Chapter 344 - The Body Politic part 2

It lay prone upon the floor, white and waxen and lifeless looking. Yul's body was big boned and heavily muscled, with large calloused hands and feet. His culture, wherever he hailed from, practiced ritual scarring. There were intricate patterns inscribed upon his chest and shoulders and upper arms, the scar tissue thick and raised. His body was nearly hairless, and he had a short, thick, mushroom-shaped penis. If circumstances were different, I would not have given him a second look, but since I would be wearing this flesh until all the pieces of my own body were recovered, I was understandably curious.

I could not say that I was pleased, but it would do.

If it worked!

Zenzele knelt beside the lifeless figure. "Remember, it is like Sharing," she said. "He will try to take control. You must assert your dominance. Do not let him take possession of your mind."

I blinked once for yes. The others watched from the far side of the chamber, their faces taut, the light of the torches glimmering in their eyes. Hammon and Bhorg had joined us. They had helped carry the Eternal's body to Zenzele's quarters. Hammon leaned against the wall of the cave, arms crossed. Bhorg leaned upon his hammer, a skeptical expression on his face. Eris, Irema, Tapas, Usus. They all watched, which made me extremely self-conscious. I did not want them to see me fail.

Zenzele placed my head beside the stump of Yul's neck, pressing the edges together.

She waited, watching anxiously.

Nothing happened.

She leaned forward and adjusted my head, pressing the ends of our two tattered necks more firmly to one another, as if our flesh could be molded together like clay.

Still nothing.

She sat back, looking down at me thoughtfully, then gashed her wrist with her eyeteeth. She leaned forward and dribbled some of her blood onto the edges of our wounds. It was just a few drops, as her flesh healed almost instantly, but I felt the icy fluid trickle down the side of my neck.

Nothing.

She scrubbed her mouth, looking perplexed. "Eris," she said, "go down into the city and fetch some mortal blood from one of the temples."

"Yes, Mother," the hermaphrodite bowed. He turned and vanished around the bend in the chamber.

Zenzele did not speak. No one spoke, but I could see that they were all disturbed. Hammon and Bhorg looked meaningfully at one another. Perhaps they'd laid bets on whether this would work or not. It would not be out of character for the two. They wagered on everything. Usus paced restlessly, waiting for Eris to return. Irema wrung her hands and fretted. Tapas stood behind her, massaging her shoulders. There were some others, blood drinkers I did not recognize. They must be newly made, I thought, or Zenzele had taken them into her confidence in my absence.

I had been anxious about the pain of the joining before, but now I began to worry that it would not work at all, that I had been in this bodiless state for too long. Perhaps my head had forgotten what it was to have a body. Perhaps my Living Blood had grown too weak from lack of nourishment. Maybe it would only work with my own body. My Living Blood might not be compatible with this foreign flesh.

Eris returned quickly. He passed Zenzele a stoppered gourd and then stepped back as if it might explode.

"Thank you, Eris," Zenzele said, removing the gourd's plug.

"You're welcome, Mother."

"If you hold to any gods, pray that this works," Zenzele said to our audience, and then she tilted the gourd and poured the bright red blood onto my neck.

It was warm, fresh. My thoughts quickened as the smell wafted up to my nose. Zenzele moved the gourd so that the stream of blood fell down upon my lips, into my open mouth, and then she upended the container over my neck, pouring out the remainder.

At first, I was too overwhelmed with pleasure to realize what was happening, or if anything was happening at all. The mortal blood had kindled a blazing fire of want in me! I wanted more! I needed it! No congress of engorged genitalia, male or female, could match the sheer physical pleasure I experienced when that warm blood splattered down upon my lips and tongue. I swirled the blood in my mouth, relishing the taste of it, its slippery texture. My eyes rolled back in ecstasy, and then…

!!!PAIN!!!

Had I ever known such agony? I do not think so. The pain I felt as my flesh merged with that other's made the torments of my original transformation seem like a mild ache in comparison. It was worse than the pain I had felt when I cast myself into the glacial crevasse. That pain, when a vast shelf of ice collapsed and crushed me to paste, was at least mercifully quick. There was only a moment of agony before oblivion erased my feeling of it. This pain seemed to go on and on and on.

