by Donald Tyson
“We can talk here,” Feisel said. “These are my private living chambers. This is my personal servant, Tanni, who attends to all my needs while I am beneath the Sphinx.”
The slender young man bowed at me with a solemn expression and withdrew through an archway. I put back my hood and peeled away my scarf, then handed it to Martala, who shook it and folded it. Feisel sat on a pillow-covered couch and gestured for me to take a seat beside him. Dru threw himself carelessly into a chair opposite and regarded me with interest.
“What do you think of our work?” the older man demanded, studying me with his flint-gray eyes.
“You are rendering the bodies of the ancient Egyptian dead into their essential salts, and storing them in glass vessels.”
“Why do you think we do this?” Dru asked.
“The bodies of the dead have curative value in healing disease, and may be used for certain potions and unguents to produce occult effects.”
Dru made a sound of disgust in his throat, and Feisel suppressed a smile. We waited while his gloom-faced servant returned with a tray containing bread and cheese, and a leather-covered flagon of red wine. He poured wine into three silver cups and set them before us, then withdrew.
“You don’t really believe that is our work?” Dru said.
I shook my head, looking at the two of them over the rim of my cup.
“If that were so, you would not store the salts separately, or label them with such care.”
“You will learn our secret soon enough. Today, there is no work for you. I wish you only to wander the halls and acquaint yourself with the processes we use to render out the essential salts of the dead. Tomorrow, I will assign you some plausible task that will justify your presence to the other members of our order. Watch and learn all you can. The dark god to whom we give service has placed you here for a reason. Let it unfold itself.”
“May I ask you a few questions?”
Feisel stretched his legs and regarded me with an indulgent smile.
“What is it that puzzles you?”
“When we entered the chamber of worship, I saw that the idol on the pedestal was the same as that of the great Sphinx above us, save only for its head. Why does the head differ?”
“The Sphinx is old. Only our order has any comprehension of how ancient it truly is. Legend teaches that it was carved by Kephren, who built one of the three pyramids it seems to guard, but this is false. Kephren merely uncovered it from the sands that had buried it up to its neck, and had its face recarved in his own image. What you saw in our hall of worship is the true visage of the Sphinx. It is the face of a god from beyond the stars, he who wanders the desert regions of the world, the herald and messenger of the Old Ones.”
“Do not speak his name,” Dru cautioned with a finger to his lips, smiling in apology. “We never speak his name in these halls. It is a superstition, but we have adhered to it for centuries.”
“The face is curiously uncouth, and difficult to hold in the memory,” I said.
Feisel nodded his agreement.
“It depicts the true face of the god, which is not a thing of our time or place. Our human minds are too frail to comprehend it. Those who gaze long upon it without turning away invariably go mad. It was for this reason that the pharaoh Kephren had it chiseled away, and replaced it with his own features.”
“That single act of hubris earned Kephren the enmity of the dark god for eternity. Long have we searched for his linen-wrapped corpse,” Dru said, a redness in the depths of his dark eyes.
“What would you do if you found it?”
“All this, you will learn in time. It is best that you become acquainted with our work in stages, so that it will not overwhelm you.”
“Let me ask another question,” I said, changing the subject. “What are the gold plaques I saw in the hall of pillars?”
Feisel tore a piece from the loaf of bread and tossed it to me. I tore it into two parts and cast one at Martala, who caught it and began to chew at it. I observed with approval that she had not spoken since entering Feisel’s private chambers. She was leaning her place. Perhaps she would make a useful servant after all.
“The golden tablets are said in the annals of our order to be as old as the Sphinx itself,” Feisel told me. “What they depict, no one knows. What their purpose may be is a matter of conjecture, but one view is that they show scenes of prophetic importance.”
“They are obscure,” Dru said carelessly, a piece of cheese between his fingers. “Do not waste your time with them.”
“They interest me. That one depicting the collapse of a great tower—”
“Perhaps the fall of the Tower of Babel, who can say? What does it matter, when that event took place countless generations ago?”
“The pillars are inscribed with the Hebrew letters,” I observed to Feisel.
“It is an ancient language. Some say it was the original language of the angels in heaven, that was taught to Adam and Eve before they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.”
“The golden tablets are a relic of the past,” Dru said, drinking deeply. He did not see, or chose to ignore, the disapproving glance of his father. “No member of our order pays them any attention.”
“Yet we draw our strength from the past,” Feisel said, more to his son than to me. “We honor it for the wisdom it teaches.”
“The living past, yes,” Dru said. “Not the dead past. When we make the past live it yields up its secrets, but the mystery of the golden tablets is lost in time.”
Feisel spent the next hour teaching me the rudiments of the sign language used by the brotherhood. Since, as I had discovered, I already knew it thanks to the ingestion of the finger of Nectanebus, I proved an apt pupil, and he praised my quickness and my memory.
“Tell me what you can about the traitor in your brotherhood,” I said when opportunity presented itself. I cared not a fig about this traitor, but I was eager to present the mask of a loyal servant of the dark god.
