Gods & Mortals

by Various Authors

  ‘Here,’ said Karya, looking up. ‘Both our families have long attended the Grand Chapel.’

  ‘I approve. Go, then. Make your preparations. Surprise Vorst Treveign and Nagra Halorecht. Surprise Nulahmia. For I will do more than bless your union. I will attend its ceremony.’

  ‘Treveign and Halorecht together are more than twice as dangerous as each is separately,’ Mereneth said when Neferata joined her in the crypt. The spymistress did not sound happy.

  ‘Of course they are,’ said Neferata. ‘The way to neutralise this threat, though, is not by simply opposing it.’

  The crypt was circular. The only light was the gloomy red that filtered in through the arched doorway. The walls bulged outwards in imitation of the great chamber’s gargantuan ribcage. Neferata walked around the dais upon which Therul lay. There was a gap of a few inches between his head and his body. His entire neck was missing. Whoever had killed him had taken care to create a wound so massive, it could not be interpreted.

  ‘Did Therul ever mention the romance?’ Neferata asked. As long as the two families had been at war, she had not had to devote much attention to them. Vorst Treveign’s high counsellor had been her spy. With him in place, she had been content to let things simmer, ready to interfere only if the violence between the families rose to a level that inconvenienced her. Peace had never been a possibility. But the situation had changed, and her attention was required.

  ‘I don’t think he knew of the courtship,’ said Mereneth. ‘Not directly, at least. He reported that Vorst had some concerns about what his daughter might be doing, but it does not appear to have crossed his mind that she might be falling in love with Evered Halorecht.’

  ‘And they are both sole heirs,’ said Neferata.

  Like many of the vampire nobility, the Treveigns and Halorechts had, through the ages, ensured there were enough mortals in the family to sustain the bloodline through direct descent. The firstborn of each generation were given the soulblight curse of vampiric immortality. Both Nagra Halorecht and Vorst Treveign had lost their consorts shortly after the births of Evered and Karya, and neither had thus far acted to produce any further offspring. Vorst was strong, and it might be a millennium before Karya took control of her house. Nagra, though, seemed weak. Therul suspected the Treveigns had found the means to erode her immortality with poison, though the assassin had silenced him before he could find proof.

  ‘Therul’s death is convenient for the union,’ Neferata went on. ‘Karya admits this freely. Do we know where she was at the time of the assassination?’

  ‘At a masked ball hosted by House Falkreach,’ said Mereneth. ‘Do you think she arranged the killing?’

  Neferata thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘She is too young… and sincere. Had she wished Therul dead, I believe she would have killed him herself and then confessed. No, this union must benefit someone else.’

  ‘So the question is whether Therul was a target because he would have opposed the union, or because he was our spy,’ said Mereneth.

  ‘We will act on the presumption that both are true. Belief in coincidence is the prologue to defeat. The stage has been set for us. Let us take measures. Then we will let the performance proceed, and the players reveal themselves.’

  Twenty feet up from the floor of the Grand Chapel, a gallery ran the entire circumference of the walls. On the night of the marriage ceremony, Neferata walked the gallery alone. As she passed from archway to archway, she appeared and disappeared to the sight of the gathered multitude, but the crowd was always open to her gaze.

  The Grand Chapel was filled with hunger. The full houses of Treveign and Halorecht were there, as were their allies. There were hundreds on both sides, two armies present to witness a contentious peace treaty. The curious were more numerous still, here in their thousands. The hunger for power and the hunger for knowledge were so thick, the air roiled with tension.

  The walls were hung with the colours of the two houses. Treveign’s banners were obsidian streaked with gold. Halorecht’s were scarlet, trimmed with black. They seemed to hang together, rather than in opposition, and Neferata wondered if the two lovers saw a good omen in the complementarity of the colours. For herself, the serendipity was irrelevant. As the ceremony progressed, what Neferata saw was a ritual that was the result of a much greater, longer, hidden orchestration.

