Seven Kings

19

Sharadza fell sideways into a cosmos of living flame. As Iardu had promised, the pain of the transition was immense. Her newly reborn body blazed, and she fought the urge toward annihilation, wearing a coat of golden fire that scorched every inch of her body. It would not destroy her unless she lingered too long here in the heart of the blazing agony.

Good, Iardu whispered in her mind. Harness the flame! Wear it as your armor against the shadow. Fight the pain. Keep your center…

She was blind in the seething torrent of heat and light, but she heard his voice clearly now, singing another ancient song. Again she fell sideways, and he thought-spoke to her once more as they dropped free of the flames into the heart of Khyrei’s black city.

Gammir wears the body of his effigy. Destroy it and you will lure him from his high tower. Leave Ianthe to me…

She had no chance to respond or argue, as she followed the Shaper through the breach, back into her own world. For an instant they hung suspended within a corona of leaping amber fire. Iardu took the form of a great eagle, weaving the flames about himself. She joined him in this way, winging about the black spires. The city shuddered in chaos underneath the roiling smoke. Thunder roared from the plaza of the slave market. She sped toward the great idol as it stomped the pale beasts swarming about its feet.

She was a creature of flame more than flesh or feathers. This was no ordinary fire trailing like vapor from her flapping pinions. It was the living flame of a world where darkness and shadow did not exist. She cast a bolt of it at the statue’s great spear. The monolithic weapon fell to dust. The massive head of Gammir’s effigy turned to regard her with its ruby eyes brimming with undisguised hatred. She sensed the spirit of her half-brother inside the colossus, yet his true body lay within the high tower. She spewed golden flame across the statue and circled about as it burned to ashes and rained down upon the fractured city. She lost sight of the great twin rubies as they fell, but noted that they alone did not burn.

Soaring toward the palace she felt Gammir’s presence inside the barbed tower. In the shape of a great jungle bat he burst forth to meet her. The sound of his furious screeching was lost beneath an explosion of prismatic flames from the palace courtyard. She had no time to glance down and view Iardu’s progress before she and Gammir collided like two renegade meteors. Black claws reached for her heart as they spun for a timeless moment, falling like the statue’s ruby eyes toward the blazing gardens.

Wrapping her arms about the wolf-bat as it sank claws deep into her breast, she sang Iardu’s song and forced open the Gate of Living Flame. The last of the golden flame about her avian body linked her to the burning realm. Sparks leaped from her eyes, encircling Gammir and herself. She burned away the substance of her own dimension, opening a passage back to the source of the living flame. She prepared herself for pain as the flaming cosmos engulfed her once again.

Gammir’s screams were the high-pitched wails of a wounded beast. A creature forged from shadow and blood, he could not long stand immersion in this endless conflagration. The flames ate away his black wings, and his body reverted to its pale human form, writhing and gnashing against the terrible trap into which she had lured him. His alabaster skin burned away, and the pink flesh beneath curled like burning paper, leaving only a chattering skeleton.

His white bones blackened as she watched, wrapping a fresh gown of flames about her body. She gritted her teeth and harnessed the pain. She could not stay here long either, but she could master the flames long enough to annihilate him.

As the last of Gammir’s skinless face melted away, she grabbed his whirling skull. The burning void yawned toward infinity in every direction.

I pity you.

She plunged her thoughts like daggers into what was left of Gammir’s fading mind.

You who once were a Man. Now I understand how you could fall so low.

She enslaved you… just as you enslaved me.

But I forgive you, Brother.

While I cannot free you from her bondage, I can keep you here long enough to end you.

Gammir’s bones burned into ash, as his effigy had done in the other world. Yet in this molten place even the ashes were scorched into nothingness.

A bodiless voice came to her as the last dancing motes of Gammir disintegrated.

Sweet Sister… there can be no end.

You have only set me free.

She willed herself back into the living world, armored once more in a sheath of golden flame. The chaos of Khyrei writhed below her, and she floated among the tips of the black spires, watching slaves and apelings flood into the blazing courtyard. As Iardu had mentioned, this was nothing less than a full-scale revolution. An invasion of inhuman liberators and a rampaging mob of slaves rising up to cut their cruel masters’ throats.

In the midst of the burning gardens stood Ianthe the Claw, tall as an Uduri. A twisted and bloodless corpse lay at her feet. An army of rebels poured through her gate.

The Empress waved a taloned hand, and the horde of slaves fell at once to their knees. They dropped their stolen weapons to the ground and wept in her flamelit shadow. They begged forgiveness for their sin of insurrection. Even the pack of eyeless apes bent low, groveling in a ring about the sorceress instead of leaping up to tear her apart.

