Seven Kings

4

At night she was an owl, flying high above the tangled swamp. The full moon stared at itself in the pools and fens of black water. Darkness swelled and writhed in the morass of weed, mud, and moss. The great mire was thick with vipers, slippery and venomous. If she were a true owl, she might swoop and grab one or two of them in her talons and feast on the sour flesh. In the back of her mind such owl-thoughts swam like tiny fish in the murky marsh pools. Yet she only stopped her flight when her wings grew tired, resting for a while among the clawed branches of a dead tree.

She marveled that anything at all could live in such a stagnant bog. The sheer multitudes of swimming, crawling, thriving beasts infesting the marshland amazed her. At times she spied great lizards plodding through the swamp, pulling their scaled bulk along on fat, muscular legs, dragging tails thick as trees. She stayed well above their snapping jaws.

During the day she was an eagle, gray-feathered and keen-eyed, soaring across the blue, bathed in the sun’s warm gold. It was difficult not to miss the green fields and ripe orchards of Yaskatha. The winds above the Eastern Marshes were cold and reeked of rot. She recalled the warm ocean breezes that caressed the seaside kingdom. The forest of colored sails rising from a bay filled with trade ships, lean galleys, tall freighters, and pavilioned pleasure barges. Every morning for the past seven years she had greeted the day on the palace veranda overlooking that blue-green expanse of ocean. Every day she dined on the fruits and vegetables cultivated in royal orchards, and sipped elder wines from the finest crystal. Every day, every night, she and D’zan, together. The Southern King and his northborn Queen. Now, below her, lay only a sodden wasteland, a realm with no solid foundation, where the fertility of nature had turned to rot and decay. So it was with her marriage.

She put such thoughts from her mind as she plied the sky, gliding through low clouds and skirting the tops of swamp fogs. East and north she flew, across lands where no man ventured to travel. The great fens were the dividing line between the outlying territories of Yaskatha and Khyrei. Although Khyrei claimed the marshes, there was no sign of settlement, fortress, or habitation. The marshland was not a place for humankind. It offered a thousand deaths and very little in the way of resources or sustenance. Yet, in its own way, this gloomy land was a blessing for both kingdoms. Surely there would have been war after war over this middle territory if living here were not so impossible. A range of impassable mountains could not have divided Yaskatha from Khyrei so effectively.

On the third day the land itself rose higher and the marshes gave way to a dense crimson jungle. The great trees stood like towers of blood, blossoming with vermilion leaves and scarlet fronds. Now the eagle sailed above the poison jungles of Khyrei proper, and there was no denying it. A black tower, spiked and thorny, dominated a high hill. It rose from the livid undergrowth to rival the blood oaks, a testament to the power of the city-state that built it. Her eagle eyes watched sentinels walking the parapets of that tower, figures in black armor and fanged masks. Their spears were tall with curved blades of gleaming bronze. A black pennon flew from the tower’s summit, and she could not guess what purpose the outpost might serve this far from the center of Khyrei’s walls. Then it dawned on her: As unlikely as an attack from the marshes would be, Khyrei remained vigilant along its western border. Another such tower rose several leagues to the north, so that no force of arms could emerge from the sucking grip of the marshes without being sighted. The Khyreins did not trust their neighbors across the great swampland. How many more watchtowers stood along the border between marsh and jungle?

By midday she found the winding green ribbon of the River Tah. It glimmered like the back of a colossal viper winding through the scarlet wilderness. Its waters were sluggish and full of black serpentine creatures. They rose at times from the rank flow to display fin, fang, or tendril, perhaps to grab a stray bird or water lizard, then sink back into the deeper waters. Flocks of copper-colored bats flitted from bank to bank. Once she saw a great crimson tiger drinking from the river, a gorgeous beast as large as a pony. It fled into the shadows as she soared past, following the river’s course directly northward.

