Ali Gamal's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

The stones worked. Ali stood in the market at noon and watched vampires walk under open sun. Hundreds of them. Each wore a moonstone coated in the White Domnitor's blood-light. None burned. The White Domnitor had walked out first, at dawn, into the square. He fed on animals, not people. The clans hated him. But he had gone first, alone, to prove the stones held. Now all of Walachia poured into the streets to follow him. Ali moved through the grand market rows, past shops open in daylight for the first time. Vampires drank wine at tables under the sun. They laughed. They wept. Someone had rolled barrels from a cellar and cracked them in the square. The whole kingdom fell into a drunken celebration. Ali watched a soldier drink from his boot and knew his work had changed everything. He had done it. Vampires walked in the day. Carmilla found him against the wall of a stone bazaar. His romantic pursuer, the countess who wanted a clan of her own in Styria. She wore black lace under the bright sky she had never seen. She held two cups and gave him one. "You made this," she said. "Every vampire here owes you their day." "They owe the White Domnitor," Ali said. "His blood coats every stone." Carmilla drank. Her red eyes moved over the crowd. "Then you have a problem. The clans will not thank the man they want dead. They will take his gift and hate the giver." Ali looked where she looked. The White Domnitor stood alone in the center of the square. Vampires drank all around him. None drank with him. They wore his light on their chests and turned their backs on his face. "The stones drain," Ali said. "By dusk they are spent. Every dawn needs fresh coating. Every coat needs his blood." "So the day belongs to him," Carmilla said. "Not to you. Not to Dracula. To a half-witch who feeds on rabbits." She set her cup down. "Give the work to me. I will free you from him. Nobles pay for a thing they can hold without shame." Ali said nothing. He watched a drunk vampire stagger into the White Domnitor and shove past without a word of thanks. The sun poured down on the whole reveling kingdom. Every wearer would need a new coat tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that. He had solved the sunlight. He had made a kingdom drunk with joy. But he had built a chain, and it ran straight to the most hated vampire in Walachia. If the White Domnitor stopped, or the clans killed him, every stone would go dark by noon. Ali set down his cup. "I need my own source of the light," he said. "One that does not bleed from him." Carmilla smiled. "Then let me help you find it."