The Queen of Wolves (30 page)

I did not wish to argue against him, for I knew Pythia well enough. My first knowledge of her was that she had bled a child—the boy named Thibaud, whom I had felt close to in the mortal wars. She had deceived me, and had destroyed her father’s kingdom, and cursed her sisters. She had brought Artephius the Medhyic scrolls, and had further heaped destruction on our tribe.

I knew her now as a mortal. I knew her now as the woman within whom my third child grew. I knew her for her tenderness and fears.

Yet I could not completely ignore the centuries of her existence that told a different story.

7

Ophion accompanied me to the throne of Medhya, with dawn but an hour away. In fury, I went to the golden statues and hit them with the staff, cracking them open, the bones of the dead falling in fragments to the marble floor.

I broke apart into a swarm of rats and raced up to the throne itself, re-forming upon it. I sat there, looking out at the fallen statues, at Ophion, who stood at the center of the room. “On this throne, Ophion, Medhya began a destruction that has not yet ended.”

“You are here to end it, my lord,” he said.

“Is it worth stopping her? For you see them—they are not kings and queens. They are as brutal as she. I, too, am like her. Her breath is in me. Her blood, my bloodline.”

“Do not say that, my lord,” Ophion said. “I have seen the works of Medhya, and she does not have the Serpent within her. You possess it. You are no son of mortals, nor are you a son of Medhya. You are the progeny of the Great Serpent, and none other. They fear you in that hall of the dead, and they will follow you in battle. In the stream, you are known to them, and the stream is their guiding star.”

I rapped my hands upon the gold serpent of the throne’s arm. “Why should I risk myself—and my unborn child—for these creatures? They would destroy me if I did not have the awakening power of these objects. If they could wield the Nameless, they would—and do to me what I did to that poor servant.”

Ophion drew his hands together, and would not look at me.

“What is it? Ophion?”

“I cannot say, my lord, out of fear.”

“Fear of me? You have nothing to fear from me. Come forward. Come, now. Tell me what is on your mind?”

He glanced up, but would not move. “It is Medhya, Maz-Sherah. She is here. In some way, she is here. It is not like you to have sent that servant back to damnation. Not like you at all. The only law I know of our tribe is not to send a vampyre to Extinguishing. You are now the law, and yet you have broken it. Here, you sit upon her throne. The Asyrr also have sat upon it. All knew her voice, whether they admit it or not. Her power is seductive, Falconer. It traps many. When I was imprisoned here, the king was Setyr, called the Conqueror, and Medhya influenced him. The Myrrydanai had grown corrupt, but it was Setyr who signed my fate—my imprisonment here. My torments. He was a good king when he first ascended this throne. Like you, who would be a good king. But she whispers in power and the draw of the Asmodh sorcery is strong when it is in your blood to have it. This is why none may wield the Nameless but you. None wish to, for she always exists in the sorcery of our tribe.”

“I will rid myself of the blade,” I said.

“It is the only weapon against her. Will you leave it for someone else to hold? Some thousand years from now? After she has cut you down to your grave, and held you there in chains? No, you must wield it, and the staff, and the Eclipsis, though the grasping of them will destroy you. Medhya and her hounds do not destroy from wounds and fights, but from this—from the want of power. Your appetite for it will grow, as I have seen it grow in mere hours this night. You are now the source of all this, Maz-Sherah. The fires of the city have gone out, for you have this energy within you. You must use it.”

I pushed myself away from the throne and drew him into the corridor beyond it. “I will fight such influence. We must leave when night comes. The waning crescent comes, and within two nights the sky turns dark, and the solstice will have begun. I would leave now, even as the sun rose, but for those who I must lead back. Yet, I have wasted much time.”

“In you, the Serpent lives,” Ophion said. “And all I suffered has been cleansed. The solstice will not come before we return. Your staff, your sword, bring us the power of Myrryd itself.”

