“And the others?” she asked.
“The rest remain in their funeral pyre,” he said without looking back. “We burn this box to the ground and piss on the ashes.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE FORTRESS SPRAWLED along the edge of the forest, her turrets rooted deep into the earth like industrial claws. Like the talons of a steel-footed throne.
From the highest lookout among the twisted pines, one might monitor the hills of Byzantium twenty miles away and gaze at the roiling sky’s ominous poetry, diffusing the sun’s light as those beneath lived under the guise of death.
The thin strain of violins filled Saric’s master chamber, pumped in through the vents like air. Not the soulless stuff composed in the last half millennium, but the music of Chaos as it had been five centuries earlier, resurrected-a melody to tear at the soul. The minor key saturated the darkened chamber, the heavy silk hangings, the very candlelight, until it ruined the air for anything else. Saric had ordered it played throughout the fortress every evening at the same time for the benefit of those dwelling within these walls.
So much had changed.
Nine. It was the number of years since the Master Alchemist Pravus had first injected him with the serum that awakened him to a semblance of dark life. His entire being had seethed with new emotion. It had been a tortured birth that nearly destroyed him. And yet today he celebrated that first awakening because it had ultimately led to a far greater life-the same one that now allowed him to relish the ancient paintings of lush landscapes that lined the walls of the room in which he sat.
The master chamber was twenty paces to a side. An expansive, thick rug woven from the hides of lions lay before a long ebony desk that doubled as a dining table when Saric felt so inclined. And he was inclined often. Gold silk panels gathered in each corner, hanging from the ceiling to pool on the marble floor like sunlight fallen to his feet. On the far side of the room, a tall cylindrical glass sarcophagus stood against the wall.
Eight. It was the number of years he had spent in stasis in that very sarcophagus, here, in his former master’s fortress. He had little memory of those years except for the nightmares of his time before stasis-dreams of sweaty ambition. Of clawing and desperate jealousy. Of anger like poison in the veins.
Seven. It was the number of months since he’d woken from those dark visions to find himself a man reborn. Something more than he had been, a masterwork of his maker, Pravus.
He was evolved, perfected from those first violent days of a lesser life years ago. The base sentiments of anger and greed and raw ambition had been joined by a capacity for joy and love, peace and wonder. It was then that he became aware of his true purpose: to fully embrace true life at any cost. And for this hunger he would be eternally grateful to his maker.
Saric sat behind the carved ebony table and considered the steak topped with the tiny raw quail egg. The egg was smattered with caviar, the salty aroma of which he had inhaled now for a full ten minutes. His eyes fluttered closed. The ecstasy he felt at the thought of eating life into his very cells was only the beginning. Soon he would taste life in a way that exalted him to the heavens.
He touched the silver knife with a fingertip, slid it across the damask tablecloth before gently picking it up. He lifted the fork with similar reverence and then, with deliberate leisure, slipped tines and tip at once into the steak. The egg trembled and spilled yolk onto the plate as he lifted the first salty bite to his mouth. He chewed slowly, the caviar popping, briny as life, against his tongue.
Six. It was the number of months since he had first discovered that out of this reborn life there were two things he could no longer abide: death, and any power that threatened his mastery of life, which equated to any power greater than his own. He had found true life at last in this dead world, and nothing could be allowed to compromise or supplant the unquestioned power that came with it.
He slid his gaze down the table past the glow of the candelabra to the glass sarcophagus. Pravus stared back with sightless eyes.
Five. It was the number of months since he’d killed Pravus. The memory of that day was stamped into his mind like a birthmark. His master had been bent low over a microscope in Corban’s lab, analyzing a new sample of flesh quickened by a strengthening serum, when Saric had quietly stepped in behind him, axe behind his back, trembling with the thought of what he was about to do.
He’d hesitated only a moment, considering the profanity of killing the one who’d given him life so abundantly. But Pravus could not become Sovereign of the world as he, a royal in the line of Sovereigns, could. Though he loved the man as a father, he would always stand in the path of Saric’s discovery of all this new existence could offer him. Raw power was an expression of life, and Saric’s destiny lay in unrestrained consumption of both.
Pravus had turned as Saric rushed forward, but the rage he felt as he buried the axe in his master’s face had been directed at himself. The slaying had been a deeply distasteful experience. He’d fallen to his knees and wept as Pravus slumped in the chair, dead, bleeding onto the floor.
And yet, in his death Pravus had given him a great, final gift brimming with power. And so he would revere him forever.
Saric set down the knife and fork, slid back his carved chair and rose. He rounded the end of the table and walked to the sarcophagus, napkin still in hand. Tilting his head, he wiped the barest bit of a smudge off the front of the glass, resisting the urge to weep at the sudden loneliness that seized him.
Tubes fed into the back of the sarcophagus, twitching ever so slightly at the pulse of the fluid within them. For an instant he thought of ripping them away. Instead, he touched one thoughtfully, knowing it sent nutrients even now to the layer of living flesh he’d ordered Corban to graft over the long wound that had forever separated Pravus’s eyes an inch too far-that gash that had opened under Saric’s ax, spilling blood and brains so that he could fulfill his calling.
He stepped back, his faint reflection transposed over the soulless face of his former master. Saric could not count the times he’d stood before this sarcophagus and wept. But there was new life yet to be found. And power greater than any yet understood. He leaned forward and placed a light kiss on the glass.
“Forgive me.”
And he knew his master did.
Four. It was the number of days ago he’d first learned that Byzantium’s Citadel, home to the world’s highest administrative offices, housed a terrible and beautiful secret.
A knock at the door. Saric slowly turned his gaze from the sarcophagus and glanced at the delicacies on his plate. He didn’t like to be interrupted at times like this. He considered ignoring the intrusion. Instead, he folded the napkin between his fingers.
“Come.”
The carved double doors swung open on their hinges, revealing the robed form of Corban, his chief alchemist.
His head was bowed, his long hair bound into a braid wrapped tight with black silk that fell down over his chest. It was a preference the alchemist had adopted since waking to the life that he had once been denied by Pravus. It was Saric who had given it to him.
Two others stood behind him, taller, broader of shoulder than Corban-products of the same chambers from which Saric himself had emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon. They knelt in reverence, one in the shadow of each door, twin images of sinister beauty, perfectly muscled with inky veins beneath their pale skin so similar to his own. As Pravus was his maker, he was theirs-a better maker, having seen to it that they were stripped of all ability to countermand him. They would never know the disquiet or anguish of killing their creator as he had. He was their father, and they were his children, whom he loved as much as his own life. To a point.
“Yes?”
The black eyes of all three lifted to him with devotion.
So much had changed.
“We’ve found her,” Corban said.
“Where is she?” Saric was careful that his words not bely the acceleration of his heart.
