Seven Princes

19

The moon was a pale and scarred face haunting the night. The waters of the Golden Sea sparkled with a million reflected stars. The only sound was the rushing wind and the beating of the black horse’s leathery wings. Gammir, formerly Fangodrel, sat comfortably on its back in his mail of gleaming shadow, basking in his mastery of the night-time world. A black cloud that was not a cloud at all flowed across the sea behind him, a mass of shadow-things exhumed from mountains, valleys, tombs, and graveyards. The rich blood of a King lined his throat and stomach, suffused the substance of his pale flesh, mingled with that of seven Princesses and a young Sharrian Duke.

Spots of dried brown ichor speckled his lean chin and cheeks. He should have taken that last one as well… There was no good reason to let him live. No good reason, only the damning visage of his own dead brother. The words that only he could hear.

Curse him! Curse his rotting bones… He’d best not cross this sea with the rest of the shades.

King Ammon had received Gammir with open arms, calling for a feast to honor his presence. He had even kissed his nephew on each cheek (there were no bloodstains there yet). He must have assumed that his sister in Udurum was sending her eldest to observe the Khyrein piracy problems.

“It has been too long since you visited us, Fangodrel,” Ammon cooed. He stroked the braids of his black beard, the same irritating mannerism his son Andoses had adopted. Ammon’s seven sisters would join them at table, and the two grown sons of his brother Omirus, who was still at sea protecting trade routes from Khyrein reavers. “Why did Andoses not come back with you?” he asked.

Gammir smiled, refusing wine. His thirst was great, but not for the blood of grapes. “Andoses and Tadarus have gone to seek the favor of Uurz,” he said. The name of Tadarus was a sour taste on his tongue. Then he remembered the sweetness of his half-brother’s blood and rediscovered his smile.

“This is good,” said Ammon from his throne of ivory and onyx. “My sister gathers support for a war against these jungle devils.” The banner of the white bull on a sky-blue field hung behind him. Servants bustled in carrying the feasting table. They placed it directly before the Sharrian throne, which sat on ground level with the rest of the chamber. Gammir found it odd that the Sharrian Kings chose not to raise themselves upon a royal dais. Some ancient tradition perhaps. Ammon was all but ruled by the Seven Priests who guided his every decision. Perhaps it was they who kept the Sharrian Kings at ground level.

“Tell me, Uncle,” said Gammir. “Why do you wish to bring war upon Khyrei?”

Ammon’s face grew petulant, his lips pursing. “Have you not heard my son’s words? They are pirates, murderers, and thieves. They ruin trade by sacking our ships, and take our mariners as slaves. They are an unwholesome race who have long resented our prosperity.”

“I have heard they are a great and noble people,” said Gammir. “That they lived at peace with Shar Dni until wronged by the sorcery of Vod. Did he not steal my mother from the Prince of Khyrei? Did he not murder the Khyrein Emperor and his son?”

Ammon laid his head back against the satin lining of his throne. His eyes searched the face of the man he still thought was Fangodrel, perhaps only now realizing that this was not him. The blue jewels hanging from his turban crown trembled as his arms shook with restrained rage.

“You speak ill of your own father?” shouted Ammon. Servants withdrew, and the noble women who were gathering at the table cast their eyes downward at its mahogany surface. Children squealed and ran into adjoining corridors. “You find sympathy for the pale demons of the south? Has my sister never told you the truth of her marriage to Prince Gammir?”

Guards in blue surcoats and gilded mail moved restlessly between the pillars as the King stood up to tower over his nephew. “No! She could never tell you! Gammir was a beast. He tortured her. He kept her as a slave until Vod came. A Princess of the Sharrian House locked in a dank cell like an animal!”

The King had drunk too much wine and was obviously not used to anyone telling him what he did not want to hear. Anyone but the Seven Priests, thought Gammir. Those holy personages were in their great temples conducting the Rites of Twilight. Would he have raged so in their presence? Gammir doubted it. These lies about his true father must come to an end.

“He was her master,” said Gammir in a quiet voice. “Was it not his right to treat her in whatever way he chose? He was a Prince; she was his property.”

