Seven Princes

14

He woke shivering in the cold rain. The world was made of mud and tall green blades of grass. He lay in a sea of that grass, staring into the heaving stormclouds. The wind tore at his naked flesh as he crouched like an animal, hugging his knees for warmth. His right fist clutched something, sodden purple fabric. By its silver trim he knew it – the cloak of his non-brother Tadarus. He pulled it about his pale shoulders, pulled the hood over his head. Now he could at least stand and face the hateful wind. The brightness of the gray day troubled him.

The rain had washed all the blood from his body, although under his fingernails lingered a brown residue, and there were congealed clots in his sopping black hair. He recalled the taste of the blood on his tongue, the sweet bitterness of it, the coppery tang. The power it brought him… the Dwellers in Shadow flocking to his command. Where were they now, his children of the night? His army of unseen terrors?

Rain swept across the Stormlands plains in all directions. At his back rose the green foothills and beyond those the black immensity of the Grim Mountains. The storm of blood and shadows, the storm he had commanded, had carried him southward. He saw the tumbling walls of Steephold in the diamond panes of his memory… his amorphous children pulling them down upon the heads of Men and Giants. The screaming, the feasting… the blood. The delicious flowing blood. Such a tempest his brother’s blood had fueled. Now he was spent. And alone.

“Ianthe,” he said into the swirling clouds. “Grandmother!”

Distant thunder was the only answer. Where was his power? Where were his ghostly servants? She had given him the key to greatness and he had squandered it in a single night of destruction. His stomach growled like a famished lion, but he did not hunger. He thirsted.

Blood… he must have more of it. The source of his power. And this time he must not waste it; he must learn to savor it. Like fine wine. Not swill and spew it forth like some drunkard wandering the back alleys of Udurum. This time he would drink wisely. But he would drink deeply.

His thirst was not only physical, but spiritual, emotional, mental. He longed for the hot sticky fluid of life. He drank some cold rain from his hands and grimaced at the bitter blandness of it. He spat, trying to rid his mouth of the earthy taste. There was no satisfying his thirst that way.

He walked thonter grirough the blowing storm. Far enough from the mountains he would find some village or trading post. He walked south, bare feet sinking in the mud. The day was leaden, but the sun lingered high behind those rushing slabs of cloud. Once it broke free and a golden ray fell across his face, piercing the shadows of his hood. He cried out and pulled the fabric tighter about his head, squinting. Then the golden orb hid once more behind a bank of thunderheads, and he was glad.

He walked all day, finding no signs of road, settlement, or traveler. A wild dog, lean and starving, ran howling from his gaze. Its base ichor held no appeal for him. Now that he had sampled the blood of Men, he would not drink that of a cur again. Not even his terrible thirst would force him to that.

As the gloom fell into purple dusk, and night rose from eastern plains to crawl westward, he saw the lights of a tiny village. It lay at the end of an unpaved road, surrounded by ploughed fields. Somewhere to the west that crude track must intersect the Northern Road, which ran from the Gates of Uurz all the way to Vod’s Pass. But this hamlet was far from the main way, nestled among a few scattered cedar trees. To its south a stream flowed heavily in the wash from the storm; likely some tributary feeding the waters of the Eastern Flow.

He walked toward the collection of thatched roofs and walls of baked mud. Goats and swine stared from their wooden-walled pens, moving away from him as he passed. Coils of sooty smoke rose from the chimneys. A central plaza stood empty but for a rudely sculpted statue of Vod the Giant-King.

At the nearest of the hovels he knocked on a wooden door. The smells of roasting lamb and vegetables wafted through a round window, and curtains of rainwater fell from the eaves. A face peered out the window, silhouetted by the glow of a hearthfire. Then the door opened slightly, a young girl barely visible in the crack.

“Yes?” She was no more than fourteen, a peasant, not especially lovely or comely. Brown hair in braids, small brown eyes.

“Can you help me?” he asked. His teeth chattered. “So cold…”

The girl turned away but did not shut the door. “It’s a man,” he heard her say. “A beggar. He has no shoes.”

Now the jowly face of an older woman peered out at him. “What do you want?” she asked.

“I am lost,” he told her, “and hungry. May I sit by your fire for a little while?”

She eyed him suspiciously but relented. “Come in,” she said. “Take off that filthy cloak.”

“I am naked underneath,” he said. The woman and her daughter exchanged a look of shock.

“Gods of Earth and Sky, you are a poor one,” she said. “Nellea, fetch a dry robe for this poor man.”