In late afternoon she spotted the spires of the black city on the horizon. It rose from the jungle like a gleaming mountain of jet, dominating the western banks of the river delta. Here the Tah flowed into the Golden Sea, dropping its green life into those depthless waters. There were few riverboats that dared to plumb the jungle’s interior, yet beyond the massive walls of Khyrei City the harbor was filled with black-sailed war galleons. They outnumbered the bright sails of trading vessels ten to one. She did not wonder at the sight, for there were few countries now that would actively trade with Khyrei. Its reputation as a haven for pirates and sea raiders had traveled the length of the continent. These triple-sailed warships with blood-trimmed hulls would as often sink a merchant vessel as allow it passage on the trade routes.

Most of the traders moored in the harbor flew the orange and yellow standards of the Jade Isles. She could not readily identify any other sails among the black fleet. Yet she did notice the image stitched onto every one of the black sails, the insignia of a scarlet crown bearing seven points. Years ago, when this fleet sailed north to lay waste the city of Shar Dni, these ships had flown the sign of the white panther, sigil of their sorceress Queen. The red crown had replaced the pale panther on the same field of black.

The sight of this new standard lent credence to rumors that the city’s old Emperor had returned from death. Gammir the Bloody. The Undying One. These were the names they called him, if Yaskathan spies were to be heeded. Ianthe the Claw was no more, annihilated at the Fall of Shar Dni by Queen Alua’s white flame. Just as Fangodrel the Kinslayer, heir to Ianthe’s dark power, was slain by the sword of his own brother Vireon. So Khyrei’s forces had retreated, and the wicked nation had lain quiet for years. Sharadza’s three brothers had finally stopped killing one another, leaving only one still alive. Unless…

Now an Emperor from decades past had returned to revive the power of the black city. Or had he? She had flown a long way to discover the truth for herself. She hoped it was indeed the Gammir of old returned from death, for if what she suspected was instead the truth… Best not to consider it until proof emerged.

The jungle subsided below her, replaced by a swathe of orderly fields. Thousands of pale slaves labored among the rows of crops. Green plantations encircled the city except on the north and east, which were claimed instead by river and ocean. Narrow roads ran among the sprawling farmlands, often busy with slave-drawn carts and yoked oxen pulling loads of produce. Unlike Yaskatha, where most growing lands were lined with fruiting trees, nearly every crop nurtured here grew close to the ground. She wondered if citrus trees would take root and thrive in this place, or only be poisoned by the sour soil. Then the black walls of the city reared before her, and she glided between the peaks of barbed towers.

The city walked in fear, moving in slumped clusters between buildings of low black stone. Even among the sprawling garden estates of noble families there was no single structure to rival the palace of onyx and obsidian. Its central spire rose above all into a vaulted crest surmounted by seven curving spikes, a manifestation in stone of the seven-pointed crown woven into the sails of the black warships.

Clusters of huge bats hung from the eaves and battlements of the tower. The beating of her eagle wings disturbed them, sent clouds of them flapping into the sky like dark fogs screeching with thirst. Fearing they might swarm her, she dived low into the heart of the city, gliding along a wide street where pallid laborers traded with gray-robed shopkeepers. A squad of demon-masked soldiers cut a path through the milling crowds. She flew into the shadows of an alley and settled there among the filth and debris.

She took the shape of a Khyrein woman, middle-aged, whose long dark hair had started to turn gray. Her feathers became a drab shift tied with a black sash, and her feet stood upon the wet flagstones in sandals of worn leather. Grabbing a crooked stick to serve as a support, she walked from the stinking alley into the crowds of Khyrein peasants. There was nary a smile to be seen or laugh to be heard among the shuffling multitude. The wrinkles of deprivation and exhaustion were etched deeply on these people’s faces. Even their clothing reflected this lack of vitality, wrapped as they were in tunics and togas of gray or faded black homespun. Their hems were worn, the soles of their sandals thin, and a few wore jewelry of copper, bronze, or tarnished silver rings on bony fingers. They smelled of sweat and fear and denial.

There were no beasts of burden allowed in the city other than soldiers’ horses, so workers from the fields carried baskets of produce on their shoulders or balanced atop their heads. There were no public musicians here, no great works of art lining broad thoroughfares, no poets spouting verse in the dismal dugouts that served as taverns. There was only a hushed murmur of voices, tinged with worry and suffering. She also sensed an urgency to conclude the day’s business as the sun sank beyond the city’s western wall. These people feared the night.

