But as we reached the tower White-Horse, it was as if I had left the Earth’s sphere, and had ridden into a dream.
Into a vision.
You will find me in the place of your visions.
All slowed down, though I heard the cheers and cries of my men and women as they brought their merciless attack into the halls of that cursed city, and as the vampyres dropped into the pockets of resistance along the alleyways, and drank deep from the enemy who fought against them with waning effort.
Before the towers of the Lady White-Horse, had been erected a scaffolding, and upon it, a great stone that was blue as lapis, flat as an altar, and all about it, White Robes stood.
There upon the altar, the same as visions I had been given since the Sacred Kiss had come to me—and yet, slightly different, as if the visions from the Veil, from the Priest of Blood, and from Medhya herself were transmuting, and changing as I had changed. As if my becoming Maz-Sherah within the Asmodh depths had touched the truth of these visions. I felt locked in the moment, unable to move.
The vampyre Pythia, bound to the flat-cut stone quarried from the Barrow-Depths of Taranis-Hir, seemed to wear a fierce golden sun upon her face.
Each time I had dreamed of this, seen it within a Veil vision, I had not truly understood that one day I would come to this perfect moment, when the vision became flesh and blood and fire and ash.
The sight of the altar and scaffolding; the towers beyond it, the smoke beyond the walls and the fires within the foundries; winged creatures in the red sky diving and rising and diving again like a war of the heavens; below them, the white-robed priests, and, upon her horse, Enora.
Pythia, held by the shadow priests, turned her mask toward me. Her wings drew out from her shoulders, great spurs at their bows, the dragon wings of our tribe. Yet she could not fly, nor did she struggle.
We were frozen in tableau—my wings curved for flight, while I sat astride the stallion, my enemy in his final breath of life.
The roaring host of others, swords raised, stones at midshot, those falling to earth in death and Extinguishing and those whose thrusts tore flesh—all were still as I heard the Dark Madonna’s voice:
“All is lost, Maz-Sherah, and you will see the Queen of Wolves raise the burning sword to your heart. You will know that your skin will be flayed and worn as a robe of victory as Medhya’s once was worn by the Myrrydanai. Your blood will be drunk as Medhya’s was by the Kamr priests. Your bones broken and thrown to the dogs, as the priests of the Nahhash did with our Dark Mother’s bones. You will understand—only then—what it means to be the Anointed sacrifice of your tribe.”
It was the mask upon Pythia’s face that seemed to speak those words.
The sky was red with a bloody night; the towers of White-Horse lit with human torches; the armies of night on either side; the smell in the air of defeat and terror; and the cries of mortal and immortal alike as we heard the great tearing of the invisible as it birthed the Dark Madonna.
Many of the Akkadites who survived to enter this inner sanctum had stopped fighting, and even the soldiers of the enemy looked upon the altar with awe. The three remaining kings of the Asyrr—Sarus and Illuyan and Athanat—and the two queens who still haunted the skies—Nekhbet and Namtaryn—had sheathed their swords and dropped the mortals from whom they drank. For we were in the presence of the Dark Mother’s touch, and we felt it as the breath of the Veil, like the Sacred Kiss itself burned down among us in heat and despair.
The golden mask covering Pythia’s face had grown as if it were a living thing. Radiant bursts off the brow formed a crown of glistening spikes, and the lower half had elongated so that it covered her chin. The ancient writing of Myrryd itself had been scrawled across its face.
She sat, roped to the altar stone. The White Robe called Ghorien—his rotting hand showing the birthmark to me as if he wanted me to know he was there—held his instrument of sorcery, the Staff of the Nahhashim, taken at last from Enora.
The mask spoke with the voice of Medhya, the Dark Madonna, mother of my race. She whispered to me, so close it was as if she embraced me as she spoke. “If you but bow to me, you will be my consort, Falconer. I will raise you up and fulfill your true destiny. You will become greater than the Serpent himself, who betrayed me as I lay in his arms. Do not fear, for you will be a god. We will give birth to gods. We shall undo all that mankind has wrought, and all of earth shall be our kingdom. All these you see will tremble before you, if you will sacrifice this traitorous creature and open the Veil.”
As I looked across at the kings and the queens of Myrryd, and at their many warriors and servants who had survived the night, I saw in their faces what was in my own: they too had shared this vision, although they had not understood in their long Extinguishing.
Ghorien’s skin sloughed off, dropping to the wooden planks at his robe’s edge. With a dark hand, he pointed to me. “You have known your destiny, Maz-Sherah.”
Maz-Sherah, he whispered in my mind. You have lost a son to the sacrifice. He pointed to a golden bowl to the right of Pythia. It was thickened with blood. You will lose a daughter to this as well.
From among the six robed Myrrydanai, they brought my daughter, Lyan, whose mouth was covered with rope, and whose eyes were blindfolded, and her hands bound.
You were born to this, Ghorien whispered to me, and turned his free hand toward Pythia, who remained silent. Take the Asmodh blade and tear out the traitor vampyre’s heart with its fire. Medhya will come into her, and breathe life into her flesh. The mask of Datbathani welcomes her, and has drunk the immortality of this traitor that she might live in the flesh forever and walk again, a goddess among the vessels of the mortal world.
