Island of the Gods

In the lands of Ashem the Nahar river spread wide over the fallow fields, inundating the lowlands with the seasonal flood that brought life. Even in the dry season the river was wide here, forming a long, jagged lake that shone blue beneath the pale skies and the noontide stars. At the center of lake Sedem was the high, rocky island of Mannat, and on it stood the polished stone palace of the Kings of High Ashem and the vaulting dome of the temple of Hadad, the Father of the Sun.

The palace was of bright stone smoothed and whitewashed with lime, then painted with intricate designs and inlaid with polished stones of a thousand bright colors. The walls were engraved and illuminated with the stories of the gods. Of Uannan the Wise, who brought fire to mankind and taught him to plant and to harvest. Of Slud, the powerful spirit of the river itself, who brought life or withheld it at his whim. Over all was the bright golden sun of Hadad himself, the one who created light and all life, the one who ruled the heavens.

The roof of the throne hall was covered in bright gold, and so even as the day faded and the sun streamed red through the high windows and crimson curtains, the gold threw back the light and washed the entire chamber. It turned the bronze of the guards’ armor and spearpoints to gold, it shone on the gleaming floor, and it lit the crown upon the brow of Khumu, King of High Ashem, thirteenth of his dynasty, third of his name.

The king was angry, and his dark-skinned face was drawn down in a scowl. The object of his ire was the man before him. He was tall, with the pale skin of the northern peoples, and he was dressed as a lord all in white, with golden pectoral and heavy arm-rings. His eyes were painted dark, and his tall headdress covered his oiled hair. This was Lord Rukha, and he seemed unconcerned with the wrath of a king, despite the host of thirty armed guards looking on him impassively.

The king knotted his fingers in his dark beard. “You sent an army against our neighbor, kingdom of Meru, and you did so without my permission or countenance. You risked all upon a dangerous venture, and you failed. Not only have you declared war without my command, but you cost the lives of men to no purpose, gave insult to the Queen of Meru, and by your failure brought humiliation upon my own crown. How then shall I allow you to live?”

Rukha bowed slightly, less than he should have, and his delicately arched brow was more than half-mocking. “Your Majesty, Great King of Ashem, the men I sent were mercenaries, and their loss harms us not at all, as we have shed no Ashemi blood to test the power of a kingdom that has fallen into chaos.”

“You gambled,” the king said, his anger not soothed. “You heard a rumor and acted upon it, and you suffered for it.”

“It is no rumor that Queen Malika has been deposed,” Rukha said. “I have confirmed that tale. Her general, Zaban, turned upon her and usurped her place. She was driven from the city, and for many weeks was thought to be dead.”

“And she is not?” the king said. “Zaban is an ambitious man, and a dangerous commander. It would be unwise to antagonize him for no cause.”

“Forgive me, my king,” Rukha said without sincerity. “My lands are upon the southern border, and so I gather news of Meru much more swiftly than it can make its way to the court. Zaban himself is dead, and while Malika may indeed reside in Shendim once more, she is certainly not in control of her kingdom.”

Khumu ground his teeth and gestured. “Speak, then, what have you heard?”

Rukha looked pleased. “Apparently, while she was in hiding she made herself the concubine of some desert charlatan, and so she was able to gather an alliance of border raiders to take back the city. Now she may claim to be queen, but it is this wasteland brute who wields the true power.”

“How does it matter who is the true power when you still failed to defeat them?” the king said. “You sent the much-feared General Nokh against them, and yet he failed, lost hundreds of men, and your commander himself lies broken and may never rise again, while his men tell stories of demons and sorcery.”

“Do you fear devils from legend?” Rukha said contemptuously. “I do not.”

“What does it matter what we fear?” the king said, snarling. “It is the men who fear it, and now any army we gather will march beneath the poisoned cloud.”

“It is nonsense,” Rukha said. “General Nokh betrayed me, and that much is plain. I am only glad that he was injured too badly to escape. I will see to it that he dies as a spectacle of agony, and so none shall dare go against my orders ever again.”

Khumu regarded him for a long moment. “My orders,” he said. “It is my orders they must fear, not yours.”

“Of course, my king,” Rukha said. “Of course. Fear not, I shall break treachery beneath my heel like a serpent.”

o0o

Nokh lay in his bed of agony, only dimly aware of the passing of time. His broken bones gave him such pain he often could think of nothing else, and he knew he burned with fever. He was in a cell, the door barred to keep him inside, and it was that betrayal that stung him most deeply. He had been entrusted by Lord Rukha with the attack, and he had failed. That failure must be blamed upon someone, and now he knew it would be placed upon his shoulders, and he would die to salve his master’s wounded pride.

