Serpent Goddess: The Horse Lords Book 1 Read online

  Expressive amber eyes misty with emotion, Kleo stood next to the prancing golden stallion . She handed Sava his bronze helmet lined with soft black ermine, the black horse tail pluming from the crest.

  After he mounted the stallion, Damara handed up his shield and kontos. From his horse Sava gazed down on Kleo and her mother. Also there to see him off were arkhons Levon, Makarios and Strategos Nikos.

  “I will always look back on knowing you…” his gaze lingered on Kleo, “As one of the best times of my life. You opened your arms to me, a stranger. From my heart I thank you.”

  “The gods be with you Sava!” Kleo called out as he turned out onto the road accompanied by Mikon and several guards.

  They traveled north along the Tanais River for two days until they came to a huge face carved into a bluff overlooking the river. Water from a tributary stream streamed through holes in the eyes and mouth of the face.

  “Who is that?” Sava asked.

  “That is the Face of Targitaos, Lord from Above. We turn here.” Mikon pointed right to an intersecting trail that ran up behind the rock face.

  The trail led along the swift running stream up into hills dotted with groves of evergreens. By late afternoon they halted on a hill overlooking a small valley with a sparkling blue lake.

  In the middle of the lake was an island with a flat-topped stone pyramid surmounted by a small temple. A statue stood on the temple roof, its bearing and stance arrogant, powerful. Sava assumed this must be an image of the oracle god, but he could not make out the details.

  Lifting their lances in salute Mikon and his men shouted down to a group of people gathered on the lakeshore. One of Mikon’s men raised the Geloni banner, an image of two warriors back to back, bows drawn, protecting each other. The group down at the shore hailed and waved in response.

  When they joined the Budini Sava drew a shocked breath and tried not to stare. Too much.

  The Budini warriors were tall and broad shouldered with hair of reddish-gold, the color of the rising sun. Their eyes gleamed a strange silver-grey. But it was the malformed heads of the Budini ennarei who captured Sava’s attention.

  Their heads were extraordinarily large, cone-shaped and shaved bald. Like most Skythians, Sauromatians were proud of their hair, heads and facial structure. A thick mane of hair was viewed as indicative of virility.

  It pained Sava to see the grotesque heads of the Budini ennarei. He had heard of skull deformation but never seen it before. A board was pressed against a baby’s forehead to flatten it while another board was pressed against the back of the head. The head was then tightly bound, forcing the skull to grow up in a cone.

  Mikon made the introductions – “Noble King Konrad, this is my good friend, Sava of Sauromatia, son of Voivode Skopasis. He has come bearing a message from King Raymaxos. Persia has invaded Thrakia and will soon cross over the Ister to conquer Skythia. He bids us attend a council of war in Royal Skythia.”

  After Sava saluted King Konrad, Mikon introduced him to the king’s voivode, Sandor and his chief priestess, Lashna.

  “Will the Geloni attend the council?” Konrad asked Mikon.

  “Aye. But we have not decided whether to join the alliance, yet.”

  As Mikon spoke with King Konrad, Sava’s eyes kept drifting to Lashna and her acolytes. Both male and female ennerei wore white robes, identifying them as devotees of the sky gods. To Sava’s eyes their flattened foreheads slanting into cone-shaped, hairless skulls appeared swollen and painful.

  A wreath of fragrant herbs nestled on their bald heads above large silver grey eyes. Compared to their huge eyes and over size skulls, their noses and mouths appeared inordinately small, almost childlike.

  Lashna spoke to one of her acolytes. Her voice had a ringing ethereal tone, like vibrating stalactites in a cavern. Sava observed the priestess with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Sensing his interest, the priestess turned and gazed directly into his eyes.

  Her enormous, glinting gray eyes intrigued him. Such cold, calculating eyes, without a hint of human feeling. As if the ruthless distortion of Lashna’s skull had suppressed, even obliterated her emotional mind.

  He was captured, lost in those endless, deep, glimmering silver gray eyes…

  A thrill traveled up Sava’s spine, followed by an involuntary shudder.Mentally he slapped himself. Pay attention! There are more important things at stake here.

