Ildiko blinked, and he was Brishen once more, leader, loving husband and friend. She crushed the hem of her tunic in her hands to stop herself from trying to touch him. Neither living nor dead, he shimmered in front of her, a lodestone to which she would always be drawn.
She had no idea why he returned to Saggara with the dead still bound to him, but she thanked any god listening that he was here. “Prince of night,” she said, and reached out to caress the air in front of him. “Welcome back.”
His rigid stance eased a fraction, and he leaned toward her, yearning rippling in every slope and bend of muscle covered by leather and mail. A smile played across his mouth. “Woman of day,” he said, and the endearment held the worship of a supplicant before a beloved deity. “I’ve missed you.”
He was so close, a breath away from her fingertips, and lethal to any living touch. Still, Ildiko’s hands tingled with the temptation to grasp him, assure herself he was real and unharmed, even in this unholy incarnation. Instead, she asked the question she knew hovered on the tongue of every Kai behind her. “Are the galla gone?”
Once more his phantasmal gaze swept the crowd. “They’re gone,” he said.
The crowd erupted into thunderous cheers and applause. Ildiko didn’t join in. Instead, she looked beyond Brishen to the three Kings who waited in the distance with the dead. There should have been four. Her heartbeat sped up. “Where is the fourth King?”
Brishen’s shoulders drooped as if the question carried the weight of a thousand sorrows. “Taken by the galla.” The echo of ghosts whispered in his answer.
The crowd continued to cheer behind them, but their voices seemed far away. “Who?” She dreaded his answer. Not Serovek, she pleaded silently, picturing the Beladine’s laughing eyes and the way his teasing drove Anhuset to distraction.
“Megiddo.”
Ildiko closed her eyes, recalling the monk’s quiet dignity and unhesitating bravery in volunteering to help Brishen. To suffer such a fate… “I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I,” he replied, the chime of mourning in his voice.
Brishen turned his attention to the crowd, and their cheers quieted. He raised his voice, its tone no longer mournful but sure and strong. “I come to you now so you may know it’s safe to return to your homes, your farms, your holts and villages. And soon I will return to Saggara.”
More cheers followed his declaration along with shouts from the crowd. “The Queen is safe! The Queen is here!”
Brishen tilted his head, puzzled, and looked to Ildiko, the obvious question in his expression. She grinned, relieved to offer good news to blunt the horror of Megiddo’s fate. “There’s someone you should meet,” she said and motioned for Kirgipa to come forward.
The nursemaid handed the baby to Ildiko and bowed before stepping back. Ildiko tucked back swaddling and turned the infant to face Brishen.
He only looked more puzzled. “Who is this?”
“Harkuf’s youngest child. The daughter born a few months ago.”
Brishen inhaled sharply, gaze darting back and forth between Ildiko and the baby. He opened his mouth to say something else but was interrupted by a frantic screech. A single, swirling cloud of black erupted from the revenant army and hurtled across the stretch of grass toward Brishen before taking form.
Ildiko cried out, startling the baby. Screams and sharp cries rose from the crowd as almost all of Saggara dropped automatically into genuflection. Anhuset leapt forward, blade drawn, and shoved Ildiko behind her. Guards flanked either side, enclosing regent and regnant within a cage of armor, weaponry, and grim-faced Kai with no inclination to join the others in subservient posturing.
Secmis. As terrifying and malevolent in death as she had been in life, her form smoked and roiled before Brishen who showed no surprised at finding her there.
“I wondered when you’d show yourself,” he said in a bored voice.
Secmis flung a skeletal arm at Ildiko who huddled even closer behind Anhuset. The baby squawked at her tightening grip. “Give the baby to me! She is blood of my blood.”
Another cry rose from the ghostly throng, and Ildiko swore she recognized the voice of Tiye, the baby’s dead mother. “No! Brishen, I beg you! Don’t!”
