Lords of the Black Sands

by J. Edward Neill

  She felt the weight of everything increase as she drew nearer the Pharaoh’s throne room. It wasn’t supposed to have happened in her lifetime—the Sisterhood had plans long-laid to topple the Pharaoh many generations removed from hers. It was to have been a peaceful thing, the glorious, sunlit beginning of a new epoch.

  Not this, she thought.

  Not with everyone dying.

  If everyone is in the ground, who will survive to make the world right again?

  Walking well behind the brothers, she considered her role in the way of things:

  If she’d not whispered caution into Eadunn’s ear during her years spent at his side, would he have killed the Prey?

  If she’d done her sworn duty and cut Eadunn’s throat as he lay naked and satisfied next to her, would fewer lives have been snuffed?

  Or would none of it have mattered?

  Mortals, after all, were just as capable of murder as those who lived forever.

  It was just a matter of why.

  Why does Menkaur do it?

  And why do his sons?

  At last they arrived at a great golden door. The giant slab stood five men tall, and five wide. Two guards regaled in black armor stood outside with spears and dark-lances, and for a moment Thessia thought it might end then and there. One whisk of a lance could kill a Varwarden just as dead as anyone else.

  But to her surprise—or was it her horror?—the pair of guards recognized the brothers and knelt.

  Didn’t Menkaur warn them? she thought.

  Why aren’t they killing us?

  Eadunn marched up to them, but said nothing.

  It wasn’t Eadunn they feared.

  It was Galen, the Prey, whom she realized she feared the same.

  “Weapons down,” Galen said to the two men. They dropped their spears, stripped away their dark-lances, and pulled off their masks. These at last were grown men, but they were just as fearful of Galen as the mobs of young knights who had become ashes in the Pyramid halls.

  When Galen glanced back to her—this time without smiling—she understood.

  He looks like his father.

  He is his father.

  “Go,” Galen commanded them. “Come back at dawn. Not before. Not after.”

  The guards stood and shuffled between the brothers. They passed Thessia without a glance, vanishing quickly into the forever-long corridor behind her.

  When the guards were gone, Eadunn came to her. She became aware of how much her body hurt, how her wrists ached, how her bones felt full of fire. Her dark-lance hung from her fingers, but she’d no notion of using it.

  Not on Eadunn.

  Never on him.

  “You should stay here.” Eadunn clasped one cold, armored hand around her shoulder. It was his wounded hand, but it felt no less powerful.

  “How will you get in?” she asked. “The doors are sealed. They only open from the inside—I’ve heard your men talk about it before.”

  “When I was a child, I would play out here,” he explained. “I learned every hall on every level of the Pyramid. There are hidden ways, Thess. Father made them so he’d have a way to escape. I know how to use them to get inside.”

  She shivered. A part of her had hoped the Pharaoh’s door would stay forever locked.

  We could make our own kingdom without him.

  Let him rot away the centuries locked away in here.

  “I’m coming with you.” She stood tall before Eadunn.

  “Thess, I don’t think—”

  “Someone needs to see what happens,” she said. “Someone needs to know.”

  He looked hard at her—first with worry, then with distant love. He had never loved another, she knew, not in five centuries. He’d never been capable. But for one moment she believed all his cares in the world were for her, and she remembered why she’d been unable to end his life.

  “Let her come, brother,” said Galen, his voice a shadow over her and Eadunn. “She’s right. Someone mortal should watch. Besides, if we’re to die, shouldn’t we do it together?”

  Eadunn let loose a vast sigh. For an instant, Thessia wanted to take his hand and pull him out of himself. Away from the Pyramid. Away from everything.

  But he was resigned.

  And as enthralled to his brother’s voice as every man in the world.

  “This way, Thess,” he said.

  She watched him walk back the way they’d come. He counted his steps, ten and twenty, then thirty-five. At a place in the hall no different from the others, he halted.

  “Brother, Thessia, come here.” He beckoned them. “This is the place.”

