The Queen of Wolves (21 page)

“Aren’t you thirsty?”

“A bit. But not for them. Not for that...taste.”

“And we are heading for the garden where the Nahhashim tree grows?” I asked, for I had asked periodically as he took me along.

“We will pass the tombs of the kings before we come to the garden,” he said.

5

In a hall of gold, with a great domed roof, upon which were painted scenes of fish-tailed men and harpies and Gorgons, devouring mortals, as well as depictions of ritual and mating and what I assumed must be the commerce of Myrryd—there was a giant statue in red stone, reaching nearly to the dome of the roof.

It was the only statue of Medhya where her face had not been chipped away. Yet the gems that had once been the statue’s eyes had been removed. Painted on her forehead, the third eye I had seen in my vision of her.

Her jaws were parted as if to bite, and her fangs were ivory tusks, polished to perfect sword points.

Beneath her left foot, she trod upon the Great Serpent, father of our tribe. Her right hand was raised to the dome as she pointed to a series of glyphs. She wore a cloak of human skulls, and upon her breasts were tattooed the sun and the moon. A stone tablet, covered with etched writings had been laid—at a later date—at the border of the statue’s feet. As I approached it, I felt a slight vibration from the Eclipsis, but ignored it, for something else had caught my eye in the great chamber beyond the colossus:

The effigies of the Asyrr—the rulers of Myrryd—and their great tomb chambers, filled with the funereal beds of their servants and their warriors. I went swiftly from one chamber to another, marveling at the beautifully carved statues of the great kings and queens of the kingdom.

“A tomb and an armory,” I said. I drew a spear from its place against the wall of one of the chambers. I hefted it in my hand. “It is a good weight.” I glanced about and saw the crude bows along the walls, hung carefully as if never used; and long swords and double blades stacked without care in piles.

Near these were bronze helmets, piled high; and then a series of armor unlike any I had seen. These were of leather and bronze and some heavy black metal unknown to me. I went to one suit of armor that had been placed upon a metal rib cage. Its helmet had scales upon it, and at its crest, small spikes that went down the back of the neck like the shelf-scales of a dragon. The leather underclasp was like a corset in some respects, and the rest of the suit was of that black metal that shone nearly as reflective as some dark mirror.

I set the pieces back where I had found them, and followed Ophion as he scrambled along the narrow hall, down a stair, beside a long, flat pool, still as ice. As we passed twin columns, and went beneath an archway, we came upon a temple without roof—above it, a shaft of light from the night sky, and the stars themselves far above in a rift of the rocks.

I saw the moon’s light—full now—the solstice was close.

I felt a dull ache in my body, thinking of what I had not been able to fulfill, and felt the urgency return.

“Where is this tree of the Nahhashim? For I must cut a new staff from it now.”

Ophion pointed ahead, beside a round fountain at the center of the
roofless temple. Beyond, in what seemed a garden thick with purple flowers, and through another doorway, into what seemed a great red-domed basilica, I saw at a distance what might have been a white tree.

6

In the doorway to this strange garden, Ophion pointed to the swarms that moved along the upper hollows of the dome overhead.

“They are the Akhnetur,” he whispered. “Long have they guarded this sanctuary. Small biting terrors, from a demon-haunted depth.”

I heard their movements—a
sh-ch-sh-ch
sound from the beating of their wings and movement in their swarms. I had assumed at first there were a dozen or so of them, but as we progressed inside the garden, the noise grew deafening.

“There must be hundreds!” I shouted.

“Thousands,” he said. He glanced about the rounded ceiling and along the painted scenes of the high walls.

He looked along the high, jagged columns that supported the structure. He pointed toward the monstrous faces carved at the elephantine base of one of the pillars. Dark swarms gathered at the ledges below the ceiling. “They were here before Medhya and her sisters had come. Before Myrryd was Myrryd. Before the crystal caverns below were torn by flood, and before the golden mask was forged. The Akhnetur guard this place from the likes of you and me, my brother.”

