Robert Walker - Zombie Eyes

The goddess's own likeness was that of a beautiful woman in robes, surrounded by a company of stone lions. An inscription in lapis lazuli was at the base of the statue, proclaiming in the ancient letters of the Etruscans that Eslia was the queen of all the worlds of the universe. Men worked about the temple documenting the business of the temple, of the religious leaders, and they wrote on their clay tablets of Esruad, who was becoming something of a living god among his people. Herbal treatments, recipes known previously only to Esruad, were being set down on stone in the now-familiar wedge-shaped characters used in ancient Etruscan, lettering which Leonard had called cuneiform in nature. Stroud thought of temples discovered near Baghdad and Nippur which had given up rich lodes of Sumerian and Akkadian documents written on clay tablets. Stroud was reminded of figurines left in Mexican churches even now, as cues to the saints to help cure someone.

Stroud knew that some forms of herbal treatments went back as far as the Stone Age, but it was generally felt that the Babylonians and the Egyptians had been the first people to develop a systematic practice of medicine, and most certainly the first to use surgery. Now Stroud knew better.

Esruad shared his knowledge freely, placing himself at the disposal of the historians, giving them specific recipes of herbs to treat various conditions, from eye infection to diarrhea, constipation and fevers, leaving even a restorative for gray hair and baldness. He also left strict directions for surgical procedures of various kinds. He had even left magical incantations to drive out demon spirits and evil gods that threatened the peace and comfort of Etruria, as well as the lesser demons that afflicted individuals. In fact, Esraud had left a complete medical text in the temple which attempted to clarify the complex and delicate relationship between the religious healers, herbalists and magicians quartered at the temple.

Esruad was not the only magician living at the temple by this time. There was a hierarchy of leadership, a council of members, and on large issues, no one man--not even Esruad--had complete say. The Etruscan temple was democratic, allowing conflicting views and much room for intrigue. While Esruad was busy with patients one morning on a sun-baked day in 793 b.c., he felt the earth below the temple shudder. In fact, the earth below the entire city was shuddering like an earthquake. But it was no earthquake. It was Ubbrroxx, the ancient god of destruction and denial, somehow brought to the surface after eons of sleep. His power shook the temple so badly that the statue of Eslia toppled, crumbling about her fearsome-looking lion guard in the manner of cake. Men Esruad had known all his life had gone deaf and dumb, and they walked out to the desert where a gaping hole had broken open in the earth and they began to pray to the voice that they heard emanating from the pit; they forsook all else for the thing in the hole which wanted a temple built to worship it.

It also wanted the sacrifice of 500,000 humans. And so it built its army and Esruad hid in the temple and worked day and night at whatever alchemy he could devise to combat the monster until he realized he hadn't the power to defeat it, because it drew its power from the faith--or lack of faith--of the others. Everyone in the temple had gone by now, and Esruad stood alone--the only man immune to Ubbrroxx's sway. It sent others to drag Esruad down into the hole with it, to end his puny life, but for a time Esruad fought these off with magical weapons that he had devised that were effective against the human zombies.

Then Esruad lost the battle and was dragged to stand before Ubbrroxx, a sight that blinded Esruad there in the pit. Ubbrroxx ordered Esruad to build a temple that would serve as a place where men would worship only the god that fed on them, telling Esruad that when next he came, he would devour five million men, if his wishes were not met.

Esruad agreed to build the temple, saying that he would build it as a great monument to the power of his god, Ubbrroxx. "I will make it easy for you," Ubbrroxx had said to the Etruscan wizard. The demon then turned to stone before Esruad, who, sensing the change, felt around in the dark pit and touched the scalding stone that was left behind. It was a stone likeness of the hideous, enormous, two-headed demon that had spikes and scales over its body.

Esruad gradually regained his sight, a gift from Ubbrroxx, his new god, he assumed. All of those men who had been used by the demon--some of them Esruad's former enemies in the temple--had fiendishly had a hand in feeding the monster its sacrifices. These men, from religious leaders to beggars, from merchants to midwives, were now clear-eyed and coming out of their forced condition of unknowing and uncaring; out of the fog to the terrible and shattering realization of what they had done and had been made to do.

Still, fear reigned. They feared Ubbrroxx and they fell to their knees at his stone self. It took another generation and much planning on Esruad's part to gather the courage and strength required to dare put his plan into operation, but he did it. Ubbrroxx wanted a temple built to surround his stone image. So be it.

But the temple was built in the form of a ship, and the ship, along with all of Ubbroxx's remains, was let loose from its gantry and out into the ocean. Ubbrroxx was taken to a land that was not populated and there buried with his ship beneath a restraining pyramid that covered him. The work took years upon years, but Esruad, using up all of his psychic energy, had read the meaning of the stone demon and it told him that the god inside must remain at rest, and he had convinced his nation of this.

With this done, Esruad had one final duty before he should pass away, before he should never see his sons and grandsons again. In his alchemist cell in the ruins of the old temple, he fashioned the molds with the help of a young and patient apprentice, a grandson who was very good with metals and stones. The boy had fashioned the molds precisely as Esruad had ordered, seven of them in all, to go with the nine smaller ones and the three larger ones. Using the magical numbers of the year when Esruad had come face-to-face with Ubbrroxx, 793, he now mixed the molten crystal and touch of desert earth over which the demon had stood, and he carefully filled the final molds with the steaming, thick soup. The demon-touched sand would ensure the success of his magic, he was sure...

The veterans of the evil time, those who fed Ubbrroxx blindly and without resistance, began dying away, and as each man, woman and child did so, Esruad visited their bedside like a doting priest giving last rites, but Esruad's rites were those of a powerful magical nature which called on the goddess Eslia to assist him in the deliverance of the souls of such men as himself--weak men who had fallen prey to fear, falling into the pit of the unfaithful. Where should such souls reside for the rest of eternity but inside the crystal skulls that would refract and reflect back their gross sins for all eternity? But more important, so that they might have one final chance at redemption by fighting Ubbrroxx the next time it rose against mankind.

Esruad's grandson, sworn to perform the ceremony he had witnessed thousands of times over, now did so over the silent form of Esruad himself. The skull in the boy's hands lit with a shimmering, yellow-to-gold fire for a moment before it went dormant. He then solicitously placed the skull in the deep ruins of the temple.

Years upon years passed and the crystal stones were discovered and traded to kings and pharaohs for their amusement, little knowing that they housed the souls of men and magicians.

-17-

For Stroud, returning was like coming out of a black vortex that spun him around at a dizzying speed, but in an instant, he had returned to the others there in the tunnels. They'd made him as comfortable as possible, propping him against a wall, Kendra being solicitous over him, the concern creasing her face. Stroud began blinking and it drew them all around him. They were at exactly the place he had left them.