The King's Blood (81 page)

He rolled to a crouch and looked up at a flaming stone pillar, the light echoing an eerie lavender across the walls of the open air Tower into the night's sky. A gaggle of noises whipped his head to the back wall where a handful of men, dressed in those not so ivory robes dashed about stringing beads and stripping leaves from a branch. It looked like one of those "fertility rituals" women started to get out of the house and away from the menfolk for a few hours.

And there, in the middle of the ivory men, dressed in elaborate robes the color of freshly spilt blood, stood the Emperor. He continued to watch the fire even as the dark assassin rose to his feet. Behind Taban, the girl and the boy emerged, each brandishing their swords. Ciara's gleamed in the haunting light, Aldrin's probably rusted a bit more at all this excitement.
 

Ciara looked at the mad man smiling beatifically upon the fire as if it were a babe about to be blessed into their flock. He still took no notice at the three armed people trespassing upon his little ritual. Taban unsheathed his own sword, but it was Aldrin who rose up to his full height.
 

"I command you, step away from the fire...thing." Well, he'd have a few years to work on the commanding.

Finally, the Emperor turned to the boy waving his rusty sword at him as if he were an obstinate piece of unsliced bread. A darker smile pulled back the mad man's lips and he raised up the sword he stole from Aldrin's fingers.
 

Kynton climbed out of the hole and, looking over at his fellow men of gods, waved meekly. He despised staff meetings. The witch's head popped up behind him, surveying the room far quickly than the others and screeched, "Stop him!"

Aldrin walked steadily forward, his sword leading his steps, around the stone fire towards the Emperor. "I said, step away from the fire," his voice grew as cold as an Ostero winter.

Vasska looked upon the child he dismissed so readily and bowed his head, the sword still high above him, "Very well." And the Emperor took one step back just as his fingers released the blade.

"No!" was as far as Isa got before the steel hit the lavender fire.
 

It flared and burst a deadly blue, burning off some of the priest's eyebrows, and the entire keep twisted from the power. Aldrin slipped and fell, his face crashing hard against the fire's stone edge. Taban tried to flatten his body out, but another shudder of the tower sent his feet gliding along the smooth surface. Ciara lashed her hand out and grabbed his coat, keeping him from tumbling a very long way down. Isa screeched as the ringing hit, her own voice intermingling with the amplified sound of metal clanging and burning against fire. Everyone stumbled as their senses over stimulated, struggling to find an off switch.
 

As hearing came back, the ringing was matched by a giggle, quiet at first but growing in strength. Slowly, a few heads rose as steadying legs got under foot. "What have you done?" Aldrin demanded, still trying to find his balance.

The mad Emperor's hand grabbed the child by the back of his head and lifted him up. Aldrin scrabbled against the pain, his sword torn from his hands in the fall. But Vasska didn't let go, instead he leered across the boy's upturned face. His breath reeked of garlic. "Argur's work," he whispered. "I have done Argur's work and freed us all from the horrors of magic!" he shouted to the still partially deaf masses.

Isa rose to her limited stature and cried through the buffeting winds, "You bastard!"

And her anger rose to such a dangerous crescendo, an arc of light crossed from her accusing finger and right into the stone pillar behind the Emperor. The mad smile fell off Vasska's face as he turned from the smoldering hole behind him to the witch cackling, "You have done nothing but doom us all."

"No,"
 
Vasska looked back at his priests, still bowled over from the keep's twisting and turning, "This is not how it is to go!"

He spun about, trying to find a single supporter of his magic destruction theory, when Aldrin sunk his elbow deep into the side of the Emperor. Vasska gasped, and released his hold on the boy. Aldrin rolled away, grabbing up his sword in the process and landed beside the assassin.

Isa rose up, the blue fire unable to mask the magic shrouding her and she pointed to the courtyard below, "The dead are coming."

Everyone broke from their stand off and turned to the mercifully stable tower's edge. They all looked down upon the carnage as bodies, and pieces of bodies, seethed deep below. It was like watching an anthill with a morsel of food tossed on top, an order in the madness as each body broke against the buckling doors. It wasn't a matter of if, but when.

