“I hear no laughter among these trees.”
“Perhaps they have truly left, but...oh, oh, my brother, oh, look, look.” He leapt from the ground to the trunk of a tree, glancing about as if expecting some forest beast to spring out at him. He pointed first to a twist of brambles that ran—a forest hedge—through the groves of bent and gnarled trees. Among the brambles, I saw the bones of men. “The thorns of this heavy vine are like daggers, and sharp as any knight’s blade. The mortals run against the thorns and die from madness rather than face the Laughing Ones.” He grimaced. “But up there, look.”
I glanced upward into the swaying branches above us.
“This is their handiwork,” he said. “Tasmal.”
On several branches of this old tree, as big around as a castle tower, dead men had been hanged—nearly rotted, some preserved as if they’d been pickled, and others wrapped in dried leaves like mummies. The nooses about their necks varied from thick-corded ropes to chains to leather straps torn, no doubt, from their clothes.
Still, more trees carried these hanging corpses, high up, far beyond where an ordinary mortal might climb—and if not a corpse, then the remnant of bones—a skull and spinal cord, an arm bone through a noose, a series of skulls strung together by a length of cord.
Ophion shivered. “Some of these dead men sought to enter Myrryd. Others were the mortal rats, trying to escape the red city. See the pale ones? When they are possessed, they seek their death after a time. Their flesh has been skinned, or has rotted. The Laughing Ones are done with the flesh, and have no use for it. They kill their hosts from within the body as a worm wriggles through the flesh of a fish. The mortals who are their victims are alive until the end. The spirits invade the flesh. Men go mad from it, and pain is their doorway, and death, their release.”
I looked among the many enormous trees and saw many bones and many bodies swaying.
“I do not fear them,” I said. “For it is true that spirits may harm mortals, but among the immortal dead, as we are, what mischief may they do? I have known that necromancers speak to the dead to learn of future events. I would like to speak with these Laughing Ones, for if they see the future, I would learn it from them.”
“Do not even say this thing,” Ophion gasped. “It is blasphemy. The Laughing Ones are not merely spirits. They come in vibration, and the pain of their entry is as the worst tortures devised by men.”
“I hear no laughter. Perhaps they no longer haunt these woods.”
Grudgingly, he nodded. “It is silent, but for the wind above us. Perhaps they sleep, or have wandered elsewhere. But do not wish to meet them. When they find entrance through your flesh, it is a terrible feeling, like a thousand invisible insects burrowing beneath the skin.”
“You have felt this yourself?”
He nodded. I felt great pity for him, more now than when I had first seen him. Ophion had suffered much. He had sustained humiliations and tortures I could not imagine. “The hungry spirits invade the body, even of the immortal dead. But do not speak of them, for speaking of them may awaken their hunger.”
As we walked among the trees, Ophion paused to sniff, as if this would help him find his bearings and the direction toward Myrryd’s red city. I began to hear a distant sound as if a seagull were calling out to its mates.
Ophion froze in his path. “Do you hear it?”
I nodded.
The piercing shriek seemed closer, and it was followed by a series of staccato bursts—a cackling laughter that seemed to fly far above us, with the wind.
“We must be silent and still. They may pass over us. If they speak to you, do not answer, for to do so is to invite them.”
We stood frozen to the spot. The branches of the trees of the grove began to sway and creak. Whirling leaves spun at the edge of the path. Within the leaves and debris, I nearly made out the shape of a man or a boy standing there. The leaves flew out and landed on the tall grass. The sound of laughter grew louder—a cackling, a giggle, a loud honk of a laugh, and each sound sent shivers down my spine, for it was like listening to several people who had lost their minds, and circled around us. I felt a whir of wind so strong at my ears it was like the beat of a drum against me, and the laughter had grown deafening as vibrations pushed against my flesh.
In my mind, I heard a strange melodic voice, like a choirboy about to sing. You are in our woods.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Your flesh smells sweet to us.
