Chapter 35

KAMALA STEPPED through the portal braced for trouble. Her own inspection of the anchors had indicated no malevolent intent attached to them—certainly no trickery by Farah’s people—but that didn’t mean that Siderea’s people hadn’t figured out what was going on and set a trap of their own. Not to mention that it would take very little effort for a witch of Siderea’s caliber (or was she a sorcerer now?) to alter a scout’s memory so that he reported falsehoods without knowing it, or overlooked the obvious in his reconnaissance.

But when she stepped through the portal, there was no hostile army waiting for her, nor any sign of a sorcerous trap. She summoned her power quickly, wrapping herself and her immediate surroundings in the gift of the ikati queen so that neither human eye nor superhuman power would be able to detect her. But when the portal had first appeared, there had been no such protection, and whoever or whatever was standing guard in this place might have taken note of it. So she was doubly wary, and she scoured the land and sky with both her physical and her supernatural sight, alert for any sign that someone had taken an interest in her arrival.

It appeared that no one had.

The land surrounding Jezalya was flat and desolate, with a few stark ridges of black rock to the east—were those the mountains?—and little else to look at. The sun had not yet risen here, and the predawn light gave the entire landscape a hazy gray quality in which it was hard to make out details. Not that there was much to see. The utter starkness of the empty plain made the badlands surrounding Tefilat seem downright festive by comparison, and as Kamala shivered in the chill morning air, she wondered why anyone in their right mind would choose to live in a place like this.

When she was finally satisfied that no one had detected her arrival, she conjured a message to let Colivar know that all was well. A moment later a second portal appeared, considerably larger than her own. Salvator’s people began to come through, each new arrival moving out of the way quickly to make way for the next. Last of all came the High King himself. He nodded as he took note of the markers Kamala had set up, indicating the boundary of her protective spell. As long as they all stayed within that area, no one on the outside would be able to detect them.

Or so they hoped. But Kamala herself didn’t know the exact range of her ikati power, so nothing was certain.

She wondered if Salvator would have forbidden her from using that power if he’d known she was a Magister. She was the only one in this crowd—possibly the only person in existence—who could guarantee them true invisibility, to the point where even Siderea’s power would be unable to detect them. Without Kamala’s sorcery the invaders would have been unable to arrive on this plain before the actual moment of attack, so they would have had no chance to take stock of their surroundings or establish a base camp before engaging the enemy. Would that have been enough to justify the use of sorcery in his mind? Or would even that have fallen short? She was a survivor by nature and could not conceive of throwing a good tool away just because the wrong person had provided it.

She could hear Salvator and Favias giving orders to the small cadre of soldiers and witches who had arrived with them, as they unpacked supplies and began to erect a canvas awning over the arrival site. The size of the first team had been kept to a minimum in respect of her sorcerous boundaries, but even so, there suddenly seemed to be a lot of people in the desert. Salvator and Favias had arrived to command the overall campaign, Shina to direct the witches, Gwynofar to bolster the lyr’s special abilities, and Ramirus to protect Gwynofar. Small teams of witches and warriors stood ready to take up positions surrounding the city as soon as they were given the word to move out. The witches were all carrying silk scarves and jeweled trinkets from the box that Colivar had once given Kamala, treasured possessions of the Witch-Queen that presumably still carried her resonance. Using those items as anchors, they would be able to focus their witchery on Siderea herself, instead of wasting time and energy on more generalized conjurations. Even Ramirus carried a bright pink scarf tucked into his belt, its beaded ends tinkled as he moved. The utter incongruousness of it would have been amusing had its purpose not been so lethal.

She saw Colivar standing some distance from the others, staring out into the darkness. She didn’t know how to reach out to him, or even if she should. He must be afraid—what man wouldn’t be, given his role in this campaign?—but if he wouldn’t even acknowledge that fear to himself, how could anyone help him address it?

She came up to where he was standing, and for a moment just gazed silently out into the darkness beside him. A faint gray shape was slowly becoming visible in the center of the great plain. Colivar turned one of the bone fragments over in his hand as he stared at it, his fingers unconsciously tracing the symbols etched into its surface. Kamala knew that the other half of this anchor was buried outside the House of Gods, but no more details had been given to them. Whoever used this to open a portal into Jezalya would be traveling blind.

“There must be another way to do this,” she said to him. Speaking quietly, so the others would not hear.

“The witches will need time to take up their positions and perform their ritual before they can raise the barrier. But the minute they move out from under your protection, Siderea will be able to detect their presence. So someone has to distract her, at least for those first few minutes, or none of this will work. My presence in the city will accomplish that.”

She said nothing. They had discussed this at length in Coldorra and no one had come up with a better idea. Whatever fantasy she’d had that they would come up with an alternative at the last minute was fading along with night’s darkness.

“Siderea wasn’t trying to kill me in Tefilat,” he reminded her. “She wanted me taken prisoner. So it stands to reason that even if she manages to get the upper hand now, she probably won’t kill me immediately.”

“And if her plan was to torture you?”

She could see his jawline tense. “Well, then, that will succeed in distracting her, won’t it?”

Kamala started to open her mouth to say something, but he turned and put a finger to her lips. “Shh. No more.” He took off the silver ring he was wearing and placed it in her hand. It looked like the same ring he had lost in Tefilat; her hand tingled briefly as she held it, remembering Lazaroth’s poison. “I won’t be able to send a message to you without her detecting it. So you’ll have to gather the information you need from here. If I die, then launch the operation without hesitation, and let’s hope she is preoccupied enough with my death to give you the time you need.” He folded her fingers over the ring. “The others will wait upon your word, Kamala. I’ve arranged it with Salvator. You are the one who must tell them when to begin.”

“I will,” she said. Closing her hand tightly about the ring. “But only if you promise me that you’ll return safely.”

It seemed to her that a terrible sadness came into his eyes.

“I made this mess,” he whispered. “So long ago. Another lifetime. Now I must help clean it up.”

Stepping away from her, he glanced back at Salvator for approval. The High King nodded. Colivar shut his eyes for a moment and concentrated. The air directly in front of him began to shimmer, and a portal the size and width of a man formed. Without looking back, he stepped into it. The air rippled like water in the wake of his passage, then grew still once more as the portal vanished behind him. The small piece of bone fell to the sand behind him; Kamala walked over and picked it up, tucking it carefully into her doublet.

She knew that the odds of Colivar coming out of this alive were slim. Surely he knew it too. If he had been morati, she would have thought that he was resigned to his death. But such a state wasn’t possible for a Magister. So this was something more complex than simple self-sacrifice. A desperate bid for freedom, perhaps. A chance to cast off the shadows of the past, after so many centuries he could no longer remember what it felt like to live without them. The most rare and precious thing any man might fight to possess: a chance to start over.

Any man might be willing to risk his life for that. Even a Magister.

If she had believed that there was any god who cared about the welfare of Magisters, she might have prayed for Colivar. As it was, she could do no more than slide the ring onto her right thumb—the only finger it fit—and wait.

Siderea dreamt that the gods were angry at her. It was a dream she’d had before, but not one that usually worried her. If there really were divine entities in Jezalya who had an issue with her presence there, thus far they had proven too impotent—or simply uninterested—to do anything about it. By which she judged that her nightmares were merely nightmares, and had no greater significance.

But today’s dream felt different.

She woke up with a sense of dread that was both compelling and unfocused. As if she knew that something in her immediate environment was wrong, somehow, but didn’t know what. Lying still in her bed, she tried to focus on the feeling, to determine its cause. There didn’t appear to be anything amiss in the bedchamber itself, nor in the rooms beyond it, nor anywhere surrounding the palace. She reached out to her ikati consort to see if perhaps some agitation from that creature had bled through to her awareness, but the ikati queen was still asleep, her presence no more than a dull, warm weight in Siderea’s mind.

All seemed well enough.

And yet it was not.

Gathering her power to her, Siderea extended her senses out into Jezalya itself, searching for any anomaly that might explain her disquiet. For the most part the city seemed quiet. A local witch had been hired to keep rats away from the meat market; another was establishing travel wards on a merchant’s wagon that would urge thieves to choose some other target. Other than those few sparks of witchery, this dawn seemed as quiet as any.

It was not. She knew that.

Closing her eyes, Siderea summoned the nearest bird to come to her. A dove arrived at her window a few moments later, its iridescent blue wings identifying it as one of those she had received as a gift from a sycophantic merchant. She had set them loose in her gardens, knowing that there were few places in the hot, dry city for them to escape.

Gently she extended her consciousness into the small winged creature. It was a trick that was becoming more and more difficult over time; apparently her tie to a great predator made herbivorous birds loath to accept her essence. But she was practiced in the art, and soon she was able to slide her mind into the tiny creature, allowing her to direct its motions and see through its eyes. If a flutter of avian panic attended the action, it was not enough to distract her.

She headed out the window and began to fly over the city. Dawn’s light was just beginning to spread out across the heavens, which meant that the city was beginning to stir. She ignored all the people who were going about their normal business, searching for any pattern of activity that seemed out of the ordinary. But she could find none. As far as the residents of Jezalya were concerned, this morning was just like any other.

When she was satisfied that the rest of the city was functioning normally, she headed toward the House of Gods. The patina of residual energy hanging about the place made it hard for her to make out any meaningful patterns there. Traces of prayer clung to the ancient walls, along with the residue of countless rituals, some of them magical in nature. Spells had been affixed to many of the idols for one purpose or another, and foreign energies swirled and eddied about them. A minor spell worked in such an environment would be all but undetectable, and there would be no way to see it from a distance.

Yet as soon as she approached the ancient temple, she realized that the source of her disquiet was indeed here. For a brief moment she worried that it might be coming from within the House itself (what if the gods really were angry with her?), but as she circled the plaza, she was able to make out a place nearby that seemed to resonate as if a powerful rite had just been performed there. It was within a small copse of trees that flanked the prayer plaza, the only place within sight where a man could hide himself . . . or his magic. She circled the area warily at first, looking for any sign that the perpetrator was still present, but apparently the place was empty. So she settled her avian body on an upper branch of one of the trees and folded its wings, preparing to concentrate all her attention on the task at hand. Then she reached within her soul for power, molded it into a spell of inquiry, and cast it out over the area. She could not pick out any personal traces of the person who had been here while possessing another creature; the focus required to maintain control of its body detracted from her ability to focus her power on fine details. But the spell he had performed here was another thing. The kind of magic that could tear a hole in reality was not easily obscured, and the metaphysical scar that it left behind when it closed was something no well-trained witch could mistake. She could not tell who had made it, or what kind of power had been used, but its purpose was clear.

A portal had been conjured here.

She withdrew her mind from the dove, hearing it squawk in surprise as its body was suddenly returned to it. For a moment she lay still upon her bed, considering the ramifications of what she had just experienced. Though she had established wards all over the city to warn her of any foreign magic being used, she had not done so in the area immediately surrounding the House of Gods. Such a spell would have been triggered ten times a day by the priests and pilgrims who performed their rituals there, becoming effectively worthless. So the conjuration of a portal right next to the House of Gods should not have triggered any of her metaphysical alarms, and it should not have awakened her from sleep. Something else had done that. Had someone tried to get through her personal defenses? Perhaps whoever had arrived through the portal?

Don’t jump to conclusions, she warned herself. Many a powerful witch had died as a result of misreading such situations; she did not intend to join their ranks.

She sent out a spark of power to awaken one of the palace witches, a young woman named Hameh. By the time the girl arrived, Siderea had put on a silk dressing gown and had applied a whisper of magic to smooth out her sleep-tousled hair. No one in the palace was ever allowed to see her at less than her best; that was part of her mystique. The same could not be said of the young woman, who was rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she responded to the summons.

“Milady.” The witch bowed deeply in the southern style, hands before her forehead. “How may I serve you?”

“A portal was used outside the House of Gods. I need to know if one of our own people was involved. And I need to find that out discreetly, Hameh. Can you do that for me?”

The girl bowed again. “Of course, milady. Though if you really need discretion, I’ll have to wait a bit. If I wake up the city’s witches to ask them questions, they’ll know that something’s amiss.”

“That’s fine.” Siderea wasn’t happy about the delay, but there were other avenues of investigation she could apply while waiting for Jezalya’s witches to wake up.

After the witch departed, Siderea called for her servants to come and dress her. Not because she needed help, or even wanted help, but because that custom was a standard part of royal protocol, and questions would be asked if she did otherwise.

In the distance the ikati queen awoke and stirred, wondering aloud at the agitation she sensed from her consort. Are we in danger? the creature asked.

Siderea hesitated. I don’t know yet.

It was always possible that the portal wasn’t significant. Someone who had needed to leave Jezalya quickly had hired a witch to send him elsewhere. Someone who had wanted to visit the city hadn’t been in the mood for a long desert trek.

But magical transportation was costly enough that such things were never done casually. And a legitimate traveler would have no reason to depart from the one place in Jezalya where local energies would mask such a spell. Not to mention the fact that an innocent portal would not have awakened her from a dead sleep, no matter how many wards it had triggered.

Farther in the distance, the leading edge of the sun breached the horizon at last.

Nasaan awoke from sleep the moment the door to his bedchamber creaked, and he had a weapon in his hand by the time it was fully open. Battlefield reflexes. His visitor was clearly startled, and hesitated on the threshold. By the dim light of early dawn he could see it was one of the palace witches, a young woman named Hameh. Normally he wouldn’t respond well to such a furtive entrance, but this was someone he had entrusted with unusually discreet business. If she was coming to him at this hour of the morning, and was not even willing to knock on the door for fear of alerting the servants, she must have significant news.

Sheathing his sword in the hidden place beside his bed—another battlefield habit—he waved for her to approach him. “What news?” he asked, his voice pitched low enough that no one outside the room would hear it.

She offered a hurried gesture of obeisance. “You wanted to be informed if the Lady Consort did anything unusual.”

“Yes.” Unusual was a subjective term, of course, and he’d already had a thousand useless bits of information delivered to him by agents who thought they were doing him a favor. But he paid for it every time. Better too much information than too little. “What happened?”

“She said that a portal had been conjured outside the House of Gods. She doesn’t know who’s behind it yet. I’m supposed to help her find out.”

Of course you are. The witches of the city didn’t trust Nasaan’s consort, so the djira wouldn’t be able to question them directly. “She doesn’t think it’s normal business? A local witch doing . . . well, local witch things?”

