The Queen of Wolves

by Douglas Clegg

  “Did you go among them with wings spread to terrorize them? Or did you ride into battle on the back of a horse?”

  “In those nights, it was the Lamiades I rode,” he said, and a roar of laughter went up from the others. “For they are fearsome beasts in battle, and easily trained. But no, we guarded the mortal kingdoms, for they protected us, and gave us tribute.”

  “In war, did you swoop down from the skies to attack your enemy?”

  “My warriors did, for I was on the ground, riding with foot soldiers into battle.”

  “As befits a king of Myrryd!” I shouted. “To ride upon a noble stallion into battle, to show the mortals you protect that you are among them, and fight for them, and will not abandon them—and to guide your warriors in the sky, as well, for they must have guidance upon the ground to look toward! Though we do not have Lamiades here—though if some are willing, you may steal them from the Myrrydanai if you can...” The Asyrr roared with laughter, Nekhbet shouting that she would own one of the Lamiades for herself before dawn. “We have these mounts—beautiful and noble creatures that once carried the knights who fell in the battles before we came here. These horses know this terrain, and they will carry us from these cliffs, down into the territory of the old Nahhashim staff. They are blessed with the Nahhashim staff, and are used to battle. You are kings. You need mounts. And you need to lead those in the night sky.”

  “Do we fight merely for the sake of mortals of one castle?” Illuyan asked. “I do not mind riding a horse to battle, but whom do we save in this fight?”

  “You do not ask such questions, King of Myrryd,” I said. “For you have sworn this oath to me. You will do as I say. You will follow where I lead. Only those who wear the Disk—a medallion smaller than your palm, Illuyan—will be cut down. Only those who oppose us. You will protect these mortals who ride behind you as your children, for they are descended from the same blood that once you drank and protected in your first kingdoms! And to me, your loyalty will be, and well repaid shall you be from this, though your resurrections from Extinguishing and those of your servants and warriors, should be enough—yet you will draw up those old kingdoms that you lost—and guard the mortal realm again when the battle is through! If you are the falconers to your warrior falcons, then I am your falconer—and you will come when I call you!”

  “I do not care whom we fight, or whether on horse or lizard,” Namtaryn said, her sharp teeth glinting in the torchlight. “I long for the taste of the blood of battle. And when it is over, I want to find the most handsome youth and take him for my pleasure.” The others laughed as she said this, and she, too, began laughing. “How can we lose this fight?” Namtaryn asked. “For we follow the Maz-Sherah who has been foretold since the scrolls were written upon with Medhya’s blood! How many are against us in this city? It is one thing for mortal knights to have fallen to this scourge, but I have dealt with the Myrrydanai before. Mortals are easy kills.”

  “I have seen their warriors,” I said. “They outnumber us by the hundreds.”

  “Mortals.” She laughed. “I have drunk from thousands of them.”

  “In one night!” Nekhbet shouted.

  “You know the sorceries of the Myrrydanai, made strong when their flesh was torn from them and Medhya pulled them into the Veil. They return with much knowledge of the Medhyic art, and their earthly queen holds the Staff of the Nahhashim that was once held only by Merod, the Priest of Blood. These White Robes will not be satisfied to fight merely with sword and fang. They will use all they have against us. You know what Ghorien can do—though I have not yet met him, he is their heart. If you can destroy him, the others will fall. You know what these shadows, disguised now in skin, can call to their service. They can abandon their flesh and possess any mortal they wish. They have powers we do not even understand. But I tell you, before this night is through—many of them will be destroyed, for it is Ghorien I must have—and with this sword and this staff, and with the power of the Eclipsis, I will send him into oblivion that he may never return again!”

  The Asyrr shouted and cheered, and called out to the Serpent for strength.

  “There are mortals we must protect here. I have two children, who may be within the towers, or deep in the Barrow beneath. There are others here who do not follow the White Robes. Yet they are slaves to this kingdom. Only fight those who draw sword upon you, and only slaughter those who threaten you with Extinguishing. We will not spill innocent blood.”

  “There are no innocent mortals but those who ride with us!” Sarus shouted.

