The Queen of Wolves

by Douglas Clegg

  When we had gone out on deck, a youth pointed up to the mast and shouted, “There, we see a beast from Hell!”

  Without a thought, I unfurled my wings and shot upward, catching my hands on the limp sail.

  The night’s mist was heavy, but through it, I made out the vague shape of a creature like a crouched gargoyle clinging to the top of the mast.

  9

  I crawled toward it, as quietly as I could. It must have sensed me, and it took off into the mist, crying out like a gull as it went.

  I tried to follow it, but could not find it in the haze.

  When I returned to Pythia, I spoke of the corpse-vampyre. “It is like us, but without glamour. Why it has followed us, and yet not attacked—or spoken—I cannot understand.”

  “Nezahual had many dungeons and prisons in his temples, and a menagerie of creatures I could not bear to look upon,” she said. “This may be some beast sent to spy upon us.”

  “To retrieve what was stolen,” I said.

  Instinctively, she clutched the pouch at her waist. “If it has flown off, it is probably on one of those other ships mired nearby,” she said. “I do not feel danger from it. Do you?”

  I shook my head. “Not danger. In the stream, I felt its weakness. What if that orb calls to it? For it has followed us too well. I do not like this, for we have burden enough without this stranger stalking us.”

  “We will hunt it after we have drunk our fill,” she said, but within minutes, an alarm sounded across the ship’s decks. The sailors on watch cried out, and I sniffed the air.

  “Do you smell it?” Pythia asked.

  “It’s the wind,” I said. “It is coming from the east.”

  Even as I said these words, there was a great, terrible creaking sound, as if every board of the ship groaned in pain. The Illuyanka shifted restlessly in the now-moving waters, and I heard the crack of thunder in the mist that moved like a broom, sweeping across the sea. Flashes of lightning in the dark clouds overhead tore at the fabric of the fog, and I thought of Illuyanek and his dream of the brothers of the wind as they agitated the sisters of the water itself—for this is what it seemed like as the squall came upon us all of a sudden.

  I saw it—the rising waves in the distance that had cleared of mist—and heard the cries of the remaining men as they took their posts. The rain came like a sheet of shattering jewels against the deep early morning, before the sun, before the warm vibration of dawn. The waves rose and slapped across the decks so that some went below, though others shouted for them to return.

  I flew to the highest mast, feeling the wind whipping at my wings as if trying to shred them. I clung to the mast as the sails shifted, turning first left and then right as the men at the rigging drew them to and fro with their skill at handling the roughest of winds. With the sun threatening a pale light beyond the darkening storm, I joined Pythia belowdecks, away from the comforts of the upper cabin, and remained far beneath in the depths of the ship, until we awoke in the night to hear the cries of men far above, and that endless groaning of the ship—and the cracking of one of the masts as it broke far above us.

  PART 2: OPHION

  Chapter 5

  ________________

  THE DISTANT WAR CRY

  1

  Five nights had passed since Pythia and I fled Aztlanteum’s fall, and before the sixth night ended, the ship had been thrown into the maelstrom of a storm, battered and bloodied. Fewer than a dozen men aboard survived—the sea had claimed several men. Two of the seven masts had broken—one smashed the captain’s cabin down its center after midnight, damaging the deck below. Men lashed themselves to masts and wheel, and some hid belowdecks with the Storm Dreamer. Pythia could not rest in the night, nor would she drink the blood of the remaining men, for she feared their strength would be gone if the gale continued. I took orders from one of the sailors who knew the ship as well as any captain might have, and managed to draw at least one man back from the brink of death as waves washed across the foundering ship.

  The storm also brought blessings, for the men who remained were able sailors and believed in the prophecies of their Storm Dreamer. The Illuyanka had been shot by the storm like a stray arrow, and yet the ship had traveled many more leagues than it would have been able to under passable weather.

  Despite the damage and loss, in the day and half the night the vessel sped along as if propelled by engines, for the fierce storm did not abate, and pushed us halfway across the ocean.

