The Queen of Wolves

by Douglas Clegg

  “The Great Serpent guides me in this weapon of the Asmodh,” I said.

  “Then you don’t need the Medhyic grimoire,” he said, contempt in his voice. “Though within the bound book lie recipes and rituals for making another master of the blade. There have been many Maz-Sherah, and many that have failed. You have not—yet. But you may fail, my son. You may, and then another will take the Nameless as his own. For, was not the Nahhashim staff cut for you? And yet, who owns it—a mortal woman, a new queen, hailed by many for the staff has ordained her, as have the White Robes.”

  “A Queen of Wolves, she is, like Medhya,” I said.

  “Will you use the sword of fire against her?” he asked, almost a challenge. “For you must wish to see what it can do to mortal flesh.”

  “I would test its metal now,” I said, and lunged toward him. He did not step back, nor did he tremble in his armor. He held no fear of the blade. “In all your torments of my tribe, in all your plans for my birth...did you ever think there would come a moment when your own son would come to send you to the Veil itself?”

  “Show me its flame,” he said, a whisper that echoed from the chamber of his visored helm. “For I long to see it.”

  I heard labored breathing beneath the visor, and felt his excitement as I stepped forward, toward him, and drew out the sacred fire from the sword. It grew straightforward, thickening at the tip, and separating there into a trident of burning.

  “Do you control this yet, or does the sword decide its form?” he asked, his hands nearly approaching the flame itself as he sought its warmth.

  “From my thought it comes, though it takes its own path.”

  “After all these centuries on this Earth, to go where the fire would take me,” he said. “It has been my greatest desire, to explore the Veil—to seek that place of the exiled gods, where such creatures exist. You do not understand even now, my son. You have fulfilled more than prophecy. You have fulfilled every dream of my deepest soul. For I spent lifetimes learning the Asmodh ritual. I baptized myself in the filth of its underworld sea. To its gods, I gave worship and paid the tribute of a thousand human sacrifices—children and maidens and beautiful sun-kissed youths who had never yet stained their souls with lust or lies—in that lonely deep where the spirits of the Asmodh moaned and roared. In my seed, they brought you—in my loins you were formed from the prophecies of Medhya, and from the sorceries of the Asmodh. And to your mother I came, a knight in armor to the lowliest hovel, in the filthiest marsh, for that was prophecy. But she was a daughter of the Druid priests, a priestess of nature and of hidden talent, whose knowledge came from the upper world, and was not of Asmodh. Into her, I brought the Asmodh prophecy, and from her, a son was born with the instincts of his mother’s tribes, and the destiny of his father’s desire. You have become everything—everything—I have lived for during these centuries. And all this—the torn Veil—is from your existence. If you were to stab me with that Asmodh blade, I would go to the Veil and leave this wretched world to my son. And to Medhya and her shadow priests, for I have spent too long a time in this wasteland of the small and foolish mortal mind that has no memory beyond its puny lifetime. To you and me, my son, the mortal realm is a vast colony of vermin, and the monsters of the Veil would be a blessing here.”

  His words filled me with a shivering cold, for I did not want to believe that I was a tool of his making. But when he went silent, watching me, I said, “My true father is the Great Serpent. The Asmodh have fooled you, for even immortal, you, too, are vermin, alchemist. You sacrificed innocents in error, for the Asmodh deep had many fallen gods who sought such bleak places. You are no god, and the exiled ones of the Veil would rip you and devour you, and still not allow you to die. You will not get your wish, alchemist. You neither have a son, nor will the Nameless be raised against you. You are not deserving of an honorable fate, and though none may destroy you, you will walk the earth until the end of time, knowing that what you desired most will never come to pass.” I did not wish to waste another moment with him, for I knew that soon enough his assistants would speak to the guards if questioned, and I would need time to return to the cliffs where my tribe waited.

  “Where is the Pythoness? Tell me now, old bones!”

  “The one who carries my grandchild?” he asked. “She is safe. She does not desire to see you, though she felt that you would harm her after she came to my bed.”

