The Queen of Wolves (27 page)

I am tempted by it,
I said.

With great power, what would you have the world be?

I do not know,
I said.
I am no different than any other vampyre. I cannot say that I would be a great hero, for I have left many to die when I journeyed to Ixtar’s country.

All heroes are tempted,
the Serpent said.
But I have been with you when you drank the blood of your prey, Anointed One, and you did not bring brutal deaths to them. I have felt what was in your heart when your friend lay in your arms in a deep prison. I have read your soul when you knew of your children. You are not a vampyre as any other. You are one with me. What you do, I also do. Now, the time is short. Nights will pass before you will return to Taranis-Hir. Set right your course. Resolve yourself to these things.

Will I go to my Extinguishing through what I am about to do?
I
asked.

Prophecy is for fools,
the Serpent said.
You are no longer subject to the whim of priests and mages. Put on the cloak of my skin. Wear the Raptorius and let your flesh drink from its strength. It is more than mere armor, and holds the greatest powers given to you. Yet, be cautious with it, for the same sword you wield may be used by the possessor of the staff to burn the skin away from your body, and destroy its armor. All sorcery may be undone, and you must not rely upon it alone. Yet I have great faith in you, for you have freed me from these depths where no one has before you. In you are my blood and venom, for you have drunk from the flower that is sacred to me. Call the Eclipsis and draw your energies into its deathlight. Raise the kings. Find your powers. Be Maz-Sherah to your tribe.

Then he spoke no more, within me or without.

The fire burned off across the lake, and what had seemed a lake was now dry, as if it had never held water or eels. I stood upon a stonework plateau, and off the edge of the temple roof were steps downward beneath the plateau, that wound around and around along a strange spur of rock and wall.

The winding stair,
I thought.

In Asmodh’s depths, the burning sword

Makes hostage of the winding stair

But he who comes to heal the Veil

Must break the stone and find the lair.

I eagerly went down these dampened steps, and long-dead blue flames lit, all of a sudden, along the curving wall. When I reached the bottom of the stair, I stood at the entrance to the temple itself. Jeweled mosaics depicting ancient Serpent Wars covered the walls. Friezes depicted an earthly paradise, as well as the depths of Asmodh, with furnace and forge and a spiraling terraced cliff, and the images of thousands of people, some with the wings of dragons, and others with wings like angels.

At the center of this rounded temple, a suit of armor had been laid across an altar made of black rock. Beside it, on the floor, a nearly transparent pile of cloth, so thin that when I lifted it, I could see my fingers through each layer.

I undressed, leaving my shirt and trousers on the floor.

Naked, I drew the cloak of the Serpent’s skin over my shoulders. Within moments, my own flesh had soaked it within.

I went to don the suit of armor—the Raptorius.

It had shiny copper-colored metal plates upon it that seemed like the scales of a reptile, and was no heavier than ordinary cloth. Just beneath the scales was a leathery skinlike material. Beside the suit of armor, a helm of leather and bronze, with flares along its skull so that it had the semblance of a dragon’s head with bony spurs in waves along the back of it, while the visor itself became the upper jaw.

I drew the helmet over my face—it felt light. Yet, when I touched it, I also felt its contours, like the hardness of solid rock. I drew the visor down over my face. It had only slits for my eyes, and yet I was not impaired in vision as I looked about. After a minute of wearing this helmet, I felt as if I wore nothing at all on my head.

I drew the coat of armor upon my body. As with the helm, this felt light upon my flesh, but I had a strange sensation that it had small feelers touching my skin. Digging into my flesh. I felt nausea at the pit of my stomach, and tasted the Serpent’s Venom at the back of my throat.

The armor moved beneath my flesh, a new skin of the Serpent passing into mine. A white-hot pain shot through my back, beginning at the base of my spine and moving upward to the back of my skull.

The scratching into my flesh grew too intense, and I dropped to the floor. I felt as I had the first time I died—as my vision darkened, I saw a brief spark of blue, as if from a flame that had only just been lit, and then this went out.

No voice of Merod entered me in this dark place, nor did I feel great power from the Serpent. My extremities tingled, and I lay there with my arm outstretched, watching my fingers twitch as if controlled by some source other than my own will. Across the stone floor, I imagined an emerald-green snake twisting its way toward me. Nothing more than a snake, not a god or a messenger, but a creature that haunted such abandoned temples.

I stared at it as I felt a kind of death come for me, and the snake moved toward my hand, and then over it. As it traveled, I felt a prickly heat across my fingers and palm where the snake moved.

It slowly traveled along my arm, and when it was at my wrist, it opened its small jaws, and bit down on the flesh where my forearm and hand connected, into a vein.

A frozen numbness shot through my arm, and in an instant I no longer lay upon that temple floor but had crossed into the Veil itself.

The entry of the Veil was a mist across water, and rising from the depths of it, Medhya stood, her body a mass of writhing scorpions and flies and milk-white maggots.

She brought her hand to my face. I could not move as she touched my chin, and then leaned into me, bringing the swarm of her lips to mine. As she kissed me, she whispered, “You have freed the snake, Maz-Sherah. But you tear the Veil as you do this, and I am also freed. Your children will die. You will extinguish. But first, you will give me life, and this sword you hold will be mine, for I am its true mistress. When I have you, I will flay the snakeskin from within your flesh, and you will greet the dawn, spread-eagled, upon the dust.”

She drew back from me, and like a cobra striking swiftly, lunged for me, her teeth slicing into my throat and tearing at it. It felt as though it was not my blood being taken from me, but my breath.

2

I awoke sometime later, alone in the temple.

I rested, feeling in need of blood. As if sent by the Serpent himself, one of the pale human rats from the city crawled along the floor toward me, muttering in his gibberish. As he drew closer, I saw that he was the same boy from whom I had drunk before. The wound had only barely healed at his throat.

