by Kirby Crow
Helpless, Scarlet crouched on his knees with his head down, breathing hard, waiting for whatever came next. Little flakes of snow drifted from the cracked ceiling as Melev watched him for a long moment, and then sat down cross-legged a few feet away from Scarlet. Melev rested his monstrous hands on his legs and seemed to drop into a pose of waiting.
Scarlet thought Melev was staring at him, but when Scarlet spit and thrashed in his chains, Melev did not seem to notice. Scarlet saw that his mouth was moving and a thin thread of sound came from his lips. Melev was chanting.
The words were strange, but not totally unfamiliar to Scarlet. It sounded almost like the cantos to Deva that his father had taught him, and as Melev’s voice rose in volume, he realized he could definitely pick out words here and there.
“Farnorl esi, Danaae Deva er su Nauhin...”
Melev’s pale, milky eyes unnerved him, and the chanting began to make his head ache right in the place between his eyebrows.
“Shut up!” Scarlet shouted, wanting Melev to do something, anything, rather than sit there and look at him like he was a bug with those sounds coming from the ancient’s mouth. Yet, when Melev suddenly moved, Scarlet wished he had kept quiet.
Melev uncrossed his legs and rose with an eerie grace for one so large. His hand went into the sleeve of his thin robe and produced a small glass vial, rather like the perfume bottles Scarlet used to sell back home. Melev stood over him, impossibly tall, and reached down. Scarlet flinched, but Melev seized his chin in his hand and flicked the cap off the bottle, setting the cool ring of glass against his lips.
“Drink.”
“Like hell!” Scarlet tried to twist away, pursing his mouth closed. Melev’s thumb jabbed into the tender spot below his ear, and a spike of pain went through his head and neck. Still, he tried to keep his mouth closed. Melev pinched Scarlet’s nose shut and cold liquid washed against his tongue. He swallowed reflexively, expecting some awful taste, but it was only some kind of pungent herb. Melev took his hands away and Scarlet coughed, spitting drops of milky liquid onto the stone. Before he could rage at Melev, his tongue started to go numb, and the last coherent thought he had before his vision melted into scenes of nightmare colors and shapes all bleeding into one another, was that Melev had fed him poison.
***
Blood streamed from Jochi’s hand, spattering the ground with a steaming trail of red. His left shoulder was drawn down like a hunchback and the arm hung there useless, the muscles of that shoulder severed by a sword cut. A long red line ran from his temple to his jaw, and blood welled from his nose. Liall bent in the snow to look at him, and held his hand over the ragged wound to stop the bleeding.
Vladei’s guards had slammed the temple’s stone doors shut as soon as they heard the horses. Liall had led his men to the temple ruins, where they found it occupied by Vladei’s surviving defenders of Magur. The red guards had barricaded themselves in with fallen stones and spears and their bodies. Outside, in the snowy twilight, the blue and silver-garbed soldiers of the queen gave a rallying shout and a loud crash shook the temple ruins. Jarek and Alexyin and several of the queen’s soldiers were using a battering ram made out of a felled tree. A second crash and the doors cracked. Rock dust and snow trickled from the jagged battlements. Liall caught Jochi’s arm just as his sword dropped from his fingers and he toppled like a felled tree. Jochi’s weight pulled Liall down with him and Liall crouched on his knees, wiping some of the blood from Jochi’s face. They had not known the number of red guards surviving the routing of Magur. There were more than they expected.
Jarek spun about on her heel and her blade clashed with a red guard who leaped over the outer wall. The red guard’s dark face was bared, and he snarled, his mouth dripping with froth. Liall had seen enough battles to recognize killing-lust. It was a strange and fey lunacy in the Rshani blood, the berserker rage, a thing beyond their control. Jarek ended the madness quickly, parrying the strike and dipping to her knees. She slashed once with the curved edge of her sword and brought the hilt back in the return motion to jab the barbed pommel up into the red guard’s abdomen, thrusting once and then twisting. Jarek jerked the barb out and the red guard staggered down, entrails spilling into his lap. Jarek kicked the corpse away, and then the queen’s soldiers gave a rallying shout as they made one final stroke. The doors of the temple shivered, cracked, and crashed inward. Men screamed, high and excited, in dying or in lust to kill, and a stream of Jarek’s soldiers poured through the breached opening.
