by Donald Tyson
“The secrets of the necromancy used by the order, and much more besides. It should bring us a casket of gold in the book marts of Alexandria.”
Her murmured reply was lost to me. I slept uneasily, recalling fragments of nightmare each time my mind stirred into a semblance of awareness. The first time I woke, I discovered that I lay on my right side with Martala curled in front of me, her head on my arm. She faced the room, where the red flame of an oil lamp flickered fitfully beneath the tattered hem of the curtain that concealed our mat. She had placed me so that my back was to the wall, and put herself in front for my defense. This realization brought a curious warmth into my heart. I tightened the arm that lay across her naked waist, and she patted with a sleepy gesture the back of my hand. I slid into sleep to the sound of the squalling baby and the soft clucks of its mother as she tried to quiet it.
When next I woke, the hut lay in near complete darkness. The only light came through the small, unshuttered window beside the door. Through the gap between the curtain and the wall, I saw starlight out the window. The baby had fallen asleep. Snoring came from the main part of the hut, but whether it issued from the throat of the mother or her husband, I could not determine.
There was something not quite right about the air, a faint scent of decay that I knew well from my days in the Empty Space. I strained my ears but heard nothing apart from the regular snores. Closing my eyes, I summoned Sashi. Her beautiful features formed on the darkness within my mind.
Sashi, is anything amiss?
She frowned and appeared to listen, then shook her head.
No spirits threaten your safety, Alhazred. I would have awakened you.
I know you would.
Opening my eyes, I peered around the edges of the curtain. Nothing stirred. My right arm had fallen numb from the pressure of Martala’s head. I gently closed and opened my hand to make the blood flow to my fingers. My hand began to tingle as it regained sensation. I could have slid my arm away, but that would have awakened the girl, so I merely rotated it until her head rested on a different place.
While I did this, something caught my attention, a soft sound like the distant slap of a wet cloth against a river rock. I lay wondering what had caused it. There were no large rocks on the bank of the Nile that bordered the town, and in any case, no washerwoman would be doing her laundry in the middle of the night. Through the gap at the edge of the curtain, the stars in the window began to wink out. I squeezed shut my eyelids to clear my vision, thinking I imagined it. When I looked again the stars were back. Again, the faint slap came.
Cold ran down my spine like a dipper of well water. I reached my left hand to Martala’s shoulder and squeezed gently. She stirred against my body, and made a faint sound with her lips, but my tightened grasp stopped it in her throat. Gently, I began to ease my arm from under her head, grateful that the girl had not wholly undressed me for the night. She had removed my sword and my boots, but my dagger still hung from its baldric at my hip. Outside the window came the murmur of a voice and quiet laughter.
Something scuffed in the room beyond the curtain. The snores ended with an abrupt snort. A sleep-laden man’s voice asked who was there. A mat rustled, and the mother spoke a man’s name. Suddenly he began to shout. The sounds of a struggle filled the darkness, mingled with the terrified and bewildered questions of the woman. The baby wailed, and for a few seconds the outer space was a milling confusion of unseen bodies. I gained my feet and pulled Martala up.
“Where is your weapon?”
“With my dress, in the corner. What’s happening?”
I made no attempt to search for my sword, but gave silent thanks that the girl had not removed my dagger. Drawing it, I swept the curtain aside.
The dim light from the window showed two human shapes locked in struggle, while other forms danced around them. The man continued to shout, and his wife to scream, so that I wondered why their neighbors did not rush into the hut to discover the reason for the tumult. The frightened cries of the two older children joined the wails of the baby.
Above the din came a sharp snap, like the breaking of a dry branch, and one of the struggling forms crumpled slowly to the ground. A flash of light lit the hut. By its brief illumination I saw a black man sprawled across the disordered sleeping mats, his head twisted backward on his neck at a grotesque angle. Above him stood what I took to be another man, until I realized that the dark patches on his cheeks and mouth were not shadows, but holes. A second flash, and another, revealed the mother crouched over her oil lamp, attempting to ignite its wick with steel and flint, tears of fright streaming wetly down her round cheeks. In the corner, next to the crib of the infant, huddled the little girl and her older brother. Both were naked. He had an arm across her chest as though to shield her, but his eyes were vacant with fear.
Several more quick flashes of the flint showed the corpse that stood alone in the middle of the hut turning its worm-eaten face in my direction. The shriveled sockets of its skin-wrapped skull held no eyes, and I wondered how it could see its way. As I stepped forward, the wick of the oil lamp caught, and a red flicker illuminated the hut. Still the door remained shut. Through the open window I caught a glimpse of a black face, and recognized in that instant the young shaman who had argued for my death in the lodge of his master.
