A Land Of Fire (Book 12) (14 page)

Kendrick’s face darkened as he turned
and looked out to the sea.

“I would be, for you,” he said.

“Your people are more open-minded than mine,”
she countered. “You do not know what it’s like. The people of the Ring, they marry
those of other races, from all parts of the world.”

“And yet if they did not,” Kendrick
said, “I would not let their disapproval stop me from being with someone I
love.”

Sandara turned to him, frustrated.

“You cannot say that,” she said, “because
you do not know what it’s like.”

He sighed.

“The choice is yours, my lady,” he said.
“I will not ask you to be with someone you do not wish to be with.”

Sandara felt her heart breaking inside.
She reached out for his hands, raised them to her lips, and kissed them.

“Kendrick, you do not understand me.
What I am trying to say is that I want to be with you. I don’t want my people to
tear us apart. But I will need to be strong. I will need your strength.”

He nodded, and looked at her intently.

“I would walk through fire to be with
you,” he said. “The disapproval of your people will not drive me away.”

Sandara felt relieved, as if she’d let a
great weight off her chest, and she leaned it to kiss him; but suddenly, she noticed
something out of the corner of her eye, something that made her stop. She
looked carefully, studying the ocean waters, and her heart dropped as she was
flooded with panic. She saw that, beneath them, the waters of the sea were shifting
colors, growing lighter and lighter.

Kendrick followed her gaze.

“What is it?” he asked, seeing her
expression.

“Turn around!” she yelled, grabbing his
shoulders. “Do not look at the water!”

Sandara didn’t take time to respond to
Kendrick’s puzzled look, but instead turned and suddenly yelled out to one of
the Queen’s attendants: “Sound the bells! Warn the people! Do not look down! No
matter what! GO!” She shoved the sailor, and he stumbled off, yelling the
warning throughout the ship, and climbing the mast to sound the bells.

Soon the bells started to toll, and shouts
sounded all throughout the ships as they burst into chaos.

“What has gotten into you!?” Kendrick
asked.

But Sandara was busy studying the
others; she looked around and saw many people rushing to the railings, on all
the ships, leaning over and looking down at the light waters. Desperate to save
them, she ran to the ship’s side, grabbed people from behind, and yanked them
back before they could look over.

Kendrick saw what she was doing, and he
joined in, and together, they managed to save quite a few of them.

But they could not reach them all, and
for the others, for those who did not listen, it was too late. Sandara watched
with horror as one person after another, staring down at the waters, turned to
stone.

They fell over the rail, one after the
next, the air filled with the sounds of stones splashing into the water, as they
plummeted one after another into the sea of death.

Volusia sat on her marble throne,
impatient, impetuous, staring back at the two common prisoners who stood
shackled before her. Beyond them, in the distance, down below, there rose the chants
of a hundred thousand of her citizens, squeezed into the coliseum, all cheering
as the Razif was let loose in the arena. Volusia, not wanting to be distracted
from the big moment, looked past these riffraff and down over their shoulders and
saw the beast, bright red, nearly the size of an elephant, with three horns and
a wide square face and jaw, and a hide as thick as a hundred swords, charging madly
through the arena. The ground trembled as it charged in circles on the dirt
floor, again and again, in a rage, looking for any victim.

The crowd cheered wildly at the
expectation of the blood sport that would follow.

Volusia’s cold black eyes turned and settled
on the two men standing before her. She studied them with disinterest, and as she
did, she watched the expression of these middle-aged men softening at the sight
of her, saw a new hope in their eyes, and something else: lust. Volusia had
always had this effect on men. Although she had barely reached her seventeenth
year, Volusia had already lived long enough to witness the effect she had—every
man and woman she’d ever met acknowledged that she was gorgeous, and she did
not need them to tell her; when she glanced into a mirror, which was often, she
saw it herself. With her black eyes and raven black hair falling down to her
waist, her perfectly chiseled features, her skin white as alabaster, she was not
like others of her race.