  “…Tomorrow at dawn we will sacrifice to the oracle. Targitaos will guide our decision as to what action we should take regarding the invasion,” the Budini king was saying.

  It was then Sava noticed a desolate looking young man flanked by guards. His hands were tied behind his back at the elbow, a rope was around his neck.

  Ah. A human sacrifice in exchange for a few cryptic words from the `gods’. I don’t want to witness it. If only I could just deliver my message and go. But my mission was never destined to be that simple.

  Clearly Konrad expected him to stay and watch the sacrifice. Sava schooled his features not to betray his inner revulsion. After the oracle had spoken, the king would determine whether to attend the war council.

  That evening they ate roast venison and drank koumiss around the campfire. Sava’s eyes kept flicking to the island with the temple on it. Something strange about that temple…

  Every time he looked, the island seemed to be in a different place on the lake. Sometimes he could swear it was closer to shore, drifting in with the lapping waves. Other times the island appeared further away, or in the middle of the lake where he first saw it.

  “Did the Budini build that temple?” He asked King Konrad.

  “Nay the Temple of Targitaos was already here when we came here, many generations ago.”

  “Who built it then?”

  “Legend says it was built in honor of Targitaos by his sons.”

  “Who was Targitaos?”

  “Targitaos was the Lord From Above. He Who Came Down From the Sky. He was the First Man. His sons were the Sons of Man. Tabitti was the First Woman. She was Targitaos’ consort and the mother of the Sons of Man.”

  “Aye, Targitaos and Tabitti, the First Man and Woman. We Sauromatae also have legends about them. What about the name of your tribe – Budini. Bud means Awakened. Does Budini mean The Awakened Ones?”

  “It does,” Konrad nodded.

  “Why do you call yourselves that?”

  “Through our priests we communicate with the Lords Above. The Lords carry the knowledge and wisdom of the ages in their eternal minds.”

  “The Lords Above? You mean the gods?”

  Konrad shrugged. “Some people say that, but we Budini worship only one god – The Lord Behind The Sun. The sun is the eye with which He sees us. Targitaos was sent by Him. Our ennarei are prepared and trained from childhood to hear His messages.”

  Sava glanced at Lashna. She could have been a beautiful woman. Maybe the koumiss had loosened his tongue, but the harsh words rolled unbidden from his mouth –

  “Is that why you deform their heads like that? To hear messages from the Lords Above?”

  Chapter 27 - Cone Heads

  O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes

  Were never anything but children.

  There is not an old man among you…

  There is no old opinion

  Handed down by ancient tradition

  Nor any science hoary with age.

  And I will tell you why.

  There have been and will be again

  Many destructions of mankind

  Arising out of many causes -

  Plato, Timaeus, Egyptian priest to Solon, Greek lawgiver, 360 BC

  “Deformed?! You dare call our heads deformed?! You find us ugly?!” Lashna hissed at Sava. “Ignorant fool. You know nothing! Nothing! My head is a sacred instrument through which I receive messages from the Divine!” She pointed a slender finger at the heavens.

  “The oracles of our ennarei are unsurpassed in all Skythia.” King Konrad’s tone brooked
no dissent. “Tomorrow at dawn we go to the island and sacrifice to Targitaos. If the victim dies, his spirit will go swiftly to the Lords Above. We will be granted a prophecy.”

  IF the victim dies? Sava shot a glance at the young `victim’ sitting nearby. The cone heads were feeding him with their own hands. The man’s arms had been untied, but he was chained by the neck to a stake.

  Ah. So it goes…For every `divine message’ the gods deign to give us, they demand a price – in blood.

  “You say If the victim dies? What if the victim does not die?” Sava asked.

  “If the victim does not die, then he is a bad man. Unworthy. The Lords Above have rejected him. Then we will find someone else, a good man to take our message to the Lords Above.” Lashna replied.

  “How will he give you the prophecy if he is dead?”

  “We study the victim’s groans, his dying movements and the pattern his blood makes as it drips and pools on the earth. In these things we see and hear the voice of the Lord Above. Targitaos will not fail to guide us.”