Among all the mutineers flooding her courtyard, only one slave stood tall and defiant while his brothers bowed and scraped and cried. A lanky Khyrein, his exposed body a mass of scars and dripping wounds, his only garment a dirty loincloth. He clutched a bloody sabre in one fist, a knife in the other, black eyes smoldering. What could such simple weapons do against the Claw of Khyrei? Such singular bravery.

Outside the ruptured palace gate, thousands of horned apelings converged on the royal grounds. They dragged down squads of armored soldiers and tore them apart like hounds mauling panicked pheasants.

Sharadza took all of this in as she floated near to the barbed tower, shedding yellow flames from her skin. As the last of the pain drifted from her like pale smoke, she hovered lower above the blazing gardens. Now she saw clearly the body Ianthe had cast aside.

The drained and mutilated carcass of Iardu.

No! It cannot end this way…

Ianthe held the single unbowed slave by his neck, lifting him from the flagstones.

Sharadza dropped like a fiery stone hurled from the heavens.

Ianthe’s dark and glittering eyes pierced him as surely as her black talons. Tong stood breathless in the glow of licking flames. Both his blades fell from numb fingers, clattering against stone. The freed men at his back, the proud Sydathians who had climbed over the wall and flung open the gate… everyone but Tong himself… fell to the flagstones and wept like shamed children.

I will not bow to you. Not any longer.

She stalked toward him, forgetting the corpse of Iardu.

Even if you feast on my blood, I will die standing.

I defy you with my last breath.

The Empress seemed to understand. Her claw wrapped about his throat, lifting him to her Giantess eye level. His arms hung dead at his sides, useless hocks of meat and bone. Hot urine spilled down his legs, dripping from the soles of his feet.

“You are the source of this sad drama,” said Ianthe. Her sensuous mouth was large enough to bite off his head if she desired it. “You have a touch of greatness about you. Your blood must be delicious.” She opened wide that mouth, displaying the fangs of a panther. Tong closed his eyes, ready to accept the final agony of those fangs sinking deep into his neck.

Instead a blast of scorching heat erupted between them. Her fingers loosened; he fell across the prone bodies of his fellow slaves.

A second Giantess stood now in the courtyard, this one wrapped in flaming armor. Her hair was dark as midnight, dancing in the updrafts of superheated air.

Tong glanced about at the simpering slaves. They had been so eager for blood and freedom only moments earlier. This was the power of Ianthe’s reign, the strength of her dark glory, that Men could not defy her openly. He might have hated his fellows for abandoning their righteous fury, but he was not able. All of them had risked what little they had; all had been ready to die in the name of liberty. What chance had they in the face of such sorcery?

Now, without Iardu’s magic, what chance did this burning Giantess have against the Claw? Tong lay numb and helpless amid the weeping slaves, trying to force his leaden arms toward the fallen sabre.

The Giantess struck out with a bolt of brilliant flame. Ianthe cast it aside with the back of a single claw. The pale skin of her hand sizzled, and black wings twitched on either side of her bristly spine. Her claw lashed out at the flaming armor, extinguishing it with a cloak of instant shadow. The fire wielder stumbled back as Ianthe sent both claws slamming into her chest. Now Tong saw that it was no true Giantess who defended the slaves, but a young woman no older than himself. The power of Ianthe’s double blow sent her flying across the courtyard. The girl crashed into a mass of blazing foliage.

The Empress turned her blood-smeared face back to Tong. Still he could not move, or even hope to stand. His rebellion ended here and now. In utter failure. Iardu had led him to this, and even the great sorcerer lacked the strength to end the Claw’s rule. How many times over the centuries had other slaves, hopeful and desperate, staged such an uprising, only to be smashed by Ianthe’s boundless power?

It does not matter. I die as a free man, not a slave.

So do we all die.

Matay… at last I come to you.

Ianthe reached a claw toward him, smiling with keen bloodlust.

She paused, the tips of her black talons gleaming before his eyes. She pulled back, her head bobbing weirdly to the side. She curled her claws into fists. She stood shivering before the mass of cowed slaves and the cringing eyeless ones. A fresh pack of Sydathians had climbed the palace wall, sitting like gargoyles above the smoking courtyard. In other corners of the city they still ravaged the places where guardsmen strove in vain to stop their advance. The cries of dying men rang above the flames as Tong watched Ianthe perform an impossible dance of agony.

