Seven Princes (40 page)

“Cousins…” said Gammir, his lips and chin dripping dark fluid. He stared at them with a predator’s eyes, his tongue flicking like a Serpent’s. The shadows about their bodies lowered them within reach of his teeth. “You need weep no more. The end of your suffering has come. Your father will soon join you.”

He sank his teeth into the neck of Dutho, tearing out the warm juice within, slurping it into his belly. Pyrus wailed beside him, and the legion of shadows swirled and feasted in their own mysterious ways among the mutilated bodies. Dutho, drained to a still whiteness, fell from Gammir’s grasp and lay in a black puddle.

He looked up from the corpse and saw Tadarus standing among the shadows.

“No!” he shouted, pointing with a bloody claw that was his finger. “You cannot be here!”

Tadarus only stared at him, wordlessly accusing him of being the fiend he truly was.

Gammir tore off the purple cloak of Udurum, stained black with the blood of Ammon’s court, and threw it at the ghost. “Take it!” he screeched, and the shadow-things writhed and twitched. They flowed about the ghost of Tadarus like harmless vapor. They could not touch him. He was already dead. Perhaps he was one of them.

Brother
, said the wraith. It made no move to take up the cloak. The fabric lay over the corpse of a dead Princess, soaking in the bloody pool beneath her. The shadow-things seethed and snuffled between the pillars. Behind the walls of darkness that barricaded the chamber, Gammir heard the shouts and cries of soldiers and priests.

“What do you want from me?” asked Gammir. “Why torment me? Do my bidding as these other dead things do… or leave me be.”

Why have you called me here to witness this?
asked the ghost. It
wept ethereal tears.
Can you not see what you have become? What you are becoming? Turn back from this path of shadows. It is not too late to redeem yourself with the edge of a clean blade
.

Gammir grabbed the throat of quivering Duke Pyrus, the only thing left living in the chamber besides himself. The tendrils of shadow moved away, and the Duke’s mouth was freed. “Please…” he wept. “P-p-please, cousin…” Gammir smelled the tang of filth among the blood. The whelp had soiled himself.

“I’ll ignore you, Tadarus,” said Gammir. “As I ignore the bleating of these pigs.”

Can you ignore yourself? You called me here, as you did before, to remind you
…

“Remind me of what?” said Gammir, still holding Pyrus in his hands, a begging, dripping sack of meat.

That you are human
, said the specter.
You are not one of these things that serve you, no more than I am. Remember, Fangodrel. Remember the warmth of sunlight, and the ink you scrawled on countless parchments. Remember who you are. This is why you called me
.

“No!” bellowed Gammir. “I did not call you… You haunt me! This – all this – is who I am. I’ve embraced my true heritage… a legacy of blood and power.”

Tadarus was gone. Shadows swam in the empty air where the apparition had stood.

Gammir dropped the squirming Pyrus onto the floor, where the lad immediately lost consciousness.
My belly is full of royal blood
, he told himself.
I do not need this one. Let him carry the tale of what was done here. Let them know what is coming for all of them. Let them see
.

The black horse walked out from a wall of shadow, pacing toward him through spreading pools of red. Gammir leaped upon its back, leaving the cloak of Tadarus among the corpses. A pulse of shimmering sorcery ran along his limbs, and the horse sprouted
its immense bat-like wings. It crashed through the skylight toward the bloated moon, leaving a shower of glass in its wake. The walls of darkness fell and the warriors of Shar Dni rushed in to view the massacre as a black cloud flowed upward through the broken ceiling and disappeared in the night.

Now, hours later, a dark coast appeared along the southern horizon. At last, the shores of Khyrei. The phantom steed’s speed was terrific, fueled by the potency of the Sharrian blood. The sun would not rise for quite some while, but already the beast arced down toward the vast spread of the jungle lands. The steaming wilderness looked black beneath the stars, but its true color was that of fresh-spilled blood… like the petals of the bloodflower he had used as a surrogate for the liquid itself.

Ianthe’s capital hugged the coast, and the jungles ran from its southernmost wall as far as the eye could see. Here was the thorny palace of onyx and jet he had seen in the depths of the Red Dream. Its spires stood sharp as barbed spears, ready to pierce the moon and drink the red rain of its death. The city’s buildings, too, were of black stone, low and dull, bearing none of the glory of the splendid palace. The castle’s central tower bore a crown of curving spikes, and flocks of jungle bats flew about its balconies and bridges. In the light of the sun, the dark palace would stand against the backdrop of scarlet jungle as it had stood against the flames of the Red Dream. The city cowering in the shadow of those regal towers, with its thousands upon thousands of pale slaves and bronze-masked warriors, would all be his. It was already his. This was his birthright, laid before him at last.

Somewhere within that edifice of night, long rebuilt from the days of Vod’s perfidy, the pale Empress sat waiting to kiss his lips and embrace him with a passion his own mother had never shown. His gorgeous, ageless, grandmother, Ianthe the Claw. She kept a
hoard of secrets hidden here, and they would open wide for him now like ruby blossoms.

The black steed flew over the black ramparts and entered the grounds of Ianthe’s citadel.

She received him in the eight-sided courtyard grown thick with jungle plants, the gossamer flow of her gown disturbed by the wind of the black horse’s wings. She stared at him with eyes that mirrored the pre-dawn sky, ripe with miniature constellations. The beast faded to a dark fog and wafted from his body as his booted feet met the stones of the yard. Now the simmering heat of Khyrei washed over him; in the fierce winds of the upper air he had not felt it. It crawled across his skin now, damp and thick, an invisible layer of wet silk beneath the cool exterior of his shadow-mail. He stood before her not in any dream or vision, but in the quivering, sweating flesh. He inhaled the jasmine scent of her skin, dazzled by the moonlight bright as diamonds on her skin.

The spiderweb of a crown rose from her alabaster forehead, pushing back the whiteness of her thick hair. Her lean shoulders supported a diaphanous robe, cut low below a necklace of jade, moonstones, and opals. Golden bands encircled her arms above and below the elbows, and the rings on her lithe fingers refracted the light of the stars. Her nails were the claws of a panther, hard and sharp as diamond. About her narrow waist hung a belt of silver set with lapis lazuli, sparkling above the triangular shadow of her loins. Diamonds blazed on her slim ankles, and her long feet were bare on the jet surface of the cobbles. She stood the exact height as him, and her feline face met his own with an expression of perfect grace. Her lips were the color of wet, delicious blood; her smile thrilled and frightened him.

“My Prince, my Blood, the Son of my Son,” she said, her eyes locking onto his. He could never look away from those eyes unless
she wished it. “Prince Gammir… welcome home.” She wrapped her arms around him, and he melted into her. Tears ran along his cheeks, but he did not care.

“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.