Chapter 7: The Blood of Kings

The scent of these fear-creatures always disturbed the great beast; dread cast itself over her like a blanket. A low guttural growl broke softly from her savage throat, but the huge cat decided it was best to hunt elsewhere. She had taken two slow steps backwards, and was just turning to slink off, when another sight and smell caught and held her attention. What were those?

They were small, white and defenceless. Never had the cat seen anything that was so obviously meant to be her food. Glancing back at the fear-creature near the crest of the hill, the cat slyly made her way through the undergrowth and, circling very warily, crept invisibly to the bottom of the hill. Not fifteen feet from her, up wind as she had planned, stood one of these intriguing creatures with its soft, inviting flesh. It was cropping mouths-full of grass and munching away, totally unaware of the stalking terror close at hand. Oh, yes, everything about this creature screamed food! The saliva dripped from her lips as she crouched and tensed like a drawn bow.

Without warning, she shot from her hiding place, but even as she left the ground her quarry randomly but suddenly lay down. The cat whirled acrobatically, reaching back with her clawed forefoot, as she sailed over the creature. Two claws caught on the small beast's back, rolling it over violently. It managed one bleat of alarm. A split-second later and the cat, having severely over-shot her target, and being off balance from twisting in the air, tumbled wildly across the grass. It didn't take her more than three blinks of an eye, however, to regain her footing and snarling she turned back to seize her helpless prey.

It was that slight mischance, stirred together with the bravery of the shepherd, which cost the great cat her meal and her life. Howling like the wind the fear-creature came running down the hill towards her. Some menace was whirling above its head. The cat looked quickly between her victim, the undergrowth and the fear-creature hurtling towards her. Savagely, with claws splayed and muscles taut, she pressed herself flat against the bottom of the hill, preparing to leap on fear itself. However, even as she tensed, a rock suddenly filled her whole vision and sank into the bone between her eyes, and she roared in pain and anger. She thrashed about blindly. Then a vicious blow smote her on the head, then another, and another, and the creature knew no more.

Jaomin collapsed on the ground shaking. What in the world had he just done? The adrenalin drained from his limbs, leaving him limp as a banner on a windless day. He flopped back on the ground and breathed a prayer of thanksgiving to the creator. "Creator-saviour," he exclaimed, "Creator-saviour, you have created this deliverance and you have rescued me from the claws of the great cat."

Beside him on the grass, completely motionless lay the lithe form of the now dead predator. Jaomin pulled himself together, and walked across to where the small sheep stood shaking and working its mouth in a soundless bleat. All the air had been frightened out of him, apparently. Jaomin knelt down beside him and carefully examined his back. The plump creature leaned against its shepherd shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"Okay, fella, only a scratch. Nothing a little talba-gum won't mend." Jaomin picked up the creature and sat with it cradled in his lap, then turning he whistled a shrill note. The sheep, which had scattered during the attack, came hesitantly back towards their shepherd, but gave a very wide berth to the dead beast at the base of the hill.

One thing was certain, thought Jaomin as he walked home that night, he wouldn't tell his father that he had risked his life for a silly sheep! He shook his head and wondered what had made him do it?

~ ~ ~

"Cherion?"

"Yes, child."

"What's it like being an angel?" Jenna was sitting in the highest fork of the tallest tree in the Singing Forest; she had her back pressed against one trunk and her strong young legs pushed stoutly up against another.

Cherion looked up at her from his perch five feet below her, where he was sitting easily balanced on a great limb.

"Being an angel can be likened only unto itself, little one," said the huge creature with a glint of amusement in his flaming eyes, "I do not think it can be described to you."

"Is it fun?"

"It is the best of joys."

Jenna clicked her tongue, and closed her eyes, "It is not; being a kid's the best." Then Jenna thought of Meda, "Or maybe bein' a knight is."

The angel laughed, "Every joy is its own, Jenna. And everything that is what it is meant to be is pure joy down to its core." Cherion had followed Jenna since she was first born. He remembered, though she did not, her life in the slums of that great and wicked city of Earth, called New York. He remembered how she had been forced into the streets. He had seen her tears, her hunger, her death. To see her here, in the Father's land: that was joy.

"Well, that's right, I think. But, Cherion," and here Jenna leaned forward a little and peered down through the foliage, "What's it like to fly?"

"Now that I can describe. It is exactly like drinking water from the Crystal River, while the Master's reflection lies upon the water. This I know by experience."

"Wow! Really?" Jenna leaned back again. She knew what that was like, because whenever it had happened she was sitting on Majesty's lap seconds later. "Do you ever sit on Majesty's lap?"

The angel looked blankly, not following her thought, "Pardon?"

