Vengeance, page 72
D’zan woke screaming, and seconds later the Stone came into his bedchamber.
“It’s all right, Olthacus… I’m fine.” D’zan waved his guardian away, but the big man would not leave the room. He stood in the corner while servants dressed D’zan. The Prince called for a cup of morning wine, but could eat no breakfast. He spent the day in the library, poring over ancient texts from Khyrei detailing legends of sorcerers and necromancers who had haunted the Old World. In one of these tomes, after hours of meandering through moldy pages, he discovered mention of a wizard bearing the same name as the one who’d come to plague his nightmares. “The Tyrant Elhathym,” said the Book of Disgraced Savants, “ruled a southern kingdom before the Age of Serpents.” Nothing more than that brief passage.
Such texts were widely discredited by Yaskathan sages, because there were no civilizations that existed before Giants out of the northlands drove the race of fire-breathing reptiles from the earth. According to D’zan’s history tutors, the Giants then claimed the north for themselves, forcing the Four Tribes of humans to flee southward to ultimately form the five kingdoms: Yaskatha, Khyrei, Uurz, Mumbaza, and Shar Dni. How could there be a southern empire before any of this happened? Unless history was wrong… a lie invented to cover up horrible truths. And why would this present-day sorcerer take the name of a tyrant from an age of mystery?
It did not matter, he told himself. The sorcerer was finally dead now, tortured to death last night by order of King Trimesqua.
Or was he?
As the sun slipped once more into the sea, D’zan closed the musty volume and walked with urgency into the lowest level of the palace proper. Behind him, a second shadow, came the imposing figure of the Stone. The Prince hated the reek of the torture chamber, a blend of feces, sweat, blood, and fear. Even more he despised the terrible sounds that resounded among the boiling furnaces and intricate devices of torment. He usually avoided this part of the palace. But the sorcerer’s laughing had finally stopped, and he had to be sure that Elhathym was dead.
The smells of scorched flesh and decay drowned all others as D’zan entered the chamber. There was no sign of the sorcerer. Only the bodies of the three hooded torturers lying across the floor, blood pooling about their split bodies, their limbs askew in impossible angles. All the racks, cages, and shackles were empty, even those that had encased rotting corpses to terrify victims.
The sound of screaming came from somewhere above. D’zan raced back up the steps and ran toward the throne room, the Stone pounding at his heels. Courtesans, servants, and soldiers fled the great hall, mouths agape, eyes wide with terror. A cacophony of shrieking filled the arched corridors, and the odor of ancient decay was everywhere. The stench from D’zan’s dreams… the acrid reek of the tomb.
D’zan raced into the throne room to see his father the King surrounded by a trio of grasping mummies. The smell of long-rotten flesh filled the chamber like a fog, and two of the mummies grasped the King by his arms, holding him immobile while the third decomposing corpse raked its claws across his flesh, spilling royal blood across the dais. D’zan heard his father scream, and his legs were frozen; he could not move forward or backward, but only stood staring at the tableau of impossible slaughter.
On the King’s throne sat black-robed Elhathym, a grim smile on his lips, his skull nearly visible through the tight, pallid flesh of his face. He bore no marks of torture on his person; not even his black robes were disturbed, and his necklace of blood-drop rubies hung gracefully upon his emaciated chest.
A legion of the dead swarmed the hall. Already several guards lay bleeding on the flagstones, their throats ripped out by fleshless fingers and the teeth of withered skulls. Swords and spears clove into dry breastbones with little effect. The mummies of previous dynasties were now ravening ghouls, splashing gouts of blood across fine tapestries as they tore the palace guards to bits. D’zan recognized the tattered raiment of the ghouls, and saw on the head of more than one a royal diadem or crown out of Yaskathan history. These were the inhabitants of the royal necropolis crawled up from the underworld beneath the palace.
The shadows of your own past will tear you from your throne.
More lurching corpses poured into the hall; the screams of women and children rang from the walls in every wing of the palace. A grinning mummy rounded the corner and reached for D’zan’s throat, but the Stone’s blade took off its moldy head. Olthacus’ booted foot crushed the corpse against the floor; as he tamped its ribcage into dust, its fleshless arms kept grasping at his legs, tearing through his leathern leggings and drawing blood. D’zan backed away, inspired by the Stone’s bravery to draw his own weapon; a reeking cadaver grabbed him from behind, pressing its rotted skull against his ear. Its jaws snapped like those of a turtle, and he dropped his sword clattering to the floor as horror suffocated him.
The Stone tore the mummy from D’zan’s back and pulverized it with blade and boot. His big hand slapped D’zan across the face, ending his paralysis. “Come, Prince!” growled the Stone. “I know a secret way.”
“No!” shouted D’zan. “We can’t abandon my father!”
“Your father is dead, boy!” said the Stone, pointing his blade at the cluster of ghouls who tore at a mess of scattered flesh upon the royal dais. Above the horrid feast sat Elhathym, the bloodstained crown on his head now, smiling at the devouring of Trimesqua. Still the ranks of blood-hungry dead things continued filling the chamber, the last of the guards falling before their voiceless assault.
The Stone grabbed D’zan’s arm and they ran through milling clouds of grave dust. They never stopped running, all through the winding corridors of the servants’ wing, the Stone’s great blade demolishing one desiccated corpse after another. Everywhere the dead feasted upon the living. None in the palace were spared the bottomless hunger of the corpses; royal and servant alike died under the raking of bony claws. So Elhathym had promised, and he had delivered on his ultimate threat.
