by Donald Tyson
Tyroon, I perceived, was constructed in the shape of half a wheel, its fortification wall forming a circle that was interrupted by the gated straight section that bordered the Nile. Not all of the buildings were as inconsequential as they appeared to be from the river. An avenue lined with palms extended from the market square inside the gate to a long house of red brick with a rounded roof of thatch. Around it were placed other structures of carved wood logs cunningly fitted together, or made of the same red brick. They could only be the houses of nobles or wealthy merchants. Poor though they were to civilized eyes, they dwarfed the huts lining the other streets that radiated from the market.
A low building of white stone with a flat roof that stood near the long house had the appearance of a temple. It honored a serpent god whose sinuous effigies were carved boldly upon its pillars and walls. As I paused to study it, I realized that similar designs decorated the door of every house. It must be the image of Yig. Dimly I remembered reading in a book of arcane history that Yig was the supreme god of Khem, the black land. I paused to marvel at the simple elegance of the temple. It would not have been out of place in the sphinx-lined avenues of Memphis or Thebes. The only structure of the town made wholly of stone, it appeared much older than the other buildings.
We made our way across the open marketplace, ignoring the cries of the merchants and beggars, and found a public drinking house by following the smell of warm beer that drifted over the stalls. The tavern had no walls, merely a sun-bleached linen awning held aloft on four carved posts set in the earth, beneath which were tables and benches. The beer was ladled from clay pots by the proprietor, a small black man with white hair who seemed unable to speak.
Martala helped me to sit at an empty table and went to fetch two wooden cups. She returned and laid one on the table before me. I gazed into its liquid without enthusiasm. It was green. Small particles floated to the surface from its depths as I watched. Reminding myself that I was a ghoul, I drank it without drawing a breath, merely so that I would not have to look at it. Martala sipped her cup and made a face of disgust, but did not spit it out.
“We need to find a shaman,” I said to her in Greek.
“Wait here,” she said, rising from her seat. “I will ask questions in the marketplace.”
I allowed my mind to be lulled by the drone of conversation in the tavern and the more distant cries of the hawkers in the market. The little proprietor of the drinking place cast me a suspicious glance from time to time as he bent over his sweating clay vats, but made no attempt to approach my table. All the other patrons of his noxious brew were natives of this land. They ignored my presence as though my table were empty. I had not seen a single Greek or Copt since leaving the fishing boat, which surprised me. This was not a poor land, to judge by the wares in the market. Why would the Greeks not trade here? I shrugged to myself. Perhaps there was a law prohibiting foreign traders. In my present condition, it was a matter of no interest. Were the market peopled with a thousand Greeks, it would not have helped my circumstances.
As I brooded about my fate, I became aware of a man standing next to my table. I raised my head to examine him. He wore a breastplate and helmet of beaten brass, and little else apart from a woven skirt and sandals that laced to his calves. In his hand he carried a short spear with a long copper point. He stared down at me, dark face expressionless. When he saw that he held my attention, he spoke softly in a language strange to my ears, but due to my recently acquired gift for tongues, I understood his meaning.
“You must follow me.”
There seemed little reason to argue. In my weakened condition, a child of ten might have knocked me down and stolen my purse. I nodded and pushed myself to my feet on my walking staff. He waited patiently until I was able to hobble around the bench, then led me slowly across the market square and along the palm-lined avenue toward the sprawling house of red brick that I had noted upon entering the town. Several times he paused and waited while I stopped to catch my breath, for which I gave him silent thanks, but he did not embarrass me by attempting to take my arm and assist me. Martala was nowhere in sight.
Inside the shadowy long house, the air felt cool on my cheeks. I quickly saw why. Two young boys, both naked, sat working the paddle levers of large fans with their feet. The levers were attached to the fans by ropes, and the fans moved back and forth above a throne occupied by a barrel-chested man in a tall feathered headdress and voluminous white robe that concealed his feet and all but the tips of his fingers. Each time the rectangular vanes of the fan passed above him, the red and white plumes bent and trembled. The throne was of wood, but could not be mistaken for any other kind of seat. Its arms were carved in the shape of coiling serpents, its high back decorated with two extraordinary elongated skulls studded with innumerable teeth. They must be the skulls of crocodiles, I speculated, for I could think of no other beast with a head so oddly formed. In his right hand, the man bore a short mace of polished black wood, topped with a globe of smoky crystal as big as a fist that was enclosed in a standing gold ring.
He was eating as I entered, and did not immediately look at me. A young woman with naked breasts fed him sweetmeats from a gold tray. She smiled each time she popped one into his mouth. Several gray-haired black men stood behind the throne, which was guarded on either side by soldiers in brass breastplates. Spears were their only weapons. My escort indicated that I should stand in the open space before the throne, then left the long house.
When the girl wiped the seated man’s thick lips on a white cloth and removed the tray, he finally turned to me with a pleasant smile. Like most of the others in this land, his chin was beardless.