The clomping of soldiers’ boots drowned out the wheedling voices of merchants, and the black-armored squad strode by. Their captain kicked a small boy into the mud. In the dullness of his youth, the sickly lad had failed to yield the right of way. She feared to next see one of their curving spearheads pointed at the boy’s heart, yet the masked ones continued on their way. A starving child was obviously beneath the notice of their spears or their charity. She tossed the child a jewel from her purse as she followed the group of soldiers, a tiny yellow topaz. Drenched in mud, he snatched up the stone and ran like a frightened hare into the maze of booths and vendors.

Now she walked behind the guards as one of their own. Her body had grown tall, sheathed itself in blackened plates of bronze; her shoulders broadened and a mask rose like a black vapor to obscure her face in the manner of all Khyrein warriors. Her walking stick became a tall barbed spear like those of the soldiers she followed. The squad entered a great plaza ringed by more open booths and vendor stalls, yet dominated at its center by a single great effigy.

The statue was carved of black basalt, like most of the city’s structures. A man with broad shoulders and long legs, draped in a flowing robe flecked with tiny sprays of quartz. The effect was an imitation of the night sky itself, hanging about the figure’s body, shimmering against the purple of early dusk.

As she marched closer, safe in her disguise at the rear of the squad, she saw better the head and face of the idol. A lean wolfish face, its eyes represented by rubies set like bloody almonds in the sockets of the dark skull. A seven-pointed crown rising from its brow. One arm extended toward the west, a globe of crystal in its palm clutched by clawed fingers. The symbolism of the sphere was lost on her. The other hand was high above the crown, lifting a gigantic version of the Khyrein spear. This was an image of Gammir himself, there could be no doubt. It radiated an aura of conquest, war, and sheer defiance. An arrogant Godling giving challenge to the world.

She studied the stony face as well as she could without tripping over her feet as she marched. Could it be? The resemblance was… Yes, it was there. Distorted perhaps, or exaggerated to evoke the lupine qualities, the ferocious grace. Her heart sank. A quickening in her belly that was the first fluttering of genuine fear. Suddenly she understood the folk of Khyrei. She knew what they feared.

Still, she must see him with her own eyes to be sure. She would know if it were truly him. She could not fail to know her own half-brother.

On the plaza’s far side lay the disgusting spectacle of the slave block. Such brazen cruelty amazed and appalled her. Khyreins selling Khyreins to the highest bidder. Frail children in rags stood upon the platform, linked neck to neck by an iron chain. A crowd of nobles, merchants, and foreign traders cast their bids with raised hands as the slavemaster touted the physical features and beauty of his stock. A line of waiting slaves cowered behind the platform in the shadow of masked guards. Farther back among those unfortunates she saw darker skins, prisoners taken in sea raids from the galleons of peaceful kingdoms. Every sailor knew it was better to die spitted on a Khyrein blade than to be taken alive for torture and servitude.

A handful of gold changed hands and a small boy was led away by a tall slaver She turned her face from the scene. She was not here to confront this injustice now. That time would come, but it was not today. Swallowing her revulsion, she bent her mind to the march, focusing on the armored backs of the men she followed.

The gates of the palace lay open before the Onyx Guards. She entered as one of them into a splendid courtyard. Here in the shadow of the black towers a tiny paradise thrived and bloomed in every shade of red. Blood oaks from the distant jungle grew here, surrounded by lesser vegetation of every kind, including several Yaskathan pomegranate trees. She thrilled to see them heavy with fruit, and knew her theory about poison soil had been foolish. Earth was earth, and growing things did not discriminate. The petals of gargantuan flowers lined a path of black stones, and she followed the squad toward the nearest of the guardhouses skirting the lush grounds. Some distance to her left stood the main doors of the palace proper.

The heavy iron portals were open wide, a quintet of legionnaires standing at attention before the opening. On the broad steps before them lay two black and scarlet tigers, each chained by the throat and anchored to the gauntlet of a guard. The beasts licked their paws and drowsed upon the marble, but she guessed they would tear apart anyone who sought to mount those steps unasked.

