Flame in the Dark

The city of Shendim blazed crimson in the sunset, the night coming down from the high places of the desert to coil abut the white walls and alabaster towers. Watchfires were lit along the battlements, casting forth their handfuls of sparks, illuminating the troubled faces of the guards who watched the dark for the oncoming terror they all lived in dread of – the army they knew was coming against them, though they could not see it.

The people, as yet, walked untroubled through their streets and gardens, for Zaban, on his return to the walls of his stolen city, had told them nothing of the terrible defeat he had suffered in the desert. He had shut himself within the high walls of the palace and spoke to no one of where his army had gone. All he had done was give orders that the walls be watched and the gates shut. He offered gold in plenty to any mercenary or sellsword who walked within his reach, and so all the men in arms within the walls knew what was coming, even if they did not know all.

Shedjia stood wrapped in darkness upon the top of one white tower, looking down at the city spread beneath her. She saw the pinpoints of lanterns and candles, saw the shapes of people as they moved through the city, from night markets and temple rites, from secret meetings and amorous assignations. They went through their lives, all unknowing that a power from out of the lost ages of the past was coming to usurp their world.

The darkness that enshrouded her was a more than ordinary shadow, a cloak of unseen night that guarded her from those who would see her, and so she could move through them, unknown, so long as she exercised a modicum of caution. Shedjia had been a thief long before she had become familiar to a sorcerer, so she knew well enough how to pass without being seen.

She passed the guard posts, noting how the men huddled close to their fires in the chill desert night. She heard their mutterings and doubts, and she knew what they feared. They would not stand hard in the service of Zaban, for they did not fear him, nor honor him. Their iron was bought with silver, and so it would not hold.

The streets were alive with scents and smoke and voices, and it pleased her to walk among them. They might see her as a passing knot of shadow, as an outline without feature, soon forgotten. The cloak masked her from minds as well as eyes, and she walked among the living as though she were only a shadow herself, insubstantial and faceless.

The palace, even as night fell, was lit from within by fire and lamps, the walls and halls paced by well-armed men with hard arms and sharp swords. These were Zaban’s most trusted men who remained to him. His household guard brought up from his best soldiers and made his bodyguard. Some of them knew what had happened to the rest of their number, and the rest of them wondered. All of them could see their master was afraid, for even Shedjia could see that, even without looking on his face.

She climbed the wall like a spider, no one seeing her, and she slipped between the patrols and down into the gardens where she had once met a queen. The night smells were heady, the flowers bright and seething with their arcane scents. Shedjia walked down the long, winding path and then climbed the steps up to the balcony that had once been Malika’s and was now where her usurper spent his nights. She saw him pacing there in the lamplight, hands knotted behind him.

o0o

Zaban looked down at the stack of reports on his table. They did not tell a pleasing tale. They were lists of the money in his treasury, and how many mercenaries had been found to employ in the defense of the city. All told, he was only going to be able to muster a few thousand men. He had to hope that could be enough. The desert riders had no experience assaulting walled fortifications, they could not hurl the power of their charge against his gates, could not ambush a city.

And yet he remembered the way his chariots had been scattered in fire, how the storm had hidden the enemy until they were close. He had heard the whispering of some desert charlatan who had united the warring tribes, but he had discounted them as of no consequence. It was Malika he had to capture or kill. Once she was in his hands or dead on the field, then there would be no one to gather support against him. Troops could be replaced – he only needed time.

A night breeze stirred his curtains, and he shrugged his robe closer about him. The air was chilled tonight, and it made him uneasy. It was not often this cold so close to the river, not this time of year. This was the season of dust storms and blazing hot afternoons, when the river shrank and the heat baked from the palace stones long after sunset. The cold made him feel nervous, as though something fell walked close to him, waiting.

He heard a sound on the balcony, and he closed his hand on his dagger hilt. He almost raised his voice to call for guards, but then he felt foolish. A bird had landed outside, or something else ordinary had made a sound. He knew he was too anxious, and he licked his lips and set his teeth. He would not become like an old man, jumping at shadows and thinking every shadow hid assassins.

Annoyed with himself, he went to the balcony and flung back the silk hangings, looked down on the dark gardens and saw nothing, only the glimmer of the lamps in the dark, flames flicking in the gentle wind. He snorted and let the hanging fall closed again. A battle was coming and he had to be hard as iron, ready to fight and kill. He would let the city burn before he gave it up.

