Diclaimer: Draco and Ginny and Bill (oh my!) belong to JK Rowling. No ofense intended, no money being made.
The Curse-breaker's Sister
Chapter 14
Yarik groveled before his master, knowing that no matter how hard he pressed himself into the floor, it wouldn't be low enough to appease his master's anger. Estrada was already dead and Yarik longed to follow him into death. Anything was better then the torture he was enduring at the hands of Emsaf.
Ea Nasir was a fair master, a good master – if you obeyed his orders. Fail him and you found yourself praying to any god or goddess that listened.
"They were easy prey!" Nasir shouted, his voice reverberating throughout the dungeon.
"Master, I'm-"
"Silence you FOOL! I am tired of listening to your petty excuses, your feeble reasons for coming back empty handed. I expected such nonsense from Estrada, but not from you, Yarik. I had plans for you, Yarik. You could have gone far."
Had plans. Could have gone far. Nasir's choice in verb tense caused Yarik's prayers to increase in passion, and volume.
"I said SILENCE!"
Yarik was unable to help himself, he babbled on, beseeching any deity that could hear his plea's to save him.
"Emsaf, his tongue."
Those three simple words caused Emsaf's face to light up with glee. He removed a sickle shaped blade from his belt and knelt down beside Yarik's head, one of his fat knees firmly placed between the slave's shoulders. With one hand, he grabbed a fist full of Yarik's hair and yanked his head back; the other hand was caressing the highly polished blade. A crook of Ea Nasir's finger and Yarik found his tongue extending out of his mouth. He tried to control it, but could not. Nasir used strong magic and Yarik was powerless to move against it.
Yarik was sobbing now, his prayers unintelligible. Saliva dripped down his chin and mingled with the tears now flowing from his eyes.
Emsaf ran the blade lightly across the top of Yarik's tongue. Yarik felt the sting of steel and tasted blood, could feel it's sticky warmth dripping down his chin. He watched fearfully as Emsaf licked the blade before taking it to his tongue again. Yarik squirmed under Emsaf's knee but his efforts were useless.
The blade was brought to his tongue again. Yarik tried to ready himself for the pain...but it never came.
Draco was off 'somewhere' taking care of 'things'; things which he refused to elaborate on. He had left Ginny alone at his house for the afternoon with nothing to entertain her but books. She'd already flipped through several atlas's and an illustrated dictionary of Mesopotamian gods and goddesses. At the moment, she was reading a treatise on the Island of Atlantis. The colourful pictures combined with her active imagination meant she could visualize it happening in her mind.
According to legend, Poseidon, God of the Sea, created Atlantis to be
the most powerful and technologically advanced empire in the world.
Legend goes on to tell how Atlantis thrived for three thousand years
before an earthquake sent it into the sea.
Only part of that legend is true.
Gods are known by many names, and the god known as Poseidon, was once
Ea, the Sumerian Water God. It was Ea that created Atlantis as a
marvel of technology and architecture. And it was Ea that caused its
destruction.
What had started as a beautiful, powerful city and quickly turned into
a cesspool of evil and destruction. Fallen gods, known as demons,
took over the empire, preying on innocent citizens, killing thousands.
Disgusted by the state of his city, Ea rescued what people he could
and banished the Island of Atlantis to the ocean.
With it sunk the demons and demonesses that had haunted it for three
thousand years. Ea used powerful magic to prevent the demons from
escaping. He created a barrier around the city and all it contained.
Atlantis was sent to the bottom of the sea and there it has sat for
the past 3000 years...
Ginny marked her page and placed the book she was reading on the coffee table. Though she normally enjoyed reading, she was feeling restless. Rather then sit around all day she opted to go for another walk along the beach. Perhaps Draco would be back when she returned...
Until one day there came a person who raised Atlantis. Though the
island was sent, once again, to it's watery grave, the barrier
surrounding it remained weak and it could no longer contain the evil
it had enclosed for millennia....
Lamaštu had already sent her minions through those barriers once before, and tonight she went through them herself. Yes, she could have sent her slaves to do the job, but slaves made mistakes. She would capture Ea Nasir herself.
The journey was arduous and uncomfortable. It took hours to break through the barrier and travel to the surface. Her powerful magic allowed her to transfigure a chair into a wooden boat, which her slaves hitched to the goat-fish. They pulled her up to the surface, and once on land, her boat changed into a chariot and the goat-fish into donkeys that pulled her across the sky towards Ur.
