The Last Volari, page 3
So. That piece of my plan was finally falling into place. Right when everything else was falling apart.
White armour gleaming in the dark, Celasian raised Heaven’s Edge, staring at the lightning that wreathed distant Temero. ‘For his glory!’ he shouted, and his voice echoed out of the ravine and over the night-drenched plains.
CHAPTER THREE
Built of black basalt, Maar was a dark city in the day. At night, under a cloud of ash, it was shadow turned stone.
I rode Thorn through the narrow streets, the mortals bowing as we passed. There weren’t many of them. Maar had once been the greatest city in the Broken Plains, the mortals in it prospering after they had bowed to my father’s rule, but now… The city was slowly emptying, despite the villagers who’d come in from the surrounding plains looking for shelter. The constant war, not enough food, not enough trade… The decline had been happening ever since the Sun Seekers had attacked thirty years ago, and nothing seemed to stop the bleeding.
Bleeding. How long will it be before there are no mortals left for that?
I ignored that cheerful question and guided Thorn towards the inn that rose ahead of us. The Black Stork’s facade was ornately worked, but years of falling ash had half-buried the carvings. Much of Maar was neglected like that, all except the great temple that sat at the end of the street. Once it had been dedicated to all the gods of Order, but the multihued stained-glass windows that decorated it had been replaced with panes of amethyst-coloured glass, glowing purple against the temple’s clean, black stones. The temple belonged to Nagash now, as did this city and all the Broken Plains.
Whatever the Sun Seekers thought.
‘Lady Volari.’ The Black Stork’s innkeeper looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember if he was the man I knew, or the son that had grown up to replace him. Mortals were inconvenient in their constant change. I just nodded and swept past, heading for my rooms. When we reached the suite, carefully kept free of dust despite my infrequent visits, Rill frowned at me.
‘We ran all the way back, and you stop here?’
‘I do.’ A great mirror stood in the room, flanked with panels of polished obsidian. I stopped in front of it and looked myself over. Ash dusted my hair, and blood stained my armour. ‘If I went to the Grey Palace looking like this, I’d never hear the end of it from Mother.’
Erant sighed. ‘How come you only listen to her now that she’s dead, Nyssa?’
What an excellent question.
‘Shush,’ I said to them both, then there was a knock at the door. Erant opened it for a small troupe of serving women bearing pitchers of steaming water.
‘For the princess,’ I heard one of them whisper, and my lips curled back from my fangs. They quickly filled the tub that sat on one side of the room and were gone. I stripped and settled into hot water that smelled faintly of sulphur. The Irewater was a long, narrow lake that stretched from Maar to where the Grey Palace stood at the foot of Temero. Near the volcano the lake boiled and steamed, heated by the volcano’s fiery heart. Here, near Maar, it was still hot, but not scalding. Convenient for baths, even if it did smell, and I cleaned the dried blood and ash away.
My scrubbed skin was deep brown, though it took a greyish cast when I needed to feed. My eyes changed when I fed – the chestnut irises coloured by strands of red that grew thicker when I was sated, or when I was angry. My hair was difficult, long and black and thick, just wavy enough to want to tangle in everything if left unbraided, but cutting it back was right out according to Mother.
I ducked my head beneath the water to wet it, and when my eyes closed I saw the words again, written in Arvan’s cramped hand. Come back. King Corsovo is ill, mayhap dying. Mayhap dying? What in Nagash’s lowest hell did that mean? My father was a vampire lord of the Kastelai. Vampires do not get sick, and they do not die.
Do we not?
Beneath the water, I shook my head. You were killed, I thought. By treachery and flame and my failure. You didn’t just die, like a mortal.
Nyssa.
She said my name like a warning, but I didn’t listen. I pushed myself out of the tub, splashing water across the floor. ‘Clean up,’ I said to Erant and Rill, and Erant went to the door, calling the servants for fresh water. Neither of them had teased me about the serving girl calling me princess, which meant they both knew my mood.
You call yourself the king’s daughter. To these people, that has a title.