Volusia was different from them in every
way, she, of the human race who had nonetheless managed to ascend to leader of
the Empire race of this Empire city, like her mother before her.  This city
might not be the capital of the Empire, but it was, at least the capital of the
Northern Region of the Empire, and if it were not for Romulus, no one would
stand in her way. Indeed, Volusia considered herself, not Romulus, to be the
undisputed leader of the Empire, and very soon she planned to prove it. There
had always been a rivalry between the South and the North, an uneasy alliance,
and up until recently, Volusia had been content to allow Romulus to think he
held all the power. It was advantageous for her to be thought of as weak.

Of course, she was the farthest thing
from it, as anyone in her city knew too well.

As Volusia stared at the two men gaping
at her, she shook her head at how stupid they were, looking upon her as a sex
object. Clearly, they did not know of her reputation. Volusia had not risen to
become Empress of the entire Northern Empire through her good looks; she had
risen because of her ruthlessness. She was, indeed, more ruthless than all the
men, more ruthless than all the generals, more ruthless than all the great nobles
that had served in the House of Lords for centuries—more ruthless, even, than
her own mother, whom she had strangled with her own bare hands.

Volusia tracked her ruthlessness back to
the day when her mother had sold her to that brothel. Just twelve years old
when her mother, who had more riches than she could count, had decided that she
was going to sell Volusia off into a life of hell—just for the fun of
it—Volusia had been shocked when she had been escorted into a small, stale room
and given her first customer. But her customer—a fat, greasy man in his
fifties—had been even more shocked when he’d encountered, instead of an
accommodating girl, a remorseless killer. Volusia had surprised even herself
when she’d made her first kill, surprising him by wrapping a cord around his
neck and strangling him with all her might. He had fought relentlessly, but she
had not let go.

What had surprised Volusia most was not
her courage, or her ruthlessness, or her lack of hesitation—but how much she
had enjoyed killing him. She had learned at an early age that she had a talent
for killing, and a great joy for it; she just loved inflicting pain on others,
a far greater pain than they intended to inflict on her.

Volusia murdered her way out of the
brothel, and had kept on murdering, killing her way all the way up into the
house of power of Volusia, finally taking her own mother’s life, and taking the
throne. She had slept with men too, when it suited her—but she always killed
them when she was through with them. She didn’t like to leave a trail of anyone
who had come into contact with her; she considered herself a goddess, and above
having to interact with anyone.

Now, at only seventeen, Volusia, having
consolidated power in her great city, sat on her mother’s throne, having
amassed so much power that the entire city cowered before her. Volusia knew
that she was special. Other rulers of other Empire provinces wielded brutality
for the purposes of power; Volusia, though, thoroughly enjoyed it. She was
willing to go farther, to be more extreme, to do more than anyone else who
might get in her way. She thought it more than ironic that she was named after
her city, as if she were always destined to rule. She thought it was destiny.

 “My Empress,” a royal guard announced
cautiously, “these two captives brought before you have been caught slandering
your name in the streets of Volusia.”

Volusia look them up and down. They were
stupid men, peasants, shackled, dressed in rags, looking at her with their
lowly grins. One of them stared back at her during the pronouncement, while the
other looked nervous and contrite.

“And what have you to say for yourself?”
she asked, her voice dark, deep, nearly like the voice of a man.

“My lady, I’ve said no such thing,” said
the captive who was trembling. “I was misheard.”

“And you?” she asked, turning to the other.

He stuck up his chin and looked at her
defiantly.

“I slandered your name,” he admitted,
“and you deserve slandering. You are a young girl still, and yet have built a
sadistic reputation. You don’t deserve to sit on the throne.”

He looked her up and down as if she were
a mere sex object, and Volusia stood up, sticking out her chest, which was
considerable, standing erect with her perfect figure. Her eyes lit up as a he
continued to stare at her; these men sickened her.
All
men sickened her.

Volusia stepped forward slowly toward
them, looking them over, and finally approached the one who was leering at her.
She got close to him, removed a small metal hook, and in one quick motion, she
thrust it upward, beneath his chin, through his mouth, hooking him like a fish.

