One small sliver of metal.
No one is immortal.
“Please, Lord,” she called to Galen. “A Blue Vial might save him. There are more, perhaps. In the throne? Somewhere else? Call your guards. He’s your brother. Does he mean nothing to you?”
Galen glanced in her direction. He was gone now, drunk with the blue liquid, looking already twice as powerful. His father’s body was already going cold. If Galen cared, if ever he’d suffered doubt for what he’d planned his whole life to do, she couldn’t see it.
Stalking, he came to her.
In her hand, the dark-lance trembled.
How hard would it be?
One flicker, and it’s over.
She saw him coming. In that moment, all the power in the world belonged to her. Her fingers flexed along the thin black cylinder. She looked to Eadunn’s eyes, and as he sank lower to the floor, she heard him try to say something, though it came out only as a whisper.
Kill him? Is that what you want? She wondered.
Or something else?
Eadunn opened his mouth, but no more sound came out.
Galen saw the dark-lance flutter in her hand, but he moved no faster. If he was afraid, if he cared whether or not he lived or died, she could never have said. The man seemed incapable of fear. She supposed five-hundred years of running was to blame.
Ten steps away, he moved like a chilling breeze.
At five steps he came slower still.
Her palm sweating, her throat moving without making a sound, she clutched the dark-lance to her chest. A flick of her wrist, a fraction of a second, and the new Pharaoh’s reign would end.
The Varwardens can die together this night.
He arrived. She supposed if he’d wanted he could’ve trimmed her head from her shoulders. He still carried one sword, after all. It would be faster than her dark-lance.
She peered into his dark, empty eyes, and through the unfathomable she thought she glimpsed a moment of kindness.
But not for me.
For Elia.
“So…” he said to her. “What will it be, Thess?”
“Your brother…he’s dying.” She swallowed hard.
“Yes. I see.”
“Don’t you care?” she said.
“Give me the weapon.” He held out his hand. His armored palm was inhuman, and the kindness in his eyes was gone.
Beside her, Eadunn sank lower still. He made no sound, but his face was pallid, the glaze of his skin corpselike. The Sisterhood stood not far away. Their purpose seemed served—overtake the Pharaoh’s guards, infiltrate his throne room, see to it that Galen ascended.
As is their oath.
As was mine.
Her mother’s face, Thessia saw in her mind. The words she’d said again and again rang clear as a bell:
We are sisters, all of us.
We are beacons in the night, candles still burning.
We are many. We are sacred. We are soldiers in a war yet to be waged.
The Lord of the Sands must die.
And we must make it so.
Agonized, she handed Galen the dark-lance. She gave it to him with the deadly end pointed at his chest, but she dared not press the button. Gently, he took the wand, slid it into his belt, and showed her a cold smile.
“Thank you,” was all he said.
“Please…save him.” She looked to Eadunn. “We’ll leave this place. You’ll never see us again. I swear it.”
He said nothing, but set his hard stare on the copper floor, whose surface seemed to dance in the firelight.
In his eyes, she read all the things he didn’t say:
You’ve sworn already, Thess.
You’ve broken the only oath that mattered.
You chose the Nemesis over the Prey.
You are not your sister.
Eadunn looked up at Galen. The two brothers, bound by centuries of violence, spoke oceans amid the silence.
Wordless, Galen forgave Eadunn.
And Eadunn accepted his fate.
It happened so quickly, even some of the Sisterhood gasped. Galen loosed his longsword from the scabbard upon his shoulder and drove it down into Eadunn’s chest. It was a perfect stroke, landing in the very hole Menkaur’s bullet had made. The awful sound of punctured metal, flesh, and bone lasted only an instant.
Thessia screamed.
Galen withdrew his sword and backed away.
Eadunn pitched onto the merciless floor.
Dead. The Nemesis was dead.
From Thessia’s right, one of the Sisters strode near. Thessia threw herself at Eadunn’s body, clawing his armor as if to tear him back into the world of the living. The Sister pried her away, and though Thessia fought, the girl was stronger.
