As the stunned Minions looked on, a deathly stillness crept over the channel, the rocky ledge, and the mysterious ghost ship that lay upon it.
TRISTAN AWAKENED GROGGY AND DISORIENTED. HE WASlying prone, and he had no idea how much time had passed since he had been pulled into the vortex. His vision was fuzzy and his head swam sickeningly.
Raising himself up on his elbows, he saw several figures standing before him, but their images were too hazy to distinguish. He tried to look around to find Wigg and Tyranny, but his blurred eyesight failed. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision.
Fearing that he had entered Rustannica, he sat up groggily and reached behind his right shoulder to grasp his dreggan. To his horror, he found that his sword and his throwing knives were gone. He also realized that his clothing had been changed. He now wore a dark blue silk robe wrapped oddly around his body. His knee boots were gone; in their place, thick socks and wooden thong sandals clad his feet.
“You will not need your clumsy physical weapons here in the People’s Palace, Jin’Sai, ” he heard a female voice say. “Please calm yourself. We mean no disrespect, but our magic is far more powerful than that of your Conclave mystics. You feel drugged because you are unfamiliar with our vortex. We deeply apologize for any discomfort you might have suffered, but it was the only way. The feeling will pass, and your vision will clear momentarily.”
As he tried to see through the haze, Tristan thought he saw one of the figures raise a hand and point it at him. At once his eyesight began to improve.
First the cloudiness disappeared, then his double vision cleared to reveal a scene of startling beauty. The room in which he lay was magnificent in its exotic splendor, and the woman who had just used the craft to aid his eyesight was remarkably beautiful. Her long dark hair was piled atop her head in a strikingly unusual way, and a silken robe wound around her body revealed a tantalizing hint of the graceful figure that lay beneath it. Several more women dressed the same way stood beside her, their hands folded gracefully before them.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “What have you done with my friends?”
“They are well,” the woman replied. “Because of the strength of your blood, you are the first to awaken.”
“Where am I?” he asked.
The woman bowed deeply from the waist. As she did so, the others followed suit.
“You are safe,” she answered as she remained bowed in his presence. “You are the firstJin’Sai to reach our side of the world, and your arrival has long been anticipated.”
Rising and looking into Tristan’s dark eyes, she smiled. “Welcome, Jin’Sai, ” she said. “Welcome to Shashida.”
Robert Newcomb
Rise of the Blood Royal
IV
GOLD AND DEATH
CHAPTER XXXV
Sadly, more often than not the difficult thing to do is also the right thing.
- MASHIRO OF THE HOUSE OF CRANES
AS TAMMERLAND BURNED AND THE CRIES OF HER TERRIFIED citizens rose into the night, Khristos’ lead viper looked around and smiled.
Just as the Viper Lord had planned, the surprised Minion patrols wandering the city had been no match for the thousands of Blood Vipers that came slithering up from the depths of the Sippora. Caught off guard, the winged warriors had fought well, but the vipers’ superior numbers soon ruled the night. The lead viper knew that the alarm had gone out to alert the royal palace and that the hordes of Minions camped there would soon arrive. He welcomed their coming, for the Viper Lord’s plan depended on that very thing. As the heart of the city burned, the viper in charge of the carnage slithered about, taking stock of the scene.
Hundreds of citizens and Minion warriors lay dead in the streets, their blood pooling in the gutters and their bodies lying wherever they had fallen victim to the vipers’ talons, fangs, and venom. Scores of buildings had been set afire by marauding Blood Vipers carrying torches. Winding their bodies and tails around Tammerland’s many lampposts, the seething man-serpents slithered up them to smash the glass globes and eagerly light their torches. The torches were then tossed through the windows of shops and homes and the vipers gleefully watched them burn. Anyone caught rushing from a burning building was summarily killed, and the many thatched roofs in the city provided opportune targets as the torches tossed on top of them set them ablaze straightaway. Many citizens with endowed blood were being ruthlessly gorged on while still alive, their screams ringing out into the night as the vipers-once again hungry now that they had been freed from the water-searched for fresh endowed livers on which to feed.
