The Queen of Wolves (16 page)

“Do not confuse what you have within you with that unspeakable vampyre. I knew it when I passed the Sacred Kiss to you. I saw it, as I had never seen a vision before.” Her voice softened, and it was at such times that I trusted her least. “That beast is a blasphemy to all vampyres. Look at him—a walking corpse with wings like a mangy bat. He has no glamour. No beauty. His flesh is half-peeled from the bone, and rotted brown and oily. His teeth are yellowed and like tusks. When he drinks blood, do you see how some of it runs down his legs? It is a miracle of our tribe that he even survives with so little flesh left to him. It’s a wonder he can even speak, and yet it is hard to quiet him once he has begun. We do not share many traits with this beast. He may drink blood, but what good does blood do him? It does not restore the semblance of health to this oaf, Ophion.”

“When you first drank from me, I saw the corpse beneath your glamour. I saw, for a moment, the skull and bone and sinew as you tore at me. I have also been trapped in a hall of great silver mirrors. In them, I saw myself without the magick of our tribe. I knew what my body truly was.”

“All illusions,” she said. “It is a trick of light and of quicksilver. Nothing more.”

“That is what your father suggested,” I said. “But we are not so far removed from Ophion, are we? He has been called ‘Anointed One,’ as have I. He is my reflection in the mirror—and I am, perhaps, his.”

She shook her head lightly. “You cannot look at a corpse and see yourself. You cannot look at ghouls and see what I see. You are young, and you will be eternally young. You are a man, and you will never be rotted flesh. In your loins, there is life, where there is no life in his, nor does he have even the semblance of such life. Ophion is a betrayer. A liar. There are those who knew this creature once...and met their Extinguishing because of this knowledge.”

“You have
never
seen him before?” I watched her eyes for the glint of a lie. She called Ophion those same things that she herself could be called—a betrayer, a liar, a destroyer of vampyres.

“I certainly knew that a creature like him lurked about the dark chambers of Nezahual’s prison,” she said. “Nezahual had a menagerie of monsters. A monster that drank the blood of goats and gathered up the skulls of men, a dragon that stood upright like a man and turned those who looked upon it into stone, and beasts with many long arms and the eyes of an owl. Ophion may have been among them. I felt something in the stream, but I could not be sure what it was, for the stream was strong and full in that country. But I did not know him.”

“He is more like us than these others you mention,” I said. “I will not seek the Extinguishing of a vampyre as easily as you might.”

“If this is your will, then so be it,” she said. “But he would be wise not to be alone with me, for I will show him no mercy. But for your sake, I will allow you his existence.”

She was not so generous when I told her that I would leave within the hour to travel to Myrryd with this vampyre—but she was wise enough not to fight it much. In the end, she said, “Do not forget the newborn tribe that will arise within two nights. These will be your warriors, and they will need to know their leader. If you truly decide to leave me here with these newborns, you risk all that you have suffered—for what? A journey to a dead place. A quest for sorcery that may no longer exist.”

6

“Take the cudgel from the dead man,” Ophion said as we walked among the dead who lay between the smoke billows along the plain. He pointed to a fallen soldier. “This one’s good and dead, brother—and look, a shiny razien, there, see? Beautiful as a fine sword, but far better for the hack and jab. See the sharp blade? Very fine work, that one.”

“What do we need with such crude weapons?” I asked. “You said no vampyre exists in Myrryd.”

“There may be creatures we do not know of, and others who hide.” As he spoke, his voice grew small and soft as if he were remembering a dreadful nightmare and was afraid to speak of it. “It has been abandoned for too long, and it holds energy even when no mortal or vampyre sleeps within its gates. Myrryd calls to creatures that live only in dead places. It takes all energy from us. You will not sprout wings there, and there will be no strength in you. You will be as a mortal among its towers and ruins. It sucks at us—at our sorcery. It lights its lamps with our energies.” Of this he would say no more, no matter how I dogged him with questions.

