The Queen of Wolves

by Douglas Clegg

  “When my prison was destroyed by fire, I escaped, and drank of mortal blood for the first time in many years, brother. I followed because I smelled Maz-Sherah on you. Your stream is strong and cannot be lost. I am weak in many things, for I do not have youth as you, or sorcery as your...” and here I was sure he would use some rude term for Pythia, but instead he chose, “...lady. The mask had called to me for many years, and I also could feel its fingers reach for me, even across the seas.”

  “Why did you run from me on the ship?”

  “Oh, my brother, I was ashamed of how I looked. Ashamed of much. Ashamed I had drunk of too many mortals that night. Ashamed of these bones. I did not know if you would harm me, for vampyres do not like me. Many have tried to destroy me. The priests themselves wished my end, and yet I had come to fulfill their prophecy. I failed in my quest to heal the Veil and destroy Ghorien.”

  “Ghorien?”

  “You must know him. Oh, but you have not yet spoken to the Myrrydanai? For if he has you in his clutches, he will make himself known to you.”

  “He is not among the Myrrydanai. They are shadows—and take on the skins of the dead. But none seem to have a person within them.”

  He grinned and it seemed like a lizard’s smile, for the long, sharp teeth extended as he did so. “Oh, there is a person within them. Ghorien controls all Myrrydanai, for he is the only mind they have—they are like locusts gathering around honey. When Ghorien goes, so go the shadows. I know him well. He hides among them, but will reveal himself only when it is safe. He can be destroyed, though I did not have weapons to do this.”

  His rictus grin faded, and for a moment I was sure he would weep. Despite the rotting of his corpse and the bone and sinew revealed through that leathery gauze of skin, I found something almost endearing about him.

  He spoke eloquently enough, and had no love of my own enemies. “He did much to cast me into this sorry state. For it was in the Myrrydanai prisons of Myrryd I—Ophion—Maz-Sherah—was tortured and tormented and my flesh was drawn off, again and again, even while it grew in the day’s sleep, so at night they tore at it with their instruments... This is what awaits the Maz-Sherah. This was my destiny, and is yours as well. This is what you were born to, my sorrowful brother. Oh, Ghorien will surely want you to bring this mask to him, and a staff of bone, and any other enchantments you have—to use against you, my brother, as he used much against me. Ancient sorceries are strong, and the Myrrydanai seek them always—but they must seek them through others, for they cannot find them on their own.”

  “I am sorry to hear you have been abused,” I said. “But the staff—do you mean the Nahhashim?”

  He nodded. “Broken from the white-bone tree of Myrryd, born from the bones of the gray priests themselves. Yes, gray their cloaks, and gray their eyes, and gray their conjuring. I do not know of them other than their legend, for they had been destroyed before all the priests of my early nights, though they must have held great power—for the staff broken from their tree carries old sorcery within it. It is guarded—oh, well guarded—by the swarms of those called the Akhnetur. The Myrrydanai cannot touch such magick for long, for it eats away at their souls—the treasures of Myrryd’s depths are not meant for these shadow priests. Yet, they must control it. This mask as well—they cannot wear it, yet it must be in their possession that their queen might come to flesh.”

  “And a sword of fire?” I asked.

  He nodded, but shivered before he spoke as if remembering a terrible encounter. He leaned toward me, and whispered nearly at my ear, “This...this treasure...this weapon...I have never seen, for I failed, oh, I failed.” He drew back from me, raising his knobby hands to the skies. “As deep as the sky above, so are Myrryd’s nether regions beneath the earth. In Myrryd’s depths I despaired. Yes, for I have been in one prison after another since mortal man first built his cities. I escaped the prisons of Myrryd at the fall of that great city when many of our tribe extinguished, only to flee to the prisons of Nezahual. I have not tasted freedom in such a long time. Had I not felt your stream, my brother, oh, where would I have gone? For the world is much changed since last I breathed the air of a mountaintop, or saw the view from a cliff’s edge. My brother, it is changed, and all I knew of it was that brother—yes, you—I felt like the pull of a tide within the stream.”

