The Queen of Wolves (32 page)

My mind reeled as I tried to imagine reasons for Pythia’s betrayal—perhaps she had a plan, perhaps the army of the undead we had breathed vampyrism into was just a night’s flight away...and yet, for every reason, every excuse I gave, the word written in the old tongue haunted my mind:

Anguis.

Betrayer.

Betrayer of the Serpent.

Betrayer of Merod.

Daughter of Namtaryn.

Lover of Artephius, of Nezabual
—
of those who held great power.

Yet, I remembered those moments on the
Illuyanka,
when we danced and she hummed the tune of her mortal life. I remembered the passion in her arms, and her pleading voice as she begged me to go with her to some deep forest to escape the doom of this city. But I also bore the memories of her greed, her fury, and her need to best whoever held her in their arms. I remembered how she had helped bring the downfall of Alkemara, and how she had murdered the boy, Thibaud, in the tower of Hedammu, and had drunk from me until I was her mortal slave—and until she brought me the Sacred Kiss.

How many times had I been warned of her duplicity? How many had told me that she could not be trusted? Nezahual himself, though enraptured of her, did not believe her lies. Ophion, who had proven himself and suffered greatly, had not believed there was good in her.

Despite this evidence, I did not believe that Pythia would betray me—betray us—nor would she have abandoned those resurrecting vampyres to their fates along the mountains beyond Hedammu. I did not believe the woman who had passed me the Eclipsis that I might have guidance would go to my greatest enemy and the source of my destruction.

I remembered her fear, her terror at our shared vision—of the sacrifice upon the altar, of the maiden with the golden mask, of the ritual that I would perform.

My heart wished to believe that she was a victim of this sorcery of the White Robes. But my mind knew otherwise—for her thousands of years of life had taught her to save her skin before thinking of any other.

Unbidden, the memory of her words came back to me, from my first death until my last sight of her. Her voice seemed fresh in my head as she had once whispered,
While you live, you are mine, you are my love, you are the dirt of my grave, you are the flesh that is my bed,
and the sound of her voice grew haunting,
If I could destroy you now, I would. If I could tear you limb from limb...
In Aztlanteum, Pythia had told me,
When I saw my future as I passed the breath of immortality to you, I knew that I would have to destroy you...or save you.

Then her words to me when I left her at the cave mouth to journey to Myrryd.
Do not judge me harshly, if I fail you.

I raged within myself, thinking of how I had trusted her, and how foolish I had been, for she had been unworthy of trust. She knew she would betray me at that last moment, and she had told me many times in many ways how she would stop me from the solstice ritual.

I had wanted to believe some goodness of her, yet she had become as Enora herself—as Medhya, too—a Queen of Wolves, a betrayer.

Anguis.

For the first time since I had abandoned Taranis-Hir and the Akkadite Cliffs, I felt the heaviness of absolute despair. I had lost my children, and my companion, and Pythia herself—for I could not deny the love I felt for her. Yet love became ice in my blood, and in moments, I was numb to these feelings. I even cursed the child that grew within her, if that had not itself been a lie, as well.

6

Calyx, waiting for me, led me down into the valley below, out to the night sky, along a ledge and down a stone stair. We came out beneath the shadow of the mountain, where Taranis-Hir was unseen, and the forest beyond the snowy meadow thickened again. Here, below the cliffs was a long paddock made by hedging stones along the field that ran through the forest. In the paddock, nearly a hundred horses, tended by three forest women who brushed and hayed them. These were all that had returned from the battle from the hundreds that had entered it, carrying knights and warriors who had come to the Akkadite cause.

I turned to Calyx and put my hands on her shoulder. “Soon, hundreds of my tribe will come to these cliffs. We have not lost the solstice.”