He did not know day or night, only that the light that came through his single window faded and died, and then he lay in the utter dark, breathing in and out, thinking only of the next few moments. If he tried to move he felt greater pain, and if he tried to push through it, he felt dizziness come, and his vision swarmed with phantom motions as he fell unconscious.

When he stirred again, he heard sounds. Listening, unsure, he heard voices out in the passageway beyond the cell door, and then he heard a short cry, cut off before it could become too loud. Footsteps shuffled on the stone, and then he heard the bar on his door drawn away and the door groaned as it was opened.

Light spilled across his face, and he saw red-robed forms with hoods that concealed their faces. He smelled the bitter stink of fresh blood, and then he knew these were not his executioners, for they had slain the guards to reach him. This was something else.

They didn’t speak, and he asked them no questions as they gathered the blankets beneath him and lifted him as on a crude stretcher. The pain was enough to make his awareness fade as they bore him away from the cells and up steps and along narrow hallways. The light of lanterns and torches washed over them and then was left behind. He smelled smoke and sweat and the hint of flowers, and then the heady scent of incense.

The hooded forms carried him more easily now, and when he opened his eyes he saw a roof high above painted with many colors and shapes, and he knew he was in the great temple somewhere. He did not know what was to happen, but he had no strength to resist it.

At last they put him down on hard stone, and he ground his teeth so as to not make a sound from the pain. He closed his eyes again, and when he opened them he saw a tall man with a shaved head, signs of power tattooed on the skin. “Can you hear me, General?”

Nokh licked his lips. “I can,” he said, his voice dry and weak.

“Good. Do you have your wits about you? You know me?” The priest’s voice was deep and rich, a voice he had used many times to sway the faithful. A dangerous voice.

“You are Madek, Guardian of the Inner Mysteries,” Nokh said. They had never spoken before, as the Inner Mysteries were secret, and the rites the priests observed were never seen or uttered.

“Do you know that you are condemned to die when the sun rises?” Madek said. “Lord Rukha blames you for the loss of the frontier, and you will be flayed alive when the day comes.”

“I guessed my fate,” Nokh said. “I do not fear it. I know only anger, and the desire for justice.”

“Then justice you shall be granted, if you have the courage for it,” Madek said. “Now is not the time for weakness. The Dark One comes out of the ancient days to overthrow the works of men and of gods, and we must be ready to do battle with him.” He put a hand on Nokh’s brow, felt the fever burning there. “You are the greatest warrior in the kingdom, and without you the armies of the king will wither and die. If you are slain, or lie fallow in a bed of death, then this kingdom will break when the enemy comes.”

“Do you have the power to uplift me?” Nokh said, his throat dry and cracking. “Can you heal my wounds? Many times I have cried out to Hadad, and yet the sun does not heal, nor does it bring the power of victory. Only flesh and iron have those powers, old man.”

“Hadad is not the only power within these walls. You are in the Inner Temple, where the secret mysteries are enacted. Behold.” Madek gestured, and at his sign a dozen lanterns were set aflame, sending their light upward over the walls of stone. Close by they illuminated an idol all of smooth, black stone, worn by many ages. It had the form of a man, but his face was the face of a beast with red stones for eyes.

“This is the shrine of Anur, the Iron God. It was his image that was found here upon this island, and the first temple raised here was his. Again and again over the ages new shrines were raised, until the great dome was uplifted to rival the very sky. Yet beneath it all lay the sanctum of the old god himself. The Iron God, the War God, and over many ages we have kept his rites, and spoken his litanies. He is the secret within the temple of the sun.” Madek spoke with a voice that resonated with belief, and the fire lit his face to show his wide eyes and the gleam of his faith within them.

“And what power does your god have to give me?” Nokh said bitterly. “Can he heal my broken limbs? Can he purge my fever?” He closed his eyes. “Do what you will, priest. I will not be any more dead by morning than if you had left me to the executioner.”

Madek gestured again, and Nokh heard a grinding sound of stone on stone. He turned his head and saw the priests lift a heavy slab from the floor, and within the hole thus revealed there was a dull, metallic fluid that rippled like oil. He looked up at the black idol and felt a fear down inside him, and a small spark of twisted, desperate hope.

