Chapter Eighteen
Kall-Su lost balance for a moment as loose sand shifted under his boots. It took him longer than it should have to regain it. He went down on a hand and a hip on the slope of the dune, vision swimming and senses threatening to depart. As if they were doing him tremendous good as it were. As if the sun and the heat were not sucking up what vitality he had left to him after the chaotic battle with the Black March. He might have attempted to fly, but the air spirits were untrustworthy with his control so ragged, with the turmoil of the storms the March brought with them so close by. So he walked and drew power he didn't have to buffer himself when the desert and the fight threatened to overwhelm him.
If the djinni was behind him, he paid her no heed. He paid no heed to anything save the shields that protected his presence from the ominous ones in the distance and the desperate search for some sign of Schneider. The latter eluded him. There was nothing. No scent, no essence of power, no spark of the tremendous life-force that was Dark Schneider. Death did that. He'd experienced the cessation of all that was Schneider before. Twice before. He ought to know the feeling of it by now. He ought to be able to accept --- but he still had to see for himself.
In the distance he saw the blocky shape of the mastaba. He slid down involuntarily to sit in the sand, bereft of a sudden of any reasonable notion of what he might do next. It occurred to him that his life was not a thing he could throw carelessly away. His life was the only thing standing between Lily and a life of slavery in this miserable land. Without him, she was lost. So he could not -- even in an act of vengeance -- cast his existence aside.
He ground his palms into his eyes, cursing Schneider for abandoning him. Cursing Schneider for stupidly rushing into a thing that common sense said was too much for the both of them. He shocked himself to no ends when moisture leaked from beneath his lashes. He hadn't thought he had enough of it left in him to expel.
He'd come this close looking for a trace and found nothing. He put everything he had into a last desperate search for a familiar presence and failed. He drew a trembling breath. Forced calm upon himself, forced a wall up between needless emotion and cold rationality. To stay here was death. He could not afford it, so he turned to seek out the djinni. The sand shifted behind him and bulged upwards, a huge black form erupted upwards, spraying sand outwards as it did. Kall scrambled backwards and into the shifting disturbance of yet another large figure emerging from the desert. Great black horses with ominous helmed figures on their backs.
Earth magic, he thought, to conceal them so, to allow them to travel so. Earth magic, yet not. Just as they were wizards, yet not.
They had sensed his presence despite his shields. Or perhaps the desert itself had betrayed him to them. Regardless, he was lost. He hadn't the strength to fight them alone and the djinni had disappeared.
He found himself the center of a cluster of them. Six, perhaps eight of the silent, helmed wizard warriors. He did not know if they were capable of speech. He had heard no word uttered by any of them save Ramlah, not even to cast spells. If he spoke, would they even understand him?
Islim. They could speak. The word was an archaic form of the language he had absorbed. It took him a moment to figure it out. Submit? They wanted surrender from him, which was rather surprising since they'd killed everything else in their path so far. It was a better choice at the moment, than attempting to fight them, and without the djinni escape was an impossibility. Slowly, he inclined his head.
Before he'd even lifted his eyes to see what further requirements they had of him, something hit him in the small of the back. No spell, but a physical blow that knocked him forward and onto his knees. He growled and spun, on his back in the sand, ready to throw up a shield if it was their intention to kill him after invoking an agreement of capitulation.
Taoud Al-sih'r. Sa'tamout. There was a sword in his face, held by a large, helmed warrior. It took him a second to figure out the gruff command. Use magic. Die. They were not particularly glib, these followers of the Black March. But they very much held the upper hand in this place that sucked power from him like a sponge. He glared up at his accoster, but nodded again regardless. They hauled him up then, with grips that went beyond mere human strength and dragged him along in the midst of the great, demon eyed horses towards the mastaba.
He was frankly afraid to go in. He was afraid he might see the desiccated remains of Schneider that they'd dragged there like beasts dragging prey to their cave. But there was nothing dead there that had not been dead a thousand years or more. There was nothing there but the silent, patient bulk of the March and at the desecrated tomb of the priestess whom this mastaba had been built for, the master of the March himself. He was without his helm and blunt cut, dark hair hung past his shoulders. He held in his and a pile of ash, that he slowly let fall into the gaping mouth of the stone sarcophagus.
The March shifted a bit, when Kall-Su entered in the midst of their fellows. He felt pale and out of place among the overwhelming cadence of black. Black cloaks, black armor, black eyes beneath the helms. They were quintessentially creatures of the desert, creatures of the dry wasteland, and he so far from that, that it was laughable that he was even here at all.
