The Queen of Wolves (24 page)

Was all power a great theft? Yet—who had made the Eclipsis? Who had endowed the mask with its energy to draw out immortality?

She shouted orders to those I could not see, for I was unable to turn in this vision and see the room itself, nor could I hear her voice, yet I detected her intent. She stood before her throne in serpent armor, a creature of metal and teeth, judging and condemning those brought before her.

As I watched her, I saw what seemed a movement along the throne’s gold surface.

But not precisely movement—a reflection of movement.

The throne reflected something in the chamber that I could not see, but it twisted as if it were some giant form. I saw the distortions of soldiers with spears alongside it.

I heard Merod’s voice.
You have been seeking the wrong power, Falconer. Just as Medhya fooled the Serpent, you have allowed her to fool you. Where is your path? Why are you not on it? Why have you come to Myrryd when it takes you from your path?

Priest of Blood, within my own blood, show me what I need to understand,
I thought.

This I cannot do, for the way is closed to me, Maz-Sherah. But you must ask yourself: Whom do you seek here? Who lights the fires of Myrryd when its queen is beyond the Veil, and its kings lie extinguished in the tomb, and the priests are devoured and destroyed? Who draws your energies and keeps you from flight here? When you answer this, you will know what you seek. And you will find your path. Do not look at the power of Medhya, for like the she-wolf among tombs, all she has was stolen from the suffering of others. The Queen of Wolves cannot create a kingdom like this, nor can she be a source of her own power. She must steal what others have created. She must suck the energy as our tribe sucks blood for sustenance. But who is the source of this?

And then I heard no more of him.

It was as if a lightning bolt had gone through me, for suddenly I myself could answer those questions now. It was as if a door had opened, a door for which I held the key.

I knew who lit the fires of Myrryd when no vampyre or mortal human ruled in that city.

There could only be one answer.

One source.

The Great Serpent.

The conquering queen commands above,

The vanquished lies in wait, beneath.

2

I realized what I saw reflected in the throne’s gleam: It was the moment when Medhya had conquered the Great Serpent. Her soldiers held the Serpent beneath her throne. I remembered those statues in the chapel at my home—of a saint with his foot upon the serpent.

Medhya had done this—she had put her foot upon the Great Serpent, and stolen his treasure, which was immortality and those objects that—somehow—absorbed it.

The mask. The Eclipsis. Even the sword. Though I did not see the Nahhashim staff in this vision, I knew this object held some secret of the immortal world.

I knew now why I felt drawn to seek Myrryd.

I opened my eyes, thrown from the vision.

“The Great Serpent is here,” I said.

I began cutting away at the white stone, at the fissures that ran through it, using cudgel and blade until I had drawn back chips of stone. Using great force and industry, I opened a hole beneath the floor.

Fumes of sulfur and steam came up from beneath the throne, yet though I felt weakened by this, they did not seem to contain any terrible poison. Through this opening, I saw the throat of the Asmodh Well, a scarred and jagged drop. I did not have a rope as Ophion had once had to be lowered to it; nor could I draw on my wings to journey there. I would have to crawl as best I could along its pitted walls.

Within a few hours I had made the opening large enough to fit through, and I slipped down into the gap. I swung myself down to a slender ledge, but when I reached for a dent in the rock wall, I slipped and fell. It was a long drop, but soon enough I landed in a large pool of black water, lit on all sides by the strange blue fires that burned upon spurs and spikes of rock. The water was icy and deep, and I felt strange movement along my body as I came up to the air. Swiftly, I swam to the shallows, and then stepped upon the cavern floor, which had been built by men, for it had flat stones laid across it to create a ledge.

Above me, I saw the crevasse that was the well—it must have stretched the length and breadth of Medhya’s palace. It was a wonder to me that the palace itself had not fallen into its depths.

