Lycanthropos (44 page)

The leader of the Karpans walked forward and asked, "Do
you know who I am. Magaya?"

"All men know the name of Zuvanosha, priest of the daevas," Isfendir said, his voice trembling.

"Yes," Jamnaspa added, angry through his fear, "even as
all men know that the daevas are false gods!"

Zuvanosha glared at Jamnaspa as the Turanian bandits laughed at the remark, and in that glower and in that laughter Isfendir and Jamnaspa heard the sentence of their own deaths. "Surely...surely...you have no fight with us,
lord of the daevas," Isfendir said quickly, "for we are but two young priests of noble lineage, and no danger to you or
to your followers..."

"No, little Magos," Zuvanosha said, "but all who give
themselves to the worship of Ahura Mazda, all who sit at the
feet of that evil old man and drink in his words, all who deny the power of the daevas, all such men are my enemies." As several of the Turanians drew their swords, Isfendir began to whimper and Jamnaspa felt his knees begin to buckle. Zuvanosha held out his hand and one of the Turanians placed a sword hilt into it. The Karpan closed his hand upon the sword and walked slowly over to the two young Magi. He placed the tip of the sword against
Jamnaspa's throat and smiled. "But it is true that I have no
personal quarrel with you, Magos. I wish to see Dzardrusha.
Where is he?"

"Y...you wish to slay him," Jamnaspa stammered.

Zuvanosha shrugged and did not respond to the statement. "Where is Dzardrusha?" he repeated.

Jamnaspa shook his head. "I know not."

Zuvanosha pressed the blade a bit harder against the young man's flesh and repeated for a third time, "Where is Dzardrusha?" Jamnaspa stared at him, defiant and silent, and then the Karpan thrust the blade into the throat of the young Magos. The Turanian released his grip, and Jamnaspa fell to the floor, clutching his slit throat and emitting a
sickening gurgling sound as his blood rushed out and covered
the marble. Jamnaspa's body shook violently, and then the tremors subsided suddenly. In a few moments he lay motionless in a pool of his own blood, his dead eyes gazing and seeing not.

Isfendir felt himself beginning to swoon, but his fear
revived him as Zuvanosha turned to him, pressed the bloody blade against his throat and asked calmly, "Where is Dzardrusha?" Isfendir tried to speak, but no words could break through his terror. Zuvanosha increased the pressure of the blade
against Isfendir's cold, clammy skin and repeated, "For the
last time and for your
life,
where is Dzardrusha?"

"Below!" Isfendir cried. "He is below, in the most sacred of fire chambers!"

Zuvanosha removed the sword from Isfendir's throat, and the young man's legs gave way. The Turanian who had been confining him was now holding him up as Zuvanosha said, "I see no doorway and no steps in this hall, Magos. Where then
is the doorway to this fire chamber?"

"T...there, over there!" Isfendir said. "Behind the
throne! A passageway, a secret passageway!"

Zuvanosha grabbed Isfendir by the collar of his robe and pulled him toward the wall. "Guide us, O brave and loyal
Magos."

Isfendir felt the tip of a Turanian sword at his back as
his trembling fingers sought out the hand hold in the apparently smooth surface of the wall. He pulled the door open and was then pushed into the corridor. The Turanian bandits and their Karpan masters followed behind him,
torches held high and weapons drawn.

Down again into the depths of the earth below the great
Temple
of
Balkh Isfendir
went, but not now to learn of the mysteries of Ahura Mazda. He went now in terror and fear and
shame, leading the enemies of Truth to murder the prophet of
Truth. They descended to the holiest of fire chambers and found the prophet Dzardrusha still standing before the altar, gazing into the flickering flame. Zuvanosha nodded to the Turanians, and one of them began to walk toward the
prophet, prepared to thrust his sword into the old man's back.