  Galen walked past her. Within a few feet, he passed, and she felt her body go cold. The only lights in the grand hall came from some hidden place far above, but in Galen’s passing they seemed to flicker, throwing shadows in places none should have existed.

  She swallowed so hard it hurt. The firstborn of immortal father and mother, the Prey, possessed power beyond that of his family.

  …else I am paranoid, and losing my mind.

  No sooner did Galen arrive at his brother’s side than Eadunn knelt, slid the remaining fingers of his left hand along the junction between floor and wall, and closed his eyes. He’d found something, a tiny switch invisible in the shadows. With a flick of his thumb, he pushed it.

  The wall opened.

  Much the same as when the Pharaoh’s soldiers had poured out in ambush, a sheaf of seamless black steel withdrew into the nameless space above. A ten-by-ten foot void snapped open, and the reek of stale air spread out into the hall.

  “The Old Man forgot this was here,” said the Prey.

  “He never knew,” said Eadunn. “Our mother ordered it. You mean to say she didn’t tell you?”

  Galen’s eyes went dark, though he composed himself faster than anyone but Thessia could see.

  “Perhaps she thought you’d be Lord.” Galen stood ominously above his brother, a sword’s length away.

  Eadunn stood and backed away. “No.” He shook his head. “Even were I the eldest, I’d never desire to be Pharaoh. It’s not mine. I don’t want it.”

  Wordless, Galen walked into the dark space. A part of Thessia hoped it would consume him and spit him out into oblivion. When it didn’t, she swallowed hard and followed the brothers into the blackness.

  For a long while, they walked. Thessia sensed they were rounding a vast section of corridor, perhaps marching in the hidden spaces behind the throne room’s outer walls.

  And she was right.

  Holding Eadunn’s hand, trailing him many hundred steps into the darkness so vast only immortals could see, she came to a stop at the same time he did.

  “Here,” she heard Galen say.

  “Yes. Here.” Eadunn confirmed.

  In the thin air of the hidden passage, Thessia gulped her breaths. She felt constricted, and not by the walls. She wanted to scream. The voice inside her chest rose with every thump of her tired heart against her wounded ribs.

  She saw the whites of Galen’s eyes.

  The five-hundred years of forethought.

  And her voice abandoned her.

  Eadunn knelt again. Galen held a sword in his right hand, a dark-lance in his left, and centuries of malice on his face.

  Eadunn found the switch.

  The wall hissed open.

  The Pharaoh’s throne room was revealed.

  There it lay. Thessia had seen the grand room once before. Its four walls were so far apart, an entire city might’ve fit within. Its floors were burnished copper, its pointed ceiling so high a hundred men could have stood on each other’s heads and never hoped to reach it.

  The only lights?

  Eight fires burning in great braziers far removed from the walls.

  And a lone sliver of starlight leaking in from far above.

  The brothers went out into the great dark space. She slid in behind them, sure that with her very next breath a weapon of which she’d never conceived would wipe out t
he three of them. For all her silence, the brothers bothered none with stealth. Their boots hammered hard on the copper floor, while their weapons flashed free in the fragile light.

  Somewhere in the dark, the brothers stopped, though only for a moment. Thessia walked up beside Eadunn. She saw only the eight braziers burning far away, the flames like eyes licking the tomblike shadows.

  “We don’t have to go,” she said to Eadunn. “We can turn around. Let your brother do as he wills. Let him go.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It’s too late, Thess. I must confront Father.”

  She tried to stand in his way, but Eadunn brushed past her. He went to his brother, who cast his impossible shadow across all things.

  “It’s time,” said Eadunn.

  “Father never kills fairly,” Galen said to his brother. “We’ll probably die soon. But if not, we’ll live forever.”

  The two walked toward the fires. Thessia wanted to chase them, the fools, and drag Eadunn back. The salted river wending down her cheek was unwanted, but though she blinked back her tears, her sorrow paralyzed her.

  And she couldn’t stop shaking.

  * * *

  In a ring of fire, she saw them.

  One broad and powerful, yet still alive.

  The other full of nameless fury.

