Echoes of light, p.15
Echoes of Light, page 15
"What the fuck is going on in there!" sounded a voice outside—Lena Florine's voice, and the locked door rattled.
"Are you all right?" Ofeer whispered to Ariel, then looked over her shoulder. "He's covered in blood. He's covered in blood, Atalia! We need a healer! We need a—"
"It's not his blood," Atalia said, standing above them, still holding the wet sword. "Ariel is fine. Tirus never got a chance to hurt him. It's Tirus's blood. Ariel is fine, Ofeer."
Ofeer forced herself to take deep, steady breaths. She grabbed a blanket and wiped blood off Ariel, examining him for injuries. Atalia had been right; the baby was rattled but unharmed. Soon he calmed and even gave her a wan smile.
"What's going on in there?" Florine demanded outside, and Ofeer heard Mariana in the hallway too, trying to soothe her mistress, to lead her away.
Finally the door swung open. Lena Florine stood there, leaning on a cane, her wide frame wrapped with silk. When she saw the blood and the armless Tirus on the floor, she gasped, clutched her heart, and took a step back.
Tirus moaned.
Ofeer whipped her head toward him and covered her mouth. He was still alive! The bastard was still alive. He bled from a gash on his leg, and his arms were both severed at the elbows, but the wall-pisser still drew breath, even managed to rise to his feet. He stumbled forward, and Florine shrieked and stepped back, and even Ofeer retreated from the grisly sight.
"I need help," Tirus whispered. "Please. Please. A healer."
He limped out of the room, waving his stumps, a spectacle so gruesome Ofeer couldn't help it. She laughed. Terror pulsed through her, but she laughed.
Holding Ariel, she stepped out into the corridor, past the shocked Florine, and saw Tirus race downstairs. Patrons and lupi fled from his advance, shrieking. Ofeer was sure Tirus would collapse any second—he was losing so much blood—yet the emperor managed to careen toward the door and out onto the street.
"Fuck," Atalia said. "Come on, Ofeer. After him!"
They ran through the Lunapar and burst outside. Tirus swayed along the dark street, his stumps still spurting and waving pathetically. If he had brought any guards with him, the men were drunk somewhere, for none approached to aid him.
"Help me!" Tirus wailed. "Help me, somebody!"
Yet the street was quiet at night. Only two old men walked here, then turned to flee from the gruesome figure. Tirus fell to his knees and shuffled forward, as if hoping to cross the entire distance to the Acropolis on the hill.
Ofeer and Atalia approached and stood before him. Tirus looked up at the sisters, his skin gray, his eyes sunken. His mouth worked but no sound came out.
Ofeer looked down at this wretched man kneeling before her.
"You tried to rape me," Ofeer said. "You enslaved my older sister. Your troops murdered my little sister. Your troops destroyed my kingdom and slaughtered every man, woman, and child in Beth Eloh." Tears wet her cheeks. "You tried to murder my son."
Gently, Atalia placed her sword's hilt into Ofeer's hand. Ofeer held her son with one hand, the sword with the other.
"He's yours," Atalia said softly.
Ofeer nodded and handed Ariel to her sister. She held the sword with shaking hands, pointing it at Tirus.
"Beg me," Ofeer whispered.
And Tirus begged. Kneeling before her, bleeding to death, he begged. And Ofeer watched. And she listened. And she let him suffer. And then, moments before his heart could stop beating from blood loss, she plunged her blade into it.
She pulled her blade free and looked down at the corpse. She felt nothing.
Atalia exhaled slowly. "He begged for his life, Ofeer," she said softly.
Ofeer nodded. "I wanted him to. And I wanted to take it anyway." She looked at her sister. "I'm not a good person, Atalia. The good, the meek, the righteous—they don't survive in this world. It's only we, the bastards and broken ones, who survive."
Curious people, roused by the sounds, were emerging from their houses. They converged around the armless body, pointing, whispering.
One woman cried out, "It's the emperor! The emperor is dead!"
The call spread through the crowd. "Emperor Tirus is dead!"
Ofeer tucked the bloody sword into her cloak. Atalia held Ariel to her chest. The sisters walked away, vanishing into the shadows.
CLAUDIA
"Climb!" she shouted. "Fucking worms, raise your shields and climb!"
