“The King of Shar Dni is dead,” he whispered into her ear, a pointed porcelain seashell.
She pulled away and took his face between her hands. Her smiled was unchanged.
“I see his blood swimming in your eyes,” she said. “You make me proud.”
She led him by the hand along the starlit glades, between a pair of guards with the masks of leering demons, their husky bodies shelled with intricate armor. The blades of their spears were hooked and curved, works of art that could only be used for murder. Once past the main gate, she conducted him down a long hallway past more of the faceless guards, through a great hall where slaves cowered like dogs to await her pleasure. She ignored them. He drank in the sights of the place, the pillars of jet and ruby, vast murals of war and ritual, demons and Serpents crawling across gilded frescoes. Witchlight filled the corridors; glowing balls of flame hung weightless in the air, shifting from red to orange to green and amber. It seemed the walls were alive with grotesque beauty. Silent as the night itself, a black panther glided from a passage and nuzzled against Ianthe’s slender legs. She stopped for a moment to stroke its massive head between the ears.
“Say hello to your new Prince, Miku,” she told the cat. It stared at him with yellow eyes, slit with green. Its red tongue came out and licked his hand. Pearly fangs hovered over the skin of his hand but did not threaten. The tongue was rough, yet pleasant. He smiled at the beast, smelling its raw-meat breath, and recognized a kindred spirit.
“Beautiful,” he told her. Instinctively he knew the panther was female. It glided about his legs now like a playful puppy.
“Come,” said Ianthe. He followed, and the panther loped behind him.
They climbed a set of black spiral stairs carved with wards and runes of an unknown language, past the arched doorways of sealed chambers. At the very top of the stairs, she opened a portal of heavy bronze with a wave of her hand. Inside lay her inner sanctum. A pointed dome rose above a hall large as a throne room, but filled with the paraphernalia of sorcery.
A desk of black wood sat piled with curling scrolls and moldering books. A collection of ancient tomes lined the shelves on the walls. The skulls of humans, beasts, and other entities also sat upon the shelves, some with burning candles perched atop their empty craniums. Artifacts from obscure ages hung upon the walls: the shields of fallen empires, jeweled blades of esoteric design, daemonic tapestries spun of gold and platinum, and many other curiosities for which he could find no name. An oval mirror taller than a man stood along the wall, its frame carved into the forms of grinning gargoyles and grasping limbs of demons. The entire room swam murkily in the depths of that glass, a distorted reflection of what was real. At the very top of its frame a fanged devil’s face held a massive yellow topaz in its jaws. Of all the weird contrivances in the chamber, the cloudy mirror seemed the most strange.
Four windows rose high along the walls of the sanctum. They looked north, east, south, and west over city, ocean, and jungle. This was the summit of the great barbed tower standing above all others. Outside the sun was stirring, and the eastern horizon glowed orange and violet. The moon sank into the rolling jungle hills. Ianthe raised her hand again, and black drapes fell across the four windows, blotting out the dawn. A globe of spinning fire hovered in the center of the chamber, casting stark shadows and saffron light.
Miku the panther crawled onto a pillowed couch and licked at her paws.
“This is the heart of my wisdom, the center of my power,” Ianthe said. “The seat of learning here is now yours.” She motioned to the high-backed chair, much like a throne, sitting behind the cluttered desk. “Sit. Your journey was long. You must now be comforted.”
She clapped her hands, for what reason he did not know, and turned to the great mirror. “This the Glass of Eternity,” she said. “It will show you the past, the present, and sometimes the future.”
The chamber door swung open, and a hulking guard dragged in two slaves by chains attached to neck-collars. They were two girls, young and pretty, naked and shaved bald from head to foot. The guard grunted behind his fanged mask, and Ianthe waved him away. As the door closed, the two slaves huddled together on the chamber’s woven rug. They made no attempt to escape or cry out. They quivered with fear, and Gammir’s lust began to rise. No, his thirst. But there was no longer any difference. He licked his lips.
