Gog (Lost Civilizations: 4) (13 page)

In time, he puffed his bull-wide chest. He was Vidar the Warrior, the one who self-healed. Alas, he could only heal his own wounds and hurts, never another’s. He began to stride to his main area of authority. Under his breath, he mouthed vile oaths of what he would do to Keros the first chance he had.

Chapter Thirteen

The Quest

“Show me your scars and I’ll tell you my tales.”

-- Chant of the Huri Fire-Talkers

Tamar turned into the canal that was as wide as a river. A pleasure barge, with great burning lanterns, with dancing girls and flutists had anchored in mid-stream. Silk-clad gluttons gorged at a table, while others chased the scantily clad girls. With her rhythmic sweeps, Tamar took them past the barge and then past a galley with creaking oars. In the galley prow-castle, a pilot held aloft a torch and called out instructions to the steersman. On the pavement shores, there rose narrow towers, from where chanted Gog’s priests. There were warehouses, merchant wharves and squalid tenements for dock-slaves and their yelling brats.

Tamar rowed past them all, her emotions numb, seething, null and boiling. It was almost impossible to credit that she had escaped a hideous death. Would the Enforcer truly have killed her? Maybe he had only been trying to scare her.

“Not that I’m ungrateful,” she said, “but why did you do that?”

Keros studied the left shore, absorbed with something. “Hmm?” he said.

“How is it you were there to help? And why did you bother?”

“You were in trouble,” he said.

“Yes, but—”

He smiled. It was so different from other smiles in Shamgar. Some men smiled when they rolled crooked dice. Others smiled when they kicked a groveling man. Merchants smiled counting coins. Urchins, when they stole a loaf of bread. Priests— she shivered. Priests of Gog twisted their lips, but she could never recall having seen one smile.

“Others are in trouble,” she said. “I don’t see you vaulting to their rescue.”

“True.”

“And please don’t tell me you did it because I gave you a pan of water. One doesn’t offer their body for that.”

“No?” he said, scanning the shore.

“That would be ridiculous.”

“Why is that?”

Her bare feet were braced as she gripped the stern oar. She pushed and pulled the pine shaft, swaying the leaf-shaped blade, propelling them through the murky waters. “Why?” she asked. “Because you might die.”

He shrugged.

Her fingers tightened around the smooth wood, browned and oiled over the thousands of times she had held it with her sweaty hands. “This isn’t a shrugging matter. Life is precious.”

“Agreed.”

“I mean that,” she said.

“Excellent.”

Tamar frowned. Keros was different. Before, he had dragged himself through Shamgar, a leper without hope. Oh, he hadn’t complained. He had chatted with her, sipping the pan of water as if at ease. But all the while, he had oozed thirstiness. How his hands had trembled then. He had always thanked her, not profusely, but with dignity. Here, however, in her rat boat, he seemed like a swamp beast. She sensed the coiled tension, and marveled at his lithe grace. The putrid sores that had once dotted his face and arms had vanished, leaving pink round circles of new skin.

“They set a trap for you,” she said.

“I saw.”

“When did you see? I never saw you.”

His knuckles whitened as he gripped the gunwale. “I went to the Goat Bridge and saw you there. I couldn’t understand why you loafed. Then, two Jogli shouldered me aside.” He shook his head. “When I saw the Enforcer charge out of the shed—”

“His name is Vidar,” she said.

“I know.”

“Oh?”

“I spoke with an old acquaintance. He told me.” Keros scratched his chest, thinking about Yeb the Fence, wondering how he fared. “After Vidar cut down those poor nomads, I finally noticed all the attendants disguised as net tenders and canal men. I was startled at my stupidity, at how quickly I had become sloppy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m a Shurite, a mountain warrior, but I acted like a lowlander. Fortunately, my enemies are arrogant.”

Tamar rolled her shoulders and lifted the oar-blade out of the water, listening to droplets splash. “You were really coming back to see me?”

“Someone has been back-tracking me,” he said, “finding out who I knew and where I usually went.”

“That would be Naaman,” she said.

“Who?”