  I consulted Illuyanek in his bunk. He thanked us both for the “demon blessings,” and for bringing food and water and the burning leaf from the abandoned ships. “You must fly now, my good demon,” he said. “For as you pass through the layers of night, you will see that the dark remains ahead of you, even while light comes from behind. If you move swiftly, you will reach such islands where you may find a day’s rest, with many mortals to quench your thirst.”

  I did not wish to remind him of his own death, which he had dreamed of, nor could I ask him of the fate of the remaining crew, for fear that he would tell me of some misfortune. Yet, as if understanding my silent thoughts, he raised his eyebrows and smiled slowly. “Oh, these men will reach their homes, good demon. But I will pass to the halls of my ancestors before my foot touches the threshold of my own doorway. Yet do you not understand such prophecy?” He chuckled. “For if I never return to my house, I will not die soon. Instead, I will go to the emperor’s palace and live out my days. I will think of you, my friend. I hope we will meet once more before my last breath comes.”

  “This is my hope, as well,” I said, clasping his hands in mine.

  “Tell your lady demon that I have dreamed of a child, a boy, who will one day remember this journey his mother has taken, and will thank her for it,” he said.

  2

  Pythia wept as she left the ship, for the old man had touched her heart deeply. When the worst of the gale had ended—with several hours until dawn—we departed the Illuyanka, and the wind was with us as we spread our wings and passed across the still-roiling seas. Illuyanek had been right—as we traveled, if we kept up a swift flight—it was as if the night grew deeper. The wind pushed at our wings, sending us faster into the dark, and though I thought dawn would come soon, it seemed as if it lingered far behind us.

  As we approached several islands, I saw again the line of frozen sea along their edges, for the terrible winters of the plagues had touched that edge of the world.

  We spent two nights traveling, sleeping during the short days in caves and in the broken tombs of the dead—for we passed through cities and villages, just long enough to drink blood and sleep, and then take off into the sky again.

  After we had crossed many thousand miles, Pythia found her way toward that poisoned city where she had first taken my life—and so we came again to Hedammu, upon the great cliffs above the sapphire sea.

  I did not sense the following of the strange vampyre, nor did I know if he had survived the storms as we had. A sensation had taken over the stream, interrupting my feel of it, as sometimes happened on long journeys.

  Yet, as we came to the towers of Hedammu, I did not believe the vampyre had left us.

  The towers of Hedammu were nearly as I remembered them. I had barely been more than a boy when I first approached the poisoned city. Now, many years after death, I felt that another life had been lived between the youth I had once been and the creature I had become. The gates of the city had been both torn and held tight by ropes, locked as if to keep the Devil in and those called by the Devil out.

  I crawled like a spider along the side of the jawlike gates and looked across the empty courtyards. Pythia called to me from one of the open chambers at the top of the northernmost tower, and I flew to her. She had gone to the place where many vampyres had extinguished, but found no guard, no one left of our tribe here.

  As I stood beside her, I glanced back, scanning the night sky for the vampyre who I was sure still followed us.

  “I had
hoped that some would be here,” Pythia said. “For this is the birthplace of many of our tribe.”

  I shook my head to her hopes. “Kiya had raised her army and fought when I lay imprisoned. They were defeated, and many went to their Extinguishing. Others were captured and have become the mindless servants of Enora and the Myrrydanai.” Even as I said these words, I understood what we would have to do, even here, in Hedammu.

  I leaned across the tower spur and looked out across the sea, and then toward the mountains.

  I saw some small speck of darkness moving along the mountaintop. Though it might have been a beast of some kind, I suspected it was the vampyre I had seen on the Illuyanka. I did not like this creature following without speaking, without showing what threat he presented. I was sure that if I flew out to that distant mountain, he would have already flown many miles from me.

