Farah’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Didn’t you tell me once that Magisters were sworn enemies to one another? I seem to recall a comment about how your average sorcerer would rather have his eyes gouged out by a red-hot poker than help another of his own kind. Yet you would help this one?”
“We are rivals, not enemies,” he said quietly. And such injury means little, when we can steal the athra required to build new eyes in the time it would take you to blink your own. “And my relations with this particular Magister are . . . uniquely civilized.”
“I see.”
“You need someone with knowledge of the Souleaters. Sulah has been following their progress along with me. He will know what signs to look for.”
The implication of his words took a moment to sink in. When they did, one of the women drew back from Farah and wrapped her arms protectively about herself; goosebumps prickled her charcoal skin.
“You expect there will be signs in Anshasa?”
Colivar shrugged stiffly. “Your kingdom is vast. The Souleaters must seek shelter somewhere. Better to be watchful, don’t you think, than to risk being taken by surprise? Sulah knows what to look for. And he has connections with other Magisters who are sworn to cooperate in this matter. If he calls for help, they—we—will come.”
Farah’s eyes narrowed. “Magisters swearing to aid one another. Why does that worry me more than Souleaters?”
“It is a bad sign,” Colivar agreed, smiling faintly. “Normally no enemy could have brought that about. But these are not normal times.”
Farah frowned as he considered the matter. The reasons Colivar had given for leaving his service were weak, and clearly he knew that. Farah would have given the Magister all the time and space that he required for his business, and they could have made it work. But the truth was, Colivar feared that if he remained bound to a particular domain and then the Souleaters moved into it, it might awaken territorial instincts in him that were better off forgotten. Instincts he might not be able to control. And that was a truth he could not share with any morati . . . or even with his own kind.
Some of the Magisters thought that their curse had been weakening over time. New recruits certainly didn’t seem to suffer through First Transition the way earlier generations had. If that were indeed the case, then Sulah’s youth meant he might have better resistance to the ancient drives than the ones who had come before him. Certainly better than Colivar, who was among the oldest of his kind, and uniquely weak in that area.
Youth was needed here. Human instincts were needed here. Colivar could offer neither.
“Very well,” Farah said at last. He was clearly not pleased by what was happening, but he was wise enough to know that arguing with a Magister was a pointless exercise. ”Bring me this Sulah. If he suits my needs, and I think I can work with him, he may take over your contract.”
A knot inside Colivar’s chest loosened a bit. It was only one knot of many, but the change in pressure was noticeable. “I thank you, Majesty.”
With a gentle touch to Safya’s cheek, genuine in its regret, he rose to his feet. Farah had a taste for interesting women, and Colivar would miss having access to them. “I think it is best that I leave now, Majesty. I have much to do.”
Farah nodded regally. “I am sorry to see you go, Magister Colivar, but I understand. Know that you have both my gratitude and blessing.”
With a final nod of leave-taking, Colivar began to walk away. He could have done one of a hundred other things instead, things involving wings or shadows or flashes of light or quivering portals hanging in midair . . . but he simply walked. It seemed a respectful gesture to mark the end of their contract. The end of this part of his life.
“Magister Colivar.”
He turned back to look at the king.
“You will always be welcome here. I know that’s not the usual custom, but it is my custom, and I will see that your successor honors it. Whoever that turns out to be.”
Colivar had nothing to say to that. Magisters were fiercely territorial creatures, and no matter what courtesies a king like Hasim Farah might offer, he would never show up in the court of a rival without proper clearance. Doing so might stress the beasts within them both to the breaking point.
So many customs, so many constraints, all to keep us human. What happens if those tools ever fail us?
“I understand,” he said at last. And he added—because it was expected of him—“Thank you.”
From the corner of his eye he could see Safya returning to her master’s side as he finally left the chamber.
Chapter 11
M
OUNTAINS.
Stark granite cliffs, bleached white by the cool morning sunlight.
Jagged ravines, shadow-rivers coursing down their length.
Stark granite cliffs, blazing gold in the noontime sun.
Snow-clad peaks, desolate and irrelevant, despised by the ikati.
Stark granite cliffs, crowned with sunset’s orange fire, darkness licking about their lower flanks. . . . .
Night fell again. How many times now? Kamala had lost count. The concentration required by her search shut out all other things, including any sense of time. The rhythm of the world was marked only by those things that might aid or hinder her search; nothing else had any meaning.
When evening fell, the bats would leave their caverns, streamers of black wings stretching miles across the face of a blood red sunset. When their flight was low enough, she could use them to focus on, following the twisting fractal patterns of their flight as they swooped down low over the earth, seeking sustenance. Any power obscuring things on the ground below, she reasoned, would interfere with her ability to focus on such details. She could cover many miles that way, scanning her gaze along the shifting column, alert to any place where the details of its formation seemed unclear. Much easier—and more interesting—than studying the earth below.
