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Queen of Wolves by Douglas Clegg | Chapter Two
1
I watched the skies when I escaped Nezahual's besieged kingdom for a sign of the new moon's birth—for it was the solstice that had become my target, the bomb lobbed at me by those who understood the Veil and its fragile nature during the shortest night of the year. These ancient sorceries were rumors to me, for I did not understand the importance of the season, nor of the solstice night. Though I had been claimed Maz-Sherah by the Priest of Blood called Merod, I did not feel as if I were anything more than a tool in the hands of some larger force.
2
When Pythia and I left Aztlanteum, on a continent far from my homeland, the moon no longer reigned over the black of night.
We had fled another war in an obsidian city when the vampyre king Nezahual was besieged by his brothers and sister in a battle for supremacy, for the blessing of their mother, Ixtar, and for the lands that had once been divided among them. Jealousy and envy divides all families, mortal and immortal, and the want of power—and the ignorance of its corruption—destroys many kingdoms.
The city of Ixtar burned and raged, and below us, vampyres fought in the air, tearing at each other like wolves, while fires consumed the walls of their temples and palaces, while priests fought against invaders and mortal men died for their gods. The cries of mortal and vampyre alike seemed to ride with us as we moved beyond its territories.
In the stream, we knew that someone pursued us through that blinding darkness
Within an hour of our escape, I glanced back, briefly, and spied a gray shape in the whirling black smoke.
3
I was still weak, and did not think I could fight any of the vampyre guards who had trailed us from the burning city. I knew why this guard had followed us—it was not merely our escape, it was that fist-sized orb of black stone that Pythia had tied in a pouch around her throat as we flew.
She had stolen the sacred relic, and I had no doubt that this had awakened Nezahual's ire, even as his city perished. Perhaps it held some secret power that only he could access, or perhaps it was simply that it belonged to Ixtar herself, and Nezahual's existence depended upon its return.
At first I thought it was one unseen vampyre who followed, and then I felt many coming for us, but at a great distance. The stream felt strange to me, alive and yet confusing, and this follower seemed a disruptive influence. Perhaps, I thought, I only sensed those vampyres fighting many leagues away, amidst fire and smoke.
Below us, the smoke met a haze of mist out upon the sea. I was not going to be able to fight the pursuer off in midair, and Pythia was now mortal—she would easily be captured by a vampyre. I felt our only hope to deflect any pursuing guardians of Ixtar was to throw them the orb.
I flew toward Pythia and reached for the strap at her throat.
She hissed like a snake, her fangs bared toward me. The strokes of her wings increased, and she shot ahead.
If my sense of the stream was correct, I could not out fly the guard who followed. I turned in midair to face him, remaining motionless in the sky, my wings spread apart as if to glide downward.
"Show yourself!" I shouted. I glanced down toward the ragged land as it dipped several miles ahead to the sea. The thick smoke blinded my view.
I was sure I saw a movement in the clouds of gray and black, yet no one came forward from them.
I waited another few seconds—still feeling something in the stream—just a vibration there. If one of Nezahual's brethren had been hiding in the ash-clouds, he easily could have leapt out and subdued me—though I would give him a fight he might not forget.
Finally, I turned again toward Pythia, who had almost reached the edge of Nezahual's lands, a mile or more ahead. I flew along, catching up to her, but I could not shake the feeling that some vampyre stalked us.
The smoke of the burning kingdom swept across the sky, and held back the dawn.
4
Toward the western sea we soared, beating our wings against the tides of the wind. The stink of sulfur and ash attacked our lungs and seared our flesh, as if the inferno behind us reached up to draw the two of us back to earth, two demons escaping Hell.
Pythia flew slightly ahead of me, like a dragon on the air, the spines of her wings flexing up and down as the eelskin stretched across them like those of some angel of the deepest pit—beauty and terror bound up in her form.
The world below us burned and spat fire into the sky. Lamentations rose from among mortals of that land, and they sang of the immortals whose mother, Ixtar, and given birth to them. The songs that came up through the rumble of falling stones and the cries of war seemed like those hypnotic chants of the monks from my own country: beautiful and somber and not of the death of a city, but a mournful prayer to the gods for swift passage from this world to the next.
The whorls of clouds around us seemed endless tunnels within the night sky, and I followed my guide—Pythia—as she ascended farther upward, until the red ember of the burning city and countryside below us seemed a distant hearth.
