Epic Of Ahiram (Book 1) Read online

  Rahaak, triumphant, let out a shout of joy. He had summoned the Okod—Baal’s Staff of Power—a feat no other priest of the Inner Circle would have attempted alone. Filled with pride, Rahaak gazed upon the Okod like a mother over her newborn child. “Do you see this, Jethro,” he cooed. “Now that I have the Okod, I am ready to launch a frontal attack on Sureï’s curse.”

  Jethro watched with a sick fascination as Rahaak twisted his hands, weaving the red and blue rays into one thick strand. The priest’s veins bulged under the strain, and Jethro thought he was about to explode. But with a fluid motion, he shaped the strand into a foot-wide, hollow circle, fused the two ends together and shrunk the circle into a blue and red, flat ornament. Arching his back and greeting his teeth, Rahaak moaned as he pushed the eerie, circular object forward.

  The strange, object reached the medallion, their sizes matching perfectly. Without stopping, it sunk beneath the dark surface. The two men held their breath. The Okod reemerged a few seconds later, turning the ordinarily dull object into a dazzling display of brilliant light.

  “Is it done?” asked Jethro.

  Rahaak motioned for him to remain silent. “If the colors dissolve, the curse will be broken.”

  “Is it working?” asked Jethro, suddenly hopeful.

  “I think… no. The medallion, it’s—”

  “What? What?” asked Jethro frantically.

  He never knew what the priest was going to say. The two colors died out just as a terrifying, high-pitched scream pierced their ears. The medallion let out a white beam as thick as a man’s fist. It lit the main room of the Library, as in bright daylight, and hit Rahaak in the chest, pulverizing him. Jethro screamed in terror. The beam struck the floor twenty feet behind him, and the warden thought he was dead.

  He could not remember how long the beam had lasted, how long he had screamed, nor how long he had lain on his back with eyes wide open. Wearily, he stood up. Of the priest of Baal, there was nothing left. A shiver ran down the warden’s spine as he limped out of the deserted Library, slipping into the thick night, grateful he had survived the ordeal.

  Had he looked back, he would have seen a smoldering hole in the Library’s floor. Beneath, a strange light began to throb, and an eerie sound filled the Library. Then the light and the sound vanished, and darkness fell once more.

  High above ground, the Libre Aharof floated gently, and the Medallion of Power hung limply in place.

  Moments before the white beam had struck Rahaak, Hoda and Ahiram stood on the beach watching a glorious sunrise, proclaiming the beginning of the Feast of Light—a day when the whole village rested from fishing and servile work.

  “It’s your birthday, Ahiram,” said Hoda.

  The young boy leaped for joy, held his sister’s hands, and danced with her on the deserted beach. Hoda laughed and followed him.

  “Are you ready to set bait, young fisherman?” she shouted.

  “Absolutely,” Ahiram shouted back.

  Abruptly, his countenance fell, and Hoda saw he was in pain. He touched his chest and muffled a scream.

  “Hot, hot, hot,” he stammered, and frantic, he yanked the chain holding his medallion and threw it on the sand.

  “Ahiram, what’s wrong?” asked Hoda with a sickening feeling.

  “The medallion,” replied her brother, lifting his shirt to inspect his chest. “It nearly burned me.”

  Hoda quickly examined his torso and was relieved. “You are not burned,” she said. “You are fine.”

  They stared anxiously at the small, round object expecting they knew not what. After a while, Ahiram laughed a nervous laugh.

  “Maybe I’m imagining things, Hoda.” He bent to pick it up, but Hoda prevented him.

  “Let’s wait a little longer,” she said with an altered voice.

  A deafening shriek terrified them, while a powerful, white beam shot up from the medallion. The heat wave it produced hit them like a fist and threw them backward onto the sand. The shriek and the beam died as abruptly as they had started. Ahiram saw white symbols emerge from the medallion and fly away in a fast staccato. Drawn to them like a shark to blood, he leaped to his feet, and in a futile attempt, tried to catch them.

  “Ahiram,” asked Hoda, coughing, “what are you doing? What are you trying to grab?”

