This was the Great Army of Zyung, and the sheer size of it took her breath away. Now she saw ancient and terrible things, winged lizards with beaks like amber blades. Entire flocks of them soared above the great host. Some of these beasts lay at ease amid the ocean of tents, chewing on the flesh of burned offerings. It seemed that she gazed on some ancient empire out of dim legend. For a moment she doubted the truth of Gammir’s words.
“Does all this… does it really exist?” she asked.
He laughed. “Now you know the truth of the world, Sweet One. Zyung is of the Old Breed. While our civilizations rose from barbarism and built the Great Cities, Zyung was conquering all the lands on the far side of the world. Do you understand? One single all-encompassing empire bearing his name. He even cast down their Gods. Now they worship only Zyung. Only a master of the Old Breed could achieve such greatness. Impressive, is it not?”
She stared again at the inhumanly perfect face of white stone. If it were to fall from the heights of the temple-palace, thousands would die beneath its weight. It seemed inconceivable. Yet here it was. She knew now that Gammir did not lie. Not about this, his great secret.
The mirror faded to cloudy gray once more, and she turned to face him.
“Why did you show me this?”
“So you will know what is to come,” said Gammir. “I have treated with the God-King himself. He intends to expand his empire until it encompasses the entire world. Both sides of the stone. This means our own world must fall to the one he has built. It has been his goal for untold ages.” He took up the black sphere again, squeezed it in his fist. “His power is unimaginable.”
Sharadza’s eyelids fluttered. “Your words bring me fear.”
Madness! All of this is madness.
Gammir chuckled at her mock naivety. “My little Princess, do you not see? When Zyung and his numberless legions come to claim our world, he will have one ally-only one-to aid him in this conquest.”
“You,” she said.
He smiled and struck a kingly pose. “I will continue to rule Khyrei in his name, while the rest of the Great Cities crumble and burn and die. Zyung will build new ones in their place. Such a great and fine slaughter it will be. All my enemies and their kingdoms will fall, and the spires of Khyrei will stand above them all.”
“My Lord…” she breathed. “You would… serve… such a being?”
“For a while, yes,” Gammir said. “Long enough to see Yaskatha and Uurz and Mumbaza and Udurum wiped from the earth.” He turned away from her and walked to the center of a circle of runes. His eyes caressed the worn floor there, as if it held all the secrets of the cosmos.
“Then… when she returns… we will take the God-King’s power.” He looked at her with a new kind of lust blazing in his lupine eyes. “And the world will be ours.”
He took her body there in the center of the rune circle, as if the carnal act could summon his missing Empress. His fangs raked across her neck as his fingers explored her body. She was, as always, helpless beneath his touch.
Drops of her own blood spilled across the black flagstones. He left them there to dry among the runes, so their power might kindle a spell he long wished to cast.
Thirteen bloody nights later, the high tower seethed brightly enough to blot out the moon. On the darkened streets hunting her prey, Sharadza looked up to watch a blazing comet fall out of the sky. The summit of Gammir’s barbed spire burst into flames. No, the flames poured from its four windows, white and fierce as the naked sun. She turned away to spare her eyes.
Something dark and heavy fell within her chest as the white light faded. A thicker darkness replaced the shattered gloom of evening. Doors slammed and dogs howled. Somewhere a stabbed man’s death cry rang across the night.
She finished sucking out the life of a brawny blacksmith and left his drained body lying across his anvil. She flew as if summoned to the palace and up the winding stairs. No longer was Gammir’s sanctuary off limits to her. She was his Princess.
His slave. Only his slave.
Flinging open the iron door, she rushed into the high chamber. Gammir kneeled inside the circle of runes, his arms wrapped about the waist of an imperious figure. His smile was a mask of total bliss, and Sharadza knew he would never love anyone the way he loved this woman with the steaming pale skin and black diamond eyes. She stared at Sharadza now, her mane of white hair wild as a northern blizzard. Entirely naked, she radiated power. Her fingers, tipped with feline claws, stroked Gammir’s face. When she spoke her ivory fangs sparkled. The last of the white flame dripped like water from the pink tips of her breasts.
