Shina reached out and touched the sphere. A shiver of energy ran up Gwynofar’s arm as the crystal began to dissolve in her hand. Black became red; stone became liquid; smoothness became heat. Holding it high, she let the scarlet fluid stream down between her fingers into the cup. There it mixed with the wine that Salvator had prepared, until the final drops filled the cup to its brim exactly.
Holding the chalice before her, she stepped back and nodded for Salvator to take her place.
The young king was wearing full armor with a priest’s stole over it, and he had a leather-bound book in his hand. “Fellow Penitents.” His voice carried to the back of the assemblage with natural ease. “By the word of the Primus Council, I have been restored to the station of Priest for the duration of this campaign, so that the sacraments of our faith can be performed.”
He opened the book before him, paged over to where a golden marker lay, and in a clear, strong voice began to read:
Lord God, Creator of the world
Lord God, Destroyer of the world
Lord God, Source of all wisdom
Lord God, Judge of all men
Hear our prayer:
In humble penitence we turn to You, our eternal Judge, and beg for Your blessing upon our mission. Not because we seek glory for ourselves, but because we would glorify You. Grant us Your divine mercy this day, and forgive us our many sins, so that we may enter battle with a clean soul, free of the burden of our past failings. Remove all fear of death from our hearts, for life is the ultimate possession a man can offer You, and sacrifice the greatest of all prayers. Lo, he who dies in Your service is doubly blessed, for the measure of his faith has been taken, and his sacrifice will ransom the souls of his fellow men.
Therefore do we consecrate our bodies and our souls unto Your service this day, trusting to Your mercy and Your wisdom, and we beseech You to give us Your blessing for the coming battle, so that we may fight in Your name.
As he closed the book, a servant stepped up onto the stage and handed him a second chalice, with the symbols of his Church etched about the upper edge. And he waited.
Shina ushered one of the Penitent witches up to the dais. The woman looked a bit hesitant, and she glanced at Salvator for reassurance; he nodded with regal grace, which seemed to settle her spirit. She bowed her respect to Gwynofar, then took the chalice from her hands and sipped from its contents. There was no visible change in her, but in Gwynofar’s mind she could imagine the essence of ancient lyr warriors coursing through her veins, adding a single crucial note to the spiritual symphony of her own soul.
Shina stepped forward then, and took the woman’s hand. For a moment the two of them just stood there quietly, eyes closed, and Gwynofar could hear them murmuring something in unison. Then, suddenly, the witch gasped and pulled back. Trembling, she stared at Shina, astonishment clear in her face.
Shina turned to Gwynofar, her own face glowing. “It works, your Majesty.”
The rest of the witches followed: some hesitant, some eager, some clearly awed by what was taking place. One by one they accepted the chalice from Gwynofar’s hands and sipped a single drop from its contents. One by one they came before Salvator, each one kneeling or standing according to the custom of his home culture, and he anointed each with a spot of consecrated oil in the center of the forehead, while murmuring prayers in an ancient tongue that Gwynofar did not recognize.
When all the witches had shared in the dual communion, Gwynofar looked out upon the field of them and felt a deep satisfaction. Closing her eyes for a moment, she imagined she could see the ghost of her child standing among the witches. His face looked serene and content, and for the first time since Alkali, the knot that had been in her heart loosened up just a tiny bit. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone.
As they handed the chalices to servants, Salvator took off his priest’s stole and gave it to them as well. Then, dressed only in the armor of a king, he looked out over the crowd. Men and women who had been watching from the sidelines had begun to come over as soon as they’d seen the ritual was ending, and now there was a mixed crowd of Guardians and Penitents before him, intermingling without any self-consciousness. Hundreds of them. Their energy was a tangible thing, that heated the blood and strengthened the spirit.
Salvator raised his hand for silence, and as soon as he had it, waved toward the open field to the south of them. “The time has come. I want the portal teams ready by sunrise. As soon as they’re in place, the first group will move in. We only have a couple of hours of good combat weather to work with, so I want to get as much done in that time frame as possible. And remember, the goal of this mission is to take out the Souleater queen. Everything else is secondary to that.” He paused. “May God watch over you all.”
