THE NECRONOMICON ~ The Cthulhu Revelations (25 page)

In my confidence, I believed my lack of wealth would be as nothing.  There would be no need to bribe my way into the ruined city.  I could steal through the outskirt ruins off the caravan tracks in the deep of night, alone and undetected.  Entering Babylon would be simplicity itself.

I proved to be misguided.

~

The road into Babylon from the south, from the many ruined pillars along its course, is named the Way of Ten Thousand Teeth.  Coming therefrom to Babylon’s southern devastation under the glow of a gibbous moon, I was met by those callous foreigners who call themselves the “guardians” of the city.  These men were little more than bandits, jaded and covetous reavers led by a moon-wild and fearful
malik
by the name of Omuz.

Omuz, with his haunted expressions and furtive eyes, seemed content to let his captains bar my way.  These two men, Tashet and Akhri by name, demanded tribute to let me pass.  I said to them that I was under the shadowy aegis of the Cabal, and offered to their appraisal first my amulet of bone.  Omuz gasped and made the Hands of Horns in my direction.  He ordered his men to let me pass, but it seemed that Omuz could only command his men when their greed had already been held at bay.

My instincts told me that blood would be shed that night, and very soon.  My
jambiya
was concealed within my head-wrap, its pommel a cunning “jewel” upon my hair.  If a fight were to occur, I would dare to side with Omuz against the others.  For he had seen and understood the symbols upon my amulet, and I suspected that if we were to come to blows, his fear of the Ghuls would prove to be greater than his fear of the disobedient Tashet and Akhri.  He might fight by my side.

Beyond these three leaders, however, there were some twenty lesser men.  These watched my defiance of Akhri’s call for tribute with great interest.

Tashet dared call me
majnun
, one haunted by the Jinn and so made mad by sacred visions.  I did laugh at him, and told him this was truer than he would ever dare to believe.  Akhri—too late, I could smell that he was drunk and mad with spice—grew rash and wild, and drew a scimitar and held it to my throat.

This was a delicate time.  Beyond these three, there were the twenty other men in the command.  Some few seemed respectful, others wary, but most were curious only to see if Omuz’s authority could survive the disrespect of both his captains at once.

I was ordered by Akhri to dismount from my riding camel.  This I did.  Tashet commanded that I submit to search, and this was overruled by Omuz.  And so I refused.  Murmurs arose within the ranks.  I asked Omuz, over the shoulder of Akhri, whether it was proper to hold one poor merchant at blade point and not offer him a shelter for the night.  If I was to be detained, was I not a guest?  Had tribal honor come to this?

The men murmured at this, for some were Bedouin, and others tribal outcasts.  Few of them were at ease with my confinement.

Biding my time, I suggested a truce of ways:  I would go with them, and submit to their search of my camels; but not until I was fed and my camels watered.  I would feast with them, and then they could search all my goods and take whatever tribute they deemed to be the equal of my gratitude for their hospitality.

Akhri scowled at this, for he knew that he had been outmaneuvered.  He sheathed his blade.  But his eyes were filled with hatred.  And so did I let myself be taken.

~

Allowed to lead the most heavily burdened of my camels, I was walked to the Mosque of the Undervaults, which stands upon the foundations of a greater ruin at Babylon’s southwestern edge.  My camels were tethered and watered by four of the men, while four others stood guard.  Five further men left to patrol the Ten Thousand Teeth once more.

The rest of us descended the holy stairs, and there underground—where the coolness of water reigned and amber censers filled the air with their enchanting glow—I was made a guest of blessed night.

Such was hospitality, even in the age of ruin and holy war.

But the night was not at an end.  Despite my guile, I had underestimated the senseless fervor and the bloodthirst of Akhri.

~

There were eleven of us in the Undervaults.  As several of the men strode about and lit the censers and lanthorns and hung them upon the elaborate silver curvatures which arced from the mighty pillars, Akhri himself knelt in solemn prayer.  Some of the others—Tashet as well, but not Omuz—did the same.

When his prayers had been spoken, Akhri stood and walked in a measured circle around me.  He asked me my name.  I told him, “To myself I am Abd Al-Azrad, but the name of my soul has been spoken as Samir.”  Several of the men murmured at this, pleased at my sincerity.  I knew I was walking upon the edge of a blade, and that my respect for the rituals of gratitude and hospitality were being scrutinized and dissected by brazen Akhri.

