Why had his futile struggle been so important? Flesh and bone were such unimportant things… transitive… dancing dusts in a wind that blew forever. Now he rode that wind, and the memory of who he was and all he cherished began to fade, as the light and noise of the world had faded already.
Yet inside his tight pale fist, back on the blood-splattered plain, lay the hilt of the sword that bore the Sun God’s sigil. And that same sigil was marked on his pallid forehead in black ash by the hand of that God’s High Priest. D’zan had prayed over that sigil when he lived, asked the Bright God for his blessing and the protection of the ward that had come to him across the ages.
Something dark and ethereal tugged at his lifeless bones, seeking entry into that house of drained flesh. At the words of Elhathym, this dark spirit struggled to invade the young corpse… but could not enter it. D’zan felt this as a living man might feel a mosquito crawling across his forehead. It nagged at him, it sliced him with memories, stabbed him with anger that refused to subside. He turned away from the celestial lights and swam back toward the cold flesh that belonged to him and him alone. He had lost a kingdom, lost a father, lost a throne, lost his very life… but he would not lose his own bones to some foul thing that obeyed the whims of Elhathym. His rage blossomed, and the blackness of eternity became a universe of blood and flame. He would have cried out, but he was a disembodied soul and had no throat with which to scream. So he merely claimed what was his… the last vestige of his existence.
D’zan’s corpse rose to stand before the outstretched hand of Elhathym, whose mouth was a hideous smile. D’zan glared at him with glazed eyes swiveling inside their sockets.
I am dead.
Yet here I stand with my enemy before me.
“Go now!” said Elhathym. “Take this steed and ride among your living troops! Lead them to victory in my name.”
I exist under the power of his will, thought D’zan. He wants me to conquer in his name, the last threat to his rule now turned into an asset. His final stroke of victory.
Living, I defied him.
Dead, I must serve him.
The Stone’s blade was still in his hand. He lifted it, and it seemed light as a reed.
“Yes!” said Elhathym. “Take up your ancestral weapon and fight!”
I must serve him.
D’zan, dead and yet beyond death, raised the greatsword high. The sun-sigil on his forehead, like the one on his sword, gleamed bright as a torch.
Elhathym laughed at the greatness of his new slave.
No.
He brought the sword down upon Elhathym’s helm with all the terrible might of a dead man.
The helm cracked and the skull beneath it split wide. Elhathym’s face slackened, and a black fluid that was more shadow than blood gushed from between his lips. He no longer laughed. His eyes bulged on either side of the iron blade. Astonishment gleamed in those bloodshot orbs.
D’zan pulled the blade free of Elhathym’s skull and swept it with uncanny grace in a sideways arc, cleaving the sorcerer’s body at the waist. His two halves fell into the muck where D’zan had lain. Neither half twitched, and there was no blood. Galloping horses trampled them to dusty fragments.
D’zan raised his free hand to his chest. He felt the jagged hole, the wound that had killed him. There was no heartbeat. He stared in awe at his milk-white hand. He stood in a pool of blood that was mostly his own. There was no more of the stuff in his body, or very little.
I am dead, yes.
But I serve myself.
I serve Yaskatha.
He climbed upon Elhathym’s warhorse and raised his blade toward the sky. From his dry throat came a battle cry that froze mens’ hearts even in the midst of killing and savagery. He saw their faces turn upon him with fear, wonder, and terror. Then he laid about him with the sword, slicing a path through the Yaskathans. The battle was in full swing, and there was no stopping it now. He must fight for Mumbaza and hope that his own people would surrender once they realized their Tyrant-King was dead.
Someone shoved a spear through his belly. He killed the man with a swipe of his blade, then pulled the spear free and tossed it aside. He felt no pain. His strength seemed limitless, and his blood was already spilled. Swords bit at him, and he brushed them aside. Arrows peppered him through the mail shirt, and he plucked them out like thorns.
Everywhere he rode, slashing and stabbing his foes (his countrymen) to death, and he sent up the cry in his hoarse, rasping voice: “Elhathym is dead! Long live the true King of Yaskatha! The tyrant is dead! King D’zan has come! Elhathym is dead!”