“They protect the tree?”

“The Nahhash tree, and the flowers,” he said. “I would not raise a hand to them, and neither will you. I have seen a man run from them, and within seconds they attached their claws, and their stinging tails, oh, like razors against the flesh. Still running, he was—the flesh and tissue torn from him, a blur of bones dropped to the earth.” He reached over and with his fist tapped at my heart. “Their only work is to protect the Nahhashim.”

The Sang-Fleur, which held the juice of the Veil—grew along the trunk of the white tree, and from it, its vines had wandered out and entangled among bone and skull like a vineyard of Hell.

These were not the small purple blossoms I had seen in Alkemara—these flowers were as large as a hibiscus, and within their purple petals, deep crimson stains.

I glanced at the thousands of Akhnetur, stirring but not moving far from their swarming hives. I could not make out any single one of them, but I imagined they were the size of my hand. My sword could not stop them if they wished to attack.

I stepped forward cautiously, not wanting to disturb the swarms above. I drew my razien from its sheath, but as I did the buzzing sound of the creatures grew louder.

“Touch the tree, or a petal of the flower, and the Akhnetur
will
attack us.”

I watched the ceiling, but our presence did not do more than agitate them. Their noise increased. None moved down to seek us out.

I ran for the tree, drawing my razien up and was about to hack at one of the low branches, when the humming burst into a sound like thunder at my ears.

The great cloud of Akhnetur approached swiftly, flying scorpions whirling around me, buzzing at my scalp, forming a perfect outline of my body, right up to the tip of my razien. I saw them more clearly now—their tails dripping with some liquid, their pincers snapping, their black wings fanning the air. They whirled around me, an army of these creatures, and I knew that if I made one more move toward the Nahhashim tree, they would tear at me. And I had no power to stop them.

Yet none touched me, nor did their poison harm me, nor was a single claw drawn across my flesh. But when I made a slight move toward cutting the tree’s branch, they drew closer until I felt their heat upon my skin.

I drew the blade back slowly, sliding it into its sheath at my hip. I reached for the Eclipsis, hoping to draw out its deathlight, but nothing came from it. I slipped it into the pouch again.

The Akhnetur pulled back in the air, and as I stepped backward through the flower vines, they, too, retreated until I was again at the doorway with Ophion, and the creatures, in their swarms at the corners of the domed garden.

As we returned toward the great tombs of the Asyrr—the great kings of Myrryd—Ophion whispered at my ear as if afraid someone might hear him, “Another man they would have torn apart. But you have the scent of the Veil flower in your blood. I smelled it all the way from Aztlanteum. But had you cut the branch, or harmed a twig from that tree, do not doubt that they would have spread your flesh across the garden until your Extinguishing was relief.”

“There must be a way to disarm them,” I said, and wandered back through the temples and tombs, remembering the vibration of the Eclipsis.

7

When I came again to the great red statue of Medhya, I asked him about the language of the stone tablets by her feet. “When I draw near to this, the Eclipsis moves in the pouch.”

Ophion shrugged. “It is some poem, though I do not read, my brother.”

I felt the Eclipsis pulse against my waist, and drew it up from the pouch. I lifted the small globe into my right hand—its gentle but insistent throbbing shot a spike of warmth up my arm. I held the Eclipsis to the stone tablets, and the deathlight came up in a shadow-glow.

Despite its dark illumination, there was a brightness to the deathlight as it touched the words in the language of the ancient ones. From these ornate scrawls, a green light projected into three dimensions within the light’s penumbra.

From that light, a voice spoke as if from within the strange green light as the script raised outward from the tablets. It was a woman’s voice. That of a Priestess of Blood, who had extinguished in some forgotten millennium of the city’s birth.

She spoke in my own language, maddeningly slow, as if she were dying as the words came from her mouth:

Beneath this temple, terror reigned

When she upon her throne cast down

The Serpent into endless flame,

And set new shadows at her crown.

