The Priest of Blood

by Douglas Clegg

  Kiya moved toward them and began cutting them down, careful to avoid the silver thrust between their ribs.

  “There is only one Maz-Sherah,” she said. “It is you.”

  “Perhaps I am one of many,” I said. “Perhaps the dark mother exists here. Perhaps these—”

  “Only one is truly anointed,” she said. “These were false.” Suddenly, Kiya crumpled to the Earth as if her legs had failed her. I crouched down, wrapping my arms about her to hold her steady.

  She did not have to say it. I felt it. Her stream was too weak.

  She stared at the hanging skeletons of our tribe. I knew what she thought: she was near her Extinguishing. She had hidden any failings carefully. But she no longer could.

  “I am able,” she said, pushing away from me to stand again.

  “Do not be afraid.”

  “I fear nothing,” she said, her voice like steel. “Maz-Sherah.”

  She continued cutting down our long-extinguished brethren, and when she had them on the ground, she began to say a Medhyic prayer that their souls might find peace even in the endless eternity they now faced. She kissed each skull and drew the bones from their jaws.

  Then she walked ahead of me, toward the city.

  “What awaits us?” Ewen asked.

  I saw terror in his eyes and felt protective of him.

  “You have met death once,” I said. “Do not fear it again. If this is a true prophecy, then we will see what we have come to see.”

  “The prophecy is for the Maz-Sherah,” he said. “Yarilo is gone. Perhaps each of us will meet similar fates.”

  “We will find what we are meant to find,” I told him. But I did not add that what we might find could be our Extinguishing. If our destruction would be at the jaws of the Alkemars, or among this poisonous Necropolis, it might not matter. I truly began to believe in my destiny. Perhaps the ripping at the stream, when Yarilo was taken, had begun this process. The leeches and the lizards and the deadly flowers might have been enough to keep human predators and thieves out. But whoever or whatever had built this kingdom had learned to weaken our tribe, as well.

  We were expected.

  I thought of the prophecies, and of Kiya’s belief that I was the “Anointed One.”

  But whatever intelligence and sorcery had built this place had also known that the Maz-Sherah would come, and had no doubt wanted “the One” to be alone, to have no defenses, and perhaps to extinguish in Alkemara.

  With fallen gates before us, I led the way along the rubble of twisting road that ran through the luminous valley of bones.

  3

  At the entryway, which was many leagues from where we’d first arrived at the great boneyard, we could better see the enormity of that city. The gates were two stone giants connected by bolts and crossbars, locked from the outside. They wore the armor of ancient warriors and were entirely naked with the exception of helmet and chest plate and shield. They were the sentries, and with the exception of a few gaps near the base of the gates, they had not been touched. Whatever had buried this city within this mountain had come from within it, not from some enemy beyond its walls.

  “It’s a prison,” Kiya said.

  Entering through a long gap in the structure of the left-hand gate, we felt a current shift along the stream. We experienced a complete darkening of our eyesight and a blurring of the edges of things as if some gas were in the air that distorted what we saw. Shadows existed that could not be defined as figures or the last standing walls of a building. Statues that had fallen along the promenade were also of indistinct feature for no other reason than that our vision was impaired.

  It was as if we were underwater—seeing this city was like viewing a shipwreck beneath the sea, where some shapes along the wreck were indefinable while others were perfectly clear. Great stone faces looked up through the hollow mountain, and the hands of giants—some marble, some basalt, some gold—lay upturned where they’d fallen during the cataclysm that had destroyed this land.

  Along the walls, a labyrinth of pathways ran through chambers small and large, filled with more bones and fragments, more signs of life once lived. Some of the walls were painted with friezes that told parts of the story of the time. The images depicted a family or a brothel or athletic pursuits. A man embraced two maidens whose legs encircled his waist; a matron instructed handmaidens in their work; youths of beauty and muscle played athletic games.

