**********

 

6. Metamorphosis

 

**********

 

(Late Winter, 1179)

 

Rahab of Mahmun.

Two long years had not changed the sorcerer at all. He remained tall and imposing, still radiating menace, his voice smouldering like coal behind that ivory mask and its lopsided smile – with that gods forbidden Tome of the Ancients still clutched jealously to his person. Abana and Maliq were surrounded by an armed guard of over twenty men and the unarmed one was by far the most dangerous.

"Welcome home, slave." said Rahab. "Welcome home."

Abana felt the knife burn a hole in his robes. It was as if the enchantments had tied it to his rage. "This is NOT my home and I am NOT your slave! Not anymore!"

"And yet here you are with my brand upon your neck..." he looked to Maliq, "And you. To think you were fool enough to return too. Do you think serving Yahya makes you any less of slave, boy?"

A clink of unsheathed steel. Maliq drew Jahanshah and stepped into his fighting stance unperturbed by the sorcerer's words. "We will not hear your poison. We are here to kill you, Rahab!"

He chuckled. "...I know. Come and try."

Maliq growled his war cry and charged forth. A seething Abana drew his kidney spike and followed him. Rahab did not flinch.

It was a simple spell. Magical light followed the path of his fingertip as it carved runic shapes into the air and forged a bright white sigil. He held its form for but a moment, then with a single push Rahab cast it forth at his attackers. It passed over Abana and Maliq like a wave, like they were diving into water, and as its surface broke, they were frozen mid-lunge, weapons aloft and faces contorted with silenced rage. Rahab smirked. Ghassar and the armed guards around them looked on with awe at the two would be assassins frozen in the air.

"Step back, men."

They did as commanded and widened their circle around him. Rahab stepped forth and slapped his fist into his gauntleted palm. A snap of energy broke the instant of time Abana and Maliq were frozen in, tossing them off their feet and knocking the weapons from their hands. The knife and the sword clattered loudly to the ground as the lovers toppled over.

`W-what happened? We were running and then- `

"And then you were on the ground?" Abana looked up and saw Rahab of Mahmun towering over him. "Slave. Many people far greater than you have tried and failed to kill me. I am insulted that this is the best the governors could think of..."

Maliq blinked. "...You knew?"

"The arrogant never hide their trail. Consider this. When Yahya grew too influential at court, they conspired against her to appoint me as Grand Vizier. Would it not... behove me to prepare for and forestall a similar fate...?" Rahab dropped to his haunches and glared at Abana, tilting his head like an owl. "I embed my mind in the souls of those I enslave. That brand on your neck does not merely mark you as my own – the symbol itself is a conduit for my psyche. Its range is not limitless... but the moment you set foot in Tehraq your thoughts became my thoughts. Yes. I can see into your memories, `Dancer of Hafiz'. I can see you poisoning Dhabr and Ganu. I can see you ordering that little boy's execution. I can see your patricide. All that death... all that skulduggery... and yet here you are again... beneath my heel. I could have you killed right this instant."

Abana glowered at him. He would give Rahab the satisfaction of hearing him say do it.

"However," a white-hot aura manifested around the sorcerer's body. Its tongues lashed at the black air like fire, "I have a proposition for you..."

 

**********

 

(Early Spring, 1177)

 

`I want die...' thought Abana the Slave. `I should have died.'

Other members of the Silk Court came to check on him over time. Hamami was the first. She gave him some encouragement and fresh blankets. Zanza brought a kiss and some wine. Roswyn re-dressed the flower baskets around his room with healing fragrances. Pasha and Li convinced Ishfan to waive his other palace duties until he recovered. But it was Qabus who stayed by his side. He performed a healing ablution with incanted waters, lit sticks of incense and brought baked bread and smoked fish (which Abana only ate a bit of).

Abana laid flat upon a cushioned stone bench in the centre of the Silk Court's healing room. Qabus swathed him in a long samite cloth from slave brand to anklets. The Kushwari boy did not move and he did not speak. He just watched the still waters of the Silk Court's reflecting pool through the doorless archway.

"It gets easier," said Qabus. His was an accented Tehraqi but a strong one. "...Over time."

Abana said nothing.

The Northlander had a washing bowl at his side sodden with blood and faecal matter. He disposed of it and returned with fresh water. "I was your... predecessor in this. When Master Rahab was a scrivener... he served me to the magistrates. And when he was a magistrate... he served me to the governors. And by the time he was a governor... I was too old to suit anyone's taste. I was... thirteen when the master bought me. And now I am twenty-nine."