  I pointed to Nekhbet, with her raven hair drawn back and oiled, her helmet in her hands, her wings folded yet shivering with the anticipation of unfurling. “Nekhbet the Terror of Night! These were the words on your tomb! Yet, did you not suffer when the mortals who served you also suffered? Did you not wish for their fertility, their strength, that they might both serve you—and prosper in their lives that their children should honor you?”

  She nodded, raising her arm into the air, clenching her sword in her fist, and called out to the Great Serpent for his blessing.

  “And Illuyan, the Fair-Haired, were you not just to your people? Did you not show mercy to those who had been wrongly treated? I have met your descendant, from those early nights of your life when our tribe brought forth the living from undeath—a wise and good mortal this man, a namesake of yours who does honor to your name and spreads your fame throughout the world! Setyr! Namtaryn! Zoryas! Each of you—and yes, your servants, your warriors, loyal and true vampyres in a world that once honored you. This world has changed! We have fallen—all of us—from the heights of Myrryd’s red towers! We have fallen from the stream itself, for we have not honored it! Each of you—extinguished by the corruption of the Myrrydanai priests, who now call themselves White Robes and rule the citadel whose furnaces burn in the night to make weapons, armor—for a war against you, and against the mortals whom they have wronged! But we fall no more. We do not stand upon a cliff, nor do we stand beside a golden tree of some ancient legend. We stand upon the rock of your kingdoms—the ordaining of the Great Serpent is here—and it is with me, and with you. And when you remember the years of your dominion in Myrryd, and the betrayal of those shadow priests in whom you put your trust—recall the greatness and beauty of the earth before Medhya’s hounds attacked you and extinguished each of you! Remember what you ruled, and why you ruled, and the balance between the world of the vampyre and the world of the mortal! Remember your own mortal life before the Sacred Kiss came to you in your final moments! For we will guard the mortal realm because we are of it! I have known of vampyres who never knew mortality. Never had in their hearts the memories of a finite lifetime! Medhya is one of these! She is no goddess, no Queen of Myrryd! She is more monster than any of us here! For each of us once suckled at the breast of a mortal mother! Each of us once held a lover in our arms, and knew that we might die before we held them again! Each of us once lived as mortals live, and died as mortals die—though we did not cross the Threshold. Still, we knew that darkness better than we know the dark of night! You have each sworn an oath of allegiance to me and to this war we must wage. But your allegiance is to the Serpent himself, and it is his will—and my will—to send the shadow priests back into the Veil, to destroy the Chymer wolves, even to extinguish those Morns who were once of our tribe but whose destruction is a kindness to them! To take from the Queen of the Wastelands the old Nahhashim staff! Break her bones against the power of the gray priests of Nahhash! The war must come to them now, this night—the night when the Veil is thin, and its threads unravel as Medhya’s greedy fingers reach this earth to extinguish you again, and destroy the mortal vessels that bring us sustenance! Remember your mortality! Remember your reign as vampyre! Remember Ghorien, and his priests who fell under the thrall of our Dark Mother! Remember the fall of Myrryd! Remember the Asyrr!”

  The Asyrr and the warriors roared, and all raised their weapons. When they had quieted again, I cried out, “I a
m the Falconer! And you are my falcons! As the raptor bird rides the storm of night, so we shall all ride—and you shall be at my arm, and in the skies above, and I shall hunt with you! But it is you that will find our prey!”

  I glanced over at Calyx, who had mounted her horse and trotted along the snow-covered paddock to me. She had two sheaths at her middle, and a short sword tucked into another near the blanket that was her saddle. In her hand, she carried a spear. “Will we have victory?” she asked as she came close, leaning into me to block out the roars of those behind us.

  “The gods have granted us this long night that we may send those of the Disk to the arms of the children of Death,” I said. Even as I spoke, I felt for the Eclipsis at the pouch at my waist. “Do not risk your plague in ordinary battle, Calyx. Let my tribe take the first sword and arrow, and I want you to guide your people in a ring behind us to catch any of the enemy who break through. When we have breached the city gates, look for me, for when they are opened I will need help finding Taran and Lyan. I do not wish them to live another night beneath their mother’s rule.”

