Totem, Part 7
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It started before the master’s dream, before he even took me on as his apprentice. Azibo paused to step back into the past.
I could never actually read another’s thoughts, but there was always a sense of what the people around me were feeling. Sometimes, if someone thought about something hard enough, I might even catch a glimpse of it in my head—like a vision out of the corner of my eye, there and gone before you knew it was there. Growing up, I thought it was just intuition, the sort of thing everyone’s capable of to one degree or another. If I could tell that my parents were worried about their crops during the season of Shemu, or that my brothers and sisters were angry because they’d been caught doing something they were told not to do, what was so unusual about that?
Then as I got older, my talent started to grow. No longer would I catch just fleeting glimpses from those who spent a lot of time with me and my family. Soon, I could discern actual thoughts. The day I first remember being sure, I was with my parents at the market. They’d been haggling with a merchant over the price of a young goat. The man had told them two sacks of wheat was as low as he could go, and my father, eager to conclude the day’s business, was about to agree. But I could sense the merchant was willing to go lower, that he was banking on my father’s weariness to reap a substantial profit. Though I thought it had to be my imagination, a part of me was convinced I should say something, and after a moment of awkward silence, I did.
“Father,” I said, “Let’s go. There are still other merchants we can trade with, and I’m certain we can get a better price.”
While most parents would have balked at such an outburst from a child in public, mine received my words with patience. They wanted their children to learn the ways of the world, and what better way to do so than to be a part of the world’s business?
“My son makes a good point,” my father said, and I could see the panic in the merchant’s eyes as he saw a profitable sale about to walk away. In the end, we got the goat for only a double barrel. That was the day I knew my talent was real.
The others stared at Azibo with almost reverential wonder. How could little Azibo, the youngest of their number, harbor such a startling secret?
But how did you go on for so long without the master catching on? asked Rashidi. If you could read his mind, surely he could read yours.
I don’t know. If Azibo were still a human boy, he would have hunched his shoulders. I’m certain I could feel him trying, like an itch at the back of my head that’s impossible to scratch. He must have been able to read something, because if I’d been a blank slate to him, he probably would have suspected me straight away. But whenever I didn’t want him to know something, I’d just turn my thoughts in another direction and hope he couldn’t hear everything. I guess it worked.
Only one day, ventured Jahi, you discovered an unexpected aspect to your talent and found yourself inside the master’s head while he was asleep.
Azibo nodded.
Yes. A terrible day. For all of us, I think, at least in the end.
* * *
Calm. Dark. Quiet.
Azibo floated through the infinite space behind closed eyelids, lost in meditation. His master had taught him the technique almost nine months ago, only a week and a half after he’d taken the boy under his wing with assurances to both his parents that, in time, he would mature into a cunning and powerful ruler.
“A still mind is a sharp mind,” his master had said, followed by the command that he practice at least three times each day for at least two hours per session.
“But I want to learn real magic,” Azibo had whined, “not relaxation techniques.”
“Focus first. The magic will follow.”
“Focus my ass.”
Three days had passed before Azibo could sit again.
He still didn’t see what was so important about meditation—So what if he could clear his mind? So what if he could concentrate? So what if he could control his emotions?—but it was a habit now, a state he could slip into almost immediately, and he hoped that once he demonstrated he was ready, he would learn the same arcane secrets that had made the master so powerful.
Now, Azibo drifted across a sea of endless black, detached from the world around him, deep in the waters of oblivion. There was peace here, a cosmic stillness of thought that Azibo would have a hard time letting go of when his meditation session was over.
Just dark and oblivion.
Dark and oblivion.
Dark and—
A flash of light, there and gone. Azibo would have been startled had he not detached himself so thoroughly.
There it was again. The light was back, and this time it was growing. Larger. Brighter. It caught Azibo in its gravity and pulled him in.
Brighter.
Brighter.
Flash.
Azibo stood inside the arched entrance of a broad walled-off garden. The sun was bright overhead, casting its late afternoon light over a pond filled with purple lotus and papyrus. Across the water, against the far wall, stood two white marble statues: one a woman garbed in flowing, loose fitting robes, with wings that fell from her arms like sails, head angled toward the sky; the other a man, with a crown atop a narrow, regal head, dressed in a luxuriant style of clothing Azibo didn’t recognize, gripping the handles of a crook and a flail.
The master was there, kneeling before them both like a penitent lost in prayer. Only prayer was the farthest thing from his mind. This Azibo knew, for the master’s thoughts permeated the air like fog rolling off the Nile River.