The news spread, and some Yaskathans began to surrender. When the Mumbazans called in their reserves, a general retreat was sounded. Tyro cut down a Yaskathan Adjutant who refused to let his troop surrender. D’zan laughed, but it sounded like coughing. The battle became a rout. Yaskathans either gave themselves to the mercy of the Mumbazans or fled across the plain toward their city. Most of those fleeing were cavalrymen. The foot soldiers were faced with the options of accepting quarter or trying to outrun Mumbazan arrows and horses.
D’zan took a fallen Yaskathan flag and raised it high. He ordered a prisoner to sound the horn of Yaskathan assembly. He galloped about the field, trampling or leaping over dead bodies, weaving through forests of spears planted in flesh and earth. His banner waved high as the assembly horn sounded. Many of the cavalry had ridden too far south to see or hear him, but the captured men and those who ceased retreating took up a cheer now.
“King D’zan!” shouted the captives. Tyro and his cohort joined them. The Mumbazans added their voices, and three retreating divisions rode back to the middle of the plain, where D’zan flew their flag from the back of his leaping stallion. It bucked beneath him and snorted like a bull, stamping the earth. Its eyes were flames, and it howled like a wolf as the cheering men gathered closer.
Now D’zan realized that the horse of Elhathym was not a horse at all, but some demon given a horse’s shape. Still it served him, and he accepted its fealty without question. As he accepted his own dead existence.
The Yaskathans rallied about their rightful King and shouted his name. They were mostly glad to be alive, but also that the tyrant’s rule was done.
“Long live D’zan!” they shouted, and a sadness fell upon him.
Tyro rode near to congratulate him. His green-and-gold mail was showered in the purple of drying blood. He carried a deep gash on one arm, and his face was blackened by dirt and sweat. Yet he smiled and hoisted the flag of Uurz next to that of Yaskatha.
Tsoti and Lyrilan rode down from the ridge to join the triumph. The banners of Shar Dni and Udurum rose alongside those of Uurz and Yaskatha. Soon D’zan would ride into the city and reclaim it in the name of peace.
He calmed his demon-steed and looked into the face of Lyrilan. The scholar’s face fell from joy into deep worry.
“He is wounded!” Lyrilan shouted. He turned to the battle-maddened Tyro. “Can you not see D’zan is wounded? He has lost too much blood! We must get him to the tents!”
General Tsoti looked at him with a grave face and ordered men to bring a litter.
“No, I will ride,” said D’zan. “I am… fine.”
Lyrilan looked at him in horror. “You are delirious. You are white as death. You must rest! You have won, but you must rest!”
“I have won,” said D’zan. He looked about him at the elated faces of the Yaskathans in their smeared silver mail and torn cloaks, some wounded and barely standing.
“I have won,” he said again, bringing his horse close to that of Lyrilan. He reached out a hand and pulled his friend close to him. Close enough to whisper in his ear. “I have won, Lyrilan. But he has killed me.”
Lyrilan looked into his eyes and understanding dawned on his lean face. The Scholar-Prince pulled his horse away, his eyes still staring at D’zan, speechless.
Now Tyro saw the mortal wound in D’zan’s chest and turned to Tsoti, who also saw it. His friends s
tared at him with a strange aspect now. Their joy had turned to sympathy and worry. And now to something else entirely.
It was fear.
“Assemble a vanguard to take the city,” said D’zan in his croaking voice. “I will not rest until I sit the throne again. Let the wounded stay and be tended. All who can ride, come with me. My own legions will aid us.”
He swirled away from them on his demon mount and guided it into the midst of the Yaskathans, who knew nothing of his terrible wound and hailed him with a banging of shields, and prayers lifted to the Four Gods.
“D’zan!” they cried. “King D’zan! Long live King D’zan!”
The Yaskathans followed him, seven thousand strong, as he rode toward the city of his birth, and they chanted long life to a King who was already dead.
Living… dead… What does it matter?
They ride alongside their rightful king.
