The Queen of Wolves

by Douglas Clegg

  “Death was never for you, Maz-Sherah. This is the existence that you yourself have reached for, and you must hold it in your grasp. You must become what you intended to become. You had power as a child. Do you not remember...”

  A vision swept through me, and I was there in the forest with my grandfather, as I called to the ravens to come and nest, and then later as I trained the falcons to hunt with mortals. “You are more than seed and egg, and more than blood, and more than vampyre, Maz-Sherah. I am within you. I am part of you. You have always known this, and yet you have denied me. As you devoured the Priest of Blood, you began to unravel what was within you. I am you, Maz-Sherah. I am you. You must now be the Serpent.”

  As he said these words, I felt the realization shoot through my veins like the Veil juice itself.

  I felt myself soaring above the cavern walls, above the earth, above the stars themselves.

  I remained there, on the roof of the temple, before the rising flames.

  The voice of the Great Serpent was within me, and the fire itself went out, suddenly, doused by this understanding. We are guardians of this realm. The blood of mortals is their sacrifice to us. We are not meant to be part of senseless slaughter, Maz-Sherah, though many of your tribe have brought this to mankind. We are the watchers of this world, and we guard it from those of the Veil, and those who would unravel this world. We have been demons and angels to some, and we are hated by the very mortals we guard. Yet this is why you were born, and why I have existed since the first mortal rose from his haunches, and called to the gods for aid. There is a will to this universe. You have come to its center, and you have found the path meant for you and for you alone.

  I felt as if every bone in my body cracked. I dropped to my knees, and fell down hard on to the rock ledge.

  The voice of the Serpent within me: I am with you. I am you. You must find me within your soul. You will understand the power of those objects of the Priests when you call me forth from your own depths.

  What must I do? I asked.

  In my temple, there is my skin, sloughed, in the form of a tunic. Beside it, a sheath for the Nameless. Near this is a suit of armor called the Raptorius. Take off these mortal clothes and wear my skin. Once you put it on, it will become part of you, and you may draw it beneath your flesh. It will protect you in times of danger. Wear the Raptorius, as well—it, too, is from my flesh and bone. When you draw the visor of its helmet closed, you may walk in the sun, for its burning light will not harm you. Of the Garden of Flesh, the Akhnetur will not harm you if you wear this armor. Break off the branch of the white tree, and make of it a new Nahhashim staff, for these priests’ souls are within the tree, not one staff carved from it. Call the Eclipsis. It will answer to you alone, and will find you though it has been cast to the deep. Your energy will bring its life, and the deathlight will come from you, focused upon its lamp. With this, call the ancient kings from the Extinguishing. You have the power within you, and no city, alive or dead, may drink of your energy now. But, Maz-Sherah, be cautious with those you raise from death or Extinguishing. There is no being of the earth that has not been tempted by great power, and few may resist its call.

  I am tempted by it, I said.

  With great power, what would you have the world be?

  I do not know, I said. I am no different than any other vampyre. I cannot say that I would be a great hero, for I have left many to die when I journeyed to Ixtar’s country.

  All heroes are tempted, the Serpent said. But I have been with you when you drank the blood of your prey, Anointed One, and you did not bring brutal deaths to them. I have felt what was in your heart when your friend lay in your arms in a deep prison. I have read your soul when you knew of your children. You are not a vampyre as any other. You are one with me. What you do, I also do. Now, the time is short. Nights will pass before you will return to Taranis-Hir. Set right your course. Resolve yourself to these things.

  Will I go to my Extinguishing through what I am about to do? I asked.

  Prophecy is for fools, the Serpent said. You are no longer subject to the whim of priests and mages. Put on the cloak of my skin. Wear the Raptorius and let your flesh drink from its strength. It is more than mere armor, and holds the greatest powers given to you. Yet, be cautious with it, for the same sword you wield may be used by the possessor of the staff to burn the skin away from your body, and destroy its armor. All sorcery may be undone, and you must not rely upon it alone. Yet I have great faith in you, for you have freed me from these depths where no one has before you. In you are my blood and venom, for you have drunk from the flower that is sacred to me. Call the Eclipsis and draw your energies into its deathlight. Raise the kings. Find your powers. Be Maz-Sherah to your tribe.

