Drums beat faster and the players’ fingers flew across strings as the dancers flew over the ground, spinning and jumping in a swirl of flying skirts and tunics. Ildiko threw back her head and laughed as Brishen caught her up in his arms and whirled through the serpentine line as it coiled and stretched, compressed and expanded to the increasingly wild music. The dancers spun, calling out encouragement to each other and to the musicians to play faster, play harder.
Ildiko was a feather in his embrace, and he tossed her high in the air. She screamed, not with fear but exhilaration. He caught her easily, snatching a quick kiss before spinning her away from him to her original place in the line. They slid around each other, a wordless courtship that fired the blood in his veins from hot to boiling.
His wife’s hair had come loose and flew about her head and shoulders each time he spun her around him. Even in the light silvered by the moon and warmed by the bonfires, he could see the pink glow washing her pale skin. He’d once compared her coloring to that of a boiled mollusk. The mollusks and their bounty of amaranthine dye were the wealth of Bast-Haradis and Ildiko of Gaur the greatest treasure of Brishen Khaskem.
The beat of the song slowed in increments, finally coming to a halt. Brishen admired the quick rise and fall of Ildiko’s breasts as she struggled to catch her breath. She massaged a spot on her side. He guessed she rubbed at a stitch similar to the one pinching his ribs at the moment.
Her eyes narrowed as she followed the line of his gaze. “And what are you looking at, Herceges?”
He drew her closer and pushed a lock of red hair off her shoulder to expose her neck, shimmering with perspiration in the half-light. “The exceptional stitchery on your bodice, madam.” He bent and licked at the spot no longer hidden by her hair. She tasted of salt and flowers. “You’re nimble on your feet, wife,” he whispered in her ear.
She chuckled and stroked his arms. “I have to be if I don’t want to be trampled by you and the rest of your kin. Heavier than an ox you are. My toes would be crushed beyond hope if I didn’t keep them out of the way.”
Brishen hugged her, careful not to squeeze too hard. She was human and far more fragile than a Kai woman, at least physically. If her physical strength equaled that of her character, she could carry a loaded wagon on her back up a mountainside and never break a sweat.
“What if I told you, I’m a sliver of a breath away from hauling you behind that barricade.” He indicated a low wall away from the crowds with a thrust of his chin. His voice thickened. “Hitching your skirts and taking you against the timbers.” Her soft sigh tickled the underside of his jaw where she nuzzled him. His trousers stretched tight over his erection, and he held her even closer, no longer aware of the many people eddying around them.
“I would tell you to remember to cover my mouth so I don’t embarrass us both by screeching your name from the pleasure of it.” She winked.
“Holy gods,” he muttered before ending their embrace to grasp her hand and pull her toward their chosen trysting place. Once more, she jogged to keep up, her breathing as harsh as his in anticipation.
They made it three steps before a voice rose above the crowds and the music and the crackling bonfires in a bellow that brought silence down on the loggia with the force of a thunderclap. “Herceges!” Anhuset strode toward him and Ildiko, the gathering of Kai parting before her like grain before a thresher’s blade. Her eyes glowed almost as silvery as her hair, her features harsh and leached to the color of cold ashes. Another Kai followed close behind her.
A warning roil gathered strength in Brishen’s gut. Had his father died? Djedor was already an old monarch when he married Secmis and sired children off her. Brishen hated his mother and barely tolerated his father. The apprehension swelling inside him rose from something other than a sorrow he didn’t possess for a parent he hardly knew, an instinct that warned of news more dire. Anhuset’s expression mirrored that of the man who accompanied her.
Anhuset inclined her head briefly toward Ildiko. “Hercegesé.” She turned immediately back to Brishen. “A messenger from the capital. You need to hear this.” She stepped aside and motioned for the man to come forward.
Ildiko released Brishen’s arm to step behind him, an observer now. The man looked as if he’d ridden off a battlefield, horror stamped on his haggard face. Brishen eyed him, noting the shadows of sleep deprivation, the ragged and dirty state of his clothing. If he’d ridden from Haradis to Saggara, he’d done it without stopping by the look of him. “What message do you have from Haradis?”
