The Temple of Baal-Zebub (Tale I of the Valruna Saga) Read online



  THE TEMPLE OF BAAL-ZEBUB

  A TALE OF THE VALRUNA SAGA

  CHRISTOPHER COURTLEY

  The Temple of Baal-Zebub

  A Tale of the Valruna Saga

  Copyright 2012 by Christopher Courtley

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living, dead, or otherwise is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Christopher Courtley

  Also by Christopher Courtley:

  The Bone Dancer (Tale II of the Valruna Saga)

  Troll Stew: A Strange Brew of Dark Fairy Tales and Poems for Adults

  He hath need of his wits who wanders wide

  ~ Hávamál

  The towering black statue of Baal-Zebub loomed in the inner recesses of the temple, its many-faceted eyes glittering in the flickering glow of the flames that rose perpetually from two enormous bronze braziers that stood on either side of the great stone altar at the idol’s feet.

  Hairless blue-skinned priests clad only in loincloths of gold tended the fires night and day, feeding them coals and a rank concoction of foul substances that produced a pungent incense.

  The High Priest, robed in black, stood before the altar, his arms spread wide, chanting in an ancient tongue no longer spoken by anyone but priests. In his right hand he held a ceremonial dagger with a gold gem-studded handle and an obsidian blade.

  Upon the altar lay a naked slave-boy with wrists and ankles bound, his eyes wide with terror.

  The High Priest raised the dagger aloft as his chanting rose to a crescendo; with his left hand he turned the boy’s face toward the statue, so that the fearsome idol would be the last thing he would see.

  Somewhere in the darkness a priest struck a gong. As the deep bellow resounded through the shadowed halls of the temple, the High Priest plunged the dagger’s point into the boy’s heart.

  A wide, shallow groove in the blood-stained, slanted stone surface on which the boy lay caught the warm red liquid that gushed from his still-beating heart and carried it to the rear of the altar, toward the statue’s midriff, where in the shadow of the massive torso a gaping maw waited to drink the wine of the boy’s life.

  This greedy nether mouth led to an unseen cavity deep within the gargantuan idol suggestive of both stomach and foul womb, for when the god wished to punish his subjects a swarm of biting flies would be birthed from that enclave to darken the skies above the temple and the surrounding city like a black pestilence-bearing cloud.

  At all other times maggots continually dripped from that reeking hole, so that the floor of the temple writhed with them.

  All eyes were on the High Priest as he emerged from the cool moist shelter of the temple into the hot dry air without. It was midday in the city of Bel-Athis, the Jewel of the Sands, her blue and green domes gleaming in the sun, and despite the oppressive heat a sizeable throng still lingered in the high-walled courtyard of the Temple of Baal-Zebub.

  A hush fell upon the crowd as the High Priest lifted his arms high and wide. He waited a moment before speaking; relishing the suspense with which he commanded the mob’s undivided attention.

  “The Lord of Flies is not yet sated!” he proclaimed at last.

  Murmurs rippled through the crowd as two temple guards armed with swords of bronze at their sides descended the steps of the temple to fetch the god’s next victim. Slowly they moved through the throng, to the western gate of the courtyard and out into the narrow streets of the slave quarter.

  From the rear of the crowd that had assembled in the courtyard a tall, fair woman on horseback, a stranger to these lands, gazed in wonder upon the temple, which squatted ominously atop a crumbling ziggurat of dark red stone.

  A narrow black stairway lined with torches led steeply up the southern face of this ancient pyramidal structure, and on either side of the massive doors to the temple itself, which were fashioned of stout wood reinforced with iron, there stood four glossy black pillars with brazen capitals supporting the winged golden roof which blazed its defiance against the stark blue of the cloudless sky.

  Even from this distance, she could see in the shadow of that roof the carven faces of grotesque demonic creatures leering down from an elaborate frieze, their long tongues lolling.

  The temple radiated an ancient evil, alien and incomprehensible. In all of her travels, she had never before seen its like.

  Neither had any of the citizens of Bel-Athis seen her like before, and wherever she went in this age-old desert city she was stared at with a mixture of awe, curiosity, and suspicion.