Yarik prepared for the worst, but was saved when the back wall of the dungeon exploded, bricks, and chunks of stone flying everywhere. A sickly, green light permeated the room. An unseen force connected with Ea Nasir and he flew back off his chair, slamming into a stone podium. Emsaf was torn between fulfilling his orders and seeing if his master was all right. He looked regretfully at his blade, and then at Yarik's tongue before crawling towards Ea Nasir.
Yarik was thankful. The magic that had bound him was gone. He tried to stand up, but his legs were like wet noodles and refused to support his weight. Instead, he dragged himself along the floor using his arms, thanking the gods and goddesses with his bloody tongue all the while.
Yarik did not make it to the door, nor did Emsaf make it to his master. Both had crawled only a few feet away when they found themselves paralyzed and floating in the air. Yarik could feel invisible ropes wrap tightly around his wrists and ankles. His neck was immobile, but he could just see Emsaf out of the side of his eyes and he too, was hung in the air as if bound by invisible ropes.
At first, she was a shadow walking in the darkness, a black wraith making her way through the dungeon. But then Yarik could see her. Incandescent skin, glowing palely in the sick, green light of the room. She was barely dressed, this woman, and she looked like a...
"Goddess!" Yarik called out. "Goddess, you have come to save me!"
Then the goddess looked at him and Yarik knew true fear. The fear that now coursed through him caused his muscles to shake, and his eyes to roll back into his head was nothing on the fear he felt earlier. His torture at the hands of Emsaf paled in comparison to the oily waves of evil that were washing over him now.
Yarik's prayers for death were finally answered. With a wave of her hand, Lamaštu ended his life and cast his body down onto the floor. Her minions watched him, their red eyes flashing hungrily and looked to their mistress for permission before pouncing on the body.
Lamaštu allowed her slaves to deal with the bodies of Emsaf and Yarik, she had no time for them. She wanted to deal with Ea Nasir.
Nasir was quivering in the corner, a pile of leathery yellow skin and broken bones. He tried to reach for his magic, the ancient source of power that he had relied on for thousands of years but it was blocked from him. The pain was torturous, he could sense his magic, just beyond his reach, but he could not connect with it. A slick taint surrounded it and prevented him from harnessing that power.
"Foolish human," he heard a husky, female voice say. He watched as a tall woman walked towards him through the green, vaporous light.
"How dare you steal the staff of Lamaštu," she told him. "How dare you think you can steal my staff and get away with it!"
"You...a-are...Lamaštu?" Nasir could barely manage a whisper.
An explosion of white light filled the room. Nasir tried to close his eyes to the blinding rays, but couldn't. Before him stood the demoness Lamaštu in her true form. A lions head roared at him, its wide-open mouth bearing the teeth of a donkey. She wore no clothing. Her hairy body was stained with blood; a piglet and a puppy were suckling at her naked breasts. Snakes coiled and writhed around her neck, a living necklace. What had once been a pair of shapely feet were now the talons of eagles, twisted and yellow.
Another flash of light and this time Nasir was left blinking in its brightness. The ugly demoness was gone and the beautiful woman was before him once more.
"I believe that answers your question, mortal. Now, you will tell me where the Anbar of Atlantis is."
Ea Nasir did not answer. He had fainted.
Draco returned home late that evening. Ginny was walking up from the beach when he Apparated on the front porch.
"More sea shells?" Draco called out by way of greeting.
"Just a few really pretty ones. I have some ideas for a beach inspired line of jewelry."
They were side by side, now, Draco having walked down the path a ways to meet her. He slung a friendly arm around her shoulder and they walked the rest of the way to the house in silence.
After dinner, they retired to the living room with hot chocolate. Draco wanted to plan their next move, but Ginny was more concerned with why they were attacked.
"I don't know," Draco said thoughtfully. His heart was beating out of control and he hoped Ginny couldn't see it pounding beneath his shirt. He knew full well why they were attacked, and who it was that sent the attackers. If Ginny found out he knew...she'd never forgive him and the thought of that made him sick.
"I have a theory," Ginny said slowly. "I think we were attacked because of the tablet."
Draco knew she was right, but for the sake of his charade, he asked, "Why makes you think that?"