D’zan wondered if his mother’s corpse was among the hungry dead. Would I recognize her? Would she tear out my throat with the same hands that gave me life? Stifling a bottomless scream, he drove such thoughts from his mind, closing his eyes and mumbling a prayer to the Sky God.
The Stone brushed aside a wall hanging and opened a hidden passage, leading the Prince along the dark and narrow way. D’zan, fearful of dark places now that his nightmares had come to life, closed his eyes while Olthacus dragged him along that winding route, up and down seldom-used stairwells, through crawl spaces, and finally out into the night air. Once again the screams of the dying filled D’zan’s ears. He dared to open his eyes and found that the Stone had brought him to an outer palace garden. They ran for the orchards beyond. Behind them flames danced among the towers and courtyards. The dead were heedlessly knocking over braziers and torches, spreading flame and death throughout the royal domain.
Where can we go to escape this damnation? His unconquerable father was dead and there was no safe place left in the world. The Stone grabbed his arm and pulled him onward.
Once in the deep shadows of the orchards, they seemed free of the undead plague a while, steeped in the tangy aroma of hanging citrus. But when they crossed the outer wall into the seaside quarter, they saw again the terror and panic that had claimed Trimesqua’s house. Here, too, corpses walked the streets and tore at living flesh. It seemed every graveyard and mausoleum in the capital had vomited forth its dead at the command of Elhathym. Citizens fled for the hills or locked themselves inside their houses. The Stone smashed another mummy to powder as he drew D’zan on toward the wharves, where towers of flames writhed and flickered. All across the city, walls of orange-white fire leaped toward the sky. They must be fighting the dead with fire, D’zan thought. But they will burn their own city to ash…
Many ships in the harbor had already launched, heading out to sea to escape the apocalypse of Elhathym’s making. Citizens jostled and fought one another for passage on one late-embarking galleon which flew the Feathered Serpent of Mumbaza among its white sails. The Stone hacked his way through the crowd, leaving a bloody trail in his wake, dragging D’zan by his elbow. The panicked Yaskathans gave way before the big warrior. Without a word the Stone gained passage from the ship’s captain at the point of his dripping blade.
The deck of the galleon was crowded, and the sailors had to beat back the mob with oars and clubs before they could cast off. D’zan collapsed on the deck, near the prow. The pitiful cries of women, children, and men—all doomed—filled his ears even when he clasped his hands over them. When he dared to look out over the railing, the capital was a flaming, screaming mass of chaos separated from him now by an expanse of dark water. The horned moon hung pale and implacable above the dying city. Towers gleamed brighter than rubies in the glow of the roaring fires.
Those who had escaped by securing passage on the galleon were weeping, or cursing, or both. A few had brought entire families with them. D’zan stood in the prow watching his inheritance burn, thinking of his father’s bloody crown sitting upon the sorcerer’s head. Hot tears burned his cheeks. Behind him, as always, stood the Stone, silent and still as the moon.
In the blood-spattered throne room, Elhathym drank wine from Trimesqua’s goblet as his army of undead Yaskathans preyed on their descendants. He smiled at the irony of using the past to remold the present in such a way. Among the entrails and filth littering the hall, a great white panther glided toward him. The beast licked at Trimesqua’s blood, and the snapping ghouls ignored it as they wandered off to find fresh victims.
The white panther came close to Elhathym’s knees and rubbed its silky fur against him. His thin hand caressed its head between the ears, and it growled.
“You see, my dear?” the sorcerer told the panther. “I told you my birthright would be easily reclaimed.”
“So you did,” said the panther. “But what of my desires?” Now the cat was a pale-skinned lady sitting at his feet, her voluptuous body draped in strings of chromatic jewels. A thick mane of hair, gleaming white as silk, fell across her shoulders. Her eyes were as dark as his own.
Elhathym, the new King of Yaskatha, smiled at his lover.
“Patience,” he whispered. And he kissed her ruby lips, which tasted of royal blood.
BY IAN IRVINE
The Three Worlds Series
The View from the Mirror Quartet
A Shadow on the Glass
The Tower on the Rift
Dark Is the Moon
The Way Between the Worlds
The Well of Echoes Quartet
Geomancer
Tetrarch
Alchymist
Chimaera
Song of the Tears Trilogy
Torments of the Traitor
The Curse on the Chosen
The Destiny of the Dead
The Tainted Realm
Vengeance
Rebellion
Contents
WELCOME
DEDICATION
MAP
PART ONE: ESCAPE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
PART TWO: PURSUIT
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
PART THREE: HUNT
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
CHAPTER 86
CHAPTER 87
CHAPTER 88
CHAPTER 89
CHAPTER 90
CHAPTER 91
CHAPTER 92
CHAPTER 93
CHAPTER 94
CHAPTER 95
CHAPTER 96
CHAPTER 97
CHAPTER 98
CHAPTER 99
CHAPTER 100
CHAPTER 101
CHAPTER 102
CHAPTER 103
CHAPTER 104
CHAPTER 105
CHAPTER 106
CHAPTER 107
CHAPTER 108
CHAPTER 109
CHAPTER 110
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EXTRAS
MEET THE AUTHOR
INTERVIEW
A PREVIEW OF SEVEN PRINCES
BY IAN IRVINE
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2011 by Ian Irvine
Excerpt from Seven Princes copyright © 2012 by John R. Fultz
Map by Ian Irvine and Xou Creative
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-0-316-18067-2
Ian Irvine, Vengeance