He shrieked and dropped to his knees as blood
burst from his throat. Volusia pulled the hook harder and harder, enjoying his
squirming, until finally, he collapsed to the ground, dead.

Volusia turned to the other, who was now
positively shaking, and approached him, enjoying her morning immensely.

The captive dropped to his knees,
quivering.

“Please, my lady,” he pleaded. “Please,
don’t kill me.”

 “Do you know why I killed him?” she
asked.

“No my lady,” he said, weeping.

“Because he told the truth,” she said
derisively. “I granted him a merciful death because he was honest. But you are
less than honest. You shall get a less than merciful death.”

“No, my lady! NO!” he shrieked.

“Stand him up,” Volusia ordered her men.

Her guards rushed forward, grabbed the
man, lifted him up as he quivered, and stood him before her.

“Back him up,” she commanded.

They did as she commanded, backing him to
the edge of the marble terrace. There was no railing, nothing between the edge and
the drop down to the arena below, and the man looked over his shoulder,
terrified.

Down below stormed the Razif, to the
taunting of the crowd, waiting for the contestants to arrive.

“I do not find you worthy to live,”
Volusia pronounced. “But I do find you worthy of being my entertainment.”

Volusia took two steps forward, lifted
her foot, and shoved him in the chest, knocking him backwards off the balcony
with her silver boots.

He shrieked as he tumbled through the
air, falling downwards, bouncing off of the sloped walls, then finally tumbling
and landing down into the dirt arena.

The crowd cheered wildly, and Volusia stepped
forward and looked down, watching as the Razif set its sights on the man. The
man, bloody but still alive, stumbled to his feet and tried to run; but the
beast’s rage was great as it charged, the crowd’s cheering goading him on, and
in moments, it gorged the captive with three horns to the back.

The crowd was ecstatic as the Razif held
him up high above his head, victoriously, and paraded his trophy in a broad lap
around the arena.

The crowd went crazy, and as Volusia stood
there and watched, taking it all in, she thrived on the man’s pain. It brought
her a joy she could not describe.

Down below, horns sounded, gates were
opened, and dozens of shackled slaves were dumped into the arena. The crowd roared
as the Razif tracked each slave down and tore them all to pieces, one at a
time.

A distant horn sounded, from the ports, and
Volusia looked to the horizon, already bored by what was going on below her.
She watched people get torn to pieces every day, and she was craving a more
interesting form of torture. The horn she’d just heard was unique, announcing
the arrival of a dignitary, and Volusia looked to the horizon and saw in the
distance, out at sea, three Empire ships sailing toward her, bearing the
distinct banner of the Romulus’s army.

“It seems the great Romulus has
returned,” one of her advisors said, coming to stand beside her, looking out.

“When he left, his fleet filled the
horizon,” said another advisor. “Yet he now returns with a mere three ships. Why
does he come here, to us? Why not to the South?”

Volusia watched carefully, hands on her
hips, and she studied them, taking it all in. She had a great skill to grasp a
situation far before any of the others, and she did once again, knowing
immediately what was happening here.

“There is only one thing that would
drive Romulus to return here, to us, to this part of the Empire, before going
on. It is shame,” she said. “He comes here because his fleet has been destroyed.
He cannot return to the capital without a fleet—it would be a sign of weakness.
He’s come to us to replenish his ships first, before sailing to the heart of
the Empire.”

Volusia smiled wide.

“He presumes that my part of the Empire
is weaker than his. And that will be his downfall.”

As Volusia watched his ships approach, she
knew that soon he would be in her harbor, and she felt her blood rush in
excitement. It was the moment of her life she had been waiting for: her enemy was
being brought right into her hands. He had no idea. He had underestimated her;
they all had.

Volusia couldn’t stop smiling; the fates
indeed smiled down on her. She always knew she was meant to be the greatest of
them all—and now the fates had proven it true. Soon, she would kill him. Soon,
it would all be hers.