by Tim Waggoner
Qarakh extended his arm over the stones and squeezed his hand into a fist. Thick drops of blood splattered onto the previous patches of blood. When the old blood had been completely covered, Qarakh drew his hand back and lowered it to his side.
“Welcome home, my khan.”
If she had been a stranger, the interloper would’ve been slain before finishing her sentence. But Qarakh recognized her voice, and so turned calmly to face her. “Deverra.”
He noted that her gaze was fixed on his ragged wrist, and her nostrils flared as she inhaled the scent of his blood. He was unconcerned. He doubted Deverra would be so foolish as to give into her Beast and attack him. Still, she was a sorceress and possessed mystic abilities beyond those of ordinary Cainites, and thus bore watching. But then, as far was Qarakh was concerned, everyone bore watching.
He didn’t ask how she knew he was coming and that he would stop at the altar first. She was a shaman; knowing such things was her lot.
She nodded toward the altar. “Building up hiimori, I see.”
Hiimori meant “wind horse,” the power that came from such sacrifices. He gave her a simple nod.
The shaman was not a Mongol. Tall and thin, she dressed in a dark blue robe, its hood down to better display her long flowing red hair. Her features were delicate and fine, and her complexion pale, as was normal for the unliving. Her eyes were a touch too large for her face, but the effect merely added to the overall air of otherworldliness that she and the other sorcerers cultivated. More striking was the color of her eyes: They were a bright emerald green, so bright that, in the right light, they almost sparkled.
“You were gone longer than usual this time,” Deverra said. “Some of the mortals in our flock were beginning to worry that you had run into mischief during your wanderings.”
Her tone was even, but Qarakh detected a hint of disapproval.
“I trust you reassured them otherwise.”
Deverra smiled, revealing the pointed tips of her canines. “Naturally, though some required the special kiss of a priestess to draw out their ill humors.”
Qarakh wasn’t certain how to take this. She sounded almost amused, but he knew from long association that she took her roles as tribal shaman and high priestess of the cult of the Livonian god Telyavel very seriously. She had tended to the needs of the god’s mortal worshippers and taken their blood as her due for many years before he’d come to Livonia, before they had made common cause to create a new tribe. Still, he found her tendency toward ambiguity puzzling and often frustrating. Over the few years he’d known her, he’d learned the best way to deal with her unclear comments was to ignore them, which he did now.
“You have my thanks for coming here to welcome me back, but it was not necessary. I would think you’d have more productive ways to occupy your time.”
Deverra smiled and stepped closer to the warrior. She reached out and gently touched his now-healed wrist. “Is it so hard to believe that I simply might have missed you?”
Another Cainite might have recoiled from Deverra’s touch. She and the rest of her brood of priests were blood sorcerers, and such folk could be very dangerous indeed. Even Qarakh had heard rumors of the sorcerous Tremere who stole the blood of other Cainites in their dark witchery. But Qarakh judged people by the deeds they performed, not by their lineage, and to his mind, the Telyav were nothing like the Tremere.
Deverra rubbed her fingers over his wrist in slow, small circles, then brought her hand to her nose and sniffed. She frowned. “Your vitae is weaker than usual. It has been too long since you fed.” She said this last as if she were a mother chiding a naughty son, despite the fact that Qarakh was her khan—but then she was also high priestess of the Telyavs.
Take her, whispered his Beast. She fed well tonight on one of her acolytes. Think of it! Living blood filtered through the veins of a Telyav priestess… a heady brew indeed!
The Beast’s guttural laughter echoed in Qarakh’s mind, and the Mongol was surprised to discover that his mouth was watering. He found the loss of control most disturbing, and he took a step back from Deverra.
“I will feed upon returning to the camp.” His voice was thick with barely repressed need and sounded too much like that of the Beast to his ears.