“No, no, no,” Thessia kept screaming. “Leave me.”
The Sister dragged her far from Eadunn and threw her on the floor. She was beyond tears, incapable of rational thought. When finally she lifted her face to the light again, what she saw broke her heart anew.
The Sister who’d carried her away—she knew.
“Mariya?” she said through a haze of tears. “Mariya, is it you?”
The young woman who’d pulled her away from Eadunn was tall, raven-haired, and by far the most beautiful of all the sisters, cousins, and daughters of the Sisterhood. Gone was the little child who’d lived in the tower of Alexandria, blinding Menkaur’s satellites. Gone was the girl who’d tottered in the sands beside the Nile. In her place was a tall, whip-strong woman, clad in armor stolen from a soldier—just one of the many—she’d dispatched.
Mariya went to a knee beside Thessia. The younger woman wore no smiles, only bottomless disappointment.
“You’ve no right to weep, cousin,” said Mariya. “You picked the wrong side.”
“No.” Thessia stretched her fingers toward Eadunn. “No…you don’t understand. The Pharaoh…he was right. Can’t you see it? Don’t you know?”
“Elia loved him.” Mariya shook her head. “And still you defy him. Oath breaker, you are.”
Thessia peered up at Galen. He stood now at the throne’s base, gazing out at nothing. Even now, he seemed to see no one in the room—not the Sisterhood, nor Eadunn, nor anything but the black dream into which he’d fallen.
What was it Thessia saw that none of the others could see?
Vengeance in Galen’s eyes?
A thirst for power?
No.
Alone. He looks alone.
She wanted to shake sense into Mariya. She wanted to grab her cousin and all the others by their shoulders and rattle them back to their senses.
It would be useless… she knew.
They’re oath-bound.
This is what they’ve believed in their whole lives.
“Did you really protect him, Mariya?” Her voice cracked. “All these years?”
Mariya, her big eyes shining with brazier fire, looked down at her. “I did,” she said. “And my aunt before me. And her mother before her. You don’t know the things we did, Thess. The horrors we endured. You were too busy in the Nemesis’ bed. You betrayed us all.”
Thessia’s tongue went flat inside her mouth.
Her cousin told only the truth.
Mariya stood tall. At her full height, she was the most imposing of all the Sisters. “Lord, shall I?” she asked Galen, reaching for the sword upon her shoulder.
“Kill her?” Galen looked on impassively. “No.”
Mariya gazed with pity and disdain at Thessia. She and the others had expected something other than mercy.
“Put her in my brother’s room.” Galen’s voice echoed in the dark. “Maybe she’ll take her own life. Or maybe not. If she survives the night, I’ve a place to send her. She’s seen what happened here. Let her talk. Let her tell the world who is Lord, and who is dead.”
Thessia sat up. In her heart, now empty, she knew she was to blame.
But of all the people in the Kingdom of Earth, only she knew what was true:
>
Menkaur was full of shadow. Of cruelty. Of darkness.
But now…
Watch what happens now.
Mariya and another snared Thessia’s shoulders and hauled her to her feet. She was a rag doll between them, hanging as though her arms and legs were made of cloth.
They dragged her away into the dark.
In her eyes, all she could see was sand—black sand.
The Pharaoh told no lies.
He was protecting us.
38
On the first dawn of Galen Varwarden’s reign, he hunkered on his throne no different than he had for the last many hours.
In his armor, black as coal.
With blood upon his swords and bodies on his floor.
With eight fires still burning.
His body flush with immortal fluid, he felt as sharp as a sword newly-made, and yet his mind was unchanged. He’d expected the cobwebs to be broken, for the shadows to crack. Living forever, it seemed, remained a heavy burden.
The Sisterhood had taken Thessia away, and his grand room had lain silent since their leaving. In the quiet, he had brooded, and might have done so forever had he the choice.
Through the main door, three men came to him. Two were the soldiers he’d dismissed outside the throne room’s grand doors. One was a tall, pale, slender man who’d rarely seen the sunlight. Galen glanced at them, and in his heart his first instinct was to believe they were intruders.