But all too soon the vast black streamers were gone, and only individual bats remained, moving too quickly for her to focus on. So she adjusted her vision to see the heat of living things and continued onward into the night, scanning the ground for detail. Any detail. It did not matter what she focused on, exactly, only whether she could see it clearly.
It had been days now. Her mind ached from the effort. Her soul ached from boredom. A million trees. Ten million rocks. All were meaningless, save that she had to look at them. How many were there in this vast wilderness? A tiny bird could move a mountain of sand grain by grain, but that did not mean he would not go crazy from boredom halfway through the job.
She’d intended to do her search in stages, returning to her body each night to mark out the day’s route on her great map, but instead she’d just kept going, ignoring the hunger pangs that resonated through her abandoned flesh. Sorcery would keep her body alive well enough, though her body clearly wasn’t happy about the exercise. Was it determination that kept her going, or did she just not have the heart to return to her maps and see how little ground she had really covered?
At dawn the bats would return to their haven, aiding her search once more. As the cool, blue light of morning spread out across the land in their wake, she envisioned herself with broad wings sweeping out from her shoulders. Souleater wings, flickering crystal in the sunlight. It helped her figure out how much space was required for their flight, so that she did not have to bother searching areas they could not enter. And it was, in a strange way, a pleasing exercise. She passed the time by imagining she could feel how the wings would beat against the air, in that strange, sweeping stroke, so unlike that of any bird. She couldn’t quite work out the mechanics of it. Perhaps when she returned home she would make herself a Souleater’s body and test its capacity in some secret place—
Damn.
She’d gotten so caught up in the imagined sensations of her flight that she’d lost sight of what she was doing. It wasn’t the first time that had happened—boredom had its cost—but this was the longest lapse yet
. Looking back, she saw that the last landmark she’d really paid attention to—an odd spire of wind-carved rock—was miles behind her now. Almost out of sight. She was going to have to refocus her sorcerous vision back on that spot and pick up where she’d left off.
With a sigh, she gathered the athra she needed to shift her focus. At least it would be easier going in that direction; without the need to study the ground as she moved, she could reclaim all that distance with a single thought. It was the one advantage of not actually having her body with her.
But she felt an odd twinge as she made the adjustment. If her real body had been in this place, she would have said that her heart had just skipped a beat, but of course it wasn’t, so it couldn’t. How very strange. The feeling was gone an instant later, but its physical echo was disconcerting. She should probably return to her body and feed it some real food. Sorcery could keep one’s flesh alive as long as fresh athra was available, but it wasn’t a natural state even for a Magister, and one wasn’t supposed to remain like that for too long. Could that be what was wrong? Was her survival instinct telling her that she needed to go back and tend to her physical shell?
Just finish this stretch of ground first, she told herself. It would be all too confusing to come back to this spot later, given that she had passed over it without studying it closely. Too easy to forget later just where her inattention had begun . . . or ended.
Taking a deep mental breath, she focused her senses upon the earth beneath her and began to move forward once more.
But what if it was her soulfire that was the problem? Was it possible she was nearing transition, and was somehow sensing its onset? That wasn’t supposed to be possible, according to what Ethanus had taught her. But then, female Magisters weren’t supposed to be possible either. And she’d had the Sight in her morati years, which the rest of the Magisters didn’t. Maybe this was how that gift was supposed to manifest after First Transition. Maybe in time she would learn to sense when her consorts were about to die, so that she could choose the time and place of her next transition.
If that was what was going on, then she really needed to go back to her body. She remembered her last transition—
Shit.
The ground beneath her was unfamiliar. She’d been daydreaming again. How far had she gone this time, lost in her private reverie? She looked back behind her and saw the narrow spire again, about the same distance away as the last time. Strange. She hadn’t thought her mind had been wandering that long.
A strange, cold shiver coursed through her metaphysical substance. If she’d had a spine present, she’d have felt it there.
Slowly, carefully, she headed back toward her starting point. This time she watched the ground as she did so. Or, rather, she tried to watch it. But a flock of birds suddenly rose up, banking into perfect formation as they headed south, and she wondered if she could use them as she had used the bats earlier—
Concentrate.
These mountains had no snow on them, but other ranges did. She had assumed that Souleaters would hate the snow, but maybe that assumption was wrong. Maybe they’d gotten used to it after all their centuries in the north, and now it felt like home to them. Maybe she shouldn’t be searching this range at all, she thought. Off to the northwest there was a line of peaks that were all capped in white; maybe she should go explore there instead—
Concentrate!
Gods, she was tired. She could feel her body’s hunger coursing through her, now, could smell the sharp tang of the olives that she had conjured by the side of her body—
NO!
Shaking, she reached the spire at last. She had no trouble bringing its details into clear focus, but as soon as she tried to look back the way she had just come, her attention faltered. Sorcery only made the matter worse. Only when she gave up on magical tricks entirely and tried to bring her senses under control by sheer force of will did she get anywhere, and even then her vision wavered. Is this what the other Magisters saw when they were in the vicinity of a Souleater queen’s power? Or were they not even able to do this much?
