The Almighty shed his prison of iron as a viper sheds its brittle skin.
Flakes of black metal large as the shields of Giants broke from his limbs and fell into the bay, crumbling to dust before they met the water. Flame erupted once more along his great blade and in his eyes. Scores of Seraphim flitted about him like a swarm of nervous wasps.
The battle had not ended, but the defenders were nearly conquered. The Giant-King had fallen, and the Feathered Serpent was captured. A third of the Giant legion had perished in bursts of Celestial Light or were devoured by bloodshadows. Some had even died beneath the unrelenting blades of the Manslayers.
Sungui stood with Ianthe, Gammir, and Lavanyia on the forward deck of the Daystar. Captain Ajithi and a legion of anxious Manslayers stood in formation along the middle deck. The flag-ship had dropped anchor at the outer edge of the bay, placing a thousand ships between itself and the valley. The foremost ranks of dreadnoughts had suffered losses, yet less than a tenth of Zyung’s legions had taken to the shore.
Vireon and Khama had slain a dozen High Seraphim and at least fifty Lesser Ones. A hundred others floated still above the battleground. The main ranks of the Holy Armada had not even entered the bay yet; over two thousand dreadnoughts were anchored in the sea outside it.
Without Kings or sorcerers to lead them, the defenders of the valley could not last much longer. The highest cost of the invasion to Zyung thus far was the loss of three Trill legions. Yet seven such legions remained, and plenty more of the flying lizards could be bred. There were always Manslayers eager for the honor of riding them.
“You see?” Ianthe smirked. “I told you we need not intervene. Zyung shatters his iron skin as easily as he struck down the Giant-King. Now he will finish the slaughter…”
Sungui wore his male aspect today. He bristled at Ianthe’s false familiarity with the thoughts of His Holiness. Sungui had learned long ago never to second-guess or predict what the Almighty would do. Zyung was often as unpredictable as he was powerful. He had proven that fact once again by allowing Sungui’s treasonous yearnings to exist.
He tests me. He tests my loyalty and my wisdom. These qualities he places above even faith, which is only a tool he uses to dominate lesser beings. By giving me a choice, he proves himself worthy of my continued support.
Yet still I remain Diminished, like the rest of the High Seraphim.
And Ianthe is persuasive.
“Are you certain that Vireon is slain?” asked Gammir. “The God-King does not deliver a deathblow after all.” Above the mass of corpses and shattered vessels Zyung’s flaming sword faded like a snuffed torch. The Seraphim gliding about his colossal body turned their attentions once more to the embattled legions at his feet. New flares of Celestial Light leaped from their hands, burning Men and Giants alive.
Sungui saw no sign of the fallen Giant-King. Vireon’s rapid decrease in size meant that he fell into a red haze of carnage and was lost.
“He must be dead,” said Lavanyia, “or His Holiness would now be correcting that mistake.”
Do not be too sure. Zyung’s choices are his own.
“Was that Iardu?” Gammir asked.
He meant the stranger who had briefly sent Zyung to iron.
Ianthe turned her black diamond eyes to the Wolf. “Iardu would not strike and disappear as that one did.”
“It makes no sense,” said Lavanyia. “Why would the Shaper and his cohort of sorcerers not come in full force to face Zyung here?”
Gammir stroked the goatee decorating his chin. “Perhaps Iardu wishes to lull the God-King into false confidence. Let him win the day and strike later, when Zyung least expects it.”
“No,” said Ianthe. “Iardu’s heart is soft. He would not endure a massacre of his own people simply to fuel some greater strategy. Yet the Shaper loves Uurz above all other cities. He will face the God-King there. I am certain of it.”
Ianthe stared far beyond the ravaged coastline and its green hills. Her eyes narrowed.
“Iardu seeks the aid of a power greater than Zyung,” said the Panther.
Lavanyia gasped. “You speak heresy! There is no power greater than Zyung. Best mind your tongue, Panther.”
