Crown of gold and ruin, p.55
Crown of Gold and Ruin, page 55
They were a ribcage, Diana realized in shock, some fallen giant’s ribs sticking up from the earth. And around them, the walls were made of femurs as large as temples, and a breastbone the size of a house into which someone had carved steps, led to beautifully wrought ivory-pale doors going inside to a huge, triangular shaped edifice. High up, among the reddish clouds drifting past on a brine-smelling wind, there were small windows carved into this edifice, leading Di to believe this was the fortress called—
“Welcome to Nymsar, the Citadel of Bones.”
Di whirled. The strident female voice that had spoken rang out across the endless oceans beyond, and the eerie bone courtyard filled with Erzul and the two Frenalin brothers. Two demons flanked her, taller than she was, which was a feat since she was as tall as Cintran. The infernal creatures were obsidian black, leering. It hurt Diana’s eyes to look at them, at the yellow multitudes of fangs that had devoured her people alive.
“Big brother, it has been too long,” the tall Frenalin woman said, her huge black wings folded neatly behind her back. She wore a sleeveless, flowing maroon dress, but it was armored at the chest with a brilliant silver breastplate, carved with a screaming gorgon, and there were platinum gauntlets on her slim brown arms. She glided down the stairs, movements like black oil flowing from broken monsters.
Taliesin, who was hefting Cintran’s weight against him, replied, “Tamaranthe. Last time we met, you tried to claw my eyes out, cut off one of Aeryan’s fingers, and nearly disemboweled dear Ygerthe. You will forgive me for not regretting that it has been decades since I last saw your beautiful face.”
Tamaranthe smiled, and Diana almost turned and ran back towards the portal, intent to get away, anywhere, just away from this stunning, incredibly tall woman whose oblivion-black eyes were like the trenches of hells, the black spaces between worlds, the dead sands at the bottom of the ocean. Terror chilled her, and Diana shook with it in a way the Lionsbane or Cintran or even the Erzul hadn’t induced, a terror that made her not want to live. The Frenalin brothers wanted her to fight this?
Tamaranthe turned to Diana, her wings flaring slightly, her mahogany skin gleaming in the red light of the sunset sky, “And … I finally meet a Blacknett when they are not either dead, fleeing, or unconscious at my feet.” At Di’s look of confusion, the demon-summoner continued, “Your father I saw dead, and I have witnessed your handsome brother in such a vulnerable position before too, my dear. He was doing quite well fighting my demons before I put a stop to it. It was a battle of wills, to quell his rage and berserker battle fury,” she continued, as if discussing the weather.
“You harmed my brother?” Diana asked, fists knotted, barely breathing, rage and terror igniting like twin-flames, brine-winds tearing her hair around her like a crimson halo.
Taliesin murmured something under his breath that sounded like a warning.
Between one blink and the next, Tamaranthe was suddenly standing in front of Diana. Her legs turned to jelly as she breathed the Scrimtor in, her smell of spices and old bones and filthy cauldrons of twisted spells. The woman’s straight black hair lashed around them in the winds, snapping at Diana’s skin like little whips. Belatedly, Di realized there was a small emerald-green serpent coiled upon one of Tamaranthe’s breasts, baring glistening fangs at her.
“I have wanted to play with you and your brother for a long, long time, dear Diana,” was all Tamaranthe said in her ancient, honeyed voice. She flicked her head to the Erzul. “Bring them in. I can’t wait for the games to begin.” Her face suffused with glee.
“What games?” Diana asked slowly. “My only purpose is to—”
An Erzul came up from behind her, and shoved her to the bone-floor, so she crashed with knees squeaking in pain, and crumpled at the Scrimtor’s feet.
If the courtyard was the vast ribs of a primordial giant’s remains that had fallen to this island eons past, the throne room within the fortress of Nymsar was dominated by the goliath’s skull. It sat beyond the throne, a huge grinning skull with the bones of horns sprouting at the crest, almost the height of the Lionskeep, throwing a gnarled shadow over all. Diana wrinkled her nose at the smell here of rotten things, of bones drying and cracking for centuries in furious suns. Tamaranthe’s vast throne was also fashioned of bone, spiraling outwards like a stag’s antlers, with enough space to accommodate the woman’s huge wings, crafted of what looked like black leather and traced with purple veins.
