She was laughing, this girl with so much blood on her hands.
I looked at the serpents who had surrounded me only moments before, and saw them all still and silent, their bodies glistening with the golden magic that would burn through this land like a storm.
I threw my mind into the power, screaming, Why?
Ecl, my love.
Ahnmik, my master.
Anhamirak, my bane, please, I must know! There must be a way to stop this fire.
Vere caught my hands, trying to call me back to the real world. I felt his magic from Ahnmik soothe mine, even as Anhamirak’s power shivered across my skin like …
Fire.
Like Oliza’s wyvern.
Then the vision of the girl turned to me, and her eyes lit up as she said, “Mommy!”
Oliza was not the only one whose magic was unbalanced, made dangerous by Anhamirak’s flames.
No.
Fate could not be so cruel.
When had it ever been gentle?
I shoved back from Vere, hard enough that only a serpent’s reflexes kept him from falling. I felt the murmur in the crowd more than I heard it.
When I turned to run, people tried to stop me. Maya grabbed my arm, demanding an explanation, before Opal dragged her away.
I pushed past my followers and my enemies in a panicked daze, fleeing toward the only place I could think of: Wyvern’s Nest.
Only a few feet from the nest, I slammed into Velyo as the wolf stepped in front of me.
“Diente,” he said, greeting me with a nod.
“Frektane,” I replied, gritting my teeth. I tried to step around him, and he blocked me. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to offer my congratulations,” he said, “and I suppose an apology. I misjudged you.”
“Fine. Forgiven,” I said. “Now move aside.”
“You look upset,” he observed.
“And in a hurry,” I returned.
“You did the right thing.”
The right thing—this from Velyo Frektane, of all people. “I want no comfort from a man who murdered his own father to ascend to the throne.”
“I did it for the good of my pack—just as you have done this for the good of Wyvern’s Court. Oliza’s weakness would have made her—”
“If Wyvern’s Court had been ready for a wyvern queen, Oliza Shardae Cobriana—and her Naga, Betia Frektane—would have been the greatest monarchs this land had ever known,” I snapped. “They are both strong, just and capable leaders … and they will prove it,” I continued as the vision came to me, “when Betia succeeds you as alpha of the Frektane.”
Velyo scoffed. “Your prophecies have become muddled again, Hai. There is no way I would allow that deviant back into our pack.”
I had seen in sakkri this wolf with his angry hands on Oliza’s mate. I had seen him try to repeat the crime with the wyvern. I had stolen Oliza’s throne from her only minutes earlier, but there was one gift I could give to her and Betia now, so I gave it. “You want a prophecy, Velyo?” Sometimes, speaking of a vision can set into motion the very events one is trying to prevent. Or in this case, trying to cause. “Betia and Oliza will become the much-beloved queens of the Frektane tribe. Their son, an orphaned wolf cub they will adopt within the next few years, will inherit the title later. And you will have a say in none of it—because you will be dead within the next six months, at the jaws of one of the wolves you call your allies.”
As I spoke the words, I felt Fate shiver, the future realigning itself until the possible events I had seen became a near certainty. Paranoia would eat at Velyo, and he would turn his fear on his allies until they would be forced to exterminate him.
“Enjoy your future,” I said. “Now, I have my own to attend to.” I pushed forward, shoving the horrified wolf out of the way, and stumbled through the doorway of the dancer’s nest.
Inside, I was struck by the silence. Usually this place was full of graceful bodies and joyous sounds, but now all I heard was a single voice.
Rosalind, Salem’s mate, was singing a haunting, wordless melody. The others were silently dancing, their movements slow and careful.
They were praying, offering their worship to the gods in exchange for the health of one of their own.
The instant Rosalind noticed me, the mood shifted from sorrowful to angry.
“You aren’t welcome here, falcon,” she said. Her eyes were glazed with tears, and I could feel her pain like hail against my skin. “I don’t care if you are Diente. You have no right to be here.”
