Seven Kings

by John R. Fultz

  “What of the girl?”

  “She is still there… a slave to shadow… a drinker of blood.”

  “Will you kill her?”

  “Not if I can free her of Gammir’s trap. She could be of great aid to us.”

  Tong nodded. The jungle rustled behind him. “They come.” The raven turned its ebony eyes at him and blinked. “Will you not reconsider?” Tong asked. “Stand with us tonight?” The raven shook its head. “I must seek the girl.” “Is she your daughter?”

  The raven did not answer. Instead it spread its wings and flew back toward the steaming city.

  Tong climbed to the ground and watched the jungle come alive with pale, emerging forms.

  Come, my Brothers!

  They responded to his unspoken call. He ran into the fields, followed by a loping horde of Sydathians. They rushed soundless and without light across row after row of leaf, stem, and stalk. The first of the manor house gates loomed before Tong now. To his east and west throngs of Sydathians moved toward similar structures. The Overseers did not even lock the gates of their outer walls. How could they expect to be assaulted here in the very center of their power? Tong’s heart raced as he pulled the long sabre from its sheath. The knife was gripped in his other fist, point downward for quick stabbing. His eyeless brothers needed no weapons. Their claws and fangs were far more deadly than his two lengths of Khyrein steel.

  Tonight is for you, Matay. And for our son.

  The Sydathians outpaced him with their apish running gait. The first one to reach the manor house crashed through the front door as if it were a paper screen. A second later three more hurdled through the low windows of murky glass. When Tong entered the doorway, the blood had already begun to fly. The eyeless ones tore apart a roomful of off-duty guardsmen before they could even draw blades to defend themselves. They had been dining with the Overseer. Tong was not sure which one was master of the house, but it did not matter. All were guilty. All would die. Fresh crimson splattered across the feasting table.

  “What is happening here?” a wide-eyed soldier yelled. Without their monstrous masks, they were little more than frightened boys. Tong answered with his sabre, skewering him cleanly through the heart. He died before his body hit the lush carpet. Now the entire house was in an uproar, men shouting for blades and armor and horses. The Sydathians poured in through doors and windows like a white flood, a tide of surging destruction. The masked sentinels rushed forward to die two by two, their swords and spears unbloodied as they fell. The Sydathians were too fast for the men’s blades, probably even too fast for speeding arrows. Time would tell.

  The first manor house fell easily. Tong killed four panicked guardsmen with sabre and knife. He grabbed a brand from the hearthfire and set the house aflame as he fled with his leaping brothers. A small corral of perhaps fifteen horses stood behind the manor. Tong kicked down the gate and let the beasts run free. They galloped into the fields in all directions, fleeing the conflagration. Yet one of them lingered in the pen as if it were afraid of liberty. Tong approached the stallion, stroked its nose, combed its black mane with his fingers. It was a young horse. In his boyhood he had dreamed of riding such a fine creature; but only the Onyx Guard was permitted to ride south of the city wall.

  The Sydathians rushed onward, striking down any man who fled, converging on the next manor house. The same scene played out across the length and breadth of the plantations as the eyeless ones invaded the sanctuaries of the Overseers. They ran on all fours, bounding white spiderlings. Slaves came rushing from the field ghettoes to cheer and weep in the face of the destruction. The Sydathians did not touch Tong’s people. They recognized the slave folk as brothers and sisters. They sought the tender, fleshy faces behind the metal masks. They tore apart the bones and sinew of their enemies with a ruthless ease.

  Tong, inspired by the madness of the moment, leaped atop the timid horse’s back. It responded to him instinctually, like one of the Sydathians would. An understanding beyond the use of words. There was no saddle; it had likely burned with the house. The horse whinnied when he pulled at its mane. He grasped its back between his muscled legs, and it raced toward the next plantation. Tong found himself smiling, caressed by the cool night winds. His dripping sabre gleamed bright as silver in the glow of burning manor houses.

  He held the blade high and rode like a mad specter through the hordes of rushing Sydathians. They swarmed the estates of the Overseers, pulling the wicked lords from their houses and feeding the earth with their blood. More structures went up in flames as the eyeless ones tore flaming logs from stone-built hearths.