This is what happened:

When tendrils of my Living Blood, stimulated by the mortal blood Zenzele had poured on me, threaded out of my disembodied head to absorb the nourishment, it encountered the like flesh of that other Eternal's body. Thinking it my own missing body perhaps, the Blood seized onto that other flesh and drew it to mine, then began to knit together the edges of our two truncated forms. It joined us, cell by cell, layer by layer. As damaged nerve endings twined together, waves of coruscating pain shivered through my consciousness. As vertebrae fused, as our two spinal cords mated, bright bolts of agony thunderclapped in my brain. For two years I had lived without the sensations of a body. Those sensations, which now seemed alien to me, overwhelmed my consciousness. I felt as if I had been swept up in a burning maelstrom, a whirlwind of sizzling white fire, with nothing to shelter me from the light and heat, and no way to protect myself.

But the worst part was the Sharing.

In preparing the Eternal's body for this endeavor, Zenzele and her compatriots had drained the headless figure of most of its Blood, leaving only enough of the Strix to maintain its vital processes. If they had not drained the Blood, I believe Yul's personality would have overwhelmed my own. We Share when we exchange blood because our personalities and memories imprint themselves upon the formless symbiote that is our Living Blood. The Strix, which does not think for itself, except perhaps in the most rudimentary way, preserves much of our thoughts and experiences. In essence, it is a biological hard drive, and when I joined with the remains of the vanquished Clan Master, our Blood merged as well, and I felt the Eternal's psyche coalesce with my own.

The Eternal's thoughts and experiences flooded into my mind. To say that it was disorienting was like saying the moon is a pebble in the sky, or the ocean a puddle. For a moment, I did not know who I was, where I was or even when I was. I was Gon, protector of the People, but I was also Yul, born of a tribe of hunter-warriors called the Gorlo. These people endured an austere existence in the cold climes of what is today Northern Russia. They lived along the White Sea, hunting seals and raiding their neighbors to the south when the hunting was poor and the sea frozen over. They were a fierce, proud, stubborn people with a strict code of conduct. I remembered Yul's father (or was it my father) telling him (or was it me), "It is the law of nature that men must kill to live. You must never feel pity for your enemies, nor remorse for the killing of them, for they are not your brothers, nor will they show you mercy in the field of battle. You will only know what it is to be alive, truly alive, when the blood of your enemies drips hot and wet from your hands, when you have taken their children as slaves and put your seed in their women. It is only by strength and ruthlessness that our people survive. Weakness, pity, these things are forbidden to the Gorlo. Surrender to your enemy, Yul, turn from them in battle, and you are not my son. You are not Gorlo."

I remembered the first seal he (I) killed, and the feast they held in honor of him (me). I remembered the first man he killed, and how he had stared at the bloody snow afterwards, reminded of that first seal and thinking that his father was right. Men must kill to live. The truth was self-evident. This man had tried just as hard to kill him, had he not? Killing did not trouble Yul's mind after that, for what other choice did he have? He did not want to die.

He took the man's woman as his mate. He dragged her from their hut and raped her right there in the bloody snow, beside the dead man's body. She fought, but he beat her until she lay still for him, then put his seed inside of her, as custom held a warrior should do. Her name was Inu, and she eventually became a good wife for Yul. Theirs was a harsh and unforgiving environment and she needed a powerful mate to protect her and provide for her children, so she put aside her anger and got on with the work of living. She even stopped trying to kill Yul in his sleep. She sometimes thought about her first husband, when she was angry with Yul or upset. Tomas was a good man. Funny and kind. But Yul was stronger, more ruthless, a better provider. She bore Yul three children before she died. By then he had a second wife, a woman-child named Fenna, so it was not too much of a hardship. Yul survived. Two of his sons and one of his daughters survived to adulthood.

And then the foreigners came.

He had never seen their like before, the foreigners from the south. They had the shape of men but their skin was as pale as the skin of the beluga whales the Gorlo sometimes hunted. The foreigners were powerfully strong, able to kill the mightiest Gorlo warrior with a single blow, and they could move faster than the eye could follow. They did not die when they were wounded. They plucked spears and arrows from their flesh as though they were splinters. They had fangs like wolves and their wounds healed with incredible speed. Strangest of all, their injuries did not bleed red as all other living creatures bled. Instead, their blood was black, and seemed to crawl upon the earth when it was spilled like a thing that was alive unto itself.

There were only five of them, but they defeated every man who dared to challenge them. Eight men died in combat before the Gorlo conceded defeat. The strange foreigners took twenty of their tribesmen as tribute. Before departing, the leader of the foreigners told their chieftain that they would return in five cycles of the seasons. When they returned, the white-skinned stranger said, the Gorlo could elect to surrender their unwanted to the raiders, or they could defy their new masters and be defeated again.

Their chieftain, who was not nearly as honorable as Yul's father had been, said nothing. Merely stood with his head hanging, cradling the arm the slavers had broken.

