“We have made good time, for even the storm has not impeded us, but it will as we venture over these mountains. The cliffs are but a half-night’s journey, if this fierce wind ends, a full night if not. Where the plagues have been many, where the snow gathers thick, these cliffs are miles from a white-towered city,” I said. “The Myrrydanai haunt this kingdom, and you will sense them there. But you must not go near it, for we must meet others at the Akkadite Cliffs. You must be cautious, for there are vampyres called Morns under the guidance of the White Robes, and they will not recognize you or our company as their tribe, for their minds have been destroyed, and they hear only the Myrrydanai. I will keep watch for you and draw your stream toward our lair.”
I passed him the Eclipsis in its pouch.
He looked at it in his hands, and then at me. “My brother, this is for you only. My touch does not bring its deathlight.” He tried to pass it back to me, but I folded his hands around it.
“Tie it at your waist,” I said. “Wrap it as tight in its pouch as you can. When you are near—and I will keep watch, for if you stay on course, it will be but a night at most—I will call it. It will come to me, but hold fast to it. It will guide you to the spot where I stand. The others will follow. Do not let anyone touch this, and pass it to no one.”
“You will fly...during the day?” he asked.
“I wear the skin of the Great Serpent,” I told him. “And from my skin, I may call the Raptorius armor. The sun cannot burn me while this exists in my flesh. Now, my brother, sleep, and at nightfall, lead them north and west. When you feel my strength in the stream, I shall also feel you. I will call the orb to my side, and you shall come with it.”
We embraced, and I left him and the company to their rest.
Tired though I was, I drew out the cloak of skin from my flesh, and from it, the suit of armor with its helm. Raising the staff, I moved through the sky at sunrise feeling the heat of that great burning chariot upon my face for the first time since my nineteenth year. Yet the storms continued, and the sky grew dark before midday, and what was not a tearing at the clouds of light and thunderclaps was a gloom of snow and ice, pelted from the roiling black clouds. I moved more swiftly as I shapeshifted into a flock of ravens in the sky, as I did not wish to be recognized as a demon returning to Taranis-Hir’s towers. The wind blew at my back, and my shifting was difficult, but I held fast to it. The sorcery of such shapeshifting is intricate, for I felt like nothing other than myself, with the Nahhashim clutched in my fist and my wings drawn out from that scaly armor. Yet, at the same time, I was aware of the multitude of forms I had become—I was infinite in this form, and I saw from every raven’s vantage point, and felt their many wings beat against the whistling wind. It was a pleasure to shapeshift now, and I felt a glorious upsurge of energy from it, for I was a multitude, and I was a single being. It was as if the boundary of my flesh had expanded to include many within one movement forward.
The whirling storm did not abate until I saw the trees of Brittany, and the ancient wood of my ancestors, after nightfall.
Much of the forest had been burned in the past few weeks, and the fires of Taranis-Hir were blinding along its towers so that it seemed like daylight there—made more brilliant by the heavy blanket of snow that covered all, thicker than any winter before, for even trees groaned under the ice, and many fell to it, and the white of the land could barely be distinguished from the white of the city itself.
I remained far beyond the sight of its towers, and flew low into the forest from the east, rising up to the Akkadite Cliffs, then leaping down onto a ledge, weary and exhausted.
2
Within the intricate series of steps, beyond the cavern vault, I expected to hear the sounds of mortals, or to find the dark chambers of rock where Pythia and the soldiers we had raised from the battlefield might wait among these warrens of dirt and stone. Instead, silence greeted me in the cool, damp shadows, and the need for rest overcame me, though I did not desire it.
I lay down in the green shadow of the roots of the Akkadite trees themselves, thrust into the rock of the cave, and there in the earth, I slept several hours.
My dreams were disturbed by a whispering at my ear, and I recognized the voice as that of Enora herself, as if she had sent her spirit form into my soul. Come to us, Falconer, was all she said.
Someone pushed at my shoulder, and I awoke suddenly. My eyes adjusted to the shadowed dark, and I recognized the woman who stood over me.
3
Calyx sat down beside me. She called out a name, and an elder woman dressed in the brown cloth tunic of the forest dwellers came in, limping as if she had damaged her left leg. I tried to speak, but my thirst left a whisper to my voice.
Calyx drew back the woman’s sleeve, and offered the stranger’s arm to me to drink. Neither of them spoke, nor did they have to speak, for I read sorrow upon their faces, its veil drawn away, the plague beneath her skin a glow of amber.
When I had drunk my fill, leaving the old woman sleepy, I asked Calyx of the army that had been raised among the mortals.
“Hundreds dead,” she said. “Fewer than a hundred left.”
4
Calyx led me up the hidden paths of the cliffs, and within those quarters she shared with her fellow mortals, she showed me the wounded, the dying, the ones who had not survived the night. Many men lay with broken bones and bodies. Their sunken eyes told me a tale of hopeless battle, and women, bound with bloodied rags at their shoulders and waists who had fought with valor against an enemy with none. Their faces all seemed of one face—despair and loss, for none of them were untouched by the horrors of the Myrrydanai, the scratches of the Morns, the bites of the Chymer wolves.
