Seven Princes

by John R. Fultz

  Beyond those gates… a red river to spill at our feet and quench our thirst.

  Gammir smiled as the shadow legions floated over the mighty walls and sank into the city streets beyond. He waited only a moment for the symphony of screams to begin, and then it came.

  He stood there, a Prince among his warriors, listening to the sound of a city being murdered. After a while he called forth from the feeding shadow legions a band of his own Vakai. They followed his orders gladly, blood-drunk as they were.

  A sound of thunder came from behind the bronze gates. And again. A third time and the portals burst open, shadows flooding outward and upward.

  As the Vakai moved across the maddened city, the Prince and Empress of Khyrei entered its streets in a haze of crimson glory.

  The red river was indeed sweet.

  And so very deep.

  27

  The Laughter of Elhathym

  Atop a green hill stood the walled fortress of Zaashari, built of gray granite with a central tower overlooking the sea. Between the waves and the fortress lay the town of the same name. Its roads, residences, and warehouses spread from the citadel ramparts to the white-sand beach. Outlying farms girded the settlement in fields of ripe corn and olive trees. The sun blazed high between scattered clouds, but Zaashari lay in deep shadow. Riding on the back of the Feathered Serpent, Sharadza looked down upon the unnatural gloom that smothered the town. In the midst of that eerie dark, the armor and spears of Yaskathan legions glimmered like shifting constellations.

  Khama’s flight from Mumbaza was shockingly fast, and only his sorcery kept her and Iardu from being swept away by the fierce winds. Along the way Iardu advised Sharadza, helping her to grab sunbeams from the sky and mold them about herself, until she wore golden armor of condensed light with a helm of dancing flame. She forged a brilliant spear from that same light and grew herself to the impressive height of an Uduri. Iardu called thunderbolts down from the clouds into his hands, stuffing them into a quiver on his back. Now white flames streamed from the Shaper’s eyes as Khama’s great bulk descended toward Zaashari.

  Five thousand silver-mailed Yaskathans marched through the conquered town. Bodies lay mangled and drained along every street and in every house. These human warriors had lifted no finger in last night’s slaughter; the Spirits of Vakai had slain Zaashari. A horde of shadows that lay sunken and dormant among the stones, alleys, and fields while the sun held the day. A dark stain on the earth itself. The grounds of the fortress proper resembled a battlefield, littered with piles of bodies and the carcasses of horses. Along the wooden docks modest fishing vessels sat still under shredded sails, some crowded with the drained corpses of townspeople who had fled too late. The Yaskathans had built huge bonfires in the early morning, and they tossed body after body into these flames. Once Zaashari was clear of decaying flesh, its occupation would be complete. Then the shadows would rise and move on toward Mumbaza for a similar yet far greater massacre. Elhathym had brought no more than five legions of men because no more than that would be needed after his blood-hungry demons were set loose.

  “Look!” Sharadza shouted through the wind to Iardu. “The tyrant!”

  Through an outer courtyard of the fortress Elhathym rode in a chariot of carven bone, drawn by a great black lion with gleaming eyes. It stood tall as an ox with the curving tail of a scorpion. The usurper’s robe was night-black, set with a crescent of sparkling rubies. The golden crown of Yaskatha sat brazenly atop his gray head. His eyes flashed brighter than the lion-beast’s when he looked to the rushing Feathered Serpent. Even from this distance, Sharadza heard his laughter like a flock of arrows winging past her ears.

  Khama opened his fanged maw and roared his wrath upon Zaashari. The sound of it was deeper than the ocean, louder than a crumbling mountain, and a terrible wind blew through the streets and over the battlements of the captured fortress. Armored men were swept across the ground like leaves, smashed to death against walls, pillars, and each other. Spears and shields flew from the Yaskathans’ fists as they grabbed hold of whatever chunk of stone or supporting beam they could find. Their eardrums burst and their blood seeped into the shadow-stained ground, which drank it up greedily. Mailed horses flew through the air as well, increasing the devastation when their bulk slammed into groups of wailing soldiers. The tower of the fortress crumbled, raining deadly stones among the invaders. The battlements cracked and fell to the ground, burying warriors beneath splintered masonry. The wooden structures of the town itself exploded into kindling, clouds of flesh-piercing shards that found the exposed areas of armored bodies.

