The Jewels of Cyttorak

JEWELS of CYTTORAK

DEAN WESLEY SMITH

Illustrations by Chuck Wojtkiewicz

BYRON PREISS MULTIMEDIA COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK

BOULEVARD BOOKS, NEW YORK

The intense heat and mist-thick humidity smothered the jungle like a blanket tucked in tight on all four comers of a bed. All noises were muffled and everything was wet to the touch. Just simple breathing seemed harder than normal. Even the light of the sun fought to get through the thick air to warm the damp ground.

Two brown-robed monks were the only life moving this hot afternoon, as they walked with their faces turned downward at the moist soil of the jungle floor. The thin, rough fabric of their robes clung to them, showing wet outlines of legs and arms. Sweat coated both their faces, dripping from their chins. Their eyes were blank, their pace measured, controlled through the thick heat.

The path curved ahead of them like a snake winding its way around trees and brush. The two had walked this path every day for the past nine years, but always much earlier in the morning, just after dawn, when the mist and the air still had a slight touch of coolness to it.

And before today they had always walked it with many others of their order. Never had they gone alone before. The others would be shocked if they knew.

The two monks would be shocked if they understood their own actions.

But they did not. They simply moved like zombies, one step at a time through the humidity, drawn to a task they were unaware of doing.

The path turned upward and moved out of the jungle, twisting back and forth past rocks, climbing toward a stone temple half-built, half-carved from the face of the rock bluff. The temple dominated the valley below on clear days, seeming to rale over the world of real life in the jungle.

On closer inspection, the temple looked ancient and was in desperate need of repair, but there was no one to repair it. The great structure had been built by an unknown people ages before the two monks were bom. No records or stories of the temple’s builders had passed down through the centuries.

Only a name: Cyttorak.

It was a sacred place, the temple of Cyttorak.

A place of great power.

A place that allowed mere men to feel closer to their god. Only the monks dared go inside, and only during the early morning hours. After that, not even the monks entered the sacred place.

Until today.

Now, the two monks blindly followed the path, not looking forward or upward at the temple of Cyttorak, only down at their feet, as if ashamed of what they were about to attempt. And they would have been ashamed, if they had been aware.

But the power of Cyttorak had reached them. And now drew them to a task.

They were to be the vessels that would carry the power of Cyttorak into the world.

A hundred paces behind the two monks another monk followed, staying to the edge of the trail, ready to duck

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behind a brush or tree at any moment. Unlike the two young monks being drawn to the temple, he was old, his beard gray. For his entire life, he and the other elders of the monastery had waited for this day. And worried about it happening.

For centuries, the elder monks had guarded the temple, passing down the guard duty generation after generation.

Now, during his time of watch, it was happening. Cyttorak was again calling to younger members of the order, as had been foretold. It was his duty to stop the calling by any means possible.

Other elders would be following to help, but they might not arrive in time. Fear gripped him, but he forced it aside and moved on after the two young monks. He had spent his life preparing for this moment. He would not fail now.

The temple held the heat of the day outside, stopping it at the door like an unwanted guest. The air inside was deathly still between the stone walls. It smelled of mold and ancient death. The high stone ceilings and massive construction gave any visitor the sense of immense power around them, looming like a dark figure in the night. It was a humbling feeling to the few who had seen the insides of the sacred place.

The two young monks entered through the main arch and moved slowly down the central corridor of the temple, not glancing around. Sweat dripped down their backs and arms, but they felt no discomfort. Their eyes remained blank, not seeing their true location, not seeing anything.

During the usual morning worships, they always turned right at the end of the corridor and into the large hall with its open windows and stone pillars.

This time they turned left at that spot and stopped at the statue of a deformed creature sitting on a throne. The creature’s head was rounded and without neck. Snakelike bands wrapped around under its arms and extended into the air behind its head. Its chest was massive, its arms huge and ending in fists.

The name of the creature was said to be lost in time and the passing of the temple’s builders. None of the younger monks could have imagined that the monster sitting in the huge throne-like chair was Cyttorak. If they had, they would have never entered the temple again.

But the elders knew. And they knew that their duty, their life’s work, was to keep Cyttorak inside that stone temple.

The two younger monks had accidentally discovered the temple’s secret late one morning. They had heard a noise near the statue as the order was leaving for the morning. They had stopped and investigated, thinking a village child had found his or her way inside the sacred place.

They had accidentally, or so it seemed at the time, pushed on both arms of the statue’s chair at the same moment. The stone wall and statue of the creature had moved inward and back, opening a walkway that led downward.

