Prince Andoses was Ammon’s only son and heir to the throne. He was sent to gather support for a war against Khyrei. Gammir smiled as he circled the blue temple-pyramid. His shadow-children had slain Andoses at Steephold… torn him to bloody shreds. Word of his son’s death had not even reached the Sharrian King yet. Gammir would bring it. As he stood over the twitching body of Ammon, his lips wet with royal blood, he would tell the King that his son was dead by the same hand that now strangled him. He anticipated the exquisite moment.
Somehow he had always known his mother’s people were not his own. Shaira was his birth-mother, that much was true. But everything he was came from his father, the betrayed and murdered Prince of Khyrei. Soon this city would bow before the new Gammir. It had no inkling that a black viper crawled through its streets carrying poison toward its heart. When Ammon was dead, and all his royal family, Khyrei would sweep across the sea to take this valley and its riches. These smug, milling crowds would all be slaves and chattels.
As he rode into the Great Market between the four blue temples, he sensed a sea of blood washing about him, foaming and dark against his boots as he rode. All these dull-eyed sheep walking through a world whose truth they could hardly suspect. The first pang of thirst came upon him then, riding among the cloth merchants, jugglers, livestock sellers, and fruit vendors. He ignored it. The sounds of the living city rang in his ears like a storm, hawking voices, clanging metal, lilting music, shouting children, groaning camels, laughter, the squawking of caged parrots. This city was a rich feeding ground. It would be his.
Beyond the plaza rose the white spires of the Royal Palace. The black steed carried him across the bazaar, and he licked his lips.
A face in that milling crowd caught his attention. Blue eyes staring directly at him, as no Sharrian had dared to do. Dead Tadarus stood there, unmoving and unseen among the busy throng. No, it could not be Tadarus… only some passing resemblance. But emb had alwthen what of the ghost on the ridge top?
Perhaps it was the purple cloak that invited the dead man’s shade to haunt him. He considered dropping it from his shoulders and leaving it in the dust of the plaza. But he needed it as part of his disguise to gain entry to the palace. What’s more, he liked the cloak. It was the last piece of Udurum he could claim – until his Khyrein armies took the city. First Shar Dni, then Udurum. The Giants were dying; they could not defend it forever. War was coming and it flew on wings of shadow.
Tadarus stared at him from a sea of faces.
Gammir turned away. I’ll give him his damned cloak once I’ve entered the palace. Damn him. A nuisance in death as he was in life.
He looked back, but Tadarus was gone.
The outer wall of the palace loomed before him.
“I am the eldest Prince of Udurum,” he told the trio of guards at the gate. “I come to speak with my uncle, King Ammon.”
The guards bowed and opened the gates wide for his passage. A splendid courtyard lay beyond, a forest- orchard of palms, cypress, pear trees, marble fountains, and sand gardens. The white towers and cupolas of the palace proper rose above the green fronds of the trees.
“I’ll take you r mount to the stables, Lord,” offered a guard.
“No need,” said Gammir. He slid from the black horse, and it faded to nothing like smoke dispersing in sunlight.
The guards gasped and stepped away. Their fear was perfume to him. The blood in their veins rushed with fear and awe. They knew the mark of sorcery as a hare in the forest knows the tread of a predator. One of the men made the sign of the Sky God on his breast, and Gammir smiled. The man grew even more frightened at the sight of his feral grin.
“I’ll be your escort, Lord,” said the ranking guard.
“Take me directly to the King,” said Gammir. “I’ve come a long way and I am thirsty.”
The guard swallowed his fear and led Gammir through the courtyard to the golden doors of Ammon’s palace.
Beneath the branches of the cedars, among the hedges and roots and untrod patches of the royal gardens, a swarm of hungry shadows awaited the coming of night.
15
The owl flew beyond the forests of Uduria, across the snow-capped peaks of the Grim Mountains. When walls of dark cloud rolled into its path, spitting lightning and fierce winds, it rose higher into the sky and soared above the churning storm. It winged westward across the sleeping world, seen only by the blinking stars and mute moon. When the sun rose at its back, it sailed downward through the clouds and found a soft place on the grassy plain of the emb hthe chuStormlands. There it became a young girl again and slept in the lee of a mossy boulder, obscured by a sea of waving green stalks.
Sharadza awoke at midday and drank rainwater from a natural depression in the crown of the boulder. She found a wild patch of cloudberries and picked them for breakfast. Before the sun climbed high enough to battle the army of clouds, she took the black owl’s form again and soared westward. After a while the clouds below her beating wings grew thinner, and a cool salty air blew into her shining owl eyes. She left the Stormlands behind and the vast blue ocean lay beneath her, a shimmering blue expanse spangled with shards of sunlight. She flew south and west now, and the coastline dwindled behind her.
By sorcerous instinct she flew toward the place she had seen in her vision. It lay beneath those sparkling waves, in depths where the sun’s rays could not reach. The great waters stretched in every direction, and the owl hovered between white cloud and azure sea. Its feathers flowed like smoke and Sharadza took her true form once again. She fell feet first through the air, inhaling the rush of sea air. She dropped without panic or concern, with arms outstretched, fingers pulling from the fabric of the world those things she would need.
In her right hand she grabbed a bit of wind. Her left hand grabbed a strand of sunlight, and she squeezed its warmth in her palm.
The part is the whole… There can be no separation.
The dancing waters rose to meet her. She pulled the wind about herself in a tight bubble, an ethereal armor, a sheathe of fresh air welded to her skin. She draped the sunlight across herself like a cloak, spreading warmth and light along her limbs. A second before she broke the surface of the sea, she became an oblong slab of granite which kept the semblance of her features.
The ocean swallowed the warm glowing stone and welcomed it with a rush of bubbles. It fell into an aquamarine realm where sunlight refracted across schools of silver fish. The stone Sharadza’s weight carried it into the purple gloom of deeper waters where sharks and rays skirted its sinking form. Then it entered the darkness that cloaked the floor of the sea, where gnarled reefs and forests of seaweed hid multitudes of darting, skimming creatures.
The stone Sharadza’s journey might have ended there, but it plunged into a great fissure like a meteor, shedding the golden radiance of a miniature sun. Inside the great chasm an ultramarine glow replaced the dark, and a wilderness of massive luminescent anemones waved their tentacles in silent dances. Immense squid sailed past the sinking stone, ignoring its advent, and rainbow- scaled fish parted ranks as it found the coral ridges of the chasm floor.
Some distance away, an even greater glow lit the depths in blazing hues of crimson, magenta, a dozen greens and blues, shining amber, and deep turquoise. There stood the immensity of the coral city and its palace, a citadel of spires, vaults, and terraces formed by ancient generations of polyp and shell. Giant anemones waved along its ramparts like the flags of sunken kingdoms. Subaqueous gardens enclosed its grounds for leagues, brimming with marine flora and fauna.
When the bright stone fell to rest among a forest of dancing blue-green weeds, it lay still for a while in its thin shell of air. It still emitted thillere, bute glow of the upper sun, and it had left a brilliant streak across this realm of watery twilight. A group of Sea-Folk swam from the palace in search of the sun-stone, gliding toward its resting place, waving cautious tridents in its direction. Their skins were a mix of silver and turquoise scales rippling in the