  In the centre of the nave, surrounded by their families, Karya and Evered stood facing each other, attending the words of the ancient necromancer, Alvaras. The few wisps of hair on Alvaras’ yellow-grey scalp floated in the still air of the chapel, a serpentine halo. Ceremonial attendants flanked the betrothed, each holding the golden chain of a collared, subdued mortal from each household. As Alvaras approached the conclusion of the ceremony, Neferata scrutinised the leaders of the houses. Even the slightest change in their expressions was clearly visible to Neferata’s witchsight. Nagra looked even more fragile than when Neferata had last seen her. The Halorecht matriarch was stooped, her face withered as crumbling leather. Her features were pinched into a frown, but her eyes were rheumy, as if she had trouble concentrating on the event unfolding before her. Vorst Treveign, on the other hand, looked far more sanguine. His expression was neutral, but Neferata could see no flicker of concern as his sole heir pledged herself to the son of his enemies. The other members of the family seemed much more uneasy than Vorst. Their expressions mirrored Nagra’s and those of the other Halorechts. There seemed to be very few parties present who saw the union as anything other than harmful to their interests.

  ‘Where two rivers of blood have flowed, let there now be one,’ Alvaras intoned. He gestured to the attendants, who pulled the imprisoned mortals forward. They opened the collars, but retained their grips on their charges’ shoulders. Alvaras bowed to Karya, to Evered, and then, in a single motion rose and turned, right arm outstretched. His talon of a nail on his middle finger sliced open the jugular veins of the mortals. Every move of the ritual was known and rehearsed by the participants, and the couple fastened their mouths on the throat of the other family’s mortal before a first jet of blood had splashed to the ground. Treveign drank deeply of Halorecht blood, and Halorecht drank Treveign. They drained the bodies, then quickly twisted off the heads, completing the sacrifice, leaving bloodless husks that would not rise again.

  The lovers stepped away from the bodies, joined hands and stood before Alvaras again. He touched their foreheads with his crimson-stained finger. ‘And so two are one,’ he said, his voice like the rasp of sand over bone. ‘The work of this solemn day is complete.’

  No, Neferata thought. I believe it has just begun.

  The taste of the Halorecht mortal’s blood still on her tongue, Karya looked up at the conclusion of the ritual to see Neferata gazing down at her. She had been circling the ceremony since its start, only fitfully visible, a shadow in flowing crimson robes. Now that she had paused, Karya saw that her arms were clad in what looked like dark armour. It seemed to Karya that the queen was clad for the celebration and for war. Karya felt reassured. Neferata’s dress revealed the risks attendant on this union. Karya would have donned more protective clothing too, if there had been a way of doing so. But the robes she and Evered wore would not have concealed any armour underneath, and the result would have been a provocation to violence. So she and Evered were armed only with hope. She trusted that would be enough.

  There was a flurry of movement to Karya’s left. She turned in time to see a silver blade stab through Nagra Halorecht’s throat. Evered’s mother opened her mouth in a soundless gasp of agony. Night-dark blood burst from her lips, and her skin crumbled like parchment. The figure behind her was hooded and robed, a shape of darkness so featureless it was as if the sword moved of its own volition. While Karya was still in the first moments of shock, the blade withdrew from Nagra’s throat, rose to one side, then slashed into the side of her neck. Her head tumbled off her body and rolled
to her son’s feet.

  In the same moment, another figure leapt out of the crowd from Karya’s right. It was shrouded like the first, though to Karya’s horrified eyes the clothing seemed subtly different in style, wrapped around the limbs more tightly. That was enough for her to understand. Though her limbs were frozen in horror and surprise, it came to her that the attackers were not of the same faction. They were not working together. The second was responding to the actions of the first.

  The assassin raised his sword, pointing it at Karya’s heart. She took a step back. Evered threw himself at the killer, and the blade plunged forwards.

  ‘Evered!’ Karya screamed as the assassin stabbed him through the chest. Evered’s hands fluttered at the hilt in weak protest, and then stilled as his body went limp.

