“I’m hungry,” the woman said. She extended her fangs and moved towards Anuit.
“Don’t,” Arda said, chest heaving as the other vampire sipped from her wounds. Her eyes fluttered in induced contentment. “She is sick, and needs rest.”
The black woman looked down at Anuit. “I don’t care,” she said.
Anuit panicked for a moment, but remained still.
Arda extended her left arm. “Drink from me instead,” she offered. “Until she is recovered.”
The woman stared at the darkling for a moment. “Very well then.” She sat on the other side of Arda on the bunk, and the two vampires drank from the paladin’s wrists. Their heads were down, bent over their offering, and Arda breathed deeply as another flood of the intoxicating venom filled her veins.
Arda’s eyes met Anuit’s. She saw the sorceress was awake and watching in terrified fascination. Arda nodded slightly to her and smiled. Anuit lost herself in the glittering void of the darkling’s eyes.
The woman vampire with the frizzy hair drew away first. “That’s enough.” The male vampire acquiesced and followed her example. “Let her rest now,” the woman told him.
“Sleep with me tonight,” the man told Arda.
Arda looked at him for a moment, face still flush with the pleasure of their feeding. Anuit felt a shock of jealousy through her heart, and her blood ran cold. Arda’s eyes darted once to Anuit.
“No,” the paladin said. “Only my blood. I know the law.”
The man seemed surprised. He opened his mouth to protest.
“You heard her,” the female vampire said. “Get out of here.”
“But—”
The black vampire hissed. “NOW!”
The man left, and the other followed him without so much as a glance behind her.
Anuit sat up, but then laid back down as nausea threatened to rise again.
Arda slumped over. “That was… intense,” she said. She lay down on top of the bunk’s blanket, resting her head on the small pillow.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Anuit said. “I’m sorry.”
“I did,” Arda replied. “It was important to you.”
“It’s more than I would have done for you,” Anuit admitted. She felt sad, not for saying it, but for knowing it.
* * *
Thus it went for the remaining days of the voyage until the ship finally docked in Tavenport. The morning sun was only halfway to its zenith once they docked, and Arda wasted no time in guiding Dart down the gangplank behind Anuit.
Tavenport was definitely one of the more unique cities in the world. It wasn’t a capital of any of the Nine Realms before the Empire, but it was the city in which the kings of the Nine Thrones had come together and signed the treaty that established their sovereign borders in the eighth century of the Third Age. Even though Erindil had been the home of the High Wizards who governed the isle, it claimed no throne for itself and chose to remain neutral between the Realms.
Tavenport was built out on the water itself. It used to be dry ground, but over generations it had slowly sunk beneath the sea, and the main streets now were all underwater. The people took pride in this and set stonework down to make permanent canals. Some city blocks had streets raised above the water, and there were a few main bridges that allowed horse access from the docks through the city to its front gates.
Arda mounted her horse and held her hand out to Anuit. The sorceress accepted and allowed herself to be assisted up to sit behind the paladin. Earlier that morning, Arda had given Anuit her white raw silk pants and shirt, knowing that the gown would be difficult to ride in. Anuit had protested, but then acquiesced. The only problem had been the hole in the back of the pants that accommodated Arda’s darkling tail. Anuit had taken a knife and cut away the bottom six inches of her gown, wrapping the green fabric around her waist in a wide belt.
She looked different now in the simple white suit. Arda had grown used to seeing the green of the enchanted, always-comfortable gown on Anuit’s brown skin. The white against her dusky coloration looked nice, and the unassuming attire made her look a little less mystical, more down to earth. For a moment, Arda could forget this woman was pact-bound to demons.
Anuit straddled the saddle behind Arda, hands lightly on her waist for balance as the paladin guided the horse forward through the city. Arda’s tail lay to the left, falling over Anuit’s knee. She wondered what Anuit thought about her demonic appendage, given that Anuit dealt with demons regularly.