“Welcome to Tyroon,” he said in a resonant voice in perfect Greek. “I am N’golo, king of the Besari. It is not often that we receive visitors from the north.”
I bowed, leaning on my stick to keep my balance.
“My name is Alhazred. I am a traveler from Yemen.”
His eyes widened with interest.
“A man of Islam. I have spoken with only a few of your kind. Your Prophet was a great warrior.”
I bowed again to indicate my appreciation.
“Tell me, Alhazred, what is your purpose in coming to the land of Khem?”
For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if I would gain or lose by being truthful. The king seemed to have no hostility in his manner.
“By a mischance of fate, I was poisoned with the black ichor that is said to be brewed only by the shamans of your tribe, great king. I have come seeking a remedy before the poison corrupts my body to death.”
He stared at me with interest, then gestured for me to approach. I came close and stood between his knees. His guards tensed and shifted their grip on their spears, but made no other movement. N’golo reached out a hand and gently lifted my eyelid, peering at the white of my eye beneath. Again, I marveled at the power of the glamour, which concealed my deformities even from his touch, for when his hand brushed my cheek he felt no scar. He turned in his throne and murmured into the ear of an aged advisor with a white beard who bent close. The old man whispered back to the king.
“This is most extraordinary, Alhazred. My advisor tells me that no man has survived the black ichor for more than a quarter of an hour. Most die in the first minute or two.”
“I was fortunate, majesty. The poison barely scratched my skin.”
His expression was skeptical, but receptive. He might be the king of a tribe of savages, I thought, but he himself was an educated man. I wondered where he had acquired his perfect Greek speech.
“The shamans of my people are not forthcoming in the display of their arts, and are of uncertain tempers, Alhazred. I sympathize with your condition, but it might be better for you to avoid the shamans and allow your body to fight off the poison with its own resources. You seem to have some extraordinary natural immunity to its effect.”
&nb
sp; “Alas, your majesty, I have been informed by divine revelation that only the antidote of the shamans will save my life.”
He was silent for several moments, then leaned close so that I felt the heat of his breath on my cheeks.
“For your own safety, I must order you not to seek out the shamans of this land.”
A cackle of laughter split the quiet in the shadowed air of the long house. I turned painfully on my stick. Outlined in the light of the open doorway stood a man of such inhuman thinness, his silhouette appeared that of a skeleton. The light from outside obscured his face. I was still trying to discern his features, when I noticed that everyone in the large audience chamber had dropped to their knees and bowed their heads to the hard-packed mud of the floor. Even the two guards on either side of the throne knelt. The king rose behind me, and I hastened to step aside, thinking that he would order this skeletal maniac taken prisoner by his guards for intruding on his presence. Instead, the king himself knelt at the foot of his own throne and bowed to the figure in the doorway.
The skeleton approached, and the two naked black boys who had been operating the fans jumped to their feet and ran out the door behind him. No one else rose from their postures of abasement. He was a black man of some forty years of age, dressed in feathers and bones, carrying a white wand that appeared to be a human thigh bone, with a ring of black feathers tied around its tip. From a thong around his neck hung a whistle made of bone. Apart from bands of red feathers encircling his upper arms and ankles, he wore only a loincloth of woven green and red straw. The top of his head was shaved in a broad strip from his forehead to the base of his neck, leaving two tufts of curly black hair above each ear. Red paint in the shape of lightning bolts decorated his hollow cheeks.
“What do you want with the shamans of the Besari?” he demanded in his own tongue, staring at me with bloodshot eyes that harbored madness in their depths.
I made no answer.
His lips were thin, his mouth small, like that of a child, and his tiny white teeth resembled a string of miniature pearls when he smiled.
“You have a spirit guardian who watches over you. It can hide your scars from these fools, but not from me.”
He turned and in the tone a householder uses to command his slaves, ordered the king to stand. N’golo rose and faced the bony man. His handsome features remained expressionless, but beneath their surface resentment and hatred raged. Even so, when the other questioned him about me, the king answered truthfully, repeating what I had said to him. That I was still alive after being poisoned with the black ichor interested the thin man. He peered beneath my eyelids, as the king had done, and smelled my breath.
“There is power here,” he murmured to himself, his eyes rolling.
Lost in thought, he seemed to forget that we stood before him for a time, and began to mutter and bark to himself in little yips, like a dog, turning in a circle as he wagged his head from side to side and extended his red tongue from the corners of his diminutive mouth. As ridiculous as this performance appeared, not a single person in the audience chamber laughed, or even lifted his head. I saw the curved back of one guard tremble, so great was his terror.
Recovering his wits, the bony man regarded the king with contempt.
“Bring him to my lodge. We will examine him to verify that he speaks the truth.”
N’golo drew himself up. He was a tall man, at least several palms higher than the intruder.
“I am king of the Besari. It is not your place, Lo’oka, to tell me what to do.”