Abana said nothing, only listened, as Qabus rang a new cloth over the water bowl. "I once tried to end myself. I failed. And then I stopped. And I listened to the heartbeat of the world... and found strength to keep me up and keep me whole. I found the Word of Mnenomon."

Abana sighed.

"All is balance. All is order. All is Mnenomon's will. If I am a slave in this life, I will be a king in the next. Only by taking my life would I disrupt that cycle. Abana, you understand, don't you?"

He kept silent.

"The others do not," Qabus slowly peeled back the samite and wiped away the blood traces around Abana's hind quarters. "They will not heed Mnenomon's word. We are all of us slaves to prophecy. As it is written in the Book of Mnenomon, so it shall be."

There was not much blood left. Qabus soaked the cloth into the bowl and withdrew a small leather pouch from his pocket. He placed it in Abana's hands.

"W-what... is this?"

"This is but one of Mnenomon's many gifts," said Qabus. "Jinn Powder will ease your anxiety and dull your pain until riding the camel becomes second nature. Take it when you need it."

Abana glared at the pouch. In another life a happier boy was raised to be wary of alchemists and their drams. What nature gives it also takes, went the saying. No matter what the effectiveness... there was always a cost. But... he could not endure another night like last night. If this jinn powder was the only way...?

Abana's clothes were tucked up besides the stone bench. He hid it inside their folds and thanked Qabus for his `gift'. Qabus told Abana to thank Mnenomon rather than him.

Outside the healing room Roswyn tossed fresh rose petals into the reflecting pool only to stop suddenly and bow. A Jafari eunuch standing guard did the same. Then Qabus quickly took a knee as Rahab of Mahmun shuffled into the healing room. He was so tall he had to lower his head beneath the archway to just to enter. His Tome of the Ancients swung close to his waist from its leather strap.

"Qabus, leave us."

The paleskin man nodded and excused himself. Rahab's mask turned to Abana who froze in his very flesh. He felt the hairs across his body stand on end. He had met frightening men in the past, but none frightened him more than Rahab of Mahmun. "I spoke to Governor Marwan. He said the slave I sent to tend to his needs last night was unruly and inartful. Is this true?"

Abana bit his lip. He felt like an errant bread thief confessing his crimes to a magistrate. "I-I-I'm so sorry, Master Rahab, it was not my intent to..."

The Governor of Yaghazu tilted his head to the side in that owl-like way of his. His shadow swallowed up the whole bench. "...People are wont to see rhythm in their lives... but there truly isn't any. Order is restricted to the controllable... and all else is chaos. Do you understand, slave?"

"N-no, master..."

"Come," Rahab turned his right-hand palm-side up and raised two fingers into the air. "Let me show you."

The magics that slowly lifted Abana into the air were sightless, soundless, and touchless. He felt no tingle on his skin nor any invisible hand raise him up, he felt nothing at all... until Rahab closed that hand into a fist. The lightning hit him instantly. The spark, the ignition of his blood, the screaming snap of energy surged through his entire body and set every receptor capable of pain alight. It felt like being thrown into fire. Abana's eyes bulged out of his skull and his jaw cracked open so wide his screams thundered throughout the entire Silk Court. Abana twisted and writhed and screamed and screamed and screamed until his throat was hoarse and all saw was the blinding white explosion of raw magical energy bombarding him into submission until his brain finally caught up to his agony.

`Stop!' He thought. The pain was too blinding and stark to speak it, `Stop! Stop it! STOP! STOP! STOP!'

"You disgusting people and your worthless obsession with flesh and seed," Rahab opened his fist. The thunderous barrage stopped almost as quickly as it started – but the breathless Kushwari boy remained frozen in the air by his master's magic.

"I do not understand that urge... and thank the gods for that... but I have found that obsession makes people malleable." Rahab leaned into Abana's sweat-soaked ear. "I bought you... because there are powerful men in this city whose vision is so miniscule that their sole ambitions in life are to fuck boys and chase wealth. But as much as it galls me to admit it... I need those men... or rather... their influence. You are here to placate those men. You are here to ingratiate those men TO ME! But if you cannot do that..."