"Call it women's intuition, call it a hunch but I think we aren't the only people looking for Bill. The Ministry is obviously doing something, or Ron wouldn't have talked to me last week. I just don't think the Ministry would trash our hotel room like that."
"Or chase us through down town Ur," Draco added sardonically. "What about Gringotts? You did harass them quite a bit."
"Goblins would never hire men to work for them. Never. They do all their work themselves. No, it wasn't Gringotts. I think, well, this might sound silly but...I think it was Bill's boss."
"Ea- exactly what I was thinking." Draco hoped Ginny didn't notice his almost slip-up. He was not supposed to know the name of Bill's boss.
"I mean, once I figured out who he was, I sent him a lot of Howlers. And though I don't want to believe this, maybe the table is his and Bill stole it?"
"We won't know until we find Bill," Draco said. "Which brings us back to what are we going to do next."
"Mesopotamia is out of the question," Ginny said with a laugh. "I don't want to go back their anytime soon."
"I was thinking we could to Thamugadi."
"Thama-what?"
"Thamugadi, the ancient library in Carthage. It's an amazing place, Ginny! You think the Athenaeum has a loot of books, wait to you see Thamugadi! It has the most complete collection of scrolls, parchments, and books on ancient civilizations in the Wizarding world. The observatory there is just amazing, you can look at what the night sky looked at thousands of years ago, if you want to. And there's this-"
"Slow down, Draco!" Ginny said, laughing. "You sound like a living advertisement for this place. I've never heard of it, but you've obviously been there before."
Draco nodded. "I've been there plenty of times, researching things for Malfoy International. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. If any place will have information on the Eyes of Ningal, this place will."
Authors Notes: I'd like to thank the academy, er, I mean. YOU!
Totally unbeta'd because. Well. People asked for it. Which makes me blush! Please don't' read that last line and think, "OMG, she is one of those authors who refuses to update until each chapter as been RnR'd 44 times, WTF!!!!111!." Because I am not! I've just been beta-ing for others a lot (oh the stories I can recommend!) and as it's the summer time, my beta s are out enjoying themselves rather then staying inside and making my stories beautiful!)
Anyroad, two major problems w/this chapter. If you can pick them out, I'll give you a prize! (Gmail invite, anybody?)
The Curse-breaker's Sister
Chapter 14
Yarik groveled before his master, knowing that no matter how hard he pressed himself into the floor, it wouldn't be low enough to appease his master's anger. Estrada was already dead and Yarik longed to follow him into death. Anything was better then the torture he was enduring at the hands of Emsaf.
Ea Nasir was a fair master, a good master – if you obeyed his orders. Fail him and you found yourself praying to any god or goddess that listened.
"They were easy prey!" Nasir shouted, his voice reverberating throughout the dungeon.
"Master, I'm-"
"Silence you FOOL! I am tired of listening to your petty excuses, your feeble reasons for coming back empty handed. I expected such nonsense from Estrada, but not from you, Yarik. I had plans for you, Yarik. You could have gone far."
Had plans. Could have gone far. Nasir's choice in verb tense caused Yarik's prayers to increase in passion, and volume.
"I said SILENCE!"
Yarik was unable to help himself, he babbled on, beseeching any deity that could hear his plea's to save him.
"Emsaf, his tongue."
Those three simple words caused Emsaf's face to light up with glee. He removed a sickle shaped blade from his belt and knelt down beside Yarik's head, one of his fat knees firmly placed between the slave's shoulders. With one hand, he grabbed a fist full of Yarik's hair and yanked his head back; the other hand was caressing the highly polished blade. A crook of Ea Nasir's finger and Yarik found his tongue extending out of his mouth. He tried to control it, but could not. Nasir used strong magic and Yarik was powerless to move against it.
Yarik was sobbing now, his prayers unintelligible. Saliva dripped down his chin and mingled with the tears now flowing from his eyes.
Emsaf ran the blade lightly across the top of Yarik's tongue. Yarik felt the sting of steel and tasted blood, could feel it's sticky warmth dripping down his chin. He watched fearfully as Emsaf licked the blade before taking it to his tongue again. Yarik squirmed under Emsaf's knee but his efforts were useless.
The blade was brought to his tongue again. Yarik tried to ready himself for the pain...but it never came.
