The globe of white flame sinks toward the great palace at the heart of Uurz. I look across its jumbled vista of streets, orchards, and commons. Although every tavern and shop is crowded, there is little mirth and far less music than usual. An aura of fear hangs about the metropolis like a cloying fog.
Among verdant roof-gardens the noble families gather to fret and glare at the commoners milling below their walls. In the orchards and vineyards of the palace, groups of servants rush to fill baskets with produce that will be priceless treasures if the siege is a long one. Along the congested avenues, merchants haggle with laborers and ask triple the normal price for their goods. Farmers and brickmakers trade in their shovels and trowels for swords and spears, hiding their families in cellars, rented hovels, or overpriced inns. Legions of soldiers in green cloaks patrol the main thoroughfares while the city ramparts teem with spearmen, their eyes aimed eastward, searching for the first sign of the invaders.
Alua sets us down in the palace courtyard. Wing-helmed guards rush forward waving spears as if we four are the Hordes of Zyung. The white flame fades and I raise my hand, announcing myself and my companions. They usher us toward the Grand Hall, where I expect to see Tyro sitting bandaged and exhausted from battle and flight. Yet the Sword King Emperor is not here. The throne of Uurz–not long ago it was a double throne–sits empty now. In a high-backed chair before the royal dais sits a lean man with a prominent nose. I recognize him as Lord Mendices, Warlord of Uurz. His golden seat is the chair of a Regent. By this alone I know that Tyro is dead.
“Iardu the Shaper,” Mendices calls out to me. “We expected you at Shar Dni.” A score of guards in golden cuirasses stand between the marble pillars. A crowd of nobles and advisors lingers about Mendices, ready to carry out his orders and impress him with their counsel.
Mendices does not need to condemn me with any harsher words. The simple fact of my missing the lost battle is enough to make me cringe before his hard gaze. His shoulder is wrapped in white linen, yet still he wears the gear of an active-duty legionnaire. A sword hangs from his waist, reminding any who have eyes on the vacant throne that he, Mendices, has control of Uurz’s surviving legions. He is the one man standing between the city and a horde of invading Manslayers.
I offer him a bow of respect, yet not the low bow I would offer to a King. “It pains me to say that I was hindered by a power greater than my own,” I say. “Yet I have escaped to bring Vireon’s sister and wife, along with the sorceress Vaazhia, Queen of the Forgotten City. We stand with Uurz now in its moment of need.”
“Where is Vireon?” asks Sharadza. “Tell me he yet lives…” She cares nothing for courtly etiquette, and I cannot blame her.
Mendices studies each of my companions for a moment, his gaze falling at last upon Sharadza. “The Giant-King lives, yet I cannot say for how much longer. He is grievously wounded.”
Sharadza falls into my arms, pressing her cheek against my neck. Alua blinks at me.
“What of the Emperor?” I ask, already knowing what the Warlord will say.
“Tyro died bravely,” says Mendices. His tone is not what I expected. Instead of an accusation tinged with rage, it is the tenor of a grieving father. I see now that he loved Tyro. “He died in battle, drowned by a sea of foes that his sword could not touch. The bloodshadows of the cursed valley.”
“Why does the Empress Talondra not sit upon the throne?”
“She too is dead,” says the Warlord. “Though none can say how, I suspect sorcery.”
“These are dark days indeed,” I say. “There are no words for such deep loss. What of Undutu and D’zan?”
“The first is dead, the second yet lives. D’zan rests now in a palace bed.”
Tyro and Undutu. Lost. And Vireon dying. A slab of granite falls from my heart into my stomach. I stagger, but Sharadza’s grip keeps me from falling.
“There is no time for tears,” I say, as much to myself as to those around me. “The enemy will be at our gates in three days. Show us to the Giant-King. I will do what I can to prevent his death.”
Mendices’ long face damns me without words. There are many deaths you should have prevented. You have failed us. Yet he surprises me again by escorting us personally to the helpless Vireon’s chamber. It lies beyond a tall corridor lined with a dozen Giant guards. Some of them lean wearily upon their spears. Their thick skins bear the marks of keen metal, their furs, cloaks, and corslets begrimed with dried blood. Most of them are blue-skinned Udvorg, yet three pale Uduru stand among them.
