Chapter 333 - Whom Gods Destroy, Uroboros, 23,000 Years Ago part 6

Somehow the blood drinkers who had conspired with the insurrectionists had managed to survive the God King's purges. Not only had they evaded discovery, they had resumed their activities in the Shol-- to a limited degree. Most of them were attired as before in the garb of the low guard, though a few dressed in what I suppose you might call civilian clothes. They no longer made the sign when they passed below me—it was still too dangerous for that sort of thing—but I remembered their faces. I was surprised their involvement with the uprising had gone undiscovered. Khronos, I assumed, would search for T'Sukuru collaborators as well. Root out the traitors in his midst. He was certainly paranoid enough to suspect his own people of colluding with the rebels. Even if he were not, conspirators are usually caught out. There are always cowards willing to turn on their compatriots, to save their own skin or secure a position in the enemy's camp.

And yet these men and women still moved freely through the Shol.

For now.

Who were they, I wondered. And what, ultimately, were their goals?

I saw them at random intervals. Usually it was just at sunset, or very late in the morning, right before the sun peeked over the horizon, after most of the blood gods had retired to the Fen for the day. They often glanced up at me as they passed below the wall, their faces grave, their glinting eyes unreadable, but they did not pause and they did not make the sign.

No one made the sign anymore.

I watched their comings and goings with great interest. It was the only thing I could do. As summer swooped in with an oppressive spell of hot weather, I pondered the mystery of those rogue blood gods. I watched for them day and night as my head roasted on its pike like a pig on a spit. One of the stealthy conspirators seemed terribly familiar to me, though I was certain that I had never set eyes on her before.

I'm not sure what it was about her that piqued my interest, other than the fact that she was a rebel. I had not noticed her before the uprising, but she was very active in the Shol afterwards. Perhaps the God King's brutal reaction to the uprising had stirred her to disloyalty. Perhaps she had simply grown weary of decadence, and treason was the only thing that could thrill her jaded spirit now. Her face was as inscrutable as all the others, her activities a mystery. I did not know who she was, but I felt I should know her.

Most nights, I only caught a glimpse of her. She would pause to pass a few words with one of her fellow mutineers, speaking so low and fast that I could not catch what she was saying—not even with my supreme senses-- and then she would melt into the darkness again, vanishing like a spirit. I knew not whence she came or where she went when she departed from my sight. I never saw her coming down the mountainside at dusk or returning to the Fen at daybreak. She seemed able to appear and disappear at will, like a ghost. But she seemed very familiar to me. I had a sense that I had met her before, though I knew that I had not. I felt that we had known one another in a different time, or perhaps that we would meet in some future time and place.

The mystery of her identity tantalized me.

She was a pretty little thing. Short. Somewhat plump. Not fat, just well rounded. She had strikingly beautiful features, with a broad sweet mouth and large brown eyes fringed with lush, curling lashes. Her hair was jet black and fell in undulating waves to the middle of her back. She had a nose like a plum and bright white teeth with short, straight, needle-like fangs.

How did I know her?

The question tormented.

Once she paused beneath my mounted head and glanced up at me with such an expression of love and pity that I would have cried out to her if only I had a throat to give my lips voice.

"Who are you?" I wanted to shout. "Where did you come from?"

It seemed, at that moment, that I was on the cusp of realization, that her identity, like a word you cannot quite recall, was right there on the tip of my tongue. I could feel the shape of it in my mind. I could almost taste it!

She seemed startled by my passionate response and vanished like a ghost into the shadows. I blinked my eyes, searching for her desperately, but she was gone, without a whisper of sound.

I began to think I was hallucinating her, as I had hallucinated my father and Brulde and all the other visitations I'd enjoyed.

Finally, one morning just after dawn, there was a sudden flurry of activity around me. The sun was still struggling, face flushed, to haul itself over the edge of the world. The clouds were streaked red and orange and pastel pink. The masters of Uroboros had already retired for the day, crawling up the face of Fen'Dagher to vanish into their cheerless crypts. The slaves of the Shol were rising to their labors. Already the whips of their mortal overseers were cracking in the humid air. It was going to be another scorching day, but it would be a day that I'd not see the end of. For as I hung there on my pike, dozing just a little, my eyes shut against the painful light, I sensed a great tumult of movement from all around me.

