Al-Biritania, or early medieval Britain if the Moors had conquered it.
800 AD, in a parallel world…
A thumb of stone stuck up higher than a man from the forest floor. Halawa would have thought little of the outcropping had her companion, the old mawlawi Ishraq, thrust his finger at it while whistling for her attention.
“Look at it closely,” he said. “Do you not see the inscriptions?”
Halawa leaned her head toward the monolith and squinted where Ishraq pointed. Through the mossy crust which had grown over the course of centuries, she could indeed make out lines indented in its surface. After she dismounted her stripe-legged horse and approached the stone on foot, she used her scimitar to clear away the moss, exposing the eroded inscriptions underneath.
Some were strings of unintelligible symbols of circles, crescents, and notches, which Halawa guessed represented some ancient language. What she could recognize was the larger illustration chiseled into the rock above the rows of text, with scattered flecks of red paint clinging to it. It was a creature with the wings of a bat, the taloned legs of an eagle, and the sinuous tail and neck of a serpent, with the horned lizard-like head bearing sharp teeth in its gaping jaws. A sphere of amber embedded in the rock winked from where the beast’s eye would be, making Halawa’s dark brown skin creep over her body.
“The Red Dragon of the Brythons,” Halawa said under her breath. “Does this mean we’re nearby?”
“If the old map doesn’t deceive, Amira, then of course,” Ishraq said. “Keep your eyes out while we press on. The barrow could be anywhere around here.”
In ancient East Africa, this rhino-riding warrior is defending her home from intruding marauders!
East Africa, 500 BC
Wangari felt a jolt as Kimani, her white rhinoceros, stopped in mid-canter. The animal lifted his horned head to sniff the air and let out a nervous, whinny-like groan. Smoke. Wangari could smell it too, and she could see black tongues of it licking the sky from behind the grassy hill to their left. It could have been a wildfire, or it could have been local villagers clearing their grounds to make way for crops or pasture. Or it might have been what Wangari dreaded it was.
The only way to find out was to investigate it herself.
She squeezed her legs on Kimani’s flanks, her usual way of commanding him to go. He stayed put with a stubborn snort. Wangari squeezed harder, flicking the rhino’s reins, but he still would not move. Not that she could blame him, for it was not in the nature of grazing beasts to approach signs of fire. If she could not force the rhino to go, she would have to encourage him somehow.
Wangari dug into the leather pouch under the sash around her waist, plucked out a handful of ripe green jackalberries, and tossed them toward the hill. Kimani burst into a jog in the direction his rider had thrown the fruit, carrying her uphill as he sucked up and devoured as many of them as he came across. After giving her mount a playful rub on his tough and pale gray forehead, Wangari hopped off him and secured his reins to a nearby raisin bush.
Beneath the hill’s opposite slope, laying in front of a low cliff, was a cluster of leather tents, several of which had caught fire. Squinting through the haze of smoke, Wangari could make out the mutilated bodies of men strewn between the tents, giving off the putrid stench of death. There were living men scrambling throughout the campsite as well. Some poured water from vases onto the fires while others hauled their dead or wounded brethren into the tents that remained unscorched.
Seeing all the slain people made Wangari’s eyes water even more than the stinging smoke did. It was all too much like what had happened to her own village when she was a teenager.
Grayscale version of my illustration for “The Black Cross”.
1940
The uneven chopping of the rickety old fan was never enough to beat back the heat of a San Diego summer. I’ve been meaning to install a new one, but business hasn’t been too good for me since the big depression started. Most workdays see me baking in my little office for hours, waiting for a call, a visit, or anything else to liven things up. So far as the morning was proceeding, today looked like it wasn’t going to be much different from the usual.
I was ready to pour myself a glass of lukewarm bourbon for the slightest refreshment when Lizzie, my petite blonde secretary, chimed in with an announcement and a pearly smile. “Someone’s here to see you, Mr. O’Sullivan.”