‘A stupid one,’ I muttered. ‘If they want to give me a title, I can be royal executioner.’
An executioner is a commoner. You are a Kastelai, Nyssa. You are nobility. You must know that, the way these mortals know it.
Of course they knew it. One hundred years ago, Maar had been about to fall. A dozen bands of nomads had ridden in from the wastes that edged the Broken Plains, united in their greed. They’d laid siege to the city and were on the edge of victory the night the ruins that lay on the other side of the Irewater had blurred and stretched, and the abandoned castle had transformed into the Crimson Keep.
The nomads never understood what happened. One moment they were ready to claim Maar, and then had come catastrophe. An army of death, of vampires mounted on Nightmares and still more terrible things, had slammed into their flanks. Killing, feeding, smashing the nomads until each band had run, defeated.
We’d followed one of those ragged remnants. My mother and father and I, and the other vampires in our cohort. We’d helped shatter their army, now we drove them away. Not because we had cared what happened to Maar, we didn’t even know the name of the city then, didn’t even know which of the Mortal Realms we were in. That was the nature of the Crimson Keep. The home of the Kastelai was cursed to move, always, unpredictably. It would rest on the bones of some ancient fortress for a day, a week, a month, and then suddenly, as one day faded, the shadows would grow around the Keep and swallow it, taking it into darkness and then spitting it out somewhere else.
There was no telling where. It could be a different continent, a different realm. The only certainties were that the Crimson Keep always came to rest on ruins and that there would be a battle happening somewhere close. I could clearly remember the times the Keep had moved when I’d lived there. The thrill of feeling the darkness take us, knowing that when we came out into some new night, there would be a war waiting for us. We wouldn’t know what the sides were, what the stakes were. We were just there to fight, and to feed, and we did both well that night.
Too well.
Temero had been spewing ash over the battle. The ash fall had been thick enough to hide the day when it came, and my cohort had followed the survivors of one of the shattered nomad bands far out into the Broken Plains before we stopped, finally sated on fighting and blood. By the time we’d returned, the cloud had thinned a little, enough for the last bits of daylight to slip through it and turn the churned earth around Maar red as blood. Night was coming, and we knew we should go to the Keep, but we were lazy with victory and the knowledge that it almost always lingered in its new spot. We joked about it as we rode, until the darkness gathered around those distant red walls and we saw the Keep vanish. Gone, leaving us behind.
That had been a long, terrible night.
Most of the vampires with us died. Some, tied close to the Crimson Keep and its curse, had crumbled to dust the moment it vanished. Others died a slow, agonising death over the next few days, wasting away to desiccated corpses no matter how much blood we gave them. We might have broken then, but for my father Corsovo and my mother Vasara. They kept us going. They were the ones who went to Maar, and discovered that the people there called us their saviours. They bent the mortals’ loose legends about the return of the rulers of the Grey Palace to our ends. My parents saved us, ensuring we would not be refugees but conquerors. They made a broken cohort of Blood Knights into rulers, and became king and queen of the Broken Plains.
But just because I was their daughter didn’t make me a princess.
I sighed, went to my wardrobe and began to pull out my things.
My court garb wasn’t a gown. Mother wouldn’t have minded that, though she’d seldom worn them. But armour was always appropriate for a Kastelai, especially at court. This armour wasn’t worn or spattered with blood. Its leather was a lustrous black, perfectly fitted to me. Rose vines twisted up the legs and arms and across the shoulders, intricately tooled so that the long thorns looked sharp as fangs. They flared into blooms around my collar and across my shoulders, roses of deep, deep red, the colour of blood in shadow. Across the back was a white skull with a rose blooming in each eye, one for Corsovo and one for Vasara.
I’d had this armour made for her funeral.
I frowned at myself in the mirror, dressed in that dark leather, my swords on my hips, a circlet of dull gold marked with one heavy ruby holding back my hair. I wasn’t beautiful. My features were too hard and thin, my body too lean, long as a whipcord. But in this outfit, my eyes flashing red-brown over the rose-stitched collar, I was striking, and that was more important.