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“Because it is before me, in you, my brother,” he said as solemnly as I had ever heard him speak. “No one will destroy us, so long as you lead the tribe. The Asyrr have bowed before you. The Great Serpent is within your blood, yes, my brother, within you—and the door to the Veil as well. I feel now as if you were with me in those years of my captivity, for you were my hope though I did not know your face. You were my sustenance, though I did not taste your blood. Into the deepest prison of the Asmodh I would follow you now. The Asyrr and their warriors, also, would take this plunge if you asked it of them.”

I went to him and clapped him upon the shoulder, and embraced him. When we separated, I said, “Let us go sleep among the tombs and rise at dusk to begin this war.”

*
   
*
   
*

When the sun fell like blood beyond the cliffs of the red city, with the thousands of stars in the darkening sky, I led the kings and queens of Myrryd upward, and brought blessings of the staff to each of them, and to their men and women who would fight, and their servants who would guard.

“Our way is written upon the wind!” I shouted to the host gathered there. “To the cliffs beyond Taranis-Hir we fly—and if we go with the winds, it will be two nights’ journey, I am sure of it. But none must lag behind, nor must you stop to gaze upon the earth for long. We will not drink blood until we are at the Akkadite Cliffs, for we would waste precious time otherwise! Now, with the blessing of the Nahhashim staff—fresh-cut from the bone of the priests who were cursed by the Queen of Wolves and full of the power of their ritual—let us follow the path of stars that point north and to the west!”

To the north we flew, swiftly, and from below, we might have looked like a great flock of giant falcons moving toward the lands of bitter cold, more than three hundred strong, toward the birthplace of the plagues of the Veil.

Beside me, Ophion, who knew the markings of the stars, for it was an old magick learned in his travels.

I told him our destination, he led us across the heavens.

The stream grew strong and thick that night, and dark angels within it, we soared.

Chapter 13

________________

T
HE
A
KKADITE
C
LIFFS

1

Frozen was the great sea along the straits of Iberia, with leviathans dead along the frosted shore, come up from the deeps of the western sea, unable to survive its chill. The fires of men burned below, and the smoke of many wars rose to greet us. Towns had grown dark beyond the fortress walls of cities, and cities themselves had hundred of guards, and in those hills, the pitch fires smoked to ward off the breath of ice. Famine stretched its fingers to many lands, and the wars between town and fort, between neighbor and kinsman, were signs of this lack.

The plagues brought by the Myrrydanai had done their job too well over the years, and the Disk dream had silenced the cry of human need. Within the stream I felt the fury of the warriors who trailed me, for they knew the power of the Dark Mother and saw her handiwork in this sorcery. Many spoke with their minds, yet I ignored them, for I had no answers for their complaints and their anger. They saw the handiwork of Medhya in the ruins of once-great citadels, and in the strange silence of the night in those places where once fires had been lit for warmth rather than war.

Snowcapped mountains passed beneath us, and we were nearly thrown off course by a storm that raged from every direction with rain like spears of ice. The wind howled like the wolves of the north as our company came to high mountain caverns for rest—though we did not see the coming sun for the tempest that had descended, we felt its heat in our bones.

But I needed no rest, and the sun would not harm me with the serpent skin beneath my flesh. I drew Ophion out to the morning sky and asked him if he knew the constellation to my home. He looked up to the fading stars and told me that there were several that headed north and west, but he would not know these cliffs if passing over them. He pointed out one of them. “See it? The great coiling cluster,” he said. “In my youth, the seers called it the Uriz—the gyre of Ur—for it turns over and over upon itself, like the ancient creature of the mists. There, do you see? Oh, but it is hard to find in this lightening sky. I know this ancient forest you speak of, and its third cluster ends not far from it, my brother.”

“We have made good time, for even the storm has not impeded us, but it will as we venture over these mountains. The cliffs are but a half-night’s journey, if this fierce wind ends, a full night if not. Where the plagues have been many, where the snow gathers thick, these cliffs are miles from a white-towered city,” I said. “The Myrrydanai haunt this kingdom, and you will sense them there. But you must not go near it, for we must meet others at the Akkadite Cliffs. You must be cautious, for there are vampyres called Morns under the guidance of the White Robes, and they will not recognize you or our company as their tribe, for their minds have been destroyed, and they hear only the Myrrydanai. I will keep watch for you and draw your stream toward our lair.”