King Ammon beat his fist upon the table and silverware jumped among the dishes. His sisters coughed and sipped at their wine, hoping the rest of the food would arrive soon to fill both King and Prince’s mouths. Now the Dukes Dutho and Pyrus, the teenage Sons of Omirus, entered the hall and came to the table. They were dressed in the manner of warriors, though Gammir doubted if they had ever left the palace grounds.

“You are young and ignorant,” said Ammon, returning to the seat of his throne. He grasped his wine goblet with an agitated hand. “There is nothing of Vod in your looks/em›our, t in your manner… and I’ll wager there is none in your veins either.”

The table grew silent. Two servants carried the steaming carcass of a roast pig across the floor, placing it at the center of the board. No one dared say a word. The King gulped his wine and would not look at the nephew he had insulted.

Gammir did then what they least expected him to do. He laughed. Threw back his head and howled. The assembled Princesses, Dukes, and guards turned all eyes upon him. Still no one spoke and still Ammon ignored him.

Finally, grasping his stomach, Gammir let his mirth fade. “You are quite correct, Uncle,” he announced so that all there would hear it. “I am no son of Vod. Gammir the First was my father. Vod stole me from my rightful home and murdered my sire. This was the fruit of a conspiracy hatched before I was born.”

Now King Ammon did turn to face him, his face a purple mask of rage and shock. The torches in their sconces, freshly lit to ward off the growing darkness, dimmed and snuffed themselves. The flames dancing in the twin braziers at either side of the hall fell away to fading embers. A ray of silver-gold moonlight streamed through the skylight at the apex of the throne room, bathing the table in pale gloom. In this gloom, Gammir’s black mail gleamed and sparkled like the midnight sea.

“Your fool of a son is dead,” Gammir told Ammon. “By my own hand.”

He raised that same hand like some white jewel to glimmer in the moonlight. The King’s eyes, and the eyes of all those at the table, watched his writhing fingers. Gammir smiled.

The hand struck like a pallid viper and seized the throat of Ammon. The King’s eyes bulged, his wine spilled across the table, and the ladies of the court screamed. A roar like that of a tiger split the air, and Gammir’s teeth sank into Ammon’s throat. A gout of scarlet spewed across the plates, goblets, and the steaming pig carcass.

The guards rushed forward, crying alarm, but the shadows along the walls rose up to seize them, ripping mail and flesh with phantom claws. Gammir drank deep of the blood gushing from his uncle’s pierced neck vein, his merciless hand holding Ammon still against his own feasting board. The sons of Omirus rushed at him, raising jeweled scimitars. A glance from Gammir froze them in terror, and the shadows rushed forth to enshroud them, lifting them above the marble floor. They slashed futilely at the air with their weapons, bellowing hate and fear.

The seven sisters of Ammon ran, but rising walls of darkness blocked every exit. Terrible things floated out from those walls to gather them up in arms cold as death. The throne room was a vault of echoing screams, splashing blood, and death. Gammir, finished at last with the King’s sharp juices, turned one by one to the other guests. He let the Dwellers in Shadow take the impotent guardsmen and the terrified servants. He heard their bones crunching and the pieces of their torn bodies slapping against the floor as he went from lady to lady… aunt to aunt… sucking at the necks of his mother’s sisters. A wolf among penned sheep would have had no easier a feast.

This royal blood was saccharine, tasting of privilege, ripe fruits, good wine, and glittering ruby. It spilled across the table, the floor, stained the white-gol th

“Cousins…” said Gammir, his lips and chin dripping dark fluid. He stared at them with a predator’s eyes, his tongue flicking like a Serpent’s. The shadows about their bodies lowered them within reach of his teeth. “You need weep no more. The end of your suffering has come. Your father will soon join you.”

He sank his teeth into the neck of Dutho, tearing out the warm juice within, slurping it into his belly. Pyrus wailed beside him, and the legion of shadows swirled and feasted in their own mysterious ways among the mutilated bodies. Dutho, drained to a still whiteness, fell from Gammir’s grasp and lay in a black puddle.

He looked up from the corpse and saw Tadarus standing among the shadows.

“No!” he shouted, pointing with a bloody claw that was his finger. “You cannot be here!”

Tadarus only stared at him, wordlessly accusing him of being the fiend he truly was.

