“These Spirits of Vakai can slip back into our world at times, or someone like Elhathym may summon them. They cannot abide the sunlight, so they roam at night. When dawn comes they sink into the depths of the earth and its very stones, where no light can penetrate. Yet at night they emerge into physical forms like wolves, reptiles, or flying beasts, to seek the blood that gives them power and substance. The essence of blood, torn from the living, is their only concern. Those they drain but do not kill – like Wayudi – bear their curse.”
The first sunray fell through the window and Wayudi fell still. “It is too late,” said Khama. “I cannot save him.”
Brightness grew on the pristine walls and ceiling, and Wayudi grew dim before Sharadza’s eyes. His flesh and clothing became transparent, and he flowed like water into the sheets, then into the stones of the floor. A black shadow bearing his shape lay on the floor, then that too faded.
“At nightfall he will rise and haunt the palace,” said Iardu. “Unless we bind him to this room.”
Khama nodded and sighed.
“You mean… he is… one of them?” Sharadza asked.
“A Vakai, yes,” said Khama. “He will crave only blood.”
“Why do such terrible things exist?” she asked.
Iardu looked at her as if she already knew the answer.
“Patterns,” he said.
Khama instructed a servant to bring certain herbs, a strong lock for the door, and boards for the window.
“We will wait in the Lemon Garden,” said Iardu, his hand on Khama’s shoulder.
Sharadza had time enough to say goodbye to Vireon. She hugged him and Alua.
“Come with us to Shar Dni,” said Vireon. She knew he feared for her in Yaskatha.
“I cannot,” she said. “I asked Iardu to face Elhathym. I cannot abandon him.”
Vireon seemed to understand. “We will meet in Khyrei then… when you are done here.”
“We will,” she said.
She ate a few grapes, drank some fresh milk, and joined Iardu on the terrace of a secluded garden. A ring of tall thin trees bore vivid fruits the color of topaz stones, and birds sang among the branches. The sky was blue and cloudless overhead, a hot southern sky. She had no time e hnd jto visit the famous Forest of Jewels that lay somewhere in the heart of Undutu’s palace. Such wonders must wait for more peaceful times.
“This is your last chance to change your mind,” Iardu told her, his prismatic eyes glistening. “Once we leave here, there will be no turning back.”
“What is our other choice?” she asked. “Wait for the hordes of Vakai to come raging into Mumbaza? Then Uurz? Then on to Udurum? No… we must do this.”
“Khama and I must,” he said. “But you do not have to. Go east with your brother and cousin. They need you in Shar Dni.”
She tilted her head at him. He would go to face Elhathym without her if she asked him to. There it was again, that strange endearing look in his inhuman eyes.
“We three must go,” she said, and he said no more about it.
Khama came forth in his cloak of gaudy feathers. He had finally let go of his herdsman’s staff, leaving it with his wife. Without a word he sprang to the ground, balanced on his fingers, legs stretched taut behind him. The sea wind picked up and blew strong over the city as Khama’s cloak lengthened and grew. Beneath its feathery folds, the man-shape blurred and was lost. The feathers multiplied in all their shades: crimson, emerald, azure. He lengthened impossibly, his head growing into a huge triangular shape, his body coiling and writhing among the trees of the lemon grove. Sharadza grabbed Iardu’s elbow as Khama grew and swirled about them like a tri-colored wind.
A moment later his great head turned amber eyes to stare at them. They stood now in the center space of his massive coils. Khama was the great Feathered Serpent, his neck the height of a tall horse, his body tapering in coil after coil toward the end of his pointed tail. A black stinger rose from its tip, sharp as the blade of a spear. His snout was frighteningly fanged, nostrils flaring with citrus-scented breath. She could not tell from the middle of his coiled immensity exactly how long he was.
“Climb upon my back,” said the Serpent in Khama’s voice, only deeper. A forked tongue long as a whip came darting from between his fangs, drawn as quickly back into the cavern of his throat. His eyes narrowed into slits as he watched them grab his plumage and lodge themselves behind his reptilian skull. Sharadza was amazed at the softness of the bright plumes.
