“It is the only outcome,” he said his first words. “I knew it would one day come to this.”
Volkan glowered, hot as the desert sun, cold as a starless night sky.
“You are not the Nemesis, but you may be once more,” he said to Eadunn. “Join us. Lend us your talent for ending this barbarism. Show us the cleanest methods of erasing the Habiru. You will have it. By your father’s own tongue, you will regain your honor. Your armor. Your sword. Your life.”
Eadunn’s question, lingering behind his teeth, desired freedom.
But he already knew the answer.
If I refuse, I am dead. They’ll kill me here. In this room.
We’re flying over the ocean now.
I’ll be carrion for the waves.
* * *
Volkan explained everything.
As the ship tore through the night, Eadunn sat in a cabin lit only by two grey lanterns.
And listened.
The Black Fleet was a newly-born thing. Ten warships, grander in scale and far more powerful than Eadunn’s own, had been under construction for the last eighty-three years. In a hidden bunker, in a desolate, irradiated tundra far north of the Pyramid, thousands of workers had toiled across four generations to perfect ten deadly ships.
Eadunn had always known his father to be a master of long-laid plans, but the Black Fleet’s creation was beyond his reckoning. How the ships had been kept secret, how the flow of parts had slipped undetected across the world, he would never know.
Father has desired this for centuries.
Volkan paced the room, his face half-shrouded in shadow, and told him more.
Of all the world’s settlements, only those who paid tribute to the Pyramid would be spared. The Pharaoh had decreed it only two days ago—loyalty, servitude, and fealty were now expected of all human life. The decree was permanent. No courts would exist to determine the rights of the affected.
Father’s will is arbitrary.
He’ll lift his finger.
And bring it down.
It would begin in the lands east of the Pyramid. Umbali had only been the first of many. Settlements, whether riddled with Habiru bandits or stocked with peaceful farmers, stood to be annihilated for the simple crime of existing.
Eadunn understood.
Saeed, the so-called lord of the Habiru, the man Menkaur hated almost more than the Prey, was still alive. Saeed was not immortal, but his ideas were centuries old:
Resist the Lord of the Sands.
Overthrow the Pyramid.
Remember humanity as it was before the immortals.
Volkan continued.
“You will be restored,” he explained to Eadunn. “Once it’s done, once Saeed and his followers are ashes, and once every settlement is destroyed, if you are judged to have deployed your skill with honor, you will have your peace. Your father promises it.”
Expressionless, Eadunn stewed.
Who is this man?
How is it he has my father’s ear, and yet I’ve never before seen his face?
“Who will judge me?” he asked.
“I will,” said Volkan.
“How do I know you have my fath—the Pharaoh’s blessing?” he countered. “How do I know you speak for him?”
Volkan sneered, the closest thing to a smile the ugly man had ever managed. With fingers long and thin, he reached into the chest pocket of his black vest. The thing he withdrew, Eadunn hadn’t seen in centuries.
A Blue Vial.
Volkan held the slender thing aloft. In the grey light, it seemed to glow. Such intense color, radiant blue, was a thing most humans would never see.
Were Eadunn to pour the blue liquid into his skin-port, he would extend his life another five-hundred years.
“Isn’t it grand?” said Volkan, “that just because someone drilled a hole in your neck when you were a baby, you get to live forever? It’s not fair, really. Is it?”
“That’s not how it works.” Eadunn shook his head.
Volkan sneered again. He looked half ready to give the vial to Eadunn, half ready to dash it to pieces on the floor.
“The Vials…they’re only extenders,” Eadunn said mildly. “The cause of what I am began at conception.”
“The hell it did,” said Volkan.
“It’s true.” He shrugged. “Go ahead. Have a port drilled in your neck. Take the Vial for yourself and pour it in. Your body…it’ll reject the chemicals. You’ll be dead in seconds.”
For all his obvious cunning, Volkan knew nothing of Vials, chemicals, and immortality. Eadunn could tell it by the glare in the hawkish man’s eyes, the twist of his lips, the dull anger coloring his cheeks.
“The Pharaoh gave you this Vial?” Eadunn asked. “He trusted you?”
Volkan clacked his teeth and clutched the Vial close. The tiny glass cylinder of glowing blue liquid was worth more than him, all his men, and the entire Black Fleet.
And he knows it.
“The Lord said to give you this once Saeed is slain.” Volkan pumped his fingers around the Vial. “He said you don’t need it yet, that you’d live another few centuries even without it. But the Lord also said because you failed to end the Prey, this pretty blue juice was in danger. So that’s your reward. Help us kill Saeed and all his vassals, get the Vial.”
“And what about the Prey?” asked Eadunn.
Volkan tucked the Vial away.
“Three ships are off to kill him now. The Lord no longer cares to see the Prey’s body brought to the Pyramid. The Fleet will find the vessel he stole and disintegrate it with the Prey inside. It’s over.”
One final question welled on Eadunn’s tongue. He needed to know about Thessia. She’d wandered into his mind, and when he closed his eyes he saw her.
Smelled her hair.
Felt her touch.
Before he could ask, he felt his chair move beneath him. The warship slowed, and everything within it rattled.