Gammir tore off the purple cloak of Udurum, stained black with the blood of Ammon’s court, and threw it at the ghost. “Take it!” he screeched, and the shadow-things writhed and twitched. They flowed about the ghost of Tadarus like harmless vapor. They could not touch him. He was already dead. Perhaps he was one of them.

Brother, said the wraith. It made no move to take up the cloak. The fabric lay over the corpse of a dead Princess, soaking in the bloody pool beneath her. The shadow-things seethed and snuffled between the pillars. Behind the walls of darkness that barricaded the chamber, Gammir heard the shouts and cries of soldiers and priests.

“What do you want from me?” asked Gammir. “Why torment me? Do my bidding as these other dead things do… or leave me be.”

Why have you called me here to witness this? asked the ghost. It wept ethereal tears. Can you not see what you have become? What you are becoming? Turn back from this path of shadows. It is not too late to redeem yourself with the edge of a clean blade.

Gammir grabbed the throat of quivering Duke Pyrus, the only thing left living in the chamber besides himself. The tendrils of shadow moved away, and the Duke’s mouth was freed. “Please…” he wept. “P-p-please, cousin…” Gammir smelled the tang of filth among the blood. The whelp had soiled himself.

“I’ll ignore you, Tadarus,” said Gammir. “As I ignore the bleating of these pigs.”

Can you ignore yourself? You called me here, as you did before, to remind you…

“Remind me of what?” said Gammir, still holding Pyrus in his hands, a begging, dripping sack of meat.

That you are human, said the specter. You are not one of these things that serve you, no more than I am. Remember, Fangodrel. Remeangidth="27"›mber the warmth of sunlight, and the ink you scrawled on countless parchments. Remember who you are. This is why you called me.

“No!” bellowed Gammir. “I did not call you… You haunt me! This – all this – is who I am. I’ve embraced my true heritage… a legacy of blood and power.”

Tadarus was gone. Shadows swam in the empty air where the apparition had stood.

Gammir dropped the squirming Pyrus onto the floor, where the lad immediately lost consciousness. My belly is full of royal blood, he told himself. I do not need this one. Let him carry the tale of what was done here. Let them know what is coming for all of them. Let them see.

The black horse walked out from a wall of shadow, pacing toward him through spreading pools of red. Gammir leaped upon its back, leaving the cloak of Tadarus among the corpses. A pulse of shimmering sorcery ran along his limbs, and the horse sprouted its immense bat-like wings. It crashed through the skylight toward the bloated moon, leaving a shower of glass in its wake. The walls of darkness fell and the warriors of Shar Dni rushed in to view the massacre as a black cloud flowed upward through the broken ceiling and disappeared in the night.

Now, hours later, a dark coast appeared along the southern horizon. At last, the shores of Khyrei. The phantom steed’s speed was terrific, fueled by the potency of the Sharrian blood. The sun would not rise for quite some while, but already the beast arced down toward the vast spread of the jungle lands. The steaming wilderness looked black beneath the stars, but its true color was that of fresh-spilled blood… like the petals of the bloodflower he had used as a surrogate for the liquid itself.

Ianthe’s capital hugged the coast, and the jungles ran from its southernmost wall as far as the eye could see. Here was the thorny palace of onyx and jet he had seen in the depths of the Red Dream. Its spires stood sharp as barbed spears, ready to pierce the moon and drink the red rain of its death. The city’s buildings, too, were of black stone, low and dull, bearing none of the glory of the splendid palace. The castle’s central tower bore a crown of curving spikes, and flocks of jungle bats flew about its balconies and bridges. In the light of the sun, the dark palace would stand against the backdrop of scarlet jungle as it had stood against the flames of the Red Dream. The city cowering in the shadow of those regal towers, with its thousands upon thousands of pale slaves and bronze-masked warriors, would all be his. It was already his. This was his birthright, laid before him at last.

Somewhere within that edifice of night, long rebuilt from the days of Vod’s perfidy, the pale Empress sat waiting to kiss his lips and embrace him with a passion his own mother had never shown. His gorgeous, ageless, grandmother, Ianthe the Claw. She kept a hoard of secrets hidden here, and they would open wide for him now like ruby blossoms.

