The Priest of Blood (39 page)

We would be immortal for many more years than the century that Kiya had feared. We might not overcome the silver that held a strange power over us, which was the mined ore of the fallen kingdom of Myrryd, nor would we defeat an enemy by daylight, for the sun could still destroy us with its slightest glance.

But our tribe had been restored to its rightful place among the Medhya’s children, and of our father, the Serpent who was within us, in the blood itself.

We stayed in that place long, but when at last we emerged into the night, having drunk our fill of the hanging bodies of Merod’s tomb, Kiya said, “It’s too late. It’s nearly too late.”

I knew what she meant—I could feel a movement in the stream, stronger, a pull backward. It was a call through the stream, back to the Hedammu, for our tribe had begun to suffer greatly.

The stream felt as if it were afire.

Chapter 19

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T
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HISPERING
S
HADES

1

Taking up the Nahhashim staff, I rose, my wings unfurling from my shoulders, brought about by my will. The others followed, and we three flew from the tomb and returned through the city of Alkemara to the milky sea. The barge we had abandoned no longer remained, but unfurling our wings—which came to us from our thoughts first, then grew swiftly from our shoulders as did the wings of devils—we flew above the choppy white waves, and though we heard the Alkemars calling to us, we ignored their entreaties.

Arriving on the far shore, we met Vali and Yset, who had stood guard all the while. They had tales of fighting off the Alkemars, who tried to reach them at the shore. After their anointing, we took off swiftly up through the passages of the mountains, emerging at the chasm’s doorway through which we had entered into the moonless night. We flew, and felt both fear and an incredible freedom, for we had the ancient sorceries within us. Ewen flew highest, a great dragon he seemed above me, and Kiya remained just ahead of me, watching the earth below for signs of any enemy. I felt bolts of lightning within me, as the flesh of the priest became part of my own flesh. Merod was not dead—he could not enter the Nowhere. But he was within me, I felt his presence with me, and his stream was like burning sand at my throat.

We moved fast, our wings beating with the dusty wind, traveling many leagues in minutes, and what had been a journey of several days on foot had become a night of travel by air. The memory of Merod’s voice in my mind:
Medhya is gathering skins of humans, and her Myrrydanai swallow souls. They are creating an army of the spirit, using the Veil itself to bring the spirit to a monstrous existence. They already whisper in the minds of men, and seek to destroy those who have touched the Maz-Sherah.

We began the descent as our birth-grave city Hedammu came into view below us. It was lit with many torches, and the cries of both men and vampyre. The stream felt like a boiling water within a pit, and it drew us earthward on a path of heat.

A battle raged below us.

2

As the five of us descended swiftly into the midst of the fighting, I drew the black sword from its sheath, the Nahhashim staff in my other hand. I brought the sword down to the head of a soldier who had swung an ax against a vampyre who already lay dying.

I could not know then the author of this fight, or why my own countrymen—knights and commanders of the Hospitallers—had come to the poisoned city to find and destroy the tribe of the undead, but the Myrrydanai showed themselves between the light of the many torches and fires that had been set.

They were shadows of men with long, tattered robes and cowls covering their heads. They moved between and among the mortals, whispering as men fought and died. Their whispering was like locusts amid the battle. When I was not hacking at the soldiers who attacked, I was watching over the others of our tribe. I looked over to see Kiya slaughtering the human intruders who had come under the influence of those loathsome shades. Ewen, never far from my side, was gathering men up in twos and throwing them over the battlements with the newfound strength of the anointing.

As the torches flickered, the shades of the Myrrydanai crowded around one particular man, and when I looked to see who it was, it was a knight, commander of this army, in full gear, with his great broadsword hacking at a vampyre whose arms had already been sliced away. When finished with the vampyre, Myrrydanai surrounded him with darkness. They possessed his flesh and raised his sword, pointing it toward me.

I flew to him and became a wolf as I came down on his throat, tearing at his skin, all the while jabbing my sword between his ribs. Yet, even torn, he began speaking to me with the voice of the shadows. “Maz-Sherah,” he whispered, “Your son will be a sacrifice to the Veil, so that we may multiply among you and among mankind. When the war comes, Maz-Sherah, you and your tribe of blood-stealers will be no more.”

Then, in my human form, I held him there, and said, “What do you mean? Tell me of my son.”

“Your son’s blood will feed the dark, and your child will destroy you,” the voice whispered from the knight’s lips. “Despair, oh Hallowed One, for you have lost before the war has begun.” And then, in a woman’s voice, “Please, oh dear God, where are you, Aleric? Please, come to me. They’re burning me!”

I recognized the voice as Alienora’s.

I sliced his head off neatly from his body and kicked it away from me. The remaining soldiers had lit a pyre of vampyres with their torches, but most of the humans were dead, and soon those that remained ran from the handful of our tribe, ran like dogs from Hedammu, out into the purple light that broke, heralding the coming sun.

3

Near the great bonfire of bodies we watched as the smoke rose and curled, and the smoky blackness bore witness to the shadows of the Myrrydanai as they rose up into the sky and traveled on vulture’s wings across the sea.

Kiya had been wounded, but it would heal soon enough. Ewen flew down from a tower, his face and chest covered with blood. Yset’s wounds from the battle had healed; Vali crowed like a madman and cried out for his lost brothers. We looked at the extinguished of our tribe, and the dead of the mortals, and had no words for each other. We carried those of our tribe who could be gathered up into the deep corridors beneath Hedammu.