She slipped away from the marchers and entered a close group of trees where the foliage would hide her from prying eyes. The guards marched on until they disappeared through the portal of their barracks hall. A few seconds later, an identical squad marched out of the same building. It wound back down the courtyard path to begin its evening rounds in the city. In the ruddy glow of twilight, the palace towers seemed darker and more terrible. A few orange lights sprang up in scattered windows low and high.

Discarding the warrior shape, she stepped through a curtain of green ivy. A secluded grove lay beyond, rife with long-stemmed flowers the color of amethysts. She drank water from a stone fountain and sat in her true form on a tangle of mossy roots. She sighed as night coalesced above the blood oaks. She should have been thinking about what lay ahead of her, but instead her mind went back to Yaskatha. Back to D’zan. She lifted a palm to her eye and wiped away the moisture before it could escape to flee down her cheek.

Their first two years together were bliss, a heady blend of passion and splendor. Since the time Sharadza was a small girl reading the histories and tales of elder kingdoms, she had dreamed of a Prince who would one day become her husband and King. D’zan was everything she had imagined. When she first met the determined lad striving to regain his kingdom from the Usurper Elhathym, her heart had recognized him. Months later, when he gave his life to regain that lost throne, it was her magic that helped forge a new body for his undying spirit. D’zan’s first act as King of Yaskatha was to ask for her hand. How could she refuse the love in his reborn eyes, the culmination of all her secret hopes?

The wedding was a grand affair, high point of Yaskatha’s victory celebrations. The False King, a grave-robbing necromancer, was vanquished, and the Crown Prince annointed King at last. Only days later she became his Queen before a cheering multitude of sun-browned Yaskathans. She recalled with fondness the brace of doves set free at the zenith of the ceremony, the hundred musicians, the ranks of nobles draped in silk and jewels, the thousand bright sails gleaming in the harbor beyond D’zan’s city. From a balcony high atop the palace, King and Queen had waved to the masses, their hands tied by a golden chain in symbolic union. This was no political marriage. It was love, deep and soul-stirring.

The months that followed were full of banquets, feasting, parades, and quiet moments stolen by the young lovers for their own private pleasures. They lay together in secluded orchard groves while legionnaires stood guard beyond the trees, or they frolicked in forgotten alcoves behind gilt tapestries. The royal bedchamber was full of golden daylight, salty sea breezes, and the urgent moans of love. Man and woman learned together the mysteries of their bodies as they shared the deepest precincts of their souls. D’zan’s presence consumed her every moment, even when duties called him from her for a day of kingly concerns. Always he returned to her, as the moon returns to the sky at the close of day. Always she received him as the ocean received the weary sun at twilight.

All the pomp and jewelry, the adoration of commoner and noble alike, the manifold luxuries of the palace and its expansive gardens… all of these things meant very little. She had been raised in the great castle of her father in Udurum, and the ways of a Queen were not far removed from those of a Princess. She relished exploring the great library at the heart of Yaskatha’s palace, yet even that treasure trove of knowledge could not keep her from D’zan’s side for long. She craved the smell of his skin, the power of his arms, the weight of his chest against her own, the heat of his lips. She even misplaced her passion for sorcery. She had discovered a far more potent magic.

Her joy was magnified when her mother sailed from Udurum to visit the Kingdom of Orchards. The aging Shaira found peace in the warm climate and opulence of Yaskathan high society, so she decided to stay. She had left the ruling of the City of Men and Giants to Vireon, and she seemed to come alive again with the blessings of the southern sun.

Late in the second year of the marriage D’zan had changed. Something restless and irksome had grown within him like a slow fever. Eventually he confronted her with anger. The morning was like any other, yet their lovemaking had lacked fervor. He was distracted, preoccupied, and eventually pulled away from her to pace between the pillars of rosy marble. A cool wind blew in through the harbor window, chilling her skin. She gathered the silken sheets about her and waited for him to speak. Outside, seagulls cried out strange alarms.

At last she could take no more of his silence. “What is it?” she asked.

He stopped, hands behind his back, and turned to face her. She could not tell if it were anger or heartbreak on his face. His eyes, as green as her own, sparkled like wet emeralds.

“Why have you given me no heir?” he asked. The words were a slap across her cheek.

She had no answer for him. She swallowed a lump in her throat.