“I knew you would return,” Gammir moaned, his cheek pressed against her pale thigh. “I knew it…”
The tall woman held Sharadza’s gaze. She could not look away, even if she chose to.
Gammir turned his eyes upon Sharadza and grinned. She expected him to offer her neck to this fanged Goddess. Sharadza would gladly lie down and offer up her hot blood if asked. But the decision was not hers to make. She belonged to Gammir, as Gammir belonged to this other.
He reached a hand out to her, and Sharadza moved across the chamber to take it. She kneeled now at the edge of the rune circle. The sigils throbbed with a scarlet light, overpowering the last of the white flame’s glow.
“Grandmother,” said Gammir. “Meet your new daughter… my Sweet Princess… my gift to you.”
The pale Empress smiled. She kissed Gammir’s lips and took Sharadza’s hand from him.
“My Favored Son has been lonely,” she said. “This one has the Blood of Vod in her.”
“Not anymore,” said Gammir. “She is reborn to us in blood and shadow.”
The Empress raised one of her thin eyebrows.
Her loveliness was blinding, like the sun at midday.
Sorceress!
She killed Father! She killed…
Ianthe kissed her and gave her hand back to Gammir.
“My children,” said the sorceress. “You make me so very proud.”
She smiled, and Sharadza’s heart leaped. Nothing could be a more worthwhile endeavor than to please this Queen of Queens. This Empress of Immortality.
The Claw.
“It seems a Royal Wedding is in order,” said Ianthe. She pulled Gammir and Sharadza close, her long fingers cradling their chins.
Sharadza’s cheek burned against the cool skin of her thigh.
“But first,” said the Empress, “let us drink deep the Red Wine of Khyrei.”
13
Masters and Slaves
In a tangle of red foliage Tong crouched amid a band of twenty silent Sydathians. Their pink snouts sniffed at the evening air while he scanned the broad fields beyond the jungle’s edge. A collection of irrigated plantations lay between the wilderness and the black wall of the city. As the sun lowered itself in the west, thousands of slaves walked the dirt roads between the great crop squares. They carried bushels of beans, corn, lemons, and grapes on their heads; others hauled great sheaves of wheat on two-wheeled carts.
The Onyx Guard rode sable horses among the workers, a constant reminder of the Emperor’s power over those who dwelled in the fields. Each plantation was supervised by an Overseer who barked orders and consigned the day’s pickings to the beds of wagons bound for the Southern Gate. The occasional crack of whips in the distance made Tong’s shoulders jump reflexively.
A long line of carts, wagons, and bent-backed slaves filed onto the gate road. Spiked towers stood on either side of the portal, built from the same volcanic stone as the city wall. Sentinels with pennoned spears paced from station to station along the great ramparts. The bulk of the Onyx Guard filed into the city through the crowded gate, where busy taverns and cheap wine would fill their off-duty hours.
In the fields after sundown the Overseers and their personal squads retired to comfortable plantation estates. Crowds of slaves finished their day’s work and trudged back to their rows of ragged shacks. Women started the evening cookfires a
nd prepared their allotted portions of pork, fowl, or beef. Usually there were surplus vegetables for these simple families, the lowest class of Khyrein society. Underfed slaves were useless, and the Overseers ensured that those who worked would eat. Yet in lean times slaves were the first to starve, and they were driven by scourge and club to work until they died. Those too old or sick to be productive were taken from the fields and never seen again. There was no doubt what happened to such slaves: they lay numberless in unmarked graveyards hemming the fertile fields.
A league from the city wall the River Tah completed its long winding journey from the volcanoes of the southern jungles, losing itself at last in the Golden Sea. Bands of women and young girls carried water gourds and buckets to the river and back to the huts. The river’s dark water was the only source of drink for the clustered slave communities. No fishing was allowed in the river due to the venomous predators and vipers that lurked there. How many times had Tong seen a girl-child dying from the bite of a river beast, skin purpling as the poison rushed toward her heart? He had lost count.
