Lunnah - The Gift of Death

The last scion of the first King of Stygia, Tuthamon, lay dying, and with his death, so too withered the ancient bloodline of Luxor’s Priest-Kings. Through the hot, stifling night the temple gongs boomed and the conchs roared. Their clamor was a faint echo in the gold-domed chamber where Tuthmoset, High-Priest of Set, struggled on the velvet-cushioned dais. Beads of sweat glistened on his dusky skin; his fingers twisted the gold-worked fabric beneath him. He was young; no spear had touched him, no poison lurked in his wine. But his veins stood out like blue cords on his temples, and his eyes dilated with the nearness of death. Trembling slave-girls knelt at the foot of the dais, and leaning down to him, watching him with passionate intensity, was his sister, Lunnah. Her honeyed-ivory skin, showed her to be Stygian of some ancient noble family, and like all such women she was tall, lithe, voluptuously figured, her hair a great pile of finely spun platinum, among which gleamed a sparkling ruby. But for her velvet sandals and broad jewel-crusted girdle about her supple waist she was quite nude; her sleek ripe curves drawing the eye in a way no adornment of silken cloth, or gold, or priceless gems ever could. With her was the Temple Scribe, a noble grown old in the royal court, who although of noble blood and lineage, was no less her servant.

Lunnah threw up her head in a gusty gesture of wrath and despair as the thunder of the distant drums reached her ears.

"The priests and their clamor!" she exclaimed. "They are no wiser than the leeches who are themselves helpless! Nay, he dies and none can say why. He is dying now--and I stand here helpless, who would burn the whole city and spill the blood of thousands in sacrifice to Set, to but save him."

"Not a man of Luxor but would die in his place, if it might be, my lady," answered the scribe. "This poison--"

"I tell you it is not poison!" she cried. "Since his birth he has been guarded so closely that the cleverest poisoners of the East could not reach him. Five skulls bleaching on the Tower of the Serpent can testify to attempts which were made--and which failed. As you well know, there are ten men and ten women whose sole duty is to taste his food and wine, and fifty armed warriors guard his chamber as they guard it now. No, it is not poison; it is sorcery--black, ghastly magic--"

She ceased as her brother spoke; his livid lips did not move, and there was no recognition in his glassy eyes. But his voice rose in an eery call, indistinct and far away, as if he called to her from beyond vast, wind-blown gulfs.

"Lunnah! Lunnah! My sister, where are you? I cannot find you. All is darkness, and the roaring of great winds!"

"Brother!" cried Lunnah, catching his limp hand in a convulsive grasp. "I am here! Do you not know me--"

Her voice died at the utter vacancy of his face. A low confused moan waned from his mouth. The slave-girls at the foot of the dais whimpered with fear, and Lunnah beat her breast in anguish.

In another part of the city a man stood in a latticed balcony overlooking a long street in which torches tossed luridly, smokily revealing upturned dark faces and the whites of gleaming eyes. A long-drawn wailing rose from the multitude.

The man shrugged his broad shoulders and turned back into the arabesque chamber. He was a tall man, compactly built, and richly clad.

"The High-Priest is not yet dead, but the dirge is sounded," he said to another man who sat cross-legged on a mat in a corner. This man was clad in an ashen robe and sandals; his expression was tranquil, his gaze impersonal.

"The people know he will never see another dawn," this man answered.
The first speaker favored him with a long, searching stare.

"What I can not understand," he said, "is why I have had to wait so long for your masters to strike. If they have slain the High-Priest of Luxor now, why could they not have slain him months ago?"

"Even the arts you call sorcery are governed by cosmic laws," answered the man in the ashen robes. "The stars direct these actions, as in other affairs. Not even my masters can alter the stars. Not until the heavens were in the proper order could they perform this necromancy." With a long, stained fingernail he mapped the constellations on the marble-tiled floor. "The slant of the moon presaged evil for the High-Priest of Luxor; the stars are in turmoil, the Serpent in the House of the Elephant. During such juxtaposition, the invisible guardians are removed from the spirit of Tuthmoset. A path is opened in the unseen realms, and once a point of contact was established, mighty powers were put in play along that path."

"Point of contact?" inquired the other. "Do you mean that lock of Tuthmoset's hair?"