Ianthe laughed. “You have forgotten too much, Lavanyia. There are beings in this universe that even your High Lord Celestial respects and fears.”
“Will Iardu be able to harness such power?” Sungui asked. His tone did not display the hope that lurked in his breast. The more resistance Iardu provided to Zyung, the better for Ianthe’s plan. Lavanyia’s gaze was sharp as a dagger. She did not like Sungui’s question, despite the reality behind the Panther’s words.
A fresh sea wind tossed Ianthe’s white locks about her shoulders. Sungui ached to taste her red lips again, as he ached now every night and day. Gammir avoided Sungui’s male form, as Mahaavar had done. Sungui expected this with men. His male body was not attracted to other males, so why should they be attracted to him? Yet he had never met the male equivalent of Ianthe. Zyung was perhaps the closest he had found to her, and he had never considered the Almighty as a sexual being. Zyung kept no wife, harem, courtesan, or lover. His only love was his Living Empire.
“Iardu is bold and clever,” Ianthe admitted. “Yet his weakness is his affection for living things. It has ever been his undoing, and will be again.”
“Look!” Gammir raised his hand, pointing a bony finger at the legions in the valley. “They retreat!” He grinned, lupine incisors gleaming white as ivory in the sunlight.
The legion of Manslayers upon the Daystar’s deck raised spears and shields, cheering the victory of Zyung. On the surrounding dreadnoughts men did likewise, and the sounds of triumph spread across the bay to the outer ranks of ships. The defenders of the valley were broken, their Kings defeated, their sorcerers missing or captured, and their numbers decimated. Among the cheers floated the notes of distant war horns signaling retreat along the western ridge. Great bands of soldiery ran toward the river, abandoning heavy armor and weapons to swim or wade across it, while others bounded across on piles of waterlogged corpses.
A cadre of blue-skinned Giants ignored the retreat order. They were caught deep in the red madness and would not abandon its berserk pleasures. Or perhaps they sought to distract the sor cerers and Manslayers, giving their allies a better chance at escape. It made little difference. The flying Seraphim blasted them to bits, two and three at a time, while the eyes of the Almighty watched from on high. Zyung stood smaller now, but still he towered above the ruins and its multitude of dead.
Again the horns blew their desperate warning, a chorus of pleading voices.
Flee! Run! All is lost!
Men obeyed the call in droves, yet once more the blue Giants were more reluctant to abandon the valley. They charged entire companies of Manslayers, who withdrew and left them to the cruel mercy of the Seraphim. A dozen more Giants were burned to ash as Sungui watched.
The Almighty waved a great hand over the battleground. His voice rang deep and clear above the screams of dying men and the clamor of escaping legions.
“Let them go.”
The Seraphim in their bright globes fluttered about Zyung’s person once again. Now even the last of the Giants were fleeing the valley, wading across the river and pouring up the western slope. Zyung could have ordered his sorcerers to pursue and burn every last one of them to ashes. He chose instead to let thousands live when tens of thousands had died.
The battle was won. There was no need for further carnage this day.
These survivors would carry the tale of Zyung’s victory to Uurz and Udurum, and even to the rest of the Five Cities. Every village and town would know that the Conqueror had come to claim this half of the world. They would know his power, and they would fear it.
Sungui saw the brilliance of his strategy.
Gammir cursed and Ianthe chuckled.
Lavanyia sighed. “His Holiness is ever merciful.”
Sungui sensed Gammir holding his tongue. The Wolf’s appetite for blood was exceeded only by Ianthe’s. When he ruled these lands there would be no mercy at all. No enemies left alive to whisper of his power. Gammir could not see the wisdom of Zyung’s mercy because he understood only cruelty. This lack of understanding was his weakness. Sungui saw this now and realized why the Panther had so wholly dominated the Wolf.