I straightened myself in my chair and wiped the sweat off my brow. She held the door open, and there shuffled in a gentleman in a white robe with a tiny gold cross hanging from his neck. He was balding at the top, the hair on the side fading from black to gray, and his tawny complexion was typical for a Mexican or other mestizo. I don’t normally receive clients from the swarthier races, but my family’s always been Catholic, so as far as I was concerned, he would have been a brother by faith if not by blood.
“Well, well, it’s not every day I have a man of the cloth come down to my humble workplace,” I said. “Not that it’s an unwelcome change of pace, to be honest. How can I help you?”
The old priest entwined his hands with a calm smile. “Good morning to you, Señor O’Sullivan. Call me Father Manuel, of the Mission Santa Isabella, a little out into the countryside east of town. It’s small as the old missions go, I will admit, and not very remarkable until recently.”
“Until recently? How so?”
“I know a Frenchman by the name of Pierre Dupont who is like an explorer or antiquarian. He was in the Belgian Congo a year ago, and he was kind enough to donate to our establishment a special relic he’d uncovered there. But first, Señor, have you heard of the legend of Prester John?”
I scratched the back of my head. “Can’t say I recall the name.”
“They say he was descended from one the three wise men who visited baby Christ, ruling over a Christian kingdom hidden somewhere in the Orient. At first, people thought he was in India or perhaps Central Asia, but then the Portuguese started looking for him in darkest Africa. And now my friend Pierre believes he has located the ruins of Prester John’s kingdom, whence he obtained this.”
Father Manuel laid a photograph on my desk. Despite the picture’s murky quality, I could make out a dark artifact shaped like a thick cross or arithmetic plus sign, with an ovular human face sculpted in its center, standing on a stone altar amidst tropical vegetation. The face’s exaggerated features resembled those of a native African mask or idol, but situated on a cross like that, it did nonetheless recall the Crucifixion.
“Imagine, this holy Christian icon has lain rotting in the jungle, surrounded by pagan ignorance, for who knows how many centuries!” the priest said. “It is only by the grace of God that my friend Pierre has found it, brought it back to civilization, and entrusted our mission with protecting it. And protect it we have, until it went missing last night.”
I leaned forward. “Went missing? Any idea where it could have gone, Father?”
“That is where you come in, Señor. At first, we tried contacting the police, but they told us they were stretched too thin, and you know how they are with brown folk like us anyway. So, it is to you we turn. We need your keen eyes to examine the scene of the crime and find who may have taken the cross and why. If you can get it back, the mission would be most grateful.”
Father Manuel bowed his head with palms together as if in prayer. His case was more serious than what I usually received. This cross of his wouldn’t have been the first stolen article I’d been asked to retrieve, but it sounded much more significant than, say, a fancy necklace or a missing cat. The Lord Himself might judge me if I refused.
“I would be more than happy to help, but it’ll cost you a bit,” I said. “Nothing personal, it’s just business.”
“Oh, I expected as much, my child,” he replied. “How does five thousand sound?”
I could not help but grin like a schoolboy examining a shiny new toy he’d gotten for Christmas. “It’s more than what most folks offer me.”
“Excellent! You are truly blessed, Señor O’Sullivan. I must warn you, though, the scene is a bit grisly.”
For once, despite the summertime temperature, I felt a tingling chill in my back.
A woman climbed onto the bough of a kapok tree, which twisted up from the treetop canopy. Her lissome dark umber figure, clad with a barkcloth skirt and halter-top, sparkled with droplets of perspiration beneath the hot glow of the sun piercing through the overcast sky. She raised her hand over her eyes, surveying the green ocean of jungle as it rolled in choppy waves all around her high vantage.
To the east rose a jagged range of overgrown crags, which ran in a ring like a caldera. Covering the basin within was a vast, terraced dome glimmering of corroded gold, with a circular hole in its summit. Under the shadow cast by the crater walls, the green-stained spires and roofs of ruined masonry poked through the jungle, but there appeared no evidence of a living settlement in the proximity of these ruins.