As I walked along the ledge, I saw a honeycomb of chambers opening up before me. The blue flames flickered along each corridor, and I heard noises both terrible and curious from these entrances, but at some distance. I remembered the creatures that Ophion had spoken of, and I did not wish to encounter them on this journey. I reached to my pouch for the Eclipsis, and held it forward, bringing out the light from it.
Where is this sword I seek?

The deathlight moved like a ghostly black shadow along the rough cave walls, and through the natural vault ahead, where the waterway twisted along.

3

Ophion’s words came back to me:
The delvers cut the bridge of Myrr, and tore apart the Asmodh depths to channel power from far below.
The stonework was intricate along the ledge, and each triangle of stone fit into the next, and within the lines I saw a design of sun and moon and stars—a mosaic of gray and white and yellow stone. As I looked across the vaulted arch of rock, I saw the burned drawings of these ancient people, high above, of lizards and lions, dragons and harpies—the cultural remnants of the Asmodh. I followed the water farther—the canal was broad, and bounded on the other side by another ledge, like the one I walked, and beyond this, arched entryways into deep chambers.

The water itself was of a dark, rusty color, as if metals rested at the bottom of it—a dumping ground of the materials used to make the red city itself. I saw piles of human bones on the opposite ledge. I even heard the skittering of what I feared might be the strange white creatures at some distance, but only saw shadows as they scampered through various tunnels along the canal. I feared them, but did not turn back, nor was I precisely sure how I would rise from these depths with no power of flight and no grip along the smooth walls of the bottom of the Asmodh Well.

Overhead, the vaulted ceiling was low so that I had to crouch as I made my way along the ledge. The humid steam of a filthy waterway assaulted my senses, and I began breathing through my mouth to avoid the awful stench.

I felt the pulse of the Eclipsis, and held it ahead of me—and this time, a feeble deathlight came forward, and then died out. As I went I was faced with various twists and turns, and the canal forked, but every time, I held up the orb in each direction and followed its weakening pulse along these waterways. As I followed its vague directions, feeling like a hound without the knowledge of the prey, offense in the form of some rank, moist air covered me like a glove. The sulfurous stink increased as I bent down to follow the ever-narrowing vault above me. I heard a strange sound, like a distant roar of the sea far beyond, or of a forceful wind blowing from some shaft high in the world above.

From behind me, I sensed the source of the stench that moved nearby.

I paused, glancing back, narrowing my vision to bring up the light that existed within the dark. There, crawling along the low, arched ceiling above—and just a few feet back from me—was one of these white slimy creatures. It was a female of its kind, for her many breasts hung downward as she pivoted her lower body toward the wall of the vault, while keeping her hands somehow glued to the arch of it. Her face reminded me less of human or alligator, but more the mouth of a fish of some kind, elongated was the jaw, but small the mouth as it opened and closed as the thing breathed. She made a hissing noise as she saw me turn, and a strange rattling sound came from deep within her throat.

I froze, not knowing how this encounter might go. She drew her entire body down to the side of the wall, and if she had wanted to—in a fraction of a second and a short reach—she might have leapt upon me. She slowly parted her oval lips wider, and I could see the jagged sharp teeth, shown in a threat as she hissed, and that strange rattle sounded again. Behind me, the constant roar of water—from the place toward which I assumed the canals flowed. The creature then moved toward me without moving an arm or leg. Instead it was her neck that came forward in such a way that it reminded me of a snake swallowing its prey. Her face was so close to mine—and her stench as well—that I grew afraid to move. Yet I wondered what harm she could do me, for I was more than three times her size, and my teeth were longer and grew sharper.

She sniffed at my face, and I saw that her eyes—which had seemed white and invisible to me at a short distance—existed there in the translucent tapeworm slickness of her face as two small, shiny black dots nearly covered over by the folded white flesh. The rattle grew louder, and I felt she would strike at any moment. I lifted the Eclipsis, and its darkening light shone as I thrust it between her face and mine.

