His legs were bound together, fastened with lengths of human hair that had been braided again and again to form a tight rope. And yet, it was easy enough to cut through—its purpose had been merely ceremonial.
Ewen leaned over the body, marveling at the tattoos that brightened as we wiped the blood from the body. The corpse had a particular sheen to it. Kiya quickly read the story of the tattoos in a language she understood well. “He is Merod Al Kamr, and he was truly the king of Alkemara. He began his life as a slave of the field. He lived in a fertile valley. He first heard Medhya’s voice in the wind and found her flesh growing, a weed among grain. But it was the reading of what are here called the ‘words,’ and the stealing of the ‘flesh of Medhya’ that brought him into the realm of immortality.”
“If he’s immortal, then why...” Ewen began, looking at the skin drawings with wonder.
“He sleeps,” Kiya said. “The sphere holds him, the blood feeds him. But he cannot awaken.”
Then she turned to me. “You must open his jaws. He has been bound at the heart, at the mouth, and feet. His wings are shorn.”
“Our tribe had wings as this?” Ewen asked.
“Wings, and more. I have heard that some could become wolves, and others ravens. Still others could enter a village as the plague itself and spread across human flesh like fire, drinking the blood of all within a single night. All the powers of Hell.” Kiya laughed as she said this, for the vampyre phrase was that Heaven itself was hell, and Hell was heaven.
Ewen’s eyes shone with excitement. “And we will have all this?”
I saw some danger then in Ewen’s eagerness to embrace this ancient sorcery of vampyrism. “Treasure is to be used wisely,” I cautioned. “What we seek should not cloud our judgment of it.”
Kiya grinned, showing her polished teeth. “You are the conscience of our kind, Falconer. I am as hungry as a wolf bitch for this knowledge. My time is coming. But if we can discover the secrets...”
“The watcher,” I said, cautioning.
Ewen glanced at both of us as if we had kept a great secret from him. “Someone else is here with us,” I said. “No vampyre would slaughter other vampyres to show us the trophies and scenes in the chambers above. Pythia may have known of this kingdom, and she may have escaped it. But some other agency is behind this. During the day, I believe this person or persons have watched as we slept.”
“Then we must quicken our hand,” he said with alarm. He reached for the metal sphere above the priest’s heart, but it was as if he received a shock—his hand was flung back, and he let out a brief cry. Kiya moved closer to the sphere and sniffed at it. “Quicksilver.”
“The man who made this sphere knows our weaknesses.”
She got as close as she could to the sphere and said, “There’s a slender blade running from it to his heart. It is keeping him from waking.”
“We must remove it,” I said. I drew the black sword from its scabbard and nudged it against the sphere.
“You must be careful!” she said. “If the blade in his heart does not come out clean, it will destroy him.”
I sheathed the sword again.
“The needle,” Ewen said. “Use the bone needle. And the thread.”
Kiya thought for a moment then brought the needle out of her pouch. The hair-thread was just a few inches long.
She dipped the thread between the metal curves of the sphere until it came out the other side.
Although the quicksilver seemed to sting her a bit, she managed to grasp the end of the thread and draw it back up. Once she’d made a loop with it, she tied it in place. Ewen held it with his fingers. Then she lay down beside the corpse and, using the long, slender needle, pressed it into the nearly healed wound in which the blade had been carefully set. She was able to work open the wound. It was dry—no blood released from the corpse.
Then Ewen gently tugged at the sphere. It gave slightly. I looked at Kiya with some feeling of tension. Ewen tugged again; Kiya worked the bone needle a bit more about the blade.
Finally, the blade rose a quarter-inch.
Then another.
And another.
A long slender blade emerged that had, at its sphere end, seemed of metal, but as it went down was a slender glass tube with slight barbs along it as if to help keep it in place in the body. Quicksilver filled the tube. Thus, the engineer of this device had created something that would keep the priest in a state of constant dreaming, like the Extinguishing but without the destruction of the body or the ability to awaken and rise.