  The wails of slaves and fleeing guardsmen filled the night. The sounds of slaughter would soon reach the city walls. Tong rejoiced as he cut down armored men who ran like frightened boys from his army of monsters. As far as he could see across the fields, manor houses burned and leaping shadows hurled themselves ever closer to the great sealed gate of the city.

  How many men he killed from the back of the horse, he could not say. Either he trampled their bones into the dust when the stallion overtook them, or his blade hacked off their heads and arms as he passed. They must have thought him a demon, slaying in the company of demons, wreaking the vengeance of some dreadful God. A God of slaves come to liberate his people.

  A patina of shining blood covered his body by the time the stallion ceased its headlong flight. The chaos of slaughter churned about Tong like a storm. He eyed the watchtowers of the black wall, where sentinel fires grew brighter and the horns of alarum pierced the night with urgent wails. Now the city’s defenders knew that its fields were under attack. Now the battle would truly begin.

  Brothers!

  Dropping from the horse, he rubbed its charcoal neck in admiration. He called to him a throng of his eyeless brothers. Thousands more stalked the fields, chasing down and ending the lives of anyone who was not a slave.

  Stay near to me, Tong signaled with mind and hands. I must speak with my people.

  With a band of the beastlings at his back, Tong led his stolen horse toward a group of shacks deep in the midst of the fields. The slaves regarded him with suspicion, naked fear gleaming in their eyes. Mothers grasped children to their bosoms, while fathers and their half-grown sons brandished clubs and stones. Before this moment none of the inhuman invaders had paid them any attention. All across the plantations, slaves watched their masters torn to bits while they stood unmolested, shocked into silence by the strangeness of their liberators, who neither spoke nor looked at them. How could they look? They had no eyes with which to see. Now Tong brought a pack of them like friendly hounds to sniff at the huddled families.

  “Friends!” shouted Tong. “Cousins and Brothers! People of Khyrei! You are no longer slaves. Tonight your bondage ends! I am one of you–Tong, Son of Thago and Omita. My uncles are Soth, Dorno, and Phialmos.” He gestured to the white forms crouching about him. “These… are my brothers from the red jungle. They have looked upon our slavery and seen the wrongness of it. They have pledged to aid us. Throw off your chains and join me in freedom! Death to the Overseers!”

  The congregated slave families muttered nervously and stared at the horned Sydathians. The cries of dead and dying men filled the air, the smoke of burning manor houses. The smells of burning flesh and wood mingled into an unpleasant reek. The forward slaves passed Tong’s words to their fellows at the back of the crowd.

  “The people of Khyrei are no longer slaves!” Tong bellowed. “Let us fight! Let us storm the black walls and tear down the stones of our oppressors. Let us be free! Death to the Emperor!” He raised the sabre to sparkle in the glow of moon and flames. Thickening blood dripped into his hair like a slow rain. He mounted the horse again and renewed his call. “Death to Gammir!”

  A single voice echoed his cry. A young slave stepped forward, a boy of no more than seventeen years. He raised a clenched fist, and Tong beckoned him forward. He gave the boy his soiled knife. “What is your name?”

  “Tolgur,�
�� said the youth. His face was round and bloodshot.

  “Tolgur fights for freedom!” yelled Tong. “Who fights with us?”

  “Death to the Overseers!” yelled another slave.

  “Death to the Emperor!” cried another.

  “Freedom!” Crazed voices rose into the night. A song of hope and rage that became a ceaseless roar.

  Tong galloped toward another group of milling slaves, the Sydathians striding after him. He replayed this scene a dozen times. By the time he finished uniting his people, the city’s southern wall was lined with archers. Every manor house had burned to the ground or was still burning. Between city and jungle a hundred great fires danced like wild Giants. Flames had spread into the fields themselves. Entire tracts of crops blazed like massive bonfires. It must have been quite a sight from atop the city walls.

