Seven Princes

29

At the top of the Great Earth-Wall, overlooking a sea of churning stormclouds, the three riders stopped at midday. They shared a meal of mangoes from the orchards of Mumbaza. The northern half of the world stretched away from the precipice, hidden beneath a blanket of mist and thunder. Gold sparks of lightning danced across the cumulus, yet here at the top of the continental cliff the air was warm and dry. The rising echoes of distant tempests reached their ears. They traveled the narrow strip of mossy ground between the sudden lip of the cliff and a dark wall of dense forest. To east and west the precipice reached as far as the eye could see, a dividing line between the lower world and the wilderness of the High Realms.

A fourth horse stood riderless, its flanks heavy with provisions. The four steeds nibbled at the green grass while Vireon, Alua, and Andoses stretched their legs and enjoyed the sweet southern fruits. At times the clouds below the crag parted, and vast swathes of green plain shone through, only to be obscured a moment later by the next bank of scudding clouds. The two Princes looked north across the roof of the Stormlands, but Alua’s eyes searched the shadows between the red-barked trees and tangled skeins of undergrowth. There were no mighty Uyga trees here, but some of the rust-hued and black-boled hardwoods grew nearly as high, if not as thick in the trunk. The songs of birds and insects flowed from the deep thickets. Occasionally the growl of a hunting panther shook the foliage, or at night the far-flung howls of wolves.

Vireon turned from the precipice to Alua. She chewed the flesh of her mango while staring into the forest. It called to her, the wild freedom of its deep hollows and unseen groves. He felt it too. Yet while he could easily ignore the call of the hunter, she heard a more urgent call. He did not quite understand it, but he recognized it. She longed to roam the wildwood as an eagle longs to fly.

“The forest is haunted,” Andoses had said on their first day up from the steppes. After three days crossing dry grasslands and two more scaling a series of escarpments, they had reached the western rim of the Earth-Wall. Their course now lay directly east, atop the cliff all the way to Allundra on the Golden Sea.

“Haunted by what exactly?” Vireon had asked. This was his first sight of the High Realms.

Andoses shrugged in his saddle. “Ghosts, spirits, the restless dead, I suppose,” he said. “Legend says a proud people once lived there under the protection of a Forest God, but some plague or destruction fell upon them. The Mumbazans will not hunt there, nor the Yaskathans at its southern edge.”

“It is beautiful,” said Alua, already under the spell of the spreading trees.

“Nearly as fair as the northern woodlands,” said Vireon. “Perhaps even more fair for its mysteries. What splendid gam›e must lie within.”

“Perhaps we’ll snare a wayward hare, or take a quail with this Mumbazan bow,” said Andoses. “But we’ll do well to stay clear of those branches.”

“Worry not, Cousin,” said Vireon. “We’ll move hastily across this high trail and get you to your crown. There is vengeance waiting for us. I am as eager as you are to grasp it.”

“Twelve days should put us in Allundra,” said Vireon. “Then a fast ship from its port is only a few days to Shar Dni. Would that we could fly there instead.”

Six days of riding between precipice and forest had brought them here, where the Wall curved northward for several leagues. “This region is known as the Promontory,” said Andoses. “A kind of peninsula that stretches north a while before doubling back to its eastward course. Here we must hold steady and cross a league or so of treacherous woodlands. However, there is a path here used by Royal Messengers. It should bring us safely through if we cross the stretch of woods by daylight.”

Vireon fed the rest of his mango to the packhorse and rubbed its nose. He looked east into the thinly wooded peninsula of Wall. It was not the forest proper, but its shadows were no less murky. Alua wrapped her arms about his neck and laid her head upon his shoulder. The sunlight sparkled on her golden hair as it fell across his chest.

“Your cousin fears the wild,” she whispered.

Vireon pursed his lips. “He is a city-bred Prince. Walls and towers give him comfort.”

She smiled and kissed him. “I am glad you do not fear the wild, Vireon.”

His lips lingered against hers until Andoses’ subtle cough made him pull away. “Let us ride,” he said. “A few hours of sun are left… We should cross these Promontory woods with ease.”

Andoses made the sign of the Sky God at his chest. He nodded, but his nervousness was clear in the narrowing of his eyes, the deepness of his breathing. Vireon loved him and worried for him at times. In the past few weeks Andoses had become more like a brother to him than a cousin. Having him near made it easier to bear the loss of Tadarus, and the memories that haunted him each evening. How many times had he promised vengeance to his brother’s ghost? Once he dreamed that Tadarus came to him on a black horse and offered him a golden crown. He could not hear what the dream-Tadarus said, but he smiled at Vireon the same way he had when he was alive. Vireon spoke to no one about the dream.

