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.
26
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.
“What shall we do, Grandmother?” he asked. He already knew, but it pleased her when he played the role of innocent youth. It was one of the many ways he indulged her.
Ianthe fingered the necklace of moonstones about her slender neck. Her white hair was caught up in a beehive, wrapped in strings of beryl and agate. Her smile was a splash of blood on a statue of sculpted marble. The statue of a Goddess driven by wicked whims.
“We will strike first,” she said. “Elhathym has promised me half of his Vakai horde. He will send them to us through the mirror. Already he moves to take the border of Mumbaza. Soon his shadows will drink the blood of the Boy-King and his court, and we will drink that of the Sharrians. We will not bother with tiny Allundra, but make directly for Shar Dni.”
“Why not take Elhathym’s gift and kill him?” he asked. “Surely he holds no real interest for you.”
Ianthe turned her black-diamond eyes at him. “There is much you have yet to learn,” she said. “Elhathym is of the Old Breed. He ruled an empire on the southern coast before any other nations claimed this continent. He walked the Ancient World at my side and we played the games of blood and fire. The world was our toy, even after the Great Descent, when we took the shapes of mortals.”
“Where has he been all these ages?” he asked. “The world has forgotten him.”
A floating globe of fire above their thrones turned from orange to emerald and its light shifted the contours of her perfect face. “He grew bored and went off to explore the Outer Worlds for amusement. His earthly empire crumbled without him, and three thousand years of wandering yielded him no more pleasurable sphere than this one. Yet he stumbled, perhaps caught in his own terrible ennui, and fell into the void where the Vakai dwell. He lingered for ages among those famished spirits, observing their torments. They could not drink his blood, but they reveled in his pain for it distracted them from their own suffering, so they kept him there. In his madness he called out to me. Across a divide of centuries I heard his cry. So I pulled him from the void, sealing him to a pact that would meet my own needs.
“First he reclaimed the heart of his former kingdom. Now he has called forth the Vakai, his former tormentors, to serve him. In this world he is their master, and he assembles them now in great numbers. Together, Yaskatha and Khyrei are indomitable. As in the Ancient Times, we will stride across the world and spill its blood for our pleasure. This is our world, Gammir. You must learn to love Elhathym as you love me.”
He bristled. “You love him?”
She laughed again, musical knives upon his bare skin. “He is my lover… but he is not my husband.”
“I will never love him,” said Gammir.
She smiled and reached over to caress his cheek. The fire-globe turned to deep scarlet, his favorite color. “My sweet boy,” she cooed. “None will ever come between us. If you will not love Elhathym… then you must at least show him the respect due a fellow warlock.”
He said nothing to that. He would show the necessary courtesy to the gray-haired sorcerer. Until the day came when he found the chance to destroy him. For now, let him send his shadow legions to join those of Ianthe. What could it hurt? The destruction of Shar Dni was worth even this sour alliance. Time later for his own designs.
Ianthe spoke often with Elhathym in the Glass of Eternity. Gammir arranged to be outside the sanctum when this occurred. Let her deal with him; Gammir gave only silent consent. Three days ago, he saw Elhathym walk through the mirror, to stand in fleshly form inside the high tower. He had come to taste the sweet flesh of Ianthe,
