A Sea of Singing Fire

When the sun set, he grew stronger, and when the moon was high, Utuzan rose from his bed where a queen lay slumbering, and he wrapped himself in his dark robes. He bore no sword and no armor shielded his pale skin. On his arms and down his back were ancient inscriptions that would turn aside the stroke of bronze or iron, and they were the only protection he required. In his left hand he took up the glowing red jewel that was the beating heart of his goddess, and he went out into the dark.

Shedjia awaited him there as he had commanded, and she sat astride a dark horse, and she held the reins of a second in her hands. The beasts shied from his presence, but he spoke a single word and they stilled as he mounted to the saddle. The heat of the day had fled, and the breath of the animals blew forth as smoke.

He looked out over the hidden canyon where the tribesmen were encamped, the stone walls illuminated by a thousand campfires. The Emru were here, as well as the remains of the defeated Muzur and a dozen lesser clans of the desert places. He had gathered them here to be the fist of his power, his hand of iron and bronze and blood. Here slumbered his army, and close to hand was the queen he would restore to her throne. It was not his earthly power he sought tonight – it was that within his own ancient hands.

He looked at Shedjia, grown so much fiercer than she had been when he found her, when she saved him from living death. “It is not necessary that you accompany me,” he said. “It will be a dangerous path.”

“I will ride with you,” she said simply, and he did not press her. Of such loyalty were empires forged. In times past he had wielded armies of such faithful; now he would rebuild that strength, yet she had been the first to bind herself to him when he had not the power to compel her. He would remember that.

“Then come, stay close beside me, and do not stray.” He turned and rode out of the deeps of the canyon and up into the night. Stars blazed in the arch of the heavens, but tonight there was no moon. No gods of light would look down upon him now.

They rode out into the sands of the desert, and he saw it all laid stark and silvered under the night sky. It still smote him like a blow to look on it. Only he remembered that this had once been green and fertile land, thick with trees and watered by the many streams that flowed from the hills down into the waters of the Sea of Xis.

Now the sea was gone, not even a memory to those who still lived in this desolate place, and he felt all the ages that had passed like a weight that pressed upon him. Here and there they passed some half-buried remnant of a ruin, the stone scored by wind and sand so the marks of human hands were only barely visible. Even what he could perceive looked crude to him, as if they were things made in some long decline from the ages of the greatness of his home.

He lifted the heart and the jewel blazed with red light. A wind sprang up, bringing sands and dust billowing around them, and he set heels to his horse and the two of them sped into the dark, the night growing darker and more forbidding around them, sands whirling and coiling ahead of them, closing in behind, so that it seemed they rode through a world without sky or horizon.

They rode through darkness and shadow, and then they emerged into the light of the star-fraught firmament, and they drew rein upon the stony bluffs that looked down upon the place where a sea once dwelled, now nothing but rolling dunes of sand. Utuzan looked southward to the mountains and he knew he looked upon the grave of Akang, the city at the heart of a vanished empire. Here, beneath an age of sand and stone, lay buried his past.

“What do we seek?” Shedjia said, her voice low and subdued. He did not take her questioning amiss, for he knew she was worth more to him as a hawk than a caged nightingale.

“I have come through time,” he said. “I was buried for an age of the earth, and now I come awake once more and I am a shadow of myself. I know you may believe me a great power, and that I can command magics that you cannot comprehend, but I can feel how thin my power has become. I am all but worn away, and I seek renewal.”

“Can you not take strength from blood, as I have seen?” she said. “That was how my blood awakened you.”

“I can,” he said. “And I did so because I had little choice after so long. Yet you must understand that to feed on blood, is to take a path that leads to horror. At first the taste of life is filled with vigor, but then you must have more, and more. At last you will become as a demon, leading a shadowed life and feeding upon hundreds simply to sustain it. It is a way for quick and easy power, but it becomes a trap. Those who live such lives in the end will devour themselves and become spectres with no more strength than a memory. That shall not be my fate.”

They rode down the sloping sands and into shadow, and Utuzan looked up at the great dune rising before him. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see the towers and the plazas of Akang, the domes that had gleamed in the light from the sea. He heard the music and the voices of the multitudes who dwelled in the city for so many ages. Now they were gone, and the only music was the sound of wind in the dark.

o0o

“Here stood the greatest city in the world,” he said softly. “Here was Akang, the city of a thousand fires and a thousand shadows. Here generations lived out their lives and knew no other, and now I look upon a blank place where once there was grandeur. Now I see I did not love it enough whilst it stood, and now I have only a memory.” He turned and glanced at Shedjia. He held up one hand and flame flickered there. “Behold.”