The man wanted to hate me.

He asked, “And so your
soul
has been spoken of, O Abd?  And by who?  Who is your god, wanderer?  Yahweh, the salt-sower?  The Prophet himself?  Mithras of the
syndexioi
?  Shiva, Parameshvara?”

There beneath the Mosque?  The question was audacious, even vulgar.  But I was outnumbered by the faithful, and I stood by their graces in the vaults beneath their one place of reverence.  Touching my Cabal’s amulet, I bowed slightly to Akhri and said, “Forgive me, friend.  I am of the tribes and the Desert Mother.  I worship no god.”

To this there was only silence.

But Akhri the viper had found some meager fissure in the armor of my civility, and at this he pried with eager claw.  He put his hand upon his scimitar once again.  Omuz said, “Akhri, not here.  Never here.”  But Akhri ignored him.

And Akhri said to me:  “You ask sanctuary and blessing, here of all places, and insult us thus?  Who has burned away your fear?  You
should
fear me, and well, yet you do not.  Greater warriors than you have cowed from me.  Who in your heart protects you?”

There was nothing else I could do.  The other men, uncertain at first, were souring and changing their stances from rest to stern alertness.  While Omuz was their commander, his temerity and silences did not seem to rest well with the mercenaries.  It is Akhri whom they looked to, and with Akhri’s indignation building into rage, the others were casting eyes of disapproval upon my ways.

So it was that I said, “I wish you no harm, only sanctuary and passage.  I have come to Babylon to learn wisdom, and mayhap I will find my way.  You, Akhri, you will allow me to learn the error of my ways in solitude as is proper, will you not?”

Akhri’s nostrils flared.  His eyes went wide, and he drew his scimitar and held its point before my heart.  Two of the men cried out and ran up the stairs, either to warn the others or to flee what was to come.  Omuz drew his own blade with reluctance, as did Tashet; and the four of us stood upon the lapis-mosaic floor with great currents of  indecision welling all about us.

Omuz said, “Akhri, do not do this.”  And Tashet, “Is this an unbeliever?  Of the prophecy?  Is it he?”

And Akhri, to me:  “You will answer.”

I spread my hands, and I said, “I do not fear you, Akhri.  Neither will I destroy you, provided you do me no harm.  But my Lord is proud and hateful, and if you demand that I call unto him I shall.  He, I believe, will have no mercy for you but the revelation of the Chaos of the Abzu.  For my protector is the Lord in Ebon, Nyarlathotep, and no one else.”

This name meant little to Tashet or to Akhri.  But Omuz fell upon his knees, and cried, “
Ai!
  Ai, the darkness is come!  Know that I have not looked upon your servant in hatred, O Nyarlat!  I am innocent! 
I am!”

The other men were incredulous.  I could feel the fulcrum of power shift, as the sacred warriors all about me cast their disdain upon fearful Omuz and favored valorous Akhri all the more.

I turned away.  If I was going to be able to leave this sanctuary in peace, the last moment I could do so was fleeting and well upon me.  As I began to walk to the alabaster stair, Akhri cried out, “You worship a false god here?  In our
sanctum sanctorum
?  Infidel!”

And I could feel the air hiss and the candleflames lean as the fool Akhri raised his scimitar to behead me.

The man was a bold warrior of his god, I am certain; and he had no reason to believe I could outmatch him.  But I was a changed man who walked as an outsider between the spheres of man and blackest revelation, and the powers of Anata and Naram-gal—while fomenting and uncertain—already were within me.

One of the arts which the Ghul-crone Anata taught to me was this:  There is an incantation, simple in its abomination, which can be cast upon the body of a dead child.  It causes the mutilated body to rise, and to flicker into animacy, a blurring dance of death.  The Thing thus raised can blur between there and here as if a reflection leaping between two mirrors, an unholy celerity of motion.  Then the body of the child crumbles, wasted and abandoned.  But if the speaker of the incantation is to cut a sliver of rotted flesh from the child’s fingertip, and swallow it and its essence before the unholy animacy fades fully from the vessel, from that moment the power of speed lives within the chanter and there waits for its release in words of power.