He turned to go back to his table, and there, atop the pile of papyrus documents, he saw a skull. It was not well-cleaned, and scraps of flesh still clung to it. It seemed to stare at him with its empty eyes, and as he watched a small, black snake flowed out of the mouth and slithered across the table to vanish behind a bowl, and then Zaban, the Usurper of Meru, screamed for his guards in a voice that cracked with terror.

o0o

The riders came out of the dark, kindling one torch, and then another, and another, until it seemed that a plague of embers crawled across the earth. Men on the walls watched as eyes of flame came down from the hills toward the city, and then they heard the drumming of thousands of hooves, the chanting of ancient war cries, and the pounding of battle drums.

Signal fires were lit, alarms were sounded, and the people of Shendim, like sleepers awakening to a sudden storm, realized they were at the center of a war. Soldiers rushed through the streets to take their places on the walls, to man the war engines and to gather ready with spear and sword and arrow. The sky above was fraught with dark clouds, and through rents in them the blue night shone gleaming with jewels. The moon had already set and was nothing more than a pale glow on the far horizon, like a warning light.

A horde of riders swarmed through the dark, shouting and brandishing their torches. They rode in scattered formations, loosing arrows at the men on the walls, though few of them found a mark. The men on the walls shot back, but the dark-robed men on their quick steeds made difficult targets. The commanders quickly stopped the wild arrows, and held their men ready for the attack they knew must come.

A great many soldiers were gathered behind the main gate, for there they knew the greatest danger lay. Horsemen could not attack high walls, but if the gate failed, there would be no stopping the wave of riders sweeping through the streets. The great gate was braced with a barricade and heavy beams of wood, while archers were thick on the wall above it, ready to send death raining down upon the enemy when they attacked.

If they broke the gate, then here would be the great battle for the city. Here men in armor and lowered helms would fight and die to keep the invader from the streets. If they looked down the hill toward the river, they saw the many boats leaving the quays, pushing out into the muddy channel as merchants and rich men fled before the assault. The wind from the west was deep and cold, biting with a hungry chill, and hardened men of battle gathered themselves against the poison of fear.

o0o

Utuzan sat astride his own dark steed and looked down from the hilltop to where the city lay glittering beside the slow current of the river. He had expected it to be larger, had imagined it would be like the grand city of Akang where he had been born. Instead he found it small and lacking in majesty. He knew he had been foolish to expect this place, so far from any great center of civilization and clearly long in decline, to match his memories of his lost empire, yet he had. He wondered if there was a single place left in the world that would seem to equal the city of his memories.

No matter. He could rebuild the world into grandeur once it was his to command, and he would not leave it meaner than he found it. From here, his eyes could see the shape of the high walls and the gate. Crude, by his own standards, and yet they were stout enough that to cast them down with mortal strength would be a challenge to any army.

It was not mortal strength he contemplated now. He had defeated Zaban’s army and allowed him to escape so that this final defeat might be seen by as many eyes as possible. He wished to make a clear show of power so that the tale would spread before him and weaken his foes before he faced them. He would strike his enemies yet unseen with a blow that would wound more than flesh. He would wound them in their hearts.

He turned to Izil who waited beside him. “Go and take command of your men,” he bade him. “Pull them away from the gate and tell them to be ready. I would not see them broken underfoot. Go.”

Izil bowed his head, then donned his bronze helm and rode away into the dark. Utuzan saw Shedjia there in the shadows, close at hand, and Malika awaiting him, ghostly in her white robe. “Shedjia, you taught Zaban fear tonight.”

“I did,” she said. “As you commanded.”

“And now, I shall sharpen the lesson, and share it with all who await us inside the walls.” He swung down from his horse and let his attendants lead it away. He stepped forward until he stood at the edge of the rocky promontory, feeling the good stone beneath his feet. “Remain close to me,” he said. “You will be afraid, but do not cry out, whatever you do. Keep your silence, if you would escape this night.” He lifted his hand where the Heart of Anatu blazed and throbbed like a ruby heart, and he cast his mind outward into the dark, seeking through the ages he had lived to whisper in the ear of one who had served him, long ago. He spoke three words that no living man would have understood, and then he felt something shift in the outer darkness between the stars. He felt something long-slumbering bestir, and rise.