The black steed flew over the black ramparts and entered the grounds of Ianthe’s citadel.

She received him in the eight-sided courtyard grown thick with jungle plants, the gossamer flow of her gown disturbed by the wind of the black horse’s wings. She stared at him with eyes that mirrored the pre-dawn sky, ripe with miniature constellations. The beast faded to a dark fog and wafted from his bodd food agy as his booted feet met the stones of the yard. Now the simmering heat of Khyrei washed over him; in the fierce winds of the upper air he had not felt it. It crawled across his skin now, damp and thick, an invisible layer of wet silk beneath the cool exterior of his shadow-mail. He stood before her not in any dream or vision, but in the quivering, sweating flesh. He inhaled the jasmine scent of her skin, dazzled by the moonlight bright as diamonds on her skin.

The spiderweb of a crown rose from her alabaster forehead, pushing back the whiteness of her thick hair. Her lean shoulders supported a diaphanous robe, cut low below a necklace of jade, moonstones, and opals. Golden bands encircled her arms above and below the elbows, and the rings on her lithe fingers refracted the light of the stars. Her nails were the claws of a panther, hard and sharp as diamond. About her narrow waist hung a belt of silver set with lapis lazuli, sparkling above the triangular shadow of her loins. Diamonds blazed on her slim ankles, and her long feet were bare on the jet surface of the cobbles. She stood the exact height as him, and her feline face met his own with an expression of perfect grace. Her lips were the color of wet, delicious blood; her smile thrilled and frightened him.

“My Prince, my Blood, the Son of my Son,” she said, her eyes locking onto his. He could never look away from those eyes unless she wished it. “Prince Gammir… welcome home.” She wrapped her arms around him, and he melted into her. Tears ran along his cheeks, but he did not care.

“The King of Shar Dni is dead,” he whispered into her ear, a pointed porcelain seashell.

She pulled away and took his face between her hands. Her smiled was unchanged.

“I see his blood swimming in your eyes,” she said. “You make me proud.”

She led him by the hand along the starlit glades, between a pair of guards with the masks of leering demons, their husky bodies shelled with intricate armor. The blades of their spears were hooked and curved, works of art that could only be used for murder. Once past the main gate, she conducted him down a long hallway past more of the faceless guards, through a great hall where slaves cowered like dogs to await her pleasure. She ignored them. He drank in the sights of the place, the pillars of jet and ruby, vast murals of war and ritual, demons and Serpents crawling across gilded frescoes. Witchlight filled the corridors; glowing balls of flame hung weightless in the air, shifting from red to orange to green and amber. It seemed the walls were alive with grotesque beauty. Silent as the night itself, a black panther glided from a passage and nuzzled against Ianthe’s slender legs. She stopped for a moment to stroke its massive head between the ears.

“Say hello to your new Prince, Miku,” she told the cat. It stared at him with yellow eyes, slit with green. Its red tongue came out and licked his hand. Pearly fangs hovered over the skin of his hand but did not threaten. The tongue was rough, yet pleasant. He smiled at the beast, smelling its raw-meat breath, and recognized a kindred spirit.

“Beautiful,” he told her. Instinctively he knew the panther was female. It glided about his legs now like a playful puppy.

“Come,” said Ianthe. He followed, and the panther loped behind him.

They climbed a set of black spiral stairs carved with wards and runes of an unknown language, past the arched doorways of sealed chambers. At the very top of the stairs, she opened a portal of heavy bronze with a wave of her hand. Inside lay her inner sanctum. A pointed dome rose above a hall large as a throne room, but filled with the paraphernalia of sorcery.

A desk of black wood sat piled with curling scrolls and moldering books. A collection of ancient tomes lined the shelves on the walls. The skulls of humans, beasts, and other entities also sat upon the shelves, some with burning candles perched atop their empty craniums. Artifacts from obscure ages hung upon the walls: the shields of fallen empires, jeweled blades of esoteric design, daemonic tapestries spun of gold and platinum, and many other curiosities for which he could find no name. An oval mirror taller than a man stood along the wall, its frame carved into the forms of grinning gargoyles and grasping limbs of demons. The entire room swam murkily in the depths of that glass, a distorted reflection of what was real. At the very top of its frame a fanged devil’s face held a massive yellow topaz in its jaws. Of all the weird contrivances in the chamber, the cloudy mirror seemed the most strange.

