John Fultz - Seven Princes

Khama nodded and sighed.

“You mean… he is… one of them?” Sharadza asked.

“A Vakai, yes,” said Khama. “He will crave only blood.”

“Why do such terrible things exist?” she asked.

Iardu looked at her as if she already knew the answer.

“Patterns,” he said.

Khama instructed a servant to bring certain herbs, a strong lock for the door, and boards for the window.

“We will wait in the Lemon Garden,” said Iardu, his hand on Khama’s shoulder.

Sharadza had time enough to say goodbye to Vireon. She hugged him and Alua.

“Come with us to Shar Dni,” said Vireon. She knew he feared for her in Yaskatha.

“I cannot,” she said. “I asked Iardu to face Elhathym. I cannot abandon him.”

Vireon seemed to understand. “We will meet in Khyrei then… when you are done here.”

“We will,” she said.

She ate a few grapes, drank some fresh milk, and joined Iardu on the terrace of a secluded garden. A ring of tall thin trees bore vivid fruits the color of topaz stones, and birds sang among the branches. The sky was blue and cloudless overhead, a hot southern sky. She had no time e hnd jto visit the famous Forest of Jewels that lay somewhere in the heart of Undutu’s palace. Such wonders must wait for more peaceful times.

“This is your last chance to change your mind,” Iardu told her, his prismatic eyes glistening. “Once we leave here, there will be no turning back.”

“What is our other choice?” she asked. “Wait for the hordes of Vakai to come raging into Mumbaza? Then Uurz? Then on to Udurum? No… we must do this.”

“Khama and I must,” he said. “But you do not have to. Go east with your brother and cousin. They need you in Shar Dni.”

She tilted her head at him. He would go to face Elhathym without her if she asked him to. There it was again, that strange endearing look in his inhuman eyes.

“We three must go,” she said, and he said no more about it.

Khama came forth in his cloak of gaudy feathers. He had finally let go of his herdsman’s staff, leaving it with his wife. Without a word he sprang to the ground, balanced on his fingers, legs stretched taut behind him. The sea wind picked up and blew strong over the city as Khama’s cloak lengthened and grew. Beneath its feathery folds, the man-shape blurred and was lost. The feathers multiplied in all their shades: crimson, emerald, azure. He lengthened impossibly, his head growing into a huge triangular shape, his body coiling and writhing among the trees of the lemon grove. Sharadza grabbed Iardu’s elbow as Khama grew and swirled about them like a tri-colored wind.

A moment later his great head turned amber eyes to stare at them. They stood now in the center space of his massive coils. Khama was the great Feathered Serpent, his neck the height of a tall horse, his body tapering in coil after coil toward the end of his pointed tail. A black stinger rose from its tip, sharp as the blade of a spear. His snout was frighteningly fanged, nostrils flaring with citrus-scented breath. She could not tell from the middle of his coiled immensity exactly how long he was.

“Climb upon my back,” said the Serpent in Khama’s voice, only deeper. A forked tongue long as a whip came darting from between his fangs, drawn as quickly back into the cavern of his throat. His eyes narrowed into slits as he watched them grab his plumage and lodge themselves behind his reptilian skull. Sharadza was amazed at the softness of the bright plumes.

All these wonderful feathers, and no wings…

Khama did not need wings. His head rose into the air and his shifting coils followed, straightening to his full length. He rose toward the clouds and flew wingless above Mumbaza, two riders on his back, the sun glistening in three colors along his feathered length.

“How can he fly without wings?” Sharadza shouted through the wind at Iardu, who rode behind her.

“He is a Creature of the Air,” said Iardu. “Do you know the story of Mumbaza’s founding? How the Feathered Serpent told its first king Ywatha the Spear where to build his great city?”

Sharadza nodded. The legend could be found in any proper history text. Ywatha and the Feaha dathered Serpent had always been one of her favorite epics.

“That was Khama,” said Iardu.

Sharadza had no words as the city dwindled below, a collection of luminescent domes and steeples gleaming like a single pearl beside the vast green sea.

The warships of Khyrei were black and crimson, the colors of city and jungle, night and blood. One hundred and twenty lean galleons skimmed the Golden Sea, shards of darkness escaped into the daylight. Their sails bore the white panther sigil of Ianthe on a field of black, and their prows were iron rams in the shape of horned devil-heads. Eighty slaves manned the oars of each vessel, chained and whipped, made impossibly strong by herbs and drugs that would burn away their lives in months. Upon the decks strode the demon-masked captains draped in scales of bronze, while in the holds a hundred faceless soldiers waited for the call to slay, driven to fury by the smoking bloodflower in their braziers.

Prince Gammir stood beside the Empress in the forecastle of the flagship Talon, scanning the northern horizon. An unnatural wind filled the black sails, and behind the ships came an invisible storm… a rush of forces skimming the water, darkening it from sun-gold to inky jet. The storm would rise up into a thousand deadly forms when the doors of night opened.

Gammir wore plate mail of glittering black, a longblade of sharpest obsidian sheathed at his waist. His dark hair had grown long; it writhed Serpent-like in the wind. The sunlight pained his eyes, but it would not be much longer. He squinted, searching for the first sign of the Sharrian coast. The fleet had launched in the dead of the night, powered by Ianthe’s summoned wind, and it had not ceased in its headlong flight across the waters. The plan was to reach the Valley of the Bull at sunset, or soon thereafter. Two trading galleons, one from the Islands, one a Sharrian merchant, had crossed their path earlier in the day. The merciless iron rams had torn into their hulls like arrows into bales of hay, and while the main fleet gusted northward a few ships lingered to scuttle and burn the traders. Now those ships, their crews incensed by an early taste of slaughter, had rejoined the fleet. The red sun hung low in the west, and Shar Dni grew closer with every passing second.

“They plot against us,” Ianthe had told him days ago. “They plan a season of war to follow their northern winter. In their ignorance, they imagine we will wait on their legions to march southward. What idiocy! They send Princes to Mumbaza to plot against our Elhathym!”

She had laughed, the sound of beautiful cruelty. Slaves cowered about her throne of ivory and jade, and the panther Miku lay sleeping at her feet. Gammir sat on a similar throne, where his grandfather the Emperor would have sat if he were still alive. If Vod had not killed him all those years ago. Gammir enjoyed the slaves of Khyrei; they served his every need, carnal and otherwise. There was none of the charade played out in his mother’s court – no pretense that servants were worthy of kindness and sympathy. Ianthe’s pale people – his people – knew their place. They lived and died to serve their Empress. ha dg flight aAnd now their Prince.

Ianthe had confessed to sending the nightmares that drove Vod to madness. She sent the Red Dreams that pulled Fangodrel to her, so she might teach him the secrets of power. Now she had laid her kingdom at his feet in all its shameless splendor. Now he was truly Gammir, and Khyrei was his realm as much as hers.