To sleep. To eat. To heal.
But mostly to sit in the dark, unbothered by the light, and cleanse his mind of all distraction.
Smart girl.
She knew without asking.
He supposed it was a risk. Although he knew the Nemesis had only one ship, for Elly and him to cross the sea at a measured pace might’ve allowed the Pharaoh and his minions time to warn their vassals, to prepare their defenses. The enemy had other ways of communicating. Just like Elly, they had their secrets.
And secrets were deadly, he knew.
But after seven hours in bed, two full meals, and a glass of the cleanest water he’d drank in fifty years, he thought the risk might be one worth taking.
When he awoke in the dark, he sat up on the Nemesis’ bed. He’d known which one was Eadunn’s. Five-hundred years had made a peculiar man out of Galen’s immortal foe. Everything in the tiny cabin was too clean. The scabbards on the wall had been polished to a perfect shine, and the bed sheets folded with meticulous care.
And then of course there was the screen affixed to the wall.
The Pharaoh’s screen.
On which poor Nem shares secrets with his father.
It was to the scabbards Galen paid his greatest attention. Five hung on the wall above Eadunn’s bed, four of them stuffed with master-crafted swords. Once his vision adjusted to the dark, he plucked each blade from its resting place and studied it with his eyes.
And with his fingers.
Rare alloys. Near unbreakable. Each of these has claimed hundreds of lives.
Made in Japas.
…where all things sacred are birthed.
He’d seen such blades before. Hundreds of years ago, when he’d studied his killing craft alongside men who’d known little else but the sword, he’d learned the old world ways of blacksmithing, folding steel, and honing instruments of death to otherworldly sharpness.
He wasn’t a spiritual man.
He believed the closest thing to divinity was a sharp sword.
…and the will to wield it.
In the end, he picked the weapon with the blackest blade. The dark sword, three feet long, double-edged and leather-handled, felt like a lover in his grasp. Fashioned of nameless alloys, graven with the Pharaoh’s mark on the pommel, it seemed the perfect gift to give himself.
He held the cold, dead thing in his hands.
And he whispered to himself of its perfection.
I take his fingers.
And now his sword.
He whirled it many times, hearing it split the air with each turn.
He saw the whites of his eyes glitter on the mirrored black blade.
And he gave it a home upon his shoulder.
…where so many others have lived.
In his enemy’s room, he stretched his body. His joints, young as the day he’d turned twenty, creaked none. He tugged at his torn pants and removed the bandage Elly had affixed, and he found no marks upon his leg. It was as if nothing had touched him in the City of Bones. His skin was smooth, his pain forgotten.
He remembered who he was.
He left the room behind.
Down through the ship’s corridors, he swept. No windows marked the vessel’s insides, and no light shined but the grey glow of a few tiny lamps embedded in the floor. He knew he’d fully healed when his eyes took to the darkness like a wolf on the hunt. He saw everything. His ears devoured all sound. The world was naked to him once more.
He found Elly where he’d left her many hours ago.
She sat in the cockpit, hovering over the controls which needed nothing from her. The window behind her was black, and the stars absent from the skies. It was as deep and dark a night as any Galen remembered.
Elly faced him, her previous ferocity evaporated. Her eyelids were heavy, and her mortal fatigue hung upon her far thicker than her cloak.
“You’re awake.” She managed a smile.
He stood in the cockpit doorway. The glow from the floor lamps caught his chin, his hands, and his crumpled hood, but the rest of him lay in shadow.
“How long until Japas?” he asked.
“Dawn tomorrow.” She stifled a yawn. “Eight hours.”
“You slowed the ship,” he said. “You knew.”
“You were hurt. It looked bad.”
He looked to the window again, and to the blackness beyond. Japas was out there, he knew. How many times had he dreamed of returning to the great, dark island? How many years had passed since he’d left?
He couldn’t recall.
“I should thank you,” he said.
Elly’s eyes awoke.
“Do you mean it?” She sounded suspicious. “I didn’t think I’d ever hear these words, not from you.”
A familiar smirk cracked his lips. “Not sure I’ve ever thanked anyone in my life. Hard to be grateful when the whole world wants me dead.”
“So…you’re not going to kill me when we land in Japas?” she asked.
He let the silence linger just long enough to scare her.
And then he slid into a black chair.
“No.” He shook his head. “You’re foolish, Elly. Foolish to find me and foolish to stay. But you’re brave. In all my plans, I never dreamed of taking this ship for my own. But I should have. It was you who made it possible. And yes, I’m sorry for using you as bait. Nem’s knights…they’d never seen a creature like you before. I knew they’d chase you. It’s all I needed…one moment of his men divided.”
“Do you think the Nemesis is dead?” she asked.
He’d known her question before she’d opened her mouth.
“He’s wounded,” he said. “Two fingers cut from his left hand. He’s tired and in pain. You frightened the Habiru with the ship, but they’ll return, and Nem has no one left to stand beside him. His Scimitar disc is broken. All he has is his sword. It’s formidable, that thing. He could probably kill fifty Habiru before they drag him down.”
Elly looked at him. He hadn’t answered her question.
