Брайан Ламли - Khai of Khem

There was nothing childlike about his awful voice, however; and now, as he moved forward with a swirling of his loose yellow robes across the stark and stony chamber, he commented on the girls. “Beautiful,” he said to each one in turn, peering at their eyes above their veils as he passed before them. “Beautiful. Charming. Oh, yes, Anulep—I am well pleased!” But while Khasathut’s comments were warm, his tone remained as cold as a deep, rock-cut tomb.

“The Pharaoh’s pleasure is mine,” Anulep intoned, bowing from the waist until his forehead touched the back of the throne.

Now the diminutive Pharaoh approached his throne—moving, Khai thought, almost like a Nile crab, sideways—and mounted the tiny steps to turn and seat himself facing the manacled girls. As he took his seat, Anulep straightened up, then bent momentarily to whisper something in Khasathut’s ear. Khasathut uttered a weirdly baying laugh. His and the Vizier’s eyes went back to the three girls.

By this time, the Nubian girl, whose white-gowned figure was flanked by the two smaller, golden-skinned Khemish girls, was beginning to take an interest in things. The three had quite obviously been drugged, for so far they had simply leaned against the wall with their arms made fast over their heads. The one closest to Khai where he crouched in darkness had even appeared to fall asleep, her head hanging limply against her arm.

They were all awake now, however, and by their uncomfortable movements, Khai judged them to be feeling the strain of their awkward positions. The blood must have completely drained from their hands and arms by now, and the drug was beginning to wear off. The black girl was recovering much faster than her white sisters and her eyes were large as they stared about the room. Finally those brown eyes of hers found Khasathut’s where they stared back at her.

Pharaoh licked his pale, thin lips and stood up. He seemed to tremble as he stepped down from his throne and sidled across the floor to where the girls were chained to the wall. He went to the Nubian girl and stared up at her, his octopus eyes unblinking and his tongue constantly licking at his lips. Staring down at him, the girl’s eyes seemed to reflect—disgust? terror?—as they focused on Pharaoh’s own yellowish orbs.

“Beautiful,” Pharaoh said. Khai took his eyes quickly from Khasathut and the girls to peer for a moment at Anulep and the guardsmen. They had not moved, seemed frozen as they gazed across the room, their attention unwaveringly upon Khasathut and what he was doing. Something was going to happen, Khai knew, and he returned his eyes to the yellow-clad form of the God-king….

Khasathut had just reached up his left hand to remove the black girl’s veil; and now the terror could plainly be seen in her flaring nostrils, her drawn face, the film of moisture on her black brow. He stared at her a moment longer, and his tongue was like that of a snake. It flickered in and out of his mouth, licking back and forth ceaselessly over his lips. Pharaoh’s hand reached up again, fingers crooked, to catch at the neck of the girl’s gown.

Watching, Khai held his breath. Clearly this was no ordinary ceremony … no ceremony at all but something terrible, a parody of whatever the boy had expected. And now the two girls flanking the Nubian bride were also watching, their faces turned inwards to follow Khasathut’s every motion. He looked from one to the other of them, the vertical slits of his eyes unblinking, then turned his attention back to the black girl. His hand tightened on the material of her dress close to the hollow of her throat, then, swift as a striking cobra tore downward.

The fine linen ripped wide open as, with sudden frantic tearing motions, Pharaoh stripped the girl to her waist, pausing only when her gown hung in tatters. Now the sight of the half-naked girl seemed to incense Khasathut. He stepped back and stared at her for a long moment, the trembling of his body clearly visible through the folds of his yellow robe. The girl’s large breasts were heaving as she began to writhe, fighting to tear her wrists free from the manacles that held them. Sweat glistened on her breasts and naked belly.

Again Khasathut uttered his baying laugh, more highly pitched and breathless than before and full of a weird excitement. He lifted his hand to his own neck and plucked out the bronze pin that held the folds of his royal robe in place. Freed, the robe fell about his feet, leaving him naked except for his crown, which he now removed and tossed down upon the floor. The Nubian girl at once ceased her struggling and her mouth fell open in sheer horror as she stared at the Pharaoh through bulging brown eyes.

Peering through his peephole, Khai too gasped with shock at sight of Khasathut naked. Not because the mere thought was blasphemous, which it surely was, but because the God-king was far more monstrously deformed and alien than ever the boy might have guessed. Until now his only visible limb had been his left arm and hand, which had seemed normal enough. Beneath the yellow robe, however, things were hideously different.

Indeed, the only thing that seemed normal about Khasathut was his penis. But even this, because it was the organ of a full-grown man and firmly erect, looked inordinately large and freakish on the shrivelled, twisted body of Pharaoh. His right arm was only half the size it should have been, with the elbow correctly placed but having a forearm no more than six inches long. The hand at the end of that freakish arm was a stump of webbed fingers that lay twisted across his breast.

His legs, too, were deformed, the right being several inches longer than the left, which accounted for his crablike walk. His body, with skin so smooth and pink it was almost translucent, was completely hairless; and between his shoulder blades there showed the taut mound of a small hump.

Worst of all, however, as if the list of loathsomeness were not already long enough, was Khasathut’s head. That incredibly long head—like the skull of some ancient, evil bird—which sloped backward and carried on the sloping line of the forehead for at least a further fifteen inches. No wonder he wore the great crown!

In short, with all of his deformities, Pharaoh was a completely and utterly alien monster!

And now the monster stood up straight as he could and leaned forward. His crippled, webbed right hand fell forward almost of its own accord and for a moment caressed the Nubian girl’s left breast, then caught and held her large, squarish nipple. Quick as thought, his good left hand, which still held the long bronze pin from his discarded robe, rose up to thrust the metal sliver lengthwise through the center of the girl’s nipple and into her breast. Only the ball of the pin, which instantly turned red and began to drip blood, protruded: a scarlet berry on a black velvet background. It seemed that time stood still and for a split second nothing further happened. Then—

All three girls began to scream—screams of desperation, of all hope lost—and the black girl commenced a wildly agonized threshing, banging her head again and again on the solid wall behind her. And as their screams rang deafeningly loud in that hollow chamber of torture, so Khasathut clapped his good hand to his ear and bent his head until his right ear pressed against his shoulder. In this position, shutting out the sounds of their screaming, he staggered back across the stone floor and almost fell into his throne.

“Now— now!” he said, motioning to his blacks, directing them to commence some prearranged play. The huge Negroes leapt forward at Pharaoh’s command, two of them clapping hands to the shrieking mouths of the Khemish girls where they flanked the now-unconscious Nubian. Khai, his eyes glued to the crack in the wall, would remember what next happened to his dying day. For the sight was such as to freeze him, so that however much he desired to look away he could not tear his eyes from that scene of absolute cruelty and horror.