  Then, as I stood before them, I brought the Raptorius out from beneath my skin—its scales covering my flesh, its spurs and spines drawing outward from my elbows and along the helm. “This is the armor of the Great Serpent!” I shouted. “And it is in his name that I lead you!”

  The Asyrr and their warriors and the mortals who fought with us roared at this, and many gasped in awe at the Serpent armor, which was like none they had seen.

  I reached to my right side to unsheathe the Nameless. I held the shattered blade up in my left hand that they could see its glory. “In the name of the Great Serpent, I offer my service to this blade, forged by the Asmodh!”

  I felt the heat along my arm and the blistering at my fingers as the flame erupted from the sword as the fire burned out to its length. “Those who will come from the sky, guard our descent! When we are at the edge of the forest, then will we call you to battle! Those on mounts, follow me!”

  3

  I rode swiftly along the narrow ways, with Calyx riding ahead of us, leading us through the brambled paths, out of the thickest of the woods. The snow was piled high here, but our horses galloped bravely along the twists and turns. I could not look up to the sky to watch the vampyres above us, for my senses had begun narrowing the closer we came to Taranis-Hir, but I knew Ophion led the charge from the air. I began to smell incense fire in the air, bitter herbs and a sour stench like old stew left too long in the pot. My eyes focused straight ahead, trusting my horse and the lead of Calyx.

  The woods became a blur, and soon turned into open fields with canals running alongside them. I tasted bile at the back of my throat and wished that I could turn back the Earth to the moment when I was a boy and had longed to go work in the baron’s castle. I spat such a thought from my mouth and trusted the Serpent to remain with me through the ordeal to come.

  Fires had been lit along the canals, and a strange black potion had been spread across its surface. Hundreds of soldiers on foot lined the road toward the castle, and archers stood at the ready along the walls of the city.

  I held up my staff to slow the kings behind me, and those who accompanied us, as well as those of the sky, who flew down among the trees and soon stood beside the Asyrr and awaited my word.

  “Wait,” I said to those behind me. “For at a quarter-mile, they stand for us. I will go among them. You will see the fire of the Nameless should I call you.”

  “It is a trick,” Ophion said, as he reached my horse. “They will destroy you if you go along their gauntlet.”

  “I am protected, brother, but be watchful of the Morns, for I fear they lurk somewhere unseen.” I bade my horse trot up the path, beyond the edge of the woods.

  Across the open range I went, and within half of the hour I came to this aisle of soldiers.

  Two lines of soldiers, a hundred on each side, made a path to where their queen sat covered with the pelts of wolves, upon a snow-white horse, surrounded by her minions.

  I walked my horse slowly between the lines of foot soldiers, glancing at these mortals with caution. I held the staff in my right hand that they could see and fear it, for they knew such an instrument of sorcery from their own ruler. They watched me as if I were their devil come from Hell to take their souls. About their throats, the Disks on leather straps, shiny with the small mirrors that had been inset into them, believing these would ward off such devils as those I had brought with me that night. I dismounted as the lines of soldiers opened up into a wide circle, within which Enora sat upon her beast.

  Enora wore a crown of silver, and her red hair had been tied with golden ribbons. Her face was alabaster, and upon it, she had painted the third eye of Medhya, at the brow. Beneath her wolf-pelt cloak, she wore a robe of deep blue and upon it the Disk had been sewn in silver threads. In her left hand was the Nahhashim staff, and in her right, a short black sword. Upon her pommel, a black sack hung down, and I could not guess what she held there, but it intrigued me.

  Growling along at her horse’s flanks were the Chymer women in their wolf forms—I counted eight of them, their fur bristling, their snaps and snarls aimed only for me.

  Behind her and beside her, nearly a hundred Myrrydanai priests, all wearing the white robes, and covered in the skin of the dead.

  Of these many priests, who had multiplied in number since I had left the towers, twelve of them surrounded Enora and her wolves, and each of these rode one of the Lamiades. I was not surprised that these lizards seemed all sharp teeth, small eyes, brown-green skin, and spikes along their crests and backs that were similar to the spikes at the crest of the Raptorius helm I wore. At their hind limbs, I saw thornlike spurs, and their forelimbs seemed smaller than the hind. These might be easy to disable, I thought.