Ramlah turned, and black, fathomless eyes fixed on Kall-Su. He moved forward, silent and predatory, even in the bulk of his armor. He waved a hand and the warriors holding onto Kall's arms backed away. He did not flinch from the stare. He had to tilt his head back to meet it, Ramlah was as tall as Schneider at least. Broader perhaps, but that might have been the armor. Most certainly considerably more imposing than Kall-Su himself. He did not turn his head when the man -- he supposed even if he were some sort of demon, the term applied -- circled him. He merely stared straight ahead, waiting to see what move might be made or what might be expected of himself.
From behind him, Ramlah leaned close and asked softly.
"What are you called, sahir saghir?"
Little wizard. He ground his teeth and lifted his chin and very calmly spoke his name.
"Kall-Su? A foreign name for a foreign devil, humm?" Ramlah's hand snaked around his neck, jerking his head back against the hard metal of his shoulder guard. "A foreign devil who killed men of mine. I did not know there were such sorcerers in the world, that could kill one of us."
"It is not the same world." Kall hissed.
"No. Apparently not."
He was released. He spun and took a step backwards then, thinking that this place would probably be his tomb as well.
"I had no wish to fight you." He sought after reason. It was his last resort.
"Then you should have run away."
He opened his mouth, shut it abruptly in frustration and pain. With Schneider there was no such thing as running away. No such thing as retreat if he had the will to avoid it.
"Ah, but it was your master's choice, not yours, was it not?"
He blinked at the voicing of his thoughts. He did not bother to deny the association. It was true enough, or had been at one time or another, he supposed.
"He died well." Ramlah stated. There were motions of assent from the shadowy figures of the March. Men who respected powerful adversaries then. "How well will you die?"
"I suppose," he said carefully, a sinking desperation setting in, an overwhelming fear for the life of his beloved that he would not be able to save. "That will depend on you. I seem to be at a disadvantage."
Ramlah stared at him. Ramlah laughed, teeth starkly white against the black of his beard. "So you are, sahir saghir. So you are. How do you wish to die, then?"
"I do not wish it at all. I have obligations I would very much like to fulfill."
"What obligations, that would take precedent over a glorious death?"
He would not utter Lily's name, or breath of her existence to these creatures. He spoke his first lie to them and hoped they might honor it, hoped that Schneider's death might give him some benefit after all.
"You say my --- master --- died well, then allow me the grace to tell his clan of his honorable defeat at your hands." He thought clans and honor meant a great deal to these men. They seemed actually to consider it. Ramlah tilted his head in contemplation and Kall held his breath, some scrap of hope leeching back.
"He lies." And then it was dashed. The djinni appeared in the midst of them, all curves and soft flesh among the armor and weaponry. The Black March shifted, and power pulsed in the air at the shock of her arrival.
Kall glared at her, feeling sick, baffled as to why she felt the need to appear here and reveal the mistruth. It was hardly even a lie, he would have to tell Yoko and everyone else that cared about Schneider, he merely had more important things to do before that.
Djinni. The word was whispered around the tomb. Malice swayed towards Ramlah, her lips curved in a sensuous smile.
"He seeks a woman, oh master of the Black March. He lies if he says otherwise."
"What business of yours, creature of air and magic?" Ramlah caught her wrist and dragged her towards him. She willingly went, pressing herself up against his armor.
"His master was mine as well. If you've killed him, then I've no purpose. Will you give me one?"
"You betray the confidence of your allies so easily? Fickle female. All of you are. You think I would trust one of your ilk, after spending an eternity trapped in limbo because of one?"
Power heated the already stiflingly hot interior of the mastaba. Malice squirmed, trying to pull away, her eyes gone very wide.
"No." She whispered, then with greater vehemence. "No! Let me go, evil creature."
Almost she managed to fade, but the magic of Ramlah snared her and kept her solid and the flesh about her wrist where he held her, and her torso where it touched his armor began to crack and wither. Like so much dried, crumbling earth, she began to fall apart. Her screams died as the slender column of her throat buckled and crumbled to sand. In the end there was nothing left of her but a pile of it at Ramlah's boots.
He stepped over it absently and strode towards Kall-Su, who was staring at the remains of the djinni in something akin to shock, remembering all too clearly his failed attempt at destroying her himself. A gauntleted hand caught him across the side of the face, flung him backwards against the open coffin.
"You gave me a lie?"
He struggled to gain his feet. Not to show weakness that these creatures would pounce upon.
"Yes." He said.
Ramlah caught his wrist, yanked him forward and held him there with a hand tangled in his hair. He stared down with eyes hard as stone and said softly.
