Chapter 354 - Aioa part 2

Though she might have looked like a wild animal with her tangled hair and naked, filthy body, the Eternal Sunni was startlingly intelligent and direct. When we entered our chambers at the summit of Mount Asharoth, she immediately told us of their recent adventures, including their confrontation with the God King's assassin, the fearsome Baalt. It was a remarkable contradiction, her sweet, piping child-like voice and the calm, thoughtful way she spoke. As she talked, she untied the bundle from the old man's stooped back. Chaumas muttered to himself as she deftly loosened the straps, his milky eyes rolling blindly in their sockets, neither helping nor hindering her. She removed the leather-wrapped bundle and presented it to Zenzele with a ceremonial bow, watching me from the corner of her eye. Zenzele accepted with a nod and carried it into the adjacent chamber. When she returned, Sunni finished telling us her tale, and then waited with a self-satisfied smile for her queen to decide what was to be done about the situation with the God King's assassins.

I was curious what Zenzele planned to do as well.

From the moment I was Divided and the pieces of my body hidden by the God King's minions, Zenzele had sent out search parties to find and retrieve the far-flung segments of my mutilated body. Even before my head was rescued from the wall, her trackers were combing the continent in search of my body, but it wasn't until Irema and Aioa had found and joined our alliance that any real progress was made in locating the pieces. If not for Aioa's talent for finding lost and hidden things, they might never have been recovered. It was a very big continent—even bigger then than it is now, for the seas were smaller in that long ago age-- and the pieces were very well hidden. Until now, Aioa and her team of trackers had been operating anonymously. Khronos was clever and ruthless but he was also overconfident and thus had a tendency to be shortsighted about certain things. It never occurred to him that Zenzele would try to put me back together again. It was not something he would have done—restore a fallen ally; a failed ally. He did not have feelings of love or loyalty like a normal human being and so he never imagined that his enemies would seek to restore me. It was not until my head was rescued from the wall that he began to consider what his enemies might be doing, and sent out his Eye to spy on his foes. That was how he found Aioa. She could not conceal herself from the God King as her sister could, and he immediately dispatched a group of his most fearsome warriors to stop them from saving me.

Some of that is speculation, of course. I do not know what Khronos thought and did, only what I believe he must have done. The rest Sunni told us as we held council in our chambers.

It gave me great pleasure to imagine how furious he must have been. First, when my head was stolen from the wall—right under his nose, as the old saying goes—and then when he realized my allies were retrieving the pieces of my body that he had ordered scattered to the winds. Had already recovered a few of them! He must have choked on his outrage. That he had sent Baalt, his own personal bodyguard and assassin, after my granddaughter spoke of how deeply he was infuriated by the revelation. Maybe he was even a little frightened. He did not feel love like we feel love. Not since his mother perished. But he felt fear. I know because I could feel it in his Blood. It gnawed at him like little rat's teeth, that fear.

Again, I defied him!

Again, I escaped his wrath!

I wondered if his subjects had lost their faith in him, if they had begun to question his competence as a ruler. I imagine there were whispers in some of the darker alcoves of the Fen, talk of forsaking the God King, perhaps even rumors of sedition. They must have known that we were amassing an army to rival their own, that their king had utterly failed to put down our rebellion. His mortal subjects had already revolted once, forcing him to slaughter them. How long before the immortals of Uroboros rose up against him, too? What would they do when I returned to challenge him yet again, fully restored and with an army every bit as powerful as their own?

Yes, I believed they might betray him. Not all of them. But enough to turn the tide of battle? Oh, yes! It was certainly possible!

It was Chaumas, Sunni told us, who had sensed the God King's Eye. The old man was blind, and because he was blind his four remaining senses had become especially acute. It was not a preternatural talent like Irema's ability to elude the senses of others. It was a skill that he had developed to compensate for his handicap. A natural adaptation, augmented by the Living Blood. He had sensed the God King's Eye as soon as it fell upon Aioa and her team of searchers, and made it known, despite his madness, that the God King had finally discovered what they were doing. He described a vast, flapping bat careening through the sky above their heads, but their team was very close to recovering my fourth and final limb and Aioa did not want to give up the trail.

"We are far from Uroboros," she had said (according to Sunni). "It will take at least half a cycle of the moon for the God King's forces to reach us here."

And she was right. But it took nearly that long for Aioa to locate my arm. It was far beneath the earth, in a cavern in Iraq. Shortly after recovering my limb, their party was beset by Baalt and two other Eternals, and nearly a dozen of the God King's elite guard. Aioa lost two members of her team before they managed to escape. Desperate to keep my arm from falling into the God King's hands, Aioa divided her team into two groups, leading their enemies away so that Sunni and Chaumas could safely deliver my arm to Zenzele.

"She asks that you send four Eternals," Sunni said. "She does not believe Baalt will give up his pursuit unless he sees that he is outnumbered."

"Not even then, perhaps," Drago said. He and Bhorg had accompanied us to the Aerie. Irema, Eris and several other members of the council had joined us as well. "Baalt is just as ruthless as his king, and infinitely more perverse."