Out in the dark, the clouds seemed to shift and gather, and something heavy and formless descended to earth. Men and horses felt the ground beneath them shudder, and out on the battle plain, a passageway opened as the army drew away, leaving a wide path leading from the unassailable gate out into the wilderness. Utuzan smiled a cold smile, and then he called forth a name that twisted and smote upon the air like a poisoned blade, and he saw both Shedjia and Malika shrink back from the sound.

Something howled in answer, an echoing cry that cracked against the stars and made living flesh creep and shiver on the bone. Something moved in the night, and all men cast fearful glances into the darkness as heavy footfalls began to draw closer.

The howl came again, yet closer, and now there was a shape against the tattered clouds of the night sky. Something towered high over them all, taller than a tower, taller than a storm. Eyes blazed down from on high, and men shrank back from a bitter, perfumed scent. It was sweet and strong and yet men cringed from it, for there was something charnel hidden beneath.

Now it came into the light of a thousand torches, and men cried out in terror and hid their faces from what they saw. A giant loomed over them, flesh shrunken and dried to black glass, wrapped in funeral cerements. It had the head of a jackal and the eyes glowed green, even as it yawned wide a mouth of teeth like swords. Its shadow blotted out the sky and flowed over the ground like a curse. All hid their faces from it, and did not dare to look as it walked forth from black legends.

Ancient even in Utuzan’s time were the tales of the unliving giant, the great sorcerer of the race of the Omira who had been the first to have himself embalmed, first to bury himself in sand and salt, the first to preserve his flesh against time and decay so that he might live forever. The ancient rituals had bound his spirit to his body, and now they still gave him a semblance of unending life. He was Utuzan’s kindred, his ancestor, the keeper of dark secrets, and the devourer of souls.

Loosed from the shadow realm where he awaited, he went to the gate with mighty strides, walls themselves trembling at his footfalls, and then he reached down with one desiccated hand and crushed the gates of the city like dry clay in his grasp. He tore the towers and walls up by their roots, and he carried into the sky a fistful of stone and wood and screaming men. The defenders stared in horror as the apparition lifted that hand high and then let a cascade of doomed soldiers fall into his yawning maw.

Brave men shrieked and fled, mad with the terror of what they saw, and the giant spread his arms wide and howled a final time, the sound shattering glass in the city and casting men to the earth, dead from fear. Then the titan seemed to fade before their eyes, growing larger and more diffuse like smoke billowing up into the night, leaving only the shape of his nightmare head to slowly tatter away into the clouds.

“Now strike,” Utuzan said softly, and yet the wind carried his words to all those who followed him. As one they shook off their terror and set their heels into their steeds, and a wave of horsemen rushed forward and crashed through the rubble where the gate had been. Those few soldiers who stood to fight were savagely cut down, and then the nomads spread through the city, galloping in blood-mad hordes through the wide streets, killing anyone who tried to stand before them.

Utuzan laughed to see it, watching as fire flowed into the city like blood from a wound. Now was the hour when he would place this first city under his dominion and begin to take what had once been his birthright – and would be again. “Come,” he said to Shedjia and Malika. “Come, we shall greet Zaban in his stolen throne hall, and we shall show him the error of his judgment.” The shadows gathered around them and bore them away on darkness like wings.

o0o

From the high tower Zaban had watched the battle begin, and from on high he had looked down on the gate and seen the unholy apparition towering over the walls of the city, had heard the hideous rending sound as the gates were destroyed, and then he had at last believed, and known it was not simply some illusion conjured to frighten. He knew the enemy was loose in the city streets, and that the battle was lost before it had begun.

He hurried to his throne hall, and there he gathered his most loyal bodyguard – a full fifty men in heavy scaled armor with iron swords and shields. The rest of the palace guard were on the walls of the inner palace itself. He knew the defenses would not stay a determined attack, and they would never stand against some kind of otherworldly power. In his mind, again and again, he saw the blazing eyes and immense jaws of the thing that had destroyed the gates of the city. What kind of power could call forth something like that? What had he chosen for an enemy?