The messenger blinked at him slowly, as if unsure Brishen was real or simply an illusion born from lack of sleep. “They are gone,” he choked out in a raspy voice. “All of them. Every one gone. Destroyed by galla.”
Startled cries and gasps broke the suffocating stillness. Brishen slashed a hand through the air, and they quieted. “Bring wine,” he ordered and waited while someone rushed forward with a full goblet. The messenger took it with shaking hands and downed the contents in three swallows. He gripped the empty goblet as if it were a talisman, and he shuddered.
Brishen’s heartbeat accelerated. “Who’s gone? And what is this of galla?”
As if restored not only by the wine but also Brishen’s calm voice, the messenger inhaled and exhaled a steadying breath before continuing. “Three days ago, someone summoned a galla horde.” This time Brishen didn’t bother to silence the chorus of gasps punctuated by fearful cries. “It started in the castle. Consumed everyone inside. The horde destroyed everything in the capital east of the Absu. Some in the city escaped into the river and swam to the other side. The rest were devoured, trampled or drowned.”
A flare of heat pressed against Brishen’s lower back—Ildiko’s hand, touching him. He stared at the messenger, listening to his words as if the man spoke from the opposite end of a tunnel, and they carried back to him at the other end on an icy wind. “Are you certain of this?”
The other man nodded. “I saw it all myself. Ran to the river with the others. I rode my horse into the ground and stole another to get here. The galla are spreading from the capital like contagion. Survivors are keeping close to the Absu or fighting over boats. They’re coming here to Saggara.”
The roar of the frigid tunnel wind sounded in Brishen’s ears. Galla. Survivors. Both streaming toward Saggara. “My family?” he asked softly, even though he already knew the answer.
Shoulders slumped, the messenger shook his bowed head slowly. “The royal house of Khaskem is gone. All perished. Except you. The king is dead.” Mournful wails from the Kai surrounding them met his declaration. He fell to his knees before Brishen and bent to touch his forehead to the ground. “Long live the king.”
The crowd’s whispers rose to a dull roar. Brishen’s stomach plummeted to his feet. He scowled and bent down to haul the man to up from the ground. “Off your knees,” he snapped. “There is no king at Saggara until we know more.”
His heartbeat echoed the earlier pounding of the drums from the dancing. The hot desire for his wife that had coursed through his body moments earlier was snuffed, replaced by detached purpose. He turned to Ildiko, noting her stricken expression and eyes made glossy with unshed human tears. “Find every vicegerent, mayor and clan chief in the crowd,” he instructed in a calm voice. “Send them to the hall.” She nodded without speaking and briefly caressed his forearm before disappearing into the sea of Kai.
Brishen motioned a grim Anhuset closer. “Summon Mertok. I want you two and a dozen of your best scouts in the hall with the ministers.”
She leaned toward him, speaking in a low voice. “How did galla breach the barriers between worlds and enter ours?”
He met his cousin’s firefly stare but didn’t reply. The question wasn’t how but rather who breached the walls for them. They both knew the answer. If the messenger was right and galla first appeared in the royal palace, then his mother, Queen Secmis, and her power-mad machinations had something to do with it.
He ges
tured to the haggard Kai who waited for his next command. “Come with me. There’s more wine and food inside my hall and a promise of rest as well, but first I need your help.”
Once inside, he sent Mesumenes to retrieve a set of maps from the library. Space was cleared on a trestle table and the maps rolled out flat. The messenger picked listlessly at the food served to him before abandoning his plate to join Brishen who studied the terrain illustrated on parchment.
One map depicted the known world, from frozen Helenrisia in the far north to the Serpent’s Teeth in the south and all the lands between, including the kingdoms of Bast-Haradis, Gaur and Belawat. The second map focused solely on Bast-Haradis, and it was this one Brishen scoured first. He tapped a finger on the square that marked the capital of Haradis. “Show me which path the survivors are taking to reach Saggara.”
