“Mokbal, it is quite possible to secretly curse leprosy and nuggets of tumours onto people and then to command the illnesses to go. Loyalties can be won in a day that way as people will see a person as their Healer. They’ll believe anything he tells them after that, a fast hold over one person’s mind or that of thousands” Mokbal always listened attentively, cocking his head like a dog at what he couldn’t possibly understand.
“Yes indeed. A person can make farmers’ crops wither and then make the stalks spring up huge like poles”, ( he raised his hand high for a bush-image to rise up and then disappear ) “make their barren animals produce giant litters or their prize ones go barren; a majician can control the whole countryside then”. He made the boy’s eyes go wide as he projected images into him of vast herds of piglets, of flocks obliterated by the sweep of his hand, – “ or they might summon spirit bulls to thunder at people”. Mokbal felt the ground shake and looked all around. “ ‘Might call down vultures out of an empty sky, make body parts appear in the air. Just imagine, my friend, what terror can come from materialising a demon or making even a house cat fly!” and Mokbal sat very small. “Very handy devices, I assure you, should someone need to control village farmers and peasants”.
Then he mused, “Or maybe they’d want to addle people into sudden craziness or mimic their thinking patterns and insert their own, eh? or by a simple flick of a finger suck breath from their lungs as they speak. Or maybe, – what do you think? – blind them as they stare.” Mokbal shut his eyes tight. “Useful when confounding wise men, Marduk priests, vizirs. It is quite possible to sump away energy from muscles, you know, and so, in the future, Mokbal, you might easily drop any local palace guardsmen jelly-like at your feet.
What would men do when a man draws every woman to want him, no matter her rank, no matter theirs, morale about their women gone in a moment from a king or commander?” Mokbal never could follow these bits. “Female loyalties can be very useful around royal courts, and a female’s readiness to be special for a time perhaps as his chosen Marduk Priestess, his honoured Ishtar devotee, whatever, can secure their obedience for months. Ha, any men strong enough to resist him doing it would be demoralized by what they themselves felt under the reach of his super-male appeal, especially if he projected seducing spirits into them at the same time!
Even Nature itself could be made to yield to him for awhile!” He often got heated in imagining like this and Mokbal didn’t want to have to see him do it. “He could incinerate things from a distance with his stare, make a giant storm cloud appear in a courtyard or bed chamber to soak people as they sleep, stun with a thunderclap right over a person’s head, seem to make the sun leap and dance! Black vortexes could be positioned on roads, in a room, over beds, to whisk people away to deserts, to sudden cliff edges, to the center of a midnight Wiccan ritual!”
Such were Hamar’s full stores, and he relished them. The right or wrong of them made no difference to him now, so long as they’d work in the world of men. He daydreamed much these days, his young head filled with images of territories.
Only, the ultimate issue of what he’d forever become was still not settled. And could not be escaped much longer, nor the advance toward the learnings of his own Death.
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