Calyx told me of the fight. The armies of the Akkadites—raised within weeks by a knight called Per Ambler who wished to destroy all who served the Disk—rose in a thunderous host to besiege the city. Their spies within the walls of Taranis-Hir would open the gates, and the mortal warriors would cut down all who opposed them. “But the spies had already been found out, and their heads hung across the high gates, as if in a necklace. The White Robe priests flew like spirits as they rode creatures like dragons, and drew swords, quickly leaping upon the knights and foot soldiers. Their mounts devoured our horses, tearing them at the spine, grabbing them in their jaws like jackals running down deer. Enora rode out upon her white horse, and raised the staff—and from it, a gray mist came, and all who breathed this poisoned mist fell to the snowy ground, and their skin bubbled and dissolved as if the blood boiled from beneath the skin.”
Fallen knights and soldiers lay on straw mats near a roaring fire at the cliff’s ledge. Several did not even look up as we passed by, for they stared intently at the flames as if willing their minds to escape this place while their bodies could not.
“When did this happen?” I asked Calyx.
“When the moon died.”
“One night past?”
She nodded, and did not show me any kindness in her glance. “You have much to answer for, vampyre, for you are too late for us. Taranis-Hir holds power beyond what I even believed.”
“It is not yet the solstice night,” I said. “You should have waited. One more night.”
She had been pushed too much in the past several weeks, and I saw in her anger the buildup of years of waiting for such battles. Calyx snarled and snapped as she told me of the bloody battle—the wolves, the phantoms, the fires that came from the staff and burned men alive on horseback. “We could not wait. They came to us. We had no choice. We did not know if you would ever return. No one believed you had survived.”
I could not fathom this—I asked her how many had died, what had occurred, why could they not have waited another night?
She shot me a fiery glance. “Another night? How many days should pass before their Chymer wolves came to us? Enora astride a white horse that breathes smoke, raising that staff—that was stolen from you—to tear apart the flesh of many men? We waited for you.
They hunted us. It was not a battle, but a capture—a hunting party. The hunters had skill and sorcery on their side, and all we had were men and women willing to fight for what they believed. My sisters and I called up the Briary Maidens for your safety and to find out what delayed you in your search for this mask, and those sisters of the brambles told us you had a whore’s legs wrapped around you. Even those elementals have fled the wood, for too much has been uprooted, too much burned, and the bog sorcery has gone to something deeper of the unknown world. All is a wasteland, and Enora, its queen. From other lands, other kingdoms, more soldiers come to fight for her—for the Disk dream has torn their reason from them, and replaced it with faith in this cursed Virgin of Shadows. The solstice no longer mattered! You left us to this!”
She quieted as she glanced around at the wounded, who stirred, and several looked over at the two of us and began murmuring among themselves.
“Look at them,” she whispered. “They are mortal men and women. They are in pain, and our healers cannot take away many of these wounds. Some burn within, and some without, and others have bones that will not set to heal. They are not like you blood-drinkers. The White Robes broke bone and spirit down along the forest floor, and used such magick as I have not seen before. From the bogs, they called up their infernal lizards to ride, and from the art of their alchemists, they made poisons to tip their arrows. A single shot, in the arm, in the thigh, might fell a man and leave him in burning agony. The Morns dropped down like vultures, and drew men and women up in their arms, and dropped them from the clouds that they might break against the ice of the canals and sink below into the frozen water. The Chymer wolves tore at others. Few of the Disk knights fought at all—for why should they, when such monsters did their work? We fell by the hundreds, and Per Ambler was the first, for he led the charge. The bravest of men I have known, and he raised his sword against Enora herself—but his horse was brought down by the monsters, and when he was on foot, three White Robes gathered around him and with great pleasure tore off his armor, and with his own sword, eviscerated him that the steam rose from within his fundament. His cries shook all who heard them, and it was not until his blood had soaked the ice like some new dark bog coming from the deep, that the priest stopped their torture of that goodly knight. By then, many had gone to the arms of Death, and of those who remained, all scattered. I, too, fled upon a horse, though I wished to turn and fight to my death. But the screeches of the Morns, and the howls of the Chymer wolves—it was the mouth of Hell itself. Why did you not return before this? If you had but been here...”
I told her of what had occurred, but she told me she did not care for my stories. “We had to attack, Falconer. We had to attack, for Per Ambler, the renegade knight, had gathered an army of hundreds of men—all loyal to kings far and away, and some from the Aquitaine, others from Cornwall, and others from the mountains to the north. Pagan and Christian fought side by side, for these warriors did not fall under the spell of the Disk dream. Too many of our people were caught and tortured and burned, and we could not wait for a flying devil to return to save us.”
“How many died?” I asked.
“I do not know an exact count,” she said with fury in her eyes. “They had come from every kingdom to fight against her, called by Per Ambler, called by those of distant Christendom, called by the pagans of the endless groves. Some who didn’t die in battle were captured. Others, in terror at the sorceries and horrors of the wolves, surrendered. We are abandoned by all gods here, Falconer. We could not even save many of the wounded, for the Chymer wolves tore at those who fell, and others were speared as they lay upon the ground. Of those who surrendered, their heads appeared this morning upon the pikes of the city gate. There was nothing...nothing...we tried all we had,” she said. “We waited for you.”