“What about the galla?” The other man choked on the name.
“Such demons are drawn to blood and magic. Where the Kai travel, the galla will follow unless distracted by a greater food source or trapped by water.”
The messenger paled. “Then they’re bringing them here.”
Brishen stared at him before speaking, that cold numbness inside him spreading throughout his body. “Possibly. We must figure out how to contain them before such a thing happens.” He didn’t point out the fact that containing galla was the least of their challenges, the most difficult, how to send them back to the chaos from whence they came.
The hall filled with more people as Ildiko ushered in the various village and clan leaders. Anhuset, Mertok and a company of other officers and scouts swelled the gathering until a sizeable group congregated around Brishen. They were no longer revelers enjoying a night of celebration but a somber troop faced with a possible catastrophe unlike any witnessed by Kai generations much earlier than theirs.
Ildiko and Mesumenes traveled back and forth between the hall and the kitchens and the hall and the loggia, directing the small army of servants to serve food and drink. The servants whispered among themselves, wide-eyed and frightened as they watched and listened to the arguments rising and falling around the two maps.
The exhausted messenger took the brunt of it, peppered with multiple questions, exclamations of disbelief and even an accusation of falsehood by one clan chief. That had almost erupted into a brawl. Brishen threatened to imprison the chieftain and tie the messenger to his chair if they didn’t calm themselves.
No one spoke when the man described what he witnessed at the river, his voice broken. “We saw...we saw a line of elders, led by the old general Hasarath, make of themselves a wall near the riverbank so that others might reach the water in time. Their sacrifice saved hundreds, maybe more.” His breath hitched, and he bowed his head. “No one should die like that.”
Brishen knew the image conjured by those words would remain emblazoned on his mind’s eyes until he died. He spent the next several hours planning and strategizing with his most trusted ministers and his garrison officers. Fear and the black of edge of panic saturated the air, heavy enough he could taste its bitterness on his tongue. When the meeting finally ended and the group disbanded to race to their respective homes or scout the territories Brishen had marked for reconnoitering, the sun was high in the sky and the exhausted Haradis messenger slumped over the table, asleep.
Brishen scraped a hand over his face and blinked a dry, itchy eye. Even the memory of his left eye itched. He swallowed, wondering when his tongue had grown a wool blanket, and gratefully accepted a cup of cold water from his heavy-eyed steward. Except for Mesumenes and the slumbering messenger, he was alone in the hall. “Did the hercegesé find her bed?” Ildiko had long since disappeared from the hall, and Brishen was desperate to hold her, find some steady point to grasp in a world suddenly spinning out of his control.
The steward nodded toward the hall’s doors, now closed to the brutal daylight. “She’s outside, my liege, seeing off the last of the ministers. As you know, she can withstand the light better than we can.”
Brishen was tempted to follow her, but the events of the past few hours had drained him, the enormity of their circumstances threatening to overwhelm him. “When she returns, tell her to come to me.”
He left the hall for the sanctuary of his chamber. A low fire danced merrily in the hearth, the windows shuttered closed tight against the daylight. Brishen dropped into the nearest chair and closed his eye.
A more cold-blooded side of his character reasoned it was probably fortunate that he wasn’t close to any member of his family except Anhuset, and she was here at Saggara with him, thank the gods. Otherwise, the shock and grief over their deaths would cripple him.
Still, he sorrowed for his brother’s children, for their mother, the quiet, biddable Tiye and for every Kai in the palace and in all of Haradis who never imagined the horror their own queen would visit upon them.
He’d grown up with stories of the galla. Even humans knew of them and called them by the same name. Savage, ravenous, they thirsted for blood and fed on magic. Some held they were created by the gods at the same time as the elder races. Most, however, believed them born of the Gullperi who sought to somehow purify themselves and transcend their worldly limitations by wrenching out the darkness in their own souls.