“The blood of Anur, gathered here for so many ages,” Madek said. “Only twice before have men dared to immerse themselves in it. One of those men died, and the other went mad, but he emerged as an incarnate form of the war-god. Will you be the third?”

Nokh looked at the strange liquid, felt his broken body and the fever eating away at him, and he closed his eyes again. “Do it,” he said. “Do it and be damned.”

He felt them lift him, and the pain already seemed very far away. The priests chanted strange words in a language he did not know, and they carried him through the firelight to the great black idol. They held him there for a moment, shouting their invocations, and then they plunged him down into the blood of a dead good, and he felt a coldness come over him, engulfing him, and then there was pain.

o0o

It was the deep of night when the king came to the temple of Hadad, his bronze-armored guard marching in his wake. The halls and chambers were lit with a hundred crimson fires, the priest acolytes casting strange powders into the flames of the braziers to make the fires glow the color of blood, and the smoke gather in the air in red clouds. Khumu walked to the great central shrine of the temple, where the statue of Hadad rose up against the gold-inlaid wall. The sun god stood watch with his great horns containing the disc of the sun. He had the head of a bull, and in one hand he bore a mace to crush his enemies, and in the other he carried a flail with which to reap the grain that gave life to all men.

Lord Rukha was here as well, for this very much concerned him. The king had commanded that the priest Madek perform a great sacrifice, as of old, and to read the future and the portents in the spilled blood and spread entrails. Lord Rukha’s fate would rest upon the signs read in the death of the sacrificial steer, and he knew it as well as any man. The king sought assurances in the gods, as many kings had before him. Here in the city of kings, on the island of the gods, the way would be revealed.

Madek stood beneath the idol, dressed in his crimson robes, face hidden behind the mask of a bull. He held forth his hands, painted black and fixed with twelve golden rings. He did not bow to the king in this moment, because now he was Hadad incarnate, and the god of the sun bowed to no man.

The king took his place, his guards arrayed around him, silent and reverent in the dark shrine. There were many muttered prayers and oaths to the gods spoken in hushed voices, for the men feared the attention of the powers gathered here. Lord Rukha watched it all with a cold touch of fear. He had paid Madek well for the proper auspices, but in this moment he could not be sure what the man would say. He was a priest, and all priests were a little mad.

The acolytes gathered and began their chanting, low and deep, speaking the words of the litany in a language no man understood. They called forth the power of the sun god with words that were ancient before the first king of Ashem was crowned, when men dwelled in mud hovels beside the flooded river and prayed for the sun to ripen their crops and bless them with life.

The holy steer was led in, decked with a fortune in gold and jewels, horns plated with gold, lowing softly as it was brought to slaughter. Rukha looked at the placid, empty eyes and felt sick for what was to come. He had never liked the slaughter of animals. Unlike men, animals rarely deserved the treatment they suffered.

Madek chanted as new flames roared up, and then he took the hooked ceremonial blade and cut swift through the heavy throat and spilled what seemed an ocean of blood onto the floor. The steer fell to its knees, and then rolled over and lay on the stone as the life rushed out of it. Frenzied, painted with blood, Madek slashed open the heavy belly and reached in, drew forth the squirming guts and scattered them across the floor. The smell of blood and slaughter was overpowering, and the acolytes chanted more softly as smoke rose up, making the air almost impossible to breathe.

“My spirit hears the voice of the god!” Madek shouted, his voice echoing from behind the gidled mask. “He speaks to me of war, and of death! A doom comes for High Ashem, and the towers of Mannat will fall!” He pointed one red-dripping finger at the king. “If you are king when the enemy comes, you will die, and the city will die!” He pointed at Rukha. “And you, you are worse than a parasite that crawls in the lake mud! You will be the death of all, if you remain to ply your indulgent ambitions!”

Rukha felt rage boil in him, and when he looked at Khumu, he saw the king was enraged as well. There were shocked faces among the guards, and even among the young acolytes. Never had a priest spoken out against a king before his very eyes, declaring the curse of the gods upon him.

“You shall both fall, and the city shall be preserved by my will, and mine alone!” Madek’s voice shuddered with emotion, and his eyes behind the mask glittered like bright coins. “I call on Hadad and Uannan, upon Slud and Anatu, and upon Anur, the Iron God. His son I call forth from the darkness! Do the will of the unseen!”