She dunked the oar-blade into the water, resumed rowing, and told him about the gray-haired attendant.

“Ah,” he said. “I passed him earlier. Yes, he’s cunning.”

Tamar wondered at this feeling in her gut. She wondered at the lithe mountain warrior sitting in her boat. No one had ever fought for her before. “You still haven’t said why you helped me.”

Keros swiveled around and regarded her in the moonlight. He had a square jaw, a piercing glance. “I’m a Shurite,” he said.

“So?”

“Shurites remember their friends.” He smiled sheepishly. It made him seem so young, too young to do what he had. “I have no other friends in Shamgar,” he added.

“So Naaman was right,” she said, more sharply than she had intended. “You need my help. You want to use me.”

“Use you?” He considered that. “No, not use you.”

“Oh, so I’m to slip you out of Shamgar and then fend for myself, is that it?”

He cocked his head. Behind him on shore, night watchmen with lanterns and spears clattered and clanked as they chased a darting shadow, a boy perhaps. The night watch shouted for the lad to stop. Keros paid them no heed. There was nothing unusual in the chase. Such events were a nightly occurrence in Shamgar.

“You’ll come with me to Shur,” Keros said.

Tamar could only blink at him. Could he mean that?

“—If I were going to Shur,” he added.

“What does that mean?”

“I have to rescue a friend.”

“You said I was your only friend in Shamgar. Who else could you possibly help?”

Keros said it in an offhand manner: “Lod.”

It took a moment to sink in. “Are you insane?” Tamar asked. “Lod is in Gog’s dungeon.”

“Yes,” Keros said, as if agreeing to a small matter.

She let the boat glide. Two rats scrambled onto a walkway. In the torchlight of a post, their noses quivered. At last, she found her voice. “You can’t storm into the Temple and free Lod.”

“I have to sneak in,” Keros said.

“That’s insane.”

He shook his head. “Gog and his children are arrogant. They view men as chattel. They will never expect my rescue attempt. My boldness will be my shield.”

“Impossible.”

“With Elohim, all things are possible.”

“Your god has nothing to do with it,” she said.

“No?” he said, arching his eyebrows. “He healed me.”

“They say Lod healed you.”

Keros lifted the lid of her water jug and dipped a tin cup, rinsing his mouth and swallowing. “Elohim healed me through Lod. Now, I must return the favor.”

“You’re throwing away your life for a gesture?”

Keros set the lid back in place. “Perhaps.”

“For this, you need my help?”

He fretted, and he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “All I ask is that you take me to the Temple.”

“You can walk there,” she said. “See that mountain? Well, it isn’t. There’s the Temple. It towers over Shamgar. Its shadow poisons everything in the city. You can see it from anywhere here. So I’ll just set you ashore, and you can walk there.”

“I understand your fear. And… if all I had to do were walk there, I’d never bother you. I have to go by water. So I need your help.” He pointed at a row of barrels. “If you could row over there,” he said, and he explained to her about Bessus.

Who was this Shurite? He had no sense of the possible. Then, Tamar recalled his vault in the dark. No sane man would have tried that. He had, and it had worked. It had saved her life.

Tamar tried a last defense. “You can’t trust a beastmaster, a priest of Gog. That’s madness.”

Keros grinned as if she had just praised him.

“We’re going to die horribly,” she said.

“All you have to do is drop me off at the Temple. Then, you’re free to go.”

“Free?” she asked. “I’m a marked woman. Vidar means to kill me.”

Keros dropped his hand onto the hilt of a heavy knife stuck in his sash. “He was already going to kill you.”

“Because of you,” she said.

“No,” he said, “because of you.”

“You’re blaming this on me?” she asked, her voice rising.

Keros stared at her. He had eyes of startling intensity. “You gave a leper a pan of water. You were kind to a stranger. In Shamgar, that marked you as outcast as surely as my leprosy.”

That left her speechless.

Keros raised his arm, quietly hailing Bessus.

***

Despite the desperate battle against Vidar, the joy of speaking with Tamar and the dread he had thinking about entering Gog’s Temple, Keros kept recalling the old legends. Bessus’s talk about Magog must have done it. Magog, Keros knew the tale of Magog. It was intertwined with the original rebellion.