“The Giants guard their King in shifts,” explains Mendices. “Fourteen hundred of them rest inside the palace; they cast lots for this revolving duty. It has been so since we arrived two days ago.”
“How many Men survived the battle?” I ask.
We approach the great iron doors at the end of the corridor.
Mendices winces at the pain in his shoulder. “Far too few. Two Legions of Uurz. A single legion of Udurum. Less than ten thousand soldiers, all told.”
The sheer depth of our losses steals my breath. Sharadza weeps quietly beside me. Nine out of every ten Men died in Zyung’s onslaught, as well as two brave Kings, and possibly a third. How different would the outcome have been, if only I had been there? If I had taken my three companions to the Sharrian valley instead of spirit-roaming into the depths of the earth? I will never know the answer to this question. I cannot let it torment me until I do what must be done.
Vireon must not die.
We stand before the double door now, staring at its inlaid mosaic of curling Serpents and battling Giants. Mendices knocks upon the portal with his golden vambrace. The hall and room were prepared specifically to accommodate visiting Giantkind. There are other lofty places throughout the palace, where the Udvorg have been quartered.
Before we enter I ask Mendices one more question. My voice lowers so that only he and I can hear it. “How many legions does Uurz yet possess?”
“Twelve,” says the Warlord. “Yet there is no King to lead them.” He walks back down the corridor as the big doors open from the inside. An Uduri spearmaiden stands before us. In the rush of thoughts that fills my mind, I cannot recall her name. Sharadza rushes past her. I follow with Alua and Vaazhia in tow. Alua’s steps are hesitant, as if she were a virgin bride walking to meet her ordained husband for the first time.
The chamber is a broad oval, supported by columns of purple marble veined with black. The colors of Udurum. On a great bed at its far end lies Vireon, as small now as any normal man. Twenty-two solemn Uduri stand about the flame-lit chamber, their yellow braids gleaming like strands of gemstones upon their shoulders. Their faces turn to me, then to Sharadza, and finally to Alua. Recognizing the Queen they all thought to be dead, the awed Uduri fall to their knees. All save one, who was already on her knees at the bedside of Vireon. She weeps, but her eyes are fixed upon the dying King. She holds his small hand in her great one.
Sharadza steps near to her sleeping brother. A thick bandage stained to crimson encircles Vireon’s entire abdomen. I recall the name of the Giantess who holds Vireon’s hand. It is Dahrima, first among his household guard. She embraces Sharadza as one of her sisters, and the two weep together.
As I approach with Vaazhia at my side, Alua walks more slowly. She does not know how to respond to these Giantesses who seem to worship her. Ianthe stole so much of her memory, I wonder if she remembers any of the spearmaidens.
Dahrima’s wet eyes look up from Sharadza’s to meet those of Alua.
Whatever emotions glimmer there like doused embers, I cannot name them. Yet the Giantess backs away from the returned Queen, as if in horror. Dahrima cannot long meet Alua’s gaze, so she turns away and leaves the bedside. She takes her longspear from the wall and finds her station among the rest of the Uduri, who have risen to their feet again. They stand solid as statues, waiting for their King to rise up and lead them again into battle. Or waiting perhaps to carry his bones toward a distant tomb.
Shara
dza takes Vireon’s hand. She speaks his name, but his eyes do not flutter. His breathing is shallow, his face pale. There is little life remaining inside his body.
Alua looks at her husband with an impenetrable expression. Is it fear, or love, or both? Her eyes are dry, and as cool as black ice. She remains silent. The sobbing of Sharadza and the crackling of flames fills the chamber as I draw near to the one I have failed.
She had run all night long, and well into the next morning. The blood had dried across her lower body in the first few hours, a second skin of brackish purple.
When the sun arose it was a white disk set in a gray sky. A soft, warm rain fell, washing the gore from her hair and skin as she sprinted. Traces of it remained stuck in the grooves of her corslet and beneath her nails. It had stained her leggings and boots thoroughly. The great wound in Vireon’s chest, and the matching hole in his back, had clotted in her tight grip. It oozed darkly now rather than bleeding.
