Legacy of Kings

by C. S. Friedman

  “Kamala.” His voice was very quiet. “This isn’t a simple shapeshifting experiment we’re talking about. There is a part of your soul for which this form is natural and human flesh is alien. Thus far that part has been buried deeply within you, manifesting as little more than a metaphysical echo, but there’s no guarantee it will stay that way. What happens when you give it the freedom it hungers for and the body it longs to possess? Are you so sure you’ll be able to change back after that?”

  “Colivar.” She reached out a hand to touch his cheek. She could feel his tension beneath her fingertips, muscles tightly controlled as he sought to keep his expression from revealing too much to her. “I understand why you’re so concerned, but remember . . . I’m human. I’ve never been anything but human. If this . . . this Souleater essence . . . takes on a life of its own, then I will fight it off as I would fight off any other possession. Do you doubt my tenacity in such a contest?”

  In answer he reached up and took her hand away from his cheek. She thought that he hesitated a moment before releasing it, but it was hard to be sure. “Ignoring for the moment your boundless self-confidence, there are practical considerations here. Think back to when you first learned to shapeshift. Do you not remember how you stumbled the first time you had to walk on four legs? Or how the wind buffeted you about the first time you took on winged form, until you learned how to ride it properly? Each form carries within it the instinct necessary for it to function, but that doesn’t mean we can access it right away. It takes time and practice. The more alien the form is to our own, the harder it is to adapt, and the longer it takes.

  “The Souleaters are unlike any creatures you’ve ever replicated before. The nature of their flight has nothing in common with that of birds or bats, so the fact that you’ve mastered those forms won’t help you at all. The subtle currents of air and heat that a bird rides are meaningless to an ikati; its wings stir up currents independent of the wind, powerful enough to lift that massive body without need for forward motion. Different muscles. Different dynamics.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have any time to practice. Your very life would depend upon your ability to fly perfectly from the start, and you can’t do that without prior knowledge of how an ikati body functions.”

  “No,” she said softly. Her voice a whisper. “I would need to get that knowledge from someone who already possessed it.”

  It took him a moment to realize what she meant. When he did so, he recoiled as if he had been struck, and all the color drained from his face. “You cannot ask that of me.”

  “Who else has what I need, Colivar?” When he didn’t respond she pressed, “Who else has smelled the perfume of a mating queen—who else has heard the call to flight as a Souleater performs it—has else felt the beat of those great wings, the flexing of the muscles that drive them? Or do I mistake the nature of the bond you shared? Did you not experience those things along with your consort?”

  “You don’t understand the risk,” he whispered fiercely. Turning away from her.

  “I just need to share your memories,” she told him. “Nothing more. You wouldn’t be transforming into an ikati. Or inviting one into your brain. However terrible your memories may be—whatever instincts you fear they may awaken in you—surely they’re still just that: memories.”

  “They’re not terrible,” he whispered. “That’s the point.”

  “And are you telling me that you haven’t ever dreamed of that time? That you’ve never surrendered to those memories in your sleep, so that for an hour you thought you were back there? Yes? Didn’t you awaken after that? Shaken, perhaps, but still human?” She paused. “You won’t be able to escape the ghosts of your past until the last of the Souleaters is gone, Colivar. And this may be the only way to get rid of them.” When he still said nothing, she pressed, “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  For a long moment he stared out into the distance. “No,” he said finally. “No. I do not.”

  Slowly he turned back to her. “Once,” he said. “I will do this only once. If that’s not enough for you, you’ll need to find some other source of information. Or come up with another plan.”

  She nodded solemnly. “Agreed.”

  He lifted a hand to her face and placed it against her cheek; his sorcery should not require such a thing, but she guessed he was doing it to help him focus.

  “You will have to let me in,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, closed her eyes to shut out all distractions, and tried to take down enough of her defenses for him to make direct contact with her mind. It was harder than it had been with Ramirus. She’d been battered and weak back then, and she had needed to submit to him in order to survive. Now she was strong, and her survival instincts rebelled at the mere thought of letting another Magister into her mind. Even Colivar.

  But if she wanted to be able to draw off the Souleaters, then she had to do this. And so, squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she turned her awareness inward and stripped herself of all the spells that normally protected her from others of her kind. She could feel his sorcery taking its place, moving into her soul, and she gritted her teeth as she struggled not to resist it.

  Then the memories came pouring in.

  Clouds like icy knives score his flesh as he plunges through them—

  Rivals on every side screech their mating challenge to the wind—

  Teeth pierce through his tail. He shakes them off. His own tail whips through the air, driving its blades into the offender. His serpentine body twists in its flight like an agile dancer, compensating for the motion. Wings shift their angle. Flight is steady once more.

  He howls out his own challenge, rage and lust and bloodthirst combined, but does not look back. His lead over the others is fragile, and one moment’s inattention might cause it to be lost. He must stay ahead of the others. He has no choice. He must fly faster and harder and higher than all of the others, even if he expends the last ounce of his strength in doing so. Even if he dies in doing so. There is no other action possible for him.