He trembled in the doorway until the girl returned with a simple robe of white linen. Mother and daughter turned away while he slipped off the wet cloak and pulled the smock over his thin body. His stomach growled. His lips twitched.

“Thank you for this hosp foy whileitality,” he said.

The hovel featured a table, a hearth, some blankets spread on a wooden floor, and a small back room, obviously a shared bedroom.

The woman picked up the purple cloak and wrung it with her hands just outside the door. The girl scooped broth from a boiling kettle into a stone bowl and set it at the table.

“What is your name, sir?” the girl asked. She sat across the table from him, some part of her still afraid, even in the midst of her overwhelming pity. Her mother hung the cloak on a peg next to the fireplace.

“Gammir,” he said. He stared into the steaming broth.

“Well eat, Gammir,” said the mother. “You may stay with us until the rain lets up, then you must go.”

He did not touch the bowl, or the wooden spoon she gave him.

“Ah,” the mother said, as if she had forgotten something. “You’ll need some water to wash that down.” She got up to fetch her bucket.

“No, thank you,” he said.

The woman smiled, her face pink and heavy with an old sadness. “I suppose you’ve gotten enough water out there this evening…”

“Call me Nellea,” said the girl. “My mother is Naomi. Please eat, Gammir. It is all right.”

“What is the name of this village?” he asked. Still he did not touch the broth. He stared at the fire. The warmth made his thirst grow, and the dancing flames made him think of the Red Dream. He no longer needed the bloodflower to enter that special place.

“Vod’s Way,” said Naomi. “You’ve seen the statue? They say the Giant-King once slept here, in this very spot, when this place was still a desert. That the stream sprang up to quench his thirst when he woke.”

Gammir laughed. The irony was delectable.

Naomi stood behind her daughter, hands on her shoulders.

“Where do you come from, Sir Gammir?” she asked. A cooking knife lay on the shelf at her right elbow, just below the circular window.

“From the south,” he said. “And the north. Do you believe the legend of your village?”

Naomi shrugged. “It’s what they say…”

Gammir nodded. “Yes, they say so many things about Vod, don’t they? Such a hero, such a legend… The truth is that Vod was a liar.”

Mother and daughter looked at one another. “You’d better go, sir,” said Naomi. “You are frightening my daughter…”

Gammir smiled. He smelled the blood pulsing in their wrists, necks, and thighs. His nostrils twitched. His stomach roared. The flames in the fireplace raged like the fire in his blood. r w"0em" width="27"› “I told you I was hungry,” he said.

“Then eat and go!” said the mother. She grabbed the cooking knife and pointed it at him. Nellea wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist, one eye still focused on Gammir, wide and white-rimmed.

Gammir nodded. “Oh, I will.” He lunged across the table, a white panther in the shape of a man.

Beneath the wind, rain, and thunder rang the screams of mother and daughter. If anyone heard they chose to ignore the sounds and stay warm inside their cozy huts.

Presently the white robe was stained to brightest red. The uneaten broth grew cold in its bowl. Gammir rose from his feast, took up the cloak of Tadarus, and walked into the storm once again, following the main track out of the village, then turning back into the tall grasses.

Lightning danced in the sky and in his veins. He laughed at the chaos above. He spread his arms, and the winds swirled about him. The Red Dream rose into his eyes, and he called for his grandmother. She came to him wreathed in vines of orange flame.

“Sweet Prince,” she cooed. “Now you see the truth of the blood. You know its power.”

“Yes.” He told her of the destruction he had wrought in the mountains, of his great triumph, and the exaltation of slaughter.

“Now you must learn not to waste your power,” she told him. He already knew this, but he did not mind her guidance. She doted on him as a mother on her favorite son. “Use it as you need, call upon the shadows when you must, but do not squander the gifts of the blood. I have much more to teach you.”

“I will come to you now,” he said. “Across the Golden Sea… to your black palace and your crimson jungles… to your soft bosom, warm as a hearthfire.”

For a timeless moment she held him in her arms, his head against her bosom.

This is what it was like to be loved.

“No,” she said. “Not yet. Go first to Shar Dni.”

“Why?” he asked, a petulant child.

“To spread terror and death among our enemies,” she said. “To drink more royal blood and harness its power. When you come across the water, you will come to me as a true Prince of Khyrei, with a legion of shadows at your back. Then our war song can truly begin.”

“I understand,” he whispered into the wind, and opened his eyes.