  Khama the Feathered Serpent had belched a hurricane across the murdered town, and the Yaskathan legions were decimated. All save Elhathym. He stood unmoved in his bone chariot, and the lion-shaped demon that pulled it roared back at Khama. Elhathym’s head was thrown back in laughter as he raced down the hillside, but Sharadza’s ears still rang with the roar of the Feathered Serpent. If she had stood before that terrible gust, rather than directly behind it, she would have died along with the Yaskathans. As the roaring echoes faded, Khama floated directly above the devastation, and Iardu grabbed her hand. Together they jumped from Khama’s back toward the speeding chariot below.

  Giant-girl and sorcerer came down gently, guided by the currents of Iardu’s power. Elhathym raised his hands and shouted at the darkness. A host of shadows, the ravenous Vakai, soared up from the bloodied earth, a torrent of inky blackness rising toward the Feathered Serpent. Khama swirled above the ruins, twisting his great coils in a spherical pattern, growing ever faster, casting brightness from his tri-toned feathers until he blazed like a second sun in the sky. The Vakai swarmed up to smother his light, a deluge of darkness brimming with ten thousand claws and fangs. Rays of illumination shot through cracks in the writhing black cocoon.

  “The shadows are weakened in daylight,” said Iardu, “Khama will handle them.”

  Now that Sharadza stood in her Giantess form, the Shaper looked so very small.

  So much death in these first few seconds. We must finish this soon…

  The black lion sped toward them, and Elhathym’s grinning skull-face hovered above the chariot wall behind it. His eyes were twin voids, pathways to nothingness. Iardu tossed a bolt of lightning from his quiver. The chariot exploded into a shower of bone fragments. Now the black lion roared, and a thick tongue came spilling from its fanged maw. The tongue was a hissing cobra, spitting venom. Elhathym stood unfazed, watching the battle of light and darkness in the sky. The thunderbolt had not harmed him.

  The Feathered Serpent spun faster in the sky, and its light grew hotter and brighter, until its colors merged into a single white flame round as the moon and hot as the sun. The Vakai shrieked and shriveled, and were annihilated. They dripped from the tiny sun, falling like a black rain that evaporated before it touched the earth. The sky itself turned to a blazing vault of whiteness.

  The black lion shrugged off a second thunderbolt from Iardu. Sharadza grabbed its poisonous tongue in her fist, which was sheathed in a gauntlet of sunfire, and ripped it from the beast’s mouth. Now the beast fell upon her with fury, stamping her to the ground and gnashing at her helm with fangs black as ebony. She kicked it off her, stabbing at it with the golden spear, but it was quick and she missed. Its scorpion tail struck forward, clanging off her fiery breastplate. She thrust the point of the sun-spear into its flank. It howled more like a wounded wolf than a lion. The great white light dimmed in the sky, and she looked up to see the last of the Vakai fading like smoke. Yet now another shadow blotted out the true sun. A far greater shadow.

  Elhathym’s laughter filled the vault of blue sky. He was a black mountain rising toward the clouds. One massive foot stood upon the ruins of the fortress, crushing it to dust, while the other stamped the ruined town into a flatter desolation. His mighty head wore a second crown now, a wreath of clouds, and his hands were gargantuan spiders that might tear whole islands from their homes in the sea. Khama was o
nly a glowing ball of fire before the God-sized sorcerer.

  An icy terror froze Sharadza’s heart. She was so very small. Miniscule. They all were.

  Iardu lay on the ground struggling against a mass of black tentacles that strangled and constricted his limbs. They rose from cracks in the earth, like living roots, but their substance was pure darkness. The Shaper screamed. His flesh withered where the dark vines curled about it.

  All this Sharadza took in with a moment’s glance, then the black lion clamped its jaws about her leg. The scorpion tail lunged at her again. She sliced it in two with the blade of her spear. The grip of the lion’s fangs would not break. It shook her, slammed her against the ground. Its fangs sank through the solid light and pierced her skin. She grabbed a pebble from the grass and became a thing of stone. The lion-beast pulled away, growling at the granite obelisk that no longer bled or offered resistance. It turned luminous moon-eyes toward the divine bulk of Elhathym, recognizing his earth-shaking laughter.