Utuzan called on the names of spirits and forgotten gods, and he spoke words no other woman or man would understand. He felt the power gather there in him, and then he held up the red jewel and it flared like a fallen star. A wind rose, and then he cast it ahead of him, and the sands parted.

There was a great rushing and hissing sound, as a cascade of serpents, and then the sands before him rushed away, seething back to either side and rising up in great walls of shadow. They washed away like waters drawn by a wave, and then the ruins of Akang began to emerge from their buried ages. The sands parted and revealed a great avenue of dark stone. Pillars rose from the wasteland, row upon row of them, and then a way opened into the forgotten city.

He saw Shedjia stare, her eyes wide and more than a little afraid, and he smiled. “Do not fear. Walk with me, we will seek the counsel of those long dead, and the wisdom of the lost. Come.” He beckoned, and then he walked into the shadows of his remembered home. The stone beneath his feet was scoured by centuries of sand, and yet it seemed also as smooth and sharp as the day it was hewn. The pillars were long broken down, but from the corners of his eye he saw them as they had been, towering and polished, surmounted by the images of the line of the kings going back to the age of the giants. He saw an image of the glory of the city undimmed by time.

They walked along the path, the city revealed around them, both the remnants of the ruin as well as the flickering of a time long past. The walls of sand towered beyond, held back by his will, held back by ancient invocation and the pacts of dead gods. He trod the ways of the dead city beneath the silver stars, and his companion followed wondering beside him.

He saw flickers of luminescence and motion in the shadows, and then he saw the images of people that moved and spoke and laughed. Phantoms walked here, conjured forth by his magic. He saw men and women who wore the robes and headdresses of his own age, and he saw those who wore simpler garments of earlier days. As well, he saw shapes tattooed and wrapped in dark raiment, and he knew they must have come in the days after his own. He did not know the tale of the decline of his people, and that pained him.

“What do they say, of the days of Kithara’s fall?” he said. “What happened to my race, that they faded away so completely?”

Shedjia walked close to him, watching the shadowy ghosts of another age walk on vanished streets. “They say the gods cursed the kings of this place,” she said. “I have heard little of it, but they say the last king of the city was a demon, and that he worked some great magic to make himself immortal. The gods turned their faces from the city, and the sea was burned away and the rivers ran dry.” She shook her head. “There are few tales that speak of it. It was so very long ago.”

“And yet it is near to me,” Utuzan said. “I remember as though I simply slept for a long night. Yet now I awake, and the world is transformed. Ages have flown in what seems like hours. My power is a power of a lost world. I must gather my strength and build it anew, a power for a new age.”

They walked the dust of ages until a great palace rose before them, fallen towers and faded reliefs all girdled round a dome that was cracked and gleamed from the remains of its azure-gilded roof. Utuzan walked up the great sweeping stair and into the halls of the palace where he had been a prince and would have been an emperor. There were many ghosts in this place, and some of them even seemed to look at him and know his face. He knew no fear of them, for they could do no harm – they were echoes of the dead.

They came at last into the great throne hall, and Utuzan stood in the vast, dark place and closed his eyes, remembering how it had once been. The throne had been tall and set with jewels, casting back light that fell from above and seemed to suffuse the one upon it with the fire of the heavens. The floor now was cracked and the ancient tiled patterns covered over with soot and soil. Bones lay scattered on the floor, and there was the glint of corroded bronze and golden gilt. He saw in those few remnants that the last day of this throne hall had been a violent one, and blood had stained the hall of the emperors.

He went and stood at the foot of the throne, where the first of seven steps rose from the floor to ascend to the high seat. He looked up to the cracked and blackened throne, and he remembered a day when he had been dragged in fetters to this place, and he had been judged.

“Rise,” he spoke into the silence, and the ephemeral ghosts of vanished ages drew away from him. The heart glowed in his hand, and the light suffused him. “Rise and come forth. I demand it, and you will not deny me now. Brother, betrayer, emperor. Eshuh, my kindred, I bind you to rise.”

