The Queen of Wolves

by Douglas Clegg

  “Wait,” she cried out as I turned my back on her and spread my wings. She reached into her pouch, and withdrew the Eclipsis and ran toward me. She stood before me, and held the Eclipsis up.

  “Take this.” She pressed it into my hands, then unraveled the pouch and strap at her waist. “It pulses with life when you hold it. It is not meant for me. Perhaps its deathlight will protect you in that city of the dead.”

  This was the single most selfless act she had ever done for me. Perhaps the mask did not just leach her immortality, but also something darker within her soul. Perhaps the child that grew in her womb had awakened this. Or perhaps she had the instinct to protect me, even when she had first shared the vision of the ritual, after giving me the Sacred Kiss. For surely she might have destroyed me then, but, instead, fled from me out of fear. I knew that within Pythia, there was an instinct for good—for what was right, within the realm of our tribe—and she too often buried it. She had saved me from a terrible Extinguishing at the jaws of Ixtar, and now might save me with this gift.

  I embraced her and did not wish to let go. I accepted the Eclipsis and its pouch, and wrapped them around my shoulder. I held her face in my hands, and said, “You are a queen among our tribe. But you must not forget how vulnerable you are. If you arrive before I reach the Akkadite Cliffs, do not take the war to Taranis-Hir. Wait, and keep company with the mortals who are there and who will join the fight. Do not hurt them, except to drink, and then, only enough.”

  She whispered, “Do not go there. I may never see you again. Those who seek Myrryd do not return.”

  I touched the edge of the gold mask, feeling its ice. “I will see you again before the new moon is dark in the sky.” I pressed my lips against hers, opening against her mouth, wanting to pull myself into her, never to have to—again—leave any I had loved, any I had hated. Just as I had grown afraid I would never see Ewen again, so I was sure that I might not return to Pythia, nor see my child born.

  Yet I knew no other course, for I did not have sorcery to fight the Myrrydanai White Robes or the staff that Enora held in her grip. But how I wished I could do as Pythia wished and travel with her to lands as warm as summer rain and raise our child without knowledge of the damnation of the greater world beyond us. I loved her, and I hated her, and I did not wish to part from her upon that bleak mountain.

  I let her go, and her last words to me did not hurt as much as she wished. “Do not judge me harshly, if I fail you,” she whispered, almost as if she didn’t want me to hear.

  “You will not fail me,” I told her, and went out to the ledge of the cliff, joining Ophion, who had already begun the flight.

  8

  We flew across the great sea that had carried me from the Italian shores to the land of the Saracens in the last days of my mortal life. South and west we flew, and slept on a windswept island, in a chapel that had been carved into rock perhaps a hundred years previous. We closed our eyes in a windowless chamber beneath the chapel, surrounded by bones and barrels of wine. Ophion brought me a squirming vessel of blood when dusk broke—a young monk who had come to open the chapel doors and sweep the crypt. I drank greedily, forewarned that we might not find mortal blood again for several nights.

  Before the sun had vanished from the sky, we sat together in the vault. Ophion spoke to me about what he had experienced at Myrryd, and though his memories seemed vague at first, once he had drunk his fill, much of it returned to him. “I was like you,” he said. “Robust then, robust and full of...the look of health. Like you, brother. Older than you, but yet not so old. I knew of this Myrryd. Knew it like I know the bones on this hand.” He held his hand up for my inspection, the small finger bones thrusting out from the tattered flesh as if it were a well-worn glove. “Knew it like I know the taste of good blood. There were armies of vampyres. Cities of them. They knew the legends about the Maz-Sherah. They knew. I was famous, like you, and I believed the prophecies I had been told of Maz-Sherah and what it might mean. Myrryd still reigned in those lands, though its energy waned in those times.”

  “But,” I interrupted, which was made difficult as Ophion rarely took a breath when he began speaking. “But...wait...why would there be a Maz-Sherah, when Myrryd had not yet fallen?”

  “Oh, yes. The kings. The priests. The Myrrydanai were not yet shadows,” he said. “Their flesh had not yet been torn. And yet I tell you, I was born to the same destiny as yours, for it was prophesied of me.”