  For to the people of these sun-scorched lands, who were mostly of swart complexion, this stranger seemed unnaturally fair of skin—though the years she had spent in these climes had darkened her considerably—and whereas they all had dark hair and eyes, her hair, which she wore in a single long braid that fell to her waist, was the pale colour of straw, and most startling of all, her eyes were the same bold hue as the sky itself.

  Her clothing, too, was outlandish: two crude garments consisting of nothing more than small pieces of hide laced together with leather thongs barely covered her breasts and loins, and her furred boots came almost up to her knees. A bear-claw necklace adorned her slender neck, and from a belt around her waist there hung a steel broadsword sheathed in brown leather trimmed with ermine. The sword’s grip below its steel cross guard was also wrapped in brown leather, and a reindeer’s hoof formed the pommel.

  Though she wore no armour, the sword at her side made it clear for all to see that she was a warrior, and this in a land where a woman wielding any blade bigger than a dagger was almost unheard of. But this was not at all unusual for her kind, for she was of the wild and warlike barbarians of the northern steppes; the first of that country ever to travel this far south.

  Presently the horsewoman’s attention shifted from the architectural marvel that was the Temple of Baal-Zebub toward the commotion that was stirring by the courtyard’s western gates. Her guide through these strange lands, a small dark man with shoulder-length curly black hair and short, pointed beard, clad in the loose-fitting garments of the desert folk, glanced up at her from where he stood beside Thunrasar, the magnificent grey stallion she rode.

  “What is it, Vana?” he asked her in the tongue of the desert kingdoms.

  “That girl,” the horsewoman replied. “Where are they taking her, Jerob?”

  Her command of his language had greatly improved in the two years that he had known her, though her accent was still just as thick as it had been when they had first met.

  He followed the direction of her gaze, standing on the tips of his toes in a vain attempt to see over the heads of the people in front of them.

  Then, in fleeting glimpses between the shifting bodies he saw them: a pair of temple guards, armed priests whose depilated, blue-tinted skin declared their devotion to the Lord of Flies, gripping the wrists of a girl who could not have been older than twelve or thirteen, and dragging her, kicking and screaming, through the jeering crowd.

  “They are taking her to the sacrificial altar inside the temple,” Jerob explained. “She is to be sacrificed to Baal-Zebub. See that grim-looking spectre looming over the crowd from atop the temple steps? He is Ammon-Zul, the High Priest of Baal-Zebub. All fear him, for he holds the power to choose who will live and who will die.”

  Vana glanced up at the gold-painted face of the bald, black-robed, effeminate-looking man Jerob had indicated. She frowned, momentarily perplexed by her guide’s use of the word ‘spectre�
��. She could sense power there, of the most chaotic kind, barely constrained beneath the calm exterior of the distant figure who glared down at the throng with an ancient hatred seething in his dark eyes. Yet this was no ghost, but a mortal man.

  This, then, must have been one of those words that could have more than one meaning. Jerob’s language seemed to be full of them, and at times she missed the simple plain-speaking conversation of her own folk.

  “What was the girl’s crime?” she asked Jerob then.

  “Crime?”

  “What did she do to deserve death?”

  Jerob shrugged. “Nothing. She is the chosen one; that is all. Baal-Zebub demands blood sacrifice, lest he bring a plague down upon the city... though Ammon-Zul never seems to choose the children of nobles, who enjoy the queen’s protection, or those of wealthy merchants, who can afford to bribe the priests of the temple. This girl, like many who have gone before her, is a slave.”

  Vana’s frown slowly deepened to a scowl.

  “Do they not make sacrifice to the gods where you come from?” asked Jerob.

  “Yes,” the horsewoman replied. “But criminals... robbers, rapers, murderers. Not innocent children.”

  She spurred her horse forward. The crowd parted hastily to let her through, those nearest to Thunrasar falling over each other to stay clear of his mighty hooves as Vana rode up alongside the two temple guards who were dragging the young slave-girl to an undeserved death.

  The horsewoman’s left hand gripped the reins of her fearsome steed, but her right rested upon the hilt of her broadsword, Icebreaker. She did not look at the guards as she spoke, for her cold blue eyes were fixed upon the High Priest himself, perched like a carrion crow high atop the black stone steps of the temple where he awaited his victim.

  “Release the girl,” Vana demanded.