Her spearsisters followed, ragged and exhausted. The ones who had escaped major wounds caught up to her, while the rest fell behind. Twenty-two Uduri had survived the massacre in the valley; six spearsisters had been slain by the killing lights, yet none by the blades of Manslayers.
Dahrima wondered as she ran: How many Udvorg and Uduru had the sorcerers burned alive? Hundreds, at the least, along with thousands of Men.
She had not run toward any specific destination, not at first. She only meant to get Vireon as far away from his enemies as possible. It was a kind of madness that had fallen upon her. The madness of grief.
The soft rains grew into a steady downpour, and the stalks of steppe grass stood as high as the belts of the Uduri. Men could easily get lost in that forest of long grasses, and often they did so. It was Vantha the Tigress who had finally convinced Dahrima to stop and take a moment of rest. Vireon was still breathing, though Dahrima could not get his eyes to stay open. He felt weightless in her arms, and she feared there would be no lifeblood left inside his veins by the next sunrise.
Atha Spearhawk wrapped the Giant-King’s chest tightly with a woolen cloak taken from a passing villager. Dahrima had failed to notice the isolated farming villages that dotted the plain. The cloakless farmer ran back to his collection of tiny huts and roused his folk. They fled southwest toward the gates of Uurz. Atha told the farm folk to spread warning of the bloody horde that would soon cross their plain, and she claimed the cloak as payment for the information.
“We also must go to Uurz,” said Vantha. She kneeled next to Dahrima and studied Vireon’s bloodless face. How similar the peaceful look of dying was to the look of sleeping. “The general retreat began when we left the valley. Any survivors will come to the City of Sacred Waters. The Sword King will have physicians and wizards there to aid Vireon.”
“The Sword King is dead,” Atha said. “I saw him devoured by shadows.”
“Yet the Warlord of Uurz commands his legions still,” said Yasha the Flamehair. “He blew the horn that called the retreat.”
“Let us await the Warlord here then,” said Atha.
“No,” said Dahrima. “We must run and bring news of the defeat to Uurz. It will take the survivors at least three days to reach the city gates, perhaps longer if there are many wounded among them. Every second we delay could mean Vireon’s death.” She stood once more with the Giant-King cradled in her arms. His breathing was faint, his heart barely beating.
There were sighs of weariness and moans of pain as the spear-maidens arose about her. The rain had paused momentarily, but the wind brought it back stronger. It blew cold upon their faces.
“We are Uduri,” said Vantha. “Let us run!”
All that day and the following night they sprinted, crossing the very heart of the Stormlands. They waded across the Eastern Flow rather than wasting time to locate one of its five bridges. Always the passing of the Uduri was an unspoken warning to the villages in their path. The plantations sprouted thicker and closer together as the Giantesses neared the walls of Uurz. Sight of the sprinting Uduri convinced even the most stubborn doubters that invasion was nigh. A line of plainsmen with carts, wagons, and herds of livestock lined up before the city’s great gate.
Vantha ran ahead, shouting the crowds off the road, clearing the way for Dahrima and her burden. When the gatekeepers saw the Giant-King’s limp body, they formed an escort to accompany Dahrima’s band directly to the palace. There a nervous steward showed Dahrima to the Giant Quarters and summoned the royal physician to tend Vireon.
“There is little more that I can do,” the bearded codger told Dahrima. He had cleansed the wound, wrapped Vireon with white bandages, and poured a foul-smelling elixir down the Giant-King’s throat. He told her the medicine was brewed by a clever alchemist who was also a known wizard, and that it would revive Vireon if his spirit had not already fled the body. Yet the potion had done nothing. The next morning Vireon still lay barely breathing, pale as a corpse, and a fever had set his brow to burning.
Dahrima and her sisters had not left Vireon’s chamber. Servants brought them wine, food, and the physician treated their wounds as best he could. The more seriously wounded of the spear maidens arrived with the Warlord Mendices and his retreating forces. The Uduri respectfully ignored Dahrima’s tears. They said nothing of the way she cradled his head in the crook of her arm, or the soft words she spoke into his ear. They stood by her as she sat with him hour after hour. At times they rested on the lush carpets, only to rise and stand at attention once again.
