Seven Princes (24 page)

He pondered the skeleton of an Old Wyrm mounted along the eastern wall, held together with clever wires. It was at least four horse-lengths, with a dozen clawed legs digging into the stone wall. The triangular skull bore fangs large enough to impale a man. Living, it might have swallowed men whole between those snapping jaws. If it didn’t singe them to ash first with flaming breath. Near to the Wyrm’s bones hung an Uduru sword, a Giant’s blade of antique steel. He studied its length, the polished
metal, the murky gems set in pommel and hilt. The weapon stood a head taller than Tadarus, but he lifted it off the wall easily, brandishing it in his right fist.

There was time before dinner, so he practiced wielding the Uduru sword. He carved figure eights, ellipses, and spherical patterns in the air, thrust it like a spear. This was the blade that killed this Wyrm. Somehow he knew it. How long ago was this beast slain? The blade was centuries older than the keep. These relics must have been stored in the vaults of the castle that stood here before the building of Steephold. He marveled at the perfect balance of the big blade. It felt good in his hands. Often the swords forged by Men seemed little more than sticks to him. Perhaps he would keep this Giant-blade. It would serve him well on the field of battle. His men would stand in awe of its size. When the melee began they would not lose sight of him with this great steel thing in his grasp.

Thunder rolled as rain pelted the thick glass of arched windows.

Yes
, he decided.
This blade comes with me to Mumbaza
. Then to Shar Dni. Then to sweltering Khyrei, where the song of battle would break loose and shake the sky. He studied the shallow runes along the spine of the metal… Perhaps there was some lingering enchantment in the sword as well.

A commotion rose outside his door, and he heard the booming voice of the sentinel at the head of the corridor. Someone had escaped his grasp and was running toward Tadarus’ chamber. Whoever it was, he wept and grunted with panic. Now came a pounding against the door, followed by the plodding of the sentinel’s huge feet.

Tadarus opened the door with the Giant-blade in hand. A bloody figure stumbled upon him, grasping at his chest, smearing it with red. A small man dressed in servant’s livery, stained to
black by the gore splattered across arms and chest. He recognized the bleating, weeping figure: Rathwol, his elder brother’s servant. He reeked of dog flesh, filth, and fear.

“Majesty!” screamed Rathwol, clutching at Tadarus’ belt. “Majesty! The darkness! The blood! Majesty!”

Tadarus pushed him back into the corridor, lowering the great blade. The giant sentinel seethed with embarrassed anger.

“He slipped through my legs like a…” the Giant growled.

“A rat?” said Tadarus, staring down at the mess Rathwol had made of his fine raiment.

“Majesty!” howled Rathwol, mouth drooling, eyes flooding. He trembled violently. “Save me, save me! Oh, I’ll serve you faithfully – not
him
, never him anymore!”

“Bring Captain Jyfard to my quarters,” Tadarus told the sentinel. The Giant tramped down the corridor.

“The shadows!” squealed Rathwol, grasping now at the Prince’s boots.

Tadarus pushed him firmly against the corridor wall and slapped his face. “Calm yourself, man. What’s the matter? Whose blood is this? Yours?” He kicked away Rathwol’s filthy hands as gently as he could.

Thunder rumbled, and the stones of the keep trembled as if mimicking Rathwol’s terror.

“Oh, so much blood…” Rathwol cried. “All spilled and burned… Now the
shadows
drink it. Save me!”

Tadarus shook him. “Where is your master? Where is Prince Fangodrel?”

The name cast a weird calm over Rathwol. He looked into Tadarus’ face, silent for the space of three heartbeats. The storm beat against the windows.

“Gone…” whispered Rathwol, eyes staring at nothing. “Gone into the shadows… into the blood!” Now he keened and wailed
like a woman. “Keep him from me, Master! Keep him away! I’ll serve you, not him! Only save me!”

A great wind gusted along the corridor, like a hurricane suddenly unbottled. It swept Tadarus off his feet. A flying, howling blackness tore Rathwol away in a blind instant. Now his cries of terror rang in some other corridor, echoing from the darkness. All the torches in their sconces were blown out by the terrible wind. Tadarus crouched in the darkness, the Giant-blade ready in his hand. The only light came from the partially open door of his chamber, where the fire bowl still blazed.