But then confusion descended as one of the Turanian bandits pulled a knife from his belt and threw it at his comrade. The blade struck him in the back of the neck and
sank deep into his flesh, the impact sending him sprawling
onto the floor to die. The traitor then raised his sword
high above his head and, screaming a battle cry, rushed at
Zuvanosha.

The other Turanians seized their traitor and disarmed him easily before he could smite the Karpan, and Zuvanosha's eyes narrowed as he turned to the Turanian leader and demanded, "Is the word of a Turanian chief meaningless, Nushak? Or has Dzardrusha or King Vishtaspa paid you more gold than we, that I am to be the victim of betrayal?"

The Turanian khan bristled. "If I had betrayed you,
Karpan, you would have been dead hours ago." He gestured at
the traitor. "This man is no Turanian, but a wandering
warrior who has lived with us for many years. I had thought him worthy of trust, for he has joined us in many raids on
the villages of Chorasmia." The khan Nushak turned his deadly eyes to gaze upon the traitor and said, "But I was wrong, for he must be a spy sent by Vishtaspa to learn of us. And he shall die the death which treason warrants, tomorrow, in our camp, for all to see."

The turmoil had awakened the prophet Dzardrusha from his reverie, and he now faced the assembly of his enemies. He
looked long and hard at the face of Isfendir and then shook his head sadly. He turned to the Karpan. "Zuvanosha, slave of the darkness and leader of the ignorant, wind tightly your turban upon your deathbed, for long is the fall from the Bridge of the
Separator to the House of the
Lie."

Zuvanosha
still
held the sword, dripping with the blood of Jamnaspa, and as he walked toward Dzardrusha he raised it above his head, saying, "I shall pray that the
daevas catch you when you arrive, you old fool." And then he swung the sword around in a vicious arc and severed the head
of the prophet.

Zuvanosha stared down at the corpse of his enemy, reveling in the moment of victory and vengeance, and then
turned to the Turanian khan. "Kill the Magos, and then let
us depart."

"But no servant of the daevas," Nushak smiled, "for he
is of a noble lineage, is he not? His family will pay much
gold for his
life."

Zuvanosha shrugged. "As you wish, Nushak. It is of no
matter to me."

The Turanians and the Karpans parted company after leaving the great
Temple
of
Balkh
, the Karpans returning to their own daeva temples and the bandits returning to their nomad settlement. It took the Turanians three hours on horseback to reach their camp in the wild hill country north of Chorasmia. They had bound both Isfendir and the traitor hand and foot and had slung them over the backs of two horses. Isfendir spent the three hours in prayers of shamed repentance, trying to calm his nerves by telling himself that he would neither fall from the horse and break his neck nor be tortured by the Turanians; and he tried to soothe his
conscience by telling himself that Dzardrusha was an old man
and would have died soon, even if Zuvanosha had not cut his
head from his body. But neither effort was availing, for his fear remained and his shame remained.

When they reached the Turanian camp, a motley nomad village of campfires and yurts, redolent of offal and
unwashed people, Isfendir and the traitor were pulled
roughly from the backs of the horses and, still bound, were
cast into the same yurt to await the morrow. For Isfendir, the sunrise would see a message carried to his clan, to the Magaya. For the traitor, the morrow would see his wrists and ankles and head tied to five horses, which would be whipped to run in different directions. Or so all thought, save the traitor, who sat in the yurt and stared at Isfendir with an expression of bizarre merriment on his tired face. Isfendir tried not to look at the traitor, but he could not avoid listening as the other man asked, "You are priest?"

Isfendir nodded nervously. "Yes." The man's accent was peculiar and Isfendir could not identify it.

The traitor laughed. "I too am priest. Was priest. No
more. Was priest in
Egypt
far from here, long time ago. Was Aton priest, Pharaoh Akhnaton priest." The man laughed
bitterly.

Isfendir could not keep himself from looking over at his
fellow prisoner who sat, bound as he was, upon the earthen
floor of the yurt. "You are not a Turanian?"