This Yul learned later, as he was knocked unconscious fairly early in the battle.

He was outraged when he came to. His daughter was one of the tribesmen the raiders had taken. He tried to exhort his fellow Gorlo to pursue the pale marauders but none would step forward and join him in his quest. They just stood there, looking down at their feet like shamefaced children. A couple of the men even had the audacity to shout him down.

"It is a fool's errand," they cried. "How can we hope to defeat them? Look how they tore poor Rudo to pieces!"

"Cowards!" he raged. If looks could kill, all of his tribesmen would be dead at his feet. "You should squat and piss from this day forth. You've let fear unman you. Fine, I will go alone! Unlike you, I still remember the face of my father!"

His father, who was still alive, looked both proud and ashamed. When Yul departed, the old man embraced him as if for the last time.

"It is better for a man to die young and in battle, if what he fights for is honorable, than old and in shit-stained bedding," he said.

It was the last homily his father ever shared with him.

Yul pursued the raiders on his own. He caught up with them the following evening. The slavers seemed shocked when he came stomping over the hill, brandishing his spear and challenging them to combat. But they only laughed at him when they recovered from their surprise. Their leader, a tall fair-haired blood drinker named Onus, struck a bargain with Yul. They would release his daughter if Yul could best the least of them in battle. Yul fell, of course, but not before he landed a lucky blow with his blade, ending the life of the T'Sukuru they pit against him. He awoke sometime later that night, bound with all the other slaves, and demanded that he and his daughter be released.

"We had a deal, Onus," he protested, jerking at the cords tied round his wrists. "You said you would release my daughter if I defeated the least of your men in combat."

"You were the one who fell first," Onus said.

"Your man died," Yul said. "I still live."

"Maybe he died," Onus said with a sly grin, "but he still stood longer than you did."

Yul cursed them, calling them every foul word he could think of-- and the language of his people had a good deal of profanities. The slavers laughed at him some more. The madder he got, the louder they laughed. Finally, they tired of his curses and beat him, but they did not beat him too badly. They might have beaten him to death, but Onus held up a hand to stay them. He seemed more impressed than angry with Yul. There was something about the seal hunter that amused the pale blood drinker. He asked Yul his name, and when Yul answered, he nicknamed him "Yul the Defiant". When they arrived in Uroboros, rather than selling him at the slave market, or putting him to work in the rock mines, Onus presented him to his God King.

When Onus told his king how Yul had defeated a blood drinker in single combat, the lord of the slavers was impressed.

"Do this again and I will set you free, Yul the Defiant," the God King said.

Yul had smirked. "That is what your raiders promised, yet here I am," he said, waving his bound hands.

The God King scowled. "I am the lord of all I survey. Do you think I would trouble myself with deceiving you? If you win, you go free. If you lose, you die. I care not which it is, only that it amuses me."

Looking around at the hissing, glowering creatures that encircled him, Yul was more frightened than he had ever been in his life, but he knew that he must not show his fear. He maintained his cocky demeanor, and scoffed at the God King's honor. "Is this to be a fair fight then? I am exhausted. I have not eaten in days. Feed me, let me rest a day, and then I will best your finest warrior."

They had all laughed at that, even the God King. Their uproar resounded through the chamber. When the God King finally had himself under control, wiping at the blood tears that had trickled down his cheeks, he waved a hand and said, "I will feed you. I will give you time to rest. In fact, I will give you one full cycle of the moon to rest and train your body, Yul the Defiant. Then you will return here, to my court, and battle the warrior of my choosing in single combat." He turned, still smiling, and addressed one of his advisors. Yul had been dismissed.

Yul did not trust the God King's promises. These cold-skinned blood drinkers had no honor, but what else was he to do?

Two of the king's guard stepped forward and took him by the arms. He resisted, calling out to their master.

"And my daughter? Will you release her as well?"

Khronos turned back to him, looking vaguely annoyed. "I will set her free as well," he said. He held up a finger, arching one of his hairless eyebrows. "If you are victorious."

So it was settled. For one full cycle of the moon, Yul would be housed and cared for in the Arth. When he had recovered his strength, and the injuries he had sustained during his trek to Uroboros had healed, he would be brought before the God King once again. An opponent would be selected for him—by Khronos himself!—and he would fight for his and his daughter's freedom.