"I sure wish I could fly, almost more than anything."

The angel shook his head, Jenna was almost as hard to follow in conversation as she was to trail after physically! "Well, if the desire to do so runs through your blood, then perhaps one day you shall. The Creator doesn't put desires in the blood without a purpose."

This had to be discussed face-to-face. It was far too important for a casual just-as-you-please approach. Jenna pivoted around on her stomach and hung upside down, so she could speak more directly. "Do you really think I might fly someday, Cherion?"

"Perhaps," Cherion said thoughtfully, "but not necessarily. Sometimes the desire runs in your blood for one thing to prepare you for another thing."

"Yeah?" Jenna looked very silly, her face a study in concentration, but her whole being poised upside down. "Hey, Cherion, what kind of blood do angels have?"

"Well, Jenna, your light is our blood."

"Naw, get out!"

"Yes, it is..."

Now, even in Loridan one must take some note of one's circumstances, and, Jenna, being so full of ideas about angel blood and flying was not paying any real attention to her surroundings. The result was that a moment later she was hurtling from the tree and discovering that - yes, she didn't know how to fly.

Yet almost before she began to fall, her angel was in motion; long before she could hit branch or ground, two great arms scooped her up and carried her safely to earth.

"I love accidents!" giggled Jenna, as Cherion brought her safely to the forest floor and deposited her on her own two feet. You couldn't fall on purpose, Hector and Jenna had discovered one afternoon - the Spirit wouldn't let you. But accidents, well that was another thing entirely.

"You love accidents because the Father has given strict charges concerning you!" said the angel, not at all sternly.

Jenna put her hands behind her back and looked up at Cherion appealingly. "Don't you ever have accidents?"

"No, Jenna, angels don't have accidents."

Jenna scowled slightly, "Well, then I can tell you what being an angel is. It's dull!"

"Little one, with you in my charge it is never dull!"

Jenna seemed not to be listening but had turned away from the angel with her small face towards the City of the Great King. After a moment she looked up, with a curious expression on her face:

"Cherion, what kind of blood does Majesty have?"

~ ~ ~

If Targa Gamarad could ever be pardoned for anything, it would be for having a headache, on this day. We idly speak of having a splitting headache; Targa Gamarad had the original of these.

"You say he is a grown man, Captain Diserac?" the toad asked very quietly.

"Yes, my General; and a warrior of considerable prowess," whispered Nagara, as his hand went unconsciously to the wound beneath his rib cage, "for a human, that is, great General."

"You will lower your voice," breathed the toad softly, "or I will rip your tongue from your head."

Diserac, realising that such threats from Gamarad were not for rhetorical effect, endeavoured to speak more softly still.

"Yes, my General," the words barely audible, "I did not know whether I should pursue him, for your orders forbidding me to go beyond the Western Hills were most strict, and in that direction the vermin was headed; on the other hand..."

Diserac broke off, carefully observing the general's mood. For Gamarad said nothing but sat with his eyes closed and his face contorted, occasionally emitting a sound somewhere between a croak and a moan. Previous interviews had warned Diserac that interrupting his master's thought processes could be most painful. So also he had been ... rebuffed ... for failing to report all that the toad deemed important. Consequently, Diserac stood wavering between two opinions. Should he directly point out that in either pursuing the human or failing to pursue the human he was - in each case - directly disobeying the Over-General's orders?

What did it mean? Gamarad wondered. A child, that is what the blood screams, a child; and the Demiurge had found the child: this Gamarad knew, but a warrior and a man? Gamarad's mind squirmed with the problem, when suddenly a realization broke over him. If there were two kings of the true blood, would that somehow affect the power of the Seeing Crystal? He did not know. The toad opened his eyes and began scanning the ceiling. How is it, wondered Gamarad, that the Demiurge does not know this? Of course, he was not sure what the Demiurge knew, and yet...

"Captain Diserac," said the Gamarad suddenly focusing both his yellow eyes upon his lackey, "you will carefully scan that image behind you. Is this the man?"

Diserac did not like turning his back to the great toad, but had no choice. Feeling the results of his obedience all along his unprotected spine, Nagara Diserac turned and looked. What he saw was a large curtain that appeared to be made out of crushed velvet; it hung on the wall beside the double oak doors of the retiring room entrance.

Flap! The sound behind him made Diserac stiffen, but daring not to turn back, he held his gaze steadily towards the curtains. Apparently the toad had triggered some switching device with his foot, for the curtain began to draw apart, revealing an enormous imaging crystal. "Look carefully, Captain," came Gamarad's gravelly voice. "Is this the 'man' you fought?"

