Seven Princes (18 page)

“Just you mind your place in my company,
brother
,” Tadarus said, teeth gritted.

“Or what?” said Fangodrel. “You’ll kill me? You’d be a kinslayer, a cursed criminal.”

“If I wanted to kill you I’d have done it years ago.”

“You haven’t the stomach for it,” said Fangodrel. “You’ll always be Mother’s little boy. Play at war if you like, throw your stones and wrestle your Giants… but that’s all you are. You hate me because I know this better than anyone.”

Tadarus refused to follow the conversation any further.

“Mind your place,” he said again, and spurred his horse back to the front of the line. Once more he rode alongside Andoses.

“How fares my cousin?” asked the Prince of Shar Dni.

Tadarus breathed deeply, calming himself the way a warrior prepares for battle. “Always the same,” he said. “Miserable, offensive, and insufferable.”

“Good thing he’s riding back there then, eh?” said Andoses.

Tadarus looked at his cousin and laughed. Andoses caught the laughter and returned it.

Fangodrel rode grim and silent behind them.

In the narrow belt of sky above the ravine, stormclouds scudded and rumbled.

Tadarus and Andoses were still laughing when the first of the cold drops fell.

The cave was a tunnel leading deep into the bowels of the hill. The darkness lived there, seething and flowing and breathing like some ancient beast. Sharadza walked into the depths of the earth, the dark flowing thick about her like honey. She smelled damp granite and the spoor of little blind creatures. She heard her own footfalls, clattering and booming in the lightless regions, and the crone’s voice called her deeper and deeper into the subterranean void.

“The five senses are lies,” said the crone’s voice. She was
somewhere nearby, hovering in the darkness. “Down here, without light, you will see more clearly.”

Stumbling, groping, crawling through the dark. Echoes of her own movements dancing across the walls, the invisible ceiling.

“The first step in learning sorcery,” said the crone’s voice, “is to look beyond the lies of the world. To see the invisible that dwells behind and beneath the visible. The world you know up there does not exist. Down here you are a newborn, and you must relearn. So you will come to understand the world in a new way. Eat this…”

Sharadza’s head swam, and she felt the crone’s hand against hers. She closed her fingers over some kind of root like a gnarled carrot. It smelled of dirt. “Eat,” said the crone’s voice.

Crunching molars, bitter taste vibrating on her tongue. The aftertaste of the sweet tea mingling with the earthy flavor of the root. Then a lightness, a dizzy flow, the pounding of blood in her ears.

The rough ground at her feet glowed now, a phosphorescence she had not noticed. A hue of nameless color. She raised her head. A vast cavern opened before her, a forest of stalactites and stalagmites stretching into the darkness. Some of them had melded into magnificent pillars, glowing with that same colorless color, glinting with crystalline deposits like skeins of diamond. The roof of the vault was too far overhead to see, as were the walls. Here was another world altogether. Now white mushrooms tall as Giants grew in the murk, with lesser fungi sprouting beneath them in masses of shifting, pulsing colors. How had she not seen all this a moment before? Where was the source of light? There was no light. She was seeing the darkness. No… seeing
through
the darkness.

The crone stood near a tall stalagmite, supporting her bent back with a wooden staff. She glowed like a rainbow, translucent and glimmering in wondrous shades that had no names.

“Who are you?” asked the crone.

“You know who I am,” said Sharadza, the non-lights dazzling her eyes.

“Who are you?”

“Sharadza.”

“Who is Sharadza?” asked the crone.

“The daughter of Vod and Shaira.”

“Who are you?”

The crone was gone. Tiny beings moved among the wilderness of fungi, glowing with life. Now the fungi sprouted above her like the forest of Uduria, and she walked – no scuttled – among the blossoming foliage. She sniffed, smelling color and sound and a dozen mysteries. Her hands and arms were gone. She had four clawed appendages now, and a proboscis nose, snuffling along the ground. The cave creatures greeted her with subsonic noises and bursts of scent. She responded by instinct. She roamed the fungi world for a time without measure, sometimes alone, sometimes with her pale-furred companions, dragging a long tail that switched and slapped the ground. She nibbled at the choicest of fungi, savoring its taste, going on to sample more. She ate, defecated, and moved on. She screeched, and fought, and fed again, and sang with her sightless brethren in the swirling fungus groves.