She knew she should go home, then and there. She knew she should return her consciousness to her body, figure out where this place was on her map, and deliver that information to Colivar. He and his people could then hunt the Witch-Queen down, and he could retrieve the box of tokens and deliver it to Kamala. That was the intelligent plan. The prudent, self-preserving thing to do.
Assuming he actually would deliver it to her, of course. Which was by no means certain.
She should have demanded an Oath for that too, she thought. She should have left nothing to chance.
Too late now.
Just confirm this is the right place, she told herself. Nothing more. Make sure it is what it seems to be, and then you can go back home and figure out what to do next.
Slowly, warily, she edged her way forward. Power seemed to ripple in the air ahead of her, visible to her Sight but almost completely invisible to her sorcery. It was a bizarre phenomenon, and she had no clue about how to interpret it.
My body is safe, she reminded herself. A single thought can return me to it. A second thought can sever any trace that an enemy might use to follow me back home. So nothing can hurt me here.
And then she came to the place where the strange effect seemed to begin. She braced herself for some kind of resistance at the boundary, but there was none. For a brief moment the desire to return to her body was nearly overwhelming, but she pushed that thought out of her mind. Years of practicing mental discipline under Ethanus’ tutelage paid off; the power that guarded this place loosened its stranglehold upon her mind, and she was able to move forward once more.
And then she was inside.
The land itself seemed utterly mundane in its physical aspect, but something about it made her very uneasy. Things were all wrong here. She was all wrong here. That awareness was not born of intellectual knowledge but of instinct, a sudden certainty that welled up from the center of her being, a desire to turn and flee this place for her own safety. But that same instinct also urged her to keep moving forward, to claim this place for her own. If there was some other creature who felt she had rights to this place, then let her challenge Kamala for it. She would make this territory her own, and then its resonance would bear her mark. Then it would be the others who felt it beating at their brain like some terrible drumbeat, scattering all rational thought, driving home the fact of her sovereignty. Who would dare to oppose her then?
Steady, Kamala. Steady.
Shaken, she tried to focus on her physical surroundings as a means of disciplining her mind. Thus far in her search she had relied solely upon sight, but now she conjured a full array of sorcerous senses to complement her vision. An odd, musky sweetness wafted past her, alien and familiar at the same time; something inside her found it powerfully repellent, so much so that she instinctively moved away from it. Then the breeze shifted slightly, and she caught another scent, coming from the southwest. Corruption. Death. Something had died there, whose corpse was slowly surrendering the last scraps of its flesh to scavengers and rot. But there was something else in that direction, too. A subtle note that she could not identify, mixed in with the message of decay. Carefully she moved in that direction, scanning the landscape around her for any sign of threat as she did so. Repeating over and over again the single reminder, as if it were a spell of protection: I can return home any time I want to.
If she’d had a heart present, it would surely have been pounding now.
She passed over a steep ridge, then eased herself down into a rocky valley on the other side. The smell was becoming stronger, but not in the manner of natural odors. It was more like a memory of odor that clung to the landscape as a whole, rather than drifting along in the air. After a moment she realized what was causing the strangeness . . . and it sent a chill through her very spirit.
The smell was not real.
All her life, she had been able to sense supernatural forces. It was
a gift that morati called the Sight, since its manifestation was usually visual in nature. With her Sight she had seen the power of Ethanus’ magical repairs glowing in the corner of his house and had watched his sorcery flicker about her during their lessons, like a swarm of mad fireflies. But the gift was not limited to sight alone, and sometimes it manifested in other ways.
Like now.
What she was smelling was power. . . . and the death of power. Some creature had met its end here, violently enough that its spiritual essence had been splattered across the landscape. That was the trace that she was sensing now, that her mind was interpreting as scent: psychic bloodstains.
Fascinated now, she began to follow the strange trail back to its source. Each mountain and ravine that she crossed took her farther and farther away from the other strange scent, which was an added benefit of the task. Whatever the musky-sweet odor signified, she sensed that she didn’t want to be anywhere near its source.
And then she came around a bend and saw the skeletons.
There were two of them. One was that of a vast creature, its ribcage cavernous, its tail a long, sinuous python of sun-bleached bone. The other, lying some distance away from it, was a smaller thing, maybe half its size, but it was clearly of the same species.
Their wings were missing, but even so, there was no mistaking what the creatures were. Or, rather, what they once had been.
Souleaters.
They had no flesh upon their bones, nor did any sign of the jeweled wings remain. The bones themselves were strangely white, as were the long, curved spikes that rose from each vertebra, but, she did not get the sense they had actually been around long enough to be bleached so thoroughly by natural forces. Indeed, the skeletons of smaller animals could be seen nearby, and those all had the appearance one would expect from natural corpses: bones stained dark with dried blood, scraps of desiccated skin and flesh hanging like ragged pennants from ossiferous masts, maggot casings littered between and about the ribs. Those creatures had died naturally, it seemed. So what had befallen these two ikati?