Thunder was the roar of the gods. Abana never dreamed he would find it in the palm of a man's hand. He tried to thumb the drool off his lips to speak and to beg his master not to hurt him anymore... and yet he was utterly dumbfounded as a burning and blood-eyed white shadow loomed up behind Rahab's soaring body. A silhouette of evil light hung there for a moment like a phantom, smiling at the boy, daring him to look away. Abana blinked. And then it was gone.

Rahab lowered his fist. A shuddering Abana landed with a wet thud upon the marble bench. His samite cloth fell away.

"The Governor of Khrat shall wake soon," said Rahab. "And when he does you will bring him wine and baked bread and smoked fish. You will prostrate yourself and you will apologize for your poor manners by treating him to the delights he should have received last night. Am I understood?"

`I wish you would have killed me instead, father, truly I do. I wish you would have killed me...' Abana thumbed the tears out of his eyes. "Yes... master..."

 

**********

 

(Late Winter, 1179)

 

"Call me master once more," said Rahab. "Take to your knees. Beg my forgiveness and I will spare your lives."

All he had endured... all he had sacrificed... all for this one moment. The deer was in his line of sight... and he missed his thrust. How had he come so far only to have it end like this? Abana of Hafiz peered at Ghassan and his twenty men surrounding them with outstretched blades. Even if he and Maliq found a way to get past them there was no defeating Rahab of Mahmun. Their plan was always to poison him in his stone sarcophagus before he woke – fighting him head on was nothing but a last resort.

                `After all we've done...' Abana looked to Maliq with a tearful smile. `I am so sorry, my love...'

                Maliq kept a relentless eye on Rahab.

               "Did you hear me?" churning white flames engulfed the sorcerer's clutched fist. "On. Your. Knees. Do not waste your lives on petty revenge when you still possess useful talents. Acknowledge me as master and I will be merciful."

                Abana fixed his eyes on Rahab's black-void orbs and spat a wad of phlegm at his sandaled brown feet. "That is what I think of your mercy! I'll never again bow before a man – least of all YOU!"

                Rahab chuckled gravelly. It made Abana's teeth itch. "A slave will always be a slave... if not for me then for Yahya and those other dung-wit governors. But I wonder: is your resolve truly so great? Let us plumb the depths of that vengeful rage of yours..."

                The sorcerer raised his hand. As if in reply, Ghassan's sickle sword flew out of his grasp and landed in Rahab's fist, as the sorcerer's free hand twirled its gaunt fingers and dispersed another wave of magical energy that struck his captives numb.

Abana froze.

Maliq froze.

Neither of them could move.

And then a familiar cold fear crept down Abana's spine as Rahab of Mahmun set Ghassan's sword at Maliq's throat. "Declare me your master once more... or I will cut your little black pet's head off."

 

**********

 

(Early Winter, 1177)

 

The Elephant Palace was built atop a sloped hillock that gave it a sweeping view of the southern (lowborn) side of the city, and its watchtowers were the highest points in the palace. Although he risked a beating whenever he tried it, Abana the Slave enjoyed sneaking up into one of those lofty vantage points and observing Tehraq.

There was something... soothing about it.

From up there Tehraq was nothing but its sandy thoroughfares, domed palaces, bustling marketplaces and sweeping sandstone tenements. For all its horrors it was a breath-taking place. For a time Abana observed the city's splendour and forgot the absolute evil lingering beneath its surface... but then the reality always struck home. The `sandy thoroughfares' running through Tehraq like veins looked impressive... until you pictured Wahdi guardsman forcing war captives and half-lames to sweep out heap after heap of horse dung. Those `domed palaces' hosted tyrannical rulers who sat to opulent feasts as their subjects staved off starvation. Those `bustling marketplaces' were where human beings could be bought and sold like livestock, those `sweeping sandstone tenements' were where the poor sold their dead to pig farmers and bone-mongers for just enough coin to last them another week.

Perhaps somewhere out there was a similar slave boy of a similar age and ethnicity, eye freshly blackened by his master's fist, looking up at the remarkable Elephant Palace and thinking to himself – `what would it be like to live there?'

`A great deal worse,' thought Abana. He spat out a clotted wad of phlegm and semen over the breastwork, not to be crude but because was he sick of the taste. It was a `gift' curtesy of Khamaj ibn Khaffa, a powerful retainer of the Ban of Kushwar. Master Rahab ordered Abana to attend to him that night. It was not difficult work – Khaffa was not a man of tremendous girth and rather timid in the bedchamber, it only took a few long strokes and a warm mouth to bring him off. Abana waited for him to lull off to sleep before sneaking up to the watchtower for some air. But air (and a good view) was not the only reason Abana came out that night.

