Heir to the Shadows (47 page)

He felt the sexual tension rising as soon as she stopped crying, but he held on. If he was reading the intensity correctly, she was over the worst of it now.

After several minutes, she relaxed enough to rest her head on his shoulder. "Lucivar?"

"Mmm?"

"I'm hungry."

His heart sang. "Then I'll feed you."

*Fire?*

Jaenelle's head snapped up. She stared at the wolf standing at the edge of the clearing. "Why does he want to build a fire?"

"Damned if I know why he wants one. But if we did build one, I could make some laced coffee."

Jaenelle pondered this for a while. "You make good laced coffee."

Taking that for a "yes," Lucivar led Jaenelle to the other side of the clearing while Smoke started searching the debris for pieces of wood big enough to use for fuel.

Lucivar called in the food pack, flask, and sleeping bag

he'd left by the creek. Jaenelle wandered from one side of the clearing to the other, nibbling the sandwich he'd given her. He kept an eye on her as he built the fire, called in the rest of their gear, and made camp. She seemed restless but not uncontrollably driven, which was good since they were losing the light and the day's warmth.

By the time he had the whisky-laced coffee ready, Jaenelle was tucked in her sleeping bag, shivering, eagerly reaching for the cup he handed her. He didn't suggest that she put on another layer of clothes. As long as she focused on the fire being the source of warmth, she'd be reluctant to wander away from it until morning.

He was rummaging through the food pack, looking for something else he could offer her to eat, when he heard a delicate snore.

After more than two days of unrelenting movement, Jaenelle slept.

Lucivar closed her sleeping bag and added a warming spell to keep her comfortable as the temperature dropped throughout the night. He pulled the coffeepot away from the heat and added more wood to the fire. Then he pulled off his boots and settled into his sleeping bag.

He should put a protective shield around the camp. He doubted a four-footed predator would want what was left in the food pack enough to challenge the combined scents of human and wolf, but they were on the northern border of Ebon Rih and uncomfortably close to Jhinka territory. The last thing Jaenelle needed right now was being jolted awake by a Jhinka hunting party's surprise attack.

Lucivar was sound asleep before he finished the thought.

6 / Hell

Resigned to the intrusion, Saetan settled back in one of the chairs by the fire and poured two glasses of yarbarah. He'd decided to spend some time in his private study beneath the Hall because he hadn't wanted to deal with any more frightened, clamoring minds—not after the past twenty-four hours. But Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince or not, High

Lord or not, a man didn't refuse a Dea al Mon Queen when she asked for an audience—especially when she was also a demon-dead Harpy.

"What can I do for you, Titian?" he asked politely, handing her a glass of the warmed blood wine.

Titian accepted the glass and sipped delicately, her large blue eyes never looking away from his gold ones. "You've made the citizens of Hell very nervous. This is the first time, in all the centuries you've been the High Lord, that you've purged the Dark Realm."

"I rule Hell. I can do as I please here," Saetan said mildly. Even a fool could have heard the warning under the mild tone.

Titian hooked her long, fine, silver hair behind her pointed ear and chose to ignore the warning. "Do as you please or do what you must? It didn't escape the notice of the observant that the Dark Priestess's followers were the only ones consumed in this purge."

"Really?" He sounded politely interested. In truth, he felt relieved the connection had been made. Not only would the rest of the demon-dead relax once they realized his choice of who had been hurried to the final death was based on a specific allegiance, anyone Hekatah approached in the future would think long and hard about the cost of such allegiance. "Since you've no personal concern, why are you here?"

"You missed a few. I thought you should know."

Saetan quickly masked his distaste and dismay. Titian always saw too much. "You'll give me the names."

It wasn't a question.

Titian smiled. "There's no need. The Harpies took care of them for you." She hesitated for a moment.

"What about the Dark Priestess?"

Clenching his teeth, Saetan stared at the fire. "I couldn't find her. Hekatah's very good at playing least-in-sight."

"If you had, would you have hurried her return to the Darkness? Would you have sent her to the final death?"Saetan flung his glass into the fireplace and instantly regretted it as the fire sizzled and the smell of hot blood filled the room.

