Seven Sorcerers(5)

Mahaavar’s eyes grew large, terror bleeding from his wound along with dark blood.

“We could keep you this way for eons,” Sungui said, “trapped between the edges of life and death.”

Durangshara laughed, a metallic chortle. So very cruel, that one.

“Yet I pity you, Mahaavar,” Sungui said. “Instead of this lingering punishment, we will accept you in the Ancient Way.” Mahaavar’s wet eyes closed. Sungui reached a hand to grab his throat and sang the tones of an ancient song.

The hand released the neck, and Mahaavar fell at last. His body clattered against the stones, no longer made of flesh and blood. The Ear was now a bone-pale statue, a perfect effigy of himself, dead of eye and limb. Sungui licked a finger and rubbed it along Mahaavar’s petrified cheek. He brought it to his tongue and tasted the salt. Bitter and strong as any earthly salt.

Sungui grabbed the salt figure’s wrist and broke off the entire hand with a snapping sound. He raised it to show his fellow High Seraphim that the consumption was ready. Each of them came forward, male and female, reaching down to snap off an arm, a foot, a thigh. The head was divided three ways into odd-shaped blocks of grainy salt. They broke the salted Mahaavar into a dozen white lumps, shoving each of them into their mouths, and chewed at the chalky substance.

Sungui crumbled each of the salt fingers into his hand and dropped them into his mouth, swallowing the bitterness easily as water. Then the rest of the hand, gnawed to dust and coursing down his throat while the others devoured the rest of the salt figure. When it was done, they arose from the floor with pale stains about lips and chins. All that remained between them were a few scattered grains which no slave would ever know to be any different from the seasoning used in the kitchens.

Now the circle reformed itself. The imbibed pieces of Mahaavar turned to light in their bellies. The salt-eaters glowed from mouth, nostril, and eye, until the greatness of their own spirits subsumed the ingested shards of Mahaavar.

So did members of the Old Breed die, consumed by their fellows, never tasting the sweetness of a mortal death; only divided into oblivion among those who remained. Sungui’s kind could neither be created nor truly destroyed. He hoped the death of his lover might remind these listeners of that essential fact. If so, then Mahaavar’s slaying would have some meaning. Some purpose.

Sungui led them in the meditation once again. The imbibed power settled in their stomachs and spread throughout their limbs, becoming less than noticeable. His voice guided them through the depths of forgotten ages, back into the formless void that gave birth to all things, back to the source of their common essence. Back to the days when even Zyung himself was simply One of Many, and the deep cosmos was their playground.

Now the listeners emerged from the trance, and Sungui saw it flickering in their eyes. He did not mistake it for the glow of Mahaavar’s faded essence. This was another fire. The fire of memory. The flames of outrage and epiphany. Now they remembered exactly what they used to be. They would remember for days, some even for weeks. During this time, their secret resentment would fester, and the Almighty’s rule would weigh on them like a bronze yoke.

They would realize the similarities between themselves and the humans that were so expendable. Like Sungui, they would recognize the shape of their own slavery. Yes, even the High Seraphim were but slaves in the blinding glare of His Holiness. Now they remembered this fact.

Yet they would soon forget. Zyung’s power over them always reasserted itself.

So it had been for millennia.

“Now is the time,” Sungui spoke. He met each of their gleaming eyes. “While memory lives fresh in your minds, while Zyung’s dreams of western conquest command his attention. His ambition is our opportunity. While he is distracted, we can rise up and take it all. We can end our bondage and claim his empire for our own. Join me in this, and we will be again what we were. Not Gods… but greater than Gods.”

The faces of Those Who Listen were placid pools hiding untold depths of memory and experience. Johaar looked to Mezviit, and Mezviit turned to Aldreka. In the end they all turned to lovely Lavanyia.

Lavanyia offered a smile of infuriating kindness.

Sungui’s male loins ached.

I will have her, if it takes a century.

“Sweet Sungui,” said Lavanyia. Her jeweled fingers rose to caress the muscles of his chest, not daring to plunge beneath the silvery satin, yet warm through the thin fabric. “You are well named Sungui the Venomous by those who fear you. Your ambition rivals that of His Holiness. Yet you are but a mote set to spinning about his bright sun. So are we all. Planets fixed in the gravity of his grand order. What you suggest–what you dream–is not possible.”