  “Then what would you save our tribe...from?”

  He leaned into me so that I could smell his fetid breath and the stink from his curdled eyes, and whispered, “Enslavement, my brother. Enslavement. Medhya reached out when the Veil was thin and tore at our tribe. She whispered secrets to mortals that they might hunt us. She had already turned the Myrrydanai into her hunting dogs.”

  He told the story of the centuries of enslavement of vampyres, by the priests themselves. I learned soon enough that the Myrrydanai priests had used their sorcery to bind vampyres into service. The Priests of Blood had already been expelled from Myrryd, and the Nahhashim were imprisoned in the bowels of the great Myrryd city. It was only when the Myrrydanai overstepped their own powers and broke the Veil through the use of the purple flower’s juice that Medhya tore their skin from them and tossed their meat to other creatures of the city. “A horrible, horrible time,” Ophion whined. “So long ago, before mortals rose up against us. But the shadow priests asked for it, for I suffered greatly at their hands. But I know little, my brother, so little. When I came here, I was ignorant and full of want. I had visions as you must—the dreams that haunt and torment. I went to find answers, but oh, when Ghorien saw me...”

  “The leader of the Myrrydanai priests,” I whispered.

  Ophion nodded. “He is the voice—the throat of the Myrrydanai, the gullet, the heart. There are many in the shadows, but he is chief among them. When he saw me, he knew. Maz-Sherah is foretold, and many will come. Many will fall, my brother, my falconer.”

  “They tortured you in these prisons, but did they reveal any weakness to you?”

  “Weakness? Myrrydanai? No, oh, none have they, but for the touch of the mask. They fear it—they fear what the Great Serpent has himself touched. They fear the Nahhashim, as well, but when these priests were destroyed, their bones bound in the tree, Myrrydanai did not fear again. My prison? Much worse than shackle and chain. Stripped me of flesh, salted these bones, and nearly extinguished me. Raised me again only to break my bones beneath great rocks, my brother. They threatened to turn me to ash in a terrible furnace. The kings watched and allowed all of this, for they, too, had become prisoners of Myrrydanai. The Fallen Ones of Medhya, our mother and destroyer, believed Ghorien and his Myrrydanai—for kings must be ordained. When not ordained by country, they are ordained by the corrupt few who convince them of their power. For three hundred years, Ghorien held me there, seeking to find a way to make what was Maz-Sherah in me die. But he could not. We, who are Maz-Sherah, may only be Maz-Sherah. We may extinguish, and we may not know what this power is that brings such fear in visions to the powerful and the cruel...but what is in us, is in us. Those such as these shadow priests fear us. Yet, we, too, have much to fear.”

  Ophion told me more of this as we soared up into the night, heading for the coast of a country that had been conquered many times, but there was an area of it that remained wild and untamed—and unknown by outsiders for centuries.

  He told me of the creatures that Ghorien had called up from the Veil—of the Lamiades, which were like lizards, but as large as horses, and of creatures called Akhnetur; and in their sorceries, Ghorien and his minions forgot that Medhya’s prison was in the Veil. She was using these priests to free her, though they did not know this. When she was nearly free, she reached though the Veil itself and tore at their skin, and in trying to escape the Veil, she failed. Instead, her breath drew their souls—within shadow-clouds—into that otherworld.

  But by then, Ophion had gone into hiding.
“In the old caves, I hid. I did not show myself. With my glamour gone, I was but a monster to mortals and to the vampyre tribes. The earth changed its course, and mortals flourished when the kings of Myrryd were extinguished. Men hunted the Priests of Blood. Mortal hunters who had grown in their knowledge of weapons and warfare. It seemed but a night to me but the world changed over thousands of years. I did not recognize it when I returned to it. Medhya still visited me in my dreams—as a whispering darkness she came to me.”

  I could not help my next question, for it vexed me to even wonder. “Have you seen the Serpent?”

  Ophion went silent for a moment. In that silence, I eagerly asked, “Is it real? Or is it in visions only?”

  “The Great Serpent exists,” Ophion said. “He manifests in...flesh...in fire...in many things. Though I have only heard the legend of this father of our tribe. As you have. It is the mortals of Myrryd who have seen his fire.”

