John Fultz - Seven Kings

The wounded man gasped for air on the sand, grasping at his punctured flesh.

Lyrilan became aware of all eyes focused on him now. Lord Mendices threw his voice across the hall again. “Majesty. It is customary for the Emperor… or King… to claim the right of final execution.” He paused, and when there came no reply from Lyrilan, he added, “The death blow is yours if you wish it, King Lyrilan.”

Lyrilan shook his head. He waved the sword away with distaste, as if it were a platter of overripe cheese. His eyes turned toward Tyro, who watched without expression from across the long table. Did his brother enjoy seeing him squirm like this? Or did he feel Lyrilan’s pain? Was it Tyro’s idea to offer Lyrilan the killing sword first?

The guard walked about the table and offered the red blade to Tyro. The Sword King wrapped his hand about the grip and stood before the audience gathered about him. All there knew he would do the deed. There was no question. Tyro had no qualms about killing his enemies, as no warrior should.

Lyrilan avoided his eyes, and the eyes of the nobles that flickered back and forth between the two Kings. He stared at his own hands, cursing the jeweled rings on his fingers. He could not even look at Ramiyah, though her presence beside him was hot as flame.

Tyro stepped down from his dais while Talondra stood to watch him go. He approached the ring of sand, stood over the dying man, and said something in a low voice. Only the bleeding Khyrein could hear him. As easily as slicing a melon, he drew the keen blade across the young Khyrein’s throat, pressing it deep to sever the great vein. A fresh gout of red spilled among the black sand, and in a few moments the prisoner was dead.

The older prisoner stood nearby, still the focus of an octet of spears. Tyro would grant him freedom according to the custom of blood justice.

“I beg the Great King’s mercy,” said the prisoner in perfect Uurzian. He fell upon his knees before Tyro. Tears glittered in his eyes, perhaps shed for the man he’d killed, perhaps for himself, perhaps only a show to secure the King’s pity.

Tyro kept his own dark eyes focused on the face of the victorious prisoner. Yet his voice spoke to the assembled courtiers and to his brother behind him. “This man has won the trial of blood justice. By slaying his own cousin he has proven his worth as a soldier. Yet the Kings of Uurz will allow no mercy for the devils of Khyrei.”

The Sword King’s fist moved quick as a shadow, a dance of silver in the smoky air. The blade sank deep into the older Khyrein’s heart, stopped only by the curve of the bronze hilt. Tyro released the blade and stood quiet as the prisoner keeled over. Now both captives lay dead on the sand.

Lyrilan blinked and realized he had forgotten to breathe. Ramiyah whimpered softly once beside him.

Tyro turned to address his shocked audience. “No mercy for the devils of Khyrei!”

Now the crowd fell from shock to applause, and Tyro’s cry was repeated from many drunken throats. Even the guards of the hall joined in the chant. “No mercy! No mercy! No mercy!”

During the cacophony of applause Tyro walked back to his dais, sat himself upon the throne, and met Talondra’s lips with his own.

Lyrilan, sitting silently as the two dead men were dragged away, saw the faces of a half-dozen nobles staring at him. These were the sensible ones, the ones who feared war and supported his talk of peace. They expected him to balance his brother’s martial sensibilities. They looked to him now, deafened by the cheers of their fellows. But he could do nothing to stop the rising tide of Tyro’s bloodlust. It spread through the court like a virus, a contagion that could not be stopped.

This had all been planned. Tyro had called him out.

The true spectacle this night was not the slaughter of two Khyrein spies.

It was the weakness of the Scholar King.

Lyrilan rose from his chair and descended the platform, drawing Ramiyah after him by her hand. A quartet of legionnaires followed as they left the Feasting Hall, where the reek of spilled blood overpowered now the scents of meat and smoke and spices. To his surprise a half-dozen noblemen followed him as he exited. He only wanted to be alone with Ramiyah, to think. To figure out this problem dropped into his life like a bead of poison into a cup of wine.

He was not the only Peace Speaker among the court. Yet he was their leader, their Scholar King, their only chance. They did not want a war any more than he did. They feared Tyro the Sword King and the voices who guided him toward savage glory.

This was the beginning of something new and terrible.

Factions. The Sword and the Scholar.

Before there was war with Khyrei, there would be war in Uurz.

O Father, what have you done to us?

It began with a dream of blood.

Vireon sank into a red sea, rich and warm as the ocean that had drowned his father. His great arms, his mighty thews, the Giant strength of his body, all these things were worthless as he sank deeper into the crimson depths. His iron-hard skin that no blade or arrow could break… useless. His limbs flailed like a child as the bloody tide invaded his mouth and lungs. At times he broke the surface, where a black sky sparkled with icy stars. He pulled against the current, yet always it pulled him back under, until he lost the stars completely. All was red and molten and weighty as a mountain collapsed on his broad chest.

The red sea turned to burning flame, and he awoke. The bedchamber was warm with orange torchlight, and his sweat drenched the silken bedding. Alua lay peacefully next to him, her arms wrapped about tiny Maelthyn. Vireon breathed the night air into his lungs, pulling the covers back. He stalked to the open window where the breezes would cool his dreaming fever. The King’s Chamber lay at the top of the palace’s highest tower, and the window opened on a view of Udurum’s northern quarter. The City of Men and Giants slept quietly beneath a harvest moon, only a few pale fires and flickering street lamps alive at this late hour.

Beyond the encircling wall of black stone stretched the wild forests of Uduria, ancestral land of Giants. The great Uyga trees rivaled the height of the city wall, which stood higher than even the tallest Giant. Vireon gripped the window-sill, and his thoughts turned to the stones of the palace itself. His father and the Uduri had rebuilt the palace when they rebuilt the shattered city some thirty years ago. Vod the Man-Giant had slept in this very bedchamber with Vireon’s human mother for more than twenty years. At times he could still smell his father’s scent upon the very walls. Could the curse have taken root deep within these very stones? No, he must not consider such a thing. He knew where the curse came from, and it was not his father’s doing.

He thrust his shaggy head out the window, breathing in the scents of the distant forest: pine, leaf, bark, soil, night blossoms, animal scents. It called to him, a balm for his troubled mind. Such thoughts of doom never assailed him in the depths of the woodland. He must escape his own palace to find peace in the hunt. And he must do so now, before the sun came up to remind him he was a King, no longer a boy who could run away and lose himself in the forest. How long had it been since he ran the Long Hunt? Too many years.

He returned to the great bed, moving silently across the carpet on the balls of his feet. Alua’s face lay beneath a tangle of golden hair; he brushed the locks aside and put his lips lightly upon hers. She moaned but did not wake. He would not leave his wife a scrawled message. She would know where he had gone and why. She always knew.

He turned to the curled form of his daughter, a miniature version of Alua, yet with hair black as his own. When her eyes were open they gleamed a fierce blue, another mark of her father’s blood. She was seven now and had her own room in the King’s Tower, yet every night this month she had climbed into bed between her father and mother. Vireon did not mind this. He loved Maelthyn as deeply as he loved her mother. Perhaps even more. He placed a rough hand on her small cheek, kissed her pale forehead. Lost in some pleasant dream, she took no notice of these things.