"The prophecy was clear!" Vasska shrieked at the corpses below, as if he could command them to go back to the dirt, "Destroy the sword, destroy the evil in the world!"

Whatever shell he'd maintained cracked fully at his long term plans coming undone. He dashed about, slugging each of his priests in the arm, trying to get one to back him up that all this shouldn't be happening. Ordering the world to shape to his words had always worked before.

Aldrin looked over at Taban, who had his sword out but made no move on the mad man running about, trying to tear his scalp off in frustration. "What are you waiting for, assassin?" he shouted above the cacophony of raging fire and madness.
 

"He is not my target," Taban said, and took a small step back, careful to not fall off the edge.

"Wonderful, glad you told us that now!" Aldrin was getting a bit testy, and wobbled on unsteady legs towards the Emperor who still had tufts of his own ice blonde hair clinging to ancient Avar rings. "Vasska!" he shouted, but didn't get a reaction. The Emperor continued to throw a fit, tossing some more leaves, a few beads, and one of his priest's shoes into the fire, hoping to change anything. Each time he dashed back to the edge to check on the state of the dead.

"Hey! Hello," Aldrin looked over at Ciara, who kept her eyes glued to the witch about to reach critical mass. "I say, you, crazy man."

The eyes stopped and turned to the child waiving his dilapidated sword about as if it were a dousing rod. Each of the priests shuffled away from the Emperor at the c-word. The crackling air around him seemed to pause as his whole body faced the boy. "Do you know what happened to the last man who called me crazy?" Vasska asked, his voice losing all panic.

Aldrin stopped and looked back at the others. Ciara shrugged and Taban rolled his eyes. This is why he preferred to work alone in the dark. Hard to monologue when your throat was already slit.

"He wound up neck deep in a pit of honey!" Kynton's voice carried across the winds. "No? Um, you poured lemon juice into a nasty paper cut? You sent him a very passive aggressive letter?"

Both King and Emperor snapped to the priest who bowed under the intensity, "Wait, I know, you made him scrub the pots with the old brush that only had a few bristles left because Brother Balm never takes care of the damn thing!"

"Anyway," Vasska stretched out each syllable, showing a rare glimpse of humanity beneath that crimson robe, "child of snow," he looked over at Ciara, and her skin crawled under that stare, "child of sand," finally he landed upon Isa, whose mouth sparked when she moved, "and child of the devil. All together in one place," the crooked smile tipped those cruel lips up, "it is a test of Argur's faith."

"To hell with your Argur," Ciara cursed at him, "You'll pay for every life you and your 'god' took."

"Your blood shall bind the evil," Vasska said, re-writing the prophecy he'd been following since he was a young man watching from the eaves as uncles slew aunts, and sisters dropped catapults on brothers. It saw him through every false alliance, every impure soul trying to claim Argur's glory, and - here and now - he wasn't about to let a little thing like getting it all completely wrong stop him.

"You, child of sand, will be the first to die. Kill her."

A hand reached out of the open trap door and grabbed onto Kynton's ankle. The priest only managed a "Hey, what…" before he fell down the ladder, landing in a quiet pile at the bottom. He was replaced by the exhausted face of the General, his sword out.

In the commotion, Vasska zipped around the fire. Ciara raised her sword, but backed up, afraid the mad man would recognize the etching upon the blade and realize he'd been played for the fool. Still he advanced, gazing only upon her eyes as his soul mentally ticked over another dozen or so prayers needed to expunge that stain. Perhaps less.

Aldrin shouted at Isa, but as the witch raised her palm overloaded with magic she couldn't control, a heavy hand grabbed her wrist and yanked back. The snap echoed across the stone pillars as Isa screamed, her arm flapping uselessly to its side. "I have another," she screeched into the General's face even as he kicked her legs out from under her.
 

"Vasska!" Marciano shouted, his eyes tracking the dark man inching around the edge, as well as the boy who flared in rage.

"My favorite," Vasska crowed to his General, "You are in time. Slay them all."

"There are dead climbing the walls!" Marciano continued, not about to break at his Lord's words.

Vasska nodded as if he told him the bathroom taps had burst again and no one could find the mop. "Yes. Yes. I am seeing to it. Now please, do away with these...miscreants."
 

