The Blood Moon

Shedjia’s riverboat followed the red moon northward along the muddy, slow waters of the Nahar in full flood. She sat in the prow under a canopy of shadow and watched the land unfold. It had been ten days since the messengers had come, bearing with them Kardan, wounded on a barge like a slain crocodile, and the news that Utuzan had been wounded and lay near to death in the temple of Anatu on the island of the gods. At once, she gathered what little she owned and took to the river to reach him.

The days and nights were an agony of waiting, sleeping in shadow beneath the blaze of the sun, then pacing the deck through the watches of the dark. She allowed no rest, no putting ashore for any reason. The boat was small and coasted easily over the shallows where reeds grew like arrows nested from an unseen battle. Herons flew low over the waters, chasing their reflections as they passed beneath the stars.

The temples and towers of Mutun glowed white in the moonlight, reflected in the river like bones. Shedjia looked at the columns of smoke that still rose from plundered shrines and destroyed mansions. Over all loomed the palace of the kings, and not far from it she saw watch-fires, and she heard the great drums of the temple of the dark goddess, and she sent up a silent prayer to the veiled one herself that the dark son still lived.

The steersmen poled the boat into the shadow of the island, to a stone slip that jutted from a gate in the wall, and the wood grated against rock as she stepped off, feeling the welcome solidity of earth under her feet. She spoke to no one, only gathered her black robe about herself and followed the torch-lit gateway into the city itself.

She could smell smoke, and not only the sweetened odors of incense and wax. There was the bitter scent of burnt metals, and the undertones of cooked meat that meant human flesh had been put to the flame. The nomads had sacked this place, but the fury of it had died away, and now they encamped here, uncertain what to do, waiting for their master to rise and lead them onward. She knew they would not wait long.

Two men on horses rode to meet her and drew rein. They looked down at her and made gestures of respect. There could be no doubt as to who she was. All of them knew their master’s shadow. “We have awaited you,” one of them said, his accent thick and barbaric. “We are to take you to our chief.”

“Show me the way,” she said, gesturing. “I will follow, but you will not see me.”

o0o

The shrine of Anatu was the only temple on the wide plaza that did not bear the marks of fire and slaughter. Blood splashed on columns had dried to black, and there were rotting heads hanging from the lantern-hooks on the other great and holy structures, but Anatu’s place of power was lit from within, and an honor guard of armored warriors stood before the steps where plunder was heaped in offering to the Black Flame’s goddess.

Here Izil, chief of the armies of Utuzan, held court in his tent, pitched upon the grass in the open plaza. Here had been a garden with delicate flowers and statues; now it was trampled down, and horses and men drank from the silver fountain that ran beside the great silken pavilion. Shedjia came out of the night and entered the illumination, calling forth for the chief of the Emru to meet her at the edge of the dark.

War had made him greater, and he stood tall, armored in fine bronze scales and with an iron sword at his side. He saw her and inclined his head. She was not of his people, and she was a woman, but he knew she was favored of the Black Flame, and now she might be his only path to reviving their lord.

“I am glad you have come,” he said. “I know not what may be done. I am but a warrior, not a worker of secrets or magic.”

Shedjia looked around, seeing the unease of the other warriors, the glances they cast from her to the temple. The sack was over, and the treasures and women from that would only sate them for so long. They would begin to grow fearful, believing Utuzan was dead, feeling more and more trapped by walls and streets and towers. They were not an army meant to sit still.

“Take me to him,” she said.

Izil led her up the wide steps and into the temple, where she at once saw his manner grow uneasy and his glance hunt the shadows, seeking unholy dangers. The lanterns here were lit, and the smell of incense was heady. She followed him toward the sound of the drums, into the heart of the temple where the columns stood like ribs around a sacred heart.

Anatu’s idol stood against the dark, her many arms illuminated by the lamps, her jewels glimmering like blood. Her hidden face lay in shadow, her eyes unseen. Her form cast a wild shadow over the walls of the shrine, her arms spread like spider-limbs, shifting in the light of many flames. At her feet lay heaped wreaths of flowers and sweet-smelling grasses gathered from the riverlands. Shedjia smelled blood and wine and the secret scent of fear.