“She’s not certain yet, Sire. We are checking on that first. But I assume she would not be giving us secret orders if she didn’t feel there was a good chance it was something more than that.”

A portal.

He cursed under his breath as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. A portal could be bad news. Someone might be in his city now who was not supposed to be here. Or else someone who normally lived here might be traveling secretly to other places. Either possibility could spell trouble for him. He had begun his own conquest of Jezalya by planting agents inside its walls, and any enemy worth his salt would do likewise. Just as any enemy worth his salt would know that a portal spell was uniquely conspicuous magic that might be detected by his witches. If someone was conjuring one now, it meant that time mattered to him more than secrecy.

Also not a good sign.

“Send word to the outlying tribes,” he told her. “Tell them to have scouts scour their territory and report anything unusual to me immediately. If a lizard so much as blinks in the wrong direction, I want to know about it. And have their men arm up and be ready to fight; there may be trouble in the wind.”

“Yes, Sire.” Her eyes were wide, and he could see the concern in their depths. Nasaan rarely asked his witches to expend their life-energy simply to deliver messages. If he was doing so now, that meant that he believed there might not be time to have a man on horseback do so in person. Or perhaps that he feared a trap might have been set for mundane messengers. “Shall I follow the Lady Consort’s orders after that?”

“Aye. But I want any information you gather to be brought to me first.”

His djira could stop an invading army in its tracks, Nasaan knew that. But she would only do so if it suited her personal agenda. And he was no longer certain how confluent that was with his own.

A man should not rely upon the aid of demons, he thought.

As soon as Hameh was gone, he barked out an order for his guard to attend him. The man entered with his hand on his weapon, and the first thing he did was look about the room for any sign of danger. Evidently something in Nasaan’s tone had made him think there was some kind of threat present in the bedchamber.

No man would risk conjuring a portal in the early stages of an infiltration, Nasaan thought. If some greater plan is being set in motion, its final stage is probably underway.

“Bring me my armor,” he commanded. “And tell my private guard to suit up and be ready to move out. Ask them to be as quiet about it as possible; I don’t want the city to panic. If anyone asks, it’s for a training exercise.”

Should he be more afraid than he was? Was it wrong of him to feel a rush of pleasure at the thought of combat, every bit as intense as the moment of release inside a woman?

I will kill someone before the day ends, he thought with satisfaction.

Colivar’s portal had brought him to a small thicket of trees at the edge of a plaza. Given how little light there was, he thought it unlikely that anyone had seen him arrive, but he bound a bit of sorcery just to make sure of it. It seemed to be unnecessary. In the distance he could hear the sounds of people starting to move about, but no one nearby was stirring. This corner of town was all but deserted.

Giving thanks for the foresight of Farah’s scout, he wrapped a layer of protective sorcery tightly around himself and slipped out from among the trees.

Nearby, in the center of a great plaza, was a circular building with a dome of polished gold. That must be the House of Gods, home to the idols of the city. There were two priests at the door, ready to receive any visitors, but they looked only half awake, and his sorcery was not hard pressed to push them over the edge into true slumber.

A short distance away, a line of close-set buildings offered him comfortable shadows to slip into. Once he was safely away from the portal site, he molded some athra into a spell to find Siderea and sent it coursing out over the city. Whether it actually located her or not was irrelevant. He knew from past experience that she had good metaphysical defenses, and the subtle prodding of such a spell would not go unnoticed. Soon enough she would know that there was a Magister in Jezalya. And Colivar had left enough subtle signs for her to figure out which Magister it was.

He hadn’t told Kamala about that part of his plan. She would have declared him a fool, and rightfully so. Ramirus might even have forbade his doing it, which—barring a successful challenge to his dominance—he had the right to do.

But any other path was greater folly.

Colivar still remembered the trap that Siderea had set for him in Tefilat. He remembered it not only in mind but in his body as well; the pain of it was seared into the very substance of his flesh. If her defenses in Jezalya entailed something like that, he would not be able to approach her by surreptitious means. And while he was willing to risk imprisonment and even torture to aid Salvator’s campaign, being imprisoned and tortured by a mindless spell while Siderea went about her business undisturbed—perhaps even unaware that he was there—would accomplish nothing. If Colivar’s purpose in Jezalya was to distract Siderea, then he must somehow draw her attention to him. And he must know that he was drawing her attention, so that the next stage of the plan could be set in motion.

What better way to do that than to have her seek him out?

He watched as a small blue bird appeared, its bright coloration incongruous against the dull sandy hues of the surrounding architecture. It circled the plaza twice and then dipped low over the place where his portal had appeared. He found himself holding his breath, and only an extreme act of will kept him from directing his sorcery at it, to learn its purpose and identity. If it was serving as a conduit for Siderea’s power, establishing any kind of direct sorcerous connection might be dangerous.

He watched as the brightly colored bird circled the area once more, then headed back the way it had come, toward the center of Jezalya. A short time later two witches approached and headed straight for his arrival site. No doubt they had been sent to gather more information for Siderea. In bird form it would have been hard for her to read his traces clearly, but these two witches should have no problem with it. The mark of his sorcery was impossible to miss; even an untrained witch would not mistake its cold essence for anything else. They would know—and they would report to Siderea—that a Magister had come to Jezalya. And, if their skills were good, they would tell her which one.

So far, so good.

“You wished to see me, Lady Consort?” Nyuku was clearly pleased to have been summoned, but when he saw the grave look on Siderea’s face he grew wary.

As well he should, she thought. The time for games was over.

She spoke simply, because any attempt to elaborate on the truth would have lessened its impact: “Colivar is in Jezalya.”

His back grew rigid. His nostrils flared. Emotions stirred in the depths of his eyes that were probably not human in source. “You are sure?”

“There are remnants of true sorcery outside the House of Gods. What other sorcerer has business in Jezalya? And he left traces of his presence on the ground when he passed. He tried to disguise those things, making them hard to identify, but I’m as adept at ferreting out secrets as he is at hiding them.” When he said nothing she added, “You don’t look surprised.”

“I told you he would come to you. And that was even before you tried to entrap him in Tefilat. Now he has two reasons.”

“Yes. “ Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “You did say that.” Her tone grew disarmingly soft; any man who knew her well would recognize that as a warning sign. “You’ve said a lot of things about him, in an indirect sort of way. Hinted at mysteries enough to keep an oracle employed for a lifetime. And now we have come to the moment when that particular game is ending. I am going to be the one who writes the rules for this round.” Her expression darkened. “Why must he come to me? How did you know that would happen?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again without saying anything.

“There is a hostile Magister in my city,” Siderea said harshly. “He’s not here for the scenery. So you will tell me what I need to know to deal with him, or so help me, all the gods in Jezalya will not be enough to guarantee you victory in my queen’s flight.”

Something black and cold glimmered in his eyes. His words were edged in ice. “That isn’t your decision to make.”

“Isn’t it? The fact that queens have always submitted to the strongest suitor in the past doesn’t mean that my queen will have to. Or that the contest can’t be fixed in other ways.” Her expression darkened. “I’m not one of your helpless little girls, Nyuku, who has never been anything more than the eleventh wing of a Souleater, too ignorant to question the rules of the game she’s playing. And I understand about the vested interest of my advisers as well, in choosing what parts of the game they will tell me about.” She could see by the look on his face that she had guessed right; they had been misrepresenting the queen’s flight to her, or at least withholding information. A dark satisfaction filled her heart as she thought to her ikati, You see? It is as I told you. “Don’t test me, Nyuku. You won’t like where it leads.”

If she’d been a man—or a woman whose favor Nyuku did not need—he might have responded in an acerbic manner. But he did need her, so he breathed in deeply to steady his spirit and said, “What is it you want to know?”

“Why will Colivar come to me? What drives him?”

“The same thing that drives the rest of us, my lady.”

“Us, as in . . . the riders? Why? He’s not one of you. Is he?”

A faint smile appeared, as if something about the question amused him. “He was joined to an ikati once, as we are. He shared in its hungers, as we do. And he will be drawn to the last living queen for the same reasons that we are, though he will doubtless come up with other reasons to explain it to himself. Human reasons. But those will be just excuses. It is the spark of the ikati that drives him . . . and perhaps the hunger to regain what he once lost.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “You’re sure of this?”

“Absolutely”

“And your personal issue with him?”

The brief flicker of hatred in his eyes was more eloquent than any words he could offer. “We have . . . unfinished business.”

He did not need to say anything more. She had seen enough men in rutting mode to recognize what kind of business they shared.

Let them fight over us, the young ikati whispered in her mind. It is what they want. It is what their blood demands.

It was apparently what Siderea’s blood demanded as well, for she could feel a rush of heat warm her loins at the mere thought of such a contest. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll give you a chance to finish your . . . business . . . before I deal with him.”

Nyuku scowled. “So I must spare his life again? With all due respect . . . aren’t we past that point?”

In truth, Siderea doubted that Nyuku could take Colivar. The rider might have the fire of ikati passion in his veins, but as far as she knew, he had never had any kind of magical training. All the athra in the world did you little good if you didn’t know how to channel it properly.

But she was not pleased with Nyuku at the moment. He had failed her in Tefilat. And while his masculine arrogance might be appealing to a Souleater queen, it was starting to wear thin on her human nerves.

If he kills Colivar, he will serve my need in doing so. If he fails, then he will be dead, and another will take his place. Either is acceptable.

“Very well,” she said. “I will place no constraints upon you. If you’re capable of killing him, then do so. If you can’t, then I’ll deal with him myself. Either way,” she promised, “this will be Colivar’s last battle.”

How good those words sounded. And how gracious of Colivar to come to her city and give her the chance to say them.

For the first time that morning, Siderea smiled.

Something in the theater of war had changed. Ramirus could feel it. Nothing so concrete as a spell that he could point to, or any single phenomenon he could give a name to. Call it a ripple of potential. A subtle shift in probability. Things were being set in motion that had little significance on their own but that might set off significant events farther down the road. His divinatory sorcery could detect the greater pattern, but it could not put a name to its cause.

Was this part of Colivar’s plan?

There was no point in warning the others yet. Salvator wouldn’t trust any information garnered by sorcery. Favias and Shina would need more specific facts before they could act, and he didn’t have those to offer. Whereas Gwynofar . . . she didn’t understand how severely the Law constrained his actions. She didn’t know that once sorcerers had thought nothing of slaughtering whole armies for sport, and that the Law had been formulated in part to keep such things from happening again. A Magister might guide the course of a war by advising its leadership, lending subtle advantage to one side, or perhaps fiddling with the environment where a battle was taking place. But he could not lay waste to a morati army by his own hands, no matter how much the outcome of that battle mattered to him. So while Ramirus could and would protect Gwynofar, there was a limit to how much he could do for her beyond that.

He had already broken the Law once, with Kamala. Now he could feel bestial instincts lapping at his mind again, as they had not done for centuries. He remembered what it had been like in the early days, when he had been less than human. He remembered how hard he had fought to reclaim his humanity, after First Transition had stolen it from him.

He would stand by while a thousand human armies perished before he would allow himself to be reduced to that state again.

But that did not mean he couldn’t take precautions. And so, shutting his eyes, he extended his sorcerous senses out into the desert. Across miles of sand and scrub brush and wind-scoured rock, so much athra pouring into the effort that his sleeping consort probably dreamed of death. He tasted the flavor of the wind and the shifting of the sand dunes. He drank in the moisture in the air above the oases, the breath of wild camels, the breezes stirred by the wings of vultures as they launched themselves into the morning sky. He measured the golden creep of dawn’s light across the barren landscape, and sipped from the wave of blinding heat that crested just behind it. He tested the traces of human emotion that clung to the sand: passion and fear, anger and hope.

With that much knowledge of the surrounding environment he could bargain with Nature herself if he had to. He hoped that such extreme tactics wouldn’t be called for, but war was full of surprises, and the more weapons you had in your armory, the more likely it was you’d have the right one available when trouble came calling.

I hope you know what you’re doing, Colivar.

The palace was white, pure white, and its central dome was tall enough that the rays of the rising sun played across it before reaching the rest of the city, setting it aflame. Its columns were made of white marble, with thin lines of color coursing just beneath its surface, like delicate blue veins beneath a woman’s skin. Such stone was precious anywhere, and doubly precious in this place, hundreds if not thousands of miles from the nearest marble quarry.

Which, of course, was the point.

Colivar gazed at the building for some time, trying to settle his spirit. On all sides of him the city was now stirring to life, and the palace guards were keeping a wary eye out for anyone who approached the palace too closely. Had Siderea told them he would be coming? Was she the one who had conjured the summoning spell that even now tickled the edges of his mind? It was such a faint thing that it was hardly compelling, and it wasn’t making a very concerted effort to get through his defenses. Call it more an invitation than a mandate. If he could be sure that it came from her personally, then nothing more would be needed; having her focus enough attention on him that she was sending spells out to find him would satisfy the tactical needs of Salvator’s people. But this spell was so faint and indistinct that that he couldn’t make out any kind of signature: a mere whisper of magic, so insubstantial that he could not determine whose trace it bore.

Passing his hand over his garments, he exchanged his camel-hued travel wear for crisp black clothing. No need to hide what he was if he was going to march in the front door. Then he let his sorcery drop, so that morati eyes were no longer forced to turn away from him. Startled by his sudden appearance, the guards drew their weapons. Then, after studying him for a moment longer, they sheathed them again.

He walked up the broad stairs with a casual air, as if this were a mere social call. But inside his head his mind was racing: binding power, molding spells, gathering all the information he could about the palace and its inhabitants. It appeared to be a new building, and it did not have the kind of residual witchery that came from a long history of defensive spells. But Siderea’s mark was clearly on it, and her power was no small thing. Especially now that the athra available to her was, for all intents and purposes, infinite.

One of the guards snapped his fingers as he reached the top of the stairs. A young woman emerged from the shadows of the doorway and bowed her head to Colivar, indicating for him to follow her into the building. He took note of a subtle power that seemed to emanate from the area they were approaching, but he could not make out its exact nature without stopping to concentrate on it. Gods willing, it was not a trap like the last one.

