The Shadow of the Moon-Lydia's Tale

Chapter Sixteen

Dragging Lydia by the hair the Halout ran like a man possessed through the damp corridors of the old fortress. Lydia grasped him by the wrist to lessen the pain and listened to his unintelligible ranting's as they stumbled blindly over piles of lose stones, crumbling remnants of half fallen ceilings and broken colonnades. Every now and then the roof opened up and she could see a flash of sunlight blazing above them through the ragged teeth of shattered beams, then they were swept back into darkness again. Here and there, rooms opened up either side of them, revealing their startled occupants as they raced past, dirty clothed men sitting around feeble fires, their blank faces turned to them as they struggled past. In one room a man stood, his leather apron splattered red, sharpening a long blunt knife. Behind him swung the carcass of an animal, kicking slowly, its blood gushing into a rusted bowl from its slit throat. A group of Issi stared impassively at her as she was pulled past and then turned their expressionless eyes back to the blackening blood in the bowl.  

As they began to climb a long spiral staircase her hold on the Halout's wrist slipped. Crying out in pain she struggled to pull free of his grip. He stopped, span her around, pushed her hard against the wall and put the knife to her throat. 'If you pull any more Prophet I'll hamstring you and then drag you up the stairs with me. Is that what you want?' 

Lydia shook her head and they resumed to their relentless climb. After a while the darkness closed in around them until she could not see her feet below her. She closed her eyes and willed the pain away and like an automata she mindlessly climbed after him, occasionally stumbling and getting her head jerked up in retribution. The temperature rose as they steady climbed upward, soon her shirt was wringing wet, stuck to her skin, held by the rivulets of sweat running down her back. 

After an eternity they stopped. Lydia rested against a wall gasping in the wretchedly hot air. By her she could feel the Halout fumbling to open a door, then she heard the turning of a key in a lock. She was dragged violently round and thrown sprawling onto a hard stone floor. Instantly she was hit by an overpowering smell. The smell of old flesh, of death, raced across the floor and crawled into her nose and mouth and raced down into her lungs. She put her hand over her mouth and tried to stop herself retching. 

He walked in after her. In the gloom Lydia watched horrified as he undid his robe and dropped it to the floor. He was naked underneath. She looked away and covered her eyes. 

'Look at me. LOOK at me!' 

She turned to face him. At first she could not make out much, a sliver of light crept through the cracks in a great stone rolled up against one wall of the chamber they were in. Then gradually as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she could see him. He stood naked in front of her. In the shadows his skin appeared deeply mottled as if he had a heavy bruising across his arms and upper chest. 

The Halout stepped closer to her, she could hear his heavy breathing after the exertion of the climb. Instinctively she went to draw back but she stopped and watched entranced him as he raised his arms above his head and slowly turned in front of her. His body was covered in writing, a myriad of tiny perfectly formed letters chased across his flexing muscles, like a pages of an illuminated manuscript, thousands of minute curves and arcs rippled across his skin, each set forming a passage of visionary literary perfection.  

'Here,' he stopped and looked down at his chest, 'is written all that I was, all that I am now and when I die, all I have ever been.' He ran the blackened fingers of his hand across his chest. 'All my servants are here, all the men they have killed are here and every single significant action I have ever made is recorded here. The people I knew, my friends and enemies are all here, every singular point of importance preserved for prosperity. Do you know why Prophet?'