“Our most precious scrolls have been vanishing from our scriptorium,” Feisel said, his face darkening. “Last month, we lost two, the month before, three.”
“What do these scrolls contain?”
“They are a record of our work, as you shall learn in the course of your stay with us.”
“Not ancient wisdom?”
“In a manner of speaking, but the scrolls themselves are quite new.”
“The ink is barely dried on them before they vanish,” Dru said bitterly.
“It must be one of the brotherhood, since the servants never leave,” I said.
Feisel nodded.
“Of that we are certain. We have instituted a rigorous search of the clothing and packs of all brothers who leave these halls, but as yet it has provided no hint of the traitor.”
“I do not know how I am to find this traitor,” I told him with a shake of my head. “I have no knowledge of spying or treachery. I am only a young man of the household of the king of Sana’a.”
Feisel startled me by leaning forward and taking my hand between his. His fingers felt dry and cold against my skin.
“Our lord has faith in you. He has placed you among us, as a cunning wolf among the goats. You will not fail.”
I clasped his hands in mine and smiled reassurance, inwardly wondering what barbed trap I had allowed myself to wander into in my arrogance. What would Feisel’s regard for me be when I failed to produce his traitor? Perhaps it was in my interest to search for this spy. Even if I could not identify him, I could always accuse some innocent member of the order. That would satisfy the bloodlust of Feisel and his son. It would not placate Nyarlathotep, and I was more concerned about the wrath of the dark man than about all the secret brotherhoods in Egypt. I did not wish to give him reason to seek me out. It was bad enough that I
had to endure his presence in my dreams.
Dru showed me to my own private rooms and left me alone with Martala. All their illumination came from oil lamps that hung on iron brackets set into the stone of the walls, the severity of which was softened by hanging tapestries depicting Egyptian pastoral scenes. There were two rooms, an outer work chamber with a writing table and several chairs set on a rug of good quality from Persia, and an inner sleeping room containing a comfortable bed, a wooden wardrobe, and a side table with a basin and pitcher of water for washing. It was Martala’s task to empty the chamber pot and replenish the water in the pitcher, as well as to sweep the floor and make up the bed. No other servant would enter our rooms, Dru had assured me with a sidelong leer at the girl. I wondered if his own servant was a woman.
“What do we do now?” Martala asked, sitting on the bed. She bounced up and down on its mattress to test its softness.
“We play our parts. I wander about like a curious brother and learn the work I am to do, and you go among the drudges in the kitchens and laundry and acquire the skills of a good servant.”
“Do we search for the spy?”
I saw the eagerness in her ice-gray eyes, so like the eyes of a wolf, and suppressed a smile.
“Why not? Learn what you can. Be discreet. If you discover any matter of interest, let me know.”
The prospect of spy hunting made her cheerful. It would distract her mind from the less elevated aspects of her present situation, and she might even learn something useful.
Time was kept in the chambers beneath the Sphinx by means of water clocks. Each hour a bell rang in a small alcove at the end of the main corridor, the number of strikes signifying the hour of day. There were no locks, and indeed no doors, in the public halls and chambers. Each brother and his personal servant roamed freely where duty required, as did the members of the working staff of the kitchen and other rooms run by the general servants. They fulfilled the same utilitarian tasks necessary in any large institution or palace, as well as a number of others peculiar to the order.
Bread was baked and meat roasted in the ovens. Plates, cups, and knives were set out on the long tables in the public dining hall, where the brothers ate by raising their cauls to the level of their noses. These dishes required scouring after the daily meals. Dirty robes and bed linen were collected and washed in the laundry. Slops were emptied into the pits in the hall of defecation, and periodically these had to be cleaned out with buckets. The oil lamps that provided light were in constant need of replenishment. Those who maintained the bubbling kettles fed them an endless stream of water and various chemicals that came from jars and metal cylinders similar to those I had seen unloaded from Dru’s ship. The scriptorium, where the scrolls of the order were copied and stored, required its own supply of lamps, pens, ink, and papyrus rolls.
While Martala was off discovering the joys of manual labor, I walked the length and breadth of the corridors and halls until I gained a fair sense of the location of everything of importance. The size of the brotherhood surprised me. There must have been several hundred members of the order dwelling beneath the desert in these interlocking rooms, each with his own servant, and many general servants besides, so that the total number in the chambers beneath the Sphinx could not have been less than half a thousand. All their purpose appeared to consist of nothing more than rendering down corpses in the great copper kettles into neatly labeled glass jars filled with powdered gray salts. How this was of any interest to Nyarlathotep, or indeed to the brotherhood itself, was not apparent.
I returned to my rooms at the sounding of the bell for the eighth hour of evening. Martala awaited me. She had procured a tray with wine from the kitchen, but I had already eaten an evening meal in the dining hall and was not thirsty. I waved it off, and she set in on my writing table.
“What have you learned?” I asked wearily. The effort to comprehend all the details of the order chambers taxed my mind.
“This is a mad place,” she said. “Everyone labors here to no purpose. All they do is cut up corpses.”