It was odd he should remember in such clarity. Yet, throughout the rat-boat ride with Tamar and Bessus, he kept pondering it. He could almost hear the old chanter of his youth. He had been a boy, and his Grandfather had been alive then. One-Eye had listened, sipping from his ale jug. The old chanter had captivated young Keros, imprinted the tale onto his impressionable mind. The old chanter’s voice seemed to drone in Keros’s thoughts even now, as he moved through Shamgar’s canals.

***

“Once, before there was any corruption found in the Celestial Realm, one named Azel tended the celestial stones of fire. They lay on the mountain of Elohim, and they were and are glorious gems, radiant beyond the things of Earth. Then the dread day arrived. One third of the
bene elohim
rose up in rebellion as they heeded Morningstar’s call. It was a bitter war, until finally, the Fallen fled before the wrath of Omnipotence. Azel was one of those, and he had long coveted the stones. In hideous impiety, he dared steal one, and took it with him to Earth. Among the Fallen, there were those who lusted after women. They fashioned for themselves bodies of flesh and bone, and inhabited those corporal forms. These
bene elohim
walked among men as gods, and took any woman they chose. They lay with them. The offspring were hideous hybrids of celestial and terrestrial origin, the First Born, the Nephilim, the Gibborim and others.

“Among these self-proclaimed gods of Earth, Magog was among the craftiest. There are legends that say he often sat in his darkest chamber and fashioned a strange device that let him probe the Heavens, and other strange realms far beyond the Earth. He remembered the lost glories of the Celestial Realm. It sickened him, and made him wroth to think he was trapped forever on a ball of mud.

“Those were hideous days of evil, when gods walked among men. Oh, I know others these days call themselves gods, but in truth, they are merely First Born, although they are deadly enough. At last, in mercy, at the end of what we call the Elder Days, Elohim sent his Shining Ones. It was their task to throw down these gods and drag them in adamant chains into deepest Tartarus. There, they await judgment, prisoners in perpetual gloom.

“Their offspring remain on Earth, the First Born and the Nephilim, as I’ve said. And certain fell weapons and ruins from that olden age litter the various lands. One of those ruins has been rebuilt, terrible Shamgar of the swamps.

“Magog once ruled from Shamgar. He trained his hosts, learned grim necromancies, and thousands died screaming in his gargantuan Temple that sat upon the city’s acropolis. There, too, he refined his strange device that let him gaze into mysterious realms. Then, the Shining Ones swarmed Shamgar. They sailed to the mouth of the Hanun Delta. They gathered on the muddy shores, and slogged upriver, floating their siege engines. Magog and his legions defended their swamp den. On the walls and in the canals, swords flashed and spears sang. The enemy legions hurled their flesh into the breach, but were unable to stem the invincible assault. So Magog armed himself for battle and thunders rumbled in his fist. The old lore speaks of balefire. Magog wielded it, and winnowed the ranks of the Shining Ones. It brought fierce retribution. The Shining Ones slaughtered every living thing in Shamgar, and used their powers to blast the stone buildings and burn the rubble with brimstone.

“Afterward, such was the stench of Shamgar that the place reeked of foul death. With their tempers cooled after the battle, the Shining Ones wondered if they were becoming tainted by this earthly war. They departed sooner than they wanted. Maybe the smells drove them. Maybe the Shining Ones wished to leave the grim reminder to their growing bloodlust. They did not prowl the ruins and search for items or artifacts of otherworldly design or origin. Legends hold that the strange device Magog fashioned still lies in Shamgar, in some hidden vault deep under the Earth, maybe buried under the swampy slime.

“Whatever the case may be, Gog seeks to reclaim his father’s title and power. The First Born spins his webs and tightens his grip. Beware Shamgar, and beware the Temple, but most of all, beware the ancient spirits and the ghosts of the horribly slain that surely lurk where thousands died screaming under Magog’s butchering knife. In the ancient days, the god practiced necromancy, leaving it a haunted place, evil and filled with supernatural perils.