Two Thousand Years Later

In the high place of Siu Rial’s temple, bathed in the pale green glow of the ghost city that hung upside down overhead, Queen Jadarah lifted her bloody offering to the strong gods. Covered in gore to her elbows and knees, she screamed for the deities’ attention, their approval, their guidance.

From the priests surrounding the altar rolled a deep, resonating chant.

King Hazerial VI of House Khinet looked on in calculating silence as the mad queen placed the sacrifice, still steaming in the cold night air, at the center of the stone altar. It was too young to even utter a cry. Would the strong gods consider this a worthy offering?

His queen claimed they would be pleased. Royal blood was a finer and rarer vintage than the common red spill of the street urchins whose bones littered the high place. As the only non-priest allowed to perform these auguries, Jadarah must know.

The mad queen fought the dying labor pains racking her body to raise the killing knife. Her screams reached an ear-shattering crescendo as she plunged the blade into the tiny heart.

New blood poured, purple-black in the green light, running into the troughs at the altar’s edge. So little of that vital liquid in the newborn body. Barely enough to flow down the channels.

King Hazerial’s eyes narrowed.

There could be no doubt that the gods could hear the mad queen. This was the most holy of places in the Kingdom of Night, perched at the peak of Siu Rial, the City of Blood. Here the tallest pinnacle of the strong gods’ ghost city reached down from the sky until it nearly touched the tallest pinnacle of the earthly city, an otherworldly mirror in pale green ghostlight.

The strong gods must smell the blood, too, scant though it was. The scent curled the king’s own tongue and filled his mouth with anticipatory saliva, calling to the hunger deep within him. Within all Children of the Night.

And yet there was no response from above.

On the altar, the steaming sacrifice squirmed no more. Perhaps it was too young after all. Royal blood or not, it had not survived long enough for its suffering to entice the strong gods’ notice.

The priests raised their arms, digging into their flesh with glinting ceremonial daggers. Their chanting rose to a frenzy. Queen Jadarah carved at the motionless sacrifice and howled, her voice splitting into tones both too high and too low for any other soul to reach. Their frantic refrain vibrated through the stones of the high place, buzzing up through the soles of the king’s boots.

A gasp of wind. All air was sucked from the high place. The wet sheen of blood disappeared from the altar’s troughs. Light shined from within the bloody lump of meat at the center.

The mad queen staggered back, grinning triumphantly, gory knife at her side.

The dripping lump of gristle and bone rose into the air above the altar. It shone so brightly that its half-formed bones stood out dark within. Its shadowed jaws opened and issued forth a hissing roar that echoed in the space between the city above and the city below.

“HE WHO SEEKS VICTORY FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT,

TO SCOURGE THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN,

TRAP A DROP OF OCEAN IN A SEA OF BLOOD AND STEEL.

DRIVE DAYLIGHT INTO EVERLASTING NIGHT

WITH THIS SCOURGE OF THORNS.

THE CURSE REVEALED,

NIGHT WILL POSSESS THE DAY.

THE BIRTHRIGHT OF BLOOD RENOUNCED.

THE ELDER TO SERVE THE YOUNGER ONCE MORE.

ANCIENT BLASPHEMIES ECHO

AND ARE OVERTHROWN.

THE THRONE.

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THE THRONE.

THE THRONE!”

***

“You would charge the Crown Prince of Night for his time?” Izakiel hauled the giggling whore onto his shoulder and smacked her taut rear. “I’d say that’s a flogging offense.”

“This is a place of business, Your Highness!” Despite her amusement, she managed to convey disbelief aplenty in his title. “Flogging costs gold, just like everything else!”

Izakiel headed for the stairs, and the whore shrieked with breathy laughter. He suspected she wasn’t only skeptical of his claims to the throne but also of his ability to safely transport her up the steps, given the way he was reeling.

With a small expenditure of royal blood magic, he turned them both into a puff of curling black smoke, took a step, and resolidified them at the top of the stairs. Only twenty feet or so, nothing close to the distance he could actually smoke step, but in an enclosed space and as drunk as he was, it was safer to go with the minimum.

Which still had great effect. The whore gasped in delight.

Izakiel smirked. Nobles with the blood magic could do much, and extraordinarily gifted commoners could do some, but only the royal family had the power to smoke step.