  “Brother,” I said, for I truly felt our kinship, “will you tell me of Myrryd? Is the Nahhashim tree still there?”

  He looked bewildered, as if there had been no point to my asking. “Perhaps, perhaps. It will not die, this tree, nor will it grow. Yet only a branch broke to make the staff.”

  “But another may be broken still?”

  “It is guarded by the Akhnetur, as I told you, and their swarms will tear at your flesh. Not even the priests could approach it once the Akhnetur were called from the deep. It is said that only the Great Serpent himself may enter its garden.”

  “This sword—is it hidden in the city?”

  “I do not know, my brother,” he said with such a peculiar tone, a death rattle at his throat. He knew more of the fire sword, and he was not good at hiding his lies without the thickness of flesh to cloak them. “Many things are hidden there, and many creatures lurk.” His eyes seemed to focus on some distant star as he spoke, and his voice took on a hypnotic quality. “It is unseen by outsiders, my brother. Only those who have been within its gates may return to it. It is lost to all others, protected by a sorcery more powerful than Medhya herself. A legend, a vision to some.”

  “Yes, legend—and vision,” I said. “Tell me of it.”

  “Myrryd is hidden—as if a curtain had been drawn over the cliffs above the many towers of the city. A curtain the color of fire when the sun is at its zenith, and beneath the stars, a cloak of crystal. Myrryd has remained hidden in this way, and those who get close to it, sense the poison. The ground seethes with gases from its depths, and it sucks energy from mortal and vampyre alike to light its strange fires as if the city itself has a soul and a spirit. There are many dangers for winged jackals like us. There are creatures there that have been born of Medhya’s nightmares and crossed the Veil to guard the bones of the high kings.”

  “There are kings buried there?”

  “Kings of the Blood, as there are Priests.” He nodded. “Very wicked jackals they were, and tricky, my brother. But all are extinguished, in tombs that shall never be disturbed. A great sanctuary of the dead—a hall of kings and queens, and their many servants and protectors—all extinguished, all dust and bone beneath the watch of stone effigies.”

  “How far is Myrryd, do you think—from here?”

  Ophion grinned, nearly laughing, breaking the somber mood.

  “What is it?”

  He could not stop laughing, a death rattle from his throat, his teeth chattering as they clacked against each other. “You must never go there, Maz-Sherah! It is a city of the dead, a poisonous gouge in the earth. It is not meant to be found, not meant to be found at all!”

  But I had set my mind to this. “You will guide me there, Ophion, for I have heard it is across this sea, in the lands of desert and sea and deep forest—far from the ancient Carthaginian port, yet not so far for one who flies. I have but seven nights to return to fight the Myrrydanai at Taranis-Hir. If I can make a new Nahhashim staff—if I can find the sword...the power of its magick will be with us.”

  His laughter ended, and he grew quiet. “Why should I do this? I never wish to go back there.”

  “If you are Maz-Sherah,” I said. “As I am. And you are not extinguished, but have survived centuries of imprisonment and torment...then you will want to fulfill even that destiny denied you. I need your knowledge, Ophion. Has your existence been a waste to be tossed out with the dead? Or did you arise, Maz-Sherah, and suffer at the hands of the Myrrydanai, never to avenge the wrong done to you? Never to destroy the shadow priests who held you in a terrible captivity—never to taste the moment of victory over those who had taken away your glamour�
�your youth. Show them that they did not take your soul along with such things. Lead me to Myrryd. Show me where its treasures lie. For if we are both anointed of the Great Serpent, then we will meet his enemies and smite them.”

  He remained silent for too long a time, and when I asked him of his thoughts, he finally said, “All these years, I lay in the dark and believed another Maz-Sherah would come. I believed you would release me from prison and be my brother. Then, I did not believe. Hope, I lost. Will, I lost. But you came. You came, and the city of Ixtar fell. The mask escaped the grasp of that fierce goddess. And I, too, escaped. Because you are my brother, and you came to my prison. And hope, also, found me. And now I understand. Yes. Yes, my brother. I will take you to the red city of Myrryd. We will fly swift, and we will face its haunted towers and poisoned depths.”

