The Queen of Wolves (11 page)

“I have lived longer, and I have seen too many prophecies made flesh.” Saying this, she reached up and sliced a fingernail against my cheek, drawing blood. She held her bloodstained hand to her face. “If I were to kill myself, the child would die with me. If I bled, I would pass away as any mortal.”

I grabbed her wrist, drawing it from her face. “What if our child is the reason we are both here? What if there is another prophecy, unknown to you? What if all that was once written is dead, and all that we write, here, today, lives for the future? What if I prophesy that our child will grow in daylight, and will become a great mortal, and will be part of a world that Medhya cannot touch?”

She tried to strike me with her hands, but I held them tight. “When you have lived as I,” she spat at me, “then you will understand. When you see a thousand times a thousand mortal lifetimes pass, then you may begin to know how these prophecies come to light. For you, I waited through the ages, and when you came, I knew you, for I had studied such things and found scrolls you could not hope to decipher. I worshipped gods that were like you, Falconer. But I watched those gods break like fragile stone against the trembling of time itself. You learn through visions, Maz-Sherah. You have seen many. But have you seen the vision of the priestess who wears the gold mask?”

As she spoke, I felt something clutch at my throat. I did not want to remember such visions.

“On a bleak plain,” she said, her voice growing soft as she spoke, cold and soft, and lulling me into a memory I did not want to recall. “Wearing ceremonial robes. Holding a curved knife, meant to be used for sacrifice. Do you remember such a thing? Yes, I see the light in your soul as it flickers with the memory. My father showed you that moment. He revealed the objects necessary for such a sacrifice upon a great altar stone. He is there in that vision, is he not? With his tattoos coming alive upon his body? The Nahhashim staff. The curved blade. The mask of Datbathani upon the maiden’s face. But did you notice the swelling of that maiden’s belly? Did you notice the sky on fire all around? The beasts of the Veil beginning to come through? Did you hear the whispering of the Myrrydanai at their great moment of becoming? This was not some dream you have had, nor some idle unspoken prophecy.

“Shall I tell you what will happen? I have shared this vision, too, and read of it in the ancient scrolls. I saw it when I brought the Sacred Kiss to you. It is the last day of light in the world, Maz-Sherah. It is the day when the Veil tears, and those beasts of Hell draw Medhya into the world upon their backs. The plagues sent from the Veil are but harbingers of this terrible night to come. The Earth slowly turns to an age of winter, and even now, famine reaches across the seas. Soon ice will cover more than the sea beyond Taranis-Hir. Plagues have come from the Myrrydanai and the bog sorcery, and spread on the winds. Mortals grow weak, and the dream of the Disk has persuaded them to accept the words of the whispering shadows. What my father called the Myrr—that invisible boundary—a glass that fueled the city of Myrryd, brought from the Veil by the first priests—will cover the world in darkness. We are the instruments of this. My father held the gate closed to Medhya within his own body, and he could not be destroyed by ordinary means. Only the Maz-Sherah could take him into his flesh, and only you—only you, Falconer—contain that locked door, behind which Medhya may come through. I tell you, I know this will destroy you, and you will break like those statues of heroes and gods that are broken along the walls of Alkemara. We have both had the vision of the altar. Altars exist for sacrifice. You and I are there, and I am shackled as the victim of this ritual.”

We both went silent.

“We have both failed,” I said, after several minutes. “The vision I saw of the maiden at the altar was not fulfilled in sacrifice, though it seemed it. Nor did I see terror in her face. It was a mystery put before me—and before you. It is something that cannot be spoken of in words, but must be lived, I think, for in visions, all is not as it seems. If this is you, in this vision, perhaps it may yet be undone. We will not know if we do not continue our journey. I believe our child may grow into a great leader, and should we fail in this quest to destroy the Myrrydanai, and to mend the Veil that Medhya and the leviathans and behemoths of this other world do not cross into the world of mortal men and women, perhaps our child will have the strength to be more than a daughter of Alkemara, and a Maz-Sherah. For I have heard that many Maz-Sherah have failed over the centuries, and if I join them, I believe what you and I create in this child may overcome our failings.”

