by Chris Howard
Phaidra bit the hand of the guard trying to re-insert the gag.
"The Wreath-wearer is coming to get you, Tharsaleos!” Another punch to the jaw, two of her teeth on the right side went through her tongue. Hot blood pumped in her mouth.
She spat red and gave the Nine-cities something to talk about, an event so unusual that news of it traveled to every district in the city before the king's guards sealed the stone door of the lithotomb over Phaidra's head.
Phaidra threw her head back and for the first time in history, a Rexenor screamed the Alkimides war cry. “Right of the Earth-encircler, dark-haired Lord of the Sea! Souls arise, with third fore-fathers by our sides we will kill the old kings!"
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Chapter Thirty
The Army of the Bone-gatherer
From here is the road that leads to the dismal waters of Acheron. Here a whirlpool boils with mud and immense swirlings of water, spouting up all the slimy sand of Cocytus. A dreadful ferryman looks after the river crossing, Charon.
—Virgil, Aeneid 6.297
* * * *
The pale woman was not the last of the ostologoi. The last paddled feebly and curled into a formal bow that obviously caused him pain in his old joints. The pale woman smiled, enjoying it.
The old Seaborn's voice was like a handful of shells rubbed together, slippery and hard and clattery, the voice of someone she did not trust.
"Mistress ... it is you."
"You have no idea who I am, old man."
"You are of the family, there is no doubt. You sent the dead here to open our stronghold—although they would not allow us to enter. We knew one of us would come. Finally. It is time."
The pale woman stared at him and turned her mouth down in disgust. “My stronghold. My time has come. My family.” She said each in a very exclusionary manner. “And there was never any doubt."
The old man flinched, stung by her tone. He bowed again, grimacing. “What would you wish of us, milady?"
"Us?"
"My wife, Agathe, my sons, Pleistonax and Thennas, and my brother and his daughter Phaustine. All that remains of the ostologoi."
"That is all? What is your name?"
"Sopheas."
"And your brother's?"
"Skyllias."
"Very good. What do I wish, Sopheas?” The pale woman's face brightened with delight. Her eyes did not, her focus pinned to Sopheas as if she were sighting a crossbow. “I wish to see all of you for a grand welcome home, of course. Finally, I am home. Now get someone to tend to my orca."
She sprang into the water, kicked over his head to a high ledge jutting from the side of a mountain. A glow like a dragon's mouth, heat-distorted water shimmering orange and yellow, through a broad arched doorway.
The pale woman recognized a man's decaying bones and teeth on the ledge. She smiled, a genuinely sincere smile, warm as the light spilling from the gate of the stronghold of the ostologoi.
"We meet again, Alois. I see you found my home without trouble—and even opened the gates for me."
She winked at the animated dead frame of a five-hundred year old Spanish soldier who had drowned when his ship sank on the far side of the world.
"Do not allow anyone to pass you, Alois."
Alois returned a smoldering soul-light stare, the glow of the arch behind him coming through the holes in his skull and out of his ruined eye sockets.
"Unlike you, my dear Corina—” The pale woman frowned and glanced over her shoulder at the decaying home of the remaining ostologoi. “—and what is left of my once great bloodline, you can always count on the dead."
* * * *
Corina surfaced in the body that used to be hers, wiping away her tears, leaving her tiny gray island to come back into her head, the first time since Aleximor had fed an Akast?'s parasite to Phaidra. Corina had cried and pleaded with him, trying to persuade him to spare the Rexenor, but the pale woman had returned at that moment and betrayed Phaidra to King Tharsaleos.
Corina, broken and hollow, stared out of the eyes that had been hers so long ago.
The stronghold's exterior looked like a rough abyssal mountainside. Inside it was a palace decorated in a rich but weird mix of rococo and the soft organic feel of the inside of a seashell.
The pale woman kicked down the long orange-lit central hall lined with framed portraits of the bone-gatherers of the past, shriveled bony figures with long stringy hair. The ceiling was painted the dark red of bloodstains, the walls were as yellow as sulfur.
