The Priest of Blood

by Douglas Clegg

  “Whatever roams the fallen kingdom, it will not let mortals through,” I said. “Drink now, and hope it lasts us the journey.”

  The others gathered around the two mortals, each taking a place near the source of blood, whether neck or heart or shoulder or wrist or thigh. After the drinking was done, we sought out the place of the greatest of the serpents. The whole time, I felt as if we were being watched by someone—someone who followed us yet didn’t interrupt the stream enough for any of us to completely sense this stalking form. I saw it in Kiya’s face—she glanced upward along the cliff as if expecting something to be seen there. Ewen reached for me as I climbed up the sheer wall, feeling as if I had the powers of a spider. He touched my ankle. I turned to him, and he said, “I feel something. Something is near.”

  I nodded, but had no idea what threat lurked nearby. When I had scaled perhaps a hundred feet up the cliff, using the myriad snake holes to grip as I went and the energy from the newly drunk blood to move swiftly, a crevasse opened up, with a shelf of rock. As I studied this, I saw that it was truly a doorway—an ancient one, for it had carvings of strange figures along its edges, figures of women with wings and lions with the heads of children and the tails of crocodiles. Words, written above the doorway, carved into the rock, in some language long dead. Were they words of warning? Of welcome? I could not know.

  I called to the others to follow after me. They did not move as swiftly as had I, and Vali fell twice. His agony on his second fall could be felt in the stream between us, and my head ached with his pain. Kiya clutched the sides of her scalp, closing her eyes. This was only the second time I had experienced the stream’s negative aspect—that we were tied together in this afterlife, that our tribe was within one stream, held like clasped hands, one to the other.

  Yarilo scuttled down the rock face as agile as a crab, and took Vali’s arm, wrenching him up with him so that he might not fall again.

  “I feel it,” Kiya said mysteriously.

  I glanced over to her just as she brought herself up onto the rock door’s threshold.

  Tension clenched at her face. “Something,” she said. “Something’s coming.”

  Suddenly, I knew what she meant.

  What had been watching us from a distance descended along the wall of rock above me, pouring from the openings with clicks and a strange shhh sound. I glanced up the cliff and first saw a blurred motion of bone whiteness moving down toward us in a wave. It became more distinct as it approached.

  Scorpions.

  As large as my hand. Pure white, and with twin stingers hovering over their backs. Thousands of them coming toward us. I glanced down at Ewen, who struggled up the rock face, barely moving fast enough to make it to the doorway. He would be overwhelmed. The scorpions had already covered the threshold and begun crawling on Kiya, who madly shook them off. I went to try and help her. I heard Ewen crying out, and Vali, as well.

  When I looked over the edge, I saw that the creatures had covered them and were beginning to weigh them down. A stinger struck my foot, then a pincer. More stingers jabbed at my flesh. I felt the intense pain of both my own feelings and the others of my tribe as pain shot through our stream. The poison of these creatures worked into me, and I felt nausea as my blood fought against this strange venom that was unlike any other. It made my blood warm, then seem to boil. I pulled at the creatures, flinging them against the rocks, tearing at their twin overhangs of spears, then I went to free Kiya from them. After I left her, I crawled downward on the rock, reaching first Yarilo, who, once I pulled a massive scorpion from his face, had the strength to help Vali with his small demons. And then Ewen, whom I took up in one arm and shook hard so that the monsters would drop to the Earth far below.

  He was in the worst shape, and when I finally drew him up into the doorway he rested in my arms while I plucked a stinger that had gone deep into the side of his neck.

  “Why didn’t we sense them?” Kiya asked, when we had all gathered at the mouth of the entrance.

  “Perhaps,” I said, “they’re like us. Perhaps they are not alive.”

  “Who could create such a creature?”

  “Who could create us?” I asked.

  13

  I watched the night sky with its pinprick stars above and the cliff opposite us. “These creatures are a warning. If we were human, their venom would have killed us. Whoever put them here did not think that those who have already been to the Threshold would exist to come here.”