The dull silver surface of the crystal began to swirl with colours, like an asymmetrical kaleidoscope. As Diserac watched, the colours slowly coalesced into a unified picture. It was the face of a human boy: young, fresh and - to Diserac, who found looks of innocence and candidness things of jest - entirely revolting. He looked carefully at the face. Certainly it was not the man he had fought two days ago. At least, if it was, then it was a likeness taken some years ago. There was something about the eyes. Yes, those eyes. As Diserac looked he again saw his human adversary, eyes flaming, sword flashing, slicing through the garg advance.

"Yes, General, this could be the man."

"Could be!"

"Well, General, this is only a boy. Yet the eyes are very alike. It could, perhaps, be a portrait of the man I fought, but it would have to be six or seven years out of date, at least."

Gamarad thought carefully, "But you think it is the man?"

Diserac looked back again, and shook his head, "I'm not sure, Great One, but it could be, I believe."

For a long time the general subsided by degrees into a torpid state, he appeared after a while to be almost comatose. The blood, the blood, the blood: it pounded in his head, like tom-toms beating on his brain. Suddenly his eyes broke open, peering at the waiting captain like twin disastrous dawns, "Captain," he hissed, "It is time to send a message to this Akinwrath." He hatched his hideous three-foot long parody of a smile: "You know what we will require of him."

~ ~ ~

He sat like a spider at the centre of his web. The filaments of his plan ran out invisibly and unsuspected. It was such a simple plan, really, one that made him aware of the thoughts of nearly three quarters of the humans in Grenwilde. Not only could he view their thoughts, but also to a great extent, he could influence what those thoughts would be.

The image crystals were not mere passive receptors - they fielded and returned the fantasies of mankind - with interest: pulling, twisting, enlarging, and corrupting. And if the suggestions of the crystals changed moral behaviour, then the operation of the crystals crippled the ability to imagine. For humans who used the crystals repeatedly found it increasingly difficult to play, think or plan without them. For it was so easy to merely think of an idea and immediately see it take living shape before your eyes, dancing in the silver eye of the crystal! They did not realise they themselves were being shaped by the Master of the Crystals.

Nihilos believed the crystals might be more important to securing his ends than even his 'blood hoods' were. In the long run, they would have to be. For not only did the Speaking Crystal make him the final shaper of human thought, but the Seeing Crystal let him reap the harvest of what he had sown.

He could not, of course, be individually aware of every victim's thoughts, but then he didn't need to be; the Seeing Crystal gathered the thoughts of every human using an image crystal, allowing the Master to view their cumulative testimony concerning the one thing that urgently interested him: the Blood of the King, and only yesterday, someone - living in Rama-gil - had unwittingly told the Demiurge all he needed to know.

~ ~ ~

Telliam had escaped from the butchery at the Western Hills, by what had seemed to him the wildest coincidence. Moreover, of the three hundred men under his command that day, the thirty-six he had managed to gather were, it seemed likely, all that had survived. In the day following the battle one more man had made his way back to the king's encampment, but he had died during the night.

Telliam lay on his cot with his right arm thrown across his eyes. He felt the loss of his men heavily; it weighed on his heart. Moreover, he couldn't shake the image of Nagara Diserac's demonised face. Hatred he could comprehend, but mania escaped his understanding. What had that look meant? Where had it come from?

He rolled on his side and looked out through the opening of his tent. Sighing, Telliam realised how badly he missed his father and his brothers. He wondered how Abba and the two younger boys were getting on with the clearing of a new farm. Where had they settled? The past weeks had not afforded him much time to think of his family. He thought of Sethrim and Orun, and wondered how they were faring. There had been very little news from the troops defending Nar Shad. No news is good news, Telliam guessed. He wondered if Yason and Regine's baby had arrived yet. More importantly, had they managed to escape? He had heard that children and pregnant woman were being taken into custody by the desigarg. He shuddered to think why this might be so. Oh, Creator, he silently and earnestly prayed, bring my brother and sister out from under the hand of evil.

He opened his eyes just in time to see two energetic young men walking towards his tent. Lieutenant Ganarth Bindaved stooped down and looked in the tent opening.

"Hello, brother, feel like receiving visitors?"

Telliam smiled at his brother, his only link with his family. He sat up stiffly - how his arm hurt! "Of course, Ganarth, come on in. Welcome, Adran," added Telliam as Lieutenant Philomen followed his brother into the tent.

Adran immediately saluted and then stepped forward, extending his hand towards his commanding officer. Telliam took it.

"I'm glad you made it, Sir."

"Let it be Telliam today, Adran, we're off duty. I'm glad, for your sake, you weren't there, because not many did make it."