  Then he spoke no more, within me or without.

  The fire burned off across the lake, and what had seemed a lake was now dry, as if it had never held water or eels. I stood upon a stonework plateau, and off the edge of the temple roof were steps downward beneath the plateau, that wound around and around along a strange spur of rock and wall.

  The winding stair, I thought.

  In Asmodh’s depths, the burning sword

  Makes hostage of the winding stair

  But he who comes to heal the Veil

  Must break the stone and find the lair.

  I eagerly went down these dampened steps, and long-dead blue flames lit, all of a sudden, along the curving wall. When I reached the bottom of the stair, I stood at the entrance to the temple itself. Jeweled mosaics depicting ancient Serpent Wars covered the walls. Friezes depicted an earthly paradise, as well as the depths of Asmodh, with furnace and forge and a spiraling terraced cliff, and the images of thousands of people, some with the wings of dragons, and others with wings like angels.

  At the center of this rounded temple, a suit of armor had been laid across an altar made of black rock. Beside it, on the floor, a nearly transparent pile of cloth, so thin that when I lifted it, I could see my fingers through each layer.

  I undressed, leaving my shirt and trousers on the floor.

  Naked, I drew the cloak of the Serpent’s skin over my shoulders. Within moments, my own flesh had soaked it within.

  I went to don the suit of armor—the Raptorius.

  It had shiny copper-colored metal plates upon it that seemed like the scales of a reptile, and was no heavier than ordinary cloth. Just beneath the scales was a leathery skinlike material. Beside the suit of armor, a helm of leather and bronze, with flares along its skull so that it had the semblance of a dragon’s head with bony spurs in waves along the back of it, while the visor itself became the upper jaw.

  I drew the helmet over my face—it felt light. Yet, when I touched it, I also felt its contours, like the hardness of solid rock. I drew the visor down over my face. It had only slits for my eyes, and yet I was not impaired in vision as I looked about. After a minute of wearing this helmet, I felt as if I wore nothing at all on my head.

  I drew the coat of armor upon my body. As with the helm, this felt light upon my flesh, but I had a strange sensation that it had small feelers touching my skin. Digging into my flesh. I felt nausea at the pit of my stomach, and tasted the Serpent’s Venom at the back of my throat.

  The armor moved beneath my flesh, a new skin of the Serpent passing into mine. A white-hot pain shot through my back, beginning at the base of my spine and moving upward to the back of my skull.

  The scratching into my flesh grew too intense, and I dropped to the floor. I felt as I had the first time I died—as my vision darkened, I saw a brief spark of blue, as if from a flame that had only just been lit, and then this went out.

  No voice of Merod entered me in this dark place, nor did I feel great power from the Serpent. My extremities tingled, and I lay there with my arm outstretched, watching my fingers twitch as if controlled by some source other than my own will. Across the stone floor, I imagined an emerald-green snake twisting its way toward me. Nothing more than a snake, not a god or a
messenger, but a creature that haunted such abandoned temples.

  I stared at it as I felt a kind of death come for me, and the snake moved toward my hand, and then over it. As it traveled, I felt a prickly heat across my fingers and palm where the snake moved.

  It slowly traveled along my arm, and when it was at my wrist, it opened its small jaws, and bit down on the flesh where my forearm and hand connected, into a vein.

  A frozen numbness shot through my arm, and in an instant I no longer lay upon that temple floor but had crossed into the Veil itself.

  The entry of the Veil was a mist across water, and rising from the depths of it, Medhya stood, her body a mass of writhing scorpions and flies and milk-white maggots.