Breathing deeply, he repeated to himself all the things he had told Kamala: Siderea doesn’t want to kill me. Distraction is all we need. Make sure the battle goes on if I die. The ikati spirit within his soul beat its wings suddenly at the suggestion that it might die, raging against the mere concept of submission. He had not felt its presence so strongly in centuries, and he struggled to force it back down into its accustomed bondage so that he might think clearly. This was not a time to lose control.

But you are about to confront an ikati queen, he thought. How successful can you be in denying what you really are, in her presence?

The servant brought him to an empty chamber and gestured for him to wait. It was a large room with little furniture in it: a few benches, a narrow table set against one wall, and several wooden racks with an assortment of weapons in them. He was tempted to inspect the latter, but past experience suggested that handling unknown items in Siderea’s home might be a bad idea. He moved close enough to see that there were numerous swords of different makes and other handheld weapons of a variety of types. The half dozen spears in one rack had bronze heads inscribed with the images of gods; they looked as though they had tasted their share of blood. Not practice weapons, any of them. He wondered if they were normally stored here, or if they had been placed for his benefit; for a minute he was tempted to read the traces in the floor, just to see how long the racks had been present. But that was just the kind of trap that Siderea had set for him last time. He would not be foolish enough to fall for it again.

“So good of you to come visiting,” a man said behind him.

In Kannoket.

He whirled around, athra surging in readiness. Though there was a part of him that recognized that voice, the shock of suddenly seeing its owner standing before him was like a physical blow that drove the breath from his lungs.

Nyuku.

He was far cleaner than Colivar remembered, but otherwise he was much the same. Sharp Kannoket features in a weathered face, skin etched with harsh lines from squinting against the cold, eyes so dark that pupil and iris bled into one another, black as the arctic night sky. And, of course, the armor. Layers of Souleater skin molded into close-fitting garments, cobalt highlights shimmering along their surface like rainbows on an oil slick. He wore a necklace made of polished chips of Souleater tail blades strung on a cord of seal gut. Trophies from vanquished rivals, perhaps? The fact that each chip invoked images not only of a dead Souleater, but also of a consort gone mad, made it a truly macabre adornment.

Ever since Colivar had learned that Nyuku was still alive, he had been preparing himself for this moment. But it had not been enough. Nothing could possibly have been enough. Memories rushed up from a black pit within his soul, not coherent images but waves of raw emotion, images from a forgotten life—a life he had struggled to forget—

Scream, scream rage into the twilight winds

Wings beat wildly against the blistering cold

Hatred is ice on the tongue

Pride becomes strength, fury becomes fuel, where is the sunlight?

Claws rend ice-air and flesh, hot blood froths like surf

Hatred, hatred, hatred on the wind, consuming all thought

Madness

Screaming pain madness fear hunger

Beg the gods for surcease

Beg the gods for obliteration

This, this is the cost for betraying mankind—

“The human world has not treated you well,” Nyuku said. “You reek of weakness.”

Colivar gritted his teeth against the tide of memory. The wounds in his soul throbbed mercilessly. “And you reek of arrogance, as always.”

He chuckled softly. “Is it arrogance to celebrate the downfall of a rival? If so, then I’m guilty. But you—surviving such a loss—that is no small accomplishment.” The black eyes glittered coldly; there was cruelty in their depths. “Tell me, what is it like to feel your consort killed while you’re riding him? To feel half your soul being torn away and be helpless to do anything about it? That must be a unique sort of impotence.”

Suddenly Colivar could feel the loss of his ikati as though it had just occurred, that terrible instant when his human identity had been ripped to bloody bits. He wanted to scream as a wounded animal would scream, as he had once screamed in the arctic: mindless agony, utter despair. But instead he balled his hands into fists by his sides, trembling as he struggled to maintain some semblance of composure inside himself, even while he feigned loss of control on the outside. Squeezing his eyes shut for a moment as though Nyuku’s words had completely overwhelmed him, he struggled to focus enough power to detect any active spells in the room. It wasn’t a difficult task. The entire chamber resonated with power. Its walls, floor, and ceiling had been warded so that no sorcery could affect them, and the air in the room had apparently been fortified as well. Which would explain why the shutters were all tightly closed; fresh air coming in from the outside would dilute the effect. Colivar didn’t dare take the time to inspect the weapons closely, but it was a good bet that they had some power attached to them as well, perhaps even primed to respond to Colivar’s own touch, as the traps in Tefilat had been.

“Don’t do this,” he whispered. Pouring as much pain into his voice as he could, hoping Nyuku would take such pleasure in his humiliation that he would stay his hand for another moment, giving him a few precious seconds more in which to assess the situation.

He wouldn’t be able to use sorcery on the room itself, he thought desperately. Nor could he use it directly on Nyuku without risking a fatal connection to the man’s ikati. No, he realized with a sinking heart, the only thing he could use his sorcery on in this room was his own body, and the only safe weapon he had was his own intelligence. But the latter was no small advantage. Nyuku was an ignorant barbarian at heart, who had been raised up to power by forces beyond his comprehension. He might have learned to play the part of a sophisticated nobleman, but he lacked even a peasant’s education to back it up. Whereas Colivar had been a witch and a healer long before ever meeting the ikati, and he understood how the human body functioned.

It was his only possible advantage.

It would have to be enough.

Slowly he looked up at Nyuku. It didn’t take sorcery to sense the energy tightly coiled inside the man, or to see the rage of his ikati shining through his eyes. He might have been successful in claiming leadership of the colony from Colivar years ago, but clearly he regarded the Magister’s survival as a personal affront. He would give no quarter.

“Do you remember that day?” Nyuku said. His voice was a mockery of seduction, crooning insults to Colivar’s pride in the tone one might use with a lover. “Because I do. I remember the taste of your consort’s blood. The sound of him screaming and thrashing as he died. The sight of you lying in the snow, helpless as a child.” Clearly it was his intent to goad the ikati portion of Colivar’s soul into such a rage that he would be forced to surrender to it. And he was succeeding.

Wrapping his arms around himself, Colivar tried to stay focused; he knew he might have only a few seconds of sanity left, and he had to make them count. Sorcery rushed through his body with unnatural speed, driven by desperation. Muscles expanded. Bone thickened. The chemistry of his blood transformed. Organ by organ, fluid by fluid, his body was transformed—not in rational order, as it would normally be done, but in a chaotic whirlwind of mutation that left each living cell in agony.

And Nyuku smiled. Arrogant egotist that he was, he assumed there was nothing more happening than Colivar suffering. He was pausing for a moment to enjoy his rival’s pain.

His mistake.

His last mistake.

Then the transformation was complete, and Colivar’s self-control crumbled. The beast came roaring up out of the depths of his soul, hungry for vengeance. And everything turned crimson.

Hands gripped Kamala, holding her steady. Sand shifted beneath her knees. Her head felt as if it were on fire.

“Are you all right?” Ramirus asked. “What happened?”

It took Kamala a moment to realize who was talking to her and to remember where she was. Her concentration had been so tightly focused on Colivar that she had lost all sense of the world surrounding her. And then the storm had come. Blinking, she looked up at Ramirus, not sure how to answer him. Salvator was beside him, she saw. Equally worried, though likely for different reasons.

“Is it time?” the High King asked.

Was it?

Using Colivar’s ring as an anchor, she had been able to pick up faint traces of his emotional state. She knew that when he arrived in Jezalya he had been calm but apprehensive. She had been able to taste the subtle shadows of fear that played about the edges of his mind after that as he analyzed the threats surrounding him in a rational, controlled manner. And then, in an instant, everything had changed. A storm of violent emotion seemed to fill the very air around her: fury and hatred and frustration and pain . . . and then it had all exploded. A crimson mist seemed to hang about Colivar’s ring now. Was that a metaphorical vision, or something real?

But the mere fact that Colivar’s soul was in turmoil said nothing about their mission. The combined armies of Jezalya might have descended upon him with swords drawn, and still that might have no immediate relevance to Siderea. Nothing mattered except the moment in which she turned her attention on him, so that she stopped paying attention to other things. How was Kamala supposed to know when that happened if she had nothing more than these unfocused signs to interpret? For all she knew, Colivar had run into Siderea already, and that’s what this storm of emotion was about. Or not. She couldn’t use her sorcery to get more information without running the risk that Siderea would detect her efforts. Nor could Colivar contact her directly, for the same reason. How on earth was she supposed to find out what was happening to him?

She was suddenly angry at Colivar, but the feeling had more to do with frustration and fear than actual rage. Gods damn him for putting her in this position! If he managed to come out the other end of this alive, she was going to wring his neck.

Is it time for the witches to move out? Somewhere in the distance Salvator was asking her questions. Is Siderea’s attention fixed on something else?

I don’t know, she wanted to say. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to figure it out.

But an army could not be led that way. It required certainty from its leadership . . . or at least the illusion of certainty.

“No,” she said quietly. Feeling her words resonate across the desert sands, “Not yet.”

Cursing Colivar under her breath—and fearing for him—she waited.

Nasaan was just buckling on his sword when a servant came running in. Clearly the prince hadn’t put on his armor a minute too soon.

“In the east wing, Sire.” The servant was breathing hard, though it seemed to be more from agitation than exhaustion. “There’s some kind of fight going on, Nyuku and a stranger—”

Cursing under his breath, Nasaan was in motion before the end of the sentence could be voiced.

Nyuku was one of the Lady Consort’s sycophants, and Nasaan’s least favorite. Left to his own devices, Nasaan wouldn’t trust the man to clean out a chamber pot. It was hard to say just why he felt that way, since Nyuku had never actually said or done anything offensive—that Nasaan knew about—and he generally respected all the proper protocols in dealing with the royal household. If anything, his obeisance sometimes bordered on excessive, almost as if the whole thing were a joke to him. But as soon as he walked into a room, Nasaan could feel all the hairs on his neck prick upright, and his muscles tensed in the way they did during battle. There was a sense of challenge about the man, all the more irritating for never being voiced openly, that stirred Nasaan’s blood in ways he did not fully understand.

The djira’s insistence that this unpleasant creature have free access to Nasaan’s palace was one of the few real points of contention between them. His witches had told him that Nyuku’s aura was not entirely human—whatever that meant—and as Nasaan had made a contract with only one supernatural creature, he was under no obligation to allow another one into his house. So Nyuku barely had permission to visit, and he certainly had no permission to be raising his hand against anyone within these walls. Nasaan found himself hoping that the man had finally transgressed in some major way, so that he would have an excuse to throw him out for good. And to hells with the Lady Consort if she did not like it.

By the time he got to the room where the altercation was taking place, several members of the palace guard had assembled outside, wary of entering without some kind of instruction from him. From inside came the kind of sounds one would expect from combat, though it didn’t sound as though metal weapons were being used. Nasaan wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign.

“The Lady Consort said we should remain outside—” a servant began.

He did not wait for the end of that sentence either, but drew his sword and pushed his way through the half-open door. The room had been stripped bare of all its normal decorations, he saw, and racks of weapons from the armory had been arranged against one wall. The sand shutters were tightly closed, reducing the early morning light to a bare minimum, and the few lamps that had been set up in the four corners of the room did little to dispel the shadows. There was indeed a fight going on, between Nyuku and a tall, black-haired man, and while no weapons had been drawn, it was clearly more than a simple wrestling match. Gouts of flame accompanied blows that were struck faster than a human limb should be able to move, and shadows and smoke swirled in the air between the two contestants, only to be quickly extinguished. Blood appeared, then became a cloud of crimson mist, then was gone. He could hear bones cracking under blows so forceful they seemed to make the whole room shake, but the one who had been struck would simply glance at his shattered limb and then reengage his opponent.

Thus do demons fight, he thought darkly.

He saw Siderea in one corner of the room. Her eyes were bright and moist as they followed the fight, and her full lips were parted in an expression that was both sensual and disturbing. When she saw him enter, she waved him over to her, and she put her hand on his free arm as he drew close. “They can’t see or hear us,” she said quietly, and he saw no reason to think that she was lying. Her pulse was hard and rapid, like a woman in the throes of pleasure, and the scent that rose from her skin was something that belonged in a bedroom more than an armory. It made him more wary than the battle itself, and he pulled away from her, putting enough distance between them that the scent of her arousal was less intrusive.

“What is this all about?” he demanded.

“What it’s always about,” she answered. Nasaan watched as Nyuku grabbed hold of his opponent in what might have been a death-grip among normal men, but the black-haired stranger simply altered his form into a more flexible shape and slipped from his grasp. He left behind him a sheet of blue flame that clung to Nyuku everywhere the two had made contact, but that was quickly extinguished. The action was almost too fast for Nasaan to follow, but he had the impression there was much more going on than was visible to the human eye. “Power,” she continued. “Lust. Dominance.” She paused; her lips curled into a smile that was warm on the surface but utterly chilling in its essence. “Courtship.”

He remembered the last time he had seen that smile. He had been on a battlefield then, and she had stood within a circle of death, the blood of living men falling about her feet like rain. He had feared what she was capable of, even as he’d lusted for what she was offering him. That formula had never changed.

She had toyed with whole armies that night, for her pleasure. Tonight it was only two men, but the hunger driving her was clearly the same. And for the first time since he had known her, its nature was undisguised. Nasaan could read the truth in that cold, predatory smile. He could smell it on her skin. And as two men attempted to tear each other to pieces in front of her, he knew for the first time exactly what the name of that hunger was.

Or perhaps he had always known. Perhaps he had simply not wanted to acknowledge it.

Let them die for me, her expression proclaimed.

Speed and strength. That was what mattered. Speed and strength enough that Nyuku would be forced to respond in kind. Nothing else offered hope.

Colivar clung to that thought, even while fear and despair pounded in his veins. Fighting with a sorcerer was futile. He knew that. He had been alive in the days when Magisters were still allowed to kill each other, and he knew how it had to be done. By surprise. By stealth. Nothing else worked. When you were dealing with a man who could heal any wound with a single thought, and who could protect himself from any attack he saw coming, the only way you could take him down was to give him no warning and allow no time for healing. And since a skilled Magister could detect hostile intent in an enemy, that meant you couldn’t even plan out your actions in advance. How often did all those elements come together?

But refusing to fight was not an option. The beast within him had risen to the surface, and its rage was not to be contained. Memories of past pain and humiliation welled up inside him, awakening a hunger for vengeance so powerful that all other thoughts were simply swept aside. All of his being was focused upon one thing and one thing only: taking down the man who had bested him so many years ago, driving him into the embrace of madness.