"Are you afraid to die?"
"Yes."
"Because of this woman?"
"Yes."
The eyes continued to bore down at him. The hand in his hair tilted his head to the side.
"Jalaab. If you lie to me again, you shall prey you meet the djinni's fate." Ramlah said and let him go. Kall took an unsteady step backwards and caught hold of the lip of the funerary box to hold himself balanced. "You made the ice. I've never seen so much of it. Do it again."
Kall blinked at him, off his guard and confused now. Jalaab. Ramlah had called him captivating. Ramlah indicated that death might not be forthcoming. Ramlah wanted to see him perform an ice magic. The master of the Black March stood with his arms crossed, waiting. Kall took a breath, thinking that if he could prolong his life by entertaining the creature, there might be hope yet.
He hadn't the strength for anything large. Hadn't the fuel in this desolate place. So perhaps something subtle and intricate. He whispered the words of an incantation, and molded the influx of power to his own needs. He drew the water from what he could. From anything that wasn't a living body, he demanded the gathering of moisture. The stone had none to give and the sand was devoid of it, but the air -- the storm the March had brought with them, and the weather patterns that Schneider had altered in his battle with them possessed the trace of moisture. He drew it down and channeled it into his crafting.
He knew what these people found sacred. He had read enough scripting on the walls to understand the omens they lived by. They formed on the floor. Dozens of small, oblong shapes. Scarabs that began to writhe and scuttle along the floor, peddling as fast as their small legs could take them outwards from Kall-Su. There was an appreciative gasp from the dark figures of the march as the ice beetles crawled up onto boots. They pooled at Ramlah's feet, scurried up his body. He picked one up off his shoulder and held it in the palm of his gauntleted hand at eye level. The ice scarab made crackling, clicking sounds even as the heat slowly melted it into a pool in his hand. The others were meeting a similar fate, absorbed into the sand and the dust which lay in thick layers over the stone floor.
Ramlah looked at him, water slowly dripping from his hand. The corners of his mouth beneath the beard and mustache twitched.
"Pretty. You make pretty things. But not like the daggers of ice that came out of the sands before."
"This place lends me no fuel for such magics." Kall said carefully. "There is no water running beneath the surface of the desert that I might use to create such a thing."
"And such water is plentiful in the lands you call home?"
"Yes." He said it without hesitation and regretted it a moment later, when Ramlah tilted his head curiously in contemplation.
"The mother Nile lent bounty to the lands surrounding her. Is she still vibrant, in this distant era?"
"I know not."
"Perhaps we shall see, hummm? Perhaps we shall see if our old enemies still pollute the lands."
"Who were your enemies?"
Ramlah smiled then, a full showing of white teeth. The members of his company hissed among themselves. He didn't know if it was at the mention of their ancient foes or his impertinence at asking.
"The Assyrians who spilled like plague into the middle lands, who we drove back like curs in the end -- I might have taken all of Assyria and Babylonia save for the witch who betrayed me."
"You -- you were a king?"
"I was a king. Then I died and slept for many years in the palace of the gods until she and her ilk called me back to fight their wars. I brought the Black Company with me and now -- as then, we are immortal."
Things he had read on the walls of the palace turned brothel began to make sense. A desperate land besieged by a greater power -- forever fighting off a relentless enemy. The spirit of a warrior king had been called back from the dead to animate a body created by magic and witchcraft. His company had been created the same way, of heroes and warriors that had died with this ancient Pharaoh. And they had driven off the Assyrians in a final great battle and being creatures summoned for no other reason than war, they had turned their sights upon other things. Those that had summoned them quite suddenly had no use for them. Quite suddenly feared their creation and sought to banish them back to whence they came. Only it was not so easy and trickery and betrayal had come into play. Three thousand years ago they had been merely powerful, merely warrior wizards capable of spearheading an army that drove an aggressive enemy from the lands of Egypt. They were something quite more than that now. They had done more than sleep in hibernation during their imprisonment. They had grown.
"What will you do now?" They had done nothing so far but destroy and seek vengeance on the sorceress who had betrayed Ramlah.
"That remains to be seen. A new world brings new possibilities, does it not, sahir saghir?" Ramlah smiled again and moved forward. He was quick and silent even in all the armor.
Kall-Su did not back away. He wanted to. He didn't like the smile or the predatory look in Ramlah's eyes. But to retreat would most certainly be a mistake.
"My army is dust and bones. Every king needs an army, no?"