Brishen’s attention never wavered from his mother. Secmis’s demands gave way to cajoling. “You have proven yourself far beyond my expectations, excelled beyond your father and spineless brother. A worthy ruler of Bast-Haradis.” She pulsed with dark light, a creature born of maledictions and the suffering of others. “Give me the child, so I may live once more,” she whined. A sour hint of bile surged into Ildiko’s throat at the hungry desperation in the plea. “I will rise as queen again, rule by your side and raise you above the throne of Bast-Haradis, over all kingdoms of the world until there is one king and one queen. Our children will be spoken of in legends.”
If Ildiko’s stomach wasn’t already empty, she’d have retched right there. The Kai, on their knees, recoiled, many abandoning their subordinate posture to rise and gape in disgust at the scene before them.
Brishen’s upper lip curled as if he smelled something rank. “What manner of legends, dearest mother mine? Abominations? Monsters worse than the galla? You would possess an innocent child, crush her soul and turn her body into your vessel.” The loathing of decades painted his words, thick and curdled. “Is there nothing you won’t defile or debase in your quest for power?”
“I will make you a god,” she boasted.
More dark light spilled out of her at his contemptuous laugh. “You would devour me.” His eye blazed bright. “I saw you murder my sister,” he snarled. “I released her spirit and took her mortem light before you could use either for whatever foul purpose you had in store.”
Secmis shrieked and lunged at him, ghostly hands curved as if she’d rend him apart with her claws. He opened his arms wide and caught her in an embrace.
It was the hold of a lover—if that lover were vengeful, murderous and eaten with hate. Brishen’s hands pressed into Secmis’s back, crushing her against him until she arched like a bow. Stars died in her shadow as she writhed in his unrelenting grip and wailed her fury.
Cracks split Brishen’s armor, small fissures opening in his chain mail and brigandine. Ethereal blue light burned hot through the breaks. They spread, splitting the skin of his hands and face until he resembled parched earth gasping under drought, his form held together only by the bondage of an internal sun. The cold light snaked out of him to pierce Secmis whose screams pitched and dipped, furious at first and then agonized and drawn out as Brishen first broke her soul on an invisible wrack and then tore it apart. His splintered face remained implacable.
Ildiko had often wondered how her thoughtful, infinitely loving husband could be the child of parents like Djedor and Secmis. At the sight of his expression, merciless and indifferent to his captive’s agony, she wondered no longer. In those moments, when he shredded Secmis’s soul as easily as galla shredded flesh, Brishen Khaskem was truly his mother’s son.
Searing light pulsed around his body, and Ildiko flinched away from the brightness. When she could see once more, he stood before her, solitary and no longer fissured. His eye, a cerulean blue, burned almost white now. His gaze swept the shocked and silent crowd before returning to her. “Good riddance at last,” he said softly.
No one spoke; no one breathed. They had just witnessed an execution the like of which they had never seen before and would probably never see again. Ildiko suspected she stared at Brishen with the same expression every Kai around her wore: stunned amazement, horror, and no little fear. What power did this transformed king possess that he could destroy a soul at will? She knew, and that secret would die with her.
“It’s about damn time,” Anhuset said in a loud voice. “I never could abide that jackal in fancy dress. At least now I won’t be ashamed to say I’m related to you, cousin.”
Her irreverent remark broke the gravid quiet. Ildiko chortled, a mixture of true hu
mor and shattered nerves. Brishen joined her, and soon laughter echoed through the crowd. It wasn’t the twisted amusement of watching vengeance so finally delivered, but the joy of relief, of hope.
The living shield wall around Ildiko opened so she could return to Brishen. His face softened as he stared at the baby in her arms. He drew closer, blue eye no longer as incandescent as he took in the sight of his niece. He then dropped to one knee and raised the ensorcelled sword he carried in offering instead of threat. His declaration, earnest and resolved, carried across the plain. “The queen is dead. Long live the queen.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Serovek studied his body with a critical eye. “At least my beard didn’t get any thicker while we were gone.”
They were once again at the peak of Saruna Tor, with the dead swirling restlessly around them. The physical bodies of the kings lay undisturbed, features peaceful as if they slumbered without worry or care. Brishen’s gaze settled on Megiddo. Deathless sleep. Dreamless, soulless, trapped in a state of waiting for a spirit that would never return.
