The senior tutors rose solemnly and began their approach to their former student. Seeing their homage Hamar dismissed the howling demon as easily as he’d called for it. All the highest ranks of majicians who’d remained standing, bent low.
Who would have thought it, two of the elders only had to flick their wands in unison in a rapid tracing of the wall-hangings to his right, and the entrance to the Trysting place opened there in front of them all! It had always been so near and yet so far, – in all his years in the place Hamar had never perceived of it even once.
Hamar stood in front of the new entrance that now gaped wide to welcome him. Aktiarh, Red Priest over all the teachers, quickly removed his turban, a senior teacher removed his silver medallion, and the two stood chanting on either side of the opening.
With a solemn salute and lowered eyes, Aktiarh bowed low out of Hamar’s way and made a sweeping gesture for Hamar to come forward. An alcove lay beyond the parted tapestry, and Hamar was surprised first of all to see a carpet in it that he somehow recognized.
Its colours were brilliant and almost rippled against each other in the rich sunlight that beamed down from somewhere above the alcove. In fact, the carpet’s geometric patterns were so bright they made his subterranean eyes water. He went through the portal and stepped onto the carpet, riveted by its beauty, trying to remember where he’d seen the ancient designs on it before. Wherever that was he hadn’t known their meaning at the time, but now he could read them, “Entry and exit, death of Light, light of Death.”
He stood in the middle and turned to face the assembly, framed by the ornate doorway in his moment of glory, – himself a grand sum of all their crafts. His form was lit there by the light streaming down from above, his eyes black sockets in his patterned face, his young black beard trimmed neatly to a point under his chin.
A new dawn lay waiting above him, and now the power grew strong as the energy pulses of the Grand Master stroked on him in waves, pulling at him. As Hamar majestically threw his cape up over his shoulder, the carpet rose. He watched through the receding door as the last of Aktiarh’s face disappeared beneath his feet.
He turned his eyes upward. Once bonded he and the Master would return, united as future Rulers of the World! How their joined powers were pounding now!
He looked up, his eyes fixed on the bright square enlarging above him. Pure sunlight at last! The good heat of day began burning on his face and shoulders, and he marvelled that it meant the ceremonies must have taken all night. So, the Grand Master already knew to wait for him aboveground, – in readiness for a new global dawn, the Master’s enormous mind wonderfully attuned with his for their global task!
The surface neared! Oh the thrill of rising into an earthly morning! He trembled, all his majic stores cargoed and ready!
As the carpet slowed near the top Hamar’s dough-white skin began to burn, and he thought it must be the start of a very hot day indeed in Al Musar. He squinted, surprised that his eyes couldn’t cope with the light at all. The outdoor air stank to him now, its rotten cucumber smell hurting his nostrils.
His face was red, circles of sweat widening around his armpits. As he came to a stop he peered hard to see anything and found himself facing out through a door into some sort of small courtyard. He wiped the stinging sweat from his eyelids and peered toward the sky beyond it, and was confused…
…the horizon that showed through the doorway was dim. He could just make out a shape poised there in the sky. It was the moon. Not the sun.
So, it wasn’t daytime outside! It was still night.
He could just discern a garden was out there. Its swept and empty entrance, its mass of dark bushes and spindly trees, – was the one he’d first known! It was the same place he’d stumbled into as a boy in Al Musar, he knew so, – the old grove!
Which meant, – this building he now stood in was that old majic house. There on the floor the helmeted skull lay looking up at him.
Then the horror of the truth sapped any strength from him!
It meant that this great light, – and this awful energy, – was not coming from outside. It was coming from… THE ONE BEHIND HIM!
Hamar whirled round!
Had he expected to confront a Master who was somehow like him?
THERE, towering above him in radiant beams WAS THE FOUR-HORNED GOATMAN ! – but alive, and more terrible than any idol!
An evil smile stretched across its daggered teeth. Its eyes orange fires! Its aura stinking the place!
A growl became a roar. The creature threw its great head back and let out an eerie howl that rose up in volume almost too loud for human ears.
Hamar was rigid! Frozen! – HELPLESS!
Had he thought a Death Master wouldn’t be EVIL? A killer who wouldn’t kill?Evil that wouldn’t LIE? Deceptions, – all of his own majics pitiful!
