Dragon Magic (8 page)

The head had a curled bit like a mane, and a cone-shaped horn halfway down the creature’s nose. He had the head nearly done. Some more bits of upper neck—

As he picked and chose, fitted and discarded, Ras knew a growing excitement. There was something about this strange picture that he knew, had seen before; only, he could not remember when or where. He frowned as he hunted for the section that would unite head with body. Suddenly he closed his eyes, trying to think of the whole thing as a picture and not a puzzle. Where had he seen it? Something Shaka had shown him? A picture in a book? Memory stirred very faintly.

All done now but one piece of clawed paw. Ras hesitated, trying again to remember how—when—where—This must be the right piece, but it was upside down. Those queer marks on the back looked like little wedges set in a broken pattern.

He remembered! Writing! He had seen that writing in a history book—Sumerian writing! Those wedges were made on clay with a stick and then baked so that the blocks of clay were books! Ras was surprised at the clearness with which it came back to his mind now. Carefully he detached two of the pieces he had fitted in earlier and turned them over.

Each piece had some of the wedge writing, though each was different. The Sumerians had lived a very long time ago. What would their writing be doing here on the back of the puzzle?

It had something to do with the dragon, he was sure of that. Bricks!

Yes, bricks! He suddenly saw the picture his mind had been seeking—a wall and on it this queer shape made of colored bricks.

“Sirrush-Lau!”

Ras started, looked around the many-shadowed room. Who had said that? He—he must have! But how—why?

Sirrush-Lau. He stared down at the creature now complete. That was its name. And it blazed up at him fiercely as if brilliantly lighted by a hot sun.

PRINCE SHERKARER

The sun blazed, so strongly that the brick pavement of the wharf was oven-hot. Yet inside himself Sherkarer shivered with cold. But to let these pale-faced barbarians know that he had ever been touched by fear—! He stared straight ahead, his head as proudly high as he could hold it: he, who was of the blood of Nubian Piankhay, Lord of the Two Lands, Pharaoh of Egypt, a slave in this place of towering walls and strange, bearded men.

He need only glance at his own wrist to see the blue tattoo marks braceleting his dark brown arm—the coiled Serpent with the lion head of the great god Apedemek—to remember how it had been. How long ago?

One day wove into the next and the next. First only a blurred misery of pain, which had fogged his mind after the war ax had smashed against his skull at the taking of Napata, City of Kings. Later, when his wits had returned to him, he had found himself a war captive, sold as a slave. Ah, that was a drinking of bitterness!

There is no medicine to cure hatred, and he hated hotly those who had taken but not killed him at Napata, as well as the trader who had bought him, and those jostling around him now. He might not yet wear the lion-claw scars of a warrior across his cheeks, but he had fought in the defense, his bow well drawn until the arrows failed and the Egyptian forces broke in, those Egyptians who hated all the men of Nubia since the days Piankhay had shown them to be only shadow men in battle and had taken their throne.

The Nubians had held that throne, too, until generations later, Pharaoh Tanwetamani had at last been driven south once more, but not by Egyptians! No, it had taken the Assyrian war host to do that. This time, along with the Egyptians who had stormed Napata were mainly barbarians, white-skinned sea rovers, clanless men who had taken service in the north.

Not that they had found the men of Napata, or Meroë, easy meat.

Sherkarer’s lips flattened against his teeth in a silent snarl. Ay, they had paid a full price for the sacking of the city. Though to remember that did not ease his heart now, since he was not among those who had managed to retreat farther south to Meroë.

He had no bow, no sword hung in a shoulder sling ready for his drawing, no ax to hand. He was as those men on the wharf stripped to breechclouts, working to haul up the largest piece of cargo in the ship which had come up river at early dawn. That cargo—Sherkarer shivered.

He knew the wild hunters of the marshes south of Meroë. Had he not, from the time he stood upon his two feet and ran about his mother’s courtyards, heard the strange tales they could spin? For his mother was Bartare, Princess of Meroë, grand-daughter to the Candace, the Queen-Mother. At her court gathered all those who came and went into far lands, that she might hear what they had to tell and report it to Napata.