  Now the Sydathians gathered at the center of the fields, aligning themselves along the Southern Gate road. At least a thousand able-bodied slaves joined them, picking up the swords and spears and shields of their slain oppressors. Their numbers grew to at least two thousand by the time Tong rode his mount along the unpaved road. He smiled at the irony of the simple math taught to slaves for the counting of bales and bushels of produce; now that same skill served him well in counting the number of soldiers in his army of freedom fighters. No wonder the Overseers limited the education of their slaves to serve practical purposes, yet such precautions gained them little in the end. Knowledge was power, and like water it flowed where it wished and could not easily be stopped.

  Few Sydathians, if any, had died in the taking of the fields. By midnight the eyeless ones stood six thousand strong about a core group of three thousand slaves armed with whatever weapons they could find or make from farming tools. Tong sat at the heart of the throng on his tall horse, to which he had given the name Liberty. Other slaves had stolen mounts as well, some with less than satisfactory results, yet some could ride reasonably well. They had worked and lived with these horses their whole lives. A few had learned to ride secretly for years, hiding such activity from the Overseers.

  A rain of black arrows fell like stormclouds from the city walls. A legion of archers fired into shadow and the trickery of firelight, but their keen darts fell so thickly that it made little difference. Raven-feathered shafts pierced human and Sydathian flesh as one. Men screamed and scattered. The eyeless ones bore their pain in silence. It would take a score of arrows to kill a single one of them, unlike a human, who could easily die from a single poisoned barb.

  A second volley launched as Tong shouted orders: “To the trees! Seek shelter in the jungle!” He whirled his steed around and galloped southward. Slaves would not go deep into that wilderness, but they held no fear of its nearby shallow glades. He rode hard toward the distant line of forest, outpacing even the Sydathians. The runners left dead men lying behind them, twisted bodies rife with feathered shafts. The wounded stumbled along with the help of friends and cousins. Another volley blotted the stars and fell into the fleeing horde.

  Envenomed arrowheads killed at least a hundred men before the slaves made it out of bow range. The Sydathians plucked shafts from their dense bodies as if they were no more than bothersome insects. The slaves and their liberators raced into the shadows of the jungle trees. Most of their women and children had already fled there to escape the flames and slaughter.

  By the light of crude torches and the shouts of their fellows, they assembled into a single mass. The youngest and strongest among them came forth to smile at Tong and clasp his hand and call him cousin. Whether they shared a common bloodline or not, all these slaves were cousins of circumstance, united by generations of bondage. No more would that be the case. They would die or be free this night.

  Tong climbed atop a stone monolith draped in hanging moss. Moonlight glared across his blood-slick skin. From the ancient rock, he spoke again to his people. Sydathians lingered in a great ring about the gathering of slaves.

  “Soon they will open the Southern Gate!” Tong shouted. All ears turned to hear him, even those of children whose faces were stained with tears and mud. “Soon they will come for us. They think us weak and afraid. Yet we must fear them no longer, for we have the strength of our Sydathian brothers!” He waved his arms to acknowledge the pale lurking forms that surrounded the glade. “Do not fear them. They will harm only those who enslaved us. The Earth God has sent them to foster our freedom.”

  He paused for a moment to let his words sink in. The slaves stared at him, ragged and bleeding, and not one of them questioned his leadership.

  “Soon they will come for us,” he said. “But it is too late. We are already free!”

  Most of the pale slaves cheered, while others wept. Already the fighting had claimed too many lives. Men died so their families would be free to fight on.

  “Cast aside the fear that lives in you heart. You are the true People of Khyrei!” Tong told them. “This is our land. How long have we worked it, coaxed life from it, bled for it, been buried in it? Khyrei is ours! Let us take it!”

  “Death to the Emperor!” someone cried out.

  “He will come!” said Tong, and the anxious voices quieted. “Gammir the Undying… the Reborn… the Drinker of Blood. I say let him come!”

  Tong raised his arms toward the high trees, and the former slaves gasped as they looked skyward. A woman cried out. A little boy laughed.

  Silence fell upon the glade. In the high branches of the jungle canopy, silent as moss on twigs, another ten thousand Sydathians waited with clever claws and zealous snouts. The eyeless ones sat thick as leaves among the trees. A second, far larger force had joined the six thousand who had taken the fields. Here was an army that could and would take the whole city; the true heart of the Sydathians’ might had been held in reserve.

