The Priest of Blood (35 page)

He opened his eyes.

2

The priest reached up, rubbing his eyes, which were milky white.

He seemed to be unable at first to see anything around him. He rubbed his eyes once again, then one more time. He reached up with his right hand for something, as if he could see a distant light. It was his staff—he sought it, but it was not there.

I did not yet want to give up this prize. I reached out with my free hand and grasped him by the wrist. His hand flailed, then relaxed. I clasped my hand in his to show friendship and kinship. Quickly, I felt the piercing of thorns—and let go of his hand quickly. Tiny barbs had grown from his palms, and, just as quickly, receded into the leathery skin of his hand.

I reached to hold him again by the wrist. As I did so, the end of his hand became the head of a hooded serpent, which jabbed downward at the back of my hand. Although I felt some pain, I knew the poison would have no effect upon me, so I held him fast.

As if melting against itself, the cobra transformed back into a man’s hand with long, spindly fingers.

He opened his mouth and rasped words in a strange language. His breath was as the worst death had to offer, and all of us coughed from it. Then it sweetened slightly—as I imagined his vital organs began functioning again. He whispered, “Where is the serpent’s progeny?”

Then I realized he had not spoken these words from his mouth but from his mind to my mind. I glanced at the others—had they heard him? But from the looks upon Kiya’s and Ewen’s face, I gathered that they had not.

I spoke aloud to him. “What is the serpent’s progeny?”
 

Nahhashim
, he whispered.

“The staff?”

No answer.

“I have it.”

“Who are you?”

“I am no one.”

“No one is here,” he said. “Do you not exist?”

“I am neither living nor dead.”

“You are a child of Medhya. A fallen one of the great mother.”

I did not reply.

“I am Merod Al-Kamr,” he said.

“The Priest of Blood,” I said.

“And you are my destroyer,” he replied.

3

Within an hour, we had cleaned him using our garments to dry the rest of his body as we might clean a newborn.

He rose naked before us, and looked every inch the demon. He stood a full foot taller than I, and his skull seemed slightly elongated in the back as if there were some headdress beneath the skin. His shoulders, though slender, were broad.

As his skin grew and healed over itself, we saw muscles grow upon him like brambles beneath the flesh. The thinness of his body had become sinew and strength. His thighs burst heavily muscled while his feet stretched slightly, with talon-like claws at the ends of his toes. The ear that had been torn from him grew back into place, and, as I watched, vestigial wings crackled and sprouted along his back.

The drawings and tattoos along his body seemed to be in constant motion, as if I could look at any of them carefully and I’d see the people within the drawings move.

The milky white of his eyes was unchanged. As he rose before us, he rubbed at his eyes again, and yet he still was blind.

Give me Medhya’s flesh
, he said to me in my mind.

“I do not know this flesh.”

“I smell it on you,” he snarled. “Give it to me.”

“I have no flesh other than my own.”

I thought I heard the rasp of a laugh from him. Then, “It is a flower. It grows among the bones of those who have been sacrificed.”

Remembering the carnivorous purple blossom, I told him I had gathered it up.

“Yes,” he said. “I must have it.” He reached out to me, his finger grazing my chin. I fumbled through my pouch, finding one of the crushed flowers and its bit of vine. I passed it to him without hesitation.

He took it, pressing the petals against each of his eyes until a dram of clear liquid pollen dripped from it. Still clutching the blossom, he lowered his hands from his face.

The milk of his eyes gave way to yellow, then began to turn dark, but with the red of blood pulsing behind them, shining beneath the black.

He could see again. As soon as his eyes shone with their red-black darkness, he grinned. It was a wicked, broad smile that showed enormous sharp, curved teeth.

He glanced at each of us, regarding us as a wolf might watch deer in the wood. Before any of us could react to his swift movements, he leapt upon Kiya, pressing his snapping jaws down upon her shoulder, ripping. She dug into him, biting back as best she could but barely grazing his flesh. She kicked against him, a blur of movement as he, his body still and tensed, drank from her.

Dark blood flew from his mouth as he dropped her, before Ewen and I could even reach her to save her from him.

