Lucius could do nothing on his own while he waited for his bannermen to awaken. He could take a train of camels and charge off on his own, perhaps with Lupa or the priest, but he was not enough for the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of thralls and creatures that the desert people were taking to the ley mine. He needed an army, so he had to wait. A lesser man would have enjoyed chewing the fat, a moment of respite before the war.
Anubi found him pacing the garden, glaring at the form of the once-divine beast. The potency of Golden’s presence seemed to be oozing out of him and leaving behind the chrysalis shell of a metamorphosis.
“He will be able to join you,” my comrade of old said, leaning on a withered excuse for a walking cane, one merely of material form.
“He should have waited until after the war,” Lucius said, stopping before Golden to look the doll-like body over once more.
Anubi chuckled. “There is always another war, until you retire like I have.”
“Why did the wolf-killer retire anyway? You don’t seem injured.”
The jackal grinned. “You don’t know what I used to look like. But come. I will show you. Take it into your being and you will be a man worthy of my daughter.”
His pride pricked, Lucius followed the aged demon. They departed from the garden, passed through the fields and past the hovels. Within one of the ancient houses, one with doors still locked and maintained, Anubi took him into the embrace of the firmament. They did not descend into caverns. Not worm-riddled caverns spotted with the warrens of vermin. The stairs had been crafted into marble and the oddments gilt in gold. No light was needed, for the chamber itself glowed as though molten ore flowed through the veins of the stone.
Anubi took my pupil into the great treasure room of the desert.
An artist might be inspired to depict it laden with gold, with coins and jewels and the spoils of war. That there were heaps of treasure the kind a fat dragon would crawl through in hedonistic gluttony. No such clutter existed there then, nor I hope exists there now. Treasure of the material world is next to meaningless.
The treasury of the desert was a library. Shelves and crates laden with papyrus scrolls preserved by the dry air and protected by the dearth of little life, no better reliquary could exist beneath the light of Helios. But it was not old plays or treatises on morality, not even forgotten histories, that were the gem shown to Lucius. All those, I could have wrenched from mine own soul if there were merit.
At the heart of the library, precisely beneath the garden of Anubi, was the gloomy fields fecund; rife with the mycelium of godly thought and fed by the blood of life.
“I don’t know what I’m looking at,” my pupil said as he knelt beside the loam. The phallic caps of death before death stood like a little, rubber forest before him, engorged on corpse rot and dusting their faintly toxic spores across the soil.(1)
Anubi said, “We had a rather vulgar term for it in my time, I suppose you would balk to think of this as the ejaculate of the sun. We didn’t feign such propriety long ago. Call it the mystery.”
“I think I understand what this is,” Lucius said, turning his back to the botany. He swept his gaze instead across the urns, the bottles, and the casks. “Before I came here I was the governor of the Misty Isles. An angel turned godling invested herself, itself, into a local narcotic. The transfusion of will mixed with bodily euphoria–”
Anubi said, “You do not understand. If you take nothing else from me today, take the knowledge that you will not bring with you this life. It will stay here with me. My gift I give you now, not for your benefit, but for Lupa’s. Birra da cimitero I bequeath to you. Drink this not tonight, nor under any desert lull. Carry it north and only consume it in the embrace of the Shepherd.” He plucked from a shelf and handed Lucius a phial dark with occult medicine. It was no larger than his hand, stopper excluded, but with the glass fused together to seal it against the elements and time.
“The Shepherd?” he asked, taking the gift.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Of all the gods and goddesses, she is beloved by all. Even if her emissaries leave some to be desired. If I might make a suggestion, bring your woman with you to her home of Tavina and drink it with her.”
At once, Lucius’ grip tightened about the vial. “How do you know about her?”
Anubi cackled and began his trek back to the surface. “Your friend, the angel. He paid with his essence for the gift I gave him. I picked through quite a few of his memories since. I know much. Tell me boy, do you enjoy protecting her?”
