Chapter 11: Darker Than Blood
Fourteen days before his tombkeeper's initiation, Marik told Odion he'd rather die than go through with the ceremony.
Marik didn't have a plan for how to avoid the initiation because he'd never been taught or permitted to make a plan of his own about anything, but the truth was there just the same: He would rather die. If he'd told Ishizu the truth, she would have berated him in a two-hour lecture and then forced him to say fourteen prayers for forgiveness. If he'd told his father the truth, the reaction would have been even worse.
So he told Odion. Because there was no one else he could tell, no one else he could trust. And after Marik's desperate sobs faded into unsteady, quiet breaths, Odion told him a truth in return:
"I want the initiation."
He said it was all he'd ever wanted, to be the true eldest son of the Ishtar family, to be the true heir. He said it like a confession of treason, like Marik was king and he was a servant leading a rebellion, but Marik took it like a gift from the gods. He was foolish enough to believe that it could all work out. Even as Odion left to speak with their father, Marik was foolish enough to believe the perfect solution had been found, that it would all be okay. He sat on his bed crying again, with relief this time, imagining how Father would gather the entire clan and announce Odion as the new heir. There would be some shots taken at Marik, some comments about his cowardice, his weakness, but he would take the cuts without bleeding, and after it was all settled, perhaps he could even go above ground to see the sun.
The screaming broke through his fantasies.
It was good he didn't waste a moment to think. If he would have given room for thought, he might have run the other direction. He might have gone nowhere at all, curled up and covered his ears and cried to himself about bad-to-worse. But he didn't think; he ran. It was a visceral response because he'd never heard Odion scream about anything before, but he knew the sound of his brother all the same.
Marik saw his father first, red-faced and sagging from exertion, a barbed whip in hand. He saw Odion second, collapsed on the ground.
And though Marik was used to seeing Odion's back bloodied from a whipping, it was the first time he'd ever seen white in the red. At first, he didn't even register it as bone.
"Marik," Odion croaked, "I—"
And Father bellowed, "You will address your betters with the title 'master!'"
The whip came down, peeled back skin that had already been torn raw while Odion screamed again.
"Stop," Marik whispered, but Father didn't hear.
Another lash. Odion's eyes rolled; he collapsed.
"STOP IT!" Marik screamed, latching onto his father's arm.
With a grunt, his father threw him to the ground, pointing at him with the hand holding the whip. Odion's blood dripped from the barbs, stained the inside of Marik's ankle.
"You must learn, Marik," Father said, "how to punish blasphemy."
The lashes continued until Father was satisfied, and at the end of it all, he told the servants to take Odion to his room.
"Check him in the morning. If he's dead, handle the corpse. Something unmarked—the clan burial grounds have no place for a heretic." Then he turned cold eyes on Marik. "Stop your shameful tears this instant."
Marik couldn't help Odion; he didn't know how. So for the first time in years, he turned to Ishizu. She sat at the edge of Odion's bed, wiped the blood from his skin, sewed the lashes to hide the bone. And she didn't say anything, but her eyes were wet, and it was enough to give Marik hope.
"I'm leaving," he said, "and I'm taking Odion."
They argued. She made excuses. But he didn't bend because he realized the truth wasn't that he'd rather die than receive the initiation. The truth was he would die if he received it.
And he didn't want to die.
In the end, she agreed. It was the first time Marik had ever convinced Ishizu to see his side of things, and it was the first time in years that he hugged his sister. Ishizu knew men in the Khouri clan who could help, who could transport Odion. Marik would have to distract Father while it happened; then Ishizu would distract Father while Marik followed.
"I'm sorry it has to be this way," Ishizu said.
"When it's safe, I'll write," Marik said. He would never come back, so it was all he could think to offer.
The next day, Marik held up his end of the plan, and when Ishizu came to tell him Odion was safely aboveground, he was once again foolish enough to imagine everything would work out.
Until he was surrounded by guards. Until he was dragged to his father. Until his father thanked Ishizu for warning him of Marik's escape plan.
"I will purge your weakness," Father said.
The guards chained Marik to the wall of the ceremonial chamber with a clear view of the altar he'd be sacrificed on. Every day, Father offered prayers at the altar on his behalf, asking the gods to purify Marik's heart, which had been corrupted by the heretic, Odion. For the first three days, his father withheld food and water. Marik was given a limited meal on the fourth, but before he could be grateful for an end to the forced fast, it began again.
Marik screamed out his hatred for his father, the first time he'd ever done so, but the words seemed to glance right off Ahmed's stone exterior; his only reaction was to increase his prayers.
Ishizu visited once with more of her excuses. If Marik had possessed the saliva, he would have spit in her face. As it was, he closed his eyes, refusing to look at her or speak to her until, finally, she left.