“I need to see Salem.”
“So you can finish what your supporters started?” Rosalind said accusingly.
“So I can try to save him!” Serpents jumped, as startled as I was by how desperate I sounded. The dancers were the only rulers of their nest. My own magic would stop me if I tried to force my way past them.
Before Rosalind could respond, A’isha, the nest leader, placed a hand on her shoulder. “What can you do for him?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I have to—”
“We can’t trust her!” Rosalind protested. “For all we know, it is her magic that is keeping him in this state.”
A’isha shook her head. “I can’t know your intentions for certain,” she said to me, “but I will let you pass. If Salem’s guard disagrees, you will leave.”
“Thank you.”
I pushed past, shaking off Rosalind when she tried to stop me. Behind me, I heard A’isha trying to calm the fearful woman.
I descended the stairs to the private rooms beneath the nest and found Salem’s room easily. When I opened the door, Nicias looked up at me with disdain.
“Oh, gods,” I whispered. “Nicias …”
“Get out of here,” he ordered.
He knew that my vows to him were what kept me in this world, knew that my magic would tear at me to obey him. I fell to my knees to keep from turning around.
“You have to listen to me,” I begged, fear, need and pain all too clear in my voice. “Oliza cannot take the throne. For her to do so would be disaster. You haven’t seen—Dear Ahnmik, help me speak true and clearly,” I prayed. “You haven’t seen the visions I’ve been haunted by. You haven’t seen Oliza murdered by her own child. You haven’t seen Wyvern’s Court burned to ash by Anhamirak’s fire, or by the falcons when they come ….” My voice trembled. “I heard you scream, too, Nicias, my—Please, believe me, I would do everything in my power to keep you from that pain. I know you fear that sakkri can mislead, but not these,” I whispered. “I have never seen visions this strong, this sure. I’ve tried and tried and I can’t keep this land from burning.”
He crossed the room as if he couldn’t help himself, and lifted me to my feet. Even if he hated me, Nicias wasn’t the type of man who could stand by and let a woman grovel.
His hands did not linger on mine. Coldly, he said, “So you set yourself up as queen of a land you never wanted. Then why are you here?”
“Because I can’t rule, either,” I whispered. I looked at Salem. “I swear to you, Nicias, I have never betrayed you. I swear it by blood, by fire, by flesh, by steel, by Ecl and by Ahnmik and by all that is and never will be …. I swear I have never lied to you and I have never betrayed you. I breathe this scorched air for you. Now, please, believe me. In every vision I see, this land falls. In every future I look to, I see you screaming. Salem Cobriana must take the throne, or our world burns.”
“Ours?”
“You made your world mine,” I said. “When you pulled me from Ecl, you gave me this land. At first I hated you for that. Now … I don’t want this land to become the falcon crystal I see whenever I turn around. Let me try to help Salem.”
“You couldn’t help him before,” he argued. “How can you help him now?”
“I’ll dive deeper …. I don’t know, maybe I can’t do anything, but I need to try again. It’s all I can do.”
He stepped to the side, letting me past. When I moved toward
the silent cobra, Nicias touched my arm.
“I’ll try to hold you, to keep you from going too far.”
I shook my head. “Don’t pull me back. His life means more than mine.”
Presuming there was any life left to save.
Oh, gods, help me. Diving into Salem’s body again hurt. He wanted to die, but the magic I had wrapped into him previously kept him on this side of existence. His heart wanted to stop, but my power kept it beating.
His spirit was curled somewhere in the darkness, screaming in pain as it struggled to flee its corpse. Fear and agony ripped through me as his flesh prayed for release.
Had Salem been anyone else, I would have given him a gentle death, faced with such pleas. I was tempted to do so even now, but there was too much at stake.
This world needs you, I cried, begging him to return.
