Legacy of Kings (25 page)

This time, he could feel the cry resound in his flesh. This time, it was meant for him.

High overhead the ikati queen did not so much as pause in her wingstroke, but her power began to lap down over the party with increasing intensity. Two of the horses tried to pull back against their reins, and Colivar saw that the warrior who reached out to steady them stumbled slightly as he did so. One of the archers put out his hand to a nearby boulder to steady himself, as the strength in his legs began to fail him. Salvator’s witch seemed about to perform some kind of spell when he lost his concentration, swayed, and then went down heavily on one knee. Colivar saw Ramirus glance over at Salvator, who seemed startled by his witch’s fall; clearly whatever strategy the High King had prepared for that day had depended upon this man’s talents. The High King moved over to where the man knelt and helped him to his feet, refusing to meet the Magisters’ eyes as he did so. Even in the face of death he would accept no help from one of their kind. Colivar was both amazed and appalled. Did he think that stubbornness alone would save him?

You damned fool, Salvator! You will die here along with all your people, in the name of that idiotic faith of yours. Who will benefit from that, other than our enemy?

And then suddenly Gwynofar thrust her spear into the ground, ran the largest rock heap, and began to climb. Startled, Salvator called her back, but she ignored him. One of the royal guards ran up to her, but he hesitated an instant before grappling with the Queen Mother . . . and then she was out of reach. He struggled to catch up with her but in doing so dislodged several large rocks and lost his footing; he hit the ground hard and then lay still.

Colivar watched in fascination as Gwynofar worked her way up the rock pile. The climb was treacherous, but her altered muscles had been designed for just such a task, and compared to the monument in Alkali, this was practically a promenade on the garden path. Even with the steel cuirass she wore and the heavy sword sheathed across her back, she seemed to have little difficulty making the climb. Within several minutes she had gained the top of the mound, and she moved across it with an almost animal alacrity. Colivar conjured an overhead view to watch her, and he saw that in one place there was a pile of sun-bleached bones. She was moving steadily toward that now, tiny skeletons crunching underfoot with each step. When she reached the center of it, she stood up straight and tall, defying the waves of debilitating power that were beating down from above. Was she immune to the queen’s power, as her son appeared to be, or simply determined enough to overcome it? The elevation she had gained was minimal when measured against the ikati’s own position, but from his conjured perspective Colivar could see that her new placement set her apart from the rest of the morati, and the macabre nest of bones that lay at her feet would draw the Souleater’s eye directly to her.

She was offering herself as bait.

For a moment she stood there, just catching her breath. Colivar himself was hardly breathing. Did she understand what she was doing, in any conscious sense? Or was blind
lyr
instinct driving her now, and she was simply going along with it? A Souleater queen had no reason to answer a mating challenge such as the one the Guardian had performed; that was meant for the males of the species. But a female invading her territory was another matter. Would she recognize Gwynofar as a legitimate rival? Enough to be consumed by rage at the sight of her? Nothing else was likely to bring her down now that the witches were immobilized.

Drawing in a deep breath, Gwynofar spread her arms wide. And then she began to speak. Crying out to the Souleater with all her strength, willing her voice to be carried upward by the wind, clear and true. And there was more than mere volume to her words. Colivar could see power shimmering about her skin, but not a structured spellcasting. Something more organic, more innate.
Lyr
magic? Was that of her own conjuring, or had some Seer in the party prepared her for this? If the Guardians had arranged for such a strategy in advance, then they had more knowledge of the Souleaters than Colivar had given them credit for.

“This is my land!” Gwynofar yelled to the skies. “
My
land! These are my trees, this is my water, this is my sky! The earth here is mine, the food here is mine, the people here are mine to do with as I please. Do you hear me, soulsucker? You have no rights here. The very earth rejects you. It vomits you up and casts you out. The very sky reviles you. It knows who is queen here, who belongs here, who
owns
this land . . . and whose children will feed here.”