The cold, dark sea lay below us now as we left sight of land. Still, I sensed our pursuer, but now his form barely touched the stream. He had fallen back, and yet I could not help but think that he still followed.
5
I began to form—in my mind's eye—a figure of a male vampyre, but without a face and without human form. That corpse-reflection of myself I had seen in the mirrored hall on the way to the torture device that the alchemist, Artephius, had devised.
It was the stream that brought this to me, and yet in it, I almost felt as if it were myself—my dead mortal body—somehow in pursuit.
As a vampyre, I knew that physically I had the beauty and vibrancy of a youth of twenty, for my hair was rich and thick, and my body sinewy and strong, a musculature built in my mortal life from war and its practice. My flesh renewed itself with each day of sleep and night spent hunting for mortal blood.
I had seen myself in that mirror—for a vampyre does reflect, yet we reflect upon ourselves alone and those who have died at our hands—and the truth of my body was there before me. I was a corpse, and yet even this was an illusion of the trickery of the silver mirrors, for I was neither the dead nor the living—but between these states of existence. The mirror lied; and my body lied. The truth was neither, and yet it was all I knew.
I was, as all vampyres of my line may be, a shadow of my own self. Neither in this world nor the next, the children of the Serpent and of Medhya are on the borderline, the threshold between.
In my mind's eye, I could see my dead self—that nineteen-year-old youth, bled by the Pythoness of Alkemara, rotted—my own shadow pursuing me to remind me of what I truly was beneath the beauty of vampyric glamour.
The feeling did not pass, but as dawn threatened us at our backs, Pythia dove through a smoky cloud toward the sea, as if falling to her death. I followed behind her, and saw her goal: a place where we might sleep the night.
6
We spent our first night on a small island barely larger than the grave we dug from its dirt and rocks for our rest. Just before the sun rose above us, Pythia and I had to huddle together so that no ray of its light cut through the pile of rocks beneath which we slept. She was wonderfully icy against my flesh.
She took the stolen orb from the pouch at her neck and strapped it around her waist. I felt its small, hard roundness between us. She whispered only in my mind, If you try to steal it, I will return to Nezahual. I know that's not what you want. Not with your child in me.
1 2 Next
I watched the skies when I escaped Nezahual's besieged kingdom for a sign of the new moon's birth—for it was the solstice that had become my target, the bomb lobbed at me by those who understood the Veil and its fragile nature during the shortest night of the year. These ancient sorceries were rumors to me, for I did not understand the importance of the season, nor of the solstice night. Though I had been claimed Maz-Sherah by the Priest of Blood called Merod, I did not feel as if I were anything more than a tool in the hands of some larger force.
2
When Pythia and I left Aztlanteum, on a continent far from my homeland, the moon no longer reigned over the black of night.
We had fled another war in an obsidian city when the vampyre king Nezahual was besieged by his brothers and sister in a battle for supremacy, for the blessing of their mother, Ixtar, and for the lands that had once been divided among them. Jealousy and envy divides all families, mortal and immortal, and the want of power—and the ignorance of its corruption—destroys many kingdoms.
The city of Ixtar burned and raged, and below us, vampyres fought in the air, tearing at each other like wolves, while fires consumed the walls of their temples and palaces, while priests fought against invaders and mortal men died for their gods. The cries of mortal and vampyre alike seemed to ride with us as we moved beyond its territories.
In the stream, we knew that someone pursued us through that blinding darkness
Within an hour of our escape, I glanced back, briefly, and spied a gray shape in the whirling black smoke.
3
I was still weak, and did not think I could fight any of the vampyre guards who had trailed us from the burning city. I knew why this guard had followed us—it was not merely our escape, it was that fist-sized orb of black stone that Pythia had tied in a pouch around her throat as we flew.
She had stolen the sacred relic, and I had no doubt that this had awakened Nezahual's ire, even as his city perished. Perhaps it held some secret power that only he could access, or perhaps it was simply that it belonged to Ixtar herself, and Nezahual's existence depended upon its return.
At first I thought it was one unseen vampyre who followed, and then I felt many coming for us, but at a great distance. The stream felt strange to me, alive and yet confusing, and this follower seemed a disruptive influence. Perhaps, I thought, I only sensed those vampyres fighting many leagues away, amidst fire and smoke.