  Her voice was cool and even, and just loud enough to be heard over the din of the surrounding rabble. But the priests merely looked at her as if she were a madwoman, and continued to drag the girl across the square.

  The horsewoman urged Thunrasar to the fore, overtaking them and veering to the left to cut them off. Now the crowd gradually fell silent, so that soon the only sound besides the girl’s frightened sobs was the restless clip-clop of the great stallion’s hooves upon the cobblestones.

  Jerob saw his opportunity, and as he had often done before, used this diversion to move unnoticed through the crowd, here and there deftly depriving a man of his purse or a woman of her jewelry.

  “Unhand her,” Vana commanded, her voice louder now as she turned her icy glare upon the two temple guards, “or I will do it for you.”

  The priest who had hold of the girl’s right wrist reached for his sword with his free hand, but never had a chance to draw it. There was a flash of bright steel as Vana drew her own sword first, and the hand that had been gripping the girl’s wrist lay twitching in the dust.

  Another flash, and the other priest’s hand was also severed, freeing the girl from his grasp. The two temple guards fell to their knees in howls of pain and rage, their mangled limbs vomiting blood onto the thirsty ground.

  The freed slave-girl pressed her lips to Vana’s boot in gratitude before she faded into the crowd. The horsewoman watched her go, and then turned her murderous gaze to rest once more upon Ammon-Zul, her ice-blue eyes delivering a silent challenge. Her deadly blade shone brilliant in the sun, its well-honed edge now dripping bright red with fresh blood.

  The remaining temple guards who flanked the High Priest atop the ziggurat shifted uneasily, their fingers playing upon the gilt handles of their own undrawn swords, lacking orders and looking with uncertainty to their leader.

  From where he stood atop the temple steps Ammon-Zul’s eyes burned black with fury. For a long moment he merely stood there staring at the strange yellow-haired barbarian, neither moving nor speaking. Then at last he whirled about, his long robes trailing behind him like raven’s wings as he retreated into the darkness of the temple’s interior.

  As the murmuring crowd gradually dispersed, and four unarmed priests approached warily to collect the wounded temple guards, Vana calmly wiped Icebreaker clean with an old tattered rag, and slowly slid the sword back into its sheath.

  Then she turned her steed toward the courtyard’s southern gates, which led out into the labyrinthine streets of the residential quarter.

  “What you did,” gushed Jerob, bobbing excitedly as he hurried to keep up with Thunrasar, “was incredible! No one has ever had the courage to stand up to Ammon-Zul like that!”

  “He possesses great power,” said Vana. “Though perhaps he has grown unaccustomed to using it. He rules mainly through fear, now, I think. But I also think we have not seen the last of Ammon-Zul. Be on your guard. He may not take matters into his own hands, and the city watch will not be as easy to deal with as those priests were.”

  “True,” said Jerob. “Ammon-Zul has considerable influence in this city. But might we not seek refuge in the house of the slave-girl’s owner? I recognized his brand on her; a merchant I have often had dealings with. He is pretty influential himself, not to mention wealthy, and I am certain he will be grateful for the return of his property... though... then again, there is always the risk that he may try to curry favour with the High Priest, especially since he obviously isn’t on very good terms with him now, or else his slave would not have been chosen.”

  “I do not think it would be wise for us to remain in this city another night,” Vana replied. “Get Nightwind and meet me at the city gates. We will leave at once, and ride as far from here as we can before we make camp.”

  Nightwind was Jerob’s horse, a beautiful black mare. He had stabled her as soon as they had entered the city, but now he wished that he had done as Vana had done, and brought his horse with him, despite the narrowness of many of the streets. The stables were not very far from the city gates, but it would take time for the stableman to fetch Nightwind, and every moment longer they spent in this city was another moment their newfound foe had to marshal his forces against them.

  Jerob had been to Bel-Athis many times and knew the city well, so for now he left Vana behind and took the shortest route to the stables while she continued on the wide central way that led to the city gates.

  He rejoined her at the gates some time later, leading Nightwind by the reins, and though he had half expected to see a host of city guards waiting for them, as luck, or perhaps some other unknown factor would have it, there were none.

  The two riders wasted no more time, and to Jerob’s surprise, the gates were opened for them without delay. Indeed it seemed as though the city of Bel-Athis was as glad to see them go as they were to bid it farewell.