Vermilion Dreams_A Vampire Fantasy Epic

by M. U. Riyadad

  “Who is your favorite poet? Why do you like them? Tell me something about their writing.”

  In Emel and all the Hulnesh languages, most words and syllables sounded distinct. Vowels had clear patterns, and tenses all had consistent roots. It was not difficult to make your way around Chaya or Mimenhi if you knew just pieces and fragments of the languages spoken there. But Angpur was different. Words could sound meshed together if spoken too fast. Thousands of words sounded the same, but were accented differently or spoken with certain tones to give context and meaning. Add to this the different variations of Angpur that were spoken at different times of the day, for reasons revolving around their worship of Raya, and Angpur was without question far more complex than all the others. It was the only language that had no predecessor, and had stayed consistent through the centuries. Likely, I thought, because it was so convoluted that no one wanted to change it after spending a lifetime learning it.

  “My favorite poet is the prophet Dh’hpur,” I replied, “because most of what she says is said between the lines and not in the words themselves. She was a master of eleven languages, and wrote across all of them, including Voz’ruhdal.”

  From the corner of my eyes, I saw Father smiling nervously. He rubbed his knuckles against his bearded chin, then poured himself wine with his other hand without looking. Father spoke Angpur, but not well. His glance went back and forth between Queen O’nell and me, clearly hoping what I’d said was satisfactory. Mother was listening, but her eyes were on a fly that was buzzing over a nearby table. I wished she would pay more attention here, but insects in the palace drove her mad. If you could’ve seen the rage in those eyes, the bloodshed and destruction they demanded from the fly, you would’ve understood also. She watched its every move with wolfish eyes. The veins at her temples turned a light blue. Her knuckles, a ghost white. Every few seconds, she would glance at all the guests nearby, looking to see if they’d noticed the fly. Then, she would curl her fingers around the handle of an invisible knife. In her mind, she meticulously planned how she would kill each and every person who might have noticed the insect. She would leave no witnesses. No pair of eyes that had witnessed this fly in the great hall of Chaya’s palace would be safe tonight.

  Queen O’nell raised a brow. She relaxed in her chair and leaned back. She held the glass of wine to her mouth like she was going to take another sip, but instead, let it rest there and continued with a barrage of questions.

  “Who are the three major gods?” she asked.

  If I wanted to answer correctly, I had to give their Angpur names. It was slightly tricky. She spoke in their evening dialect, and so under the context of her question, she was asking for Raya’s evening name.

  I gave their names in Angpur, and Raya’s evening name. Queen O’nell didn’t react; she just moved to her next question, holding her glass of wine tighter.

  “What is bigger, the old continent, Adhib, or the new continent, Khadun?”

  “The old.”

  “What is your favorite liquid to use for alchemy?”

  “Water, of course.”

  “What are the three largest creatures in all of Mirradalia?”

  “The Sand Kraken of Stala, the Sky Wyrm of Raya, and the Leviathan of Yuweh.”

  “Who is the most powerful alchemist in all the lands?”

  “My grandmother.”

  Her lips broke into a smile at that answer. Several of the groups around us shared a laugh. My father’s forehead was sweating. His brow creased with tension. Mother was far tenser. The fly had been bold enough to move toward someone’s plate. Mother placed a hand over her heart and whispered a prayer. Or some kind of a deathly curse, I could not be sure. There were priests in the Isles of Illusions who swore by spells in Voz’ruhdal that could burn the insides of a man to ash, melt the flesh off their face—the kind of power that would be beyond reason and convention to release upon a fruit fly. Then again, you could never be certain about Mother when her eyes went barbaric around the corners like that.

  “How many fish are in the ocean?” another voice interrupted. My uncle. He asked the question in Hulna.

  My uncle was as ugly as a parrot who had taken an arrow to the face and never bothered removing it. He also sounded like he smoked harsh brandy and drank sour tobacco.