His daughter was returned to him. They were put up in a strange stone apartment that overlooked the slave district. Yul embraced his daughter, told her what had transpired, and then he rested. He slept for two days straight. When he arose, his daughter prepared a great break fast for him, and then he began to train. He did not wait for his injuries to heal. He was not injured half as badly as he had pretended. He sent his daughter out into the city while he exercised, with instructions to learn all that she could of these blood drinkers and their ways. In the evening, his daughter returned to their quarters and reported everything she had learned of these strange people. "These T'Sukuru were men just like us once," she told him. "They say they are gods, that they cannot be killed, but it is not true. All but a very few of them can die. You need only wound the heart, or cut off the head, and they die just like ordinary men."

"Even the gods can die," Yul said, smiling grimly. He thought of his father's words as he said it, and then he returned to his training.

The day came. Yul was escorted to the throne room. Khronos selected a blood drinker named Erbour as his opponent. Erbour was young, newly made, not particularly powerful but beautiful and brash. He danced around Yul as they fought, capering for their audience. He mocked the seal hunter from the north, and threatened to have his way with his daughter once he'd slain his foe. Yul fought the vainglorious fool with grim determination, ignoring his mockery, ignoring the laughter and shouted insults of the vampire courtiers.

And once again he vanquished his foe.

He killed the blood god with a blow to the heart.

He knew from the outset that it would be impossible for him to defeat his foe in a fair contest, so he did the only thing he could think of to win the fight. He resorted to trickery. Yul fended off his adversary as long as he was able to, fighting with all of his might, and when at last his strength began to wane, he pretended to stumble on the uneven floor of the throne room and feigned an injury.

At once, their audience shouted for his blood. "He's hurt his leg!" they cried to Erbour. "Finish him now!"

As he struggled to rise to his feet, gasping and clutching at his knee, the overconfident young blood god moved in for the kill. Yul let him draw near, throwing his free hand out as if to ward off the killing blow. He did this to obscure the blood drinker's vision. Overconfident, assured of his victory, Erbour closed in, batting away his hand. It was then, while his foe was partially blinded, that Yul thrust his blade up and into the blood god's heart.

Erbour's dagger dropped to the floor and shattered. "You've killed me," the young blood god gawped, standing nose to nose with Yul. Already his flesh was shriveling to his bones, the Living Blood devouring him from within.

"All men must kill to live," Yul panted, blood and sweat dripping from his face.

"Then die with me," Erbour said, and he plunged his hands into his opponent's abdomen. Baring his teeth, the blood drinker tore open Yul's stomach, disemboweling him in one brutal stroke.

Yul stayed on his feet until his opponent had crumpled to the floor, flesh still shriveling to his bones. When he had gone still, Yul's foe looked as if he had died ages rather than moments ago. Yul stood, holding his intestines in his hands as the God King rose from his throne. The chamber had fallen silent. All the courtiers stared in awe as Khronos approached the swaying mortal. Yul stood panting in the middle of the court, trying to hold onto his slippery guts. A puddle of blood was swelling around his feet, but he would not fall. Not until the God King had acknowledged his victory.

"Make good your bargain," Yul wheezed. "If you have any honor, release my daughter as you agreed you would do. I may be dying, but I stayed on my feet longer than your champion. I have won. Do not deny me this victory, T'Sukuru."

Khronos looked at the pile of withered bones Yul's foe had crumbled to, then grinned at the seal hunter. "It is true," the God King nodded. "You are the victor."

An instant later, he sprang upon Yul.

Yul struggled against the monarch of the blood drinkers, but Khronos's strength was irresistible. The God King bore the man to the ground, then stuffed Yul's organs back inside his torso. "Why do you resist?" he asked. "I am saving your worthless life." He vomited black blood onto Yul's mangled abdomen, healing the lethal injury. Then he pried open the seal hunter's mouth and brought forth another great torrent of blood, forcing the man to swallow the vile fluid, putting it inside of him.

The agony was terrific. All-encompassing.

They took Yul away as he writhed and screamed, fiery ice threading through his veins. "What have you done to me?" he wailed as they dragged him from the throne room. His flesh had turned white. Fangs were sprouting from his gums.

"I've freed you," Khronos said. "Just as I promised. I've freed you from death, and from all your mortal flaws. You may thank me later, seal hunter."

They took him to the God King's priests, who saw him through that terrible agony. All day long, he writhed and howled. He begged the priests to kill him. Anything to stop the pain. Were he still a mortal man, his screams would have ruptured his throat.

Slowly, the pain gave way to hunger. They gave him fresh mortal blood to drink, and bathed his cold white new body. He arose, a powerful Eternal, blood child of the God King himself. And the first thing he did, when they released him from their temple, was go down to the Arth and give his daughter the Blood.