  The symbols vanished before he could answer and seemed to take the rest of the beach and the mountains with them. Hoda shrieked. The boats were gone and so was the familiar landscape. All was replaced by rolling hills glittering with a green substance oozing from the ground. In the distance stood a massive pillar of flashing light surrounded by a cluster of giant dandelions. A dull, red light pulsed beneath the surface, and two shining stars behind the pillar mesmerized Ahiram.

  Briskly, he walked toward the pillar, and had his sister not restrained him, would have crossed into that strange world. In a daze, she gazed at what she was seeing, wanting to disbelieve it, unable to make sense of the eerie landscape, when a young boy appeared before them.

  Seeing Ahiram, he gasped. “You? What are you doing here? This is not your time.”

  “Who are you?” blurted Hoda, “What is happening to him?”

  The boy saw the medallion on the sand. “Oh no, Rahaak, you fool, what have you done? You woke up the medallions and now they know.”

  The boy gazed at an object that was out of Hoda’s sight and yelled, “Run! They are coming for him!”

  He raised his right hand, formed a fist and snapped open his fingers. The hills and the pillar vanished, and the beach was back to normal.

  “No,” screamed Ahiram, “no, don’t take them away from me…”

  “What, Ahiram, what did you see?” asked his sister.

  “I… I don’t really know, but they were so beautiful. I heard them calling out to me.”

  “Who? Who is calling out to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hoda held her brother, scanned the length of the beach, and breathed a sigh of relief. It was still deserted.

  Think, Hoda, think. The strange boy said they were coming for him. The High Riders. They must know. What am I to do?

  Protect Ahiram, came the answer. That’s what the mysterious man told me. Protect Ahiram. She knelt down, placed her hands on Ahiram’s shoulders. He was shivering, but time was of the essence.

  “Listen to me, Ahiram, I want you to get into my boat and row as hard as you can…”

  “In your boat?” exclaimed the young boy. “But Hoda, you told me never to get into your boat without you.”

  “And now I am telling you to get into my boat and row as hard as you can until you reach the spot where Father and the other men bait the sharks. I want you to lie in the boat until I come and get you. Can you do that for me?”

  “I’d do anything for you, Hoda, but why do you want me to go there now? Hoda, what is happening to me? What is going on?”

  She clasped his hands in hers: “There is no time to lose, Ahiram. Just do as I ask. I’ll explain later.”

  “You will come, yes?” He just wanted to hear her say it.

  “Do not worry. Everything I do, is for you. Now go.”

  Ahiram hugged his sister, and something told him he was seeing her for the last time. He held back his tears, kissed her, and after pushing his sister’s small boat into the water, jumped in and rowed hard. Hoda waved and said, “Wait for me, Ahiram. I will be back to get you.” She sprinted away in the direction of Baher-Ghafé.

  Ahiram rowed as fast as he could and reached the submerged cliff in no time. He dropped the tiny anchor and lay in the boat. Dread hovered above him like a gathering storm. He felt like a hunted animal hiding from some unseen predator. A sense of deep loneliness gripped him, and the surrounding stillness compounded his oppression—as if he were lost, beyond the reach of mortal men. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he found himself standing at the bottom of a dead canyon hemmed by mountains of cold steel. A vengeful sun pummeled the ground with a suffocating h
eat wave, and in the rising haze, he saw shadows thundering toward him. Thousands upon thousands of filthy creatures he had never seen, or imagined, were growling, howling, nipping, and biting as they moved like a wave of black water in his direction. He heard an insidious voice whisper in his ear, “I see you. I am coming.” Ahiram screamed and sat upright. He was back in the boat.

  “This is all my fault,” he said between sobs. “I couldn’t control my temper and now all this happened, and Hoda is so scared. I really tried to control my temper, but I just couldn’t.”

  “The covenant is broken,” said a soft voice in his ears. “A life is given, and a life will be taken away; do not lose hope.”

  Ahiram sat straight up in the boat and looked around. This was not the first time he had heard this voice, the voice of an old man who spoke with power, yet his voice was laced with sadness. The young boy knew this was a friendly voice, for it had helped control his temper in the past.