Jochi pushed him away. “Go!”
Liall shook his head, but he was already picking up his sword. Scarlet was in there. Scarlet needed him.
“Save them,” Jochi murmured, breathing with difficulty.
Liall gripped his shoulder one last time, hefted up his sword, and joined Jarek’s charge.
There was knot of fighting just inside the broken doors, the combatants stumbling over stones or slipping in blood. A red came at Liall and he cut the man down, his sword slicing the neck cleanly. Blades flashed in the torchlight, mingled with the screams of dying men, and the smell of fresh gore and smoke was sickening.
Alexyin put his back to Liall’s, and the next several minutes seemed like hours. For Liall, it was all too familiar. First there was the fear and the fear of pain and death, then came the sudden, frantic struggle for life, pitting strength and will against steel. Swords flashed, cutting the air with an angry hum like hornets. Every clang of metal meant a blow stopped, and every cry was outlined in blood.
Finally, Liall stood beside Jarek, breathing hard and leaning on his sword. There were red guards on the floor. They were a deeper red now, their chosen color becoming their shroud. Alexyin was finishing off a red guard who was screaming in agony.
Jarek pointed. Liall spat to clear his mouth, and he saw that her soldiers had Vladei pinned against a wall. Torchlight threw weird shadows over the shoulders of the blue guards, flickering yellow, as they dodged and feinted blows with him, trying to take Vladei alive.
“Stop!”
The soldiers backed away. Vladei’s sword was still in his hand, but it was broken about a foot from the haft. Vladei batted away one last blade and stood looking at Liall, his chest heaving, head lowered like he was a bull and would soon charge.
Liall trod upon the fallen banner of Ramung –two gold hatchets crossed on a field of crimson– as he crossed the room and the point of his blade came up. "Drop it."
Vladei shook his head once, either too winded or too furious for speech. Liall drew nearer, intending to run him through if he did not obey. Vladei saw the look in his eyes, and his broken sword clattered down.
They faced each other. My kinsman, Liall thought bitterly. Our fathers had been half-brothers. What would they say now, those two powerful men, if they could see us like this?
Liall sheathed his sword and stood looking at Vladei, tired to the bone and wondering how to settle this without blood. He was already known as Kinslayer in Rshan.
“Where are they, Scarlet and Cestimir? I warn you, Vladei. They had best be unharmed.”
A rat is most dangerous when cornered. Vladei’s hand flashed to his belt, but Liall had seen that trick before. He slammed his fist into Vladei’s jaw and the knife clattered across broken tiles. Liall punched the man again and Vladei spat blood at him, his face twisted out of all recognition by rage and hatred.
Liall knotted his fist in Vladei’s collar and hit him again; a backhanded blow that bloodied his nose. Vladei struggled, not having the leverage to swing properly, and Liall hauled him to his feet and slung him against the wall, smashing his face into the stone.
“Snake!” Liall kneed him in the belly and Vladei went down on his knees. The man craned his neck to look up at Liall, smiling viciously, and nearly went down on his face when Liall’s fist met his jaw again.
Liall went down on one knee, there on the floor with him, and grabbed his hair and jerked his head up to make Vladei look at him. “Villain!” Liall shook him like a d
og shakes a mouse. “Where is Cestimir? Where is the prince?”
Vladei gave him a bloody grin. “Gone the way of all weaklings. Did I not tell you, Nazheradei? Rshan must endure. If I have to kill every single prince in Kalas Nauhin to accomplish that, I will. We once ruled the stars. I will not let my people sink into darkness and misery with the rest of cursed Nemerl.”