Or gods, Gwynofar thought.
As the men and women in the crowd ran off to their various stations Salvator saw Colivar and Kamala, and he waved for them to come over to him. The former had abandoned his black garb for more inconspicuous clothing, Gwynofar noted; from a distance one would not suspect that he was anything more than a common workman. Kamala was wearing the men’s garments she seemed to prefer, but in muted shades of brown and tan.
Salvator stepped down from the dais and approached them. Unexpectedly, he reached out and clasped Colivar’s shoulder briefly, then Kamala’s. “I want you to know I respect you both greatly for your courage today. Without the services you have volunteered, none of this would be possible.”
Their surprise could not possibly have been greater than Gwynofar’s own.
As the two of them hurried off to their posts, Gwynofar looked up at her son. Dawn’s early light had made a silhouette of his profile, emphasizing his hawk-like Aurelius features. The image brought back memories of Danton, and she knew that if her husband were here, he would approve of the leader his son had become.
Filled with pride, she whispered a prayer of thanksgiving under her breath and then added a plea for the gods of the north to watch over Salvator and keep him safe. Just in case his own god wasn’t up to the job.
Chapter 35
K
AMALA STEPPED through the portal braced for trouble. Her own inspection of the anchors had indicated no malevolent intent attached to them—certainly no trickery by Farah’s people—but that didn’t mean that Siderea’s people hadn’t figured out what was going on and set a trap of their own. Not to mention that it would take very little effort for a witch of Siderea’s caliber (or was she a sorcerer now?) to alter a scout’s memory so that he reported falsehoods without knowing it, or overlooked the obvious in his reconnaissance.
But when she stepped through the portal, there was no hostile army waiting for her, nor any sign of a sorcerous trap. She summoned her power quickly, wrapping herself and her immediate surroundings in the gift of the ikati queen so that neither human eye nor superhuman power would be able to detect her. But when the portal had first appeared, there had been no such protection, and whoever or whatever was standing guard in this place might have taken note of it. So she was doubly wary, and she scoured the land and sky with both her physical and her supernatural sight, alert for any sign that someone had taken an interest in her arrival.
It appeared that no one had.
The land surrounding Jezalya was flat and desolate, with a few stark ridges of black rock to the east—were those the mountains?—and little else to look at. The sun had not yet risen here, and the predawn light gave the entire landscape a hazy gray quality in which it was hard to make out details. Not that there was much to see. The utter starkness of the empty plain made the badlands surrounding Tefilat seem downright festive by comparison, and as Kamala shivered in the chill morning air, she wondered why anyone in their right mind would choose to live in a place like this.
When she was finally satisfied that no one had detected her arrival, she conjured a message to let Colivar know that all was well. A moment later a second portal appeared, considerably larger than her own. Salvator’s peopl
e began to come through, each new arrival moving out of the way quickly to make way for the next. Last of all came the High King himself. He nodded as he took note of the markers Kamala had set up, indicating the boundary of her protective spell. As long as they all stayed within that area, no one on the outside would be able to detect them.
Or so they hoped. But Kamala herself didn’t know the exact range of her ikati power, so nothing was certain.
She wondered if Salvator would have forbidden her from using that power if he’d known she was a Magister. She was the only one in this crowd—possibly the only person in existence—who could guarantee them true invisibility, to the point where even Siderea’s power would be unable to detect them. Without Kamala’s sorcery the invaders would have been unable to arrive on this plain before the actual moment of attack, so they would have had no chance to take stock of their surroundings or establish a base camp before engaging the enemy. Would that have been enough to justify the use of sorcery in his mind? Or would even that have fallen short? She was a survivor by nature and could not conceive of throwing a good tool away just because the wrong person had provided it.