The Scrimtor, on her ghastly throne, spotted Di studying her wings. “Do you like them, child? They were a gift from the Malakim when it took me into its thrall.”
Diana narrowed her eyes. The Malakim had vanished the moment they had reached Nymsar, sputtering out of sight, not a single tendril of violet mist left curling around Diana for protection. Though if it allied with Tamaranthe and made Scrimtors out of mages, was it truly a protector?
“You have many questions about the Malakim,” Tamaranthe noted, her unnerving black gaze rioting over Diana, perusing every inch of her, until Diana felt stripped and naked and vulnerable, impaled upon a hook for the Scrimtor to do with as she would. It made the bile rise in her throat. “Indeed, I have heard whispers on the wind that the elemental Malakim has taken a liking to you, little princess. Perhaps it means to make a Scrimtor of you, too. What fun we would have then,” she cackled.
“I am not little,” Diana replied. “And I would not ever wish to be a Scrimtor or anything near your kind.” She glanced at Taliesin, who had taken a seat on a small ivory bench and watched this exchange carefully. He inclined his head, though there was fear in his pale eyes. She really wished they had had the time to make some kind of plan to defeat this cold, winged bitch on her eerie throne, and that Di had not just been thrust here as bait in an ancient war between predators.
Tamaranthe leaned forward. “Then what would you wish to be, Princess?”
“A spell-weaver powerful enough to protect Eria, my kingdom, from the likes of you. You,” Diana spat, “who overran my city with demons and murdered thousands.”
“The Malakim would help you with that. Letting it consume you gives you greater power and knowledge of this world and others than any ordinary spell-weaver could ever fathom.”
“Why does it do that?”
“Because, Diana Blacknett, the Malakim is the blood of the creature whose bones now sit around us,” she said, gesturing around at the palace of ivory-pale bones looming around them ominously. “This being’s blood, and that of its many brethren, suffused over the world when they fell to the earth millennia past. It is the source of all magic.”
Diana wrinkled her brow. “That seems—”
“Incomprehensible, absurd? Yes, that is what I once thought, too.” Tamaranthe shook her head, examining her polished black wildcat claws, clicking them together in a stuttering beat that matched Diana’s racing pulse. “But no. It is the truth.”
Her voice took on a prophetic tone, and from her eye sockets, tiny snakes started coiling out. Diana recoiled but was also entranced by both the strange melodic tone she had taken, and the words that spilled forth. “Once, before humans or Frenalin were born from the salt and sands of this earth, this world was overrun by a species of giants known as the Numagai. They were not, as you might expect, primordial, dull beings squabbling over territory, but exquisitely intelligent and crafty, and more powerful and elemental than you or I could ever dream of. They were not formed from the core of Terra but were part of a race that came from the stars. They arrived in mighty vessels from the sky and dominated this world as they had done so many planets in the past. The Numagai were adventurers, scholars, warriors, explorers. They ruled the earth for many forgotten tumultuous ages, and when the Frenalin were born from the blood of spilled creatures, our ancestors became slaves to the Numagai. As did the earliest humans.”
“And then?” asked Taliesin, who had risen and come to flank Diana, his face taut with both interest and caution.
“And then, dear brother, as all kings, they were challenged by their own kind. More of their brethren exploded from the stars, jealous of the empire their brothers and sisters had built on this water-rich, blood-rich world. Wars of the Numagai waged so brutal and apocalyptic that the very continents split to form the landmasses we have today. Rhea, Rhona, Falernia, Prator. These are all just names and places, no match to the kingdoms, the wonders, the sheer miracles, that existed when the Numagai ruled.
“Imagine,” Tamaranthe exclaimed, her wings flaring with excitement, “ships that could traverse the spaces between stars. What power, what technology. But as always with the greatest, hubris disintegrated the rule of Numagai here on Terra, their interminable, world-breaking wars wiped out the armies of the giant creatures which had journeyed here, and their empires cracked and shattered. And with the deaths of all these creatures, these gods, you could say, their blood rained down from the skies, suffused over the earth, bled into seas, and transformed trees. Their histories, their true names, were lost in time, and the legends of these entities morphed into the myths and folklore that forged the many gods of the religions that would follow, as Frenalin and humans, freed from slavery at long last, battled for dominion over this torn land.”
