"I have a special blade in mind--" Nydeon's breath caught and he winced in pain, grabbing his side. "A special blade for the yellowwood man," he said.
"First, we have to get across this street."
They watched as three more men with swords in their hands sped past. Mejadym. Others were now spilling out of doorways and heading toward the beach from where another bell was now clanging wildly. During a lull, the Prathians sprang from their hiding and made a dash across the street. The dark mouths of the alleys beckoned invitingly. They ran to the first one they saw, eager to plunge into the darkness and lose themselves in the city.
They stopped dead in their tracks. A group of men with torches were running right at them. They wore blue head scarves with yellow stripes.
"There they are!" one of the men cried. "Look! It's them!"
The Prathians turned and ran. They ran openly now through the street, not pausing for anyone. They heard the torch men emerge onto the street behind them, shouting. They kept running.
They turned a corner and Xanthippus felt a hand on his shoulder. Before he could react, the hand whisked him off the street and into a dark alley. His heart beat wildly. He was nearing exhaustion. He expected to see another gang of Mejadym. Perhaps the first had split up and had cut them off.
Instead, he found himself staring into a Gyriecian face. Blue flashed before his eyes, but not the blue of a Mejadym head scarf. It was the blue of the flowing robe of a nobleman. A Gyriecian nobleman.
"I am Asander," the man said quickly. "Kerraunus sent me."
The man's Gyriecian appearance stayed Xanthippus' hand. "Are you here to kill me?" he asked.
"I am here to save you," Asander replied.
Part II
Gods of War
Chapter 10
The men who remained behind with the Shadow Riders were the lucky ones. The two Menleco had brought to Irrylia with him were anything but.
The old general shivered at the notion. If it had not caused him such anguish to capture the pair, he might have felt pity for them. But the effort had cost him two of his Shadow Riders, and that he could never forgive. A dead Rider was an abomination. It gave people hope and made his job that much more difficult.
Still, the screaming left him feeling rattled -- and Menleco did not rattle easily.
Lord Taler laid a skinny arm around the aging general's shoulders. Taler was a sharp-faced wraith of a man who moved like a ghost, with nary a flutter of his floor-length robes. A simple thin gold band around his forehead caused his stringy, graying hair to pucker over his ears and his wispy still-black beard hairs danced and bobbed on the end of his pointed chin whenever he spoke. In his free hand, he held a little bag. He clapped it into Menleco's palm and the general could feel the satisfying mass of coins inside. They chinked melodically.
"Despite the fact that you have only brought us two conspirators," Lord Taler said, "the Lady remains appreciative and pays in full."
The Lady? Menleco had to think for a moment before realizing that Taler spoke of Pylia. Menleco had never heard her referred to as Lady. But he supposed she was.
He moved out from under the Lord's skeletal embrace.
"These two cost me plenty," he admonished his lordship. The screaming stopped for an instant, and then resumed, causing Menleco to stammer. "They are… were… I mean, these are the leaders of their little band."
A man and a woman. The Shadow Riders had found them in a subterranean chamber beneath their home with two dozen rebels. Their captors had thought them unarmed, but one of the men carried a concealed dirk. He had been fast, and suicidal. A zealot. He had suffered a zealot's death, as had they all. Only the man and the woman had been brought to Pylia. Menleco had waited until nightfall to bring the two dead Shadow Riders out of the cellar. The local peasants believed them immortal. It would not pay to have them see the Riders' blood.
"I have brought you exactly what you pay for, Taler," he said, making a conscious effort to steel his spine. He had allowed the shouting of the Epirian traitors to unsettle him. He knew that Lord Taler had noticed it. "You'll pardon me if I don't blubber with gratitude. In fact," --he bounced the bag of coins in the palm of his hand, judging its weight-- "if the purse proves light…" He drew his dagger and described an arc with its point at the level of Lord Taler's throat. The palace guards took a step from the walls before Taler motioned them back.
"You wave your blade in my face, but do you also have a blade for Pylia?" Lord Taler asked.
