Chapter 331 - Whom Gods Destroy, Uroboros, 23,000 Years Ago part 4

It is perhaps a subtle distinction, but I could not help but be encouraged by their spirit. It is an easy thing to mope around, waiting for some imaginary deity to deliver you from your travails, to decry the unfairness of the universe instead of actually doing something about it. Such passivity is a form of cowardice, but the people of the Shol were no sulkers. They were no self-pitying cowards. They were survivors. And they were waiting for the opportunity to strike back at their oppressors.

I suppose it only makes sense. The God King's violent regime was like a great threshing machine, scouring away the weak as quickly as its slavers could haul new captives in. It was a perfect example of natural selection. The God King's slavers patrolled his empire, bringing in hordes of new captives every month. The deplorable conditions of the Shol ensured the unfit were quickly winnowed out. Within weeks of their arrival, only the strongest, the cleverest and most ruthless individuals remained. And their awful living conditions forced them to become even more clever and ruthless. Eventually, inevitably, they were going to rise up and overthrow their brutal masters. It is the fate that befalls every slave-based culture, from the Oombai to the Romans. Slavery, by its very nature, is a self-destructive institution. The cultures that employ it might prosper in the short term, but eventually their slaves are so hardened by the brutal conditions of their captivity that their masters cannot hope to stand against them when they turn and shout, "No more!"

The bread made from the wheat of these people was going to be very hard to chew. Yes, indeed, I thought. The Uroborans were going to choke on it!

It was a heartening discovery, and I decided, right then and there, that I would be the leader they were praying for when I was finally restored to wholeness. I had no doubt that day would come, that I would be restored. My father's spirit had promised it. And Brulde. "You have many allies," Brulde had said. "They will deliver you from Uroboros." And despite the seeming hopelessness of my situation, I believed them. Zenzele would do it, if no one else rose to the challenge. If she had to march in here and take on the God King's armies all by herself, she would do it. She was probably plotting my rescue right now, trying to figure out how to liberate me with the fewest possible casualties. I'm sure her plan would be bold and brilliant, just like her. And when she did, when she finally freed me from this hell…

The God King would fall!

But what to do in the meantime?

What could I do?

Watch. Listen. Plan.

It was really all I could do, being a disembodied head on a pike.

So I watched the God King's city.

At the height of his power, the God King's empire spanned half of Europe, much like Rome in its heyday, but there was really only one city, the seat of the God King's realm, Uroboros. Uroboros was the first, possibly the only city that existed at that time, apart from Asharoth, my own kingdom in the Ural Mountains. Though his slavers might range from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east, Uroboros was the hive to which all his worker bees returned.

The city was carved into the side of a mountain, a vast gray fist waved in the face of the heavens called Fen'Dagher. Fen'Dagher, in the tongue of the Uroborans, meant "Heaven Spear". It was a dormant volcano actually, and stood on the shores of the Black Sea until its eruption several thousand years later, when it was erased from the face of the Earth once and for all.

The city that dwelled on its back was three-tiered, much like the society of the people who inhabited it. At the bottom of the mountain, and the city's social hierarchy, was the Shol. It was the lowest of the low, its denizens kept penned behind high stone walls. It was a nightmare maze of filthy tenements and stinking charnel pits, stone quarries and gladiatorial arenas. Its people were dirty and emaciated, desperate and hopeless. Exploited by their middle caste mortal brethren, and preyed on by their vampire masters, the best a slave of the Shol could hope for was a quick death at the fangs of his immortal keepers. That, at least, would free him from the endless toil and oppression that was their everyday lives. Hanging over the Shol were stone structures reminiscent of the Anasazi cliff dwellings. This was the Arth, the home of Uroboros's mortal middle class. They had no political power per se, but they were technically free men and were allowed to keep property and slaves. Most of them were craftsmen or merchants, priests or bureaucrats. They lived in comparative luxury, tending to the business of their vampire masters while enjoying the amenities of their elevated status. They were coldly disdainful of the denizens of the Shol, who huddled, quite literally, in their shit. The toilets of the Arth emptied directly onto the city below, you see. Shit, as the saying goes, rolls downhill, and it couldn't have been more true than in the city of Uroboros. The citizens of the Arth were really no freer than their counterparts beneath them, but they were pampered slaves. Greedy. Corrupt. Conniving. They alone had the prospect of advancement. Only the citizens of the Arth were granted the Living Blood. No slave from the Shol had ever been made an immortal, not that I am aware of, but once in a great while a lucky Arthian—a favored lover, a loyal servant or a talented artisan-- was elevated to the status of blood god by a doting Master. Finally, at the very apex of Uroboran society, and the mountain itself, was the Fen, the abode of the gods, and the God King's seat of power. The Fen did not perch on the side of the mountain like the Arth, but resided within the mountain itself. The Fen was a subterranean district of twisting passages and vast stone chambers. It was there, in that hive of atrocities, that the blood gods dwelled, safe from the sun, surrounded by luxury, thinking only of their comforts and the gratification of their abhorrent desires. There, divided by Clan and House, dwelled the disciples of the God King, his council, his court, and all his slithering serpents.

