Seven Princes (13 page)

Gliding through the murky depths, he passed shoals of rainbow-scaled fish and skimmed a forest of dark waterweed, an aqueous wonderland that mimicked the wood outside the lake. What secrets lay buried in the sediment among those drowned roots? That was the world, he supposed. Secrets within secrets within secrets.

He emerged on the far side of the lake, stepping out to sun himself on the green bank. Looking back, he saw Fangodrim
dozing now under the Uyga’s rustling canopy. The rain shower had already faded to a drizzle, and the sun hurled a rainbow across the eastern sky. Vireon watched it in quiet wonder, airy strings of jewels like a new crown for his love, arcing gracefully over the gigantic trees. The air, stunned by the wet glow of the sun, took on a golden quality, and nature shimmered like a glassy vision.

Suddenly a flash of purest white caught Vireon’s eye. He turned his head and found himself staring at a curious creature. Some distance away from the lake a pale-furred thing crouched atop a green boulder, staring at him with narrow black eyes. It blinked once, and he realized it was a fox. Twice as large as a normal fox, larger than a wolf, with a regal tail swishing low behind its lean body. He stared, and the white fox did not move.

“Vireon?” Fangodrim’s voice rolled across the water. A second time he called out, but Vireon did not answer. He was staring at the fox, unable to turn away, knowing it would disappear like a dissolving dream if he did so.

A third time and Fangodrim’s voice broke his reverie. He turned and shouted across the lake. “Uncle! I see a white fox!”

Fangodrim rose to his feet and his voice boomed. “It is only a dream,” he yelled. “Many of us have seen it. We call it the Wyrial, the ghost dancer. You must ignore it! Swim back to this side.”

Vireon looked back and the fox was gone. The flip of a white tail dove into the shadows of the trees. He ran after it.

Fangodrim shouted after him. “Vireon, no! Do not chase the Wyrial! It’s only a vision! Come back!”

The Giant’s voice echoed across the valley, but Vireon was gone.

“Vireon!” he shouted, standing between the carcasses of the two cleaned Welka bucks. Their dead eyes stared blankly at nothing. “Vireon, come back!”

It was too late. The chase had begun.

Vireon ran, and the forest became a blur of green, brown, and gold. He leaped over narrow ravines, fallen branches big as logs, and piles of mossy boulders. The white fox glided between the trees like a low-flying bird, a pale shadow with the speed of a winter wind. Hours he ran after it without tiring, until the sun sank low in the sky and darkness flooded the forest. Now the fox gleamed silver in the moonlight, sometimes stopping to look back at him with its dark, almond-shaped eyes, pink tongue lolling. Then it was running again, a gleam of white threading the hem of night’s dense cloak.

The sinking of the sun on his left told Vireon the fox was heading north, probably well beyond the realm of the Giants’ hunting ground. How far north did the great forest extend? He had no idea. It might stretch all the way into the frozen wastes at the top of the world. He put such matters aside, reveling in the joy of the run, the thrill of the chase. His spear had been left behind with his uncle, but he had his knife of Uduru steel. All he would need to skin the fox’s pearly coat when he caught it. Such a fine pelt it would be, a raiment fit for any Prince.

The last of the day’s lingering warmth faded from the forest, and his breaths came in gusts of white fog. He lost sight of the running fox every now and then, but he already had caught its smell. It was unlike any animal odor. A cloying mix of jasmine, rose petals, and raw green earth. More like a woman’s smell than a beast’s. It incensed him in some primal way, and he pushed himself faster, running on across moonlit valleys, splashing through creeks foamy with whitewater, launching himself up the sides of fallen Uyga trunks and leaping wolf-like to the earth on the other side. The ground grew rougher and a range of wooded hills rose about him. Still the white fox led him on by sight and smell and sheer audacity. His hunter’s pride hung in the balance. No beast could escape a Prince of Udurum.

