Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 9

From the sheltered stone doorway of the palace, Nicci watched the black cloud creep into Orogang.

“The zhiss…” said the old woman next to her, and a deep shiver lurked in her voice. The other shrouded people crowded together, more afraid of whatever was out there than they were of Nicci. Some of them peeked out into the daylight, while others retreated into the gloom of the windowless passageways.

The sentient cloud swirled like a thunderstorm that had been shattered into obsidian fragments. Each fleck was only the size of a biting black fly, and together they swirled in a shapeless predatory mass. A buzzing simmered in the air like a thousand beehives, and the sound grew louder as the mass drifted among the abandoned buildings.

“What are they?” Nicci whispered.

“Death,” said the old woman. Behind her, in the gloom of the shuttered palace, the other people remained utterly silent.

Tendrils of the black mass extended, probing, hunting. The zhiss had a purpose.

From the doorway, Nicci spotted movement in the overgrown shrubs in the empty square. As the daylight brightened, the two foraging deer cropped tender green vegetation. The doe pricked her ears and raised her head, while the young buck with short velvety antlers continued to munch flowers, until he also sensed the buzzing cloud.

The zhiss moved toward the animals. Black specks tumbled, rotated, extended in an ill-defined tentacle that advanced like candle wax pouring down a slanted surface. The uneasy animals skittered, but they didn’t understand the threat.

From her sheltered overhang, Nicci wanted to shout at the deer and make them run, but the old woman squeezed her shoulder like a vise. “Remain silent! We don’t dare call attention to ourselves.”

The black cloud buzzed forward, expanding, then swooping down around the deer. Too late, the animals tried to bolt away, but one extension of the zhiss blanketed them like countless bloodthirsty mosquitoes. Smothered, the deer collapsed on the flagstones. The poor animals twitched and thrashed, but eventually lay still.

Before long, individual specks rose up like drunken bumblebees and drifted away from their victims. Now, the tiny flecks were swollen globules the size of grapes, purplish red instead of black, engorged with blood. The rest of the cloud drifted and kept expanding, still hungry, still probing through the ancient city for prey.

Sickened by what she had seen, Nicci turned to the old woman, realizing what these strange people had done by capturing her. “You did save me.” She had killed so many of them! “You knew what was coming. If I had been out there when the sun rose…”

“We saved you, and perhaps we saved the world,” the woman replied. “We could not let them have you. The blood of a gifted sorceress is incredibly potent.”

Nicci was frustrated that they had been unclear, that their muddled old dialect and their urgency had led to such tragedy, but they had been desperate to keep her away from the black cloud. Now their voices were loud in the silence, and the zhiss detected the sound even from outside. Part of the swarm poured toward the towering palace in which Nicci and the others hid. The furtive people let out a collective gasp and retreated deeper into the shadows. The old woman pushed the thick door shut, assisted by others. Nicci added the last nudge to slam the barrier in place just as the buzzing, swirling zhiss struck the blocky structure. Through the stone-hard wood, she could hear a vibrating hum as the angry force vented its frustration.

With the door sealed, Nicci waited for her eyes to adjust to the light of intermittent torches mounted on the stone walls. The people had covered every crack and cranny, allowing no outside light and no speck of predatory blackness to enter.

The building was huge, an imposing palace with vaulted ceilings and enormous chambers larger than the torches could effectively illuminate. Hundreds of the pale people were crowded inside, far more than Nicci had expected. They all wore gray, unobtrusive garments. Although they seemed healthy enough, the people looked haunted.

The clamor of questions became too loud in her mind. “Explain what is happening here,” she demanded. “What are the zhiss and who are you?”

As the people muttered, the old woman pulled back her hood to reveal gray hair with a few streaks of brown. Her skin was pale to the point of translucency, showing the faint lines of blood vessels. “I am Cora. We call ourselves the Hidden People, for that is what we do—we hide.”

“What do you accomplish by hiding? I rarely find that a useful strategy.”

“We control the zhiss,” Cora replied. “We keep Orogang safe. We keep the world safe.”