That night (as he did every night when the moon was at its apex) Maliq of the Palace Guard came out into the courtyard to train. Shirtless and barefoot the Jafari man twirled his sabre in a series of looping slashes and stances. Abana knew nothing of the sword or its use but he knew a masterful hand when he saw one. He watched Maliq dance with his invisible opponent until the sweat dripped down his muscular torso. He stopped to catch his breath, set the sword down at his feet, then muttered a prayer in a language the boy did not understand to a god that was likely not Tehraqi in origin.

Abana bit his lip.

The Dance of Flesh was a foreign thing to his mind before Master Rahab bought and brought him to Tehraq. Now, as a member of his Silk Court, that dance was his sole purpose. Rahab hosted gatherings for every noble, merchant and magistrate he sought to curry favour with, and each had his pick of the Court to bed. In the year since his arrival at the Elephant Palace, Abana had been ravished by governors, generals, chieftains, judges, mages, stargazers, merchants, quartermasters, auditors, envoys, slavers, priests, and guildsmen.

There were few rules to his (mis)use.

So long as they did not wound or kill him, they had their permission to do with Abana as they pleased. Most were unimaginative and only wanted a quick hard ride with him. Others were sadistic ghouls bent on living out every twisted fantasy their minds could concoct – and those were by far the worst. A Mnenomonic theologian named Argonax made Abana crawl on all fours like a dog and lick his feet. Ghadesh the Horsemaster liked to bring chains and whips into the bed. Magistrate Shahab could not climax unless Abana took him up the rear. Sometimes (after their own seed was spilt) they turned Abana over to their men to use. On one exceptionally long night, an overlord from the barbarous lands of Soth gave Abana to his outriders. Twelve hotblooded paleskin ruffians took turns upon his throat and anus and hands. They took him on his back, and they took him on his belly. They mocked him and beat him and spat on him. They rutted him across the hours until every orifice gouted with seed, and then they circled up and urinated on him. He passed out shortly after. Hours later he woke up where they left him; on a straw pallet in the stables caked in a viscous mask of sweat, semen, spit, and piss.

That was the night Abana would have killed himself just to end it all – his Night of the Outriders – if not for the Jinn Powder.

Qabus' gift required only a single sniff up either nostril. Within a few moments it turned ugly cretins into handsome suitors. It numbed the pain and heightened the pleasure. It turned painful slaps into gentle tickles and made even the most inartful thrusts bring him to orgasmic bliss. He would be sore and stiff when he woke up the following morning, but in the moment, he felt no pain. In time it trained his mind to endure even the harshest dance partners and extract whatever precious scraps of pleasure he could derive from the experience until he did not even need the Jinn Powder anymore. His purpose was to serve the men his master needed to indulge and so he did. Like marble, he was chiselled mind and soul into the form his sculptor sought to shape.

And that was his life now.

There were some small specs of joy in all the pain. The Silk Court did not suffer the whippings that the other slaves in Master Rahab's palace did (lest they mark and `soil' their attractiveness). The other members tended to his bruises and aches after rough nights. They were permitted wine and sweet treats such as dates and grapes; and in their free time they could play games, write poetry, and perform music.

The Silk Court also took lovers from within. This was forbidden of course but the eunuchs took a blind eye and if Master Rahab was aware then he did not act on it. They alternated when it suited their favour. Hamami might bed Roswyn one night and then her brother the next. Sometimes tender feelings lingered – Li and Pasha developed a closeness that Hamami warned against before it became too strong. It was often only frivolous... just a tender moment in the night to help each other survive. Abana shared such a moment with Zanza once but felt nothing from it. As much as the Kushwari boy hated the way men treated him, he only had eyes for them.

And for months now he had eyes for Maliq.

Hamami favoured him too (as she often told the others in the Court) but neither of them acted on it. That was a transgression the eunuchs would not turn a blind eye to. They had not spoken much and Abana could not say when it started but he found himself drawn to the stoic swordsman – which was why he risked punishment on nights such as this to sneak out and watch him train.