All these wonderful feathers, and no wings…
Khama did not need wings. His head rose into the air and his shifting coils followed, straightening to his full length. He rose toward the clouds and flew wingless above Mumbaza, two riders on his back, the sun glistening in three colors along his feathered length.
“How can he fly without wings?” Sharadza shouted through the wind at Iardu, who rode behind her.
“He is a Creature of the Air,” said Iardu. “Do you know the story of Mumbaza’s founding? How the Feathered Serpent told its first king Ywatha the Spear where to build his great city?”
Sharadza nodded. The legend could be found in any proper history text. Ywatha and the Feaha dathered Serpent had always been one of her favorite epics.
“That was Khama,” said Iardu.
Sharadza had no words as the city dwindled below, a collection of luminescent domes and steeples gleaming like a single pearl beside the vast green sea.
26
The Game of Blood and Fire
The warships of Khyrei were black and crimson, the colors of city and jungle, night and blood. One hundred and twenty lean galleons skimmed the Golden Sea, shards of darkness escaped into the daylight. Their sails bore the white panther sigil of Ianthe on a field of black, and their prows were iron rams in the shape of horned devil-heads. Eighty slaves manned the oars of each vessel, chained and whipped, made impossibly strong by herbs and drugs that would burn away their lives in months. Upon the decks strode the demon-masked captains draped in scales of bronze, while in the holds a hundred faceless soldiers waited for the call to slay, driven to fury by the smoking bloodflower in their braziers.
Prince Gammir stood beside the Empress in the forecastle of the flagship Talon, scanning the northern horizon. An unnatural wind filled the black sails, and behind the ships came an invisible storm… a rush of forces skimming the water, darkening it from sun-gold to inky jet. The storm would rise up into a thousand deadly forms when the doors of night opened.
Gammir wore plate mail of glittering black, a longblade of sharpest obsidian sheathed at his waist. His dark hair had grown long; it writhed Serpent-like in the wind. The sunlight pained his eyes, but it would not be much longer. He squinted, searching for the first sign of the Sharrian coast. The fleet had launched in the dead of the night, powered by Ianthe’s summoned wind, and it had not ceased in its headlong flight across the waters. The plan was to reach the Valley of the Bull at sunset, or soon thereafter. Two trading galleons, one from the Islands, one a Sharrian merchant, had crossed their path earlier in the day. The merciless iron rams had torn into their hulls like arrows into bales of hay, and while the main fleet gusted northward a few ships lingered to scuttle and burn the traders. Now those ships, their crews incensed by an early taste of slaughter, had rejoined the fleet. The red sun hung low in the west, and Shar Dni grew closer with every passing second.
“They plot against us,” Ianthe had told him days ago. “They plan a season of war to follow their northern winter. In their ignorance, they imagine we will wait on their legions to march southward. What idiocy! They send Princes to Mumbaza to plot against our Elhathym!”
She had laughed, the sound of beautiful cruelty. Slaves cowered about her throne of ivory and jade, and the panther Miku lay sleeping at her feet. Gammir sat on a similar throne, where his grandfather the Emperor would have sat if he were still alive. If Vod had not killed him all those years ago. Gammir enjoyed the slaves of Khyrei; they served his every need, carnal and other
wise. There was none of the charade played out in his mother’s court – no pretense that servants were worthy of kindness and sympathy. Ianthe’s pale people – his people – knew their place. They lived and died to serve their Empress. ha dg flight aAnd now their Prince.
Ianthe had confessed to sending the nightmares that drove Vod to madness. She sent the Red Dreams that pulled Fangodrel to her, so she might teach him the secrets of power. Now she had laid her kingdom at his feet in all its shameless splendor. Now he was truly Gammir, and Khyrei was his realm as much as hers.
“What shall we do, Grandmother?” he asked. He already knew, but it pleased her when he played the role of innocent youth. It was one of the many ways he indulged her.
Ianthe fingered the necklace of moonstones about her slender neck. Her white hair was caught up in a beehive, wrapped in strings of beryl and agate. Her smile was a splash of blood on a statue of sculpted marble. The statue of a Goddess driven by wicked whims.