The people with her muttered more loudly. Nicci was glad to confirm her suspicion. “So this is Orogang, the capital of Emperor Kurgan’s empire.”

“What is left of it,” Cora said.

A square-jawed man with a grim expression said, “Emperor Kurgan is long dead, destroyed by his vengeful people, but General Utros will return. That is what the old prophet said.” Nicci was surprised to hear the statement, but did not point out that the man’s desire might actually come true, though not in the ways he expected. The man introduced himself as Cyrus.

The old woman explained, “The city fell many centuries ago, after the people overthrew Iron Fang. The populace longed to anoint General Utros as their next emperor, and back then a crazed prophet insisted that Utros would come back to Orogang. But years passed, and he never returned. The empire fell into a civil war. The people were busy fighting under different flags, breaking into factions, paying little attention to anything but their own conflict.” She drew a deep breath. “Then the zhiss came.”

“Utros will return!” Cyrus insisted.

“I think we’ve waited long enough,” said a brown-haired young woman with a huff, drawing an annoyed glance from Cyrus.

“What are the zhiss?” Nicci asked, interested in the true danger. “Where did they come from?”

The Hidden People stirred uneasily at hearing their own history, but let the old woman continue the tale. “A fiery star fell from the heavens and struck the mountains. Inside, it carried the zhiss, like an egg sac filled with spiders.” A frown settled into her deeply lined face. “They fed on the population. The zhiss were just a black wisp at first, but each time they consumed a human, the swarm multiplied. The things used our blood to breed, and the cloud doubled and doubled again. Some of us learned how to hide.” Cora closed her eyes, and in the dim torchlight Nicci could see tears glittering.

Nicci considered. “But Kurgan fell fifteen hundred years ago. You cannot be that old.” She remembered the preservation spells woven through the Palace of the Prophets that prevented aging. Nicci herself was over one hundred and eighty years old. “Or are you?”

Cora shook her head. “No, that was generations ago, but we have stayed because we know our duty. We need to keep the zhiss here. If we leave, the cloud will seek out other villages, towns, cities, and then the zhiss will be unstoppable.”

The young woman who had scoffed at Cyrus came closer, even managing a smile. “The swarm only comes out in daylight, so we are safe as long as we remain sealed in our buildings until dark.” The girl would have been pretty, a heartthrob for any young man, if she hadn’t been so pallid. “I am Asha. We go out at night to hunt and gather. We have stockpiles of food throughout the city, enough to last for decades, but we dare not leave Orogang.”

“We wait,” Cyrus said. “We have our purpose.”

“But the zhiss fed on those two deer,” Nicci said. “Won’t the swarm reproduce now?”

Cora shook her head. “The zhiss sustain themselves with the blood of animals, but there is some quality in human blood that lets them reproduce.” The old woman lowered her voice. “And gifted blood is the most powerful of all.”

Nicci realized the significance of how vulnerable she had been out in the ruins. “When you first saw me at night, how did you know I was a sorceress?”

“We didn’t,” Cora said. “We just tried to save you, but when you fought back using your gift, we knew it was imperative to get you inside, away from the zhiss, even if it cost the lives of many of our people. If the black cloud had fed on you…” She let her words trail off, shuddering visibly.

Nicci wondered if her gift would have been able to deflect the hungry black swarm. She didn’t count on it.

Old Cora continued her explanation. “And so we remain here and feed the swarm just enough to keep it under control. It doesn’t wander away, but we cannot leave. Not ever.”

“Unless we stop it somehow,” Asha interjected.

Looking around inside the expansive foyer of the palace, Nicci frowned at the burned bodies of those she had killed with wizard’s fire while trying to avoid capture.

“I’m sorry I caused you so much harm,” she said again, tasting the regret in her throat. “I didn’t understand what you were doing.”

“We were not only doing it to save you,” Cyrus scoffed. “If the zhiss had fed on your blood, our situation would have grown far worse.” He added an edge to his voice. “If we could not bring you inside the shelter in time, we would have killed you.”

Nicci faced him in the flickering torchlight. “You might have tried.”