My dagger entered the heart of the corpse. It made no sound. When a man is stabbed in the chest, his breath hisses from his lips, and he gasps in pain. This thing did not breathe. I wrenched the dagger free and spun away to avoid its closing grasp, then slashed it across the arms. I might as well have been cutting the bark of tree limbs. It took no notice. From the corner of my eye I saw Martala, naked but carrying in her hand the long blade of her new dagger, as she circled around to approach behind the monster. I darted the tip of my own blade at its face. Several fingers’ breadth of the steel entered its left eye socket. Before I could free my dagger, it got its hand on my shoulder. The strength in its bony, rotting fingers was unnatural. I tried to shrink away by bending my knees, but the tips of its fingers dug like spikes into my muscles, and I was only able to escape by hitting it an upward blow on the forearm with all the force of my arm.
Martala began to stab it in the back at the level of its kidneys. When this had no effect, she crouched and tried to cut the tendons at the back of its legs just above its heels. For a moment I had hope that this would bring it to its knees, but it continued to walk toward me, forcing me backward into the corner occupied by our sleeping mat. With the splitting of awareness that only comes in battle, I saw at the edges of my vision that the woman continued to huddle on the floor, holding the oil lamp up before her face as though it were a kind of charm. On the other side of the hut, the two children stood frozen in terror with their backs pressed against the wall.
“Alhazred, get out of there!”
Martala grasped the corpse around its waist and tried to pull it backwards, but its balance was as inhuman as its strength. It took no notice of her. All its attention remained fixed on me. I started to dodge to the right to get around it, but it was quick. For a moment I stood motionless, letting its arms extend over me on either side, then I ducked to the left. Its hand caught the collar of my coat. I struck at its forearm in a futile attempt to break its grip on the fabric, but before I could writhe my body out of the coat, its other hand closed over my right forearm.
Martala’s cries of rage and frustration mingled with the unceasing squall of the infant. I heard her long blade slide into dead flesh over and over, but she stood concealed from my sight behind the chest of the corpse. Feeling the fingers of the thing grind through the muscle of my upper arm and grate against the bone, I transferred my dagger to my left hand and cut upwards into the rotting crotch of the hulk. Again I stabbed up, and heard its belly rip open. Something wet fell across the back of my left hand, and the stench of excrement filled the air.
It dr
ew me closer, in spite of my effort to press it away. I heard Martala’s fists beat against its back with impotence above her frenzied curses. As our faces drew near, I had time to reflect that the dead thing had a nose very like my own. I felt its blackened teeth in my throat, and the hot gush of my blood.
Then I died.
Chapter 31
The light was more than bright, it was an agony that poured through my brain like molten steel. Shrill screams rent the air, rising in pitch until they exhausted themselves with inarticulate babbling. My body convulsed and twisted around on itself. Something scraped my bare shoulder. I recognized the chill touch of stone. In the silence a voice spoke.
“Alhazred, don’t be afraid.”
I unclenched my eyes and opened the lids a crack. The pain was less intense. It receded along the nerves of my body like an ocean wave running off a beach. I saw my exposed knees and realized that my arms were looped around them. With a distinct effort of will, I forced them to relax. Rivulets of sweat trickled across my legs and chest, and I trembled as if with some ague. Over me leaned a shadow that became a woman’s face. It wore an expression of deep concern, and something more in strange contrast. Exultation.
“Martala? Have I been sick?”
“Yes, you were ill, but you are better now.”
Her hand touched my shoulder. I flinched. So sensitive was my skin, the coolness of her fingertips felt like ice. She helped me to sit upright on the flagstone floor. I became aware of my nakedness.
A single stone oil lamp burned on a low table of rough wooden planks. It was that flame that had seared into my eyes like the desert sun. The rest of the chamber lay under shadow. The walls were made of stone blocks, and the roof of vaulted red bricks, supported by two thick pillars of stone. In the corner I noticed a stone stair leading up into darkness. A kind of green mold grew on one wall darkened by a patch of moisture. Beyond the pillar in front of me, I saw a large copper kettle in a kind of open fireplace, the charcoal cold and black beneath it, a copper vent hood to remove fumes hanging over it. No one else was in the room.
The memory of the walking corpse returned. I grasped my throat, but found it whole and uninjured. Had it been nothing more than a dream?
“Can you stand?”
“Yes . . . I don’t know, I think so.”
Confused thoughts races through my brain. I remembered consulting with Lo’oka, the chief shaman, at his lodge on the island in the fen, and later being in the mud hut at Tyroon. This was no mud hut. It must be a vault beneath the ground, to judge by the cool damp air.
Martala helped me to my bare feet and guided me to a plain chair beside the table. I sat with relief, unwilling to trust the strangeness of my legs any longer. They were strong enough. The effects of the poison had wholly departed. Yet in some curious way they felt detached from my body, as though they were the legs of another man that I controlled at a distance. Everything felt both too intense and unreal.
Martala knelt on the floor at my feet and took my hand between hers. She wore a simple white linen dress unfamiliar to my eyes, with a broad embroidered girdle of the same color to close it around her waist, and her lustrous dark hair was knotted on top of her head in a fashion I had not seen her wear before. A comb of ivory held the coils in place. I wondered where she had acquired the dress. Her ice-gray eyes stared up into mine with concern.
“Where are we?”