“If he lives, and it’s no given, he has no escape,” he continued. “This ship is the only flying machine in the world—I’ve heard it from his knights’ own mouths. His father can’t save him. He’s half the planet removed from anyone who can help.”
Elly blinked. “So…even if he’s not dead—”
“He’s out of play.” Galen nodded.
She looked relieved. She pulled her black braid out of her hood and took it into her hands, toying with it like a tired child. He felt almost sorry for her, then. Well beyond exhaustion, she seemed on the brink of collapse.
It’s unfair, he thought. To be so mortal.
“You should rest,” he said. “Your braid’s coming undone. Your eyes are red.”
She glanced to the dark window and let out a sigh. “No. Can’t.” She shook her head. “I’ll sleep once we land. I’m guessing you don’t know how to pilot this thing. I need to be awake.”
It was true. He’d never learned much about machines. To him, the warship’s controls were as foreign as friendship.
While sitting in the chair, he remembered something his mother had once told him. The memory bounded out of the darkness in his mind, and he muttered his words aloud.
“Leave that be, Galen. You shouldn’t touch these things. You and I, we make our lives in the soil. Steel…it’s not for us.”
Elly cocked her head at him.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Just something someone used to tell me. There was a caravan…wagons full of machines bound for the Pyramid. She told me not to touch anything. I didn’t understand until later. How Menkaur sees everything from the sky. How he hunts anyone who dares to dream of resurrecting technology.”
He met Elly’s big moon eyes.
She knows.
She’s not stupid.
She knows I’m speaking of Mother.
15
On a bed of coal-colored sand, he knelt.
&nbs
p; Moonlit waves roared against the beach, swimming up the shore, caressing his armored legs.
In the sand, his sword lay. A hundred notches scarred it. Unbroken, it remained.
He held his left hand up to the moon. Against the pallid disc, he recognized his loss. His pinkie and ring fingers had been shorn away, and were now only bloodless stumps. He felt no pain, but he doubted his fingers would ever grow back.
The reason for his failure?
Not arrogance. Nor righteousness.
No. A simpler thing.
I’ve no passion for this anymore.
Alone beneath the night, judged only by the moon and stars, Eadunn Varwarden reached into himself and grappled with the truth. For many years, perhaps as long as a full century, he’d doubted his work. The horrors of everything he’d done had settled into his bones, his heart, and his soul.
He’d never admitted it before, not to himself, surely not to his father.
But he’d doubted it nonetheless.
He’d begun to believe his father’s words were lies.
The Prey…he doesn’t want anything from us. Only to live.
The Habiru…their small machines and tiny transgressions…they’ll never rival us.
Cities, quiet and far removed from our fortress…they want only peace.
We hunt these things not for any meaningful cause.
But for sport.
And even if I slay every Habiru, burn every village, and stake the Prey’s head on a spike tall enough to reach Heaven, Father will never let me rest.
These things and more, he knew.
But to believe them was the worst manner of heresy.
And so he cast them out.
He rose, a blacker thing than before, and he walked along the water’s edge. His footsteps left shallow pits in the sand. His dangling sword rutted the beach beside him. He was forsaken, he knew. He would never see his soldiers again, nor his father, not unless many years from now they deigned to track him down and execute him for his failures.
He looked to the City of Bones. Far to his left, the great ruin breached the night. It was medieval to his eyes, the haunted towers like ancient chapels, the streets cobbled with bones, and the dust of millions of dead spread across the earth in pastures five-centuries fallow.
After the Prey’s improbable escape, Eadunn had fought the Habiru. He’d slain so many, carved away so many arms, hands, and heads—he knew they wouldn’t come after him again. In a way he regretted not allowing his death at their hands.
Even without a Blue Vial, I’ll live another three centuries.
And for what?
For longer than he knew, he walked the night. He wanted to remove his mask and strip away his armor, but he never did, only marched in silence down the shore.
Aimless. Passionless.
An empty vessel.
How long did he walk before they found him? Three hours? Five? A thousand?
The ocean’s rhythm cracked. He halted in the sand, the salt and seaweed clinging to his armor beneath his knees. Skyward, something stretched across the void and blotted out the stars.
Ships.
Flying ships.
Father lied to me.
Ten black vessels, inkier than the night, thundered in the sky above the ocean. They were like his, only huger and jeweled with many more Scimitar discs on their bottoms. Their engines’ exhaust made the sea foam and boil. Their shapes cut clean holes in the darkness.
Nine of the terrifying craft flew over his head. They were inland-bound, doubtless headed to the City of Bones.
But one craft, hugest of the ten, settled over the beach.
Ten ships. He faced the lone vessel. Ten? And how many more, Father?
You built a fleet, and for what?
The world is already yours.
The lone ship floated down to the sand. Its engines quieted, and the sands ceased to swirl. A ramp opened in its belly. A dark figure silhouetted by grey light appeared from within.
Eadunn closed his eyes and imagined many things.
Perhaps his father had been right, he dreamed. Perhaps the dark figure was Galen—the Prey, and he’d already conquered the Pharaoh’s kingdom.