But how could he return when his body wouldn’t take him? It wasn’t … right. Stripped of its magic, it had no life, no place for a heart and a mind and a soul. It yearned for Brysh’s embrace, after which there would be only silence and peace.
For him. For us, there would be only pain.
Come to me, I commanded, straining with every ounce of my own magic. Come to me. I tried to wrap the words around him but felt him slipping away.
I cursed the am’haj poison. I slid my power over the ruined edges of his magic, trying to make him whole again, but Ahnmik can only destroy, and I had never had control over the hint of Anhamirak in my blood.
I tried to soothe Salem’s pain and coax his terrified spirit back into this body, promising anything if he would return to this land. I felt him starting to fall into his final rest instead of rising.
I drew back and felt him shriek.
Salem could not survive without magic.
Wyvern’s Court could not survive without Salem.
And Wyvern’s Court needed to survive.
Therefore, Salem’s body needed magic.
Suddenly I felt calm.
I had tried being gentle, coaxing and soothing and begging in much the same way that Ecl had whispered to me for years. Come to me, and I will let you rest, the void called. Come to me, and I will take care of you. I will comfort you, and you will be at peace.
But Anhamirak’s power wasn’t rooted in peace, gentleness and quiet entreaties. A cobra’s magic, my father’s magic, was what burned in me every moment of my life. It was fire and chaos; it was freedom, savage and natural, beyond civilization and law.
And it was desperation.
I slammed power into the cobra now, drowning his body in all the energy I had at my disposal. I held back nothing, baring every part of myself as I forced his flesh and soul to do as I willed.
Desperation was all I had left.
Finally I felt something in him react to the assault, drawn by the flicker of my father’s magic. I had never been able to control Anhamirak’s power, but now I used it as a lure, enticing Salem not with promises of rest—serpents didn’t rest—but with heat.
Now I have you. I twined myself around and through every particle of his being, using Anhamirak to hold him close and Ahnmik to slice through the bonds between flesh and magic. I severed the rotten, tattered remnants of magic left by the am’haj poison, and felt Salem instinctively clutch at the familiar, healthy magic in my blood.
One more cut and—
I screamed as I felt the fabric of my reality rip. I struggled not to flee from the ice storm that struck me as my power slid away from me, seeking a more comfortable home.
Cold … so cold. Once, I had called Ecl cold, but that had been a blessed numbness compared to this ….
Back on the ice, I felt it cut into my hands and my knees as it began to shatter, as I fell into the darkness, choking on the frozen black water.
Down, someone said to me, a voice that sounded so familiar, so comforting. Dive. Now.
The beasts that used to dwell beneath the ice, forever drawn toward Anhamirak’s warmth, ignored me. As I sank into the void, images of the past fluttered before me.
I walked through the white city as a child and spoke to spirits others couldn’t see. Oh, how the world shone so brilliantly. The voices of the Mercy who raised me faded as I listened to the songs the city wove. I could hear the colors of the sea and taste the moonlight and feel the shifting strands of Fate all around me.
“When might I be able to see the Empress?”
This cobra had no fear at all. Though Anjay had been carried across the ocean by Pure Diamond falcons, who could as easily have dropped him into the sea, he had held his head high from the instant he had set foot on the white island—a place no Kiesha’ra had ever stood before.
“When she decides you are worth speaking to,” Darien replied.
“How am I to convince her of my worth if you never let me so much as walk in the city?”
My lady?
Let him see our land, Cjarsa whispered through Darien’s mind. Give him beauty. There will be none in the world to which he must return.
“I have always loved you, Darien.” Years later, and still Cjarsa and my mother argued. “Always favored you. Always bent Ahnmik’s rigid laws for you, though Ecl shrieks at me every time those laws are broken. I could not let a mongrel be trained in this land. Hai would never have survived if I had tried. But have you no faith at all that I might have worked toward this hena’she?”
My mother turned her back on her Empress, though she could not close her ears to Cjarsa’s words or close her heart to her own hope.