  She brought her hand to my face. I could not move as she touched my chin, and then leaned into me, bringing the swarm of her lips to mine. As she kissed me, she whispered, “You have freed the snake, Maz-Sherah. But you tear the Veil as you do this, and I am also freed. Your children will die. You will extinguish. But first, you will give me life, and this sword you hold will be mine, for I am its true mistress. When I have you, I will flay the snakeskin from within your flesh, and you will greet the dawn, spread-eagled, upon the dust.”

  She drew back from me, and like a cobra striking swiftly, lunged for me, her teeth slicing into my throat and tearing at it. It felt as though it was not my blood being taken from me, but my breath.

  2

  I awoke sometime later, alone in the temple.

  I rested, feeling in need of blood. As if sent by the Serpent himself, one of the pale human rats from the city crawled along the floor toward me, muttering in his gibberish. As he drew closer, I saw that he was the same boy from whom I had drunk before. The wound had only barely healed at his throat.

  He chattered at me, as he sniffed the air. I realized he had memorized my scent, and I wondered if he had followed it down into the depths.

  I pounced upon him, and drank enough for strength. He howled when I let him go, and went scurrying off out of the temple. I heard his footfalls echo on the steps back up to the subterranean passage.

  Then there was more chattering of these mortals far above, and I was sure when I glanced up to the crack in the roof that I saw some creature looking down at me.

  I stood, feeling a surge of energy in my arms and I raised them to the ragged cavern ceiling. All the energy of Myrryd, all that had been stolen from vampyres and mortals, all that had been used to fuel the lamps and torches of the city, seemed to flow through me, in me, upon the surface of my skin.

  In an instant, I had become a mass of wriggling locusts, and moved with one mind into the air, breaking apart and re-forming again.

  In solid flesh, I brought the Raptorius armor out from beneath my skin. I felt the tickling pain, as of light, sharp razors. Yet once the armor formed—a skeleton of metal plates and talons over my skin—all sensation on my skin’s surface deadened. I went over to my clothes and drew out the broken sword.

  As I held it before me, I willed the fire to come from it and form the curve-toothed sword. I then emptied it again so that only the shattered sword hilt was in my hands.

  Call the Eclipsis, the Serpent had told me.

  I held my left hand out into the air, palm upward. I thought of the orb, as it had lain in the pouch that was tied about Pythia’s waist.

  Come to me. Come to me, Lamp of Death, come to me, for I am the Maz-Sherah. I am your master now, and it was from the Asmodh fires you were born, broken from the glass in the Veil, born again from a stem in those furnaces of old, formed perfect and dark and alive. You were never meant for the handmaidens of Death’s children, but for this hand—and from you, I will have power over the dead who have not yet crossed the Threshold. As I thought this, my mouth opened and words spilled forth in a language I had never heard, that sounded as a ceremonial chant.

  Within moments, a dark light moved like vapor through the door of the temple, and as it brushed against my hand, it formed into the round Eclipsis. Up from the great subterranean sea’s depths it had come, moving like a bird that flew by instinct toward its home.

  I grasped it, and went outside the Serpent’s temple, and up the steps.

  I shattered my being and all I held, and re-formed myself as a flight of ravens, which poured into the air, through the subterranean depths. My flock went upward, past the white creatures, past the vaults and Medhya’s throne room.

  Seeking Ophion, I re-formed in the flesh upon the golden throne. Fear seemed to overshadow him.

  “Do not fear me, brother. For had you not brought me here, I would not have seen the face of the Great Serpent himself. I will not harm you, for you are the instrument of my ascent. I am as the prophecies spake, but even prophets may be blind to what will come,” I said. “The Serpent lives within me. I am also here.”

  “You are truly the Maz-Sherah, my brother. You were not before, though many saw it in you. I was never Maz-Sherah, this I see now. I only existed to bring you here, that you might find your anointing. I see it in your flesh. In your eyes.” Ophion gasped, and got down on his knees before me. “You are the Serpent, reborn.”