The two young monks had entered and moved down the stone stairs as the wall slid closed behind them. At the bottom of exactly one hundred stairs, they found a bitterly cold room and a sight that had scared them. They had quickly returned to the light of day and the heat of the jungle, but just the visit to the room had allowed Cyttorak to cross over between the two worlds and gain a small measure of control of their young minds.

Over the next two weeks, Cyttorak solidified that control every morning when they came for their morning service, until finally the two monks would do as he bid.

They would return to the room and set him free.

As the two young monks disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel, the older monk stopped and stared at the opening, his stomach turning in fear. He knew what they would find below. He had never seen it. None of the monks now living had seen that room except the two young ones. Now he was about to go down into a place he had prayed to never enter: the sacred throne room of Cyttorak.

He forced himself to take a deep breath to calm his shaking hands. He stepped to a hidden alcove and retrieved a large wooden staff. The elders had all trained for years in the art of fighting with the staffs, and there were many hidden along the path to this temple in case they were needed. He had always hoped to never have to touch one outside of the training room, but now that the solid wooden weapon was in his hands, he felt better.

Quickly, he moved in past the statue and down the stairs after the two younger monks, hoping that he would be in time to stop them.

At the bottom of the stairs, light from the outside sliced through the huge dark room from four round holes bored at angles through the rock above. Two of the shafts of light focused on the eyes of a gigantic statue of the same deformed creature that guarded the tunnel entrance above. It was as if the creature, through the shafts of light, always looked out into the world.

The elder monks believed he did.

And since finding the room the first time, the two younger monks had never lost the feeling of being watched. Now, directed by some unseen hand, they had returned to a place they had hoped to never have to see again..

The other two spots of light focused on the monster’s hands, and the two huge stones he held in his palms. In his right a huge emerald, in his left an equally large ruby. Both stones were larger than a man’s closed fist and under the light both seemed to have a life and energy all their own.

In reality, they were gateways to the mystic power bands of Cyttorak. The two stones, when touched by the same person, would allow Cyttorak to come through the barrier between his world and the human one. And with his power there would be nothing humanity could do to stop him from ruling the world. Nothing.

But the young monks did not know this. Their eyes were blank, their bodies controlled by Cyttorak.

They stopped, facing the huge statue of Cyttorak, as if worshipping their new god. Then the young monk on

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the right stepped forward, both hands outstretched, reaching for the gems held out for him by the huge creature.

“No!” the elder monk shouted from the doorway.

The shout seemed to have no effect on the spell over the two young monks.

With a quick step forward and a swing of the staff, the elder monk smashed the closest young monk in the head with the staff. The young man went down like a stone.

Then, with a quick spin, the older monk knocked away one arm of one younger monk, obviously breaking it with the force of his blow.

But the younger monk continued to reach for the emerald, as if he didn’t feel the pain from his smashed arm.

“I said no!” the older monk shouted.

But the younger monk was within an inch of touching the huge gem.

With a quick swipe with the staff, the older monk tried to knock the hand away from the stone. But in his excitement and rush, he missed.

And hit the emerald.

The room exploded in green light.

The elder monk stepped back.

It was as if the room had suddenly filled with the anger of centuries. Anger, now fueled with the frustration of failure, released in a huge explosion by an errant hit with a staff.

The energy increased quickly, burning the skin off the three monks before they could even feel the pain.

The intense blast of the energy released from the emerald quickly boiled away their blood and then turned

their bones to a fine dust that filled the swirling air of the room like the mist in the hot, thick air outside.

The emerald grew brighter and brighter.

Then suddenly it shattered into three pieces in a huge explosion that sent huge stones flying. The ground shook and rocks filled the stairway to the temple above.

One large piece of the emerald was quickly buried in the stone wall of the hidden room.

The other two pieces, fueled by the otherdimensional power of Cyttorak, were sent spinning through space and time into the future.

After a moment, the dust from the monks’ bones settled and only one light shaft still shown down on the creature, now holding only a bright ruby, as if offering it to the first person who would come along and take it.

It would be centuries, long after the temple had crumpled into a pile of stones and Cyttorak was only a long-ago memory, before Cain Marko came along and did just that.

Sn the dead-of-night hours, the French Quarter in New Orleans was a place of danger and excitement. The party and business life of the day and evening still echoed through the empty spaces of Jackson Square. The laughter and the jazz were now only ghosts drifting among the tall old trees and vine-covered buildings. The heat and the humidity lingered over the rough pavement of the streets. Not even the darkness could push it back to a cooler time.