He'd been asking himself that question since he'd made the decision to eliminate all the support Hekatah had among the demon-dead. If he had found her, could he have coldly drained her strength until she faded into the Darkness? Or would he have hesitated, as he'd done so many times before, because centuries of dislike and distrust couldn't erase the simple fact that she'd given him two of his sons. Three if he counted . . . but he didn't, couldn't count that child, just as he'd never allowed himself to consider who had held the knife.

He jerked when Titian brushed her hand over his. "Here." She handed him another glass of warmed yarbarah. Sitting back, she traced the rim of her own glass with one finger. "You don't like killing women, do you?" Saetan gulped the blood wine. "No, I don't." "I thought so. You were much cleaner, much kinder with them than you were with the males."

"Perhaps by your standards." By his own standards, he'd been more than sufficiently brutal. He shrugged. "We are our mothers' sons."

"A reasonable assumption." She sounded solemn. She looked amused.

Saetan twitched his shoulders, unable to shake the feeling that she'd just dropped a noose over his head.

"It's a pet theory of mine about why there's no male rank equal to a Queen."

"Because males are their mothers' sons?" "Because, long ago, only females were Blood." Titian curled up in her chair. "How intriguing." Saetan studied her warily. Titian had the same look Jaenelle always had when she'd successfully cornered him and was quite willing to wait until he finished squirming and told her what she wanted to know.

"It's just something Andulvar and I used to argue about on long winter nights," he grumbled, refilling their glasses. "It may not be winter but, in Hell, the nights are always long."

"You know the story about the dragons who first ruled the Realms?"

Titian shrugged, indicating that it didn't matter if she knew or not. She'd settled in to hear a story.

Saetan raised his glass in a salute and smiled grudgingly. Jeweled males might be trained as defenders of their territories, but no male could beat a Queen when it came to tactical strategy.

"Long ago," he began, "when the Realms were young, there lived a race of dragons. Powerful, brilliant, and magical, they ruled all the lands and all the creatures in them. But after hundreds of generations, there came a day when they realized their race would be no more, and rather than have their knowledge and their gifts die with them, they chose to give them to the other creatures so that they could continue the Craft and care for the Realms.

"One by one, the dragons sought their lairs and embraced the forever night, becoming part of the Darkness. When only the Queen and her Prince, Lorn, were left, the Queen bid her Consort farewell. As she flew through the Realms, her scales sprinkled down, and whatever creature her scales touched, whether it walked on two legs or four or danced in the air on wings, whatever creature a scale touched became blood of her blood—still part of the race it came from, but also Other, remade to become caretaker and ruler. When the last scale fell from her, she vanished. Some stories say her body was transformed into some other shape, though it still contained a dragon's soul. Others say her body faded and she returned to the Darkness."

Saetan swirled the yarbarah in his glass. "I've read all the old stories—some from the original text.

What's always intrigued me is that, no matter what race the story came from, the Queen is never named.

In all the stories, Lorn is mentioned by name, repeatedly, but not her. The omission seems deliberate. I've always wondered why."

"And the Prince of Dragons?" Titian asked. "What happened to him?"

"According to the legends, Lorn still exists, and he contains all the knowledge of the Blood."

Titian looked thoughtful. "When Jaenelle turned fifteen and Draca said that Lorn had decided Jaenelle would live

with you at the Hall, I had thought she was just saying that to block Cassandra's objections."

"No, she meant it. He and Jaenelle have been friends for years. He gifted her with her Jewels."

Titian opened and closed her mouth without making a sound.

Her stunned expression pleased him.

"Have you seen him?"

"No," Saetan replied sourly.
"I've
not been granted an audience."

"Oh, dear," Titian said with no sympathy whatsoever. "What does the legend have to do with the Blood once being all female, and why didn't we keep it that way?"

"You would have liked that, wouldn't you?"

She smiled.

"All right, my theory is this. Since the Queen's scales gifted the Craft to other races, and since like calls to like, it seems reasonable that only the females were able to absorb the magic. They became bonded to the land, drawn by their own body rhythms to the ebb and flow of the natural world. They became the Blood."