  “The Pythoness?” Vali asked. His face had been restored to its alabaster splendor from the welts and scratches that had existed there just moments before.

  “It must be another,” Kiya said. “She would know we might find this doorway.”

  “Do you think she follows us?” Yarilo asked. He came to me, and sat beside me, gently stroking Ewen’s hair. Ewen glanced up at him, then at me. I still felt pain within him, but his blood had stopped its raging within his flesh.

  “She follows no one,” I said. “If you had felt what I had when she offered the Sacred Kiss, you would know that she is far away from us now.”

  “Because she fears you,” Kiya said, nodding.

  “But the other one,” I said. “Medhya. It feels as if she watches me, even now.”

  14

  When at last we crawled on our bellies through the darkness, we saw nests of vipers along rock shelves and among the deep pits along the way. They crawled across our backs and legs as we pushed through. I felt fangs going into my skin, and with each bite and injection of venom, one of the serpents died, drinking the poison of our blood. Holes crisscrossed the tunnel through which we moved, and eventually we came to a dip in the rock that opened into a larger space.

  It was like a giant well within the mountain. When I looked up, there was no exit to the sky above. I sensed water far below us.

  “We crawl down,” Kiya said.

  “Or jump.”

  She then sensed the water, also. “A sea,” she gasped. “How, within the mountain, can there be this?”

  “An underground passage of water,” I said. “If the city was swallowed by the Earth, might not its waterway be also? And yet have you seen rivers that run beneath the Earth, as well? Perhaps this is like that.”

  She shook her head. “We’ve come all this way. But...water.”

  “We can go back,” Vali said, crouching at the edge, peering down into the vast abyss below us.

  “I am continuing on,” I said.

  “Water,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Perhaps.”

  Kiya said nothing then, but Vali called out, “We grow weak in water.”

  I nearly laughed. “Silver. Water. What good are we? Have we no strength in us?”

  Kiya, angered by my outburst, spat back, “Do not laugh at what you do not understand, Falconer. Water does not harm us. We simply lose the stream within it. It takes much from us.”

  I took a breath, closing my eyes. Part of me wished to take Ewen and just escape this world, as I had wished to escape the world of mortals through death. Instead, I opened my eyes upon Kiya and said, “Do not fear the water, then. I will be your strength.” To the others, I shouted, “I will be the strength for all of you, if I must carry you each on my back across a raging river.”

  Yarilo roared with laughter, but Kiya remained angry. I tried to take her wrist in mine to communicate through the stream my respect for her, but she drew her hand back.

  I leaned over the edge and tested my hand against the well’s curves. “There’s enough to hold. We can crawl down. Look.” I pointed down the circular wall, and there, carved into the sides, was a steep series of steps, barely more than a slight raised shelf of rock. I felt that some engineer had planned this entrance—that it was not haphazard, not part of being swallowed by the Earth in a cataclysm, but of a plan. As if this mountain had been hollowed out by some great civilization then into which it buried itself alive.

  15

  The sight of us must hav
e been extraordinary—six vampyres, heads toward Earth, arms and legs outstretched but bent, crawling down the well, clinging to juttings and holes within the structure, following the trace of indentations and narrow shelves that formed the steps down.

  Near the bottom, there was the lip of a cavern, and a drop to the ground of perhaps twenty feet. I landed like a cat and remained crouching at the bottom, looking out at the wonder before me. Above, the cavern of many-colored rock, lit with luminous blue ore.

  Directly ahead of me, the shore of a lake. Shingles and shells lay beneath my hands and feet. Other more substantial forms made of some kind of plaster also were underfoot. I lifted a flat disk, and, turning it over, saw that it was a fragment of a white mask of some kind. Its eyes and lips were shell. As I glanced near where the water met the sand, I saw other broken masks also and proceeded to glance at each of them. Had they once adorned sculpture? Had they been worn? Were they of some heathen religion or of a theater’s repertoire? I didn’t know—something about them bothered me, for they seemed alien to me, and to anything human I had seen. Yet they were simply masks, most of them reduced to shards.