Ianthe ignored the cowering girls. “Grandson,” she spoke from beside the dark mirror, “what do you know of the world’s history? Did your northern tutors teach you any truth?”
“I know of the Age of Serpents,” he told her. “The birth of the Uduru, the Time of Flame, and the Five Tribes.”
She laughed dismissively. “As I thought… You know nothing. This continent is far older than the six kingdoms that claim it,” she said. “Older than you can imagine.” She gestured to the mirror, turned her eyes upon it, and the light in the glass swam. It became a vision, moving and living inside the oval frame, like a scene outside a window.
A primal landscape of volcanoes, flame, and raging oceans took shape in the glass. Vast beasts, terrible and alien, lumbered across the steaming rocks. Blazing stars hung above the primeval world, far more than he had seen in any modern sky. Dark things moved in the starry void, sinking to earth, colossal and formless, gleaming with eyes of fire.
The creatures from the void took on terrestrial shapes… They became colossal obsidian gods, and lesser beings worshipped them – walked gladly into their open maws, built idols to honor them. Fantastic cities grew like fungus about their towering temples. The creatures who walked those twisting streets and gave tributes of blood and flesh were not human, but some distant ancestor of man. Apish, brutal, and filthy, they nevertheless built a crude civilization, carving it from the hot stones of the earth. Volcanoes roared and sank their cities beneath floods of magma, and the green ocean washed in to fog the world with steam.
The beings of darkness strode through the gaseous atmosphere, raising up the crawling, shuffling life-forms they found into new and more bizarre civilizations. Impossible architectures sprouted mould-like from the primordial swamps. Again the temples of the dark gods rose into the sweltering sky, and a red sun slowly burned away the continental marshes. Again the shaggy ancestors of humanity came into the vision, making war on the city-builders with stone and spear, ultimately claiming their domains. Then the pre-humans warred upon each other, and the dark gods watched in amusement, feeding on them now and then like great reptiles on tiny insects.
The sub-human empires fell, and the dark gods reveled in the tumult of the unstable earth. Millennia passed, and the pattern repeated itself. New races came and built their temples and cities… they fell, conquered by other races, or devoured by the whims of the dark ones… only to spring up again in some other corner of the continent.
The void-born ones walked upon the world, wrapped in the celestial glory of their immensity. They began to take the forms of terrible beings, or beings of great beauty, playing always their cruel games with the lesser forms of life… fostering empires, then watching as they crumbled. They moved like the shadows of mountains across burgeoning forests. They raised or sank island kingdoms for their pleasure.
These patterns played out again and again on the surface of the mirror. Gammir forgot himself and the chamber in which he sat. He saw the ancient beings, the terrible gods of death and war, the blood-hungry deities of a hundred nations, the endless wars of tribe against tribe, city against city, the genocides, the slaveries, the annihilations and rebirths of a thousand peoples, all leading toward the birth of humanity and its own proud kingdoms. The patterns swirled, repeating, unchangeable. The dark gods laughed, and reveled, and toyed with empires.
Until they grew bored…
Some of the dark ones took to the void, losing themselves among the stars. Others dwindled to mere shadows, and took on the forms of lesser beings – men and women who ruled over the tiny kingdoms of earth. Still others faded into distant worlds, stretc
hing their bulk into unseen dimensions, while some merely slumbered, sinking into the bones of the earth and becoming one with its stones, winds, and waters.
Yet a few of the dark ones who had fallen into fleshly shapes… remembered. They remembered the caress of the void, the taste of blood spilled on their altars, the divine power that was once theirs. They could never regain their lost forms. They were diminished… absorbed into the world they had toyed with for long eons.
Yet they remembered, and they drew to themselves the remnants of the great powers that once were their birthright. They saw into the stars and moaned the loss of their brothers and sisters. They belonged now to this singular world and its never-ending patterns of birth and death, night and day, creation and destruction, rising and falling through the centuries. Time itself had conquered their divinity.
Among the empires of men they were called sorcerer.
Or sorceress.