  In a flash, she became flesh again, shed of the golden armor now, and raised the sun-spear. The black lion lunged and she rammed the blade into its maw, shoving with all the strength of Uduri limbs. She forced it backward and vaulted atop it, impaling and pinning it to the earth.

  Now colossal Elhathym stomped his right foot, and an earthquake struck. Sharadza fell to the ground beside the dying demon lion. Ocean waves leaped skyward along the beach. The earth cracked like green glass, and a fissure spread east and west from Elhathym’s monolithic foot. She could not stand, but lay on her belly as the earth split wide, the fissure yawning, becoming a vast chasm. The scattered debris of town and castle fell into the abyss, and a cataract of seawater rushed into its steaming depths. She watched, buffeted and shaken, as Iardu wailed inside the tangle of black vines that stole his life. Elhathym reached out to grab the spinning ball of flame that was the Feathered Serpent. His hand took it as a man might grasp a firefly. Now it was the Serpent again, a squirming, burning cinder between his clawed fingers.

  Elhathym raised his fist toward the clouds, then hurled Khama into the great chasm. The coastline moaned, ocean heaved, and his laughter boomed. The Feathered Serpent plummeted into the abyss like a discarded olive pit.

  He is a Creature of the Air. Surely he will fly out again…

  Elhathym clapped his hands. They sparked with dark flames and the earth-fissure groaned, closing as fast as it had opened. The walls of the crevasse collided with a bone-rattling crunch. Somewhere deep below, the Feathered Serpent was caught and crushed.

  Iardu had told her in the cave that earth was the nemesis of air, as water was to fire. Of course Elhathym had known this, and used the earth itself to destroy Khama.

  The world grew still for a moment, but Iardu’s shout broke the stillness. The killing vines shattered like kindling about his blackened limbs. His mouth and eyes blazed with white flame, and the Shaper grew. He grew beyond the ability of her eyes to follow. Rivers of white flame danced along his carmine robes… and now he stood as tall as Elhathym.

  The two sorcerers filled the sky.

  Taller than the Gods themselves…

  She lay there, stifling a scream, a prisoner of awe, as they wrestled above her, their feet stamping hills into prairies and hurling quakes along the coastline. The ocean crashed about their ankles. She imagined herself a gnat caught between the feet of feuding Uduru. The black lion had melted to a pitchy sludge, and she pulled loose her golden sun-spear. She stumbled toward the western hills, dragging the weapon behind her as the soil trembled and trees uprooted themselves.

  Iardu spewed gouts of white fire from his mouth, but Elhathym only laughed as his face melted and reformed. His serpentine tongue wound about Iardu’s neck, a flame of darkness, and his huge claws locked between Iardu’s fingers. They shouted indecipherable words of power that split the earth and sky worse than any thunder. Sharadza fell among the grass of an open field, transfixed by the spectacle of warring titans.

  If they should fall…

  Instinct demanded that she run… flee this terrible sight before she went mad… or watch the sky-tall sorcerers fall into the sea and set loose typhoons to swallow half the earth. But she could not tear herself away from their struggle. Iardu did this impossible thing because of her. She witnessed the summit of his powers now, and she knew that he was not the equal of Elhathym. Not in strength, ferocity, or sorcery.

  What could she do? What could a speck of dust do to aid a mountain?

  She clutched her spear of sunlight and watched the wrestling of immortals.

  Elhathym opened his great mouth hideously wide. Stars and nebulae swirled inside. It yawned wider and wider, beyond the confines of his godly head. The stars fell away, swallowed by a sea of infinite darkness, and the maw grew wider and taller than Iardu, who struggled to pull away from its celestial gravity. Elhathym was a vast black gullet now, large enough to swallow the ocean, sucking clouds and wind into the void at its center.

  Iardu turned away, his white fires dying.

  It was too late.

  He fell into the cosmic orifice, shrinking as it pulled him deeper. Where Elhathym had been was now a swirling shard of the ultimate void. Iardu was a tiny speck lost in the depths of nothingness. Now rocks, trees and debris went flying into the void-mouth. It closed slowly, deliberately, until it was again the mouth of a yawning titan. Then that titan was a Giant, then the Giant was a solitary man wrapped in black silk and blood-colored jewels. He stood in triumph amid a wasteland that had once been called Zaashari.

