Dahrima recalled the account she had read of the Doom of Shar Dni in Shaira’s library. When Gammir and Ianthe led the hosts of Khyrei across the sea to raze the city, Vireon and Alua had arrived too late to save it. Yet they drove the conquerors out of the valley and took thousands of refugees back to Udurum. Andoses, the heir to King Ammon’s throne, died in that battle. Andoses had fathered no children, so this madman could not be his heir. Unless he were some other relative of Ammon’s.
“Tell me what happened,” Dahrima said. She used the voice she might offer a child. Gentleness did not come easily to her, but she attempted it for the sake of the truth buried here. “Where were you when the Khyreins came?”
Nothing slumped into a bed of crackling moss. The shadow of the broken arch obscured his face, but his dull green eyes glowed. “They locked me in a room,” he said. “I screamed and yelled and cried… but they said I must behave until my cousin returned. He would be the new King. Ammon was his father.”
“You speak of Andoses?”
He looked at her face again, his eyes growing wide. “Andoses the Brave,” he smiled. “My cousin had gone to visit the Giants. Did you know him? Tell me you knew him, Lady.”
Dahrima nodded. She had seen Shaira’s nephew about the palace of Udurum when he visited, but had never shared words with him. She knew only that he had traveled south with Tadarus, Fangodrel, Vireon, and D’zan, and that he had died at the Doom of Shar Dni.
“Why did they lock you up?” she asked. “Were you a criminal?” Silence. The night winds picked up, roaring through the valley.
“They said I was mad,” he told her, “because of what I had seen. The Prince of Shadows did it to me… He should have killed me, you see, but he left me alive and mad. That was what they told me. I remember it, too.”
The Prince of Shadows? He must mean Gammir.
“He came to visit my uncle the King. There were pirates in those days, you see. Horrid reavers spilling blood on the Golden Sea. Ammon–he was my uncle–wanted help from the City of Men and Giants. They sent Fangodrel, Son of Vod, to us then. Oh, he was a fine spectacle in his black mail and cloak of shadows. Yet he was terrifying, Lady. So terrifying…”
Fangodrel was the northern name of Gammir. He must have visited Shar Dni on his way to take the throne of Khyrei from his sorceress grandmother. Ianthe had called him to her side, urging him to murder his own brother, Tadarus. Fangodrel was not truly the Son of Vod. He was a bastard and the heir to Ianthe’s blood magic.
“Tell me all of it,” Dahrima asked.
“A feast!” Sir Nothing started. He danced a jig between the broken stones, then stopped and came near her with a whisper. “There was a feast to honor the Shadow Prince. But he did not want food. No, he wanted blood.”
The madman wept as he continued. “My seven cousins were there, the daughters of Ammon. Such beautiful Princesses as you will never find elsewhere. And my brother Dutho–he was named Duke that year. He was at the feast too… Oh, Gods, would that he were not. The Shadow Prince drank their blood, one by one. His army of shadows poured forth to strangle the guardsmen. My uncle–he was the King, you see–he died first. Oh, the screams of the Princesses were terrible. I still hear them when I close my eyes.”
He did close his eyes then, lost in a dark reverie. Dahrima waited for him to finish the tale. Tears squeezed from beneath his eyelids, streaming to join the filth trapped in his beard.
His eyes flew open. “Blood! So much blood! The Prince of Shadows took their lives and their blood. I was the last. I begged him for mercy… Oh, how I begged, Lady. He took pity on me. He chose not to drink my blood. Tell them, he said to me. Tell them what happened. His teeth were wolves’ teeth. He sprouted black wings and flew away…”
Sir Nothing cradled his head in the palms of his hands, fingers twitching on his scalp.
“They locked me in the yellow room after that. There I stayed, laughing and screaming. I had to tell them, you see. He had commanded me to tell them. Oh, the blood… the blood. Then he returned with the Pale Queen and her armies of black metal. The city burned and fell to ash. Someone broke open the door of the yellow room. They tortured me. They had the faces of demons. Then they were gone and I was alone. There are no more left of the King’s bloodline. I am the last.”
“What of your father?” she asked. “Who was he?”
“He died at sea, battling demon-faced pirates.”
