by Donald Tyson
Martala stared at me, her face strangely lit from below by the redness from the grate. I saw the thought in my mind mirrored in her eyes.
“Necromancy,” she whispered.
Chapter 23
The days passed with the regular monotony of the drips from a water clock. I was assigned the task of copying scrolls in the scriptorium, and labeling and keeping close records of the collection of green glass cylinders filled with corpse dust, which numbered in the thousands. Feisel’s purpose was to place me close to the scrolls, so that I would become immediately aware when one of them was stolen. He did not reveal to any other members of the order that I was an agent of Nyarlathotep, since he feared alerting the spy.
As a new brother, I was not permitted access to the locked storage room at the rear of the scriptorium where the more important documents were kept. I spent my days seated on a high stool, bent over an angled table stained with centuries of spilled ink, squinting in the uncertain lamp light with my reed pen poised over parchment or papyrus sheets. There were four rows of similar tables. The documents I copied were of minor significance. Only the elder scribes handled the more precious scrolls, which were closely watched whenever they were taken from the locked room.
I was assigned a number for identification. All brothers of the order under the Sphinx were known only by numbers. As the head of the order, Feisel bore the number two. The god himself was the monad. Each time two brothers communicated with sign gestures, they identified themselves by their numbers. This was necessary since no personal jewelry or emblems were worn on their black robes. It was apparent to me that it would be an easy matter for a spy to adopt the number of some other brother, and in this way penetrate to chambers beyond his usual duties. I mentioned this weakness in the procedure to Feisel, but he was reluctant to change a system of identification that had served the order well for so many generations.
Martala and I spoke little about what we had overheard through the floor grate that first night, since we had so little information upon which to speculate. That it was necromancy, I had scant doubt. No living man had spoken that ancient tongue for at least a thousand years. In some way the work involved the bottles of essential salts. After the mummies were reduced to their dust, they waited on their shelves until called for by one of an elite group of brothers. Which bottle was chosen depended on its perceived importance, as I learned by studying the records. The corpse of a king or court magician seldom waited on the shelf more than a few days after its preparation, but the corpse of a minor nobleman of the pharaoh’s palace might remain neglected for years, as the dust covering its lead seal attested.
The particular bottle chosen was carried down a concealed back stair to the lower level by one of the elite brothers, who did not participate in the work of the upper level, and always remained aloof and apart from the rest of us. Regular members of the order were never permitted to descend the stair to the deeper level. Its cedar door was concealed behind an elaborate tapestry that depicted a battle between the Egyptian gods Horus and Set, and no brother ever spoke of it, even though the youngest and most recent knew of its existence. The removal of the bottles to the lower level invariably occurred during the hours of night when most of the brothers lay in sleep.
At last, after several weeks as a copyist of scrolls beneath the Sphinx, Feisel decided that I was ready to be shown the true work of his brotherhood. It was with keen curiosity that I accompanied him through the door and down the hidden stair. The lower level was not as large as the upper level. Six archways on either side led off from the central corridor. Oil lamps hanging from wall brackets provided ample light, but the corridor possessed a utilitarian air, being unadorned by furniture, paint or tapestries.
It was shortly after ten of the clock. Feisel led me to the third opening on the left wall, and waited for me to enter the chamber ahead of him. I saw no one in the other rooms into which I glanced as I passed their archways. However, this room was almost crowded. It was not large, and square in shape. Set in its center was a chair made of wood. I noted that it was unusually sturdy in construction, including its arms, and also that it was stained with a small amount of dried blood on the back. The chair rested within a flat pan made of copper that had been scoured so clean, its inner surface gleamed in the lamp light. This odd piece of furnishing had a rim no higher than the span of a hand that ran all the way around its four sides.
Behind the chair, a brother sat at an angled writing desk similar to those used in the scriptorium, his reed pen in hand, a blank scroll spread before him. Two other brothers looked up from the glowing iron brazier they were tending to nod with deference at Feisel. I wondered how they recognized him when he had not delivered his identifying hand signal, then realized that his uncommon height and military bearing set him apart. He moved with a posture of authority, as one in complete command. The brazier rested on an iron tripod. Heat emanated from its orange bed of embers in waves, though the glowing charcoal made almost no smoke. I looked up and saw a square vent hole in the ceiling above the brazier. No doubt it led to a bronze grill similar to the one through which Martala and I had listened.
One of the two white-robed servants in the room took a green glass cylinder from a table against the wall and removed its lead stopper. He tilted the vessel and poured out its contents in a pile on the flagstones of the floor just in front of the chair. Several camel-hair hand brushes and a hand sweeper of pig’s bristles lay on the table beside a coil of fine white ropes that appeared to be made of silk. The floor was uncommonly clean, so clean that I noticed its cleanliness, even though it is not my habit to pay attention to such things. Indeed, the entire chamber had been so dusted and swept and scoured that any of its surfaces might have served as a banquet table. No speck of dust, no wisp of straw, no spider’s web, was to be found in the corners.