  She crept to the edge of everything, breathing little, seeing all.

  Beyond the burning braziers, she saw a pool of copper and a towering throne. A man, erected in his seat, lorded over all things below.

  Beneath the throne, not fifty feet away, stood the brothers. They’d no weapons but their swords.

  Surrounding the brothers?

  …at least forty soldiers. Some with spears. Others with great blades. And a few with obsidian discs naked in their hands. Every soldier was masked. Nothing showed of their skin, only ebon plates of articulated armor.

  It could’ve ended then. Not even the Prey, gifted as he was, could contend with such odds. One sweep of a Scimitar disc would turn his bones to ashes.

  Yet he walks right up?

  He must’ve known Menkaur would keep guards.

  Please, Eadunn…walk away.

  “Father!” Galen stood in the ring of fire and shouted. The echo of his cry lasted for a small eternity. All other sounds died.

  “Look at me, Father.”

  Menkaur, half-standing and half-sitting, swathed in copper robes, gazed down from his throne upon his eldest son. But when the Pharaoh spoke, it was to Eadunn.

  “You…you have betrayed us, boy,” he sputtered, and Thessia recognized not confidence, but terror. “Don’t you know what you’ve done?”

  “Only what you’ve asked, Father,” said Eadunn. “And yet you lied to me. You imprisoned my lover. You meant to kill me.”

  “No, never,” hissed Menkaur. “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? I’m trying to protect this world. All that I’ve sent you to do—to kill this monster who stands beside you—I’ve done it to protect us. All of us.”

  “By ordering me to kill millions?” Eadunn raised his three-fingered hand. “This is how we protect?”

  Menkaur’s face was mad with fear. Still, his soldiers did nothing. Thessia didn’t understand.

  Why don’t they just kill Galen?

  We’re beaten.

  Why don’t they—

  “Not thousands,” Menkaur raved. In his fury he finally looked old, the lines in his face so sharp no blue liquid could smooth them. “Just one.” He pointed at Galen.

  Eadunn looked at his brother. The soldiers gazed on, motionless.

  Is this some trick? Thessia dared a few steps closer. She was sneaking now, an outlier at the light’s edge.

  “Why do you hate him so?” Eadunn looked at Galen and then back to his father. “Why, Father? He is what you’ve said—one man. If we’d not chased him across the centuries, he wouldn’t be here. He’d be out there, living his life among the rest.”

  Menkaur was frothing now, shaking with such horror Thessia thought he might shatter and fall to the floor in a thousand pieces.

  “Your mother…” Menkaur pointed at both brothers. “Your traitorous mother. ‘All reigns must end,’ she claimed. ‘Even Menkaur cannot rule forever.’ And the Sisterhood, the wretched Sisterhood.” He glanced Thessia’s way. “Even as your mother burned, she swore it. ‘Five centuries,’ she said. ‘Five, and then no more. The blessed Sisters will see to it.’ And now you bring him before me.” He rattled his finger at Galen. “You help the Prey walk into my home. You don’t know what you’ve done. Your mother and I made this monster, but only one of us was wise enough to know it must be destroyed.”

  Finally, one of the black-armored soldiers stepped forward. Thessia wanted to believe it would end now, and that soon she would die, having helped not to orchestrate the Pharaoh’s fall, but to deliver death to both his sons. She was at peace with it. She had lived her life.

  …and I will get what I deserve.

  And yet…

  Something in the soldier’s stride gave the truth away. Two Scimitars and a sword hung from the soldier’s back, but the warrior carried nothing in hand, portending no violence against either brother.

  When the soldier removed their mask, Thessia’s breath stopped in her chest.

  God, it’s a woman.

  The other soldiers stepped forth. Their masks, they removed all at once.

  Women, all of them.

  How many did Thessia recognize?

  Nearly all.

  Many had been concubines. Many others had been nurses, midwives, and servant girls. Thessia had seen them walking with downcast eyes among the Pharaoh’s men, scrubbing the Pyramid floors, cooking soldiers’ meals, and shadowing their masters in utter submission.