Unlit doorways broke up the procession of ugly ghost men and women every six portraits, and the Greek key moldings along the floor lost their geometry at each one, morphing into columns of carved lace, knobby coral polyps and crinoidal spirals.
The pale woman kicked harder, reaching her hands toward the bright open end of the hall, where the wall design changed to arched folds of rock lined with carved human figures, throats cut, bones bent at wrong angles, pronounced channels cut for blood and the cooling ingots of their souls.
The pale woman swam through the arch at the end, entering a chamber as vast as the mountain itself, its walls polished smooth, soft pink like the inside of a conch.
The floor of the chamber was hidden under the shadow of the army.
Corina clutched at her broken mental space, trying to hold on long enough to see the army of the bone-gatherer. There were thousands of them, straight formations of skulls and dull black breastplates, spears butted, points up, three times the height of the tallest skeleton.
"I had not expected them all to be here—and hoped that some remained.” He sighed. “Isn't it glorious, Corina? Not one appears out of place."
How ... how many are there?
"My synomotia, bound to me. Five Khilarkhia, what you would call a brigade, each containing over a thousand, every single one of them with many times the power of the Olethren. And in the front, two Merarches, commanders of two brigades each. The fifth is mine, as is the overall generalship."
Corina's soul thawed. Saving them for the king?
"And Rexenor, dearest. Rexenor first."
You ... liked Phaidra—and then you betrayed her. I detected a hint of admiration for Rexenor when you joined with Phaidra. What happened?
"They killed my old body and imprisoned me for two hundred years. That is what happened. Strates was damned—I fed him through the fire to Akast?. Kassander—probably the very namesake of this bitch granddaughter of the king—ruined me, bound my psyche inside the earth."
Kassandra is both: royal line and Rexenor.
"Perhaps it will be sufficient to kill her? Is that what you are saying? She is not enough.” The pale woman laughed suddenly, cold knife laughter with teeth bared. “Corina, you doubt my abilities. That is what you're after, isn't it? You do not want me to pursue the king and Rexenor because if I fail you will die with me. Have I discovered another of your plots?"
Corina begged, I just want to live. Please. I just want my life back.
"You are dead, Corina. You were dead the moment you touched the lock, the moment you freed me. Give it up."
I can't.
The pale woman waved a hand through the water impatiently and kicked above her army.
"To the north. To battle. March now, and I will meet up with you before we settle on allies and a battlespace.” She laughed grimly. “I have not yet decided who our enemy or enemies will be, not before meeting with Kassandra. Eis orthon apodunai!"
The ranks of dead lined up into four tight columns, lifting their spears off the floor of the chamber, slamming them down with thunder that shook the earth and lifting them again.
"Paragoge!"
The army moved, thundering footsteps and creaking armor, the left column first, through the wide arch and down the hall. The others followed in perfect ranks, the two taller fiercer looking dead Merarches leading the way.
There were a handful of living dead standing off to one side, the remains of the Maria Draughn's crew in t
attered uniforms and rotting strips of flesh, along with three of the Spaniards, nothing left but broken bones streaked with rust.
The pale woman smiled at them. “Come, Captain Teixeira, I promised you a meeting with the Sea. It is time."
She swam from the army's chamber, down the hall and through the front gates, giving dead Alois another wink. The dead followed, stumping and dragging along the flagstones, lining up next to the bone-gatherer on a flat stretch of ground halfway between the stronghold entrance and the family home.
The remaining members of the ostologoi stood back, huddled together, fueled by the excitement of one of their number returning—and with power enough to raise the dead and bind psychai, enough to send the army forth.
The pale woman swam to them, smiling gently, running her fingers through the white-blond hair of the youngest boy.
"What is your name, beautiful young man?"
The boy looked up fearfully at his mother, who nodded back encouragingly.
"Thennas, milady.” His voice was a hoarse whisper.