If Deverra noticed, she gave no sign. “There is another reason I came here once I sensed you were to return this night.” Her tone became grim. “There have been certain signs of late. The land speaks to me—the wind that rustles the leaves, the squeal of a mouse caught in the claws of an owl, the silhouettes of trees outlined in silver moonlight, they all say the same thing: He is coming.”
Qarakh scowled. “Who?”
Deverra looked at the Mongol for a moment before answering, and the warrior was surprised to see fear in her eyes.
“A prince with the face of a boy.”
Chapter Two
By the time Qarakh and Deverra reached the cluster of round felt tents—what the Mongols called gers—that made up the campsite, the eastern sky was tinted by the coming dawn. Qarakh invited the priestess to seek shelter from the sun in his tent, as was the Mongolian custom. But Deverra declined, giving her thanks (which was not only unnecessary but almost insulting to Qarakh) and walked away from the camp, across the clearing where it was currently set up, and toward a stand of pine trees. Qarakh watched her go, wondering where she spent the daylight hours. To his knowledge, she had never remained in the camp after sunrise. He wondered if it was out of some Telyavic necessity, or merely to maintain her priestess’s aura of mystery. Probably a little of both.
He tethered his mare to the single wooden pole in front of his ger. The other tents in the camp all had similar poles with horses tied to them as well. Qarakh didn’t remove his mount’s tack. That was work for a ghoul. He’d dismounted and walked with Deverra as they spoke, leading the horse behind them, and the mare was much better for it. Still, she needed a rubdown, water and food. Qarakh bent down and entered his ger through the single low door facing south. The doors in all the tents in the camp faced south, as was only proper.
Even though Qarakh was khan of this tribe, his tent was like all the others in the camp, inside and out. Woven red rugs covered the floor, and the bed for his ghouls was against the left wall. A man and a woman wearing simple Livonian peasant garb lay there, cuddled together beneath a fur blanket. Normally a tin stove stood in the center of a ger, but since Cainites hated fire, only the handful of tents used solely by mortals had them.
Qarakh removed his sword, bow and quiver, and placed them on the ground to the right of the door. He then walked over to the sleeping ghouls and kicked the male’s rump to rouse him.
The mortal woke with a start and sat up. He blinked groggily for a moment, but when his eyes finally focused, his mouth broke into a wide grin. “My khan! You’re home!”
“Tend to my horse,” Qarakh said.
Still grinning, the male—a youth barely into his manhood—said, “At once, my khan.” He threw back the blanket, rose and started toward the door of the ger.
Before he could crawl through, Qarakh said, “Hold.”
The youth stopped and looked up expectantly.
“When you finish with the mare, tell the other ghouls to inform their masters that I wish to hold council after sunset.”
“Yes, khan.” The youth hurried off to do his master’s bidding.
The female roused then and opened her eyes. “You’ve come back to us.” Her tone was that of a woman welcoming home a lover.
The Beast that laired inside Qarakh growled softly at the implied familiarity. The woman was merely mortal, after all, a ghoul and a servant. But she was also Livonian, and the mortals of these lands still held fast to their ancient beliefs, and they viewed Cainites not as demons, but rather as supernatural beings akin to gods, as Deverra had taught them. Qarakh wasn’t always comfortable with this perception, but he had found it useful in establishing the tribe.
So he did not chastise the woman. Instead, he sat
down next to her.
She sat up, and he smelled the odor of sweat and semen on her. She and the male had lain together not long before he’d entered the ger.
Good. The exertion would add spice to her blood.
“Your face is more pale than usual, my khan, and I can see the hunger burning in your eyes. You must feed.” She rolled up the right sleeve of her tunic and without hesitation offered her bare wrist to him. Qarakh preferred not to drink from the necks of those mortals who gave themselves to him willingly, lest he risk damaging their living soul, which all Mongols knew resided there.