  Seeing no one, Ahiram was about to lie back down when the boat stirred furiously in foamy waters, as if a giant hand were toying with it. Ahiram gripped the edge of the vessel and peeked beneath the surface.

  His hair stood up on end, and he quickly backed away. The shark was of monstrous proportions.

  He took a second look, and his heart skipped a beat. Silver rays were on its back and it had a double fin. Ahiram immediately recognized the shark circling Hoda’s boat; it was Yem. No one knew how old this shark was, and every generation of fishermen had stories to tell of their chance encounters with the shark of legends.

  “Yem. It’s Yem! I cannot believe it.” Forgetting his sister’s order to stay down, he peered at the shore and saw a small boat moving in his direction. Standing at the prow was the man who wanted to buy his medallion. The medallion, thought Ahiram, I forgot it on the beach.

  “I am here to help, my friend,” called the man across the water. “Hoda, your sister, sent me.”

  “What? Hoda?” said Ahiram, confused. “That’s not possible. She said she would come for me.”

  “She is a bit delayed,” answered the man. In the dim morning light, he had not noticed the foaming wavelets around the boy’s tiny vessel, but now that his boat was a mere twenty yards away, he could clearly see the furious movements beneath the water. “What are you doing? Why is your boat moving so?” he asked, confused.

  Before Ahiram could answer, Yem moved swiftly underwater, cut loose the rope attached to the small anchor, and hauled the boat away at great speed. The men in the other boat shrieked; they had not seen the shark.

  “No,” screamed Ahiram, “Hoda! Hoda!”

  His scream was swallowed by the waves. The shark leaped forward faster than before, and Ahiram fell back, hit his head hard on the side of the small vessel, and lost consciousness. The shark pulled him rapidly away from home. Yem towed the boat for several miles until it reached a secluded, sandy area where the wooden vessel ran aground and came to an abrupt stop. Ahiram rolled over, hit the side of the boat, and ended up face down, motionless, and still unconscious.

  The sun rose on Baher-Ghafé. On this Day of Light, the Feast of Adonis (celebrating spring), the villagers enjoyed a good night of rest and slept late into the morning. None of them saw the High Riders surging through the forest, swords drawn, ready for the kill.

  “The Malikuun are the guardians of light and servants of El. No mortal has ever seen them—not since the close of the Age of the Second Covenant—and lived. They are immortal.”

  –Lost discourse of Ramael, son of Shatumael, son of Hanayel, son of Zarubael, son of Lamatael and great-grandson of Habael the Wise

  “Great are the deeds of the dwarfs and greater still, their heroes. Alone and unaided, Kwadil the Redeemed, shouldered the weight of the two realms when it was on the verge of collapse. He is the modern founder of the dwarfish nations, its unsung hero.”

  –Philology of the Dwarfs, Anonymous

  Wearily, the sun reached its setting point, leaving behind a trail of bloodied clouds scattered in the sky like dead men across a battlefield. A sickly, white moon crawled across the heavens like a giant spider on an invisible web. The sentries manning the walls of the Temple of Baalbeck saw lightning flash atop Mount Sanniin, towering some eight thousand feet over the Temple. Thunder boomed angrily, and storm clouds poured ice-cold water with a vengeance on Baalbeck.

  “Riders on approach,” said one of the sentries. “Archers at the ready.” Two hundred archers flexed their bows. After a tense moment, the sentry raised his hand. “Relax bows.” The archers complied. “High Riders of the Lightning Division are on approach. Open the gates.”

  The order was relayed down to the porters. Three trumpet blasts shattered the quiet of the night. A gong answered deep within the complex, and the twenty-foot-tall iron gates opened to welcome Arfaad, captain of the Lightning Division of High Riders, returning with one light guard—two hundred and eighty-eight horsemen, one-tenth of the full division that had left at the break of dawn.

  After putting the villagers to the sword, Arfaad had ordered half of his division to impose the curfew in Byblos. The rowdy metropolis was a stone’s throw away from Baher-Ghafé. Merchants were bound to protest the closure of their stores on the busiest day of the year, when tourists flocked from the world over to celebrate the Feast of Light and partake in the all-night carnival of Adonis.

