Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

– |In the dark cavern, Abdmachus had closed down all of his othersight and sat, cross-legged, at the side of the young man, his fingertips laid lightly on the pulse at Maxian's neck. The body of the Prince stiffened suddenly, and Abdmachus struggled to keep from laughing out loud in triumph. The boy twitched and his body convulsed, but his pulse-though it began to race-stayed strong. The Nabatean began a low chant, placing his fingertips lightly on either temple of the Prince. Around him, the detritus of bones trembled in the ground and then each femur, skull, and scapula began to twist itself free of the earth. Finger bones scrabbled in the dirt, then began to rise into the air. Clavicles rose and joined the slowly spinning array of bones. The door of the tomb-house began to flicker with a tremendously deep blue, almost black.

One of the skulls, already missing a quarter of the forehead, suddenly disintegrated in midair with a loud crack as the power Maxian was drawing from the remains of the dead took its physical integrity. There was a rapid popping sound as the smaller fibula and ribs pulverized. The other remains began to erode as an invisible wind lashed across them, spinning them faster and faster around the old man and the Prince.

Maxian felt and saw and heard none of this. His attention was utterly filled by the snarling whirlwind of power that had rushed into him like a mountain torrent. Something in the back of his mind gibbered in fear at the sleeting fire that channeled through his body. But his intellect was soaring on a godlike wave of ability. He directed his will against the tomb door and the ancient ward rang like a porcelain plate as the vast power smote it. The viridian abyss flexed under the assault and then deformed, suddenly becoming an almost silver mirror, throwing back a contorted reflection of the Prince. Then it broke apart in a shower of tiny green flecks. Maxian's intellect stormed into the tomb-house, greedily swallowing up the long-dormant energies of those buried within. At the center of the tomb, his rush slowed and then stopped. The body of a man lay on a simple bier. The body, long decayed and shriveled to a bundle of dry sticks, was dressed in the tattered remains of a formal white toga. Once leather-bound sandals had attired his feet, but they were only scraps now.

Maxian struggled to stop the avalanche of power that his initial attempts to draw on the rocks and stones had precipitated. At the edge of his perception, he could sense that the roof of the tomb, the walls, even the floor was beginning to erode. If he did not halt the effect, even the body before him, the lever that Abdmachus had promised him, would be destroyed. Grimly he tried to recenter his thought, and after a seemingly endless period of raging against the dissolution that was tearing at him, he succeeded. Though he could no longer feel it, his body was soaked with sweat and had collapsed in Abdmachus' arms.

Maxian's spirit hovered over the ancient body. His shape body was filled with what seemed to be an almost infinite power, burning white-hot at the core of his form. Mentally he flexed his healing talent and found that it had subtly changed. Before it was a delicate skein, capable of settling with utmost precision into damaged flesh or a wounded organ. Now it throbbed with a visceral power, capable of reforming shattered bones from chips, of reconstructing whole bodies. He wondered with delight at the vision of transformation it showed him. His thought turned back to the body. This will work! he exulted.

He placed his hands, shimmering in and out of mortal sight, on the withered body. He muttered a low chant and dust puffed from the floor into a great cloud that filled the chamber. He spoke again, strange inhuman words, and the dust congealed into the visage of a dull red heart suspended over the body of the dead man. Stiff fingers sank into the chest of the corpse, peeling back dry leathery skin to expose the corroded organs. The dust-heart began to beat, stiffly at first, but then filling with blood. The organ steamed and smoked. Maxian seized it from the air and crushed it in his invisible fingers. Hot blood, almost boiling, spurted between his fingers and flooded into the exposed cavity.

Maxian steeled himself, bringing the words of an old spell to his mind. Abdmachus had shown him the crumbling parchment and he had labored to make out the words, crudely scribed in the tongue of ancient Thessaly, but now they were clear and bright in his mind. Ghostly lips moved, saying:

"O Furies and horrors of hell! Dread Chaos, eager to destroy countless worlds! O Ruler of the underworld, who suffers for endless centuries because the death of the gods above cannot come too soon! Persephone, who hates and reviles her own mother in heaven! Hecate, goodness of the dark moon, who grants me silent speech with the dead! O Custodian, who feeds the snake-crowned Dog with human flesh! Ancient ferryman who labors to bring souls back to me on his ship of bones! Heed my prayer!"

The blood, steaming and hot, settled in the inner cavity of the body, soaking into long-closed arteries and veins. A sucking sound filled the dank chamber and the corpse trembled, filling with the burning liquid.

"If these lips of mine that call you have been tainted enough with hideous crimes, if I have always eaten human flesh before chanting such spells, if I have cut open the breasts of new mothers and washed them out with warm brains, if any baby could have lived, once his head and organs were placed in your temple-grant me my desire!"

The corpse, its lips flushed a pale rose by the blood curdling within it, did not move.

"Tisiphone and Megara! Are you listening to me? Will you not use your savage whips, studded with hooks and teeth, to drive this ancient wretch from the wasteland of Erebus? Shall I conjure your true names to call you forth into dreadful light? Shall I follow you over graves and burial grounds, driving you away from every tomb and urn? You, Hecate, shall I drag you before the gods in heaven and show them your true aspect, pale and morbid, always hidden behind artifice? Shall I tell the gods, O Persephone, what kind of dear food it is that keeps you under the earth, what bond of love unites you with the gloomy king of night, what defilement you welcomed that makes your mother deny you?"

The stones of the tomb echoed with the violence in Maxian's shout. The air crawled with strange lights and shuddering darkness. Still, the body on the slab did not move, though now wisps of steam and smoke issued forth from its eyes and mouth.

"Upon you, you lowest rulers of the world, shall I focus the sun-breaking open your caves-and daylight shall strike you. Will you obey my will? Or must I call him who makes the earth tremble when his name is invoked, who can look upon the Gorgon unveiled, who lashes a frightened Fury with her own whip, who dwells in the depth of Tartarus that is hidden even from your view, for whom you are the 'gods above,' who commits perjury in the name of Styx?"

The clotted blood, thick and viscous in the open pounds of the body, suddenly boiled up again. The limbs of the corpse twitched as it circulated, reaching the extremities. Flooded with the black liquid, the tissues in the cold breast began to vibrate, new life stealing into organs long unaccustomed to it, struggling with death. Every limb began to shake, the sinews stretching, the tendons popping. Eyelids flickered open, revealing dead white orbs. Stiff lips twitched and the chest, its gaping wounds closed and puckered, heaved with breath.

Maxian was giddy with triumph, seeing life and vitality flow throughout his creation. His head began to spin and he clutched at the stone lip of the table. His ghostly fingers fell through the platform.

In the cavern, Abdmachus stared up at the ceiling with near terror. The whirlwind of bones was gone, all of the remains consumed by the young master. The roots that anchored the roof were gone as well, and a steady trickle of gravel and stones rained down onto the floor of the chamber. The tomb door was gone, dissolved into dust, and a strange wind now blew into the open tomb. For all his long years scrabbling in the earth of graveyards, ossuaries and among the remains of the dead, the Nabatean harbored a carefully concealed fear of close spaces. The earth groaned around him as abused stones shifted. He cowered over the body of the young man, his own talents extended to the utmost to hold up the pattern of protection that kept him from being consumed.