`I wouldn't need any Jinn Powder for you,' thought the dancer. Maliq was an enigma. He was not a slave (un-branded as he was) but he served Rahab without qualm or reserve. Yet he extended kindness to the slaves and chided Ishfan for punishing them too harshly (though Ishfan oft retorted that the slaves were not within Maliq's remit). It could not have been an act of pure kindness as ultimately the slave staff outnumbered the palace guard 4 to 1, but somewhere in that stolid muscular frame there was a kind heart... and Abana could not help but wonder if there was room in there for him.

A short time later Maliq sheathed his curve-bladed sword, mopped up his brow with a cloth, and made his way back to the barracks. Abana watched him go before climbing back down the watchtower and sneaking back into the guest wing. Khamaj ibn Khaffa was where Abana left him (snoring in the four poster) so he climbed back into bed with him to see out the night.

At first light Abana woke up and fetched a morning meal of fried bread, boiled eggs, and smoked salmon hanks. Khaffa was grateful and ate well of it. Then later (as Abana re-dressed him in his riveted armour and half-cloak) one of the retainer's riders brought him a missive from Kushwar.

"...Yet another barbarian raid on our northern border," said Khaffa, balling up the parchment. "I must away. Give your master my regards. I have also left a sealed letter for his attention. Be so kind as to give it to him in my stead."

It sat upon the scribing desk nearby, sealed in wax. Abana nodded and promised he would deliver it to his master's hand. Khamaj ibn Khaffa bid him farewell and departed with his men.

The Kushwari boy's smile fell.

He did not want to see the master now, but Rahab had an uncanny knack for sniffing out disobedience in his slaves. Abana slipped the note into his belt and traversed the Elephant Palace and is long black marble hallways to the ironwood door to his master's private chambers.

If Abana had known the horror lurking behind that door, he might not have knocked it.

If Abana had known the fate that awaited him when he did, he would have knocked it the day he arrived.

The boy knocked the door.

His expectation was that the door would part open by a fraction of a pace and a blood-chilling voice would ask, `What is it, slave?'

Instead the door swung wide open and Abana was met with silence.

"M-Master Rahab?"

Silence.

Abana had never been inside these quarters. Only a select handful of palace slaves (including Ishfan) had even seen it. Curiosity got the better of him. Abana could not help but peer inside.

"Master Rahab, I have a message for you?"

There was no reply.

When first he saw the bleached skulls, he did not notice his sandals cross the threshold. They were mounted and lined up along the rear wall by order of size from large to small – the skulls of a hippopotamus, a horse, a lion, a human, a dog, a crow, and a gannet. Each were so marked. All the braziers were lit. The master's chambers sported none of the extravagant trappings customary to men of his station – but rather the oddments and oddities of some sort of scholar of the macabre. Ghastly stone idols sat alongside the foetal corpse of a conjoined twin preserved in a tall jar of formaldehyde. Bookcases as tall as the ceiling stood against the east and west walls – books of sorcery, astronomy, alchemy, and ancient history. There was no bed to speak of. A large table centred the room strewn with hundreds of loose parchment pages displaying hastily scratched notes, diagrams, and equations. The ink block was dry and surrounded by dozens of stained quills.

Abana picked up one of the pages. The master's penmanship was horrible, and his writings were of another world...

 

"...Pity upon those who deny that the teleological principles undergirding both our natural laws and our empirical existence are perceptible (and ultimately quantifiable) by our embrace of the transcendental sciences. We Tehraqi scholars think highly of ourselves but FAR too many of us are afraid to pierce the veil of the unknown! There is no heresy, only utility. I seek only the beyond..."

 

It was a stray page from a sheaf of notes tied up by string. His eyes wandered to another page, torn from journal as if in haste.

 

"Non-standard deviations in corpuscular structure are congruent with both exposure to lunar radiation and the associated hyleg of parturition. Perhaps a bisection of the cranium will uncover..."

 

The sentence trailed off where the page had been torn out but beneath that was a third scrap of parchment,

 

"The alchemical calculus of phlogisticated tissue as a by-product of escalation coefficient intensity in necromantic rituals can be represented as Ph = n³/x. This bitter substance is not to be considered flotsam. Mathematically, not only is its build up perpendicular to the regeneration rate of necrotic matter, but with the right incantations it can also be used as a catalyst for the process itself!"

 

The meaning was beyond him. It could have been genius or gibberish for all Abana knew. What he did know was that the tone was unmistakable. Those were the whirligig writings of a madman.

