Ashes to Ashes

by Carrie F. Shepherd

  He stood again and held his arm out to Paul.

  “Come, child.” He commanded. Paul stood, without question, and took his arm. “The time for our departure is long overdue.”

  Unable to tear his gaze away from the demon, Iladrul watched him as he wrapped his arm around Paul’s waist and, for the second time, jumped upon a balcony, scanned his surroundings, spread his wings and took flight.

  -38-

  Iykva was furious when he reached the base of the tree and was barred entry by General Balean. His very purpose for having made this trip with Paul and Jamiason was to attend the meeting.

  The war was, after all, entirely his to win.

  As the red moon crossed the sky with the pink moon close on her heels, he became more and more agitated. Finally, he could take it no longer.

  He stormed away from the tree to the lair that Emissary Lord Darklief had made for the travelers to stay in during the daylight hours. Once there, he found his bag, scavenged thorough his trikla and found a small scrap of paper and a small bit of lead.

  As far as Iykva was concerned, if he wasn’t part of the negotiations, there was no requirement that he abide by the agreed upon terms.

  After scribbling his message, he tied the scrap of paper to one of three falcons that had been following him from a distance and shooed the bird away. As its shadow crossed the silver moon above him, Iykva found a tight, yet extremely satisfied, smile.

  -39-

  When Aiken entered Loki’s apartment, he was wearing a tired scowl. After having met Jamiason’s elf for the first time, he finally understood Jamiason’s draw to Paul.

  Not that Aiken, himself, hadn’t always been drawn to Paul. He was an extremely handsome man.

  For a speaking ape, that was.

  But his personality and Jamiason’s personality were extreme polar opposites. While Jami, since his exile, was very serious in his nature, Paul was what many people considered to be a laughing fool. He was always cracking wise, especially when it was inappropriate to do so.

  In many ways, Paul reminded Aiken of the Loki of old. Loki before he’d lost his head the King of Lords’ scythe, that was. Though he would never admit this to anyone, that reminder was why Aiken had always been leery of the man.

  “Oh.” Aiken started at the sound of Ishitar’s voice. “Aiken. I wasn’t expecting anyone home today.”

  Aiken turned toward the young Prince of Providence and forced himself to smile. He stood in the door frame of Loki’s library, his shoulder leaning against one side and his long legs crossed at the ankle. He looked extraordinarily casual to Aiken in that pose.

  “I doubt Loki is expecting me either.” He winked at Ishitar. “The vampires demanded an audience with the elves and, given I have a fondness for both races, I offered them the Oakland Grove.”

  Ishitar’s brow rose over his contemplative eye. “Is that so?”

  “Ta.” Aiken forced his smile to grow. “Perhaps they can come to a truce.”

  Ishitar continued to assess him with his brow high over his eye. “And, perhaps, the planet Kramalta will soon see its first snow.”

  Aiken’s smile became true at that sentiment. It was a world that the King of Lords was trying to destroy because its people had offended him in their refusal to worship their Gods. To punish them, King Noliminan was depriving the planet of all fresh water supplies. The place had become all but a barren desert where only the most hardy of souls, a lizard like race of mortals known as grops, had adapted to survive.

  “Which race is the one striking for war?”

  “The vampires.” Aiken, reluctantly, admitted. “Or, rather, the demons.”

  “Jamiason Scrountentine?” His tone was strangely gentle. Aiken suspected that this was because Ishitar understood the relationship between Aiken and the man who had once been his demon.

  “A demon named Iykva.” Aiken shrugged. “As their King, Jami will be forced to lead them.”

  As Ishitar nodded, Aiken noted that his eyes narrowed slightly. They darted over Aiken’s face, almost as if assessing him. Finally, he looked away. When he spoke, his voice was a low growl. “Gods . . . I grow weary of these four walls.”

  “I’m going to the Courtyard on the Twenty Third Level to meet a friend.” Aiken offered. “I’m sure she won’t mind if you join us.”

  “She, is it?” He returned his gaze to Aiken and smiled.