“Who are you?” came the crone’s voice.

It took her a moment to answer. “Sharadza,” she chirped as best she could.

Now she came to a dark underground lake lying serene beneath a vast dome of granite. Ripples moved across its surface now and then, and she saw the glow of life drifting in its depths. The crone said something, and Sharadza
slithered
forward, letting the frigid waters envelope her. She swam the black currents, moving her lithe body, flexing flipper-like appendages, sensing
the movements of subaqueous creatures by their vibrations. She swallowed blind cave fish, swirled her serpentine self over slime-encrusted boulders, and flowed into a subterranean river that fed the lake. She avoided the lunging maw of something much larger than herself. She was not ready to be devoured. She followed the swift current like an eel. After an eternity, she sensed sunlight above, and rose to find the river flowing through the forested wilderness. The brilliance of the sun made her spasm and twist in the rushing waters.

“Who are you?” came the crone’s voice.

She slithered up onto the riverbank and opened her fanged mouth. With difficulty she said, “Sharadza.”

Now she ran through the forest as a great black wolf. She hurdled the swollen roots of the Uyga, reveling in the speed of her limbs, the keenness of her scent. She smelled game, the magnetic call of prey, and chased a buck for leagues through the leafy landscape. The sun was a ball of fire rolling across the sky, and the forest opened its secrets to her. They poured in through her black nostrils, and her thick fur stood on end. She drank from forest pools and chased another deer, bringing it down with fang and claw. She lapped up the hot blood, tore at the fresh meat, devoured the carcass until her belly was full. Her four-legged brothers and sisters came to share her kill, and she yowled her pleasure at the rising moon.

“Who are you?”

She howled into the twilight sky, “Sharadza…”

Now she became that howl, and the moon grew larger, a golden orb bearing down upon her. She flapped her wings and turned from its radiance. The northern forest spread like a purple carpet below. Mountains ruled the southern and northern horizons; to east and west gleamed the oceans whose names she could not remember. She whirled and spun in the night winds, exulting in
the perfection of flight. She soared above the forest among hundreds of other wind-riders above and below her, all pursuing nocturnal hunts. She flew toward the dawn as the sun rose, an infinite well of crimson, gold, and white flame. She turned back and flew westward until it stood high in the blue sky.

“Who are you?” came the crone’s voice.

She hardly heard the question. She soared downward now, toward that sea of fall colors, entering the forest through its whispering roof, gliding along its cool corridors until she found the hill. She flew toward the cave mouth where the crone stood, one wrinkled hand held up to the sky. She landed on the crone’s forearm, sinking her talons into a leather sleeve.

“Who are you?”

Sharadza stood now before the crone, looking down at her two hands, her two legs and her cumbersome feet. She flexed her arms, her clumsy arms that would not lift her into the skies. She smelled the forest smells, a symphony of aromas rising from the wild, as if she had never before been here. It smelled of earth, of freedom, and of power.

“
Who are you?
” demanded the crone.

“I… I… don’t know,” said Sharadza. Tears brimmed in her green eyes.

“
What
are you?” asked the crone.

Sharadza blinked, weeping, smiling. “I don’t know.”

The crone huffed. “Now we can begin,” she said.

Sharadza followed her down the hillside into the depths of the autumn forest.

From the summit of the pass rose the colossal bulk of Steephold, a citadel of black rock nearly as large as Vod’s palace. The sinking sun cast orange light across its dark walls as the Princes halted their company. At Tadarus’ command, a sergeant blew three notes
on a horn of gold and bronze, and a deeper horn sounded its answer inside the fortress walls.