Ramlah's breath was stale, a thing out of the grave. The eyes were so black they were almost like looking into the eyes of a serpent. Dead eyes. Merciless despite the smile. Power brewed behind them, waiting for the chance to strike out. It emanated from him like an exotic scent. And he wasn't even trying to summon it. Sometimes Schneider exuded the same thing, that essence of power that went beyond the reasonable bounds of magic. But he didn't do it if he was just standing about. He wouldn't do it at all anymore. A little of the pain seeped past Kall's barriers. A little crippling flash of grief that made a lump form in his throat and made him for just an instant turn his eyes away in fear that Ramlah would see the hurt. He forced it back. No time for grief, no room for it here in this position he found himself in.
Ramlah's fingers gripped his chin so fast he didn't even see the move. He started in reflex and the grip tightened, gauntleted fingers pressing into the flesh behind his jaw It hurt.
"Will you pledge to me, sahir saghir?"
Pledge? He would have laughed in surprise, if he'd had the breath to do it, if he hadn't thought it would have gotten him killed.
"Why?" He had to ask. It was too baffling not to.
"You've taken from me members of my company. As I said, a king needs his army. You've a power that is foreign to me. Intriguing. I would add it to my own."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you will die." The smile came back, and Ramlah bent his head close, wrinkling his nose as if taking in the scent of Kall's skin. "But perhaps I shall take my time about it, hummm?"
Not an encouraging prospect. "You would believe me, if I offered such a pledge?"
"When loyalty is given to me, little wizard, there is no breaking of covenant."
"I -- I have fealties that I will not betray." He was grasping. Death loomed all about him and the choices were becoming more and more limited. "If I swear service to you, I will not betray them."
"Your master is dead. Bow to the hand that killed him or meet his fate."
There was a time he might not have done it. Lily or no Lily. There had been a time that pride and ego wouldn't have allowed it. That had been before the Prophet and the hard learned knowledge that pride was nothing but an illusion and ego was a thing that could be stripped away at the right prompting. Not to bend was to break. He'd learned that from Lily. If he'd taken her advice when it had first been given, perhaps Angelo might not have damaged him the extent he had. Perhaps he might have had the power to get himself out of this instead of being forced into bending knee to a creature that had been dead three thousand years ago and for all he knew, still was dead.
"All right." He said, fighting to keep his face and voice calm. "I will pledge service to you."
There was a rustling of armor and cloaks as the March shifted. There was danger in the air and anticipation. He kept his eyes on Ramlah. Ramlah released him, black eyes studying him.
"You will serve me before all others."
"No." Ramlah demanded honesty, Kall-Su would honor him with it. "I've told you I have existing fealties ---"
"No, you do not." Power slammed into him, it made his knees buckle and his vision go gray about the edges. Ramlah's hand -- free of the heavy gauntlet swept towards him. Kall-Su reared back, and came up against the sarcophagus and the naked palm slammed into his forehead, smashing his head back against the stone. The impact was not what took the rest of his vision away, it was the power that invaded his soul. It was like a plague. Like a swarm of black locusts that ate away at integral parts of him and tried to forge new ties to the immense power that spawned it. In that instant he knew that even at full strength -- even on his best day -- he could not have taken Ramlah. He didn't think Schneider could have. What lurked behind those black eyes had ceased being mortal or living so long ago he could not fathom it. A personality had been brought back to serve a purpose, but only the shell of the personality not the soul of the ancient king that had died, but something from the depths of a hell long forgotten that had come in his place and taken on the remnants of his personality and his desires. Something that could infect a man's mind and his soul in order to make his body a tool of the master of the Black March.
The world dimmed. Kall felt himself detached, distantly aware of the heat and the pain and the dark figures that were only houses for entities that had no business on this plain of existence. Ramlah drew him up and there was no fighting it, nothing but compliance. Ramlah put his teeth to his own palm and ripped the skin. Blood flowed, thick and dark.
"Share my blood, and become one with my essence." It was not a request. It was a command. The palm covered his mouth and the blood seeped between his lips. It carried with it the essence of what inhabited Ramlah's shell. It carried a disease which sought to reinforce the infection the power that had already invaded him.
Ramlah spoke ritual words. He didn't know if a reply was expected of him. He couldn't at the moment utter the will to speak. He hit the floor and propped himself up on hands and knees, head hanging, the taste of the blood still in his mouth. A normal mortal man would have been lost. Would have been overcome and overwhelmed. Would have most certainly have become a creature of Ramlah's body and soul. Kall-Su was neither mortal nor completely human. The part of him that shared blood with his demon father fought the infection off, refusing to be tainted. He took a breath and another, shuddering. But he was his own master still. There were no unbreakable ties. He wondered if Ramlah could tell. God help him if he could.