If the serpent understood what
wife
meant, she gave no sign. She coiled herself up, inspecting Tanyth, the blue tongue caressing crimson flesh. Tanyth giggled. "It tickles."
I embraced my wife, kissing her, and stroking the serpent's head. The three of us rejoined Ujaala in the main hall. I sat down at the table and Ujaala told us what had become of her. She had followed me over the Red Wastes, sometimes only a few months behind, sometimes a year. She had nearly caught up with me in Repentance, but missed me by scant days.
"But I am here now with you," she said, a smile spreading over her face.
"And you are welcome in this household," Tanyth assured her.
"Thank you, mistress."
"You do not have to thank me, my dear," Tanyth said. She spoke to Ujaala like a mother to a child, yet the bedslave was perhaps a decade her senior. "I will need to speak with my husband about the proper care of slaves."
"She is not..." I cut myself off. I had tried to free Ujaala and she had steadfastly refused. Kharsoom was a strange culture that I could not truly understand. This seemed to be the life Ujaala wanted, perhaps the best she thought she could hope for. She would be comfortable enough. I had missed her charms as well, and looked forward to laying with her that night.
With Quiyahui once again beside me, the anchor holding me in Eirashtar was gone. I felt it lift as surely as I could feel anything. The quest called and finally I could answer. I said none of this, instead merely voicing my acquiescence to Ujaala's presence. "See that she's given night tea," I said finally.
I quietly made my preparations and three days later announced my intention to leave. Ujaala wept bitterly when I announced my intention, protesting she had only just found me. Tanyth held her, reminding her that she had a place in Clan Abibaal. "You will be safe here, and Belromanazar will return to us."
"You will return, won't you?" Tanyth asked as we held one another in bed the night before I was due to leave.
"You have to ask?"
"No," she admitted. "But I want you to tell me."
"I will return to you, my love." I paused, and into the silence said, "You did say you wanted a rest."
"I hoped that I would be with child already," she sighed.
"I will not be gone forever. This I vow to you."
"I know." She kissed me. "Because you cannot be long away from me."
"I love you, Tanyth."
She sighed and lay on her back, looking at the dancing golden light on the ceiling. "I think I will like being wed to a wizard. Your finger will finally be cold for a reason."
I chuckled, looking at Diotenah's ring wrapped about the index finger of my left hand. A skeletal serpent, it clutched its tail in its mouth. It had become so silent lately I had nearly forgotten it was there at all. I was only reminded if my finger, which took the temperature of the surrounding air, probed a sensitive spot in one of my paramours.
A ring was forged to distill, to concentrate, the power of the one who forged it. A piece of the creator remained within, and in this case, that piece was that of a ghoul necromancer dedicated to a dark design whose shape I could not yet see. That piece had whispered to me, encouraging me to use its power, but when I lost my magic, its voice diminished. It had been years since I felt the ghoul whispering softly in my mind.
I filled Ksenaëe's saddlebags with provisions, bringing several skins filled with water from the cistern. I was far less concerned about water thanks to my sweetwater goblet. Still, leaving without a supply was an unnecessary risk. Last, I took my weapon, Ur-Anu, a spear forged at the dawn of time to slay a god.
I rode from the gates at dawn, Quiyahui flying next to me. My guide was a map I had created from scattered hints in Clan Abibaal's library combined with what Kirylkis, the xerxyss holy man, had told me. I would learn that I managed a shockingly accurate one. As it turned out, Tele'kili was not particularly hard to find if one knew where to look. It was merely surrounded by some of the most inhospitable terrain in the Red Wastes.
There are times I regret Kharsoom's passing from the world. Nothing is permanent. I understand this better than most. And now, in our Sixth Strata, many places have that bleak, funereal feel that made Kharsoom linger in the heart. The Blacklands spring to mind. I do not find them as romantic, perhaps because I was there for their formation. Their starkness feels more like a tragedy than a remnant of a tragic past. One of the prices of immortality, I suppose.
I left the Forest Issatesh behind for the craggy and broken landscape of the Lu-Ninurta Wastes. I saw no signs of life here. Not a single pharcyl wheeling in the sky, nor a starving jagkru hunting the meager shadows. I saw not even a solitary lizard sunning itself on a rock.
Time was difficult to measure, for every day blended into the next. I know we traveled for more than a month and Quiyahui never came to me in her human form. I did not think this odd at time, so consumed was I in the quest. It was not until later that I realized it, when we were back in Eirashtar, and she awakened me with kisses from her human mouth.
It was not until the sky changed that I was certain my path led in the right direction. No longer the flat blue that reigned over the wastes, the sky had taken on a sickly tinge, an unnatural gray-green. An eerie feeling descended over me like a cloak, and I reached behind me, freeing Ur-Anu from its sheath. I gripped the spear in hand, though no threads met my mind, warning me of attack. If I was going to be in a place where the gods were slain, better to hold a weapon forged to kill gods.
That night, Quiyahui wrapped about me as we nested in the furs, leaning against Ksenaëe. Night in Kharsoom demanded the husbanding of warmth. I fell into a fitful sleep. Nightmares troubled me. A slender figure appeared in shadow, and I did not know who she was until light glinted from her metallic teeth. It was Diotenah, awakened from whatever slumber had claimed her. She was no mere dream. She was an ill omen, a guide to a place of slaughter. She reached out to me, her clawed fingers curling.
I awoke, breathless. A strange, goblin light surrounded me. Gray-green, it was the color of the sky, and in it the shadows danced as though I was underwater. Ksenaëe was still. Quiyahui was a weight upon my chest. It was not until I struggled free of the furs. The qobad squawked and the coatl uttered a warning hiss.