  In the distance, more cavernous space and natural bridges of rock built so perfectly that they might’ve once been the outer walls of the kingdom. Before me, the water lapped gently at the sands—but it was milk-white water, fairly glowing with minute particles of life, as if thousands of tiny white insects or prawns moved in the liquid. When I cupped my hands into it and brought the water up, it was as clear as any lake’s. So it was these tiny creatures—harmless—that made the color so white. When we had all arrived along the shore, we explored its edge, and, presently, Vali found a barge docked at some distance, as if it had been set there for us to find.

  “See?” I told Kiya. “We don’t need to swim.”

  It was little more than a large raft made of wood, but was large enough to accommodate four of us. Vali and Yset remained behind, for we could not risk them walking within the water, as it would drain them of any energy they had left. Yset touched the edge of my stream with her hand, and told me without words that she and Vali would guard the exit to this world at the center of the mountain.

  We boarded the wooden vessel and pushed off from the shore. Yarilo and Ewen handled the oar and pike, pushing away from the rock walls or digging into the sucking earth at the bottom of the water to propel us forward. The smells that came up from the water were of sulfur and a strange musty smell; from the caverns through which we navigated, an icy chill grew as we moved farther and farther from the shore. Just as we crossed beneath a spiked ceiling of glassy stone, Ewen caught my attention with a slight wave of his hand. I went over to him, at the back of the barge, and looked across the surface of the white water. “Something’s there.”

  “I can’t sense it,” I said.

  “The water interrupts the stream,” Yarilo said. Then, slightly startled, he pointed off to the other side of the barge. “Over there.”

  We watched the surface of the water as it rippled, then went still. Kiya got down on her hands and knees and looked into the water. “I see...someone.”

  “Someone?”

  “It’s one of the Alkemars,” she said, keeping watch on the milky water.

  Chapter 14

  ________________

  THE ALKEMARS

  1

  Within a few minutes, we all saw them—at least four creatures beneath the water’s surface, lying as if on their backs, floating beneath the water. I had heard tales of mermaids, but had never expected them to have such monstrous forms. While the faces of these nymphs were fair and lovely and their shoulders and breasts were as fresh and ripe as any young maiden’s, gradually their pale flesh gave way to scales and fins, and barbs as catfish might have, while small barnacles clung to their sides and flat bellies. What would be their thighs melted together into one long tail like that of a crocodile. “They watch us,” Kiya said.

  “They’re beautiful,” Ewen added.

  “They’re like us,” I said. “See? They have the teeth.” And indeed, their smiles were sharp, and the barbs of their teeth were like sharks’. “These are our ancestors, perhaps.”

  “They seem dumb,” Yarilo said. “Fish. Monstrous fish. I wonder if their blood tastes of the sea?”

  “Fish?” Kiya asked. “Or serpents? See their tails. They are like eels. Or crocodiles. These are the sisters who guard the entry. They are not to be disturbed.”

  But Yarilo could not resist reaching into the water to touch the breast of one. Yarilo enjoyed his predatory touching—I had seen him do it with a maiden on the hunt. He had wanted to seduce her with his touch, and, truthfully, he had drunk much blood from women who were enchanted by his handsome, rugged face and eyes that lit up like a cat’s in the dark.

  The Alkemar that he fondled grinned with the teeth of a shark. She rose up to meet his touch, and brought her face above the water. Her eyes were milky white with a yellow center almost like an egg yolk. Her skin seemed darker than it had beneath the water and was translucent in parts, so that beneath the skin, blood pumped, and streaks of nerves ran up and down just behind the glowing of the flesh.

  She spoke in a voice that was nasal and nearly a shriek. A language like none we had ever heard came from her, and our senses could not at first decipher it. Kiya told Yarilo to pull back his hand from her—for he was cupping her face.

  “She won’t bite me,” he said. “We’re cousins, aren’t we? You and I.” He leaned over and pressed his lips to her eyelids, kissing her on each.