The chamber they were in restricted their sorcery, forcing them to fight as morati would fight—strength against strength, speed against speed, a primitive physical contest. Sorcery flickered about them, but they were too evenly matched for it to make a difference. Flames engulfed Colivar, but he doused them before they could ignite his clothing; poisonous smoke shot into Nyuku’s lungs, but the Kannoket neutralized it with a thought. The fact that neither of them could transform the air or summon foreign elements into the chamber made it next to impossible to conjure any malign force of consequence; even a fireball, lacking proper fuel, would extinguish itself within seconds. But their own bodies were fair game, and Colivar was quick to realize the potential of that. The sweat on his skin could be transformed into an acid mist. His own breath easily became toxic smoke. But conjuring such effects entailed considerable risk, and Colivar knew it was something that must be done carefully lest he poison himself in the process.

And then there were the weapons.

Colivar dared not touch them for fear they were entrapped, but Nyuku was under no such restriction. With one wild gesture he levitated all the swords from their rack and sent them hurtling toward Colivar. The Magister transformed the natural oils of his own skin into an impermeable shield—just in time, for in that fraction of a second in which he was distracted Nyuku transformed his fingers into an ikati’s talons and swiped at his throat. What an inept fool, using the same sort of physical assault that Colivar had just established protection from! As it was, the swords slammed into Colivar from the side, but they did not pierce his skin; Nyuku’s blue-black talons skittered across his body as if it were made of stone.

Out of the corner of his eye Colivar could see that the swords that missed him continued on in their flight until they struck the wall. All save a group of three, which stopped in midflight as if some giant hand had grabbed hold of them, then dropped to the floor with a clatter. So. Apparently there was an unseen audience that did not wish to be skewered.

He could not tell how long they fought, but thin rays of sunlight soon began to lance through cracks in the shutters, and the air about them was warming. Good. Nyuku would be at a disadvantage in the full heat of day, and more likely to make mistakes. Already Colivar could see that his opponent was tiring, and once or twice the man seemed to stumble. Was that exhaustion, or something more significant? It was clear that Nyuku was enhancing his own strength and speed to match Colivar’s, which was what he had been pressing for. If such a transformation wasn’t done properly it could destroy the very body it was meant to protect. The thin, porous bones and slender ligaments of a normal human body were not sufficient to anchor what their muscles were becoming, and the unnatural exertion was pouring toxins into their flesh with every moment. Colivar had made allowances for all that. Had Nyuku? If the Kannoket’s body failed him from the inside, that would be one precious instant in which he would have to focus on healing while Colivar still had full use of his sorcery. It would only provide a moment’s advantage, but one moment could mean the difference between life and death in a contest like this.

Colivar grappled with Nyuku, hands shifting into claws as the Kannoket’s flesh reshaped itself to break free, forcing him to exert himself beyond any human limits . . . and he could feel the break as it occurred. Not the simple crack of a limb that resulted from blunt force impact, but the shattering of a bone from the inside, after it had finally been stressed to its breaking point. He could hear Nyuku’s grunt of surprise and could feel him withdrawing his concentration from their grapple as he focused all his attention on weaving his broken flesh back together.

And in that precious instant Colivar lifted him up and heaved him against the stone wall, headfirst, as hard as he could. He didn’t expect he’d be able to crush the man’s head so easily—though it would have been nice—but his action forced Nyuku to shift his focus from internal healing to external defense so quickly that he could not pay attention to his environment at the same time. At what point would he realize that Colivar had chosen an impact point just above the rack of spears? He could save his head or control his fall, but he could not do both at once.

One second of confusion. That was all Colivar needed, one extra second in which to conjure his weapon of choice, in the way that it needed to be done. Now he had it. The instant he released Nyuku, he bound the sweat on one hand, transforming it into an inert, impermeable surface that covered his hand like a glove. Then he touched his palm to his forehead, picking up a few drops of sweat, and he transformed those as well. He trembled slightly as he did so, for he knew just how deadly this weapon was, but he might not get a second chance to try this.

Nyuku twisted in midair, and even as he hit the wall he began using sorcery to melt the spears beneath him. Colivar could not have asked for more. He lunged toward Nyuku and grasped him briefly in a place where he was unarmored, so that the substance coating his palm was pressed tightly against the Kannoket’s bare skin. The rider’s body shuddered, and it crashed into the rack of weapons before they were fully blunted. Most of the blades were deflected by his ikati armor, but one that was directly beneath him punched through, and Colivar could hear Nyuku moan in fear—not from the pain but from what else was happening to him.

Then he tumbled to the ground and fell silent. The body twitched a few times, but it was clear that he had no control of it. Or over his mind, apparently. For a moment Colivar just stood there, waiting for some movement that might indicate his plan had not worked. But at last it was clear that Nyuku was fully unconscious. Their fight was over.

The beast within Colivar screamed for him to rip out his rival’s throat and consummate their vengeance by drinking his blood, but he shook his head and focused on his sorcery once more. Pain lanced through his transformed muscles, exacerbated by physical exhaustion, as he carefully banished the substance he had spread across his palm, making sure that not even a single bit of it remained. The poison that Lazaroth had used on Kamala was far too volatile for any Magister to handle safely. Thank the gods he’d had the foresight to study the traces of it that remained on his ring when he had rescued it from Tefilat.

Banishing the layer he had conjured to protect his hand from the stuff, he turned to face his audience. Knowing with certainty who must be there, but no less shaken to see her.

Siderea Aminestas.

She was dressed in an opulent gown of deep purple silk, with some kind of crown resting on the thick dark curls of her hair and a necklace of golden drops trickling down between her full breasts like rainwater. Her scent was a mixture of human arousal and the spicy-sweet smell of a Souleater queen; he trembled as it filled his nostrils, stirring memories anew. Nyuku was no longer a threat to him, but his body was a trophy of conquest. An offering to be laid before her. He remembered other bodies in other times, dead warriors in their blue-black carapaces, which he had laid at the feet of various queens. He struggled to control the sudden flood tide of memory, but the battle with Nyuku had opened the door to his past, and he could not force it shut. He had been a queen’s mate once. Nyuku had stolen that from him. Now he would reclaim what was rightfully his.

There was a man standing next to Siderea. For a brief moment Colivar wondered if he would have to fight him as well. But though the man was armed, and clearly wary of Colivar, the same energy was not there. This man had never known the glory of flight, nor surrendered to an ikati’s hunger. He was as relevant to their business as a pet dog would be.

Now it was time for Colivar to answer to that hunger. Time for the ancient ritual to be completed at last. Slowly, muscles aching, he went down on one knee, and bowed his head. He could hear Siderea’s sharp intake of breath as he did so; he thought he could feel the pounding of her heart echo within his own chest.

“I have killed for you,” he whispered.

Flying in icy skies, drunk on the scent of the queen . . . tasting the enemy’s blood in his mouth . . . this, this is my offering, this is my strength, this is my worth . . . I have killed for you, my queen!

Kamala’s eyes shot open. It took her a moment to remember where she was. The images being channeled from Colivar had been so powerful that it was hard to focus on anything else.

Then she realized why that was happening.

She turned to Salvator. “He’s with her.” She could taste the truth of the words on her lips even as she spoke them. “Go!”

The High King signaled to the lead witches, who moved into position and began to concentrate. Six portals appeared in neat array. Silently, efficiently, the teams that had been waiting patiently in place for nearly an hour began to step into them.

Two witches would establish a traditional barrier at each arrival point, by the fastest method possible. Two more would perform the spellsong ritual, a lengthier process; they would weave a more permanent construct once linkage was solidly established. Other witches would protect them from supernatural assault while they worked. Soldiers would stand guard against more traditional attacks. And when everything was in place and the final barrier was sealed, so that Siderea could no longer help her Souleater queen escape the trap, the secondary teams would transport in to help protect everyone.

Then it would be Kamala’s turn.

Her heart pounding, she tried not to think about Colivar. He had played his part, and now she must play hers. She needed to focus on her own role in this campaign and not be distracted by worrying about him.

But something in that last series of images had been deeply disturbing. Not the overwhelming sense of an ikati presence—though that was truly daunting—so much as what had been missing. There had been no human element in that vision. No human element in him. Gods willing, that was no more than just a quirk of the spell she was using to connect to him, reducing his mindset to its most basic elements. Gods willing, he had not surrendered his human self entirely.

Because once he did that, she was not sure he would ever be able to find his way back.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she stared out at the desert, using her Sight rather than her sorcery. Shimmering sparks seemed to play about the edges of a vast circle with Jezalya at its center as the witches took up their places one by one, casting their spells. Kamala could see the shimmer of witchery take shape over various portions of the landscape, gleaming in the sunlight like vast plates of glass. The sections were not uniform in nature but differed in their depth and luminosity, and where they met, the power shimmered and rippled like air over sun-baked sand. Slowly, piece by piece, a dome of power was being erected with Jezalya at its center, and presumably a matching dome was being established underneath the sands as well, enveloping the city above and below in a perfect globe. It was a powerful but unstable construct, with too many different minds feeding into it; Kamala’s Sight could pick out tremors of energy coursing through the dome at irregular intervals, and they crashed into one another at the seams where the different conjurations met, sending thin sprays of witchery into the air.

She consulted Colivar’s ring briefly to make sure that Siderea was still within the city walls. Judging from his state of mind, she was. She nodded to Ramirus and Salvator to let them know that. So far so good.

Now the spellsong was being established, and Kamala could see the barrier being transformed by it. The tremors of power that had roiled across the dome’s surface grew quieter, then ceased; the fracture lines between the segments faded and then disappeared; a soft, measured light began to emanate from the whole of the dome, no brighter or dimmer in any one place than another. Where there had once been wild currents and eddies of power and the collision of mismatched planes, there now was a single, uniform whole, as clear as a flawless crystal. It seemed to Kamala that it had not merely been improved in its visible aspect but that it was stronger in its substance as well. Such a construct might well succeed in binding a powerful witch . . . or even a Magister.

And Gwynofar was a part of it. Kamala had never fully understood the nature of the special relationship she had with the lyr, which helped her link them all together, but it was clearly visible now. The same arcane light that shimmered from the crystal dome surrounded her as well; the same sense of balanced power that gave it strength resonated in her aura. No creature with supernatural sight could possibly mistake the fact that she was central to this undertaking, if not the metaphysical keystone for the entire project. The shimmering dome of witchery was a visible extension of her person.

Then Ramirus met Kamala’s eyes, and she knew that her turn had finally come.

Raising up her arms, she bade the power come to her. Athra rushed into her soul, drawn so swiftly from her unnamed consort that it still carried a whisper of life’s warmth about it as she molded it to her purpose. Holding the image of a Souleater queen in her mind, she surrendered herself to transformation. This was no easy change, as adopting the form of a familiar creature would be, but it required that she create her new body by conscious effort—crafting it scale by scale, cell by cell, even as she fixed Colivar’s image of the queen within her mind. As she did so, she imagined she could feel the ikati essence within herself stirring, expanding—exulting in its new horizons—and she surrendered herself to that as well. If she was to call the others to flight successfully, and keep them engaged after that, she would need every ounce of ikati instinct in her soul to be active.

Never mind what would come after her flight, or how a human soul might be altered by such an exercise. If Colivar was willing to surrender to his own personal demons to make this campaign succeed, she owed him equal courage.

When the last gleaming scale was in place and the last bit of jeweled-glass membrane was stretched taut across insect-veined wings, she took to the air. Sunlight blazed along her wing membranes as the ground dropped away from her, and she could feel it feeding strength to her body, warming her blood and increasing the strength of her heart.

Below her the conjured dome still glowed, albeit dimly; apparently the Souleaters were able to detect metaphysical energies.

Then the shadow of something winged rose up from the nearby mountains, and she knew that one of the Souleaters had seen her. It was time.

Drawing a breath into lungs so vast they seemed endless, she cried out across the desert as she had heard the queen cry out in Colivar’s memory. A single long, keening note that rose and fell with the wind. She could see the humans on the ground looking up at her, and she was sure that all the people in Jezalya were watching as well. Including Siderea.

She had no idea how her new body was supposed to spread its mating scent, so she simply created the smell herself, with sorcery, and let the wind carry it eastward. Soon it would be blowing into every crack and crevice in the rocky range, all the places where men and Souleaters might hide. Then she wrapped herself in the ikati queen’s power—far easier to do in this form than as a human—and waited for the Souleaters to rise.

One by one, they did so. Rising from the crevices and caves where they had been hiding, spreading their glorious wings in the morning sunlight like a flock of freshly decanted butterflies. Whenever two of them came too close together, one of them snapped at the other, and several encounters drew blood before the combatants parted. Once or twice she heard the same sharp cry that Rhys had used to call the Souleater outside Danton’s castle, which she knew was the challenge of a male in full combat mode, inviting others to test his strength. Unable to see the queen that had called them, they were turning their energy on each other. If Kamala left them to their own devices, they might even kill each other off eventually. But that would not serve her purpose, which was to get them away from Jezalya as quickly as possible.

There were not quite two dozen of them in all; more must have expired in the north than Colivar had allowed for. A few of them seemed to notice the human armies on the ground, but the intensity of their mating rituals apparently allowed for no distraction. If their human consorts were aware of what was going on, they were clearly not in control; there was no sense of anything driving these creatures other than blind bestial instinct. For perhaps the first time since arriving at Jezalya, Kamala found herself truly afraid. Up until now this whole enterprise had seemed unreal—even her transformation and flight had possessed a dreamlike quality—but the cries of the males were waking her up from that dream into a chilling reality. She was fully committed to the game now, and if she did not play it well many people might die.

She might die.

Concentrate, she told herself. The first task at hand was to get the Souleaters away from here, so they could not interfere with Salvator’s people. One thing at a time.

Dropping her sorcerous shield, she allowed the Souleaters to see her.

The response was immediate. Awareness shot through the air like lightning, and even those Souleaters who had not been facing her wheeled about in midair, suddenly sensing her presence.

As soon as she saw them heading in her direction, she turned west and began to fly, with as much strength and speed as she could manage. The advantage was hers in that arena. Her body was lighter than that of her pursuers, in part because it lacked the specialized combat appendages that the males required. The wind flowed smoothly over her sleek body, with no spikes or armor ridges to interrupt it. No male could catch up with her unless she allowed him to.