“Do you think the guardians of Taranis-Hir have not been honing their skills with your kind? Since the night you left, they have tormented those of your tribe. The vampyres that were not tortured into becoming Morns are put out at sunrise as examples to other such demons. They are spread-eagled and staked, and the sun burns them slowly throughout the short day so that by nightfall, many are blackened bones. We have heard their cries of anguish. Those who survive one short day are brought out again the next until they are roasted. Their ashes are gathered and put in silver boxes, as a reminder that the demons are not invincible. A few, they have made examples of—your friend. The one with whom you shared your long years in prison at the bottom of the old well.”

Ewen,
I thought, but could not say his name.

“I was there,” she whispered, her eyes downcast. “I stole into the city, for I did not understand why they did such things to the devils, rather than torture them until they had become Morn. I watched from a culvert beneath the foundry tower. Even I felt the suffering of this winged devil.”

“Tell me of this,” I said, feeling a burning at my throat. “Who did this?”

“Do not make me remember, for I carry too much pain,” she said.

“I must know. For I will have my vengeance against the one who destroyed my friend.”

“They made a show of it. Seven of them, heroes of the arena, their wings drawn out and pinned down with spikes. Torques at their throats, attached to wooden slats to keep their heads just so—their faces upward to the noonday sun. At dawn, they lay there, and Enora and her White Robes stood by, while the prince of Taranis-Hir, who is called Quentin—though he once was known as Corentin Falmouth—supervised this torment.”

I began to curse when I heard his name.

“You must tell me,” I said. “For I want to know what this man did to my friend.”

“I will not tell you this,” she said. She reached up and touched my brow. “You have a fever.”

“It is from the gall in my throat,” I said. “My want of vengeance burns. Tell me of his Extinguishing. I want to know every detail, so that when I have Corentin in my hands, I will know what to do to him that he might feel what Ewen felt.”

“It took three days for your friend to pass. I tried to rescue him—and others. But the White Robes guarded them, and I found no entry. They stripped him, and led him in chains before dawn across the bridge, to where the arena opens to its Game. They tied his wrists and ankles to four black horses, and upon these horses, four knights of the Disk who goaded their mounts to frenzy until his bones popped and his flesh tore. Yet when this was done, they drew him to the center of the arena. There, they cuffed and shackled him with silver, and painted him with quicksilver that he should not grow strong. Around his throat, a torque of silver-painted iron, and in his mouth, a silver coin. Then they staked his ankles and wrists, and waited for the sun to rise...” Here, she stopped speaking, unable to look me in the eye.

“And when the sun rose?”

Her eyes welled with tears. I could not help but put my arm across her shoulders and draw her close to me.

“Please,” I said. “I want to know. Recall for me everything, for I must know what suffering he endured.”

Her words were hesitant and slow, and she stopped here and there, but I asked her to continue. “His skin began blistering. Oozing. But he did not cry out then. Not until the fire began to spread along his arms. His cries...his cries...” She pressed her face against my chest. I had no more tears for anyone, only a growing sense of what must be done. Yet, this news—even though I had anticipated the worst—shook me to my core.

“What did he cry out?” I asked.

“Your name,” she whispered. “‘Aleric!’ he cried, a bleating lamb more than a devil. ‘Aleric!’ and then from this he cried, ‘Maz-Sherah!’ and, finally, to the Serpent he shouted his last and his voice went silent. He sounded like a boy who had been chased into the woods by wolves and sought the hunter. Crying out for someone who would not find him. On the third day, though the sun was not even in the sky more than a handful of hours, and the bitter cold wind blew gray snow from the sky, even so, his skin turned to ash. Before the wind could draw the motes of dust and ash upward, his skull and soot were swept up into one of the silver boxes. Others of your tribe were not so fortunate, for their ash blew along with the winter winds, whirling ash taken up into the gloom, and their skulls—of those that had not turned to dust in the sun’s glare—were tossed to the wolves and dogs, and other were thrown through the breaks in the ice that thickens the canals.”

I covered my face with my hands, and felt on the edge of my own destruction. Why had I been so long? Gathering these Asmodh sorceries, rather than fighting for Ewen’s life—and the lives of so many others?

Yet, within me, I felt the Serpent stir—and what had been despair turned to rage, and what was rage became a white-hot fury.