Something moved, crackled, shifted in the dark at the end of the corridor, in the direction the sentinel had gone. Tadarus stared into the gloom. Could it be Uduru making that rumbling sound, or was it only thunder? Had some window been smashed, letting winds howl into the keep? From the infinite darkness at his back came a long, thin scream of agony. Rathwol. Darkness claimed the citadel in both directions; winds shrieked like ghosts through the distant hallways. Tadarus wanted to run inside his chamber and bolt the door, hide himself from this plague of darkness.

The thing at the end of the corridor pulsed, and something came flying through the air. It hit the floor several spans before Tadarus and rolled like a small boulder, a trail of black blood in its wake. It stopped at his feet. He looked down and caught his breath. Two bulging, fist-sized eyeballs glared at him, dead and sightless. It was the head of the Giant sentinel, severed at the neck by some jagged instrument… or a vast set of claws.

Now anger overcame Tadarus’ fear. He yelled along the corridor. “Come forth! Face me! What are you?” He thought of the Wyrm skeleton on the wall of his room. Surely there could not be—

“I called you brother…”

The voice drifted from the pulsing mass of shadows. That darkness moved closer now, drinking up the dull glow from the chamber fire.

“Fangodrel?” he called. Was this some jest? Had his brother gone mad? In the back of his mind a voice whispered,
This was always meant to happen. Fangodrel was never right. What did you expect of him but murder and disaster? Blood and doom?
Now, at last, the wait was over.

“… but you are no brother to me.”

The voice was Fangodrel’s, but obscured in echoes and amplified by thunder. Tadarus could see nothing in the darkness but the writhing darkness itself.

“Show yourself!” he yelled. “Let us spill familial blood if we must. Come!” He raised the Giant-blade high above his head.

“Steel? This is your answer for every problem, Tadarus. There are things in this world stronger than metal.”

Tadarus could take no more baiting. He rushed headlong into the darkness, swinging his great blade, slicing only emptiness. Something grabbed him up in formless claws, biting into his thick skin with unseen fangs. He swung the blade about him, back and forth like a reaper’s scythe. Nothingness… he hovered in the grip of nothingness and now he could not see at all.

Suddenly Fangodrel was there, lit by the red glow of his own flaring eyes. Naked, emaciated, his skin wrapped in skeins of running crimson. The blood danced across his chest, ran along his arms and legs, defying gravity with its slick flow. Or was it shadows that danced across that pale skin? Some mixture of scarlet and ebony, living, sliding, throbbing…

“My name is Gammir,” said Fangodrel, lips dripping with blood, teeth stained black by it. “Gammir, Son of Gammir. Prince of Khyrei.”

Tadarus heard the shrieks and wails of dying warriors,
bellowing Giants, throughout the castle. The storm assaulted the exterior walls, while a storm of blood and darkness assaulted the interior. This was the heart of the bloody storm right here. This thing before him was not his brother. It had never been his brother. How could he not have known this?

The greatsword fell from his hand. No, his hand was sheered away from his wrist. Sword and hand fell clanging into the dark. The pain washed over him a second later, a burning wave to drown his senses. His warm blood squirted into the shadows. It did not reach the floor. He screamed now, for that was all he could do, held tight in the grip of some amorphous, unseen,
vast
thing…

Fangodrel – no,
Gammir
– crouched below the fresh stump of Tadarus’ wrist, blood pouring into his open mouth. A flood of screams and blood gushed from Tadarus. He saw the face of Vireon, his sister Sharadza, and his weeping mother. His father’s face was a gray blur, like an underwater vision.

“Your blood was never my blood,” said Gammir, lips running with crimson. “But it is sweet… Uduru and man, a potent blend…” Gammir raised his mouth to kiss Tadarus’ throbbing neck. “Sweet and potent…”

Darkness stole the breath from Tadarus’ lungs. His final sensation was that of a ravenous beast tearing at his throat. Mercifully, he heard no more of the terrible screams that filled the halls of Steephold.