"No," the traitor replied. "Egyptian. Aton priest, long
ago. Horemheb come, Akhnaton killed, old gods return. Aton
priest Menereb become Amon priest. Help Horemheb kill
Akhnaton, help Horemheb kill Aton priests." The man leaned
forward and said earnestly. "You remember, Ahura priest, you
remember words of Menereb. Important, important! You remember, Ahura priest!" Isfendir turned his head away and
tried to ignore him. The fellow has lost his reason,
Isfendir thought to himself.

Soon it was night, and as the campfires of the Turanians grew dim and then went out, the full moon floated in mute majesty in the dome of heaven, bathing the world with its cold light. Isfendir could not sleep, and thus it was that he was awake to hear the traitor scream in pain. He looked over at the other prisoner in the yurt and
strained his eyes to see in the dim lunar darkness. Isfendir
blinked his eyes, for he reasoned that he could not possibly
see what he thought he was seeing.
But his eyes were not deceiving him, and a few moments
later, as the Turanians entered the yurt to investigate the
screams, Isfendir watched in speechless horror as a werewolf rose to its feet, snarled viciously, and then
attacked its erstwhile captors.

The creature carried the battle out of the yurt and into the dark camp. Isfendir struggled against his bonds, trying to free himself and escape before the creature remembered him and returned to the yurt, but the ropes were too thick and the knots were too tight, and he strained his hands
impotently against them.

The screams of pain and agony which arose from the nomad village were terrible, and an hour passed before the cries ceased. Isfendir lay shaking upon the dirt floor of the yurt, not knowing what had transpired without, not daring to
roll his body to the door flap and look out at the now silent
camp. And then the yurt itself was lifted high into the air and thrown aside by the werewolf, leaving Isfendir lying upon the open ground in the midst of a hundred shredded human bodies. He whimpered as the creature dropped to
its
hands and knees and rushed over to him, its jaws dripping with blood and flesh, its talons dark red in the moonlight. Isfendir faced an unspeakably horrible death, and he wept and whimpered and trembled.

But the werewolf did not attack. It knelt over the
helpless young Magos and stared at his forehead for a long while. And then, without warning, it snapped its bloody
fangs shut on Isfendir's shoulder and bit deeply, crunching
bone and muscle and sinew between its powerful jaws.
Isfendir screamed in pain and jerked his body in a mad, irrational attempt to free himself from the inhuman vise,
and then the creature released him. The werewolf gazed at him for a long moment, and then ran off into the darkness.

The next day the Turanian camp was found by the soldiers
of King Vishtaspa, who had sought them out to avenge the death of Dzardrusha. They released the wounded young Magos, who told them all that had happened the previous day and night, leaving out his own role in the assassination of the prophet. The soldiers concluded that Ahura Mazda had sent an avenging angel to destroy the Turanians, and this explanation became the official one at the court of King Vishtaspa. The soldiers took Isfendir back to his people where he was welcomed as a hero and a true servant of the Great God Ahura Mazda, and he accepted the adulation and hid
his shame.

Zuvanosha and the other Karpans were seized by the soldiers of King Vishtaspa and were beheaded. Of the Turanians, only one was left alive to be captured and executed. This was the traitor himself, who could have saved his life by saying that he had sought to save Dzardrusha, for Isfendir could have supported his words; but Isfendir could not look upon him, for he knew that this was the creature that had destroyed the Turanians and had attacked him, and he grew faint at the thought of seeing the man
again.

Nor did the traitor make any attempt to save his own
life.
Indeed, when the executioner's blade swung high above
his head, the man laughed and wept with happiness. He was smiling as his head was severed from his body. His head was
placed upon a pole and left outside the walls of the city of
Balkh
, as a lesson and a warning, but the face which
gazed down at passersby from the elevated head wore an
expression of joy. No one could understand the happiness of
the traitor, not King Yishtaspa, not the Magayan priests who
now sought to continue the work of the dead prophet, and not Isfendir.