by David McAfee
Or take it away, Taras thought. He didn’t say as much, however. His relationship with the fiery Baella was still far too new to test his boundaries. She could kill him with very little effort, and Taras had no desire to die. Not yet.
He was practicing a preservation technique on a vial of new blood when one of Baella’s servants entered the room. Taras recognized the dark-skinned human as K’walli, but he had no idea where the man was from. Somewhere far to the south of Rome, it seemed.
“Mistress,” K’walli said, his accent thick and clumsy. “You asked me to summon you if your mirror changed.”
“Indeed, K’walli. You may go.”
K’walli nodded and backed out of the room.
“Are you always so brusque with them?” Taras asked.
“Always,” she replied.
“Do they ever get angry?”
“When the day comes that my servants feel I owe them my respect, I will find new servants. And they know it. They are docile because they have no other option, not if they wish to continue breathing.”
Taras watched as the door closed behind K’walli. He’d never had servants before, and he was having a difficult time getting used to it.
“Shall we go?” Baella asked.
“Go where?”
“My chambers,” she said. “The mirror?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will,” she said. “Come. This is another lesson.”
“What’s this one about?” he asked.
“Survival,” she replied, “and revenge.”
When they arrived at Baella’s private rooms, the mirror was hard to miss. It was massive and ornate, and looked to be made of gold, inlaid with silver and precious gems. The mirror would have been worth a large fortune back in Rome, but he supposed Baella had little enough need for actual money.
What was truly surprising was the face that stared back at them from the mirror’s icy glass. Taras didn’t recognize him, but the man was definitely Bachiyr. The red eyes and long fangs betrayed his race as surely as Taras’s own.
“So the Roman is with you,” the Bachiyr said, his voice dripping with contempt. “I might have known.”
“He is here as my guest, Herris,” Baella replied. “It does not concern you.”
“Headcouncil Herris!” Herris replied.
So this is the famous Herris, Taras thought. Why would he concern himself with me?
“You should have told me he was involved,” Herris went on. “Ramah asked about him, and I had to make up something on the spot. It almost broke the psalm I placed on his memory.”
“So? Why do I care how badly you tinker with his head?”
“Because you, above all others, do not wish to see him damaged.”
“What do you want, Headcouncil?” Baella asked, somehow managing to make the word sound derisive.
Herris sniffed. “To tell you that I have cleaned up your mess. Again. Ramah remembers nothing. You are in my debt now, and as such I wish to ask you a favor: join the Council or leave us be. Your obsession with Ramah has become more trouble than you are worth.”
“Keep your debt, Herris,” Baella said. “It was you who sent Ramah to Vesuvius, was it not? As such, anything that happened on his mission is your responsibility. I will not pay you for cleaning up your own mess.”
“Damn you, Baella!” Herris shouted. “You were not supposed to be there!”
“I go where I please and when I please. I do not take orders from you.”
“You walk a fine line, Baella,” Herris said, his voice barely above a whisper. “An acrobat on a thin rope. One day you will slip, and on that day, I will be waiting.”
Baella waved her hand dismissively. “Is this all you wanted? I would think sapphires are more valuable to you than empty threats and pointless conversations.”
Herris bristled. “How did you know about…”
Baella snorted, as if the question did not even deserve a reply.
“If you are quite finished,” she said, “Taras and I have work to do.”
Herris looked at Taras. His eyes bored into the Roman, even through the glass. “You chose the wrong ally, Roman,” Herris said. “Your nights on this earth are finite. I will not bother turning you into a Lost One, as I did Theron. No, I am going to rip you apart and leave pieces of you all over the world as a warning to other Bachiyr.”
Taras shrugged. “You were going to do that anyway.” He flashed an obscene gesture at the Councilor, then turned around and left the room. He heard Baella laughing at his back.
She caught up to him on the way back to the laboratory. Her smile was wide and full of teeth. She seemed genuinely pleased.
“Did you enjoy that?” she asked.
“Very much,” he replied.
Baella laughed. “I thought as much. I have rarely seen Herris so angry.”
“Survival,” Taras said. “And revenge.”
“Indeed.” She grabbed Taras by the shoulder and turned him to face her. She looked into his eyes, and he had the uncanny feeling she was rooting around inside his mind. Whatever she saw there, she seemed to approve.
