Читать книгу Legacy - James Steel, James Steel - Страница 8

The dancers in the graveyard waited silently for the signal.

Their faces, lit by flames, stared at the huge man standing in the centre of their circle.

Abba Athanasius was a Nubian, dressed now as an Ishfaqi mystic. His body was a slab of black muscle, more like a force of nature than flesh and blood. He was naked but for a black loincloth and kudu-skin bands that decorated his arms and legs.

Sensing the hour, he held up his right arm and bellowed, ‘Dance for the darkness in your heart!’

‘Amen!’ they roared, and the music began.

In the centre of the circle, black men drummed on hollow logs; staring unseeing at the flames. Light gleamed off the sweat on their muscles.

Other musicians played flutes and horns. The cult was of every creed and colour: Muslims, Christians, Druze, Alawites, Copts, Maronites and Bogomils.

The crowd danced as if they were one. Concentric rings of people moved in and out like a giant organism breathing. Their stamping feet stirred up the dust in the moonlight.

The dancers ululated. They made sharp cracks with little brass hand-cymbals. The sound was deafening, a heavy cloth of noise draped over them, suffocating their senses.

Abba Athanasius ran to and fro in the middle of the rings. He held a small drum in one hand and struck it repeatedly with a stick. He bounded around the circle, leaped in the air and screamed at the crowd, urging them on.

A young German knight, Eberhardt von Steltzenberg, danced himself into a frenzy and opened his heart to a nefarious force.

The rhythm grew faster and faster. The crowd shouted louder and louder. The drummers beat harder and harder.

The witch doctor suddenly stood stock-still. Sensing a spiritual climax he threw an arm up into the air.

‘Silence!’ he bellowed, and the drummers and musicians stopped.

The crowd gave a great groan as though winded by a blow. A sorrowful sound; as if coughed up out of the recesses of their souls.

The silence was overwhelming. It pressed itself into their heads. Men cried out and fell down on their knees.

Abba Athanasius called out to the drummers, in a quiet voice, ‘Softly,’ and they began a gentle rhythm.

As they played, the black priest picked a large metal censer off the ground. It was made of three heavy iron chains attached to the rim of a metal pan. A lid with holes in it slid down the chains to cover the pan. Abba Athanasius flung the container into the fire and scooped it out, brimming over with hot coals.

As he was doing this, a gang of huge Nubian men pushed their way in through the crowd. They were naked as bulls, faces as powerful and impassive as cliffs.

Four of them were holding staves with solid metal ends, which they used to push the crowd aside. Behind them came a man lugging a narrow iron bucket, and two more carrying a heavy chest between them. Another four held the poles of a litter supporting a three-foot-long lump of rock like black glass. The Nubian Deathstone. The men staggered under its weight.

It was so dark and shiny that it seemed to have a light inside it, as if it knew something.

They pushed their way through the worshippers. When they came into the clearing they set the litter down. The priest leaped onto it, straddling the Deathstone, silhouetted in the light of the fire. His hands grasped the shaft of a sledgehammer and swung it up over his head. With a cry he brought down a swingeing blow on the stone.

The sound rang out and a lump the size of a fist split off. The priest scrambled to pick it up. He held the rock above his head to show to the devotees. They groaned like cattle.

Abba Athanasius flung the lump into the metal mortar that the Nubians had brought with them. The men with poles arranged themselves around it and began to pound the rock to powder with their metal staves, just like the women in their home villages pounded cassava. They drove the heavy poles down so that they thudded in a constant rhythm.

As they worked, the priest threw open the chest; using a trowel he heaped incense from it into the censer. Lumps of myrrh produced a cloud of sweet fragrance. Other spices threw up puffs of white smoke. Finally he poured in trowels of opium resin.

When the rock was ground to powder the priest stood up on the litter and raised the heavy mortar above his head. A Nubian held the censer up to him by its chains. Abba Athanasius bent down and carefully poured the fine black crystal powder onto the pile of ingredients and then slid the cover down the chains and over the pan.

Black smoke poured out of holes in the lid. The huge monk took hold of the chains and whirled the censer around his head, sending out clouds of sparks into the night whilst he chanted prayers.

He gestured to the crowd to kneel and made his way around the rings of worshippers with the censer, dispensing a strange benediction. As he moved along the lines of kneeling figures he held the chain so that the pan passed underneath each bowed head. Evil, black clouds of narcotic smoke poured out, and each worshipper took a deep inhalation.

Eberhardt kneeled and stared at the Deathstone. Its gleaming black depths mesmerised him; he could feel it reaching out to him, pulling him into its mystery.

What was its secret knowledge?

Where had it come from?

What was it saying to him?

He knew he had to find its source, hidden somewhere in the heart of Africa. It would be his purpose in life.

He heard the priest coming along the row. The young knight had been shaken by the worship; his broad shoulders trembled with each breath. He bowed his head as the priest neared; his long, brown hair fell around his face. Nervously he brushed it back behind his ears. The huge man was mumbling some blessing in a language that he did not understand, over and over again as he walked slowly along.

Eberhardt could see the red glow of the censer out of the corner of his eye and prepared himself.

The first whiff of smoke caught at his nose, intensely fragrant. He forced himself to take a huge gulp of it as it passed under him.

Hot, noxious vapour filled his throat and bronchioles. He felt a seizure in his respiratory tract under the powerful chemical assault.

His throat burned and convulsed. He could not breathe. The strong opiate hit his brain as the black miasma of the Deathstone worked its way into his body and being.

Darkness invaded his heart.

He felt both lifted up and cast down, overawed and appalled. He had been invested by something profound yet terrible.

He clutched at his throat but no air came in. He passed out and fell face down on the ground.