He ran on through the depths of night, along pitch-dark hollows where moonlight could not reach, across bony hilltops bright with legions of spreading moonflowers. He barely noticed when the rain returned, this time falling hard and cold against his skin. He ran through the rising wind and the whirling storm; the damp only made the fox’s scent stronger. Just before dawn the rain turned to sleet, and the ground became slick with gray slush. He fell once, sliding down a hill on his backside and slamming into a tree bole, but he was up and running again even before catching his breath. The icy rain washed him clean as he ran.

In the cold glare of sunrise, he saw the fox mount a hill no more than a spear’s cast away. He stopped dead in his tracks, blinking at it. Atop the rise now stood a gorgeous young woman, barefoot on the frosty ground. Long hair fell bright as sunlight about her naked body, and she glowered at him down the hillside. Vireon held his breath. Her narrow eyes were dark as night, just like the fox. Her flesh was pale, the alabaster of a nocturnal being, the inhuman beauty of an airy spirit. The falling sleet turned to snow in that instant, and black clouds swallowed the early sun. The white fox raced down the hill’s far side.

Vireon followed, snowflakes steaming against his hot skin. He ran through the frosty morning, ignorant of the cold. Shirtless he had come into the forest, and his buckskin leggings and boots were soaked with the night’s rain. His slick black mane swirled behind his head as he crowned the hill and sprinted down its back. The white fox already mounted another hill up ahead. A thin layer of snow had covered the autumn colors of the forest floor. The Uyga still grew here, but there were many other, smaller varieties of tree. The undergrowth was thicker here, and often he jumped a cluster of white-leaf fern or a knot of tall skyweed. He ran north, into the cold lands where summer only ever visited briefly before fleeing southward.

The second day of running brought him deep into the snowbound clime of northern Uduria. The ground was lost beneath ankle-deep snow, icicles hung from the branches of trees, and he leaped across frozen streams. Ice crystals hung in his hair and on the fringes of his boot-tops. The cold was a constant companion. He felt no pain, only a distant sense of discomfort. What would have frozen a human man to death in hours was harmless as a toothache to the son of Vod and Shaira. He would not let small things like ice and snow keep him from the white fox.

It was no animal, he knew that now. He no longer wanted to skin it. He did not know what he would do with it, but he would capture it. Time later to decide its fate.

The white forest turned to scarlet as the sun sank into the western hills. Once again he saw the pale girl, closer this time. She squatted on a low crag of icy granite, her blonde tresses mingling with the icicles along its summit. Again he stopped, a steaming icon among the wintery landscape. Her feet were bare upon the ice, and her black eyes met his own. Her lips were soft pink, the color of the fox’s tongue. She watched him watching her, and she smiled. He walked closer, snow crackling beneath his boots. She raised a lithe, colorless arm and pointed southward, the way he had come.

Her eyes said,
Go back
.

Vireon shook his head, shedding bits of frost from his hair. His heavy breaths filled the space between them like a warm mist.

Without warning he bounded toward the crag, but she was gone. He climbed its face and saw the white fox leaping through the snow.

North… always north. Who is she?

He looked southward for an instant. Hunger gnawed inside his belly. The cold wrapped his skin like a rough fabric. She was the most stunning girl he had ever seen. If he turned back now, as she seemed to want him to, he may never see her again.

He scanned the white hills ahead; they stretched like a pallid blanket across the northern world. Who knew what lay among that white waste? What secrets did the frozen north keep to itself?

He had seen one of them.

Jumping from the crag into a snowdrift, he ran toward the fox-woman’s delicious scent. Now that snow and ice muted the forest, her fragrance was easier to follow than ever. He sped through the winterland like a wild buck fleeing invisible predators. But
he
was the predator. He would catch this gorgeous treasure and hold her in his arms and… at least he would know her name. He would caress her marble flesh, swim the intimate depth of her eyes… taste those ripe lips.

All that day and into a frozen night he ran. Snow fell again, and he ignored it. He delved deep into the winterlands, far from any recognizable landmarks save the frosted Uyga trees, which grew sporadically from the snowy ground. A range of white-capped mountains stood on the horizon, rising over walls of eternal fog. He had no name for those peaks, nor had any Uduru every spoken of them. The snow was knee-deep here, and far deeper in places. Several times he fell into fissures and had to claw his way out with knife and bare fingers. When he emerged from these white caverns the fox stood nearby as if waiting… but it fled again at first sight of him.

