Sworn to Vengeance

by Terah Edun

27

  Seven leaned forward over his podium with eager, rabid eyes. “So you see, prince heir, this is why we have brought you here.”

  “At least in part,” Oiye hurried to add.

  Sebastian turned his attentions to Seven. “For a heinous crime, you would have the court's full support in pursuing the perpetrators.”

  Then Sebastian spread his hands out. “But my imperial father had nothing to do with this.”

  “Lies,” said Seven in rage as he practically climbed the podium to lean farther over it. “You tell your lies in your golden palace by the seas, Sebastian Algardis, but they will not stand here.”

  Oiye banged a gavel that Ciardis didn't even know he had. “Order. Order! We will be civil. We are not the plagued animals they seem to think us.”

  “I apologize for my interruption,” said Sebastian solemnly. “But my father's edict was clear. City dwellers and citizens alike were given his word. Journey into the strongest citadels imaginable, take the supplies and medical help we could will you, and return to our lands in fifty years. We built no camps. We chained no men. It was voluntary to go within the city walls, not some far-off domain where the weather was cold and heinous acts were handed down.”

  That's not what the rumors and legends said, Ciardis thought. She remembered the tales of whole villages stricken by the Aerdivus that had disappeared from one day to the next. They hadn't all died. Besides which, there'd not been any bodies to collect. Just ghostly buildings.

  Abandoned.

  Or taken.

  “Do you call us liars?” asked Seven.

  “I merely ask for you to hear my words. See the edict from my father's own hands, which all cities and citizens were free to read and free to decide on on their own,” Sebastian replied without looking away from Oiye once.

  Oiye smiled. “We have read the edict. We know of your father's stance.”

  “Then why have you brought us here on false pretenses?”

  “False, I would not concede,” Councilor Oiye said. “But it is simple. Yes, once your father's decree was made we were transported again—this time to the city of Kifar without delay. Other camps, if there were any, I'm sure did the same. But it was the actions which preceded that evacuation and the conditions which we encountered after being 'freed' into the city which bring us here today.”

  “When we came here,” said the woman, “we were as babes. No clothes on our backs. No food in our bellies. Wide-eyed and brand new to the domain. Looking for help.”

  “And finding none,” said Seven.

  Councilor Oiye nodded sadly. “The city was abandoned.”

  “At least of all those who could help us,” said one of the council members. “Medical personnel, soldiers, even city officials—they had all abandoned their posts.”

  Oiye said, “When the decree was signed to seal the city and its inhabitants inside, something went wrong.”

  Seven muttered something like, “Or they planned it.”

  Oiye continued, “No one who was not ill or who had not been previously exposed to the plague stayed. The city was filled with the literal dead and dying.”

  “When we arrived, we had no choice but to stay,” one of female councilors concluded. “Half of us were ill ourselves, and others were in the beginning stages of dying.”

  “They had given us very little to take care of ourselves, let alone the hordes of people left without care,” said Oiye with sadness. “But all that was in the city was ours. So we scavenged. We found homes and a place to care for the sick and wounded. We found grain storages so that we would not starve. We burned the ones who were lucky enough to pass on from this life and into the next. And for the ones who could not die, we devised a system of care.”

  “We may have come from an internment camp,” said the man, “but we were determined to make this city a haven for the forgotten, the ill, the dying, and the undead.”

  “And so we did,” added Oiye. “For decades we have done what we could. Built a city of rule out of a place left for the ashes. But we have come to realize that instead of a haven, we have built our own hell.”

  Ciardis looked at him curiously as he swallowed heavily and struggled to speak.

  A woman who had not yet spoken took on the mantle of representative and carried on. “We came across this by accident and were not prepared. It was a hard thing.”

  What was? Ciardis wondered.

  “And you, Seven?” said Sebastian with bite. “You seem to have weathered the devastating first forty years of this imprisonment very well.”