The Sydathians ringing Tong sat still as stones. For hours he had watched his nation of slaves complete their daily chores. Patience was the first of his weapons. Surprise was another. Darkness crept at last from the red jungle shadows, spreading across the fields to engulf the black city. The dusky towers of the Emperor’s palace snared the sun’s dying light, burning red and gold above the hidden streets.
Tong could not see the great harbor on the city’s northern side, but a few ships’ masts were visible beyond the reedy estuary, dark galleons bearing the Khyrein banner. Perhaps those ships would return with foreign slaves to break and put to work in these fields. Such captives never lived long: deprivation and exhaustion stole their lives if the brutality of the Overseers failed to do so. If slaves were no better than loyal hounds, then foreign slaves were the most hated of the breed.
As the ships grew tiny against the darkening horizon, Tong made a silent vow. By the time the sea reavers returned to Khyrei, there would be no more slavery here.
Now the Southern Gate rumbled shut for the night. The wall would not open again until the light of dawn touched its parapets. For a few hours all the plantations would be sealed off from the majority of the Onyx Guards. Only the Overseers and their squads of estate guards ruled the fields now. An army of slaves slipped into their nightly respite from constant toil.
Tong wondered exactly where Matay’s body was buried. The graveyards of slaves were mass affairs, rough holes filled with the bones of those who died that week, piled upon those who had died the previous week. He put it from his mind. Matay was in the Deathlands, where none of the blood and fire that was to come would harm her. She would be proud of him for what he was about to do. He had to believe it so.
Vengeance was one thing, but freedom was far more precious. He would see his people free, or he would die in the attempt. A worthy death was preferable to a wasted life. As the rim of the sun disappeared, Khyrei became a mass of glimmering amber lights beside the moonlit river.
The smell of roasting meat drifted across the fields from the nearest slave huts. The Sydathians inhaled and licked their lips with prehensile tongues. He understood their fascination. He understood far more of their world than he had thought possible. Weeks of shared meditation before the Godstone had guided his mind and theirs to a common destination. The creatures had no spoken language other than their curious singing ability, yet Tong comprehended now most of their arm and claw gestures, as well as the quirks of arm and leg and snout that held specific meanings.
The eyeless ones used thought and emotion to communicate the same way Men used words. After living among them he had come to share their thoughts and emotions, as they had begun to share his own. They understood that Tong’s people suffered in bondage. They would follow him into blood and fire in the cause of freedom. They were his brothers, these voiceless beasts from below the world. Tonight began their holy crusade.
Tong climbed high into the branches of a tree to get a better view of the dark fields. The eyeless ones followed, and soon they all squatted among a welter of branches. He pointed toward the nearest houses of the Overseers, stone-built manors encircled by low walls of rock and gates of barred iron. Each house hosted a squad of at least fifty Onyx Guards, half of whom were on night duty at any given time. Across the maze of plantations he estimated at least a hundred such manor houses.
A hundred well-guarded Overseers. Tonight they all must die. The Sydathians must cleanse these fields. Only then could his people rise up and take what they deserved. The road to freedom ran though a forest of death, beyond a roaring sea of blood and fire.
Tong closed his eyes and reached out to his horned brothers.
All those who wear the mask must die.
The eyeless ones nodded and snuffled among their branches.
All those who carry the whip must die.
They waved claws and arms in the signs of agreement.
All those who carry the sword must die.
The Sydathians shuffled anxiously. They knew these things already. They had seen a vision of all this terrain, this darkling city and its vast fields, in the mind of their newest brother. Tong shared their eagerness. They shared his anger, his need for vengeance, his lust for liberation. They longed to see the rebirth he had promised them, to be a central part of it. A reborn Khyrei that would welcome Sydathians inside its gates. They had dwelled in the dark long enough-they knew all the subterranean secrets the underworld could teach.
Tong was their key to the world of sun and sky. A whole new existence in a realm they hardly knew. They sought a remedy to the long-borne loneliness of their race, and an end to ancestral isolation. They craved a place among Men, the fresh liberty of the upper world. Theirs would be a kinship born in this struggle for freedom.
