Chapter 174 - Zenzele, My Captor part 1

With Ilio out of harm's way, I felt more sure of myself. I allowed the female blood drinker to lead me up the forested ridge, observing the woman discretely as we travelled.

She was a comely creature, my captor, small of stature, with a lithe and muscular body. She had small breasts, a narrow waist, but full hips and powerful thighs, which I found quite sensual. I had always been attracted to voluptuous women when I was a mortal man (and such things were all consuming) and the sight of her body, full hips rocking on the back of her powerful beast, rekindled desires I had thought long gone to ash.

The color of her skin intrigued me. It was dark, almost black, and lustrous like obsidian, which is a glasslike igneous rock that was used to make cutting tools in those days. Humans with very dark skin often take on that glossy black appearance when they are made into vampires, in stark contrast to mortals with more lightly colored flesh, who unerringly turn the color of sun-bleached bone.

It was the first time I had ever seen such a dark-skinned immortal, and I imagined how she must look in the moonlight, limned in its quicksilver glow.

She glanced in my direction as if she felt my eyes on her.

"What is your name?" she demanded.

She had a round childlike face, with full lips, a broad nose and large expressive eyes. Her hair, like Ilio's, was black and styled into braided coils, swept back from her brow like the plumage of some exotic bird.

When I did not answer, her nostrils flared and she gave the rope around my neck a sharp yank.

"Answer!" she snapped. "Or would you prefer I call you slave?"

I stumbled forward a little at her tug. For such a petite creature she was surprisingly strong!

"Thest," I croaked. I wriggled my fingers beneath my leash, trying to loosen it.

She looked amused. "So, you are the blood god who destroyed the Oombai." She shrugged when I met her eyes, surprised that she knew my name. "Do not think me impressed, Thest. Those craven fools had long lost any good sense they might once have possessed. And they had even less honor, if that is imaginable. You should have seen the way they groveled at my feet. How they lapped my spittle from the dirt. They would fight over it like dogs!" And then she laughed, her eyes flashing with contempt.

"And might you be the blood drinker Zenzele?" I asked. My lover Aioa had described one such creature when I was a guest of the Oombai.

Their chieftain is a female, Aioa had said, with skin like volcanic glass. She is very beautiful, but cruel and full of spite.

"The Goddess Zenzele!" my new mistress corrected, holding her back very straight.

"The goddess of death," I said, echoing my dead lover's words.

My beautiful captor did not reply. She merely chuckled, looking away to the north.

I wondered what she would say if I told her that I'd dreamed of her, If I told her of that night at the lake, when it seemed that our spirits had intertwined. I was certain this woman was the seductress of my dreams, though how I had dreamed of her I still cannot explain.

The words trembled on the tip of my tongue: I have dreamed of you. But I knew she would only make light of them.

Of course, dreams and prophecy have long been closely related. It is a phenomenon common to all human societies, from modern times to the most ancient civilizations. I myself have dreamed the future. Once. When I was still a mortal man. I dreamed of my doom, personified by the snake god of the Grey Stone People. Was my dream of the vampire Zenzele a premonition of doom as well? I had dreamed of my maker's coming. Was this spiteful beauty, then, fated to be my un-maker?

O, Ancestors, let it be so!

If death was come for me, it could not have bore a finer countenance.

We had come to the peak of the great wooded ridge. The ground here was open and strewn with slabs of weathered granite, frosted in ice. Far below, in the distance, the forest gave way to a rolling plain, and there, twinkling like distant stars, the lights of many small fires. Torches, I realized, squinting to bring them into focus; a procession of torches wriggling eastward like a snake.

"How is it you speak the tongue of the Tanti?" I asked, returning my attention to the mounted woman.

She rode silently for several minutes. I did not think she was going to answer, but then she sighed and said, "I speak all the tongues of this region, beautiful one. These lands are my keeping, as they have been for many cycles of the seasons. The Tanti are known to me. We have many Tanti slaves in Uroboros. They are strong, obedient workers."

"Uroboros?" I asked.

"The city of the gods!" the woman shouted in disbelief, wheeling around on her animal. "Yahi, beautiful one! Do you know nothing of the world? Who is the blood god who made you immortal?"

"My maker taught me nothing," I said. "He made me a blood drinker against my will. For that transgression, I took his life. I am far from the lands where I was born a mortal man. I know nothing of your blood drinker ways."

I saw a flicker of compassion in her eyes. It was fleeting—there, then gone an instant later—and then she merely looked annoyed. Perhaps I'd only imagined it.

"Do not expect me to be your wet-nurse," she said, sliding back around on her animal. "We are returning to Uroboros. When we arrive, I will present you to our ruler, Khronos. He will decide your fate. Until then, you are bound to me. You have sworn on your honor."

I nodded.

She knew that I could escape her. It was the promise I had made to her which restrained me, not the rope around my neck. She had spared the life of my son, and in return, I had made an oath to serve her, and I intended to honor that oath—for the time being.

Until we were far away from the Tanti. Until I felt sure that Ilio would be safe.

When we had travelled far enough away, when I was certain that my loved ones were safe from retribution, then I might think of… renegotiating the conditions of my surrender.

Until then, I would be her obedient slave.

Also, I wanted to see this "city of the blood gods".

Uroboros.

Just the sound of it excited me.