"Which would have lasted one generation," Titian pointed out.

"Not all men are stupid." When she looked doubtful, Saetan let out an exasperated sigh. The only thing more pointless than arguing with a Harpy about the value of males was trying to teach
a
rock to sing. He would have better luck with the rock. "For theory's sake, let's say we're talking about the Dea al Mon."

"Ah." Titian settled back, content.
"Our
males
are
intelligent."

"I'm sure they're relieved you think so," Saetan said

dryly. "So, upon discovering that some of the women in

their Territory suddenly had magical powers and skills . .."

"The best young warriors would offer themselves as

mates and protectors," Titian said promptly.

Saetan raised an eyebrow. Since landens, the non-Blood of each race, tended to be so wary of the Blood and their Craft, that wasn't quite the way he'd always pictured it, but he found it interesting that a Dea al Mon witch would make

that assumption. He'd have to ask Chaosti and Gabrielle at some point. "And from those unions, children were born. The girls, because of gender, received the full gift."

"But the boys were half-Blood with little or no Craft." Titian held out her glass. Saetan refilled it.

"Witches don't bear many children," Saetan continued after refilling his own glass. "Depending on the ratio of sons to daughters, it could have taken several more generations before males bred true. Through all that time, the power would have been in the distaff gender, each generation learning from the one before and becoming stronger. The first Queens probably appeared long before the first Warlord, let alone a male stronger than that. By then, the idea that males served and protected females would have been ingrained. In the end, what you have is the Blood society where Warlords are equal in status to witches, Princes are equal to Priestesses and Healers, and Black Widows only have to defer to Warlord Princes and Queens. And Warlord Princes, who are considered a law unto themselves, are a step above the other castes and a step—a long step—beneath the Queens."

"When caste is added to each individual's social rank and Jewel rank, it makes an intriguing dance."

Titian set her glass on the table. "An interesting theory, High Lord."

"An interesting diversion, Lady Titian. Why did you do it? Why did you offer me your company tonight?"

Titian smoothed her forest-green tunic. "You are kin of my kin. It seemed . . . fitting ... to offer you comfort tonight since Jaenelle could not. Good night, High Lord."

Long after she'd gone, Saetan sat quietly, watching the logs in the fireplace break and settle. He roused himself enough to pour and warm one last glass of yarbarah, content now with the solitude and silence.

He didn't dispute her theory of why males came to serve, but it wasn't his. It wasn't just the magic that had drawn the males. It was the inner radiance housed within those female bodies, a luminescence that some men had craved as much as they might have craved a light they could see glowing in a window when they were standing out in the cold. They had craved that light as much as they had craved being sheathed in the sweet darkness of a woman's body, if not more.

Males had become Blood because they'd been drawn

to both.

And, as he knew all too well, they still were.

7 / Kaeleer

Lucivar lay on his back in the young grass, his hands behind his head, his wings spread to dry after the quick dip in the spring-fed pool. Jaenelle was still splashing around in the cold water, washing the sweat and dirt out of her long hair.

He closed his eyes and groaned contentedly as the sun slowly warmed and loosened tight muscles.

Yesterday, he'd awakened just before dawn to find Jaenelle busily rummaging through the food pack.

They'd managed a hasty meal before the physical tension produced by the drugs forced her to move.

It wasn't the unrelenting drive of the previous days, and as the day wore on, physical tension gave way to emotional storms. Anger would flood her suddenly, then turn to tears. He gave her space while she raged and swore. He held her while she cried. When the storm passed, she'd be fine for a little while.

They would walk at an easy pace, stopping to pick wild berries or rest near a stream. Then the cycle would start over, each time with a little less intensity.

This morning, he and Smoke had brought down a small deer. He'd kept enough meat to fill the small, cold-spelled food box he'd brought with him and had sent Smoke back to the Keep with the rest. If Saetan wasn't at the Keep, Smoke would go on to the Hall to let the High Lord know that the worst had passed and they would spend a few more days in Askavi before coming home.