The moon and stars were lost in the upper dark, and the night poured down upon him. He must go east now, and he must not walk. He must ride.

He spoke an incantation, eyes blazing, and shadows raced toward him from the mouth of night. Down from the mountains they flowed like floods of dark water, converging among the grasslands at his feet.

“My children…” he said. The shapes of shifting s odth="27"darkness sniffed at his bare heels, wolvish, serpentine, ever-changing, and eager. They worshipped the blood in his belly, in his veins, spilled across his chest.

The shadows flowed into a shoulder-high form, an ebony stallion, snorting and stamping, digging razor hooves into the wet earth. Its mane flowed upward from its neck, like black seaweed waving in unseen waters. Wisps of dark smoke trailed from its nostrils. He pulled himself up onto its back, a saddle of shadow-stuff forming beneath him. The dark flow continued, wrapping about his body like slithering eels, shredding the stained robe. He wore a suit of darkness now, black mail like that of a Khyrein warrior, and the purple cloak of Tadarus flapped at his back. There was another non-brother to kill… but that would come later. A pleasure rushed and not savored was a pleasure wasted.

The black steed galloped across the plains. A horde of shadows followed in its wake, dark plumes trailing after a thunderbolt. Gammir laughed, breathed in the wet freedom of night, the cold air of liberation. The scent of ancient darkness. Faster and faster the phantom horse carried him across the Stormlands.

The blood lingered on his tongue, in his throat. He would not waste this power. Not as he had done at Steephold. He would conserve it, use it sparingly to satisfy his whims and the justice of his impending throne. The power was his and no matter how much of it he drained and swallowed and poured across the earth, there would always be more.

Always more ruby liquid flowing hot and luscious in the veins of the living.

Across an interval of darkness lay Shar Dni. An entire city filled with red blood, ripe for the taking. He threw his head back, laughing with terrible joy.

The wraith-horse sprouted black wings from its sides, flapping planes of leather which beat faster than its hooves, and it carried him into the sky. The moon, full and bloated, rose above a bank of clouds. He soared beneath its golden glow, howling gleefully into the night.

A red blush smudged the horizon just before dawn. A few cold stars glittered above the clouds, and the dark expanse of the Golden Sea lay directly ahead. As the night lost its hold on the world, the winged specter slowed its flight and Gammir sank toward the rolling plain. Between himself and the sea lay the River Orra, flowing through the broad Valley of the Bull, and there stood the white towers and blue pyramids of Shar Dni. Soon the dawn would rise up, turn the sea to molten gold, and set the city ablaze with light.

The shadow-stallion lost its wings, which dissolved like morning mist, and set its hooves upon solid ground. It had brought him to a high ridge overlooking the valley. He had covered a great distance in a single night and was not tired. The swirling shadows that followed him crept away into the hollows and crevices of the land, hiding from the sun’s crimson eye. The Golden Sea earned its name, reflecting the solar glow as it faded from red to orange to gold. The shadows were fled and gone from him now; only the black steed remained, stamping nervously, blood-colored eyes glaring defiantly at the sunrise.

The first rays of sunlight fell into the valley, and the river became a silver ribbon. The walls of Shar Dni were painted sky-blue, frescoed with clouds in shades of pearl and slate. A forest of ships’ masts and sails grew alonailnd it cag the wharves that straddled the mouth of the river delta. A white barge moved along the river, heading upstream for village trade. Flocks of white seabirds filled the air. Most of the galleons in the crescent harbor flew the white bull standard of the city, but a few triremes from the Jade Isles flew exotic sigils of green, scarlet, or white. A trading ship of Mumbaza had come all the way from the western side of the continent flying its Feathered Serpent banner, but there were no Khyrein vessels here. Khyreins were the enemies of Shar Dni on the open sea, so this was no surprise.

An ancient road wound from the Stormlands into the valley, skirting the outlying villages and farms. It ran directly to the river and the great stone arch of the Bridge of Clouds, which led to the city’s eastern gate. This green basin of cypress, palm, orchard, and delta marsh was a place of heat and calm winds. The Stormlands lay behind Gammir now, though his coming was a kind of storm in itself, rolling quietly toward the Valley of the Bull.

The black horse snorted and Gammir grabbed its mane. Before he turned it toward the winding roadway, he noticed a glimmering in the tall grass to his right. His night servants were all hidden now, but something hovered there in the watery sunlight. His eyes narrowed and the figure of a tall man wavered into sight.