Or perhaps the figure was some rival of his father’s, some dreaded foe who’d spent the last century building dark vessels of war in catacombs far beneath the earth.
No, he thought. None of these.
He walked a measured pace toward the ship. He saw no weapon in the figure’s hands, but he expected death nonetheless.
“Eadunn Varwarden, son of our Lord, the Pharaoh?” the figure called out.
Eadunn halted five steps from the ramp’s end. His father had sent for him, after all.
And so soon.
“Is it to be prison?” he said to the figure, whose armor was as dark as his face. “A short trial and a long death? Crucifixion above the Pyramid gates?”
“None of these,” said the figure. “If you would come aboard, you would find forgiveness.”
Forgiveness? he laughed inside his mind. From Father, for spending all my life slaughtering his enemies?
Or from the dead, who have no voice?
Head down, sword still dragging, he walked toward the ramp. The ship’s thrum consumed all sounds, and yet he swore he heard something from afar.
The City of Bones?
The other ships?
Screams?
He clapped his sword into the scabbard on his shoulder and climbed the ramp. His lost fingers hurt no longer, but he felt them still, clawing at the air only to touch nothing. He felt like a shadow of his former self, scrabbling up the ramp like a newborn babe.
Useless. Defeated.
Soon to be dead.
At the ramp’s top, he rose to his full height. The figure was just another man, a knight dressed in black raiment.
Eadunn towered above him.
“Explain this forgiveness,” he said.
And so the knight did.
* * *
In a grey-lit room, in the ship’s heart, he sat amongst twelve of his father’s soldiers. They encircled him, standing tall above him. Although they said little, he understood.
If I step outside the circle, they’ll kill me.
They looked at him in awe.
And in fear.
And in pity.
They’d made him remove his armor, and so for the first time in many centuries, his face was bare to the eyes of mortal men. He’d forgotten how long it had been. His once bronze skin was ashen, and his palms the color of milk. His veins carried colorless blood through his pallid forearms, and his eyes unmasked looked upon men who seemed somehow less than real.
He waited for them to speak. For a time, they only stared, appearing to judge whether he was alive or a ghost. They whispered things to each other, and though they believed themselves secretive, he pried many words from their exchange:
“…is it really him?”
“…he has the armor, but no one’s seen his face.”
“…his Scimitar disc? His dark-lance?”
“...it’s him. Look at the port in his neck. Why won’t he speak?”
He let them ogle, steal glances into his eyes, and judge him. It lasted near an eternity, until finally a thirteenth of their number entered the room.
The others fell silent.
The thirteenth man, tall, narrow, and gnarled with muscle, entered the circle of standing knights. Eadunn recognized him as the man who’d stood on the ship’s ramp and accepted him aboard.
The Commander.
“I am Volkan Corusk.” The man stood before him. “This is my ship, first and most formidable of the ten. And you are Eadunn Varwarden. Acknowledge this to my men.”
Eadunn said nothing, only sat in his chair and nodded.
“You will have questions,” continued Volkan. “These, I will answer in time. First, the rules.”
Eadunn looked up to Volkan. For five-hundred years, no man beyond his father would’ve dared speak to him in suc
h a way.
But now his subservience was implied.
By Volkan’s tone of voice.
By the dark-lance wands hanging from many of the knights’ belts.
By the blades every man carried.
“You are no longer the Nemesis,” Volkan declared. “By the Lord of the Pyramid, Pharaoh Menkaur, it has been decreed you are stripped of your rank and title. You are no son of his. You are nameless.”
He’d expected it. He didn’t flinch.
“Under penalty of death, you’re not to leave the presence of the Black Fleet,” said Volkan. “You are to follow my commands…and those of the other nine captains.”
The Black Fleet…
The ten ships my father made in secret.
He nodded again. Volkan, with his hawkish nose and black-beaded eyes, caught the gesture and moved on.
“Lord Pharaoh’s decree is not without mercy, however.” Volkan gazed across his men. “Never let it be said our Lord is unkind. Even you, Eadunn Varwarden, for all your many failures, may earn redemption.”
Redemption? What redemption? He wanted to laugh.
Instead, he listened.
“Our task is plain.” Volkan’s eyes narrowed. “Six-hundred seventy-four settlements, villages, and outposts. Six-hundred seventy-four. The Black Fleet will fly to each one and destroy it utterly. None will survive. None. By the Pharaoh’s will, we’ll see it finished at last.”
Finally, Eadunn stirred. He scanned Volkan’s face and found it dark, hungry, and full of violence. He looked to the ring of men. They were wolves, quiet for the moment only because no lambs were present.
Six-hundred seventy-four.
He knew the number. He’d seen it on maps created by his father’s cartographers. They’d covered the world with their satellite gazes, and they’d catalogued every settlement on every continent. From the sands nearest the Nile to the farthest frozen harbors of the distant north, his father’s closest watchers knew the location of every living human.
And now…
He wants to kill nearly everyone.
Any who don’t pay fealty will die.
He might have known. His father’s disgust for not only the Habiru, but for any living human not submissive to the Pyramid, was a thing of legend.
Lords of the Black Sands Page 12