"Yes. All discarded portions of the human body still remain part of it, attached to it by intangible connections. The priests of Set have a dim inkling of this truth, and so all nail trimmings, hair and other waste products of the persons of the royal bloodline are carefully reduced to ashes and the ashes hidden. But at the urgent entreaty of the High-Priestess of Khemi, who loved Tuthmoset vainly, he gave her a lock of his long black hair as a token of remembrance. When my masters decided upon his doom, the lock, in its golden, jewel-encrusted case, was stolen from under her pillow while she slept, and another substituted, so like the first that she never knew the difference. Then the genuine lock travelled by camel-caravan up the long, long road to Khopshef Province, thence up the Kheshetta Pass, until it reached the hands of those for whom it was intended."

"Only a lock of hair," murmured the nobleman.

"By which a soul is drawn from its body and across gulfs of echoing space," returned the man on the mat.

The nobleman studied him curiously.

"I do not know if you are a man or a demon, Khuran," he said at last. "Few of us are what we seem. I, whom men know as Annusethsis, a merchant of Khemi, am no greater a masquerader than most men. They are all traitors in one way or another, and half of them know not whom they serve. There at least I have no doubts; for I serve Osirris, the High-Priest of Khemi."

"And I the Black Ring," said Khuran; "and my masters are greater than yours, for they have accomplished by their arts what Osirris could not with a hundred thousand swords, or all his petty prayers to the Dark Lord Set."

Outside, the moan of the tortured thousands shuddered up to the stars which crusted the sweating Stygian night, and the conchs bellowed like oxen in pain.

In the temple gardens the torches glinted off polished helmets and curved swords and gold-chased corselets of the temple guard. All the noble-born fighting-men of Luxor were gathered in the great temple or about it, and at each broad-arched gate and door fifty archers stood on guard, with bows in their hands. But Death stalked through the temple gates and none could stay his ghostly tread.

On the dais under the golden dome Tuthmoset cried out again, racked by awful paroxysms. Again his voice came faintly and far away, and again Lunnah bent to him, trembling with a fear that was darker than the terror of death.

"Sister! Lunnah!" Again that far, weirdly dreeing cry, from realms immeasurable. "Aid me! I am far from my mortal house! Wizards have drawn my soul through the wind-blown darkness. They seek to snap the silver cord that binds me to my dying body. They cluster around me; their hands are taloned, their eyes are red like flame burning in darkness. Aie, save me, my sister! Their fingers sear me like fire! They would slay my body and damn my soul! What is this they bring before me?--Aie!"

At the terror in his hopeless cry Lunnah screamed uncontrollably and threw herself bodily upon him in the abandon of her anguish. He was torn by a terrible convulsion; foam flew from his contorted lips and his writhing fingers left their marks on the girl's shoulders. But the glassy blankness passed from his eyes like smoke blown from a fire, and he looked up at his sister with recognition.

"Brother!" she sobbed. "Brother--"

"Swift!" he gasped, and his weakening voice was rational. "I know now what brings me to the pyre. I have been on a far journey and I understand. I have been ensorcelled by the wizards of the Black Ring. They drew my soul out of my body and far away, into a stone room. There they strove to break the silver cord of life, and thrust my soul into the body of a foul night-weird their sorcery summoned up from hell. Set! I feel their pull upon me now! Your cry and the grip of your fingers brought me back, but I am going fast. My soul clings to my body, but its hold weakens. Quick--kill me, sister, before they can trap my soul for ever!"

"I can not!" she wailed, smiting her naked breasts.

"Swiftly, I command you!" There was the old imperious note in his failing whisper. "You have never disobeyed me--obey my last command! Send my soul clean to Set! Haste, lest you damn me to spend eternity as a filthy gaunt of darkness. Strike, I command you! Strike!"

Sobbing wildly, Lunnah plucked a jeweled dagger from her girdle and plunged it to the hilt in his breast. He stiffened and then went limp, a grim smile curving his dead lips. Lunnah hurled herself face-down on the rush-covered floor, beating the reeds with her clenched hands. Outside, the gongs and conchs brayed and thundered and the priests of Set gashed themselves with copper knives, and offered up prayers to Set to mark the High-Priest’s passing. Inside, alone in her anguish, Lunnah but prayed for revenge.

[More to Come]