  “Is a friend.” Aiken winked at him. “And one I think you know: Lady Zamyael.”

  “Zamyael?” He started. “She braves a Hells bound courtyard?”

  “She does.” Aiken nodded. “It’s a rather barren level where your father never tarries. And the Lady Regent thinks far too much of herself, these days, to sully her space with we commoners.” Ishitar chuckled at that and shook his head. “You should join us.”

  “I really don’t want to draw attention to Zamyael if she’s braved visiting these lands.” Ishitar sighed. “I wish I could join you, but—”

  “Really, your Royal Highness.” Aiken scoffed. “You’re one of the three most powerful Gods in either realm or exile. You can’t devise a spell to cloak your face?”

  “I suppose I could make myself look like Loki.” He muttered. Then with a tight lipped frown, “He’s staying with my mother tonight.”

  “There you go.”

  “He drinks harder spirits than I.” Ishitar complained. “What if they go to my head?”

  “Then I’ll see you safely home and to your bed.” Aiken, not caring much for Ishitar’s dark expression, shrugged.

  “What if one of his gaggle would see me to theirs?”

  Ishitar forced himself to smile. Aiken, not caring much for his sense of humor, forced himself to smile in response.

  “Then, your Royal Highness,” Aiken winked at him again, “I’m afraid you’re on your own. Though, for your safety’s sake, I do hope that you understand well and true how Loki has managed to become so famous for his Gods be damned beard.”

  For the first time since Aiken had met the young Prince, Ishitar threw back his head to grant him a good, honest laugh.

  -40-

  The air was still. And eerily quiet.

  Shivering, Iladrul felt his grip tighten around the reins in his hands.

  “Jeavlin?”

  He leaned toward the boy on his left flank, swallowing back his fear. Something about their surroundings did not sit well with him.

  “Yes, my Prince?” Jeavlin blinked his unsettling, gold rimmed eyes. Clearly he was surprised to be the one to be addressed. Generally, Iladrul only passed words with Macentyx. He thought it best not to engage the others until he was ready for the responsibility of owning them which had been thrust upon him against his will.

  “What do you see?” Iladrul asked, trying desperately to hold his voice at a low whisper. It was time to see if the doxy was as perceptive as Macentyx had touted him to be. And, perhaps, the young Prince would learn a thing or two about trails and tracking in the process. “What do you hear?”

  “No birds.” He blinked again as he raised his gaze to the sky. “And no stars.”

  Iladrul’s lips thinned as he gave the boy a barely perceptible nod. “Anything else?”

  Jeavlin lowered his gaze, his brow furrowing. As he raised it to the side of the road, his own lips thinned. “Too many hoof prints. A hoard has ridden this road.”

  “A hoard?” Iladrul’s voice trembled slightly.

  “And recently. I smell soot and ash.” The boy shuddered. “Vampires, do you think?”

  “If I had to guess.” Iladrul, now seeing and smelling these things for himself, agreed. He pulled the reigns in his hands, tightly, bringing his horse to an abrupt stop. As he did so, he called, “Jeanir!”

  Jeanir looked over his shoulder, realized that Iladrul and his doxies had come to a stop and pulled his horse around to face the young Prince. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Something isn’t right.” Iladrul shook his head. “The road is rough shod and the
vegetation seems disturbed.” He flicked his eyes upward. “I smell smoke. And I see no stars.”

  Jeanir’s jaw clenched as his nostrils flared and he took in a deep, long breath. “Loki’s beard . . .”

  He spun his horse in the other direction and drove it with breakneck speed to the front of the line. The relief that overwhelmed Iladrul as the party of angels surrounding him came to an abrupt halt was welcomed with quiet desperation.

  “I thought the vampires meant to give us time to prepare.” This was said by the one called Haidar. Iladrul flicked his eyes in his direction, frowning at him. “Didn’t Prince Paul tell you that he would give you time?”

  “Obviously, he lied.” Iladrul rounded on the boy. “Draw your weapons.” He turned his attention to Sezja, who rode at his side. “I want you to duck into the trees and make haste for the castle the barest moment it appears we are to face a scuffle.”