  4

  He glanced over at the corpses lying several feet away. “You are resurrecting these men.”

  I nodded.

  “By the time the last of them rises, we might return. Do you truly believe you are the Anointed One? For I once believed this, my brother, but I do not anymore.”

  “I have devoured Merod, the last Priest of Blood, as was the prophecy,” I said. “If I am not the Maz-Sherah, then my doom is certain regardless. But will you guide me, Ophion, brother?”

  He covered his bony hands over his eyes as if blocking out a memory. “If I return...I will remember too much...”

  I reached for him, and took his hand in mine, laying it over my hand. “Do you see? I am like you beneath this flesh. I will fulfill this destiny, but you, my brother, will be with me. You are not a failure in this destiny if you guide me to Myrryd. You will be the one who fulfilled your destiny within me, and those years of your imprisonment will not be for nothing. You have paid a great price, but I will offer you the reward of such a payment.”

  He clasped his hand to me and formed a fist around my fingers. “Yes. Yes, my brother. Yes. You are my brother. I knew you would come. I knew you would. All that I have suffered should not be lost and buried with my Extinguishing. Yes, I will guide you. Yes, my brother.”

  5

  “That...that...ghoul...is a loathsome creature,” Pythia said to me when I found her drinking from a soldier who had wrapped his naked body around hers in his drunken sleep, believing she was a whore of the camps come to him in the dark. I stood nearby, shaking my head. “You should send him away. Destroy him. That thing is not meant to exist.”

  She pushed the drunken youth away, leaving him to sleep off his fantasy, puncture wounds at his thigh and wrist as he rolled to the earth.

  We walked along the trails between the sleeping soldiers and the horses tied by the knight’s tents, careful of the many men who lay wounded and exhausted nearby. When we had reached a quiet place among the rocks by the water, far from the camp, I said, “How can I destroy Ophion? He is of our tribe. He is a Maz-Sherah.”

  “There is only one Maz-Sherah,” she said. “You. The others were dreamers. Fools. The untested. You fulfilled the prophecy of the Priest of Blood. You alone. None of the others did.”

  “I may yet fail,” I replied.

  “Do not confuse what you have within you with that unspeakable vampyre. I knew it when I passed the Sacred Kiss to you. I saw it, as I had never seen a vision before.” Her voice softened, and it was at such times that I trusted her least. “That beast is a blasphemy to all vampyres. Look at him—a walking corpse with wings like a mangy bat. He has no glamour. No beauty. His flesh is half-peeled from the bone, and rotted brown and oily. His teeth are yellowed and like tusks. When he drinks blood, do you see how some of it runs down his legs? It is a miracle of our tribe that he even survives with so little flesh left to him. It’s a wonder he can even speak, and yet it is hard to quiet him once he has begun. We do not share many traits with this beast. He may drink blood, but what good does blood do him? It does not restore the semblance of health to this oaf, Ophion.”

  “When you first drank from me, I saw the corpse beneath your glamour. I saw, for a moment, the skull and bone and sinew as you tore at me. I have also been trapped in a hall of great silver mirrors. In them, I saw myself without the magick of our tribe. I knew what my body truly was.”

  “All illusions,” she said. “It is a trick of light and of quicksilver. Nothing more.”

  “That is what your father suggested,” I said. “But we are not so far removed from Ophion, are we? He has been called ‘Anointed One,’ as have I. He is my reflection in the mirror—and I am, perhaps, his.”

  She shook her head lightly. “You cannot look at a corpse and see yourself. You cannot look at ghouls and see what I see. You are young, and you will be eternally young. You are a man, and you will never be rotted flesh. In your loins, there is life, where there is no life in his, nor does he have even the semblance of such life. Ophion is a betrayer. A liar. There are those who knew this creature once...and met their Extinguishing because of this knowledge.”

  “You have never seen him before?” I watched her eyes for the glint of a lie. She called Ophion those same things that she herself could be called—a betrayer, a liar, a destroyer of vampyres.