Brother of Dutho. Nephew of Ammon. That made him Shaira’s nephew as well. Dahrima did not know enough of Sharrian genealogy to guess his name. Vireon would know. Perhaps a name was all the poor wretch needed to end the spell of madness that held him here.
As if sensing her thoughts, he whispered a final confession.
“I was Pyrus, Son of Omirus.”
Dahrima met his sad eyes and offered him a smile. She bent to one knee before him.
“Hail, Pyrus,” she said. “Last King of Shar Dni. I am Dahrima the Axe. I serve Vireon, King of Giants and Men, Son of Vod, Lord of Udurum and the Icelands.”
“Pyrus…” He repeated the name, as if remembering it again for the first time.
She stood then. Her courtly gesture had not impressed him. The memories must weigh too heavily on his broken mind. He had lived like a rat in these haunted ruins for eight years. He could not be older than thirty, though he looked closer to sixty.
“Are you hungry, Pyrus?” she asked.
He smiled at her, displaying rotted teeth. “There are plenty of fish in the river, Lady.”
Pyrus seemed to forget the sad tale he had told as he led her through the ruins to the bank of the Orra. There he produced a crude spear from its hiding place inside a hollow log. He waded into the shallows and tried several times to skewer a passing fish. Dahrima was amazed that he could see so well in the moonlight. Yet he speared one and raised it wriggling from the water. He offered her another crooked smile as he climbed back onto the riverbank.
“I will build a fire,” Dahrima said. She gathered enough twigs to serve and sparked them with a piece of flint from her belt. As she blew on the tiny flame to make it grow, Pyrus used a sharp rock to scale and gut his catch. Soon it was spitted and roasting above the flame. He watched it with an eager glee, licking his lips.
“Soon there will be great danger here,” she told him. “A great foreign army sails toward this valley, and the Legions of Uurz and Udurum are marching to stand against them.”
Pyrus ignored her words, intent on the cooking fish.
Dahrima gazed at the stars. The night was clear and the moon was bright above the valley. “It will not be safe for you to stay here much longer,” she said. “Do you understand?”
Pyrus nodded his head and removed the spit from the cookfire. “It is done!” He tore a chunk from the fish and offered her the rest of it. She nodded thanks and accepted it. She would have to force him to leave the valley before the battle began. She put that unpleasant thought aside for later and enjoyed the taste of the fish. It was not bad, despite the lack of seasoning. Not a Giant’s preferred fare, but it filled her belly.
After the meal they lay back and watched the stars. Pyrus hummed an ancient melody of the Sharrian folk. He nodded off and she followed soon after.
There was no way of knowing how long she slept before the darkness rose to wrap itself about her throat, arms, and legs. She came awake in its frigid grip, limbs of solid shadow reaching out of the ground to seize her with claws sharp as daggers. They raked across her flesh, tore the bronze corslet from her body, and stole the breath from her lungs. She strove to rise, to suck in air before she suffocated. Her fingers found nothing to grasp. The shadows were going to rip her apart and she could not touch them.
She gagged and kicked and rolled across the glowing embers. The bodiless claws tore at her stubborn flesh. An Uduri’s skin was tough enough to turn arrows, but the bloodshadows would keep at it until her insides burst forth and her blood spilled out to feed them. Pairs of eyes like crimson coals hovered in t
he mass of living darkness, radiant with malice. A scream escaped her throat as the first set of claws pierced her shoulder. Another tore the flesh of her thigh. Every second, more of them found ingress to her flesh. They sucked at her seeping blood like a cloud of formless leeches.
She could no longer even squirm or kick. The shadows took on the shapes of wolves and gliding vipers, beating wings like a flock of bats about her captured body.
Something cold and hard met the palm of her right hand. Her fingers were shoved tight about it. A blue glow infused the air and the shadows dispersed in a fog of hissing and rustling half-shapes. Dahrima lay gasping and bleeding on the raw earth while the shadows converged nearby.
A high, moaning sound filled her ears. The sound of a man screaming.
She raised her fist and saw the object Pyrus had forced into her grasp. The blue stone worn about his neck. The Sky God’s amulet. His only protection from the bloodshadows. She’d had none, and he had tried to warn her of this fact. Now the talisman’s potency was proven.