Adequate.
Despite the brevity of the word, I could sense her approval. I looked at Rill and Erant in the mirror. They’d dressed in their best, too, armour similar to mine if not as ornate. It was time to go, but despite all the speed I’d made getting here, I hesitated. What if Arvan was right? What if my father was dying?
Then you need to see him before he is gone.
There was no arguing with that, and I spun away from the mirror and walked out, my companions falling in behind.
We rode through Maar’s gates, the hooves of our Nightmares tapping across the black bridge that crossed the river running below.
The hot, sulphurous Irewater poured itself into a rocky channel in Maar, and became the River Ire, looping through the hills and flatlands of the Broken Plains until it finally spilled into the sea at Gowyn, where the Sun Seekers plotted their raids. I stared at the boats scattered below, fishermen venturing out into the hot lake to catch the fish that surfaced each night. Every boat was draped with ribbons and pennants begging Nagash for full nets and a successful return.
Returns. Returns were hard.
The Grey Palace lay on the other side of the Irewater. I could pick out its lights in the dark, bright dots gleaming across the steaming water. We’d claimed the ruin where the Crimson Keep had briefly stood, dug a portion of the ancient castle out of the drifts of fallen ash and made it our home. My home. The other Kastelai had spread out over the years, starting their own holds in other parts of the Broken Plains, creating their own families of vampires from those they deemed worthy. But I’d stayed in the Grey Palace with Corsovo, because he’d made me, and with Vasara, who’d tried to remake me.
Stop being dramatic. I was just trying to educate you.
‘There’s a difference?’ I said. My voice was soft, but the night was silent and I knew Rill and Erant had heard.
‘Did you say something?’ Rill’s voice, of course. She was the braver one when it came to me. Her question wasn’t a question, it was a reminder that my arguments with the ghost inside my head were audible to those around me.
She’s right.
‘Then–’ I started, then caught myself and lowered my voice. ‘Then why are you always starting arguments with me?’
Because you need my advice, Nyssa. And that advice right now is to school your tongue. The others have enough doubts about you.
I curled my lips into a silent snarl, but I didn’t answer. It was unfair, the way she could speak whenever she wanted and I had to watch my tongue. It was unfair that she was right, too.
‘No, Rill,’ I answered, then followed that grudgingly with, ‘Thank you.’ Not for the question, but for the reminder to keep my arguments to myself.
They knew, of course. My father had made Rill and Erant, giving them his blood when they’d proven their skill and loyalty. But they’d been my companions, my supposed guards, since before they were born into their second life. They’d watched over me after Vasara’s death, when I’d raged and mourned, and they knew how grief and guilt had become a ghost in my mind. The only ones who knew. I’d never told Corsovo about it, and never would.
And sure as all the amethyst hells, I didn’t want any of the other Kastelai to know.
We rode through the dark, the lights of Maar fading behind us, the lights of the Grey Palace growing brighter. Beside us the Irewater lost its dark stillness, its surface marred with bubbles coming up from the boiling springs that fed into the lake far below. The steam rising off the water grew, twisting and turning into strange shapes, phantoms that stretched up from the water and then faded into the dark.
Black monoliths lined the side of the road. The massive stones were carved with names, a tally of the city’s dead. It’d been their custom since Maar was founded, to wrap their dead in cloth weighed with stones and throw them into the Irewater. The corpses settled far below, their flesh dissolving in the boiling water, leaving their bones to pile in the darkness. Silent and gone, except for the thin wraiths that rose from the slowly roiling water and the names carved into the stones.
My father had changed the practice, told the mortals that they could still carve the names of their dead into the stones, could still cast a bundle containing the little fingers and toes of the bodies into the water, but that was it. We were the servants of Nagash, the god of the dead. We respected funeral rites, but we had other uses for those bodies.
When we passed the last of the monoliths, I was close enough to pick out the ash-coloured walls of the Grey Palace, rising high over the Irewater. Points of light had resolved into lanterns along the battlements, and I could see the narrow stained-glass windows glowing in the towers behind those walls. The ones that had been repaired – my father had left half the castle in ruins. A place for the Crimson Keep to reappear, if it ever would.