  How hard it is hard to fly in the cold, dim sunlight! Frozen muscles struggle to move the great wings; flight that should be fluid and painless is torment. His lower wings beat the air with frenetic energy, creating roiling whirlwinds to support him. His upper wings stretch out into the frozen sky, struggling to stabilize his flight. The scent of the queen surrounds him, envelops him, maddens him. Her cry resonates in the air, stirring his blood. In the wake of such things no rational thought is possible. Hunger pounds in his veins, more terrible than anything he has ever known, and he must satisfy it or die in the attempt—

  The flow of memories ceased so suddenly that it left Kamala gasping for breath. For a moment her mind could not adjust to the shift in reality, and she stumbled. Strong hands grasped her by the arms, holding her upright. She trembled, overwhelmed by the sensation of being human once more. Already it seemed an alien thing to her.

  Shaken, she looked up into Colivar’s eyes. How dark they were, how haunted! So much pain in their depths. And desire. So much desire. The madness of the ikati had faded from his mind, but she could sense the human hunger that had taken its place. For a moment they just stared at each other, wordlessly aware of how close they were to one another, equally loath to move away.

  “I didn’t expect the pain,” she whispered.

  “They need the sun on their wings. We trapped them in a place starved of sunlight. The ones that were born there have never known anything else.”

  The moon was rising. It reflected in his eyes.

  “Do you have what you need now?” he asked. Because I cannot go there again, his expression said plainly.

  She nodded. In truth, it was not as much as she had hoped for. But it would have to be enough. She would make it enough. She would replay the memory in her mind, over and over, until she knew the feel of the ikati’s body as well as she knew her own. Until the motions of its flight were as familiar to her as breathing, and the sc
ent and cry of a queen’s flight were second nature to her.

  “Yes,” she whispered. Raising a hand to his face, brushing back a lock of jet-black hair that had fallen across it. His cheek was warm, and it seemed to her that he trembled slightly as her fingers brushed against it. So much hunger. So tightly controlled. What had it been like for him in the first days of his exile, when human memories had been no more than a distant echo? How did a man hang on to sanity when his soul and his flesh were no longer in agreement?

  We are the harvest of your madness, she thought.

  For a moment he did not respond to her. Then he reached up to catch hold of her hand, drawing it away from her cheek. His heart was pounding so hard she could feel the blood pulse in his palm, but in his eyes there was only sadness. He put her hand down by her side and let go, then moved back from her ever so slightly, so they were no longer close. A single inch. A thousand miles.

  “Why?” she asked.

  A shadow of pain flickered in his eyes.

  “Because I’m not sure which part of me wants you,” he told her. “Or why.”

  Before she had a chance to respond, he transformed himself. Black wings flurried in the air before her—a single feather brushed her cheek in passing as he rose up—and then he was gone.

  She watched him head out over the plain, his wings rising and falling in a simple rhythm, until the currents of the evening wind carried him out of sight.

  Chapter 32

  M

  ASTER FAVIAS and the High King were together when Shina found them, conferring in a small tent near the edge of Salvator’s military encampment. Just before entering it, she stopped for a moment, closed her eyes, and tried to bring the fluttering of her heart under some semblance of control. Not until she felt she was calm enough to do what she had come to do did she continue on to the tent itself and greet the guards outside.

  No one liked to bring bad news to a king.

  In the distance, to the south, one could hear the sounds of Farah’s camp being struck. The Anshasans were working quickly and efficiently, and soon all his people would be gone, leaving nothing in their wake but trampled tufts of grass stubble and a line of earthen mounds where the cesspits once had been. Salvator’s men seemed to be having trouble with their work and were well behind schedule. With as many grand and complicated tents as the High King had brought with him, some of his people would probably be at the site long after the last of Farah’s men had departed.

  She felt a tightening in her gut at the thought that within a day or two—as soon as Farah’s people were all gone—they would be moving out to Jezalya. And because of her failure, a key element of the campaign could not be brought into play.

  The thought of delivering that news to Salvator made her sick inside.

  The two men looked up when she entered, and they seemed genuinely pleased to see her. For some reason that made it worse. There was a camp table between them with papers they had apparently been going over. She did not look down to see what they were.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, bowing her respect. “Master Favias.”

  Then she drew in a deep breath and said, “I bring news from the witches.”

  “Ah, good.” The High King pushed the papers away and picked up a metal cup that had been sitting beside them. “Let’s hear it.”

  Shina had always found the High King intimidating. They had put her in charge of the witches because she was the most skilled of all the Seers, but her life in Kierdwyn had not prepared her for the frenzied world she was suddenly part of, or for the battle-scarred priest-king who lorded over it.. The three deep claw marks running down his face gave his expression a fearsome aspect even when he was smiling—which he did not do often—and while the clarity of his faith was a thing to be praised, its intensity unnerved her. She was not used to dealing with fanatics. Or with giving them bad news.

  “Majesty,” she said, “We have been unable to teach our spellsong ritual to the Penitent witches. It appears . . . .” She paused. Did she look as nervous as she felt? “It appears they are incapable of learning it.”