As the glass tube came out, a gassy emission erupted from the wound.
Then it closed, healing itself.
A foul stench rose up from between the vampyre’s teeth. I swiftly went to break the hinged lock along his teeth. For this, I used the sculptor’s tools that we’d retrieved from the chamber above. I tapped at the bone hinge, and it finally gave. His jaw, which had been broken, hung down against his throat. Yet, as soon as his lower jaw was free, I positioned it against his skull. It snapped into place.
I reached back for the Staff of the Nahhashim and held fast to it. As I touched it, I felt a shock go from my fingers up my arm. It was as if I held a live snake in my hands, and although it was some illusion, I felt the staff wriggle as I held it, twisting as if trying to get away from me. Still, I held it fast. The last of the blood fell from it, and I saw white, ivory-like bone with carvings upon it, and this intertwined with wood of some tree unknown to me. Embedded along its spine, also, bits of amber and glasslike gemstones. At its tip, a blood-red stone that seemed to reflect darkness.
I had heard of ancient mages with great power within their staffs.
And yet I did not know how to wield it, yet, or what its purpose might be.
Nor did I trust who this priest might be. I wanted to make sure that if there was power in the staff, I had it on my side.
We watched while the body rippled as if serpents moved beneath its skin. Then blood pumped from the heart outward. His body filled and plumped until a gaunt but living man lay before us. His skull cracked and snapped and churned against itself until the face was less wolf-like and more of the vampyre I’d seen at the altar in my dream.
He opened his eyes.
2
The priest reached up, rubbing his eyes, which were milky white.
He seemed to be unable at first to see anything around him. He rubbed his eyes once again, then one more time. He reached up with his right hand for something, as if he could see a distant light. It was his staff—he sought it, but it was not there.
I did not yet want to give up this prize. I reached out with my free hand and grasped him by the wrist. His hand flailed, then relaxed. I clasped my hand in his to show friendship and kinship. Quickly, I felt the piercing of thorns—and let go of his hand quickly. Tiny barbs had grown from his palms, and, just as quickly, receded into the leathery skin of his hand.
I reached to hold him again by the wrist. As I did so, the end of his hand became the head of a hooded serpent, which jabbed downward at the back of my hand. Although I felt some pain, I knew the poison would have no effect upon me, so I held him fast.
As if melting against itself, the cobra transformed back into a man’s hand with long, spindly fingers.
He opened his mouth and rasped words in a strange language. His breath was as the worst death had to offer, and all of us coughed from it. Then it sweetened slightly—as I imagined his vital organs began functioning again. He whispered, “Where is the serpent’s progeny?”
Then I realized he had not spoken these words from his mouth but from his mind to my mind. I glanced at the others—had they heard him? But from the looks upon Kiya’s and Ewen’s face, I gathered that they had not.
I spoke aloud to him. “What is the serpent’s progeny?”
Nahhashim, he whispered.
“The staff?”
No answer.
“I have it.”
“Who are you?”
“I am no one.”
“No one is here,” he said. “Do you not exist?”
“I am neither living nor dead.”
“You are a child of Medhya. A fallen one of the great mother.”
I did not reply.
“I am Merod Al-Kamr,” he said.
“The Priest of Blood,” I said.
“And you are my destroyer,” he replied.
3
Within an hour, we had cleaned him using our garments to dry the rest of his body as we might clean a newborn.
He rose naked before us, and looked every inch the demon. He stood a full foot taller than I, and his skull seemed slightly elongated in the back as if there were some headdress beneath the skin. His shoulders, though slender, were broad.
As his skin grew and healed over itself, we saw muscles grow upon him like brambles beneath the flesh. The thinness of his body had become sinew and strength. His thighs burst heavily muscled while his feet stretched slightly, with talon-like claws at the ends of his toes. The ear that had been torn from him grew back into place, and, as I watched, vestigial wings crackled and sprouted along his back.