Now as you know, my senses are exquisitely fine. I am not gifted with any of the more outré talents some of my vampire brethren possess—I cannot read minds or move objects with my thoughts—but I can hear the beating of a gnat's wings a mile away, smell a single drop of blood at ten miles distance, watch the wind blow through a bumblebee's fur. So it was a great surprise to be surprised. And I was surprised! I was completely taken aback by the sudden appearance of some two or three dozen vampire warriors.

My warriors!

They flew over the wall to either side of me, racing toward the mountainside as if they intended to challenge Khronos in his lair. They were armed with the God King's strange metal weapons, the ones we had stolen from his warriors when we defeated them at Asharoth. They cried out boldly as they leapt over the slave huts and zigzagged through the winding alleys of the Shol. None of them were particularly powerful blood drinkers, none of them Eternals, but they were daring and brave and eager for combat.

I had not sensed their approach at all, and that was something I found both marvelous and perplexing.

Was I imagining all of this?

I did not think I was dreaming, but how would I know?

A moment later, I had that bug-buzzing-past-my-ear sensation that always accompanied the God King's Eye. He had sensed the presence of the invading troop. His Eye stabbed down from the mountain like an invisible lance, shifting rapidly to and fro as he assessed the intruders. Did I sense a note of panic in the way that invisible beam twitched around, or was that only wishful thinking? Whichever it was, I was quite certain Khronos was just as shocked as I that these invaders had gotten so close without revealing themselves to him.

I have to confess, I was flabbergasted. In many ways, my senses were finer than the God King's invisible Eye. I should have sensed these warriors while they were still miles and miles away. Moreover, I could not imagine what Zenzele thought she would accomplish with this assault. There were not nearly enough men to challenge the God King. They were racing to their own slaughter!

Even as I was thinking these things, a cloaked figure flipped down onto the wall beside me. It was the pretty young woman who had haunted the Shol the past few weeks, my maddening mystery girl. She clung insect-like to the dewy stones.

Her teeth flashed beneath the rim of her hood, lush wide mouth, fangs like needles. "Forgive me, grandfather," she said.

Forgive? I thought. Forgive for what?

An instant later, she shook open a leather rucksack. Clinging to the wall with her right hand, she clamped onto the rucksack with her teeth. With her free hand, she grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked my head off the spear. She had to pull hard, for I had sort of crusted around the shaft of the pike. It was quite painful.

"Be not afraid," she said as she fumbled my head into the pouch. "I've come to liberate you!"

I do not know if I could have spoken, even were I able.

Liberated! I cried out in my thoughts. Finally! Father, Brulde, you were right!

"I am your granddaughter Irema," she said. "Your son, Ilio, was my father."

Yes, of course! That was why she looked so familiar! She was the mortal child of Ilio and Priss! She was a babe in arms the last time I'd seen her, but their relationship was unmistakable. She greatly resembled the boy who had sired her. Same curly dark hair and large doe eyes, her features frozen by the Blood in the bloom of youth.

Where is your sister? I thought. Was Aioa also given the Living Blood?

She glanced over her shoulder toward Fen'Dagher, an anxious expression on her face, then smiled back down at me. "I mean to return you to your lover Zenzele," she said. "Pray to your ancestors we escape from the God King."

Yes! I wanted to cry. I will pray to my ancestors. I will pray to all our ancestors! Take me home, my beautiful Irema! Take me away from this terrible place!

She drew a cord to close the sack, then threw the sack across her shoulders. An instant later, she leapt over the wall.

That is what I imagined she did, anyway; I couldn't see what she was doing, being enclosed in the aforementioned sack.

She landed on the ground on the other side, my head bouncing between her shoulder blades, and then she began to run east, headed toward the Ural Mountains.

Headed toward my beloved Zenzele.