Four windows rose high along the walls of the sanctum. They looked north, east, south, and west over city, ocean, and jungle. This was the summit of the great barbed tower standing above all others. Outside the sun was stirring, and the eastern horizon glowed orange and violet. The moon sank into the rolling jungle hills. Ianthe raised her hand again, and black drapes fell across the four windows, blotting out the dawn. A globe of spinning fire hovered in the center of the chamber, casting stark shadows and saffron light.

Miku the panther crawled onto a pillowed couch and licked at her paws.

“This is the heart of my wisdom, the center of my power,” Ianthe said. “The seat of learning here is now yours.” She motioned to the high-backed chair, much like a throne, sitting behind the cluttered desk. “Sit. Your journey was long. You must now be comforted.”

She clapped her hands, for what reason he did not know, and turned to the great mirror. “This the Glass of Eternity,” she said. “It will show you the past, the present, and sometimes the future.”

The chamber door swung open, and a hulking guard dragged in two slaves by chains attached to neck-collars. They were two girls, young and pretty, naked and shaved bald from head to foot. The guard grunted behind his fanged mask, and Ianthe waved him away. As the door closed, the two slaves huddled together on the chamber’s woven rug. They made no attempt to escape or cry out. They quivered with fear, and Gammir’s lust began to rise. No, his thirst. But there was no longer any difference. He licked his lips.

Ianthe ignored the cowering girls. “Grandson,” she spoke from beside the dark mirror, “what do you know of the world’s history? Did your northern tutors teach you any truth?”

“I know of the Age of Serpents,” he told her. “The birth of the Uduru, the Time of Flame, and the Five Tribes.”

She laughed dismissively. “As I thought… You know nothing. This continent is far older than the six kingdoms that claim it,” she said. “Older than you can imagine.” She gestured tSheeight="0emo the mirror, turned her eyes upon it, and the light in the glass swam. It became a vision, moving and living inside the oval frame, like a scene outside a window.

A primal landscape of volcanoes, flame, and raging oceans took shape in the glass. Vast beasts, terrible and alien, lumbered across the steaming rocks. Blazing stars hung above the primeval world, far more than he had seen in any modern sky. Dark things moved in the starry void, sinking to earth, colossal and formless, gleaming with eyes of fire.

The creatures from the void took on terrestrial shapes… They became colossal obsidian gods, and lesser beings worshipped them – walked gladly into their open maws, built idols to honor them. Fantastic cities grew like fungus about their towering temples. The creatures who walked those twisting streets and gave tributes of blood and flesh were not human, but some distant ancestor of man. Apish, brutal, and filthy, they nevertheless built a crude civilization, carving it from the hot stones of the earth. Volcanoes roared and sank their cities beneath floods of magma, and the green ocean washed in to fog the world with steam.

The beings of darkness strode through the gaseous atmosphere, raising up the crawling, shuffling life-forms they found into new and more bizarre civilizations. Impossible architectures sprouted mould-like from the primordial swamps. Again the temples of the dark gods rose into the sweltering sky, and a red sun slowly burned away the continental marshes. Again the shaggy ancestors of humanity came into the vision, making war on the city-builders with stone and spear, ultimately claiming their domains. Then the pre-humans warred upon each other, and the dark gods watched in amusement, feeding on them now and then like great reptiles on tiny insects.

The sub-human empires fell, and the dark gods reveled in the tumult of the unstable earth. Millennia passed, and the pattern repeated itself. New races came and built their temples and cities… they fell, conquered by other races, or devoured by the whims of the dark ones… only to spring up again in some other corner of the continent.

The void-born ones walked upon the world, wrapped in the celestial glory of their immensity. They began to take the forms of terrible beings, or beings of great beauty, playing always their cruel games with the lesser forms of life… fostering empires, then watching as they crumbled. They moved like the shadows of mountains across burgeoning forests. They raised or sank island kingdoms for their pleasure.