From my place on the wall, I had an unobstructed view of the entire mountain. I could not see into the Fen, but I could observe the vampires when they boiled out of their underground warrens at sundown, crawling down the face of the mountain like insects to feed in the Shol or do business in the Arth. Sometimes they traversed the zigzagging stairways that connected the Fen to the Arth, but more often they crawled straight down the mountainside, a sight that seemed monstrous and inhuman even to me. I watched the Arthians idle in their markets and hanging gardens. I studied their religious festivals and all their busy bustling about. At night, the Arth was lit up with thousands of flickering torches so that it gleamed like any modern metropolis. On festival days, so many flower petals were scattered to the wind that it snowed down on the excrement below, piling in pretty white and pink and yellow drifts upon the shit and decaying corpses that clogged the alleyways beneath them. I watched the indignities and torments heaped upon the people of the Shol, day and night, winter, spring, summer and fall. I watched it all, the backbreaking labor, the murders and rapes, so much senseless cruelty and perversity, and I wondered at the accounting that would be taken there someday.

Their comeuppance, I thought, would be very dear indeed!

But for the time being, I could only watch. I could only watch and listen and scheme.

The scheming, I think, kept me from slipping away into oblivion. It held me firm against the madness that flapped at the periphery of my thoughts-- all day, every day—like frenzied, shrieking bats. It kept me grounded. It gave me something to live for when all that I valued had been stripped away from me-- my dignity, my freedom.

I committed the geography of the city to memory, knowing that the knowledge would come in useful when I was finally restored and led my assault against the God King and his minions. I tried to memorize the faces of the mortals down below as well, but there were so many, and they died in such great numbers, that I decided it was a futile endeavor. Better to study my enemies, I thought, and so I observed the immortals who patrolled the streets of the Shol, the God King's foot soldiers.

Most of the God King's soldiers, I noted, were lesser immortals. I saw very few truly powerful blood drinkers among the warriors that patrolled the Shol, and not a single Eternal. I eavesdropped on their conversations and learned that assignments to the Shol were employed as a form of punishment by their superiors. They considered their patrols down here demeaning and repulsive, and that was why they were so cruel to their wards. I could certainly understand why they found it so humiliating. The streets quite literally ran ankle-deep with the shit of the slaves—and the freemen from the district above—but I could find no sympathy for these brutal spear-carriers. They were mortal once, the same as I. No different than the people they so casually fed upon. Their callousness was appalling. Not a single one of them showed their mortal charges a drop of human compassion. They were merciless. They reveled in their wickedness. It was incomprehensible to me!

Despite their relative unimportance, I memorized the names and faces of these vicious supernumeraries. I looked for patterns in their comings and goings, the duties they performed, their habits and inclinations. I knew it might be a very long time before my endeavors bore fruit, but I committed myself to the task, for it was all I could do and it distracted me from my suffering.

From time to time, one of these patrolling guards would notice that I was watching them. Usually they just turned away with a sneer, dismissing me contemptuously, but sometimes my scrutiny provoked a more significant reaction. "What are you looking at, Divided One?" one of them would jeer up at me. "You need someone to come up there and scratch your nose?" Every now and then, one of the guards that I was observing would squat down in the middle of the alley, scoop up a handful of muck and lob it at me. Alas, vampires have very good aim, even the ones who are not well made. They always hit their target, splattering my mouth and eyes. It was not so bad when the filth went into my mouth. I had enough movement in my lips and tongue to work it out. If their missile hit me in the eyes, however, I was effectively blinded until the next substantial rain, and that was a great frustration.