“We will strike first,” she said. “Elhathym has promised me half of his Vakai horde. He will send them to us through the mirror. Already he moves to take the border of Mumbaza. Soon his shadows will drink the blood of the Boy-King and his court, and we will drink that of the Sharrians. We will not bother with tiny Allundra, but make directly for Shar Dni.”
“Why not take Elhathym’s gift and kill him?” he asked. “Surely he holds no real interest for you.”
Ianthe turned her black-diamond eyes at him. “There is much you have yet to learn,” she said. “Elhathym is of the Old Breed. He ruled an empire on the southern coast before any other nations claimed this continent. He walked the Ancient World at my side and we played the games of blood and fire. The world was our toy, even after the Great Descent, when we took the shapes of mortals.”
“Where has he been all these ages?” he asked. “The world has forgotten him.”
A floating globe of fire above their thrones turned from orange to emerald and its light shifted the contours of her perfect face. “He grew bored and went off to explore the Outer Worlds for amusement. His earthly empire crumbled without him, and three thousand years of wandering yielded him no more pleasurable sphere than this one. Yet he stumbled, perhaps caught in his own terrible ennui, and fell into the void where the Vakai dwell. He lingered for ages among those famished spirits, observing their torments. They could not drink his blood, but they reveled in his pain for it distracted them from their own suffering, so they kept him there. In his madness he called out to me. Across a divide of centuries I heard his cry. So I pulled him from the void, sealing him to a pact that would meet my own needs.
“First he reclaimed the heart of his former kingdom. Now he has called forth the Vakai, his former tormentors, to serve him. In this world he is their master, and he assembles them now in great numbers. Together, Yaskatha and Khyrei are indomitable. As in the Ancient Times, we will stride across the world and spill its blood for our pleasure. This is our world, Gammir. You must learn to love Elhathym as you love me.”
He bristled. “You love him?”
She laughed again, musical knives upon his bare skin. “He is my lover… but he is not my husband.”
“I will never love him,” said Gammir.
She smiled and reached over to caress his cheek. The fire-globe turned to deep scarlet, his favorite color. “My sweet boy,” she cooed. “None will ever come between us. If you will not love Elhathym… then you must at least show him the respect due a fellow warlock.”
He said nothing to that. He would show the necessary courtesy to the gray-haired sorcerer. Until the day came when he found the chance to destroy him. For now, let him send his shadow legions to join those of Ianthe. What could it hurt? The destruction of Shar Dni was worth even this sour alliance. Time later for his own designs.
Ianthe spoke often with Elhathym in the Glass of Eternity. Gammir arranged to be outside the sanctum when this occurred. Let her deal with him; Gammir gave only silent consent. Three days ago, he saw Elhathym walk through the mirror, to stand in fleshly form inside the high tower. He had come to taste the sweet flesh of Ianthe, to ravish her and satisfy his inhuman lust. So the Prince went down into the Torture Garden alone to distract himself with blade and tongs, screams, and bits of torn flesh. He had no wish to dwell on what was happening in Ianthe’s lofty sanctum. Even among the wails of the dying slaves, he heard the moans of the Empress as her ecstasy spilled like a faint stink throughout the palace halls.
Not long after this tryst, the Vakai came flowing through the mirror like a deluge of black water, flooding out the sanctum windows, into the courtyard and the city beyond. They sank into the shadows and stones until they were called forth to flock behind the war fleet.
Four admirals commanded the Khyrein navy, but Ianthe set Gammir above them all. Now the Talon was his own ship, and she stood at his side calm and cool as marble. His thirst was rising… Nearly a full day since he drank the blood of nubile slaves. Tonight, Ianthe and he, and the host of shadows that followed like a black storm, would drink Sharrian blood.
There… The green coast came into view at last. The Valley of the Bull with its verdant slopes, the reedy delta thick with flocks of white birds, the city of white towers and azure pyramids, the cloud-painted ramparts. The smoke of temples rose into the evening sky like futile dreams… Their Gods would not help them this night. The sun kissed the western horizon. The inky waters in the fleet’s wake steamed now as if boiling.
Gammir saw the ghost of Tadarus standing near the rail, wrapped in his purple cloak, unstirred by the wind. Tadarus stared at him with eyes as blue as the Sharrian temples.