  The first killer rushed in to attack the second. Their blades clashed once before the crowd finally reacted. The spectators who had come out of simple curiosity now shouted in alarm and rushed for the doors, desperate to avoid the coming storm of violence. Fury rippled out from the centre of the nave. The families of Treveign and Halorecht and their allies and vassals roared with anger and hurled themselves at one another. None were armed, for Neferata had decreed no weapons could enter the Grand Chapel on this night, but vampires did not need steel to wage war, and the dim, crimson glow of the immense chamber exploded with the sudden fires of sorcery.

  Karya sank to her knees. The frenzy around her was a dull, background roar. She cradled Evered in her arms. His eyes were dull, unseeing. His mouth hung open. A trickle of his own blood dribbled past his fangs and down his chin. Karya called to him again and again, rocking the body, begging him to return. His mother’s head lay a few feet away. Its flesh had fallen to dust. All that remained was an ancient skull in a splayed nest of grey hair. Nagra had been centuries old, and time had rushed to claim its due from her corpse. Evered did not crumble. Like Karya, he was truly young. They had both been turned only a few years ago, and so he lay in his pooling blood, youth in his features, decay having to take his body in its natural time.

  Karya howled. She could not hear her own voice over the rising shriek of the battles around her. The force of her screams tore at her throat. Her dream of hope was gone, and it burned on a pyre of renewed violence. Instead of two families becoming one, soon there would be none. Inside the Grand Chapel of Night’s Hunger, darkness was swelling, gorged with blood. Karya screamed. She felt as if she would go blind. There was nothing before her now, no future for anything, only an abyss of absolute darkness.

  She wept until she choked on her grief and pain. She doubled over Evered’s corpse, gagging. Around the two, fighting swirled, but the combatants ignored them. Both of the assassins lay still, ripped apart by outraged family members, who now were in turn fighting for their existence. Karya regarded the struggle with the dullness of despair. She did not look up for succour from Neferata. The slaughter unfolding in the chapel deserved nothing but disgust from the queen. The jaws of apathy closed around Karya. She welcomed them. They would hold her for eternity, or until a Halorecht finished the work of the second assassin.

  She believed this for several long moments until, looking up, she searched for her father’s face amongst the fray. But Vorst Treveign was not there, nor was he lying butchered on the floor.

  Karya frowned. The apathy began to lose its grip on her, and she stood. She turned around slowly, searching. It was entirely possible that her father was just a few yards away and that she would not see him. She could barely make out any of the bloodied faces in the flares of sorcerous fire and crushing darkness. Yet she kept turning, compelled by an instinct and a growing terror.

  Finally, she saw him. He had managed to make his way through the melee to the far wall. The struggle between the nave and the main doors was too intense to push through without being drawn into it. Between the nave and the entrance to the tower, though, the crowd was more sparse. Vorst had climbed a short flight of steps leading to the tower’s landing. He paused before an open doorway, looking at the battle in the great chamber, and then his eyes met hers. Even from this distance, through darkness slashed by magical bolts and misted with blood, Karya felt the impact of his dispassionate contempt. Then he turned his back on his family and its foes, disappearing through the doorway.

  Karya pursued. She plunged through the fray, running in a straight line for the tower. She pounded over flagstones slick with gore, ducking and weaving between the struggles, flowing around them as if she were the wind. Clawed hands snatched at her, tearing at her robes and flesh. Snarling, enraged faces turned at her passing. She was too fast to be caught. She had seen the face of betrayal, and rage gave her wings.

  She reached the steps and raced up them, through the doorway, and then climbed the endless spiral staircase of the tower, never slowing. There was no apathy now. Her grief was as strong as ever, pricked to an incandescent fury. Somehow, her father had brought the horror below into being. Karya’s existence had narrowed to a single goal. She would confront Vorst and demand an answer. Why? She would force the answer from him if she had to rip it from his throat with her hands. Why?

  Why?

  From an archway at the top of the staircase, Karya ran onto the roof of the tower and stopped short. The immense claw-spire loomed thirty feet above her, a curved dagger of a silhouette in the night. Vorst leaned on the parapet, his back to her.