The Giants were slow opening the gate, so Fangodrel stared impatiently at its embossed surface. A scene of Uduru in battle against fire-belching Serpents ornamented the black iron. The artistry was excellent, far too complex and well constructed to have been done by a Giant’s hands. Fangodrel smirked at its absurdity: the great deeds of the Uduru preserved by skill of a mere human.

The saddle chafed his thighs, and his back ached from days of riding. How long would it take those lumbering morons to open the gates? Five days they had ridden from Udurum, the last three in the frigid shadow of the peaks. Sheer idiocy to send an escort of three hundred men on this mission. A company of four or five could travel at double the speed. Still, his mother had her way, as always.

Steephold would offer at least one night of warm beds and passable food. More importantly, Fangodrel would have a private chamber here, a place to lock himself away and smoke the bloodflower. In his frail tent the past few nights, he dared not indulge in the Red Dream for fear of being discovered by his brother or cousin. He drank plenty of wine in the camps, but tonight he would taste the smoke.

Ianthe would come to him again.

When she first appeared to him in the Red Dream, he thought it only the drug’s illusion. But the following night he spoke with her again, and a third time on the morning before the journey began. Somewhere in the distant south, in her jungle palace filled with slaves and riches, she too dreamed the Red Dream. But she knew it better than he… she knew how to reach out to him across a continent.

She told him splendid things that he only half dared believe.
He wanted them to be true so very much. She was his grandmother… a sorceress… an Empress. Vod was not his father, although Shaira did give him birth. His true father was Gammir, Prince of Khyrei, who died at Vod’s hand. She showed him this in a vision summoned from the past and played out in the swirling depths of the Red Dream. Vod in his Giant form, storming the Khyrein palace, calling down thunder and lightning with his cries of rage and hate. The onyx palace crumbling into shards, handsome Gammir lost beneath a heaving wall of rock, his bones crushed to powder along with his father the Emperor. Only Ianthe escaped the destruction, a white panther crawling along the blood-slick rubble.

Now Fangodrel understood why he inherited none of Vod’s strength, why his skin was so pale. Like Gammir’s… like Ianthe’s. He had none of Vod’s blood in him, no Uduru blood at all. Shaira had been a Princess of Shar Dni when she wed Gammir. Vod stole her away and murdered Gammir that same year. He knew now why his mother never truly loved him. Why she favored his brothers. He only reminded her of Gammir, whom she hated. Shaira had plotted her escape with Vod even before the marriage. She was a traitor and a whore. His adoptive father was a liar, may his bones rot beneath the Cryptic Sea.

Ianthe told him the truth in the ecstatic depths of the bloodflower trance. In that heaven of red shadows, he embraced her and she kissed his forehead.

“You must find your way back to me,” she told him. “To your inheritance. You will be Emperor of Khyrei. All of my kingdom, my wealth, my great knowledge is yours.”

“I will steal away this very night,” Fangodrel swore. “I’ll travel in disguise and take passage from Shar Dni.”

“No,” said Ianthe. “The danger is too great. The Golden Sea is full of death and pirates. War is brewing.”

“But Grandmother…” he protested, crying tears of flame. “I want my true family… I want—”

“You want
power
,” said Ianthe, soothing him with her gentle touch. How old was she? She seemed as young as he, her skin so white and unblemished, her body firm and perfectly sculpted. It seemed impossible that she could be two generations removed from his own, yet he believed her. He felt it in his very soul. Saw it in the visions poured like dark wine from her mind into his.

“Power you shall have, darling boy,” she told him. “It is yours by right of your bloodline. That power will grow within you and bring you to me. The kyreas, which you call the bloodflower, will be your guide. Here in the Red Dream I will teach you the power and glory of blood, red and hot on your tongue. You will call upon the Dwellers in Shadow… The blood will liberate you; the blood will bring you to me.”

“What blood?” he asked, ashamed of his own ignorance.

Ianthe smiled, and again she was the white panther, her claws and fangs stained with fresh crimson.

“The blood that you
spill
,” she said. “The blood of your enemies.”