In those days, merchants from the caravans to the gulf ports, men out of the south where there were many strange and almost unbelievable things, told their stories and the scribes wrote them down. So the marsh hunters had talked of the lau—the demon-monster of the swamplands—until at last the Candace had decreed that this thing be captured and brought to her that she might make an offering of it to Apedemek. And Pharaoh Asopleta, her Son by the Favor of Amun, gave his seal to that order.

When the Great Voice speaks, men obey. It had taken a full year and twenty days more. Men died in ways the survivors would not speak of save in whispers, looking over their shoulders to the right and left as they did so. Finally the lau was brought caged to Meroë. Those who saw it knew that it could only be a demon, for no normal beast would have had such an appearance. Yet it had been netted by men, put in a cage, carried north.

So who could doubt the courage of any man out of Nubia?

Sherkarer, looking now upon that cage set on rollers, that curtained cage, wondered what those about him would think if the matting screen about it should suddenly fall and they could see what manner of creature they transported. He wished that would happen, for he was sure he would see all this company flee.

He thought again of the past, the days at court, before his enslavement.

He remembered well how the lau had been sent from Meroë to the palace of the Candace at Napata. And Sherkarer had gone with the party guarding it. His mother had wished to bring him so to the attention of the Great Lady, thus to take the first step along the road of her future favor.

He had pleased the Candace, though the lau had not. For she straightway ordered it covered again after she looked upon it, taken away to the temple of Apedemek. But the priests there had not slain it, but carefully tended it, planning to make its sacrifice the center of the great midyear ceremonies. Only, before that time had arrived, the Egyptians and the barbarian mercenaries had struck.

After the taking of Napata, which he could not remember to the end, Sherkarer had found himself part of the booty along with the lau. Why the monster had been preserved, he did not know. It was a thing of ill omen.

Look how Napata had fared after it was brought to that city, and how those who had borne it north had suffered.

Sherkarer was captive; the rest, he thought, were all dead. Again Sherkarer snarled.

But the lau and the Sherkarer had been bought by the merchant Cha-paz and now they were both in this city of white-skinned, crocodile-souled barbarians. Had the lion-god Apedemek disliked the monster so much that he arranged this defeat for his own people so that it might be gone from his temple?

If so, was Sherkarer cursed because he had helped to take the monster to Napata? Yet he had only acted under orders, and those the orders of the Great One, Daughter of Apedemek, Lioness of the Land.

His lips moved now, though he did not speak aloud, in that prayer he had heard each morning at sunrise:

“Thou are greeted, Apedemek, Lord of Napata Splendid God, at the head of Nubia.

Lion of the South, strong of arm.

Great God, who comes to him and calls.

Who is a companion for men and women,

Who will not be hindered in heaven nor earth.”

“You, black one, down!”

That ever-ready lash curled about Sherkarer’s shoulders, shocking him into awareness of what was going on about him. The slaves who had been dragging the curtained lau cage were lying face down on the wharf. Other men, free-born, had fallen to their knees, their arms crossed over their breasts, their heads bowed. There was the sound of horns. A procession was coming.

The lash licked painfully at Sherkarer’s shoulders.

“Down, slave. You do not look upon the Great King’s Chamberlain!”

Sherkarer knelt. It was that or be beaten senseless, as he had discovered the first time his captors had had their will of him.

There was a saying of the peasants—the rat cannot call the cat to account. But it was also true that if the moon moves but slowly, still it crosses the city. Who holds the whip today may not curl his fingers about its butt tomorrow.

Kneel he would, but they could not force him to measure his body on the bricks with those laboring slaves. And perhaps they dared not extract full punishment for his stubbornness in the presence of the lord who came, for he did not feel the whip again.

The Nubian had learned enough of his owner’s tongue during the long trip from Napata to understand most of what was said to him. But the rush of chanted words he heard now was a meaningless gabble. First came a guard of soldiers, walking stiffly in their overlapping scale armor, their curled beards forming a second breastplate across their chests.