Over an empty expanse of desert she flew, as fast as her broad wings could carry her. They followed. Several times she heard screeches of rage from behind her, and once it seemed she caught sight of a dark, crumpled shape falling toward the earth. But though a real queen could probably have managed to look behind her while flying, swinging her long serpentine neck around without missing a wingstroke, Kamala was not so confident in her skills. She kept her gaze resolutely fixed on the skies ahead of her, using sorcery to bolster her hearing, so that if any males drew too close to her, she would not fail to detect it. Everything was now riding on her success in evading them, at least until Salvator’s people had a chance to bring the true queen down.

But she remembered what Colivar had told her about the queen’s flight, and when she finally reached a place where there was nothing but empty sky and sun-baked sand visible on all sides of her, she began to alter her course, adopting a sweeping curve toward the south. The Souleaters who were directly behind her continued to follow blindly, wholly fixed upon the prize just out of reach, but those who were farther back and had a better view of the overall picture set their course at an angle, meaning to head her off. Heart pounding in her chest, she turned back even more sharply, encouraging them in their strategy . . . and headed directly toward what promised to be a violent collision between the two groups. The Souleaters following behind her howled out their challenge, seeing her head toward their rivals, and they whipped the air so violently in their frenzied attempt to catch up with her that she felt as if a storm were battering at her rear wings.

And then, just as the two groups of Souleaters seemed certain to crush her between them, she disappeared. Summoning the ikati gift that would hide her from their sight, she pulled in her wings tightly against her sides and turned her carefully controlled flight into a heart-rending plummet. If any Souleaters had been able to see through her obfuscation, they would still be unprepared for the suddenness of her move.

And the two groups of Souleaters crashed into one another, drops of blood flying through the bright morning sky as they began to vent their fury and frustration on each other. A few individuals broke free of the chaos and circled the area, searching the sky for their lost quarry, but they all searched the skies at the normal elevation for ikati flight; none of them thought to look down to where she was coasting, mere yards above the sand.

A strange satisfaction filled her as she craned her head upward to watch the chaos, one that was not wholly human in its tenor. Yes, she had fulfilled her primary goal in drawing the Souleaters away from Salvator’s forces and keeping them distracted, and yes, she was managing to get them to turn on each other, which might get rid of some and would weaken more than a few. But there was more to it than that. The patterns playing out overhead struck some nerve deep in her psyche, fostering a sense of satisfaction more intense than anything she had known before. This was right. This was as it should be.

The ikati were starting to sort themselves out now, and though a few were still focused on tearing their rivals to pieces, most were now searching the skies for her. As she considered what course of flight would cause maximum bloodshed the next time, she noted that the ikati who had come out of the collision unscathed were not the ones she would have expected to. This contest was not about size or strength, she realized, least of all raw aggression. The more intelligent ikati had been better prepared to analyze her flight pattern and gain advantage from it; the ones with the most self-control had managed to escape the maelstrom of violence and remained undamaged. A simple flight might favor brute strength over intelligence, she realized, but a complex one rewarded other qualities.

No wonder the species had become so strong.

Fixing her next flight pattern firmly in her mind, she banished the power that protected her from their sight and began to climb into the air once more. Drops of blood pattered down on all sides of her as she did so, raising tiny dust clouds as they landed. Crimson rain in the desert.

Come on, boys. Let’s see just how smart you are.

This moment is perfect, Siderea thought.

Nyuku lay crumpled against the rack of weapons, effectively humbled but not yet dead. It was a suitable penance for his failure in Tefilat, she mused. The Magister she hated most had been forced to his knees by the power of ikati instinct and was at her mercy. And Nasaan now understood just how powerful she was: He had seen two of the world’s most powerful men vie for her favor like dogs in a fight ring. The only thing that could have possibly made this moment better was to have a man inside her right now, to drive her raging blood to climax and release . . . but that would come in time.

She stared down at Colivar in quiet satisfaction for a few moments, reveling in her triumph. Then she turned to Nasaan, who had not yet spoken. “Prince Nasaan.” She bowed her head to him graciously. “Permit me to present Colivar to you. Once Magister Royal of Anshasa, now . . . .” She shrugged. “Unaligned. Apparently he came to visit Jezalya without being properly announced. I called him to the palace so that he might explain himself.”

“So I see,” Nasaan said quietly. His expression was unreadable. She guessed that he was not pleased by the situation—what prince would be?—but he said nothing more. She had known him long enough now to know that only a fool would mistake such silence for passivity.

Her own eyes narrowed as she turned back to Colivar. “You’ve killed one of my servants,” she accused. “Not to mention made a mess of my hall. Did you expect all this to please me?”

She expected him to respond with at least a spark of defiance, but all the spirit seemed to have been leached out of him. It was clearly more than mere physical exhaustion. His expression was haunted, his eyes gateways to a terrible spiritual emptiness. Whatever had passed between him and the Souleaters in the past, it had clearly left deep scars upon his soul. And now she was rubbing salt into those wounds.

Thank you for giving me that weapon, Nyuku. It seems you were of some use, after all.

“Your servant challenged me,” Colivar said dully. “If you know the ways of the ikati, then you know I had to answer him.” A fleeting spark of defiance played weakly in his eyes. “Did you expect me to just let him win?”

She was about to answer when she felt the queen stir within her. She let the queen see the current scene, and she felt the creature picking through her mind for enough details to understand what was happening. Finally an unvoiced question took shape within her mind: This is the one you hate most?

Yes.

Why?

The other Magisters merely failed to help me. This one came to gloat over my death, under the guise of sympathy.

She could feel the ikati gazing down at Colivar through her eyes. He seemed to sense her presence as well, for his eyes widened in surprise. His nostrils flared, and Siderea realized that he was testing the air, seeking the scent of the ikati queen that clung to her skin. When he detected it, she could see a flicker of fear in his eyes . . . and desire.

He is yours now, the ikati thought.

Yes.

“That does not excuse you, Colivar.” She folded her arms sternly across her chest. “I believe I am due compensation.”

A flicker of concern suddenly sparked in her brain, not from within her but from outside. She sensed some kind of confusion in her queen’s mind, and a shadow of apprehension. She held up a hand for Colivar to be silent and was beginning to turn her senses inward when a terrible cry filled the heavens and exploded inside her head simultaneously. Part of her knew what it was—what it must be—but the greater part of her could not accept the truth. Her queen had not made that sound. Where had it come from?

She could sense the fear rising in her consort, and she knew if she did not find a way to ameliorate it she would quickly be overwhelmed.

Be steady, she thought. I will come to you.

She glanced at Colivar—who had not moved—and then Nasaan. “See to them,” she ordered the prince. There was no saying what he would make of that order, but she had no time to stay and explain things to him. She summoned her power and created a portal, so that she might join her queen in the mountains and comfort her—

And nothing happened.

Stunned, she tried again.

Nothing happened!

Ikati panic was pouring into her brain now, making it impossible to think clearly. There cannot be another queen here! No other queen exists! Siderea ran to the window and jerked open the heavy shutters, letting outside air pour into the room. Maybe the spells she had placed in the chamber had backfired and were inhibiting her power as well. But the air carried with it a scent that made every hair on her body prick upright. Once more she tried to summon a portal . . . and once more she failed.

She whirled back to confront Colivar. He had risen to his feet and looked considerably more composed than the last time she had looked at him. “What have you done?” she demanded, and when he did not answer she repeated, with increasing fury, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!”

“I invited some friends,” he said quietly. A corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. “I hope you don’t mind.”

She struck out at him blindly, channeling her ikati’s rage as well as her own into one blazing, unstoppable wall of power. It slammed into him with so much force that she could hear his bones snap, and it threw him across the length of the room, directly into a stone wall. Then, drawing in a deep breath to steady her spirit, she reached out into the desert with her supernatural senses, to see what was happening.

She saw witches.

Armies.

An unknown Magister.

Salvator!

She tried to strike out at them, but they seemed to be protected from her direct assault, so she reached out past them, into the tribal encampments that were loyal to Nasaan. Their own scouts must have spotted the foreigners already, for their warriors were armored and getting ready to move out. She relayed to their witches the information they would need to locate the invaders and one simple order: Kill them all. Then she returned her attention to the invading forces and addressed herself to finding a way around their protective magics, so that she could crush them all like insects.

“Not bad for a slave.”

The words broke her concentration. She returned her awareness to the room, where she saw Colivar standing once more. Whatever damage she had done to his body had been repaired.

“Given your origins,” he continued, “I would never have expected you to get this far. Quite impressive, really.”

For a moment she was too stunned to speak. She took a few steps toward him without thinking, then stopped herself. “What do you know of my origins?” she whispered.

“Not much,” he admitted. “It was hard to research. You covered your tracks well. But I did find records that spoke of an Elanti slave who had been working her way north, owner by owner, just about the time you showed up in Sankara.” He glanced at Nasaan. “The Elanti were a line of slaves especially bred and trained for sexual service. Very popular in some regions. This one was supposedly quite skilled.”

“This is of no interest to him!” she exclaimed, shaking with a new sort of rage now. “The curious thing about this slave,” Colivar continued, “was that her owners all died mysteriously. Reasons were always offered, of course—one had an unfortunate accident, another died of a lung ailment, a third was killed by bandits while traveling—and the slave was invariably purchased by someone more affluent after that. So I suppose it was just good luck.”

“This is of no concern to anyone now,” she hissed. Fingers flexing as though they had claws at their tips.

“Eventually one of them became enamored enough to free her, and he brought her to the Free States on his arm as a free woman, intending to make her his wife . . . what a pity, though. He died also. Touch of summer fever, I hear.” He shook his head. “That slave seems to have disappeared about the same time you arrived in Sankara. There wouldn’t happen to be a connection, would there?”

For a moment the rage was so hot inside her she could not speak. Her ikati did not comprehend what was wrong, but she could not spare the time to explain it to her. Focusing inward, she drew forth her power again—

—and heard the whisper of steel through the air one instant before the sword hit her neck—

—and darkness.

The two men stood there for a moment in silence, staring down at Siderea’s headless body. Then Nasaan reached down and wiped off his sword on her gown. Returning it smoothly to its sheath, he looked at Colivar. “If I’d known she was just human I would have done that a while ago.” After a moment he added, “Thank you.”

Outside the window the cries of Souleaters could be heard, fading into the distance as Kamala led them away. Colivar had not heard the ruckus when it first began. The game he had been playing with Siderea had been a delicate one and had consumed all his attention. But his final gambit had paid off. Her sudden realization that her past history was known, in all its murderous glory, was enough to break her concentration on whatever she’d been trying to do. Long enough for Salvator’s people to do what they came here to do. And long enough—unexpectedly—for Nasaan to kill her. Foolish woman. I uncovered your secrets years ago. Mysteries are a Magister’s greatest passion; did you forget that?

Colivar looked about the room, now splattered with blood from one side to the other, and caught sight of Nyuku lying in a heap by the weapons rack. Not dead yet, despite Siderea’s assumption. Fresh hatred welled up inside him, and with it the atavistic desire to rip out the man’s throat with his teeth. But he still had unfinished business with Nyuku.

He looked at Nasaan. “Don’t kill him. Not yet.”

The prince raised an eyebrow, then nodded.

Colivar leaped up onto the windowsill. Outside the palace a crowd had gathered, drawn by the sound of combat, but they were keeping a safe distance. Or what they thought was a safe distance. He stood for a moment on the broad stone sill looking down at them, knowing what a sight he must be to them in his bloodsplattered clothing, his long black hair unbound and whipping free in the wind. He found it perversely pleasing.

Are you sure you want to do this? he asked himself. For a moment he shut his eyes. and a shudder ran through him, and he was not certain at all. In fact, this was possibly the stupidest thing he had done in his life. Only a madman would even consider it.

Then looked back, saw Nyuku lying there, and he remembered the night the man had killed his ikati. He remembered walking into the Wrath, his arms held out as if inviting its embrace, tears frozen on his cheeks as the screaming voices of murdered witches filled his head, as he begged them for death . . . and the last vestige of his doubt disappeared, drowned out by a hunger for vengeance more primitive and powerful than any human doubt could possibly be.

The gods have given you this opportunity, he told himself. You cannot pass it by.

Bolstering his courage as best he could, he stepped off the sill, into the open air. A few of the spectators gasped, but he shapeshifted so swiftly that he had no chance to hit the ground. It was not a difficult transformation; his soul remembered this form as though it had actually been his own. All he had to do was shut down every part of his mind that was human and let the ancient memories possess him utterly. Surrendering everything he had become in the last few centuries and returning to the one state he feared—and hungered for—the most.

Those few locals who hadn’t run screaming in terror when they first saw him change now watched as a large and powerful Souleater rose up over their city. It flew one wide circle above the desert plain surrounding it, then headed out to the west, following the scent trail of its brothers. And soon was out of sight.

Two dozen Souleaters screeching their mating challenges overhead was a sound piercing enough to bring pain to human ears. The creatures seemed oblivious to the human presence beneath them, and occasionally one even dropped down low enough that the turbulence from its wings rippled the sand at their feet. Ramirus saw some of the witches cringe when they got that close, but the Guardians were eager to do what they had come here for, and they kept looking at Salvator and Favias, hoping to get permission to fire. But no one was going to sanction an attack on the ikati until Kamala had made her attempt to draw them away from Jezalya; a wounded Souleater might well focus his attention on his attacker and thus get left behind.

Much to all their relief, the Souleaters did follow Kamala when she finally reappeared, and she led them off on a chase to the west; their cries of lust and fury echoed across the landscape with decreasing volume until they could be heard no more.

After such painful cacophony, silence was welcome.

Ramirus had conjured a spell of his own to supplement that of the witches, using Siderea’s scarf as a focus. It hung about the barrier like a thin mist now, ready to detect any spell of Siderea’s that was sent out into the desert. Now, even as Ramirus watched, his sorcerous construct responded to something. Apparently many small spells had been sent out at the same time, and they pierced the witch’s barrier—and his own creation—simultaneously. He could see his spell ripple briefly as they passed through it, like water into which a handful of pebbles had been cast; by the time the surface settled down again, he had determined what the spells were and the purpose behind them.

His expression was dark as he turned to Salvator. “The tribes have all been alerted. They’ve been told to head in toward Jezalya immediately, and to kill anything in their path that doesn’t belong there. In short, us.”