The woman shuddered slightly as she tightened her grip on her perch. She had heard the legends, but never considered them anything more than village storytellers’ way of frightening children into good behavior. Neither had she imagined that she would ever venture within sight of a place like they had described.
Dinanga, huntress of the village of Mungu, had spent the better half of the past moon-cycle searching for her younger sister Kazadi. The memory of the girl’s abduction, with men in blood-red loincloths lunging out of the undergrowth to seize and drag her away, had haunted Dinanga’s every dream with a vivid clarity that never faded. She would have taken those men for common marauders had she not tracked them all the way to such mysterious ruins. If the old myths had spoken the truth all that time, an even more terrible fate would await Kazadi.
Within the jungle to the southwest, someone screamed.
It’s a ball game between two cultures. If our heroine loses, she might be put to death!
The sunset lent a warm, almost cozy glow to the stacks of scarlet-washed terraces that supported the buildings of Mutul. It was a city stuffed with more pyramids than any place Neith-Ka recalled from her native Khamit. Her people might have buried their Pharaohs in monuments of equal or even more mountainous scale, but then these peculiar Mayabans would lay every one of their structures on top of a stepped pyramid, none less than two stories high, with everyone having to hike up a succession of stone stairs to reach the summit.
Neith-Ka shook her foot to dull the pain chewing away at her tendons. Already the woven papyrus of her sandals had started to splinter apart from wear. The Khamitan people may have taken pride in the grandeur of their own monuments, but never would their architects dare subject anyone to so many tortuous steps. You weren’t even supposed to climb the royal tombs back home.
Huya, her high steward, clicked his tongue with a frown.
“You could feign a good attitude, Your Highness.”
Neith-Ka drew in a deep breath through her nostrils.
“I’ve done my best. Please show some understanding.”
“I saw you pouting. And, I swear by the scales of
Ma’at, I heard you mutter a curse while shaking that leg. You don’t seem to
remember that you’re representing your father, your family, and all the Black Land
here, princess. I’ll see no more lip from you tonight!”
With another inhale, Neith-Ka straightened herself up and
nodded to her steward. As he and their entourage of guards and servants marched
up yet another ramp of steps, she huddled close behind while keeping her focus
on their destination on top. Looking back down the pyramid’s height could only
intimidate her further. Even more so with the lighter brown locals crowding
behind her with the gawks of strangers who had never seen even one
darker-skinned person their entire lives.
The lip of the stairway connected to a platform that
supported a ring of rectangular buildings around a courtyard, all plastered
with a blazing red base. Yet these were not monochrome edifices, for each had
mounted on its walls and over its doorways elaborate reliefs of jade-plumed
gods, snarling gold leopards (or were those called jaguars over here?), and the
strings of complicated square images that constituted the Mayaban culture’s
written language.
To think that foreigners claimed that Khamit’s hieroglyphs
were impossible to read! No mortal could possibly even draw their
Mayabic equivalents.
From one short and wide building at the far end of the
complex floated a faint yet spicy odor, with thin trails of steam snaking out
from tiny windows in the walls towards its left edge. Dark green curtains,
splashed with reds, golds, and purples hung behind the gallery of square
columns that supported the remainder of the building’s length. Standing in
front were a pair of native guards, stocky men in padded cotton vests who
parted their obsidian-fringed spears upon noticing the Khamitans’ arrival.
Huya bowed at the waist to both guards. “Excuse me, my good
man, but where would His Majesty the Ahau and his family be?”
“Already inside, waiting with as much patience as they’ve
got,” one of the guards said.
The second glanced at Neith-Ka from the corner of his eye.
“And you’re the one he’s waiting on, I presume. Not so ugly as far as your kind
goes, if a bit overcooked. I’d advise you to stay clear of his youngest
daughter.”