“For two years now we have lain together, nearly every day and every night,” he reminded her. It sounded like an accusation. “Yet your belly grows no rounder… Your womb rejects my seed. Have you… have you prevented this through some sorcerous means?”

The slap was now a whip scourging her back. Though he did not touch her, he could not have wounded her more deeply.

“I…” she stammered, unable to breathe. “I… never thought-”

“What?” he asked, stepping nearer to the bed. “You never thought a King might need an heir? A son to wear his crown when he dies? Or at the very least a daughter to indicate that a son might later be born? How can I believe this from you?”

“You must believe it,” she said, wrapping the sheet closer about her naked body. “Because I say it is true!” Despite her efforts not to do so, she wept. How long had this quiet storm been building inside him? How long had he doubted her intentions?

“Then why?” he demanded. It was frustration that ignited his anger, not her actions. “Why has my seed not taken root?”

She looked away from him, casting her attention beyond the window toward the wild blue sea. She could not tell him. She feared it might destroy him. She remembered the words of Iardu the Shaper on the day she had woven a new body for D’zan’s stubborn soul to inhabit.

He will live as other men, said the Shaper, and feel as other men. But he will not be as other men. We have given him a gift that carries its own price, for his body will not age as does one born of woman. If he is not slain he may live far beyond his desire to do so. Neither will he sire any sons, or daughters, for the mortal body that could produce such seeds has perished. Yet he loves you, and this he may do without impediment, just as he may freely rule his kingdom. We have shaped a vessel for the soul, but it is an imperfect one. This is the best we can do.

Knowing this, she had still chosen to work the Great Spell. Not to do so would have left D’zan’s spirit trapped inside a decaying body. The act of sorcery saved him from becoming a monster, yet could not restore him to full manhood. She could never tell him this. For all other purposes, he was a man, with a man’s hungers, desires, and emotions. The man she loved above all others. He might become the greatest King that Yaskatha had ever known, if he chose to pursue the goal. He might bring a new age of prosperity and peace to his nation. But never would he be able to father a child. The body that could have done so was destroyed by the Usurper Elhathym.

“I am barren.” The lie fell from her lips, heavy as a stone wrenched from her gut. “I was afraid to tell you.” Her tears fell to stain the bedsheets.

D’zan sighed. He wrapped his arms about her. He said nothing, and his touch was tender. Yet she had confirmed his fear. Her lie had preserved his pride.

He said nothing more about it after that day. He still lay with her, still smothered her with his passion, though not as often. He claimed pressing royal duties. Often she did not see him for days at a time. Yet always he returned to ravish her in the darkness of their chamber, as if she were some secret love rather than his ordained Queen and wife.

She renewed her interest in the study of history, philosophy, and sorcery. She spent most of her days in the library, or on the stone benches of the palace gardens, a book nestled on her lap. She dined frequently with her mother and those ladies of noble personage whose presence she could tolerate. She preferred the company of books and scrolls. Twice Iardu visted her in the form of a great eagle. He spoke of strange spirits, forgotten spells, and distant worlds. Some impending doom seemed always to worry him, but he was evasive. Always he flew from her at dawn, back to his lonely island, she supposed. The ageless wizard said many things she did not understand, or would not understand until years later. She learned not to forget a word that he mumbled.

In the fourth year of the marriage, the first of many black rumors floated across the marshes like poison vapors. The lost Emperor of Khyrei had returned. Gammir the Bloody. Now they called him Gammir the Reborn. It was Vod, Sharadza’s own father, who had killed Gammir nearly four decades ago. Yet the word of his return brought nightmares. Yaskathan mariners, as well as merchants from the Jade Isles and Mumbazan traders, spoke once more of Khyrein piracy. The marauding of the black-and-crimson ships had ceased for years, but now they plied the waves again, preying on any vessels in their path.

D’zan sat in long meetings with his advisors. Many who shared his confidence urged him toward war on the returned Emperor of Khyrei, yet there were no facts to prove Gammir’s return. Sorcerers could defy death a thousand times, so it was quite possible. Yet it was just as likely that some new lord, hungry for greatness and power, had taken the name of the old Emperor and used it to secure the throne. D’zan asked her to join a council meeting, against the wishes of his advisors. They did not care for what she had to say, or for her pleas for caution and diplomacy. They wanted war. That day she realized that these were the same advisors who had turned D’zan away from her, whispering in his ear the necessity for an heir. They were the ones who had ruined her marriage.