Favias cursed under his breath. “How far out are they?”

Ramirus shook his head. “Don’t know yet. I got a mental impression that she expects them to be able to move in pretty quickly, so we should assume the worst until reconnaissance says otherwise.”

“They’ll be coming from all directions at once,” Salvator muttered.

It was not an unexpected development. In fact, it was the reason that they had brought so many common soldiers with them, just in case something like this happened. But that did not mean that an attack by the tribes wouldn’t put their people in danger, not to mention complicate the portions of this operation they had yet to launch.

We must find the Souleater queen quickly, Ramirus thought, frustrated by the new complication. This is all a wasted effort otherwise.

Salvator opened his mouth to speak . . . and then closed it. A dark shape was rising up from Jezalya, and the sudden realization of what it must be appeared to have banished all other concerns

The queen was rising.

Ramirus could hear the Guardians preparing to fire at her, archers nocking their arrows while witches prepared to lend added velocity to their fire. But something was wrong. It took him a moment to realize what it was, but when he did, he called out “Hold!” with all the power his voice could muster. Apparently Salvator trusted him to make such a call, for the High King held up his hand and nodded his approval of the termination. Shina shut her eyes, presumably to began to pass the message along to the Seers at all their relay points. Thus far not a single arrow had been fired.

“It’s not a female,” Ramirus said.

It wasn’t a real Souleater, either. Its body looked proper enough, but its presence lacked that disquieting power that was a hallmark of the species. And he could see that the Guardians were having no trouble focusing their attention upon it, which would not have been the case with a real ikati.

The false beast circled low overhead, following the circumference of the witch’s barrier. Ramirus held his breath, hoping he had not made the wrong call. Then, just as it passed over the royal party, a wind whipped up about Ramirus’ feet, raising enough sand to blind them temporarily. But his sorcerous senses still functioned, and he was able to catch a glimpse of the power that had conjured the wind, as well as the metaphysical signature of the man behind it.

The Souleater was Colivar.

Ramirus was torn between being furious with him for his insane recklessness and being afraid for him. Had he discovered something in Jezalya that merited taking this kind of risk? Or had he simply lost his mind? Ramirus remembered back to the Colivar he had known back in the days before the Law, so close to a wild beast in manner and spirit that others had remarked upon it. Now that he understood the reason for it, he knew that the last thing Colivar should be doing was taking on the very form that would encourage his ikati side to express itself. What if, after knowing such freedom, it did not wish to return to the shackles of human existence?

When the great beast turned away from Jezalya and began to head west, Ramirus looked down at the place where Colivar’s wind had scoured the ground. A map had been impressed into the sand, he saw, with Jezalya at its center and the mountains on two sides. A wide circle had been drawn around the city, no doubt representing the witch’s barrier. Outside that were a dozen cryptic marks, each one a cluster of tiny imprints such as a fingertip might make, arranged in neat rectangles. Troop markings, Ramirus realized. Much too close for comfort. There would likely be fighting soon, and a lot of it. He looked closely at the mountains and saw similar imprints there, but they were single points, arrayed in no particular pattern.

Below the map were two hieroglyphs. They were from the written language of a culture that had died out so long ago that few men knew how to read them. Ramirus did. So did Colivar.

“What does it say?” Salvator asked him.

“The first one signifies a woman in power. The second signifies death.” He looked at the High King. “It would appear that Siderea Aminestas is dead.”

“Good news if it’s true, but who sent this to us?”

Ramirus drew in a deep breath. “I believe that was Colivar, your Majesty.”

It said much for Salvator that he didn’t look as surprised as he must have felt. Or perhaps he wasn’t surprised. Perhaps his faith had prepared him for the thought of a Magister turning into a Souleater. Didn’t they both stem from the same corruption, in his eyes?

Favias looked up from the map. “If Siderea just died, shouldn’t her ikati be going insane right now?”

“That is the theory,” Ramirus agreed.

They had all hoped that if Siderea were killed her Souleater would appear right afterward. Screaming in rage or anguish, as her cousin had done outside Danton’s castle, perhaps even attempting to attack Siderea’s killers. That’s what precedent suggested would happen. That’s what they had prepared for.

Not this silence. Not this mystery.

The queen is young, Ramirus reminded himself. Colivar guessed that she would be dependent upon the bond with Siderea because she’d had next to no life experience before it. But what if youth in fact makes her more adaptable? Humans can learn some things easily in childhood that they must struggle to grasp when they are older.

“We have to find her,” Salvator said. “And if we can’t find her—” He bit his lip and did not continue. Gwynofar was ready and willing to challenge this Souleater queen as she had done in the Spinas, but Salvator loathed that option and would only consider it as a last resort.

We may come to that point soon if the queen does not show herself.

“What are these things?” Favias asked, indicating the isolated spots in the mountains.

“Most likely the places where riders are hiding,” Salvator said. “If so, we need to send in troops to deal with them. If what Colivar told us is true, they won’t be in shape to resist right now. Send witches in also, to search out any who aren’t accounted for on the map. We must get them all.”

Ramirus looked westward, remembering the flock of maddened Souleaters who had set off after Kamala. If their consorts could be killed, so that the Souleaters lost their human intelligence, she would be in much less danger. Was that a good or a bad thing?

“With the tribes so close—” Favias began.

“I can hold off their warriors,” Ramirus told him. “You see to the riders, and focus on finding the queen.”

Salvator’s eyes fixed on him. There was a question in them. Ramirus did not flinch, but nor did he answer. After a moment the High King nodded gruffly and turned away.

You are learning, High King.

The warriors of the Tukrit tribe were thundering across the sands when their leader suddenly pulled up short and signaled for the others to do the same. Their compact, tightly muscled horses had been bred for maneuverability, but even so they were hard pressed to come to that quick a halt in neat array; the sand that was stirred up by their hooves was taken up by the wind, veiling the air in a gritty mist as the man who had called the halt peered off into the distance.

Then they heard him curse under his breath, a long and picturesque curse that combined unclean animal parts and the sexual habits of enemies. Even the horses knew him well enough to know that was not a good thing, and several pawed the ground nervously.

Then he said simply, “Sand,” and they all understood the cause.

It was barely visible to the east, masked by the brightness of the rising sun, but those with the most perceptive vision could just make it out: a thin gray cloud in the distance, stretching from the land upward to the sky, and as far from side to side as the eye could see. It was moving quickly toward them, which was not a good sign. In fact, it was the worst possible of all signs, short of the earth opening up and sending them hurtling down into the Abyss. An option that some of the warriors might have preferred.

No orders were required, because only one course of action was possible. Dismounting, the men began to force their horses to the ground, their flanks to the east. The animals sensed what was coming and jerked nervously at their reins, but it was a token defiance; this was not an operation in which there was any room for compromise or delay, and deep inside they seemed to understand that.

The storm moved swiftly, a demon of sand and wind that towered over them as it approached. If any of these men had ever seen the sea, they might have likened it to a massive wave, whose rolling crest seemed poised to crash down upon their heads. But these men knew only the shapes of sand and heat. And they knew that there was no way to fight such a storm, or run from it, or do anything other than take shelter as best they could, until this demon of the desert passed them by.

By the time the first sand-laden winds struck, the men were huddled down behind their horses, wide desert robes spread over the animals’ heads as well as their own bodies, to offer what protection they could. But the wind whipped about them with typhoon force, driving sand into every possible opening and crevice; even with fabric held before one’s mouth it was impossible to breath without inhaling some of it. Those who could draw enough clean breath to speak muttered prayers under their breath, asking the gods to dispel the storm. But few expected their appeals to be answered. For such a storm to come upon them just as they were riding toward Jezalya was a clear sign that the gods of the city did not approve of their mission; only a brain-damaged child could mistake a message like that.

Apparently the gods were not yet content with their understanding, for the sand demon that had come upon them with such great speed now settled down over their huddled forms and did not move on. And it seemed to some of them that in the sound of the wind there was laughter.

The scent of ikati rivalry hung heavy in the air, leaving a clear trail for Colivar to follow. The conflicting odors of two dozen males were spread across an area half a mile wide, each one as distinct to his ikati senses as a human name. A few seemed vaguely familiar to him, though he could not remember them clearly enough to identify their owners. But it was very possible that some of the ikati he was chasing now were among those he had flown with—and fought with—before. The thought was both exhilarating and unnerving.

Rising above all those odors was the rich, musky-sweet scent of a queen in flight. Breathing it in awakened memories that he would rather not surrender to, but there was no way to deny them now. In taking on this form he had opened the floodgates of recall and thrown away the key.

It is worth the price, he told himself stubbornly. The words had become a mantra to him as he flew, a mental drug with which he subdued the human portion of his soul. The ancient hungers that were stirring in him now threatened to drown out his human awareness, but he did not resist them. He let them fill him and drown him and drive him to the edge of madness, because he knew there was one hunger that must be satisfied—that he had waited centuries to satisfy—and there was no other way he could do so.

Today he must become ikati.

Sunlight played across his wings, fostering a pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. It was a sensation he was not prepared for. He had known all along that the Souleaters thrived on sunlight, but that knowledge had been a thing of human words, sterile of personal experience. His own ikati had been trapped in the north for so long it had forgotten the feel of tropical sunlight on its wings. Even at the peak of the arctic summer, when the sun never set, fear of the long arctic night lurked about the corners of ikati consciousness, filtering that sun through a veil of fear.

But now! Sunlight blazed across the jeweled panels of Colivar’s wings and lent him strength—it warmed his blood and bolstered his heartbeat—it intensified his senses so that every breeze that touched his skin made him tremble. Flying in the sunlight sent his spirit soaring to heights that human experience could not hope to replicate. If his faceted eyes had been capable of tears, he would have wept from the sheer pleasure of it. What human passion could begin to compare with this?

What fools he and the others had been, to search all over the world for the ikati! Of course the creatures would come to a place like this in the end, to bathe in this glorious sunlight! Why had Colivar not realized that from the beginning?

As he flew, he began to alter his ikati flesh, altering it in much the same way he had done just before fighting Nyuku. If Kamala was leading the males in a straight path away from Jezalya, it would take every sorcerous trick he could muster to catch up to them. If, on the other hand, she had fallen into the flight pattern of a true queen—if she had picked up enough details from the memory he’d shared with her in Coldorra to realize just how complex the mating flight could be—then the whole colony might have turned in another direction entirely, or at least lost some time weaving tangled patterns in the sky before moving on.

Tangled patterns . . . .

Memories from the past washed over him, images from forgotten flights crowding about him like the ghosts of jilted lovers. The last queen he had known had been a master of the dance, and she had led her suitors along a serpentine path whose essence was beauty and death combined. How could Colivar ever explain to a mere human the maddening arousal that came of such a flight, so far beyond any simple concept like lust or bloodthirst that one lacked words to describe it? Human language could not possibly do justice to such a transcendent intimacy.

Now he could hear a murmur on the wind, mating cries muted by distance. He could feel his heartbeat quicken at the sound, and fire shot through his veins. This was not mere lust-born energy, but something even more driving. Lust was an ephemeral thing. Finite. The hunger he was feeling now was so much more than that. It had gnawed at his heart for centuries, without any hope of surcease or satisfaction. Until now.

Soon he could see dark shapes moving in the sky before him. Many of the males seemed to be engaged in one-on-one combat; apparently Kamala had figured out how to turn them against one another. That she had been able to do so with no more than a snatch of his memory to learn from filled him with awe. How appropriate it was that such a woman should be the one to drive the Souleater colony to its final destruction!

He did not see her anywhere, but that did not concern him right now. She was not the one he was looking for.

Heart pounding, he hovered a short distance from the melee, trying to make out the features of individual ikati. Would he even recognize the ones he had known in the north, after so many years had passed? Their smells were all mixed together on the wind, a maddening elixir of lust and hatred, and he could feel his body responding to it despite his attempt to stay focused.

And then one of the largest males suddenly broke out from the flock. It was a broad-chested creature with spikes half a span longer than those of its fellows, and its flanks were crosshatched with the ragged scars of past mating contests. Colivar watched as it looked about to find the queen and then, when it failed, let loose a mating challenge of such arrogance and anger that it seemed to shake the very sky.

Colivar remembered that cry.

His body remembered it.

He answered.

The creature wheeled about to confront him. Did it recognize the body Colivar was wearing? He had done his best to replicate the appearance of his lost consort. Was the sound of his challenge familiar to it? The last time this ikati had heard that cry, they had been above the ice-fields of the far north, so close to the Wrath that one could hear its ghostly screams in one’s brain.

By unspoken accord they began to fly upward, seeking a place far enough from the general fracas that they would not be interrupted. The air grew thinner and colder with each passing minute, and their layered wings had to beat twice as hard to maintain altitude;, but that was just part of the challenge. A weaker ikati would have fallen back at this point, panicking as his breath grew short and his maneuverability was compromised. These two did not waver. They were among the strongest of their kind, and both knew the value of staging their fight in a place where none could follow them.

When they finally reached an elevation that suited them, they faced off against one another and began to circle. Colivar felt his forward wings stiffen even as his rival spread his own; jeweled membranes stretching wide on both sides of his neck, providing a fearsome backdrop for the snake-like head. The sight of his rival’s display made the blood rush to Colivar’s head, awakening a hunger that no human soul could contain, but he embraced it without reserve, even as he embraced the inevitability of this glorious moment.

The two great serpentine bodies began to circle one another, a delicate and deadly dance in which each one sought to create an opening whereby he might gain advantage. Tails with razor-sharp blades at their tips feinted toward fragile wings; talons flashed when a sudden shift in position brought the two bodies close together for an instant . . . but not close enough. The concentration required for such maneuvering was absolute, and Colivar could feel all the rest of the world fading from his consciousness. He let it go. There was no way to win this challenge other than to be wholly subsumed by it, and if that meant abandoning his humanity, so be it.

It was worth the price.

Suddenly the ikati struck out at him, its tail whipping sideways through the air with such speed that it was rendered nearly invisible. Colivar pulled in his wings so that gravity yanked him out of range, then caught the wind again and lunged upward, catching the sinuous tail in his teeth just as it reached the end of its trajectory. He bit down into the heavily muscled flesh and felt it spasm against his teeth; the blood of his enemy filled his mouth. But the ikati managed to pull free before Colivar’s jaws could close completely, and it quickly put distance between them. Not without cost, though. There were deep parallel gouges in his tail now, and drops of blood sprayed into the wind as it moved. Such damage would not be enough to kill the creature, Colivar knew, but it might hamper its mobility.