The howl from ‘The Master’ became a braying laugh of insanity and hate that rocked against the building’s walls and pounded into Hamar like fists! This was THE DEATH GOD, a hideous being. NOT a Grand Lord!
And he’d come for HAMAR!
Hamar shot out of the door like a wasp!
Behind him a bank of evil was released from the creature and it sped like a shadow to fill the yard with a nullifying despair. It dragged on Hamar’s whole being and slowed his moves, the devil’s waul echoing within the walls of the square.
Out of the door a black flood of snakes poured from the god’s feet!
Then the carpet hauled up its sides and flew out over the spillage, majically stretching itself out over the square to exult over the treetops and wheel around obliterating the stars, – covering up any last light at all!
Hamar’s cape flitted around his head like a snared bird as he stumbled ahead! Then the thorn bushes snagged all over the cloth and pulled him down to the ground! His energy drained almost to nothing as the great sorrow-of-death weighed on him. His heartbeat heavied until his heart was brick-like in his chest!
Now the carpet fully stretched to the garden edge and sumped the last strength from Hamar’s arms and legs. His face was flattened to the ground while above him the carpet’s demonic tonnage was poised, trembling, ready to plunge down and stamp him as flat as a roach!
He wheezed into the dirt, summoning every last cord and sinew in his body, and managed to dig the corners of his elbows and knees hard into the ground to inch forward, then faster and faster through the roots of the bramble coils, barely outdistancing the wave of vipers curling up through all the branches!
Frantically he remembered he once came into this place through a stone wall! He aimed toward the spot in the wall where he saw moonlight shining through a hole.
The devil’s voice dropped again into a pumping growl, idling for another crescendo. Hamar sank inches into the dirt as a wave of Grief and Mourning next softened the soil to be like seething grave worms and he wildly scooped himself along toward the hole, while behind him the leading tide of snake heads tangled with each other in the thorns.
Gaining the wall Hamar frantically dug at the opening with his nails! He forced a leg through the split, dragged his body through, with ounces ofstrength wedged himself into the narrow space between the walls!
In pain he shoved his creaking ribs along until he fell out into the alleyway!
A big mound was there, – an old sleeping camel! Hamar yanked its rope free from the stake and launched himself onto its hump! It rose bellowing as he kicked and kicked it into action, and as he swung its head to leave the lane its sleepy owner appeared, unmindful of the carpet’s shape just creeping high over the old walls and blotting out the moonlight!
As the old man grabbed at the animal’s halter rope, swearing at Hamar and blocking their way, Hamar concentrated a last stare into the man’s eyes and struck him blind!
The man cried out, tripping over as Hamar rode off berserk on the loping animal! Behind them a spray of snakes spewed out through the hole into the alley, – and disappeared.
With a flourish the carpet swung round to sail back into the little house, recalled by its monstrous owner. Only the fiend’s laughter continued on.
It pumped higher and higher as if laughing at the sky itself. Then it trailed off into a final triumphant howl.
The awful glow above the garden, – vanished.
….
Hamar ran the camel into lameness.
He abandoned it chuffing and limping in the dark far away from the town. He ran on through the night and went further than he’d ever run as a child, out across the plains beyond Al Musar.
In the darkest hours the dawn refused to break through for him. Instead ominous clouds and racing wind battered him with the cold threat of rain. When he couldn’t press on any further up a hill he sank down against its side, only then daring to look back toward all he’d left behind.
But it would never really be left behind.
He could never get away, – not from HIM.
IT!
He hugged his knees tight to his chest and buried his head in his arms. Lightning lit the hill white as thunder boomed. His tattered cape leapt up in the stormy wind that blew and he grabbed it down around himself. He’d never been so alone.
At least, not since the day he’d buried his poor mama near his beloved dad!
As more thunders came and then the first spatters of rain, Hamar’s tears joined the water that ran down his face. Now, at last, with his whole heart he cried the deep racking sobs of his childhood as he’d never done before.
Mercy, still at work.
END: “MAJI!” BOOK ONE
NEXT IN SAGA! BOOK TWO: “TO KILL A MAJI!”
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