The days passed, draining Marik's strength and sanity until the world around him turned foggier than a dream. Sometimes he imagined Odion was actually safe, that he would come to Marik's rescue just in time. But in his heart, he knew the truth: His brother was dead. Buried in some unmarked grave by his father's hand. And Marik would soon follow.
At last, the fateful morning arrived. It was his birthday. He was twelve years old.
His father prepared the room for the initiation. He scrubbed the altar with myrrh and cinnamon wine, brought in bundles of white linen, and arranged the ceremonial knives.
He lit seventy white candles.
The guards unchained Marik. Stripped him naked and scrubbed him with the same perfumes of myrrh. His weak attempts to fight were laughable, although no one laughed. He was dressed in white pants, his chest left bare.
His father tied him to the altar. The stone slab was like ice against Marik's stomach.
The prayers were given, the first knife heated.
Then the first cut.
Marik's screams echoed in the chamber, and when his father's knife seared through his skin, something emerged darker than blood.
His father called for him to be gagged, which a guard did as the carving continued. The cloth muffled the sound, but Marik screamed all the same. His tears soaked the gag. He could smell the sour ink as his father rubbed it into his fresh, still-burning cuts.
The seconds stretched like years.
Until finally—
Father washed the last knife, set it beside the others. He rinsed Marik's blood from his hands.
"Now you are reborn," he said in his voice of gravel. "Marik Ishtar the child is dead."
Marik felt the truth of that statement in his heart. But the new Marik born that day was not, as his father claimed, "Marik the tombkeeper."
It was nothing so docile.
Marik passed in and out of consciousness. The guards untied him from the altar, bandaged his back, and then were dismissed. Marik and his father remained alone for the final step of the ceremony. His father gave him water, forced him to sit upright and awake.
"You are now ready, son, to enter the glorious tradition of our forefathers, to guard with loyalty the secrets of the nameless pharaoh until your death or his return."
Father extended the Millennium Rod, the tombkeeper's artifact that was as much his birthright as the wounds on his back, and Marik took it. As his fingers curled around the shaft, he felt the power of the rod stir his very soul.
And all at once, he was not in the tombs. He stood in a world of black, alone but for a life-sized reflection of himself in the darkness.
His reflection grinned, and the wide expression sent ripples of black across the rest of the image.
"Power?" it purred, an ethereal voice that came as much from the air itself as from the reflection. A question. An offer.
Marik looked at the rod, at the Eye of Horus that promised protection.
"Yes," he said.
The reflection showed him from the back, shirtless, unbandaged, and bleeding. The fresh ink in his skin rippled shadows.
"Revenge?"
Marik gripped the rod with both hands.
"Yes," he said.
With that, he was sitting once more in the cold underground room, drenched in perfumed blood and fear.
And the Eye of Horus glowed to life.
Marik felt its energy in his heart, felt it pumped out and back, out and back, until it filled his every shadow with calm, with certainty. He couldn't breathe without pain, but he couldn't breathe without power, and the power would avenge the pain.
"Good, Marik." Father smiled. "Control the darkness. Command it."
So Marik did.
He stood, bracing his free hand on the altar as his vision cracked. The world flashed in spots of light from the candles and spots of dark from the pain. Still, for the first time in his life, Marik was seeing clearly. The realization made him smile.
He raised the rod, and his father slammed backward against the wall, pinned as firmly as Marik had been during the initiation.
"Marik," the man grunted, struggling. "What are you doing?"
"I think it's best"—Marik giggled—"that you address your betters with the title 'master.'"
He stepped and stumbled. Laughed again, hissed at the pain when his skin tightened. He gripped the rod with both hands, and in one powerful movement, he unsheathed the dagger lying in wait beneath the rod's shaft. He dropped the outer shaft to the stone floor, and it sang on impact.
There was no one else in the room. No one to stop him. His father tried to call for guards, but Marik gripped his mind like he gripped the rod, sealed his mouth and enjoyed the fear that painted his eyes white.
"You are now ready, Father," he said softly. "You have kept the glorious tradition of our forefathers, to guard with loyalty the secrets of the nameless pharaoh . . . until your death."
Marik hoped desperately to see shameful tears. That ethereal voice hummed in his ears with the gold of fulfilled promises. Power. Revenge. And when Marik breathed out, he sent black ripples through the air. When he smiled, one side of his face split wide.
He drove the dagger through his father's rib cage until his fist hit skin. The shadows howled in delight. Though only in his mind, his father's scream was exquisite.
