Seven Princes (43 page)

Sharadza grabbed her mother’s hand. “Mother, you must understand. The Mer-Queen had all but forgotten her curse. It was
not
her who called Father to his death. It was not your fault.”

“Yes, it was,” said the Queen. “I made him go! I looked on his Giant body as a curse and I made him go to Iardu.”

“It was his choice,” said Sharadza. “And he was in love. You said yourself, love changes you. You know the philosopher Therokles? He said, ‘Love is the death of Wisdom.’ Do not blame yourself. Father would not want you to.”

The Queen regained her composure. She squeezed her daughter’s hands.

“Tell me though,” said Sharadza. “Why did he take the name Vod?”

“When the Giants captured him, Fangodrim the Gray recognized Ordra as the lost son of his brother Fangodrel, who died at the fangs of the Serpent-Father. When he realized this was his own nephew, he gave Ordra his true name. Fangodrel the First had named his infant son Vod. Ordra was the name Vod’s human foster-parents gave him. So Ordra become Vod, and regained his people. Yet he lost me… I blamed him for betraying Uurz to the Giants. A year later my father sent me to Khyrei to wed Prince Gammir.”

“Then Vod rescued you,” said Sharadza. “And re-won your love.”

Queen Shaira nodded, a mix of old emotions dancing in her
eyes. She drank a cup of the pomegranate juice. “Are all your questions answered?” she asked.

“No,” said Sharadza. “One remains. The most important.”

Her mother looked at her, green eyes matching green.

“What was it that tormented Father so terribly that he would gladly walk into the sea and drown?”

Shaira’s eyes fell. “
Her
,” she said. “It had to be her. She took Vod and now she’s taken Fangodrel. One is dead and one is lost.”

“Who?” asked Sharadza.

“Ianthe,” said her mother. “Empress of Khyrei… the sorceress. I told you how Vod brought her palace down about her ears, killing her husband and son. They were evil and deserved to die. We thought she had died too, but we were wrong. Word of her survival reached us years later, when the boys were still small. We thought she would stay away from us – New Udurum had become a great power – but her sorcery knew no bounds. It must have been her taking vengeance on Vod, poisoning his mind with visions. She stole his sanity… and now his adopted son.”

Sharadza considered the enmity of the sorceress. Ianthe had sent the nightmare madness that killed her father and blamed it on the Mer-Queen. Then she had somehow seduced her grandson away from his foster-family – driven him to murder Tadarus as she had driven Vod to murder himself.

“Sharadza?” asked her mother.

“Yes?”

“Where did you go? Tell me now.”

“I went to study… with Iardu,” she said. Her mother’s face tightened as if she had been smacked. “He taught me what he taught Father. He made me remember what I truly am. He taught me sorcery.”

Shaira said nothing. She looked out the window again, studying the snow.
She is truly an old woman now. The last of her youth has
fled, if not her beauty
. Sharadza felt pity for her mother and wanted to cry. But there had been enough tears lately.

“Tell me of these Princes,” she asked. “Why does Vireon lead them south?”

“They go to Mumbaza,” said the Queen. “To gain their alliance in the coming war.”

“War?” said Sharadza. “Against whom?”

“Who else?” said the Queen. “
Khyrei
.” She spoke the name like an adder spits poison. “And Yaskatha… to regain the usurped throne.”

“You have planned a war for vengeance?”

Shaira explained the growing tensions with Shar Dni, the nautical conflicts, the onslaught of Khyrein pirates, and the sorcery that had slain the true King of Yaskatha. Two sorcerers. Shaira and Vireon gathered nations to war against two beings of immense power, each with a vast army that dwarfed the size of Udurum’s human legions. Shaira explained the plan to add Mumbaza to their ranks, to foster rebellion in Yaskatha. She would lead her own legions across the peaks when spring arrived.

Sharadza sat in stunned silence. It was not her father alone who had gone mad, it was the entire world.