Into the heavy silence that followed, Diana said, “So, the Malakim is the blood of fallen Numagai?”
“Indeed. In fact, there is a pool of liquid Malakim underneath Aeltar. Numagai blood is the source of all magic in this world. The Malakim that has been trailing you, Diana, is just a small manifestation, a wayward stream that has been attracted to the potency of spell-weaving in your bloodstream. It follows you, wants to merge with you, as it did with me. Not just to touch you, as it does with the ordinary mages of Aeltar, but to consume you. To become one with you until your blood runs violet. As mine does.”
Diana glanced around the throne room made from the bones of some long-dead star god, if Tamaranthe’s tale ran true, and noticed the Malakim had surfaced again, violet-pale, sallow, curling around the edges of the chamber, running under and between the lances of Tamaranthe’s throne.
“If you broke my mage-blight, then this would be easier for the Malakim to consume me, as you say?”
“Yes. That is why you have come here, is it not?”
Taliesin beside her was rubbing his jaw, as if something confused him, or alarmed him.
“Yes. But—”
Taliesin burst into explosive movement. “Diana, watch out—” He was too late.
Diana cried out, gasping in shock, as a powerful arm came up from behind and seized her around her throat, cutting off her breath, squeezing her windpipe until she saw red-black spots dance in her vision.
“Fuck!” Taliesin cried out, as Diana realized with horror who was behind her. She kicked and struggled and writhed, but it was no use. She supposed his anger was warranted—she had torn his arm off. Bile rose in her throat even as her throat narrowed and narrowed, and her lungs shrieked.
“Let go of her!” Taliesin bellowed, but in moments, he too, was seized by the Erzul. He changed into beast form, but an Erzul stabbed a sword into his side and he roared with pain and morphed back into human, shuddering and spitting, blood streaming.
“Cintran,” Tamaranthe intoned, amusement thrumming as she ignored the growling, wounded Taliesin, and the strangled Diana. “How kind of you to join us. I was waiting. Humans get so enthralled with tales of ages past.”
“Bitch-sister,” Cintran snarled back, his breath foul and blood-reeking, streaming into Diana’s purpling face. “It’s been a while.”
“Let go of her,” Tamaranthe said drily. “I have many games planned for us, and I intend her to be the prime player in them all. This puny little human girl, who would even let the Malakim consume her, if only she could protect her twin’s broken little kingdom.”
Cintran’s grip only hardened, and Diana choked, hacking, her vision fading into blackness. “This human whore tore my arm out with her power. I don’t think she needs anymore of it, lest she destroys us all with it.”
“Scared, are you, brother?” Taliesin rasped out, from where he kneeled between two Erzul, one with a slimy black blade pressed into his pale throat.
Cintran ignored him. Di felt him, as if from a vast distance, groping at her pockets, and she squirmed in terror, but it was in vain. “And she stole this from us, the Ampthyia.” He brandished the glittering golden chain.
Tamaranthe sat forward, her mouth opening softly in a gasp.
She looked like a greedy, winged fish, Di thought in contempt.
“I have been looking for that for quite some time indeed,” she said. “That would have amplified anyone’s power magnificently.” She clapped her hands together, gleeful again. “Yes, that will make our games all the more fun.”
“What games?” Diana hacked out, and immediately regretted, as Cintran squeezed her again, nearly throttling the life from her.
Tamaranthe rose from her throne, and ambled closer, her elegant dress flowing, snakes coiling now from her black eyes, as if they were black pools where they bred. There was a necklace of huge purple gems at her slim, dark throat.
“I have an idea. It is this: you, Diana, want me to shatter that mage-blight forever. My brothers, however, have come here with another plan entirely. They wish to kill me, and sing to our belligerent, annoying father of their glory. And I want to test the limits of your power. See if you are worth harnessing to me, to the Malakim. And I also want the Ampthyia in my possession.” She grinned, and it was terrifying.
Cintran’s grip loosened slightly, and Diana gulped in wonderful cold breaths of air. But as Tamaranthe continued, warning bells pealed in Di’s head, yelling at her to run, to run and forget all about blights and mages and Frenalin.