“It’s a good thing you don’t get tired.” Volkan looked down at him with a deadly smile. “We’ve arrived. We’ll be doing this for a long, long while. I trust you’ve made your choice.”
A knight opened the door.
In his hands hung a sword and mask resembling the Nemesis’. The faceless ebony mask looked newer, darker, and more fearsome than ever.
Am I doing this?
Am I helping them destroy the world?
He stood.
And he followed Volkan into the sand.
16
Galen hammered his fist against the panel, and the ship’s ramp opened to the night.
The first thing striking him was the smell. Trees, alive and flourishing, rustled in the black. A warm wind danced through the leaves, carrying scents of wood, flowers, and soil. Starlight, sharp and shining, gleamed upon something other than dead, dry sand.
The place Elia had brought him was alive.
He remembered.
He’d lived here once.
The wind and the trees brought it all rushing back.
Elia stood beside him. She was yawning, and her black braid dangled across her front shoulder. For a single breath, he let himself appreciate her. She’d slept the whole day after guiding the ship to its hiding spot on the mountainside.
But even now…
Even just waking…
He supposed she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
And the thought troubled him.
“You know this place, don’t you?” she said.
“I do.”
“It was too long ago.” She sighed. “My grandmother…she didn’t have many stories of Japas. My ancestors lost you here.”
He gazed into the trees. Down the slope, in every direction, mighty oaks and their smaller cousins sprouted from the mountainside. Hanging vines made labyrinths through which the starlight wove, and great dark rocks bulged from the forest floor, casting shadows even in the night.
“It’s the perfect place to lose people,” he said.
He descended to the ramp’s bottom. Still groggy, Elia tottered after him. A few steps closer to the night, and she wouldn’t be able to see anything. To her, the darkness beyond the ship’s meager light would be all-consuming.
“You did well to bring us here,” he said after a long silence. “Where I’m going is only three hours’ walk. If I leave soon, I’ll be back before dawn. And then—”
He closed his eyes and allowed himself to dream.
Out there, in the deep valley below the mountain, lay a door.
Beyond the door, a cavern.
Somewhere within the cavern’s long, dark tunnels, a laboratory.
And within, my destiny.
It was close enough for him to taste. He swallowed a gulp of the night air, and he swore he tasted a desirable scent on the wind. The soup of chemicals used to reignite his body’s immortal potential had a distinctive odor, one which he remembered from childhood.
“My mother showed me a Blue Vial once,” he said to the night as much as to Elia. “It had a metallic odor, like charged air in a coming storm. I was a little boy. But it’s still in here.” He tapped his forehead. “I’d sooner forget my own name than lose the scent of forever.”
He glanced to Elia. Her eyes were wide now, filled with curiosity and fear. He guessed her next question a second before she asked it.
“Can I go with you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He gazed long into the night. All was silent now, but for the crickets, the wind, and the leaves quaking.
“The laboratory’s guards…” he said, “they aren’t like Nem’s knights. To guard the Vials, these men train generations of their kind in the same methods as I. The old Japas ways: The sword. The senses. Moving unseen, yet seeing everything. There was a name for these people, long ago. The name is lost, but the tradition remains.”
“Meaning, you’ll need help.” Elia sounded stern.
“Meaning, you’ll die if you join me.” He faced her. “You’re no fool, Elly. You’re a good fighter. But this is where I draw the line. I need you here, on the ship. When I return, there’s a good chance I’ll be running, and an even better chance we’ll need to fly away in a hurry. If you come with me, they’ll cut you down. You’ll be just another corpse. I don’t want that for you.”
He supposed he shouldn’t have looked at her.
He should’ve marched away into the night—wordless, swift, and invisible.
But he met her big moon gaze and held it fast.
“You must live, Elly,” he told her.
“I’m not supposed to let you go alone,” she argued. Her normal stoicism fled, and her eyes were full of heartache.
“Are you worried?” he said with a smirk. “About me?”
“I’m not supposed to care about you…” She shivered. “Not like this, anyhow. You’re my ward. I’m to keep you alive and see you to the Pyramid. And that’s all. But—”
He took her hand and squeezed it hard. Even through his dirty leather glove, he felt her warmth. She was more alive than anything. He squeezed harder, and she betrayed something that might’ve been a smile.
She loved him, he knew.
And in a way, he loved her back.
“I’m leaving.” He backed away into the forest. “I’ll be back by dawn. The next time we talk, it’ll be under the sun, atop floors of gold. When I’m Lord, everything will be different. You’ll never want for anything again. I doubt your grandmother ever promised you that. Did she?”
He dropped away into the blackness.
But before he did, he caught the look on Elly’s face.
For one moment, just one, the black dream he’d carried for five-hundred years included someone other than himself.
It included her.
* * *
Japas’ forests were deep, and its mountains treacherous. Galen leapt from stone to stone, winding through the trees like a serpent, a shadow amongst shadows.
And yet…
Everything felt achingly slow.
He couldn’t move fast enough.
He was close.
So close it hurt.
So near his destiny every minute felt like an eon.
As he moved through the night, he reached into his hood and touched the skin-port on his neck. He had to be sure it still existed.