The priestesses drew away, afraid, and she saw the altar there before the goddess. It was a long bier of red-laced black stone, and now it was draped with black silks, and upon it lay stretched the giant form of Utuzan, still and pale as death itself. Upon his breast lay the heart of Anatu, and Shedjia saw that the light that flickered inside of it was very weak, as though it were in truth a heart almost extinguished.

Shedjia went to stand over him and looked down on his face, so still. A veil lay across his features, so fine it was like gossamer, and yet no breath disturbed the material. There was a slackness to Utuzan’s features, and she felt a cold plunge in her belly as she suddenly dared to think he was truly dead.

She controlled herself, hands clenching at her sides. “How was this done?” she said.

Izil did not dare approach too closely. “He went at night to meet with the queen of the city, and she came alone. She bore a hidden dagger, like no weapon anyone has seen. She cut his hand with it, and he remained upright long enough to raise the causeway and bid us to take the city, and then he fell into this sleep as you see him here.”

She reached to touch his hand, and Izil made a hissing sound. “Do not touch his skin. The venom is so potent those who have touched him have died, though it takes days for them to fall to it.”

Shedjia wondered if the poisoned words she had survived would guard her from this bane, and she doubted it. She could not take the chance to test it without reason. She simply longed to touch him, to try and feel the spark of life in him.

“He lives,” Izil said. “It has been ten days and he does not mortify. He lives in some way I cannot explain.”

“Where is this dagger?” she said, her voice steady and cold.

“We left it where it fell,” he said. “I will show you.”

“And the woman?” she said, a hook in her tongue.

“I will show you,” he said.

o0o

The small shrine beside the water was not much more than a stone platform with a pillar at each corner, two of them broken and crumbling down. Ancient bronze hooks for lanterns were pinned into the stone, and two oil lamps burned on them now, casting a thin illumination. Shedjia stepped off the reed boat beside Izil and listened to the frogs singing in the dark, smelled the earthen, cow-dung smell of the river so close.

By the lamplight she saw a statue dressed in finery leaning against a pillar, face contorted into an expression of horror and pain. It was so lifelike it looked as though the woman might begin to walk and speak with one flicker of flame. Izil held out his hand and gestured. “Here she is.”

Shedjia went and stood before the statue, looking at the fine details. Yes, her master had turned this woman to stone. She wondered if she was alive inside, trapped and screaming to be free. She hoped so. She had an urge to smash the smooth alabaster into pieces, but she would not. It would be for Utuzan to decide what to do with her when he arose, and she would ensure that he arose. He had slumbered for three thousand years beneath the sands, he could not be so easily destroyed as this.

“Where is the weapon,” she said, and Izil pointed. Turning, she looked down and saw it on the stones nearby. It was a dagger of a simple shape, with a wide blade that tapered to a fine point. It seemed to be made of a single piece of black obsidian, hilt and blade both, and the blade was a black spine down the center fading to such thinness on the edge that it was almost transparent. It looked sharp enough to cut anything that so much as touched it.

As she looked, a small scarab came crawling, beetling its way across the aged stone, leaving a trail in the dust that lay there. It reached the dagger and touched the black glassine blade with the barest brush of its legs, and then it fell dead, crumbling into pieces as it rolled over, leaving nothing but blackened fragments of its shell.

“Indeed,” she said. She looked around. “Venom did not slay that woman; if she carried the weapon, she had some way to wield it.” She went and took one of the lamps down and carried it to the petrified queen, used the light to examine her more closely. Her regal gown had not turned to stone, nor had her jewels, only her flesh.

Shedjia saw on her right hand was a glove that looked made of black scales, and she tried to draw it off, but it was caught on the clawed fingers. She took some pleasure in breaking two of them off so she could slide the glove free. It was heavy in her hands, smooth like a serpent. She shook it until the broken fingers fell out and rattled like teeth on the stone.

Further search uncovered a similarly-made sheath belted under the expensive silks, and Shedjia took that as well. With the glove on her right hand she picked up the dagger by the smooth hilt and felt the weight of it, as though it were solid iron. It fit cleanly in the scabbard, and she sheathed it with great care.

Even sheathed, she did not like holding it. She wrapped it in a fold of her cloak and turned to Izil. “I will need to learn what this is, where she obtained it. Someone in the palace will know. There will be wise men, or scholars. Tell me you have not burned it all.”

