, the pain does not fade with time, and for exposure to an extremity, amputation was once the only solution.”

  He smiled, surveying the expressions on his visitors’ faces. “In fact, the affected persons were generally glad to perform the amputation themselves, even gnawing off the extremity, if no other option were available to them. More extensive exposure inevitably resulted in death, not by any physical cause other than ultimate pain.”

  “This,” said Dao-Shuang, “is barbaric.”

  “Diluted, the poison has many applications, including relief for the pained limbs of the elderly and the treatment of certain fevers found only in the jungles of the Black Kingdoms. Of course”—he grinned—“there are those who will still pay for the undiluted poison, and occasionally the antidote. It is not my concern what purpose they put it to.”

  Anok looked intently at Sattar. “You intend to test us with pain?”

  He laughed. “Only, perhaps, for the clumsy.” He snapped his fingers. A rectangular tray was brought out and attached to the railing before them. On it were two engraved metal disks, each the size of an eating plate.

  Sattar looked up at them. “You recognize these devices?” They were smaller than the one Anok had spun to destruction at the Great Temple at Khemi, but there was no mistaking their purpose. “Wheels of Aten,” he said.

  “Very good,” said Sattar. He glanced at Bai-ling. “You have seen these as well?”

  “I have, but I fail to see their purpose here. Surely there is not enough magical energy here for a proper contest of will, and why two instead of one, as they are generally used?”

  “The flow of our underground river is reduced in the dry season, and we keep these here to test its ability to weaken magic. If they can be turned too readily, then we know we must be on guard for sorcerous attack. In the years I have ruled this plantation, it has never happened; still, one cannot be too cautious
. But there is always enough magic here to allow one of your ability to make them spin. Here . . .” He spun one of the disks with the flat of his hand. “Bai-Ling, this is yours. You have but to keep it turning.” He spun the other. “Anok Wati, this is yours.”

  As he spun the disk, Anok reached out with his will, feeling the spin and helping it along. It required a surprising amount of focus for such a trivial task, but it was not difficult for one of his training and experience.

  The two disks spun side by side on the little platform. “Now,” said Sattar, “we will test your powers of concentration.” One of Sattar’s men took each of the two competitors by the arm, and led them to the far ends of the chamber. Each of them was handed a bamboo rod, and a small gate opened in the railing in front of them.”

  Sattar grinned. “I would suggest removing your sandals. It will make it easier to keep your footing on the bamboo.”

  Reluctantly, Anok slipped off his footwear and stepped out onto the nearest bamboo pole crossing the room. He teetered there for a moment before straddling the gap to the next pole, making it easier to keep his balance, then looked back as the gate snapped shut behind him.

  Across the room, Bai-Ling joined him on the bamboo.

  An excited murmur came from Sattar’s men, who leaned across the rail, their long poles at ready. Anok now understood that their purpose was to keep the contestants away from the edge, where they might be able to lean against, or catch themselves on the railing.

  Suddenly, in the back of his mind, he felt his wheel of Aten wobble and concentrated to bring it back to speed.

  “Concentrate, young friends,” said Sattar. “The first to allow his wheel to fall will be the loser. That, is the contest. There are no other rules.”

  Bai-Ling eyed Anok from across the room, then spun his bamboo rod like a staff. Though the rod was light, it still was enough of a weapon to send an opponent falling to the agonizing doom waiting below. He moved toward Anok, stepping lightly from pole to pole with catlike grace and balance.