The drawings and tattoos along his body seemed to be in constant motion, as if I could look at any of them carefully and I’d see the people within the drawings move.
The milky white of his eyes was unchanged. As he rose before us, he rubbed at his eyes again, and yet he still was blind.
Give me Medhya’s flesh, he said to me in my mind.
“I do not know this flesh.”
“I smell it on you,” he snarled. “Give it to me.”
“I have no flesh other than my own.”
I thought I heard the rasp of a laugh from him. Then, “It is a flower. It grows among the bones of those who have been sacrificed.”
Remembering the carnivorous purple blossom, I told him I had gathered it up.
“Yes,” he said. “I must have it.” He reached out to me, his finger grazing my chin. I fumbled through my pouch, finding one of the crushed flowers and its bit of vine. I passed it to him without hesitation.
He took it, pressing the petals against each of his eyes until a dram of clear liquid pollen dripped from it. Still clutching the blossom, he lowered his hands from his face.
The milk of his eyes gave way to yellow, then began to turn dark, but with the red of blood pulsing behind them, shining beneath the black.
He could see again. As soon as his eyes shone with their red-black darkness, he grinned. It was a wicked, broad smile that showed enormous sharp, curved teeth.
He glanced at each of us, regarding us as a wolf might watch deer in the wood. Before any of us could react to his swift movements, he leapt upon Kiya, pressing his snapping jaws down upon her shoulder, ripping. She dug into him, biting back as best she could but barely grazing his flesh. She kicked against him, a blur of movement as he, his body still and tensed, drank from her.
Dark blood flew from his mouth as he dropped her, before Ewen and I could even reach her to save her from him.
She lay on the floor, blood flowing from her throat and shoulder. His mouth, dark with her essence, still grinning, he kept Ewen and me at bay with enormous strength. “I drink from any I choose.”
“You will destroy all of us.”
He leaned his head back and laughed. As he did so, we heard a strange humming—and then gusts of flying insects came from between his lips, moving upward in a funnel of air, far above us in the chamber. Seconds later, they were gone.
“I am he who first heard the words of Medhya and drank her blood to enter into her stream. I may drink from all. I am your source.”
“Are you mad? We’ve rescued you, and now you want to destroy your own kind?” I shouted.
“Vampyre blood carries with it great power,” he said. “You may not drink of it, but I have kept the essence of Medhya prisoner within my body; I hold her hostage. She cannot destroy me as she might you if you drink from one another. You backward jackals. You are not worthy to be vampyre.”
I stood again, holding the staff up.
“I am the owner of the Staff of the Nahhashim!” I shouted.
His eyes gleamed in darkness as he watched me. His neck moved slightly side to side, as if he were a serpent in its hypnotic movements. “You do not even understand its power, weakling.”
“But I’ll use it as I wish.”
His grin returned. Blood sluiced from between his teeth. “Is this what our tribe has come to? Such as you?”
“I am the One,” I said, unsure of the truth to this. “The Maz-Sherah.”
“There have been many Maz-Sherah who have come to follow the vision. There is no One.”
“I am the only one who has freed you from your prison.”
“If you were the Maz-Sherah, you would not need to speak. You would take what is yours and do what you are meant to.”
“I’m meant to learn from you,” I said.
“You are barely more than a boy. You are an apprentice to war, not even a great warrior. You have a heart that beats too close to the mortal rhythm. When the Maz-Sherah comes, he shall be more powerful than you.”
“And yet, who has been imprisoned here so long? Whose kingdom was overthrown? Who created this machinery of bone and human harvest and quicksilver, to keep you in your cage?” I asked. As I spoke, Ewen reached over, lifting the threaded needle that carried the sphere and glass tube of quicksilver. He held it up at the end of a dagger toward the priest, though it caused him some pain to do so.
