James West - Reaper Of Sorrows

“Yaazapa Gathul! El yettairath dakerr! Yaazapa Gathul!”

A stirring cold raised the fine hairs at Sanouk’s neck. The torches brightened from gold to blinding silver, and their leaping flames roared against the curving ceiling like claws of fire. A shadow drawn from the deepest reaches of the underworld oozed into the base of the greenstone altar, obscuring its odd luminosity. The unformed figures trapped within, those Sanouk had tried to deny existed, darted like fish in a pond. As that shifting darkness imbued the stone beneath her, turning its vibrant hue a featureless black, Aleena flailed all the more.

“Yaazapa Gathul! El yettairath dakerr! Yaazapa Gathul!”

The spirit of Gathul flooded over Aleena’s skin, forming a vision of a girl soaked in boiling tar. Her screams cut off as that sludge squeezed around the gag and poured down her throat, yet still she fought.

Sanouk stared, as enthralled as he had been when Undai had lain in Aleena’s place. He could not guess what it was to have the essence of a god envelope your flesh, its soul taste your soul, and neither did he care to find out.

All at once, Aleena went still.

“Yaazapa Gathul! El yettairath dakerr! Yaazapa Gathul!” Sanouk cried a fourth time, belatedly putting an end to the summoning.

Gathul rose like oiled smoke from Aleena’s flesh. She appeared unscathed, but she stared at nothing, and might have been dead, save that her breasts rose and fell with each shuddering breath.

The god’s nebulous shape swirled and pulsed as it moved before Sanouk and solidified. Even now, at this second summoning, Sanouk’s heart quailed with a terror so deep as to threaten his sanity. The color of old bruises, the god’s warty hide clung to hanging mounds of loose flesh. Six sagging breasts depended from its torso, capped by horn-like protrusions and tufts of wiry black hair, yet its unbound loins declared Gathul to be grossly male.

Sanouk flung himself at the god’s clawed feet. “I have brought another offering, master,” he stammered, his fear bringing him not shame but pride. A lesser man would have soiled himself at the mere description of Gathul, and never would such a man dare speak with the deity.

“Indeed you have, human,” Gathul said, its voice that of a millstone grinding corpses to pulp. Burning red eyes, a score at the least, each sunk into its lumpen face and about its skull, regarded Sanouk. A dribble of reeking muck spilled from the ill-formed rent that served as the god’s mouth. Sanouk jerked back his outstretched arms, lest any of that slaver touch him. “You have leave to make your petition,” Gathul invited, revealing a forest of ragged teeth pitted by corruption.

Bent double, Sanouk scuttled to the altar. He upended a tiny jar, spilling a honey-thick line of resin over Aleena’s hands bound at her waist, then continued to her neck. When finished, he flung the empty jar away with shaking fingers, and retrieved a blazing torch.

Where shock at Gathul’s touch had frozen Aleena, she thawed now. The girl wailed at the raging silver fire descending toward her flesh. Her struggles increased, tearing the delicate skin caught under her bindings.

Sanouk cursed when one of her feet broke free and her legs began scissoring. Gathul’s pestilent flesh rippled with displeasure, and the god made a terrifying chuffing noise at Sanouk’s back. The lord tried to hold Aleena down, but she squirmed like an eel, enough to break free of the altar’s sucking grasp.

“Fail to meet your obligations, human,” Gathul warned, “and our covenant is broken.”

Sanouk threw himself on Aleena, terror closing his throat. Should he ever fail to appease the god’s hunger, the cost was his own soul-not locked away, but taken, imprisoned as Gathul’s eternal plaything. Desperate to avoid that, he struck Aleena, once and again. The third blow dazed her, and she went limp. The gag had loosened enough for her tongue to push it away.

“Please, do not do this thing,” she begged.

“I must, and I will,” he said, and jabbed the torch into the resin smeared over her belly and breasts.

Sputtering flames quickly engulfed her. Her shrieks gave him pause only a moment, then he caught her up and spun from the altar, grinding his teeth against the red pain of his own sizzling skin. As he raced toward an open tomb, fire and smoke roiled before his eyes, blinding him. The reek of scorched hair and meat filled his nose. Flames poured down his throat, searing his lungs. He took one more step and threw the girl. Swirls of black smoke and leaping tongues of red-orange fire blocked his sight. Aleena was still screaming, screaming-

Silence fell, and only the fast-fading echoes of her cries gave evidence that she had ever made a sound. With that abrupt quiet, the fiery pain that had swarmed over Sanouk, an agony that had begun to sink into his flesh with deadly hunger, vanished. Even knowing what to expect, he fell to his knees, a sooty arm held before his awed eyes. His flesh was nearly whole, the last blisters fading as he watched. Like steel before it, fire would never again threaten his life.

His black eyes darted. Aleena screamed at him in terrible silence, not beautiful any longer, but a charred, undying ruin. Where Undai beat against an immovable wall of running blood, Aleena pounded her blackened fists against a barrier of flame. The agony of immolation was in her, marrow-deep, but she would not perish by fire … and neither would he, as long as she remained trapped within her fiery tomb.

“You have done well, human,” Gathul mocked. The god paused before adding, “Your offerings have stirred my hungers. It would serve you well to bring the next sacrifice sooner.”

Sanouk jerked his head around. “But, master, you allotted a moon’s turn between each offering.”

“I have changed my mind, human, as is my privilege. Do my will, and all will be well with you. Fail, and your suffering will be limitless.”

Before the last syllable was complete, the god’s hideous form blackened and shrunk to the size of a rat’s eye, then vanished with a blast of lightless energy that threw Sanouk against a rough stone wall.

For a long time after Gathul departed, Sanouk sat in a stupor, looking on Undai and Aleena, but not really seeing them. Their sacrifices ensured he was invulnerable to steel and flame. With but two sacrifices, he could achieve much uncontended. With a few more, he would become impervious to all manner of deaths, save that wrought by time. All that pleased him, but what if Gathul once more changed their pact? “Do my will, and all will be well with you.”

For the first time, Sanouk saw clearly the trap in dealing with the god of grief and avarice. Once the sacrifices began, they could not be halted, save by the death of the conjurer. And yet, if he became invulnerable to death by all means except long years, then he would need to make timely offerings the rest of his days. That obligation had never troubled Sanouk, for hapless fools were as numerous as grains of sand. But what if Gathul’s hungers became such that the god required a daily sacrifice … or more? Even fools would notice such a harvesting of their flock.

Sanouk swallowed back the bile on his tongue, told himself Gathul would never make such impossible demands, for to do so would end the feedings altogether. Why would the god want that?

Feeling better about the whole affair, confident that he had not erred in treating with Gathul, Sanouk departed the chamber to attend to the other intricacies of building his future kingdom.

“Another fine victory for the Scorpion!” Lieutenant Thushar shouted to Rathe. Grinning as if the smell of ashes and death did not touch him, the strong-jawed Prythian tied back his long brown hair with a leather thong, then poured water from a leaky wooden bucket over his broad chest to rinse away blood and dust. Hours had passed since the village’s last defender had fallen, but the lieutenant’s green eyes still glinted with the heat of battle.