Apparently the ikati thought so as well, for it turned and lunged directly at him. Colivar tried to twist out of the way, but in dodging the deadly teeth he miscalculated and came within range of the talons. He managed to pull his wings out of the way at the last minute, but two of the claws scored his flank before he could dodge them.

Whipping his own tail upward, he wrapped it about the ikati’s own. It was a move better suited to mating than to combat, and it took the creature by surprise. Colivar now had a python’s grip on his opponent’s tail, and he used it to pull the creature off balance. For a brief moment the ikati had to focus all its attention on remaining airborne, and in that instant Colivar struck. His teeth closed on one of the creature’s lower wings and ripped through its membrane, tearing loose a fragment as long as its leg and releasing it into the wind. Now the ikati was bereft of half its lift on one side; it struggled to save itself, but Colivar’s weight dragging down on its tail made it impossible for it to establish the equilibrium necessary for flight. Nor could Colivar’s wings, angled upward for the assault, support them both.

Locked in a serpentine embrace, they began to plummet toward the earth. A chill wind roared past Colivar’s ears as he twisted desperately about, seeking a way to deal a deathblow before the fall killed them both. The ikati clawed at his flanks, trying to force him loose, but he did not let that distract him from his purpose. Wounds meant nothing at this point. Pain meant nothing. Even his own death meant nothing, if he could destroy this creature on his way out.

Then his talons slipped between the ikati’s wings, and he lashed out with all his strength, rending to pieces every bit of flesh, bone, and membrane within reach. The creature howled in pain and began to struggle wildly, trying to free itself from Colivar’s deadly embrace. And now Colivar let it go. His tail unwrapped from about the ikati’s; and, dodging the great beast’s claws one final time, he pushed himself away from it, seeking enough distance to be able to spread his wings wide so that he could stop his own fall.

It was over.

Breathing heavily, blood trickling down his flanks, Colivar watched as his opponent spiraled down toward the earth. Faster and faster the great creature fell, and it was clear it would be unable to save itself. Lacerated wings beat frantically at the wind, but that only tore the delicate membranes further; by the time the ikati reached the earth, there was little left of its wings but broken struts, and Colivar imagined he could hear them snap as the massive body struck the ground. Sand rose up in plumes from the force of the impact, and a single piece of glistening membrane drifted from the sky, coming to rest beside the still, broken body.

Colivar watched to see if the ikati would move, and then, when it did not, he let out a howl of triumph that could surely be heard as far away as the Sea of Tears. The torment of all his lost centuries resounded in that cry, and even the ikati who were sparring beneath him paused in their fighting and looked up, wondering which one of their number had made such a terrible sound.

And then there was silence.

Colivar gazed down at Nyuku’s Souleater with a strange sense of humility, for he knew just what this death would mean to the Kannoket. Only someone who had experienced that madness himself could comprehend its full horror. But he felt no pity. Not an ounce of pity. This was the way of their kind. Nyuku had played the game and lost.

Now we are even, he thought with satisfaction.

He turned to take one last look at the Souleaters . . . and then hesitated. All about him he could hear cries of challenge and triumph being released into the wind, and they resonated within his soul as well as his flesh. A part of him knew that he was supposed to head back to the human encampment now, but the reason for that was no longer clear. Why was he leaving this place? He had proven himself among the Souleaters. They would recognize his dominance now. Wasn’t that what mattered?

With last puzzled glance toward the eastern horizon, he spread out his wings to catch the wind and headed back down to join the others of his kind.

The Guardian who came through the portal had blood splattered all over his armor, and as soon as Salvator saw him, he waved for one of the healers to attend to him. But the blood was apparently not his own, and as the man walked the short distance from his arrival point to the base camp, it was clear from his steady stride that he had suffered no major damage. Of course, that revealed nothing about the battle that that had just taken place; the company that Salvator had sent into the mountains to hunt down the Souleaters’ riders had included a contingent of Seers, skilled enough in the healing arts to handle any wounds his people might suffer.

The temperature had been climbing steadily since the sun had cleared the horizon, and the heat was on its way to becoming oppressive. By the time the Guardian reached the royal party, his face was filmed with sweat, and the neck of his tunic was soaked with a mixture of perspiration and blood. He bowed his head sharply in a gesture of military obeisance to Favias and then turned to the High King. ”Your Majesty. I have been sent to report that the bulk of the riders have been dealt with.”

Salvator raised an eyebrow. ”The bulk of them?”

“We found and dispatched twenty-one in all. Most were as Magister Colivar had described, bound up in some kind of ecstatic trance. The few who awakened fully enough to defend themselves did not seem to have any special power at their calling. Since we had Seers on our side, it was easy killing.” He spoke with brisk formality, but there was distaste evident in his tone. The Guardians had been trained to kill Souleaters, not human beings. But a man with lyr blood in him had the greatest chance of seeing through a Souleaters’ enchantment, so the Guardians had been chosen to head this mission, while Salvator’s more bloodthirsty warriors had remained behind to guard the camp. In war, expediency reigned. “A few of our people were wounded, but healers have attended to them. We suffered no casualties.”

“Twenty-one . . . .”

Salvator’s mouth was a hard, thin line. “The rest got away?”

The Guardian shook his head. ”They were nowhere to be found. We think they may have taken shelter elsewhere. Perhaps in the northern range.”

Twenty-one riders were dead. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? It meant that twenty-one of the Souleaters with Kamala had suddenly been stripped of their higher intelligence and might go mad from the shock. Colivar had said they might turn on one another if that happened. God willing, it would be so.

That was an accomplishment worth noting, even if their primary target had not yet been located.

“And the queen?” Gwynofar asked sharply, voicing Salvator’s thoughts. “What of her?”

The Guardian ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair; it was clear that this part of the report was something he did not want to deliver. “I regret we found no sign of her, your Majesty. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t out there. None of the lairs we investigated showed signs of a female presence, but of course our Seers are only guessing at what that would look like. No one has any practical experience with this kind of thing. And the fact that the queen is still a juvenile means that her metaphysical resonance may not even be properly female yet. Or so the Seers tell me. Magic is not my bailiwick.” He sighed deeply; clearly he felt personally shamed by their failure. “I am sorry, your Majesty. I wish I had better news to bring you.”

“Twenty-one witches are dead,” Salvator said sharply. “Each of them was a significant threat to us and needed to be dealt with. You did well.”

The Guardian bowed his head. “I thank you, Sire.”

Salvator was managing to keep his voice steady and say the things that needed to be said, but frustration was smoldering inside him. They had come here for one thing and one thing only: to find the Souleater queen and destroy her. Now it appeared they were going to be able to accomplish every other goal surrounding their mission, but not that one. Siderea was dead, the allies of the Souleaters were mostly dead, the ikati themselves had been reduced to mindless beasts . . . yet all that would mean nothing if the queen survived. Nothing! In a few months she would reach adulthood and lay her first eggs, and soon after that a whole new flock of Souleaters would be born into the world including new queens and the species would become firmly reestablished. The second Dark Age would begin again.

It had to end here and now. There was simply no other option.

Behind him he heard Favias ask Ramirus, “What of the tribals? Have you dealt with them?”

A hint of a cold smile played across the Magister’s face. “They are . . . occupied.”

Salvator gritted his teeth for a minute. You allowed him to act. The burden of his sin is yours to bear. “If I asked what you did to them, Ramirus, would I regret it?”

“Merely an illusion, Majesty, that convinced them this was not the proper time for war.”

“So many of them? All at once?”

“They all share a common fear, so the mechanics of it were quite simple. I merely brought that fear to life. And since it is a fear that your own people do not share, my efforts didn’t even have to have a clear directional focus, other than keeping it out of Jezalya.”

Salvator’s mouth twitched. “That sounds almost . . . merciful.”

Again the cold smile appeared. “No, your Majesty. Simply efficient.”

The High King turned back to the Guardian. “You may refresh yourself while we confer.” He indicated the place where food and water had been stockpiled, against the leeward flank of a nearby dune. Not enough to sustain Salvator’s people for any length of time, but sufficient to tide them over if all their witches were killed in battle and they had to wait for a new supply line to be set up. A second canvas had been raised to keep the supplies cool, but it was little more than a token effort. In the full heat of day there would be little escape.

When the Guardian was out of earshot, Salvator turned back to the others. “I should join them,” he said quietly.

Favias’ breath was an indrawn hiss. “Majesty?”

“The gift of the queen is invisibility. Maybe her lair is right in front of them and yet they can’t see it. I may be able to.”

Ramirus drew in a deep breath. “Majesty, your immunity to the ikati power is mere theory right now. A good theory, perhaps and I am sure there is some truth to it but its parameters are completely unknown. While the odds are very good that if the Souleaters do break away from Kamala, they will head straight back to the place where both their lairs and their masters were last seen. The risk of you being in that place, with such a small company, is unthinkable.”

Salvator’s eyes narrowed. “Do you ask my people to suffer a risk that I myself am not willing to accept?”

Ramirus’ face was expressionless. “It is expediency, Majesty. Nothing more. This operation can function without the others; it cannot function without you.”

“So what do you suggest?” he asked, irritated by the callous rationality of his argument. “Other than standing here and wringing our hands that we’ve lost our quarry?” He saw Gwynofar about to speak and raised a hand to silence her. “Or staking my mother out as bait?”

He had argued with her about that tactic the night before. I challenged the one in the Spinas, Gwynofar had reminded him. I can do the same thing in Jezalya.

I did not sanction that, he’d responded. I would have forbidden it.

But it worked, did it not?

Your life is too precious to be risked in such a reckless gambit.

And what if there is no other way, my son? What if all other methods fail us, and we simply cannot find this queen by other means? Will you still forbid it then? When there was no response, she had pressed, You say you are willing to die for this cause. Is my dedication worth less than yours?

Between gritted teeth he had muttered, As a last resort, then, I will consider it. But only as a last resort. When every other option has been exhausted. Not one second before that.

They were not at that point yet, he told himself. Not yet.

“There are two possibilities as I see them,” Favias said. “One, that she fled the area as soon as she saw trouble coming, or right after Siderea died. In which case she is now beyond our reach, unless we do something to call her back. Two, that she is hiding somewhere nearby. Maybe the sight and smell of another female scared her so badly that she’s just not going to come out until that scent is gone from the area.”

Shina said, “We can banish that.”

Salvator nodded. “Do so.”

She moved off to comply.

Ramirus said quietly, “There is a third possibility, which is that she is still here and still quite sane, and knows exactly what is going on. She may even have been watching this campaign play out, albeit from a safe distance.”

“You speak of her as if she were still highly intelligent,” Favias said. “But her human partner is dead now, and Colivar said that she would be even more vulnerable than the others because she had bonded to Siderea before her own mind was fully developed. He said that would make her even more dependent on her partner than the other Souleaters, and less stable once her partner died.”

“With all due respect for Colivar’s omniscience,” Ramirus said dryly, “let us not forget that was only speculation. What if he were mistaken? What if being nurtured from childhood by a mind like Siderea’s could affect the development of the Souleater’s own mental capacity? So that even after her human partner died, an echo of higher intelligence would remain? What then?”

In that case, Salvator thought, even baiting her would not work. She would see the trap for what it was and keep her distance from us.

Feeling the frustration that was welling up inside him about to reach the breaking point, he walked away from the others for a moment, just to get some space around him. The sense of futility in the air made him feel claustrophobic. Never has a campaign accomplished so much, he thought bitterly, and had it mean so little. If there had been a piece of furniture around that he could strike out at, or even a sizeable rock to kick, he would have vented some of his anger on it. But nothing other than sand was nearby, and kicking sand would just not be satisfying.

He thought of asking Gwynofar what she thought of all this, but her opinion didn’t really matter, did it? It was more important that he watch the western sky for something that might happen there. Like Kamala’s return. Or Colivar’s. Or that of the other Souleaters. Or maybe the spell that Ramirus had cast to hold off the tribal warriors would collapse, in which case he should be watching for signs of enemy soldiers approaching from that direction . . . .

He shook his head, aware that something was wrong but not sure what it was. Looking back at the others, he saw them all staring in the same direction he had been, as if something to the west of the camp had drawn their attention. But even though he looked back and squinted into the distance, he couldn’t make out what it was. He thought of asking Gwynofar what she thought, then realized that her input was not important. He needed to stay focused on things that really mattered.

But she had been standing with the others a minute ago.

It took all of his effort to make himself turn around. His mind might have decided that he needed to look for Gwynofar, but his body clearly didn’t agree. He was aware enough of the disparity that it lent new strength to his efforts, even as a new kind of fear took root in his soul.

She had left the base camp and was standing out on the empty plain, alone. She had picked up a spear along the way—no one was allowed to take a step outside the sheltered area without a weapon in hand—but it hung limp in her grasp, the shaft horizontal. Useless. She seemed to be staring at something in the sky. No. She was staring at nothing in the sky. Her eyes were turned upward, but he sensed that they were seeing nothing.

He followed her gaze. A dark shape seemed to come into focus that had not been there a moment before, and an odor filled the air that was cloyingly sweet, insufferably foul. Even before he could make out details of the creature, he knew what it was. What it must be.

A Souleater.

It was plummeting down at her from a bright, clear sky, its long talons extended, like a hawk about to snatch up a field mouse. Though Gwynofar’s face was turned up toward it, he knew with sickening certainty that she did not see it at all—at least not in any conscious sense—and that she could not act to save herself.

He yelled at her as he sprinted across the sand, a sound that might have been meant to be her name but that came out of his mouth as an inarticulate cry of despair. He grabbed up a spear as he ran, knowing even as he did so that he was going to be too late. The thing was too close—it was coming down too fast—and she was too far away. For the first time in his life he wished that he were a witch, so that he might sacrifice his life’s own essence to increase his speed. But all he had was prayer, so he offered it.

Let this be my sacrifice, not hers!