“Is this right?” she asked. “Is it even wise? You know the cost of war, you’ve read the histories. Soldiers die gladly but it is the common people who suffer most. ‘War is the death of innocence.’ ”

“Do not quote Therokles to me!” said her mother, rising from the breakfast chair. “That bitch took your father and two of your brothers. Her malevolence is legendary. She was spilling the blood of innocents long before you or I were ever born! She will pay, Sharadza. For all that she has done.”

Sharadza recoiled from her mother’s sudden rage, and the gravel tone of her voice. It was the sound of unchained hate, given rein and let run free.

“How can you hope to defeat both Ianthe and this Elhathym with swords and spears?” she asked. “How many mens’ lives will you throw away in your lust for vengeance? How many more families will suffer as these armies tear across their lands and trample them to bloody dirt?”

“Vireon is the Son of Vod,” said Shaira. “He is mighty. If I did not agree to this war, he would have gone off alone to find and murder Fangodrel. Now he will have four armies at his back when he faces Ianthe the Claw. As for the Yaskathan tyrant… he will have his hands full trying to hold on to a stolen throne. Our strategy is sound, Sharadza. I would not rush into war lightly.”

It was no use. She could not reach her mother. The course had been set. Vireon was the master of the great horse upon which her pain and anger rode. The wheels of war were already in motion. Summer would bring blood and death washing across the world in a smothering tide.

“Come,” said Shaira. “We must go to lay your father’s bones in his tomb.”

“No,” said Sharadza. “I have spent enough time with those bones.” She stalked through the arch to the main hall, grabbing up a cloak of sable fur.

“Where are you going, Sharadza?”

She turned around, buckling the hasp of the cloak. “To see Iardu. He is here… in the city. He always has been.”

The Queen blinked at her. “Why?”

“This will be a war of sorcerers,” said the Princess. “Who else should I see?”

She stalked through the Great Hall, brushing aside the guards who offered her escort. Across the palace grounds and into the city she went, knowing she would find him at the Molten Sparrow, his white beard stained by wine and lies.

T
he streets of Udurum were lined with snowdrifts. The main thoroughfares were trampled flat by the steady traffic of boots, hooves, carts, and wagons. The roofs of houses and stables lay under blankets of white, and an unsettling quiet filled the city. The rumbling laughter of Giants was gone. The clomping of their feet on the cobbles, the deep honey of their voices, their ribald drinking songs… all these were missing. The towering homes of the Uduru, longhouses built of Uyga logs and basalt blocks, all stood empty, windows filled with darkness. Even in the glare of pale sunlight, Udurum wore a mantle of gloom.

Sharadza walked past a mounted guardsman on his rounds, a seller of dried fruits hauling his wares in a cart, and a group of children playing at war among mounds of snow. She skirted the Market Plaza. Business was sluggish there without the great appetites of the Uduru, who usually bought up most of the produce and livestock. A herdsman led a dozen goats from the plaza, heading back into the countryside. His face, like the rest of the men and women she passed, was solemn. The heart of their city had ceased its thumping. Without the twelve hundred or so Giants that augmented its populace, there was little to
separate Udurum from any other town or village. Except its great walls, tremendous palace, and those massive, tenant-less buildings.

She wondered how the coming war would affect these people. The best and strongest would join the legions, inspired by tales of war and conquest, the “glory” that all Men worshipped, but that existed only in stories. It was lies that fueled wars. More sages than Therokles had documented the horrors of actual warfare and its terrible cost to those who had nothing to do with the fighting. Men were like those children in the street throwing snowballs – eager to rush off into the misty depths of legend because they had no real understanding of where they were going. Even her own brother Vireon was caught up in the illusion.

She remembered Tadarus and him as young boys dreaming of battles and victories… studying their swords and shields as she studied the books and scrolls of the world’s great thinkers. Fangodrel had been more like her, interested in scholarly pursuits. They called him “book lover” and laughed at him. Another reason for him to hate his brothers. As distant and cold to her as Fangodrel was, she still had loved him. Now that she knew they shared only a mother, the loss of him felt no less painful. But what she truly feared is that Fangodrel, bolstered by the might of Khyrei, would kill Vireon as he had killed Tadarus. The two were destined to meet, and one would die. Fangodrel had murdered Tadarus, so he must pay the price. She would mourn him when that day came, as she mourned Tadarus even now. And she would aid Vireon, her true brother, if she could.