Thousands of Mumbazans followed with General Tsoti at their head, and the men of the other nations rode behind Tyro and Lyrilan.
After a league or so, the sweet smells of orchards and salty sea air replaced the battlefield stench of blood and death. D’zan marveled that he could still smell such things with his decaying nostrils. His hand wandered again to the gaping fissure in his chest. A numb red crevice.
Four Yaskathan Generals rode at his side. He pulled his torn cloak close to hide his death-wound. They congratulated and praised him. They told him of assassins and rebels who had tried several times to slay the usurper, all meeting with horrible deaths. They told him the people had never given up hope that he would return and set the kingdom to rights. Only one who was blessed by the Gods, the ordained ruler of the realm, they said, could slay the demon tyrant.
D’zan nodded and smiled, and said nothing.
Elhathym was not dead. By the sorcery they shared, the same sorcery he had turned against Elhathym, D’zan knew the tyrant lurked still in the House of Trimesqua. He had won back his people, but not yet his throne.
As the sun-gold spires of the city grew near, D’zan felt the sorcerer’s presence seething inside the Palace of Trimesqua, where he must go to face it one more time.
There was no trace of fear left in D’zan’s cloven heart.
He has already killed me.
In death, I have defied him.
In death, I will defeat him.
Now let him fear me.
29
Secret of the High Realms
At the top of the Great Earth-Wall, overlooking a sea of churning stormclouds, the three riders stopped at midday. They shared a meal of mangoes from the orchards of Mumbaza. The northern half of the world stretched away from the precipice, hidden beneath a blanket of mist and thunder. Gold sparks of lightning danced across the cumulus, yet here at the top of the continental cliff the air was warm and dry. The rising echoes of distant tempests reached their ears. They traveled the narrow strip of mossy ground between the sudden lip of the cliff and a dark wall of dense forest. To east and west the precipice reached as far as the eye could see, a dividing line between the lower world and the wilderness of the High Realms.
A fourth horse stood riderless, its flanks heavy with provisions. The four steeds nibbled at the green grass while Vireon, Alua, and Andoses stretched their legs and enjoyed the sweet southern fruits. At times the clouds below the crag parted, and vast swathes of green plain shone through, only to be obscured a moment later by the next bank of scudding clouds. The two Princes looked north across the roof of the Stormlands, but Alua’s eyes searched the shadows between the red-barked trees and tangled skeins of undergrowth. There were no mighty Uyga trees here, but some of the rust-hued and black-boled hardwoods grew nearly as high, if not as thick in the trunk. The songs of birds and insects flowed from the deep thickets. Occasionally the growl of a hunting panther shook the foliage, or at night the far-flung howls of wolves.
Vireon turned from the precipice to Alua. She chewed the flesh of her mango while staring into the forest. It called to her, the wild freedom of its deep hollows and unseen groves. He felt it too. Yet while he could easily ignore the call of the hunter, she heard a more urgent call. He did not quite understand it, but he recognized it. She longed to roam the wildwood as an eagle longs to fly.
“The forest is haunted,” Andoses had said on their first day up from the steppes. After three days crossing dry grasslands and two more scaling a series of escarpments, they had reached the western rim of the Earth-Wall. Their course now lay directly east, atop the cliff all the way to Allundra on the Golden Sea.
“Haunted by what exactly?” Vireon had asked. This was his first sight of the High Realms.
Andoses shrugged in his saddle. “Ghosts, spirits, the restless dead, I suppose,” he said. “Legend says a proud people once lived there under the protection of a Forest God, but some plague or destruction fell upon them. The Mumbazans will not hunt there, nor the Yaskathans at its southern edge.”
“It is beautiful,” said Alua, already under the spell of the spreading trees.
“Nearly as fair as the northern woodlands,” said Vireon. “Perhaps even more fair for its mysteries. What splendid game must lie within.”
“Perhaps we’ll snare a wayward hare, or take a quail with this Mumbazan bow,” said Andoses. “But we’ll do well to stay clear of those branches.”
