Drago returned shortly with reinforcements, a sobbing Eris among them. The beautiful Eternal’s face, I saw, was streaked black with tears. I knew before she even spoke what had happened. “Usus is gone,” she sobbed. “I tried to heal him with my Blood, but he was too badly injured. He fell to dust in my arms.” As Zenzele comforted the two-natured immortal, I asked if she had preserved her lover’s memories. It was all we could do for the dying. When the Blood wasn’t enough. When they went to join their ancestors.
Eris nodded, wiping her eyes. “Yes, I Shared with him. At the last, before he went. He is here now with me.” And she touched her temple.
It wasn’t enough, I knew, but it was better than nothing.
“Usus was a proud warrior,” I said. “I can think of no better way to honor his spirit than to finish his enemies. We will destroy the God King in his name, and in the names of all who have given their lives here tonight.”
Eris nodded again, more firmly this time, drying her tears. “Yes,” she said. “Once and forever!”
Though the God King’s army had surrendered to us, there were still some isolated pockets of resistance. Most of the fighting was going on in the Arth, the second level of the city where the freemen resided. We followed Aioa through the squalid, winding alleys of the slave district, past the charnel pits and the gladiatorial rings, through a barren plot of land dotted with crucified slaves, most dried to jerky by exposure to the elements, then through the quarries where the corpses of the freemen the rebels had pitched down from above lay dashed upon the rocks, their bodies twisted and burst open like piles of squashed vegetables. Aioa led us through the quarries and up the zigzagging path to the city above. We encountered no resistance on our ascent, but met a group of Uroborans as soon as we entered the Arth.
It seemed that we caught them by surprise. I wondered how anyone could have missed the approach of such a large group, and then I realized what it was: Irema’s power! It must be protecting us. We were phantoms in her company, slipping like shadows through the city!
The Uroboran group was a sizeable one, but we outnumbered them two to one and there was not a single Eternal among them. Though they fought with a wildness born of desperation, they were not warriors. These were the indolents of the Fen, accustomed to luxury and indulgence. Only a few of them had any real martial training.
We defeated them easily, forcing most of them over the side of the mountain. Their diminishing howls were terrible to hear, the little thuds at the end even more terrible, but there would be plenty of time later to replay those despairing screams in my mind, to stew in my own shame and self-loathing. Right now, I was hunting bigger game. The only one that really mattered.
Khronos!
“He’s there, inside the mountain,” Aioa said, pointing to the summit of Fen’Dagher. “I can feel him. Watching. Waiting.”
Yes, I could sense it, too. I could sense him, even without Aioa’s gift. Waiting for us to come to him, meaning to trap us, no doubt, in his underground lair. Like a spider, perhaps. Something inhuman, unfeeling.
I gazed up at the mountain. It was a hulking shape from this angle, its contours gleaming in the moonlight, a cenotaph of wickedness. There beneath the surface, somewhere in that maze-like warren of depravity and corruption, the God King awaited. What snares had he set for us, I wondered. Booby-trapped walls? Spiked pits? But we couldn’t stop now. I couldn’t stop. We had to keep going.
“Onwards!” I shouted.
21
There were a little over forty immortals in our group when we ascended the dormant volcano. There was myself and Zenzele, Tapas, Irema and Aioa. Drago and Rayna, along with Eris, Neolas and Hammon. The Clan Mistress Wen, who had the form of a beautiful young woman, had joined us, along with her co-conspirator Druas, a tall, portly and plain-featured man with a morose demeanor. The two Eternals had assisted Irema with the slave uprising, and accompanied us now to help depose their former ruler. There were several other blood gods, as well as a handful of new-blooded slaves, including the leader of the slave caste rebels, a fierce-eyed and very hairy man named Bronan. Even Vehnfear had joined us. The wolf came loping around the corner of a sprawling private dwelling as we headed across the Arth, tongue lolling, tail thrust stiffly in the air. The animal’s muzzle was glistening with mortal blood, but he was grinning and his gray eyes were bright and excited, like a child that had been playing some happy and energetic game.