Despite the great destruction and bloodshed, it was not the Viper Lord’s plan to occupy the city or to kill all its inhabitants. Seeing how many weak-minded mortals could be murdered meant nothing to him, nor did the growing numbers of burning buildings. Killing Minions was advantageous, but just as the main body of warriors arrived to relieve the city, most of the Blood Vipers would slither their way back down the riverbanks to reenter the Sippora and escape unseen. This would be no cowardly retreat, but a clever tactical maneuver.
To add believability to their charade, some vipers would be ordered to stay behind and fight to the death. Their ranks would be enough to trick the Minions into believing that they needed to remain in the city and fight on, but not so great that Khristos would miss them during the next part of his plan. Viper sentries waited on many rooftops, constantly searching the southern sky. At the first sign of Minion relief troops they would wave their torches, signaling that the retreat into the Sippora should start.
As the carnage wore on, the lead viper also looked skyward. The Minions would arrive soon, he realized. Turning back to survey the battle, he smiled once more. Hopefully enough time would remain to kill the few surviving Minions and devour many livers of the endowed.
After ordering another viper to watch for their sentries’ signals, he hungrily slithered across the dewy square and used his talons to rip into a young man’s corpse.
BY THE TIME SHAILIHA AND HER FORCES ARRIVED, TAMMERLAND’Scenter was nearly destroyed, and fires were spreading outward in every direction.
From her place in the litter she gazed out aghast over a sea of flames. Dead humans and Minions lay everywhere. Vipers voraciously fed on human victims as others madly set fire to yet more buildings. Heartened by their success, the grotesque monsters writhed about each other in a sickening orgy of victory. As her litter neared the scene, the princess pulled her sword from its scabbard, gripping it so hard that her knuckles turned white.
Faegan, Abbey, and Aeolus rode with her. Flying alongside, Traax commanded the bulk of the Minions, while Duvessa led her specialized cadres of female warrior-healers. At Traax’s suggestion, only a skeleton force had been left behind to guard the palace and the Redoubt. As they neared the battle, the rising smoke choked their lungs, and terrible screaming could be heard as its chilling tenor rose into the night.
Our people are dying down there, Shailiha thought. My failure to find and kill Khristos and his forces has brought this tragedy on us. But now the fight is finally joined. Khristos’ rampage must end here and now, on this night of nights.
Shailiha signaled her troops into the fray. Their dreggans flashing, thousands of Minions swooped down to tear into the seething vipers, while Faegan and Aeolus loosed azure bolts at the monsters with everything they had. The battle was joined.
KHRISTOS WAS THE FIRST TO STEALTHILY BREAK THE SURFACEof the river. His timing was perfect and his resolve unshakable. Smiling as he looked across the water, he realized that Gracchus’ plan was proceeding perfectly.
While thousands of his vipers waited unseen in the murky depths, Khristos surveyed the area. Just as Gracchus had told him, the palace lay near the river bend. Between the river and the palace lay a great field, its dewy expanse providing the huge area needed to contain the great Minion war camp. Untold lines of shadowy war tents seemed to stretch forever into the distance, their openings flapping gently in the nighttime breeze.
Just as Khristos had hoped, it seemed that every available warrior save for a few sentries had been called out to quell the mayhem raging in the heart of the city. Quietly turning around in the water, he confirmed the orange-red glow in the sky.
Looking back, he saw the royal palace standing west of the campsite, its many lit torches shining down onto its barbicaned parapets. The moat surrounding the castle looked deep and tranquil, and the drawbridge had been raised and locked into place between its twin gate towers. To an untrained observer the magnificent structure would surely appear unassailable, but on this night that perception would be wrong. Even so, the largely unprotected palace and the many treasures it housed were not Khristos’ first goals. Looking to the south, the Viper Lord smiled again as he spied the first of Gracchus’ targets.