“I was born to this,” I said. “But the ritual is unknown to me.”
As I spoke, I heard a scream and turned in the direction of the sound. There, held by a bloodied Disk knight, Calyx—rags and veils across her face—had been captured. Her hands were bound before her, and the knight dragged the plague maiden over to Enora. The Queen of Taranis-Hir dismounted, wrapping her wolf pelts tight about her, and drew out her dark sword, holding it to Calyx’s throat, all the while watching me. A servant brought another golden bowl and held it near Enora’s blade.
Enora drew apart the shreds of cloth and veil, revealing Calyx’s face—beautiful as the final plague of the Veil burned beneath her skin, a red-yellow fire in her blood. Enora’s blade skimmed downward at Calyx’s throat, cutting through the cloth, until all clothes fell from Calyx’s form. She stood there, bound at the wrists, naked, and her body shone with the deep-red light from the Veil itself.
Enora brought the blade back to her throat, and gently rubbed it back and forth against Calyx’s skin. I felt powerless as I stood there, watching this obscene ritual. As the sword dipped into the cut—which steamed as it poured from Calyx’s neck—all who witnessed this heard a low growl as if the plague blood itself were alive.
I knew what Calyx held within her, knew from the moment I had drunk from her. Yet I did not understand its power, for I too held it within.
The Veil itself, in the blood.
But I was immortal, and could not be the doorway of this otherworld.
Only mortal blood could carry it—if the mortal lived. And Calyx, the changeling, the daughter of the elementals, mortal and yet touched by the spirits at birth, had become a harbor for the final plague of the Veil:
The door itself, the thin caul of its skin, drawn back.
In her blood, in the steam of it.
Enora did not murder her, but bled her, and the blood went into another golden bowl.
My son’s blood, consecrated to Medhya at his birth; and Calyx’s blood, now consecrated by the Myrrydanai.
Calyx fought and bit, but Enora held her tight in an iron grip.
And as the blood splashed into the bowl, we all felt the Veil fall back, like dark water splashed against the face, like the silence of a tomb upon the whole Earth.
Then Enora
dropped Calyx to the earth and brought the wide bowl up the steps to the scaffold’s floor.
I felt hypnotized, nearly possessed as I watched.
And from my lips, words came—the Asmodh secrets, the language before there was language, in a series of tongues and hisses and growls and roars, I spoke the ancient ritual of those dwellers of the deep places as if I had no choice, as if these words had been written upon my soul.
And yet, Pythia whispered in my mind even as the words came through. Do what you must to close it, for you have the blade of sacrifice.
When I looked at her, tears ran down her golden face, and I knew in those tears that she had not betrayed me. She had gone to her fate, knowing that this moment could not be avoided any longer.
Knowing that to bring back the warriors from Saracen lands would just prolong suffering.
Knowing that I must cut her throat to complete the ritual, and wondering what would reign within me—Medhya’s call, or Merod, who had given his existence to me that I might come to this moment with strength.
It was from that blood within me that I stopped up my mouth and its ritual words that had no meaning to me though I knew its aim, and I drew the Nameless from its sheath.
With the Staff of the Nahhashim in my right hand, and the sword at my left, I brought its flame up and called to Merod within my blood, and to the Great Serpent, and even to those Asmodh sorceries that I did not fathom. I did not wish to take the life of Pythia, or to end the life of that child who had not yet known birth—for I remembered my mean and shallow birth in the fields, not far from that scaffold, in those days of an innocent world that was not touched by such dark sorcery.
I did not wish this child to have less of a chance in this world than I, nor did I want this world to darken under Medhya’s rule.
I slammed the Nahhashim staff against the one Ghorien carried and plunged the fiery blade into him, growing the fire into a conflagration along his shadow. The two staffs, as they met, cracked, and a bolt of lightning shot through my arm, knocking me backward.
But I regained my balance, and heard Ghorien—as his shadow caught fire—whisper within me, She comes, Maz-Sherah, she comes, for the door is open!
I glanced at my daughter, and the White Robes who held her drew blades against her and would kill her in a moment if I did not act.
I looked at Lyan, who could not see me, and at Pythia, who watched me with terror in her eyes, for she knew that I would kill her, and I could not think otherwise for the Myrrydanai circled my thoughts, whispering among them.
I took the Nameless and curved its blade as a sacrificial dagger.
I pressed its sharp, jagged, burning edge into my heart.
6
As I fell to the planks, I looked up at Pythia and her last look was not of the terror she had just held, but a strange excitement—in my final breaths before the fires of the Asmodh took me into the Veil I realized that I had never understood her, or what she had done. She was mystery, then, and unfathomable.
I saw gray shapes emerge from the Nahhashim staffs that had met, and broken together. I watched these figures draw themselves, phantoms, from the white bone of the staffs.
The gray priests, I thought. The Nahhashim had come, but for me? To take me to the Veil, where terrible creatures and exiled gods and monsters are held prisoners from this earth by ancient Asmodh ritual?
