Epic Of Ahiram (Book 1) (10 page)

“What are we doing?” he muttered, “No one has ever dared defy Sureï the Sorcerer before. Fool!” he yelled, unable to contain himself. “This is sheer madness. I command you to stop.”

Ignoring the warden, Rahaak focused on the twelve orbs circling around him.

“Twelve orbs, Jethro,” he said with glee. “No other priest of Baal, not even the great Sureï has done this.” He glanced back at the warden curled behind a twisted column of the strange building, and laughed a wiry, maniacal laughter.

“Tonight, the medallion is mine,” he roared. Not waiting any longer, he summoned Baal’s power. Immediately, the twelve orbs formed a line from the priest to the medallion.

Jethro whimpered, covered his ears and shut his eyes.

The wave of pain came back with a vengeance. This time, Rahaak thought his veins had been filled with razor sharp nails. Still, his training prevailed, and slowly, carefully, he snapped open the cover of a small, silvery tube hanging by a thick chain around his neck. Two small blue spheres shot up and began circling the aligned orbs. Each time they passed by him, the priest shut his eyes and held his breath, for the stench of the concentrators was unbearable. Gradually, the fast moving objects drew closer to the orbs until their orbit brought them mere inches from the orb farthest from Rahaak.

“A little closer,” croaked Rahaak.

Jethro wished the ground would open and swallow him, but he knew the Library was indestructible. No, there would be no hole to swallow him up. He would have to see this madness through.

“Steady now,” said Rahaak, “steady…”

The concentrators were about to graze the farthest orb. Jethro had sufficient knowledge of Baal’s magic to know that orbs were channels of power requiring energy to function: energy provided by the concentrators through the intermediary of the priest. It was the duty of the priest to release the lethal power locked within a concentrator and make it available to an orb by flowing it through his body. The pain he felt was excruciating, compounded by the number of orbs he was willing to use. The energy transfer must happen quickly, before the priest exhausts himself, loses control, and dies in sheer agony. Many did die. Worse still, if during this transfer, the priest allows a concentrator to touch an orb, reality would shatter and Arayatian creatures would materialize.

By now, Jethro realized that his strategy had turned Rahaak into an ambitious fool, a madman, willing to stand twelve revolving orbs in a straight line—the most potent formation for these objects—and let them be fed by not one, but two, concentrators.

“
I
am the fool,” muttered Jethro, “an utter fool. What fit of madness led me to believe I could be the master of the Libre Aharof? What have I done? What have I done?” Jethro glanced at Rahaak and bit his lower lip so hard he tasted blood.

Rahaak willed for Sureï’s formidable curse to be broken. Feverishly, Jethro entreated Baal to let him live through the night.

“Now,” roared the priest.

The two concentrators stopped their flight in front of the farthest orb and sparked a thin, blue arc of intense heat that sizzled and crackled between them. Quickly, the arc broke into a multitude of tendrils resembling a miniature thunderstorm. One of the otherworldly stems licked the surface of the orb. The priest stammered as if hit in the stomach. He bent forward, cried out in a loud voice, and pushed against an invisible barrier.

Like an unstoppable wave, the blue light covered the surface of the orb and moved toward Rahaak in a straight line, turning the twelve orbs into an eerie, iridescent chain. When the strange light engulfed the orb closest to Rahaak, the priest flung his head back and screamed words that curdled Jethro’s blood and made him wish he had never been born.

The concentrators shattered and the orb in front of the priest burst into a bubble of magma, nearly scalding him. The hot liquid seeped along the blue ray of light without harming it and swallowed the second orb, turning it into magma; it continued until it reached the farthest sphere. Slowly, the spheres of magma began to shrink while the eerie blue and red magma ray thickened until the spheres disappeared.

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 heat 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.