And so as Akhri raised his scimitar, I cried:

“Ak’nath ol-krai’eth, Ashmodai!  Akhal Kulullu, ishir!  Ishir-at, al Shol-Niggurath!”

As I spoke the first word, knowing only that Anata had told me that such would protect me, I saw a fascinating thing.

~

There was a moth, a desert gypsy of the pale, which was circling one of the lanthorns and its flame.  Its wings blurred with the rapidity of its fervor.  Sparks fell all about it, and it wheeled around the lanthorn’s candle, believing the flame therein to be the sun.  The moth had been frantically careening around the lanthorn in ever-tighter circles, but as I spoke
“Ak’nath”
... it floated there slowly, hovering in a prison made of air.

Its wings were so slow then that I could see them moving, gentle as the fingers of a reader who is turning the pages of a codex.

And I turned, speaking the second word,
“ol-krai’eth”
... and I could see Tashet and Omuz behind me, frozen and unmoving.  Tashet’s eyes were wide with doubt and horror, regarding Akhri with his scimitar.  Omuz was still on his knees and had buried his face in despair.

I turned fully, speaking,
“Ashmodai!  Akhal Kulullu ...”

And Akhri himself was frozen as a statue, petrified.  A string of slaver was suspended from his mouth, hovering in the perfumed air.  His face was contorted in rage and hatred.

It was all I could do to stifle my wonder, and complete my incantation.  I looked to the other men, petrified as well; and the fires of the candles were motionless and pure.  The incantation of Anata flowed through me, the essence of the blurred speed was filling my belly with its fire.  The celerity of the death-child was mine.

~

It is a curious thing, to kill a man.  In my youth I had feared death, and believed myself incapable of murder.  But I had stolen the obsidian
jambiya
of Ghanara, who had beat me as a child; and I had seen the gashed throat of my Adaya.  I had killed men who had threatened my cherished mentor, Fatimah, as bandits in the desert; and I had even delivered the mercy blow to a man who had been so brazen as to spit at the feet of Naram-gal before the Ghuls were to tear his body apart.  And yes, there were so many thieves.

By this time in my life, I was no murderer.  I had never killed in cold blood, and I had never assassinated anyone.  I fought only those who threatened or dishonored those I loved.  But now?

Now, the fool Akhri was at my mercy.  He had begged for this, believing me to be an old, gaunt powerless fool who had slighted his blustering pride.  Surely he meant to kill me beneath the mosque in the name of a holy law, and in doing so was likely to cast Omuz into shame and take the command of these men for himself.  If he were to do so, would these mercenaries become something worse?  Murderers of the innocent?

These, however, were mere justifications as I stood there marveling at the power of my incantation, with the men of the mosque frozen in suspended time all around me.  There was a greater reason to slay Akhri, and a black one:

It would be bring me deep and satisfying pleasure to take his life.

~

I drew my hidden
jambiya
from its hiding place in my head-cloth.  Delicately touching its razor tip to the soft flesh between Akhri’s chin and throat, I shouted the last of the vile words:
 “Shol-Niggurath!”

Time accelerated.

My
jambiya
’s blade sliced up through the flesh of Akhri’s throat, up into his mouth.  I heard a popping sound as my blade’s tip impaled the base of his tongue, went up higher, and punctured the roof of his mouth and so into his brain.  Tashet was shrieking, and dropped his own blade in horror.  Omuz was rocking back and forth.  The other men wailed in despair and terror, for in their regard, I had become a blur and had spun and impaled Akhri in a single motion with an invisible blade, too fast for the eye to see.

Akhri could say nothing.  He was dead.  His scimitar clattered to the floor’s mosaic stones.  I withdrew my
jambiya
from his skull, and the seal which had held him together was lain open.  An enormous gout of gurgling blood sprayed forth in two cascades, one burbling over his lips, the other jetting out through his opened chin and staining his robes with a viscous and spreading pool.

Emptied, he tottered and fell.

Having heard the wild cries of the beholders of my act, the other men ran from outside or the mosque above and rushed down the alabaster stairs.

Omuz cried, “He whose soul-name is Samir, the mantle of black is upon him!  O, the Ghuls and Nyarlat!  He is chosen!  Do not touch him, do not touch him!”

But Tashet shouted, “He murdered Akhri!  Slay him where he stands!”