Legacy of Kings (38 page)

She stiffened suddenly. All color drained from her face.

“Kamala?”

“It’s a trap,” she whispered. “Tefilat. It’s a trap! She wants him to look for her there. That’s what Sulah’s dream was all about.” She shook her head, as if trying to clear it. Was Siderea’s power still affecting her brain, or were her thoughts her own now? “I have to warn him!”

She got up from the table so hurriedly that her chair fell back, clattering noisily to the floor behind her. “Ethanus, I—”

“Go,” he said. “Do what you have to.”

She began to draw her power to her. Normally she would never do so inside the house of another Magister, but there was no time to waste. Ethanus watched her mold a portal for herself, his expression calm. Unflappable. The world could come crashing down around them all and Ethanus’ heart would not miss a beat. What opposites they were!

She leaned across the table and kissed him on the forehead. At least that surprised him.

And then she wrapped the portal spell around her and disappeared into the darkness.

Chapter 20

C

OLIVAR CIRCLED Tefilat several times before finally moving in. In wide, sweeping circles he flew over the desert surrounding the abandoned city, scrutinizing every grain of sand with his sorcery. Seeking . . . what? Some kind of trap? A sign that
she
was currently here, despite Kamala’s assurances to the contrary?

Even while he did his reconnaissance, he knew how futile such an effort was. Tefilat resonated with so many residual energies that it was all but impossible to pick out the one or two that might be meaningful. It was as if a hundred witches were there right now, casting all their spells at once . . . and doing it badly. Fragments of ancient power hung in the air like a dust cloud, making it hard to see anything clearly. Broken spells, failed summonings, frustrated conjurations: the detritus of an ancient war. Looking for signs of trouble here was like looking for signs of shark activity in a storm-tossed, churning sea.

When he finally landed, it took him a few seconds longer to reclaim his human form than it should have The last of his feathers did not want to recede, and his skin felt rough where they were finally absorbed. It seemed to him that Tefilat’s effect had worsened since the last time he had visited, many years ago. Or maybe that was just his nerves speaking. At any rate, there seemed to be no one around right now. He scanned the area once more, just to make certain, and then headed toward the city proper. He wrapped sorcery about himself as he went, to discourage prying eyes. Though gods alone knew if such a spell would have any power in this place.

The canyon was ancient, carved out by a river the earth had swallowed up long ago, leaving only ghostly memories of water clinging to the narrow bed at its center. Its walls were colorful, with bands of rust, orange, and in one place an odd shade of pink, layered as neatly as masonry in some places, buckling into strange curvilinear patterns in others. He knew from earlier explorations that each stripe had been formed in a previous age, and contained both relics of that age and faint resonances of the things that had lived here then. The concept had fascinated him once, but now his only concern was to make sure that nothing was hidden within the shadowy caves and crevices of the place, besides the inevitable snakes and lizards.

But all was as it should be, and there was no sign of any fresh magic that he could discern.

Finally he came to Tefilat itself. Though he had been there several times before and theoretically knew what to expect, still the sight of the place awed him. Not simply because of its grandeur, but because it had been created in an age before sorcery, when every magical task had been measured in human life.

Or, more to the point, human life with a name attached.

The main buildings had been carved directly out of the cliff face and, amazingly enough, had stood the test of time. Had any new witchery been embedded in the stone by recent visitors? Too much faded power clung to the façade for him to be sure.

When he reached the widest part of the canyon—the town square, as it were—he stood still for a moment, listening. Just listening. But only silence greeted his ears, broken by the faint susurration of wind in the distance. Kneeling down, he bound a bit of sorcery, molding it twice over just to make sure that he had it right, then he let it sink into the ground around his feet, shutting his eyes as he absorbed the images it was gathering for him.

Nomads had passed through here recently. He could see them in their desert robes, richly striped and edged in plaited cord: Hom’ra. He watched as they brought in supplies on the backs of asses and then unpacked them. Heavy amphorae sealed with wax comprised the bulk of the delivery, and baskets of what Colivar guessed to be foodstuffs. There was a sigil on several of the amphora seals that he did not recognize.