He sent ten of them back into the jungle, there to reconnoiter with the others who had climbed out of deep Sydathus at daybreak. Six thousand strong they lurked in the deep jungle. Now let them come forth.
The night grew blacker; the day’s heat faded beneath the rapid chill of evening. In the bunched huts slaves finished their modest meals and fell into slumber, or sat about dwindling fires telling tales of ancient days. Inside any one of the manor houses an Overseer might be entertaining guests from the city, or enjoying the charms of a young slave who had caught his eye. Others would be lost in bowls of wine or lying helpless in their soft beds. Let them dream. They would awake in the Deathlands, where the Gods dispensed punishment, dividing the just from the wicked and casting the latter into the Outer Darkness forever.
A raven flapped out of the darkness and perched in the tree next to Tong. It spoke with Iardu’s voice.
“What I feared is true,” said the bird. “The Claw has returned. Seven nights ago.”
“What does this mean for us?” asked Tong.
The bird ruffled its black feathers. “Her power is great,” he said. “And she will certainly take a hand in the city’s defense.”
“What of the girl?”
“She is still there… a slave to shadow… a drinker of blood.”
“Will you kill her?”
“Not if I can free her of Gammir’s trap. She could be of great aid to us.”
Tong nodded. The jungle rustled behind him. “They come.” The raven turned its ebony eyes at him and blinked. “Will you not reconsider?” Tong asked. “Stand with us tonight?” The raven shook its head. “I must seek the girl.” “Is she your daughter?”
The raven did not answer. Instead it spread its wings and flew back toward the steaming city.
Tong climbed to the ground and watched the jungle come alive with pale, emerging forms.
Come, my Brothers!
They responded to his unspoken call. He ran into the fields, followed by a loping horde of Sydathians. They rushed soundless and without light across row after row of leaf, stem, and stalk. The first of the manor house gates loomed before Tong now. To his east
and west throngs of Sydathians moved toward similar structures. The Overseers did not even lock the gates of their outer walls. How could they expect to be assaulted here in the very center of their power? Tong’s heart raced as he pulled the long sabre from its sheath. The knife was gripped in his other fist, point downward for quick stabbing. His eyeless brothers needed no weapons. Their claws and fangs were far more deadly than his two lengths of Khyrein steel.
Tonight is for you, Matay. And for our son.
The Sydathians outpaced him with their apish running gait. The first one to reach the manor house crashed through the front door as if it were a paper screen. A second later three more hurdled through the low windows of murky glass. When Tong entered the doorway, the blood had already begun to fly. The eyeless ones tore apart a roomful of off-duty guardsmen before they could even draw blades to defend themselves. They had been dining with the Overseer. Tong was not sure which one was master of the house, but it did not matter. All were guilty. All would die. Fresh crimson splattered across the feasting table.
“What is happening here?” a wide-eyed soldier yelled. Without their monstrous masks, they were little more than frightened boys. Tong answered with his sabre, skewering him cleanly through the heart. He died before his body hit the lush carpet. Now the entire house was in an uproar, men shouting for blades and armor and horses. The Sydathians poured in through doors and windows like a white flood, a tide of surging destruction. The masked sentinels rushed forward to die two by two, their swords and spears unbloodied as they fell. The Sydathians were too fast for the men’s blades, probably even too fast for speeding arrows. Time would tell.
The first manor house fell easily. Tong killed four panicked guardsmen with sabre and knife. He grabbed a brand from the hearthfire and set the house aflame as he fled with his leaping brothers. A small corral of perhaps fifteen horses stood behind the manor. Tong kicked down the gate and let the beasts run free. They galloped into the fields in all directions, fleeing the conflagration. Yet one of them lingered in the pen as if it were afraid of liberty. Tong approached the stallion, stroked its nose, combed its black mane with his fingers. It was a young horse. In his boyhood he had dreamed of riding such a fine creature; but only the Onyx Guard was permitted to ride south of the city wall.
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