No. Not intruders.
Servants.
These men can help me.
The tall, slender man, whose name was Zanist, halted some thirty feet below the throne. His pallid face was lit by the dying brazier fires. He had served Menkaur for many years, and now he served Galen.
“Lord, tell me your will.” Zanist lowered his gaze to the floor, looking upon the very spot Eadunn’s body lay in a pool of heart’s-blood.
“I wish to be alone,” rumbled Galen.
Startled, Zanist peered up. “You wish us to leave, Lord?” said Zanist.
Galen spoke still louder. The room shook with his voice, and Zanist also. “No. I mean I wish to be alone in the world. Look around you. See what we’ve done. Our legacy is dust. There is no glory, only death.”
Zanist lowered his head again.
“Lord, what would you have us do?”
None could know Galen’s heart. Whether he thought of his mother, who’d sacrificed herself to a pyre and orchestrated his rise across the centuries—or of his brother, who’d slain so many, but had hated himself for each life taken—or of Elia, whose face he’d seen in Thessia’s, and who did her work without knowing the truth—none could see what dreams roiled in his restless mind.
He made Zanist wait. In the bottomless quiet, the slender man dared no further questions, standing between the guards with his hands folded in the too-long sleeves of his robe.
“I have three commands,” Galen said at last.
“Yes, Lord.” Zanist bowed.
“Are my father’s satellites still operational?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Good. My first command is this—you will use the eyes to locate a young man. His name is Tablii, and right now he will be walking back across the desolate Tabuk toward the river delta in the east. He will be alone. He is the only survivor of Saeed’s army.”
“Yes, Lord?” Zanist looked up.
“Thessia has been sealed in my brother’s chambers. If she still lives, you will give her food, clothing, and medicine, and you will use my brother’s warship to deliver her to Tablii. You will leave her with him, and you will harm neither of them. Wherever these two should go from there, whatever they do, you are never to hunt them. No matter what other orders I might issue.”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Am I understood?”
“Yes, Lord.”
Galen sat up a little taller on the throne. He looked less regal than his father had, not being swathed in giant copper robes, yet he was far more imposing.
“The Sisterhood, where are they now?” he asked.
“They’ve taken over the lower barracks, Lord,” said Zanist. “Most of your fath—the previous Pharaoh’s—royal guards are dead. The Sisterhood has claimed their rooms. Also, the soldiers arriving from Alexandria are being quartered in the village. We’re keeping them separated from the Sisterhood, as you requested, Lord.”
“Have the soldiers from Alexandria been disarmed?” Galen’s stare was colder now, bearing down on Zanist no matter the distance between them.
“Not yet, Lord. We’ve nowhere to store their weapons.”
Galen shook his shoulders and let out a vast, powerful breath. Had anyone dared to look at him in that moment, they would’ve been afraid of what they saw.
“My second command is this—” he began. “You will let the soldiers from Alexandria keep their weapons. On this morning, before the Sisterhood awakens, you will bring the men into the Pyramid through the gates, and you will do so in utmost secrecy. Once the men are inside, you will order them into the room in which the Sisters sleep. It will be swift. It will be thorough. Every Sister is to die, including the girl Mariya. The Sisters in that room represent the best—and likely the last—of the family who aided my rise into the throne. After this morning, they will be no more.”
“Lord?” Zanist looked up questioningly.
“You have my permission to use dark-lances and Scimitars,” said Galen. “Any damage done to the Pyramid, you will order your men to repair.”
Zanist was shaken by this command. His face, pale already from three decades of service in the Pyramid’s darkest halls, turned white with surprise.
Galen knew the man desired to ask questions…so many questions.
With just a glance, he silenced them.
“Yes, Lord.” Zanist’s voice cracked. “It will be done…as you wish.”
“Good.” Galen rose from his seat. Descending two steps to the floor on which his father’s blood had dried, he stood in the place the brazier fires touched least with their light.
