At the far end of the Arth, the cliffs upon which the district had been built were broken into discrete platforms. Those platforms rose, one after the other, like the risers of a staircase, and were connected to the rest of the district by an elaborate network of ladders and rope bridges. With each progressive step, the homes grew larger and more opulent, their gardens lusher, their embellishments more extravagant. That was where the elite resided—or had resided. Though the inhabitants of that preeminent strata had cut loose the ladders and swinging rope bridges that connected their properties to the rest of the Arth, the rebels had managed to get across anyway. A good number of them were immortals now, and would have no trouble leaping the twenty or so meters to each successive area. Or climbing the sheer rock face of the mountain before dropping down atop their enemies.
We crossed the lethal chasms in like fashion, moving steadily toward the Fen. I expected a little more resistance here—surely here, amid these rich and sprawling villas—but there was just death and death and more death. The rich, it seems, die just as easily as the poor. More easily, in some cases, softened as they are by their self-indulgent lifestyles.
We encountered only one survivor in the upper-class neighborhood. Well, two actually. A mother and her child. The child was a babe in arms, the woman full-figured and handsome. A new mother, too, judging by the smell of her.
She came running around the corner of a palatial dwelling as we crossed the cobbled piazza in front, eyes bulging, flesh glistening with fear sweat. She saw us, skidded to a stop, and then stood gaping at us, too terrified to move. Neither party spoke. She stared at us, breasts rising and falling rapidly, and we stared at her. None of our group made any kind of move towards her, aggressive or otherwise. Finally, she broke.
She turned abruptly and fled to the edge of the cliff. Before anyone could move to stop her, the new mother flung her child off the side of the mountain and then followed her baby with a desolate wail.
I just stood there staring, paralyzed by the horror of it all. And then I thought, I would have done the same.
If all hope seemed lost.
And I'm sure it seemed hopeless to her, with all the chaos and bloodshed and the smoke from the burning city below enveloping her home like some demonic winding sheet. Even now, the air resounded with the screams of the dying, the roar of the flames, the clash of weapons. Every breath tasted of ash.
I felt pity for her and her child. I felt despair, and had to remind myself that the young woman probably kept slaves. The child might have been an innocent, but the mother was not. No adult here in the Arth was innocent.
Put aside your sentimentality, fool! You've killed hundreds here tonight. Thousands, perhaps. And there is one more still to go. The only one that really matters.
If he could be killed.
I believed now that he could.
Drago had said that Sunni was killed. The little Eternal had been ripped apart, and the pieces of her body passed around so that they could be completely drained of the Living Blood. The Sharing prevented us from preying on our own kind. When we drank the potashu of another immortal being, we suffered a temporary paralysis as the memories of our victim passed through the Blood into our consciousness. It gave the victim a moment to break free, to flee from their aggressor. But if there were many such aggressors, each imbibing just a little of the Blood… and if the same thing could be done to the God King…
"Quickly!" I shouted to the group, most of whom were also stunned by the young woman's desperate act. "We are almost there!"