Power. Wealth. Immortality. Most importantly, immortality. The master did not know what awaited him on the other side of death, and he feared it like an ordinary person feared an enraged cobra. He would do whatever it took to extend his life.
“Isis,” the master invoked, directing his attention to the female statue. The Goddess of Magic.
“Osiris,” he continued, this time turning to face the female statue’s mate. The God of Death and the Afterlife.
Only they weren’t gods, an understanding that materialized immediately from the ether of the master’s thoughts. Beings of great power, perhaps, but ones susceptible to certain weaknesses like anyone else—beings who could be bound and used, whose immense powers could be channeled like lightning through a metal rod. The master addressed them as subordinates, issuing commands as if they were his personal slaves.
Azibo’s surroundings flickered, wavered like a candle flame in a breeze. He was underground now, in a cavern whose walls were covered from floor to ceiling in sacred symbols that would become known to the world outside thousands of years later as hieroglyphs. Though Azibo couldn’t read, he understood their meaning at once.
Death. The underground chamber was pregnant with the stink of it. Thousands of people—men, women, and children—brutalized and tortured, their lives magically preserved at the brink of death in a horrendous ritual, only to be extinguished when their souls had nothing left to offer. The master was far older than any of his attendants and advisers had been lead to believe.
A sacrifice, Azibo understood, the lives of others exchanged for the master’s own. Only the longer he defied death—the longer he fed from the powers of Isis and Osiris to sustain the ancient, aging blood in his body—the more often he had to murder using progressively gruesomer methods that made Azibo’s stomach want to toss up everything he’d eaten that afternoon. The need for new blood was growing stronger and more frequent, and it was becoming more and more difficult for him to meet that demand without growing weaker.
Then another thought, like a speck of dust gliding on a current of air. Azibo, viewed by the master with little more affection than one might show a stray dog, an apprentice kept only as a contingency in the unlikely case the master succumbed to the sting of death and needed someone to resurrect him—a disposable apprentice who could be murdered and replaced if found incapable, unworthy, or unwilling.
All of this came to Azibo in the time it took for him to blink. Then he was back in the garden, the sun bright against his eyes, the lotus and papyrus swaying to the beat of a gentle wind, belying the torrential madness rampaging through the master’s mind.
“Isis, Osiris: Hear me. Heed me.”
Power, unseen, flowing from the statues and into the master.
Then fear, the sudden feeling one experiences when rounding a corner only to face an unseen enemy.
The master’s head whipped back in Azibo’s direction.
Terrified, the boy fled.
There was that familiar flash of light.
Then the darkness of an empty mind.
Azibo came awake with a start.
Just a dream, he decided. He’d been meditating, had perhaps allowed himself to become a bit too comfortable, and had nodded off without realizing it. Only he knew that wasn’t true, knew the way one knows the sun is bright and the sky is blue. Not a dream at all, but a glimpse into the master’s cruel and dangerous mind.
And that was when Azibo realized there was only one thing he could do. He had to get away—far, far away. Only that wasn’t possible as long as the master was interested in him—and even less so if his interest waned.
I have to overthrow him.
There was no questioning the logic of the decision, only the how and when.
* * *
For a long time, the others didn’t speak. Then Zane broke the silence.
Do you think he’s still out there somewhere?
Unlikely, Chibale answered. You saw the condition of the master’s estate when we returned.
But he could have found a way. A man as powerful as that doesn’t just disappear.
Without frequent human sacrifice on a massive scale, said Jahi, I don’t think he could have survived for long.
What makes you think he didn’t establish himself someplace else? Zane again. Just because the old estate was in ruins doesn’t mean he didn’t find somewhere new to continue his former way of life.
A worry for another day, said Rashidi, closing that line of inquiry for the time being. What I want to know more about is how this dovetails into Jahi’s story. Jahi, you were the one who got us all together and convinced us to take a stand against the master, and Azibo, we know it was you who first convinced him. But I want to know how you got to working together and why.
The two looked at each other, and the silent question of who should speak first passed between them. Finally, Azibo took the initiative.
I didn’t know what to do. With so little regard even for his apprentice’s life, I knew it was only a matter of time before I fell out of favor. I’d like to say I was driven to avenge the people he murdered underground in secret, that I felt the uncontrollable urge to defend my homeland from that monster made flesh. But in truth, I had only fear and self interest at heart.
And with that, Azibo continued his story.
Read part 8 here.
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