"The dead are killing my men!"
 

Taban inched closer to the Emperor, watching the mutinying General carefully. Ciara was only three strides from him, four if he was slow.
 

"Is that not the point of soldiers? To die?" Vasska asked, confused why his favorite was ignoring very explicit instructions. It shouldn't take him much to kill these children, only the hired blade of the Dunner's would prove bothersome.
 

Marciano stared deep into the mad abyss of his Emperor's, his Lord's, his Bosses eyes, and finally saw what he most feared; his own soul, rotted and twisted upon the vine, burst open with maggots crawling free. Without turning his gaze away, Marciano carefully laid his sword down upon the ground.

"I see," Vasska hissed, "Then I shall finish this with my own hands," and he turned back to the girl, a sacrificial dagger slipping into his palm.

Taban launched from his crouch, his foot falls carrying him one step, Vasska deflected Ciara's blade skittering it across the floor, another step, the Emperor grabbed her arm, and the final step, as the blade raised back. The assassin's hands shoved the girl away, breaking Vasska's hold upon her. But the Emperor flipped as his prey was torn from him and slashed madly and deeply with his dagger.

The assassin staggered, blood gushing off his shoulder as he fell to a knee from the pain. Vasska raised his blade for another stab when a heavy stick smashed into his head. He raised a bejeweled hand to his bleeding head and reeled about to spot Ciara heaving up Isa's dropped staff for another go at beating out his brains.
 

Vasska got a single step towards her before a blade, rusted from a few centuries of neglect, burst through his kidney, spleen, and some intestine. Aldrin gripped the sword tight, sagging with the falling Emperor, unable to pull the tetanus infested thing out. Ciara watched Vasska fall to his knees as he tried to look behind at the boy that bested him.

Eventually his draining eyes fell upon Marciano, who hadn't flinched as the child advanced within his grasp. The General didn't smile, only bitterly spat, "Is that not the point of Emperors? To die?"

Despite it all Vasska had to laugh, he'd got him good with that one. And as his failing body slipped off the blade's edge to the floor, the Emperor of Avar finally went to perhaps a not as loving an embrace as he thought of the only Goddess to ever understand him.
 

Ciara raced towards Taban, who was trying to slide his jerkin off to tend to the wound. "Kynton!" she yelled before remembering he might be dead as well. "Hang on," dangerously practiced fingers split up the skirts of her dress and she wadded up what had once been "Real Dunlaw Kotton" and stuffed it into the gaping hole. The assassin turned dangerously pale but placed his own hand against hers, pressing the bandage deeper.

"What of you!" Aldrin rose up, pointing his bloodied sword at the immoveable General, "Will you seek vengeance?"
 

Marciano's gaze fell down to the Emperor, curled upon his side as if he took a nap in the middle of the day. He almost expected a thumb to be adhered to his mouth as he succored it for a peace the man could never achieve. "Not from me," he said in struggling Ostero, wishing he'd paid slightly closer attention to that ambassador before he had to cut his head off.

"But...he leaves behind a son," Marciano said wearily, his eyes staring into the youth forced to play the part of adult. A never-ending cycle, it seemed.

Aldrin nodded slowly, taking the burden upon himself. He had killed a boy's father...and a brother's brother. Slowly, he lowered his sword, taking the General at his word. Taban would have cursed at the child's ignorance, but he was too busy trying to not die. But Marciano made no move, only crossing his arms.

As the blood rage rushed from every head (and one still bleeding shoulder), from deep below them a lone voice broke above the din of marching unblinkers, "They're about to break through!"

The General paled momentarily, "Boy King, we must stop the...the..."
blast it, what was the word for unblinking, walking dead?
Unable to come up with it, Marciano raised his hands in front of himself and moaned while tossing his head back. A gesture not a single unblinker ever made, but the point got across regardless.

Aldrin nodded and looked back at the startled priests, who were trying to hide behind each other, "You! How do we stop the unblinkers?!"

But it was Isa, staggering to her feet and gritting through the pain of a shattered bone, that answered him, "Me. You must kill me."

"What?"

"You had your instructions Princeling," Isa said, looking the ragged boy in the eyes, "I had mine."