Watchfires glowed, casting scorched shadows on the moonlit dunes. Captain Jaufré d’Orbiel sat in his tent, writing by the wavering light of a single lantern, finishing the last dispatches to be sent back to Arcassanne.
The night was so still that Jaufré could hear the distant slow tread of the nightwatch patrolling the perimeters of the camp. A gust of dry wind stirred the lantern-flame, exuding a faint breath of desert fragrance: spikenard and balsam, sweetly bitter as burning incense.
Jaufré sighed as he dipped his pen into the ink.
He had lost too many men. Six dead, seven wounded and three unaccounted for. A heavy toll for what should have been a simple task for his company, the Hawks, escorting Comte Aymon’s diplomatic mission to the Potentate of Djihan-Djihar with the aim of establishing a new trade route to the coast.
With a heavy heart he inscribed the name ‘Alois Guisbourg’ at the end of the list, adding, ‘Missing, presumed dead.’ Alois, his boyhood friend and companion-in-arms. Alois, with his eager, lop-sided grin, his untidy shock of barley-fair hair, his bantering good humour … The last time anyone recalled seeing Alois was in the shabby little town of Ilh-djor where the detachment had stopped to buy provisions. Pedlars and traders had rushed up to sell their wares and in the confusion, Alois had just … disappeared.
Jaufré was weary of soldiering, weary of writing reports, dispatches. In Arcassanne, he was better known as a poet than a soldier … though when had poetry ever earned a man enough to live on?
He paused, breathing in the hot, scented air. There was a kind of poetry in the harsh heat of the desert, he supposed, but thus far it had eluded him. The aridity of the wastes of Djihan-Djihar had parched his imagination as surely as it had dried the ink in the ink-well.
He began to wonder if he would ever write a poem again …
A gust of dust-dry wind shivered through the camp. Jaufré glanced up –
And saw that he was no longer alone. A man stood in front of him, swathed in faded ochre robes and burnous.
Assassin. Snake Warrior. Jaufré reached for his sword.
‘Captain. Wait.’ The figure drew back the concealing headdress to reveal a shrunken, emaciated face beneath, a hideous mummified face, burned to the texture of old leather. Jaufré stared, the sword half-drawn from its sheath, into eyes that burned dark with the dying fire of fever.
‘Who the hell–’
‘Jaufré …’ The stranger gripped his arm with spindle fingers. His breath was foul, rank with the taint of decay. Jaufré made to break away, but the man clung to him as if he were drowning. ‘Don’t you know me?’ His words came haltingly yet with no trace of a Djihari accent. ‘Am I so changed? It’s me. Alois.’
Jaufré forced himself to gaze into the sun-seared face.
‘Alois?’ he said slowly, disbelievingly. ‘But – we thought you were dead.’
The cracked lips twisted into a grimace, revealing blackened gums.
‘Dead. Better dead than – than this life in death. Help me, Jaufré. Help me to put an end to it.’
‘How – how can I help you?’ Mesmerised by Alois’s staring eyes, Jaufré did not dare to conjecture what had transformed the confident, handsome young soldier he remembered into this shambling, diseased shadow.
‘W-water –’ Alois’s claw hands stretched out tremblingly towards Jaufré’s flask which stood beside the half-written dispatch.
‘Here.’ Jaufré put the flask in his hands. ‘Drink.’
Alois raised the flask to his mouth and gulped greedily as the water came pouring out; spilling down his chin. But after a few mouthfuls, he began to retch, dropping the flask, clutching at his throat, his sunken belly. ‘Ahh. It burns. It burns.’
Jaufré let the flask lie where it had fallen; he had no wish to drink again now that Alois’s diseased lips had touched it.
Alois dropped to his knees; he slowly raised his withered head until Jaufré could see that a dark, blood-stained slime hung in trails from his mouth.
‘In God’s name, Alois, what has happened to you?’ Jaufré said in a whisper. ‘Shall I fetch a doctor?’
Alois shook his head.
‘No point …’
‘A priest, then?’
Alois’s hunched shoulders began to heave, to shake convulsively. Jaufré took a tentative step forwards, wondering if the young man had begun to weep. But then he realised that Alois was laughing, a gasping, shuddering laugh that it hurt Jaufré’s ears to listen to.
‘A priest? I am beyond the help of our faith, my friend. So far beyond that you would not –’ The laughter broke off suddenly as a spasm gripped Alois and he rolled over, writhing as if in unendurable agony.
Jaufré knelt down by him and, steeling himself to overcome his revulsion, put his hands on Alois’s shoulders, holding him down until the spasm calmed.
‘Only you can help me, Jaufré …’ The dark eyes were filmed, cloudy with pain, yet a fevered flame still burned faintly in the hollow eye-sockets.
‘How?’
‘You must … take it, give it back …’ Alois’s voice was growing fainter.
Jaufré leaned closer, trying not to breathe in the mephitic stench exuding from the wasted body.
‘Give what back?’
The twisted fingers reached up, scrabbling to pull something from under the filthy rags that had once been a Hawks tunic.
‘This …’
Jaufré stared. Against Alois’s dirt-caked, burned skin, it gleamed like the sun breaking through stormclouds. An enamelled disc of beaten metals, it portrayed a winged figure, arms outstretched, wings widespread, each black pinion outlined in crimson, vermilion and copper. The beauty of the artistry, the skill of the crafting took his breath away. He could feel the itch in his fingers, longing to reach out, to touch the precious object –
‘What is it?’ Jaufré breathed.
‘You must give it back to them …’ Alois was becoming agitated again; his fingers plucked at Jaufré’s sleeve. ‘Promise me, Jaufré. Promise me you’ll give it back.’