Gondolas floated in canals to the left and right of them, and she could see the bite marks of Bloodsworn on many of the people. The Covenant had taken this town, which made it much safer at night than the usual infected city, but much more treacherous during the day. She had to assume they were all potential enemies. Their priority was to get to Erindil as quickly as possible.
The paladin made one stop only on the way out of the city to purchase a gray wool coat for Anuit. It was December, and though it did not often snow on Erind Isle, the air would be wet, cold, and windy. As Anuit no longer wore the green gown, she no longer enjoyed its magical protection from the elements.
It was a hundred-mile stretch of road between the two cities, which would normally be five days at a comfortable pace. Arda didn’t want to give it that much time, so she channeled the Light and rejuvenated herself from the loss of blood during the voyage. She directed the healing energy into her horse as well, giving Dart the stamina he would need to sustain a much faster pace. Anuit felt the transfer of energy as the woman’s body tensed against her back while she channeled.
They passed through the city gate and onto the road, reaching solid land. “Hold on,” Arda said. She signaled Dart with a nudge of her foot and the horse broke into a fast, bouncing trot.
Anuit gasped in surprise and clutched tightly at the paladin, wrapping her arms around Arda’s waist to keep from falling off the horse. Arda kept the pace until they were further out of sight and then broke into a gallop, putting as much distance as she could between them and the sleeping vampires from the ship.
Even with the magic of the Light, Arda had to let Dart rest from time to time. They approached the outskirts of Erindil by dusk on the second day. During the night before, they had slept in the open beneath the trees and off the road. Despite Anuit’s demons standing watch, they did not risk the shelter of tents, for they knew they went into infected lands that had not been cleansed by the Covenant.
They huddled together for warmth beneath their coats, not wanting to risk the attention that fire would attract. The night had been mostly uneventful, save for the two wandering hungerbound vampires that Khiighun devoured. As it was, their sleep was fitful and broken by a damp, clinging fog whose cold fingers slipped into whatever pockets of warmth their cloaks had captured. Every once in a while, Arda would manage to doze off only to be awoken by Anuit’s shivering. Of course, Arda’s fits of shivering could not have helped the human woman any either. In the end, they had managed to find some warmth. As they slept, they shifted until their bodies found shelter from the cold. Arda finally awoke in the morning, holding Anuit tightly from behind, the two of them wrapped neatly together in a sort of cocoon formed by merging her leather duster and Anuit’s wool cloak. The sorceress slept soundly, and Arda had felt a little guilty for waking the woman with a whisper in her ear, “It’s time. We need to keep moving.”
A morning wind had risen and dispersed the fog. Frost touched the ground, and it had grown even colder. The two of them sat atop Dart’s back as the sun moved high overhead in a cloudless sky, but it carried no warmth with it.
After riding for some time, they came to the outskirts of Erindil. Arda stopped Dart for a moment and surveyed the city’s skyline that was punctuated by short white marble buildings capped by red-tiled roofs.
“What’s wrong?” Anuit asked. She had taken to resting her head on Arda’s back.
“Nothing,” the paladin answered. “Just taking a moment. Taer Iriliandrel is the
re.” She could see the tower on the island in Lake Erindil. There had been no island, much less any tower in the lake, the last time she had visited.
A man on horseback emerged from the city and approached them.
“Someone’s coming,” Arda said. She nudged Dart forward at a slow trot to meet him. Anuit straightened behind her, lifting her head from Arda’s shoulders.
As he drew closer, she could see the horns on his head that marked him as a darkling. His eyes were a solid blood-red instead of black. In the ancient days of the Darkling Empire, this would have marked him as a peasant among darkling-kind. Today such things meant nothing.
He extended his right arm with his hand held wide and open. “Ho there!” he called to them. He left his weapons sheathed.
They stopped twenty paces from each other.
“A Kaldorite!” he exclaimed. “It was only a matter of time, I suppose.”
“Who are you?” Arda asked.