One of the brothers stepped toward the pile of dust, but Feisel waved him aside, and he withdrew backward with a bow. Feisel motioned me to approach. I stood behind his right shoulder. The two servants stepped nearer and stopped on either side of the mound of dust, all that remained of the corpse of a once-living human being. Feisel raised his hand, and I watched closely as he drew a symbol in the air. I recognized it as the sign of the caput draconis, the Head of the Dragon, an astrologer’s glyph used to designate the point of intersection of the path of the moon with the path of the sun, when the moon is ascending. He uttered a brief incantation in the language of the Old Ones.
My ear for such things has always been good. I had no trouble committing the words of the chant to memory. However, the effect of its utterance startled me to such an extent that I almost allowed the words to slip away, even though I had expected to see precisely what transpired under my gaze. At the last word, the mound of essential body salts became molten, as though transformed to liquid wax, and began to expand into an irregular mass. The air grew distinctly cooler. I wondered as I watched if it were only my imagination, but I realized later that the coolness was due to the extraction of moisture from the air, which was drawn into the reddening and obscene wetness that lay quivering on the floor.
It resembled nothing I had ever seen, save perhaps the aborted fetus of a horse I had chanced to observe at the age of fourteen in the royal stables at Sana’a. Wetly glistening with blood and other fluids similar to the clear slime from the nose that only comes with sickness, it quivered and quaked, opening before my wondering eyes into the body of a woman. In seconds the bloody mass covered itself with white skin, and gray hair sprouted from its skull. Its eyelids sprang open, and its parting lips emitted the most repulsive shriek it has ever been my misfortune to hear. It was a woman of some fifty years or more of age. The shape of her head and the bones of her face were unnatural yet strangely familiar. It was several moments before I recognized them as the same features I had seen on the ancient temple statues at Memphis. She lay naked but an instant, then leapt to her feet.
Only t
he quickness of the two servants prevented her from dashing out the archway of the chamber. They caught her upper arms with practiced precision and forced her backward until she was compelled to step over the rim of the flat copper pan and sit in the wooded chair. She babbled in the language of the old race of Egypt, which was not unknown to me thanks to the flesh of Nectanebus.
“What is happening? Holy Mother Isis save me.”
The brother I judged to be of lesser authority took up the coil of ropes and bound her arms and ankles to the chair. Her agitation soon gave way to bewilderment. She stared around at us as though we were all demons from hell. In truth, she was a pitiful sight, sitting naked, her flat breasts sagging over her wrinkled belly, her gray hair disordered upon her bony shoulders. Yet I felt nothing. Any pity I might have possessed had been beaten from me by the rays of the sun upon the anvil of the Empty Space.
Feisel stepped back and allowed the brother who seemed to be in command of the night’s entertainment to approach the shivering woman.
“What do you know of magic?” he demanded in the same ancient language she had spoken.
She shook her head and stared at his black caul. His accent must have sounded strange in her ears. He repeated the question more slowly.
“Nothing, I swear. It is forbidden. I know nothing of such things. Are you a demon?”
“What do you know of hidden treasure?” he asked, ignoring her words.
“Nothing. I do not understand, what treasure? Where am I?”
It would be tedious to describe the entire interrogation, which was of a routine order. During life, the woman had been attached to the nursery of the Egyptian pharaoh Tethmosis, in charge of the many nursemaids who provided milk for his dozens of infants, born from the wombs of his many concubines. Her name was Nemeruma. It was asked of her only to verify her identity, not so that she might be addressed in a more personal way. Throughout the interrogation she was treated as a slave, or less than a slave—an object. The extended list of questions had two primary purposes, exemplified by the first two questions. One was to learn any fragment of magical lore that might be gleaned from the thrashing floor of history, and the second to discover the hiding places of ancient treasures.
This was the source for the great wealth of members of the Order of the Sphinx, I reflected as I watched the hot iron applied to her sagging breast. In so ancient a land as Egypt, gold and other treasure must lie everywhere, buried in the earth, hidden in caves in the hills, beneath the foundations of forgotten temples. In the ordinary course of events, when those who hid treasure died, it remained in its hiding place undiscovered. Hence the popularity of the necromantic arts. All other necromancers were as children in comparison with this black-robed brotherhood. Individual necromancers sought the treasures of individuals, but the order pursued the treasures of an entire race.
Gold was the prize that fueled their lamps and paid for their fine houses and rich city apparel, but knowledge was even more coveted than gold. For this reason, the most sought after mummies were those of necromancers and sorcerers. Almost as valued were the mummies of kings and queens, since they were privy to many secret things, and to the methods of worship and compulsion of the gods that had been lost in time. The ancient Egyptians had not merely adored their gods, but had commanded them. Methods for controlling the gods were the most valued of all secrets.
As this last thought passed through my mind, I realized it might have some bearing on the theft of the scrolls, and resolved to examine the records of the resurrections at the first opportunity.
