Year of the Hyenas by Brad Geagley Read Free Book Online

stop screaming, no matter what I did for him.”
    Tears slid
down her
face. She brushed them away with irritation. “He’s so tortured, your
brother,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone sadder. I’d do anything for
him if he’d ask. But he doesn’t see me at all. I’m just a tavern wench
he sobs to about his wife sometimes.”
    Semerket’s
eyes
fluttered open. The bald man was speaking to a physician, who was
sitting next to him on the cot. The pretty woman was holding Semerket’s
head in her lap.
    “Will you
undertake
his cure?” his brother asked the physician.
    The physician
nodded.
“Get me some date wine,” the man said to the tavern maid.
    “More wine?”
said
Nenry. “Surely more will kill him!”
    “He hasn’t had
much
else for some time. To deprive him of it suddenly would shock his
body.” The physician quickly wrote a prayer on a strip of papyrus in
red and black inks. The woman placed the bowl of wine before him. From
his instrument box, the physician withdrew a stoppered bottle. When he
opened it an acrid smell invaded the room.
    “What is
that?” Nenry
asked suspiciously.
    “Fermented
pine
resin,” he said as he poured. “And this,” he said, opening another
bottle, “is opium from Hattush.”
    “Will it cost
much?”
    “You want him
to live?”
    Nenry nodded.
    Five tinctures
of the
serum were dropped into the palm wine, then a quail’s egg was broken
into it and stirred. The physician dipped the prayer strip in the bowl
and the ink of the spell’s glyphs dissolved into the liquid. The
physician jammed an ivory plug between Semerket’s teeth, then spooned
the wine down his throat.
    The shrieks
stopped
almost immediately, and Semerket saw that the beautiful room with the
mica window was serene once again. With the ivory in his mouth,
Semerket could not speak. He would have filled the darkening room with
questions, had he been able. He would have asked the physician if he
knew why his beautiful Naia was not there and when she would return…
    Suddenly, he
knew the
answers to his questions.
    For the first
time in
many days he lay quietly, and his restless mind did not conjure visions
of beautiful rooms and pleasant pastures, everywhere inhabited by the
shade of his beautiful wife. And perhaps this was why, occasionally,
tears oozed from beneath his bruised and flickering lids.
     
    HE AWAKENED TOthe slosh of water and
the sound of a scrubbing. When he opened his eyes, sensible mud-brick
walls rose before him, and he saw a pane of mica set into the wall.
    For a moment
he
believed himself back in his dream, but the window glared red with late
afternoon sun, bloodily picking out unpleasant bits of detail in the
small room. He lifted his head and stared, wincing from the heavy,
clanging weight of his skull. He lay on dirty, crumpled linen. Broken
crockery littered the floor around him. Mouse droppings were
everywhere, and above him the palm rafters of the roof glistened with
spider webs.
    A man with
scaled and
peeling feet was cleaning up the mess, list-lessly scrubbing the floor
with a pig-bristle brush. Semerket swallowed, tested his voice, and was
able to croak to the man, “Who are you?”
    The man
whirled
around. He dropped the brush into the basin of water with a plop,
calling out, “Master! Master! He’s awake!”
    Nenry appeared
at the
doorway. “So he is,” he said with sardonic disapproval. “Don’t be
afraid of him. He’s only my younger brother, of no account.”
    Semerket
regarded his
elder sibling with wonder. “Nenry, what are you doing here?” Then
memories of the last few days flooded his mind. The inside of his skull
itched like fire, and his throat felt like sand. He turned a plaintive
gaze on his brother. “Some wine? Beer?”
    “Water is what
you’ll
get.” His brother poured some into a bowl and handed it to him.
    The bowl went
flying
across the room. “Wine,” he rasped out again.
    With a covert
look at
the servant, Nenry brought out a couple of