“You might be as afraid of the architect of this prison as I,” he said. He lifted his left hand as if to make a sign. The sphere flew from Ewen’s hand and smashed against a far wall. Ewen dropped his dagger as if it had burned his hand. “That alchemist has stolen the essence of immortality from me. And cheap sorcery like quicksilver does not daunt him.”
“He has outwitted you, that is for certain,” I said. Then, to Kiya, “Are you healed?”
She touched the edge of her shoulder where the flesh had been torn out. “The flow has stopped. It is healing, but slowly.”
“Is the alchemist here?” the priest asked.
I nodded, guessing that the alchemist was the same mortal whose presence permeated this kingdom without ever having to make himself known.
“He has great power,” Merod said. He lost his grin at this and spread his hands out, Christ-like, as if feeling for something in the air. “He sleeps now. He is not afraid of you. Or me. He may be watching even now.”
“Or he has abandoned this place,” said I. “He has allowed us to enter and wander, though he might have extinguished us during the day’s rest.”
“Perhaps then you are the One. For it might be to his purpose to let you find me. To let you raise me that he may strike us both down one night.” He stepped closer to me, bringing his hands up as if he were warming them by a fire. “You are a mad vampyre. You do not know what I could do to you. What I could do to your friends.”
I held the staff aloft. I could not understand what power it held, but he must have known it, for when I waved it in front of me as if it were a wand, he stepped back.
“I will kill him, and, if I need to, I will destroy you as well,” I threatened.
“It is impossible. He has many protections,” Merod said. Then he glanced up above us, as if expecting to see the alchemist appear.
“For a priest, you are an untrustworthy creature,” I said.
“But I possess what you seek, do I not?” he asked, and the grin returned. Suddenly, nearly froglike, he leapt up to the wall where the humans hung. He broke off a length of glass tubing and drank blood from it. When he had slaked his thirst, he glanced back down then dropped again to a crouching position among us.
As he stood up, he said, “My bed was a work of genius by the alchemist. Crystal can imprison us, for it is said to be of a hardness of water, which weakens our powers. He flooded the crystal tomb with the chilled blood so that it would torture me as I lay there in it, feeling
it on my skin, my pores tried to open to drink it, but, of course, could not. The quicksilver kept me in the state of dreaming so that I was aware these years of all that was in my kingdom. Of the tortures of my daughters and their transformations into those creatures in the waters, of the inventions he made that turned the altar into my tomb and changed the temple of the great Lemesharra, of the flashes of burning light that destroyed the mortals of my kingdom. He is a terrible being, and he has stolen knowledge from beyond the Veil and from our tribe, as well. Medhya loves him for all this, for her fury is never-ending. We are the children she has spurned, and he is the one who has been taken into her affections.”
He went to Kiya again. This time, we were ready, and I thrust the staff between them. He stopped, but said, “I mean to heal her completely.’’
“Do not trust him,” Ewen said defiantly.
Kiya looked at me, then at the priest. “I have lived to see the end of many of our tribe, Priest,” Kiya said. “I would ask that you heal me of this wound and teach us of what has been lost to us.” She reached to my elbow, and I lowered the Nahhashim staff that she might approach him.
“When I drank of your essence,” the priest said, “I tasted the end of your days, like the dregs of a wine goblet. Your Extinguishing approaches.”
“I have few nights left,” she said.
“If he is the Maz-Sherah, then you will have many, for he may bring to the tribe the power of the source.”
“If you are our priest, will you not do this yourself?”
“My time is nearly gone, for I have existed upon this land for five thousand years, and although I continue in another realm, I will not extinguish, nor will I pass the Threshold. But my fading has already begun, like the last of smoke from a dying fire. The Nahhashim is his. When he fulfills the final prophecy of which I know, he will be the one you must ask.”
“What is the final prophecy?” she asked.
“It is only for the Maz-Sherah,” he said. He stepped closer to her. “He will kill us,” Ewen said, looking as if he were about to leap upon Merod Al-Kamr.
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