“If I had let you care for your daughter, if I had not sent Kel to bring you to me and thus forced her into exile, if I had not twisted Fate as I willed with each step of the way, this Nicias would never have been born. Your daughter would never have risen from the darkness—”
“No.” I interrupted them now.
Cjarsa was not surprised that I had been present and listening.
“It is little enough,” she pointed out, “compared to your machinations to save Wyvern’s Court. Why does it seem so impossible that I might work to save one child—the only child of my favored companion?”
“If you dared walk the line between Mehay and Ecl, where Fate is woven … but you do not. You fear it. You have feared it since the day you saw the first of your followers slide into Ecl. Araceli’s terror led her to create the avian people. Yours led you to write the laws of this land, to bind you to it so Ecl could not take you.”
“Enough!”
I had spoken without thinking, as if in a trance, but Cjarsa’s command snapped me back from it.
“As you wish, my lady,” I whispered.
Ecl’gah. Illusion, all of it.
“I am sorry to distress you,” I said. I remembered the terror that had gripped me the day Nicias had first invaded my private illusion. His soul had stained that still and silent realm forever.
Cjarsa had no other world, no other place, and no one to call her from this white realm.
I did.
“Hai? Where are you, Hai?”
I could go back to Nicias. I paused, wondering. Memories of the past and the present poured through me, but I knew I could go back to him.
“Hai, listen to my voice.”
So I did. It was simple. The water was cold, and deep, and dark, but I found its center, and there … I was.
I opened my eyes, though it did me little good. I thought I was still in the private room beneath the dancer’s nest, but the lamps had burned out long before, leaving no light to see by. What I did know was that I was once again in Nicias’s arms. I felt him stir, waking at the same time that I did.
“What happens if there comes a day when I’m not here to save you?” he asked me.
“Then … I’ll find my way back on my own.”
I struggled to gather my thoughts, remembering the last scene with Cjarsa. Had I really argued with the white Lady of Ahnmik? Or had that been another vision of another future? What possible future could I have in which I would so brazenly challeng
e my Empress?
My head began to pound as I remembered what we had been doing here.
“Salem …”
I pulled away from Nicias and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to focus past the pain at my temples. The cobra wasn’t here. I would have been able to sense him even with my unfocused magic.
“He’s gone,” Nicias said, coming to the same conclusion.
My limbs ached as I pushed myself to my feet, swaying before Nicias stood beside me and steadied me.
Together we groped our way through the darkness, toward the doorway and up the stairs, until we blinked at the sudden light and noise of the dancer’s nest.
Before my eyes had a chance to adjust to the brightness from the central fire, Rosalind intercepted us, her posture guarded as she looked from me to Nicias.
“Salem’s awake,” I said. I could tell just by looking at the dancer before me. She was wearing a simple outfit made of two carefully wrapped and tied melos, one deep emerald in color, and one black with green stitching. At her temple was a symbol meaning victory. It was not an outfit for mourning.
“He is,” she replied.
Other dancers had drifted toward us, though they left Rosalind plenty of space.
“Is he … well?” I remembered a jumble of sensations and panicked thoughts. I had no idea what I had done, in my desperation, to make the cobra wake, or what the consequences might be.
She hesitated, frowning.
Nicias understood before I did. “Hai isn’t your enemy,” he told Rosalind. “Salem was dying. If he is up now, it is entirely through Hai’s efforts. She risked more than you can possibly imagine to go after him.”
Rosalind cringed, looking away and then immediately back at me. “I’m sorry. With all that has happened … I don’t understand any of it. From the moment that Oliza announced that she was going to abdicate—” She shook her head, making her long auburn hair ripple. “No. It started long before then.”
It had started the day the young serpiente Arami, Zane Cobriana, and the avian heir to the Tuuli Thea, Danica Shardae, first sat together, in a room in the Mistari homelands, and decided that they would find a way to bring peace—no matter the cost.