Neith-Ka gave him a subtle smile to hide the prickling sensation that crept up her back. “I’ll…uh, keep that in mind…my undercooked friend.”
“Princess! What did I say?” Huya hammered the butt of his
high steward’s staff twice on the stone pavement.
“Aw, give your woman a pass,” the first guard said. “She was
only telling my friend to show more hospitality. Right, Yaxkin?”
Strutting away from the two guards as they argued with one another in the Mayabic language, Neith-Ka plunged herself through the curtains into the royal dining hall.
I wrote and revised this short coming-of-age tale for a creative-writing assignment back in the spring of 2013, during my studies at UCSD. The writing may be rough compared to more recent work I’ve posted here, but I’m still partial to the unique little world I created for it.
Mukondi Djata slipped out of her leather sleeping tent with a spear and machete in hand. A gold sliver of sunlight crept up from behind the eastern plains to stain the twilight sky red and warm the sleeping women’s camp. Despite this heat growing outside, streams of dread colder than spring water coursed within Mukondi’s veins. Her spear’s iron point ran longer than her feet, and she would need every inch of it for the test of womanhood that she would begin this morning.
The rest of the Djata clan’s camp stayed asleep in silence. Not even the most excitable of the little girls scampered between the tents before their older sisters, mothers, and aunts woke up yet. The crimson arrow-shaped head of Sambu the Allosaurus, the Djatas’ symbolic animal, emblazoned each tent. When she noted the emblem’s jagged teeth, Mukondi gulped down a mouthful of air. The last thing she needed now was yet another reminder of the First Hunt which lay just ahead for her.
The throaty and hoarse blare of a hollowed animal horn shattered the silence. “Mukondi? Are you coming?” It was her mother Dyese calling.
Mukondi jogged to the fat baobab tree which towered in the heart of the camp. Two other women, her mother and her elder cousin Azandu, awaited below the tree’s shade. Having reached her own womanhood six rainy seasons ago, Azandu looked exactly as Mukondi and every other Djata girl wished to look: tall and lithe, with firm muscles under skin as dark as a moonless midnight. Rings of fangs and claws from Azandu’s kills hung from her neck, something Mukondi also wished she could earn in years to come. As for Dyese, the hide shawl she draped over her shoulders marked her rank as the Djata clan’s matriarchal chieftain.
Dyese smiled as she patted Mukondi on the shoulder. “You can do it, my precious,” she said. “Oyosi Herself sees to it that you will.” She tilted her wizened face up to the sky where Oyosi Djata, the clan’s great ancestress, rested.
Mukondi pulled her mother’s hand off. “You told Nzinge that very same thing, didn’t you?”
“Don’t mention her again!” Azandu banged her spear’s butt against the ground. “You are smarter and wiser than your big sister ever was, Mukondi. You’ll succeed where she failed, trust me.”
A quivering Mukondi folded her arms together. “How can you feel so sure of that?”
Azandu groaned. “Look, do you want to be dropped off at a men’s village and grow crops in one place for the rest of your life? Or do you want to become a woman?”
“I am no man!” Mukondi pounded a fist onto her breasts.
“Then don’t whine like one. Now, while scouting last night, I spotted Sambu drinking from the river to the south.” Azandu pointed towards the southern horizon. “He might still prowl over there.” She laid her own hand on Mukondi’s shoulder. “When you meet him, you know what to do.”
“Aim for the breast or brain,” Mukondi recited. She sucked in a mouthful of air to swell her chest upward and smiled.
“One more thing before you leave, daughter.” Dyese pulled out from her hide belt the animal horn she had blown earlier and handed it to Mukondi. “It goes back to my mother’s mother. Blow it, and you shall lure Sambu towards you.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” Mukondi asked.
“Not at all, but use it sparingly,” Azandu said. “Blow it too many times together and Sambu will figure out what you’re up to.”
Mukondi slipped the horn under her own belt and bowed her head to Dyese. “I owe you so much for the gift, mother.”