“This is your house, Alhazred. We are in the cellar beneath your house.”
I frowned and tried to still my racing thoughts.
“I own no house.”
“Yes, you do.” She smiled. “I bought it for you with several of your jewels.”
By reflex I reached with my free hand to pat my waist where my purse usually hung, then remembered that I was naked.
“You took my purse?”
“I had to, there was no other way. I needed a place to work.”
My laughter sounded strange in my ears. Martala flinched as though I had slapped her.
“If I were going to buy a house, it would not be in Tyroon.”
“This isn’t Tyroon.”
Coldness washed over my heart. My breath caught in my throat, and I forced myself to exhale slowly while I stared at her face.
“Where are we?”
“Alexandria.”
I nodded, considering the word, and remembered telling her that my intention was to travel down the river to Alexandria, after leaving Tyroon.
“How long was I dead?”
She blinked at the word, her face pale, then lowered her eyes and stared at my fingers for several moments, pressed between her own. When she raised her face to confront me, her expression was grim.
“Almost seven months.”
Gently, I extracted my hand and pushed myself up with the aid of the table. My legs still felt odd, but they were once more my own legs. The vertigo that had gripped me was fading. It was an effort to stand on my own, but I could sustain it. I felt between my thighs to assure myself of the evidence of my own eyes. My manhood was still missing. I raised my hands to my head and slid them over the holes that should have been occupied by my nose and ears.
“Feisel was right,” I murmured. “The process of resurrection cannot restore amputated flesh.”
“It healed your throat,” Martala pointed out, standing beside me.
“That is different. All the parts of my throat were still present.” I chuckled to myself, prompting the girl to glance sideways at me as though in fear for my sanity. “A good thing for me the walking corpse didn’t swallow what it bit.”
“When it killed you, it fell lifeless beside your body.”
“What did you do then?”
She shrugged.
“First I went to help you, but when I saw you were dead, I went a little crazy and cut the corpse that killed you with my knife. Then I heard the shaman laugh outside the window, so I ran out and caught him before he could run away, and forced him to go into the hut. By that time the mother and her children had fled.”
“Did any people of the town come to your aid?”
“Those cowards?” She made a sound of disgust. “No one even opened their door to find out what was happening.”
“They were terrified of the shamans.”
She nodded. It was old information to her.
“At first the shaman laughed at me, but when I cut pieces off his body, he stopped laughing. I ordered him to restore you to life. He said that it was beyond his power. I thought he lied, but after a while I saw that he was too frightened of me to lie, so I wept while I sat on his chest with my knife at his throat, and my tears fell all over what remained of his face.”
“The shamans have the power to animate corpses, but not to restore the dead to life,” I said gently. The thought of her weeping for my death touched my heart.
“I made him tell me how he controlled the corpse before I killed him. It was with this.”
She reached into the neck of her householder’s dress and pulled forth a leather thong from which hung a bone whistle. It was the same as those I had seen hanging from the neck of Lo’oka and his disciples.
“To remove life from the walking dead, the shamans blow upon it like this.” She raised the whistle to her mouth, then paused. “It took me weeks to learn how to play it.”
She blew a series of notes that echoed mournfully from the wet stones and arched bricks of the vault. I held my breath, wondering if the music would return me to dust, but when I saw that it had no effect, I relaxed. Martala perceived my concern.
“No, it only works on the truly dead. You are alive, Alhazred. You are as you were before.”
Holding my hand up before my face, I flexed my fingers. They moved easily, and I felt the strength in them. They were as pink and as clean as the skin of a week-old bab
e washed in spring water. My fingernails as yet did not project beyond the ends of my fingers, but were immature.
“How did you get my corpse down the Nile?”
“It wasn’t easy, but with wealth anything is possible. I searched your coat and found the scroll, and I saw how many jewels you had in your purse, and in the knotted rag in your pocket. I was able to hire fishermen to take your body to the Second Cataract, and from there a trading boat carried it to the First Cataract, where I placed it on a ship that sailed for Alexandria.”
“You are a resourceful woman.”
She shrugged, but the blush of her cheek showed her pleasure at the compliment.
“I pretended to be your daughter, taking you home to Alexandria for mummification.”
“How did you keep my flesh from rotting away?”
“Bitumen. I had your naked body coated in bitumen both inside and out. It kept away the worms and beetles. When I was a child at Memphis, I saw them use bitumen to make mummies, so I knew it would not hinder your resurrection.”
“The bitumen all boiled away in the vat?”
She nodded.
“The ancient necromancer’s scroll was very helpful. I had watched what was done to prepare the mummies under the Sphinx, but without the instructions of the scroll, I could not have restored you to life.”
“Just as well that I decided to steal it.”
She brushed her hands over my chest, as though wondering to see me stand before her. I reminded myself that although it had seemed only an instant to me, she had endured more than half a year of labor and doubt.
“Were you in paradise?” she asked in a timid voice.
“No.”
She caught her breath.
“Not in hell?”
I shook my head.
“Oblivion.”
For a moment she considered.
