She wiped the tears from her cheeks. She could kill if she needed to. The knowledge gave her a grim strength. It was good to know, in a way. She’d wanted hope earlier in the evening; now, in the least expected fashion, she’d found it.
Vendevorex rose with a folded sheet of paper in his claw. He opened the paper, agitating the molecules of the air above it to create a soft light by which to read. He nodded his head slowly as he studied the words.
“It’s from Chakthalla,” he said. “These tatterwings had no idea the treasure they carried. Albekizan would give half his kingdom to know the contents of this letter.”
Albekizan stirred from his sleep, sensing an alien presence in the room. He opened his eyes to the dim light of the chamber. Among the shadows something rustled like dry leaves. He raised his head for a better view. A shadow moved toward the large table on the far side of the room.
Then, a scratch, and a spark. A match had been struck. An oil lamp flickered to life revealing the dark-scaled hide of Blasphet.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Blasphet said, placing a roll of parchment on the table. “I confess, I feel rather giddy. I’ve been contemplating the task you gave me. Quite a thorny problem. I now have a solution.”
“Blasphet,” Albekizan said, standing, stretching, fighting off the stiffness of interrupted sleep. “It’s late. Why did the guards let you in?”
“They didn’t. I killed them,” Blasphet said with a shrug. “It was depressingly simple. No challenge at all in killing such a dim-witted lot. Try to replace them with something a little brighter next time.”
“I assigned all my best guards to cover you,” Albekizan said.
“Oh dear,” Blasphet said. “I have more bad news for you then. But that can wait. This can’t. Come. Look. Isn’t this the most marvelous thing you’ve ever seen?”
Albekizan glanced at the parchment. Blasphet raised the lamp to cast a better light. A nearly impenetrable maze of parallel and perpendicular lines covered the surface of the parchment. Albekizan looked closer. Slowly the lines began to make sense. They were roads, buildings, walls, aqueducts, and sewers. It was the map of a grand city.
“What is this?”
“This is the ultimate destination of mankind,” said Blasphet. “Their final home. Do you like it?”
Albekizan rubbed his eyes. His brother was insane; this was a given. Albekizan normally wasn’t surprised or disturbed by Blasphet’s odd tangents and flights of fancy. But this?
“I asked you to plot the destruction of all mankind and you design a housing project. This is unexpected, even from you.”
“Yes, well,” said Blasphet. “If the humans expected this it could never work. But I took inspiration in your words. I thought that was a very insightful thing that you said, telling me that freedom would be my shackles.”
“Hmm,” said Albekizan. “I suppose I did say that.”
“This is the Free City,” said Blasphet. “It’s the city of humanity’s dreams. What they will never know, until it’s too late, is that it is the city of our dreams as well.” Blasphet ran a claw dreamily along the lines of a major street.
“If you say so,” said Albekizan.
“You can’t see it, can you?” Blasphet said. “Let me explain the beauty of this plan.”
Albekizan said, “Go on.”
And, come the dawn, Albekizan considered the inky paper stretched out before him to be the loveliest thing under all the sky.
BOOK TWO: CROWS
For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.
PROLOG PART TWO: SPEAR
Recanna placed Bant’s breakfast before him; a large, flat golden biscuit covering half the plate beside a scramble of eggs, the yellow flecked with diced green onion. A black-rimmed sliver of orange cheese leaned on the edge of the plate. As Recanna poured him a mug of white, frothy buttermilk, Bant looked around the table to the bright eyes of his two beautiful little girls. They lowered their eyes respectfully as Bant said, “Let us pray.”
“We give thanks, oh Lord, for the bounty before us,” Bant said. “We give thanks for the new day.”
He continued the prayer for some time before concluding, as he always did, with the things he was most personally thankful for: his newborn son, his beautiful daughters and, most of all, for Recanna. His son Adam gurgled and mewed throughout the prayer as if offering his own thanks.
When Bant finished his meal he kissed Recanna’s cheek and then stepped from his cabin into the soft dawn light. He faced a busy day. He needed to complete his chores and prepare for tomorrow’s sermon. He smiled. Knowing how every moment of his day would be spent gave him a warm feeling. He felt very much at home in the world. He found joy in his labors, whether tending to the orchards or aiding his fellow villagers.
The morning light danced through the peach orchard, causing the dew-covered leaves to sparkle with a million tiny jewels. Truly, he dwelled in the new Eden.
He couldn’t know, yet, that today the serpents would arrive.
By midday, the southern sun pressed down on Bant like a giant hand, making the slightest movements laborious. If the rains had been steadier last spring, he might have avoided working in the heat of the day. All the cooler hours of the morning and evening were spent tending the fields. The village couldn’t afford to lose a single plant. This left the middle part of the day to such drudgework as reshingling a roof. Bant hadn’t planned to spend this long on the task; it was only a few wooden shingles that needed replacing after wind damage from the previous week’s thunderstorm. Bant lay his hammer down and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He would welcome a thunderstorm if it came along now, wind damage or no. He glanced toward the distant stream, longing for a dip within its cool waters. A cloud of dust caught his eye; someone was approaching from the northern road.
Bant squinted, shielding his eyes. Three huge lizards-gray in color save for the rust-red scales along their throats and bellies-lumbered along the dirt road. At first glance they appeared low to the ground, but when Bant compared them to the trees they passed he realized the lizards stood taller than horses, and only their great length made them appear squat.
As the great-lizards grew nearer, Bant could make out the riders who looked like men astride the high-backed leather saddles. But they weren’t men; they were earth-dragons. Their scaly skin was the color of moss. Their heads sat broad and low upon their shoulders, their dark eyes set wide apart. A teal fringe of spiky scales jutted from their necks.
Bant climbed down the ladder, moving to meet the dragons as they rode into the town square. He could only vaguely recall the last time the dragons had visited, well over a decade ago. The dragons had then demanded a tenth of that year’s harvest and the older townsmen agreed to provide it, citing an ancient agreement. The town lay in the land of dragons and the Dragon King had the right to take as much as a quarter of the harvest. The elders said dragons were abundant in the north but ventured south to collect taxes only rarely, seldom appearing more than once in a score of years.
Bant wished some of the elders had survived to advise him now. If the dragons wanted a quarter of the harvest this year, it would be difficult. Christdale suffered from a shortage of men. Only male children his age and younger had survived Hezekiah’s initial teachings unmaimed. Now only a dozen able-bodied men could tend the crops, and they had to provide for a community of nearly a hundred. The Lord in his mercy always provided enough but there was seldom any surplus.