“We will bury them in their filth,” I said, feeling calm suddenly. “And if I find the silver box, I will yet raise him from the dead.” I placed my hands on her shoulders. I looked her in the eyes, though she tried to avoid my glance. “No one could help him? Not these mortal knights who fought here? Not anyone?”

The strange ashen glow of her face dimmed as she said, “Mortals do not want to help your kind. I could not rouse them. I could not make them fight that day for the life of a vampyre.”

“Then it is good they died in battle,” I snarled, releasing her. “Why do I care for mortals if they would see one of us suffer like this?”

Enraged, I went to the rock wall at the mouth of the cave entrance, and smashed my fists against it. Again and again, until my hands had bled enough for me to feel something again. I held the staff and brought it down hard with a crack against a pile of stones, and the rock itself caught fire, though it quickly died out. The staff sent off a vibration through my body as if it were a warning.

I called to the Great Serpent in my blood, and to Merod, but was met with silence.

I looked over at the plague maiden who watched the fire go out along the stones. “Calyx, do you fight for us?”

“Yes,” she said. “Many have died for this cause.”

“For
us?
For my tribe?”

“No mortal will protect a vampyre,” she said.

“But will
you?”

After a moment, she answered. “Yes. I will fight for you, and your tribe. But how? With what army do we match these White Robes and their queen? We have fewer than a hundred men! How many of your devils come before this night is through to avenge us?”

I touched the edge of her face, its mottled opalescence nearly translucent in the darkness. “Is the plague beneath your skin one that can be used against them?”

“I do not know,” she said, reaching up to cover her mouth as if it would let out some secret. “I dream of what will come.”

“In your dreams, is your plague released?”

She nodded.

“What else is there? What is in your fever dreams about the plague in your blood?”

“I see her,” she barely said these words aloud, but her lips formed them.

Medhya. She sees Medhya in her plague.

The final plague of the Veil.

“I must drink from you,” I said. “Now. I must know this plague.”

She pushed me away. Calyx went out among the bramble circle, between the standing stones of the forest women, the rocks of the ancients that had been there since those who worshipped in the old religions had come to this land. She touched the tip of one of these upright stones, and when she looked back at me, she said, “Do not do this. Your drinking may bring you the plague itself.”

“I will risk it,” I said. “Come. Give me your blood. Do not fear this, Calyx. I am renewed from my journey. I have strength and sorcery within me that can match the White Robes’ bog conjurations. The plague will not touch me, I promise you.”

I held my arms out, the Nahhashim staff lowered.

She cocked her head to the side slightly, her eyes narrowing. “You are much changed, it is true,” she said. “In all those days since you left us, I had begun believing that there was no hope left for us—for my forest—for the world. It is a place of ravaging wolves and not meant for those who may become prey. But you are a predator, yet not a wolf at all, Falconer. You truly are a hunter of those who hunt.”

Then she came to me.

7

I took her in my arms, and gently nipped the tender flesh above her collarbone. It was like slicing through soft cake, and the rush of blood flooded into the back of my throat.

I was beyond the Veil in the moments it took for her blood to enter my own bloodstream. I stood beside the plague maiden, her face a hollow of emptiness, its flesh shattered. The earth around us was burned and red, corpses of men and women and children littered the barren ground. At a distance, I saw what seemed a path of fire shooting out along a plain of the dead.

It formed into a woman, and I did not need to see her face to know who she was. But in the next instant, Calyx herself was Medhya—her face plumped into flesh again, stinging insects crawling across her eyes and nose and lips. The painted third eye was upon her brow, a sign of her constant watchfulness.

“I am the Virgin of Shadows that the mortals of the Disk have dreamed of,” she whispered, a playful grin on her face, and began laughing at me. “Anointed One, how will you keep me from this world? For in your blood, the Veil burns, and through your blood and the plague of this forest woman, I have my doorway. But several doorways exist, and you will open them all.”

In the next moment, I again stood with my arms around Calyx, drawing my lips away from her throat.