Qarakh could smell the blood surging hot and sweet through her veins, and he could deny his hunger no longer. He grabbed her wrist, brought it to his mouth, and plunged his teeth into the flesh. The woman gasped—half in pleasure, half in pain—and Qarakh began to drink. As he swallowed mouthful after mouthful of life itself, the woman ran the fingers of her free hand through the wild tangle of his hair. He found the intimacy of her touch distasteful, but even though the Beast’s growling became louder, he decided to allow it. The Livs often wished to touch the “gods” as they fed, and desiring contact with the divine was a natural impulse for mortals.
After a few moments, he began to draw less and less blood until finally he pulled his teeth from her crimson-smeared wrist. If he allowed himself, he would drain her dry, and as satisfying as that might be, it would be wasteful. Alive, she could continue to produce blood for decades to come. Dead, she would be worthless.
No! howled the Beast inside him. I—We still hunger!
Hunger was a frequent, if not particularly welcome, companion to those who lived on the steppe, and though Qarakh’s mortal days were years behind him, he well remembered what it was like to have a belly that was never quite full. The hunger for blood was much stronger, of course, but if he had been able to face the specter of starvation on an almost daily basis as a man, he should—
“Have you gone to see your friend yet, my khan?” The woman’s words were slurred, as if she had drunk too much wine. She lay back on the bed, eyes half-closed, a contented smile on her lips. The wounds on her wrist were already healing.
Qarakh looked at her, his canine teeth suddenly longer, his eyes grown wolf-feral. “What did you say?”
His tone was colder than a winter wind skirling across frozen tundra, and the woman drew the fur cover up to her chin, as if it might somehow protect her from her master. “I—I meant no offense, great khan. I merely asked if you had paid a visit to your friend yet. His name is Aajav, isn’t it? The men of the tribe all say that you always go to see him upon returning home. I thought—”
Qarakh’s hand shot out faster than a striking snake and clawed fingers wrapped around the woman’s neck, cutting off her words—and her air.
“Aajav is not my friend.” He spat the word. “He is much more. He is my brother and my blood.” He squeezed tighter, and the woman—eyes bulging from sockets, face turning a deep dark red—reached up and tried to tear his hand away from her throat, but the Mongol’s grip was like iron. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You are a woman, and a Livonian one at that.” His vision had gone red, and there was a roaring in his ears, as if he were underwater. In his mind, he heard the Beast panting its lust.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!
“The bond between Aajav and I is a most sacred thing, and not for the likes of you to speak of. Do you understand?” The mortal didn’t respond, so he gave her a shake. “Answer!” Still she did not reply, and Qarakh squeezed tighter. She was his ghoul, and by Tengri, she would obey him!
“Answer!”
A sound cut through the roaring in his ears then: a harsh crack like a tree limb being snapped in two.
The next sound he heard was the Beast’s mad laughter… then silence.
He looked at the woman and frowned, confused, as if only just seeing her for the first time. Her head lolled to one side like a rag doll’s, and her bulging eyes were wide and unseeing, the whites streaked red. Her skin of her face was almost black now, and her tongue, swollen and purple, protruded from her mouth like a fat slug.
Qarakh released his grip and the woman fell onto the bed, limp and lifeless.
What are you waiting for? Drink!
Qarakh did nothing.
What do you care if she’s dead? She was nothing more than cattle to you, as are all mortals. You didn’t even know her name. Now drink, before her blood spoils and goes to waste!
Qarakh started forward, fangs bared, but then he stopped. “Her name was Pavla,” he said. He expected the Beast to respond, but his inner voice was silent for a change. He felt a sudden heaviness in his limbs, and he knew it was more than drowsiness from having just fed. The sun had risen.
He crawled to the middle of the ger and moved aside one of the red mats to expose a bare patch of earth.
He should’ve known better. The Beast could only be denied for so long before it had to feed. And it needed more than mere blood. It needed pain and death and carnage. Most of all, it needed to prove its dominance over its host body, to humiliate the Cainite so foolish as to believe that he could ever be its master. He knew that some called him Qarakh the Untamed, but the only truly untamed thing about him was the Beast that was his eternal companion through the endless nights.