  “I can hold my own.” She replied to this, turning her dark eyes in his direction. Unlike her brothers, her brown eyes weren’t ringed with gold. They were ringed with blue. This made them, in Iladrul’s estimation, the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. “My father trained me. Same as my brothers.”

  “Girls aren’t meant to battle.” Osete grumbled.

  Iladrul barely marked the movement of her hand flying to her hip to pull out a dagger she carried there and chuck it at her brother. It struck the leather strap of his quiver, which was slung over his shoulder, and shivered there. Osete, let out a gasp of fear as he reached for the grip and pulled it off of his shoulder.

  “Something more to say?” His sister asked him.

  Osete, swallowing, shook his head. As he did so, Sezja leaned forward and swiped the dagger from his hand. Iladrul, trying to hide his impressed smile, looked swiftly away.

  “The sun will be up soon.” Haidar, who rode at his right flank, muttered. “The dirty beasts won’t have anywhere to hide.”

  “If they’re still about.” Macentyx agreed. “My guess is they’ve done what damage they intended and went underground.”

  “If they are underground,” Iladrul reminded them, “we can dig them up.” He frowned as he realized that their party was on the move again. “Come.” He advised his doxies. “But stay at the ready.”

  They fell into step with the angels, their path set on the Great Road. Until, that was, they came to the branch of the road that shot toward the Doxy Village. Iladrul, who had been watching the smoke in the sky, came to an abrupt stop as the rest of his party continued toward the castle.

  “What is it, my Prince?” Macentyx licked his lips.

  It was a question that required no answer. He knew what Iladrul knew. The smoke was coming from the direction of Macentyx’s people. Not from the castle.

  Iladrul shook his head and raised his hand to cover his lips. “Why are we heading toward the castle?”

  Macentyx raised his arm to cover his mouth as if he meant to cough. “Your safety comes first.”

  “If the vampires have gone to ground,” Iladrul lowered his head and began toying with an imperfect stitch on his saddle, “then my safety is not in question.”

  “With us at your side, your safety is not in question.” Osete corrected him, almost imperceptibly.

  Iladrul raised his gaze and met the eyes of each one of his doxies in turn. He didn’t need to voice his intentions. These boys, and their sister, were perceptive and intelligent in the arts of war.

  Upon receiving a near to undetectable nod from all five of them, Iladrul pulled roughly at the reigns of his horse and urged it into a violent run toward the Village.

  The angels meant to protect him began crying their protests and chasing after him. But his horse, and the horses he had gifted to his doxies, were well bred; sired from the horse God, Pegasus. Though they had no wings, when they were at a run they may as well have taken flight. Even those angels who took wing had no hope of catching Iladrul or his doxies on the backs of these horses.

  What he found at the end of that road forever changed him.

  Every cottage had been set to fire. Screams were coming from some of them as the occupants within them burned. The smell of burning flesh permeated the air. As did the bitter taste of death associated with it.

  It was with great horror that he looked around himself. Angels lay dead everywhere. As did the bodies of the young doxy children.

  There was one small body in particular from which he was unable to pull his gaze.

  The child couldn’t have been more than three moons old. It’s head—he couldn’t tell if it were male or female given its state—had been caved in by the heel of someone’s boot. One of its arms and one of its legs had been ripped from its body and flung away as whatever beast had taken it had greedily fed from its lifeblood.

  “Dear Gods.” Sezja’s voice was quavering. Her dismay pulled Iladrul’s attention in another direction and away from the horror that was the remains of the babe. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Mother!” Haidar screamed and flung himself from his horse. Iladrul watched in horror as he ran toward the body of his mother, bloody and beaten yet, somehow, gray and withering.

  “Mother . . . ?” Jeavlin’s voice was small.

  “Don’t look.” Macentyx warned them all. “Remember what father has always told us. Don’t look at the faces of the fallen you have loved lest they opt to stay to comfort you.”