She had worked her magic on a garden pool, looking across the world as if through a mirror. Although she could spy the frosty peaks of the northlands and the Giant forests of Uduria, even the dry streets of parched Uurz, she could not bring the capital of Khyrei into focus. There was indeed some great power there, something that blocked her magical vision. It could be that Gammir the Undying had actually returned. She called for Iardu on the night winds, but he did not come.

D’zan was unsurprised at the failure of her sorcery, as if her lack of childbearing had proved her ineffectiveness in all areas. Yet he did not chastise her when she stood powerless to confirm the Khyrein rumors. He only kissed her forehead and stalked off for another conference with his generals.

She heard them speak of an embassy to Mumbaza. They would draw the Boy-King to their war by exploiting his eagerness to prove himself a man. Undutu was about to claim the throne from his mother the Queen-Regent. The Son of the Feathered Serpent would be a Boy-King no more. Now he would be the King on the Cliffs, the Jeweled One, as his fathers were before him. She had little doubt that Undutu’s young ego could be stroked enough to end Mumbaza’s long peace. An ambassador from Uurz had already pledged King Tyro’s allegiance to Yaskatha, supporting whatever action they might take against the Khyrein pirates. For the second time in her young life, Sharadza sensed the reek of war rising on the air, the scent of warm blood flowing through street and gutter, dripping from the gnarled fingers of dead men.

So it went for months on end. Squabbling ambassadors and rumors of sea battles. It seemed Uurz could not commit itself to war after all, for the Twin Kings were in disagreement. Lyrilan the Scholar checked the martial ambitions of his brother Tyro the Sword. The King of Mumbaza was not as eager to prove his war prowess as expected. He was a thinker, this dark-skinned youth, raised by his Queen-Mother to be cautious, and counseled by Khama the Feathered Serpent to maintain the harmony of the Pearl Kingdom. Meanwhile the depradations of the Khyrein pirates continued, and ships were lost in every season. Perhaps it was these frustrations with political matters, added to his fears of remaining heirless, that drove D’zan into the arms of Lady Cymetha.

At first she was only a whiff of perfume, a sweet odor that lingered on D’zan’s skin when Sharadza came near him. The scent of another woman’s lust. The reek of betrayal. She followed him one night in the form of a black cat, gliding between the columns of the great hall and skirting the hems of tapestries. Earlier, he had claimed that a meeting with his advisors would keep him late into the night. He told her not to wait up for him. Several times now he had done this, slipping into the royal bed much later with that strange scent lingering on him.

She followed D’zan into the domain of the courtesans, directly to Cymetha’s chamber. She listened at the door with her feline ears pricked, and heard the sounds of their passion. It was the sound of what she had lost. Something precious gone forever. A sparkling diamond dropped into the ocean’s dark abyss.

She did not confront him the next day, or the next. Yet no longer did she let him touch her. He would never touch her again; not until he admitted what he had done. What he continued to do. So months passed in icy silence, as politics and infidelity claimed the King’s attentions, and the pages of ancient tomes wrapped a protective sheath about her heart. Everyone at the court knew of D’zan’s affair; yet he would not insult her by speaking of it directly. Likewise, she uttered not a word to spoil her mother’s happy existence among the courtly idylls of Yaskatha. Yet even Shaira must have wondered why her daughter would give her no grandchild to coddle. Sharadza evaded her mother’s deft questions on the matter.

Three months ago she saw Cymetha’s round belly for the first time. The pregnant courtesan was roaming the halls outside her newly appointed private suite in the company of seven serving maids. Cymetha’s status had improved greatly. And why not? She carried the King’s only heir inside her ambitious womb.

Sharadza confronted D’zan that night, marching openly into a meeting of his advisors. She brushed aside their blather of war and justice, sweeping them bodily from their chairs with a great wind. Sensing her anger, fearing her power, they fled the room. D’zan was outraged and fuming. He rose from the table, yellowed maps rustling in the air like mad Yaskathan pigeons.