I crouched by the dead soldier, drew out the razien from its sheath, unstrapped the sheath and took that, also. I drew the corpse’s short cudgel up, hefting it about. I strapped the razien sheath at my waist so that it hung down along my right hip, and the cudgel over my shoulder. Ophion also picked over the dead, finding the prize of a two-bladed sword that had not yet been scavenged by others. He looked at me, and at the weapons I had gathered for myself. “These should do,” he said. He glanced up at the stars. “I will follow the beast who runs among the stars.” He pointed to a constellation I could not see for the heavy smoke. “If followed, its tail points the way to Myrryd. We must go soon, my brother, for the night will not linger.”

7

When I went to bid farewell to Pythia, my heart felt heavy. She grasped me by the wrists and drew me back to her. She whispered at my ear, “Do not go to Myrryd. It is forbidden for all of us. It is a place of Extinguishing.”

“I am going,” I said, pulling away from her.

She drew herself close to me, her lips near mine. “I brought you into this existence, Aleric. It was your beauty that seduced me, and then it was your blood, and then your flesh. But when I saw my future as I passed the breath of immortality to you, I knew that I would have to destroy you...or save you. I cannot let you go with that creature.”

I watched her eyes. The gold on her face moved in slow liquid waves along her brow and around her cheeks.

“You will have to let me go,” I said, wishing I could tell her otherwise. “I will return. I will find you again. Five nights. I will meet you at the Akkadite Cliffs at the edge of the last of the Great Forest. We will bring war to Taranis-Hir.”

“Please, Aleric,” she gasped, reaching for me.

“Do not forget—you must extract the oath before feeding these new vampyres. You must lead them toward my country. You know the way. It will be but a few days’ flight. Look for the high cliffs to the east of Taranis-Hir, called the Akkadites. There is a gold tree. Wait for me there, but take command of this rabble. They have sworn an oath, and they have honor in their blood and will obey you. I will not be far behind you, I promise. If it is trust you wish me to have, then remain with our tribe. When I come for you, I will have the new staff, and the sword of fire that is buried in the dead kingdom.”

“Wait,” she cried out as I turned my back on her and spread my wings. She reached into her pouch, and withdrew the Eclipsis and ran toward me. She stood before me, and held the Eclipsis up.

“Take this.” She pressed it into my hands, then unraveled the pouch and strap at her waist. “It pulses with life when you hold it. It is not meant for me. Perhaps its deathlight will protect you in that city of the dead.”

This was the single most selfless act she had ever done for me. Perhaps the mask did not just leach her immortality, but also something darker within her soul. Perhaps the child that grew in her womb had awakened this. Or perhaps she had the instinct to protect me, even when she had first shared the vision of the ritual, after giving me the Sacred Kiss. For surely she might have destroyed me then, but, instead, fled from me out of fear. I knew that within Pythia, there was an instinct for good—for what was right, within the realm of our tribe—and she too often buried it. She had saved me from a terrible Extinguishing at the jaws of Ixtar, and now might save me with this gift.

I embraced her and did not wish to let go. I accepted the Eclipsis and its pouch, and wrapped them around my shoulder. I held her face in my hands, and said, “You are a queen among our tribe. But you must not forget how vulnerable you are. If you arrive before I reach the Akkadite Cliffs, do not take the war to Taranis-Hir. Wait, and keep company with the mortals who are there and who will join the fight. Do not hurt them, except to drink, and then, only enough.”

She whispered, “Do not go there. I may never see you again. Those who seek Myrryd do not return.”

I touched the edge of the gold mask, feeling its ice. “I will see you again before the new moon is dark in the sky.” I pressed my lips against hers, opening against her mouth, wanting to pull myself into her, never to have to—again—leave any I had loved, any I had hated. Just as I had grown afraid I would never see Ewen again, so I was sure that I might not return to Pythia, nor see my child born.

Yet I knew no other course, for I did not have sorcery to fight the Myrrydanai White Robes or the staff that Enora held in her grip. But how I wished I could do as Pythia wished and travel with her to lands as warm as summer rain and raise our child without knowledge of the damnation of the greater world beyond us. I loved her, and I hated her, and I did not wish to part from her upon that bleak mountain.

I let her go, and her last words to me did not hurt as much as she wished. “Do not judge me harshly, if I fail you,” she whispered, almost as if she didn’t want me to hear.

“You will not fail me,” I told her, and went out to the ledge of the cliff, joining Ophion, who had already begun the flight.