“Vehnfear!” Zenzele cried, and dropped down to one knee to embrace her old companion. “Where have you been? I was getting worried.” The wolf lapped her cheek, smearing blood across her face, then came and danced around my legs, hopping and wagging his tail.
“Are you coming with us?” I asked.
The wolf dipped his head and sneezed, as near an emphatic yes as the intelligent beast could manage.
“Let’s go then,” I said.
The slaves, mortal and immortal alike, had run amok through the district. The corpses of freemen lay strewn through the streets, throats slashed, heads bashed in, bodies pierced by arrows and spears. There was blood everywhere, splashed on the walls like sloppy graffiti, running down the gutters in glistening rivulets. The smell of mortal blood was overpowering. It was all I could do to keep my mind focused.
About halfway across the Arth, we came upon a group of mortal slaves in an open plaza. The mob, which was probably close to a hundred strong, was systematically marching their masters over the side of the mountain. One by one, they prodded their Arthian oppressors to the edge of the drop off, forced them to climb the balustrade and shouted curses at them until they threw themselves to their deaths. Those who couldn’t bring themselves to leap were prodded until they lost their balance and fell. And any who refused to approach the ledge had their throats cut and their jerking, spurting bodies heaved over the side. None were spared. Not the women. Not the children. It was a horror to me, this cold-blooded slaughter, but I was not obliged to interfere. The freemen of Uroboros owed these men and women, their former slaves, a debt of blood, a debt that had finally come due. It was not my place to judge the recompense too high. It was not me they’d oppressed. It was not me they’d beaten and murdered and raped for untold generations.
An old man, naked and bloodied, was climbing onto the parapet as we passed. He was having trouble mounting the stone barrier. Legs kicking feebly, he scrabbled ineffectually at the wall. The rebels urged him on with their spears, poking him in the ass and the back of his thighs. Finally, he managed to climb onto the barrier.
Standing up straight, hands cupping his genitals, he gaped at the crowd in disbelief. “Why are you doing this?” he cried. The wind whipped his white hair around his head like tattered bandages, made him totter on the edge. “Haven’t I been a good master? Haven’t I treated you well?” His crinkled cheeks were wet with tears. He seemed honestly bewildered.
Their answer was an incomprehensible howl.
Someone lunged forward and stabbed him in the belly with a spear. The old man tipped over the side with a squawk. The rebels fell silent, listening to the old man’s trailing cry with cocked heads. They grinned in anticipation, as if waiting for the punchline.
Thud!
The rebels cheered, and then hustled their next prisoner towards the wall.
“This is wrong,” Wen objected. “Liestro was a harmless old man. He never mistreated his servants.”
I shot the Uroboran a blistering glare. “Slavery in itself is a form of abuse,” I said.
The Clan Mistress looked at me thoughtfully for a beat, her lips pursed. I thought she would dispute my assertion, argue that there were degrees of cruelty, but she did not. “I agree,” she said. “If I did not, I would not have helped your granddaughter.” She looked away then, gestured to the city below. “I just did not imagine it would be so… terrible.”
Terrible seemed a gross understatement, but how else describe the chaos around us? The violence. The loss of life. It was astounding. The Shol was burning, the conflagrat
ion spreading like a grass fire through the tiny crowded tenements. The Arth was a slaughterhouse. And I had orchestrated it all. As much as it pained me to admit it, everything was going according to plan.
The rebels cheered as another former master met his fate on the stony earth below.
I have become my enemy, I thought.