The air was frigid, but I scarcely noticed. A scent like old cobwebs filled my nose. I found Ur-Anu in my hand, but I did not remember taking it up. Diotenah's whispers slithered through my consciousness, spurring me to the edge of the rocky clearing. I peered out onto the pathways below.
An army marched past in endless ranks, passing within a few scant feet of my hiding place. The features of the men below, the design of their blades, was Kharsoomian, but they wore armor like other men. It wasn't merely a few scraps of bone or leather barely covering their nudity, but full breastplates, greaves, even kilts. They marched in orderly rows, some mounted upon qobads, and alongside armored jagkru. Either end of the column vanished on the horizon. I had never seen such a host, not even in the Turquoise Conquest, when the Heacharids could muster endless waves of men. The idea that Kharsoom could manage one was madness.
I watched in mute incomprehension as they marched north. The soldiers appeared as solid as I. They were not the source of the strange light that surrounded them. I could not understand it, until finally I saw the impossible. Shadow and light had been reversed. The shadows of the men were bright, the sky and air dark around them. None of the soldiers made a sound other than the faint tread of feet, and this, combined with the light, rendered them eerie and uncanny to my eyes.
Quiyahui joined me at the rocks. I could not read her face, for her blue eyes were blank. Her tongue flickered out, tasting the air. She never reacted to the soldiers, either in fear or anger.
I began to look into the faces of the passing soldiers, to read some of their humanity in their expressions. They were over all resolute, but I recognized the smaller expressions that war with discipline on the face of a soldier ready to enter battle. Some were gripped with a lust for war, some frightened of the bloodshed to come, some who were in pain from walking, some who daydreamed of somewhere or someone far away. Soldiers thought they hid such expressions from their commanders, but we could read them. We knew them because we saw our hearts echoed upon their faces.
Diotenah's voice grew louder, more frantic, though her words were still at the edge of understanding. These creatures were beyond death. Whether ghost or wight I couldn't say. Had I been the necromancer the Heacharids believed me to be I might have unraveled the mystery, but my knowledge was deficient. And I had spent a decade as a savage warrior, for whom magic was a distant memory.
Diotenah, the remnant of her that remained in the ring had awakened. After so long dormant, her presence was at once comforting and unnerving. A ring was a powerful object, a distillation of power, a creation of a truly powerful spellweaver. It would never die in any meaningful way. It retained the desires of its creators, and sometimes even their goals, though often in a simpler, baser state. I knew only that Diotenah the Shadow's Daughter wanted whatever was at the end of the column. She wanted the place of slaughter.
I looked down at the ring, and perhaps it as a trick of that strange goblin light, but I swear the skeletal serpent tightened upon my finger. Diotenah's purrs slithered through my consciousness. I gripped Ur-Anu more tightly, as though Fate could keep the foul creature's will at bay. I could not. As soon as I donned her ring, I gained her power, but also that piece of her within the object, a demon who would try to compel me to work its foul will.
I watched, mesmerized, as the column marched through the night. As the sun rose and fingers of light touched them, I expected that they would be banished as all nightmares inevitably were by the coming of day. They weren't immediately. As my gaze cast about, I saw that a section of them were gone, then I looked back to another, and they too were gone. They vanished never while under my watchful eye, but when I looked away, as though they were never there at all.
The goblin light of night was replaced by the sickly glow of this place. The army had been a sign. I could not fail to recognize so obvious an omen. They marched north, in the same direction my maps pointed. There could be no other destination for them.
I mounted Ksenaëe and rode along their path, Quiyahui with me. The terrain was the most Kharsoomian I had seen. Dry, cracked red earth like a badly-healed wound stretched over a bleak and plantless expanse. Broken outcroppings showed signs of human works, a piece of a wall here, a broken watchtower there, partly swallowed by the dead earth. The water here came in evil-smelling puddles and though I was wary of ghalaks, none came. I believe even they gave this place a wide berth. As I journeyed to Tele'kili, Mount Sorrow, I took to calling this place Sorrow's Meadow in my mind.
Diotenah never fell silent. I felt glee in her voice as we traced the path of the army. That night, I fell into fitful sleep and once again dreamed of the necromancer. She awaited me in the ruins of a great city, the sky black above her. The pale lines of her lissome body were all that was visible in the dark, slices of pale flesh among silky black. Her lips peeled back from her metallic teeth and her onyx eyes glittered. I awoke, finding myself painfully hard, and once again crawled to the edge of the clearing where we had slept.
Diotenah made sibilant promises as I watched the soldiers pass in their endless ranks. I wanted to return to my furs, to try to wring some rest out of the night, but Diotenah, the ring, would not allow it. The necromancer's whispers were maddened. Her words were still unclear, but I understood the need in her voice, the rage that I had stopped for the night. I should keep moving, as tireless as death.
That day, I was exhausted, slumped in the saddle beneath the punishing heat of the day, hoping vainly for rest that would not be allowed. Every night Diotenah woke me, and every night, her whispers approached understanding. The ring did not truly have a mind, but it had a will, it had desires. It was seeing them, laid out before it and it could not contain itself.
Perhaps it was the ring, perhaps it was the madness of my fatigue, but I began to understand the marching men. They were neither ghosts nor wights. They had nothing left of the will, nor did they have bodies. I began to think of them as scars. Wound a man badly enough and a scar is left. The great circular scar on my abdomen was evidence of that. Kill a man, and the scar was there, but not visible. It existed in the hearts of those he loved, and those who loved him. Kill a god, kill a pantheon of gods, and what shape would the scar take?
I wish that I had known more of theology then. None of my brides at that time were numbered among the faithful. Later, I would have Ten Ghosts, I would have Kyshaelyn, women with deep understandings of the ineffable, who spoke in the poetry of the ethereal. I am, for all my magical skill, a man of the here and now.