  My rage exploded at this, and I lunged forward, closing the gap between us. I brought the staff to his throat, and drew off his visor. I expected to see the bone and gauze of the mummy he had become, but instead, flesh had begun re-forming, and beneath it, muscle and fat.

  I stepped back, gasping.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “The essence. I have distilled it, at last. Immortality and youth eternal. Your friends offered me this in their pain.”

  I thought of those vampyres I had known who had gone to their fates in the pincers of the Red Scorpion, that infernal machine that plucked and cut and tore and pierced those of my tribe to find the essence of immortal youth. The glamour of our tribe, which we had thought was sorcery. But it was something in the blood itself. He had destroyed many of my tribe that he could bring back flesh to his bones. His lips had not re-formed, and his face was pink-red with the striation of muscle and the thinnest of flesh across only half of it.

  Summoning every drop of fury that was within me, I smote him with the Nahhashim staff, and in mere seconds, a swarm of yellow light emitted from the staff’s tip, and flew through the cracks of his armor, and covered his face where the visor had been drawn up. The light became the Akhnetur, obliterating his features, their infernal buzzing raised to an unearthly pitch.

  I shut the visor and held it, while Artephius screamed as if his skin were being torn. He reached for my throat, and I held the visor shut despite his strong grip upon me—for I was the stronger, and he would suffer as he had made others writhe in agony and lose their minds and souls.

  I held him there until he was on his knees, and the sounds from his throat were mere gargles of noise. I nearly felt pity for him until I thought of Kiya and Yset and Midias and other members of my tribe who had been pierced and flayed in the infernal machine the alchemist had invented. He would not die, but he would lose what skin had begun forming on bone. He would not gain what he sought when so many had suffered at his hand.

  “I, your son by birth, but no longer the son of a wolf father, am your Red Scorpion,” I said as I released him.

  I glanced over at the hefty book, leathery and falling apart. The scrolls were bound into it, with the blood of Medhya upon its pages. Her sorcery would be there, and all the art that the alchemist possessed existed there.

  I ran to it and drew it under my arm. As I did so, I felt the same kind of pulse from its binding that I had felt from the Eclipsis. The grimoire had great magick in it, and—in my possession—would offer insight into the rituals of the solstice, I was sure.

  I left the alchemist writhing in his armor upon the cold floor of his private study. The swarms of the flesh eaters would destroy the growth of sinew and skin he had brought to himself—but they could not murder him. Immortal he would remain, but without the essence of youth, without the freshness and beauty of skin and muscle to disguise the corpse he had made of himself.

  Hiding the staff beneath my robes, I went out along the corridor of the furnace and foundry, and when I came to the causeway that crossed a canal, there I saw guards rushing to search for me.

  There was no time left to find my children, or to seek Pythia. I had failed in what I sought to do before the battle began. I prayed that they would find protection from us, and from their own ruler. Tempted though I was to seek out Enora and take her life before the battle, I did not trust Ghorien or the first staff—and did not want to clash with them until I had weakened their army.

  I returned to the form of several falcons, drawn together with one mind. As I did so, the old book, bound with sinew and leather, d
ropped to the floor, and did not shapeshift with me—its sorcery would not allow it to come under my command.

  One of the falcons among the flock grabbed it in its talons, and we flew up from the arched vaults of the Barrow-Depths into the swirling storm. I heard the shouts of guards, and even the terrible call of Artephius from some nether window, a garbled scream for his grimoire.

  Bowmen at the battlements shot at the flock I had become. One of their arrows hit a falcon beneath the wing, and it dropped, a part of me, onto the road below.

  I felt an excruciating white-hot pain, though I did not know from which part of my body, for I was one within the many.

  Yet, a falcon looked down at the road, and saw that the bird that had fallen had become a human forearm with fingers that still twitched in the hand as it landed upon the earth.

  Beside it, the grimoire, its pages open and fluttering as the wind blew across it. A rider came out from the gate, and moved swiftly toward where my arm had fallen, and when he reached it, he stabbed the arm with his sword and drew it up, and then leapt from his mount and hefted the grimoire in his hand.