The two magnificent Black Ships that Tristan had left behind sparkled in the moonlight as they rested in their massive wooden cradles. Khristos’ heart leapt as he realized that only a handful of Minion sentries guarded them. Without the great ships, theJin’Saiou ’s ability to hunt him down would be greatly curtailed, and she could no longer sail across the Sea of Whispers. These ships would therefore be Khristos’ targets.
Following Gracchus’ orders, he would set fire to one and steal the other, filling it with his vipers and then using it to his further purposes. Having fought and sailed alongside Failee during the Sorceresses’ War, he could empower Black Ships as well as any mystic alive. But even he could fly only one ship at a time, so the other must be made useless to theJin’Saiou here and now. These things must be done quickly, before Shailiha and her Vigors mystics realized that the battle in the square was a diversion and hurried back to the palace. The time was right, the setting was all Khristos could have hoped for, and Gracchus’ plan was ready to be executed.
Submerging again, Khristos waved his thousands of vipers forward. They would quietly climb the riverbanks, then slither silently on their bellies through the tall grass to flank both sides of the Minion camp and rush in to dispatch the remaining sentries. Soon after, the warriors guarding the ships some distance away would follow their brothers into the Afterlife. If both attacks succeeded quickly and quietly, those in the castle would perceive no threat until one Black Ship was in the air and the other was in flames.
As the magenta moonlight gently licked the waves of the Sippora, Khristos and his vipers started to surface, their huge numbers slithering up the dark riverbank like a menacing tide.
SWINGING HER SWORD IN A PERFECT ARC, SHAILIHA SLICEDits blade through the throat of another attacking viper. The thing stood frozen in time for a moment before falling to the cobblestones, dead where it lay.
Daring to lower her sword for a few precious moments, the princess found that her arms were leaden and that her lungs clawed to capture each new breath. Her mind wanted to keep fighting, but more and more her body refused to obey. She and her forces were exhausted, and to her dismay, seemingly endless hordes of vipers still poured around street corners and down dark alleyways to come and challenge them. The princess’s face and body were peppered with blood and offal, and she knew that her muscles would soon give out. Even so, like her comrades, she had no choice but to fight on. Faegan and Aeolus were somewhere on the far side of the square, still loosing azure bolts, their fingertips long since blackened and singed. The acolyte and consular cadres who had followed in separate litters were doing the same all across the macabre urban battlefield.
Shailiha took a quick look around to see that the Minion corpses seemed at least equal in number to those of the vipers that had been blown apart by azure bolts or cut down by Minion swords or returning wheels. As more Minions landed in the streets, terrified citizens ran madly in every direction as they tried to escape the raging vipers.
Shailiha desperately hungered for a battle report, but Traax had not yet brought one to her, forcing her to wonder if her valiant commander was dead. She knew that to effectively lead this fight, she must understand what was going on around her. But in all this madness, finding Traax seemed impossible. Shailiha had lost track of Abbey long ago, and she had yet to see Khristos. Not finding the Viper Lord worried her, but aimlessly searching through the raging battle would surely get her killed. Knowing that she must learn how her troops were faring, she realized that there was only one way to do it. She would take to the air again and view the battle from above.
Just as she was about to summon some warriors to her side, Shailiha saw another viper coming. She instinctively backed up and lifted her sword high with both hands, readying herself for its attack. Then the deadly viper unexpectedly stopped short and glared directly into her eyes. With its talons outstretched and its strong tail coiled up beneath its humanlike upper body, the thing ominously levered high into the air, then looked down on her and let go a menacing hiss.
Standing her ground, Shailiha knew what the monster would likely do next, for she had seen it happen dozens of times this terrible night. Rearing back, the viper would suddenly launch at her, its talons and incisors flashing as it came. Holding her ground, theJin’Saiou summoned her courage and defiantly glared back.
But rather than charging, the Blood Viper opened its mouth wider, hissing again and exposing its forked tongue. Only too late did Shailiha sense the danger and swivel to one side. As the viper spat its venom, the shock of seeing the acidic poison fly through the air was so great that the danger seemed to come at her in slow motion. Even so, she could not move fast enough.