Draco was off 'somewhere' taking care of 'things'; things which he refused to elaborate on. He had left Ginny alone at his house for the afternoon with nothing to entertain her but books. She'd already flipped through several atlas's and an illustrated dictionary of Mesopotamian gods and goddesses. At the moment, she was reading a treatise on the Island of Atlantis. The colourful pictures combined with her active imagination meant she could visualize it happening in her mind.
According to legend, Poseidon, God of the Sea, created Atlantis to be
the most powerful and technologically advanced empire in the world.
Legend goes on to tell how Atlantis thrived for three thousand years
before an earthquake sent it into the sea.
Only part of that legend is true.
Gods are known by many names, and the god known as Poseidon, was once
Ea, the Sumerian Water God. It was Ea that created Atlantis as a
marvel of technology and architecture. And it was Ea that caused its
destruction.
What had started as a beautiful, powerful city and quickly turned into
a cesspool of evil and destruction. Fallen gods, known as demons,
took over the empire, preying on innocent citizens, killing thousands.
Disgusted by the state of his city, Ea rescued what people he could
and banished the Island of Atlantis to the ocean.
With it sunk the demons and demonesses that had haunted it for three
thousand years. Ea used powerful magic to prevent the demons from
escaping. He created a barrier around the city and all it contained.
Atlantis was sent to the bottom of the sea and there it has sat for
the past 3000 years...
Ginny marked her page and placed the book she was reading on the coffee table. Though she normally enjoyed reading, she was feeling restless. Rather then sit around all day she opted to go for another walk along the beach. Perhaps Draco would be back when she returned...
Until one day there came a person who raised Atlantis. Though the
island was sent, once again, to it's watery grave, the barrier
surrounding it remained weak and it could no longer contain the evil
it had enclosed for millennia....
Lamaštu had already sent her minions through those barriers once before, and tonight she went through them herself. Yes, she could have sent her slaves to do the job, but slaves made mistakes. She would capture Ea Nasir herself.
The journey was arduous and uncomfortable. It took hours to break through the barrier and travel to the surface. Her powerful magic allowed her to transfigure a chair into a wooden boat, which her slaves hitched to the goat-fish. They pulled her up to the surface, and once on land, her boat changed into a chariot and the goat-fish into donkeys that pulled her across the sky towards Ur.
Yarik prepared for the worst, but was saved when the back wall of the dungeon exploded, bricks, and chunks of stone flying everywhere. A sickly, green light permeated the room. An unseen force connected with Ea Nasir and he flew back off his chair, slamming into a stone podium. Emsaf was torn between fulfilling his orders and seeing if his master was all right. He looked regretfully at his blade, and then at Yarik's tongue before crawling towards Ea Nasir.
Yarik was thankful. The magic that had bound him was gone. He tried to stand up, but his legs were like wet noodles and refused to support his weight. Instead, he dragged himself along the floor using his arms, thanking the gods and goddesses with his bloody tongue all the while.
Yarik did not make it to the door, nor did Emsaf make it to his master. Both had crawled only a few feet away when they found themselves paralyzed and floating in the air. Yarik could feel invisible ropes wrap tightly around his wrists and ankles. His neck was immobile, but he could just see Emsaf out of the side of his eyes and he too, was hung in the air as if bound by invisible ropes.
At first, she was a shadow walking in the darkness, a black wraith making her way through the dungeon. But then Yarik could see her. Incandescent skin, glowing palely in the sick, green light of the room. She was barely dressed, this woman, and she looked like a...
"Goddess!" Yarik called out. "Goddess, you have come to save me!"
Then the goddess looked at him and Yarik knew true fear. The fear that now coursed through him caused his muscles to shake, and his eyes to roll back into his head was nothing on the fear he felt earlier. His torture at the hands of Emsaf paled in comparison to the oily waves of evil that were washing over him now.
Yarik's prayers for death were finally answered. With a wave of her hand, Lamaštu ended his life and cast his body down onto the floor. Her minions watched him, their red eyes flashing hungrily and looked to their mistress for permission before pouncing on the body.
Lamaštu allowed her slaves to deal with the bodies of Emsaf and Yarik, she had no time for them. She wanted to deal with Ea Nasir.
Nasir was quivering in the corner, a pile of leathery yellow skin and broken bones. He tried to reach for his magic, the ancient source of power that he had relied on for thousands of years but it was blocked from him. The pain was torturous, he could sense his magic, just beyond his reach, but he could not connect with it. A slick taint surrounded it and prevented him from harnessing that power.