  Then her sisters rose up from the water, their heads above the surface, and as the white water spilled from them, I saw that they each had a green-gray color to them, like crocodiles of muddy rivers. Their tails, too, which whipped lightly a white froth at the surface. They had scales and prongs of gray-green flesh that were reptilian. These were not mermaids at all—they were as much serpents as the snakes in the outer caves.

  As they chattered and shrieked among themselves, I realized that they’d surrounded our barge on all sides. There were nine of them, all told, and I began to distinguish some of the ancient tongue they spoke so that words like “Alkemarizshtan” began to mean something to me.

  “They are barbaric,” I said. “Can you not feel it? They are not like us.”

  “They are just like us,” Yarilo said. “Neither dead nor alive. Neither human nor quite monster. Aren’t you? My sweet?”

  I detected in him his intention. He had seen the blood and smelled its vigor. These creatures had blood that we could drink, and his thirst had returned. Kiya must’ve felt it, too, for I saw her nostrils flare. But I didn’t trust their appeal, and these creatures were not human and might have been undead just as we were. Death could not feed from death without bringing death.

  And yet, I sensed their life force. My nerve endings tingled with the desire to drink from them.

  One of them crawled onto a smooth, flat rock that jutted up from the water. She pressed her hands against the rock, swinging her tail lazily into the water. She cried out something, and I caught a few words that my mind was able to understand, something about “Damitra.” At the sound of this name, another of the sisters looked over at her, then she glanced at the one nearest Yarilo. I didn’t like this communication, nor the fact that Yarilo had abandoned the pike and Ewen had dug the oar against some rocks to keep the barge still. The stillness was bad. We were in their territory, and this was a dangerous world that had been buried centuries ago and was not meant to be found.

  And then I knew who had built the barge and left it. Left it for any who came. The Alkemars themselves. They were not simply dumb creatures of some ancient curse. They had an intelligence as a spider might in spinning her web, or a crocodile might, lying deep in the mud in order to fool prey.

  “Her name is Damitra,” Yarilo said, turning back to me, grinning. “She has told me. She controls the stream here.”

  I hadn’t felt the stream at all among them. Had he? Was this mon
strous creature really communicating with him through some form of the stream unknown to us? Or was it simply bewitchment?

  I looked at Yarilo fiercely. “Let her go,” I whispered with a harsh tone. “She is unclean.”

  He grinned more broadly, keeping his eyes on her face. “She is very clean.” He laughed. “Look at how lovely she is.”

  I tried to reach over and pull Yarilo back, but it was too late. The liquid wriggling in the water swirled and spiraled in waves, like the beginning of a frenzy among sharks taking down a sea lion. The other Alkemars surrounded their sister Damitra, the one that fascinated Yarilo, who leaned against her throat, sniffing for her blood.

  And then the Alkemars leapt from the surface, grabbing Yarilo by the waist and shoulders as he leaned forward, pulling him beneath the water with barely a splash.

  2

  The water’s surface went still as glass.

  Kiya swore, her voice echoing in the caverns. Ewen moved back toward me, clutching my arm. I knelt and stared into the water, trying to see them, trying to see what happened to our companion.

  “I can’t even feel him in the stream,” Kiya said, her senses exploding, as were mine, as we tried to reach him using the only method we knew.

  We could not go into the water, both because it would, itself, drain our strength, and also because none of us knew what these creatures might do.

  I could not stand it anymore. Seconds had passed, and there was no sound. I dove over the edge, breaking the water’s surface. When I felt the liquid pour over me, I felt ice both within and without. It was bone-chilling and did not just end my sense of the stream to my vampyre clan, but exhausted me as I swam within it.

  As it was, I had no strength beyond ordinary mortal power, and even that was sapped. I swam through the milky sea, which was less murky beneath than above, and I saw them swimming away, each clutching him with their teeth, shaking at Yarilo’s flesh as if they meant to tear him limb from limb.