Four pennants hung from the rebuilt walls, long shadows stretching against the grey stone. I could pick out the sigils woven into them: a raven in purple and black; a dire wolf’s snarling head; a goblet of blood; a broken skull. Magdalena. Salvera. Jirrini. Durrano. The last of the Kastelai, the Blood Knights of the Crimson Keep who had survived our abandonment here. The blood-blessed nobility of the Broken Plains. My extended family.
The very last people I wanted to deal with.
My boots were dropping to the flagstones when I heard Magdalena’s voice.
‘Another adventure, Lady Nyssa?’
I took the time to hand Thorn’s reins to the mortal groom, whose eyes had gone wide seeing my bared fangs. I closed my mouth and smoothed my face, then turned and faced the Kastelai. As always, Magdalena was perfectly if not prettily dressed in her usual court garb, a tunic and trousers coloured deepest purple. The tunic had a raven stitched over her heart and the symbols of Nagash embroidered up the sleeves. She’d always been pious and fussy, overcautious and demanding. Magdalena was shorter than me but broader, strong and tough as an old oak. Her dark, curly hair was cut into short ringlets that framed her round face, incongruously attractive around green eyes that were hard as stones.
Behind her, standing between the great doors that opened off the courtyard, Jirrini and Durrano were watching. Jirrini wore a gown and heavy jewellery of gold and rubies, the colour of the stones a perfect match for her dress. It all sat well against her dark skin, eyes and hair. Jirrini was beautiful and poised, a contrast to the deadly bearing she took when fighting, and Durrano looked plain beside her. He was my height, though with broader shoulders, but his white hair, fair skin and bone-coloured clothes made him a palette of paleness. Even his eyes were white, the ivory pupils barely visible. His personality was as dull as his clothing, but he was my father’s staunchest supporter.
‘Lady Magdalena,’ I said, without nodding my head. She was older than me, wise in battle and diplomacy, but we both knew I’d cut her to ribbons in a duel, so we acted as equals and kept our annoyance with each other buried beneath a veneer of politeness. Mostly. ‘I have had another adventure. And now our Captain Takora is short a patrol.’
‘Yet you return empty-handed,’ she said.
‘I return with the death of a score of our enemies,’ I said. ‘When’s the last time you killed so many?’
Magdalena ignored the barb. ‘All that death, and no bodies?’
‘Do you think I’m lying?’ I snapped.
Careful. She’s baiting you, my mother said, but I ignored her. Magdalena had been sitting in Ruinview for years, doing nothing while I whittled away at the Sun Seekers, and I had no interest in hearing her critiques. Especially not now, when I was supposed to be on my way to see my father.
‘I did what I said, and cost Takora. I fought her army and I bled her. I’m reducing her strength to a handful, which is how war works. Or have you sat in your hold so long that you’ve forgotten that?’ I drew myself up, staring down at her, and for once I was glad my mother had forced me to dress for this. In my black armour, swords polished on my hips, I felt like I was driving through Magdalena’s guard, ready to set the edge of my blade against her throat. And then she stabbed me back.
‘Takora’s handful has just been joined by an order of soldiers from the Church of Sigmar. They are called the Spears of Heaven, and they mean to end this long war by killing us all.’ She glared at me, her fangs flashing as she spoke. ‘I learned that, sitting in my keep, studying how war works, Lady Nyssa. We’re going to be doing more than these little skirmishes of yours soon enough, and we need those dead.’
Ah. That’s what she was setting you up for. Note the others’ faces. Jirrini isn’t surprised, Magdalena already told her. But Durrano is. She’s undermining you in front of him.
Her analysis of Magdalena’s political manipulation wasn’t helping me. Not at all. My hands gripped my swords, but I kept them still. I wasn’t that way any more: angry, vicious, frightened, my only response to any attack a flurry of blades and fangs. I wasn’t. Even if I wanted to be, sometimes.