"Foolish human," he heard a husky, female voice say. He watched as a tall woman walked towards him through the green, vaporous light.
"How dare you steal the staff of Lamaštu," she told him. "How dare you think you can steal my staff and get away with it!"
"You...a-are...Lamaštu?" Nasir could barely manage a whisper.
An explosion of white light filled the room. Nasir tried to close his eyes to the blinding rays, but couldn't. Before him stood the demoness Lamaštu in her true form. A lions head roared at him, its wide-open mouth bearing the teeth of a donkey. She wore no clothing. Her hairy body was stained with blood; a piglet and a puppy were suckling at her naked breasts. Snakes coiled and writhed around her neck, a living necklace. What had once been a pair of shapely feet were now the talons of eagles, twisted and yellow.
Another flash of light and this time Nasir was left blinking in its brightness. The ugly demoness was gone and the beautiful woman was before him once more.
"I believe that answers your question, mortal. Now, you will tell me where the Anbar of Atlantis is."
Ea Nasir did not answer. He had fainted.
Draco returned home late that evening. Ginny was walking up from the beach when he Apparated on the front porch.
"More sea shells?" Draco called out by way of greeting.
"Just a few really pretty ones. I have some ideas for a beach inspired line of jewelry."
They were side by side, now, Draco having walked down the path a ways to meet her. He slung a friendly arm around her shoulder and they walked the rest of the way to the house in silence.
After dinner, they retired to the living room with hot chocolate. Draco wanted to plan their next move, but Ginny was more concerned with why they were attacked.
"I don't know," Draco said thoughtfully. His heart was beating out of control and he hoped Ginny couldn't see it pounding beneath his shirt. He knew full well why they were attacked, and who it was that sent the attackers. If Ginny found out he knew...she'd never forgive him and the thought of that made him sick.
"I have a theory," Ginny said slowly. "I think we were attacked because of the tablet."
Draco knew she was right, but for the sake of his charade, he asked, "Why makes you think that?"
"Call it women's intuition, call it a hunch but I think we aren't the only people looking for Bill. The Ministry is obviously doing something, or Ron wouldn't have talked to me last week. I just don't think the Ministry would trash our hotel room like that."
"Or chase us through down town Ur," Draco added sardonically. "What about Gringotts? You did harass them quite a bit."
"Goblins would never hire men to work for them. Never. They do all their work themselves. No, it wasn't Gringotts. I think, well, this might sound silly but...I think it was Bill's boss."
"Ea- exactly what I was thinking." Draco hoped Ginny didn't notice his almost slip-up. He was not supposed to know the name of Bill's boss.
"I mean, once I figured out who he was, I sent him a lot of Howlers. And though I don't want to believe this, maybe the table is his and Bill stole it?"
"We won't know until we find Bill," Draco said. "Which brings us back to what are we going to do next."
"Mesopotamia is out of the question," Ginny said with a laugh. "I don't want to go back their anytime soon."
"I was thinking we could to Thamugadi."
"Thama-what?"
"Thamugadi, the ancient library in Carthage. It's an amazing place, Ginny! You think the Athenaeum has a loot of books, wait to you see Thamugadi! It has the most complete collection of scrolls, parchments, and books on ancient civilizations in the Wizarding world. The observatory there is just amazing, you can look at what the night sky looked at thousands of years ago, if you want to. And there's this-"
"Slow down, Draco!" Ginny said, laughing. "You sound like a living advertisement for this place. I've never heard of it, but you've obviously been there before."
Draco nodded. "I've been there plenty of times, researching things for Malfoy International. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. If any place will have information on the Eyes of Ningal, this place will."
Authors Notes: I'd like to thank the academy, er, I mean. YOU!
Totally unbeta'd because. Well. People asked for it. Which makes me blush! Please don't' read that last line and think, "OMG, she is one of those authors who refuses to update until each chapter as been RnR'd 44 times, WTF!!!!111!." Because I am not! I've just been beta-ing for others a lot (oh the stories I can recommend!) and as it's the summer time, my beta s are out enjoying themselves rather then staying inside and making my stories beautiful!)
Anyroad, two major problems w/this chapter. If you can pick them out, I'll give you a prize! (Gmail invite, anybody?)