This was enough to make her draw back, into her body, and then she gave out a loud squeal. Suddenly, I heard the slithering and splashing of other creatures as this she-beast retreated. Within seconds, a dozen or more of these underworld throwbacks were moving down the dark vault toward me. The Eclipsis light was not enough to frighten them. Keeping the orb in my grasp, I went running down the vault, seeing light along its distant curve.

As I came out from under one of the low archways, the ledge along the canal ended, and I nearly went over the edge of a cliff below me, a great crevasse in the earth, which seemed as large and wide as the New Kingdom of Myrryd had seemed from the cliffs far above it. The roar I had heard was the sound of a distant sea far below. I nearly went to my knees, for I had been prepared to step off the edge without noticing that the canal poured in a waterfall downward.

My grip on the Eclipsis was not tight enough, and it fell from my grasp.

I watched it plummet far below. I dropped to my stomach as if I could reach down into its fall and grab it again. But I had little time—the creatures behind me were clambering along the vault, and some had just emerged onto the cliffside. I glanced to the left and right, and there, down a series of ledges, was the naturally formed arch bridge that must have been the Bridge of Myrr. I leapt ledge to ledge downward, certain that at any moment I’d fall into distant rushing waters; but finally, I landed on the bridge of thin, unsteady rock.

I glanced back at the creatures, and saw that none of them followed down the steplike ledges. Rather, they watched me in their blur of white undulations, as if daring me to return to face them—or knowing that I faced a worse fate at the other side of the bridge.

I did not want to wait to find them chasing me after all, and so I glanced forward—on the opposite cliff, water also poured downward from channels of some kind. Because of the narrowness of the bridge, I had to run across it nearly on all fours to maintain my balance—one slip, and I would fall. On the other side, I climbed up the series of carved steps, left there for the ancient Asmodh race no doubt. Yet all I could think of was the Eclipsis, and how it was lost—for how would I find it far below—and if the dark sea beneath ran swift and strong in the earth, where would I hunt for it again?

Lost. The Serpent’s Eye. The Deathlight itself. My only guide in this place.

As I walked, the canal opened onto what seemed to be an underground lake, and from the rushing sound I heard, it emptied at some distant dam into a waterfall. The water produced foam at the point where the canal emptied into it, and its water was darker than the canal’s, although I could see areas of rust and scum at its outer edges.

At the center of the lake, a small island stood. I crouched along the walking ledge and dipped my fingers into the water. It was warm, like a well-drawn bath. I saw what seemed a small, elongated, dark fish dart from where my fingers had broken the water’s surface. It shot quickly farther out into the water. Beneath it, tightly packed stone with some filling between the stones that kept them from leaking water. The entire construction had been designed and built by some architect of the city, and supported much of city above with its heavy pillars and vaults.

Something caught my eyes—a strange light played in zigs and zags along the water, closest to the island.

As I scanned the island at a distance—no more than the size of a small courtyard at the center of the water—I noticed there a monument of some kind just beyond its shore.

Water enervated vampyres, and although I might bathe with a sponge and a bowl, immersion would weaken me further. I still did not know if there were creatures in this lake that might attack me. I had to go to the gently curved island at the lake’s center. I had trudged the filth-filled marshes of my childhood enough, and yet something about the light in the water disturbed me more than the thought of a lamprey maiden did.

The island could not have been more than a quarter of a mile from where I stood. How deep was this water? Could I walk there? I did not have any special vampyre power in Myrryd, so what more could be taken from me?

I stepped down from the gray-stone ledge, into the water. The bottom of the lake was also stone. It had been constructed all around, a container for something or someone.

I took a few more steps. The floor held, and the water came only to my waist as I walked through it. The lake was warm, and a light mist of steam came off from it. However, the vapors grew stronger here, and I felt a strange pain in my gut as if I had ingested bad blood. I glanced up to the curved ceiling of packed stone that lay beneath the throne room and the streets of Alkemara.

Built to hold this in. Called poison to keep the priests away.

To keep Medhya’s foot upon it, even after her soul had gone
—
through ritual
—
into the Veil.