He scooted onto the patch of earth and concentrated. As he sank into the ground where he would slumber during the daylight hours, he vowed that he would never forget the hard lesson the Beast had taught him this night—just as he had vowed many times before.
Deverra stood before a large pine tree at the edge of the tribe’s immediate territory. She drew a sharp nail across her palm and vitae welled forth, mixing with the tree sap already in her hand. The Telyav priestess stirred the mixture with a finger, then brought it to her mouth and lapped it up. She didn’t need to look at the lightening sky to sense the coming dawn. She felt it as a heat in her veins, as if her blood were on the verge of boiling. She swallowed the blood-sap, closed her eyes and calmly recited an invocation. Then, just as the first light of dawn broke over the horizon, she stepped toward the tree trunk and melted into the wood.
Safely encased within the pine, Deverra would sleep until sunset. But though she felt languor washing over her, the peace of slumber proved elusive. She continued to think about Qarakh and the conversation they’d had on their way back to the camp. The Mongol chieftain intended to hold kuriltai, a war council, after sundown.
It was the “war” part of the council that worried her. She had full confidence in Qarakh himself. Despite his relative youth, he was a mighty Cainite and as strong a leader as she had known. He’d also gathered an inner circle of seasoned warriors from across the northern fringes of Christianity and beyond, but the rest of his tribe was a rag-tag collection of Cainites, ghouls and thralls. They trained in the arts of war and were not without skill, but it had been a hard fight last year against the Livonian and German crusaders and the vampires in their midst. If this boy-faced prince was whom she feared it was… well, they would be no match for him.
A high priestess with so little faith, she chided herself. Qarakh had only arrived in Livonia a few years ago, but she had been born here and had spent the majority of her long unlife here. She had forged a bond with the spirit of this land, with Telyavel, the guardian of the dead and maker of things. As long as the flame of that bond burned, as long as she and the others in her extended coven were willing to make the necessary sacrifices, then there remained hope. Deverra had helped the young Mongol found his tribe here with that bond to the spirit and people of the land at its core, and she would not surrender to despair now.
The boy prince was coming. The only question was how they would face him.
At last, sun-sleep finally came for her, and her consciousness slipped into the darkness that was Cainite slumber. She had two last thoughts before oblivion claimed her for the day. First, she would not inform the other Telyavs about Alexander—not before consulting the man she had sworn alle
giance to as her khan. And second, she wondered what Qarakh’s vitae would taste like.
Sweet, she decided. And burning hot…
Then she thought no more.
Qarakh slumbered and remembered. A night years ago, when a rough whisper cut through his sleep.
“Qarakh…”
He ignored the voice, rolled onto his side, and pulled the bearskin blanket over his head. Outside, the wind howled like a hungry demon across the steppe, and though he was warmly dressed and covered with fur, Qarakh shivered at the sound.
“My brother…”
He tried to say, “Go away,” but it came out as an incoherent mumble. He wished Aajav would go back to sleep. It had been a long day of hunting with little to show for it: a single scrawny marmot and a few field mice. He was bone weary and the small amount of meat he’d managed to catch had done little to fill the emptiness in his belly. He wanted nothing more than to sleep and wake up in the morning when hopefully the steppe would prove more generous.
He felt a hand on his shoulder then, and it began to shake him gently.
“You have a visitor, Qarakh. Will you be so rude as to not greet him?”
He came instantly awake then, and sat up in a single smooth motion, dagger in hand. He tried to see who had entered his ger, but the interior of the tent was too dark for him to make out more than a rough outline of the man.
“If you come seeking shelter from the night wind, you are welcome,” Qarakh said. “If you come seeking more than that, you are not.”
The visitor chuckled. “The cold means nothing to me, brother. Not anymore.”
Fully awake now, Qarakh recognized the voice. “Aajav! It is good to hear your words again!” He tucked the dagger back into his belt. “Come, get beneath the blanket and I will start the fire.” Qarakh started to get up, but a hand—stronger than he remembered—gripped his shoulder to stop him.