“But how will I protect myself? I don’t want to be known as the man who betrayed his people.”

“Of course, how noble of you! I have a very special idea on that score. Come, my stupid little one. I will explain everything on the way.”

Sabíana rushed into the palace proper, surrounded by her generals. Contrary to her own common sense, she had summoned the Dumar, reinstating their privileges, hoping the victory would rally the representatives to her. Her sense told her that there was little chance of that. She battled a heavy dread, fearing that everything she had just witnessed—all the monsters, the carnage—was all a play, a farce to distract her from something else, something she could sense with every cell of her body, but could not see. She tried to maintain the appearance of confidence.

Her heavy wolf fur chafed at her neck, and she wished she could cast away the heavy curved sword she wore at her side. She had chosen her clothing for a purpose. She needed to be an avatar of victory, as far as the warriors were concerned. She strove to maintain that illusion for as long as possible.

“We must not become drunk over this victory, my lords. True, our men have outdone themselves today. We must reform and defend the city against any further attack. It seems we have the upper hand now, and perhaps we can even send out sorties into the forest to harry the Gumiren.” Wherever they are, she thought, but did not say.

“Darina, is it wise to entrust so much of this to the Dumar?” rumbled Elder Pahomy by her side. “They have hardly deserved much trust of late.”

“They dare not rebel now, not with this success in the…”

She was cut off by a wheezing intake of her own breath. They had entered the Chamber of Counsel. The room was a lurid mess of bloodied bodies. Every member of the former Dumar lay dead or dying, stabbed many times. The floor glistened with blood. Some still moaned. Only one among them was still lucid—Yadovír, who was also wounded, though not fatally. He wept uncontrollably, his voice like a serrated knife.

“Darina Sabíana, we are undone! Do not believe anything of what you have seen or heard. We have not triumphed. It was all a ruse of the Raven. One of the clerics did this, possessed by our ancient enemy. I barely escaped with my own life before I stopped him.”

Yadovír pointed at the body of a young priest holding a long knife, red to the handle. He lay open-eyed in the shocked surprise of death.

“One of our prized clerics,” screamed Yadovír.

Sabíana shook like a leaf in a gale and found no voice to answer Yadovír. Her knees no longer supported her; she fell and the shuddering grabbed her violently. Her mind was a protracted scream of pain; her eyes lost their focus, and she felt foam rise to her mouth. Against her will, a moan slithered out of her, and even to her own ears, the sound of her teeth chattering was pitiful and horrifying.

Two of her guards knelt by her, trying to do something to relieve her, but they had no idea what to do. Finally, the convulsion stopped. Her eyes remained cloudy and unfocused, and she couldn’t speak except to moan without words.

Yadovír stopped weeping as if he had become another person in the blink of an eye. Cold terror gripped Sabíana; Yadovír seemed to grow in her eyes, as if a shadow spread out behind him like a raven’s wings. His eyes were black fire, and he commanded with the power of a legion.

“Come,” he said with a voice not his own. “We must see to the order of Vasyllia.”

To her shock, everyone did as he commanded, crumbling to a will that seemed to be outside him, yet inside him as well. Her two guards picked her up and dragged her. All she could do was moan.

Rogdai limped back to the city, leaning on Tolnían. By now, most of the warriors had returned, leaving the wounded on the field of battle. An eerie uncertainty hung about the air like smoke, and most of the warriors were intent on the palace, hoping for some word from the Black Sun. Tolnían still clutched the banner as if his life depended on it.

“That was quite a thing, my boy,” said Rogdai, shaking his head in disbelief. “I did not know they still made warriors like you.”

“I never made it through the first year of warrior seminary,” said Tolnían and laughed.

Rogdai struck Tolnían playfully on the back of his head, as if to stop him from becoming too tall in his own estimation.

Rogdai couldn’t concentrate his vision through the throbbing pain. Everything slowed down through his eyes, and objects didn’t focus unless he looked at them with careful intention. But when he did, they became somehow too real, and he had to look away again. When he heard the marrow-chilling cries coming from the palace, he looked up at one of the turrets to see the pale figure of a skeletal Yadovír holding his hands out. Then the terrible focus came, and the horrifying reality struck him.

Yadovír’s hands were covered in blood.

Sabíana was next to him, but she was unrecognizable—white and hardly standing, supported by two of her black-robed guards. They looked like the bringers of death.

“People of Vasyllia,” roared Yadovír. “Fell deeds have been done. The Dumar has been infiltrated by treachery. Every last one of your beloved councilors lies in his own blood. I alone escaped by a miracle. Who could have done such a deed? The Gumiren, you say? No. One of our own people has perpetrated this atrocity. One of those sworn to protect us, to minister, care, and watch over our lives with benediction is a traitor. One of our priests has sold himself to the enemy, for I know not what price. His knife it was that brought death’s swift bite to our own people. A priest! We are betrayed by one of our own!”