Menleco let his dagger fall to his side. It was the screaming that did it. He was off his game. Damn it, anyway! Tell her what she wants to know already! It was maddening…
"You should save your threats for the Epirian rebels, General," Lord Taler continued. "This next we ask for is no skulking couple pulled from some cellar. The Epirians have a leader now, it would seem. We mean for your…" He closed his eyes in thought.
"Shadow Riders," Menleco reminded him.
"Yes, of course. We mean for your Shadow Riders to find him."
"Oh, we will find him. There is no force in all of Epiria that would dare stand against my Riders."
"We shall see," Lord Taler said with a shallow smile. "The Epirians have always under-appreciated Demetrius' rule. The king has been tolerant of their outrages in the past, but now they grow bold, and their efforts are coordinated and purposeful. They use our war with Sethaly to their advantage. We need to put an end to their pretensions once and for all."
"Don't include my Prathians in your 'we'," Menleco said. "The only 'we' I care about are the shiny little fellows in this bag here. I care nothing for your Epirian rebels and their hopeless aspirations. It is coin that interests me, Spymaster. Nothing more."
"Just as it was with the Epirian prince, eh, Menleco?"
"Epirian prince?"
"The Tygetian boy--"
"Oh, the Tygetian prince. I have men dealing with that now," Menleco said irritably. It was Taler himself who gave Menleco that job, and now he spoke as if --
"He is the one the people speak of."
The man spoke in riddles. The screaming would not stop. Menleco's head began to throb. "What people?"
"The Epirians. We know someone coordinates their efforts now, but it is Hurrus they speak of. Pylia has foreseen it. The Tygetian eagle soared in her vision, plucking the snake from Gyriecian waters. Demetrius himself interpreted the lady's Seeing. It was Hurrus, blood kin of Xarhux--"
"So this leader you seek is Hurrus?" Menleco asked. "But my men are already--"
"No, no," Lord Taler said. "Your Shadow Riders will find the rebel leader -- as soon as the Lady uncovers his identity, just as she uncovered the child Hurrus' hiding place and the identity of the man who spirited him away. Nothing escapes Pylia, as you can hear--"
"As I can hear? I hear simple torture, Taler, and nothing more. I never would have thought you susceptible to such superstitious prattle, a man like you. Confessions made under the blade are far from seers' visions, my friend." The spymaster was starting to sound like a zealot himself. First, King Demetrius, now Lord Taler, the last sane man in Irrylia, had fallen under the witch's spell.
Taler flashed his knowing smile. "Oh, there is nothing superstitious about it, General."
If there was anything supernatural about the sound that assailed Menleco's ears, it was the maddening constancy of it. The screams were relentless, ceasing not even for confessions -- confessions which should have been made long ago. And where was the witch's voice in all this?
"For the love of the gods, why doesn't she just question the traitors? Surely they will talk by now."
"Pylia prefers to See with her own eyes," Lord Taler said. "It is not instantaneous. She found Hurrus' hiding place buried in the minds of his mother and father. That had taken some time. A dirty business, to be sure…" Taler shook his head, remembering -- not unhappily it seemed to Menleco. "Soon, we will have Hurrus' head to show the rebels. That is, if your men do not fail."
"My men do no
t fail," Menleco said, stiffening. He realized that he was too tightly clutching his helmet in the crook of his arm. He loosened his grip and could feel the stiffness in his increasingly arthritic fingers.
"Let me show you the price of failure." Lord Taler glided toward the door through which the screams were emanating. Guards stood on either side. They wore high domed bronze helmets sprouting fountains of sky blue horse hair, spilling down their backs. Their faces were covered by plates sculpted to resemble bearded faces and their bodies were wrapped in their entirety by bright yellow cloaks. Menleco was still Prathian enough to consider them shamefully ostentatious. Or would have, if the door they guarded did not fill him with such dread.
The guards stood like statuary as Taler reached for the door handle. He opened the door a crack, but turned back before entering. "It occurred to me when you unsheathed your dagger that you might like to see our Pylia at work."
Hearing was enough, Menleco thought, but Taler opened the door anyway.