The mirror grew cloudy again, and Gammir blinked. The vision was gone. His head spun, and Ianthe sat herself upon the desk before him. She caressed his cheek like a favorite sculpture.
“We are of the Old Breed, you and I,” she said, and he understood. “There is much that is forgotten and will remain so… yet there is still much to learn. We will play the games of conquest. We will spread blood and fire, for this world is ours.”
He smiled, and she kissed his lips.
She turned away and pulled him by the hand toward the cowering girl-slaves. They would not meet his eyes or hers. Fear consumed them. His thirst raged.
“Now we drink royal wine,” she said.
With a single finger, she slit the throats of both girls.
They drank deeply from the writhing bodies, drawing upon every last drop of precious fluid. Potent with the tang of youth.
They arose from the limp forms, dripping red and satisfied, and Ianthe laughed.
She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen… or will ever see.
He licked the bloody residue from her chin, like a young hound feeding from its mother.
She held him then in silence. The world faded into oblivion.
“My sweet boy,” she said. “My sweet Gammir.”
The panther Miku lapped at the red pool beneath the dead slaves.
A subtle movement in the close air of the chamber, or perhaps a faint sound, caused Ianthe to let him go. She turned to stare at the Glass of Eternity.
A new image floated in the mirror. On a tall throne of ebony and crystal sat a man robed in darkness. A strand of blood-bright rubies hung across his chest, and a long mane of slate-gray hair swept back from his high forehead. A crown of gold and sapphire sat strangely upon his tight-fleshed skull, as if it did not belong there. His eyes gleamed, colorless fires in their deep sockets, and his fingers were long-nailed talons. He stared through the mirror, directly at the blood-drenched grandmother and grandson. His face was cruel and stone-like, but he smiled.
“Ianthe,” his voice echoed across the chamber. The sound of bones grinding. “You enjoy yourself too much…”
The Empress returned his smile and licked the remaining gore from her lips.
“Gammir has returned,” she said to the mirror. “As I said he would.”
The mirror-King’s eyes pierced Gammir through the mirror. “Never did I doubt it. All that which was lost shall be regained in time.”
“Gammir,” said Ianthe, her hand on his shoulder, “meet the Great Elhathym… Ruler of Yaskatha long before it held that name, and now returned to claim his birthright – just as you have this day. You shall be great allies.”
Gammir stared at Elhathym through the pane of enchanted glass.
“Hail, Prince of Khyrei,” said the sorcerer.
“Hail, King of Yaskatha,” said Gammir, a single red droplet falling from his chin.
He knew instantly that he hated this man, and would always hate him.
Ianthe laughed and kissed his bloody cheek.
“We three have much to discuss,” she said.
She burned like a pale flame between the locked eyes of Gammir and Elhathym.
20
Mother and Daughter
The great eagle fought the winds of winter, flying north into the Giantlands. When the snow and sleet grew too fierce, she rose above the winter clouds, where the air was even colder but the snow did not reach. The talons of her claws were black and shining, like her eyes, and they gripped a heavy bundle wrapped in leather, bound in sailors’ rope. The pinnacles of frozen mountains pierced the cloud-roof, so she knew the Grim Mountains lay below.
Night and day she flew, all the way from Murala on the coast. Days ago she had entered that town wearing the body of a Giantess, carrying Vod’s remains in a corroded iron chest. The folk there were unused to the presence of Uduru, and they had stared at her with wonder and curiosity. Three decades earlier they would have run screaming from her. That was before Vod brought Giants and Men together and changed the desert to a green and fertile plain. How could they know this weary Giant-girl carried the very bones of the hero himself… the Giant-King who had conquered every enemy but the sea?
With her oversized fingers she had pulled the ancient emeralds from their rust-caked holes in the surface of the chest, trading one of them to a Muralan jeweler for a bag of gold. After walking leagues along the desolate shore, yet before she took lodging and rest, she hired the town’s undertaker to remove Vod’s body from the trunk and restore it as best he could.