Sungui observed the red valley and its blackened river. So much rotting flesh and mangled metal. The reek of decay already filled the evening air. Flocks of gulls and crows came to pick at the bloody remains. The valley and its ruins now belonged to Zyung. The Lesser Seraphim would spend the entire night burning away mounds of corpses to prepare for the building of a new Holy Mountain.
The sun was a swollen red eye spilling its blood in the west. The world itself had been bloodied by the day’s battle. Purple darkness rose in the east and crept forward.
Suddenly Zyung stood upon the foredeck, returned to his usual hulking stature. His eyes reflected the scarlet sunset, and his silver vestment was unspoiled. His deep calm remained intact, as if it were some other being that had grown to monolithic proportions and cast down the King of Giants. His face turned from the tangled battleground toward the Golden Sea, where the rest of his armada sat waiting for orders.
Sungui, Lavanyia, Ianthe, and Gammir bowed low in his presence, as did every man upon the decks of the Daystar. “We hail your great victory, Holiness,” said Lavanyia.
Zyung’s hands were folded at his back. “Send the Lesser Seraphim to cleanse the valley of flesh. Spare the bones of every fallen Man and Giant. I have use for them.”
“It shall be done,” said Lavanyia. She rose to implement his command, but he spoke again before she departed.
“A hundred thousand Manslayers will garrison the valley under your supervision, Lavanyia. Have them ashore by dawn. You may keep one hundred Lesser Seraphim with you as well. The rest of the legions are to remain aboard the dreadnoughts. In seven days we cross the Stormland plain and take the city of Uurz. Tomorrow we raise the new Holy Mountain.”
Lavanyia bowed once more and glided toward the foremost ranks of ships. She would gather the Lesser Seraphim to her by spell, but orders for the Manslayer captains must be delivered in person.
Zyung’s eyes lingered upon the darkening sea. Perhaps he saw all the way across it and past the Outer Sea as well, into the very heart of his distant empire.
“How may we serve you this night, Great Zyung?” asked Ianthe. By we she meant only Gammir and herself.
The Almighty gazed at her and ran his massive fingers across her white mane. Sungui was reminded of a man stroking a lion cub.
“I will have need of you,” he said, “at Uurz.”
Ianthe nodded in a perfect simulation of fealty. She and Gammir departed silently.
“Sungui,” said the Almighty.
“Yes, Holiness?”
“Do you recall my conversation with your other self?”
“I recall every word, Almighty.”
“Then look upon the death lying in the valley there,” said Zyung. “Open your nostrils and breathe deep the stench of it. Taste it on the wind. This is our true enemy. If the stubborn Kings of these Men and Giants had surrendered to order and embraced the peace of submission, none of them would have died today. The Jade King’s isle would still sit above the waves if he had chosen the path of non-resistance.”
Zyung paused to let the import of his words sink deep.
“Do you understand, Sungui?”
“I do, Holiness. I understand your wisdom and your power. Your mercy and your grace.”
“Yet still the seed of doubt grows in your heart.”
Sungui shrugged. “Perhaps to doubt is simply my true nature.”
Zyung smiled then, something he did rarely. His smoldering eyes turned to Sungui.
“Perhaps it is,” said the Almighty.
A Lesser Seraphim rushed across the deck with an urgent expression. He sank to both knees before Zyung and waited for permission to speak. Zyung waved a finger.
“Holiness! The Feathered Serpent! He was confined as ordered in the hold of the Heaven’s Blade, awaiting your attention. Yet… somehow… he is gone.”
Sungui’s anger rose at the incompetence of the Lesser Ones.
“Were there no guards with him?” He spoke for the Almighty.
The man turned his eyes to Sungui, a different sort of fear swimming there. “Two of the Lesser Ones,” he said. “Both have been sent to salt.”
Sungui started. How could such a thing happen in the midst of the armada? Perhaps the battle had claimed the attention of those who should have been focused on shipboard duties.
“Devoured?” Sungui asked.
“No,” said the Lesser Seraphim. “Their salt remains.”