Dahrima struggled to her knees. Pyrus lay beneath the feasting shadows, who no longer could touch her. His arms and legs twitched. He no longer screamed. The sound of crunching bones came next.
She crawled toward the mass of shadows, waving the blue stone amid the darkness. The blood drinkers flew into the night on leathery wings, taking with them the Last King of Shar Dni. Drops of red blood marked his passing. They fell like raindrops across the bed of moss.
“Pyrus!” She called after him, but her voice was only a parched croak.
Dahrima clutched the Sky God’s stone and took up her great axe. Yet there was no foe left to fight, no enemy’s skull to split. The man who had saved her life was gone, and she could do nothing to avenge him. There was no further sign of bloodshadows.
She tied the amulet about her neck and walked to the shore to wash her wounds. The cold saltwater stung her broken skin and revived her senses. No one was there to witness her shed tears for the noble madman, so she let them flow.
She sat on the beach until dawn, axe balanced on her knees, and watched the red horizon for signs of flesh-and-bone enemies.
Many Kings had died in this cursed valley.
Pyrus would not be the last.
8
The Whelming
For two days the islands of Ongthaia had known only wind, rain, and thunder. Great waves came barreling off the Outer Ocean, shattering the small boats of fishermen into kindling. Most of the foreign traders had departed for the mainland when King Zharua made his proclamation of war. His own fleet of merchant vessels had been quickly outfitted to join the Mumbazan, Yaskathan, and Khyrein warships. On the eastern horizon the clouds swirled black as night, and bolts of purple lightning flared ceaselessly.
Khama’s willpower kept the worst effects of the storms from the islands. Yet every hurricane and typhoon he hurled across the ocean toward the Dreadnoughts of Zyung left a trace of itself behind, driving the hapless folk of the Jade Isles indoors. The populations of several lesser towns had braved the choppy waters to gain sanctuary behind the double wall of Morovanga City, but thousands remained on the twelve lesser isles. They found shelter as best they could in stone huts or hillside caves. The capital’s walls would provide some security for Zharua’s people, should the majority of Zyung’s ships make it through the barrage of storms.
The Feathered Serpent coiled himself atop the volcano overlooking the Jade King’s city. Khama stared deep into the raging tempests, searching for any signal of Zyung’s approach. It was too much to hope his hurricanes would destroy all of the great sky-ships, or even half of the invasion force. Yet every single dreadnought that fell to his storm magic would remove a thousand Manslayers, as well as a few of the flying Trills, and maybe even a sorcerer or two.
In Zharua’s war room two days ago Khama had sat with Undutu, D’zan, and a company of sea captains and generals. The Jade King himself presided over the strategy session, although he mainly listened to the advice of those who were skilled at war-craft, then passed orders to his own shipmasters. Zharua had pledged his vast fortune and every merchant vessel to the defense of the islands. Thousands of men worked on refitting the Ongthaian ships while their rulers met to discuss tactics. This would be the greatest conflict the Jade Isles had ever known. In fact, the greatest marine battle in all the history of the world. Khama had let Undutu speak for him at the council; the Son of the Feathered Serpent had a gift for inspiring Men to courageous deeds.
On the second day after the ousting of Zyung’s envoy, the defending ships began to position themselves east of the island chain. With the addition of a hundred Jade Isle traders, the fleet now stood a thousand ships strong. Of course, each ship carried one-fifth the number of warriors as the colossal dreadnoughts, and no sorcerers among them. Beyond these grim facts, the ship-to-ship ratio still weighed three-to-one in Zyung’s favor. Khama hurled more deadly storms across the sea, hoping to even those numbers.
The allied fleets were assembled in a great half-moon arc east of the islands. A wall of flapping sails and rippling banners. Khama’s concentration assured that none of them would be capsized by his storms. Yet the driving rain and whipping winds could not altogether be banished. All he could do with the forces of nature he had aroused was to focus them away from the isles and its protectors. This he did, and after two days he began to feel the strain of working such sorcery without pause. Still he would not relent. The tempests must rage across the distant seascape until Zyung’s forces reached the isles. Only then would he re focus his efforts on more direct assaults. He was the single factor that gave his people any chance of victory, slim as that chance might be.
Perhaps Iardu will return with more of the Old Breed before Zyung arrives.