If ever there was a bogeyman for vampires, in that time or any other, it was the Eternal Baalt. He was the God King's pet assassin, a brutal and sadistic creature, more animal than man. I knew him mostly from Shared memory. He was big, nearly as tall as my granddaughter's husband, with a broad, heavily muscled body and an insatiable appetite for blood. He had a thick mane of curly black hair, great bulging black eyes and fangs so large they distorted his mouth into a grotesque chimp-like leer. But what made him so frightening, amid a race of fearsome blood drinkers, was not his appearance so much as his habits. Baalt did not subsist on the blood of mortal men, which he found, he once said, as thin and tasteless as water. Baalt fed on the blood of his fellow immortals. He was incapable of Sharing, and completely bereft of human compassion. He was a true cannibal, a nightmare predator, feeding exclusively on the blood of his own kind. He enjoyed inflicting pain on other living creatures. He was aroused by the screams of his victims, amused by their pleas. He was an insatiable, unstoppable juggernaut, and Khronos had sent him after my granddaughter.

Of course we would send help. That was a foregone conclusion.

"I will go," I said, as Zenzele and the others debated whom to send.

Zenzele did not contradict me in front of the others, but I could see that she was not happy that I had volunteered. I would hear about it later, I was certain, but that did not matter. I had to go. I had to protect my granddaughter.

"And I," said Drago, with a baleful gleam in his eye. Baalt had participated in the destruction of his beloved Hannan. Drago craved revenge like other vampires thirsted for blood.

"And I, Mother," said Eris, the two-natured blood drinker.

Zenzele sighed but gave her consent. "That is three. We need one more."

"Don't even think you're leaving me behind!" Sunni declared, and when Zenzele nodded to her, giving her leave to accompany us, the girl-child gave me another of those measuring looks that made me feel so uncharacteristically self-conscious. When she gazed at me like that, eyes roaming boldly up and down my body, I wanted to cover my genitals with my hands.

I very nearly objected to the girl accompanying us. She made me uncomfortable. And she was so small! But I did not wish to insult the diminutive blood drinker, who had been working with Aioa for nearly a year by then, looking for the pieces of my Divided body. She is no child, I reminded myself. She might have the form of an adolescent girl, but Sunni was several hundred years old. Still, I did not like the way she ogled me.

Bhorg suggested we take along Rayna, the captain of his guard, and a squadron of her elite warriors.

This, also, Zenzele approved.

"But how will we find Aioa?" I asked. "If she is still fleeing from Baalt, she could be anywhere right now. Can you see through her eyes, Irema? Give us some idea where she might be headed?"

Irema's eyes glazed over as she looked inwards, testing the link she shared with her twin. After a moment, she quickened and shook her head. "I am sorry, grandfather," she said.

"It matters not," Sunni said with a smug smile. "We need only go north. Aioa will find us."

We agreed to leave at sunset the following evening. I was impatient to go, as I am always impatient, but I realized we needed time to prepare. And Sunni and Chaumas needed to feed. They had traveled far and fast and needed blood and rest before starting another journey. Zenzele called our impromptu council to a close and everyone left to prepare for the journey that lay ahead of us.

Dawn was still a blush of light on the horizon. I stood at the entrance of the Aerie, the wind feathering my hair, and gazed out across the city.

How very like a modern metropolis it was, all those lights arranged in their neat geometric patterns. They were torches rather than electric bulbs but the effect was the same. It is true, the old saw: the more things change the more they stay the same. The air, however, was sweeter. It did not stink of burned hydrocarbons and industrial pollutants. And Penthos was quieter, not nearly so frantic with human activity. Most of the mortals below were asleep in their homes, and the immortal population glided through the avenues of their inner canton with their usual ethereal grace. They were just specks from where I stood, ants trundling around an anthill. How easy it would be to place myself above them. Well, in fact I had, up here in the Aerie. I looked down on them like a god.

It seemed dangerous to think such things. Power is so very seductive.

Zenzele was staring a hole in my back.

"You do not wish me to go on this mission?" I finally asked.

"You are still weak. You have yet to gain full control of your body," she said. "If you should fall into the God King's hands again--!"

"I won't."

"Baalt is powerful and cunning."

"As am I."

"Powerful, yes. But cunning? Ruthless?"

I turned to her. "I can be cunning. I shall be ruthless."

She drew near, put her arms around my neck. We were more nearly the same height now that I wore another man's body. Her eyes were on the same level as mine. I expected to see anger or reproach in those eyes, but I saw only love and grudging amusement.

"You are not nearly as ruthless as our adversaries, my love, and you will never be," she said. "But you are stubborn, and that is one of the reasons I love you."

I smiled, relieved, and kissed her on the nose. "What other reasons do you love me?"

She tilted her head to one side, thinking about it a moment. "You are noble. You are well meaning. You are brave and kind."

"Hung like an aurochs?" I proffered.

"Not anymore," she said mischievously.

"A temporary hardship."

"Let's pray it is so."

It is a longstanding tradition for wives to see their husbands off to battle with a night of passionate lovemaking.

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