  Seven gave him a cold smile. “I don't look like the others, is what you mean, prince. There is no need to dance around our words.”

  “Very well,” said Sebastian. “Tell us how you came to be as you are today, then.”

  “That would be a long story indeed,” said Seven with narrowed eyes.

  Ciardis didn't like him at all. Seven reminded her of a crazed person masquerading as sane.

  Oiye waved his hands. “There is no need for this, Seven. Just answer his query.”

  Seven stiffened but he did as he was bid.

  “My mother was one of the camp survivors,” he spat out. “She came through it ravaged but whole. Wasting away as if dying, but with a vitality in her eyes that washed away her ills. By the time two months had passed after the walls were sealed, she knew that she carried a child. Me.”

  Ciardis felt pity rise within her. “No child deserves such a childhood,” she whispered.

  Seven spared her a glance. “I did not ask for your pity.”

  Ciardis met his gaze head-on. “Nevertheless, I give it. Not for you, the man fully grown. But for the child who has long since perished within.”

  Seven's lips pursed, but he did not respond with rancor, only more of his recollections. “After she gave birth to me, a healthy and whole baby, she thought it was a gift from the gods.”

  Ciardis almost recoiled. “Healthy” was a matter for debate. The man had red eyes, after all. Still, he'd never said he'd been born human.

  Seven continued, “After all, what mother hadn't had a child die inside her thanks to the Aerdivus's actions on her body and the new life before it was even born?”

  “The fact that Seven was born, alive and well, gave his mother hope,” said Oiye gravely. “And what's more, it changed all our perspectives as well.”

  “For you see,” said one of the female council members, “we had all contracted the plague by then. None were spared its wrath after surviving the camps and being interred in these walls. We thought it to be our grave.”

  “But it turned out to be so much more,” said Oiye. “We hid Seven as best we could away from the ills of the city. Away from the plagued survivors, like ourselves, who were succumbing not to death but a fever of the mind. A fever that broke their spirits and left them rabid.”

  “Though some,” said Seven in a voice that said he clearly counted himself among them, “considered their mindless existence as preferable to what they were cursed with.”

  Ciardis looked back and forth over the council in horror.

  “Yes,” said Seven with a sickening grin. “Now you see. These are all plague survivors who should have been long dead. Even if the plague itself hadn't killed them, the passing of time should have long ago ended their suffering.”

  “And the entire city suffers beside us,” said Oiye solemnly. “The city your Muareg so poetically calls the city of the living dead.”

  “The Aerdivus was, thankfully, known for its quick death—at least those who sickened did not linger like wraiths on the wind,” said Seven.

  “But we learned that this was different,” said Oiye. “We were more than just ill. We weren't dying.”

  “Slowly we learned that something was prolonging our life,” said the first female councilor with a face filled with both despair and longing.

  “It was the city itself,” Oiye murmured.

  Sebastian's head tilted and he snapped, “What do you mean?” />
  “He means,” Seven said while sitting back with satisfaction, “that the city both prevents the inhabitants within these fortress walls from leaving and from dying.”

  “You're certain?” Ciardis asked.

  “We are,” said Oiye. “We've had decades to study the matter. Some of us, the ones that you referred to as ravenous hordes, are like mindless and perpetually hungry wraiths.”

  “Others,” said a woman in a stony tone, “like this council before you, kept our minds even as our bodies stayed ravaged by the plague.”

  Ciardis gulped. Either solution sounded like a death sentence. One you were fully aware of. Another mercifully put you out of your own mind.

  “At first we were bewildered, then angry, then fearful,” Oiye said with haunted eyes. “Fearful that we had angered the gods by our very existence. Fearful that we had been thrown into the gates of this abandoned city for a reason. That we deserved to live in hell with these teeming, mindless masses.”

  “Then little by little,” Seven said calmly, “I convinced them they were wrong. It wasn't a punishment so much as a crime inflicted on them. A crime by a callous emperor and a craven empire.”