  It hadn’t been submission at all, Thessia now knew.

  It was they who had dismantled the Pyramid’s defenses.

  They who had ensured no weapons fired upon the warship.

  They who had waited for this very hour, knowing Galen had survived the Pharaoh’s bomb.

  And they who held Menkaur prisoner.

  Suddenly, the Pharaoh produced a weapon from the deep folds of his robe. He was a coward, Thessia understood, but in his wrath he found a last moment of courage. The weapon was no Scimitar, lance, or blade, but a small metal device with a trigger and a hollow cylinder at its end.

  Thessia recognized the machine. Eadunn had told her about the old world weapons, and how very few still existed. The little machine was better known as a gun—the preferred weapon of the ancient world—

  filled with fire and metal fast enough to kill.

  Menkaur raised the tiny machine and aimed it at his eldest son. Had Thessia the power to guide it, she might’ve done so.

  Perhaps they both should die, she thought. Father and son, and someone else will take the throne.

  Menkaur twice pulled the trigger. The terrible sounds erupting from the machine filled the empty space and echoed in the darkness beyond.

  Thessia screamed.

  Eadunn stepped in front of Galen, and was struck twice in his breastplate.

  Galen’s hand flashed from behind his brother. The dark-lance’s beam severed Menkaur’s hand at the wrist, and the gun clattered to the floor below the throne.

  Thessia ran for Eadunn. She hoped—but only briefly—Galen would stop to help his brother. Instead, the Prey walked to the throne, ascended, and threw his father down to the cold, hard floor.

  Eadunn staggered, but did not fall. The projectiles had hit him squarely. One had lodged in his breastplate, doing no damage. The other had gone straight through, making a small inward blossom of steel below Eadunn’s sternum.

  “God, Eadunn.” She touched his armor with her frantic hands. “Sit down. We have to get this off you.”

  Eadunn shook his head and kept standing. “A Blue Vial.” His voice was now a whisper. “Father will have many. Galen will give us one. It might save me. And then we’ll leave, Thess. We’ll go, just as Galen
said. God, it hurts.”

  She would have panicked then. She would’ve hauled Eadunn to the floor, ripped his armor away, and done what she could to save him.

  But none could ignore the meeting of father and firstborn.

  None, including the soldiers of the Sisterhood, could look away.

  “Where is it?” Galen stood over Menkaur. “Tell me, Father, and maybe I’ll spare you. Exile instead of death, it could be, for he who gives me what is mine.”

  Menkaur writhed, bleeding on the floor from the stump of his wrist. Galen stepped on the Pharaoh’s chest, holding him down with a sword at his neck.

  “Forever you could live, Father. Though a bit uglier than before. Give it to me. Give me a Blue Vial.”

  Shaking, Menkaur reached deep into his robes. In his left hand, he held it aloft, the little glass vial he kept always hidden in his robes.

  Galen took it, bit its top cleanly off, and poured its glowing contents into the tiny hole on the back of his neck. Such ecstasy, it seemed. He’d lived since birth without it, and now it was as though the eldest Varwarden son had taken his very first sip of wine, looked upon his first sunrise, and lain with the first woman of his long, long life.

  The moment lingered for but a moment.

  With one of his black steel blades, Galen ran his father through, leaving the sword buried in the copper floor.

  So died the first Lord of the Sands.

  37

  She begged them.

  She called to them.

  She looked to the Sisterhood, who stared her down with crushing darkness in their eyes. They knew of her betrayal. They’d always known.

  But what they didn’t see?

  The truth of the new Pharaoh.

  The son of Menkaur.

  The man possessing more reason than any to despise all of humanity.

  She looked to Galen even then. He’d stood over his father for a long, long while, lost in a place only he knew.

  Meanwhile, Eadunn had crumbled to his knees. The bullet had missed his heart, but it was a mortal wound nonetheless. Blood ran in narrow ropes from the corner of his mouth and the puckered hole in his breastplate.

  One little machine was all it had taken.