Brother? called a voice that was not a voice. Perhaps he only heard it in his head. Or perhaps it floated to him on the morning wind blowing off the ocean.

Gammir stared at the apparition. “I have no brother,” he said.

Whose fine cloak do you wear? asked the specter. Its face was a wisp of morning mist, its body a reflection of something that was not truly there. As if sunlight struck a mirror and projected its glow onto a wall. But there was no wall. Only the vision and its non-voice.

“This purple rag?” said Gammir. “It belonged to a fool who thought himself a Prince. It is mine now.”

It was the cloak of your brother, said the apparition.

“No,” said Gammir, and the black horse trampled grass under its hooves.

The specter’s face came into focus. Gammir gasped at the depth of its blue eyes, the blackness of its hair, the narrow cut of the beard, the sculpted cheekbones of bronze hue.

“Tadarus?” The name fell from his mouth like a stone.

You know me, Brother, said the ghost. You wear my cloak. You carry my memory in your heart. You remember our play and our laughter… when we were boys.

Now a six-year-old Tadarus stood before him, face smeared with dirt, royal clothes untidy, clotted with grass and mud. Smiling up at him with round cheeks.

“You were never my brother,” Gammir told it. “Leave me. The sun is risen. You are not wanted here!”

Tadarus stood full-grown again, sunlit stalks of grass gleaming through his chest. You called me here. Your memories have powers that you do not even suspect.

Gammir called upon the power of the blood filling his stomach. “Go,” he said, waving an arm. “Never trouble me again.”

The ghost of Tadarus frowned at him.

Why did you murder me?

I tried to be your friend.

I loved you, Brother.

“You are not my brother!” screamed Gammir, but the ghost was gone. Had it ever truly been there at all? He blinked into the sun, then turned the black horse onto the road.

He passed by a peasant pulling a cartload of green vegetables up the hill. The man wore a cheap turban, loose pantaloons, and a necklace hung with copper medallions. Gammir ignored his staring eyes. Fearing the weird stallion, the man pulled his cart to the side of the road and let Gammir ride past. Farms came next, sloping green pastures where oxen and sheep grazed and trees grew heavy with pears, pomegranates, and lemons. Villagers bustling about their morning duties steered clear of this dark stranger and his ember-eyed steed. They must have taken him for some warrior of Uurz or Udurum come to join the navy and fight pirates. Gammir almost laughed at the dull lives playing out before him. These people were little better than the animals they kept in pens and corrals. He sensed the blood flowing beneath their thin brown skins. But the hunger was not upon him yet. He had been frugal with his power this time.

Well before midday he reached the great bridge. Traffic here was more dense: basket-toting laborers, wagons laden with produce, carts pulled by those who could not afford wagons, and the occasional camel-mounted nobleman. A guard at the bridge peered at Gammir, his eyes rimmed in black kohl beneath a turban-wrapped helmet. The spear of his office stood higher than the point of his helm, and a scimitar hung from his wide belt. He motioned Gammir to stop.

“What brings you to the city?” asked the guard, his voice thick with the Sharrian accent.

Gammir’s eyes ached in the full light of day, so his face lay in the shadows of the purple hood. “Duty,” he told the Sharrian.

“You are a soldier?” asked the guard.

Gammir laughed. “I am far more than that.”

The guard frowned. “What is your business? Where do you come from?” He wanted clear answers, not riddles and bravado.

Gammir considered the question. Killing this fool would complicate his entry into the city. “Udurum,” he said. “I come from the palace of Vod. My business lies with your King Ammon.”

The guard blinked and studied him. Gammir’s stately black mail and Udurum cloak were impressive enough to support his claim, so the man waved him onward. The black horse’s hooves clacked on the stone, and a crowd of peasants parted to allow the horse a clear route. Gammir rode toward the open gates at the far end of the span. More guards stationed there would require more lies. Easy enough to lie. Lying was its own kind of sorcery.

Thet ses at th same story earned him passage into Shar Dni’s main thoroughfare. The street was cobbled in black basalt, lined with hanging gardens, and ran directly toward the first of the temple pyramids. A flock of priests in pale robes, faces painted indigo, walked among the crowd. Dusky-skinned girls went barefoot, their faces hidden behind veils, almond eyes gleaming green like his mother. Less reputable women bared their faces and the tops of their breasts, flaunting their worldly goods in windows and along balconies. The city seemed infested with brothels. The smells of roasting meat, camel dung, rotten fruits, and a thousand spices filled the air. Sometimes a gust of salty sea wind blew all these smells to nothing, but they crept back into his nostrils as soon as the air grew still.