  Walls without roof or doorway stood like pieces of a lost puzzle. Pottery in shards, some intact, lay among the jagged earthen floors. As we walked toward the center of the city, down the wide boulevards, we saw shadows imprinted against the walls themselves—shadows of men with their arms raised as if in supplication, of women clutching their children close, of horses and of dogs, as well as winged men like demons. Whatever had taken Alkemara had dealt it many blows—from floods to earthquakes to this flash of light that had captured the shadows of the dead the moment before death met them.

  Then, at the middle of this labyrinthine city, within a circle that proved to be a confluence of several roads, like the sun with its rays going outward, we came upon an enormous temple.

  “There she is,” Kiya said, pointing upward. “Lemesharra.”

  4

  Made of black marble, domed at its top, with an arched entryway atop sleek dark columns, it was the tallest building in the city.

  The statue of Lemesharra herself towered at its magnificent doorway. She wore the cloak of eagles, and her face was masked with gold that gave her the look of a jackal. Her headdress was a garland of flowers and leaves and fruits of the Earth. Her breasts were large and ripe, exposed beneath her cloak. She had wide yet inviting hips—the hips of the Mother Goddess, of the one who entices men to dwell there and bring forth new life into the world before destroying it. Entwined about her sandaled feet and up to her thighs, twin serpents with the faces of her other aspects, Datbathani, and Medhya, as Kiya pointed out, who knew how the tripartite goddess had been worshipped. Medhya, the immortal mother, Datbathani, the Queen of Serpents, and Lemesharra herself, the bringer of life from death and death from life. A written language that resembled the prints of bird’s talons as well as pictures of animals and men adorned her outstretched hands. In one hand, a young child rested; in the other, she carried a short, curved knife that was almost like a scythe, but with toothlike edges to the blade.

  We passed beneath her immense form. I glanced up, looking at the towering woman who was the third aspect of the legendary origin of our race. I did not worship stone statues, no matter how tall, nor did I believe that Medhya was here in any of her aspects. But part of me wanted to believe that a single consciousness had formed our kind, a unique mother, a bloodline passed mouth to mouth, breath to breath, all the way back to this, our source.

  The same mother who wished our torment upon us.

  The same mother who came to me in dreams and whispered of eternal suffering.

  We pressed on into the temple itself, which at first was a long corridor of yellow stone, then came to resemble catacombs, but without the bones of the dead. At the end of one part of the corridor lay a central, domed room.

  Beautiful youths and maidens stood in a semicircle before us.

  5

  I walked across the slick marble floor to them.

  They were the product of a taxidermist’s art. Some madman had created these stuffed creatures. They were as statues, frozen to the spot. I touched one of the youths, and his face crumbled in my hand, like dust from some ancient fabric. Then I pressed my hand to his bare shoulder, and his arm fell and cracked into a heap on the floor.

  We walked chamber to chamber. More of these repugnant statuary of some unimaginable hunt graced each. A woman worked at needlepoint in one chamber while a little girl and boy sat at her feet. A student of some kind reciting to a scribe who wrote upon a scroll; two youths with leather armor upon their shoulders, dark swords in their hands, frozen in a battle; a man and woman in their mating; a
youth dancing with his older mistress; a youth taking a small hand ax to another’s throat for what seemed to be a bag of coins; in another, a naked discus thrower posed for a sculptor who had his carving tools against a large block of rock. The tableau of each chamber had a singular effect.

  It was to haunt us.

  To remind us of our mortal lives.

  I looked to Kiya to see if her vampyric nature had erased any thoughts of this kind. I expected her to laugh at each figure, but she expressed a deep sorrow in her eyes. These humans were not our prey, and something in their aspects made me wonder why I felt such empathy, why, when I could easily take the life of a youth or a maiden and drink so deeply as to drain them into a dried cocoon of flesh as a spider might its fly, why, then, did I feel anything for these people who had, centuries before, been killed and emptied and stuffed and posed?

  Kiya said it first. “These are our ancestors.”

