Casting Shadows - Chapter 6
“Our actions in life cast shadows on the future.” - Words attributed to Xarathustra.
Aurok stood sentinel by a large metal door within the court. Beyond this, and up the spiralling staircase, were the prophet’s private quarters.
The guard was enormous even by the standards of other bull-centaurs. His naked bronzed flesh looked as it were cast in copper and his red beard was like a flame. The animalistic part of his body, was covered in black fur and had red scale-mail laid upon it.
In one enormous fist he held a spear of at least eight feet in length and of exquisite craftsmanship. Clearly a ceremonial piece, it would no doubt still have been deadly if wielded by this brute.
“The prophet is not to be disturbed,” he said in a rumbling, low voice, “he is engaged in his daily ablutions and rituals of cleanliness.”
Azkul, one of the courtiers in the tower of Bezall, in his ornately decorated golden hat muttered some minor curse and left.
Aurok was a fanatical follower of the prophet, Enlil-Shazzar. His words, as far as he was concerned , were the words of the Dark-Father himself.
Bull centaurs were famed for their fanatical devotion and this made them useful tools as well as dedicated praetorians to sorcerer prophets throughout the darklands. Some sorcerers commanded legions of these beasts in battle.
However, Bezall was, by all descriptions, a minor tower. And Enlil, in the grand schemes and politics of Zharr Naggrund and the surrounding cities, a minor prophet.
It was probably for this reason that Aurok was the only centaur in his service and the only centaur within the tower.
Enlil-Shazzar had very few warriors under his command in fact. He was a shepherd of souls and not a commander of armies. This was not a fortress of any strategic significance but its religious significance, to those who laboured within it, could not easily be measured.
Most of the armed troops who were garrisoned, at times, in the tower were really under the command of Mardurkarr, a part of his personal guard.
Mardurkarr had, during his years away from the tower, styled himself as a southern Darkland warlord and brought many a good fighter under his banner. He now came and went from this place and as he did, so did his army. It was the intermittent presence of this force that helped keep the ziggurat’s walls free from swarming hill-goblins or rampaging ogre tribes.
Despite this service, Aurok did not like Mardurkarr. The beardling had gone against the natural order of things. It should have been he who took up his father’s work but he had refused to learn of the ways of sorcery.
In Aurok’s mind, the fact that Mardurkarr had not followed in his father’s footsteps towards prophethood had nothing to do with his lack of connection to the winds of magic and more to with having not tried hard enough.
The centaur had deep respect for Enlil-Shazzar of course because he had, as regent of this tower, continued the great work. The prophet’s stoic acceptance of duty above glory and dedication to the Dark Father resonated well with his own values. Whereas the beardling was a glory seeker who had turned his back on his responsibility. It was not proper. A fire-dwarf should pay his dues.
Aurok looked forward to the coming day, when the tower would be finished. They would be wreathed in glory and be blessed: prophecy would be fulfilled.
Another dwarf in fine robes approached the centaur and bowed. Before he could speak, Aurok said, “The prophet is not to be disturbed,: he is engaged in his daily ablutions and rituals of cleanliness.”
The golden blade made a scraping sound as it moved over Enlil-Shazzar’s scalp. The dark black grease which built up around its curved edge was now punctuated with tiny shards of white hair.
Ari scraped the blade upon the side of the urn and then went back to his work, expertly manoeuvring the razor around Enlil’s stumpy horns. All the while the sorcerer laid back, eyes closed, on the lounger.
Slowly the grease was removed and the stubble from the pale head was removed entirely. Ari polished the surface like a bronze shield and cocked his head upon seeing his own reflection on his master’s scalp.
“It is done,” said Ari.
“Very good, my boy,” said Enlil-Shazzar, opening his eyes and feeling the smoothness of his head with his good hand, “Would you ready the bath?”
“As you wish,” said Ari who was cleaning his golden knife and sheafing it in its scabbard behind him, “and after that master? Perhaps, I will kill you?”
Enlil laughed, “you will get the chance, I am sure! You just need to find the right opportunity.”
Ari smiled a crooked grin, revealing sharp fangs. He then bowed and left the room.
Ari turned the valve outside the bathroom allowing the heat from the volcanic vents to reach the waters.
He then pulled a lever and clean water, pumped from a deep aquifer gushed into the mosaic pool from hidden brass tubes. The holes from which the water flowed were artfully hidden in the nostrils of a great bull’s head within the mosaic design.
The pool would take a few minutes to fill and perhaps a few minutes more to heat. The water would cut out in time: a sophisticated mechanism ensuring that the perfect amount would be poured.
“You could not make water hot enough,” said a voice entering the tiled room, “to rid you of your stench.”
Ari turned, his blue robes swirling, to look upon the source of this sound.
Jaraz was clothed in a black and gold tunic and he was running a hand through his greying beard.
“You dare to look upon me? Grobi?” he smiled with malice.