“To fulfill all these many goals, I have a simple solution. A series of challenges, which revolve around a deal. Diana fulfills two tasks of my choosing, and if she succeeds in these—I will break her mage blight. But after that, she will have one final task, and that will be to try to fight, and kill me by any means necessary.” She smirked. Di wanted to die, here and now. “And, if Diana succeeds in killing me,” she shrugged elegantly, “it will give me a chance to see her mage-gift in full, fierce power.”
“So, I complete your two tasks and you banish the blight, but after that, I have to fight you? You break the blight, but I cannot walk free?”
“Now, what would be the fun if that were the case?” Tamaranthe purred back.
“What’s in it for us? For your brothers, as you say, you half-breed Scrimtor bitch?” Cintran snarled, his remaining arm still wrapped around Diana in retribution.
Tamaranthe hissed. “Careful, Cintran. I know you came here to kill me. My Erzul know it too. And you have already been heavily wounded. Let go of the girl, lest she blast you again with the magic she gathers.”
Cintran recoiled, and stepped back, glaring daggers at Diana, who let the waves of power she had been dredging up from exhausted depths cease slightly, simmering. She turned, spat at his feet, and glared back, wishing she could turn him to steaming rubble with just a glance. Her throat squeaked in agony where he’d almost choked the life from her.
“What is in it for us, Tamaranthe?” Taliesin asked quietly, still bleeding in a crouch on the ground.
The Scrimtor stalked over to her half-brother, leaned down, and cupped his powerful jaw in her clawed hand. “You know, Taliesin, you were among the brood of brothers I hated most. You and that righteous, infernal Calain.” She jerked her wrist, and he went tumbling to the floor, growling as the Erzul kicked a heavy, metal boot deep into his ribcage. As he groaned, Tamaranthe continued, “If Diana does not kill me, her life hangs in the balance, does it not? You two,” she gestured at the outraged Frenalin males, their long hair matted and twisted, “can either choose to save her life and give me the Ampthyia. Or you can let her die and keep the Ampthyia. But if the latter is chosen, I contact our father, the King of Frenalin, and let him know that his sons have failed to kill me before the deadline.”
Cintran shook his head. “Either way, you get the artifact,” he said, glancing at the small golden chain clutched in his fist, that had so amplified Diana’s mage-gift on the lawn and carved his limb off. “Why not just order these beasts,” he jerked his chin at the Erzul, “and no doubt the legions of demons you have teeming in those ocean waters outside, to just kill Taliesin and I, and take the Ampthyia? Why go to all that trouble, all those chances and possible mischances?”
Tamaranthe raised her brows, as if there was an obvious answer explaining the twisted, crazed workings of her mind. “Because that would take all the fun out of it! So many possible paths for you to take, so many betrayals and twists just waiting to happen.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” Diana whispered. “Either way, any of it—there’s no way out, for any of us. That’s not fair, Scrimtor.”
“Not true, Diana. Complete your tasks. I break the blight. You defeat me. If you do so, then you can forget all about these two and their chain.”
“Defeat you,” Diana mused. “You make it sound so easy.”
Tamaranthe grinned, beautiful, hideous, oily, cruel. “What is a game without a challenge, human? Are you agreed?”
Diana gritted her teeth. She pictured this woman triumphantly flying over Elenon as it burned to ashes. The Malakim had flowed over the throne-room of bones as they talked, forming an archway of writhing purple mist, some of it bleeding down the walls, the color of chaos, eager to ensnare. “I agree.”
* * *
The mud-and-straw town sprawled at the base of the Shadowford stank of dust and blood, urine, and stale sweat. Wine-houses, taverns, and smithies all rayed out from a central market, crowned by a limestone fountain that did not spray, but rather trickled an oily stream of water that Jaden did not think would do anybody’s health any favors if drunk. The incredibly narrow streets were thronged as all strained to catch a glance of the armed, bloodied host riding through to the ancient stronghold that cast its almost malevolent shadow upon everything. The Erzul was a special attraction, and naked, grimed children ran behind them to stare captivated at the macabre black and white monster, its menacing snarl baring its glistening fangs.