"Now you are reborn," Marik snarled. He stabbed again. And again. His vision was gold and black; he was crying from the pain. But he was laughing, too. Or maybe only in his mind. He tried to let go of the rod and found that he couldn't; it had consumed him.
At some point, he fell unconscious. When he woke, he rolled onto his back out of habit, and the pain was enough to make him pass out again. His mind made staggered attempts to grasp reality like a drunk attempting to climb a hill and always tipping back. Once, he saw the rod's empty gaze. Once, he saw his father's. Mostly, he saw candles, bright and hot and hot and bright and hot.
"Marik." The shadows were speaking again. Something tried to take the rod, twisted his wrist when he didn't release. Marik gasped, laughed. The rod clanged against the stone, and his body chilled with the onset of fever.
"Master Marik, please," the voice choked out. It wasn't a shadow. A familiar, calloused hand gripped his; another touched his face.
It was Odion.
Marik grabbed at his brother, latched onto his robe and dragged himself into a sitting position even though he moaned with pain. Odion clutched him tightly, held him even closer than the day Marik had said he'd rather die than be a tombkeeper.
"You're safe now," Odion croaked.
Marik looked at his father's motionless body, at the blood-streaked wall above it. He looked at his father's eyes. He tried to speak and couldn't.
He fell into darkness again.
The next time he woke, he was aboveground. He saw the sun against the horizon; breathed the dry, baked air; touched his fingers to sand and sage. Everything belowground had been hard and cold; everything above was soft and searing.
And Marik hated it.
It was less than a week before he tried to run. Barefoot in the desert didn't get him far, but the pain in his back brought him down long before the pain in his feet. Odion found him and carried him to camp even though his own back was still healing as much as Marik's. He never spoke about the pain, and even though Marik knew he'd seen the murder, he never spoke about it either.
Marik hated him. He punched him once, bruised Odion's jaw and his own hand, but Odion apologized like he'd been the one responsible. Marik commanded him to leave, screamed at him to, but he never did.
The Khouri clansmen all stared when they thought Marik didn't notice. Word had arrived that Ahmed Ishtar was dead. Marik Ishtar was now head of the Ishtar clan and all four clans that served under it. And Marik Ishtar was insane. They all thought it.
Maybe they even suspected the worse truth:
Marik Ishtar was a murderer.
Fourteen days after the initiation, Marik tried to kill himself with the dagger in the rod. Once again, Odion saved him, wrestling the artifact away even though handling it was dangerous for anyone other than its chosen user. It could have killed him; Odion took it anyway, like the damn martyr he was. Marik fought to retrieve it. Since Odion was almost twice his age and more than twice his size, he resorted to the lowest, most desperate tactics he could, but even after drawing blood with his teeth, Odion still held him off until he finally dragged Marik to the center pole of the tent and tied him to it.
They were both crying.
And Odion just.
Kept.
Apologizing.
That was when Shadi came.
He offered Odion a deal: He would use the Millennium Scales to balance Marik's guilt with Odion's innocence. Marik would remember his father's murder but forget himself as the culprit. Odion would remember Marik as the culprit but bear the guilt of the murder as if he'd committed it himself.
"There is, of course, a warning," Shadi said, "that balance is delicate and that forcibly tipped scales may end up worse than they began."
It was the worst deal imaginable. Marik ordered Odion not to take it. Begged him not to.
But he did.
And four years later, when Odion was struck by a god, the balance broke.
Every eye turned to the viewing platform. For her part, Yori was immediately ready to fight, but she wasn't ready for what she saw.
Marik was slumped against the railing, one arm hooked over it, barely holding himself up. His other hand clutched his head. And as they watched, his face protruded out, half of it splitting in an awful, twisted grin below one bloodshot eye.
"What's happening?" Serenity squeaked. Duke pulled her closer to him.
Yuugi appeared in spirit form next to Yori, his eyes dark and worried.
"Do you feel it?" he said urgently.
She did; her bracelet was nearly vibrating against her skin. Yami had a hand on his puzzle as if he felt the same unseen current of power. They exchanged a glance.
Marik screamed again. The rod in his hand flashed gold. That terrible grin overtook his entire face, and his tongue lolled out from between his teeth. He released the rail and gripped the rod.
"I am reborn," he hissed, and though his voice was quiet, it pierced the distance between them.
Marik slowly raised the rod toward Yami, like an archer taking aim. Yori tensed. Then he smiled and lowered it. Without a word, he turned and left the rooftop.
"Wha' just happened?" Joey finally said, voicing what they all probably thought.
"Let's get Odion to a doctor," Yori said. But her skin crawled with the afterimage of Marik.
Note: Sorry this is a day late. This chapter was almost physically painful to write, and I hope I did Marik justice. Next update on Thursday, October 17th.