Then followed a chariot with a driver and a passenger, and youthful men in rich dress flanking it on foot. Sherkarer peered sideways to see, though his head was bowed. There were two plumed fans held behind the man who rode in the chariot.

But he was no fine figure of a warrior. Rather, he was small and fat, so that his bloated stomach was thrust out before him to make a mound of his rich robe. His beard had been carefully curled and shone with oil, as did the long ringlets which fell to touch his shoulders, held in order by a broad gold band. His robe was yellow, the shawl-like cloak over it red, fastened upon one shoulder with a brooch which flashed gem-fire.

“A hundred lives to the favored of the King!” Sherkarer was now able to understand that. “May Ashpezaa, Favored of Mardek, live long!”

The guardsmen spread out in a line as the chariot came to a halt, and the young men who had walked on foot beside it gathered in a close knot.

Ashpezaa, the Chamberlain, made no move, but his driver raised a whip to beckon imperiously.

The merchant Cha-paz hunkered forward on his knees, not rising to his feet. The courtiers made way for him as he so crawled to one side of the chariot, where the driver gave some order.

Cha-paz backed away in the same awkward fashion, to make a gesture of his own to the man who was overseeing the slave laborers. On his hands and knees the overseer went to the side of the covered cage and loosed the ties of the matting screen, his efforts matched by those of the second-in-command on the other side of the shrouded box.

The matting creaked, wrinkled in pleats, as they drew it aside. There was a strong whiff of the evil odor of the lau, and a strange noise as daylight reached into the cage, for the lau was a night creature and resented both light and heat.

That shadowy form moved, rattled the cage, as a horn-nosed head struck against the thrice-reinforced bars. Cries of alarm arose from the slaves, startled from their abject abasement before the official. And the guards swung up their stabbing spears at the ready, as if they feared the monster would break free.

Even the lord shifted his position as he stared at what he could see of the captive. Then, at a second sign from the driver, the matting fell back into place and was knotted down. Cha-paz once again was summoned closer.

This time Ashpezaa spoke, though he did not turn his head to look at the man waiting so humbly. Then the merchant squirmed away in a hurry, saving himself from being trampled on as the chariot, guards, and followers started off.

Those withdrew toward the city, for this was the wharf which served the temple. That much Sherkarer already knew. In this land the temple had its own merchants to buy and sell afar, and its buildings sprawled as wide as any Nubian town of good size.

Now the whips of the overseers cracked once more and the cage on its rollers began to edge on at a very slow pace. Sherkarer got to his feet.

Between his ankles was a bar of bronze to keep him hobbled, just as his hands were joined by a loop of rope.

“You, offspring of a braying jackal”—the lash, used by an expert, flicked him between shoulders already tender from such attentions—”go!”

Thus urged, he joined the line of march, though ahead of the unwieldy cage. Its stench gathered force in the heat, setting a cloud of evil odor about them. Cha-paz, on his feet now, strode with pride and importance as if he had never groveled before the official. Boxes and coffers, some of which Sherkarer recognized as part of the loot from Napata, were being carried by other slaves. A gilded statue wearing Amun-Ra’s ram head, and a decorated chest—these could only have come from the palace of the Pharaoh.

The slaves who bore this loot were not Nubians. Sherkarer was the only one, and for that he was as humbled as if he had crawled on his belly before the white skins. He, of the Royal House, one wearing the Serpent, a slave to such as these! He was as one of the lions of the temple of Apedemek held by the triumphant enemy.

Sherkarer was startled at his thoughts. How dared he, one who had failed the Great God, who had not died bravely in battle but had come under the slave yoke, compare himself to the servants of Apedemek?

Thoughts such as these might bring upon him the greater wrath of the Lion One! More words from the morning hymn came to him:

“The one who hurls his hot breath against the enemy In this his name of great power.

The one who punishes all crimes committed against him-”

Those of Napata must have committed some great crime or Apedemek would not have turned his face from them.

The blaze of the sun, the pain in his shoulders where the whip had scored, his own hopeless fate, combined to make Sherkarer sick and dizzy, so that now and then he stumbled. Still he fought to keep on his feet, to march proudly as became a prince of Nubia in the hands of these barbarians.