Izil almost laughed at that. “We have left the palace inviolate, as we knew Lord Utuzan would want it for himself. We have allowed no one to enter, and no one to leave.”

Shedjia scoffed at that. “Palaces are like snake dens, and there will be many ways in and out you cannot see. Many will have already fled, but there will be some who remain. There are always scholars and scribes to whom their scrolls and books mean more than life itself. Someone will remain.” She felt the weight in her hand, the dagger inside the cloak. “I will find what I need to know.”

o0o

Shedjia passed like a wraith through the halls of the ancient palace. The powers Utuzan had taught her grew stronger by night, and so she moved before the dawn came. The wind from the west was cold over the river, and she saw a few flickering lanterns, but no servants, and no slaves. The palace showed signs of looting, with hangings pulled down and things scattered on the polished floors. It seemed some of the inhabitants had fled, taking whatever they could carry. They did not concern her.

She followed the path into the deep part of the grand edifice, into halls that smelled of leather and papyrus, and there she found the great archive she had known awaited her. Narrow and tall, with ladders to reach the scrolls piled high overhead, the dusty chambers were lit by covered lanterns that filled the air with layers of oilsmoke. There were stacks of papyrus and vellum pages, heaped scrolls, and great codices bound in the hides of crocodiles. This was the repository of knowledge she sought.

As a shadow she entered, and then she unveiled herself in the light, like a being made of smoke coalescing from nothing. She stood and listened, and then she smiled and rapped her knuckles upon a tabletop. “If a scrivener, an archivist, a sage remains in these halls, let him come forth to me. I seek knowledge of what is unseen.”

Her voice rang through the warren of tanned skins and bitter inks, and then she heard the shuffle of a furtive footstep. She waited, and an old man crept out of the shadows and peered at her with watery eyes. He wore the long braid of a devotee of Slud and his white robe was not very clean. He folded his hands and bowed slightly. “I am only an old man who loves his histories and legends. I seek no evil.”

“I seek evil,” Shedjia said. She drew out the black dagger in its sheath and set it down on the table. Light glittered on the obsidian like black skin. “The queen of High Ashem used this blade to wound my master, and now he lies as one dead but not. You will tell me what manner of artifact this is, and you will find a way to counter the venom.”

Slowly, the man came forward and looked down at the weapon, and she saw the horror on his face when he recognized it. “No, it cannot be that blade. That was sealed away.”

“Then it has been unsealed,” Shedjia said. “Shall I draw it forth and show it to you?”

“No!” The old man covered his face and shied away. “No, it is said that even to look on it is evil. Leave it hidden, for that is the blade that may kill with the slightest touch.”

“So you know of it then,” she said. “Good. Now show me the lore you have. All of it.”

He hesitated, and then he led her away into the narrow aisles between the stacks of shelving, and to a dark corner shut away behind an iron gate. He unlocked it with a key he wore around his neck, and then the light of his lantern spilled on scrolls and books locked inside ancient wooden cases. Without a look back, he went to a box decorated with snakeskins and he lifted the lid and drew forth a scroll case of bone, grown yellow from age, and carried it to the table.

Shedjia watched as he unstoppered it and slid out a scroll of some dark, treated skin, and he unrolled it with trembling hands, taking care not to crack the ancient material. The smell of it was bitter and musky at once, and Shedjia knew then that the scroll was made of human skin.

“Here is written of the Blade of Akun. He was a sorcerer in life and was cursed in death. The floods did not come in that year, long ago, and the king called on Akun to bring forth rain and fructify the fields, but Akun sent instead a rain of blood. The lands were buried beneath the crimson, and the stench of death rose to the sun. The king sent soldiers against Akun, but he summoned forth lions, and the lions slew the men and drove them away. At last an army besieged his tower and threw down the walls, and took Akun prisoner. At the last he fought them with his black dagger, and the touch of it alone could kill.”

The scribe stopped and took a breath, his hands shaking where they touched the scroll. “At last they wounded him, and he cast the blade into the waters of the Nahar, and they dragged him before the king. The king bade him remedy the curse he had wrought, but Akun laughed at him, and so he was put to death. Then the back was flayed from his body and the tale of his evil was etched upon it.” The old man took a breath, and she saw the fear in him, and she knew this was the scroll cut from the necromancer’s flesh.