  I jest—he was not hideous, but his voice was that hoarse. He was the voice that little children heard in nightmares. Ojin Speight looked ten years older than he really was. His face was angular like Queen O’nell’s, but lacked her sharp features. His expression drooped over a thick jawline, and his eyes were lazy. Whenever he looked at something, he glanced it up and down in a tired way, like he was considering buying it. His cheeks cratered into dimples when he smiled, giving his angular face a ghastly demeanor whenever he was happy. Or at least, whenever he pretended to be happy. It was something similar to Taa, but without her gravitas. He was not too tall, just over six feet, but he had a long and slender neck. He looked stately like my father, but took far too much time to care for his appearances. My father never looked too orderly. He looked like a busy man, like dressing well and taking care of himself were secondary to his duty as king. That was the way it should be.

  My uncle, on the other hand, was ready to battle you to the death if you challenged him to a contest of costumes. His eyebrows were cut sharp and thick. His hair glistened with oil, and his hairless cheeks shined with fresh alcohol. He wore a silk cream shirt with jewels and bezels sewn together in patterns as ornate as old continent fashions. He had a scarf and gold plated shards on his shoulders that did not sit well with the rest of his clothes. He wore two elliptical seashells as earrings, bright blue spheres that spiraled off into sharp cones at their ends. He sat to the right of my father, and next to him stood Nikhil’s father.

  My aunt, Zenep Anasahara, my father’s only sister and Ojin Speight’s first wife, had passed away eight years ago from the plague. Mother loved Zenep, but she did not cry when she passed. She was quiet for that entire year. It was a curious thing—the plague could be treated. Nobles, aristocrats, and the royal almost never died from it except for in severe cases. And so, Taa always held suspicions about her daughter’s death. My uncle could be bold, but he always treaded carefully near Taa. We could never harm him in a way that gave alarm to the other lords of Chaya. It would’ve created chaos. People would’ve thought we were consolidating power or acting irrational, perhaps paranoid. But if we had a reason for it, that was an entirely different story. Of course, we could always find a reason with some effort, but Father would never take that path.

  It must be obvious, I think, that I speak of Uncle with a bit of a bias. If Elsa or Queen O’nell or even Taa wore something similar to what Uncle wore (Taa would never), I would have said they looked beautiful and their sartorial sense and willingness to stand out was something to be in awe of. It is all right to have biases, but important to be aware of them. That is how you can find truth inside of your own lies. That is the way.

  “How many fish are in the ocean?” my uncle had asked. He knew that I spoke all three Hulnesh languages. He was hoping to catch me off guard in a different way. It was a trick question. The trickiest kind, where you could only see the trick if you saw past the first, more obvious trick, the one set out as bait. Hulna was spoken by the people of Mimenhi, the Underearth Kingdom. Mimenhi was where Hulnesh originated from, before branching off into other languages when the people there became surface dwellers. There was an underground sea next to Mimenhi, and for thousands of years, up until the new gods came, those in Mimenhi thought that was the only body of water that existed in the world. It was called the Dead Sea because there is no life in it. When you said ocean in Mimenhi, you were always referring to the Dead Sea. To refer to a different ocean, you had to say its name first. To refer to all the oceans, you had to use somewhat of an awkward construction that roughly translated to, the ocean and all the other oceans.

  The easy answer would’ve been something like infinite. Or many.
Or a million.

  The trick answer he was hoping I would give was one thousand. People in Chaya said there were a thousand fish in the sea because when Yuweh defeated Semladon and sent the old god of the moon and all his daemons to the nether, he started all the sea life we currently knew with a thousand different kinds of fish. It was a common thing to ask children, and when they replied with many, or hundreds of thousands, or a million, you would reply no, only a thousand. I was asking how many types of fish, not the number of fish. It was not an overly conniving kind of question, just a playful one to tease a child.

  When you asked the question in Hulna however, you had to consider how the question would be taken in Mimenhi, not in Chaya.