The thought was of some comfort, but Khama knew it was still too soon. This battle was being waged against Iardu’s wishes because the Shaper already knew that he would not be able to gather a formidable force in time. It was Undutu and his impenetrable sense of honor that brought all of this to bear. The warrior code that belonged to his fathers, passed down to him from the tribal chieftains of the Ancient Land. A land that Zyung had crushed like so many others and remade into his own image.
Khama might have tried to talk Undutu out of this dangerous and near-futile course of action, but his duty was to support the decisions of his King. To advise, not to dictate. So he had done throughout the course of Mumbazan history. Khama reminded himself again that this battle would stall Zyung’s advance, giving Iardu’s mission more time to bear fruit. By the time Zyung reached the mainland, there must be a cadre of Old Breed sorcerers standing with the armies of the Five Cities. Khama forced himself to believe that the sacrifice of these fleets would be worth that time. Meanwhile, he would do what he could to balance the scales of war.
Undutu and D’zan stood upon the foredecks of their flagships, gazing into the black tempests. The Kings were too distant from the Feathered Serpent for him to set eyes upon them, but he saw the banners of the Bird of War and the Kingspear flying near the center of the great arc. Along the decks of every ship a hundred archers stood ready with arrows wrapped in pitch rags. Two iron braziers blazed beneath canopied rain shelters at the prow and middle deck of each vessel. The Mumbazan and Yaskathan forces had also treated the great bolts of their ballistae with pitch and oiled lengths of hemp rope. The Khyrein reavers possessed no ballistae, but their catapults were filled with oily spheres of pitch set to burn. The allied fleets would hurl fire at the sky-ships when they came within range.
Khama did not know if the dreadnoughts would burn, or if sorcery protected them from such danger. It did not matter; there was little else the seabound vessels could do to assault the aerial armada. The hope was to force them out of the sky so that ship-to-ship grappling and boarding would be possible. The invaders had more manpower, but the defenders would fight more fiercely; they were protecting their homelands and loved ones. Numbers were not everything–history was full of battles that
had been won by outnumbered armies. Khama took some comfort in that fact as he stared into the thundering wall of stormclouds.
There.
A single pinprick of light amid the churning thunderheads. Not the flicker of lightning, but steady as a lantern moving through fog. Then another, and another, and a whole line of lanterns emerging from the tempests.
Across the entire horizon they appeared, spanning the length of the visible world. Orbs of glowing white radiance, like the sphere that had surrounded Damodar. Inside each great orb floated a dreadnought, gliding through the ravaged sky with triple sails intact. On they came, rank after rank of golden sky-ships wrapped in shells of gleaming sorcery. Leagues away still, they seemed tiny as model ships, yet Khama knew that each of them was three times larger than the greatest Yaskathan trireme. Seeing the dreadnoughts emerge now from his battery of hurricanes, he realized the truth: Not a single dreadnought had been lost to the storms. The magic of a thousand Old Breed, the most highly prized servants of Zyung, had protected them from harm.
The beating of war drums rose to Khama’s ears from the Mumbazan warships at the center of the great arc. Their persistent cadence spread across the allied fleets, and men readied their arrows for igniting. “Not yet!” Khama could almost hear the captains shouting. “Let them draw near! Wait for the signal!”
At once the storms ceased. The rain disappeared and the winds fell to nothing. Khama withdrew his furious control and replaced it with the peaceful glow of sunshine peeking through the clouds. The armada of dreadnoughts sailed on through the sky, still encased in their sorcerous radiance. The sea grew still and golden as the stormclouds dissipated. Calm air was needed to allow the arrows and bolts of the fleet to fly true. Khama would throw winds where needed, to fan any flames devouring the sky-ships. If that were even possible. He would know soon.
The dreadnoughts grew larger. Their speed was unprecedented, far faster than any water-borne vessel. Yet they slowed as they came near to the islands, the northern and southern flanks of the armada curling about to encircle the thirteen land masses and the arc of warships. Here was Undutu’s first tactical mistake. Assembling in the eastern waters did not provide a barrier to protect the islands; the lofty positions and great numbers of the dreadnoughts allowed them to completely encircle their enemies before the fighting even began.
Seven Sorcerers: Book Three of the Books of the Shaper Page 15