Her black eyes bulged, and her torso twisted like a slithering viper. Bones snapped inside her pristine skin. A curious bulge emerged from her smooth forehead. She vomited black blood and thrust her head forward like a lizard, jaws snapping.

A finger extended from the white plane above her eyes. Four more bulging lumps appeared about the first. She cried out in some forgotten language.

Four fingers and a thumb grew from the forehead of the Empress. An entire hand sprouted now from her chest, emerging between her gory breasts. She whirled and fell to the flagstones, her flesh coiling and swelling. The hands became entire arms, thin and wiry. Male arms. A third leg grew from her abdomen, bare toes wriggling, then another grew beside it. A Man’s legs. Four-legged and four-armed now, she bellowed and thrashed. Tong’s stomach turned as he watched the contortions of her massive body.

Her ribcage swelled now, straining against her skin. Her thick white mane of hair turned to pale gray. One of the new arms sank back into her breast. It re-emerged with her beating heart held in its hand, squeezing red fluid like juice wrung from a lemon. It dropped the heart onto the filthy flagstones, and Ianthe’s face wriggled near to it. Yet it was no longer her face. The eyes flickered red, purple, emerald, silver. The fangs fell one by one from her mouth like a codger’s rotted teeth.

Now she was two beings at once. A second familiar face stared from the side of her skull. She leaped upright on all four legs, two white and two golden brown. One of the brown legs rose, then came down hard to squash the fallen heart like a bloated plum. A final scream poured from her toothless maw. The spasms ended, but her body continued to shift and flow like a waxen candle, burning itself into a new form.

Tong found his deadened limbs alive once more. He struggled to his feet, picked up his sword. The slaves about him awoke from their dark dream of obedience and humiliation. Meeting his defiant eyes, they took up their fallen weapons. The Sydathians too rose up from their submissive postures, sniffing at the being who slowly emerged from the flowing flesh of the sorceress. Tong already knew the face and the name it bore.

“Iardu!” he called out. The twisting, bulging head turned toward him and solidified at last into the face of the Shaper. Tong’s heart soared. The wizard had not failed his people.

Now the sorcerer stood naked and tall as a Giant; there was no longer any trace of Ianthe but the greasy smear of pulp that had been her black heart.

Iardu’s name was echoed by someone else. The black-haired girl who had defied Ianthe walked out from a welter of flaming trees, apparently unharmed. No longer wrapped in a sheath of flames but a simple gown of golden silk, she rushed forward to embrace Iardu. A silvery beard sprouted in an instant from his chin. Once again the Shaper stood ageless and brimming with power. Tong felt it cascading from his new-made body like heat from the dancing flames.

As they stood with arms wrapped about each other, Giant and Giantess diminished until they were only Man and Woman, each no taller than the slaves. Tong and his fellow freed men stared, speechless in the grip of awe. Here was a spectacle of the greatest sorcery, the likes of which most Men would never see in their entire lives. Here stood a pair of living miracles.

“Iardu! Iardu!”

Tong lifted his blade high and joined the voices of liberated slaves praising the sorcerer’s name. Iardu waved a hand and conjured a flash of light. Now he stood again draped in an orange robe, a blue flame burning at the end of his silver neck chain.

“Tong of Khyrei,” said the Shaper, “meet Sharadza, Queen of Yaskatha.”

Tong bowed to her in the highest display of respect possible. Those behind him dropped to one knee. Here was a new God and Goddess they would venerate for generations. He faced Iardu as the ashy courtyard grew ever more crowded with rushing slaves and Sydathians. The mass of former slaves was invading the palace proper now, while the broad gardens lay in charred heaps and piles of dying embers. The battle was over. Now came the time of plunder, a necessary prelude to the time of renewal.

“I had thought you dead,” he told the Shaper, “and all of us freed men and Sydathians to die with you.”

Iardu grinned.

“What happened?” asked Sharadza. She, too, stood in awe of Iardu’s rebirth.

Iardu glanced at the pitiful pile of bones and torn flesh that was his previous body.

“She wanted my blood,” said the sorcerer. “My essence. So I let her take it. She should have known that her spirit could not contain my own.” He watched the fingers of his new hands stretch and bend before his spectral eyes. “No one ever told her to be mindful of what she ate.”

Tong laughed despite himself. This brought mirth to Sharadza’s lips as well. Iardu’s former flesh became a mound of white sand, already scattering beneath a gust of hot wind.

“Tong. What now?” asked a freed man. “Are the blood drinkers gone? Is the palace truly ours?”