Selfish, to be thinking of my own loss at such a time. This war will destroy thousands of families – brothers, fathers, cousins – women and children
. The stakes were too great to fixate on the blood feud between Vireon and Fangodrel.

The sign of the Molten Sparrow hung from its usual doorjamb,
on a street of taverns quiet as a row of tombs. A stray dog rooted through garbage in the alley, the only visible client of the larger establishments, which had catered mainly to Uduru. The Sparrow might actually pick up some business; it was too small for Giant patrons anyway.

She entered the common room, where bags of onions and empty wine bottles hung from the rafters. The smell here was not as bad as she remembered… a hint of spilled ale, smoke, and roasted mutton. A half-dozen Men with downcast faces – likely unemployed since the Giants’ exodus – sat about the scattered tables nursing mugs of brown ale. Fellow sat at his usual place, a booth in the rear corner where he could look across the room and see everyone who came and went. He drank wine from a copper goblet, a bottle sitting half-drained at his elbow. His eyes turned toward her the moment she entered the torchlight. Despite his familiar smile, he was not Fellow at all… but Iardu the Shaper… a sorcerer and a legend.

She did not return his smile.

“Arthus, bring your finest goblet for the Princess,” Fellow called to the tavern keeper.

The robust host noticed for the first time that a royal personage had entered his very own house. “Right away, Majesty!” He addressed Sharadza, not Fellow, and almost cracked his skull against the bar with an awkward bow.

Sharadza held her hand in his direction. “Save it,” she said, not unkindly. “I did not come here to drink.” She sat herself down across the table from Fellow.

“How was your… expedition?” he asked.

“Fruitful,” she said. “I managed to bring his bones home.”

He nodded, as if confirming what he already knew. Vod was truly dead. “You know about Tadarus…”

“I know about
everything
,” she said.

“That is quite an accomplishment.” He smiled drunkenly.

“How much have you drunk, Iardu?” she asked.

“Shhhhh,” he urged her. “My name is Fellow, remember?”

She ran her tongue along the front of her upper teeth. Of all the times for him to be drunk…

“The Giants have left us,” he said, feigning heartbreak. “The grand experiment is over. They’ve gone to seek blue-skinned wives and have cold-blooded little babies.”

“Listen to me,” she said, leaning closer to him. She closed the booth’s stained curtain so the owner and his meager clientele would stop staring. “I know how you used my father for your own selfish ends. I know how you betrayed Indreyah, and how it gained you nothing. I know you have tried to use me as you used Vod. But I do not condemn you for any of this.”

“What else do you know, child?” he asked, pouring dark wine into his cup.

“I suspect…” she said, “that it was you who stole the baby Vod from his parents before the fall of Old Udurum. You who gave him to that human couple to raise.”

Fellow smiled. “You have learned a few things from me… a few things only. Did I not ask you to stay and learn more? Did I not?”

“Focus,” she told him, taking the goblet from his hand. He watched it move down the table but made no attempt to grab for it. “Listen to me. Do you know there is a war brewing? Vireon, Andoses, and three other Princes are making an alliance with Mumbaza as we speak. My mother plans to lead her legions to join Dairon’s. They will march to Shar Dni, and together they will invade Khyrei. They even plot a rebellion in Yaskatha.”

Fellow nodded and sighed. “War is a season like any other… a sad season, yes, but it has its day…”

“Tell me what you know of this Ianthe the Claw, and this Elhathym who commands the dead.”

His wrinkled eyes narrowed, looking beyond the walls of the tavern. “She is
old
…” he said. “Old as I am… and she
remembers
. He is… older than either of us.” Then his voice fell to a gentle whisper. “He has come back from the void… taken a man’s form again… after millennia.
She
brought him back.”