Vireon looked so small in the bed sized for a Giant. Yet he was still the Giant-King, and while in Uurz he belonged in this chamber. Dahrima dozed for a while, her head resting on the side of his bed. When she awoke, she examined his face and saw that nothing had changed.
Come back, Son of Vod. She whispered the words so that none in the chamber would hear them but Vireon. You have a judgment to pass upon me. Cast me in chains, throw me into the dungeons of Udurum, banish me to the furthest reaches of the Icelands, but come back and sit upon your throne again.
She fell asleep a second time, dreaming that Vireon awakened, met her eyes with his own, and whispered his love for her. He kissed her while the Uduri knelt about them and hid their faces. Then she awoke gasping and fell into despair once again.
I love you, Vireon Vodson, she whispered. If this is a crime, then add it to my list.
She no longer cared if her sisters heard. Surely they must know her feelings, watching her linger by his side. A memory rushed into her head as she held his limp hand, hot as fire. She had been a girl, no more than ten or twelve seasons old, when her mother Khorima had sat beside her dying father in this exact posture. Ingthr the Steelheart had also been pale and fevered in his sickbed. The tusks of a great Udhog had pierced her father’s flesh deep in two places. He had lived long enough to be carried on a litter back to Old Udurum. This was seven hundred and fifty years before the Return of Omagh and the destruction of the Giants’ ancestral home.
Dahrima had offered her dying father a horn of bittermead, the favored drink of hunters, hoping it would revive him. Her mother had taken the flask and helped Ingthr drink a little, but it only threw him into a fit of coughing. Dahrima had recalled for decades the bloody flecks that flew from his lips during those coughs, and she was sure her well-intentioned act had caused her father’s death. Ingthr had lasted until the next morning, and Dahrima had wept for days.
Khorima had taken her daughter aside after the pyre had burned Ingthr’s body to smoke and ashes. “You must be strong,” she’d told Dahrima. “Nothing that dies is ever lost. Your father’s strength lives on in your bones. You are Uduri, and on the cusp of womanhood. Let us be done with weeping. Let the flames of your father’s pyre burn away your tears. When you run on the Long Hunt, when you face the Udhog or the mountain lion and cast a longspear, every strike will honor your father’s memory.”
Dahrima had cried no more after that. Yet her mother had wept in secret. Ten seasons later a wasting disease claimed Khor
ima’s life. The Uduri said she died of a broken heart. Ingthr’s wife had lived long enough to see her daughter grown, then departed the world to join her husband.
If you die, I will die as she did, Dahrima whispered now.
Come back to me.
Five days after the great defeat, Vireon lay still at the edge of death. The Uduri spoke in hushed tones about the surviving Udvorg and Uduru, the Legions of Uurz, and the death of Tyro’s Empress. Dahrima cared nothing for any of these things. It was the chattering of ravens roosted about her and waiting for death.
She realized then that she, too, waited for death, although she hoped for life.
Come back, Vodson.
At midday the chamber’s black doors opened and Iardu the Shaper entered. Dahrima had slept very little, and she did not have the strength to rage at him for abandoning Vireon to his enemies. Sharadza Vodsdaughter walked beside Iardu, and a strangely beautiful woman with a horned skull and the skin of a reptile. The fourth person to enter was a girl with unbound hair the color of spun gold and eyes the shade of deep night. A great cloak of white fur hung from her shoulders, and a gown of snow-colored fabric hugged her lean body.
Sharadza rushed to embrace Dahrima. If not for the distraction of this embrace, Dahrima would have recognized the blonde Goddess sooner. As Sharadza caressed her brother’s brow, the Uduri began dropping to their knees.
“The Queen…” Their voices were low and heavy with wonder. “The Queen lives!”
Dahrima wiped her bloodshot eyes and looked into the face of Alua.
You died. I saw your mangled corpse frozen atop the Mountain of Ghosts.
Many of my sisters perished in the quest to avenge your death.
Seven Sorcerers: Book Three of the Books of the Shaper Page 26