The horses picked their way through a carpet of moss beneath the red-bark trees. The path was broad and easy to spot, yet it was not well tended. The undergrowth was less thick along its route, and the steeds found their way naturally onto it, skirting thorn bushes, clumps of fern, and rotting logs thick with purple mushrooms.

The fragrance of the deep woods was strong here, and Alua breathed deeply. Her head turned always to the south as they rode, her senses drawn toward the flowering thickets and along the corridors of green shadow. A pale mist wound among the boles, and birdsongs sounded above. Andoses kept his eyes on the path, looking straight ahead. But t ahead. Vireon found himself looking as Alua did, into the leafy depths of the High Realms. Something shadowy, almost like a man, flitted between the trees. Or was it only the mist? Alua gasped. She must have seen it too.

“Ride on,” said Vireon. “We must reach the open way soon.”

Their horses went from walking to trotting. From the corner of his eye Vireon saw a glimmering in the mist, a darting shadow. When he turned his head, there was nothing. Some trick of the forest air. Now he followed the example of Andoses, keeping his eyes focused ahead. He breathed in the fragrance of strange blossoms; huge blooms the color of honey opened along the sides of the path. A large insect buzzed by his head and disappeared into a broad flower. Some distance ahead the light of open ground formed an orange archway in the gloom.

Now they passed beneath the branches that formed that arch and rode beneath open sky once again. The precipice ran close on their left side, and the forest wall stretched away on their right, farther and farther away as they left the Promontory woods behind them.

At sunset they made their usual camp near the cliff’s edge. Alua lit a small fire while Vireon tended to the horses. Andoses extracted cooking implements and provisions from the packhorse’s bundles. He dropped onions, carrots, chunks of dried meat, and sprigs of herb into a pot, filled it with freshwater from a flask, and boiled up a hearty soup. They drank the last of the wine the Boy-King had bestowed upon them, then fell into drowsy slumber.

Vireon and Alua lay beneath a woolen blanket, the fire separating them from Andoses. Vireon slept lightly; several times each night a mouse or night-bird stirred him awake. Yet it seemed that nothing dangerous roamed this narrow way between Stormlands and High Realms.

Tonight it was no wood creature that roused him. It was Alua, slipping from the coverlet and running toward the black wall of forest. He called her name, but she did not hear… or chose to ignore him. He stood and pulled his sword-belt over his shoulder as she disappeared into the darkness between trees.

Andoses raised his head. “What is happening?” He blinked at the moonlight.

“Alua,” said Vireon. “Stay here.” And he was off, racing after her.

Andoses yelled for him to wait, but Vireon was already among the leaves now. Alua leaped through a moonbeam ahead, and he jumped across a wild hedge to follow. He called her name again, but she ran on. Some spell had grabbed hold of her. Or she truly hoped to lose him. He had chased her across the breadth of the northlands and into the White Mountains. She would not outpace him now.

She splashed through rills and streamlets, pounced over mossy heaps of rock, and tore through verdant thickets. The ground was uneven and dense with bracken. Up a slope she ran, then down its far side, dodging low limbs and hanging vines. The moonlight glimmered in her hair, and her pale skin was silver. Thorns and brambles tore her fine Udurum gown to shreds.

Now she became the white fox again, and her speed increased. Vireon whispered a prayer to the Earth God that she turn back and heed his call. But she raced ever deeper into the shadows of the forest. He could ch. He couase her for days, but Andoses must not be abandoned. He ran faster, the white fox a blur between the trees.

At last he climbed the far side of a hollow crested with a stand of silverbark and found her standing at the edge of a great and ancient ruin. Now she was a woman again, and she gazed upon the tumbled blocks of green stone, silent as a ghost. He joined her there, but she paid him no mind. Her eyes drank in the panorama of shattered flagstones thick with lichen and made uneven by sprouting weeds. Fallen pillars lay in pieces beneath shrouds of thick verdure. The forest here opened to the sky, and the full moon poured its gold across the bones of a primeval city.