  ‘Father,’ she croaked, her voice raw from her screams.

  Vorst turned around. He folded his arms and stared at her coldly. ‘What?’ he snapped, impatient.

  His anger baffled her. He glared as if somehow she were to blame for the massacre. She refused to be cowed, and marched towards him.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why have you done this?’

  Her father snorted. ‘You served your purpose,’ he said. ‘And now your utility is over. I no longer have either the need or the patience to put up with your squalling pretensions of morality.’ He took a step forward and extended his right hand. ‘Come here, daughter. Let me throw you over the parapet.’

  Karya froze.

  ‘You will do as you are told,’ Vorst said.

  Karya backed towards the door.

  ‘I am your father,’ Vorst said. ‘You owe your existence to me, and so you are mine to dispose of as I see fit.’ His presumption of ownership was so powerful, his betrayal so utterly cold-blooded, that these words assumed a perverse, terrible authority. ‘You will obey me,’ he said.

  The monstrous words held Karya fast. She could no longer move her feet.

  Vorst stepped forward, his hand crooked like a talon, reaching out to seize her. ‘I have seen your future,’ he said. ‘It lies shattered on the cobblestones below. It is time for you to join it.’

  ‘You are wrong.’ The words came from behind Karya. They came from a being infinitely older and of far greater authority than Vorst. He looked past Karya, his eyes blazing first in anger, and then in fear. His spell broke, and Karya rushed away. She crouched against the parapet, transfixed by the confrontation.

  Neferata stood in the doorway, clad in blood and night. ‘It is your future that is shattered,’ Neferata said to Vorst. ‘Your manipulations are at an end, and so are you.’

  For the space of a heartbeat, it seemed to Karya that, in his arrogance, Vorst would try to fight. Then he turned to flee, though there was nowhere to go. His eyes fell on Karya, and his face contorted with a hate so pure it burned. Karya covered her face in horror. Through her fingers, she saw him open his mouth, and she dreaded the curse he would call down upon her.

  He never had the chance.

  Karya was able to see what Neferata did next, because the majesty of the queen and the grace of her movement were such that they commanded witness. Yet she acted with a speed beyond lightning. She swept forward from the doorway, and in a single movement seized Vorst by the throat and lifted him high. She drew the dagger Akmet-ha
r from the folds of her dress and slit Vorst’s neck. The gesture was so small it looked like an afterthought. Yet Vorst convulsed upon the instant. Blood flowed in a cataract down his body. With an idle gesture, as if flicking dust from a sleeve, Neferata tossed him over the parapet. The crunch of corpse on stone, when it finally came, was barely audible, though it would sound in Karya’s mind forever.

  Karya advanced on trembling legs towards Neferata. She looked over the wall at the broken thing far below.

  ‘He did this,’ she said, as if speaking the words would help her believe them. ‘He allowed my union with Evered so that he could destroy both our families. Why? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Greed,’ said Neferata. ‘A hunger for power so great it bred delusions. Your father believed that if he gave two houses and his only daughter to me as a burnt offering, this would prove his devotion, and I would reward him.’ She shook her head. ‘That is not loyalty. That is selfishness and waste. I reward neither.’ She smiled at Karya. ‘And he failed. Through you, House Treveign still stands.’

  ‘It does not stand,’ said Karya. ‘It kneels before you.’ She did as she said, her heart burning with gratitude and love for the queen who had saved her. Once again, Karya saw the chance of purpose in her existence, and she seized it with fervour. ‘I seek nothing now but the glory of serving you,’ she said.

  Neferata smiled. ‘Then I am pleased.’

  Mereneth joined Neferata on the rooftop some time later. Together, they watched the lone figure of Karya walking across the square away from the Grand Chapel.

  ‘The fire that fuelled her honesty is now the fuel of her devotion to me,’ Neferata said.

  ‘She has the makings of a good spy,’ Mereneth agreed.

  ‘I am confident you will make that promise flower.’