Lesser Seraphim were never sent to salt. They were only Men and thus could be killed, unlike the High Seraphim, who were of the Old Breed and could not. Sending a High One to salt, as Sungui had done to Mahaavar, was only a precursor to consuming his essence. To do this with two Lesser Ones, without even troubling to consume them, made no sense at all. It would have been easier to kill the guards in any of a hundred other ways.
Unless someone with great power meant to mock the High Seraphim.
“You may go,” said Zyung. The Lesser One departed in relief.
“Salted but not devoured,” Sungui said. “Who would do such a thing?”
“The same one who sent me to iron,” said Zyung.
Sungui examined the inscrutable face of the Almighty.
“Who…?”
If Zyung knew the answer, he did not share it.
The conspirators no longer met in person.
They met in spirit while they slept, slipping one by one into Ianthe’s Red Dream.
They floated like phantoms draped in moonlight, gathered above a black abyss of stars. A city of black, barbed towers flamed in the distance, a red jungle steaming about its walls. A river of blood ran from the city, flowing through the air above the abyss. In the crimson flow dark shapes floated like corpses, an endless parade of the dead that reminded Sungui of the slaughter in the valley. Perhaps this river was the dream version of the tainted Orra. The corpses here must then be the souls of those who died today.
Of the one thousand and twenty High Seraphim in service to Zyung, thirteen were currently between physical forms, their spirits trapped in their private sanctums back in the Holy City. One of these was Damodar, who was bested by the Feathered Serpent at Ongthaia. That left a thousand and seven possible additions to Ianthe’s plot against the Almighty. She had approached them all in dreams the night before the battle, save for the four who had already joined her. Now five hundred High Seraphim floated above the river of blood, their silver robes painted in shades of rose and scarlet.
Sungui, Durangshara, Lochdan, and Bahlah hovered near to Ianthe. The Panther stood handsome as a Goddess and tall as Zyung in the dream, looking over the faces of those she had won to her coven. Gammir wore his wolf form, his fur dark and ruddy, his eyes red as flame. Ianthe caressed his shaggy neck as she greeted the dreamers with a smile.
“Children of Antiquity,” said the Panther. “Brothers and Sisters of the Old Breed. You have entered this dream to seal our pact. The Living Empire is rightfully yours, and so it shall be. You have remembered the taste of unfettered liberty, the joys of serving only yourself, and you will do so again. When Zyung falls, his Living Empire is yours, as the Land of the Five Cities will once again be mine.”
The five hundred faces stared at Ianthe with sparkling eyes. There was no sound in the Red Dream but Ianthe’s voice. The corpses floating down the blood river sometimes displayed open mouths, but their screams were silent. They could not escape the red current, if that indeed was their desire.
“Seven dawns from now we sail for Uurz, where the sorcerers of this land will make their stand against Zyung,” Ianthe said. “Remember what I have told you. Look to me in the hour of Zyung’s challenge. You must withhold your aid and strike down those of your brethren who would defend the High Lord. Yet many of those who resist now will join us in the final moment, when they see that Zyung’s fall is inevitable. You must be prepared to send them to salt if they do not. None can be spared.”
Durangshara moved forward from the masses. “We should have struck today, when the Giant-King faced Zyung and sent him to iron.”
Ianthe faced him as a tiger faces its prey. Gammir growled and bared red fangs.
“You are a fool, Sweet One,” said Ianthe. “It was not Vireon who imprisoned Zyung in iron, nor could that prison hold him for long. The God-King has not truly been challenged yet. You will see the true power of the Five Cities when Iardu the Shaper rises against him with his own coven of Old Breed.”
Durangshara dropped his eyes, embarrassed. Only the Panther could do this to him. Anyone else would have drawn only his wrath.
Sungui gazed across the phantom faces. All of Those Who Remember had come with the exception of Lavanyia, whose devotion to Zyung was flawless. Yet here stood broad-chested Eshad, golden Myrinhama, the alchemists Gulzarr and Darisha, and the triple-bonded Johaar, Mezviit, and Aldreka, along with hundreds of their kind.