The screaming exploded in Menleco's ears. His eye was first attracted to the man and woman chained tightly to the wall. He remembered them as brave, steely-eyed fighters. Now they were nothing more than heaps of animal flesh, helpless and howling inhumanly. They had been stripped naked. Their ankles and wrists were raw and bloody where they thrashed against the restraining shackles. Menleco had steeled himself for the sight of bruises and blood, and purple swollen flesh, but aside from shackle-wounds there was no other mark on them. Their contorted faces made them unrecognizable to him. Their anguish was hideously clear, but Menleco could discern no source of their torment.
It was a moment before he noticed a shape capering on the floor before them. His heart leapt into his throat and he involuntarily jumped back. The thing was a woman. She was down on all fours circling a pool cut in the floor. Her grasping fingers clutched the stone rim of the pool like claws and she scampered crab-like to and fro around the circumference of the black water. Menleco was aghast. Was it even human? Whatever it was moved impossibly fast, around and around the pool, gazing into its reflection-less surface as though striving to see into every hidden corner and crevice of … Of what?
A single torch sputtered on a supporting stone column and the crab woman went around and around in the gloom while the captives writhed in agony above her. The pool might have been an inch deep; it might have reached to fathomless depths. Not even the torchlight played on its surface. The woman paused, her nose just brushing the water. She seemed to sniff at it like an animal. She also was naked. A thick snake had wrapped its tail around one of her thighs. Its glistening body ran the length of her back and it peered over her shoulder into the pool, its tongue licking the air. When the woman raised her head, Menleco saw innumerable tiny snakes intertwined in her long hair, a squirming den of hatchlings. The woman was impossibly old … or young and supple … or … it was impossible to tell. She was one or the other, changing in an instant. Perhaps she was both at once. Menleco only hoped she had not seen him. She went back to circling the pool.
He could hear Lord Taler chuckling close to his ear. The sound was an outrage amid the screaming.
"By the gods, Taler, what form of evil is this?" Menleco asked.
"Our lady will soon See the identity and location of the one who leads the Epirian revolt. He is to be the next target for your Shadow Riders."
"But how is this possible?"
"The minds of her captives are revealed to her in the black water. See how she peers into it. When she halts, she is Seeing. The rounding of the pool is her struggle to See. It is touching, how she struggles. Look at her." Taler gazed upon her lovingly. "It was in this way that we found the whelp Hurrus all those years ago. Unfortunately, the process causes the captives some discomfort."
"But what is she?" She came to a sudden halt and seemed to stare across the room at Menleco. Her eyes burned into his, full of rage. It was all he could do to stand his ground. He saw now that she was a crone, ancient beyond understanding. In the space of a heartbeat, the crone was replaced by a seductress who beckoned him with her eyes, her hair a squirming mass. When she halts, she is seeing… It is a vision she sees, Menleco thought with rising panic, not me… Then she was off again.
"She is the mother of Xarhux," Taler said.
Menleco felt that he had crossed the threshold into a land of nightmares.
"It is not possible," he said. "She is young…and beautiful."
"Yes, our Pylia is beautiful," Taler said. "You must understand our lady. She is passionate beyond human comprehension. She couples with gods. The gods keep her fresh to satisfy their appetites. She is the whore of Sarlon."
Menleco could take no more.
"Let me out of this place," he said. He pushed Taler aside and turned away. Before he could take a step toward the door, however, a voice rose above the screaming and his skin prickled in fear.
"Clautias!" the crone cried piercingly. She slammed her frail fists into the black water. Startled, her snake reared on her shoulder, hissing. "Clautias! Clautias!"
"It is Clautias!" Taler cried. "The man who smuggled Hurrus out of Epiria leads the rebellion! Pylia's hatred for him knows no bounds!"
"I consign you to the fangs of Sarlon!" the crone cried, splashing in the black pool. "I see him! I know where he is!" The captives howled with renewed vigor. When would it end?
"For fifteen years we have hunted him and your failure--" Taler turned on Menleco. Menleco moved hurriedly toward the door. Taler rushed after him, shouting. "You, Menleco! Your failure to find him has resulted in this rebellion! Our lady wants him. Sarlon wants him. And they want him alive. Do you understand? Do you think you can do that, old man, without killing everything in sight?"