  Spit dripped from the Lamiades’ yellowed teeth, and one of them already had blood smeared across its snout. I watched the Myrrydanai who rode them—surely one of them was Ghorien, for he would not deign to walk the earth when he could ride such a monster. They were bridled like horses, and saddled, as well. The Myrrydanai seemed to have some trouble controlling their stillness, for the tails of these creatures whipped around as if in frustration, and several of the White Robes tugged at the reins to keep the lizards quiet.

  I drew the helm from my head and set it on the pommel. I touched the grip of the Nameless with my left hand and held the staff with my right. Then I slipped my hand into the pouch and drew out the Eclipsis.

  The tingling at my fingers began, and I felt the surge of energy shoot into that dark globe. The deathlight came up, seen only by me.

  As the dark light crossed over the Myrrydanai, I saw their shadows beneath the skins, but also other shades there, waiting with Enora. These were the spirits the Chymers had helped her call from the Barrow-Depths—the old evil that lay in that ground.

  I drew the Eclipsis back, dropping it into its pouch. I scanned the dead faces of the White Robes with the lizard mounts, wondering which was Ghorien, as all their features were indistinct. The White Robes who had no mounts stood with their hands clutching swords, blades to the ground.

  “Look at this devil!” Enora shouted, as the winds whipped across the night and a clap of thunder deafened all. Lightning broke the clouds, and, in its flash of daylight, I saw the Morns upon the battlements with the guard, waiting for the fight to begin, waiting for the command from their leaders. “He comes to me in armor that is like these lizard skins—scaly and dirty. Are you—a devil—afraid of the swords of my fighters? Of arrows?”

  “I wear the skin of the Serpent,” I said. “And the Raptorius.”

  “Where are your lovely wings? Did you lose them on your journey?” She performed for her people, for her soldiers, that they would see her scorn and emulate it and lose their fear. I kept glancing at the sack at her pommel, for I wondered what conjuring she kept at her side. What was this? “You have been long away from us, and many have died because of your absence,”
she said. “Where have you gone, devil, that you let the heretics die in your place?” She placed her hand across the sack that had raised my curiosity.

  I held the Nahhashim staff before me. “I have been to the red city at the edge of the fire-colored sea,” I said. “I am the Falconer of the Great Serpent. I hunt you. I hunt what owns you, my lady. For your mind is too long held in the grip of Ghorien and his Myrrydanai shadows. You have called up the spirits of the dead through necromancy, and you haunt the nightmares of the mortals of this realm, for your very thoughts take form in flesh and in dream.”

  “I am owned by no one, devil! Bow before your queen!” Enora shouted this against the falling snow, more for the show of it for her soldiers and her minions than for my benefit. She pointed the tip of her staff toward me. I felt a push at my ribs as she did this, but held my ground and revealed nothing to her.

  “Destroy him,” Corentin said, appearing from behind the White Robes, riding a muscled black horse, and wearing the armor of the baron who had once been his master. His horse was skittish of the great lizards, whose teeth ground and snapped as the animal drew near. I noticed Corentin’s wrist had been fitted with a blade, shackled at the forearm, and thrust where his hand had been.

  I shot Corentin a glance, but wasted no words upon him. Enora was my quarry, for the staff in her hand was all I needed to disable her protective sorcery of the city. Looking at her face, I could barely see the maiden I had once known.

  “You are a baroness. This is not a kingdom. It is not a country.”

  “I am Queen of the Wastelands and of Taranis-Hir and of the Jeweled Sea beyond, and even of these Akkadite heretics! I am the Lady of the Disk, and the earthly form of the Virgin of Shadows. Give me your staff, and surrender, and we will be merciful to the Akkadites.”

  “Just end this,” Corentin said to her. He grew impatient, and it was obvious he did not enjoy the back-and-forth between us. He drew his horse away from the Lamiades and the White Robes. His mount was nervous, and moved left and right, and back and forth, uneasy around the wolves and the lizards. “Show him the peace offering,” Corentin muttered, and then drew his horse to the right and trotted back behind the White Robes who stood beyond the soldiers, as if he were terrified of another encounter with me.