As the voice spoke to me, I felt what seemed a rough, wet tongue licking up my back as if it had crawled under my tunic.
You taste like the dead. The voice seemed disappointed.
“I am dead,” I said. “Like you.”
But you have flesh. You must give us some. Give us! Give us!
“Take it,” I said.
None give their flesh willingly, the voice said.
“You must enter me to own this flesh,” I said.
Ophion was wide-eyed, watching me. As soon as he sensed that the spirit was only interested in me, he scrambled away and slumped down at some distance, watching what would be done to me.
“Inside me,” I said.
You are kind to invite us, the spirit said, and in seconds, I felt a burning heat at my back, and it seemed that small hands were there, pushing at my flesh, and moving through it.
As if a wind had crossed through my mouth, into my lungs, I felt the gusty presence of a spirit within me.
The laughter began to die down, as I became more focused on the feeling of possession. It was as if someone had squeezed into my body with me, and pushed against my thoughts.
I closed my eyes.
Behind my eyes, I saw several misty shapes watching me.
We cannot wear your flesh, dead man, the spirits said. For the flesh of the immortal dead is our tomb. It is living flesh we seek. Release us, and we will leave. If you do not, we will always be here within you.
I will release you—if you tell me of the future, I said.
It is unwise to imprison us, immortal dead man.
I only seek answers that the spirits may know. You are not ordinary spirits, Laughing Ones. You must know much of the past, and more of the future.
The Laughing Ones went silent for minutes. And then, You do not seem a necromancer, dead man. We will tell what we can, but you cannot compel us. Be quick and we will be gone. Do not tempt us to stay inside your flesh for very long, for even the immortal dead may lose sanity when we possess them. We have spent time in the wormholes of your companion’s flesh, for we smelled his rank odor as we surrounded you.
I wish to know the future.
What future would you wish to see?
Is there more than one future?
Oh, many futures, and each in a different world, dead man. Your understanding limits you. You exist here, and you exist beyond the Veil. Or did Merod Al Kamr, the great teacher of the Priests of Blood, show you nothing? For we sense him here within you.
Does he speak to you? I asked.
Only you speak to us, dead man.
Do you know of Myrrydanai sorcery?
The Laughing Ones began cackling again, then grew silent. Those devils! the spirits said. It has been many lives since they have haunted our wood. They would not return here without their Dark Madonna to protect them. It was they who cursed us, and kept us from the threshold of Death. If one were here, we would devour it. We would eat even the shadow of it.
Is there a future of their unmaking?
The spirits went silent. I thought they had left my body, when suddenly they grew as a bright light in a pitch-black chamber.
There are but two futures of the Myrrydanai, they said. In one, their defeat is in a ritual of the Great Serpent, which we cannot know. In the other, they bring Queen Medhya into flesh, and their plagues cover the Earth, and spirits are enslaved as well as the living. In that future, even we might be dissolved into the ether, for Medhya has no place for us in her kingdom. The world will be overta
ken by both ice and fire, and the sky will burn while the oceans freeze. The Veil will tear and those who have slept since the Old Times will crawl the Earth again and be the devouring gods.
Tell me of the ritual that may stop this, I said.
We are but hungry spirits, and do not know such things. Only the Anointed One will know.
I am that Anointed One, I said. I am Maz-Sherah of the tribe of the Fallen Ones of Medhya.
Dead man, you are no one to us, they said. We have met other Anointed Ones who sought such as you seek, such as the one who cowers now among the tall grasses. We smell Myrrydanai in your grave. You are doomed, whether you pass into the city of Myrryd, or whether you remain with us. The Maz-Sherah is a lie from priests who have long ago been defeated.
But there are prophecies that have been fulfilled, I said.