He stretched forth his open hand and gestured and a glow engulfed the ancient throne. Wisps of light like smoke seeped from cracks and fissures in the stone and flowed upward. The dust and sands shifted with a hissing sound, and a shape was born there. A light seemed to fall from above as in old times, and there was a form upon the throne, seated where it had ruled, bent in thought or grief, resting the crowned head upon its hand. Utuzan looked upon his half-brother and felt his presence there in the ancient chamber.

“Unwillingly have I come,” Eshuh said. “Yet my spirit is bound to this place with bonds that time has not undone. I never thought to hear your voice again, nor feel your accursed power. Evil is the hour that has set you free once again.”

“No more than the hour in which you judged me a murderer and decided my fate. You sat not in wisdom that day, but in vengeance.” Utuzan felt the old angers in him, like fresh blood in old veins. “It was justice I sought, and then you came against me in war, and I had no choice left before me.”

“No choice but to sunder the empire with rebellion and bloodshed?” Eshuh’s phantom shook his head. Looking on him, Utuzan saw more years than he remembered. An age and grace and wisdom upon his half-brother that had not been there in those long-ago days. “You sought your own greatness, none other’s. You slew our father, and then our brother when he would have put that aside and named you family. You were never more than a serpent waiting to strike.”

“And was my mother not condemned for sorcery by your idiot priests?” Utuzan said, his anger rising. “I struck in her name, as any who revere Anatu must revere their mother. It was you who could not accept blame for what you did, and what was done in your name. Instead you would have killed me for all your guilt, as though I were a sacred victim made to suffer. No, no I would not die for you.”

“You set a plague upon the city,” Eshuh said. “You slew thousands who had never harmed you. You cut down my men with foul sorceries.” His ancient eyes were accusing. “I know what you are, my brother.” He spoke the word with venom.

“Enough,” Utuzan said, holding high the jewel so the red light fell on the shade and Eshuh shied away from it. “Enough of this. You are dead and gone, and yet I have risen again. The empire has fallen and I will make it anew, so speak. You took my sword from me. Tell me where it lies.”

“You cannot compel me,” Eshuh said, though he still averted his eyes from the red light of Anatu’s heart. “I will say no more. Release me.”

“My brother, I never bore you ill, not even when I sought your death, and had I prevailed you might well have walked free,” Utuzan said. He moved closer, and the red light fell hard upon the spirit, and it trembled beneath the power of it. “Yet even now I will scourge your phantom until you scream for oblivion unless you tell me what I seek to know.”

The ghost of Eshuh laughed then. “I will not utter a word, and yet you shall find what it is you seek regardless. I sired no sons, and after my death the empire fell to lesser houses. The days of the Murutai were ended, and those that grasped for power sought ever more for a stain of the ancient blood to weld onto their own. They bred themselves to the edge of oblivion, using forbidden magics, degenerating more and more, until even you would curse the sight of them.” The shade gestured. “The last of that line slumbers here even now. And you have wakened him. Now one of you shall destroy the other, and whatever occurs, I shall be well pleased.” He smiled. “Farewell, brother. I curse the day you were born.”

Part of the floor of the throne chamber erupted from below, scattering shards of stone and a column of dust into the air, and Utuzan cursed and released his brother’s remnant to go back from whence it had come. He turned as something began to drag itself up from beneath, claws scoring the stone like bronze spearpoints. Shedjia fell back with an oath, drawing her sword as the last emperor of Kithara emerged from the darkness.

It was much bigger than a man, and Utuzan saw scaled skin and eyes like lanterns. It had the upper body of a man, and two heavy arms decked with arm-rings and chains heavy with jewels. Below it had the long, coiling body of a serpent, and the scales gouged the stone as it emerged into the light, more and more of it. The head that reared into sight was an awful amalgam of human and reptilian, with an elongated face and long teeth flashing in the dimness. It wore a breastplate of hammered bronze, and upon its inhuman head was a crown set with black jewels.

“I believed I had slain you all, you who walk on two legs,” it said in a decadent, decayed version of the old speech. “You believed you had imprisoned me forever beneath the stone. But I arise again, and there shall be more of you to feed my blade.” It drew a sword that was like a tongue of black fire, the edges limned with a jagged aura of deep violet, and Utuzan felt an unease coil inside him, for here was his blade of old.

o0o

It came for him with lashing tail and the black sword striking fast for his heart. Utuzan raised his hand and spoke an ancient word and the blow smote upon the thin air, the unseen barrier he had raised fracturing into being. The serpent-thing hissed and reared back, clenched its fist and gave voice to a spell of unbinding that shattered the ward and sent fire crawling across the walls of the throne hall.