  After they had eaten Sava felt tired and sluggish. He put it to exhaustion from all he had endured over the past week. All he wanted to do was lie down, close his eyes and float away into the dark. To forget the pain tomorrow would bring.

  Wrapping his fur-lined cloak around his body he lay down in the soft sand near the fire. As the nomad sank into blackness the thought rose in his mind like a last air bubble before drowning –

  Could my drink have been drugged?

  But he was just too tired to worry about it. He was among trustworthy people. Mikon was with him. No one would dare betray him like that. Would they?

  A hand touched Sava’s thigh, then lightly shook his shoulder. Opening bleary eyes he looked up into the glimmering eyes of a cone-head priest crouching over him. Enormous dark eyes, luminescent in the night rendered him speechless.

  “Come. It is time.”

  “Time for what?” Sava croaked, throat dry as sand.

  The cone head put a finger over his lips, signaling silence. “Lashna has sent for you. She wants to show you something.”

  He was vaguely suspicious, hesitant. Why am I being singled out like this?

  But the cone-head was insistent. “Get up. Come, you will want to see this.”

  “Tell Lashna I will see it tomorrow.”

  “Nay. You must come now.”

  His mind felt sluggish. Suggestible. And he was curious. Against his better judgment, the nomad rose to follow.

  “No weapons. We go to holy island.” The priest nodded at Sava’s akinake and dagger strapped to his belt.

  After removing his weapons, Sava followed the Budini priest. Footsteps muffled by sand, they wove a silent path around the sleeping bodies down to the lapping shore. The cone head nodded for Sava to get in one of the small boats pulled up on the bank. Then he pushed it off and jumped into the stern to paddle.

  The stone steps leading up the pyramid were lit by torches, as if a secret ceremony was taking place. Two massive stone bull heads with long piercing horns and eyes of intense blue lapis lazuli flanked the base of the pyramid steps. Lashna and her retinue stood waiting near the softly lapping shore.

  “Come. Follow me.”

  Without waiting, the priestess swept her white robes around her and began to mount the steps, moving with graceful solemnity. Sava followed, the rest of her entourage trailing behind. At the top flickering torches on stakes embedded in the terrace illuminated the statue of the Lord from Above on the temple roof.

  Targitaos had a huge cone-shaped head and enormous eyes. The `First Man’ stood on a round globe. A python circled the globe and coiled up his body to rest its large triangular head on top of Targitaos’ head. The serpent’s menacing eyes gazed down upon them.

  To look at the Lord from Above was to behold the eyes of an alien entity and a serpent glaring down as one Being. One mind. The serpent on top. Dominant.

  The thought came to Sava – Always the serpent. Is this Targitaos another agent of Velesh, Black Serpent of the Underworld?

  Targitaos’ loins were girded with a wide, ornate belt. His left hand held a rhyton upon which a raven sat. In the statue’s right hand was a great broad sword.

  “Behold Targitaos, Lord From Above. He who was sent by the One God - Whose Eye is the Sun.” Lashna intoned in that echoing ethereal voice. “Tomorrow at dawn the victim’s spirit will mount Voron, the raven and fly up to the heavens to beseech a prophecy.”

  As she spoke, the Budini cone-heads with their eerie gray eyes closed around Sava. Lashna also came very close, her slender body almost touching him. His nostrils inhaled the scent of fragrant herbs mixed with a faint female musk.

  Lashna’s glimmering silver eyes were spellbinding, yet held a cold wrath. It dawned on Sava how isolated, how vulnerable he was up here. Her lips moved, forming words that reverberated in his mind, yet came from far away -

  “So you see us as deformed monsters? You know nothing! I am Katochos - Oracle Speaker. The Lords Above speak through ME.”

  “Nay Lashna - I meant no insult. It is just that your appearance is beyond anything I have ever seen before. This is why I reacted with shock initially. But now I understand. You have told me the benefits of your cone heads and I believe you. I salute your big beautiful heads!”

  “Silence. Your foolish words come too late.” The priestess’ hand knifed the air. “Words fly from your mouth like the useless buzzing of flies. Take off your clothes. Now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I will It.”

