Seven Princes (32 page)

The shadow-stallion lost its wings, which dissolved like morning mist, and set its hooves upon solid ground. It had brought him to a high ridge overlooking the valley. He had covered a great distance in a single night and was not tired. The swirling shadows
that followed him crept away into the hollows and crevices of the land, hiding from the sun’s crimson eye. The Golden Sea earned its name, reflecting the solar glow as it faded from red to orange to gold. The shadows were fled and gone from him now; only the black steed remained, stamping nervously, blood-colored eyes glaring defiantly at the sunrise.

The first rays of sunlight fell into the valley, and the river became a silver ribbon. The walls of Shar Dni were painted sky-blue, frescoed with clouds in shades of pearl and slate. A forest of ships’ masts and sails grew along the wharves that straddled the mouth of the river delta. A white barge moved along the river, heading upstream for village trade. Flocks of white seabirds filled the air. Most of the galleons in the crescent harbor flew the white bull standard of the city, but a few triremes from the Jade Isles flew exotic sigils of green, scarlet, or white. A trading ship of Mumbaza had come all the way from the western side of the continent flying its Feathered Serpent banner, but there were no Khyrein vessels here. Khyreins were the enemies of Shar Dni on the open sea, so this was no surprise.

An ancient road wound from the Stormlands into the valley, skirting the outlying villages and farms. It ran directly to the river and the great stone arch of the Bridge of Clouds, which led to the city’s eastern gate. This green basin of cypress, palm, orchard, and delta marsh was a place of heat and calm winds. The Stormlands lay behind Gammir now, though his coming was a kind of storm in itself, rolling quietly toward the Valley of the Bull.

The black horse snorted and Gammir grabbed its mane. Before he turned it toward the winding roadway, he noticed a glimmering in the tall grass to his right. His night servants were all hidden now, but
something
hovered there in the watery sunlight. His eyes narrowed and the figure of a tall man wavered into sight.

Brother?
called a voice that was not a voice. Perhaps he only heard it in his head. Or perhaps it floated to him on the morning wind blowing off the ocean.

Gammir stared at the apparition. “I have no brother,” he said.

Whose fine cloak do you wear?
asked the specter. Its face was a wisp of morning mist, its body a reflection of something that was not truly there. As if sunlight struck a mirror and projected its glow onto a wall. But there was no wall. Only the vision and its non-voice.

“This purple rag?” said Gammir. “It belonged to a fool who thought himself a Prince. It is mine now.”

It was the cloak of your brother
, said the apparition.

“No,” said Gammir, and the black horse trampled grass under its hooves.

The specter’s face came into focus. Gammir gasped at the depth of its blue eyes, the blackness of its hair, the narrow cut of the beard, the sculpted cheekbones of bronze hue.

“Tadarus?” The name fell from his mouth like a stone.

You know me, Brother
, said the ghost.
You wear my cloak. You carry my memory in your heart. You remember our play and our laughter… when we were boys
.

Now a six-year-old Tadarus stood before him, face smeared with dirt, royal clothes untidy, clotted with grass and mud. Smiling up at him with round cheeks.

“You were never my brother,” Gammir told it. “Leave me. The sun is risen. You are not wanted here!”

Tadarus stood full-grown again, sunlit stalks of grass gleaming through his chest.
You called me here. Your memories have powers that you do not even suspect
.

Gammir called upon the power of the blood filling his stomach. “Go,” he said, waving an arm. “Never trouble me again.”

The ghost of Tadarus frowned at him.

Why did you murder me?

I tried to be your friend
.

I loved you, Brother
.

“You are not my brother!” screamed Gammir, but the ghost was gone. Had it ever truly been there at all? He blinked into the sun, then turned the black horse onto the road.

