John Fultz - Seven Princes

“Your brother!” called Vireon. He pointed to hapless Lyrilan floating among the wreckage. Other men drifted around him, and a few horses.

Tyro yelled to Lyrilan, and the scholar waved his arm. His hand was red, bloodied, but he seemed intact. As Vireon followed Alua up the rope ladder and stepped onto the Cloud ’s deck, he saw D’zan among the cheering sailors, bellowing as loudly as anyone.

“Vireon! Vireon! Vireon!” they cried.

He took Alua in his arms and the men patted his back, greeting him with smiles and handshakes. Some touched his shoulder or elbow, so they could later say they had done so.

“Save them,” Vireon panted. He looked over the rail at the corpse of the monster and the spreading wreckage of the flagship. “Save as many as you can. The horses too…”

Both ships pulled men from the ocean first, and by then most of the surviving horses had tired and drowned. The few who were reached in time had to be coaxed into nets, and they were lifted aboard by a crew of ten men. Vireon lifted nine such horses by himself, one at a time, each one drawing a fresh round of cheers. He waved away the acclaim. Now was no time for such things. Fearing that the dead Serpent might rise up and menace them again, like the dead Khyreins had in Murala, the crews poured buckets of pitch onto the floating carcass. Alua then set it alight with a white flame dropped like a flower petal from her fingertips. The smell of the beast’s cremation was a gut-wrenching foulness, yet the reek was reassuring. Better the smoke of its burning flesh than the wrath of its second life.

Lastly, they hauled aboard the floating barrels of fresh water and any unbroken crates of provisions and horse grains. Of the two hundred and twenty men aboard Dairon’s Spear, only eighty-five survived, plus the three Princes and Alua. Of the two hundred horses, only twenty-three were saved. Most of the rations and water were recoveredwerns. Of, but the two ships were desperately crowded now. By men, if not horses.

During the last hours of the salvage, done in the calm light of a half-moon, D’zan and Lyrilan came to the railing of the Cloud and stood near Vireon.

D’zan took his arm and met his eyes, a mixture of seawater and tears staining his cheeks. “Thank you, Vireon,” he said. “I can never repay what you’ve done for me this day. You knew that thing had come for me, yet you-”

“I did what had to be done,” said Vireon. He patted the boy’s shoulder. “Repay me with your allegiance when you take back your stolen throne.”

“I will,” said D’zan, and Vireon knew he meant it.

Lyrilan stared over the middle rail at the spars and shards of wreckage, spread now far and wide across the sea. White flames danced along the coils of the Serpent’s corpse, devouring its flesh even below the waterline. The ships had begun moving away from the blazing carcass.

Lyrilan sighed and stared at the black waters. “My book,” he whispered. “My quills… my ink… all gone.”

The scholar mourned the loss of these things more than all those who had died. Vireon would never understand such men. The face of Lyrilan was pale and drained of hope. A red bandage wrapped his right hand.

D’zan seemed to understand the scholar’s mood better. He clapped Lyrilan on the back, and his hand lingered there.

“These are only things,” he told the scholar. “You are alive, Lyrilan. Think of those who are not.”

Lyrilan nodded, pulling back a mass of oily curls from his face. “Yes,” he said. He looked at Vireon. His eyes glittered with moonlight. “There is only one thing to do.”

“What is that?” asked Vireon.

“Start over,” said the scholar.

Vireon looked at D’zan, who shrugged.

“The Mumbazans make a fine parchment,” said Lyrilan, turning toward his new cabin. “There must be a single chapter all about today. ‘Vireon and the Sea Monster’…” His voice trailed away as he lost himself among the men filling the crowded deck.

“Is the Prince all right?” Vireon asked D’zan.

“He will be,” said D’zan. “As will we all, once we get off this damned ocean.” The Yaskathan walked away, his head hanging low. More men had died for him today. More would die in the days to come. The bloody mantle of war would not hang easy on his young shoulders.

Vireon watched the smoking remains of the leviathan fade into the night as the ships drew southward.

“What was it?” Alua asked, stroking his chest with her cool fingers.

“Something from the deep,” he said. “Some ancient coomewith her cusin of the Serpents my ancestors killed. But a thing of water, not fire.”

“I felt its thoughts,” she told him, looking into his eyes. “They were the thoughts of a man, not a beast.”

“What did these man-thoughts say?” asked Vireon.

“ The Heir, find the Heir, it thought. Swallow the Heir, chew his bones. And when it saw D’zan, it knew he was the one.”

The tyrant, thought Vireon. Not the Sea Queen, but the Usurper of Yaskatha. The northern ships sailed into the reach of Elhathym’s power. He had commanded this devil of the Old World. Made it rise from the depths and kill all those men in the hope of killing just one. He would never stop until D’zan’s threat to his rule was removed.

Elhathym and all his walking dead, ancient devils, and terrible sorcery.

So be it. Elhathym must die.

Before or after the Kinslayer, it made no difference.

Fangodrel, Elhathym, Ianthe… There was much killing to do.

Vireon had left winter sleeping in the frozen north.

This was the hot, southern Season of Blood.

It flared now in his chest like the flame from Alua’s palm.

They rose from Udurum as twin hawks, he crested in black feathers and she in white. Soaring above the continent of clouds, they reached Uurz at sunset. Drawing as little attention to themselves as possible, they lodged in separate rooms at a modest inn called the Raven’s Perch. From her window Sharadza watched the towers of Dairon’s Palace fade from gold to dark silver as night fell across the city. The songs of minstrels floated from roof gardens as she lay upon the soft bed, her mind racing with thoughts of Vireon, Fangodrel, and her cousin Andoses. Nightmares came, distorted visions of the horrors she had seen in Iardu’s spilled wine. She woke to the sound of bellowing merchants and rolling thunder outside her window. She and Iardu breakfasted on dates and honeyed bread; he drank wine while she sipped water drawn from the Sacred River. In a dark alley they became hawks again and flew into the Stormlands sky, leaving Uurz to bask in its sudden showers, ephemeral rainbows, and ripe orchards.

They flew across the southern reaches of Dairon’s realm, an emerald plain scattered with villages and burgeoning farmlands. When they broke through the cloud layer into a crystal blue sky, the Great Earth-Wall lay far below, running in a crooked line from east to west, dividing the continent into Low and High Realms. Sharadza’s hawk-eyes studied the green roof of a vast forest beginning at the top of the mighty cliff and rolling into the southern horizon.

The colors of fall never came to the forests of tomewien rhe High Realms. Here the trees grew thicker than in the northern forests and were never troubled by the kiss of winter. The High Realms were a green wilderness where cities, roads, and walls did not exist. The lower world of the Stormlands lay hidden beneath a sea of rolling clouds to the north. Sharadza flew beside the black hawk, humbled by the sheer immensity of the High Forests, while Iardu’s beaked head focused only on the horizon. He had flown over these lands many times, and probably knew what every part of the continent looked like from the vantage of the sky. Strange tales were told of the beings who dwelled deep in those woodlands, and she wondered how many of their secrets Iardu knew. Perhaps she would ask him, when they became man and woman again, exactly how long he had roamed the world. Since seeing his true form for the first time, she found herself increasingly curious about him.