“The dagger lay in the waters and poisoned them, so that all men and beasts who drank from it or touched it fell dead within a day. At last, the son of the king, Prince Numun, dove into the fallow river and dredged the blade from the mud. He carried it onto shore, and then fell dead. In his grief, the king caused the blade to be buried away, along with the sheath and the glove Akun used to hold it. It was sunk in a well beneath the palace, sealed away with locks and chains, never to be retrieved, never to be used, and it is said the shade of Akun haunts it still.”

“Haunts it still,” Shedjia said softly, and she smiled. “Yes. He haunts it still.”

o0o

She returned to the shrine of Anatu, dagger in her hand, and she looked at the priestesses gathered there and gestured them aside. “Be gone, and do not return until you are bidden.” She thought they might dispute her, but they did not. She waited until they were gone, the sounds of their footfalls fading away, and then she was alone with the breathing of the oil lamps and the flickering of the firelight on the idol of the veiled goddess. Utuzan lay on the altar, the heart pulsing there, weakly and slow.

Shedjia drew the translucent blade and looked at it, admiring the beauty of the making of the thing, the deadly grace of the taper and the edge so pale it was almost invisible. She cast it down upon the stone floor, and then she conjured one of her knives of shadow, and with it she cut her arm and let the blood drip onto the dagger of many venoms. Then she spoke a poisoned word and brought her heel down on the blade, and it crushed beneath the blow.

Darkness like serpents rushed out from the broken blade in coils and clouds, and she fell back from it, her own blade poised. On her right hand was the black glove and she held it ready as the shadow from the Dagger of Akun rose up into the light. It was a darkness with solidity and grace, and it formed the outline of a human form, featureless and blank, yet with eyes that gleamed like sparks in a dark forge.

“So it is you,” she said. “Your spirit empowered the dagger, and nothing else. When you were slain, your essence went into the blade, and has remained there.”

The shadow spoke, but it was the language of the Old Kingdom, and so she did not understand it. She laughed. “Very well, let us not waste time with words.” She held up her shadow blade. “Let us content with one another, and only one shall endure.”

The wraith of Akun came for her then, coils lashing the air like whips, cutting into the pillars of the temple, and she sprang to meet him, her shadowed blade flickering as she stepped in and out of shadow, moving in ways he could not easily predict. They danced around and through each other, and Shedjia felt a terror and exhilaration, because never before had she fought an enemy whose slightest touch might slay her. It was less like a knife duel and more like facing down a cobra.

It almost caught her, and she deflected the strike with her black glove, still feeling the sting of the lash through the protection. She laughed and cut through a tendril, and another. Her blade could wound him, and he hissed and cursed her in his ancient speech. He came for her, striking like a nest of whips, and she faded away, slid past him and reached out. Her fingers snared and caught his throat in her black-gloved hand. Before he could twist away, she drove her blade between those blazing eyes, and his wail set the stones to cracking beneath them.

She fell back, hastily shaking the smoking, disintegrating glove from her hand, and she twisted to watch him flail and claw at the floor. Black smoke poured from him like blood and spread across the stone leaving frost behind it. Akun cried out again, and then the Heart of Anatu flared bright like a star.

Shedjia covered her eyes even as the unliving sorcerer screamed, and then he was gone, devoured by the light of the Heart, taken in and away, and gone. There was a coldness in the air, and pinpoints of snow drifted down in the smoky air. She looked up at the goddess and saw only the same implacable veil over the unseen face. There was no sign of favor there.

Her heart was still beating fast as she got to her feet and reeled over to where Utuzan lay. She pulled the veil from his face and pressed her mouth to his, breathing into him, willing him to rise as the Heart pulsed stronger and stronger. She gripped his hand and felt him twitch, and shudder, and then he opened his eyes and drew in a great, shaking breath.

“I have been far away,” he said, his voice almost impossible to hear. “I have been so long away.” He looked at her, and clasped her hand in his own. “What things I have seen, and I will show them to you.” He put his hand on the Heart and warmth spread through him. Shedjia gave a cry of relief, and the fires of the temple blazed up and bowed as though in supplication.