Abana felt increasingly unsafe in those chambers. Maybe it was better to just leave the message here for his master and return to the Silk Court? The boy put Khamaj ibn Khaffa's message on the table and backed away until he bumped into one of Rahab's book cabinets. His hand accidentally pressed one of the lodged tomes – A Theory of Quicksilver – and shimmering light surrounded him. The bookcase behind his back disappeared. A startled Abana fell backwards into a dank hidden pathway as the wall reappeared in front of his eyes and solidified into a black marble wall.

"W-what?" Abana scrambled to his feet. "Oh no! What have I done?!"

He slapped his fists against the wall but whatever magics threw him onto the other side, they would not throw him back. `This is not good,' worried Abana. `Master Rahab will punish me a dozen times over if he thinks I was intruding in his chambers...!' He had to find his way out before the sorcerer returned. The corridor was dark but there was only one way forward. Abana put a hand against its dank walls and followed the path. It led to a flight of stone steps that descended into another long, narrow corridor. But unlike the one above this one had a sparkle of light at the end.

`A way out maybe?' He thought.

The boy followed the light. As he drew closer and close to its source, he overheard a familiar voice:

"Lo, Great Kafnak of the Eighth Throne! The Starfallen One, the Bane of the Abyyabids! Here we stand as supplicants to your might! Hear our cry!"

A unified chorus of monotone voices chanted back, "WE BOW BEFORE YOUR GREATNESS FOREVER AND ALWAYS."

Abana huddled down and made it to the source of the light. He emerged upon a large stone balcony running around the upper rim of a domed underground chamber. Its stones were made of pitch-black brick and illuminated by a circle of burning metal braziers encircled against the walls. The dank air smoked with frankincense and animal bones. A shadowy congregation of worshippers in hooded cassocks gathered around an ebony marble plinth more than thirteen cubits tall. Atop it a reverent Rahab of Mahmun stood and led the unholy chants as another worshipper knelt by his side. But unlike the others this one had his hood lowered... and Abana could not believe who it was.

`Qabus?' He thought. `What's he doing down there?'

Rahab drew a knife. "Great Kafnak! Progeny of the Stars! We are your VESSELS upon this earth! Take this soul as our tribute to your power!"

"TAKE THE SOUL AND ABIDE WITH US," said the congregation. Qabus said not a word. He did not move or argue. He did not even look scared.

`I was... your predecessor in this.'

Abana watched horrified as Rahab's robed body began to burn in tongues of white-hot flame. The burning `white shadow' that the boy once saw emanate from his master's body in the Silk Court reappeared – twice as large as before. It engulfed the entire pedestal and flooded the chamber from its floor to its dome in ethereal light.

`And by the time he was a governor... I was too old to suit anyone's taste...'

Through squinted eyes the Kushwari boy spotted a sudden blot of blood in the air – and then Qabus, eyes glazed over, fell out of the heart of the light. His throat was cut.

"NO!"

A hand clamped around Abana's mouth. As the light of Rahab's burning white shadow began to ebb and the blood of Qabus the Slave spluttered out of his gaping wound, a strong arm dragged the Kushwari boy away from the balcony and back into the safety of the shadows. Abana turned around.

It was Maliq.

"That wasn't for you to see, little one."

 

**********

 

(Late Winter, 1179)

 

Abana of Hafiz felt his heart thumping inside his chest as the evil sorcerer Rahab of Mahmun held the sabre against his beloved Maliq's throat. The blade was close enough to draw blood and indeed a bead of it trickled down his neck onto his chainmail. Rahab meant every word. He would kill him.

"I will have your answer," said Rahab. "Return to me or this man dies."

The dancer's fist trembled with scarcely suppressed rage. `That mask...' he thought wrathfully. `Those eyes... that voice...' Abana tasted his hate for that man like bile in his throat. He hated him. He HATED him.

Rahab of Mahmun.

The man who bought him like livestock. The man who had his servants brand him. The man who whored him out to his guests. The man who tortured him. The man who murdered his friend. The man who threatened the life of the only man he had ever loved – the only man he would ever love.

Khamali Maliq Moromaya.

The only man that ever protected him. The only man who ever loved him. The only man ever willing to fight and die for him. What was revenge if he could not share it with Maliq? What was the world even worth without Maliq in it? Without Maliq... none of this was worth any of the price.

Rahab had won.

But the second Abana moved his lips to acquiesce, Maliq glowered at him.

"Don't," he said sternly. "Do not give him the satisfaction. If we die, we die with honour... together."