It seemed to Colivar that the steady beat of wings faltered for a moment. The creature could not possibly understand Gwynofar’s words—could she?—but the tone of the Queen Mother’s voice left no doubt about her meaning. The flight pattern of the great creature changed suddenly. The ikati pulled in her wings and began to descend swiftly, jeweled patterns streaming across her flanks as she approached. Mesmeric, seductive. Even though he knew the danger of looking directly at the creature, Colivar found that he could not look away. His soul was hungry for what those colors represented, for something that had been out of his reach for centuries. He’d thought he had forgotten it. He’d thought it no longer mattered.

The knowledge of the truth shamed him, even as it stirred his blood.

The men in the company should have been scrambling to take up positions near the rocky mound, to ready themselves for the Souleater’s descent. But most of them seemed to be frozen in place, or at least slowed in their actions; only the Guardians moved with anything akin to normal efficiency, though they were clearly affected as well. Salvator alone seemed to be functioning normally. He grabbed his witch, shook him out of his stupor, and dragged him over to where Gwynofar’s spear protruded from the ground. From the expression on the High King’s face, Colivar guessed that Gwynofar’s dramatic self-sacrifice had taken him by surprise, and he was not all pleased that she had put herself out of reach like this.

“Now!” he commanded, turning the witch to face Gwynofar. And he stepped forward, yanked the spear out of its rocky sheath, and cast it in a high arc toward where his mother stood. But it had not been designed for such use, and its balance was not right; the tip began to drop too soon, and it did not look as though it was going to clear the top of the mound.

—But then the witch’s power grabbed hold of it, steadied its flight, and lent it added height to its arc. Clearing the rocky heap by inches, the weapon skidded to a halt right by Gwynofar’s feet. She picked it up gratefully. Her longsword was in her hand, but the Souleater would have to be right on top of her before she could use it. With a spear in hand she had better options.

The few archers who were capable of moving were in place now, flanking Gwynofar’s position. No doubt some of them would have tried to climb up beside her if there had been time, but the queen was descending too quickly; any man who tried to make that precarious climb would not be in a position to fire when she came within range. Standing at the base of the mound, the archers struggled to be able to look at their target as they waited for the great winged beast to come within range.

Now the Souleater’s musky-sweet scent enveloped them, a thousand times more powerful than the faint scent Colivar had detected at the Witch-Queen’s palace. Enticing. Unbearable. His human soul wanted to vomit it up, while his other soul, his darker soul, hungered to wallow in it. Colivar glanced over at Ramirus to see how he was responding. The other Magister’s expression was grim. It was clearly taking all of Ramirus’ self-control to watch Gwynofar set herself up as bait and do nothing about it. She must have ordered him to stay his hand; he would never have accepted such a restriction from Salvator alone. Even so, Colivar suspected that if it came to the point when Ramirus felt that her life was truly threatened, he would probably act anyway. Penitent sensitivities be damned.

Oathbreaker
, Colivar thought derisively. Hatred welled up inside him suddenly, for Ramirus and all the other Magisters. But mostly for Ramirus. What an arrogant fool he was, to think he was Colivar’s equal! Century after century he nurtured his plans for defeating Colivar, and century after century they were frustrated. But he never accepted it. He never stopped dreaming of victory. When would the idiot learn? He was not Colivar’s master. He would
never
be Colivar’s master.

It was time Colivar drove that lesson home once and for all.

In a distant part of his brain he knew what was happening to him. But that part had surrendered its sovereignty now, and something darker had taken its place. Fury raged like wildfire in his veins as he gathered his power to him, knowing just how much strength and skill it would take to break through Ramirus’ defenses. He also knew what the real source of his fury was, and he knew that he had to resist it, but he lacked the resources. All the connections that had previously bound him to the human world, which he might have drawn on for strength, had been severed. His human lover had disappeared, and she was probably no longer human anyway. His royal contract with Farah had been severed by his own hand. He no longer had a human agenda to serve, a human leader to protect, or even a meaningful human order to follow, outside of that ludicrous deal with Salvator.