  “I certainly knew that a creature like him lurked about the dark chambers of Nezahual’s prison,” she said. “Nezahual had a menagerie of monsters. A monster that drank the blood of goats and gathered up the skulls of men, a dragon that stood upright like a man and turned those who looked upon it into stone, and beasts with many long arms and the eyes of an owl. Ophion may have been among them. I felt something in the stream, but I could not be sure what it was, for the stream was strong and full in that country. But I did not know him.”

  “He is more like us than these others you mention,” I said. “I will not seek the Extinguishing of a vampyre as easily as you might.”

  “If this is your will, then so be it,” she said. “But he would be wise not to be alone with me, for I will show him no mercy. But for your sake, I will allow you his existence.”

  She was not so generous when I told her that I would leave within the hour to travel to Myrryd with this vampyre—but she was wise enough not to fight it much. In the end, she said, “Do not forget the newborn tribe that will arise within two nights. These will be your warriors, and they will need to know their leader. If you truly decide to leave me here with these newborns, you risk all that you have suffered—for what? A journey to a dead place. A quest for sorcery that may no longer exist.”

  6

  “Take the cudgel from the dead man,” Ophion said as we walked among the dead who lay between the smoke billows along the plain. He pointed to a fallen soldier. “This one’s good and dead, brother—and look, a shiny razien, there, see? Beautiful as a fine sword, but far better for the hack and jab. See the sharp blade? Very fine work, that one.”

  “What do we need with such crude weapons?” I asked. “You said no vampyre exists in Myrryd.”

  “There may be creatures we do not know of, and others who hide.” As he spoke, his voice grew small and soft as if he were remembering a dreadful nightmare and was afraid to speak of it. “It has been abandoned for too long, and it holds energy even when no mortal or vampyre sleeps within its gates. Myrryd calls to creatures that live only in dead places. It takes all energy from us. You will not sprout wings there, and there will be no strength in you. You will be as a mortal among its towers and ruins. It sucks at us—at our sorcery. It lights its lamps with our energies.” Of this he would say no more, no matter how I dogged him with questions.

  I crouched by the dead soldier, drew out the razien from its sheath, unstrapped the sheath and took that, also. I drew the corpse’s short cudgel up, hefting it about. I strapped the razien sheath at my waist so that it hung down along my right hip, and the cudgel over my shoulder. Ophion also picked over the dead, finding the prize of a two-bladed sword that had not yet been scavenged by others. He looked at me, and at the weapons I had gathered for myself. “These should do,” he said. He glanced up at the st
ars. “I will follow the beast who runs among the stars.” He pointed to a constellation I could not see for the heavy smoke. “If followed, its tail points the way to Myrryd. We must go soon, my brother, for the night will not linger.”

  7

  When I went to bid farewell to Pythia, my heart felt heavy. She grasped me by the wrists and drew me back to her. She whispered at my ear, “Do not go to Myrryd. It is forbidden for all of us. It is a place of Extinguishing.”

  “I am going,” I said, pulling away from her.

  She drew herself close to me, her lips near mine. “I brought you into this existence, Aleric. It was your beauty that seduced me, and then it was your blood, and then your flesh. But when I saw my future as I passed the breath of immortality to you, I knew that I would have to destroy you...or save you. I cannot let you go with that creature.”

  I watched her eyes. The gold on her face moved in slow liquid waves along her brow and around her cheeks.

  “You will have to let me go,” I said, wishing I could tell her otherwise. “I will return. I will find you again. Five nights. I will meet you at the Akkadite Cliffs at the edge of the last of the Great Forest. We will bring war to Taranis-Hir.”

  “Please, Aleric,” she gasped, reaching for me.

  “Do not forget—you must extract the oath before feeding these new vampyres. You must lead them toward my country. You know the way. It will be but a few days’ flight. Look for the high cliffs to the east of Taranis-Hir, called the Akkadites. There is a gold tree. Wait for me there, but take command of this rabble. They have sworn an oath, and they have honor in their blood and will obey you. I will not be far behind you, I promise. If it is trust you wish me to have, then remain with our tribe. When I come for you, I will have the new staff, and the sword of fire that is buried in the dead kingdom.”