Chapter 9

THE GODS were watching her.

Kamala could sense them all around her as she stared into the smoke. A circle of gods watching her as she strained her Sight to the utmost, trying to manage by purely morati gifts what she had thus far failed to do with sorcery. Their expressions were impassive, revealing nothing of their purpose, but their presence raised a line of cold goosebumps along her skin.

But even when she was able to shut them out of her awareness enough to focus on her Sight, it was to no avail. Just as sorcery had failed her countless times before, her innate gift failed her now.

With a sigh she sat back on her heels, rubbing her head with weary fingers. Inside the offering bowl a perfumed scarf from Siderea Aminestas’ collection was slowly burning to ash, releasing pungent smoke along with its metaphysical resonance. Morati mystics often used such tools as a focus for their Sight, staring into the patterns of the smoke as they tried to conjure meaning from nothingness. Had she really thought that a bit of scented smoke might make a difference to a Magister? Or was the ritual aspect of it simply comforting?

Shutting her eyes for a moment, she drew in a deep breath of the scented air and tried to center her spirit. Whispers seemed to surround her, soft sounds, like the murmuring of insects. The voices of gods? She could sense them gather around her every time she made an effort to find the Witch-Queen. A dozen unknown deities, two dozen, sometimes as many as a hundred, clothed in garments that ranged from the finest silk to the coarsest hemp, in styles she did not recognize. Sorcery might net her an identification or two, picking out names and aspects from among the crowd—Sekmenit the Bloodthirsty or Utark, Lord of the Dead—but it could not tell her why they were there. The mysterious images just stood by in silence while she searched, offering neither help nor hindrance, then dissipated like the wind soon after her efforts were concluded.

If she could somehow get them to assist her—would that help? Did they know where Siderea Aminestas was? Were they trying to tell her that? Or was this about something else entirely?

With a sigh she rose to her feet. Body and soul both ached from the long hours of futile concentration. There must be a better way, she thought.

Conjuring an apple, biting deeply into its cool flesh, she gazed about the polished wooden floor and the maps that she had etched into its surface. This was the first time she had ever conjured a shelter for herself rather than claimed a structure that already existed, and if the results were somewhat bare in decor, at least it had the facilities she required. Her meditation chamber was vast, and the maps etched into its polished wooden floor all radiated out from the center of the room, as if that were the actual center of the world. Each section had been copied from some morati map, adjusted in scale and then burned into the wood with sorcery, exactly as it appeared on the original parchment. The overall result was a discordant creation, its style shifting from panel to panel, mountain ranges transforming from the hurried scratch-marks of a traveling scribe to the rich, sweeping strokes of a master cartographer as they crossed over unseen boundaries . . . but in its entirety, it effectively represented the world. Or at least as much of the world as humans had explored.

The arrangement helped her concentrate, but it did little more than that. Thus far Siderea Aminestas had defied all detection. Mere sorcery could not locate the woman. Not even hers.

But she was not willing to accept failure. It had nothing to do with the box of tokens that Colivar had hinted at, though that was certainly enticing. It had to do with pride.

Think, Kamala. Think. There must be a way.

For the hundredth time, she reviewed what she had learned about the power of the ikati, when they’d all been briefed in Kierdwyn. Their power can draw human attention toward them, or turn it away. Few ikati can manage the trick well enough to be truly invisible, but when men are distracted, they might as well be. Legends speak of human wars in which the ikati appeared suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, to feast upon the dying. It is hard to know how much that reflects their mesmeric power, since generally in the midst of battle no one stops to study the sky.

A new thought flickered briefly in the back of her head but was gone too quickly for her to attach a name to it.

If this queen can hide herself from others of her kind, she thought, then that’s probably the kind of power she’s using. Not true invisibility, but rather, an ability to make her subject look somewhere else, at something else instead.

A shiver of excitement ran through Kamala. And also dread. The thought that was taking shape in her mind had potential, but the amount of work that would be required to test it was almost too vast to imagine. A morati lifetime might not be enough for it.

Looking down at the floor surrounding her, she contemplated its scale. Tiny lines represented wide, raging rivers. A line of loosely drawn mountain peaks might represent an entire range. The whole of the territory that she had explored in her years with Ethanus took up no more space than the palm of her hand . . . if that much.

Somewhere in that vast world there would be a place she could not investigate. A place she would not investigate.

It would likely be very small. Maybe only the size of a nesting site. Invisible from a distance, just as the actual nest would be. If one were close enough to be affected by its power, could one somehow detect that effect? That would be a much larger range.

If one’s viewpoint were close enough, would that suffice?

With a shaky breath, she considered the world map laid out before her.

I cannot search every inch of it, she thought.

But the ikati did not live everywhere. They preferred stark mountains for their nesting sits. They required a source of water somewhere near open ground, so that their vast wingstroke would not be impeded when they came to drink. And since they now fed exclusively on human beings, they would want to be near a population center of some kind. During the First Age of Kings they had been drawn to the great human cities like flies to honey.

She ran her eyes down the edges of the mountain ranges, pausing at each lake, each river coursing through an open plain. (But at this scale, how many smaller ones might she miss?) She used her sorcery to determine where human habitations were clustered. (But how many morati must be in one place for a Souleater’s hunger to be satisfied?) She tried to figure out what kind of climate the creatures would prefer. (Would they flee as far south as they could, to escape the curse that once bound them, or would they stay in the north right now, where the summer days were longest? If the latter, then how far from the Wrath would they need to be to feel safe?)

Slowly, inch by inch, she edited the map with her sorcery. Erasing any locations that could not possibly meet her criteria. Sometimes that meant a whole mountain range had to go. Sometimes just a single canyon.

When she was done, she stared down at the map in silence, contemplating her results.

Well. That leaves only half the world to search. Much better.

But daunting though the undertaking was, she knew she had to try. There simply was no better option. And besides, what else was she going to do with her time? Twiddle her thumbs creating palaces on mountaintops, like some of the Magisters apparently did? This task at least had real meaning.

—And for one heart-wrenching moment she was back at Rhys’ funeral, looking down at his body. Remembering the emptiness of that moment, and the cold kiss of envy she had felt then.

Now I, too, have purpose.

She wrote to Colivar before she began. A simple note, which sorcery deposited at their secret drop point. Tell me all that you know of the sort of terrain that Souleaters prefer, she wrote. Do not try to guess at what details will be relevant, but tell me everything. Favias had briefed them in Kierdwyn, but she doubted that he knew as much as Colivar did about the ikati’s true habits. She was beginning to doubt that anyone knew as much about the Souleaters as Colivar did.

But his response might take days to come, if it came at all. There was no point in wasting all that time. Settling herself down in the center of the vast map, conjuring a pillow to rest her head on and a small bit of food and water to have by her side, she shut her eyes, sighed deeply, and extended her sorcerous senses out into the world, to begin the impossible search.