He passed by a peasant pulling a cartload of green vegetables up the hill. The man wore a cheap turban, loose pantaloons, and a necklace hung with copper medallions. Gammir ignored his staring eyes. Fearing the weird stallion, the man pulled his cart to the side of the road and let Gammir ride past. Farms came next, sloping green pastures where oxen and sheep grazed and trees grew heavy with pears, pomegranates, and lemons. Villagers bustling about their morning duties steered clear of this dark stranger and his ember-eyed steed. They must have taken him for some warrior of Uurz or Udurum come to join the navy and fight pirates. Gammir almost laughed at the dull lives playing out before him. These people were little better than the animals they kept in pens and corrals. He sensed the blood flowing beneath their thin brown skins. But the hunger was not upon him yet. He had been frugal with his power this time.

Well before midday he reached the great bridge. Traffic here was more dense: basket-toting laborers, wagons laden with produce, carts pulled by those who could not afford wagons, and the occasional camel-mounted nobleman. A guard at the bridge peered at Gammir, his eyes rimmed in black kohl beneath a turban-wrapped helmet. The spear of his office stood higher than the point of his helm, and a scimitar hung from his wide belt. He motioned Gammir to stop.

“What brings you to the city?” asked the guard, his voice thick with the Sharrian accent.

Gammir’s eyes ached in the full light of day, so his face lay in the shadows of the purple hood. “Duty,” he told the Sharrian.

“You are a soldier?” asked the guard.

Gammir laughed. “I am far more than that.”

The guard frowned. “What is your business? Where do you come from?” He wanted clear answers, not riddles and bravado.

Gammir considered the question. Killing this fool would complicate his entry into the city. “Udurum,” he said. “I come from the palace of Vod. My business lies with your King Ammon.”

The guard blinked and studied him. Gammir’s stately black mail and Udurum cloak were impressive enough to support his claim, so the man waved him onward. The black horse’s hooves clacked on the stone, and a crowd of peasants parted to allow the horse a clear route. Gammir rode toward the open gates at the far end of the span. More guards stationed there would require more lies. Easy enough to lie. Lying was its own kind of sorcery.

The same story earned him passage into Shar Dni’s main thoroughfare. The street was cobbled in black basalt, lined with hanging gardens, and ran directly toward the first of the temple pyramids. A flock of priests in pale robes, faces painted indigo, walked among the crowd. Dusky-skinned girls went barefoot, their faces hidden behind veils, almond eyes gleaming green like his mother. Less reputable women bared their faces and the tops of their breasts, flaunting their worldly goods in windows and along balconies. The city seemed infested with brothels. The smells of roasting meat, camel dung, rotten fruits, and a thousand spices filled the air. Sometimes a gust of salty sea wind blew all these smells to nothing, but they crept back into his nostrils as soon as the air grew still.

When Gammir was last in this city, he had been Fangodrel, and thirteen years old. His mother had brought him in a caravan to meet all her royal relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins. His
grandfather, King Tadarus the First, had just died, and he remembered watching the coronation of Ammon, Shaira’s eldest brother. Tadarus and Vireon beamed with pride that day as their uncle took the oath of rulership and accepted his crown from the High Priest of the Sky God. Even then, Fangodrel had known the emptiness of the ritual and the spectacle. The people had cheered for their new monarch, and since then King Ammon was a much-beloved ruler. Yet his reign was plagued by growing tensions with Khyrei, which had now broken into marine warfare.

Prince Andoses was Ammon’s only son and heir to the throne. He was sent to gather support for a war against Khyrei. Gammir smiled as he circled the blue temple-pyramid. His shadow-children had slain Andoses at Steephold… torn him to bloody shreds. Word of his son’s death had not even reached the Sharrian King yet. Gammir would bring it. As he stood over the twitching body of Ammon, his lips wet with royal blood, he would tell the King that his son was dead by the same hand that now strangled him. He anticipated the exquisite moment.

Somehow he had always known his mother’s people were not his own. Shaira was his birth-mother, that much was true. But everything he was came from his father, the betrayed and murdered Prince of Khyrei. Soon this city would bow before the new Gammir. It had no inkling that a black viper crawled through its streets carrying poison toward its heart. When Ammon was dead, and all his royal family, Khyrei would sweep across the sea to take this valley and its riches. These smug, milling crowds would all be slaves and chattels.