“I am sorry, Milady,” he told her the next day. “The body of this poor Giant has obviously lain for months under the sea, and only his jumbled bones are left. But I have cleaned the salt encrustations from them and laid them out on my embalming table. Would you care to take a look?”
“No,” she said. “Wrap them for me… in some expensive oilcloth. I must carry them a long way.” She gave him the bag of gold and he followed her instructions to the letter. The iron chest was not only rusted and undependable, it was far too heavy. If she walked with it on her shoulder, it might take her a year to cross the Stormlands, then the mountains, and reach Udurum. She must fly instead. When she picked up Vod’s remains that evening, the undertaker had wrapped each bone carefully in a velvet cloth, then stacked them inside a canvas bag and tied it at the top like a great pouch of coins. She was glad of the velvet, for it kept Vod’s bones from rattling when she carried the parcel.
She walked inland from Murala, far enough that no eyes would see her. Then she took the form of the great eagle, grabbed the bone-bag in her claws and flew north toward the dark and jagged horizon.
After days of flight the mountains sank beneath an ocean of clouds flowing northward as far as her eagle eyes could see. She pulled back her pinions and arced down to break the cloud layer. The Forest of Uduria rushed beneath her, cloaked in a mantle of white snow. She skirted the heads of the mighty Uygas, speeding toward home. She was unsure how long it had been since she left Udurum. She longed to see her mother again and feel the warmth of her hugs. There would be tears, both for the end to her absence and the return of Vod’s remains. No longer would the false hope of Vod’s survival linger in her mother’s heart. His bones would bring Shaira peace, as they had for Sharadza. Only by knowing the truth of his death could they truly let him go.
The jet walls of Udurum rose from the pale forest. The dark towers wore hoods of white, and the city steamed its warmth into the afternoon sky. There was plenty of daylight left, but the gloom of winter simulated an early darkness. The watch-fires along the city wall blazed like miniature suns. The lights of street lamps and windows created the illusion of a vast blanket scattered with twinkling jewels. She beat her tired wings toward the palace and came to ground in the snow-packed courtyard where she used to meet Fellow and hear his stories. It seemed so long ago. She still thought of Fellow and Iardu as two separate entities, even though she knew it was a lie. Iardu had lied to her for years. But perhaps all stories were lies, and all storytellers were liars. Perhaps what really matte
red were the lessons one could learn from a well-told lie.
Of all the trees, paths, and walls in the courtyard, she saw only one walkway clear of recent snows. It led to the far precinct of the gardens and the Royal Mausoleum. A brazier burned now before its doors, turning their white marble to gold. The mausoleum itself had also been scraped clean of ice and snow. Her heart sank. There could be only one reason why servants had polished and cleared the tomb, which had never been used. She meant to inaugurate it with her father’s bones. But someone else in her family had died and already been laid to rest there. A pit of emptiness yawned open inside her stomach.
Mother!
The great bag of bones sat in the snow now, and Sharadza ran toward the palace gate in her girl form. Guards stared in awe and shouted as she ran by them, leaving a trail of melting snow. She heard their commotion behind her as word spread. “The Princess has returned! Gods of Earth and Sky be praised! Send word to the captain! Send word to the Queen!”
But there was no need. Sharadza ran up the stair of the Great Tower to the oak-and-gold door of the royal apartments. For some reason, there were no Uduru sentinels in the halls today. A man stationed outside the Queen’s chamber knelt as Sharadza banged on the locked door.
“Mother!” she shouted. “Mother, are you there?” Saltwater welled in her eyes, which were green now that she was a girl again.
“Her Majesty is resting,” said the guard, and Sharadza sighed.
She turned to the bronze-armored man. “Then who…” she started. “The tomb?”
The door opened at the hands of a servant and Queen Shaira stood in the doorway, dressed in a thick gown of white wool. Her face lit up as her eyes met Sharadza’s.
They fell into each other’s arms, and their tears fell each upon the other’s shoulders. Shaira pulled her into the room, rubbing her chilled hands, calling for mulled wine and a warm dry robe. Servants bustled in a fury of excitement and restrained joy.
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