“Narim,” he answered. “It will be nightfall soon. You must hurry with me and find shelter. The war goes poorly here.”
“You’ve not accepted the Covenant yet then?” Anuit asked.
The man looked at her, red eyes betraying no emotion. “No. Nor will we.”
“Lead the way, Narim,” Arda said. “We would be grateful for any hospitality.” This was what she was more familiar with from her time fighting vampires in Roenti. Mortals were assumed friendly, and all had put aside their differences to keep from being overrun by the hungry dead.
Narim broke into a gallop, and Arda followed. Dart had no problem keeping pace with the lesser horse, but Anuit grabbed Arda’s waist so tightly when the warhorse leaped forward that the fibers in Arda’s armor stiffened for a moment before relaxing against the sorceress’s grip.
He led them into the heart of the city to a complex of residential apartments. Arda had been to Erindil several times in her travels before the fall of the Empire, but the overabundance of marble and alabaster stonework never lost its impact for her.
They followed Narim into the courtyard of a villa where servants closed and barred the gates behind him. He stabled their horses, and then invited them into his home, leading them to the dining room. Servants laid out a simple spread of cold food and lit two candles, no more. Arda noted the dark, rune-encrusted glow sconces on the walls that still had not been taken down after the God-King had died.
“My wife, Elissa,” he said, introducing them to the lady of the house. She was a human woman with brown hair tied back into a simple bun. “And my daughters Teressa and Cinda.”
Like all children of a darkling parent, they were darklings themselves with red eyes and little horns that hadn’t yet grown to their full length. There were never racially mixed children, nor did any darkling child ever take after the non-darkling parent.
“And Elissa’s brother Miello. Please, dine with us such as it is,” he said.
Erindil had always been a blend of Roenian and Surafian culture. The villas were Roenian in style, but they ate in the Surafian manner. The table was low, and they sat on the floor atop square cushions. Narim obviously had wealth enough for servants and a villa instead of the single-room apartments of commoners in the city. Arda guessed that whatever the source of his wealth, the people here didn’t stay because he paid them—they stayed for the safety he and his villa provided.
“Will you be fighting later tonight?” Arda asked. She already knew the answer from her years campaigning in Roenti, but she still needed to ask. She knew what having the family meal meant—withdrawal into a semblance of normal life. They had given up.
He shook his head. “There are too many of them now. Our Kaldorites are dead, and those who can fight have mostly been turned. Now, we huddle in our homes.”
Anuit frowned. “You’ve given up,” she accused. “You’re ripe for the Covenant to come in.” When she said that, Narim’s wife shot her husband a meaningful glance.
Narim sighed. “I know. We’ve lost so many. But to surrender to the Covenant would betray the Order.”
“You have loyalty to the Kaldorite way,” Arda observed.
He nodded. “I was not inducted into the Order, but I supported it. Kaldor’s teachings need to be preserved if we can get through this.”
“It’s a good thing they aren’t coherent enough to strategize,” Narim’s brother-in-law said. “They don’t do things like burn our houses down or disrupt our food supply. It’s not ideal, but we can endure this.”
“The Covenant won’t leave you be,” Anuit responded angrily. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“They want us to join voluntarily,” he explained. “They respect our choice not to join them.”
Anuit sneered. “That won’t last. My home, Rille, was destroyed by the Covenant. Convert or die, they told them. They may tell you they’ll respect your choice, but they lie.”
“She’s right,” Arda said. “They will take your town. Only after they rule you will they overlook some who don’t join, as long as you submit to their law. They intend to remake the world in their image.”
Narim frowned thoughtfully.
“The tower returned,” Arda said, changing the subject.
“Yes, four months ago,” he replied.
“And Kaldor?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Narim shrugged. “I’ve not been out to the tower.”
“We’re going there tomorrow,” Arda said. “As soon as dawn hits.”