He paced before the throne, hand gripping the hilt of his sheathed sword. He looked upon the ivory-plated seat he had given up so much to obtain. He had planned and plotted and bribed and killed for it, here beneath the arch of those mighty tusks, and now all his labor came to nothing. The taste of it was bitter. He saw the men looking at him, saw the uncertainty there, waiting for him to give the right command, and yet when he sought for the words, there were none.

As one the lanterns in the hall went out, and men suddenly cried out in shock. Zaban reeled back against the throne, feeling it cold and unyielding beneath him. He drew his sword, and then there was a great darkness in the hall, and he heard his men screaming as they were consumed by it. He shied away, closing his eyes, and when at last there was silence, still he did not look. He did not want to see.

“Zaban,” a voice spoke, and he had never heard his name uttered in such a way – as though he were an animal, or something contemptible. Slowly, he opened his eyes and turned to face the hall again, and he found it transformed. The chamber was lit by a low, crimson light that seemed to crawl upon every surface, along the walls and the pillars. It lit the guards where they stood, immobile. He saw the way the light reflected from them, and he realized they had all been turned to stone, contorted and twisted into shapes of agony as they were transformed.

At the center of the hall there was a towering figure, robed in blackness that seethed as though with an inner fire. His face was pale and his eyes were endless and dark. In his hand he held a fist-sized stone that pulsed like a living thing. “Zaban, that throne is not yours.”

Zaban felt terror go through him like a stain, and he sank down upon the floor, weeping. He felt, in that moment, nothing but the desire to plead for his own life, for his existence itself. He shuddered as he prostrated himself on his belly and sobbed against the polished marble.

“It is not I who you have wronged and betrayed,” the voice said. “Let you speak now to the one you have done evil against, and see if she will forgive.”

Zaban felt new fear inside, and then he dared to look up from the floor and he saw Malika step from the shadows, white and lovely as a phantom, white silks billowing around her slim arms as she came to stand over him, and he could not look her in the eyes.

o0o

Utuzan watched as Malika bent low over the shivering form of her usurper. “I would hear you beg my forgiveness, Zaban,” she said. “Plead with me and I may be merciful.”

“I do beg,” he whispered. “I beg you to spare me whatever unnatural punishment your devil has ready for my fate. Give me a clean death. Take my sword and strike and let me die while still a man.” He pressed the hilt of his sword into her hands. “I ask this. I do not deserve your mercy, but I ask it all the same.”

Malika took the sword and she stood. She shook her head. “I will not slay you. No one shall slay you. You served this kingdom for many years, and you shall serve it yet.”

Utuzan met her gaze as she turned to face him. “Spare him, he has suffered enough for his transgression.”

“Has he?” Utuzan said, amused. “Has he suffered as much as the men he sacrificed needlessly in battle and then abandoned? As much as those in the city who even now die in his defense?” He stepped closer to her. “As much as you would have, had he made you his prisoner? No, I say he has not.”

“You said it was my choice to make,” she said. “Will you abide by it?”

He held up his hand, and he gestured. It was Shedjia who seemed to materialize from the darkness behind Zaban, and then it was her blade that struck off his head in a fountain of blood. It fell to the white stone as his body convulsed, and Utuzan watched the expressions pass over his face as he died. He saw the pain and shock, and then confusion, and at last an emptiness. He turned to Malika. “You chose poorly,” he said. “Learn wisdom.”

Malika drew back from the body and the spreading pool of blood, crying out in anger. She turned on him. “You are a devil, and I have fallen to become a devil’s mistress, but I will not be a slave!” Zaban’s sword was in her pale hand, and she struck at Utuzan with murderous intent, her eyes ablaze like fires.

The iron struck his neck and there was a flash of baleful red light, and Malika fell back as the blade shattered into smoking pieces. Slowly, he put his hand to his throat, where the blade had touched, and he looked on her with anger, and a growing sadness. “I preserved your life. I looked on you with favor, and yet you have turned on me.” He remembered other times, other faces. The sting of betrayal.

Shedjia stepped in, her blade raised high. “No,” he said. “No. I will not be so foolish as Zaban, I will not destroy a queen so wantonly.” He closed his hand in the air, and Malika was lifted off her feet, trembling in the grasp of an unseen power. “You will rule upon this throne. I said I shall make you a great queen, and I will. Even if I first must unmake you.” He bent his will upon her, and the Heart of Anatu blazed like a red star there in the darkened hall, and Malika screamed as her transformation began.