  “Mortals? In a vampyre city?”

  Ophion nodded. “Human rats in Myrryd—mortals, stupid and like vermin—living off eels and spiders and drinking foul water. They scramble to the depths to seek their vermin, but not all come back up to the red city. Many remain there...and die in the beneath. Some are caught by even larger rats in the deep damp below. As I spent years in prisons living like a rat myself, I understand them, though they disgust me.”

  “Human rats? Mortal men? Women?”

  “Barely human. They were vessels bred in captivity for the population of the kingdom. Their descendants could not escape the fallen kingdom, not from its heights or its deep places. Trapped there, unable to leave, breeding for generations, yet with short life spans. They have felt the Great Serpent, too, though they fear him. We all should fear him. It was to Medhya he offered the secrets of immortality and sorcery, and from him the priests learned of the sorceries to undo Medhya when she had grown too corrupt. It was he who showed secrets to the priests that they might destroy Medhya, who had ruled for a thousand years in that red city. She was feared in all kingdoms. It was the Serpent’s magick that brought her to her knees. It is a sorcery of the earth, and of fire. But she had broken many laws, and had murdered her sisters that she might gain their power.”

  “Datbathani—and Lemesharra?”

  Ophion nodded, grinning like Death herself. “These are our histories told to us by the ancients. These are stories lost. I dream of her sisters, and of the Great Serpent. I dream of Medhya, a storm of darkness upon a throne of gold and bone, with the pelts of wolves and jackals across her shoulders, and a necklace of the teeth of vampyres about her throat. Her raiment is the thinnest skins of flesh, and at her right, the vulture, and at her left, the raven, and entwined about her legs like the cords of sandals, asps, and lizards. The Lamiades stand in wait beside her, and upon the back of each one, the dark mist of the Myrrydanai shadow priests. I dream of her, though she seeks our destruction, and I am drawn to her...as you, too, brother, are drawn.”

  I nodded. I could not deny our brotherhood, for Ophion—though crude in his speaking and stammering—expressed what I felt. That Medhya followed me, always, and that my fate and hers would be tied, as my destiny had been bound with Pythia.

  I, like Ophion, dreamed of Medhya.

  That night, we approached the shores of Myrryd.

  BOOK TWO

  ________________

  THE QUEEN OF WOLVES

  PART 1: THE RED CITY

  Chapter 7

  ________________

  THE KINGDOM

  1

  Myrryd had once encompassed land to the east, to what had once been the great city Carthage, and far to the west, where the sea poured out into the vast oceans of the world. Ophion’s words returned to me as I beheld it from the sky: “Mortals are blinded at the fire-colored sea, but those who have been clever enough to shade their eyes have found the inverted ziggurats that seem to spiral into visions of Hell, and though it is not that infernal place, still it is the origins of the legends of such an underworld.”

  The sea was indeed a flaming red and yellow, a reflection of the structures that had fallen beneath the waters in some cataclysm.

  But the heart of Myrryd was in its namesake city, hidden from the children of the earth by the final sorceries of the Nahhashim: for most mortals were blind to it, and vampyres did not dare enter it, fearing its terrible history and the threat that something slept within its labyrinthine avenues, some power of a dark magick that would overtake even the undead.

  From land, Myrryd was invisible, for a fortress of rock encompassed it on three sides. A series of enormous, jagged cliffs rose above the sea below, which entered it in a kind of great bay, but a bay that was too perfect—as if it had been carved out by men over the millennia rather than by the sea itself.

  From the water, the city of Myrryd was too enormous to contemplate, and a sailor might not make out the more manicured curves and angles of its steps. I knew why it was called the fire-colored sea, for the ancient structures would catch the sun’s light in such a way that it would seem the waters themselves burned.

  In the clouded moonlight, the jagged and spiral shapes seemed like ghostly giants guarding a frozen wasteland in the night.