  Oiye waved a hand to resume speaking for them all. “We didn't know why this was done to us. And for a long time we just wanted revenge. Now we want something different.”

  As he paused, Ciardis felt a chill go down her spine. She knew what he would say. That they demanded the prince heir's death in compensation. And who wouldn't, after his father had obviously ordered the city sealed?

  Sebastian hesitated. “And what is that desire?”

  Seven smiled bitterly. “Death.”

  Ciardis's hope sank like a stone.

  Oiye nodded. “Because all that you see before you is as the entire city is. Filled with mindless hordes, overwhelmed by decay and devastation. Empty. Alone. Forgotten,” he said. “We gathered you here today because we've tried. We've tried to revive this old city. Tried to scrape decay from its very bones, burned the bodies, and cordoned off the living dead. We've searched for a cure for so long.”

  His voice trailed off as it cracked with emotion.

  But Seven continued in a hardened tone, “Nothing that we've managed to do so far has undone this. We control the hordes but we cannot end their suffering. We've stopped the plague but cannot undo its ravagement. Nothing we've done has undone what has passed already.”

  Ciardis heard the pain in their voices. Sebastian too heard it, and responded instinctively.

  “What is it that you want?” he asked. “My death is quite a price, and many throughout this empire would have my head, but none have come before me prior to this day and said that my death will reverse what was unnaturally done.”

  Oiye smiled gently. “Dear child, we've already determined that nothing, god nor man, can reverse what was done.”

  Ciardis stepped forward. “Then what? You kill the prince heir in revenge for a wrong done not in his name?”

  “In his father's name,” shrieked Seven.

  “Silence!” commanded Oiye with a bang of his gavel. “We do not want your death, son of Algardis.”

  Sebastian's face descended into confusion. “Then what?”

  The man looked at him with eerily calm eyes. “We desire our own.”

  28

  They all stared at the assembled members in shock.

  Quiet reigned for a few minutes and then Sebastian said, “Are you saying…?”

  “We're saying we want to die,” replied one of the female councilors. “And we have devised a way.”

  Ciardis blanched, and Sebastian looked like he didn't know what to say.

  Thanar, however, was less devastated about the revelation.

  The daemoni prince cleared his throat and took his stance beside Sebastian with his wings spread. “If death is what you want, I may have a few suggestions.”

  Oiye's eyes positively twinkled with mirth. “We thought you might. You and your journeymen are quite an assortment.”

  “But we know how the task must be accomplished,” the woman said in a quiet tone.

  Thanar ruffled his wings and said in a respectful voice, “Then we would happy to provide our aid.”

  We would not, Ciardis said.

  Internally so that the council could not hear their debate, Thanar said scornfully, Look at them, Ciardis. You can see their suffering written on their faces. At least I can.

  That doesn't justify— Ciardis replied in a horrified tone.

  It justifies everything, replied Thanar firmly. Everything.

  He fell silent, leaving Ciardis flummoxed at his passion for this endeavor. She didn't think he was taking perverse pleasure from the idea. No, instead it almost felt like Thanar thought it was his duty to be present. To do as they asked.

  Listen, Ciardis, Thanar said wearily. I've been where these people are. Trapped in an existence I'd rather end. I could do nothing about it and I still can't. But I can help them end theirs.

  Ciardis felt shock shoot through her system. She'd never known Thanar felt that way.

  I didn't know, Ciardis replied softly. I didn't know that you felt darkness with nowhere to turn.

  Thanar sighed brusquely. Let's not get poetic about this. I wanted to end my life. Suicide. Death by proxy. Whatever you want to call it. I just can't and couldn't manage it on my own. Like them, I was prevented from doing so.

  Sebastian interjected cautiously, Why not?

  He wasn't being callous, just curious.

  Thanar let a smirk cross his face as he replied, I'm immortal, you idiot.

  Ciardis blinked, but not in surprise. Well, I guess we walked right into that one.