  Mother’s attention turned to me, her hands playing with the engravings at the sides of her dress. She curled the corner of her mouth in to keep herself from smiling. For all her debasement of my honor, and her rather insulting way of suggesting that I was an irresponsible child, moments like these made her proud. Not just proud. There were other things there too, behind those grey eyes. Father shifted in his seat, swallowing three gulps of wine in one breath. He watched uneasily, soft fingers gripping the sides of the witchwater throne and working the uneven surfaces with the corners of a nail.

  Father would never have been upset if I answered something incorrectly. Or if I failed to meet his expectations as an heir. In fact he was more supportive if I failed at something, vocalizing how far I’d come in other areas. But he did keep high expectations, even higher than Mother or Taa. For the latter two, my progress in things like language was a pleasant surprise when I was young. For my father, it was what he believed should naturally come out of him. Let us not beat around the bush here—I got all my arrogance from my father. He got it from Taa, but he was far more brash than her, which might’ve explained some of my own tendencies. Taa was confident in a quiet way, like an assassin. Father was the general who charged at the front of his army. As a point of comparison, Queen O’nell was the general who charged without an army at all, seeking death from a worthy adversary.

  The people around us quieted down. There was nothing really at stake here, of course, besides the pride of my house. And even then, it wasn’t as if I would bring shame to Anasahara if I did not speak one of my eight languages as well as Taa claimed. Anyway, this was more an issue of history and culture than language. You could speak Hulna fluently and not answer correctly if you did not know about the Dead Sea. But after all was said, it was a challenge, and that was enough for me. Better yet, it was a challenge given by my uncle.

  I tipped my head low and cracked a knuckle against my chin like Taa would. I couldn’t let them think I had heard this question before. I hadn’t, but if I answered too quickly, they’d assume I had. So I made a show of mulling over the question for several seconds. Yephi and Iris were still whispering to each other, trying to figure out an answer between themselves. Father chuckled low, glancing at my uncle. My uncle avoided his eyes, focusing on me.

  Finally, I said, “There are no fish in the Dead Sea.” I spoke in Hulna, doing a good job of adopting their accent, I thought. Hulna emphasized its vowels from the back of the throat, making anyone’s voice sound deeper when they spoke the language. It made a big difference, if you heard a child speak it. Particularly a child like me, who took her performances quite seriously.

  Father nodded approvingly, though I’m sure he had no idea what I’d said, or what the answer was. Mother’s expression did not change. Yephi and Iris tried to piece the answer together with the question, then turned to me with curious looks.

  My uncle smiled sheepishly, flicking glitter out of an eyebrow. He showed no teeth, but his lips went as far as they could from corner to corner, almost straining in the process. His expression was a mix of surprise, happiness, and contempt. His eyes were idle. His earrings clinked as he gave a slow nod. A side of his nose flared and his cheeks hollowed into their famous craters, pits that went deep enough to shame the moons. It was a work of art, that look. You could’ve convinced mortal enemies you had their best interests in mind while plotting their deaths. I had no doubt he was doing exactly that—but there was little danger to it. He was not trained in the way. Uncle Ojin was like a pet snake. You couldn’t throw it away because it was a part of your family, but it had a small brain. You knew it probably didn’t recognize you, let alone felt a sense of loyalty. Likely, it considered eating you between meals. That’s why you always had to keep it fed, and inside of its cage.

  “Bravo, Dina!” Queen O’nell cheered. I nodded thanks, then bowed just a few inches forward with a hand over my chest, watching my uncle from the corner of my eye.

  Haben said, “There are people in Mimenhi who would not have answered that correctly. Well done. You make your Taa proud, I’m sure.” He spoke in Hulna, emphasizing the vowels much better than my uncle or me. I made a note of his inflections. I’d have to practice it later with Mother. Taa knew Hulna better, but her voice was too grating for me to read into the nuances of the language. With a bit of effort, Mother could speak any language in its native accent. It was a thing of beauty, her voice. Neither me or my sisters sounded like her. Father said we sounded like Taa when she was younger—sharp and salient. Mother’s voice was quite different. Cool and tender. As smooth as velvet when she sang, as polished as looking glass when she spoke. At least, I mean, when she wasn’t yelling at me. Both Mother and Taa sang often, and they both had their own kind of charm.