She lay on the floor, blood flowing from her throat and shoulder. His mouth, dark with her essence, still grinning, he kept Ewen and me at bay with enormous strength. “I drink from any I choose.”

“You will destroy all of us.”

He leaned his head back and laughed. As he did so, we heard a strange humming—and then gusts of flying insects came from between his lips, moving upward in a funnel of air, far above us in the chamber. Seconds later, they were gone.

“I am he who first heard the words of Medhya and drank her blood to enter into her stream. I may drink from all. I am your source.”

“Are you mad? We’ve rescued you, and now you want to destroy your own kind?” I shouted.

“Vampyre blood carries with it great power,” he said. “You may not drink of it, but I have kept the essence of Medhya prisoner within my body; I hold her hostage. She cannot destroy me as she might you if you drink from one another. You backward jackals. You are not worthy to be vampyre.”

I stood again, holding the staff up.
 

“I am the owner of the Staff of the Nahhashim!” I shouted.

His eyes gleamed in darkness as he watched me. His neck moved slightly side to side, as if he were a serpent in its hypnotic movements. “You do not even understand its power, weakling.”

“But I’ll use it as I wish.”

His grin returned. Blood sluiced from between his teeth. “Is this what our tribe has come to? Such as you?”

“I am the One,” I said, unsure of the truth to this. “The Maz-Sherah.”

“There have been many Maz-Sherah who have come to follow the vision. There is no One.”

“I am the only one who has freed you from your prison.”

“If you were the Maz-Sherah, you would not need to speak. You would take what is yours and do what you are meant to.”

“I’m meant to learn from you,” I said.

“You are barely more than a boy. You are an apprentice to war, not even a great warrior. You have a heart that beats too close to the mortal rhythm. When the Maz-Sherah comes, he shall be more powerful than you.”

“And yet, who has been imprisoned here so long? Whose kingdom was overthrown? Who created this machinery of bone and human harvest and quicksilver, to keep you in your cage?” I asked. As I spoke, Ewen reached over, lifting the threaded needle that carried the sphere and glass tube of quicksilver. He held it up at the end of a dagger toward the priest, though it caused him some pain to do so.

“You might be as afraid of the architect of this prison as I,” he said. He lifted his left hand as if to make a sign. The sphere flew from Ewen’s hand and smashed against a far wall. Ewen dropped his dagger as if it had burned his hand. “That alchemist has stolen the essence of immortality from me. And cheap sorcery like quicksilver does not daunt him.”

“He has outwitted you, that is for certain,” I said. Then, to Kiya, “Are you healed?”

She touched the edge of her shoulder where the flesh had been torn out. “The flow has stopped. It is healing, but slowly.”

“Is the alchemist here?” the priest asked.

I nodded, guessing that the alchemist was the same mortal whose presence permeated this kingdom without ever having to make himself known.

“He has great power,” Merod said. He lost his grin at this and spread his hands out, Christ-like, as if feeling for something in the air. “He sleeps now. He is not afraid of you. Or me. He may be watching even now.”

“Or he has abandoned this place,” said I. “He has allowed us to enter and wander, though he might have extinguished us during the day’s rest.”

“Perhaps then you are the One. For it might be to his purpose to let you find me. To let you raise me that he may strike us both down one night.” He stepped closer to me, bringing his hands up as if he were warming them by a fire. “You are a mad vampyre. You do not know what I could do to you. What I could do to your friends.”

I held the staff aloft. I could not understand what power it held, but he must have known it, for when I waved it in front of me as if it were a wand, he stepped back.

“I will kill him, and, if I need to, I will destroy you as well,” I threatened.

“It is impossible. He has many protections,” Merod said. Then he glanced up above us, as if expecting to see the alchemist appear.

“For a priest, you are an untrustworthy creature,” I said.

“But I possess what you seek, do I not?” he asked, and the grin returned. Suddenly, nearly froglike, he leapt up to the wall where the humans hung. He broke off a length of glass tubing and drank blood from it. When he had slaked his thirst, he glanced back down then dropped again to a crouching position among us.