Great jeweled wings filled the sky overhead as he dove the last couple of feet, transforming sky and sand into a mad cacophony of color. He reached Gwynofar even as the talons were about to close on her head and tackled her down to the ground, desperately trying to brace his spear in some kind of defensive position. She was as limp as a rag doll and offered no resistance. It seemed that he could feel a breeze upon his back as the great talons snapped shut just inches from his skin, and the ikati screamed in rage so loudly that it made his ears ring. Could the others hear it too? Or were they still entranced by the creature’ s power as he had been, and blind to it presence?

Rolling over on his back, he thrust the spear upward with both hands, not even caring where his target was at that moment, just trying to win himself some room to maneuver. The mass of the great body overhead seemed to blot out the sun, and its musky-sweet scent filled his lungs like noxious smoke. He had to fight the urge to gag as he struggled to get to his feet, while staying near enough to his fallen mother to protect her.

Where were the others? Were they going to help? Even if they couldn’t see the creature he was fighting, surely they could see that he was engaged in combat with something, and maybe fire their weapons into the space it so clearly occupied. But even as he gripped his spear in both hands and braced himself to strike at the creature the moment it came within range, he knew with a sense of utter despair that the queen’s power didn’t work that way. The others wouldn’t be able to help him because their attention was fixed on other things. Tribesmen attacking. Souleaters returning. Maybe even a sandstorm moving in. Each of her mesmerized victims would come up with his own reason for not looking in this direction, without ever realizing he was not doing so.

Salvator was on his own.

The Souleater’s great wings beat the air mere yards overhead, whipping the sand about him into a frenzy. His hair blew wildly across his face as he feinted with the long spear to keep her at a distance, trying desperately to remember the key facts of Souleater anatomy, to figure out where to strike. The body of this one was longer and thinner than the ones in the diagrams Favias had shown him, and a few of the landmarks he’d been told to look for, to locate major organs, were absent. But he knew he might only get one good shot at her, so he had to make it count.

Suddenly she lunged down at him with her great triangular head, teeth bared. He thrust the spear forward aggressively, so that she would have to impale herself on its point in order to reach him. She pulled back, frustrated, and great jaws snapped shut several feet short of his head. She was so close now that he could taste her breath on his tongue, sickening sweetness with an aftertaste of decay. The great black eyes reflected his own sweat-streaked face back at him in its thousand uniform facets, and he realized suddenly that if he moved quickly enough, he might be able to blind her before she withdrew. With a muttered prayer on his breath he angled his spear—

—And pain exploded in his side without warning. He felt himself flying through the air, and he hit the ground with such force that it drove the breath from his body. For a moment the entire world went red; sand mixed with blood in his throat, and he tried to cough it all up, but the motion sent a sharp pain lancing through his chest. Favias’ voice seemed to ring in his head, admonishing him for his carelessness. They fight with their tails. Don’t underestimate their reach.

Blinking against the pain, he struggled to get an elbow under him, to lever his way back onto his feet. He could feel a dent in the side of his armor where the sheer force of the Souleater’s blow had caved in the steel; if they’d been fighting on anything other than sand, he would probably be dead now. Every breath he drew was accompanied by a stabbing pain, and he was sure that one or more of his ribs had been broken. But he couldn’t let it end like this. Not after all they had gone through to get this far. He could not let this creature win.

Now his vision was becoming clear enough that he could see his spear lying on the ground to one side of him; he reached out to grab it. But razor-sharp talons suddenly closed about him from behind, locking him in an inexorable vice as they jerked him upward. The pain was so intense that for a moment it blinded him; by the time he could see again, the ground was far beneath them, and his dazed vision could not make out any sign of either city or camp nearby.

The Souleater’s talons were like bars of iron around his chest; surely, if Salvator had not been wearing a solid steel cuirass, he would have been crushed to death. As it was, he could hear the ominous creak of steel as the powerful talons tightened, struggling to finish the job. And to his horror he could feel the cuirass begin to give way, surrendering at last to the crushing grip. Bones snapped along one side of his ribcage, sending spears of pain lancing through his side and very nearly driving him into unconsciousness.

I will not die like this! he raged, struggling for every breath. Shadows were closing in about his field of vision. Black spots danced before him as blood seeped steadily into his lungs. Every indrawn breath was agony. I will not die like prey!

The only weapon he had on him was a short sword edged with Souleater blades, and he knew that even if he could get it out of its sheath, he could not reach far enough to strike at any vital target. But his hand closed about its grip nonetheless, nails biting into the leather binding as spasms of pain wracked his flesh. He would not pass out, he told himself. He would not give up. He would not stop fighting until the moment that God himself collected his soul from his body, so that all the Souleater carried away was empty flesh . . . .

Delirium was closing in on him now, disjointed visions flashing in and out of existence all around him. He saw figures from one of Favias’ anatomical charts flying past him, with Souleater vulnerabilities marked in red ink and meticulously labeled. Look. Favias’ voice was a whisper in his ear. The artery inside the leg. It is vulnerable at the joint. Slice it open and the result will be as deadly to a Souleater as a cut to the femoral artery would be to a man.

He tried to twist about in the ikati’s grip so he could locate the spot, but just then the talons tightened about his chest, driving out the last of his air and causing fresh pain to explode in his chest. His heart labored as it struggled to push enough blood through his constricted veins to keep him alive. Blessed Destroyer, he prayed desperately, give me strength to finish this one task before I die, I beg You. Let me be the vehicle by which You banish this plague from the earth.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, he somehow managed to twist his head around just enough to see the joint Favias had described. He could see where the hide was thin where the creature’s leg was joined to its body, and he imagined he could hear the pulse of blood coursing beneath its skin, so close to the surface. Fixing his vision upon that one point, he tried to shut out all the rest. Fear was temporary. Bodily pain was meaningless. Soon he would be in the presence of the Creator, and nothing else mattered.

There was a strange kind of peace in such total surrender. The pain in his body seemed to become a distant thing; it did not hurt any less, but it was as if the pain now belonged to someone else. He could feel knife-edged bone shards stabbing into his internal organs as he unsheathed his sword, gripping the handle tightly so that the wind would not tear it from his grasp. The world all about him had faded to blackness, and only a single central point of light remained, focused upon the vulnerable joint overhead. Somewhere a stranger screamed in pain as he raised his sword as high as he could, struggling to reach the vulnerable spot. Somewhere a man was coughing up blood, in spasms so agonizing no human soul could bear it.

Guide me, my Creator, for the sake of mankind, whom You love.

Drawing in as deep a breath as he could, he thrust upward with all his strength. The ikati jerked its leg back in surprise; the sudden motion caused Salvator to black out for a moment.. When he came to and found his hand empty, he thought for one terrible moment that he had dropped the sword. Despair rushed over him with numbing force. Then he saw it embedded in the creature’s leg, the grip hanging down toward him. Despite the depth of the wound, only a trickle of blood was leaking out. He had missed the vital artery.

Unable to draw in a full breath any longer, he hung limp in the creature’s grip, praying for one last moment of strength to do what he had to do. Then, gritting his teeth against the pain, he lurched up and grabbed the leather-bound grip of the sword. The cobalt blade sliced through the Souleater’s flesh, and more blood flowed out of its leg, but it was still not enough. The ikati howled in pain and tried to shake him loose, but he manage to twist the sword hard to the left before he lost his grip—and a river of hot blood answered his efforts, as the wall of the artery was finally breached.

And then the ikati queen released him.

And he fell.

Wind rushed by his head, but he could not take any of it in; the crushed steel cuirass held him too tightly in its embrace to allow for breathing. But that was all right. His time on earth was over now. There was no longer need to breathe.

Thank you, my Creator, for accepting my sacrifice in the place of my mother’s. May my death serve as penance for any and all sins this company has performed in its mission.

Clearly the Creator was pleased by his prayer, for in His infinite mercy he allowed the High King’s consciousness to slip away from him gently, just before the ground rushed up to meet him.

The queen was watching.

Colivar could see her in the distance, so far away that at times she seemed little more than a dot on the horizon. At first he thought she was just a vulture in search of carrion, and he paid little attention to her. But something caused him to look more closely, and he realized then that her silhouette was not that of a bird, and she hovered in the air in a way that no vulture could manage. A thrill ran up his spine then as he suddenly realized what she was . . . and who she must be.

None of the other ikati seemed to be aware of her. Was that by her choice? How adept had Kamala become at manipulating the queen’s special gift? Colivar remembered past mating flights that he had viewed through the eyes of his own ikati—remembered them beating their shared wings in wild fury when a queen suddenly disappeared, all rational thought driven out of their joint consciousness by a tide of pure animal frustration. Little wonder the males turned on one another! Such energy must have an outlet or it would consume its source.

If she was allowing him to see her, and only him, was that not an invitation? The mere thought of it sent blood rushing to his wings with such force that it was hard to focus on anything else; the jeweled panels twitched in anticipation, hungering to consume the distance between them. When he began to fly in her direction, several of the males tried to get in his way, but he dodged them rather than confronting them, not wanting to take his eyes off that distant winged figure for a moment. Afraid she would vanish like smoke if he did. A few other Souleaters followed his gaze westward, curious to see what it was that he was flying toward with such determination, but apparently they saw nothing of interest there. Only empty sky, a blazing sun, and sand so hot that the air above it rippled like a sorcerous portal.

She was there only for him.

The sensation of flight was so intense that it was hard for him to focus on anything else now. He was acutely aware of each muscle in his body, and the pulse of contraction and release that accompanied each wingstroke sent ripples of pleasure through his flesh. The air surrounding him seemed to shimmer with colors, and the sunlight on his back sent waves of pleasure coursing down his hide like a physical caress. Nothing his ikati had shared with him had ever been like this! Were such sensations normal for this species, and the bond between ikati and human was simply not strong enough to convey them? Or was this something that only a hybrid creature like himself might experience? If so, was Kamala feeling the same things right now? Was the very air alive with energy for her as well, so that every movement, no matter how small, heated her blood beyond bearing?

He was coming close enough to her now that he could see her clearly. Sunlight rippled along her scales as she hovered in midair, her long, serpentine tail coiling and uncoiling suggestively. Just a bit farther and he would be able to twine his tail about hers, feeling that sleek surface sliding against his own rough hide, using it to bring their bodies into perfect alignment. The promise of it was maddening. He could feel his wings falling into a new pattern as he approached her, echoing her own, and he knew that at the moment of pleasure they would share the same rhythm, stacked wings beating in perfect unison. It was an ecstasy beyond human comprehension.

But just as he was nearly within reach of her, she wheeled about in the air and began to fly away from him.

He was startled for a moment, then quickly followed. She was fast, very fast, but his altered body was equally capable of speed, and the stream of turbulence that roiled in her wake only stoked the fire in his blood to greater heights. Yet every time he was just about to take hold of her, she managed to dart away again, leaving him trembling with frustration. Once he was so close that he could have nipped her tail with his teeth—but then she surged forward suddenly into the wind, putting so much distance between them that he was afraid he might lose her.

Miles of sand gave way to stone beneath them, a rocky black plain crisscrossed by sand-bottomed faults. She turned in her flight to head directly over it, then dropped down so low that her talons nearly brushed the ground as she flew. Uncertain of her intent, he followed. She began to fly along one particular fault—and then dropped down into it suddenly, and out of sight.

Startled, he overshot the spot and had to circle about to come back to it. The fault looked much too narrow for a Souleater to fly into; Colivar’s own wings would be crushed by the rock walls on either side the moment he tried. So how had she entered it? And why? Hovering over the center of the fault, he could see no Souleater inside.

Only a woman.

She had reclaimed her human form and stood there looking up at him. For a moment he could not absorb what had happened; then the terrible truth of it hit home.

The Souleater queen was gone!

Maddened by frustration, he bellowed his rage to the heavens. His wings beat at the rock on either side of the narrow pass with audible force; one of his smallest wing struts snapped, but he didn’t even feel the pain. Gone! She was gone! The hunger for her was an unquenchable fire in his belly, but the creature he lusted for no longer shared his form. There were no wings to beat against his own, no tail to coil against his belly.

“Colivar!”

The sound she made was strange. It took him a moment to realize what it was. Human language. A name.

His.

Hovering above the rock, his wounded wing throbbing, he looked down at her again.

Her body was naked, he saw, and covered with a thin sheen of sweat. Her high, full breasts were flushed with the heat of human arousal, and the perfume that arose from her skin awakened a faint memory within him, of a kind of desire that had nothing to do with either frenzy or bloodshed. Trapped between the hunger of two species, he suddenly found himself frozen, unable to respond in any meaningful way. In some distant part of his mind he knew that his body was wrong for this moment and that he had to change it, but he no longer remembered how.

She began to walk along the sandy floor of the fault, moving slowly toward him. His wings thrummed helplessly against the rock, but they were unable to bring him any closer to her. “Be human again, Colivar.” The scent of her filled his nostrils, awakening fragments of human memory. Morati lovers. Languid pleasures. The taste of a woman’s sweat-slicked skin, warmed by the tropical sun.

“Come back to me,” she whispered. Holding out her arms in invitation.

He bound his power without knowing it, molded it without conscious thought. The change that followed was uncontrolled, and pain shot through his limbs as they returned to their former shape in fits and starts, like a bird breaking out of its shell. Suddenly his wings were gone, and he dropped down onto the sand before her, the breath driven from his lungs by the impact. Two legs. Two arms. No more. That was right, wasn’t it?

He looked up. Close, she was so close, and so real. So human. He reached out to touch her, and she did not back away. Her flesh was like silk beneath his fingertips, agonizingly soft. He stood, and his hands slid up her body, following the curve of her thighs, her hips, moving upward to cup the fullness of her breasts. He wondered at how alien her body felt, even as it aroused him. Skin so smooth. So fragile. Where were the scales? Where were the wings? So much was missing!

She moved closer to him, pressing the full length of her body against his own, bringing her lips up to his. Images of pleasure rushed through his head, human and ikati intermingled, and he struggled to find his way back to her world. Then her hands found the focus of his desire and she stroked him, leading the way. They moved down to the sand together, her legs parting for him, and then there was only heat: wonderful, glorious, human heat, and a rhythm that had nothing to do with flying. When she cried out in pleasure, it was a purely human sound, and when his own passion crested, the heat of it was so intense that in a single instant it consumed all moments but this one, banishing every instinct and sensation that was not in perfect harmony with his current self.

And the memory of wings was gone from his mind.

And the memory of ice was gone from his soul.

And when it was over, he lay in the sand by her side, and he wept.