But he also felt an impulse to remove clothing and climb beneath the fur blanket and wrap his arms around her. Their cold Cainite bodies would not warm one another, regardless of how much time they spent in each other’s embrace, nor would they respond to the physical closeness in the same manner as the bodies of mortal men and women. But they would still be together, and that was all that mattered.
Qarakh was still trying to decide what he wanted to do when Deverra opened her eyes. They retained a pinkish tinge from all the equine blood she had ingested the previous night.
“I’m surprised you’re up,” she said. “Usually you sleep later than I do.”
“You were weary after last night.” Due to the infusion of Aajav’s vitae, he felt stronger and more full of energy than ever before. It was obscene that the murder of his brother should leave him feeling so good.
Deverra sat up, not bothering to keep herself covered with the blanket. “I know what happened last night. I’ve worked so many spells on both you and Aajav over the years that I’ve become linked to you both. You’ve taken your brother’s essence into yourself, and it has left you with great sorrow.”
Qarakh did not know what to say to this, so he said nothing.
“I also know that whatever his reasons, Aajav chose to end his life, and he asked you, his brother, to grant him the mercy of oblivion. What you did was an act of love, Qarakh. You must believe that.”
“Do you want to know what I believe? I had time to think as I rode back to the battlefield last night, and more time again as I returned to the camp. I came to understand where Aajav’s error lay. He was unable to give up his mortal life on the steppe, and because of this, he could never accept his existence as a Cainite.”
“He tried to live in yostoi,” Deverra said.
“He did not truly understand yostoi, and neither did I, until last night. Like Aajav, I too believed that the only way to live with what I had become was to attempt to take the best elements of both worlds—mortal and Cainite—and combine them. But all I managed to do was make myself into a walking contradiction: a creature neither fully human nor fully Cainite.”
“You speak from your sorrow. You do not truly mean these words.”
“I do. I am a Mongolian wanderer who pretends to be khan of a tribe bound to the grasslands of Livonia. I am a hunter, yet I keep mortals, watch over and protect them, as if they were sheep and I their shepherd. I pretend to fight the Christians and their civilization, but I keep my own Beast on so tight a leash that it haunts my dreams. And last night both Alexander and I fought as mortal men do—with strategy and carefully planned battle tactics. But such is not the way of the Beast. The way of the Beast is to attack swiftly, matching your strength to your enemy’s, to fight as savagely as you can until one of you is the victor and the other is no more. It is that simple, that pure.”
“You are wrong, Qarakh.” Crimson tears brimmed at the corners of her pink-hued eyes. “True yostoi means carefully keeping all the aspects of one’s nature in balance: nobility and savagery, hunger and gluttony, necessity and excess. One in yostoi kills out of need and want both. You have successfully balanced these elements, Qarakh, and you have created a place where others can learn to do the same.”
Qarakh shook his head. “All I have created is a mockery—a tribe of predators who play at being herders. I have long been referred to as the Untamed, but that name was not accurate. I was tamed—by myself and by my foolish, childish dream.”
Red tears flowed freely down Deverra’s cheeks. “It is a beautiful dream, and one that I share.”
“It was only a delusion, and one I am well rid of. Starting this night I shall truly live up to the title of the Untamed. I shall embrace my bestial nature, and no one—Cainite, mortal or sorcerer—shall be able to stand against me.”
“You cannot mean this!”
Part of him wanted to agree with her, to tell her that he was speaking out of pain over Aajav’s loss, that perhaps his dream was still worth fighting for. But another part—a darker, hungrier part—said otherwise.
“Make yourself ready,” he said. “Tonight we shall meet Alexander’s army in battle once more. And this time there will be no plans or formations. We shall line up at opposite ends of the battlefield, and then we shall ride at one another and fight until one side is victorious—exactly as we should have done in the first place.”
Qarakh thought that Deverra would argue further with him, but the priestess wiped the tears from her cheeks, making bloody streaks on her flesh, and then nodded.
“As you will, my khan.”
Qarakh nodded once, then left the tent. He needed to speak to Malachite.
After Qarakh had gone, Deverra threw aside the fur blanket and quickly donned her robe. She left the tent and hurried to the nearby stand of trees where the other Telyavs had spent the day.
She knew something about diablerie. After all, she had once belonged to the Tremere, a clan whose very existence was due to the practice. It was more than simply consuming another Cainite’s blood. Diablerie entailed the consumption of the very heart’s blood, the last nugget of essence. Diablerie was to eat the very soul of another. This conveyed power, yes, but it could also overwhelm the diablerist’s own personality. The initial period of time immediately after diablerie—a few days to a few weeks—was marked by irrationality and impulsiveness as the Cainite struggled to adjust to his newfound strength and to integrate the elements