  I could not spend my nights chasing a flying corpse. So I ignored the distant threat and instead focused on what we would need to do next before returning to Taranis-Hir. “Both you and I have the breath of the Sacred Kiss within us. There may still be battles waged in the cities along the shores of this land. We need warriors—and we shall gather them from these Crusader wars. If you are not with me, you are against me. Choose now, Pythoness. We have loved, and we have despised each other. You murdered me, and you resurrected me. We bring a child to this world. But you and I both know the vision of the end of this. It may be our doom. I cannot predict the future, nor can you, despite visions and omens. There is more at stake than the forest of my childhood or the friends I have left in their prisons. You know of these things—for you fear Medhya and her Myrrydanai dogs as well. You have helped me escape, you have brought me here. But it is not enough. We must raise the dead now. We must bring warriors to the war. Will you help me?”

  When I did not hear an answer, I turned to her, expecting her rage or disdain. I could not help but wonder at the vast depths within her form—the fury, the unbroken will, the torrents of passion, the steel, the heat, and the fierce mind. Pythia was a magnificent vampyre, and if she had decided those centuries ago not to follow her own passions, she might have become a great priestess of her tribe—or a queen of the world.

  “Yes,” she said, resignation in her voice, and smoldering fury in the mask upon her face. “I will help you raise the dead.”

  3

  I spent the last hours of the night hunting the fortresses to the north and the south looking for signs of war, and did not have to fly far or fast to find them. The men of my country and of many others had increased their attacks on the Saracens and those armies of the east in those years since I last fought as a mortal. No doubt the Veil plagues had fanned the flames of religious ardor and the hunger for blood sport among fighting men. I found three cities under siege, and one fallen; still others had captured the invaders. Within the walls of these garrisons, fights broke out like small battles among the market stalls and courtyards. But the closest siege raged several miles to the south, just over the next mountain range.

  A hundred ships were in the port, and Crusaders had taken over the towns of the harbor, all bearing the banners of those lands and provinces near my homeland. I saw both the Knights of the Temple and Knights of the Hospital among the garden of tents and mean shelters built in that fervor of war that still held my countrymen in its grip. Miles inland, across a scorched plain made empty by war and drought, a fortress loomed, as imposing as any of the Saracen strongholds.

  Siege towers stood like mute giants, tall as the city walls, great ugly beasts of construction, to be dragged toward the fortress come dawn, with the battle beginning before the afternoon. Some of these machines lay in ruins, destroyed by rock and flame in a previous day’s fight. There were piles of the dead from a recent battle just outside the tall citadel of the Saracens.

  When I returned to Pythia, she had already gone to her day’s rest. Before sunrise, I lay down with her, wrapping my arms about her.

  I touched the black orb in its pouch at her waist and felt that slight pulse of life within it. In touching it, I wanted it, though I did not yet understand its hidden secrets. I watched her gentle breaths as she slept, her eyes fluttering lightly in a mortal’s dream. The gold mask rippled slightly. For just a moment I felt I was not looking at Pythia at all, but at that Dark Madonna’s face on the gold mask itself, a third eye painted at her forehead, scorn upon her brow.

  I fought sleep, but finally gave in as my mind turned to the darkness of oblivion.

  4

  A vision of Medhya came in my sleep:

  The Dark Mother crouched, her weight pressing upon my chest, making my breath slow and laborious. The skin of her face was like an opal darkness. Through it, I saw the strange ghostly orbs that somehow carried her life force through her body. Her face was hideous—not the noble face of statues, not the beautiful Queen of Myrryd—she was monstrous in her deformity. Every part of her skin from her throat to her brow wriggled with life as if thousands of small shiny maggots moved, in a rapid mass, over and around each other—a city of tenebrous larvae, constantly moving, creating the impression of facial features—a gaping mouth, two holes for nostrils, and her eyes, empty and dark as if all light had been sucked from them, with a third eye painted across the wriggling mass at the center of her brow.

  Her hair was wild and seemed a nest of vipers and brambles. Her wings were her outer cloak, which drew back to reveal the rose-flesh robe of human faces as if sewn into cloth, covering much of her body. What was revealed from her waist to her breasts seemed to be a series of teeth, strung as an undergarment.

  “Maz-Sherah,” she whispered, her voice a burned whisper. She sniffed at my face. “I smell Merod inside you. You are good to bring him to me.”