She slapped him. One of her jeweled rings left a tiny cut across his cheek. It gleamed scarlet, a mark of shame. He said nothing, protests dying in his mouth. She stared at him, and again her eyes betrayed her with tears.

“I must have an heir,” he said. His voice was ragged with arguing, weary as that of an old man, though he looked not a day older than when they had married. Golden hair fell about his shoulders as her magic winds died away, and the gems in his crown sparkled. “A King must have an heir, Sharadza.”

“She is a whore,” Sharadza whispered. The child in Cymetha’s belly could not be D’zan’s, would never be his. She wanted to tell him now, to shatter his illusion and strip away his arrogance. But she could not. She could not tell him plainly that Cymetha had lain with some dozen other men. That one of them had substituted his own potency for D’zan’s powerless seed. Of course Cymetha knew this. Of course she had ensured her pregnancy. Such was her path to Queenhood. The child would be an imposter, raised to be the next King of Yaskatha, with only its mother to know it was a fraud. A bastard, like Sharadza’s own brother Fangodrel.

Bitter, unhappy, wicked Fangodrel. The thought of him stung her like the point of a dagger. Suddenly a flame lit inside her skull. A fear blossomed in her stomach where D’zan’s seed could not. She turned and walked away.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She pretended not to hear.

She spent that night in the library, reading by the light of a dozen fat candles. She studied the ancient accounts of sorcerers rebirthing themselves, forming new bodies from vapor, ice, earth, or shadow. The spirit was eternal… Sorcerers could not die because they had embraced this truth. In fact, many sages claimed that a sorcerer could not truly rise to power until he had shed his earthly body as a moth sheds the cocoon. The new body, the one built of sorcery and raw elements, that was the sorcerer’s true self. As such, it could never be destroyed, only created and re-created. She knew this firsthand, as Elhathym had re-formed himself upon the stolen throne of Yaskatha after falling to D’zan on the field of battle. Yet she had helped Iardu capture Elhathym’s life force. A dark vapor trapped inside a crystal prison.

Seven short years ago she had watched in a reflecting pool the scene of slaughter that destroyed Shar Dni. She saw one brother slay another to gain revenge for the death of a third. Vireon cut the head from Fangodrel’s withered body. Poor Tadarus, her oldest brother, was avenged. She watched as Vireon the Slayer wept over the corpse, realizing himself now as much a kinslayer as Fangodrel. She had seen, and yet she had not realized.

Fangodrel had inherited the sorcery of his true bloodline. The son of Gammir the First, the Prince known as Gammir the Second, was Fangodrel’s true father. Thirty years ago Shaira had been raped by the Khyrein Prince, and Vod had repaid the offense with death for both the Emperor and his son. Yet a seed of darkness had been planted in Shaira that grew into Fangodrel. A viper curling in the bosom of the north until one day it struck, delivering its poison to the heart of her family. Tadarus had been the first to die.

Could Fangodrel truly be dead? Or could this new Khyrein Emperor be her depraved brother reborn via sorcery? If Vireon had freed him from his earthly body, Fangodrel might have formed a new one. He might have taken on the name of his true father and grandfather, neither of whom he had ever known.

He might be this new Gammir. The Undying One.

She brooded on the possibility for weeks, cloistering herself in the library or her bedchamber. D’zan no longer joined her there. He took a separate chamber for himself and his other Queen, the one who would bear his child. Perhaps he hoped Sharadza would eventually forgive him and accept her place as Second Wife. She cared nothing about losing the title of Queen, although it would surely happen. It was the loss of D’zan that pierced her heart. But she put that aside during the researching of her new theory.

On the night of the bastard child’s birth, she went into the gardens alone. She breathed deeply of the citrus air tinged with a salty breeze. The labor cries of Cymetha rang from an upper window where torches guttered and midwives worked to preserve the bloodline of Yaskatha.

It’s all a lie, she realized. All of this… the riches… the power… the world that Men build to hide themselves from the touch of Reality.

Honor… loyalty… love.

All lies.

She needed Truth. It was the only antidote for the poisoning of her soul. She wiped her eyes. The sounds of a squawling newborn drifted through the tower window.