Alua walked a winding avenue through the collapsed metropolis. Vireon followed, drawing his Giant-blade from its scabbard. They passed the husks of crumbled towers in vestments of blooming vine. Fragments of colonnade and arch stood heavy with curtains of leaf and hanging moss. It seemed that every fragment was made of pale jade. The stones had faded from emerald brightness to pastel green over the ages. In a broad plaza headless statues stood on blocks or lay in pieces among clustered ferns. Some of the figures were tall as Giants, but they bore no aspects of Uduru or Udvorg. These were the effigies of Men, garbed in baroque armor, hefting broken spears or the hilts of swords whose blades had gone to dust.

Curved terraces had become hillsides of wild growth, and fractured fountains of marble had ceased long ago to spill their waters. A high temple stood at the center of the ruins, its dome cracked and open to the night atop a series of terraced landings. Alua was drawn to this place. Vireon walked beside her, but she heard nothing of his whispers. He did not wish to raise his voice any louder in this place, for it held an aura of forgotten holiness. Dusty jewels lay scattered across the moss at their feet, treasures unclaimed for so long they had lost their gleam. Alua climbed the temple steps, and he followed.

A pale skull lay upon the highest step, secured to the stone by clinging lichen. It wore a helm of violet and gold blossoms. Alua glanced at it, as if she might pick it up, then she passed through the open arch of the temple gate. Its portals had fallen to dust long ago, and the high-walled vault within refracted moonlight from its round walls like dirty mirrors. She walked into that glow and a mass of tiny furred things skittered into the corners. Four massive pillars had once supported the dome, and three of them still stood. A dark form stood in the shadows across an expanse of toppled masonry.

She walked into the streaming moonlight and stood before an idol of some ancient Goddess. Vireon’s eyes traveled up the slim figure of sculpted jade, over its naked breasts, and settled on the finely sculpted face. It was a beautiful girl with eyes of inset onyx, or obsidian. The icon stood intact but for a few hairline fissures in its slim arms and legs. The green Goddess held a three-pointed flame symbol in each of her open palms.

Vireon looked at the young face, then at Alua, and he knew.

She wept now. Her tears sparkled in the gloom as she stared up at her own face. There was no doubt that it was her. At the idol’s feet sat a great round bowl, and a low altar also of jade. She waved a hand over the bowl, and a white flame rose up there, along with a deep sound that echoed through the ruined streets.

She fell to her knees, and Virnees, aneon put his arm around her.

“What is this place?” he asked.

She looked at him with drowned eyes.

“This was my home,” she said. “These were my people…”

She looked again at the idol’s face.

“I remember…” she whispered and sighed. “I remember it all now.”

“Tell me.”

“ Omu,” she said, her voice swelling with pride and sorrow. “This was Omu the Green City. I watched over them here like my own children… They worshipped me with sacrifices of blossom and herb. I was old even then… older than they could understand. I had not yet forgotten everything. I… I loved them.”

He held her close as she sobbed. The white flame danced in its bowl, and Vireon felt a presence now in the temple. Something or someone had entered. He looked about, squinting. Alua lifted her head at his sudden intake of breath.

They wandered in through cracks in the walls, or the crumbled gate. Men and women with painted dusky skin, feathers tangled in their hair. Some carried spears of wood with triangular tips of jade. Their bodies were transparent as mist, their eyes sorrowful and yet somehow joyous as well. The moldy stones of the temple shone through their ribcages and faces. They were ghosts, every one of them. Of this Vireon had no doubt.

“The spirits of my people,” said Alua, rising. “Children,” she said to them. And a few of them now were children, walking unhurriedly with the rest to fill the temple. “Forgive me… I could not save you.”

As she wept behind those words, the ghost-people went to their knees and bowed their translucent heads to the floor. They were silent as the moon, but their message was understanding. Forgiveness.

“Go now,” she said. “Go and rest. You need not have waited for me all this time. Take your peace and know that I remember you. I remember Omu.”

The phantoms faded from the world like pale smokes. She and he stood alone inside the sanctuary. Her eyes scanned the faded frescoes along the walls.

“Alua,” he called to her softly.

“My name was Ytara,” she said. “Though I had many other names.”

“What shall I call you?” he asked.

She turned her eyes on him again, smiling a little now. “Call me Alua, for that is who I choose to be. It is more fair than all my other names.”

“What happened here?” he asked.

She sighed and sat herself upon the fallen pillar. “Omu was a peaceful kingdom. How long I fostered them I cannot say, but when I found them they lived in woven huts. Over time they built this city from a hill of precious stone. It was a happy age. The laughter of children and lovers was a lovers s common as the singing of birds. Gentle rains fed the streams. The beasts of the forest looked to the People of Omu as friends and guardians. There is a word in your tongue to describe it. Paradise.