  Queen O’nell’s eyes glowed with anticipation. “Dina, you can converse in eight languages?” she asked.

  “I can read and write in six, and I speak fluently in eight,” I replied. “I am hoping to be able to write in the other two as well. Soon.”

  “How did you learn eight? Your mother speaks five and your Taa only knows six, and most overlap,” she asked with a playful skepticism.

  “From Dh’hpur’s works,” I said. “She wrote Vermilion Witch and The Thief in Blue in multiple languages, and many of her other writings have been translated through the years across Mirradalia. I know some of her work in Emel and Emelin by heart. I learned both Ylhetish languages by cross-translating.”

  Yephi leaned toward Queen O’nell, rolling her eyes in an exaggeratedly casual manner. “She’s a bit of an overachiever, our sister,” Yephi whispered, one hand covering the side of her mouth that was facing me. Iris glowered, squinting her own eyes in disapproval without looking at Yephi.

  Queen O’nell studied me, her eyes working up and down. A server came by to pour her more wine, a lightly shaded tinesault as pink as grapefruit. It was the only thing I ever saw her drink. A sweet wine made in the southern regions below the Glacial Swamps, where the grapes grew blood-orange and as big as plums. Like Yephi, she was picky with food and drink, and had no issue turning down something offered to her, no matter who insisted. She could be difficult to please. It seemed like the servers tonight had already had an inkling of this. More than once, I saw one veer off in another direction while on the way to her. She set her new glass down on the table next to her, delicately, then whispered to the waiter, “One more in a bit, don’t go too far.” She turned to me with searching eyes again. Father watched her. Uncle Speight watched her. All the tables around us watched her. “She must be something of an idol to you, Dina, if you favor learning languages. The prophet Dh’hpur—she had a way with words. To say the least.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Taa is giving me other things to study so I haven’t been able to learn languages as quickly as I’d like. I hope to know eleven given a few more years. All the current languages of Mirradalia.”

  My uncle cleared his throat. “Bold,” he said. “But we have translators, you know. Is it really that necessary? You could be learning more useful things than that.”

  Knowing a language is about more than just being able to talk to others in that language,” Mother said. “In so much as studying alchemy is about far more than being able to heat the air around you and open tin jars with ease. Yo
u are trained quite well in theatre, are you not, Ojin? In Qashar, if I remember correctly. You don’t plan to leave Chaya and join a travelling troupe now, do you? We’d feel more secure if you looked after our kingdom.”

  If you paid close attention to Mother’s words, you would’ve understood how carefully they were crafted. How much weight was in the word our. Our could be all of Chaya. My uncle and my family were one and we were united. Our could be just Anasahara, and my uncle was their experimental warden. This was how the way danced between meanings—suggesting, assuming, implying. This was how the way shaped words into things that held sway over empires. Not by threatening or chastising, but with double meanings and connotations. It did not crush or smash or destroy. It cut delicately. It worked slowly. It was invisible to the uninitiated.

  Queen O’nell was the only one who really noticed. She turned her attention and her tactful fingers to her wine glass, tracing only the faintest hint of a smile with her lips. For the space of a sharp breath, her eyes locked with Mother’s.

  Mother was a lot like my late aunt. The way she spoke. Her mannerisms. Gentle, but in a clipped manner if she wanted to be short. After all, they’d both been trained by Taa. It made my uncle visibly uncomfortable.

  “Hah! I’d pay good money to see that!” Father boasted, slapping a hand across his thigh with one hand and strangling his beard with the other. Father played rough with his beard. He told me once that if I ever saw a man treating his beard delicately, it was probably a face wig. And if a man was wearing a face wig, he was not to be trusted. Father had a narrow frame with bones that looked harder than normal. His jawline, his elbows, his knuckles, they all stood out like they were carved into his flesh. He was dark of hair and eyes, he had jet eyelashes that always fell into speculative eyes, and his skin was light for a Chayan, the color of a pear. He had a rabbit’s ears, and a shark’s nose.