  I clearly saw the great red-rust color of fallen structures, bright copper in the dark light of my vision; waterfalls of a league or more in extent fell from the high cliffs above like streams of white silver to an inlet from the sea far below. An enormous harbor had once been here, and fallen pillars and long stone slabs lay in heaps. Among its sunken monoliths just beneath the dark waves were the remnants of enormous statues of kings and heroes of ancient days, though the denizens of the sea had scrubbed their faces.

  The air above the sea-swept ruins was windless and bland in some way; but once we cleared the tops of the trees, the wind began to roar as it whipped along the beginnings of a deep forest.

  Suddenly, I felt a searing blast of heat, as if there were some boiling springs nearby, and a strange tugging at my wings and my legs, drawing me downward. I fought against it, but quickly enough it was like fighting against the gale force of the sea. Ophion had already dropped down into the forest below, just beyond the place where the ruins of towers had once arisen from the red rock of the cliff.

  I followed him downward, as my wings felt as if they were breaking under the pressure that pulled me down. I felt a strange burning along the bony outcroppings of my wings. Some unseen force tore at them.

  I retracted them, and they receded and vanished at my shoulder blades. I leapt down to the grassy clearing below.

  For the first time in several nights, I felt no stream here between Ophion and myself. It suddenly went silent, and I had the overwhelming sense of the place as some lonesome wood, not meant for man or beast.

  Ophion had tumbled across an overgrown path, rolling over several times until he stopped.

  “What caused us to fall?” I shouted to him.

  He clambered to his feet and pressed his fingers to his mouth to beg my silence. Even as he limped over to me—for he had turned his wayward foot farther inward in his fall—he whispered, “Myrryd eats our power. A great force within it, my brother. Sucks at our minds to feed it.”

  He pointed to the grasses, and there among them, I saw dead birds, and the skulls and bones of small animals, and as he pointed, I saw many more in the areas around us. “Mortal life is at greatest risk, for there is a magnes that draws out energy like a jackal sucks marrow from the bone.”

  “It feeds...on energy?”

  “On life. On death, too. As we drink blood, so it drinks the life energy,” he whispered, all the while his eyes wide as he looked tree to tree, bush to branch, as if expecting visitors. “Myrryd feeds on the force of the soul, for it must light its temple fires, though no priest attends them.”

  “From us, as well as mortals?”

  “Do you not feel it, brother?” Ophion shivered. “Your wings will not exist here. Your strength is weakened. You are as a mortal man, and perhaps eve
n weaker than that. It knows we’re here. It has tasted our soul.”

  “What is it?”

  “The dead and immortal city of Myrryd awaits us. It has tasted our energy and taken from us the sorcery that allows us to fly.”

  “Forever?”

  “Only within its field. The ancient kings called it a magnes—a place that draws power from life.”

  “But—” I began, and meant to ask what he meant about the temple fires and how far the citadel itself was from these woods.

  Swiftly, he reached over to put his hand against my mouth, lest I speak again in a loud voice. His voice grew even softer, smaller, and I had to strain to hear him, for the rasp of his voice had come like a light death rattle.

  “We must be quiet as the dead,” he said.

  2

  The trees around us were like giants, and thick around as houses; the violent wind rushed along their swaying branches; leaves scattered in brief whirls along the path and among the overgrowth of brambles. Ophion released his hold on my mouth and crouched, grasping me about the knees as if he might be blown away like a dried weed.

  “Long ago I was here, and know of its treachery,” he said. “I trust nothing here.”

  I grinned and squatted, patting his back. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, trying to comfort him as if he were a child. “What harm can we meet in the woods? The wind? Perhaps some thunder?”

  “Tasmal, so it is called,” he said. “Many spirits hunt the woods.”

  “Spirits of the wood?”

  “These are not elementals, my brother. Tasmal means ‘the Laughing Ones.’ They are disincarnate, they are the cursed dead—spirits of evil men who brought war to Myrryd, and were torn apart, living, their bones and flesh scattered beneath this ground, where the forest has overgrown. They wander these woods, but cannot leave them unless within the body of another. They seek flesh. When they possess a man, they can travel great distances before they’ve devoured the skin—if the host has not gone mad from them. But always, when the flesh is gone, they are drawn back here as if by the wind itself. They are called the Laughing Ones, for they make a noise that is like a madman’s cackle.”