The conspirators no longer met in person.
They met in spirit while they slept, slipping one by one into Ianthe’s Red Dream.
They floated like phantoms draped in moonlight, gathered above a black abyss of stars. A city of black, barbed towers flamed in the distance, a red jungle steaming about its walls. A river of blood ran from the city, flowing through the air above the abyss. In the crimson flow dark shapes floated like corpses, an endless parade of the dead that reminded Sungui of the slaughter in the valley. Perhaps this river was the dream version of the tainted Orra. The corpses here must then be the souls of those who died today.
Of the one thousand and twenty High Seraphim in service to Zyung, thirteen were currently between physical forms, their spirits trapped in their private sanctums back in the Holy City. One of these was Damodar, who was bested by the Feathered Serpent at Ongthaia. That left a thousand and seven possible additions to Ianthe’s plot against the Almighty. She had approached them all in dreams the night before the battle, save for the four who had already joined her. Now five hundred High Seraphim floated above the river of blood, their silver robes painted in shades of rose and scarlet.
Sungui, Durangshara, Lochdan, and Bahlah hovered near to Ianthe. The Panther stood handsome as a Goddess and tall as Zyung in the dream, looking over the faces of those she had won to her coven. Gammir wore his wolf form, his fur dark and ruddy, his eyes red as flame. Ianthe caressed his shaggy neck as she greeted the dreamers with a smile.
“Children of Antiquity,” said the Panther. “Brothers and Sisters of the Old Breed. You have entered this dream to seal our pact. The Living Empire is rightfully yours, and so it shall be. You have remembered the taste of unfettered liberty, the joys of serving only yourself, and you will do so again. When Zyung falls, his Living Empire is yours, as the Land of the Five Cities will once again be mine.”
The five hundred faces stared at Ianthe with sparkling eyes. There was no sound in the Red Dream but Ianthe’s voice. The corpses floating down the blood river sometimes displayed open mouths, but their screams were silent. They could not escape the red current, if that indeed was their desire.
“Seven dawns from now we sail for Uurz, where the sorcerers of this land will make their stand against Zyung,” Ianthe said. “Remember what I have told you. Look to me in the hour of Zyung’s challenge. You must withhold your aid and strike down those of your brethren who would defend the High Lord. Yet many of those who resist now will join us in the final moment, when they see that Zyung’s fall is inevitable. You must be prepared to send them to salt if they do not. None can be spared.”
Durangshara moved forward from the masses. “We should have struck today, when the Giant-King faced Zyung and sent him to iron.”
Ianthe faced him as a tiger faces its prey. Gammir growled and bared red fangs.
“You are a fool, Sweet One,” said Ianthe. “It was not Vireon who imprisoned Zyung in iron, nor could that prison hold him for long. The God-King has not truly been challenged yet. You will see the true power of the Five Cities when Iardu the Shaper rises against him with his own coven of Old Breed.”
Durangshara dropped his eyes, embarrassed. Only the Panther could do this to him. Anyone else would have drawn only his wrath.
Sungui gazed across the phantom faces. All of Those Who Remember had come with the exception of Lavanyia, whose devotion to Zyung was flawless. Yet here stood broad-chested Eshad, golden Myrinhama, the alchemists Gulzarr and Darisha, and the triple-bonded Johaar, Mezviit, and Aldreka, along with hundreds of their kind.
How does she sway them so deeply, when my ceremonies have only failed to do so?
A pang of jealousy poisoned Sungui’s dreaming thoughts.
Why was Ianthe’s power to stir rebellion so superior to his own?
Because she has never been Diminished. She has not spent thousands of years in the presence of Zyung, sinking ever deeper into the pattern of his Great Idea. She was not part of the Living Empire. Of course her powers are greater.
She is closer to what we all were in the Age of Blood and Flame.
To what we will be again.
“Patience,” whispered Ianthe, yet every dreamsoul heard the word. “Iardu has not come yet… but he will come. Zyung expects to face him, knows the depth of his power. This is why he brings every High Seraphim to Uurz, save for a single one. Zyung knows that the conquering of the green-gold city will be done not with spear and sword, but with sorcery. Yet he does not know that he will fall instead. And that you, his rightful heirs, will claim his great continent.”
The five hundred faces were silent, smiling, hungry with memory. Like a pack of wild dogs, they would be set loose upon the earth. To rend and run and slay and feed as they once did. Sungui felt that same hunger, the lust for a return to independence. The thirst for power and glory and the advent of red chaos. Today’s battle had been the merest taste of the grand slaughters that would come when the Old Breed were free of Zyung’s long dream.