Ari’s small red eyes darted from side to side and then settled on the floor. There was only one way in or out of this room and the vizier was now blocking it.
“How is it, I wonder, that an animal like you has the confidence of our prophet?”
Ari did not speak.
“Perhaps it is a test?” mused Jaraz, “perhaps he wants to know if a true “dwarf of fire” would stand by idly and watch their prophet be lead astray by a lesser race? Perhaps you have bewitched him? Or you are an assassin ready to strike before the final stone is laid upon our tower?”
Ari did not look up.
“Have you no tongue, goblin?!” spat Jaraz, “or is its use saved expressly for dripping poison in the ear of our master?
The vizier was speaking no louder than a whisper yet his words came forth like venom.
“And all the while I, Jaraz of Bezall, am left out in the dark….The time draws near, Grobi, when great change shall come.”
Jaraz was moving closer to Ari now. Ari instinctively took a step back but he felt the edge of the pool with the heel of his slipper. Within the pool boiling water now filled and the warmth from the steam could be felt.
The vizier was very close to him.
“One push, animal. One push. It would appear an accident. A careless “Green-skin” who slipped, fell, boiled and drowned.
“And then I would serve the master of this tower and I would be in his favour.”
Jaraz seemed to let his mind wander for a moment.
“The master of this tower…whomever that may be…”
Sweat trickled from Ari’s brow as the heat from the pool rose around him. Jaraz snapped out of his thoughts and looked at Ari. Fury filled his eyes.
“Jaraz,” enquired Enlil-Shazzar, standing in the doorway, “do you wish to share a bath with me? It really is not my custom, although I hear it is quite popular in the south.”
“O mighty prophet,” said Jaraz turning to him, his face a mask of sycophantic obsequiousness, “I heard the sound of running water and wished to ensure that your house-slave was not using your bath for himself.”
“Ha! Ari is clean enough. I think that the baths of Enlil-Shazzar would boil my boy here alive. Your concern is unwarranted, Visier.”
“So it would seem,” said Jazar bowing low and moving out of the room with a pace approaching haste.
Enlil-Shazzar watched him leave and then walked to close the door.
Ari silently sheafed the golden knife, held behind his back.
“I do believe you were going to kill Jaraz,” said Enlil-Shazzar as he turned back towards the pool and held out his one remaining arm. Ari walked over and helped to disrobe him.
“Master?” Asked Ari,
“I see with more than my eyes, boy,” Enlil reminded his pet slave while giving him a stern look.
“Master,” nodded Ari as he helped the prophet into his boiling bath. It was noticeable that the curse had crept further than the sorcerer’s elbow now and slowly worked its way up his bicep. Enlil gave a wincing sigh as he submerged the stone flesh.
“We are so close to completion, Ari. So close. This tower shall become the House of Hashut as my lord Bezallakur had foreseen. We cannot falter now. Too much is at stake.
“This curse must remain a secret until the final stone is laid. It will only be a matter of days now. Nothing can prevent that. Especially not a bath-house brawl between a high-born Dawi and a house-slave.”
“Master,“ nodded Ari.
“I mean this, Ari,” said the prophet with sincerity in his eyes, “I am fond of you, but if you were to hurt a Dawi, I could not and would not protect you. Cold violence is in your blood, even if your culture and language lost to you. But… you cannot let a Dawi ever come to harm from your blade”
“Unless it be you, master?” ventured Ari, a grin creeping onto his features.
“That goes without saying, my boy,” smiled Enlil as he lay back and enjoy his bath.
At the peak of the unfinished tower, surrounded by a little scaffolding, and a stack of unpolished rocks, stood a black-grey statue.
It was dwarven in stature and wore a long curled beard with a top lip free from hair. The style was not unlike that of Enlil’s. There were differences however. Where Enlil-Shazzar’s bald head was populated by two stubby spikes, this head boasted enormous bovine horns that shot out from each side. He could not have worn a towering hat like a Naggrunder even if he had wished.
The figure wore a traditional cloak and held a staff in one hand which terminated in the “V” rune of Hashut himself. The other hand was held out before it as if conjuring some kind of spell.
The expression of the statue was lifelike, yet hard to read. Was it deep thought or sadness? Perhaps regret? It certainly was not the visage of a triumphant or boastful moment frozen in time, rather one of melancholy and reluctant acceptance.
It had been the exact moment that Bezallakur had realised that this great work given to him was not his to complete. His part in the story had come to a close.
The tower had begun to be built on his command and from the visions that were given to him by the Dark Father. “Upon the rents of the earth, where the breath of Hashut rises up, a ziggurat that once completed would be claimed by the Farher himself and made his own - the House of Hashut. “
Very soon that work would be complete.
At the base of this statue: a statue which had once lived, breathed, laboured and died, there was a bronze plaque. In Zharralid runes, it read: “May my successor, the prophet of Bezall, finish my work.”
