The Guide Page 2
But he was the only one left. His father told him of some in the past who had moved on from the priesthood, convinced that carrying on the old traditions was a fruitless effort in the wake of foreign religions like the cult of the Nazarene. The rest, like his father, had died at the hands of men who knew their secrets. Tor, alone, had survived the onslaught and stayed the course of the destiny he was gifted, plagued by the deaths of so many other priests. This temple didn’t just house the great god, but the ghosts of those who were no longer alive because of a fatal mistake.
Now, this man was telling him that there were more like him outside of Egypt? More sons of Wepwawet? He was sure that those who strayed from the faith were no longer alive, perhaps killed by other hunters or dead because they could not survive without the support of others like himself. This stranger spoke of there being many of his kind, many priests. It couldn’t be possible.
“You’re lying,” Tor sneered.
He laughed. “I assure you, I’m not lying. My padrone is similar to you, but with some notable differences.” The foreigner’s gaze swept over Tor, examining his naked form from the crown of his head to his bare feet. “Very notable differences, in fact.”
Tor eyed the man with suspicion. Was this a plot to get him to leave the temple so the locals could ravage the place with their money-hungry hands that so often snatched the past from its rightful place? Or was he telling the truth? Were there truly more like him beyond the land of the Nile?
He listened closely, ignoring the howling winds of the desert outside the walls of the temples, and tracked the heartbeat of this stranger. It was steady, constant, and slow. The man was not lying.
“This civilization you speak of. What is it?”
The foreigner shrugged and offered his hands as if to show the priest that he had nothing to give. “That is why I’m here,” he answered. “My benefactor told me to come to Egypt and search for evidence of a werewolf or vampire. Egypt is such an ancient country that he suspected the civilization would be here somewhere. When I asked the locals in Cairo and Thebes, they directed me here, saying there was a god who was half-man and half-wolf. This must be your Wepwawet.” He gestured to the temple painting behind him.
Tor’s eyes drifted to the carving of his deity, feeling his chest tightened with dread. His life had not been a lie, but neither was it completely true. He had long since believed that Wepwawet had once been a man that existed before time began, and then canonized for his unique qualities. He suspected that was how all the gods, including Ra and Amun, were idolized. Never in his life would he have thought a creature such as himself and his ancestor existed outside of Egypt.
“You will not find such a civilization here. I’ve never heard of a werewolf or a vampire. There are only gods and mortals here.”
The foreigner took a few steps forward, his polished shoes scraping against the dirt on the stone floor. “No, you see, you are a werewolf. Wepwawet is a werewolf. Surely you have a myth about vampires; creatures that drink blood?”
Tor retraced his memory to when his father taught him about the countless gods and demons of their world. He remembered each one and their stories and many matched what this man was describing, but none so specific. “There are many gods and demons that devour the living and the dead, but they were not called vampires.”
“Is there anywhere in your religion that speaks of a place where these gods resided? A heaven or hell, perhaps?” the foreigner asked.
“There is Duat, the world of the dead, but not all of the gods reside there.” Tor paused in thought. “There is, however, a place I read of once in the ancient texts.” Perhaps it was the need to get this man out of the temple, or it was his own fascination with this new revelation that made Tor’s tongue a little looser than it should have been. “There is a place that Wepwawet was said to visit. My father wondered if it was his place of birth. It’s far outside of Egypt. The text told where it might be, but the places are unfamiliar to me.”
The pale man’s countenance lifted in a look of utter glee. “Can you show these texts to me? Perhaps I can interpret the places for you. We could even go there together.”
That was when Tor grew rigid and he glared at the man. “I will never leave the temple. My place is here, serving my god.”
The man who must have known nothing of true religious piety sighed. “This is no place for you, my friend. A werewolf needs a pack. A family. It won’t do you any good to be alone with these relics of the past. The world has moved on from the ancient ways. We can cross oceans and deserts. I am a scientist and an explorer, and I can tell you that there is more to life than serving a god. There are so many places to see, so many things to do. There’s wonders that…”
Tor tuned out much of the man’s speech after he mentioned oceans. His eyes traveled once more to Wepwawet. His name, written in the ancient symbols, was engraved above the deity’s head. One symbol of which showed a wolf standing at the prow of a boat. The god was known as the opener of the way, leading the pharaoh into battle or going ahead of long journeys to make the way safe for royalty.
Each time Tor had been permitted to travel on the Nile, he felt a special connection with Wepwawet. More than that, he longed to sail over the waters once more. Because of his responsibilities, he hadn’t been afforded the time to visit the Nile for long, before he was needed back at the temple.
“Cross the oceans…” he mumbled in the language of his ancestors, a language long dead and forgotten.
The foreigner stopped in the middle of his dialogue and watched Tor, perhaps waiting for him to translate what he had just said or for a different answer than he had given.
Tor looked to the man who dressed in strange clothes and reeked of a place he had never been. They were the embodiment of two separate worlds. One of the old and one of the new. They had nothing in common, no shared beliefs, no shared ancestry, nothing to bond them in friendship or comradery.