“Worry not, Cousin,” said Vireon. “We’ll move hastily across this high trail and get you to your crown. There is vengeance waiting for us. I am as eager as you are to grasp it.”
“Twelve days should put us in Allundra,” said Vireon. “Then a fast ship from its port is only a few days to Shar Dni. Would that we could fly there instead.”
Six days of riding between precipice and forest had brought them here, where the Wall curved northward for several leagues. “This region is known as the Promontory,” said Andoses. “A kind of peninsula that stretches north a while before doubling back to its eastward course. Here we must hold steady and cross a league or so of treacherous woodlands. However, there is a path here used by Royal Messengers. It should bring us safely through if we cross the stretch of woods by daylight.”
Vireon fed the rest of his mango to the packhorse and rubbed its nose. He looked east into the thinly wooded peninsula of Wall. It was not the forest proper, but its shadows were no less murky. Alua wrapped her arms about his neck and laid her head upon his shoulder. The sunlight sparkled on her golden hair as it fell across his chest.
“Your cousin fears the wild,” she whispered.
Vireon pursed his lips. “He is a city-bred Prince. Walls and towers give him comfort.”
She smiled and kissed him. “I am glad you do not fear the wild, Vireon.”
His lips lingered against hers until Andoses’ subtle cough made him pull away. “Let us ride,” he said. “A few hours of sun are left… We should cross these Promontory woods with ease.”
Andoses made the sign of the Sky God at his chest. He nodded, but his nervousness was clear in the narrowing of his eyes, the deepness of his breathing. Vireon loved him and worried for him at times. In the past few weeks Andoses had become more like a brother to him than a cousin. Having him near made it easier to bear the loss of Tadarus, and the memories that haunted him each evening. How many times had he promised vengeance to his brother’s ghost? Once he dreamed that Tadarus came to him on a black horse and offered him a golden crown. He could not hear what the dream-Tadarus said, but he smiled at Vireon the same way he had when he was alive. Vireon spoke to no one about the dream.
The horses picked their way through a carpet of moss beneath the red-bark trees. The path was broad and easy to spot, yet it was not well tended. The undergrowth was less thick along its route, and the steeds found their way naturally onto it, skirting thorn bushes, clumps of fern, and rotting logs thick with purple mushrooms.
The fragrance of the deep woods was strong here, and Alua breathed deeply. Her head turned always to the south as they rode, her senses drawn toward the flowering t
hickets and along the corridors of green shadow. A pale mist wound among the boles, and birdsongs sounded above. Andoses kept his eyes on the path, looking straight ahead. But Vireon found himself looking as Alua did, into the leafy depths of the High Realms. Something shadowy, almost like a man, flitted between the trees. Or was it only the mist? Alua gasped. She must have seen it too.
“Ride on,” said Vireon. “We must reach the open way soon.”
Their horses went from walking to trotting. From the corner of his eye Vireon saw a glimmering in the mist, a darting shadow. When he turned his head, there was nothing. Some trick of the forest air. Now he followed the example of Andoses, keeping his eyes focused ahead. He breathed in the fragrance of strange blossoms; huge blooms the color of honey opened along the sides of the path. A large insect buzzed by his head and disappeared into a broad flower. Some distance ahead the light of open ground formed an orange archway in the gloom.
Now they passed beneath the branches that formed that arch and rode beneath open sky once again. The precipice ran close on their left side, and the forest wall stretched away on their right, farther and farther away as they left the Promontory woods behind them.
At sunset they made their usual camp near the cliff’s edge. Alua lit a small fire while Vireon tended to the horses. Andoses extracted cooking implements and provisions from the packhorse’s bundles. He dropped onions, carrots, chunks of dried meat, and sprigs of herb into a pot, filled it with freshwater from a flask, and boiled up a hearty soup. They drank the last of the wine the Boy-King had bestowed upon them, then fell into drowsy slumber.
Vireon and Alua lay beneath a woolen blanket, the fire separating them from Andoses. Vireon slept lightly; several times each night a mouse or night-bird stirred him awake. Yet it seemed that nothing dangerous roamed this narrow way between Stormlands and High Realms.
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