I rarely saw any blood drinkers of import. I saw plenty of them from a distance when dark came and they poured out of the Fen like angry hornets, flying up and down the mountainside between their warren and the Arth, but it was rare for any of the high caste vampires to journey down into the Shol. I am talking about the God King's generals and close advisors, the truly powerful ones, the Clan Masters, the Eternals. I saw plenty of the little ones, the low caste vampires, the soldiers and social outcasts, but it was rare for even a House Mother or House Father to make an appearance in the Shol. Even the Mothers and Fathers had flunkies to do their bidding.

When I was first defeated, and my head was placed on this damnable wall, the God King came down nearly every night with his entourage of lackeys. They came so he could gloat over me. He was very fond of gloating. He would mock me, recounting his victory in an ostentatious voice, describing to his sycophants in great detail how he had forced me to surrender to him, promising to spare the life of my beloved blood child, only to renege on our bargain and destroy my son before my very eyes. Even though most of them had been there, even participated in Ilio's destruction, they listened raptly as if they were hearing it for the first time, applauding his cleverness, showering him in praise. Oh, how bold you are, My Lord, they cried. How clever! How ruthless!

At first his gloating enraged me, and I would mug at him violently, eyes flashing, baring my fangs at him in impotent fury. He took great delight in this, and he would laugh and taunt me some more. Eventually, however, I grew inured to his abuse, even when he threatened the Tanti, who were my mortal descendants. He was not very inventive and his antics grew tiresome very quickly. I began to ignore him, and he in his turn grew bored of me. He came less frequently after that, and then never at all.

For a little while after the God King quit coming down to taunt me, I would feel his Eye sweep across me, and knew that he was checking on me. He had no real interest in me anymore. He was just making sure I was still here, like a miser compelled to count his riches.

The God King, like my immortal lover Zenzele, was gifted with the ability to view things from a distance. This gift, which you mortals call "remote viewing" or "clairvoyance" is a psychic ability that only a few blood drinkers possess. I do not possess this strange ability myself, but I have always been able to sense when others employ it in my vicinity. To me, the God King's invisible Eye felt like a large insect buzzing around my head, or a great black bat swooping through the air.

After the God King grew tired of gloating in person, that Eye would come down and flutter around my head. I could sense him sneering down at me from his throne chamber—with smug satisfaction, I imagine—but eventually he tired even of that, and quit sending his Eye to view me altogether. Even the most enjoyable things become tedious with repetition, I suppose, and really, how entertaining could a decapitated head be anyway? Within a year, he had completely lost interest in me.

The only thing I really worried about, when it came to the God King, were the threats he had made against the Tanti.

When I returned to Fen'Dagher to surrender to the God King, when I gave myself up in exchange for Ilio's life, he had threatened to destroy the Tanti. His slavers, he promised me, would hunt down every last one of my mortal descendants. He would have them tortured beneath the wall. He would snuff them out, just as he had destroyed my headstrong child Ilio. Like Ilio, he would tear them limb from limb before my very eyes. He would wipe out my entire mortal bloodline, he swore, and I believed him. I believed that he would try.

Day after day, I waited in dread for him to make good on his promise. Each time new slaves were brought in by his hunters, I scanned their faces, terrified I would see my own mortal descendants among their number. The night that I submitted to Zenzele, who was one of the God King's slavers at the time, I made Ilio promise to return to the Tanti and instruct our people to flee. I suppose he had done as I bid him to do because I never saw a single Tanti among the men and women the slavers brought in. Twenty years had passed since the night that I was taken before the God King, the night I made an enemy of the First of Our Kind, but I would know the faces of my Tanti brethren if they were ever marched below my perch. Even if fifty years had passed, I would know them! But they were never, thank the ancestors, captured by his slavers. I think that is probably the greatest miracle of all, for if the God King had managed to find my mortal descendants, if he had put them to death as he promised that he would, I do not know that I would have had the will to go on.

They must have run very far away, I thought, or hidden themselves very well.

I did not know what had become of them, but wherever they had gone, they had somehow managed to elude the God King's slavers, and because of that I was able to endure.

I studied the comings and goings of my enemies.

I listened to the prayers of the inhabitants of the Shol.

And I plotted.

I plotted the fall of the God King.