{ "item_title" : "ZahhĀ", "item_author" : [" Jd Arden "], "item_description" : "A kiss on the shoulders. Two black snakes. A thousand years of feeding.Long before Dracula, before werewolves and zombies, Persia had a monster who ate the young. In Ferdowsi's Book of Kings, the great epic of Iran, a hasty prince named Zahhak makes a promise to a stranger by a dying fire. Soon his father is dead at the bottom of a pit. Then the Devil, disguised as the palace cook, has asked for one small reward: to kiss the king on both shoulders.From the places where his lips touched, two black serpents burst out of the king's flesh. Cut them off and they grow back. Starve them and they turn on him. Only one food will quiet them: human brains. Two young men, every night.Then the king has a dream. A tall young warrior with a mace shaped like an ox's head strikes him down and drags him in chains towards a white mountain. The most feared man in the world becomes the most frightened, and every cruel thing he does to escape his fate brings it closer.ZAHHĀK: The Serpent King retells one of the oldest horror stories in the world, faithfully and in order: the cooks who secretly save one boy in every pair, the cow with a peacock's coat, the mother who hides her son on the mountain, the blacksmith who has lost seventeen sons and turns his leather apron into a banner, and the binding of the serpent king in a chasm on Mount Damavand, where legend says he waits for the end of the world.Quotations come from the classic Warner translation of the Shahnameh, and a closing section explains what is Ferdowsi's, what comes from older Persian tradition, and what is history, from the Sasanian banner of Kaveh to the volcano that still smokes above Tehran.Part of The Terror Line-Up from JD Arden: the fears we carry, told as stories you cannot put down.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/826/655/9798266552098_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "13.99", "online_price" : "13.99", "our_price" : "13.99", "club_price" : "13.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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