  Of the remaining half, one light guard had stayed at Baher-Ghafé to burn all that could be burned, leaving nothing but charred ruins of the once prosperous village. The other two light guards had been sent on a punitive mission to seek and destroy the renegade Black Robes, for the Temple found it expedient to blame any one of its many foes for these ghastly expeditions.

  Arfaad dismounted and ordered his soldiers back to their quarters.

  “Remain there until someone calls for you.”

  He headed to the ablutions hall in the Temple precinct to perform the Rite of Purification. He took off his helmet, a conical cap with two jade horns bearing a thunderbolt—the mark of Baal—and carefully placed it on an adjoining table, undressed quickly, and went into the Pool of Purification where he washed three times as prescribed by the ritual. After drying himself with three different towels, he put on the robe of purification and clapped twice. The lahi (beard trimmer) in attendance hurried in to inspect Arfaad’s beard for impurities.

  The hair of his beard was arranged in five tight braids that ran from ear to ear, the mark of captainship in Baal’s army. The lahi carefully inspected each braid with a specially made silver comb until he was certain it was not contaminated. His task completed, he bowed reverently and walked backward as required of one who was little more than a slave. On the way, he picked up the dirty towels and clothes, dropped them into a large, tin container for unclean linens, and left with the sullied boots. The ritual forbade the participants from talking for fear that the spirit of the dead may speak through the one who is unclean and thus contaminate the Temple.

  Arfaad sat on a stool and waited. A servant brought him a clean uniform and a clean pair of boots, bowed, and left. The captain dressed but did not put on his jacket. He clapped twice. Two elderly maids walked in. They inspected the cuffs of his gray pants to ensure no impurity had transferred to his clean clothes. Then, dipping their fingers into an aromatic jar, they laced his neck with a soft gel that smelled of lemon and orange blossoms, and helped him put on his jacket. He straightened the black lapels and tied the green band around his neck, then he clasped the thick, red belt around his waist, snatched his helmet, and walked out.

  On his way, he stopped by the barracks to inspect his men. They stood, each by his bunk, their silent faces filled with grief and anguish. “I know you are all ritually unclean, but rest assured, you will perform the Rite of Purification as soon as I have reported back to the high priestess.”

  A wave of relief washed over their faces, confirming Arfaad’s hunch. “They must have thought I barred them from the ritual to deliver them into the hands of the Kerta pri
est,” he muttered as he walked toward the first inner gate of the Temple.

  The experiments he had personally witnessed while in the sixth and deepest underground level of the Temple flooded his memory with images of simple folks going insane, others screaming in utter despair, and the silent chuckle—the sickening chuckle—of the priest filling up the concentrators. Willfully, Arfaad suppressed these memories and fervently wished that Baal could be rid of that cruel order. He inhaled deeply and began climbing the spiraling staircase that lead to the high priestess. As he moved up, he crossed five consecutive gates protected by vulture-like creatures with shining, green eyes. These were the watchers, guardians of the Temple. As he went under each gate, he felt their incisive gaze burrow deeply into his mind, assessing his intent, deciding whether he was a friend or foe, whether to let him pass or declare him fodder for the concentrators. Arfaad shuddered involuntarily; the watchers, created by the Kerta priests, were neither dead nor alive.

  He found the high priestess sitting on her preaching chair, her hands gripping the silver, lion-shaped handles. Despite his inner turmoil, he held his right fist with his left hand behind his back and briefly nodded, then joined his hands next to his heart and bowed deeply.

  I ordered you to kill the woman you wanted to marry, your Hoda, and still your military and religious salutes are flawless, thought Bahiya, distraught. What kind of a man are you?

  “It is done,” he said evenly.

  “Any survivors?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He looked at her with eyes that did not conceal his sorrow. “Yes, Your Honor, every man, woman, and child of Baher-Ghafé is no more.”

  “How many casualties?”

  “Your Honor, the casualties are 1,283.”

  This is the correct count, thought Bahiya. “Have you given pursuit to the Black Robes?”