The pale woman curled her knees and dropped down to look into his eyes. “Now, Thennas, I have a task for you. A special task. Do you know how to feed an orca?"
Thennas shook his head.
"Would you like to learn? It's very simple."
He stared at her, afraid the wrong expression or gesture might cause her to take away her gift, but the pale woman put her cold hands on his shoulders. “Do not be afraid, Thennas. All you must do is ride my orca to the east for as long as it takes you to count slowly to one thousand, and then turn her around and ride her back. If she hasn't found something to chase and eat by then, she is not hungry. Can you do that for me?"
She gave his shoulders a squeeze and the boy dropped his head in assent.
"Good. Now swim along, count to a thousand and then you will return and we can begin our whole new life together."
Thennas kicked off enthusiastically without looking back, and the pale woman leaned in conspiratorially to the rest of the family. “This is not something the young one should witness."
Sopheas and his wife and older son, and Skyllias and his daughter agreed with smiles and murmurs of how thoughtful the pale lady was.
"Captain Teixeira. I need you to stand here, on this side of my loyal family."
Corina's thoughts withered in her head. You're going to kill them all, aren't you?
Aleximor went through the steps Corina recognized, cutting deep into her right wrist, switching the knife to the other hand and using the tip to slice open the vein in the pit of her elbow.
Blood flowered and sloshed in the water, rolling like clouds, dark murderous red, a veil of blood around the pale woman.
Corina didn't even feel the pain. Her life was thin and barely noticeable, her heartbeat unnecessary, the even cadence of her lungs a habit only. She watched the knife cut into her skin, open veins, and vanish behind the pulse of thick inky red.
The pale woman sucked it into her mouth and sang of the door into death, blowing blood through her teeth like cigarette smoke. It was so much simpler to perform with most of the original Corina Lairsey, the woman from California, already gone to feed the things beyond the door.
The line of fire burst from the end of the knife, tearing wider as something on the other side smelled the life of Sopheas and Agathe and their son, Pleistonax, and Skyllias and his lovely daughter, Phaustine.
"Step closer, my family, and feel the warm touch of my lady, Akast?, the Sea."
The fire engulfed them, and Thennas, nine hundred counts away, heard their screaming.
"It is your turn, Captain Teixeira, to meet her.” With a flourish, fanning one delicate hand over her head, the pale woman laughed, “Your wish is my command."
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Chapter Thirty-One
The Hollow Man
My grandfather the king—Tharsaleos—is a master of enslaving constructs and spells. He imprisoned Zypheria inside a shell, a slave construct, using her to control me, to keep me in my prison, to break me. My grandfather did not know I possessed the Wreath of Poseidon. He did this to Zypheria because he thought she was my mother, and he could think of no greater punishment for a mother than to force her to break the soul of her own child. She still has nightmares of the time she was told to kill me when I was four years old—and quite helpless. I hear her crying over it in the middle of the night—as do you, Michael Henderson. Lucky for me, she chose drowning as the way to do me in.
—Michael Henderson, notes from a conversation with the Wreath-wearer
* * * *
His wife was a monster. He was convinced.
"Sam?” She tugged at her long black braids, something she always did when she was uncomfortable. “Sameramis?"
Sameramis was the first of the King's Eight, the most trusted of all soldiers in the Nine-cities, sworn to give his life for the ruler of all the Seaborn. He couldn't piece together how it had happened, but somehow he had lost direction, lost control of his life, his soul tossed about in the currents of warring oceans.
He had killed for his king, had always led the Eight immediately against any of the king's enemies at every command, but lately he had trouble swimming in his own house. His life had become a dream—not even his own, but someone else's dream.
He blinked and tried to focus on his wife.
Is she really this young? She could not be more than half his forty years. Beautiful, painfully beautiful. Flawless monstrous beauty. She danced in the water. Her long slender legs moved like the fluid around her, her bare arms opening, inviting, the sheer web of skin between each perfect finger pulled tight, thin, transparent. It made him ache. It made his scalp tingle and itch as if he had just taken his helmet off.