How does she sway them so deeply, when my ceremonies have only failed to do so?
A pang of jealousy poisoned Sungui’s dreaming thoughts.
Why was Ianthe’s power to stir rebellion so superior to his own?
Because she has never been Diminished. She has not spent thousands of years in the presence of Zyung, sinking ever deeper into the pattern of his Great Idea. She was not part of the Living Empire. Of course her powers are greater.
She is closer to what we all were in the Age of Blood and Flame.
To what we will be again.
“Patience,” whispered Ianthe, yet every dreamsoul heard the word. “Iardu has not come yet… but he will come. Zyung expects to face him, knows the depth of his power. This is why he brings every High Seraphim to Uurz, save for a single one. Zyung knows that the conquering of the green-gold city will be done not with spear and sword, but with sorcery. Yet he does not know that he will fall instead. And that you, his rightful heirs, will claim his great continent.”
The five hundred faces were silent, smiling, hungry with memory. Like a pack of wild dogs, they would be set loose upon the earth. To rend and run and slay and feed as they once did. Sungui felt that same hunger, the lust for a return to independence. The thirst for power and glory and the advent of red chaos. Today’s battle had been the merest taste of the grand slaughters that would come when the Old Breed were free of Zyung’s long dream.
Damn these Men and Giants! Let them grovel and crawl like ants before us, as their predecessors did when the world was young and burning.
“Look to me in the hour of Zyung’s challenge,” Ianthe said again. “Wait for my signal. Until then, serve your God-King faithfully. Forget this dream and this pact. You will remember it when the time is right, as you remember your own natures.”
Ianthe raised her pale arm and the Red Dream faded. Like a splinter it would remain buried deep in the heart-mind of every conspirator, to blossom like a stoked flame in the hour when Zyung must fall.
Yet Sungui would remember it all. Ianthe’s spell was not meant to affect him as it had the rest of the coven. Sungui’s thoughts needed no protection from Zyung. Yet Ianthe had no idea that Zyung already saw the betrayal in Sungui’s heart. What would the Panther do if she knew? Destroy Sungui, or wipe the knowledge of the plot from his mind? Or perhaps she would allow Sungui to continue in uncertain allegiance as Zyung did.
She would never allow me a choice the way Zyung does.
Had Ianthe enchanted the five hundred to join her scheme, or won them over with memory and promises? Nearly half of the existing High Seraphim were hers now. Did it truly matter if she’d ensorcelled them or persuaded them? Sungui must be careful to take charge of the rebels at some point, before Ianthe bound them to herself as Zyung had done ages ago. Such treachery was not beyond the Panther, despite what she claimed as her true goal.
Sungui awoke inside his own cabin. Ianthe lay beside him in the dark. The dawn was only a few hours away. Outside the porthole the distant lights of the Lesser Seraphim flared in the valley, while the campfires of a hundred thousand Manslayers lined the riverbanks and ridges beyond the ruins. In the morning there would be no trace of decaying flesh left upon the battleground. Only a range of bleached bones.
Ianthe sensed Sungui’s waking and pulled him close to her. In the delights of her embrace he found no answers to his lingering doubts, but he lost the compulsion to consider them further.
Afterwards, the bliss of a dreamless sleep.
At mid-morning Lavanyia’s legions gathered in formation along the hillsides and ridges. Zyung stood in the middle of the ruined city, surrounded by a dozen new white hills: the heaped bones and skulls of Men, Trills, and Giants that had died in yesterday’s battle. The dead of Uurz, Udurum, and the Living Empire were treated as one, the raw materials of Zyung’s design.
The Lesser Seraphim had spent the night burning the flesh from these bones. There would have been even more than this, but the Celestial Lights of the Seraphim had turned every part of their victims to dust. Yet these mingled bones would be enough. They lay atop the weather-worn stones of the dead city. Stone and bone would be the bricks of Zyung’s new temple-palace. Sorcery was the mortar that would hold them together.