  Yeah, said Sebastian solemnly.

  The conversation had all happened in the blink of an eye. Their compatriots and the council staring down at them had been conferring amongst themselves, so they'd barely noticed how still and silent the triad was until that point.

  “Is there a problem with our request?” Oiye asked.

  Thanar spread his hands with a smile. “Only that we do not yet know your proposed solution.”

  “Oh,” said Seven in mock surprise. “That I would have thought you would easily figure out.”

  Ciardis cocked her head.

  Sebastian turned a cool gaze to the council member who seemed hellbent on making their appearance before the ruling members as fraught with tension as possible.

  “We do not,” said Sebastian in a clipped voice. “So if you'd like our help in this matter, and I think it will involve a great deal more than a death by sword…judging by your predicament, we will move on.”

  Seven sat back in silence.

  Councilor Oiye then spoke up. “We've known of your journey to the city of Kifar since you set out on the imperial road.”

  Ciardis's eyebrows rose into her hairline as she gasped in shock.

  Oiye turned his gaze on her. “Yes, princess heir-to-be, we still have our ways of getting information on the goings-on of the outside world. Even though we don't physically venture beyond these walls, we keep abreast of the most current events which so threaten our empire's domain.”

  Seven hissed. “We know who you all are and we know what you want.”

  Ciardis's head swung back and forth between all the voices speaking up in concert.

  Sebastian said, “Then let's dispense with pretense. You know we are here on my father's orders and why?”

  “To curtail a certain wyvern,” said the oldest councilman flatly.

  Sebastian nodded. “Then you know the mission is of the utmost importance.”

  “It is,” agreed Councilor Oiye. “But not in the way you think.”

  Before he could say anything further, Ciardis felt surprise rocket through her head. The emotion radiated from Thanar like a beacon. Surprise at what, he didn't say.

  But then he thought at Sebastian and Ciardis both, Those crafty old fools.

  Sebastian replied, Do you know something that you'd like to share, dae
moni prince?

  Satisfaction flowed from Thanar's mind. He was deliberately keeping his thoughts to himself.

  No, Thanar replied. Besides, I do believe we are all about to find out that we're here for precisely the right and the wrong reason.

  Ciardis wanted to thump Thanar on the back of his head and demand he tell them, but her training prevented her from doing so.

  Didn't stop her from thinking evil thoughts at him, though.

  “I see that the daemoni has caught on,” Seven with a chuckle.

  “Yes,” said Thanar in a leisurely voice. “And I would be happy to help facilitate your end, Seven.”

  The smile disappeared off Seven's face and fury crossed his eyes. He knew Thanar had insulted him by declaring that he would give him everything he desired, but he couldn't call him on it.

  “Although generous of you, prince, not necessary,” said Seven with clouded eyes.

  Then Oiye spoke again. “As many of you have ascertained, there is indeed a wyvern hiding amongst the warren of abandoned buildings and overgrown fields in our once-fair city. But what you do not know, you could not know, is that the wyvern is desired.”

  “Desired?” said Christian, flummoxed as he spoke for the first time—out of turn.

  Sebastian, however, didn't reprimand him. “Yes, please, tell us exactly what you mean.”

  Councilor Oiye sat back. “We have experimented with many attempts at death over the years. From the simple blade to more…complicated measures. But none worked as we thought they did.”

  Seven interjected, “To put it bluntly, those we thought had died after their throats were cut instead just became one of the ravenous horde.”

  “And when we attempted a more thorough approach,” one of the councilwomen said, “immolation, it worked for a time, until the city caught on.”

  “The city?” questioned Ciardis softly.

  The woman turned rheumy eyes to Ciardis's voice. “The city is alive. Its magic, long the domain of the strong mages who resided here, has become altered and driven by one purpose. Instead of keeping the buildings maintained, the roads clear, the water clean, and fresh food growing, it does one thing.”