At first I thought she intended to attack me, for she rushed to me swiftly, and embraced me as if to choke me into my Extinguishing. She did not weep, nor did she speak, but she held me for a long moment, and only released me when we heard the shouts of sailors on the decks.

When we had gone out on deck, a youth pointed up to the mast and shouted, “There, we see a beast from Hell!”

Without a thought, I unfurled my wings and shot upward, catching my hands on the limp sail.

The night’s mist was heavy, but through it, I made out the vague shape of a creature like a crouched gargoyle clinging to the top of the mast.

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I crawled toward it, as quietly as I could. It must have sensed me, and it took off into the mist, crying out like a gull as it went.

I tried to follow it, but could not find it in the haze.

When I returned to Pythia, I spoke of the corpse-vampyre. “It is like us, but without glamour. Why it has followed us, and yet not attacked—or spoken—I cannot understand.”

“Nezahual had many dungeons and prisons in his temples, and a menagerie of creatures I could not bear to look upon,” she said. “This may be some beast sent to spy upon us.”

“To retrieve what was stolen,” I said.

Instinctively, she clutched the pouch at her waist. “If it has flown off, it is probably on one of those other ships mired nearby,” she said. “I do not feel danger from it. Do you?”

I shook my head. “Not danger. In the stream, I felt its weakness. What if that orb calls to it? For it has followed us too well. I do not like this, for we have burden enough without this stranger stalking us.”

“We will hunt it after we have drunk our fill,” she said, but within minutes, an alarm sounded across the ship’s decks. The sailors on watch cried out, and I sniffed the air.

“Do you smell it?” Pythia asked.

“It’s the wind,” I said. “It is coming from the east.”

Even as I said these words, there was a great, terrible creaking sound, as if every board of the ship groaned in pain. The
Illuyanka
shifted restlessly in the now-moving waters, and I heard the crack of thunder in the mist that moved like a broom, sweeping across the sea. Flashes of lightning in the dark clouds overhead tore at the fabric of the fog, and I thought of Illuyanek and his dream of the brothers of the wind as they agitated the sisters of the water itself—for this is what it seemed like as the squall came upon us all of a sudden.

I saw it—the rising waves in the distance that had cleared of mist—and heard the cries of the remaining men as they took their posts. The rain came like a sheet of shattering jewels against the deep early morning, before the sun, before the warm vibration of dawn. The waves rose and slapped across the decks so that some went below, though others shouted for them to return.

I flew to the highest mast, feeling the wind whipping at my wings as if trying to shred them. I clung to the mast as the sails shifted, turning first left and then right as the men at the rigging drew them to and fro with their skill at handling the roughest of winds. With the sun threatening a pale light beyond the darkening storm, I joined Pythia belowdecks, away from the comforts of the upper cabin, and remained far beneath in the depths of the ship, until we awoke in the night to hear the cries of men far above, and that endless groaning of the ship—and the cracking of one of the masts as it broke far above us.

PART 2: OPHION

Chapter 5

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T
HE
D
ISTANT
W
AR
C
RY

1

Five nights had passed since Pythia and I fled Aztlanteum’s fall, and before the sixth night ended, the ship had been thrown into the maelstrom of a storm, battered and bloodied. Fewer than a dozen men aboard survived—the sea had claimed several men. Two of the seven masts had broken—one smashed the captain’s cabin down its center after midnight, damaging the deck below. Men lashed themselves to masts and wheel, and some hid belowdecks with the Storm Dreamer. Pythia could not rest in the night, nor would she drink the blood of the remaining men, for she feared their strength would be gone if the gale continued. I took orders from one of the sailors who knew the ship as well as any captain might have, and managed to draw at least one man back from the brink of death as waves washed across the foundering ship.