Yet, before him stood the answer to his dilemma. With this man, he could find the origins of his god. He could travel and visit those places that he had only seen in his dreams.
It was then that Tor wondered if it was Wepwawet himself that gave him the dreams. Perhaps this was the god’s way of telling him it was acceptable to move on from the temple. Perhaps there was an element of his destiny that he had not yet discovered, but awaited him to the north east, where the ancient scripts described a plentiful land fit for the gods alone.
He turned to look toward the inner sanctuary where the massive statue of Wepwawet stared at him from his stony throne. As the only priest left, he was the one to interpret the will of the gods. With the dreams and the arrival of this stranger, this must have been the god’s approval.
Tor looked to the man and nodded. “I will help you.”
Florence Italy, 1570
Giovanni gripped the reins tighter as he steered his black mare down the country road toward the towering villa. Candlelight flickered in the tall windows that overlooked the front lawn and massive gates that were already open and ready to receive guests.
Beside him rode the wary Egyptian, Tor. After spending many hesitant hours with the werewolf in his pagan temple, the two became better acquainted. It made the ten day sea voyage back to Florence much more bearable.
The easiness he felt with the werewolf was a stark contrast to the knotted feeling in his stomach as they approached the Villa DiGennari of his padrone. After serving Michael Gennari for nearly a decade, Giovanni had never quite overcome the awkwardness of working for a vampire. Perhaps it was less Michael, who was the even-tempered benefactor with his gentle cadence and wise brown eyes, but more his apprentice, Yaverik.
The latter had been bitten by the former, but they were nothing alike. Brash, cold, and sometimes rather vindictive, Yaverik had an uncanny way of making one’s flesh crawl. Michael was not the predator of the dark featured in cautionary tales mothers told their children to make them behave. Yaverik, on the other hand, could have been the very ins
piration for such stories.
Giovanni looked to Tor and studied the way he balanced himself upon the steed Giovanni had loaned him for the journey. Apart from his dark skin, one might have never suspected he was a foreigner until he opened his mouth to speak.
Giovanni fashioned him in the clothes of a middle-class Italian gentleman, but the tailors of Cairo were nonetheless impressed by his broad and burly physique. He had never met a werewolf in person, though Michael had spoken of their kind often in their long evening discussions.
Tor had a look about him that exemplified strength and dominance, but the look in his dark eyes told another story. Ever since they left Asyut, the Egyptian seemed distant and thoughtful, and Giovanni could only guess as to why until they reached the Mediterranean Sea.
The morning before they set sail, he found Tor staring out over the warm waters. Giovanni finally gathered the courage to ask his new traveling partner if something was bothering him. Tor rambled on and on about gods and temple duties, how he felt guilty for leaving but somehow sensed it was his destiny to do so.
Giovanni never believed in destiny, though he had been raised to think that the Almighty God ordained the paths of His children. If meeting Michael and Tor taught him anything, it was that everything he had learned about God and the Christian world was not the only truth.
What he did know was that Michael would be pleased with his discovery. Giovanni might not have found the civilization he was so determined to discover, but he did find the guide that could take them there.
With numerous papyrus scrolls safely tucked away in a pack upon Tor’s saddle, they made their way from the coast to Florence. Their long journey was not finished. In fact, it was just beginning.
They passed through the stone pillars and down the gravely path rimmed in trimmed bushes and trees, punctuated by marble statues reminiscent of Greek and Roman masterpieces.
“Your padrone,” Tor said, “he pays you well?”
Giovanni was proud to hear him speak in Italian. Days spent on the ship had afforded them time to teach him the language. Though Michael knew more languages than Giovanni could keep track of, it would make communication easier on all of them if Tor could accustom himself to their ways. Tor was a fast learner and absorbed the language like a dry sponge.
“He pays fairly,” he said softly, wondering how far Michael’s sharp senses reached.
The truth was not so passive. In all reality, Michael was not the most generous of padroni. Giovanni was a well-known explorer in this region of Italy and could have gone to any baron, or even the king, and offered his services for a handsome salary.
His mistake was associating with Michael too soon in his career. While his contemporaries were scouting the far east, and sailing the Atlantic to the west, the vampire lord had him trekking around the globe in search of anything but riches and fine trade goods. Michael had always told Giovanni that he was on the hunt for something far more precious. The truth.
The truth he learned all too well was that once he learned Michael’s secret, he could never leave his payroll. Only a change of heart or death could part them now and with Giovanni’s growing debt, something had to be done.
Giovanni looked to Tor once more and the staff that he held firmly in his right hand while he guided his horse with the other. “Do you wish to leave your staff on the veranda?”
Tor shot him a hard look and Giovanni turned away. He should have known better than to ask it, because not once since they left his temple, had the staff been anywhere other than by his side.
Topped with the mysterious cross that sported an elongated loop for its uppermost prong and inscribed with even stranger symbols, Giovanni knew it must have had some spiritual significance. He called it an ankh and though Giovanni burned with curiosity, he sensed Tor’s growing impatience with each probing question he asked about his world and ancient culture.