  Chapter 28 – Secret Places

  And Ceto was joined in love

  To Phorcys and bare her youngest,

  The awful snake who guards the golden apples

  In the secret places of the dark earth –

  Hesiod, Theogony 700 BC

  “Take off your clothes. I want to see your body. And you will see mine. You will see what we suffered to make us the most powerful seers in all Skythia. For this purpose have I brought you here.”

  Lashna’s cold gray eyes stared at Sava in the flickering torchlight, willing him to obey. To submit.

  Dark clouds slid across the sky, partially blocking the moon. Waves lapped at the island’s shore. A breeze licked the flaming torches on top of the pyramid, making them flicker and flare.

  Sava was aware that the cone-heads panting, closing in around him. Why are they so excited?

  This did not bode well. He forced himself to remain calm. Any sudden movement on his part could trigger violence. Anxiety slithered up his spine, inserting insidious tentacles into his brain. His mind raced, searching for a safe, strategic retreat.

  The cone-heads pressed closer. He was tightly surrounded, trapped on top of the pyramid. He was unarmed and the odds against him were 20 to 1.

  “Do as I say. Take off your clothes. Or we will take them off for you.” Lashna’s voice was edged with menace.

  When he made no move to comply a multitude of hands grabbed him. There was no point in struggling. Piece by piece, the hands removed his clothing. They touched his body almost reverently, as if something wondrous were to be revealed.

  The cone-heads took off his leather boots, his belt, and his kurta. They left the gold jewelry on his neck and arms. Finally they pulled down Sava’s buckskin leggings.

  “Ahhh…see Him.” Lashna stroked his thighs with long flexible fingers.

  So this is what she wanted to see. My manhood.

  “Lay down on your back. Remember, we have no wish to hurt you. Unless you force us. Tie him up.”

  In moments Sava was spread eagled and tied to iron stakes embedded in the stone terrace. This definitely did not bode well.

  Taking off her robe, Lashna tossed it away. She stood over Sava’s upturned face, one leg on either side so that he was forced to stare straight up at her womanly parts.

  “Look. See what they did to me!”

  Someone handed her a torch and she flashed it close to her core. Sava stifled
a shocked gasp. There was nothing there.

  She has no womanly parts.

  The priestess’ vaginal lips had been completely excised. Her slit was sewn together and healed that way. All her pubic hair was plucked out. There was nothing left of her yoni but a tiny hole to urinate through.

  “You see what was done to me?! I am not a woman. I am an instrument of the Lords Above. The gods speak through me. I hear their voices in wind and in waves. In bird song and in rain. In the voices of children and in the shrieks of the dying. But do not think that because part of my womanhood has been cut out that I cannot feel. I feel pain. I feel pleasure.”

  She pulled aside the robe of one of the male cone-heads.

  “Look. See what they did to him.”

  The ennarei’s manhood had also been completely amputated, both cock and balls. Like her, he had nothing but a tiny hole to urinate through and another through which to defecate. His pubic area was also plucked bald.

  “You see what was done to make us the most powerful ennarei in all Skythia? What we sacrificed? We are servants of the Lords Above. But we are not monsters. We still feel! We are still human beings!”

  Lashna knelt over Sava, her slender, sensitive fingers trailing along his phallus, stroking, delighting in his maleness.

  “Ah. Your God Cock. Beautiful. With this you have the power to create new life.”

  And I want to keep it that way. Sava studied the chief priestess’ expression, mentally girding himself. They plan to test me. Perhaps severely.

  “Who are `they’ that committed this monstrosity on your body?” He asked Lashna, searching her enormous glimmering eyes.

  “You dare to question the will of the Lords Above?! It was they who instructed the Ancients of Days, our elders, to bind our heads from childhood. It was the Ancients of Days who cut off our genitilia so that we would concentrate only on our devotions. On our sacred duty to divine messages sent by the Lords Above.”

  “Have you ever seen these Lords From Above?”

  “Nay. Targitaos came down to earth many many life times ago. He taught that the sun is the great Eye of God through which he sees us. Targitaos sired the Sons of Man.”