Liall felt the blood drain from his face. “You would not have killed him,” he said, though his whole body had gone cold. Vladei could have killed Liall in that instant, he was so numb. “You lie.”
“What need? The thing is done. I make no apology. I did what I had to do for the strength of Rshan.” Vladei gripped Liall’s hand, not to throw him off, but to clasp his fingers like they were old comrades.
“Do you not see it, the corruption at the core of our monarchy? You brought one of them here, Nazheradei. Your Hilurin whore should have been killed on sight. Would have been in a saner time! But no, we have forgotten our own history and become fallen. Like Ressanda, that red boar, with his diluted blood and his coarse body. He is the keeper of our lineage, he and his red daughter? Is that what lies in store for us?” Vladei’s eyes were bright, as if filled with fire from within.
“Ten thousand years have we rotted in this place; our magic stolen, our great knowledge slowly forgotten, our books of science moldering into dust.” He took a deep breath. “It had to stop, brother. I had to stop it.”
“You’re insane.”
Vladei laughed then, showing crimson teeth. “I see it is useless to argue with you. You will not see. Turn and look then, prince. Turn and see what end awaits all traitors to Rshan.”
Jarek’s soldiers held Vladei while Liall went to the wooden platform, where the crumpled form lay nearly hidden from sight. The platform was recently constructed: a new addition to the dead temple. Liall had a mad thought, wondering if the trees that had been felled to build this thing had any inkling what they were being killed for. Unfortunate trees, destined to be planed slabs soaking in the red blood of Rshan’s rightful king.
Cestimir’s bright hair was untouched. His features were tight and closed, denying, as if at the very last instant he had decided he was tired of playing a foolish game, and went away in his own mind to some fairer dream. The young body below was unmarred, only a single, neat cut in the area of his heart where the sword had gone in. A swath of blood, like a broad line of paint, blossomed from the cut and flowed to his knees, ending there to mark the moment his heart ceased pumping.
It was a tidy death. However Vladei had detested Cestimir in life, he had given him a king’s execution.
Liall knelt and touched Cestimir’s face, finding his skin still warm. They had not been late by much.
There was a sound beside him, and Liall looked up, too stunned for tears, to see Alexyin standing over him.
“I trained him from birth to be a king,” Alexyin intoned, his face haggard. His white braid was spattered in red and hung over his shoulder, snarled and matted. “He was the last, great promise of the monarchy,” he told Liall. “But he slipped away from me, clever lad. He never wanted it. Two deaths in one day, two princes taken from Rshan.”
Alexyin stood over the ashes of his life’s work, and chose. Later, as Liall pondered on the matter, he realized that it was doubtful that he would have stopped Alexyin, even if he had known what the man meant to do.
Alexyin leapt off the scaffold and crossed the chamber in the four great strides, to where the soldiers held Vladei. Even as Vladei opened his mouth to gloat, Alexyin cut him down.
Vladei’s hate seemed to take all the color out of his face when it fled. Alexyin’s sword opened Vladei from belly to shoulder, and he looked down, staring, at the red stripe across his clothing before it became a red banner, and the great wound opened like a mouth, spilling him, steaming, onto the frozen dirt and broken rock.
The soldiers leapt back in shock and dismay, letting Vladei slump into a messy heap. No one strikes a prince of Rshan, and Alexyin was a Setna, one of the Brotherhood. They cast looks Liall’s way, seeking direction. Jarek pushed her soldiers aside to stand before her men, her stern face upturned to Liall, awaiting orders as a khatai should.
Liall came down wearily from the platform and encompassed the whole of the temple with one swing of his arm.
“Search it. Find ser Keriss. Move!”
They scattered. Alexyin stood rock-still as if in shock. He kept shaking his head, though the day was far past denial. “You must kill me now,” he said.