The green substance flew through the air and hit the left side of her face. Smoke immediately rose from her burning skin, and the pain ripping through her eye was unimaginable. Screaming wildly, she covered her stricken face with one hand while trying to hold onto her precious sword with the other. But the pain was too much and she fell to the bloody square, her sword slipping from her grasp to rattle down onto the bloody cobblestones. Sensing his chance, the viper moved in for the kill.
Slithering forward, the thing reared up alongside Shailiha’s prostrate body to hiss viciously and look down on its greatest victory. The liver of theJin’Saiou would grant it inordinate power.
Bending closer, the thing curiously tilted its awful head back and forth as it luxuriated in the sight of its terrible handiwork. Despite the many dangers surrounding the viper, it knew that this woman of supremely endowed blood was the conquest of a lifetime, and he was determined to savor her. First he would kill her slowly by strangulation; only then would he rip her open and take her liver. Smiling, the thing spread wide its talons and reached down for Shailiha’s exposed neck.
He never saw the silver blur that killed him. Coming directly from behind, the Minion’s returning wheel sliced straight through the thing’s neck, severing its head from its body without stopping. Soaring on nearly unfettered, the wheel careened through the air in a perfect circle back toward its master.
Reaching up, Traax expertly caught the bloody wheel in the leaded glove covering his left hand, then quickly returned it to its resting place at one hip. Running with all his might, he abandoned any thought of his own safety and tore across the chaotic square to kneel beside the stricken princess. When he turned her over and looked at her face, the air rushed from his lungs.
Shailiha was near death, the left side of her face ravaged by the viper’s venom. Smoldering and hissing, the terrible venom was still doing its awful work and burning deep craters in her skin. Traax hurriedly removed a kerchief from beneath his armor, but when he tried to wipe away the venom, the cloth also started to hiss and steam, forcing him to stop.
Reaching down, he touched the side of her neck. He found a heartbeat, but its rhythm was weak and slow. Just then theJin’Saiou started to regain consciousness, and her burned eyelids fluttered open. Screaming and writhing in exquisite pain, her one good eye beseechingly looked up at Traax. As she did, the Minion commander tried his best to hide his shock.
Shailiha’s left eye had been nearly destroyed.
The eyeball was pitted and glassy, and vitreous
fluid ran from it, crazily tracing down her severely pockmarked cheek. Traax could easily tell that the eye was blinded, and he sadly guessed that it would never again see the light of day. As her good eye moved frantically about, her damaged one did not copy its movements, telling Traax that the muscles of the affected eye had also been damaged by the viper’s venom.
Screaming again, Shailiha madly reached out to grasp Traax’s shoulders. There was only one thing to do, he realized. Quickly overpowering her with his strong arms, he wrestled her back down atop the bloody cobblestones.
“Forgive me…” he said quietly.
Reaching out, he used two fingers of one hand to find the carotid artery on the right side of her neck, and he pressed hard. Eight seconds later the princess was again unconscious. Picking her up in his arms, Traax unfolded his strong wings and took to the air.
“IS SHE DEAD?” AEOLUS ASKED.
Faegan did his best to wipe the tears from his face, but even more came to take their places. “Yes,” he answered simply, his voice little more than a tremulous whisper. Taking his eyes from the shrouded body lying before him, he sadly looked around.
After much hard fighting, the battle had finally been won. The last of the Blood Vipers had been corralled, and incensed Minions were eagerly beheading them on Faegan’s orders. Khristos had not been among the dead, nor had anyone reported seeing him. That realization continued to deeply worry Faegan despite his overwhelming grief.
He and Aeolus had loosed azure bolts at the enemy until they had nearly collapsed with exhaustion, killing hundreds of vipers in the process. The acolytes and consuls who had also rushed here from the Redoubt had killed many more. Four loyal acolytes and seven worthy consuls lay dead, not to mention the still uncounted Minions who had also perished. Each surviving mystic had suffered venom burns and talon wounds, some of them serious.
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