Claudia stood atop the canyon, the sun baking her armor. Her voice echoed in the crevice. Across the canyon, the mesa soared—a massive monolith of stone, its cliffs taller than all of Nur's pyramids stacked together. A century of her legionaries stood below, deep in the canyon, where the snake path began its ascent. The trail coiled up the cliff—at times just the width of a man's foot—toward the gates of Tarath El above.
"Climb!" Claudia shouted from above the canyon.
She had selected these legionaries for their brazenness and courage; these hundred men had been the first into the Temple of Beth Eloh. Their centurion led the way. Man by man, they stepped onto the snake path. They climbed, their shields held overhead, locking together, forming a long semicylinder like armor on the back of centipede. Claudia watched from across the canyon, her fingers tapping the pommel of her gladius.
She drank from her wineskin, watching the soldiers make their laborious ascent, moving step by careful step. Even in late winter, it was so damn hot and dry here in the desert. Her lips were chapped, her skin burnt and peeling. She could scarcely believe that only a year ago, she had been a pampered daughter of wealth, that she had worn silk stolas, not iron armor, that rings had adorned her hand, not the hilt of a sword. That had been a different person—a giggly, vacuous girl, soft-skinned, painted with cosmetics and sprinkled with perfume.
"You killed that girl, Epher," she said, staring up at the walls high upon the mesa. "You burned her away in the fire. And you made me a demon."
The fire he had kindled in the siege tower still blazed across her. The scars ran along her arm, her neck, and her left jawline. She would never be pretty again. Never be soft. Never laugh in a garden. Never love again. Yes, that pampered girl had burned away in his flames. She had been reborn—stronger, always stronger, and the demon he had summoned would burn him.
She drank more wine. What was that saying Seneca had always used? Ale for courage, wine for strength, blood for lust. Claudia had lost her fear in the fire, and soon she would have what she lusted for.
The legionaries were halfway up the cliff when the assault from above commenced.
Zoharites emerged onto their battlements, the turrets and ramparts that surrounded the plateau atop the mesa. Their arrows rained down, slamming into the legionaries' shields, embedding into the wood. One legionary swayed, screamed, and fell, reaching out to grab a comrade, only pulling that man down with him. Both tumbled down the cliff and finally shattered against the canyon floor. The others kept climbing, ninety-eight men, shields blocking the barrage of arrows.
"You can't keep firing arrows forever, Epher." Claudia licked wine off her teeth. "You'll run out of arrows before Aelar runs out of soldiers."
As if in response to her words, the arrows from above died down. For a few steps, the legionaries kept climbing. Then the stones began to fall from the battlements.
Some stones were small as fists, others large as skulls, some even larger. They hailed down from the walls, slamming into the shields. A few legionaries managed to keep their shields overhead. Others lost their balance and careened down to the canyon. Several boulders shattered the shields they hit, crushing the men beneath. Hundreds of stones hailed down, an avalanche, tearing into the century. Finally only three men remained on the wall, trying to flee before arrows picked them out and cast them down onto their dead comrades below.
A hundred elite warriors—wiped out. Within moments.
"Fuck," Claudia said.
She stormed off to her tent. She drank more wine. She closed her eyes, hugged her pillow, and thought of Epher, pretending that he lay here with her, that he was making love to her until she climaxed with a scream—a scream like the men falling off the cliff, like the million slain in Beth Eloh, like her mother had screamed.
When dawn rose across the desert, and the Zoharites still taunted her from the walls, the new troops she had summoned arrived from the north. Claudia had chased Epher here with one legion. Now a second arrived, swelling her numbers to ten thousand men. With the new arrivals came wagons laden with wood, taken from the forests of northern Zohar, and an army of engineers and carpenters.
Claudia led the team around the jutting mesa, laboriously down into the canyon, along the chasm, and finally to the eastern facade of Tarath El. The cliffs soared here too, just as tall. There was no snake path on this side, simply a wall of craggy tan stone.
"Build!" she said.
For a long time, the legion's engineers built.
Hammers pounded the cliff. Scaffolds rose across the stone. The cliff was taller than any temple or palace; never had men raised scaffoldings this high. The hammers swung, nailing bolts into the stone. The paths of wood rose, plank after plank.