  Now the slaves saw the depth of Tong’s ambition, and they cheered his name.

  He was the Hope-Bringer, the Brother of Beasts, the Onyx-Killer.

  The light of their gnarled torches glinted in his eyes as he spoke.

  The Sydathians did not speak his language, but they understood his every word. They felt the fear and desperation of these people turn to wonder and delight. They knew what lay at stake here. Tong had shown them all in his mind.

  Let the Emperor and his bitch come and try to stop them.

  “Let the Emperor come forth!” he bellowed. “Let Gammir know the taste of our vengeance instead of our blood!”

  The slaves cheered him on.

  None saw the Southern Gate open, or the armored legions that rode into the burning fields.

  As always, she awoke to hunger.

  The Great Thirst coiled like a viper in her belly.

  She arose from the wide bed and stretched her limbs, then stepped beyond the circle of runes that enclosed it. Soon a body slave would enter and pull back the black drapes that hid the daylight while she had slept. She might feed upon the servant if she wished, but she preferred to hunt her prey. Some instinctual urge deep inside her demanded it. Besides, if she drained her body slave, who would pull back her drapes each evening and tend to the mass of night-blooming flowers that decorated her chamber? After slaking her thirst on the streets of the city below, she would rejoin her Master and Mistress. The plans for a lavish wedding had begun.

  As she called forth the substance of shadow to weave herself a dark gown, a rustling at the window drew her eye. Hers was the topmost chamber of the western spire, so it must be some bird or bat flown into the billowing drapes. A spark of annoyance fueled her hunger. She bounded across the room and pulled back the curtain. There on the casement perched a solemn raven, wings glossy with twilight. The last of the sun’s ruby glow lingered on the horizon. The raven stared at her with eyes even darker than her own.

  She grabbed it in her clawed hand and stuffed it into her mouth. The bird was no substitute for human blood, but it made a fine appetizer. Black feathers fell about her feet as the creature writhed between her fangs. The bird was now a pois
onous viper, shifting and slithering in her jaws, tail and neck hanging level with her waist. She spat it upon the flagstones, wiping at her mouth. Not a drop of blood lined her lips; she had not broken the viper’s scaly skin.

  She crouched and hissed at the reptile, but now it was the black hound she had seen weeks ago, staring at her from the shadows of an alley. Once again she stood transfixed by its mysterious eyes.

  “Sharadaza.” It spoke her name in a voice that rang familiar.

  Iardu!

  Now the sorcerer stood in his manly form between her and the open window. He held a crooked staff of umber wood. His eyes were chromatic stars.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “This is not you. You are the Daughter of Vod, not a slave. Remember this!” His eyes sparkled with forgotten colors.

  “All Is One,” she said. “There can be no distinctions.”

  Iardu smiled. His teeth gleamed white in the gloom. “You at least remember the principles I taught you. It is true… the only distinctions are the ones you choose for yourself. However, in the form you now wear, you let Gammir choose for you. The time has come to reclaim yourself.”

  Yes! Let the nightmare end…

  Her right hand lashed out, claws slicing across his chest. The blue flame burning there was cold, and its power drove back her talons. She would feed now. There was no need to roam the streets tonight. This fool would do just fine.

  She pounced like a jungle tiger, and black wings spread from her back. Iardu staggered back as the weight of her fell upon him. Her fangs snapped at his face. He held the staff against her throat, keeping her mouth away from his neck. Her red tongue lolled as her skull elongated to wolfish proportions.

  The blue flame on his chest flared again, blasting forth to engulf her body. She leaped away from him, chilled by the cold fire. He waved the staff and she fell to the floor, twitching and mewling. He mumbled ancient words and her form shifted once again. Now she lay as herself on the floor, the gown of shadow tattered and singed. Iardu’s hand waved above her and black chains grew from the stone floor to encircle her. She stared up at the wizard, gnashing her sharp teeth. The thirst raged in her belly, burned on her brow like a fever.