“I did make the right choice,” she said. “Excellent!”
“Should I be glad?”
Baella’s lips curled into a sly grin. “Come with me. I will let you be the judge of that.”
Taras did as she asked, following her down the hallway. They passed the laboratory and kept going until they reached a door. Baella produced a bone key, which she used to unlock it, then pushed her way through. Beyond the door was a stairway leading down. She took a few steps, then beckoned him to come after.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“I am going to show you a secret. Something no other being knows. Not even my servants.”
“What is it?”
“If I tell you, it will not be a surprise.”
Taras had no reply to that, so he followed along behind her. He had to remind himself that if she wanted to kill him, he would already be dead. As they walked down the stairs, he decided to ask her the question that had been on lips since he arrived.
“Herris talked about your ‘obsession’ with Ramah,” he said. “Is it true? Are you obsessed with him?”
“I suppose it could be interpreted that way,” she replied.
“But why? You are outside the Council’s influence, are you not?”
“It’s personal.”
“Personal?” he asked. “You mean…you know him?”
“Of course I know him,” she said, not turning around. “I’m the one who killed him.”
Taras stopped, mid-step. Ramah had been Bachiyr for over four thousand years, according to everything he’d learned about him. How could she have killed him? Just how old and powerful was Baella?
She must have realized he was no longer behind her. She stopped, then turned to face him. “You seem surprised,” she said.
Taras nodded. “I guess I am.”
“Technically, I didn’t kill him,” she said. “But it is my fault he is dead. I arranged his execution, after all.”
“But why? What is he to you?”
“He is my son,” she replied, then turned back to walk the rest of the way down the stairs.
For a moment, Taras couldn’t move. Her son? And she killed him? There had to be more to this story. He hurried to catch up.
“But—” he began.
She forestalled him with an upraised hand. “Later,” she said. “We are here.” She pointed to a stout wooden door at the bottom of the stairs.
“Where is here?” Taras asked.
In response, Baella pushed the door open. A wave of cold flowed from the door, not unlike the chill of a Lost One. It was accompanied by a long, low wail that made Taras’s hair stand on end. He didn’t want to go through the door. He was not sure he could.
“Just look,” she said. “You do not have to enter.”
Taras moved forward and peered through the doorway. What he saw inside made h
is knees feel weak. Had he been alive, he might have fainted, but as it was, all he could do was stare, his mouth agape.
The door was a portal to a black place. Taras did not recognize it, and had the feeling no one living would, either. The land was blighted, and the sky, if that’s what it was, was only a slightly lighter shade of black than the land. The only light in the place came from the hundreds, perhaps thousands of small fires that dotted the landscape.
And moving among those fires were Bachiyr. Thousands of them. They did not look like the Bachiyr Taras had encountered in his travels. These Bachiyr looked undisciplined and underfed, yet they moved through the massive camp with a distinct sense of purpose. Taras spotted several officers directing activities, and several areas where rows of Bachiyr trained to fight with claws, teeth, and more mundane weapons.
Several of them looked up. When they saw Baella, they let out a ragged cheer. It was soon taken up by the entire company, and in moments the sound was deafening.
Baella waved to them all and smiled. They cheered even louder.
“What is this?” Taras asked.
“An army,” she replied. “What does it look like?”
“For what purpose?”
“That is a silly question,” she said.
Indeed it was. There was only one reason to build such an army.
“War.”
She nodded, still staring at her army. “The Council will fall,” she said through clenched teeth. “Herris, the arrogant bastard, will die, as will the rest of that pathetic group. All but my son. He will be returned to me, and I will not lose him again.”
Taras stared out at the massive army of Bachiyr. He found he could not argue.
“I only lack one final piece,” she said. “A general. Someone with combat experience, who knows how to wage war. Someone intelligent, yet loyal enough to be trusted with the reins to the greatest force of Bachiyr ever assembled in one place. I have spent the better part of a century looking for a suitable candidate. At long last, I believe my search is finally over.”
Taras knew what she meant, but she spelled it out, anyway.
“Meet your new army, General Taras,” she said.
Taras smiled. He was going to like it here.