  My falcons watched him ride back to the opening gates, two prizes beneath his arms.

  It was only later, when I crested the peak of the cliffs, and resumed my form, that I felt the pain at my elbow. I lay there, with the wolvish boy, Mordac, staring in wonder at me, moments before several falcons had soared up to him, and now, the flock had become the winged devil. “Like me,” he said, as if he had never before seen anyone shift other than his Chymer mother and her sisterhood.

  I lay on my back, with the staff in my right hand, my cloak spread out beneath me, but my left hand and forearm were gone, sealed off with flesh as if I had been born that way.

  I remembered the page of the grimoire, torn out and floating—with the sword arm cut off.

  Artephius had known this would happen. He played with me. He had known I would steal the book, although his ability to see the future had not included the Akhnetur swarm beneath his armor.

  I lay there in agony, and drew the staff over to my left shoulder, and closed my eyes that the regeneration of the limb would return. Pain shot through my neck, and the muscles of my biceps bulged as if bearing great weight. It felt as if someone were drawing the bone from its socket at my shoulder. In a sudden sweat, I blacked out. When I came to, a few minutes later, my arm had restored itself, my hand and fingers moved normally, but with a deep blue scar around the flesh just below my left elbow.

  * * *

  Within the hour, the Asyrr stood before me in the lowest entrance of the caves. Calyx and her people had brought horses from the paddock, well rested and ready to return to battle.

  Chapter 15

  ________________

  TARANIS-HIR

  1

  The horses had been dressed in the bards that would protect them in battle—and on the greatest and darkest of these I would ride, with the kings and queens of Myrryd and their mounts behind me. Mortals would ride after, on the remaining mares and stallions, and some would ride double, then dismount as we approached the gates of Taranis-Hir.

  I drew Ophion aside, and asked him to lead the flying vampyres—for they would first need to attack the Morns in the sky before descending to those of the earth. “And if you slip past the gates, seek the Barrow-Depths. Beyond the foundries and furnaces, there is a study of the alchemist called Artephius. The grimoire of Medhya is there, those scrolls that carry her blood sorceries. It is of value, my friend, and I have lost it once. Be cautious, and watch for the alchemist, who wears a suit of armor like a bronze basilisk and will not want you to find the book.”

  “I know those scrolls, and I will find the alchemist’s lair. Shall I seek this at the cost of the fight?” he asked. “For, my brother, I do not want one of our tribe—or these Akkadites—to fall without another of us avenging him.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Once the Morns have been extinguished, seek the grimoire. The alchemist will stay near this book, for it is of great value to him. You will feel the stream of him, and the vibrations of it at the arched doorway of his study.”

  “I will do this, my brother. And the Morns—will we not show them mercy, for they are like us?”

  “What is merciful for them is their Extinguishing,” I told him, and clutched his shoulder in brotherhood. “I wish the staff or the blade could return them to their former glory. But they are merely the flying teeth of the Myrrydanai. My only hope is that the souls within them passed into a dark sleep long ago. Now, go, brother, lead the vampyres of the air, as I lead the kings and queens on horseback.”

  To Calyx, I said, “If I fall beneath blade or staff, take up this staff, and the sword, though it may burn your hand. And be the plague maiden in truth, and destroy those who oppose you.”

  2

  Namtaryn sat proudly upon her mount, wearing her golden breastplate, greaves at her shins, but with little else to protect her body but a tunic so fine that I could nearly see her sex. She refused the furs that were brought to her, and complained that she missed such deep winters and longed for ice on her skin. To her, I said in private, “Your daughter has betrayed us here, and waits within the towered city. If you find her, do not take your wrath out on her, for she carries my child. Though I would seek her imprisonment for her crime, I do not wish for her to die, for she is mortal, and the child that has only just begun to grow within her, also.”

  She bared her fangs at me. “She has always been a snake. Kill her and be done with her, Maz-Sherah, for that child will be no better.”

