Legacy of Kings (63 page)

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?