Yadovír foamed at the mouth. A young priest, one of those who had just fought at the wall, stepped forward to protest, but his words stopped short. Silence filled the open courtyard where he stood. The priest, fair as a spring lily, was alone, ringed by warriors who looked at him in disgust. His eyes rolled back, and he rattled at the back of his throat. A sword’s point thrust through his chest, and Rogdai, red with fury that he did not realize was there until this moment, held the sword.

“Death to all traitors of Vasyllia!”

Rogdai’s cry was taken up all around him. Swords were unsheathed yet again. He was the first among them, charging at any priest he could find. Some were in mail and fought back, but none could withstand his fury. He no longer felt the pain of his ankle, rushing back and forth, stabbing and slashing and hacking. When three bodies lay at his feet, he pursued the fleeing priests. He ran into homes, broke down doors, overturned tables and ripped off curtains to find the cowering traitors. The shock and pain he saw in their eyes only fed his hatred. He spit on them as he skewered them.

When he had run out of priests to kill, he stopped to look around, finally noticing that his right leg could no longer support his weight. The streets were spattered with red, and everywhere the open eyes of the dead clerics stared at him from dead pates. There were even a few dead women—wives, sisters, daughters—who had tried to appeal with their bodies to the mercy of the sword. There was one in particular, a girl hardly out of her childhood. There were tears on her dead face.

It was that detail, not the blood and carnage, that thrust into his mind the realization of what he had done. He tore at his hair and screamed.

Tolnían, still clutching the banner, ran from the scene of carnage back to the gates of Vasyllia. He had tried to fend off Rogdai himself, but he could not, and nearly everyone else had followed in Rogdai’s madness. Vaguely, he hoped that some of the still-returning warriors might help him. As he turned a corner, he ran into a wall of men. They were not Vasylli.

The Gumiren surrounded him, silent as hunting cats. They crawled out of every street, every shadow in the city. Tolnían thrust the point of the banner into a crack between two flagstones, drew his sword, and sang a challenge. The banner fluttered slightly, showering Tolnían with dappled sunlight. The enemy advanced.

As they attacked, he lost sense of his own arm. It flailed back and forth, striking everywhere with deadly accuracy. Like being possessed by a High Being, he thought. Two of them were at his feet. Another three came down in two strokes.

When he came to, ten mangled figures lay before him. He stopped to breathe, and iron pierced his left side. He fell and his eyesight began to dim. All he saw was five curved blades above his head, rising with the war-shriek of the Gumiren. They waited for the command to hack him to pieces.

Suddenly, light streamed from his banner, striking them like spear-thrusts. They screamed and retreated from him. Leaving him alone, they walked around him, not daring to approach the image of the Sirin in flight. They passed by and continued toward the palace. Tolnían succumbed and fell unconscious.

The despair that followed Rogdai’s madness choked him. At that moment, when the last hope shriveled within him, Gumiren warriors—hundreds, thousands of them—entered the courtyard, and with them came smoke and fire.

The war-wind abandoned Rogdai. He hardly tried to ward off the avalanche of curved blades rising high against him. He fell. He saw his brother-warriors around him fall like wheat cut down by a scythe. All of them—dead or wounded.

Within minutes, not a single armed Vasylli stood against the invaders. Rogdai, blood pouring from three wounds, lay on the ground, trying to rise only with a left arm. His right arm lay near him, hacked off by the Gumir who stood over him now with death in his eyes.

A loud retort of an ox-horn stopped the Gumiren, as though they were one man.

Yadovír, white as death, stood next to Sabíana, looking down on Rogdai and the rest of Vasyllia as though he had just given birth to a stillborn child.

I have long wondered what the fate of humanity is. We have a spark inside, fed by our soul-bond with the Sirin. And it leaves us forever restless, searching for something. But for what? I have heard that some holy men have experienced a change, a transfiguration into something higher, something stranger. Perhaps we have to shed this body of flesh for a body of fire. Perhaps the flame in our heart must engulf us whole. Perhaps only afire can we stand before the throne of the Most High and hear our ultimate fate…

From the personal archive of Dar Lassar the Blessed

Chapter 32

The Staff in Bloom

Voran laid Tarin down by the staff that still had not flowered. Tarin’s face was white, but his arms were streaked with blood, and his breathing was labored and heavy. Voran could not believe that the man who had projected such physical strength for so long could simply wither like a rose struck by an early frost. It hurt Voran, more than the river of fire, more than the sword of the Palymi. It did not help that after the war-wind had passed, it left Voran exhausted, his strength sapped.

Tarin opened his eyes, and still he did not groan or give any other indication of the pain he must be feeling. His young eyes—still such young eyes—were plaintive.

“Where were you when I suffered?” he exclaimed.