Prophecy is empty when it comes from the mouth of the Queen of Myrryd. For in her blood these were written upon dried skins of mortals. Yet who made such prophecy? Who fulfills it but the one that the Dark Mother seeks? Perhaps you fulfill a prophecy of your own destruction, dead man. You are doomed, whether you defeat your enemy or do not. Enough, for we have shown what we can. Release us now, or we will remain with you forever and show you visions of that doom and you will despair of it and never leave this place again.
“I release you,” I said aloud.
The moment I spoke, I felt burning heat, as if many hot stones had been pressed into the flesh of my back. If someone had told me that my flesh opened up at the base of my spine, and a creature made of thorn and stinger wriggled free of my innards, I would not have doubted it, for it felt just so.
I opened my eyes as a wind arose about me, and a funnel of air filled with leaves and dried grass and twigs spun in a cyclone about my body, ever widening. The heat was intense, and I felt small, invisible hands touch my face, as mad laughter rose upward into the air and swiftly was silenced. The corpses of men swayed from the tallest branches of the trees around me, moved by the touch of the departing spirits.
Swiftly came the empty silence again, punctuated only by Ophion’s yawp as he cried out to me that I had been a fool to let the Laughing Ones invade my body.
3
“I cannot go with you to the old city,” he said flatly, once I’d gotten him to calm a bit. “My brother, you are not fit for this. You invite the spirits into your flesh? Ask them to possess you? They might have remained for many nights, burrowing beneath your heart. They could draw you into the sunlight of daybreak just to smell the sizzle of your meat.” He clasped his hands to the sides of his head. “You cannot be trusted here. We have no power here. It is madness. It is a dangerous place, too dangerous for you. Your lady was good to warn you of this place. You cannot be Maz-Sherah if you take such chances as this, my brother. We must turn back now, for I see nothing but Extinguishing ahead with you as my brother.”
“The spirits did not torment me,” I said. “They answered my question.”
“What did they tell you, brother? What?”
“They told me of my doom,” I said.
He nodded rapidly. “I see it, too, brother. It does not take necromancy to see that your doom awaits you. The Lady Pythia knows much, and we should have listened to her.”
“You were once possessed by these spirits,” I said. “Surely they foretold your doom as well?”
He shot me a suspicious glance, his eyes narrowing as if trying to read my thoughts. “I do not remember.”
“They are doomspeakers. That is their madness. Tell me, how long did the spirits remain in your body?”
He turned away from me and began walking ahead. “I do not remember,” he said. “Hurry. The night is almost half-over, and we still have far to go. But we will extinguish here, I am sure of it. It sucks the soul force, and we will surely rot in these woods...”
I followed him along the narrow path, pushing through the overgrowth, cutting it with my razien when the vines grew too thick and the way was obstructed. All the while, Ophion would glance up into the trees to remark on the hanging dead, or he would crouch down near a bramble to sniff out any lingering spirits that might attack us.
The night was well more than half-gone when the landscape gradually changed. The forest gave way to grassland, and then to a rocky, dry terrain.
As we continued, I noticed that the rock beneath our feet became like shattered glass, and then a black dust. Above, the stars lit the Earth with pale light that reflected on the dust beneath our feet. A silence pervaded the landscape, and I longed to hear some noise, even if it was the wind itself.
Dark forms loomed ahead of us, like giant chess pieces on a dusty grid.
“Statues,” Ophion whispered, so quietly I had to ask him to repeat himself. “Statues, do you see?” He scrambled over to one of them and pointed at its feet. “Gifts from mortals. Gifts from vampyres. Honoring Medhya. Honoring Ghorien. Honoring the Nahhash priests, honoring the Priests of Blood. And the kings—so many kings here.”
“What does this word mean?” I asked, as I touched the base of a fallen statue. The word engraved at the foot: Asyrr.
“That’s what the kings were called. The Asyrr. Seven rulers of seven kingdoms, but they were crowned at Myrryd, and, in their Extinguishing, are in those tombs of the city.”
“Warrior kings?”