  It was a shock to hear her voice say it, but when she did, I knew it was true. These once-living statues had been tortured and killed, one might presume, then stuffed like an eagle or a lion for decoration.

  Sorrow and even pity clutched at my throat. It was what made me clasp Ewen closer and reach for Kiya when she stopped at a doorway and watched the scene that had been set.

  They were vampyres, as the hanging bones had been. Whoever had done this had destroyed them, then had mounted their bodies as trophies, obscene statuary, as if this were a demented child’s playhouse.

  6

  Beyond these chambers, another great hall came into sight. It had dark, translucent walls, leading to an even narrower corridor that descended below, then rose again until, at its center, another domed room, completely empty of the engravings and carvings of the entry-way.

  The dome above was of an odd shape, and dark as the walls. It had a spiral of jutting stones within it, curved into the ceiling. The chamber was curved as the ceiling. Six doors led off this room, and the paths from them seemed to move upward. The doorways were arched and adorned with six serpents, each with a markedly different face and design. The first seemed to be a common asp, but its tail became crocodilian in the manner of the Alkemars so that it seemed to be a serpent of the sea. The second had small limbs, and its twin fangs were curved upward like a boar’s tusks—this was the legendary salamander of fire.

  The third serpent had wings and a tail that circled around itself until it came to a point—a serpent of the air, or dragon. The fourth was hydra-headed, and its many heads seemed like a woman’s hair. This was the underworld’s serpent. The fifth had no special designation, for it seemed a snake as any other, save for its tail, thrust into its mouth. And the sixth serpent image had the head of an eagle, the legs of a lion, the wings of a dragon, and its tongue, jutting from its beak, seemed to be afire. This was the serpent-as-gryphon, I suppose, or perhaps this spoke to a deity unknown to me. Even more remarkable was that each serpent seemed to be on its back, as if moving upside down, although their heads curved so that they were at least staring out at the world upright.

  “Each to each,” Kiya said.

  I glanced at her and saw a worried expression upon her brow.

  She explained. “Each doorway is meant for one of us, and only one of us.”

  “But there are six,” Ewen said. “There are three of us.”

  “Six of us set out on this journey,” Kiya said. “Whoever built this saw us coming, thousands of years ago. We are expected here, at this place.”

  I glanced at the doorways again. “But no one knew that all six of us would not arrive here.” I remembered Mere Morwenna, having once told me about prophecy, and how it was not always the journey expected. Even this prophecy—it had anticipated six of our tribe coming this far. The guardians of Alkemara, those sisters of the milky water, took one. Vali and Yset waited on the far shore for us. Three of us had arrived, but there were six doorways into this oblivion.

  “These doorways are traps,” I said. I crawled up the side of the wall, to the edge of the dome itself. I looked at the room from that perspective, trying to see if there was any sign, any symbol we could not clearly see, that we had somehow overlooked. “We do not enter these new corridors. We do not have to.”

  Ewen glanced up at me. His face cheered me, for it was so innocent of the darkness that had seeped into my own soul. He reminded me of joy, and of home.

  “The doorways were meant to separate us. Whether our destructions are down one pathway or another, I cannot say. But whoever built this temple understood that we would go down one path or another.” I crawled along the upper platforms above the doors, where the serpents had been sculpted. “This chamber is important. We are at the exact center of the temple itself.”

  Kiya, whose sense of smell and heat was better developed than mine, began to sniff at the air. She went to the doorways, touching the stone carvings. She pressed her face against them and said, “There has been blood in this room. I do not know when, but it awoke my thirst. It is old, and dried, but there has been much here.”

  Ewen crouched down, examining the stones of the floor. As he did so, I saw how the stones had been laid out in circles around one another, in a spiral form. I began to think that we’d been brought to the center of a great labyrinth. I closed my eyes, trying to recall the vision I’d had at the moment of my rebirth in vampyrism.

  The altar. The priest. The woman wearing the golden mask. Pythia on the altar, to be sacrificed.

  Then I knew.