  “I do not believe this,” I said. “And I wish you to watch for her, so that others do not harm her.”

  “You ask me what I cannot do,” she said, coldly. “For my daughter deserves death, or worse.”

  “Then I command you,” I said. “For you know her, and will see the gold mask of Datbathani upon her.”

  “The Gorgon Mask,” she said, and her mood changed. “She has gone far in the world to have obtained it.”

  “At the price of her immortality,” I said. “And you shall not harm her, but if you find her, capture her, and bring her to me unharmed. Do you understand?”

  Namtaryn cast a look upon me that was equal parts fear and confusion. Her eyes went to my staff, and the sword in its sheath. “As you wish,” she said.

  Athanat was in the full armor of his kingdom—including a crowned helm upon his head, with its dragon wings sprouting at each side of his face. Nekhbet wore leather armor with an unvisored helm. Illuyan and Setyr had no armor to speak of, but wore the ceremonial dress of their ages, looking every inch great kings of the world. Sarus, his enormous muscles bulging, gripping an ax in one hand and a double-bladed sword in the other, wore only a half tunic. He had complained to me in his half grunts and mutterings that it was shaming for a king of Myrryd to fear the blade of a sword or the smack of the ax. He did not like being horsed, either, and complained about this while settling onto the back of his steed.

  “Vampyres and horses don’t mix,” he grumbled, as the dark horse reared and whinnied until finally Calyx was able to calm him with her words and petting.

  “We should fly. All of us,” Zoryas said, equally unhappy to have to ride a horse.

  “You are kings,” I said. “And you will bring this war to Taranis-Hir as kings of the world.”

  “I am more agile on foot,” Illuyan said, adding to the grumble.

  “Listen to the Maz-Sherah!” Athanat shouted. “For he must have a reason for us to ride.”

  “Yes,” I said, holding my hand up to silence them. “Your warriors will take to the night sky—led by Ophion but guided by their kings below. They are our falcons. But they will look to us for leadership! We must attack from below and above. We must be relentless in this, and slaughter all who cross our path. Once we are inside Taranis-Hir, abandon your mounts. Fight as you wish with the skills and training of your lifetimes. The Myrrydanai ride the Lamiades, and some of you know these creatures well. They
no longer fly as shadows, but have rooted in the flesh of the dead. We must come at them from both the sky and the earth. We must be on mounts to fight them.”

  “It is not like a king to do so,” Setyr said. “We can lead from the sky.”

  “If you wish, abandon your steed now,” I said. “All who wish to follow Setyr, and Sarus. Spread your wings, and be with your warriors. But those who wish to follow me, remain where you are. Know that you will provide not just leadership, but a symbol that you are ordained by the Great Serpent, that you are a great king of both mortal and immortal. And that you bring the battle to Taranis-Hir not merely as the flying jackals, but as kings of the world gathered to fight Medhya herself!”

  I pointed across the last of the Forest, to the fires of the furnaces of Taranis-Hir. Its white caelum towers seemed to have brightened in the distant torchlight. “What was once a great forest has been eaten away by this kingdom! What was once simply a barony has become a harbor for Medhya’s shadow priests and thieves of the first Staff of the Nahhashim! Plagues have come to the earth and spread out upon it, bringing drought and death to the mortal realm!” I shouted. “But these are not your concerns! For what does the tribe of the Fallen Ones of Medhya care for mortal woods? For plagues? We do not suffer such things!” I glanced from Athanat, his head shaved in the manner of the Priests of Blood, his eyes fierce with bloodlust. “You! Ruler of Myrryd after Medhya herself! Athanat—called Thanos by the vampyres who once swore the oath of allegiance to you! Founder of Pergamos! Scourge of Hedammu! When you ruled, did you burn the forests of the world for your power?”

  His eyes narrowed as he watched me, and he grinned, his sharp teeth shining in the torchlight. “No, Maz-Sherah!” he shouted. “Mortals who bowed to us were kept safe. We gave them kingdoms, and to us they made sacrifice!”