H
e decided to call her Alua, the name of a splendid white flower that bloomed among the Uyga vines in winter. Although she did not speak, she understood immediately that this was now her name. She knew his moods and his thoughts before he spoke them. A simple glance into her onyx eyes, or the slightest caress of her hand, these were their sublime modes of communication. So when he set about putting his plan to work, she went along in her wordless way and was eager to help.

After three days of bliss in the valley where the last days of autumn held sway, Vireon and Alua ran north again into the cold mountains. She took her fox form and he ran beside her. She guided him along the safest ravines and kindest escarpments, going ever higher into the realm of wind, snow, and ice. He found the spoor of a tiger, and they tracked it along a pale ridge. The white fox ran ahead of him, following the tracks of the beast to a shallow cave lair. Vireon climbed to a high ledge above a great precipice, and the fox pranced before the cave mouth.

The tiger sprang from its den. Its pristine hide gleamed white as the breath that billowed between its fangs. It stood larger than a stallion, a mass of rippling muscles, black claws, and yellow
fangs. It roared, and across the divide an avalanche fell into the gorge. Now the great cat chased the fox. Alua ran ahead of its snapping fangs along the mountainside. It swiped a massive paw at her, claws raking through her bushy tail. She pounced forward and the chase resumed. When the tiger was almost upon her, she turned back, baring tiny fangs. The cat lunged for the kill, so focused on the fox that it failed to sense Vireon crouching on the high ledge.

Vireon sprang boots first into the tiger’s skull. Its head smashed into the ice and rock, and he fell back against the wall of the mountain. The feline head rose and turned on him. The maw could tear off both legs in a single snap, but it was too late. The force of his two-legged kick sent it spinning toward the precipice. Scrambling, it slid over the edge into nothingness. It struck out with both front claws, digging into the ice. Now it hung there above the black depths of the gorge, struggling to pull itself back up onto the path. Its yellow-green eyes burned into Vireon’s as it pulled itself forward and upward, bit by bit. Its massive shoulders had cleared the edge when Vireon took up a boulder and hurled it against the feline head. With a final roar of defiance, tiger and stone plummeted into the icy gulf.

Alua approached Vireon in her girl form, wrapping her warm arms about his shoulders. She kissed him, and her quiet eyes said,
I knew you would let no harm come to me
.

They hurried down the mountain and found the body of the tiger on a bed of icy rocks. Vireon skinned the carcass methodically with his long knife. Before the sun had set, he wore its white hide for a cloak, tied about his neck by its front legs. Twin claws dangled upon his chest, and the hollow shape of its furred skull rode atop his own as a crude but beautiful helmet. He gave thanks to the Sky God and buried the beast’s remains under a cairn of rocks that were soon covered with a mound of fresh snow.

“Now I look the part of a proper ambassador,” he told Alua. “And this skin will keep me warm should I enter that cold palace again.”

Alua ran her delicate fingers along the fur, and her eyes said,
You look like a King
.

Back in the foothills, where snow was light and the wind hardly blew at all, he found a thin, straight tree and sliced its trunk clear from the roots. He pared off the bark and limbs, carving it into a perfectly round pole. He tested its strength against boulders and larger trees, wielding it like a staff against imagined enemies. She watched him with infinite curiosity, tilting her head this way or that. Finally, he took the ropes of tendon he had cut from the tiger’s body and used them to secure his knife, point forward, to the end of the staff. Now he had a great spear worthy of an Uduru. He was ready.

Vireon told her with his eyes,
Do not follow me. You are my secret. If they capture me again, you may need to free me again
.

Her eyes responded,
What if they kill you?

His eyes laughed, and he kissed her pink lips, ran his hands through her saffron hair.

“Stay here,” he said aloud. “I will return soon.”

He stalked alone into the highlands. Despite his plea, she would follow him in her fox form, but stay well back from the domain of the Udvorg. She was clever and elusive, his Alua. She was much more that he did not know, but hoped to learn eventually. He turned his thoughts forward, and they carried him into the mountain depths.