As he stood up, he said, “My bed was a work of genius by the alchemist. Crystal can imprison us, for it is said to be of a hardness of water, which weakens our powers. He flooded the crystal tomb with the chilled blood so that it would torture me as I lay there in it, feeling it on my skin, my pores tried to open to drink it, but, of course, could not. The quicksilver kept me in the state of dreaming so that I was aware these years of all that was in my kingdom. Of the tortures of my daughters and their transformations into those creatures in the waters, of the inventions he made that turned the altar into my tomb and changed the temple of the great Lemesharra, of the flashes of burning light that destroyed the mortals of my kingdom. He is a terrible being, and he has stolen knowledge from beyond the Veil and from our tribe, as well. Medhya loves him for all this, for her fury is never-ending. We are the children she has spurned, and he is the one who has been taken into her affections.”

He went to Kiya again. This time, we were ready, and I thrust the staff between them. He stopped, but said, “I mean to heal her completely.’’

“Do not trust him,” Ewen said defiantly.

Kiya looked at me, then at the priest. “I have lived to see the end of many of our tribe, Priest,” Kiya said. “I would ask that you heal me of this wound and teach us of what has been lost to us.” She reached to my elbow, and I lowered the Nahhashim staff that she might approach him.

“When I drank of your essence,” the priest said, “I tasted the end of your days, like the dregs of a wine goblet. Your Extinguishing approaches.”

“I have few nights left,” she said.

“If he is the Maz-Sherah, then you will have many, for he may bring to the tribe the power of the source.”

“If you are our priest, will you not do this yourself?”

“My time is nearly gone, for I have existed upon this land for five thousand years, and although I continue in another realm, I will not extinguish, nor will I pass the Threshold. But my fading has already begun, like the last of smoke from a dying fire. The Nahhashim is his. When he fulfills the final prophecy of which I know, he will be the one you must ask.”

“What is the final prophecy?” she asked.

“It is only for the Maz-Sherah,” he said. He stepped closer to her. “He will kill us,” Ewen said, looking as if he were about to leap upon Merod Al-Kamr.

“He will not,” Kiya said. “This is the Priest of Blood. He can give us breath or take our breath from us. If he meant to destroy us, he would have as soon as he was free of the sphere.”

The priest went to her and leaned again over her shoulder as if to bite her. Instead he spat upon the wound, and it quickly began to reform into healed flesh. Where the flesh smoothed, a tattoo formed, a strange red curved shape.

“We have come for the ancient sorcery,” she said. “We cannot transform shape, nor can we run as wolves or fly as dragons. Yet all these things were of your kingdom.”

“How have you heard of me?” he asked her.

“I heard from an old vampyre who went into the Extinguishing. Before he did, he told me that he had heard the legend of your imprisonment and of the kingdom of Alkemara from another of our tribe upon her passing, and so perhaps it has gone for a thousand years.”

“More even than that,” the priest said.

“I saw you in a vision,” I said. “Of an altar, and of Pythia lying upon it to be sacrificed. And of a dark woman with a mask of gold.”

He studied my face briefly, then glanced at Ewen who seethed with anger, and held an ax in his fist as if he might spring at Merod if given the chance. “Boy, do you mean to attack me with your weapons? Is this not your lord and master?” He waved his hand toward me. “Is this not your sovereign to whom you’ve pledged allegiance?”

Ewen glanced at me fearfully, nodding.

“I could snap your neck and feed on your skull and brains, as I have with other vampyres, and though my powers are at their lowest ebb, they are greater than yours,” the priest said. “I would dig your entrails out.” He lifted his hands, their yellow, curved nails long and ragged. “I would spread them out then stuff them down your gullet while you choked until the Extinguishing came to you. You are a weak boy. Are you eighteen, even? Do you shave?”

“When I died, I was nearly nineteen,” Ewen said.

To Kiya, the priest said, “You bring me novices. Young tribesmen. Are there no others of your age?”

“There are,” she said. “But this one, called Falconer, is the only one to have the vision.”

“When the vampyre named Pythia passed the breath through the Sacred Kiss,” I said, “I saw all this and more. I saw your youth. I saw your temple. I saw your beautiful daughters as they once were. And Pythia felt terror at my seeing into her soul, into her knowledge.”