Below us, the smoke met a haze of mist out upon the sea. I was not going to be able to fight the pursuer off in midair, and Pythia was now mortal—she would easily be captured by a vampyre. I felt our only hope to deflect any pursuing guardians of Ixtar was to throw them the orb.
I flew toward Pythia and reached for the strap at her throat.
She hissed like a snake, her fangs bared toward me. The strokes of her wings increased, and she shot ahead.
If my sense of the stream was correct, I could not out fly the guard who followed. I turned in midair to face him, remaining motionless in the sky, my wings spread apart as if to glide downward.
"Show yourself!" I shouted. I glanced down toward the ragged land as it dipped several miles ahead to the sea. The thick smoke blinded my view.
I was sure I saw a movement in the clouds of gray and black, yet no one came forward from them.
I waited another few seconds—still feeling something in the stream—just a vibration there. If one of Nezahual's brethren had been hiding in the ash-clouds, he easily could have leapt out and subdued me—though I would give him a fight he might not forget.
Finally, I turned again toward Pythia, who had almost reached the edge of Nezahual's lands, a mile or more ahead. I flew along, catching up to her, but I could not shake the feeling that some vampyre stalked us.
The smoke of the burning kingdom swept across the sky, and held back the dawn.
4
Toward the western sea we soared, beating our wings against the tides of the wind. The stink of sulfur and ash attacked our lungs and seared our flesh, as if the inferno behind us reached up to draw the two of us back to earth, two demons escaping Hell.
Pythia flew slightly ahead of me, like a dragon on the air, the spines of her wings flexing up and down as the eelskin stretched across them like those of some angel of the deepest pit—beauty and terror bound up in her form.
The world below us burned and spat fire into the sky. Lamentations rose from among mortals of that land, and they sang of the immortals whose mother, Ixtar, and given birth to them. The songs that came up through the rumble of falling stones and the cries of war seemed like those hypnotic chants of the monks from my own country: beautiful and somber and not of the death of a city, but a mournful prayer to the gods for swift passage from this world to the next.
The whorls of clouds around us seemed endless tunnels within the night sky, and I followed my guide—Pythia—as she ascended farther upward, until the red ember of the burning city and countryside below us seemed a distant hearth.
The cold, dark sea lay below us now as we left sight of land. Still, I sensed our pursuer, but now his form barely touched the stream. He had fallen back, and yet I could not help but think that he still followed.
5
I began to form—in my mind's eye—a figure of a male vampyre, but without a face and without human form. That corpse-reflection of myself I had seen in the mirrored hall on the way to the torture device that the alchemist, Artephius, had devised.
It was the stream that brought this to me, and yet in it, I almost felt as if it were myself—my dead mortal body—somehow in pursuit.
As a vampyre, I knew that physically I had the beauty and vibrancy of a youth of twenty, for my hair was rich and thick, and my body sinewy and strong, a musculature built in my mortal life from war and its practice. My flesh renewed itself with each day of sleep and night spent hunting for mortal blood.
I had seen myself in that mirror—for a vampyre does reflect, yet we reflect upon ourselves alone and those who have died at our hands—and the truth of my body was there before me. I was a corpse, and yet even this was an illusion of the trickery of the silver mirrors, for I was neither the dead nor the living—but between these states of existence. The mirror lied; and my body lied. The truth was neither, and yet it was all I knew.
I was, as all vampyres of my line may be, a shadow of my own self. Neither in this world nor the next, the children of the Serpent and of Medhya are on the borderline, the threshold between.
In my mind's eye, I could see my dead self—that nineteen-year-old youth, bled by the Pythoness of Alkemara, rotted—my own shadow pursuing me to remind me of what I truly was beneath the beauty of vampyric glamour.
The feeling did not pass, but as dawn threatened us at our backs, Pythia dove through a smoky cloud toward the sea, as if falling to her death. I followed behind her, and saw her goal: a place where we might sleep the night.
6
We spent our first night on a small island barely larger than the grave we dug from its dirt and rocks for our rest. Just before the sun rose above us, Pythia and I had to huddle together so that no ray of its light cut through the pile of rocks beneath which we slept. She was wonderfully icy against my flesh.
She took the stolen orb from the pouch at her neck and strapped it around her waist. I felt its small, hard roundness between us. She whispered only in my mind, If you try to steal it, I will return to Nezahual. I know that's not what you want. Not with your child in me.
1 2 Next