That ancient schism had wrought the galla, entities of such brutality and voracious appetite that the most powerful leaders of the elder races united and cast them out of the world. Unable to destroy them, they had sealed the galla in a realm outside of time and place, a prison without lock or key. The elders’ punishment of those who had brought the galla into the world had been swift and merciless: a lesson to all that such an act repeated would be dealt with in the harshest way.
History, however, was long and memories short. Whatever lesson those long-ago elders tried to teach was either forgotten over time or disregarded. Centuries of record and mortem light memory told of instances where one or two of the galla had broken free of the prison realm, usually because of a sorcerer with more power and ambition than sense. Brishen firmly believed Secmis was the culprit mage in this instance.
He growled. Leave it to his murderous bitch of a mother to miscalculate the galla’s savagery and bring down an apocalypse on an entire kingdom. Maybe even a world if the horde wasn’t stopped in time.
Brishen covered his face with a trembling hand. In a way, he understood the motivations of those misguided ancients who sought to cleanse themselves of their own malevolence. He was the child of a woman who had stained the world with her presence. Her blood ran in his veins. If he could somehow physically rip his maternal legacy out of himself, he wouldn’t hesitate. His skin crawled with self-loathing.
The door connecting his bedchamber to Ildiko’s opened on a faint creak before closing. He didn’t look up. He recognized the scent of flowers and the light footfalls that drew near.
Ildiko remained silent except for the rustle of her skirts. Brishen dropped his hand from his face at the feel of her head pressed to his knee. She sat at his feet, her cheek against his leg as she stared into the fire. She hugged his calf to her breasts while her hands stroked and massaged him through his boot.
Brishen combed his fingers gently through her hair, his claws sliding easily through the silky locks. The giant knot inside his chest didn’t unravel, but it did loosen. Her presence soothed him.
“Your ministers and chieftains have left Saggara for home as have many of our visitors from the nearby villages. Word of the galla horde is spreading like brush fires already.”
He managed a small smile, admiring the way the firelight shimmered in her red hair. Ildiko would give him all the succor he wanted, but she was a practical sort and didn’t shy away from the harsh reality of a bad situation. This one was dreadful.
“And unsubstantiated rumor fanning the flames,” he replied. “Expect a wave of fearful visitors returning to Saggara with many questions over the next few days, wife.”
“What will you tell them?” She hugged his leg
even harder to her.
Brishen shrugged. “Very little. At least until the scouts I sent out report back with more news. I’ve instructed the holt and village leaders to set their own watches and coordinate a system of signal fires to warn each other in case any spot galla breaching their borders. Except for a single messenger’s account, we know nothing at the moment.” He spiraled a curl of her hair around one claw. “In all honesty, I hope he’s delusional and spewing a nonsensical tale. I’d rather be made a fool than made a…” he stopped. King. He hid a flinch. Gods.
Ildiko stared up at him. Fatigue pinched and paled her face. “And if he’s of sound mind?”
He bent, lifting her from the cold floor to settle in his lap. She looped her arms around his neck, fingers sliding under his hair to stroke his nape. He kissed her once, twice, before speaking. “He is. My gut tells me he is. Whatever news the scouts bring back to us, I’m afraid it won’t contradict what he’s told us.”
Her eyes glossed over once more with tears. “Your family...surely someone survived.”
The numbness wormed its way deeper into him, seeping into his soul. “You heard what he said, Ildiko. The galla spread from the palace first. No one survived such an attack.”
“I’m sorry, Brishen. So very sorry.” She kissed his face, soft pecks on his forehead and eyelid, his eyepatch and nose, cheeks and lips.
He caressed her hip. “There was no love lost between us, but I wouldn’t wish a death like that—cruel and unclean—on anyone.” Except his mother, and even death by galla attack was too merciful for such a viper. Rage cast ripples across the still surface of the numb pool inside him. He almost wished he’d been there to witness her demise. It might have been worth suffering the same fate just to watch her die. “I may be all that remains of the House Khaskem.”
A vertical line stitched the space between Ildiko’s eyebrows. “There is Anhuset.”