A Magister without human ties was a truly terrifying thing. Few understood that as intimately as he did.

And he had broken the Law. The minute he’d recognized Kamala for what she was and had chosen to do nothing about it he had severed his tie to that ancient agreement, cutting himself off from the sorcerous construct that had raised his kind up out of barbarism. True, centuries had passed since the beast within him had last surfaced, and maybe he’d believed that time and self-discipline had weakened it. But he’d been wrong. The darkness within him might have been beaten into submission centuries ago, when the shackles of the Law were first imposed on it, but it had never been fully vanquished. And now those shackles had been struck off, and the ikati queen was calling to him, and Colivar knew with utter certainty that if he gave in to the animal rage that was surging through his veins right now and struck out at Ramirus, he would be lost forever.

But the rage was too powerful to contain, and it surged out of Colivar, a raw and angry force, hungry for violence. The ground surrounding him trembled as he struggled to redirect the terrible power to something other than his rival, and rocks exploded in a shower of sparks between the two Magisters. Spirals of crimson flame began to swirl wildly around him, searing his own flesh when they came too close. He could see alarm in Ramirus’ eyes, but not surprise. Ramirus had been affected by the queen’s presence as well, and deep inside, where the instincts of their kind lurked secretly, he knew what was happening. But he still had the Law to bolster his humanity, and he was bound by contract to the Aurelius. More importantly, he did not have Colivar’s memories. He did not have Colivar’s needs. He might feel that he was staring down into the abyss of madness at that moment, but he did not know the name of the horror that lay coiled in its depths, nor had he once embraced it.

No one knew the truth but Colivar.

The shadow of the queen fell over them suddenly, and Colivar was able to look away from Ramirus at last. Her long serpentine tail flexed like a whip as she hovered above Gwynofar, taking stock of her human challenger; the great jeweled wings sent stained-glass sparks skipping madly across the earth. Colivar could see a jeweled cocoon on her back, where the lesser wings had been folded back to protect some precious cargo. His heart lurched in his chest when he realized what it was—what it must be—and for a moment the sheer force of memory was so strong that it almost drove him to his knees. Heat rushed to his groin with searing intensity, as all the power he had been directing outward began to collapse in upon him. If he did not focus it somehow, and release it to do
something
, it would surely consume him.

The archers were waiting. They were not sure of their range yet. Their faces were white with strain from the effort required to focus on the queen’s motion without looking at her directly. It was crucial they launch their attack at precisely the right moment. Too soon, and their efforts would fall short. Too late, and the creature might be upon Gwynofar before they could bring her down. Every man knew that when the moment came, he would have no more than a single instant in which to look directly at the queen and locate his target before her power overwhelmed him. If the special tips on their arrows did what legend promised they would, they might be enough to bring her down, but only if they struck in the places where the creature was vulnerable. In theory the men knew what those were. In theory. But their knowledge was derived from arcane prophecies and thousand-year old anatomical charts, and no man knew how much use any of it would really be.

With cry of defiance and challenge, the queen began to descend upon her rival

—and the archers let loose their first volley.

—and Colivar’s power whipped toward the arrows, hot red flames of sorcery exploding outwards, filling the air between them. Spirals of fire formed about each shaft, blazing so brightly that the archers themselves had to look away. Thus no morati saw the arrows shuddering as Colivar’s sorcery took hold of them in their flight, altering the course of some, steadying the course of others. Sending them straight into their target.

They struck home.

All of them.

Cobalt arrowheads pierced through the ikati’s armor where it was weakest, driving deep into the Souleater’s flesh. Some struck soft points that the Guardians knew about and had been aiming for; others had been redirected to weak spots that only Colivar recognized. His sorcery drove them forward with ten times their normal velocity, thrusting them deep in the creature’s flesh, so that the barbed heads would tear the queen’s muscles to pieces every time she moved. Whatever mysterious poison the arrowheads carried was lodged deep in her flesh now and could begin to do its work.