"Yes, Sir, er...Telliam, but Sergeant Brisky told me about how you handled that Captain Diserac. 'Best piece a fightin' I ever seed.' to quote him direct."

Telliam grinned but shook his head, "Brisky was watching with his heart, Adran. That Diserac, he's a creature straight out of Tartarous. And in any case, I lost over two hundred and fifty men."

"No, you didn't, brother," Ganarth interposed. "We just want you to know that none of the men blame you. You only held the post you were commanded to."

Telliam nodded but didn't look up.

Ganarth hesitated and then continued, "They feel, and I agree, that it's madness to try and hold these hills. I guess the day before yesterday showed that."

Ganarth's use of 'they' bothered Telliam. He looked at his brother mildly, "What else can we do?"

Ganarth shook his head and he looked over at Adran, as if for support, "Sue for terms of peace. I don't know what else we can do. The desigarg are playing with us, that's plain."

Telliam didn _

't like this kind of talk. First of all it smacked of insubordination - he wouldn't say treason. Secondly, for his own part he would rather die many times than willingly submit to a cruel yoke of slavery under the thumb of Targa Gamarad.

"Well, brother, the king must decide what course is best for us to take. That's not for the likes of us to work out."

"I know, Telliam, but what's the point of all this? We can be cut to pieces gradually by the desigarg, swept away in a moment by the vulgraths, or surrender and live. No matter how you slice it the toad still controls Western Grenwilde."

Telliam looked at his brother closely, "And given those choices, you would rather live?"

Ganarth blushed, but Telliam was not sure whether it was embarrassment or mounting anger, "Telliam, only living men can fight. I say we negotiate peace and work at freeing Grenwilde after these foul creatures have taken their hands from our throats. Wait until they are off guard and then strike."

Telliam's eyes flicked to Lieutenant Philomen, "Is this how you feel too, Adran?"

Adran returned his commanding officer's gaze evenly, but without the slightest hint of defiance, "You know I'll do whatever you command, Sir. You know I am the king's man, but I think what your brother says makes sense."

Again Telliam looked down and remained silent.

"Telliam," Ganarth said softly, "You're the only one who has the king's ear, you and Captain Waller. One of you has got to talk some sense into his head, brother."

Telliam looked up sharply at his brother, but before he could speak, they were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Sergeant Brisky, blundering into the tent unannounced.

"Sergeant, what do you mean..." but Telliam broke off as he looked at his sub-ordinate's face.

Brisky, who was so pale he resembled a ghost, did not apologise for rudeness, indeed he seemed scarcely conscious of anything, "Captain Telliam," he paused and stammered, "the - the vulgraths, Sir, they've burned Rama-gil t' the ground."

"What?" said the three officers in near unison.

The sergeant only nodded. They all stood dumbfounded, looking at one another. After a short silence, Ganarth put his hand on Telliam's elbow, "Brother, speak to the King."

~ ~ ~

Lord Torba and King Akinwrath were alone in the king's tent, although Torba only stood by wordlessly, staring at his feet.

King Akinwrath cradled his face in his cupped hands, beside him on the table lay the note and the small image crystal; what choice did he really have?

He could watch his country burned town by town. If the vulgraths had returned, what was to stop them? He had no answer. There was no answer. He had no doubt about Targa Gamarad's willingness to carry out his threat; he was only puzzled as to why he bothered to negotiate - if that is what this ultimatum could be called.

He picked up the quill pen with shaking hands. His conscience spoke to him: the man was loyal and good; he did not deserve to be offered as a sacrifice to the great toad! Practicality came to his aid: it was better for one man to die than for the whole people to perish.

Lord Torba stood anxiously wringing his hands and looking at the downcast figure of the king.

Mastering his nerves, the king wrote the following brief note:

"Does not this man carry in his hands the terms of our surrender? Why should we be burned with fire? We yield fully to the terms of your demands."

He hesitated again; somehow he seemed unable to sign the cursed letter. Finally, he signed it simply, Akinwrath.

"Torba."

"Yes, Majesty."

"Summon Captain Bindaved, he shall be needed to..." the king seemed to have difficulty finding the words, "carry a delicate message to our enemy. Only Captain Bindaved can be trusted with its contents. Fetch him at once."

"Yes, Majesty," Torba bowed and ducked out of the tent.

~ ~ ~

The smoke of Rama-gil went up like a furnace. The fire had rained down from the heavens, consuming everything that could be burned in less than fifteen minutes. No living creature - human, animal or desigarg - had survived the unspeakable holocaust. Farmers had carried the tale of its destruction.

Amidst this charred and smoking ruins, lay a metal likeness of a crown and sword, and near these a human skeleton, still holding in its hand an oblong crystal.