That was the law, Liall supposed. The cold had seemed to leech into his bones, and he moved as if in a dream, putting one foot in front of the other until he was near enough that only Alexyin could hear him speak. “You will not die. You will help me find Scarlet.”
***
Melev’s heavy hand was over Scarlet’s heart. The Ancient was kneeling close to Scarlet, so close, and then he seemed to breathe the words into him:
“My power to you.”
Scarlet gasped as Melev’s fingers seemed to dig inside him, up under his ribs, as if Melev were digging through cartilage and muscle to burrow into his heart.
“My will, my heart... your eyes. See.”
Melev’s hypnotic voice compelled Scarlet, and he tried to focus on the Ancient’s face, only to have his broad features slither away into a folding, dancing ribbon of light. Scarlet tried to speak and nothing came out. His hands were chained weights.
“See,” Melev commanded. “Let your mind break free of the world, and tell me where the Anlyribeth have taken it.”
Melev pulled him closer, and it felt like Melev’s hand was gripping his bones, ripping him apart. Scarlet mourned the loss of his voice. A scream might have lessened the pain. Melev was ruthless, pushing Scarlet further into an agony so intense it seemed impossible he was still alive. As Scarlet writhed to be away from him, Melev burrowed closer, so for a moment it seemed as if they were grappling, joined as if in sex, fused as one body and writhing in completion.
The world spun around. Light bloomed in the darkness, faces like pale flowers, and Scarlet saw the Hilurin spirits he had once glimpsed in a bare stand of junipers back on the Nerit, that night when Cadan had nearly killed him. That night when Liall saved him. Cadan’s hands had been around his throat, then, cutting off his life. Now Melev was digging his heart out with his fingers.
“Tell me,” Melev intoned. “The instrument of making. The magic. Where has it been hidden?”
Scarlet struggled wildly to answer, to scream that he knew of no such thing, but the pain grayed out his vision and suddenly he was simply not there any longer. He believed he had passed out. He seemed to float in a warm void, those shifting, colored lights all around him. He blinked, or thought he did, looking up at the myriad shapes all in motion.
A young Hilurin man, no older than he, surely, took more solid form in the shifting lights and came forward. “Deva, he means,” the boy said in a gentle voice. “She was the great ship of iron that brought the Shining Ones here, and then failed them. They were marooned on this continent of ice, stranded far from their homes.”
The boy was First Tribe, but unlike anyone Scarlet had ever seen: features sculptured like white marble, jet black eyes, fringed so thickly with ebony lashes that they looked like bruises high on his cheeks. His brows were black ribbons of silk across his unlined forehead, and the beauty of youth was upon him like a crown. His smile was infinitely gentle. Scarlet had never seen such a smile, except perhaps from Scaja in his earliest memories.
Yeva Bilan, Scarlet called, thinking he must be the Flower Prince. Surely this man was the beloved of a goddess.
Visions flashed by his sight: his old friend Kozi, who disappeared one year; Cestimir, who smiled at him unafraid and held his hand over his heart with blood seeping through his fingers; Scaja and Linhona holding hands under a rain of ash. He suddenly saw Jochi’s face and recalled the history lesson Jochi had given him, only now it seemed as if he were reliving it himself, and he cou
ld see the ocean rise and the land drowned, and the earth shaking down the great towers of lost Rshan.
Melev pressed him then, and Scarlet opened his mouth in a soundless scream. Melev’s will pushed and battered his mind to ask something of the beautiful Hilurin prince, but no sound would come out. Pain dragged him under, threatening to drown all sanity, and he sent a helpless plea to the prince instead.
Help me.
The prince stretched out his hand, and Scarlet heard him send the command to Melev: These are mine. My people. Let him go.
Melev recoiled, and for once, Scarlet saw emotion on his face: fear.
Scaja smiled at Scarlet across a universe of stars, and the sky broke in half before the sun caught fire and burned him alive in it, drowning him in cold, blue seas.