Sungui and ninety-nine other High Seraphim–most of them belonging to Ianthe’s secret coven–hovered in a steady ring about the Almighty, prepared to give his vision form and structure. Sungui retained his male aspect today. It seemed to please Ianthe best, and his female aspect had grown tired of Gammir’s torrid mating.
From the slopes, hills, and the decks of anchored ships, the eyes of the Holy Armada were upon the Almighty and his chosen builders. Zyung’s will reached out to them like a guiding hand, and a current of light gleamed between each of the floating Seraphim. Zyung was the spoke of their wheel, directing their power as an archer directs his arrows.
It began with the scattered stones of the dead city. The ones that were wholly or partially buried beneath the red earth began to rise. The sections of city wall that still stood now crumbled into fragments and floated to join the rest of the levitating rock.
Zyung’s soundless symphony played on in their minds, shifting from key to key. The hills of piled bones began to leap and dance. The rattling remains ascended and spun about the wheel of power like a swarm of white flies. The stones began to melt without heat, flowing like water, and the bones added their pale presence to the liquid substance. Stones and bones blended, becoming a single essence that reminded Sungui of the pearly clouds hanging above the bay.
The raw granite that had been the bones of a city combined with the whiteness that had been the bones of living creatures. Together they formed a new kind of stone, pale as marble yet without a single vein or blotch. The symphony of thought rose into a new pattern, and the power of the High Seraphim cast the new stone upward, a rising mountain bright as cloud yet solid as crystal. The white mountain took shape about Zyung’s figure, obscuring him from sight as it encased his body and towered above it. The wheel of Seraphim spun in unison about the bubbling paleness as it grew harder and denser. They sculpted the outlines of curved walls and soaring towers, arching bridges and impeccable domes.
The summit of the white mountain rose high above the ridges of the valley. Sunlight struck prismatic auras from its flawless skin. A great arch appeared in the western side of the edifice. Zyung emerged from this arch, leaving the hollow heart of the embryonic citadel. The Seraphim lingered about the pale immensity they had erected. The foundations of the new Holy Mountain completely smothered the grounds where Shar Dni had once spread its streets and gardens.
Zyung looked toward the top of the structure, which grew angular and flattened itself out at the zenith. Twelve snow-white towers sprouted sleek and graceful from its base. The Almighty spread his arms and ascended to float level with the summit. The symphony of sorcery reached its climax and fell into silence. The ring of High Seraphim paused and descended to the earth about the circumference of their creation.
Twin rays of starfire poured from Zyung’s eyes, washing across the western face of his temple-palace. When the light faded, the white stone had reshaped itself into a perfect likeness of his face. The deep sockets of the stone eyes burned with inextinguishable fires.
The mountain’s interior halls and chambers would be carved and sculpted to perfection over the next few days by the Lesser Seraphim under Lavanyia’s charge. They would plant gardens and orchards, growing them swiftly with clever earth-magic. The beauty of this new Holy Mountain would eventually rival or exceed that of the original in the Celestial City.
Yet none of these Lesser Ones knew that the first Holy Mountain would soon crumble beneath the wrath of the unleashed Old Breed. Sungui’s skin tingled in contemplation of such delicious blasphemy.
Now a mighty roar shook the valley–the cheering of the Manslayer legions upon the hills and the armada beyond the shore. This new Holy Mountain was not only the heart of Zyung’s Extended Empire. It was a testament to his peoples’ victory over their foes. A tribute to their loyalty and bravery. A memorial to all those who had given their lives to make it possible. Within its gleaming substance lay the bones of their brothers along with those of their enemies.
Sungui pondered the symbolism of this blending of bones. It evoked the Living Empire itself, which blended all cultures and nations into one monolithic shape.
It was tyranny and oppression given form, a monument to Zyung’s dominance.
Perhaps I will carve my own face on a mountain someday.
Someday soon.