“I am inclined to agree. Perhaps we will learn more tomorrow.”
When I went into the bedchamber, she followed and began to disrobe me without being instructed. I allowed her to strip me naked. She folded my black robe and put it away on a shelf of the tall wardrobe with care. Closing its doors, she turned and noticed me watching her.
“What?”
“I was wondering if some djinn had stolen away your soul and replaced it with another.”
“If I am to be your servant, I may as well act like it.”
“You will get no argument from me.”
She prepared scented oil and clean linen cloths by the wash basin, and proceeded to use a cloth to wash my body. The water, though unheated, refreshed me. More than once I saw her eyes wander to the ruin between my thighs. I let it pass without remark. Little wonder she would be curious. Although my renewed glamour veiled me from the eyes of most men, Martala’s gift of scrying vision allowed her to pierce it, so I knew she saw me as I really was, not as I appeared to others. Once, her hand strayed to my groin with a gentle touch, almost of pity.
She disrobed and prepared herself to lie for the night upon the rug beside the bed. I crawled onto the bed and slid myself beneath its soft sheet and woolen blanket. The air in the chambers under the desert was not cold, but neither was it warm. She cupped her hand around the flame of the last table lamp that burned in our rooms and blew it into darkness with her breath.
“No, don’t lie on the floor. You may as well share the bed, since it is large enough for two.”
Her warm body pressed against my naked back and buttocks. Her foot slid down my calf as she made herself comfortable, and a sigh of contentment escaped her lips. I felt it on the back of my neck. Reflecting that it was poor practice to give favors to servants, I allowed myself to sleep.
It was utterly dark when I woke. For a moment I strained for some glimpse of moonlight or starlight, then remembered where I lay and almost laughed. No light would shine into these rooms for the rest of eternity, unless it was lamplight. A faint cry caught my attention. I stilled my breath and listened. It came again, very distant and almost inaudible, but I recognized it without difficulty. It was the scream of a man undergoing torture. Had not similar cries sounded from my own lips? It was not a sound that I would ever mistake.
“What is it?” Martala whispered in my ear, or where my ear should have been.
Some impulse made me cast off the blanket and slide my feet over the bed.
“Strike tinder and light a lamp. We will see.”
She was able to find my tinder box where she had set it in preparation the evening before, and soon had a hand lamp flickering. I dressed quickly in my order robe and cauled my face, then waited for her to finish putting on her servant robe. My dagger sheath I slid into my boot, but my dagger I carried in my hand. We left the outer chamber and crept down the passageway. Most of the lamps had been extinguished at that late hour. Not another person stirred. All the doors to the private chambers remained shut.
The cries guided us. We crossed the central corridor without encountering anyone and entered a series of connecting halls that looked little used. Dust lay upon the floors. The screams of agony became louder. They led us to an unlit room containing several crates. Another scream slit the air like the blade of a knife, and seemed to come from the blank wall at the far side of the room. I stared at it in bafflement as Martala raised her lamp. There was obviously no secret passage. The wall was a solid slab of rock.
Yet the floor was not completely solid. I noticed a faint flicker from the edge of one of the crates, and moving around it, saw that it half covered a tarnished bronze grate in the floor. The grate was no more than a cubit square. Taking the lamp from Martala, I set it on the opposite side of the wooden box so that its light would be shadowed, and appro
ached the floor grate. We both dropped to our hands and knees.
A wave of heat washed over my cauled face. It was like the air that rises from a fire. With disappointment, I saw that the grate was baffled with a plate a few inches below it so that it was impossible to see into the lower chamber. A faint lamp glow leaked around the edges of this baffle. I had not even suspected that the chambers beneath the Sphinx had two levels.
I heard a sound that I recognized all too well as the sear of red-hot iron applied to living flesh. A man shrieked involuntarily as pain drove the air from his lungs.
“Where is the location of the urn?” someone asked in a strange language. The tongue was unfamiliar, but I knew its meaning thanks to the flesh of the wizard’s finger.
“Horus will flay the skin from your bones and burn your flesh to ashes,” another man gasped in the same tongue.
His voice held a hollow echo, and his accent seemed utterly alien in my ears. The very sounds were as ancient as time-weathered stones. He spoke a string of words at his tormentor that could only have been curses. These were cut off by the hiss of hot iron against flesh. Another brother spoke a sharp word of caution, and whoever held the iron reluctantly removed it.
“He knows nothing more,” the second man said in Greek.
“Can we be certain?” the inquisitor asked.
“I am certain. He knows nothing of value.”
The clatter of the iron rod as it was cast down rang loudly through the grate and sent a wave of heated air upward. For a few moments there was an ominous silence.
“Horus will avenge me,” the tortured man spat in his ancient tongue.
The brother who seemed to have authority chanted an incantation in the language I recognized, from the few phrases I had encountered, as the guttural tongue of the Old Ones. A sound came that was difficult to describe, a soft sound, like a sack of salt upturned and poured onto the floor. No further word was spoken.