Dyese wrapped her arms around her daughter in a gentle embrace. “You owe nothing at all. Now go forth on your First Hunt, Mukondi. You leave our camp a girl, but you shall come back a woman, with Sambu’s teeth in your hands. May Oyosi bless you.”
Mukondi hugged her mother back with all her strength while more tears dripped from her eyes. This could have been the last time in their whole lives that they would see each other. Mukondi rested her head against Dyese’s breasts while her mother in turn stroked her dreadlocks.
“If I do not come back alive, I shall always remain in your memories, mother,” Mukondi said.
After Dyese withdrew her warm arms from her daughter, the chill returned to sting Mukondi’s blood. Nonetheless she jogged away from the camp, looking back only once.
The gong rang and reverberated, and the gates to the arena ground open. In rode Huan Xi, Imperial Prince of Zhongguo, on his elephant Longwei. Both he and his mount glimmered with platelets of polished leather armor under the afternoon sun, with bronze blades glinting on the elephant’s tusks. Spreading a proud smile across his pale yellow-brown face, Huan Xi waved with lance in hand to the audience that filled the terraced seating to his right.
Everyone on that side of the arena waved back with cheering and hooting of his name. These men and women were all Zhongguans, Huan Xi’s subjects, come to see him joust for the prize he desired more than anything else. From the lowermost seating there watched the Empress herself, his mother, with a bright pink robe of silk and cherry blossoms in her bun of graying hair. Her eyes twinkled with both Imperial pride and maternal love, but Huan Xi noticed her wringing her hands together with nervous anticipation.
He would make her so proud. This he swore by Zhongdi, Lord of all the Heavens.
Another gong rang from atop the arena’s far end. Afterward there thundered exotic drums as an opposite pair of gates began to part. The right side of the arena fell silent, but the spectators seated along the left erupted into cheering and chanting in a very different language. These other people, dark brown-skinned with brief garments of white linen, hailed from the ancient kingdom of Khamit far to the southwest of Zhongguo. On their lowest seating was their old Pharaoh Kahotep, with his blue- and gold-striped crown and braided goatee. He flashed a smirk in Huan Xi’s direction.
The Prince of Zhongguo searched the Khamitans’ ranks for a glimpse of Berenib, the Pharaoh’s lovely young daughter. It was over her hand that the joust had been arranged, yet Huan Xi could not make her out anywhere. He could not even find her next to her father or any of his officials. From what he knew of her character, she did not seem like the type of woman who would avoid the sight of blood in the arena, but he was at a loss to explain her curious absence otherwise.
Maybe Kahotep had meant to present her only after the event, for whatever reason. Regardless, as long as Huan Xi had the memory of Berenib’s exquisite beauty in memory, he did not need to be reminded of why he fought.
Longwei the elephant raised his trunk with an anxious rumble. Huan Xi patted his brow while whispering the most soothing words he could muster. In spite of their size, elephants could be skittish animals, but the Prince had to wonder what had intimidated his steed all of a sudden.
Nyarai crept through the tall grass with her hunting bow in hand and an iron ax by her hip. Her tawny halter-top and skirt, both banded with wavy brown stripes, further hid her within the yellowed savanna. Perspiration dripped from her brow, chilling her dark umber skin in spite of the baking afternoon sun.
The other Vavhimi had chosen her too young. No way in Mwari’s name could Nyarai do this and survive.
Ahead of her, the stegosaurs ambled in the field amidst scattered aloe and cycad trees. Any single one of the lumbering giants could feed all her neighbors back in the city, with the pebbled hide providing shields for the Mambo’s royal guard. The pentagonal plates that shimmered like copper on their backs would bring in a fortune from merchants in all directions. So would the ebony spikes glinting at the tips of their tails…if they did not impale Nyarai first.
No, she could not let her fears drown her hope. She was a Muvhimi, a hunter of the Vazhona nation, and she could not let her peers down.