“I will answer that,” said Iardu. “The Empire of the South has fallen at last. Within this palace lies the crown of Khyrei. Find it now, and set it upon Tong’s head. Will you have him as your King?”

The crowd of soot-faced survivors shouted and milled about Tong. They cried his name aloud, as they had cried Iardu’s. The Sydathians danced and capered like children among the jubilant throngs.

“Hail Tong, King of New Khyrei!” shouted Iardu. This title caught the crowd’s fancy, and it traveled quickly into the teeming streets. Men bellowed it among the rubble of the slave plaza and carried it down to the fleet of warships moored at the docks.

Tong stood quiet in the wash of their adulation. For the first time he realized that Iardu had used him as a pawn in some larger game. What the stakes of that great gamble might be, he could not guess. He did not know if he was truly worthy of Kinghood, although there would be no denying his people their choice. They rushed forward to sack the palace and find him a crown.

Iardu and Sharadza looked not at the King of Slaves, but at the high tower.

“There,” said the Shaper. “One last errand for us, my dear.”

Sorcerer and sorceress rose on currents of drifting smoke, shifting once more into a pair of golden eagles. They no longer shed flames from their bright feathers, yet the city itself writhed with flames. The smell of burning flesh mingled now with that of charred orchards and fields.

The twin eagles disappeared through the highest window of the barbed tower. Moments later one last dazzling eruption incinerated the upper half of the spire, leaving only a jagged, steaming scarp of stone.

Tong joined the mass of rushing Men and Sydathians as they poured into the black palace. No longer were these lofty halls sacrosanct, or safe from the vengeance of a long-denied people.

“Tong the King!” they cried, slapping his back and shoulders. “Tong the Liberator! Tong the Avenger!” They lifted him on their shoulders and carried him through opulent corridors.

They should be calling the name of Iardu and praising the Sydathians. How many thousands of the eyeless ones had died in the assault? How many valiant slaves had given their lives as well? He had not done this thing alone. He was only the face of it.

When they found the jeweled crown of seven points and placed it on his head, he neither smiled nor wept. He stood upon the elevated dais among the glassy columns of the throne room, still dressed in soiled rags. He remained wordless and full of doubt. Yet when he raised the blood-smeared sabre, an imperfect symbol of their vicious deliverance, Khyrein voices rose to rattle the black stones of the city.

Inside the barbed tower’s uppermost chamber Sharadza and Iardu stood before the two circles of runes. There was no activity there now, no shadowstuff flowing across the floor to congeal in the midst of the looping sigils. Yet she knew such a thing would happen eventually. Here was the nexus of power for both Emperor and Empress. The true seat of their power, and the secret of their iron-handed rule.

“We must abolish these circles,” Sharadza said. “And the stones of this entire chamber.” She looked about at the implements of sorcery, recognizing the Glass of Eternity. It stood, identical to the mirror used by Elhathym in Yaskatha. The one she and Iardu had shattered after casting the necromancer into a trackless void. Its cloudy surface glimmered with no distinct reflection.

“Yes,” Iardu said. “Though I fear it may already be too late.” He glanced at the leaden glass and raised a hand. The mirror shattered into a million fragments, leaving its grotesque frame oddly empty.

“Shall we burn it?” she asked.

He nodded. “Fire is cleansing. I will do it. You must go south into the red jungle. You will find a great host of Men and Giants marching toward this city. Your brother Vireon marches at their head. Tell him what we have done here. Tell him the old Khyrei is no more: it has been freed from the grasp of Ianthe and Gammir.” He turned and put his hands gently on her shoulders. “Make him understand, Sharadza. Khyrei is no longer the enemy of every other nation. Tell him to come in peace and meet the King of New Khyrei.”

She blinked. Vireon in the jungle? The Giants marching to war? It was all so unexpected, yet she knew better than to doubt Iardu’s words. Then it came to her in a flash of insight.

“You set all of this in motion, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Speak with Vireon. Convince him that the war he seeks is not with the black city.”

“You’re bringing all the nations together here to fight the hordes of Zyung.”

His chromatic eyes blazed. “You have always been a clever pupil. Perhaps too clever. Now, go!”

She faced the southern window. Portions of the blackened fields still blazed; the purple glow of morning was fouled by the reek of smoke and blood. Beyond the flaming landscape stood the vast crimson wilderness.

“I begin to understand the true reason you are called Shaper,” she said.

He sang the ancient song.

Once more an eagle, she glided from the window.

Behind her the pinnacle of the high tower thundered and was no more.