8

We flew across the great sea that had carried me from the Italian shores to the land of the Saracens in the last days of my mortal life. South and west we flew, and slept on a windswept island, in a chapel that had been carved into rock perhaps a hundred years previous. We closed our eyes in a windowless chamber beneath the chapel, surrounded by bones and barrels of wine. Ophion brought me a squirming vessel of blood when dusk broke—a young monk who had come to open the chapel doors and sweep the crypt. I drank greedily, forewarned that we might not find mortal blood again for several nights.

Before the sun had vanished from the sky, we sat together in the vault. Ophion spoke to me about what he had experienced at Myrryd, and though his memories seemed vague at first, once he had drunk his fill, much of it returned to him. “I was like you,” he said. “Robust then, robust and full of...the look of health. Like you, brother. Older than you, but yet not so old. I knew of this Myrryd. Knew it like I know the bones on this hand.” He held his hand up for my inspection, the small finger bones thrusting out from the tattered flesh as if it were a well-worn glove. “Knew it like I know the taste of good blood. There were armies of vampyres. Cities of them. They knew the legends about the Maz-Sherah. They knew. I was famous, like you, and I believed the prophecies I had been told of Maz-Sherah and what it might mean. Myrryd still reigned in those lands, though its energy waned in those times.”

“But,” I interrupted, which was made difficult as Ophion rarely took a breath when he began speaking. “But...wait...why would there be a Maz-Sherah, when Myrryd had not yet fallen?”

“Oh, yes. The kings. The priests. The Myrrydanai were not yet shadows,” he said. “Their flesh had not yet been torn. And yet I tell you, I was born to the same destiny as yours, for it was prophesied of me.”

“Then what would you save our tribe...from?”

He leaned into me so that I could smell his fetid breath and the stink from his curdled eyes, and whispered, “Enslavement, my brother. Enslavement. Medhya reached out when the Veil was thin and tore at our tribe. She whispered secrets to mortals that they might hunt us. She had already turned the Myrrydanai into her hunting dogs.”

He told the story of the centuries of enslavement of vampyres, by the priests themselves. I learned soon enough that the Myrrydanai priests had used their sorcery to bind vampyres into service. The Priests of Blood had already been expelled from Myrryd, and the Nahhashim were imprisoned in the bowels of the great Myrryd city. It was only when the Myrrydanai overstepped their own powers and broke the Veil through the use of the purple flower’s juice that Medhya tore their skin from them and tossed their meat to other creatures of the city. “A horrible, horrible time,” Ophion whined. “So long ago, before mortals rose up against us. But the shadow priests asked for it, for I suffered greatly at their hands. But I know little, my brother, so little. When I came here, I was ignorant and full of want. I had visions as you must—the dreams that haunt and torment. I went to find answers, but oh, when Ghorien saw me...”

“The leader of the Myrrydanai priests,” I whispered.

Ophion nodded. “He is the voice—the throat of the Myrrydanai, the gullet, the heart. There are many in the shadows, but he is chief among them. When he saw me, he knew. Maz-Sherah is foretold, and many will come. Many will fall, my brother, my falconer.”

“They tortured you in these prisons, but did they reveal any weakness to you?”

“Weakness? Myrrydanai? No, oh, none have they, but for the touch of the mask. They fear it—they fear what the Great Serpent has himself touched. They fear the Nahhashim, as well, but when these priests were destroyed, their bones bound in the tree, Myrrydanai did not fear again. My prison? Much worse than shackle and chain. Stripped me of flesh, salted these bones, and nearly extinguished me. Raised me again only to break my bones beneath great rocks, my brother. They threatened to turn me to ash in a terrible furnace. The kings watched and allowed all of this, for they, too, had become prisoners of Myrrydanai. The Fallen Ones of Medhya, our mother and destroyer, believed Ghorien and his Myrrydanai—for kings must be ordained. When not ordained by country, they are ordained by the corrupt few who convince them of their power. For three hundred years, Ghorien held me there, seeking to find a way to make what was Maz-Sherah in me die. But he could not. We, who are Maz-Sherah, may only be Maz-Sherah. We may extinguish, and we may not know what this power is that brings such fear in visions to the powerful and the cruel...but what is in us, is in us. Those such as these shadow priests fear us. Yet, we, too, have much to fear.”