“Did he?” Raina exclaimed.
If Ikaros wasn’t wrapped around her, Kaislyn would have found the shock from both of them funny.
Ikaros gave Kaislyn a little shake. “How desperate you must be if you offer to betray the one man who was your salvation!” he hissed at Sveka.
“Do not take my daughter.”
Kaislyn blinked, trying to clear her sudden, blurry vision, blinked at the desperate pleading in her mother’s voice. All hardness, all harshness, gone. “Please,” Sveka whispered.
Kaislyn felt a burning in her stomach. Shame? Embarrassment?
No one spoke. No one moved.
A cackle burst from Ikaros. “No, no! None of you seem to understand how dreadful she is! How much trouble she has caused me.”
No, Kaislyn decided, as if she weren’t really there, as if this were all a horrible dream. She wasn’t feeling shame for getting caught so easily by Ikaros. Nor was it embarrassment to see her mother displaying such naked emotion.
Sveka on her knees, pleading. Ikaros laughing.
The burning sensation grew.
A Shift attack didn’t feel like this either. Those were uncontrolled. Painful. This was something much deeper. Fear of finally dying? She felt divided from herself. As if she were a disinterested bystander observing events. For a moment, she even thought she was standing beside Raina, above her, looking at Ikaros and herself, impatient for this silly charade to end.
Sveka did not move from her spot. “Do not do this to my daughter. Do not drag her into your madness.”
No, Kaislyn thought, still fuzzy and distant. Not shame. Not a Shift attack. Not fear.
Tears had begun to fall from Sveka’s eyes.
Ikaros giggled.
Rage.
The burning sensation erupted. Kaislyn’s fuzziness vanished as a toxic flood of rage consumed her. Rage at what Ikaros was doing to her family right now, tormenting them by pretending he might not kill her, giving them a useless, mocking hope.
“You will not murder me in front of my family.” Kaislyn could barely speak, her voice shook so much.
“I should make you grovel, too, wretched creature. Make you all beg for her life!” he shouted. “Go on! Kneel and weep like the mighty Snake Tamer! Beg and—”
“Ikaros?”
“What?” he snarled at her.
“You lose.” Kaislyn lunged forward in his grasp, slitting her own throat on his knife.
Ikaros’ shrieks filled her ears as Kaislyn toppled forward, landing face first in the grass.
“You stupid creature!” Ikaros screamed above her. “I wanted to kill you! Me, me, me! Damn you!” He scrabbled at her neck, snatching her necklace. “Mine!”
Blood oozed down her body. She couldn’t smell it. She couldn’t smell anything. It was wonderful. How long did it take to die? She wasn’t breathing. She couldn’t.
People were shouting.
Ikaros?
No. He must have Shifted. Vanished again.
Silence now.
The rage still filled her but it was aimless, mindless. What was the point? No point. Ikaros would live forever with no one to oppose him. She had lost too. Run out of ways to cheat.
It didn’t seem very important anymore.
Someone knelt heavily beside her, pulled her over. Her neck rolled painfully onto a lap, but it didn’t hurt as much as when she’d gotten her head chopped off both times. Strange that. Dying for real was less painful than she’d expected it to be. Silly to be afraid of her birth life for so long.
Sound returned in a sad burst of voices.
“I can’t...” That was Raina, strained, miserable. “The phoenix can’t do anything against mortal wounds.”
There was blood in her ears. It muffled the voices around her. Good. They were annoying voices. She drifted into a pleasant blackness, lingered there. So many deaths leading up to this last, final one. She wished she could hear Zarif. What would he say over this one? Would he shake his head again at her?
Someone was shouting, swearing. They sounded shrill. Was that her voice?
“Blazing river of blood! Isn’t dying enough for you?”
“No one who swears like that could possibly be dying.”
Kaislyn’s eyes snapped open. “No. No, no, no.”
She saw Drazan immediately above her. There were tears running down his face. Their gazes met, his disbelieving.
“Gods above, she’s still alive?” That was a guard. Aiden?
“Don’t act so disappointed,” Kaislyn said, choking on her own blood. She rose to her feet, swaying. Her sore throat. Her endless, ever recurring, sore throat. A death that would never quite heal.
Everyone drew back from her, identical looks of horror on their faces.
Kaislyn couldn’t breathe, literally. It was impossible. Blood smeared her throat and the front of her clothes in a sticky mess. The loss of blood made her dizzy. It was such a familiar feeling she hardly noticed it. What was worth thinking about was the marker in her head. It’d vanished. He would have gone back to his Second City.