Of course, a common whore might not know any of that. Not much chance that she had upper-class patrons wandering into her low street whoring house in the middle of the day, when most good little Children of Night were preparing for bed or feasting the sunlit hours away. At best, she must think he was a wealthy merchant’s son who could afford enough bloodslaves to waste his magic impressing ladies of the day.

Not that Izakiel had to work very hard to catch a feminine eye. He was well aware that he was handsome. His strong House Khinet features and thick, dark hair always drew admiring glances, but it was the second set of dimples that the ladies truly could not resist. One set bored into either side of his mouth when he smiled; the other was always present, cut like notches high on his cheekbones.

As if this weren’t an overwhelming enough advantage, he was taller and fitter than most of the patrons littering the ugly red waiting chamber below, who displayed the fat and famine lifestyle of the lower classes. Izakiel was younger too, at a lusty seventeen years old, but as the crown prince liked to say, he whored like a man twice his age.

“I’m Teikru-blessed,” he told the whore. “I should be charging you.” He hauled his slipping burden higher onto his shoulder and started for a suite. “Of course, that comes with the royal guarantee: your full and utter satisfaction, or I’ll return every coin you pay me.”

She cackled and pounded his back with hard little fists. “If I believed every fine-feathered rooster who crowed that he was the Crown Prince of Night, I’d never make any gold to be stolen by them, would I?”

“Interesting theory. Let’s put it to the test.”

The door of the whoring house crashed open below.

“Prince Izakiel, by order of the king, you are to return to the castle at once.”

Izakiel’s drunken grin evaporated. He sloshed around to face Vorino, one of his father’s Royal Thorns.

With one hand, Izakiel steadied the whore on his shoulder, and with the opposite, he grasped for the grimy railing, missed, grabbed again, and this time found it.

“This is a crisis, Vorino.” The prince adopted a serious expression. “We’re a nation at war, and I believe I’ve found a spy for the Helat. Don’t those ears look as if she’s blunted them? My father will understand that this interrogation cannot wait.”

As the royal sword tutor, Vorino had long ago become immune to the crown prince’s charm. Mule-Face, Izakiel used to call him back when the prince still condescended to attend sword lessons, due to that long, narrow, stubborn countenance. Though Vorino’s hair was longer than the current fashion—perhaps in a vain attempt to hide his protruding ears—the Thorn kept his face clean-shaven in the trend Izak had set for the court.

Grafted by King Hazerial six years previously, Vorino was in his mid-twenties and no doubt as wild about women as any other healthy young man, but the Thorn showed no empathy toward Izak’s predicament.

“I’m authorized to bring you back in ribbons if I have to, Your Highness.” For emphasis, he moved his hand to his hilt. Even that small motion was as smooth and deadly as an ambush predator preparing to spring.

Thorns were the most elite and legendary swordsmen in the kingdom. Those grafted to the king were magically compelled to protect their sovereign’s family with their lives. When that directive came into conflict with their master’s orders, however, they could also thrash the light out of any one of his brats.

“Ten minutes,” Izakiel bargained. Seeing no leeway in Vorino’s expression, he tried again. “Five! I can get the answers I need in five.”

“Five?” the whore cried. “I knew you weren’t Teikru-blessed!”

“Trust me, darling, you’ll be singing my praises with the strong gods in half that time.”

“This is not the day, Prince Izakiel,” Vorino warned.

Over an open distance and at night, Izakiel could outpace the older man with a long-distance smoke step. In an enclosed space and in the midst of day, however, the Thorn’s rigorous training and myriad enhancements would outdo him in a matter of minutes.

“Light burn me!” Izakiel let his head roll back in frustration. “Then when is the day, Vorino? Answer me that.”

“Your brother’s birth celebration and seeing-off—”

Izakiel let out a groan loud enough to drown out the Thorn. He didn’t care a drop of spilt blood for what his father wanted, but Etian… He owed his brother at least his presence at the feast.

The prince set the whore down. Neither of them was laughing now.

“You really are him, then?” Her face was drained of color beneath its white powder.

Izakiel gave her a tragic smile. “I’ll make good on my offer another day. That’s a royal oath.”

One of many that he intended never to fulfill. Although, there were only a hundred or so whoring houses in Siu Rial, and he did run through them. By accident, he might just keep his word.

Izakiel faced the waiting Thorn.

“All right, you night-forsaken dyrehound, you’ve treed your quarry, dragged it to ground, and shaken the life from its body. Return it to your master.”