He watched her hands. Her fingernails were so small they frightened him, made him bring up his own large hands and study his squared off broken fingernails. How many Seaborn have I killed for my king with these? And somehow he knew that just one of her soft hands could reach into him and squeeze his heart to a stop.
His jaw hurt at the joint, a sharp needling when he opened it—a childhood injury, the result of solid hit from his brother's fist. Why am I opening my mouth? I have nothing to say to her. She fills my mouth with words not my own. She kisses me and I taste how cold she is.
"You do not look well, dearest."
Why is she speaking to me?
"I dreamed, dearest, that you went to war in the north and you did not return as you left."
"I leave to battle Rexenor soon. You dreamed I returned?” He felt the heat of his body coming off in waves. Do not say more! She will put your words in her mouth. She will warm them in her hands. She will take your words and she will use them, twine them in her hair, make them part of her, make something that she will use to draw your blood.
She pulled her hands back, a slight pout pushing her lips out. “Perhaps I should tell you another time. You look ill, Sameramis."
"A dream? What kind of dream?” Is that really my own voice, so harsh?
"My dream was short and bitter.” She shrugged her pretty shoulders and her braids twirled in the water around her head like tentacles. Her smile returned sharp, cutting into him delicately, knife-sweet. “Rexenor set a trap and brought you into their fortress in chains. They locked you in a prison and fed you only metal, gold and bronze, dull argent, rare metals that broke your teeth—and still you ate them, you ate them all. You were so hungry. Then they melted metal in a cauldron, white liquid metal rolling to the brim, breaking through the hard cooling crust, and they opened your mouth and poured it inside you. It filled you, and when you cooled, they sent you home, but not as you are. As one of the machine-creatures of the god Hephaistos, creaking joints and soulless."
He kicked away from her, knocking over a tall chair.
"What is it, Sameramis?"
She is a witch. Poison. She has poisoned you. Do not look at her. Poisoned your eyes. Words coiled at the back of his throat, but he was a
fraid to speak them. He kicked harder, hit the wall behind him, and grabbed at the edge of a dark hallway. He forced his body through.
Light spilled from an open arch on his right. A boy looked up at him, carved stone orcas in his hands, toy soldiers astride them with spears. One toy soldier fell to the floor slowly, stiff and lifeless, seesawing in the water.
It was the boy again. He remembered seeing this one before.
"Hello, father.” The boy smiled, a clever smile with tiny white teeth showing. He held up the orca and rider in his right hand. “House Alkimides has killed Dosianax again."
"Wish that it were so, my boy.” Sameramis squeezed his eyes shut. A son? I have a child?
"What is wrong, father?"
Get out. Leave before Alkimides kills Dosianax.
* * * *
The king's voice held everything right in the sea, level-toned, paternal, deeply honest. “Do you trust me, Sameramis?"
"As I trust myself, milord.” He could think in the presence of the king, his mind clear. His hands were not shaking.
"Our houses, privileged among the Nine, have never been agreeable."
"I am one of your trusted Eight."
"First among them."
"But no more or less worthy of trust than the eighth, milord."
Tharsaleos kicked into the water over the balcony, smooth strong strokes that brought him high above the royal keep to his study, his private apartment. He looked down, tugging on his short white beard, waving Sameramis up. “And Euchaon of Dosianax?"
"Will be ready to pledge his life to you when there are seven of us."
"Tell me how your dear Aischyline of Dosianax behaves."
Sameramis’ body tightened in surprise. Even her name stung him, an electric buzz deep in his stomach. “My wife suspects something is wrong with me."
"Wrong?"
"In the way I look and act. Even my son has noticed."
The king looked disappointed. “Young Stasenor has said something?"
Stasenor? That is his name? How can I not remember my own son's name? “He fights with toys, always Alkimides and Dosianax, and—forgive me lord—always Alkimides kills Dosianax. His game never changes. Alkimides kills Dosianax. It frightens me."