John Fultz - Seven Princes

“ Who are you? ” demanded the crone.

“I… I… don’t know,” said Sharadza. Tears brimmed in her green eyes.

“ What are you?” asked the crone.

Sharadza blinked, weeping, smiling. “I don’t know.”

The crone huffed. “Now we can begin,” she said.

Sharadza followed her down the hillside into the depths of the autumn forest.

From the summit of the pass rose the colossal bulk of Steephold, a citadel of black rock nearly as large as Vod’s palace. The sinking sun cast orange light across its dark walls as the Princes halted their company. At Tadarus’ command, a sergeant blew three notes on a horn of gold and bronze, and a deeper horn sounded its answer inside the fortress walls.

The Giants were slow opening the gate, so Fangodrel stared impatiently at its embossed surface. A scene of Uduru in battle against fire-belching Serpents ornamented the black iron. The artistry was excellent, far too complex and well constructed to have been done by a Giant’s hands. Fangodrel smirked at its absurdity: the great deeds of the Uduru preserved by skill of a mere human.

The saddle chafed his thighs, and his back ached from days of riding. How long would it take those lumbering morons to open the gates? Five days they had ridden from Udurum, the last three in the frigid shadow of the peaks. Sheer idiocy to send an escort of three hundred men on this mission. A company of four or five could travel at double the speed. Still, his mother had her way, as always.

Steephold would offer at least one night of warm beds and passable food. More importantly, Fangodrel would have a private chamber here, a place to lock himself away and smoke the bloodflower. In his frail tent the past few nights, he dared not indulge in the Red Dream for fear of being discovered by his brother or cousin. He drank plenty of wine in the camps, but tonight he would taste the smoke.

Ianthe would come to him again.

When she first appeared to him in the Red Dream, he thought it only the drug’s illusion. But the following night he spoke with her again, and a third time on the morning before the journey began. Somewhere in the distant south, in her jungle palace filled with slaves and riches, she too dreamed the Red Dream. But she knew it better than he… she knew how to reach out to him across a continent.

She told him splendid things that he only half dared believe. He wanted them to be true so very much. She was his grandmother… a sorceress… an Empress. Vod was not his father, although Shaira did give him birth. His true father was Gammir, Prin [Ga ce of Khyrei, who died at Vod’s hand. She showed him this in a vision summoned from the past and played out in the swirling depths of the Red Dream. Vod in his Giant form, storming the Khyrein palace, calling down thunder and lightning with his cries of rage and hate. The onyx palace crumbling into shards, handsome Gammir lost beneath a heaving wall of rock, his bones crushed to powder along with his father the Emperor. Only Ianthe escaped the destruction, a white panther crawling along the blood-slick rubble.

Now Fangodrel understood why he inherited none of Vod’s strength, why his skin was so pale. Like Gammir’s… like Ianthe’s. He had none of Vod’s blood in him, no Uduru blood at all. Shaira had been a Princess of Shar Dni when she wed Gammir. Vod stole her away and murdered Gammir that same year. He knew now why his mother never truly loved him. Why she favored his brothers. He only reminded her of Gammir, whom she hated. Shaira had plotted her escape with Vod even before the marriage. She was a traitor and a whore. His adoptive father was a liar, may his bones rot beneath the Cryptic Sea.

Ianthe told him the truth in the ecstatic depths of the bloodflower trance. In that heaven of red shadows, he embraced her and she kissed his forehead.

“You must find your way back to me,” she told him. “To your inheritance. You will be Emperor of Khyrei. All of my kingdom, my wealth, my great knowledge is yours.”

“I will steal away this very night,” Fangodrel swore. “I’ll travel in disguise and take passage from Shar Dni.”

“No,” said Ianthe. “The danger is too great. The Golden Sea is full of death and pirates. War is brewing.”

“But Grandmother…” he protested, crying tears of flame. “I want my true family… I want-”

“You want power,” said Ianthe, soothing him with her gentle touch. How old was she? She seemed as young as he, her skin so white and unblemished, her body firm and perfectly sculpted. It seemed impossible that she could be two generations removed from his own, yet he believed her. He felt it in his very soul. Saw it in the visions poured like dark wine from her mind into his.

“Power you shall have, darling boy,” she told him. “It is yours by right of your bloodline. That power will grow within you and bring you to me. The kyreas, which you call the bloodflower, will be your guide. Here in the Red Dream I will teach you the power and glory of blood, red and hot on your tongue. You will call upon the Dwellers in Shadow… The blood will liberate you; the blood will bring you to me.”

“What blood?” he asked, ashamed of his own ignorance.

Ianthe smiled, and again she was the white panther, her claws and fangs stained with fresh crimson.

“The blood that you spill,” she said. “The blood of your enemies.”

At last the great valves opened and the Giants of Steephold welcomed the three Princes into the vast courtyard with rumbling laughter. A sliver of moon rose just above the central tower, and lowering clouds promised more storms.

The keep and its [keeower, environs had been built exclusively to accommodate the Uduru, so every hall, chamber, corridor, and passage was three times larger than any human would need. The royal quarters were built with a few man-sized accommodations, but the bulk of the soldiers from Udurum and Shar Dni would bunk in the massive barracks meant for Giant troops in times of war. Those chambers had never been used because the citadel, like New Udurum, was only a quarter-century old. Steephold was built over the ruins of a much older fortress, one built by Giants a thousand years ago. It had fallen into ruin centuries past, but the caverns it had guarded still remained, a series of tunnels running deep beneath the mountains. In the old days, Serpents often crawled up from those depths, and Giants marched into the subterranean realms to hunt them. Now they were paved over and corked shut with great stones.

Fangodrel doubted there were still any Serpents living beneath the range, but many of their skeletons hung upon walls inside the citadel. These were the relics of ancient hunts, fleshless bodies longer than the Giants were tall, with a dozen clawed legs and a mouth full of ivory fangs. If not for the bones of these creatures kept as trophies, he never would have believed that such creatures existed. But then he was learning much these days that he might not have believed until now.

Tallim the Rockjaw served as Lord of Steephold, appointed by Vod himself when Fangodrel was an infant. Rockjaw greeted the Princes in his main hall, rising from his great chair and stalking toward them like some beefy monster. His laughter rumbled toward the high ceiling, rattling the bones of the trophy Wyrms along the walls. The furs of a dozen bears composed his great cloak, and the teeth of those same bears hung about his trunk-like neck. The hall was filled with all fifty of his Giants, standing at attention with hammers and axes in their gnarled fists.

“Young Princes!” bellowed Rockjaw. “You do us honor! How many seasons has it been? Ten? Fifteen?”

Fangodrel wished to avoid ceremony and go directly to his chamber, but Tadarus jumped at any chance to indulge in royal etiquette. He loved these vicious brutes and their savage manner. I will not play their games of mock respect. Let Rockjaw fawn and pretend to be civilized with Tadarus. They are two of a kind.