Brother…
Ianthe must have sensed something, for she turned her feline face toward the phantom. Yet it was gone. Perhaps he had only imagined it.
She leaned against him, her slim body wrapped in a crimson cloak and little else. She placed an arm about his waist and they eyed the blue-white city together. “Their King is already dead by your hand,” she said. “Whoever they have placed on his seat will be fearful and inexperienced, and they have no warning of our attack. This night Shar Dni belongs to us, Gammir. We will tear it to shreds, drain it dry as sand, burn it from the earth. We will build a new city on its ashes – your city. Its temples will worship us with blood and pain.”
She kissed his lips, stealing his senses. When she pulled away, the last rays of sunlight burned blood-bright across the Golden Sea. The Sharrian Navy rushed forward to meet the assault. A hundred gold-painted galleons flew the Sign of the Bull on their silks. The Khyrein warships crushed hapless fishing vessels caught in their path. Less than half the Sharrian ships had launched when night claimed the sky.
Now the legions of shadow rose from the waters like a wave of black clouds, roiling above the Khyrein vessels. Ianthe threw off her cloak, baring herself to the dark, and shouted into the mass of whirling shadows.
“Blood, Vakai!” She pointed her clawed finger at the Sharrian sails. “Your mistress offers the blood of all those aboard the golden ships! Take them! Feast, children of the void!”
A dark storm, lit by a mass of tiny red fires, rushed toward the Sharrian warships, which came boat after boat into the banks of howling shadow. Ianthe’s sorcerous wind fell away, and the black fleet crept slowly now toward the dark fog that consumed its enemies.
As the Talon moved closer at the head of a triangular formation, the shrieks of dying men reached Gammir’s ears. Famished Vakai swarmed the decks and rigging of his enemies, rending flesh and spilling blood. He licked his lips. Perhaps he should summon the phantom horse and join the blood-drinkers on those slippery decks.
“Be patient, Grandson,” said Ianthe, stroking his chin. “In the city beyond these meager ships runs a deep red river. We will sip from it soon.”
The black ships slid across the waves toward the wall of darkness. No golden galleons emerged from that writhing storm of shadows. Only the cries of dying men and the smell of steaming blood. The moon rose, a horned sickl
e between guttering stars.
At last the legions of Vakai rose back into the sky, leaving a hundred red-stained ships floating aimlessly with tattered sails. Their decks were littered with drained white bodies, trails of crimson spilling over the rails… a forest of unmanned ships waiting to be fired and scuttled.
A great war-shout went up among the Khyreins, and they sailed among the dead ships, torching and ramming them to make a path for the Talon. Gammir and Ianthe sailed through a corridor of burning ships, and the walls of Shar Dni loomed near. The black cloud of death hovered and writhed above the Talon. Clusters of flame-red eyes stared at the ripe city, thirsty for more slaughter.
Along the city wall the flames of sentinels burned bright, and legions of foot soldiers gathered to repel a siege. Gammir pictured in his mind the legions of cavalry inside the wall, forming up to ride forth and meet the invading Khyreins at the docks.
Doomed fools…
It mattered not whether they hunkered within those high walls or rode out to meet death like heroes. They were all going to die.
As the Talon left behind the forest of burning galleons, it entered the wide Sharrian bay. Trading ships and fishing vessels sat abandoned at the docks. It seemed everIt em›y Sharrian citizen had fled to the Southern Gate. Now that gate opened and ranks of cavalry charged out to defend the docks. They poured forth like bronze ants, thousands of spears glittering in the glow of stars and their own blazing ships.
Gammir watched them gallop toward the wharves and form their lines of battle. They were children playing some absurd game. He laughed at them from his perch behind the devil-head on the Talon ’s prow. His laughter spilled across the dark water like blood from rent flesh.
Ianthe raised her lithe arms toward the black cloud again, and the legions of Vakai fell like a black rain upon the legions of Shar Dni. Khyreins cheered, waving their swords and axes as their enemies were smothered by a pall of mutilating terrors. By the time the Vakai rose to hover above the heaps of slain men and horses, the Talon and its vanguard had seized the docks. Armored Khyreins bounded from the rails and raced among the scattered dead, falling into formation before the Southern Gate, now closed again and no doubt well barricaded.
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