***
“You believe yourself to be quite clever,” Herris said as the image of Baella’s smug face faded from his mirror. Soon, the reflection of his well appointed chambers was all that was visible. But he was not looking at the mirror any longer, he was looking beyond it, toward the memory of Baella’s face. Her self-satisfied smirk, as though she knew a secret Herris did not, had been irritating, but not at all unexpected. Baella often imagined she was two or three moves ahead of Herris, and had trouble hiding her false sense of superiority.
“You are not as smart as you think you are, Baella.”
Herris stood, rubbing his legs to numb the discomfort. He’d been sitting in that chair for quite a while, and though his blood did not circulate like it once did, his limbs could still grow stiff if they went too long in the same position. He was, after all, thousands of years old.
He turned from the mirror and walked across the room, his slippered feet making not a whisper of sound as they trod across the thick, plush carpet. He wound his way through his various rooms with their fabulous—and valuable—decorations until he came to the wall at the back of his personal bedchamber. There, an observant visitor might notice a spot on the wall with no decorations. A patch of bare stone that would, if one thought about it, seem quite out of place among the various paintings, sculptures, and tapestries that adorned the walls of Herris’s suite.
Thankfully, very few entered his private rooms, and no one was permitted to enter his bedchamber. The doorway was sealed with the strongest warding psalms the Father had created. Only Herris knew them, and only he could pass through them unmolested. Anyone else, even the other Councilors, would burn as they tried to cross the threshold.
Not even Baella could break them, Herris thought. Or hoped.
He put his finger into his mouth and bit down hard. The pain was minimal, but the sudden taste of his own blood on his tongue told him he’d succeeded in breaking the skin. He reached out with a bloodied finger and drew a symbol in the exact center of the bare part of the wall.
“Open,” Herris said.
A portion of the wall, roughly the size of Herris’s frame, slid backward. Such was the craftsmanship that the entire block, which weighed two tons, moved back and to the side without making a sound. Quiet as death, he thought. The exact words he’d used when he contracted the stonemason to build this secret room so many centuries ago.
The stonemasons’ bones were still inside, lying in a heap just beyond and to the right of the doorway. They had lain there for hundreds of years in the same place where their owner had fallen, a bag of jewels still clutched in the skeletal hand. Herris was a man of his word, after all.
Herris passed through the doorway, allowing it to close behind him. Once it shut, all the light from Herris’s chambers fled, throwing the secret room into total darkness. But Herris did not need light to see, and neither did the room’s only other occupant.
The prisoner looked up, his face ashen. He hung from a pair of thick manacles in the wall. No ordinary steel, Herris had personally endowed them with psalms, using his own blood to strengthen them. They encircled the prisoner’s wrists—the healthy one and the blackened one—and held him to the wall. His feet dangled just a few inches from the stone floor, ensuring he could never rest his aching arms and shoulders. Herris liked it that way. He had restored Theron early for a reason, but that didn’t mean the renegade’s life would be any easier. Truth be told, it was about to get much, much worse.
“Good evening, Theron,” Herris said. “The restoration went well, I see.”
“A thousand years, you said,” Theron replied. “Not two nights.”
“Are you complaining?”
Theron glanced meaningfully at his shackles. “This seems no better.”
“True enough,” Herris replied. “I would have preferred to bring you here straight away, but Ramah would not have been fooled by a false Theron the Lost One. Thus it had to be you.”
“Why did you restore me?” Theron asked.
“Baella,” Herris replied. “You are going to help me stop her once and for all.”
“Bah!” Theron spat. “Kill me and be done, then. I know nothing that will help you.”
“On the contrary,” Herris said. “I think you know more than you think you do. Or at least more than you are willing to admit.”
“I told you I don’t know anything.”
“Perhaps.” Herris pulled a small vial of blood from his robes. He took a great deal of satisfaction in watching Theron’s expression turn from one of defiance into one of terror. “But perhaps not. We are going to find out.”
“How did you—”
Before Theron could finish the question, Herris tore the lid off the vial and breathed the word “Esh” across the lip.
Theron’s screams went unheard by anyone outside of Herris’s special room.
THE END
About the Author
David McAfee is the author of over a dozen novels, including the UK Bestseller 33 A.D. and its sequels. In addition to his novels, he has also written numerous short stories which have appeared in several horror anthologies. He lives in Tennessee with his wife and children. He can be reached via email at [email protected],or on the web at mcafeeland.wordpress.com.