These patterns played out again and again on the surface of the mirror. Gammir forgot himself and the chamber in which he sat. He saw the ancient beings, the terrible gods of death and war, the blood-hungry deities of a hundred nations, the endless wars of tribe against tribe, city against city, the genocides, the slaveries, the annihilations and rebirths of a thousand peoples, all leading toward the birth of humanity and its own proud kingdoms. The patterns swirled, repeating, unchangeable. The dark gods laughed, and reveled, and toyed with empires.

Until they grew bored…

Some of the dark ones took to the void, losing themselves among the stars. Others dwindled to mere shadows, and took on the forms of lesser beings – men and women who ruled over the tiny kingdoms of earth. Still others faded into distant worlds, stretching their bulk into unseen dimensions, while some merely slumbered, sinkiumben ng into the bones of the earth and becoming one with its stones, winds, and waters.

Yet a few of the dark ones who had fallen into fleshly shapes… remembered. They remembered the caress of the void, the taste of blood spilled on their altars, the divine power that was once theirs. They could never regain their lost forms. They were diminished… absorbed into the world they had toyed with for long eons.

Yet they remembered, and they drew to themselves the remnants of the great powers that once were their birthright. They saw into the stars and moaned the loss of their brothers and sisters. They belonged now to this singular world and its never-ending patterns of birth and death, night and day, creation and destruction, rising and falling through the centuries. Time itself had conquered their divinity.

Among the empires of men they were called sorcerer.

Or sorceress.

The mirror grew cloudy again, and Gammir blinked. The vision was gone. His head spun, and Ianthe sat herself upon the desk before him. She caressed his cheek like a favorite sculpture.

“We are of the Old Breed, you and I,” she said, and he understood. “There is much that is forgotten and will remain so… yet there is still much to learn. We will play the games of conquest. We will spread blood and fire, for this world is ours.”

He smiled, and she kissed his lips.

She turned away and pulled him by the hand toward the cowering girl-slaves. They would not meet his eyes or hers. Fear consumed them. His thirst raged.

“Now we drink royal wine,” she said.

With a single finger, she slit the throats of both girls.

They drank deeply from the writhing bodies, drawing upon every last drop of precious fluid. Potent with the tang of youth.

They arose from the limp forms, dripping red and satisfied, and Ianthe laughed.

She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen… or will ever see .

He licked the bloody residue from her chin, like a young hound feeding from its mother.

She held him then in silence. The world faded into oblivion.

“My sweet boy,” she said. “My sweet Gammir.”

The panther Miku lapped at the red pool beneath the dead slaves.

A subtle movement in the close air of the chamber, or perhaps a faint sound, caused Ianthe to let him go. She turned to stare at the Glass of Eternity.

A new image floated in the mirror. On a tall throne of ebony and crystal sat a man robed in darkness. A strand of blood-bright rubies hung across his chest, and a long mane of slate-gray hair swept back from his high forehead. A crown of gold and sapphire sat stappbed rangely upon his tight-fleshed skull, as if it did not belong there. His eyes gleamed, colorless fires in their deep sockets, and his fingers were long-nailed talons. He stared through the mirror, directly at the blood-drenched grandmother and grandson. His face was cruel and stone-like, but he smiled.

“Ianthe,” his voice echoed across the chamber. The sound of bones grinding. “You enjoy yourself too much…”

The Empress returned his smile and licked the remaining gore from her lips.

“Gammir has returned,” she said to the mirror. “As I said he would.”

The mirror-King’s eyes pierced Gammir through the mirror. “Never did I doubt it. All that which was lost shall be regained in time.”

“Gammir,” said Ianthe, her hand on his shoulder, “meet the Great Elhathym… Ruler of Yaskatha long before it held that name, and now returned to claim his birthright – just as you have this day. You shall be great allies.”

Gammir stared at Elhathym through the pane of enchanted glass.

“Hail, Prince of Khyrei,” said the sorcerer.

“Hail, King of Yaskatha,” said Gammir, a single red droplet falling from his chin.

He knew instantly that he hated this man, and would always hate him.

Ianthe laughed and kissed his bloody cheek.

“We three have much to discuss,” she said.

She burned like a pale flame between the locked eyes of Gammir and Elhathym.