He chattered at me, as he sniffed the air. I realized he had memorized my scent, and I wondered if he had followed it down into the depths.

I pounced upon him, and drank enough for strength. He howled when I let him go, and went scurrying off out of the temple. I heard his footfalls echo on the steps back up to the subterranean passage.

Then there was more chattering of these mortals far above, and I was sure when I glanced up to the crack in the roof that I saw some creature looking down at me.

I stood, feeling a surge of energy in my arms and I raised them to the ragged cavern ceiling. All the energy of Myrryd, all that had been stolen from vampyres and mortals, all that had been used to fuel the lamps and torches of the city, seemed to flow through me, in me, upon the surface of my skin.

In an instant, I had become a mass of wriggling locusts, and moved with one mind into the air, breaking apart and re-forming again.

In solid flesh, I brought the Raptorius armor out from beneath my skin. I felt the tickling pain, as of light, sharp razors. Yet once the armor formed—a skeleton of metal plates and talons over my skin—all sensation on my skin’s surface deadened. I went over to my clothes and drew out the broken sword.

As I held it before me, I willed the fire to come from it and form the curve-toothed sword. I then emptied it again so that only the shattered sword hilt was in my hands.

Call the Eclipsis,
the Serpent had told me.

I held my left hand out into the air, palm upward. I thought of the orb, as it had lain in the pouch that was tied about Pythia’s waist.

Come to me. Come to me, Lamp of Death, come to me, for I am the Maz-Sherah. I am your master now, and it was from the Asmodh fires you were born, broken from the glass in the Veil, born again from a stem in those furnaces of old, formed perfect and dark and alive. You were never meant for the handmaidens of Death’s children, but for this hand
—
and from you, I will have power over the dead who have not yet crossed the Threshold.
As I thought this, my mouth opened and words spilled forth in a language I had never heard, that sounded as a ceremonial chant.

Within moments, a dark light moved like vapor through the door of the temple, and as it brushed against my hand, it formed into the round Eclipsis. Up from the great subterranean sea’s depths it had come, moving like a bird that flew by instinct toward its home.

I grasped it, and went outside the Serpent’s temple, and up the steps.

I shattered my being and all I held, and re-formed myself as a flight of ravens, which poured into the air, through the subterranean depths. My flock went upward, past the white creatures, past the vaults and Medhya’s throne room.

Seeking Ophion, I re-formed in the flesh upon the golden throne. Fear seemed to overshadow him.
 

“Do not fear me, brother. For had you not brought me here, I would not have seen the face of the Great Serpent himself. I will not harm you, for you are the instrument of my ascent. I am as the prophecies spake, but even prophets may be blind to what will come,” I said. “The Serpent lives within me. I am also here.”

“You are truly the Maz-Sherah, my brother. You were not before, though many saw it in you. I was never Maz-Sherah, this I see now. I only existed to bring you here, that you might find your anointing. I see it in your flesh. In your eyes.” Ophion gasped, and got down on his knees before me. “You are the Serpent, reborn.”

PART 2: VAMPYRE MESSIAH

Chapter 12

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T
HE
T
OMBS OF THE
A
SYRR

1

My mind had grown strong in the Asmodh depths, and the sorcery of the Serpent had brought new power to my body. I felt as if I had gained the wisdom of many, and had lost the uncertainty of mortality completely. No longer was I thinking as Aleric, chained to mortal memories.

I had entered a realm beyond even vampyre, and had touched the face of an eternal fire and brought it into my soul. Never would I let anyone take such fire from me.

2

“Up, Ophion.” As I touched him, I felt a strange shock. “I do not wish your destruction, but your knowledge of these avenues and alleyways. I want you to guide me to the hidden tombs of the vampyre kings—the Asyrr. Let us not waste time. The war begins.”

3

I walked along the paths of the Garden of Flesh. The purple flowers had entangled themselves around the trunk of the white tree, as if holding it to the earth. The Akhnetur hummed at a distance, but I ignored them. When they swarmed and came toward me, they stopped in the air, inches from my flesh. The Serpent skin protected me. They buzzed and snapped at each other, but parted like a great molten sea before me. I had no fear of them, for they were creatures born of the depths, as I had been reborn within them.

I took my sword and I cut the tree of the Nahhash in two. From one half of it, I carved a staff. It was not jeweled or covered with the symbols as was the Nahhashim staff Merod had passed to me. It was crude and simple, and when I raised it in my hands, it seemed more of a war club than a mage’s wand. Yet I felt a surge of power shoot from my arm through it. A glimmer of light shone from the staff itself, and as it did so, the swarms of Akhnetur seemed to form into almost human shapes.

One by one, these swarms in the form of men seemed to bow before the staff, then reconfigure into greater and greater swarms until finally they flew at the staff itself, against its now-fierce glow. As they touched the light, it was as if the Akhnetur vanished into the staff itself, sucked in by the light, held by sorcery.

4

Later, I commanded Ophion to help gather up the human rats.

“We raise the dead tonight,” I said.

5

Chasing down these pale inhabitants of the ruins and depths of Myrryd took but a few hours. We gathered forty or so, and they were docile and meek when caught. None expressed fear, though they howled terribly when taken to the tomb chambers of the kings. These mortal vessels would be enough to slake the thirst of the kings, though I did not know if the others we raised that night would find enough blood in them.

I stood at the entry down into the great tombs of the seven rulers of Myrryd, and their hundreds of warriors and servants and followers, and held out my hand, calling to the Eclipsis.

Within seconds, it flew at me as if it were a rock shot by a sling in an expert’s hand, and yet when it reached me, I grasped it easily. It felt warm in my palm, and its pulse was like a hand beating rapidly on a drum. I looked into its depths and sensed its life.