They all appeared unchanged until something caught his eye. Andras’s body, supine beside Megiddo’s, was not as they had left it. He lay with his arms crossed over his chest in the pose of a supplicant, fingertips resting against the opposite shoulders. At least the fingers of his right hand were. The left hand was deformed, shriveled into a twisted claw encased in necrotic skin.
Megiddo’s severing of Andras’s eidolon hand had left its mark. Andras might not have bled blood or suffered pain when it happened, but his physical body displayed the effects. The hand wasn’t missing, but it was as useless to the Gauri lord as if it were.
“Do you get used to it?” Andras stared at Brishen with bright, bitter eyes.
Brishen didn’t need to ask what he meant. Many had leveled the same question on him after he healed from his injuries, half blind with the loss of his eye. He shrugged. “What other choice is there?”
He turned away from the bodies and faced the vast army spilling down the tor. He was done. Done with the feel and taste of death, of unlife that coursed through his eidolon’s spectral veins. They were poisoned with the lingering essence of Secmis’s venom.
She’d thrown herself at him, and he seized the chance, the moment, to do what he swore he’d accomplish all those years ago when he freed his murdered sister from her diabolical clutches. The galla had consumed Secmis’s body; Brishen obliterated her soul. The power that gave him dominion over the dead also gave him the ability to destroy them and left a stain on his spirit. Profane. Unclean.
“General Hasarath,” he said.
A revenant separated from the ghostly crowd and shaped itself into the memory of the old Kai general who sacrificed himself for so many at the Absu. “Sire,” he replied and bowed.
“None will forget what you and the others did at Haradis. Every generation of Kai born from now forward will know the honor and bravery of Hasarath, of Meseneith, of Satsik…” He named each of those who stood before that first wave of galla and made themselves willing prey so that others might reach the safety of the river. He’d build monuments to their names, temples in their honor, and have scribes write of their heroism. Just like humans did.
The Kai could no longer rely on the reaping and storing of mortem lights with their precious memories. Those Kai too young to have their magic manifest yet had escaped the thievery of Brishen’s spell. But who knew if the power they inherited would be strong enough to reap the memories of their elders. The magic of the Kai, if not completely dead, flickered weakly in its final days.
His voice softened when he spoke Tarawin’s name. She floated toward him, her shadowy features still kind, still gentle. “My family is indebted to yours for all time, Tarawin. Your son fought under my command, and now so have you. Your daughter Kirgipa rescued my niece. That act alone saved a dynasty and a marriage. I will raise her up, ennoble her and the children she will bear. Your house will be exalted and your daughters the matriarchs of princes.”
Tarawin drew closer until the smoky mist of her essence drifted over his arms and shoulders in the lightest caress. “Live long, Herceges. Live happy.” She withdrew into the miasma, becoming nameless and faceless once more.
Brishen bowed before the dead. The other Wraith Kings did the same. “We release you from service with our eternal gratitude,” he said. “May your journey continue beyond the reach of this world, and may you find peace.”
A rippled flowed through the gathering, accompanied by a drawn sigh, and the dead faded away. No epic whirlwinds or howling faces in spinning vortices. Only a quiet vanishing as if they had never been there at all.
Brishen listened, savoring the whip and swirl of the natural breeze spinning between the encircling menhirs and lifting strands of his hair from his shoulders. No frightful screaming from ravenous galla rent the quiet. Instead, he heard the muted thud of hooves and the encouraging commands of riders as they coaxed their horses up the tor’s pitch toward the peak. Gaeres’s men. They had kept sentinel at the tor’s base while their leader rode with Brishen into battle, retreating only far enough away to avoid the returning dead. That danger was gone now, and they climbed the tor to reach Gaeres.
“What happens now?” Gaeres asked.
“We become whole again.” He hoped so. He prayed so. Brishen bowed a second time, this time to Megiddo’s still body. “At least four of us.”