As he rode into the Great Market between the four blue temples, he sensed a sea of blood washing about him, foaming and dark against his boots as he rode. All these dull-eyed sheep walking through a world whose truth they could hardly suspect. The first pang of thirst came upon him then, riding among the cloth
merchants, jugglers, livestock sellers, and fruit vendors. He ignored it. The sounds of the living city rang in his ears like a storm, hawking voices, clanging metal, lilting music, shouting children, groaning camels, laughter, the squawking of caged parrots. This city was a rich feeding ground. It would be his.

Beyond the plaza rose the white spires of the Royal Palace. The black steed carried him across the bazaar, and he licked his lips.

A face in that milling crowd caught his attention. Blue eyes staring directly at him, as no Sharrian had dared to do. Dead Tadarus stood there, unmoving and unseen among the busy throng. No, it could not be Tadarus… only some passing resemblance. But then what of the ghost on the ridge top?

Perhaps it was the purple cloak that invited the dead man’s shade to haunt him. He considered dropping it from his shoulders and leaving it in the dust of the plaza. But he needed it as part of his disguise to gain entry to the palace. What’s more, he liked the cloak. It was the last piece of Udurum he could claim – until his Khyrein armies took the city. First Shar Dni, then Udurum. The Giants were dying; they could not defend it forever. War was coming and it flew on wings of shadow.

Tadarus stared at him from a sea of faces.

Gammir turned away.
I’ll give him his damned cloak once I’ve entered the palace. Damn him. A nuisance in death as he was in life
.

He looked back, but Tadarus was gone.

The outer wall of the palace loomed before him.

“I am the eldest Prince of Udurum,” he told the trio of guards at the gate. “I come to speak with my uncle, King Ammon.”

The guards bowed and opened the gates wide for his passage. A splendid courtyard lay beyond, a forest-orchard of palms, cypress, pear trees, marble fountains, and sand gardens. The white towers and cupolas of the palace proper rose above the green fronds of the trees.

“I’ll take your mount to the stables, Lord,” offered a guard.

“No need,” said Gammir. He slid from the black horse, and it faded to nothing like smoke dispersing in sunlight.

The guards gasped and stepped away. Their fear was perfume to him. The blood in their veins rushed with fear and awe. They knew the mark of sorcery as a hare in the forest knows the tread of a predator. One of the men made the sign of the Sky God on his breast, and Gammir smiled. The man grew even more frightened at the sight of his feral grin.

“I’ll be your escort, Lord,” said the ranking guard.

“Take me directly to the King,” said Gammir. “I’ve come a long way and I am thirsty.”

The guard swallowed his fear and led Gammir through the courtyard to the golden doors of Ammon’s palace.

Beneath the branches of the cedars, among the hedges and roots and untrod patches of the royal gardens, a swarm of hungry shadows awaited the coming of night.

T
he owl flew beyond the forests of Uduria, across the snow-capped peaks of the Grim Mountains. When walls of dark cloud rolled into its path, spitting lightning and fierce winds, it rose higher into the sky and soared above the churning storm. It winged westward across the sleeping world, seen only by the blinking stars and mute moon. When the sun rose at its back, it sailed downward through the clouds and found a soft place on the grassy plain of the Stormlands. There it became a young girl again and slept in the lee of a mossy boulder, obscured by a sea of waving green stalks.

Sharadza awoke at midday and drank rainwater from a natural depression in the crown of the boulder. She found a wild patch of cloudberries and picked them for breakfast. Before the sun climbed high enough to battle the army of clouds, she took the black owl’s form again and soared westward. After a while the clouds below her beating wings grew thinner, and a cool salty air blew into her shining owl eyes. She left the Stormlands behind and the vast blue ocean lay beneath her, a shimmering blue expanse spangled with shards of sunlight. She flew south and west now, and the coastline dwindled behind her.