  The silence that followed her pronouncement was not what she’d expected. It was worse.

  Salvator turned to Favias. “How important is this ritual?”

  “Important.” Favias’ expression was grave. “This is very bad news.”

  Salvator turned back to Shina. “Most of the witches in the world know nothing about this trick, and they seem to function well enough. The witches of the Great War didn’t have it, and they dealt with the Souleaters quite effectively. I understand why it would be a good addition to our arsenal, but what makes it such a pivotal element?”

  Shina looked to Favias to see if he would take the burden of explanation from her, but he nodded for her to continue. With a sigh of resignation, she turned back to the High King, “The spellsong ritual allows a number of witches to pool their efforts, so that all their energy can be combined into a single spell. We use it mostly to share the cost of witchery amongst ourselves, but there are other advantages, which we’d hoped to apply here . . . .” How much did he already know, how much did she need to explain? Neither man was giving her any kind of clue. “Normally, if a dozen witches wanted to raise a barrier about Jezalya, each one would have to conjure a section of that barrier by herself, then all the segments would be joined together. The problem is that if one witch were killed, her section would then collapse. But if those same witches were to pool their efforts as the Seers do, then the entire barrier would become a single spell, drawing its strength equally from each of them. Then, if one witch were killed, the spell would grow weaker overall, but there would be no single point at which it failed completely. And the whole of the barrier would be stronger, also . . . but that is not the part that matters most.” She shook her head. “Without this we are very vulnerable, your Majesty. A single well-placed arrow could break the barrier wide open. We might compensate through redundancy, erecting several barriers . . . “ She let her voice trail off, certain they could fill in the rest themselves. Time lost. More witches needed. More life-essence sacrificed.

  Salvator nodded; it was clear from his grim expression that he was beginning to grasp just how serious the problem was. “You say the Penitent witches can’t learn this trick?”

  She bowed her head. “It appears so, your Majesty.”

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  She shook her head. “None of us have ever seen anything like this before. We had anticipated that maybe the two groups would turn out to be metaphysically incompatible, given that they draw their inspiration from two such different paradigms, but that should have resulted in two unified collectives instead of one . . . not an unlimited number of people who can’t connect to each other at all.”

  “Are there prayers involved in this ritual of yours? Or any religious references? The polytheism of most lyr is anathema to our faith. References to such beliefs might keep Penitents from making the kind of spiritual commitment that would be required.”

  Shina shook her head. “The incantations that we use rely upon metaphors of unity and common purpose. Nothing that should give offense to any god.” Even your infamously intolerant Creator, she thought. “But we did ask the question anyway. So one of your Penitent witches translated our incantations into the language of your own faith, glorifying your god, so that the ritual would be a true Penitent undertaking. And then they tried it among themselves, without any of us in the circle. But even that didn’t help.” She hesitated. “I’m told that several of your people offered up penance to the Creator, whatever that means. Just in case they had been sinful enough that their god was displeased by them, and that’s why he wouldn’t let them master the ritual. But that didn’t help either. Something about the Penitents simply makes it impossible for them to learn this technique, and we don’t have a clue what it is. I’m sorry, your Majesty.”

  Salvator stared at her in silence for a moment. His gaze was daunting. Then he turned back to Favias. “
Do we have enough Seers to conjure the barrier without Penitent assistance?”

  “Minimally,” Favias said. “We had counted on linking them up to your people. It will be a much weaker construct without then.”

  “But we can get the barrier up. That’s the most important part, yes?” He turned back to the Seer. “Keep trying,” he ordered. “Up until the minute that we leave for Jezalya, keep trying. And if you come up with any clue as to why this problem exists, come talk to me. If it’s something connected to the Penitent faith, perhaps I can help you figure out how we can compensate for that. Meanwhile . . . .” His lips tightened into a hard line. “Time is too precious here. Once the fifth day arrives and our people don’t show up at Farah’s training camp, it will be clear to all what’s really going on.” He shook his head tightly. “We cannot delay this. We move out at dawn as planned. Do your best to solve the problem before then.”

  What if it is Penitent beliefs that have made your witches weak? she thought. What if they’re not strong enough spiritually—or magically—to do what’s being asked of them?

  But that was something she would never say to the High King. Not even in her sleep.

  “Yes, your Majesty.” She bowed her head respectfully. “I will certainly do that.”

  At dawn, she knew, she would probably be reporting her final failure.

  “The Queen said you wished to see me.”

  Salvator put aside the pen he was holding and waved for the servants to leave them alone together. “Yes, I did. I felt there was something we should discuss before we left Coldorra.” As the last of the servants left the pavilion, his expression took on a solemn air. “The question of sorcery in Jezalya.”

  Ramirus’ expression did not waver, but Salvator could see a muscle along the line of his jaw tense slightly. “With all due respect, your Majesty, I’ve made a commitment to the Queen Mother, and I must protect her. If sorcery is required to do that, then I will use sorcery. Even your sovereignty can’t override a Magister’s contract.”