When Gammir was last in this city, he had been Fangodrel, and thirteen years old. His mother had brought him in a caravan to meet all her royal relatives, brothers, sisters, cousins. His grandfather, King Tadarus the First, had just died, and he remembered watching the coronation of Ammon, Shaira’s eldest brother. Tadarus and Vireon beamed with pride that day as their uncle took the oath of rulership and accepted his crown from the High Priest of the Sky God. Even then, Fangodrel had known the emptiness of the ritual and the spectacle. The people had cheered for their new monarch, and since then King Ammon was a much-beloved ruler. Yet his reign was plagued by growing tensions with Khyrei, which had now broken into marine warfare.

Prince Andoses was Ammon’s only son and heir to the throne. He was sent to gather support for a war against Khyrei. Gammir smiled as he circled the blue temple-pyramid. His shadow-children had slain Andoses at Steephold… torn him to bloody shreds. Word of his son’s death had not even reached the Sharrian King yet. Gammir would bring it. As he stood over the twitching body of Ammon, his lips wet with royal blood, he would tell the King that his son was dead by the same hand that now strangled him. He anticipated the exquisite moment.

Somehow he had always known his mother’s people were not his own. Shaira was his birth-mother, that much was true. But everything he was came from his father, the betrayed and murdered Prince of Khyrei. Soon this city would bow before the new Gammir. It had no inkling that a black viper crawled through its streets carrying poison toward its heart. When Ammon was dead, and all his royal family, Khyrei would sweep across the sea to take this valley and its riches. These smug, milling crowds would all be slaves and chattels.

As he rode into the Great Market between the four blue temples, he sensed a sea of blood washing about him, foaming and dark against his boots as he rode. All these dull-eyed sheep walking through a world whose truth they could hardly suspect. The first pang of thirst came upon him then, riding among the cloth merchants, jugglers, livestock sellers, and fruit vendors. He ignored it. The sounds of the living city rang in his ears like a storm, hawking voices, clanging metal, lilting music, shouting children, groaning camels, laughter, the squawking of caged parrots. This city was a rich feeding ground. It would be his.

Beyond the plaza rose the white spires of the Royal Palace. The black steed carried him across the bazaar, and he licked his lips.

A face in that milling crowd caught his attention. Blue eyes staring directly at him, as no Sharrian had dared to do. Dead Tadarus stood there, unmoving and unseen among the busy throng. No, it could not be Tadarus… only some passing resemblance. But emb had alwthen what of the ghost on the ridge top?

Perhaps it was the purple cloak that invited the dead man’s shade to haunt him. He considered dropping it from his shoulders and leaving it in the dust of the plaza. But he needed it as part of his disguise to gain entry to the palace. What’s more, he liked the cloak. It was the last piece of Udurum he could claim – until his Khyrein armies took the city. First Shar Dni, then Udurum. The Giants were dying; they could not defend it forever. War was coming and it flew on wings of shadow.

Tadarus stared at him from a sea of faces.

Gammir turned away. I’ll give him his damned cloak once I’ve entered the palace. Damn him. A nuisance in death as he was in life.

He looked back, but Tadarus was gone.

The outer wall of the palace loomed before him.

“I am the eldest Prince of Udurum,” he told the trio of guards at the gate. “I come to speak with my uncle, King Ammon.”

The guards bowed and opened the gates wide for his passage. A splendid courtyard lay beyond, a forest-orchard of palms, cypress, pear trees, marble fountains, and sand gardens. The white towers and cupolas of the palace proper rose above the green fronds of the trees.

“I’ll take you r mount to the stables, Lord,” offered a guard.

“No need,” said Gammir. He slid from the black horse, and it faded to nothing like smoke dispersing in sunlight.

The guards gasped and stepped away. Their fear was perfume to him. The blood in their veins rushed with fear and awe. They knew the mark of sorcery as a hare in the forest knows the tread of a predator. One of the men made the sign of the Sky God on his breast, and Gammir smiled. The man grew even more frightened at the sight of his feral grin.

“I’ll be your escort, Lord,” said the ranking guard.

“Take me directly to the King,” said Gammir. “I’ve come a long way and I am thirsty.”

The guard swallowed his fear and led Gammir through the courtyard to the golden doors of Ammon’s palace.

Beneath the branches of the cedars, among the hedges and roots and untrod patches of the royal gardens, a swarm of hungry shadows awaited the coming of night.