  Iladrul felt a chill rush over him with those words. With it, his senses returned to him.

  In the distance came a cry that was familiar to him. It was a cry that was akin to that which the demon who had attacked him—who Lord Scrountentine had protected him from—had made.

  “A vampire.” He muttered. “And not gone to ground.”

  He flew off of his horse and went running in the direction of the creature. Sezja ran behind him, close on his heels. As they came upon it, stumbling violently into the sunlight, the flames exploding around it, the girl pushed the being off of the road and into the river. The flames were immediately extinguished by the rushing water, though the creature was clearly still fighting for its life as it gripped desperately at a rock on the side of the river that was shaded by the trees above it.

  Iladrul rushed toward Sezja, who was grasping the creature by its hand. Sloughs of skin slid off of the meat of its arms as Sezja pulled it out of the river to lay, writhing, on the cool grass at the young Prince’s feet.

  “I couldn’t . . .” It was a woman’s voice that came from this creature. “The babes . . . Dear Gods . . . They were only children!”

  Biting back the urge to kick the bitch, Iladrul clutched at the talisman around his neck to give him courage and fell to his hunkers, reaching toward her to smooth back the hair that covered her face. As he looked into her wide, haunted eyes, he actually felt pity for the creature.

  He loathed himself for this.

  “What have you done?” He asked, his voice far more distant and adult than he had ever imagined it could be. “What has happened to the children of this village?”

  “They murdered them all.” She whispered, her eyes dancing over Iladrul’s face in terror and revulsion. “Every single one not of breeding age.” Her tone took on an angry property then. It was probably the one thing, in the end, that saved her. “They drained them dry and discarded their bodies like useless fodder.”

  Iladrul shuddered and turned his face away to hide it into his shoulder. This creature did not deserve to witness any weakness he might be unable to hold at bay.

  When he recovered himself he turned to face her again. He could hear the angels approaching him—his father screaming his name—but he ignored this. “What did they do with the others? Those old enough to breed?”

  “Took . . . them.” She swallowed. “They mean to . . .”

  She didn’t finish, but Iladrul didn’t need for her to do so. His father had told him what the vampires meant to do with the elves should they win their bloody war.

  “Where did they take them?”
>
  She shook her head. She was growing weak from the wounds she had sustained when she had been set afire by the light of the sun. “They took them to . . .”

  Before she could finish, she succumbed. Iladrul, frustrated and angry, flew to his feet and spun away. When he saw that Haidar stood directly behind him, he commanded, “Find a blanket and wrap her up. She can stay in the cellar in one of the cages.”

  “Yes, my Prince.” He spun on his heel and ran in the direction of where they had abandoned their horses.

  When he was gone, Iladrul turned back to face the demon and saw that Sezja had lowered herself to her hunkers and pulled her dagger from her belt. He didn’t realize his own intent until he found himself pouncing toward her and pushing her out of the way.

  “No!” He cried her, snatching the dagger from her and running it across his own flesh. “I won’t let you!”

  He stared with sick surprise at his wounded wrist as the blood began first bubbling, then pouring down his arm. Knowing there was no time to waste, he thrust his arm toward the creature’s mouth and let her drink it in large, hungry gulps.

  As she fed from him, he understood what Sezja had known when she had pushed the creature into the water: if he meant to find the doxy elves still living, he had to keep this unintended ally alive.

  No matter the personal cost.

  -41-

  Iykva smiled greedily as he read the message.

  Their mission had been successful. Though the castle, itself, had been secure and guarded, the foolish angels had failed to build the same defenses around the slaves’ quarters. As a result, the demons and vampires had managed to capture over three hundred and fifty elves of breeding age.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Iykva started. He hadn’t heard Paul returning from the forest. “A message from the West.”

  “Oh?” Paul’s tone was thick and guarded. “What news?”

  “Our army’s leaders have asked us to meet them at their camp.” Iykva lied. He raised his gaze and met Paul’s. The Prince’s green eyes were surveying him with mistrust and loathing. “It will mean a slight detour. Though, not one that will take us too far off course.”