Jaufré stared at the disc, mesmerised.
‘How did you come by it?’
‘I – I bought it. The trader – said it would bring – good luck. Good luck!’ Another shudder of dry laughter convulsed Alois’s frame. ‘I didn’t know then – what it is or – where it came from –’
‘What is it, man?’ demanded Jaufré. ‘And who wants it back? Was it stolen?’
‘It – is Tsiyonim.’ The words came out on a trail of blood-tinged spittle. ‘Part of – an amulet. An – ancient amulet of power. There is – a curse on it –’
‘An amulet?’ Jaufré could not disguise his scepticism. ‘Don’t tell me you fell for that old Djihari trick, Alois!’
‘You must believe me –’
‘I warned you all at the start of the campaign, didn’t I? The Snake Tribe are lethal enemies. There’s no magical power in this amulet … but I’ll lay bets the trader who sold you this impregnated it with venom. Your good-luck charm has lain next to your skin, leaching its poison into your body –’
‘No …’ Alois’s fingers fumbled at Jaufré’s collar. ‘It came from … the Temple ruins in Tsiyon … It must be given back to the Tsiyonim. It is … too powerful …’
‘Powerful?’ It was certainly an exquisite piece of craftsmanship. Jaufré could not take his eyes off it; it seemed to radiate a dull, burnished lustre as if a flame burned at the heart of the metal. ‘What d’you mean – powerful?’
Alois’s grip tightened on his collar, dragging Jaufré’s head closer to his own.
‘Don’t let yourself be seduced.’ Alois’s ribs heaved as he struggled for breath. ‘Get rid of it – before it starts to work its mischief on you.’
‘Mischief?’
‘It was never meant for us … it works through us, it seeks the others …’
‘Others? What others?’ Jaufré caught hold of Alois by the shoulders, shaking him in his frustration.
‘There were four … one to guard each corner of the Temple …’ Alois seemed not to hear Jaufré’s question. His eyes had begun to slide upwards. The rasping breath became a rattle. A death rattle.
‘Alois! Alois!’ Jaufré cried, shaking him.
‘Give it back to the Tsiyonim … promise me you will give it back …’
‘I … I will give it back.’ Even as he spoke the words, Jaufré’s fingers were stealing out to touch the dark lustre of the gleaming amulet. ‘I give you my word, Alois.’
The wheezing rattle was slowing, fading to silence.
He felt Alois’s head slump sideways against his arm. The life had seeped out of the emaciated body, which now lay limp and still.
Jaufré gently eased Alois down on to the ground and closed the sunken, staring eyes. Then he sat back on his heels, still staring at the dead man.
Alois Guisbourg had been twenty-four years old when he set sail for Djihan-Djihar. The body that lay on the sandy ground was the body of an ancient man, sucked dry of youth and life.
Give it back …
Give it back – but to whom? Djihan-Djihar had once belonged to the Tsiyonim – until the Djihari tribesmen had swept down from the mountains, burned their Temple and razed the great city of Tsiyon to the ground, claiming the land for their god Ilh-Alh. The few surviving Tsiyonim tribes had been driven out, scattered to the four corners of the world.
There were Tsiyonim in Arcassanne. He would take the amulet back with him and give it into the safe-keeping of the Elders of the community.
Jaufré reached out to touch the amulet – and then checked himself. Suppose he had been right – and the gleaming disc was tainted with one of the lethal Djihari desert poisons? He drew his handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped his hand in it before leaning over to take the amulet from the dead man’s hand.
The twisted claw-fingers still clutched the treasure tightly and he had to prise them apart to ease the amulet free, swallowing back his revulsion. As he took the amulet into his own hand, a sudden gush of black, viscous liquid issued from the corpse’s mouth, seeping into the sand. Jaufré drew back in disgust. He was not squeamish, but there was something about this sudden leaking of dark, noisome fluid from the ravaged insides of a body not yet cold and stiff that turned his stomach. It was almost as if his removing of the amulet had caused the noxious expulsion, as if some concentration of evil substances had left the body, like lice seeking the warmth of a new, living host. Now Alois’s wasted, sun-seared shell lay relaxed, empty.
Jaufré gazed down at the ancient amulet which lay, protected by his linen handkerchief, in his cupped hands. Now that he could see it more clearly, it was evident that it was incomplete, a part of a whole. Was that what Alois had meant when he had babbled about the Temple? Was it a part of the fabled lost treasure of the Temple at Tsiyon?
In the wavering lanternlight, Jaufré could just make out what looked like characters in the corona surrounding the winged figure’s upraised head. Was it a name … or a word of power? He had reacted with his habitual scepticism when Alois had called the amulet powerful. How could a piece of crafted metal be powerful? But now that he held it, he felt a faint thrill of sensation, a visceral stir of excitement.
Give it back …
He glanced guiltily at Alois’s still body. It seemed indecent to be so obsessed with the amulet when there was the news to be broken to the company and a burial to be organised. And … how to explain Alois’s deterioration and death when he did not begin to understand it himself? He must not under any circumstances mention the amulet. He would report the cause of death as exposure and dysentery.
He stood up and went to open his writing chest in which he kept his pens and inks, placing the wrapped amulet carefully inside and locking the chest with the key he kept on a chain around his neck.
In the adjoining tent, his lieutenant, Berengar de Belcastel, lay asleep, wrapped in his cloak. Jaufré knelt down and shook him by the shoulder.
‘Wh-what?’ Berengar struggled up, half-dazed with sleep. ‘Attack?’
‘I want you to organise a burial.’
‘B-but who –’
‘Alois. Crawled back here to die. Poor wretch – out there in the desert, he didn’t stand a chance.’