There was a long silence then, as each man trembled and waited for the other to answer. Rukha saw the king draw breath to give an order, and he wondered if he would see a high priest of Hadad dragged from the temple and slain just as dawn was breaking, and then he heard something from the shadows of the shrine. Something came that was like the sound of a hammer upon an anvil, and then another. A slow, pounding noise that rang with the sound of resonating iron, and then something came into the red firelight and stood before them, revealed and hideous to look on.

It was the shape of a man, tall and unclothed save for a small loincloth, but the firelight shining on it gleamed on the hard gray sheen of iron. The muscles and planes of the body were hard-edged, as though chiseled from stone, and when the shape walked, the footfalls rang on the floor like the strokes of a hammer.

Rukha looked at the face, and then he felt a horror in him like venom from a wound, for the face belonged to General Nokh himself. The mouth was drawn down into a scowl, the features set and fixed in an expression of wrath and contempt, and the eyes gleamed like copper coins set deep within black shadows. The apparition held forth its arms and opened hands that spread with a sound of sliding, groaning metal. “Come, my lords,” Nokh said with a voice that was no more human than the echo of a bell. “Let us finish this between us. Let us embrace as brothers.”

o0o

King Khumu fell back, his eyes staring in horror, and he screamed for his guard. They fell in around him, spears flashing in the light of the red flames, and the thing that had been General Nokh fell on them like a living engine of war. Their spears glanced from his skin, tips snapping off, the hafts splintering as they thrust home. Nokh struck them down with fierce, clubbing blows of his fists, and each blow crushed armor like paper and sent men to the stone floor in welters of blood.

Rukha tried to flee and was trapped by the press of acolytes as they tried to escape the sudden carnage. Nokh battered his way through the king’s guard, treading the fallen underfoot and leaving blooded footprints on the dark stone. Khumu howled, trying to get away, but he was caught among his own men as they were forced back, until Nokh tore the last soldiers out of his path and seized the king with his iron hands.

“A weak man upon the throne is worse than a dead one,” he snarled, his voice filled with the awful ring of metal. Khumu screamed and twisted, fighting to get free while his last few guards hacked at the implacable iron man with their swords, striking until their weapons twisted and broke.

Nokh put both hands around the king’s throat, and then with a seemingly effortless twist, he wrenched Khumu’s head from his body, cutting off his scream with a ragged choking sound. Blood poured forth and ran over his hands like oil, and the remaining guards turned and fled, howling their terror into the dark.

Nokh turned to face Rukha with his hands dripping red, and the lord cried out and tried to flee, but he was too slow. He slipped on his broken sandal and then he was caught by iron fingers that bruised and split his flesh as they lifted him off his feet. He writhed, seeing his own shadow cast upon the wall by the firelight, made huge by the flames as the unholy thing held him overhead.

The iron man held him there for a moment, and then he brought him down and snapped Rukha’s spine over his knee like a rotten branch, the sound loud and hideous in the confines of the shrine. He dropped the man writhing and gasping on the floor, and then he put a foot upon his throat.

“No lords, no kings. None but warriors, and gods,” he said in his iron voice, and then he crushed down and Rukha’s blood flowed out like a river, spattering and flowing over the dark stone.

It was quiet then, the acolytes fled or cowering, the guards slain or fleeing into the city, shouting out the death of the king. Nokh stood with his hands still dripping with blood, and he turned to face Madek. “There will be no power in this place save my own. I will gather an army, and I will fight whosoever comes against my kingdom. From today there will be a new king. An iron king.”

“You have done well,” Madek said, drawing off his mask, revealing his face shining with sweat, his eyes blazing with the light of the fanatic. “Now none shall stand against us, none shall speak against the faith, and this shall be in truth the island of the gods once more, as it was.”

Nokh caught him and lifted him off his feet, and the acolytes gasped in fear as Madek twisted and fought the terrible grasp. “You cannot! I gave you this power as a gift of the gods! Do not forget!”

“I have not forgotten,” Nokh said, and then he twisted Madek’s head until his neck snapped, and he cast the robed corpse into a burning brazier where it began to be consumed by the crimson fire. The black smoke smelled of silk and of death, and the light of it cast Nokh’s shadow vast and terrible over the idol of Hadad, obscuring it. “There shall be none to oppose me. No lords, no priests.” He thrust his hands into the fire and the blood smoked from them, hissing in the flames. “None but an iron king.”