A single tear fell. `Oh, my love...'

"He, he, he, he, he..." his chuckles were like a low rumble until they suddenly exploded out of his gravelled throat, "AHA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA-HA! You two were born under a very obstinate star. It is almost commendable. And it is not without use..."

"Enough riddle-speak!" spat Maliq. "If you want to end this then end this."

"I speak no riddles," said Rahab. "And this is not the end. No, not at all. This is the beginning."

Abana, Maliq, Ghassar and the twenty palace guards looked on as Rahab of Mahmun tossed away the sickle sword and wrapped his gauntleted hand around his ivory mask and pulled it off. The hood fell from his wiry hair as he revealed his face – no disfigurements, no monstrous features – just a face-shaped void of total blackness twirling into itself. His own men stepped back in shock. But `Rahab' did not care as he chuckled manically to himself and stripped away his clothing. He threw off the Tome of the Ancients and tore off his cassock then ripped off his loincloth then jammed his still gauntleted fingers into his barrelled chest and stripped away his own skin like a flayer.

Abana's jaw dropped.

Maliq's eyes trembled.

Ghassar and his men, terrified, backed away from their lord as he ripped and tore himself open until a second form emerged from the shredded corpse he made of himself – a red-eyed and man-shaped construction of absolute light stepped out of the bloodied mound of flesh and bone that once called itself `Rahab of Mahmun'...

`The white shadow!' Abana recalled. `That same white shadow I saw before...!'

It had fingers and toes and the appearance of a nose and the contours of a chest. It tilted its head upward and opened its arms as if to breathe in and savour the first gasp of morning air after long night's slumber. It radiated light and heat. Each of its footsteps evaporated the mucky puddles leaking down from the sarooj cistern in the floor above.

`Those eyes...' thought Abana. `Those bloody eyes...'

Maliq swallowed the lump in his throat as the creature of light stood before them. "...Kafnak..."

"Indeed," its voice was ghostly and waif-like. "Now accept my offer, `Dancer of Hafiz'. Or..."

Kafnak, the creature Rahab once called the progeny of the stars, walked up to the still immobile Maliq, and placed a single fingertip upon his forehead. There was a stillness for a moment. Just a moment. And then a boom. Abana shivered as a burst of light cocooned his lover and bombarded his body from head to toe with the burning, torturous energies of absolute evil. The black swordsman SCREAMED in agony from within, his silhouetted hand scrapping and gnashing at the air as though he were being burned alive.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!"

"Stop it!" Abana yelled. "Stop it, stop it, STOP IT!"

The mouthless Kafnak smiled. "Accept. My. Offer. Or. I. Will. Torture. Him. For. Eternity."

"I accept! Just stop, please! Stop hurting him!"

Kafnak withdrew its finger.

The cocoon of light shattered like a glass jar. An unconscious Maliq fell face first into the dank stone floor, limbs flopping limply about the smoked scraps left of his armour and tunic. Abana, now suddenly free of magical restraints, ran to his side for a pulse.

He found one.

Maliq was immobile but he was breathing... and inexplicably unburnt.

Ghassar and his men were gone.

"My love," Abana whimpered. "I am so sorry; I am so sorry! I could not bear it... I had no choice..."

Kafnak extended its `hand' to Abana. "You and I shall achieve great things together, Dancer of Hafiz. Let us start with Rahab of Mahmun."

"...What?"

"He is alive..." said Kafnak. "...and vulnerable. I will take you to him."

Abana cradled his beloved. "What about Maliq?"

"He will wake soon. Now that Ghassar's men have fled he will be free to make his escape. Now come. Rahab is close."

There was no choice. At least Maliq was safe this way. Abana wiped the tears from his eyes and laid his love down gently, then kissed him goodbye. Then he rose to his feet and took Kafnak's hand as a gentle light surrounded his body... and vanished with it.

It would be some hours before Maliq awoke in the tattered remnants of his armour. He would find Jahanshah would be close by, as he would the false Rahab's mangled remains and the abandoned weapons of Ghassar's men. He would groan through his disorientation, take up his sword, and then he would notice something else that had been left behind...

...The Tome of the Ancients.

 

**********

 

* Hi, thanks for reading! Comments and constructive criticisms always welcome, please e-mail me at stephenwormwood@mail.com. If you enjoyed this, please read my other stories on Nifty = Wulf's Blut, The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice and The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi) and The Cornishman (gay, historical).