Interesting.

Letting the vision fade, he headed toward the largest building in the complex. It was a two-story structure with columns flanking the main entrance and a frieze depicting a mythological battle scene overhead. He paused for a moment to take in the carved images, his mind applying names to gods and events that the morati world had long forgotten. Then he bound a bit of power to test the entrance for wards—there were none—and to establish one of his own that would be triggered by anyone else entering the building behind him. The place seemed utterly deserted, but one could never be too careful.

The temperature dropped as soon as he entered the shadowy interior, becoming almost tolerable by desert standards. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness, resisting the impulse to cool the air further. He didn’t want to use any more sorcery in this place than he had to.

The main chamber was empty, but a layer of sand and dust had accumulated underfoot, and footprints had recently scuffed a path across the room, heading toward an interior chamber. Many footprints, he noted. Whatever was happening here had been going on for some time.

He followed the path to a rear chamber. Only a trickle of sunlight could reach this far, but it was enough for him to see what was inside.

Furniture was stacked along the rearmost wall. The items were rough-hewn and simply made, such as a common laborer might own. Along another wall were the supplies he had seen in his vision. He walked over to one of the amphorae and briefly considered using sorcery to determine its contents and purpose. But the sigil impressed into its seal might well be an anchor for witchery, or even sorcery, so he left it untouched. Anywhere else he would have trusted in his ability to summon knowledge from the thing without triggering a ward, but in Tefilat it was best not to take chances.

Someone was clearly preparing this place for habitation. But why? There wasn’t enough human life in this blighted region to support Souleaters, and the local tribes preferred to keep far away from Tefilat’s polluted resonance. There must be something here that someone wanted .

Something Siderea wanted.

Moving warily, Colivar progressed from the sunlit rooms near the cliff face to a network of chambers and passages that extended deep into the earth. Tefilat’s creators had followed the twists and turns of a natural cavern system, carving out chambers wherever space permitted. The layout was strange to a sorcerer’s eye, as a Magister could simply have created rooms wherever he wanted them. But the witches who had built this place had not been free to waste energy on that scale, and so the complex was random in its arrangement, a veritable labyrinth of twisting corridors and irregular chambers. Colivar had explored the entire system when he had first taken up his post in Anshasa, and it took but a whisper of sorcery to call those memories back to him, so that he had a mental map of the place. By the light of a small sorcerous flame he followed the faint scuffmarks of Tefilat’s recent visitors as he traced their path through the twisting complex, searching for whatever anomaly might explain their interest.

And in a small chamber, deep within the earth, he found it at last.

A far wall had been broken open, giving access to some kind of space beyond. A secret room? He summoned more light, and he could see that the second chamber was richly decorated, with relief carvings of some sort covering the walls.

With one last spell to make sure he was still alone in Tefilat—he was—and another to check for wards at the entrance to the hidden chamber—there were none—he stepped over the rubble at the base of the opening and entered the mysterious room.

Every wall was covered with carvings. They seemed to be historical images, mostly battle scenes from the Great War; he recognized many of the references. He had seen other rooms like this, tucked away in various strongholds throughout the world, though few had been this carefully hidden. They represented the last desperate attempt of the First Kings to record the history of mankind in a form that might weather the fall of human civilization.

One particular set of images drew his eye, and he walked across the room to get a closer look at them.

Souleaters.

He shouldn’t have been surprised to find the ikati depicted in Tefilat. One of the key campaigns of the Great War had been fought here. And yet . . . something seemed wrong about the images. It took him a moment to realize what it was. When he finally did, his heart skipped a beat in his chest.

The carvings depicted a swarm of Souleaters descending upon a town and warriors rising up to fight them. But the Souleaters had been solitary predators during the Great War. It was rare that two would ever have been seen in the sky together, and for them to gather in a swarm like this would simply be unheard of. They would have been too busy killing each other to bother with anything else. Not until their merger with the witches in the arctic had they developed enough tolerance of their own species to come together like this.