Yanwe screamed when she first saw him, and struggled against him when he seized her and put his mouth over hers, but she could no more resist him than Yul had been able to resist the God King. Carrying her shuddering body to the Fen, he left her in the care of the priests who had seen to his transformation. "I will return," he said, brushing her hair from her brow, and then he went to the throne room of the king of the vampires.

As he approached the God King's seat, he mused on how foolish he had been. Twice, he had allowed these T'Sukuru leeches to deceive him. What was honor, he thought, but a word used to dupe the gullible. His father was a fool, and he had infected Yul with his foolishness. There was no such thing as honor. There was only strength and weakness. Kill or be killed.

Khronos eyed him keenly as he approached. "Have you come to challenge me, Defiant One?" he asked. The God King's eyes were black and depthless. If he thought that Yul might threaten him in some way, he gave no sign of concern. He sat upright, an expression of great surprise breaking across his face, when Yul knelt at his feet.

"You said that you would free me if I won, and you did," Yul said, placing his brow against the floor. "You have freed me from my mortal limitations. You have freed me from death. I renounce my tribe, and I renounce their ways. I thought that they were an honorable people. But they were not honorable. They were just fools. Cowards and fools. From this night forth, I swear my fealty to you, mighty Khronos, king of kings, god of the heavens and the earth. You have shown me the true way. I am yours, if you will have me."

The God King rose triumphantly. Above all else, he valued strength, and Yul was strong. This man, this seal hunter from the north, was strong and utterly fearless. It was no great surprise that the Blood had made him an Eternal.

"Yes!" Khronos hissed. "Yes, I will have you!"

And though he meant it, though he did renounce his people in his heart, never forgiving the way they had turned their backs on him, Yul never forgot his father's lessons.

"It is the law of nature that men must kill to live."

It was the truth, but it was an incomplete truth, for it was not just men who must kill to live. It was all living things. There was not one living creature in all the world that did not kill to live. The wolf. The seal. Even the hare was a merciless killer of clover. And the blood gods of Uroboros were the living embodiment of that truth.

"It is the law of nature that men must kill to live."

The old man's grim maxim rang inside my skull as my head joined with the Eternal's headless body, as our memories and personalities battled for supremacy. Though Yul's body was brainless, his Blood was powerful, and his memories were vivid and intensely felt. My mortal life of ease—easy in comparison to Yul's harsh upbringing—my deficit of hatred, put me at a disadvantage, and Yul's memories began to overwhelm my own. My personality waned as his waxed stronger and stronger. He was absorbing me, taking possession of my mind, devouring me in much the same way that we, the T'sukuru, devour the blood of the living.

No!

I am Gon! Son of Gan. Grandson of Gen. Husband of Eyya, Nyala and Brulde. Father of Gan, Hun, Breyya, Gavid, Den and Leth. I am the blood father of Ilio, the last of the Denghoi. I loved him like he was my own son. I am the lover of the goddess Zenzele. I am Thest, protector of the Tanti. I am the Father, and sworn enemy of the God King. I will not be enslaved by this perfidious T'sukuru, this hunter of seals, who forsook his own people because they dared to disappoint him. I guarded my people for a thousand years. I sat with the bones of my loved ones for a thousand more before I bowed down to despair and gave myself to the ice. I will not be devoured by the likes of you!

He was there, inside my mind, inside the Blood that was slowly merging with my own. Yul, the Defiant One. "It is the law of nature that men must kill to live!" he shouted and then he put his hands around my throat.

"Do not quote your father's words to me," I hissed, "you, who turned his back on his own father, who renounced his tribe and all their ways. You knelt before the fiend who enslaved your tribe, who even now devours your mortal offspring!"

I slapped away his throttling grip even as he gaped at me in surprise and shame. I wrapped my hands around his throat then and pressed against him, driving him back.

"Love is the backbone of the spirit," I said, forcing him to his knees. "Love of family. Love of friends. It is selfless. Unconditional. Indestructible."

His eyes bugged out. His tongue popped from his mouth.

"You fight for yourself," I snarled, sinking my fingers into the meat of his neck, "but I fight for them all!"

I tore his metaphorical head from his metaphorical shoulders. He slumped to my feet, headless and shuddering.

As I thought…

"Spineless!" I said, lurching upright beside Zenzele.

She stumbled back with a gasp. Everyone fell back as I bolted upright. I do not think they believed it would work.

I turned my head on my glorious new neck, drew air into my lungs… and spoke once again.

"My beloved," I said.