A sneer crossed her face.
“Kaislyn...?”
She turned to Raina, but her gaze went almost immediately to the phoenix on her shoulder, preening its feathers. She had a sudden urge to rush forward and throttle the bird.
“Was this... was this a trick of some kind?” the queen asked.
“Is that what you all think this is?” She spun in a wild circle, taking in the stunned faces of everyone around her. “Oh yes! I tricked Ikaros into thinking this was my birth life! I’m very clever. I always like to pretend to die in front of my family! It’s something we’re all good at isn’t it? Faking our deaths?” She ignored the image of her falling off the roof in the First City.
Her gaze fastened on Sveka who remained kneeling in the grass. Looked back at her steadily. She recognized the look now, recognized that hard, controlled expression she saw every time her mother looked at her. Grief.
She knew. Somehow, she had known.
Kaislyn shook. Her rage had a focus again. “It’s all a wonderful plan to catch Ikaros. I’m full of wonderful plans! Again and again and again he wins!” she screamed, clutching her hair with bloody hands.
Everyone drew away from her.
Hezere had accused her of being insane. She thought he might be right. “The mountains are mine! He thinks he won? Madman. I’ve died more!”
Her surroundings blurred and she Shifted.
Kaislyn stumbled out of the Shift, running down the empty hillside. The Second City looked peaceful in the sunlight.
She was going to kill him.
And then she’d destroy him.
5 | The Immortal Walker
Kaislyn stormed through the Second City, heedless of the stares, heedless of the alarmed cries for a guard, a priest, someone. Something. The palace gate guards ran on seeing her. Lips curling, Kaislyn kicked the gate open.
She found him in the throne room. A woman Kaislyn had never seen before sat on a gilded chair near the back of the room. A handful of servants, guards, and courtiers were in attendance throughout the room. Ikaros leaned against the arm of the throne, murmuring in a low voice to the woman. She was nodding her head as he spoke.
Kaislyn’s attention fixed on the necklace he wore.
“How dare you!” Her voice ricocheted around the room, killing the idle hum of voices as those in the room froze at her sudden appearance. The woman speaking to Ikaros jerked and looked up at her. Her eyes widened in panic.
Ikaros spun toward her, but then relaxed. “A different incarnation? Before I killed you?”
“That is my necklace! Give it back to me!”
His face drained of color. “Not different? But... dead! Why aren’t you dead?” he cried.
“I am dead! Are you blind now? Do you see my blood?”
“Sorcerer, what demon is this?” the woman quavered.
“It was your birth life! It took me years and years to get it just right!” Ikaros screamed at her.<
br />
“I am the Immortal Walker! I. Can’t. Die.”
Ikaros took one look at her face and fled.
Kaislyn chased him. Through a palace suddenly, mysteriously empty. Into a city that recoiled from their screaming figures. Past empty hills. Back to the mountains.
All sense of time ceased for Kaislyn as she pursued Ikaros through Shifts. She didn’t know if traditional years passed or not. The days and nights blurred. Seasons changed. Or didn’t change. It didn’t matter. She would not let Ikaros get away again.
Then, suddenly, he was waiting for her in a grove of trees. An old version of him, bent, nearly blind. “Enough of this! If I can’t kill you, at least you will never kill me.”
Kaislyn folded her arms across her chest. Her clothes were ragged and stiff with dried blood, feet bare, hair wild. “Are you going to stab me, Sorcerer? Are you going to push me off a cliff? Break my neck?”
His filmy blue eyes narrowed in fury. “I’ve learned your tricks, Immortal Walker. There is nothing you can do that I can’t do too.”
“Except not die,” Kaislyn retorted.
Ikaros grabbed her arm in a trembling, vise-like grip.
Kaislyn let him, seizing her necklace from him with her free hand.
“Come live with me, Immortal Walker.” He took a step, Shifted.
Kaislyn’s contempt vanished in astonishment as he took her with him. As he Shifted them both. How? Only she could...
Ikaros let go and Kaislyn stumbled backwards from him. His age had changed again, back to that indeterminate middle age.
The grove of pines, surrounded by the towering white peaks of mountains was gone. She stood in a burnt patch of grass. Beyond the little circle grew the dark green leafy foliage of a jungle. Kaislyn spun around. Gone. The mountains were gone. It was flat and humid. She couldn’t see the sky for the vine-covered trees overhead.
“What have you done? What did you do?”
Ikaros wrapped his arms around himself and laughed. “It worked!” he crowed. “It worked! It worked! It worked!”