She bent her head and grew smaller, sprouted black and gray feathers from her flesh, flexed her sharp talons, and flapped her owlish wings. The palace and its gardens grew small beneath her. She flew into the dim east, toward the festering marshlands where loneliness was but one of many dangers.

A gardener found her sitting there among the roots. It was a young Khyrein slave girl carrying a pitcher of water to feed the blossoms. The slave gasped, clutching the container to the breast of her white tunic. Her dark eyes were full of fear below her shaved pate. She had obviously never seen a stranger in this place. Certainly not a green-eyed maiden with northern skin dressed in robes of Yaskathan purple.

Sharadza calmed her with a smile. With a wave of her hand she left the girl sleeping on a bed of moss. Taking now the girl’s form, she wandered toward the wide marble steps where the scarlet tigers lay purring between rigid sentries. Carrying the water vessel, she walked timidly up the steps, and the guards did not spare her a glance. The tigers, too, paid her no attention. No beast would, unless she willed it.

Inside the vaulted hall of the palace she walked on thick carpets between rows of onyx pillars. Mosaics and tapestries adorned the walls, inlaid with blood-red rubies, sky-blue sapphires, and starlight diamonds. The patterns were mostly arcane, abstract. Khyrei’s artisans did not celebrate their great thinkers, warriors, and sages inside the palace. Instead they carved and sculpted only images of the Emperors and Empresses that had reigned over the jungle kingdom throughout the centuries. She entered a colonnade where the statues of past tyrants and their imperious wives stared down at her with eyes of obsidian. She supposed Gammir the First and Ianthe the Claw must stand among them, but she did not scan the graven pedestals for their names.

Arched corridors led in every direction from the central chamber, and the skylights glittered with brilliant stars. Night lay heavy over Khyrei now, and the palace interior was thick with dancing shadows. She felt unseen eyes at her back, but turned to see nothing. She picked a corridor at random and fled down it as a tiny black rat. The water pitcher sat unnoticed on the flagstones behind her.

Rodent senses came alive; she smelled blood and sweat and roasting meat. Hunger swelled in her tiny belly, but she denied it. Skittering through frescoed galleries and winding passages of polished jet, she found a black stair spiraling up. From its position she guessed this was the central tower, the thorn-crowned immensity that dominated the entire structure. She took the stairs one at a time, staying close to the wall. Now she smelled what she was looking for… an odor of the foulest sorcery. It called her upward, toward its secret source.

As a rat she passed demon-faced guards standing before doors of archaic iron. A quintet of slaves came rushing down the stairs carrying the body of a sixth one, a pale youth with a red gouge in his throat, like a dripping blossom that had opened in the flesh. It reeked of the sorcery she scented. Yet the stronger odor came from above…

She climbed past floor after floor of arched entries and locked chambers. At last she found the great iron door at the top of the winding stair. It stood wide open, and a bloody glow flickered into the stairwell, staining the black basalt to crimson.

There, in the doorway, limned in scarlet torchlight, stood a tall and thin figure. A long robe hung about the gaunt frame, glittering like a shroud of dark jewels. Here was the man-sized version of the great stone effigy that towered over the plaza. A spiked crown of onyx and rubies sat upon his brow.

In the lean face a pair of eyes gleamed like specks of tarnished gold touched by moonlight. They peered down the stairs at her, and she stood once more in her true form, one hand against the cold wall to support herself. The yellow eyes burned.

She had no voice. She wanted to become an eagle again, to fly from this place. She should never have come here.

“Sister,” spoke the voice, “I had almost forgotten your great beauty.” It flowed into her ears like honey, sweet and laced with clear venom.

She studied those cruel wolf-eyes. It could not be him. This… thing… was too different. Too inhuman. Too beautiful and deadly.

“Fangodrel?” she whispered.

The shadowy King shook his head.

“Gammir,” he corrected her. “I’ve always been Gammir.”

A wide grin showed white fangs.

She turned and leaped down the stairs, body melting, feathers sprouting, heart pounding. But it was too late.

Spreading leathery pinions, he struck like a great jungle bat, a sable wind wrapping her in darkness.