“What is your third command, Lord?” Zanist had regained his color, but quavered no less.
“My final command is this—listen well. Only one ship remains of the Black Fleet. The others smolder in the desert. This is not acceptable. You will reach out to every engineer, artisan, and builder who remain in my kingdom, and you will gather them as my father did. You will order a fleet not of ten, not of fifty, but of one-hundred warships to be made. You will dispatch this command to the far ends of my kingdom, and you will order the new fleet complete within two decades. Twenty years, not a moment longer. Do you understand?”
Zanist paled again, this time to a deathly white.
“But Lord, why?” he stammered. “Why rebuild the Fleet? The Habiru are all but annihilated. Nearly every settlement in your kingdom pays tribute to the Pyramid. Those who remain are…insignificant.”
Galen stalked up close to Zanist. The guards looked away, while the slender man shook so hard within his robes he might’ve died at just a touch.
“When the new ships are complete,” said Galen, “we will finish it.”
“Finish it, Lord?”
“What my father began.”
Zanist blinked uncomprehendingly. Either he didn’t understand…
…or he doesn’t want to.
“Please, Lord.” Zanist cowered. “Be plain with me. Your father’s motives were rarely known to us. We knew his commands, not his reasons.”
“You mean to say you don’t understand?” said Galen.
“Yes…Lord.” Zanist bowed again.
Galen shut his eyes, but none saw it. Had they, they would’ve thought him unhappy, torn asunder by himself, willing to work dark things no matter the emotions roiling inside him.
“Have you ever been outside the Pyramid?” he said to Zanist.
“No…I mean...rarely, Lord.” Zanist shook his head. “Only as a child.”
“And do you know what’s out there?” said Galen. �
��Do you know what lies beyond the sands surrounding this place?”
“I’ve only heard stories, Lord.”
Galen’s eyes darkened. No malice lived within him, no evil and no cruelty. But anyone who would’ve seen him then would’ve said he was the embodiment of all these terrible things, and tenfold as wicked as his father.
“Decay,” he said. “Sorrow. Hunger. Disease. Death. Short little lives punctuated with pain. No one out there wants to live like this. Not really. Given the choice, they would choose oblivion over their misery. Even I, gifted with life beyond any of you, have walked the poisoned sands, the skeleton cities, and the fields salted with bones—and I have wondered—why am I here? What is left for me? What is left for anyone?”
“What are you saying, Lord?” Zanist trembled.
“We will finish what my father began,” said Galen. “He has killed the world already. I’ve seen it. It’s dead. You’re going to help me push the last of the sand atop the grave. You will, or I’ll find someone who can. I’ll let you live like a king—you, your children, perhaps even your grandchildren. But after that, there will be nothing. It will be me, and no others. And it will be better.”
Zanist looked up with wide eyes. And although they were afraid, although Zanist’s lungs rattled with terror, Galen saw what he needed to see.
Willingness.
“You’ll help me, then?” he said. “You’ll help me rebuild the Black Fleet? You’ll accept the vast rewards I offer?”
“Yes, Lord.” Zanist trembled.
“Good.” Galen nodded. “You are dismissed. When next I see you, I want to know the Sisterhood is destroyed.”
“Yes, Lord.”
Zanist and the guards retreated. They walked past Eadunn’s body, and past the dark pool surrounding him. Across the copper floors, they went perhaps fifty feet before Zanist turned to face Galen one final time.
“I beg your mercy, Lord. May I ask one question before I go?”
Galen hadn’t moved. He’d expected the last question. He’d seen it in Zanist’s eyes.
“Ask,” he said.
“Lord, it’s said the rebel Saeed knew of the Sisterhood, that he collaborated with them to get you inside the Pyramid. It’s said also that he ordered them to take your father hostage at the exact moment of your coming.” Zanist gazed at the floor while he spoke. “But did you know, Lord? Did Saeed tell you? When you came into the throne room, did you know the rebel women were awaiting with your father as prisoner?”
Lords of the Black Sands Page 32