They carried me—or I dreamed they did—for through the Veil I went, and felt a cold, bitter wind. For in my passing, Medhya crossed a tear of the Veil that grew smaller and smaller.
Had I failed? I tried to ask the gray priests, but these looked down at me with faces of pure light, and I did not grow afraid as I felt my last breath come.
I was no longer inside my flesh, nor did I seem to be in the Veil—I floated above my fallen body, which had burned near the chest and throat. The gray priests no longer were there, but I watched as Ghorien and the Myrrydanai dissolved as rain came down, and as I moved higher, away from my body.
This was the Extinguishing itself, and I was in my body, but also watching it from far above.
Enora went to retrieve the Nameless, but from beside me in the sky, a billowing cape dropped down—Ophion—who had watched all of this transpire. He leapt upon Enora as she crouched over my body, and tore her away from it, biting deeply at her throat, for she had no sorcery without the Nahhashim staff in her hand.
From my chest he drew out the broken blade, still smoldering, and went to Pythia, cutting the ropes that bound her.
Lifting the two half-staffs, broken at their centers, he brought them to my ashen wound, and though I did not hear his words, I knew what my brother—the Maz-Sherah who had gone with me to Myrryd, brought me to the source of our tribe, and allowed me to gain the blessing of the Great Serpent that he had so desired—was about.
Through the staff, he raised me from the dead.
Again, I saw the gray priests in some dark and lonesome place, and realized they drew me now through the halls of the dead. The statues of Lemesharra and Datbathani were there, their faces pure and victorious. And the third statue, of Medhya herself, had been beheaded by some conquering hero.
The echoes of mortal life were heard in this place, and I saw many shades pass as they went down through the endless corridor, led by the children of Death and their handmaidens.
But the gray priests carried me along, and as we went beneath a low arch, I opened my eyes to the corpse-vampyre’s face, watching me with wonder.
I heard the Great Serpent speak within me, words he had told me in the depths: You are the master of this sacred fire. It will serve you alone, but you must never let Medhya near the sword, for she has rituals to turn it against you.
7
I came from my Extinguishing like a fish gasping for air on land, and although only moments had passed since I had brought the blade to my heart, it seemed like hours had gone by.
I did not hear anyone at first, but gradually each sense returned, and I smelled the blood in the air, and heard Ophion cry out that I had returned from the dead.
I reached up with my arm and drew him down so that my lips were close to his ear. “You are truly my brother,” I gasped. “And for all you have suffered, you will become a king of this world, Maz-Sherah. You called the Nahhashim to bring me back to life.”
8
The burning fire of the Asmodh sorcery tore the Myrrydanai from the world into the Veil, just as I had brought the fire into my heart. Yet this fire was made of Asmodh sorcery, and could not harm the Great Serpent for long. The Great Serpent was the fire of the Asmodh, and I had taken this sacred fire into me—not a sacrifice, but a union with the Nameless itself. Through my burning heart, the shadow priests had been sucked as if by a tunnel of whirling wind and searing heat. The gray priests—the Nahhashim—had come from within the bone staff to ensure that the Serpent reborn would not be lost within Extinguishing or in the Veil itself.
But as I rose up, as the last shred of the shadow of the Myrrydanai faded, I listened for the sound of the Veil’s tearing. Medhya will come through. She will not accept this defeat. She has waited too long. I glanced over to Calyx, who had her hands pressed to the wound at her throat as she sat among her rags. Her skin no longer burned with the plague—it had found release in a bowlful of blood. Her face was pale, and her eyes sought mine. It was as if I read her thoughts: Enora. Medhya would use Enora.
The maiden I had once loved and known as Alienora, now a beautiful terror, had already fled. She let her robes and wolf pelts fall as she ran across to the tower entrance. I drew my wings out, ready to find her, but was soon distracted by the needs of my daughter and of Pythia herself. I saw torchlight at the slender windows of the Tower White-Horse, as Enora raced up the steps toward her chamber. Carrying the Nameless before me, I leapt into the air, flying up to the balcony at her chamber window, but just as I reached it, she shouted my name as if remembering who I had once been to her. “Aleric!”
And with that sound, she le
apt from the tower, just as I reached for her.
I crouched there along the tower wall, a gargoyle of a creature, my wings covering my form. I looked down at the broken body of this terrible queen, of this lost soul.
I could not bring myself to look out over those who stood, barely moving, still in shock from the events of the night. I could only look down at Enora’s face, and remember the maiden with whom I had once vowed eternal love.
Had the loss of the staff brought her self-knowledge? Had the sorcery that had held her so long finally freed her?
As I watched the lifeless body far below me, I felt a shudder within, and an icy touch at the base of my spine.
Medhya.
She had not given up.
The ritual that had begun was enough for her.
As I crouched there, I saw a slight movement in Enora’s left hand. A trembling, nothing more. For a moment, I hoped that she might still live. That she might somehow recover from this fall. And yet the dark blood that stained the snow around her did not offer much promise of life.
Then the dead woman’s eyes opened. They were shiny and black, and the moment I saw them, I leapt to the ground, flying swiftly, knowing that Medhya had used Enora after all.
The Queen of Wolves Page 31