We found that dreaded chamber filled with those who had already gone to the Extinguishing, and laid our lost companions down among the ash and bone. I blessed them with the Nahhashim, and called to Datbathani and Lemesharra to carry them to the Veil itself, though I did not know if the Nahhashim staff was powerful enough for such a prayer to be answered. With these five, we sealed the chamber as best we could so that should mortals find us during the day, they might not enter before we had awakened. In that chamber, I set the Nahhashim staff in the lock of the doorway, on the inside that it might keep out all shadow.

I dreamed in that sleep of a great serpent that moved through murky water.

At nightfall, I told the four left of our tribe of the war to come, of our mother, Medhya, who created us and would destroy us.

I told them of our purpose as protectors of the flock of mankind, and of how we must only take the blood necessary for our sustenance, as a sacrifice from a sacred creature of man and woman. Even as I spoke, I felt in the stream their resistance to this, for they had been a pack of jackals before the journey.

Would they be ready? Would they follow me as the Maz-Sherah, even with the power to bestow the Sacred Kiss? Might they not raise their own armies of our tribe and destroy me? How could I be the leader of these vampyres who would be nearly indestructible?

4

I knew I had to return to my home to find Alienora and protect her from the shadows that whispered at her ear. My son might yet be alive, and I had a burning inside me to make sure that the Myrrydanai would not destroy either of those I had left in my past.

“You must stay here and gather others of the tribe where they exist,” I told Kiya. “You each now are able to bestow the Sacred Kiss. You will be the leader of Hedammu, and you must find other leaders to bring under our banner. Find us warriors, and princes, and those with rare talents. Find the scholars and those who seek to serve the Nahhashim.”

“As you will it,” Kiya said.

“We will speak in the stream,” I said. “When you hear my call, come to me. Raise a great army, for a night comes when we will need to overcome a terror greater than either man or vampyre can fathom.”

I took Ewen with me, for truthfully I could not bear a night’s journey without him, and he, too, desired to see our homeland again with me.

We spread our wings out and flew beyond the city, beyond the cliffs, across the midnight sea. I did not want to think of the possibility of a war between spirit and flesh, but I knew it would come. I knew that, as I fulfilled the prophecy of the Maz-Sherah, so Medhya’s prophecy of the great Last War would come.

Ewen and I slept that dawn in an ancient graveyard on the isle of Crete. We felt others of our tribe in the stream there, but did not have time to seek them out. We drank our fill from a maiden and her lover, but left them alive, yet weak. I spoke with Ewen about the nature of mortals within the realm of the tribe. He lay with me at the first light, and when we drifted into dream, he whispered, “I would walk through Hell with you if you wanted it.” His words reminded me of Alienora, and I dreamed of her, of our blasphemy in her father’s chapel as we made love, creating the son whom I might never see. The dream left me with equal parts sorrow and hope.

We raced the winds by night, by day finding graves or tombs or shallow caverns. We continued to feel other vampyres nearby, unknown to us, clans within the great tribe, and it gave us hope, though we did not seek them out. We could not stop; I felt the urgency grow as we flew over cities ancient and new, barbaric and sophisticated in design, until, finally, on a night of storms, we sensed our village and the Great Forest itself just beyond the horizon.

5

The baron’s castle was afire in the night—again, I sensed the work of the Myrrydanai. Despite lashing rain, the fire raged, and lightning ripped at the black clouds rumbling across the sky. I closed my eyes as we flew over familiar ground, clutching the Nahhashim to draw its powers of seeking. I felt Alienora, and my heart beat fast. Human memory flooded my senses, and I wanted her more than I had ever wanted her before. All the feelings of youthful love had returned, and I began to scent her presence within the castle walls.

A strange voice came into my head, then, a voice I had heard but briefly in the Veil and the vision of the Glass—that strange veiled maiden known as Calyx.
 

“Falconer, you are too late,”
she said.

I ignored this voice—it could have been a trick of the Myrrydanai.

I followed a pathway of scent down into the castle, along the chambers, leading Ewen in flight. As we passed down the corridor with which I had once been so familiar, a place of desolation greeted us.

I ignored any other instinct I had, even a feeling of ice that had clutched at my chest. Alienora was there, somewhere trapped, caught, imprisoned in her own home. My son. I had seen him in the Glass. He might yet live. The vision might not yet have come to pass.

In the chapel. The very chapel in which we had made our child.

I landed, crouching, with Ewen beside me.

Alienora stood there, before the altar, naked as if she were the virgin sacrifice of some barbaric religion.

Blood on her breasts.

On the altar, her own younger brother.

His heart torn from him, still beating in her hand.

Alienora turned to me, with an inscrutable look upon her face. She had an unconscionable beauty—the radiance of a goddess of slaughter.

I knew in that second.

The Myrrydanai held dominion over her.

She was with them.

The shadows along the wall grew long, and I could not bring wings from my shoulders again. Nor did I feel my source of power within. It was as if ropes had been thrown over me.

I raised the Nahhashim, but as I did so I felt a tugging at my fingers—and dark fingers grasped at it. The Nahhashim flew from my hand, carried by one of the shades to Alienora.

“The power of Medhya’s blood imprisons the Nahhashim,” she said, and brought the heart of her brother to her lips and drank from it as if it were a cup.

And then the shadows of the Myrrydanai surrounded us.
This is some unknown sorcery
, I told Ewen through the stream.
She has been given great power. She has forgotten her love. Forgotten her soul.

The shadows surrounding us whispered a language that could not be understood, although it sounded like a chant—a ritual—a rite of binding, for the darkness began to smother me.

I felt the priests take me into their arms, covering every inch of me with their shadows.

All power had fled from my being. It was as if the Myrrydanai drank it the way the tribe drank blood.

I began to fade into blackness, terrified that I might be heading toward the Extinguishing.

A terrible shrieking erupted in the stream, then the dark enveloped me.

Chapter 20

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