“Did any escape?”
She glanced about the room, to the men and women who lay in pain, watching us. “These are all we could manage. There are twelve of us who are able. Seventy or so wounded.” She glared at me. “Old women stood with staves in their hands, attacking the Chymers as they rushed them in their wolf forms. Old women with nothing but their prayers and their fury. Torn down in moments.”
“I am sorry, Calyx. Forgive me.”
“The time for such sorrow is past. I waited and I told these knights and men to wait more. Two more nights, I said—one night! No, an hour. But the wolves came to us, and their queen, upon her horse, her staff drawing unearthly light—and where she touched, fires burst across trees and rock. Since you left, the White Robe sorceries have grown stronger, and the bogs have given up new poisons to them. And yet, none touched me—no sword, no priest, no Morn. My weapons, they stole in the struggle, but no one would cut me down when I had no defense. The plague within me made me untouchable to them. Even the Chymer wolves shied away from me, for they fear what lives beneath my skin. And yet, I cannot release it, though I have cut myself. I cannot send it out to attack them.” She held up her arms, and drew back the cloth to show me the newly formed scars. “What is within me, I tried to pass to them. But it would not go. This plague that lives in my flesh and marks me—a plague maiden—brings no power but protection. And I would rather die than live beneath the towers of that city. But I thought you would come. I held my hope, Falconer, when none did.” She began weeping, and covered her eyes with her hands.
I wanted to go to her and hold her that she might feel some comfort, but I held back.
She told of the horrors of the battle, of the men who were skinned alive by the White Robes, of the women set afire as they fought, of the shrieking of human and animal. She spoke of the blood-eagle, the cutting and tearing of a soldier’s ribs, pulling them out of the back so that they resemble crimson wings—done while the victim was alive. “Their dragons—large as horses—drawn from rituals of the bogs, creatures with spines and scales who obey the White Robes who ride them.”
“I have heard of these,” I said. “They are the Lamiades—and have served the Myrrydanai before.”
“They devour men and poison with their spines,” she said. She talked about the howling of the Chymers when they were in wolf form. “The White Robe sorcery has made them larger than wolves of the forest and mountains, and their jaws catch many of our men and women, for they run faster than our horses, and only a spear or arrow aimed for their hearts will stop them. They have a piercing howl. When it’s heard by the man standing near, he’ll lose his hearing and the world will spin, for the sound drives us into madness. The Chymer women—when not in their wolf forms—call the dead from skull and bone beneath those Tomb Gardens of Taranis-Hir. Enora’s staff brings some substance to these underworld spirits, and they are drawn into the living through rituals of the Myrrydanai. From the Barrow-Depths, the ancient dead come—spirits of fury and war from an ancient age of evil—and they possess the living soldiers who have been blessed by the White Robes for such duty. To stop them, they must be obliterated by sword and spear, for a single blade to their hearts will not end their lives.”
“Possessed? All?”
She shook her head. “Only a few dozen spirits were drawn up from the dredge of the Barrow-Depths. But these leap from body to body, so that when one knight falls, the soul called up by the necromancers flies into another. And another. Our wounded believe that Enora herself creates nightmares in their minds, for she speaks to them in dreams. Her sorcery has grown stronger as the solstice approaches. And the atrocities of Enora’s guard...”
She drew me out along the narrow rocks, where a crumbling window looked out on the distant towers. She pointed beyond the forest, to great torches that lit the forest roads that led to the gate of Taranis-Hir. “Those are prisoners, covered with pitch and straw, set alight. Many were alive when the fires began to burn—human torches to light the road into the forest.
“The world will be ravaged, and the plagues will come again. Enora will swallow other kingdoms, for many fall under her spell. I have even felt the pull of its tide.” She p
ointed to the staff I held. “You hold this now.”
“It is a second staff,” I said. “But as long as Enora holds its brother, she will have much power, for it contains some magick of the gray priests of the Nahhashim.” I turned the staff lightly in my hand. “Even I do not fully understand the depth of this sorcery.”
“They call Enora their Queen of Wastelands, and the Queen of the Great Forest, and the Lady of Wolves. She is the end of us. When we saw another vampyre come from the south, we thought you would be with her. I held that hope as I watched the creature soar across the sky. Yet, even one of your tribe has gone to Taranis-Hir, a traitor.”
Pythia, I thought. “Were there others with her?” Even as I asked this, my hope began to die. She and I had raised many men from the crusading warriors, and made them take oaths to us. Yet, had none returned with her. Had she left them among those mountain caverns? Had they simply extinguished soon after rising, for they had no mortal vessel nearby to drink? Would Pythia do this?
Yes, I knew. She would. She was capable of cruelty beyond imagining, and yet I had come to believe the mask had changed her. I wanted to believe that she had a spark of love within her—not for me, but for her child’s own future.
Why would she go to the Myrrydanai? What would she gain?
The Queen of Wolves Page 24