So this place must have been created long after the Great War, by someone who knew how the species had changed. But how was that possible, when all the remaining Souleaters had been trapped in the far north? Was it possible that some had remained down here as well? He reached out a hand to touch one of the carved Souleaters, binding a whisper of power to investigate its origin.

Even as he did so, he realized his mistake.

Too late.

A spell that had been hidden deep within the rock sprang to life at his touch, subsuming his own sorcery for strength. A strange shimmering webwork of power appeared along the walls and ceiling of the chamber and began to close in on him; he struggled to hold it at bay, but his sorcery had no effect upon it. The alien power seemed to have his own resonance, as if he himself had summoned it into being; how was that possible? It was closing in around him now, but he could not do anything to stop it, because that would have required protecting himself from . . . himself. Then the light about him began to fade, and he felt himself choking on darkness as the chill of transition began to envelope him.
No!
he despaired.
Not now!
He struggled against the cold and the darkness, trying to find a new consort quickly enough to save himself, but he couldn’t break through the spell that was strangling him. His soul was suffocating, its last cold sparks of stolen athra sputtering out, and he could do nothing to save it.

And then the world outside flickered out like a dying candle, and there was only fear.

Chapter 21

M

IST. THAT was all Gwynofar could see at first. Damp mist covering the ground about her feet. Tendrils of mist curling about her ankles. Clouds of mist overhead where the sky should be, a few hints of pale blue seeping through here and there, quickly swallowed by whiteness.

Where was she?

Squinting against the haze, she thought she could make out some vague shapes ahead of her, and she headed toward them. The ground seemed solid enough beneath its foggy blanket, and her shoes made soft squelching sounds as they pressed into the damp earth, disquieting in an otherwise eerie silence. Now and then she felt something small crunch underfoot, and memories from her childhood provided a name:
pinecone
.

What was this place?

Slowly the mist began to fade, trees becoming visible one by one as she continued walking, emerging from the fog like soldiers in a pine-clad army. Silent. So silent. Then the last of the mist withdrew from the tree-trunks, and she could see where human faces had been carved into them long ago, now glistening from a coating of dew.

Ancestor trees.

She could see now that she was walking along a narrow path that wound its way between several thick stands of the carved trees. This place was both familiar and unfamiliar to her, and though she had the distinct feeling she had been here before, she did not recognize the faces that surrounded her. But their identities did not really matter right now; that was not what she had come for.

She wrapped her arms about herself as she walked, sensing that she was here for an important reason but having no clue what it was.

At last she came to a place where shadowy pine groves gave way to an open field. Here, where more sunlight could reach the ground, a single young sapling had taken root. Gwynofar approached it, then stopped. She felt as if she should recognize this place, but she was unable to put a name to it.

And then the sapling began to transform. Drawing added substance from the air surrounding it, painting itself in colors that could not have arisen from mere bark, it slowly took on the form of a child. A very young child, whose features were hauntingly familiar to her. After a moment she realized why, and a terrible sorrow filled her heart.

“Anrhys,” she whispered. Part of her brain now understood this was a dream, but another part—the larger part—did not care. She fell to her knees as the apparition of her dead child approached her, tears of sorrow and pain running down her cheeks. The real Anrhys had never known the touch of forest air upon his face or the soft crunch of pine needles beneath his feet. She had killed him while he was still in her womb, sacrificing him for a cause he never knew anything about. Even the tree that had been planted over his ashes—the tree that now stood before her—would never bear his true features, only a witch’s estimate of what he might have looked like had he lived long enough to reach manhood. The guilt that welled up inside her seemed vast enough to consume an army of souls. She wanted to reach out and embrace him, to bury her face in his pale blond hair—so like her own!—and weep and weep and weep, until all the terrible guilt in her soul was washed away. Telling him she was sorry—so sorry!—and praying to hear some response from him that hinted at forgiveness. Something in which she might discover even a shadow of absolution.