The Queen below, the Queen above,

Stolen was her blood and bone

Into the Veil, imprisoned she
—

Beneath the city, lies her throne.

Above the door, her face engraved

Her Gorgon sisters with tongues sublime

Golden youths in silence serve

Within the chamber of her crime.

In nameless depths, the burning sword

Makes hostage of the winding stair

But he who comes to heal the Veil

Must break the stone and find the lair.

Him for whom these words were writ

Will take the Nameless to his sheath:

The conquering Queen commands above,

The vanquished lies in wait, beneath.

The voice stopped, and the green light receded into the shadows of the deathlight.

I repeated the words, for I had memorized them as she spoke, afraid I would forget them. I slipped the Eclipsis back into its pouch. Ophion looked at the tablets with horror upon his face. “‘The Queen below, the Queen above,’” I said. “The Old Kingdom and the New. ‘When she upon her throne cast down...’” I repeated more of it, slowly, and tried to understand the significance of these words.

“Tell me what this means,” I said. “What is the Nameless? Are these the Asmodh depths? For I believe it is this burning sword I must find, more than even the staff. Where is Medhya’s throne?”

“Do not make me tell you of this, my brother, for it will be your end.”

“Tell me,” I said. “For I did not come here to be misled by you. If you are truly friend and brother, you will not withhold from me.”

After several minutes of his whining and warnings, Ophion said, “In the rhyme, she speaks of a throne. Medhya’s palace remains below us, and sealed is the throne room of it, for it is cursed.”

“Have you been to her throne?”

“Never seen, though I was taken there, blindfolded. Tormented...” he said. “It is where the priests attacked her long before you or I existed. The Kamr and Myrrydanai and Nahhashim all held her while they skinned and bled her and cut her bones apart from her flesh, that she would have no entry to this world except through ritual. She was banished to dream and vision, exiled in the Veil through the ancient words. It is a torture room, my brother. The throne room should not be breached. Do not listen to this voice, these words, for it is a priestess of the Myrrydanai meant to harm us, I am sure of it.”

“I am not so certain of this,” I said. “Whoever first spoke these words was an enemy of the Queen of Myrryd. As am I. These words were meant for the Maz-Sherah. For us, Ophion. Take me to the palace of the Old Kingdom.”

“I will not, and you cannot force me to do so,” he said, and he even repeated the words several times as he and I pressed our way through one of the rift breaks at a place where a building had shattered from the movement of the Earth itself.

We climbed down along the arches that held up the street above, into the bowels of the Old Kingdom.

Chapter 9

________________

T
HE
P
ALACE

1

This new vault of sky was made of the underpinnings of the last Myrryd, buttressed with great stone arches that seemed all of one piece, and which descended downward as if the beneath was a great well, a secret bunker, deep and endless. It was a ruined and shattered landscape, for walls crumbled, and roads had become muddy with the leaking of fountains and canals both above and below. Mosaics adorned the walls, and there was no torch that lit here, but all was dark—and yet my eyes, powerful in absolute night, saw more clearly than in torchlight.

Ophion did not wish to accompany me, for he spoke of the depths farther below. “It is a drop into a lost doom,” he whispered. “Do not seek such places.”

“You must show me the palace of the first Medhyic dynasty,” I said.

Ophion glanced downward to the subterranean vista of this under-city. “Yes, I cannot forget these places, for they have been pierced into my bones.”

He began shouting “There!” and “There!” as he mentioned places where mortals made their nests and were easy catches in the old nights. He pointed out the temples, the strange round buildings that were called Hives, where the rituals of the Myrrydanai often took place, far from the prying eyes of the rulers of the New Kingdom. “Ghorien and his priests sacrificed vampyres—a blasphemy and a threat to us all. There were rumors of the calling up of Medhya then, but I did not believe it until I felt her presence. They hold the keys of necromancy, those Myrrydanai. It is their greatest sorcery to know the secrets of the dead and those beyond the Veil. This was in the days before
she
tore their flesh from them. Before she brought them into shade.”