She could hear Salvator and Favias giving orders to the small cadre of soldiers and witches who had arrived with them, as they unpacked supplies and began to erect a canvas awning over the arrival site. The size of the first team had been kept to a minimum in respect of her sorcerous boundaries, but even so, there suddenly seemed to be a lot of people in the desert. Salvator and Favias had arrived to command the overall campaign, Shina to direct the witches, Gwynofar to bolster the lyr’s special abilities, and Ramirus to protect Gwynofar. Small teams of witches and warriors stood ready to take up positions surrounding the city as soon as they were given the word to move out. The witches were all carrying silk scarves and jeweled trinkets from the box that Colivar had once given Kamala, treasured possessions of the Witch-Queen that presumably still carried her resonance. Using those items as anchors, they would be able to focus their witchery on Siderea herself, instead of wasting time and energy on more generalized conjurations. Even Ramirus carried a bright pink scarf tucked into his belt, its beaded ends tinkled as he moved. The utter incongruousness of it would have been amusing had its purpose not been so lethal.
She saw Colivar standing some distance from the others, staring out into the darkness. She didn’t know how to reach out to him, or even if she should. He must be afraid—what man wouldn’t be, given his role in this campaign?—but if he wouldn’t even acknowledge that fear to himself, how could anyone help him address it?
She came up to where he was standing, and for a moment just gazed silently out into the darkness beside him. A faint gray shape was slowly becoming visible in the center of the great plain. Colivar turned one of the bone fragments over in his hand as he stared at it, his fingers unconsciously tracing the symbols etched into its surface. Kamala knew that the other half of this anchor was buried outside the House of Gods, but no more details had been given to them. Whoever used this to open a portal into Jezalya would be traveling blind.
“There must be another way to do this,” she said to him. Speaking quietly, so the others would not hear.
“The witches will need time to take up their positions and perform their ritual before they can raise the barrier. But the minute they move out from under your protection, Siderea will be able to detect their presence. So someone has to distract her, at least for those first few minutes, or none of this will work. My presence in the city will accomplish that.”
She said nothing. They had discussed this at length in Coldorra and no one had come up with a better idea. Whatever fantasy she’d had that they would come up with an alternative at the last minute was fading along with night’s darkness.
“Siderea wasn’t trying to kill me in Tefilat,” he reminded her. “She wanted me taken prisoner. So it stands to reason that even if she manages to get the upper hand now, she probably won’t kill me immediately.”
“And if her plan was to torture you?”
She could see his jawline tense. “Well, then, that will succeed in distracting her, won’t it?”
Kamala started to open her mouth to say something, but he turned and put a finger to her lips. “Shh. No more.” He took off the silver ring he was wearing and placed it in her hand. It looked like the same ring he had lost in Tefilat; her hand tingled briefly as she held it, remembering Lazaroth’s poison. “I won’t be able to send a message to you without her detecting it. So you’ll have to gather the information you need from here. If I die, then launch the operation without hesitation, and let’s hope she is preoccupied enough with my death to give you the time you need.” He folded her fingers over the ring. “The others will wait upon your word, Kamala. I’ve arranged it with Salvator. You are the one who must tell them when to begin.”
“I will,” she said. Closing her hand tightly about the ring. “But only if you promise me that you’ll return safely.”
It seemed to her that a terrible sadness came into his eyes.
“I made this mess,” he whispered. “So long ago. Another lifetime. Now I must help clean it up.”
Stepping away from her, he glanced back at Salvator for approval. The High King nodded. Colivar shut his eyes for a moment and concentrated. The air directly in front of him began to shimmer, and a portal the size and width of a man formed. Without looking back, he stepped into it. The air rippled like water in the wake of his passage, then grew still once more as the portal vanished behind him. The small piece of bone fell to the sand behind him; Kamala walked over and picked it up, tucking it carefully into her doublet.
She knew that the odds of Colivar coming out of this alive were slim. Surely he knew it too. If he had been morati, she would have thought that he was resigned to his death. But such a state wasn’t possible for a Magister. So this was something more complex than simple self-sacrifice. A desperate bid for freedom, perhaps. A chance to cast off the shadows of the past, after so many centuries he could no longer remember what it felt like to live without them. The most rare and precious thing any man might fight to possess: a chance to start over.