Lucius released his tension, for he understood the nature of such bartering. I had included it in his training, but he never had enough will to exchange so the knowledge was purely academic. The idea that a man’s memories are private is purely a human misconception. I myself am clearly writing this document through such after-the-fact examination. His answer to Anubi was childish. “I’d rather that she didn’t need protection.”
“But, you enjoy it, don’t you? The same way you enjoy winning a fight, conquering a city, laying the mighty low. Does it not put a stir in your chest when you see so many hundreds of spears at your command? That you may turn them against your enemies and grant wealth and safety to those you choose?”
“What’s your point? Master told me women shouldn’t drink. It’s a poison.”
“It is a solvent,” Anubi corrected. “Typically of restraint, currently of something a dash more liberating. But… yes, it does have a way of dissolving healthy, developing tissue. I don’t think that will be an issue. By the time you reach Tavina, the child will be at her teat.”
As they mounted the steps, leaving behind the great library, Lucius faltered. “It will be months before her… our child is born.”
“And months it will take you. You have a war to win, don’t you realize?”
“In the mine, yes–”
“For Jeamaeux you fool. The bishop’s presence here has created a power vacuum that is being assaulted by your prince’s brazenness. Someone else will seize the power she has left behind. It must be you that crushes them, with her at your side. You’ll be lucky to return to Vassermark by the harvest festival.”
Lucius could only scowl and expand the scope of his plans. “I need to march, now,” he grumbled as they emerged to the twilight city.
“Your friend has awoken, you may begin ladening the beasts I believe,” Anubi said, gesturing toward the garden.
Lucius excused himself and took off at a run. Sweat speckled his body as he flew up the stairs. He was panting as he spotted the new Golden.
Here, I should stop referring to him as an angel, an emissary, or a divine beast. With his soul stripped bare and grafted to such a great, arcane machine, the needs of his human body trumped the effects of his will. Golden was a man, no more powerful than any other. He sat at the edge of the stone platform, his legs dangling off the side like he might leap into one of the retaining ponds.
“Does your army have use for a newborn, Solhart?” Golden asked, tilting his head to his shoulder and glancing backward.
“For an infant? No. That’s not what you re though.”
“I barely remember a thing. That jackal stripped me bare like meat from the bone. I think once I could have picked up a sword, if I so chose. Now, truth be told, I am seated here because I don’t quite remember how to walk. I stumble and lurch. My feet aren’t numb but my body doesn’t know where to put them. The part of me that was bird and the memories of the man we killed, they don’t fit together like they previously did.”
“You sold off a lot of memory then.”
“But not the structure beneath. As I said. I am wiped clean. I am newly born. I suppose I shall have to ride with the baggage train.”
“No,” Lucius said. He stepped beside Golden and gestured to a few of the clearings–where homes once stood–to the masses of human-shaped thralls emerging from their cognitive metamorphoses. “Those are blank. There’s still plenty of you in you. If you can’t fight, you can fill the role children fill.”
Golden’s brow furrowed as he glared at the young commander. “What role do children have in war?”
“Drums and horns and running messages. Doing as they are told to echo the intent of their commander. Those bannermen I had created are worthless if I can’t give them orders and I need to be fighting, not blowing my lungs through a horn.”
Golden’s features relaxed. He nodded and sighed. “That, I suppose I can do. To war then?”
“A brutal, tribal affair. A war only in the crudest sense. In fact, I hardly want to call it a war if I can’t match wits against an enemy commander. We’re just going to have a great big brawl I think; no matter how much I try to maneuver or strategize.”
Golden laughed. “Historically speaking, that’s most wars.”
“I thought you sold your memories?” Lucius said, smirking and offering a hand up.
“Only most,” the former angel said, taking his hand.
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1. I have omitted identifiable features of the fungi on purpose. Anyone qualified to harvest the fungus doesn’t need to be told of its appearance here and anyone learning of it from this text deserves to be poisoned for their folly.