One little vial…one splash of Blue…and all I’ve suffered will be worthwhile.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t walked the Japas wilderness in centuries. Moving through the trees, the hanging vines, and the steep, swordlike rocks was second nature. If any place in the world could truly be considered Galen’s home, it was here. He remembered climbing this very mountain, sword on his back, bow in hand, training with men who wanted the very thing he’d chased his whole life.
The Lord Pharaoh…
…crucified in the sand.
His dark desire growing, he swept through the night, a brother to the wind. He accelerated to a full sprint, never once missing a step, his boots making no more sound than the moonbeams filtering through the leaves.
At one outcropping of stone, he slowed to look out across the valley. A river flowed black in the deep ravine below. Somewhere in the night, the ocean banged against the cliffs, and always the leaves shivered in the wind.
He looked for movement in the darkness.
Are they out there?
Did they hear the ship land?
Are they waiting?
He pulled his hood low across his eyes and leapt off the rock. Hitting the ground hard, he tore through the trees again. Even if men were waiting to ambush him, none would be able to kill him. They didn’t use the Pharaoh’s weapons here—they’d have to face him sword-to-sword.
He felt the Nemesis’s black blade bounce against his shoulder.
They don’t stand a chance.
At last, he reached the valley’s edge. The ship was far behind him now, and the night was bottomless. He stood atop a ridge a hundred feet high, and he gazed down at the river flowing swift and ebon to the sea.
He coiled his fingers around a vine whose snaking body stretched over the ridge’s edge.
And he leapt.
Down, he plummeted. His gloves heated up as they slid against the vine, while his hood fluttered away from his face. Tapping the tree with his boots to slow his descent, he spiraled from the tree’s lofty pinnacle all the way down to its bottom.
In a pool of darkness, he set down in the valley. The river rushed along beside him, black as anything in the world. The tree he’d used, only one of thousands, stretched up into forever.
I’m close.
They’ll be waiting.
His heart battered his ribs. A drop of sweat meandered down his cheek. A rare feeling, something unique to a man who’d lived five-hundred years, eclipsed his usual calm.
Impatience.
I should be cautious. More methodical.
No.
We stole their ship. They’ll be coming for me.
There isn’t time.
Invisible, he slid against the valley’s outer wall and moved along the moss-covered stone. Any sounds he made, the river masked. He saw nothing in the valley. The laboratory’s guardians weren’t near.
With every step, the cold expanded inside his chest.
Visions of what would soon become spread like a storm before his eyes.
He missed one step. A leaf crunched beneath his boot. He bumped his shoulder against the valley wall, dislodging a stone, which tumbled against the rock beneath it.
Still, no one came.
Lucky, he thought.
Stop dreaming.
Keep moving.
He moved through the night.
And he remembered.
Centuries ago, the valley caverns had been a haven for the last of the Japas warriors. Several hundred families had survived in the tangle of trees, the shadowed mountains, and the grottos carved ages ago by rivers long run dry. For all his watchful power, the Pharaoh hadn
’t yet discovered the hidden colony. Galen had escaped there to study in peace, training himself across many generations.
But he’d left.
And the Pharaoh, unknowing he’d only just missed capturing the Prey, descended with his scientists, his soldiers, and his decrees.
‘Serve me, and survive,’ the Lord of the Sands had told the Japas colony. ‘Guard my closest secret with your lives, and be free of my wrath.
‘Resist me, and my son will destroy you.’
Galen smirked at the memory. The Pharaoh’s secret had been poorly kept. By now, everyone in the world who cared to know had learned the truth of the Japas laboratory. The Blue Vials were a known commodity.
And now they’re mine.
At the witching hour, between cliffs now three-hundred feet high, he came to the place where the river was narrowest. There, where the black water curled around a giant stone colonnade, he pressed himself against the valley wall.
He’d arrived.
He peered around the great stone wall and saw the doors. Long ago, the Pharaoh’s servants had installed giant steel gates at the cavern entrance, sealing the laboratory away from the valley.
But Galen knew.
He knew the guardians came out at night to hunt, to ferry supplies down the river, and to breathe the open Japas air. He glimpsed a pair of tree-trunk rafts floating atop the river, tethered to the shore by thick vines. He saw the sconces drilled into the valley walls, the torches burned out only an hour ago.
He was close. So very close.
He waited.
With the Nemesis’ black sword in his grasp, he stood against the valley wall, a living sculpture hidden in the dark. The cold inside his heart deepened, but the fog lifted from his mind. He heard all things. Even with his eyes closed, he saw everything.
The trees.
The water.
The silent stone.
Most importantly, he smelled the telltale trace of the chemicals used to create the immortal liquid. The metallic scent came to him as if in a dream, and he trembled at its taste.
How long did he wait?
An hour? An eon?
Much later, when the door opened and two sets of footsteps cracked the perfect quiet, he awoke as if from ageless sleep. He rounded the corner, still unseen, and fell upon the men like sudden rain. Perhaps they’d expected him, for they were armed to the teeth with short blades, throwing knives, and hard leather plates sealed to their chests and upper arms.
Lords of the Black Sands Page 13