They were several stories high when the fire rained from above.
The Zoharites were hurling what at first Claudia mistook for stones. When they shattered against the scaffolds, fire spread. She realized the defenders were tossing clay jugs full of ignited bitumen. Aelarians screamed across the scaffolds and fell, and soon nothing remained of the structure but black stains and metal bolts in the cliff.
"Fuck," Claudia said again.
She had arrived at Beth Eloh with the finest siege engines in the Empire. Ladders. Rolling towers of wood and metal, as high as city walls, covered with metal plates. Battering rams that could shatter any door. Catapults, trebuchets, and ballistae that could crack even the sturdiest turret or merlon.
All those were useless here.
She returned to her tent. She screamed. She fell to her knees, and she felt the fire blazing across her again, and she saw her mother die, and she slept and dreamed of holding Epher, kissing him in a distant garden, young and in love.
"Bring me catapults!" she shouted. "Tear down their walls!"
Constantius approached her. With that ridiculous iron talon of his, he held his spear.
"Domina, no catapult can reach high enough."
"Then shatter the fucking cliffs!" she shrieked.
The men exchanged glances. Yet they obeyed. For a full day, the catapults pounded the cliff, chipping off bits of stone, as Claudia screamed. And the cliffs stood. And the Zoharites taunted her from above. And she tugged her hair, clawed her face, stormed back into her tent. She curled up, shivering, missing him.
In the morning she stepped out into the desert, and she stared north.
"Slaves," she said. "We need slaves. Hundreds of slaves. A thousand slaves." She grinned, breathing heavily, her fingertips tingling. "We will do something here that has never been done. We will build a monument to last for eternity. Ride north! Bring me slaves!"
EPHER
"Yeah, get lost, cunts!" Olive shouted. "Go back to Aelar and fuck your mothers, you wall-pissing sons of whores!"
Standing on the defensive wall of Tarath El, she pulled up her tunic and wiggled her bare backside at the Aelarians across the canyon. When a hailstorm of arrows followed, Epher pulled her behind a merlon. The arrows slammed into the stone battlements.
"Watch it," Epher said. "I happen to like your backside. I'd hate for an arrow to stick into it."
"You no like sharing?" Olive stuck her tongue out at him.
Epher looked through an arrowslit at the landscape beyond. The desert canyons and hills rolled to the horizon, beige under a pale sky. Claudia and her men were still there. He couldn't see Claudia now, but he could see her tent pitched across the canyon, and he could see thousands of her brutes.
Claudia had chased him here with one legion, a terror of five thousand killers. Two more legions had since joined her. The enemy now sprawled across the desert, surrounding the mesa, like a sea around a tor. For a month now, the legions had attempted to climb, to build ladders, to scale the cliffs—and every time, the flame and arrows of Zohar sent them crashing down.
And yet the legions lingered.
We're safe here, Epher told himself—as he told himself every day, struggling to calm the anxiety within him. We have enough food and water to last for months, even years, and they cannot climb. We're safe.
"Yes. I'm a possessive, jealous monster." Epher gave his wife's backside a pat, then touched the curve of her belly. "How do you feel, Olive?"
"Like I going throw up," she said. "Like everything hurts. Like boulder pressed on my bladder. And like I completely in love with this baby already."
"I think I felt him move," Epher said.
"I think that just my stomach rumbling," Olive said. "I hungry."
They walked across the plateau, the flat top of the mesa. They passed the palace, the place where Epher and Olive had taken up residence, sharing the building with Issazion, ruler of Tarath El, and her retinue. They kept walking, passing by the bathhouse, the gardens, the corral of sheep, the columned temple, and the silos. They reached the barracks, a sturdy fortress that rose along the rim of the cliff, gazing upon the canyon below and the desert beyond. In the main hall, hundreds of warriors were eating at tables. Hundreds more could be heard eating, speaking, or singing in other chambers in the fortress.
As Epher entered the hall, many of the warriors fell silent and stared. He took his seat, and Olive sat at his side, and they reached for their rations—a piece of flat bread, a small bowl of olive oil, a handful of roasted chickpeas, a cup of wine, and two carobs each.