When they reached the stone steps that led into the front courtyard, both Giovanni and Tor dismounted. Tor shouldered the pack full of scrolls and parchments while Giovanni lugged his travel pack from the back of his mare. He struggled up the steps with the heavy load of clothes and study materials until Tor obligingly took the burden from him and easily coupled it with his own.
Each day, Giovanni learned something new about the werewolf. He witnessed his incredible strength just two days into their trip when he pulled their barge laden with supplies from the waters of the Nile without breaking a sweat. Only yesterday did he find out the range of his extraordinary senses when he detected an approaching boar nearly half a mile away. He proceeded to seek out and kill the beast to feed them both for the evening.
Michael’s courtyard was a splendid garden full of radiant flora and fauna, with many exotic specimens from countries to which the wealthy vampire had traveled. With only the moonlight and stars above to light their path, it was nearly impossible to realize its particularly brilliant landscaping style. Giovanni sometimes wondered why Michael spent so much time and money into creating a magnificent villa when he would never see it in all its daylit glory.
Before they even reached the veranda, a servant opened one of the massive doors that led into the inner vestibule of the villa. With his eyes downcast, the servant invited them in.
The vestibule was lit by several lanterns, their glow gleaming off the polished mosaic floor they tread upon. Grecian pedestals against the walls boasted the carved figureheads of philosophers, emperors, and explorers from around the world. Doors on either side led to connecting rooms while a staircase ahead ascended to the second floor of the stately home.
Michael was a man of refined and sophisticated taste. Though he had never divulged his true age, Giovanni knew he must have been fairly old, despite his youthful appearance. He envied the vampire for the many stories he told of his travels and interactions with infamous artists and noblemen from the past. He was sure there was no place the vampire had not been, besides, perhaps the New World to the far west. It was only a matter of time before Michael sailed there and brought back some other artifact to add to his vast collection.
As if his thoughts had summoned the lord vampire himself, Michael appeared at the top of the stairs and opened his arms wide to his guests. “Benvenuto, Giovanni!” he greeted, his deep voice booming against the cedar rafters above them.
Michael’s dark beard was trimmed close and covered his jaw and around his lips, which was the common style of the day. He was not sporting a hat this evening, so his ebony hair shined in the lantern light as he greeted his guests. Dressed in clothes worthy of his noble status, he must have been quite a sight to Tor.
His brilliant blue leather jerkin, trimmed in gold with a high collar, was laced together with a cord and buttons over his broad chest. His jerkin revealed the rigid sleeves of his doublet beneath, and the ruffles of his linen shirt accentuated his wrists and around his neck.
Giovanni watched Tor’s baffled expression as the vampire made his way down the stair to reveal his paned, billowing, trunk hose, embroidered in fine silk, and the stockings that clung to the lord’s legs. Though Giovanni and Tor were dressed in similar garb, the elegance of Michael’s attire far outshined their simply constructed style.
Giovanni bowed to his padrone, but Tor remained upright. Not once since they left Egypt, had the high priest followed his lead in any of the customary etiquette of the day and he prayed that his lord would not take offense.
When he rose, he saw Michael inspecting Tor closely.
“And who is this you have brought with you?” Michael asked.
“May I introduce Tor, the high priest of Wepwawet in Asyut.”
Tor said nothing as his eyes were fixed upon Michael, a mixed expression of hesitance and revulsion.
“Piacere di conoscerti, Tor,” Michael said, giving a slight nod to his foreign guest.
So far so good.
“Buona sera,” Tor returned, bringing a smile to Michael’s face.
“Have you been to Italy before?”
“I hope Giovanni has been treating you well?”
They exchanged simple pleasantries and Giovanni told the story of how he came to find Tor in the nearly abandoned temple outside of Asyut.
“And I believe you’ll be quite pleased to hear what we found.”
“Did you find Arnathia?”
That name. Giovanni had heard nothing but that name for years as he crisscrossed from Greece to England to north Africa, searching for this strange, lost civilization.
“Not exactly, but we found a series of texts that can help us find it.” Giovanni turned to Tor and motioned for him to relinquish his sacred scrolls. The priest had been reluctant to share the texts at first, but he seemed intrigued enough by this place called Arnathia that he was willing to cooperate – if that could be the correct word for it.
Giovanni received the saddlebags upon his thin shoulder and staggered under their immense weight. Centuries of knowledge were entrusted to his weak frame and Tor was less than pleased. Michael helped to steady him.
“Why don’t you take those to the library, Giovanni, and prepare them for us. I’d like to have a word with our guest.” Michael must have seen the cautious look in his eyes, because he gave an encouraging smile and guided him toward the library to the left of the vestibule. “No need to worry, amico mio.”
Giovanni knew better than to ask too many questions of his padrone and proceeded with one of the servants into the library with the scrolls in tow.
2
“Signorina, we should not be spying on your father,” Francesca whispered.