I passed him the Eclipsis in its pouch.

He looked at it in his hands, and then at me. “My brother, this is for you only. My touch does not bring its deathlight.” He tried to pass it back to me, but I folded his hands around it.

“Tie it at your waist,” I said. “Wrap it as tight in its pouch as you can. When you are near—and I will keep watch, for if you stay on course, it will be but a night at most—I will call it. It will come to me, but hold fast to it. It will guide you to the spot where I stand. The others will follow. Do not let anyone touch this, and pass it to no one.”

“You will fly...during the day?” he asked.

“I wear the skin of the Great Serpent,” I told him. “And from my skin, I may call the Raptorius armor. The sun cannot burn me while this exists in my flesh. Now, my brother, sleep, and at nightfall, lead them north and west. When you feel my strength in the stream, I shall also feel you. I will call the orb to my side, and you shall come with it.”

We embraced, and I left him and the company to their rest.

Tired though I was, I drew out the cloak of skin from my flesh, and from it, the suit of armor with its helm. Raising the staff, I moved through the sky at sunrise feeling the heat of that great burning chariot upon my face for the first time since my nineteenth year. Yet the storms continued, and the sky grew dark before midday, and what was not a tearing at the clouds of light and thunderclaps was a gloom of snow and ice, pelted from the roiling black clouds. I moved more swiftly as I shapeshifted into a flock of ravens in the sky, as I did not wish to be recognized as a demon returning to Taranis-Hir’s towers. The wind blew at my back, and my shifting was difficult, but I held fast to it. The sorcery of such shapeshifting is intricate, for I felt like nothing other than myself, with the Nahhashim clutched in my fist and my wings drawn out from that scaly armor. Yet, at the same time, I was aware of the multitude of forms I had become—I was infinite in this form, and I saw from every raven’s vantage point, and felt their many wings beat against the whistling wind. It was a pleasure to shapeshift now, and I felt a glorious upsurge of energy from it, for I was a multitude, and I was a single being. It was as if the boundary of my flesh had expanded to include many within one movement forward.

The whirling storm did not abate until I saw the trees of Brittany, and the ancient wood of my ancestors, after nightfall.

Much of the forest had been burned in the past few weeks, and the fires of Taranis-Hir were blinding along its towers so that it seemed like daylight there—made more brilliant by the heavy blanket of snow that covered all, thicker than any winter before, for even trees groaned under the ice, and many fell to it, and the white of the land could barely be distinguished from the white of the city itself.

I remained far beyond the sight of its towers, and flew low into the forest from the east, rising up to the Akkadite Cliffs, then leaping down onto a ledge, weary and exhausted.

2

Within the intricate series of steps, beyond the cavern vault, I expected to hear the sounds of mortals, or to find the dark chambers of rock where Pythia and the soldiers we had raised from the battlefield might wait among these warrens of dirt and stone. Instead, silence greeted me in the cool, damp shadows, and the need for rest overcame me, though I did not desire it.

I lay down in the green shadow of the roots of the Akkadite trees themselves, thrust into the rock of the cave, and there in the earth, I slept several hours.

My dreams were disturbed by a whispering at my ear, and I recognized the voice as that of Enora herself, as if she had sent her spirit form into my soul.
Come to us, Falconer,
was all she said.

Someone pushed at my shoulder, and I awoke suddenly. My eyes adjusted to the shadowed dark, and I recognized the woman who stood over me.

3

Calyx sat down beside me. She called out a name, and an elder woman dressed in the brown cloth tunic of the forest dwellers came in, limping as if she had damaged her left leg. I tried to speak, but my thirst left a whisper to my voice.

Calyx drew back the woman’s sleeve, and offered the stranger’s arm to me to drink. Neither of them spoke, nor did they have to speak, for I read sorrow upon their faces, its veil drawn away, the plague beneath her skin a glow of amber.