The other man cackled again, flashing the tiny pearls of his teeth.
“Where is your favorite washcloth, N’golo? What has become of it? Did you misplace it? Was it stolen, I wonder?”
The face of the king paled under its dark skin. His broad shoulders sagged, and he dropped his gaze.
With a final glance at me that contained nothing but malice, the bony man turned and left the long house. It was a minute before the guards or advisors dared to lift their heads. The king sagged back on to his throne as though all the life had fled from his limbs.
“Who was that crazed fool?” I asked in Greek.
N’golo looked up quickly, face drawn with fear. With an effort, he controlled himself.
“Lo’oka is the chief of shamans in Khem. Those who defy him die.”
“Even the king of the Besari?”
Anger flashed in his dark eyes. For a moment I thought he would leap up and strike me with his mace. He took a ragged breath and forced himself to smile, but it was bitter.
“Even the king has no defense against the walking dead. They come at night while we lie asleep and strangle us on our beds, then fall lifeless themselves into a heap of bones and putrefying flesh. Everyone knows they are sent by the shamans, but everyone is afraid to act against them. It has been this way in my land since the beginning of time.”
“It is not my purpose to meddle in the affairs of shamans,” I told him. “I only seek the antidote to the poison.”
He stared at me as though I were mad, then shook his head.
“You know nothing of their ways, Alhazred. The chief of the shamans has set his glance upon you. Even were you not poisoned, you would be a dead man.”
“Then I have no reason to fear attending him in his lodge,” I reasoned.
“There are worse things than death,” N’golo murmured.
His chief advisor leaned over his shoulder and whispered urgently into his ear. The face of the king became grim, but at last he nodded and waved the elderly man away from the throne. The advisor left the long house with dignified strides.
“I wish we had more time to talk, Alhazred. You might have instructed me in the teachings of your Prophet.”
“Perhaps when the poison is cleaned from my veins, we will talk again.”
N’golo smiled at me sadly, as a father might smile at a young child who boldly asserts that he intends to live forever.
The soft-spoken guard who had escorted me to my audience with the king returned in the company of the chief advisor.
“This man will show you the way to the lodge of shamans. May the great serpent protect you with his coils.”
I bowed, and followed the guard from the long house into the sunlight. The shaman Lo’oka was not in evidence, but I noticed Martala watching me from behind a fluttering panel of red and green linen when we left the palm-shaded avenue and entered the market square. She stepped forward, as though intending to approach. I made a discrete motion with my hand. She withdrew so that only the left side of her face remained visible beyond the striped awning. The merchant of the stall spoke animatedly to her, convinced by her presence that she intended to buy his pots, but my escort gave no sign that he noticed her. If I truly walked to my death, there was no reason for the girl to walk beside me.
We followed a narrow and crooked street through the heart of the town, but to my surprise did not pause until we reached the westernmost limit of the bend in the fortification wall. Here there were few houses, and those appeared vacant and neglected. Set in the wall was a small but stout door of dark wood little taller than my head, but broad enough to admit two men side by side. In defiance of the prevailing serpent decorations that covered almost every post and wall in the town, the door was adorned only with the head of an enormous toad, carved deeply into its black planks. The monstrosity had an evil aspect, and almost appeared to grin forth from the portal in mockery.
The inner surface of the door possessed no bolt or bar to prevent entry, which struck me as odd, in consideration of how well the front gates facing the river were supplied with loops for wooden bars to seal them shut against assaults. It seemed foolish to defend the front door of the town, yet leave the back door unprotected. Granted, most attacks must come from the river, but what was to prevent raiders from making their way around to the rear
of the wall?
As the guard fumbled with trembling fingers at the corroded brass ring set in the center of the door, just beneath the head of the toad, I glanced over my shoulder. From the back side, the town of Tyroon had a ghostly aspect. The only creature stirring was a dog that limped across the road on three legs.
The teeth of the guard chattered when he drew the door inward, and I realized he was almost overwhelmed with fear.
“Follow the path, and it will lead you to the place you seek.”
“The king instructed you to lead me.”
He rolled his eyes and stepped back as though he thought I intended to drag him with me through the doorway.
“I cannot pass through the Gate of Tsathoggua. All who pass through the gate die.”
The name was familiar. Fighting off the poisonous clouds in my mind, I searched my memory. Tsathoggua was one of the Old Ones, not one of their lords but a lesser being of different blood. He had the form of a black toad with bulbous eyes and human hands. I had thought all the land of Khem ruled by Yig, the great serpent, but the shamans worshiped a different master. This was their private gate. They dwelled outside the town, beyond its wall.
Without hesitation, I stepped over the threshold. The door banged shut behind me, but there was no sound of a latch falling into place. Naturally not. Who would dare to hinder the entry of the shamans? If even the king of the land quailed before their leader, the common people must regard them as living gods.
Chapter 30