  Sharadza had crawled through the grass between mounds of rubble as he diminished. Her soundless tears spilled onto the ground like the trail a slug leaves behind as it glides.

  Elhathym stood quietly in the smoking desolation. The waters of the sea had invaded the ruined cornfields, and the structures of man were obliterated. The coastline had been altered by the powers unleashed here. Perhaps he reflected on the loss of his five thousand Yaskathans or his legions of Vakai. For whatever reason, he stood silent as a statue, his silver mane waving in the wind.

  Behind him Sharadza rose from a pile of pulped masonry, and she hurled the sun-spear with all her might.

  It sped toward his back, and time seemed to slow. Dust-motes danced in the air… Brown leaves blew between her and the sorcerer, stirred by the wind of her cast.

  The bright spear struck Elhathym between the shoulders and passed half its length through his body. He stood transfixed by the bolt of sunfire, his robe smoking and burning, but he did not bleed.

  He turned to face her, the golden spear-blade pointing from his breastbone like an accusing finger, flaming with sorcery. His eyes met hers across the brief expanse of ruined ground, and they were lightless things… as empty as the void he had become.

  She held her breath. Her knees trembled.

  His head fell back once again, and he laughed. The crown sparkled on his brow as he wrapped a hand about the spear and yanked it from his breast. He snapped it in two and it melted into rays of sunlight that faded on the wind.

  He smiled at her, and she stared at the hole burned completely through his chest. As she watched, powerless to move, unable to fall or scream or even speak, shadows bled forth to fill that gaping wound.

  He has no physical body.

  This is only a garment he wears to disguise his true substance.

  He is not a man at all.

  Elhathym reached a claw toward her, and a second claw, much larger and made of darkness, wrapped itself about her body. She reacted instinctively in the only way she could. Her flesh took on the gray pitted substance of the rocks under her feet. She became a statue of solid stone, frozen in his awful grip, but rigid and unfeeling. She could not have borne his chill touch on her soft flesh. It would have killed her.

  He drew her close to study her granite features, admiring a skillful piece of sculpture.

  “Princess,” he said, and even with ears of stone she heard him.

  Inside the stone her consciousn
ess lived and was fully aware.

  Trapped.

  “You have taken a form that is pleasing to me,” he whispered. “What a fine ornament you will make for my throne room.”

  The dark claw shrank, and the Sharadza-statue shrank with it. She was fully in his power now. She could no more regain her fleshly substance than she could speak or run. Now she dwindled to a tiny figurine, a mere trinket in the palm of Elhathym’s hand.

  “Perhaps in a while I’ll restore your tender and lovely flesh,” he said, “and you will please me in other ways.”

  He tucked her into a pocket of his black robe. After that she knew only darkness.

  Despite all her efforts, war had come and swept over her, a tide she did not even see until it completely drowned her. Like the ocean that drank the torn fields of Zaashari, it would spill across the land and devour every living thing.

  She wanted to weep for Iardu, for Khama, both of whom had died because of her.

  But a stone figurine could not weep any more than the statue of a Giantess could.

  Gods of Earth and Sky, forgive me.

  28

  Death in Victory, Victory in Death

  The legions of Mumbaza moved across the plains of northern Yaskatha, a sea of white silk, bronze blades, and ebony faces. In their fists gleamed ten thousand spears, and tall plumes waved atop their masked helms. The vanguard was three legions of horsemen, their stallions caparisoned with silver and gold. At their center rode a blended cohort of warriors from Uurz, Shar Dni, and Udurum, northern banners flapping beside the flag of the Feathered Serpent. D’zan, Tyro, and Lyrilan rode in the front ranks, alongside a coal-black charger that carried the High General Tsoti. A blade of Udurum steel hung at the general’s side, a golden spear in his hand.

  Behind the cavalry came five thousand spearmen on foot, wrapped in ivory cloaks and corselets of boiled leather. Each man bore a curved bronze blade and dagger, but they were devotees of the spear. Their shields were pointed vertical ovals made from wood, hide, and bone reinforced with ribs of bronze. In lieu of metal helms the footmen wore headdresses of war, towering displays of plumage on frameworks of bone and wire. From afar they seemed a vast flock of predatory birds.