  I leapt down to the floor and felt instinct take over as I wandered the spiraling pattern of stone. “Here. It was here.”

  “How?”

  Kiya came over to me, bending down, crouching also, pressing the side of her face to the floor to pick up vibration and scent.

  “I smell death,” she said. “Nothing more. An old stink of blood, everywhere. These stones, washed with it over many lifetimes. But nothing more.”

  I pointed to the floor. “The altar is beneath us.”

  She sat back on her haunches, crossing her arms across her chest as if she were cold. She drew out her dagger, and pressed it against the stones. Scratches of dust and fragment came from it. “It’s solid.”

  “To get here, we walked up the steep stairs from the milky waters. I have followed my dream too much. The temple is inverted. This is the lowest depth of it.” I waved my hand toward the serpent doorways. “Those go toward the Earth, yet their paths go upward. If we followed the paths, I would surmise that we’d find the milky waters again. We have been descending underground since we entered the temple.” Then I tapped on the floor. “This was once ceiling, and that,” I pointed upward to the domed rooftop, “was a basin for catching the blood of sacrifice. See the way the stones in the dome spiral downward? It is a drain at its top, although this has been sealed.”

  “Then how do we go down, to the altar?” Ewen asked, rising from the floor.

  “We go back,” Kiya said, but her voice was filled with dread.

  I understood why, seconds later. We felt it, in our stream. Something haunted this place. Some presence, heavy and smothering. It was as if we were inside some monstrous body, some breathing, living creature made of carved stone and filled with the bones of others. We each kept close to the others. I smelled the odor that Kiya had mentioned—like dried chrysanthemum and ambergris as well as putrefying corpses. It had grown stronger since we’d remained long in the domed room.

  Something’s changed, I thought, and wondered if Kiya could read me. It wasn’t anything other than the sense that there had been an awakening since we’d arrived. The sentient being of this temple, whatever fueled it, whatever remained within it, knew we were there and had come to a state of growling wakefulness. All around us, this invisible presence became palpable, yet untouchable, unknowable. I began to think of it as male. I can’t say why, but it felt masculine.

  Ewen went to the wall by the way from which we’d entered and put his hands upon it as if to crawl up it, but instead he put his ear to
it.

  “It’s a puzzle for us,” I said. “The serpents. The chambers. There’s something we’ve overlooked. Someone has put out a game for us. The pieces are all here.”

  “The vampyre statues,” Kiya completed my thought.

  7

  We returned along the narrow corridor to the chambers of the trophies, all stuffed and sewn room by room. I found a thin dagger made of material that seemed to be fashioned of amber—it was in the girdle of a man who held a maiden aloft and penetrated her in a mockery of sexual pleasure.

  Kiya gathered up the sewing needle and skeins of thread from the woman in one room, and Ewen returned with coins in his hand. I turned these over and saw some ruler of old upon them. None of us could identify the words upon it, but there was no doubt that the coins were made of gold.

  Still other things, mainly small, made to fit in a pouch were found; Kiya brought the scroll from the room of the scribe and student. Ewen brought the sculptor’s tools in the tableau of the artist. In the chamber of the warrior scene, I took an enormous sword and scabbard. I lifted it up—it was of some heft and size, and I drew the sword from it. It was carved of a translucent black stone. Along its lower edge, the stone had been shaped like pointed teeth, and it was sharp to the touch. I hoisted it and bound the scabbard about my waist, securing it with a shoulder strap. I had missed the feel of a sword, and though we did not find them useful—for they could be clumsy in our attacks on prey—I did not want to leave this treasure behind.

  When we’d gathered the finds, I said, “Some craftsman has put these elements together. As if for us. An audience.”

  “To play a game,” Ewen said.

  “Each scene is meant to be understood,” Kiya said. “The woman who sews is making a shroud. In the room where the scribe writes, knowledge is passed.” She brought forth the scroll that she’d put in the sling along her shoulders. When we unrolled it, I could see the slight bits of hair along the parchment.