When the interrogator believed he had extracted all the information of value possessed by the woman, who had fainted from the pain of the burning iron, he turned to Feisel. The head of the order nodded his permission. Stepping close to the chair so that the hem of his robes almost touched the lip of the copper pan, the chief torturer made the sign I recognized as the cauda draconis of astrologers, the Tail of the Dragon, which is used to signify the crossing of the path of the moon downward through the path of the sun. He uttered the same brief chant that Martala and I had listened to through the floor grate, and the woman instantly collapsed into a sifting of gray dust.
Sweat beaded my forehead beneath my silk caul. The air had suddenly become moist. The two servants, who stood ready with brushes in their hands, came forward and used great care to sweep the dust from the chair into the copper pan beneath it. They removed the chair and collected the dust from the pan. It was transferred on small lead scrapers back into the glass bottle, then resealed for future use.
As I watched, I meditated on this ultimate indignity. It was not sufficient to resurrect the dead in their terror and confusion, and torture their bodies for secrets that most of them did not possess, but this same procedure could be repeated again and again, as often as the bottle was opened and the incantation uttered. If a king did not give up the resting place of his treasury during the initial questioning, he might on the second occasion, or the tenth. Even to my jaded sense of morality this repetition of outrage had an evil air.
I accompanied Feisel back to his private rooms. Dru was absent in Fustat, supervising another cargo of mummies, and Martala was occupied with servant work. We were alone save for Feisel’s own servant, who did not emerge from the inner rooms. Feisel gestured for me to sit and I complied silently. The habit of not speaking was difficult to relinquish.
“Now you know everything about our work, Alhazred.”
“I had surmised much during the past few weeks, but now I have seen everything.”
Feisel laughed, something he did rarely. His throat rasped with the effort.
“You have yet to see the interrogation of a sorcerer. What we witnessed today was nothing.”
“Will the woman be awakened from death again?”
“Probably not. She knows little of value. Still, she will be preserved with the others in case at some future time her knowledge should prove of use.”
“How many times can a corpse be resurrected?”
“There is no limit of times in the abstract, but in practice impurities always find their way into the dust, no matter how much care is taken to keep it clean. After a dozen restorations, the thing that is brought back is not coherent enough to offer useful answers.”
Finally I asked the question that had burned in my mind throughout the interrogation.
“Is it possible to resurrect the body of a man who has suffered the loss of a limb or other mutilation during life, so that once reborn, his body becomes whole?”
Feisel’s keen gray eyes narrowed in thought.
“An interesting question. No, it is not possible. Flesh lost cannot be reconstituted from nothing. That is why we take such care that every speck of dust be gathered up and placed in the glass vessel. Should the dust that forms the head, for example, be lost, the next resurrection would result in a headless monstrosity.”
My heart fell with his first few words. I listened to him expound on the need to keep contamination away from the salts, but my thoughts were elsewhere. I could not restore my face and manhood merely by dying and being resurrected. For a few days I had cherished this hope. I allowed it to pass from me with a philosophical shrug. I would find a way. If not this, then some other.
“I have a boon to ask of you,” I said when he finished his discourse. “Give me access to the records of your resurrections, so that I may study them.”
Interest quickened in his flint-gray eyes.
“Does this pertain to the thefts?”
“An idea, nothing more,” I said with a shrug. “Let me prove it out or disallow it, as the fates decree.”
To this, he gave ready agreement.
Deep in thought, I returned to my chambers. Martala sat waiting. She rose and washed me silently, having learned to respect my moods. Though my mind raced with speculations, I fell asleep in my bed in a few m
inutes, the warmth of the girl radiating against my bare back. Again I dreamed of vats, and dismembered mummies, and the screams of the tormented. This dream had been my constant companion while living under the Sphinx. The most maddening part was that tapping noise, which never had a source and seemed without meaning.
The next morning, I made my way to the scriptorium and spent the entire day reviewing the records of the resurrections conducted within the last year. By referring to historical documents kept by the order, I was able to verify the identities and stations in life of almost all the men and woman raised from the dust. As I suspected, the thefts were not random crimes of opportunity. Each had been carefully planned. I sought Feisel to inform him of my discovery, but he was absent from his usual haunts, so I went to speak with his son after the conclusion of the evening meal in the dining hall.
Dru sat lounging on a cushion-covered divan in his outer chamber when I entered. His servant, a slender young woman of African blood whose name was Vanoo, took my caul and escorted me to the seat. He was intoxicated, not an unusual condition for him at this hour of night, since he began his drinking in the morning, but the dreamy clouds left his eyes when I told him what I believed I had discovered.
“This is excellent work, Alhazred,” he said slowly with the effort of keeping his words unslurred. “We should have noticed it before.”
“You are accustomed to trust within the brotherhood. It has made you complacent.”
“Perhaps. No traitor has defiled our ranks for centuries. It is a problem strange to our experience.”
“When is the next necromancer assigned for resurrection?”
“Tonight.” He smiled at me and waved his hand vaguely. “It is a matter usually concealed from the common ranks of our order, but my father chooses the times, and he keeps nothing from me.”