  Her mouth was empty of teeth, and the teeming maggots dropped from her ragged lips as she spoke. She reached down, and with the curved blades of her fingernails, gently felt between my lips for my own teeth, reaching for my incisors.

  “Oh.” She seemed to shiver with pleasure. “You were born to tear the Veil. I have loved you, Maz-Sherah, and felt your presence. My breath is in you and gives you great power. You are not like the traitor priests, my child, my boy. You are to be my lord and master, and I will come to you in the flesh of love that you may know me.” Her fingers pushed further into my mouth. The larvae and beetles that crawled along her face began to drop down onto my tomb’s bed, and as they did, I saw the emptiness behind their wriggling mass—she was a hollow darkness, clothed in the creatures of the grave. “It is nearly the solstice, my love, and you are far away from me. Mortals from the cliffs seek to destroy Myrrydanai and their earthly queen who rules the wastelands since the burning of the forest—but you are not there to help them, Maz-Sherah. Why are you not there? Has Pythia misguided you? I hear the cries of your lovers and your children, even now, even here within the Veil. The ashling calls to the elementals for news of your destruction or return. A vampyre of great beauty cries out to you from his torment. Your son wails for mercy, and your daughter weeps, but they shall be my little mortal rats soon.”

  A shadow of three dimensions, she pushed her hand farther into my mouth, to the back of my throat. I no longer felt a woman’s hand there, but the slick moist skin of a fish of some kind—an eel or a pike—choking me as she pushed her forearm further down my throat.

  “My breath and my blood are in you,” she said. “But so is a traitor. Merod of the Kamr.” She spoke his name as if it were a curse. “Stealer of sorceries, betrayer—priest of mud, and he will forever be in mud and muck when I come to you, my love.”

  I could not breathe. It felt as if wriggling parasites swam in my blood and encircled my heart as the hollow darkness watched me and whispered. “I will find the priest in you, my sweet youth, my liberator. I will burn his soul from your blood. You have come to bring me to flesh. I desire this mask stolen from my priests, and this fire sword. You will bring them to me, for I will reward you greatly.” I felt a tearing at my heart, a white-
hot pain that shot through my very being.

  5

  I came out of the vision, gasping for air. My heart pounded rapidly, and my throat was dry.

  Fire sword. Merod had told me, in the silver mirrors at Taranis-Hir, of such a weapon. A sword made of fire. A weapon against Medhya.

  Pythia stared down at me. “You went into the Veil,” she said. “Its venom is in your blood.” She said this as if she had not fully understood it before. “You are opening the Veil, Falconer, even as you exist, as you breathe. You are allowing it to tear.”

  “No,” I said, catching my breath as if I had come up for air from deep water. “I am going to close it. The war of the vampyres will be brought down upon the Myrrydanai.”

  “If it is too late...”

  I refused to consider this. “In the forest—on the cliffs called the Akkadites—elemental spirits told me that the solstice was the time when Medhya would come through. We are still several nights from it. We must return.”

  “Do not believe such things,” Pythia said. “Medhya cannot come into this world without you. I lived many lifetimes before you came to me, Falconer. I once believed in heroes. In what could be done. But I have met heroes greater than you. Though I feared you once, I no longer have fear of you. I fear for you. We cannot stop a force as great as Medhya from breaking through the Veil. She will have her vengeance. Her Myrrydanai are more powerful than the Kamr priests. The Great Serpent once walked the Earth, but now hides from his children. I know where the sorceries of Medhya were born, for I have heard the legends. They are from the nameless depths beneath Myrryd itself, from a sorcery older than the magick of our tribe. This mask—the rituals—were not created by the priests of Myrryd, but by an ancient race of those depths. These things cannot be fought, cannot be changed. But you and I have created a child between us. I am mortal. My child is mortal. We could return to Alkemara and rest there until my child is born. If you avoid the fate set for you, Medhya may not gain in power—for her power is linked to yours. She would not have this mask. You know this. The Myrrydanai would fade in some distant year. The plagues would end. The Veil would heal on its own.”