The storm also brought blessings, for the men who remained were able sailors and believed in the prophecies of their Storm Dreamer. The
Illuyanka
had been shot by the storm like a stray arrow, and yet the ship had traveled many more leagues than it would have been able to under passable weather.

Despite the damage and loss, in the day and half the night the vessel sped along as if propelled by engines, for the fierce storm did not abate, and pushed us halfway across the ocean.

I consulted Illuyanek in his bunk. He thanked us both for the “demon blessings,” and for bringing food and water and the burning leaf from the abandoned ships. “You must fly now, my good demon,” he said. “For as you pass through the layers of night, you will see that the dark remains ahead of you, even while light comes from behind. If you move swiftly, you will reach such islands where you may find a day’s rest, with many mortals to quench your thirst.”

I did not wish to remind him of his own death, which he had dreamed of, nor could I ask him of the fate of the remaining crew, for fear that he would tell me of some misfortune. Yet, as if understanding my silent thoughts, he raised his eyebrows and smiled slowly. “Oh, these men will reach their homes, good demon. But I will pass to the halls of my ancestors before my foot touches the threshold of my own doorway. Yet do you not understand such prophecy?” He chuckled. “For if I never return to my house, I will not die soon. Instead, I will go to the emperor’s palace and live out my days. I will think of you, my friend. I hope we will meet once more before my last breath comes.”

“This is my hope, as well,” I said, clasping his hands in mine.

“Tell your lady demon that I have dreamed of a child, a boy, who will one day remember this journey his mother has taken, and will thank her for it,” he said.

2

Pythia wept as she left the ship, for the old man had touched her heart deeply. When the worst of the gale had ended—with several hours until dawn—we departed the
Illuyanka,
and the wind was with us as we spread our wings and passed across the still-roiling seas. Illuyanek had been right—as we traveled, if we kept up a swift flight—it was as if the night grew deeper. The wind pushed at our wings, sending us faster into the dark, and though I thought dawn would come soon, it seemed as if it lingered far behind us.

As we approached several islands, I saw again the line of frozen sea along their edges, for the terrible winters of the plagues had touched that edge of the world.

We spent two nights traveling, sleeping during the short days in caves and in the broken tombs of the dead—for we passed through cities and villages, just long enough to drink blood and sleep, and then take off into the sky again.

After we had crossed many thousand miles, Pythia found her way toward that poisoned city where she had first taken my life—and so we came again to Hedammu, upon the great cliffs above the sapphire sea.

I did not sense the following of the strange vampyre, nor did I know if he had survived the storms as we had. A sensation had taken over the stream, interrupting my feel of it, as sometimes happened on long journeys.

Yet, as we came to the towers of Hedammu, I did not believe the vampyre had left us.

The towers of Hedammu were nearly as I remembered them. I had barely been more than a boy when I first approached the poisoned city. Now, many years after death, I felt that another life had been lived between the youth I had once been and the creature I had become. The gates of the city had been both torn and held tight by ropes, locked as if to keep the Devil in and those called by the Devil out.

I crawled like a spider along the side of the jawlike gates and looked across the empty courtyards. Pythia called to me from one of the open chambers at the top of the northernmost tower, and I flew to her. She had gone to the place where many vampyres had extinguished, but found no guard, no one left of our tribe here.

As I stood beside her, I glanced back, scanning the night sky for the vampyre who I was sure still followed us.

“I had hoped that some would be here,” Pythia said. “For this is the birthplace of many of our tribe.”

I shook my head to her hopes. “Kiya had raised her army and fought when I lay imprisoned. They were defeated, and many went to their Extinguishing. Others were captured and have become the mindless servants of Enora and the Myrrydanai.” Even as I said these words, I understood what we would have to do, even here, in Hedammu.

I leaned across the tower spur and looked out across the sea, and then toward the mountains.