Menleco pushed through the door and strode rapidly across the polished floor of the palace, pulling on his leather gloves as he walked. In the bright sunshine, he felt like he was back in the sane world of men. Taler followed on his heels, jeering him in his rage. Menleco rounded on him and thrust a thick finger under his nose.
"I will find this Clautias for you," he snarled. "But do not think for a moment that I care about your obscene little court here. I will find this man because Demetrius pays me. But you stay out of my way, madman, or it is you who will find himself twitching on the point of a Shadow Rider's spear."
His troop of Riders was waiting for him in the street when he emerged hurriedly from the palace. They made a terrifying appearance. Mounted on steeds as black as night, they sat wrapped in their long black cloaks, fingering weapons with black-gloved hands. Their helms were forged from black iron. Plates sculpted to resemble skulls covered their faces. Dark eyes glowered inside cavernous black eye holes and the sun glanced off the ridges of iron cheek bones and carved teeth that formed the jolly grin of the death's head. In action, each man of them was a galloping reaper.
Yet, when it came to instilling fear, Menleco suddenly felt like a laggard. Fear was his stock-in-trade. He had invented his Shadow Riders for just that purpose, to sow fear in his enemies. Though past his prime, General Menleco, commander of the famed Prathian Guard, was himself a man to be feared - not one to be sent scurrying away from some witch's lair with a shiver still racing down his spine. Had not even his own father, the former king of Prathia, feared him? The old man had accused him of cruelty and of harboring a tyrannical nature and a whimsical sense of justice. He feared for the people of Prathia, he had said. But because he also feared Menleco's wrath, the king granted his son the Guard as consolation for depriving him of the crown. Menleco could live with that. He knew the Prathian people hated him, and with the Guard at his disposal even the new king, his whelp cousin Areus, rarely dared to oppose him.
His father had given him the Guard because he knew the Guard would never turn on Prathia. Over the years, however, Menleco had twisted the Guard from an honorable fighting force into an instrument of black terror. Now, it served only Menleco. When he felt surly, he used it to terrorize Areus, winning for himself rich lands and gold. When
he possessed all he wanted, he used it to win love in the form of Areus' beloved niece, Lyssa. He had sent Shadow Riders to whisk her from her bed and now he kept her as his bride, even though he knew she hated him. Areus could do little to stop him. In the end, it was fear of Menleco that accounted for everything he had.
Yet, now, donning the death's head helm of the Shadow Riders, he found himself rushing down the steps of the Irrylian palace, afraid to even glance over his shoulder for fear of what might be scurrying after him. Even as he mounted his horse and led the troop through the streets, noting the frightened stares of the city throngs that parted to let them pass, the recollection of the witch's cries made his skin prickle anew. He literally shivered with fright behind his reaper's mask.
They rode for two days to reach the Shadow Riders' encampment inside Epiria, arriving just before sunset. Some of the men had killed several wild pigs and they were roasting them on skewers in an open space among the tents. The camp was operated by a thousand Prathian footmen and supported by a vast train of wagoneers and their animals to haul the baggage. The 200 Shadow Riders were the kings of the camp. They sat bare-headed in their black cloaks around the roasting fires, jovially sharing flagons of brew from the supply train, while the footmen dourly sucked on strips of dried pork. It was important to Menleco that the Riders lived high. Once established in an area, they moved fast, struck hard and mercilessly, and were subject to a myriad of dangers spared the footmen. If they also picked the country clean of booty and plunder, Menleco considered that the price of their loyalty. The Shadow Riders wanted for nothing.
Menleco rode into the camp at the head of the ten troopers who had accompanied him to Irrylia. Despite his age, he could still out-ride most of them and rarely failed to lead the highest priority missions personally. He would not miss the taking of Clautias -- though, truth be told, he was tempted to have Raulon, his second among the Shadow Riders, hand him over to the Irrylians, once captured. His cowardice shamed him, but that was one meeting he was not eager to repeat.
The Blood Gate Page 14