Utuzan recognized the words of the spell, and he knew this creature had been trained in the same arcane mysteries he himself had studied as a youth: the ancient powers of the race of the Usun, the secret hoarders of occult wisdom derived from the vanished civilizations of the Dazan and the Membe. This thing had learned the secrets of the necromancers and the powers of the star-followers in their hidden towers in the far southern jungles.

He held up the heart of Anatu, and the red light that blazed from it flared forth and struck the thing like a bolt, searing the reptilian flesh. It snarled and flung up a barrier of its own, and a fog poured down from the frozen wall of power and flowed across the floor.

In the corner of his eye, Utuzan saw Shedjia spring forward with her sword held ready, and she hewed at the scaled body of the creature where it lay in coils around the broken pillars. Sparks flared where she struck, and her sword snapped into pieces.

The serpent king reared like an angry cobra and struck at her with the black sword, but she was swift enough to leap away. The violet edge sheared through a stone pillar and the floor shuddered as it crashed down in pieces.

Utuzan took advantage of the thing’s moment of distraction and he uttered another spell out of primordial ages. Tendrils of dust rose from the floor, solidifying into lashes of darkness that coiled around the creature and dragged it down. It hissed in fury and cut through them with the sword, but more rose in their place. It bellowed and spoke a word of power that scattered the spell, but it also dissolved the barrier it had raised, and mist cascaded down like a waterfall.

He had been prepared for it, and so Utuzan was ready in that moment to spring forward. Before the serpent king could recover, he caught hold of the scaled sword arm, and then they were contending together, strength against strength. The creature was massive, and the coils of his body gave him great leverage, but Utuzan was the son of giants, and his own strength was not to be discounted. He saw the surprise in the eyes of his enemy as they strove against each other.

“You cannot overcome me! I am the war-king of Kithara! I am the king of fire and venom!” The thing yawned jaws filled with dagger teeth and snapped at his face, and Utuzan flinched back out of reach, but he did not relinquish his grasp on the iron-muscled arm. Instead he thrust the red jewel up into the creature’s face, and crimson light flamed into its eyes.

It screamed and tore itself away from him, and in the moment of its distraction he gripped the sword arm and twisted it until the bones snapped. The creature howled and tried to wrench free, but Utuzan set his teeth and ripped the arm free in a spray of dark blood that splattered the walls and the crumbling floor.

The serpent king reared back, clutching the gushing stump, and Utuzan took the black sword from the twitching grip of the dead hand. He felt again the power that had flowed through him in the elder days, the strength the sword fed to whoever wielded it, and he stepped in and ran the leaf-shaped blade through the scaled body, the enchanted edge piercing breastplate and flesh and bone. He leaped on top of the flailing thing, pinning it down, and then he cut once more and severed the inhuman head.

He left it there, the headless corpse twisting and coiling, slowly gushing out its life, and he cut the sheath from its side and put away the sword, and then he turned his back on the ruin of the last king of Kithara. He went to Shedjia and lifted her from the floor, glad to see her unharmed. “Come, let us be done with this place. I shall give you another, better sword than the one you have lost.” Together they left the ancient throne hall, and the smell of dust and bone and blood followed them forth and into the breaking night.

o0o

They went forth into the dead city, and the sky was turning silver as the sun began to cut the far horizon. The phantoms were gone, and the walls of sand hung suspended, awaiting only the command to fall once again and bury the city from the sight of man. Utuzan walked silently, lost in his memories and musings. Once they had left the ruins behind, he spoke a last word, and the sands of the desert rushed in and Akang was covered over in moments, consumed by a rushing, hissing torrent that wiped everything away and left them both standing in the rising light of the day.

Utuzan called for their horses, and he watched them answer, leaving trails across the dunes as they walked, and he looked out over what had once been the sea of Xis. He remembered ships upon the quays, lightning over roiling deeps when the summer storms swept in from the north. He remembered the smells of salt on the cool winds at night. Now there was only sand as far as his gaze could reach, no sign left of what had been, and he resolved to think on it no more. He mounted his horse beside Shedjia, and they rode away as the sun lanced across the clouds and turned the sky into a sea of flame.