  PART 2: VAMPYRE MESSIAH

  Chapter 12

  ________________

  THE TOMBS OF THE ASYRR

  1

  My mind had grown strong in the Asmodh depths, and the sorcery of the Serpent had brought new power to my body. I felt as if I had gained the wisdom of many, and had lost the uncertainty of mortality completely. No longer was I thinking as Aleric, chained to mortal memories.

  I had entered a realm beyond even vampyre, and had touched the face of an eternal fire and brought it into my soul. Never would I let anyone take such fire from me.

  2

  “Up, Ophion.” As I touched him, I felt a strange shock. “I do not wish your destruction, but your knowledge of these avenues and alleyways. I want you to guide me to the hidden tombs of the vampyre kings—the Asyrr. Let us not waste time. The war begins.”

  3

  I walked along the paths of the Garden of Flesh. The purple flowers had entangled themselves around the trunk of the white tree, as if holding it to the earth. The Akhnetur hummed at a distance, but I ignored them. When they swarmed and came toward me, they stopped in the air, inches from my flesh. The Serpent skin protected me. They buzzed and snapped at each other, but parted like a great molten sea before me. I had no fear of them, for they were creatures born of the depths, as I had been reborn within them.

  I took my sword and I cut the tree of the Nahhash in two. From one half of it, I carved a staff. It was not jeweled or covered with the symbols as was the Nahhashim staff Merod had passed to me. It was crude and simple, and when I raised it in my hands, it seemed more of a war club than a mage’s wand. Yet I felt a surge of power shoot from my arm through it. A glimmer of light shone from the staff itself, and as it did so, the swarms of Akhnetur seemed to form into almost human shapes.

  One by one, these swarms in the form of men seemed to bow before the staff, then reconfigure into greater and greater swarms until finally they flew at the staff itself, against its now-fierce glow. As they touched the light, it was as if the Akhnetur vanished into the staff itself, sucked in by the light, held by sorcery.

  4

  Later, I commanded Ophion to help gather up the human rats.

  “We raise the dead tonight,” I said.

  5

  Chasing down these pale inhabitants of the ruins and depths of Myrryd took but a few hours. We gathered forty or so, and they were docile and meek when caught. None expressed fear, though they howled terribly when taken to the tomb chambers of the kings. These mortal vessels would be enough to slake the thirst of the kings, though I did not know if the others we raised that night would find enough blood in them.

  I stood at the entry down into the great tombs of the seven rulers of Myrryd, and their hundreds of warriors and servants and followers, and held out my hand, calling to the Eclipsis.

  Within second
s, it flew at me as if it were a rock shot by a sling in an expert’s hand, and yet when it reached me, I grasped it easily. It felt warm in my palm, and its pulse was like a hand beating rapidly on a drum. I looked into its depths and sensed its life.

  I raised the Eclipsis until I saw that shadowy light emerge from its source.

  I held the staff forward, pointing to the piles of bones among the biers of the extinguished kings. “Come to me, you who lie in your Extinguishing! For I am Maz-Sherah, and have ransomed your souls through the fire of the Great Serpent! For you, this long sleep is done, and your life force will return!” The staff burst with a crackle of lightning that ran from it to my fingers and reached my spine. As I spoke, my words were translated from my lips into those ancient languages of the early tribes, and I felt more than my presence here—Merod spoke from deep within me, and the words that came were unknown to me—a ritual that had been kept secret by the Nahhashim, now released within the staff of their bones.

  I held an image in my mind of life coming to each of them, of endowing the Eclipsis with the ability to draw them from the Extinguishing as Death and her handmaidens drew the mortal soul from the body, or returned it to the body. From the orb, the deathlight shot out among the tombs, and many of the lids of these biers smashed and fell, and great lights seemed to burst from the deathlight. The power drawn into me, and torn from me, brought me to my knees, yet I held fast to the staff and the orb, and though every ounce of my being felt as if it were shattering, I did not let go, nor did the voice of the ancient priest quiet from within my throat.