22
At the far end of the Arth, the cliffs upon which the district had been built were broken into discrete platforms. Those platforms rose, one after the other, like the risers of a staircase, and were connected to the rest of the district by an elaborate network of ladders and rope bridges. With each progressive step, the homes grew larger and more opulent, their gardens lusher, their embellishments more extravagant. That was where the elite resided—or had resided. Though the inhabitants of that preeminent strata had cut loose the ladders and swinging rope bridges that connected their properties to the rest of the Arth, the rebels had managed to get across anyway. A good number of them were immortals now, and would have no trouble leaping the twenty or so meters to each successive area. Or climbing the sheer rock face of the mountain before dropping down atop their enemies.
We crossed the lethal chasms in like fashion, moving steadily toward the Fen. I expected a little more resistance here—surely here, amid these rich and sprawling villas—but there was just death and death and more death. The rich, it seems, die just as easily as the poor. More easily, in some cases, softened as they are by their self-indulgent lifestyles.
We encountered only one survivor in the upper-class neighborhood. Well, two actually. A mother and her child. The child was a babe in arms, the woman full-figured and handsome. A new mother, too, judging by the smell of her.
She came running around the corner of a palatial dwelling as we crossed the cobbled piazza in front, eyes bulging, flesh glistening with fear sweat. She saw us, skidded to a stop, and then stood gaping at us, too terrified to move. Neither party spoke. She stared at us, breasts rising and falling rapidly, and we stared at her. None of our group made any kind of move towards her, aggressive or otherwise. Finally, she broke.
She turned abruptly and fled to the edge of the cliff. Before anyone could move to stop her, the new mother flung her child off the side of the mountain and then followed her baby with a desolate wail.
I just stood there staring, paralyzed by the horror of it all. And then I thought, I would have done the same.
If all hope seemed lost.
And I’m sure it seemed hopeless to her, with all the chaos and bloodshed and the smoke from the burning city below enveloping her home like some demonic winding sheet. Even now, the air resounded with the screams of the dying, the roar of the flames, the clash of weapons. Every breath tasted of ash.
I felt pity for her and her child. I felt despair, and had to remind myself that the young woman probably kept slaves. The child might have been an innocent, but the mother was not. No adult here in the Arth was innocent.
Put aside your sentimentality, fool! You’ve killed hundreds here tonight. Thousands, perhaps. And there is one more still to go. The only one that really matters.
If he could be killed.
I believed now that he could.
Drago had said that Sunni was killed. The little Eternal had been ripped apart, and the pieces of her body passed around so that they could be completely drained of the Living Blood. The Sharing prevented us from preying on our own kind. When we drank the potashu of another immortal being, we suffered a temporary paralysis as the memories of our victim passed through the Blood into our consciousness. It gave the victim a moment to break free, to flee from their aggressor. But if there were many such aggressors, each imbibing just a little of the Blood… and if the same thing could be done to the God King…
“Quickly!” I shouted to the group, most of whom were also stunned by the young woman’s desperate act. “We are almost there!”
23
Up and up the mountain they called Heaven Spear.
Some of us climbed the sheer rock face like insects. The rest, the newly blooded, who were not accustomed to traveling in such a manner, raced along the narrow path that stitched back and forth up the slope of the mountain.
The peak of Fen’Dagher was riddled with holes, like a vast termite mound. Some of the ducts had been excavated to facilitate the passage of air. Though vampires do not respire as living creatures do, we must take air in order to speak, and we are very sensitive to smells. Stale air is as unpleasant to us as it is to mortal creatures. Other openings were used as viewing ports or exits. There were even a few for waste disposal.
As we ascended the dormant volcano, the blood gods of Uroboros escaped from those passages, flying down the mountain as we went up, and taking care to stay well away from our group. There were not as many as I would have expected, only a handful, but we did not pursue the cowardly devils. Time enough to deal with them later, if they continued to cause trouble. I was after their king, the father of our race, and would not be diverted.
I paused at the main entrance of the God King’s hive, an opening that was about five meters high by ten meters wide, and waited for everyone to gather behind me. I could hear, from deep within the mountain, the sounds of panicked retreat, blood gods shouting: “They’re here! They’ve come! This way! No-- this way!”