“Great kings who waged great wars and brought peace, as well. Two were female, five male, but all great warriors and with knowledge of sorcery, too, for they were blessed of the Serpent. But all failed in their reigns. Some failed swiftly, within a few hundred years. Others created great civilizations to the west and east, the north and south. These kingdoms lasted many thousand years. But in the final battles, they lost their kingdoms, and their powers waned. Floods and fires took many of their lands and people. Great cities collapsed, and what had once been theirs to guard—mortal man—brought them their Extinguishing, for all of us who are vampyre are vulnerable to the sword brought against us at dawn and the burning of fire and the stabbing of the heart. Whether it is within a hundred years or ten thousand, someone will always hunt us, and someone will betray us. See, this statue.” Ophion pointed to a faceless statue made of white stone, fallen and broken in several places. “Here it says on this face, anguis—this is the word of betrayal. When a traitor of Myrryd was caught, a gift such as this might arrive after the death of the traitor, to show loyalty to Myrryd.”
“I have seen this word before,” I said. “In my mortal life.” I remembered it scrawled across a gate at Hedammu when I went into that poisoned city to find my death in the towers that loomed above its hills. “I saw it at the entrance to a city of vampyres. Beneath it, a strange circle.”
Ophion thought a moment, scratching the dried leather along his scalp. He crouched down and scrawled a circle that spiraled in on itself.
“That’s it,” I said.
“It was a warning to other Fallen Ones,” Ophion said. He stood up and rubbed the drawing out with his foot. “Anguis means a betrayer is near. That circle represents the Great Serpent. A vampyre warned others that a betrayer of our father was within those gates. The vampyre within those gates would not be one to be trusted.”
I didn’t say Pythia’s name, but I knew this was the creature meant in this warning to others of the tribe.
Anguis, I thought. Betrayer.
He drew two other symbols, with the bones of his toes. The first was like an arrow with three straight lines across its tail. The second was like a pitchfork with only two tines, and a curved tail.
“Have you seen these signs, also?” he asked.
“No.”
“We will see many of them below, in the city,” he said, somberly. “The first means a place is forbidden. And the second is a sign that the Akhnetur gather there.”
“Akhnetur?”
“I warned you of them. Small, bitey creatures,” Ophion said. He held out his hand, the white of his bones thrusting from the dried flesh around his fingers. “Not much larger than t
his. Denizens of these dead cities. They thrive on the juice of the Flesh of Medhya, which grows among its templed gardens.”
“They drink from the Veil flower?”
“Its nectar gathers in the small cup of its petals,” he said. “It is honey to them. Wings like a locust. Tail like a scorpion. Claws like knives. They nest in the dark and the damp, in high places and low. They swarm when they are disturbed. Should we disturb such a hive, we may be picked clean of flesh in minutes. Remember, we have no special protection here. Do not assume you are a match for such creatures. I have seen what they can do.”
He erased these two symbols with his foot, and we went on through the darkling plain with its rubble and idols. Each statue was crudely carved, and some were simply giant heads of gods and goddesses. Some were of monsters with three heads, others were doglike creatures, and several were of dragonlike serpents, wings extended, talons spread wide.
Hundreds of them littered the ground, and we stepped over and around them.
Ophion fell back to walk beside me. “My brother, you must feel it. Myrryd is sacred. Sacred and eternal. Do you feel it?”
“It feels like a city of tombs,” I said.
“Ah, yes, brother, there are many tombs in the city. Kings and priests extinguished and rotted. Many bones have taken root. Sacred and profane.” He whispered this with that trembling in his voice, and I wondered at his fear. “Many gardens of the dead. Temples of worship, and more, so much more.”
“The tree of the Nahhashim?
“The Nahhash tree, within which the conjurings of the Nahhashim live.” Ophion nodded. “It stands at the center of a sacred garden, surrounded by the vines of the Flesh of Medhya. This tree holds much power, though it does not bring forth leaf. Impossible to touch, brother.”
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