Any man might be willing to risk his life for that. Even a Magister.
If she had believed that there was any god who cared about the welfare of Magisters, she might have prayed for Colivar. As it was, she could do no more than slide the ring onto her right thumb—the only finger it fit—and wait.
Siderea dreamt that the gods were angry at her. It was a dream she’d had before, but not one that usually worried her. If there really were divine entities in Jezalya who had an issue with her presence there, thus far they had proven too impotent—or simply uninterested—to do anything about it. By which she judged that her nightmares were merely nightmares, and had no greater significance.
But today’s dream felt different.
She woke up with a sense of dread that was both compelling and unfocused. As if she knew that something in her immediate environment was wrong, somehow, but didn’t know what. Lying still in her bed, she tried to focus on the feeling, to determine its cause. There didn’t appear to be anything amiss in the bedchamber itself, nor in the rooms beyond it, nor anywhere surrounding the palace. She reached out to her ikati consort to see if perhaps some agitation from that creature had bled through to her awareness, but the ikati queen was still asleep, her presence no more than a dull, warm weight in Siderea’s mind.
All seemed well enough.
And yet it was not.
Gathering her power to her, Siderea extended her senses out into Jezalya itself, searching for any anomaly that might explain her disquiet. For the most part the city seemed quiet. A local witch had been hired to keep rats away from the meat market; another was establishing travel wards on a merchant’s wagon that would urge thieves to choose some other target. Other than those few sparks of witchery, this dawn seemed as quiet as any.
It was not. She knew that.
Closing her eyes, Siderea summoned the nearest b
ird to come to her. A dove arrived at her window a few moments later, its iridescent blue wings identifying it as one of those she had received as a gift from a sycophantic merchant. She had set them loose in her gardens, knowing that there were few places in the hot, dry city for them to escape.
Gently she extended her consciousness into the small winged creature. It was a trick that was becoming more and more difficult over time; apparently her tie to a great predator made herbivorous birds loath to accept her essence. But she was practiced in the art, and soon she was able to slide her mind into the tiny creature, allowing her to direct its motions and see through its eyes. If a flutter of avian panic attended the action, it was not enough to distract her.
She headed out the window and began to fly over the city. Dawn’s light was just beginning to spread out across the heavens, which meant that the city was beginning to stir. She ignored all the people who were going about their normal business, searching for any pattern of activity that seemed out of the ordinary. But she could find none. As far as the residents of Jezalya were concerned, this morning was just like any other.
When she was satisfied that the rest of the city was functioning normally, she headed toward the House of Gods. The patina of residual energy hanging about the place made it hard for her to make out any meaningful patterns there. Traces of prayer clung to the ancient walls, along with the residue of countless rituals, some of them magical in nature. Spells had been affixed to many of the idols for one purpose or another, and foreign energies swirled and eddied about them. A minor spell worked in such an environment would be all but undetectable, and there would be no way to see it from a distance.
Yet as soon as she approached the ancient temple, she realized that the source of her disquiet was indeed here. For a brief moment she worried that it might be coming from within the House itself (what if the gods really were angry with her?), but as she circled the plaza, she was able to make out a place nearby that seemed to resonate as if a powerful rite had just been performed there. It was within a small copse of trees that flanked the prayer plaza, the only place within sight where a man could hide himself . . . or his magic. She circled the area warily at first, looking for any sign that the perpetrator was still present, but apparently the place was empty. So she settled her avian body on an upper branch of one of the trees and folded its wings, preparing to concentrate all her attention on the task at hand. Then she reached within her soul for power, molded it into a spell of inquiry, and cast it out over the area. She could not pick out any personal traces of the person who had been here while possessing another creature; the focus required to maintain control of its body detracted from her ability to focus her power on fine details. But the spell he had performed here was another thing. The kind of magic that could tear a hole in reality was not easily obscured, and the metaphysical scar that it left behind when it closed was something no well-trained witch could mistake. She could not tell who had made it, or what kind of power had been used, but its purpose was clear.
Legacy of Kings Page 43