Vehnfear snarled at the voices, hackles bristling, and I put a restraining hand upon his back. I could feel the muscles beneath his fur trembling.
“Hold a little longer, old man,” I said. “We all go together.”
When our group had reassembled, I proceeded cautiously inside. I even ducked as I went through, though the ceiling of the passage was several meters above my head. Just to be careful.
“Be mindful of traps,” I called back to the others.
And then: inspiration!
To Aioa, I said, “Can you use your mind gift to seek out any traps the God King might have set in our path?”
Aioa looked doubtful, for she had never tried to use her powers in such a manner before. Her eyes narrowed, and I imagined an invisible beam, like a searchlight, spearing into mountain ahead of us. After a moment or two, she smiled as if to say, “Aha!”
“Yes, I can sense them!” she said.
“And Khronos?” I asked. “Can you search for traps while you lead us to the God King?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“Then point the way,” I replied, pleased with my own ingenuity.
It really was a great advantage having the twins with us. Aioa directed us forward, steering us clear of the traps the God King had placed in our path while Irema’s cloak of invisibility allowed us to move apace. Twice, the remaining Uroborans tried to ambush us, but thanks to Irema’s power, we caught both groups by surprise and were able to defeat them with very few casualties.
We took up their fallen weapons and pressed on, moving deeper and deeper into the labyrinth.
The abode of the blood gods was a confusing web of dark and claustrophobic passages. Strung on this network of tunnels, like beads on a dreamcatcher, was a series of vast open chambers, some as large as the greatest of your modern cathedrals, as well as a seemingly endless number of smaller private dwellings, shadowy alcoves and dank cubbyholes. But half our group had lived in the Fen for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, so there was little danger of becoming lost in the maze-like warren. Even I found many of the passages and public spaces familiar, though I had only visited three times in the past, but that was how little it had changed over the years. The blood gods of Uroboros had become a stagnant, sterile race. The only difference I could see was that the subterranean city was all but deserted now, its denizens either fled or dead on the battlegrounds below. The few blood drinkers we did encounter either ran when they saw us or were quickly destroyed.
The smell was the worst, a choking miasma of mortal blood and rotting flesh, excrement and human misery. I imagined I could feel it clinging to my skin. When I drew breath to speak, I felt violated by it, as if I
were being raped by the stench of the place.
So much death! It made my head spin.
There were mortals everywhere, freshly killed and sprawled where they had fallen, their bodies savaged, eyes empty and staring blankly into oblivion. Most had been bled white. Pets of the immortals, I suppose, killed by their masters before they fled the city.
“We’re headed for the throne room,” Zenzele murmured. She glanced sidelong at me, eyes very bright in the gloom. Though she appeared to be calm, I could sense the tension radiating from her, the impending violence, only barely held in check.
“Yes,” Aioa said just ahead of us, “he’s very close now. He is waiting for us.”
Our shadows jerked and twitched in the torchlight. I knew this last long passage. The high arched ceiling, walls ribbed like the throat of some strange beast, and at the end of it: the throne room of the God King.
Our father.
I had walked this corridor twice before. Once, at Zenzele’s side, when she brought me here to be consecrated by her master, a wild blood drinker from the north, ignorant and willful. Then again, when I came to surrender myself to Khronos, hoping to trade my life for the life of my firstborn son. Both times, my journey had ended in disaster, in betrayal and blood and pain and death. I had been supplicant and then sacrifice and now I returned—one last time, I prayed—as conqueror.
Please, ancestors, let this be the end of it!
Darkness ahead, and the humming of a vast open space: the God King’s throne room. I could sense him there in the shadows. Sitting quietly. Waiting. Even from a distance, I could feel the terrible power of his presence, a palpable tremor in the air. I had expected one last great battle, the God King’s final stand, but he was alone.
I stepped forth to meet my maker.
“Khronos,” I said.
24
The Oldest Living Vampire Unleashed Page 20