“Well, there are plenty of boats on the dock,” he reflected. “There’s more dead than alive now. No one will miss it if you take one.”
“Thank you,” Arda nodded. “And thank you for your hospitality. We’re both tired—it’s been a long road to get here. Do you mind if we get some sleep?”
“Please do,” Narim said. “We only have one guest room. I hope that will suffice.”
“It will,” Arda affirmed.
“Then let me show you to your room.”
Arda and Anuit retired to a small bedroom with two individual beds and two candles on wall-mounted candlesticks. Narim left them alone and closed the door behind him. The lighting was dim, but Arda could see clearly. The servants had taken their packs from Dart and had already set them out in the guest room for the two women.
The villa had running water supplied by the city’s aqueducts, and the guest room had a small water basin with a copper faucet. Arda stripped her armor off down to her undergarments and washed her face and shoulders with the small bit of soap and a washcloth. The water was cold, but it felt good to clean away the grime of travel.
Anuit followed her example and then got into her bed, pulling the covers over her.
“In another time,” Arda said, “I would take you to the bathhouse. The public baths of Erindil are almost as legendary as the ones in Surafel.”
“A bath sounds nice,” Anuit agreed. “Except for the public part.”
Arda chuckled. “You get used to it. It’s not like they have men and women mixing together. It’s too bad the vampires have overrun this city. Even under the Shadowlord’s reign, Erindil was one of the cities I preferred to visit. People here never seemed to have a problem with my kind.”
“Paladins?”
“Darklings.”
“Oh.”
“Do you mind if I have a pipe?” Arda asked.
“No, go ahead,” Anuit said. She pulled the covers up farther over her head, keeping her face uncovered so she could talk to the paladin. Arda thought it was a cute picture, the sorceress wrapped in the blanket so that only her face shown. Even her dark hair was concealed except for a stripe of it falling over her forehead.
Arda sat on the side of the bed on top of the covers. Prepping her pipe, she lit it with one of the wall candles, sucking in air a few times in quick succession to get the tobacco smoldering. Satisfied, she then took a long, slow draw. She didn’t inhale the smoke—that hurt—but instead let the sweet taste wash over her tongue before exhaling through her nose. As always, the first pulls ha
d the best taste.
They sat in silence as she smoked. She stared thoughtfully at Anuit, looking into her dark eyes. The woman looked back at her, watching the smoke from the pipe.
There was something strangely secretive about this woman. It wasn’t just the sorcery. There was something different about her. Despite her dark magic, she seemed to have a good heart. She lived with fear and anger and displayed a coldness to other people. Except to Arda. She acted differently with Arda than she did with others. She also acted differently towards Arda than how other women acted.
“I don’t believe you,” Arda finally said.
“What?” Anuit responded, starting slightly in surprise.
“What you said the other night when they fed on me,” Arda explained. “That you wouldn’t do the same for me.”
“I—it’s not that I wouldn’t want to,” Anuit replied. “I don’t think I could.”
“You saved my life after Tulley,” Arda reminded her. “You got me out of the castle. I remembered that when the vampires came to our cabin.”
“Thank you,” Anuit said. “But I didn’t save you so you could owe me.”
“I know.”
Arda tasted a slight bit of ash in the smoke. She was done with the bowl and extinguished and cleaned the pipe. She put it away in its leather pouch, and then blew out both candles. The room fell into pitch black.
Unfazed by the darkness, Arda walked over to the sink and cupped her hand under the faucet. She leaned over and drank some water, swishing it around in her mouth and rinsing out some of the residual smoky taste. She spit and then straightened, turning towards the bed again.
In the darkness, she saw Anuit’s eyes following her and realized the sorceress had darkvision like she did. It must have been some trick of her magic. What surprised her though was the way Anuit was looking at her. She must not have been used to being around darklings, having become habitually comfortable with letting her guard down in darkness when she thought no one else could see her. There was an expression of longing on Anuit’s face that Arda was used to seeing on men.
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