“And what of the monk?” Andras’s belligerence hadn’t lessened. Tiny forks of lightning arced around his handless wrist, and he glared at Brishen.
“I’ll bring his body back to High Salure,” Serovek said. “His brother’s family are my guests there for now. Either they will take him or return him to his monastery.”
“So he’ll just stay like that for eternity? Dead but not, and a captive of the galla? This is wrong!”
“Then give me an alternative,” Brishen snapped back. “If we destroy his body, his spirit has no place to return. I will not—will not—reopen the breach for any reason. I couldn’t if I wanted to. What power I have left, and it isn’t much, will be used up reuniting our spirits with our bodies. All we can do for Megiddo now is protect his body until someone finds a way to retrieve his eidolon.”
He braced for another volley of arguments, but Andras stayed silent, mouth thinned to a tight line. Gaeres clapped a hand on Serovek’s shoulder. “My men and I will help you bring Megiddo to his family before we return home.”
Serovek thanked him and turned to Brishen. “Let’s finish this. We’ve spent long enough chasing demons.”
Brishen couldn’t agree more. “Unless anyone objects, I’ll reunite you first.” He removed the ward surrounding Serovek’s body and called up the words to reverse the incantation that separated each man into body, sword, and eidolon.
The strength of the spell rode hard on him. It didn’t require the blood and violence of its counterpart, but the force of its draw made Brishen see double. He touched the sword Serovek held. “The king is the sword; the sword is the king,” he incanted in a language long dead and long forgotten. The blade’s light pulsed as lightning crackled up and down its length. Two radiant flashes, and the light shot up the hamon line, through the guard and grip to sizzle along Serovek’s arm.
The margrave’s eidolon convulsed in one great shudder before collapsing in on itself until it was nothing more than a shining sphere. The sword fell to the ground, once more a weapon made only of steel and the labor of a swordsmith’s arm. The sphere hurtled into Serovek’s body, sinking into his chest through harness, clothing, and flesh. He gasped, arching his back, and his lids twitched open.
Brishen bent over Serovek and peered into his eyes, no longer an encompassing spectral blue, but cold-water dark, with pupils and irises and the strange white sclera the Kai found so repulsive in humans. “Welcome back, my friend.” He backed away before Serovek could touch him. Gaeres signaled, and the Quereci who had made it to the tor’s peak rushed forward to help Serovek stand a
nd retrieve his fallen sword.
Andras chose to go last, and Brishen repeated the incantation over Gaeres and finally the Gauri exile. By then, his power was almost extinguished. What faint threads might remain once he recombined belonged to Megiddo. A chance to rescue the monk and return his spirit to his body, while improbable, wasn’t impossible. Brishen would guard those last drops of sorcery inside him until he found a way.
Performing the incantation on himself proved strange. The sword in his hand bore a life of its own, that portion of his will and awareness that had hacked through galla and bore their taint. Since the start of this macabre journey, he’d felt hollow, incomplete. He was. When the part of his spirit occupying his sword sank into his eidolon, he almost shouted his astonishment to the heavens. When the muscles of his body screamed in agony, and his eyelid slammed shut against the harsh sunlight, he laughed out loud.
“I’m not mad,” he assured a concerned Serovek and Gaeres as they helped him to his feet. “I’m whole again.”
“Well said,” Serovek replied with a grin.
Their celebratory hugs weren’t shared by all. Andras stood to one side, his withered hand tucked away from sight. He already held the reins of his living mount, watched over by the Quereci while he was gone. The simulacra they rode faded as the dead had once Brishen was whole and the incantation complete.
“My daughter awaits me,” Andras said and swung into the saddle. “Do you need me for anything else?”
Brishen shook his head. “No, though you have the thanks of a kingdom for your help. You saved a world, Andras.”
The Gauri lord looked at Megiddo, still within the protective ward, and back to Brishen. “Don’t garland yourselves yet,” he said with a sour scowl. “There are no heroes here.” He nodded to Gaeres and his Quereci and tapped his heels into his mount’s sides. Horse and rider trotted out of the menhir circle to descend the slope.