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.
24
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.
Their wings carried them west now, as well as south, and the forests sank into deep valleys and rose across furrowed ridges. The land gradually fell back to sea level as the mass of trees grew thinner. By late afternoon they soared over the windy brown steppes of Mumbaza. Somewhere ahead, perhaps closer than she imagined, lay the capital city atop its pearly cliffs, overlooking the blue sea as it had for centuries. Mumbaza was among the world’s most ancient kingdoms; despite the dangers ahead, she thrilled at the prospect of walking its ancient streets.
Iardu changed his course, and she was bound to follow. He dove toward the flat heat-browned grassland. A village of domed huts passed below, and herds of horned cattle. Dark-skinned Mumbazans walked trails among the grass with tufted spears, talismans of gold and copper gleaming on their chests. Another village nestled on the edge of a lake that glistened like a dark jewel. The swarthy villagers gathered here, some in crimson cloaks and hats of woven feathers. Dusky children gamboled between white sheep and black goats.
Eventually the Iardu-hawk alighted on the leafless branch of a twisted old tree near a cluster of round huts. Sharadza perched herself there beside him, blinking her avian eyes at the scene below. Here was the smallest of the villages yet. A single herd of goats gnawed the grass on a nearby hill. The golden steppe stretched out in all directions.
The two hawks sat on their branch and watched a few children run among the hide-walled huts, where the smoke of cookfires rose from clay chimneys. Sharadza sat patiently next to Iardu, although she longed to ask him what they were waiting for in this unlikely place. Where was the one they came to seek? This looked like no place a great sorcerer would live, but then what did the lair of a sorcerer look like? She rustled her feathers, trusting in the Shaper’s guidance. The sun sank toward the flat horizon, an orange ball of flame singing the steppe.
The goats moved off the hill and came slowly toward the cluster of huts. A man walked behind them with a crooked staff, the legendary tool of the herdsman. As he drew near, he looked right at the two hawks with his keen dark eyes. His skin was ebony, shining with sweat, and his thick hair tied into a mass of braids reaching the middle of his back. A loincloth and moccasins were his only garb, apart from the golden armbands, the copper amulets about his neck, and the jade bangles hanging from his pierced ears. His forehead was tall, his muscles lean and tight under smooth skin. His nose was broad and flat above ample lips, and the marks of ritual scarring formed zig- zag patterns on his chest and shoulders.
He led ze= width='2the goats into a pen, his eyes ever returning to the tree. When he closed the pen’s gate,