Nyarai slipped an arrow from her quiver and laid it atop the bow, aligning its head with one of the stegosaurs’ rumps. On the far side of the field, the savanna gave way to a woodland of mopane trees where the other Vavhimi awaited. They had sent her not to kill any of the stegosaurs, but to drive the herd into their trap.
It was a simple, classic strategy when described out loud. Nyarai could only plea to Mwari the Creator, and to the spirits of her foremothers, that it would be as simple to carry out.
She drew her bowstring with tender care, not letting it creak. The bow still wavered in her clammy grip. The stegosaurs lowed and grazed, and she prayed in murmurs that they would not smell her.
Our heroine, Queen Butumbi of Djamba, shoots from the back of her tame T. rex Tambwe.
Tambwe craned his big head upward, inhaled through his nostrils, and let out a deep rumbling growl from his mouth of blade-like teeth. The tyrannosaur’s tail swayed behind him as he sat crouched within the wall of jungle that reared alongside a moss-stained road.
Butumbi, Queen of Djamba, stroked the deep green scales on her mount’s neck while murmuring an incantation to calm his temper. She could hear the giant predator’s stomach grumble with a hunger for fresh meat that had grown over the past week’s southward march. With a voice as soft as that of a mother reassuring her child, the young Queen promised Tambwe that he would have more than enough to gorge on before sundown.
Other than the normal chorus of bird squawks, insect chirps, and monkey hoots, the jungle lay silent on both sides of the road. Even from atop the saddle behind her tyrannosaur’s neck, Butumbi could see little of the force she had laid out before her. Armed men and women lay beneath the cover of undergrowth and creepers, as did the packs of feathered deinonychus that had been hired to protect their flanks. Only the tiniest glint of iron weaponry and jewelry of gold and copper could betray anyone’s presence.
It was as Butumbi had planned. The forces of Ntambwa would not know what struck them until it was too late.
An illustration I did for my short story “Staff of the Red Sun”.
Egypt, 1942 AD
The limestone door ground over the gravelly earth as the diggers pushed it open. The grating noise would not have been the most pleasant for most men to hear, but for Friedrich von Essen, it was music to his ears. After untold weeks of watching these chattering Arabs gouge a pit out of the desert beneath the roasting sun, he had found it at last.
The thought of presenting this discovery to those fools back in Berlin made him smirk with glee. Even the Führer himself, eager as he was for any leverage in the war, had shown a bit of hesitance before sponsoring the expedition. Even if Friedrich ended up finding nothing inside this tomb, he had at least confirmed its very existence.
A faint yet acrid smell flowed out from the black depths beyond the doorway. The Arab diggers jumped back with startled shouts and whimpered among themselves, their normally bronze faces slightly blanched.
Underneath the howl of the wind, Friedrich thought he had heard a soft whisper. It must have been one of the dozens of men behind him, but it did make the back of his neck prickle.
“What do those inscriptions say, Professor von Essen?” Colonel Hermann Schmidt pointed to the string of hieroglyphs chiseled into the entrance’s lintel.
“Oh, those simply identify the tomb as belonging to Nefrusheri,” Friedrich said. “Why?”
The colonel’s tanned face had turned a shade paler as well. “I only wanted to make sure it wasn’t something like a curse.”
“Oh, don’t believe such sensationalist rubbish. Curses aren’t as common on Egyptian tombs as you think. You might find a few in tombs from the Old Kingdom, but that’s about it.”
“Fair enough, Professor. I would’ve expected a fearsome sorceress like your Nefrusheri would have something protecting her resting place.”
Friedrich glanced back at the darkness within the tomb. If the departed sorceress truly possessed the sort of power he sought, it would seem strange if she had not taken measures to defend it somehow. What those would be, he could not even guess.
On the other hand, he could not let fear and paranoia keep anyone away. Not when there was a war to win and a world to conquer.
“In case she does, bring your men over here,” Friedrich said. “We’ll go in together.”