“Then the Pale Queen came, spreading darkness and contagion. Our waters dried up and our young ones died. She brought a horde of demons against our city and sought to drive us from the forest if she could not kill us all. She was as old as I… yet so very wicked. A selfish thing driven by her lust for destruction… a drinker of blood. I stood against her, but she cast me down. Her pacts with dark powers made her too terrible, and there was nothing more I could do. Rather than be her slave, I rode the flame as far as I could go. It carried me north, to a land untouched by her evil. There I roamed and hunted and forgot my pain… my name… my people.

“I forgot my power too. Until you came, Vireon. You awakened me from a long sleep. It was your love that brought me home… You have given me the gift of memory.”

She kissed him then, long and deep. They made love on the temple floor, wrapped in the glow of the white flame. Her urgent cries echoed through the ruins, but there were no ghosts left to hear them.

“I remember the Pale Queen’s name,” she told him afterwards, lying in his arms.

“Tell me.”

“Ianthe,” she said. “Ianthe the Claw.”

He held her tightly, and they slept for a little while amid the ancient stones.

In the hazy light of pre-dawn they ran laughing together until they regained the forest’s edge and the camp of Andoses. The Prince had risen early and stoked a breakfast fire.

“Where have you two been?” he asked.

“To the Ruins of Omu,” said Vireon. “Visiting with the spirits of a lost people.”

Andoses’ eyes grew large. “You never cease to amaze me, Cousin. Here… have some vegetables.”

Alua ate none of the breakfast, but stood quietly and stared eastward. The direction they must go to reach the sea and passage north.

“Vireon,” she called to him. “You spoke of vengeance yesterday.” A gust of rising wind caught up her blonde locks and tossed them savagely about her shoulders.

“For my brother,” said Vireon.

“I, too, seek this,” said Alua. “Though I had forgotten it. Now this desire has returned with the rest of my memories.”

Vireon quaffed a bowl of steaming broth. “We seek two things that are one… intertwined, like our fates.” He went to Alua and pulled her close.

“She must pay for what she did,” Alua whispered.

“As must he.”

“I sense them now,” she said. “North and west…”

“Shar Dni?”

“It must be. They are no longer in Khyrei.”

“Then we must travel faster,” he said.

“Yes.”

Andoses eyed them curiously as he stamped out the morning fire. “Shall we ride?” he called. He had not yet saddled and burdened the horses, waiting for Vireon’s strong arms to help.

Alua took Vireon’s hand and led him to stand beside his cousin.

“This way is too slow,” she told them. “These mounts are too tired. We must ride the flame to Shar Dni.”

Andoses looked at him. Vireon nodded.

Alua spread her arms, and white flames erupted from her palms. She cast the fire about them in a burning ring that floated in the air like smoke. Then another, and another, until they stood cocooned in a sphere of blazing whiteness. Vireon and Andoses shut their eyes against the brilliance. There was no heat, only a pleasant warmth that replaced the cool of morning.

Alua grabbed them by the hands. Now the globe of white flame rose, and Vireon felt his feet leave the ground.

She is a sorceress, he thought. This power is the substance of her memory.

The flaming sphere rose into the sky, hurtling eastward. Vireon could see nothing, but he felt great winds rush past the globe. He remembered a comet he and Tadarus had seen as young boys, a spark of light rushing across the starlit sky. That must be how they looked from below, if any could see them against the blue vault of sky.

The smell of seawater met his nostrils, and he knew they flew now above the Golden Sea. At what great speed, he could not guess. The hand of Alua was cool and strong in his own. The hand of Andoses was sweaty and warm. After a while came the gradual sensation of sinking. The white flames faded and their feet met the earth again, ever so gently.

Vireon opened his eyes, blinking. Alua smiled at him. Andoses smiled too, and gave a quick laugh. They stood upon damp green grass atop the western heights of the valley containing the River Orra. The Valley of the Bull. Andoses stared past Vireon’s shoulders toward the city. The laughter died on his lips.

Vireon turned and saw the charred walls of Shar Dni across the river. Red fires danced like crazed Giants, and pillars of black smoke rose from the streets. They were not the ritual smokes of the temples. The holy pyramids were piles of rubble; slim towers stood ablaze. The stench of burning flesh hung over the valley, and the bridge to the Western Gate was gone, great chunks of it lying in the river. The Orra ran black with blood, or oil, or both. The husks of burned ships lay along its banks, tilted on their sides like dead fish.

In the harbor a fleet of black warships flew the emblem of the white panther.