For a long time nervous silence filled the hall. Eyes gazed toward the king, then away.
Epher placed down his bread. He sat in silence for a moment.
"What is it?" he finally asked.
The warriors looked at one another. Finally a man rose, tall and bald and bearded. "How long can we keep doing this, my king?"
"For as long as we need to," Epher said. "We have enough water. Enough food for a year if we ration it, maybe two."
"And what then?" demanded another man, rising to his feet. "Would we languish here on the mountain, only to be butchered in a year, starving and weak?"
More voices rose in approval.
"We must speak to Claudia," said a woman. "We can make peace!"
"What peace means is surrender," shouted a man at her side. "That Zohar will not do."
"Then we surrender!" rose another voice. "There's no shame in that."
"Fuck surrender!" A bearded warrior leaped to his feet, knocking his chair back, and drew a sword. "I'd fuck one of our sheep before I surrender to Aelar."
Soon it seemed that everyone in the hall was shouting. Epher stared at them. They were afraid. They were afraid like he was.
"Hear me!" he said. "Warriors of Zohar, hear me!"
When nobody seemed to heed him, Olive leaped onto the table—pregnant belly and all—and shrieked, "Shut the fuck up, you bunch of yapping dogs!"
Once more silence fell across the hall. Epher inhaled deeply and helped Olive sit back down.
"There can be no surrender to Claudia," Epher said, addressing the crowd. "Her forces toppled every last building in Beth Eloh. As far as I know, she butchered everyone there who could not escape. If we meet again, she would kill most of us. She might take some as slaves, forcing us to fight in the arenas of Aelar—or simply torturing and crucifying us for the crowd. And Zohar would fall. And our land would become Aelaria Orientalis, a province for the holidays of Aelarian nobles, and all our lore would be forgotten. Thousands of years of Zoharite culture—erased, gone forever, our light never more to shine." He shook his head. "I would not have it so. Here in Tarath El, in the desert, we have found an oasis of safety. We can withstand this siege. Empires all fall. I don't know how long Aelar will last. The Empire might fall in a year, perhaps in a century, perhaps not for a thousand years. But one thing I know: We, the last Zoharites, must keep the last flicker alive, like a candle burning low. It's our duty to protect this flame. Here, in this hall, upon this mountain—this is all that remains of our ancient civilization. This is a gift too precious to squander. And so every day, we will fight. Every day, we will say the name: Zohar. Every day that we live, we resist, and we are blessed."
Many of the warriors nodded in approval, eyes shining. Yet despite his own words, Epher's heart chilled.
What kind of life do I give my child here on this mountain? he thought. What kind of kingdom will he know?
Not everyone in the crowd seemed swayed. One man—among the original defenders of Tarath El—rose to his feet and spat on the floor.
"The king fled Beth Eloh like a coward." He tossed a piece of bread at Epher. "Eat another. That's what you came here for. Food and safety while our people died. I serve no coward."
The man turned to leave.
Olive screamed, drew her dagger, and made to run after the man. Epher grabbed her shoulder.
"No," Epher said. "Let him go." He spoke loudly enough for the crowd to hear. "He's right to be upset. He's right to scorn us who fled Beth Eloh." All eyes watched him, and Epher struggled to keep the grief from his voice. "I could tell you that we could not save the women and children, that we were trapped in the Temple, the legions outside, our only path a tunnel leading to the wilderness. I could tell you that we believed Claudia Valerius would spare the city. I could tell you that by the time we turned back toward Beth Eloh, by the time we saw the fire and heard the screams, it was too late. And all those things would be true. Yet the fact remains. Six hundred of us fled the devastation. And a million who remained behind died. Nothing can undo that shame—the shame I feel for still living. For lingering on while so many fell." Now his voice cracked. "I would gladly plunge a blade into my own chest if I could save just one child who fell in Beth Eloh. I would gladly carve out my own heart to see a single grandmother or beggar or leper brought back to life. But all I can do now is live. Is fight. Is try to keep whatever flame we still have burning. There is no surrender. There is no fate for us at Claudia's hands save for slavery or death." He pushed the bread aside. "Eat, children of Zohar. Live. Sing the songs of our kingdom, for tomorrow the fire of Aelar might burn us all."