On the third day a pack of wolves ran beside him, snarling with hunger. He ran faster, hoping to outdistance them, but they matched his speed. The reek of their carnivore breath and matted pelts obscured the fox’s scent, and this irritated him. He turned on the pack’s frothing leader, grabbing it around the neck. Locked together they rolled down a frozen slope, the other wolves loping behind, eager for a kill.

Vireon’s knife slit the big wolf’s throat as they tumbled, and at the bottom of the slope he left it bleeding into the whiteness. The
wolves had their feast. The sound of their gnashing and chewing receded as he raced northward. The scent of the fox-woman was faint, but he caught it on the frigid wind and ran faster, the knife clutched in his fist and smoking with wolf’s blood. It finally went cold and red crystals froze along the blade.

On the fourth day the icy mountains loomed closer, and Vireon’s weariness caught up with him. He stopped in a deep ravine, standing up to his waist in snow, and sniffed the air for the fox-woman’s scent. She was near, but he could not pinpoint her direction anymore. His vision blurred. He was tired, at last, after days of running. His limbs ached with cold, or fatigue, he could not tell. He was beginning to know his limits, something entirely new to him. But still he would not give up.

The world turned to shades of gray about him as he followed his nose and trudged up the ravine. On either side the walls rose thousands of feet, and Uyga trees topped them like snow-crowned sentinels. He stared up at the trees, seeing for a moment the image of his Uduru cousins garbed in white, looking down as if to cheer him on. Or warning him to go back.
Go. Return to the land of sun and warmth
, they whispered.

No
, he breathed. His face had begun to sprout a shallow beard, frosted to the color of snow.

Then he smelled the sour stench of unwashed Uduru, and thought somehow his cousins had actually followed him. The walls of the ravine shook about him, shards of ice and shale sliding into the gorge. Six great figures rose before him, blue-skinned giants draped in reeking pelts of bear and mountain tiger. He stopped, blinking exhausted eyes. His cousins could not be here… This was a trick of the mind. Was the fox-woman a sorceress, and this some final trick to elude pursuit?

Vireon squinted, looking up into the face of the nearest blue-skin. A necklace of bones, fangs, and claws hung about the great
neck. The face above it was heavy-browed, flat-nosed, with a jutting chin and a beard entirely frozen into jagged icicles. The wild mane of hair was snow-pale. The eyes, however, were crimson. Pupils as red as fresh-flowing blood, a marked contrast to the indigo skin. A ring of bronze hung from the broad nostrils, two more from the big flat earlobes. Vireon’s head spun.

Are they ghosts?
he wondered.
Spirits of frozen Uduru who wandered too far north in some ancient age?

They barked at him, a few guttural syllables in tones of primordial contempt.

Surrounded by the stink of their moldy furs and sweat-caked bodies, he had lost the scent of the fox-woman entirely. He moaned.

The blue-skin before him raised a tree above its shaggy head. Not a tree, a mace of black iron. He realized this too late as the blue-skin brought the weapon crashing against his bare skull.

Thunder and sparks.

The snow rose up to greet him like a feather bed, and at last Vireon slept.

A ribbon of crimson flowed from his scalp, melting a tiny rivulet into the snow.

T
he Royal Gardens of Uurz encircled the soaring walls of the palace proper like a swathe of preserved wilderness. In the works of sages and poets they stood alongside such wonders as the Forest of Jewels in Mumbaza, the Great Earth Wall that divided the continent into Low and High Realms, and the Giant-City of New Udurum. Every known species of plant, tree, and fruit grew in Emperor Dairon’s circular courtyard, a treasury of botanical imports from across the world. Rare birds from Khyrei, Yaskatha and the Southern Isles filled the green canopies with melodious warbling; blue-furred monkeys built tiny huts in the tops of the trees; feline predators, great cats in shades of gold, alabaster, and amber, walked between the walls of sunken enclosures. A popular saying held that there were more blossoms in the Emperor’s Garden than living souls in the six kingdoms.