He’d dragged her to a point where the mountains didn’t exist. And without the mountains...
Kaislyn promptly tried to Shift. Her surroundings blurred, sulfur filled her nose. The heat increased around her. Kaislyn staggered out of the Shift before the concussive dizziness and nausea struck.
“How? How is that possible?” she screamed at Ikaros.
“Try to kill me in my birth life, would you? We’ll see what sort of state you’re in when we actually get there! Who knows how long we have to keep each other company before civilization appears? Before the gods get around to making your precious mountains? It’s just you and me, Immortal Walker, and I will see that you are as mad as I am before it’s over!” Ikaros laughed again.
“No...”
“No, no, no,” Ikaros mocked.
Kaislyn fled into the jungle, pushing the thick, wet leaves and branches out of her way. They tore against her clothes, leaving long red grooves in her skin.
Ikaros’ laughter followed her. “Run as far as you like! You’ll only come back to me. You always come back!”
Kaislyn didn’t care which way she went so long as it was away from him. There had to be a way out of this. Somehow. Her panicked rush turned into a stumble. The screech of animals concealed in the trees made her ears ache. The cold drip of water in the steamy air made her shiver. She slowed to a walk. She was numb inside and empty of all thoughts. All ideas and cleverness. There wasn’t any point. Ikaros was right. Again.
She climbed over a cracked, broken tree and didn’t see the fallen nest on the other side until she’d stepped on it. The delicate cracking sound made her look down with a sickening lurch of her stomach. To her relief the shell had already been broken and her clumsy foot had missed the tiny baby bird. It was a limpid brown color and all protruding eyes, beak, and bones.
Kaislyn hesitated, then squatted next to it. “Aren’t you the ugliest thing ever?” She scanned the nearby, empty bushes for a distressed parent bird.
The baby bird cheeped at her, mouth open for food.
“I don’t have anything for you.” How strange that in her mindless, endless pursuit of Ikaros that she would stop now. She’d died so many times that she didn’t even think about life anymore, of the lives she passed in her hunt for Ikaros. Focused only on Ikaros’ death. Yet here was a new life right in front of her. Tiny, vulnerable. Fragile. Everything Kaislyn was right now.
The baby cheeped again, the whites of its eyes giving it a desperate look. Kaislyn glanced at the broken nest. Despite stepping on it, the nest had clearly already been falling apart. It looked abandoned.
She knelt heavily beside the baby bird. “You and me both,” she said, as if continuing a conversation. “You’re alone and I’m trapped. Only I was stupid and let it happen. I doubt you’re responsible for that tree knocking your nest down.”
Setting her precious necklace next to her, Kaislyn scooped the baby bird into the palms of her hands. The hatchling’s body was warm to the touch, almost hot.
“Ah, hell.”
Too late. Far too late.
I’m hungry, the infant phoenix announced.
Kaislyn sat back hard, crushing the remains of the nest beneath her. The phoenix hopped from her shaking hands to her knee.
I’m hungry! She’s very strange. I’m hungry!
Kaislyn stared at the tiny phoenix. Its brown downy feathers were already molting. Bright red feathers began to form along its spine. She shivered. She hadn’t thought things could get worse! What would Ikaros do when he discovered she had a helpless little phoenix? What if he found one too?
She shivered again, the chill running all through her. Kaislyn’s eyes narrowed at the still babbling phoenix hopping from bent knee to bent knee, its tiny claws pricking her skin. At the pile of downy feathers it shed at an alarming rate. At its lengthening body, its darkening feathers. What had her parents told her? A phoenix needed heat to grow? Not food?
“If you don’t stop that, I’ll shove you right off my lap into the biggest, coldest puddle I can find,” she told it.
The phoenix tilted its head in confusion. Its balance wasn’t very good and it fell over.
Kaislyn folded her arms, hugging herself for warmth and watched the phoenix thrash its way to its feet again.
Do what? I’m not doing anything!
“You’re freezing me to death is what you’re doing. I don’t appreciate it.” Her teeth began to chatter.
But I can grow faster this way. Besides, she’s frozen to death many times before. Why can’t I use it too? I’ll die.
“How do you know I’ve frozen before?”
I don’t know? Oh, look! A bug. Yummy.
Kaislyn snatched the phoenix up. Its body spilled over her cupped hands. “You’re not going anywhere.”
I’m hungry!
Kaislyn’s hands began to burn and she dropped the phoenix. It pounced on the passing bug. Swallowing it whole, it flapped its half-formed wings, trying to get back onto Kaislyn’s lap. Giving up, the bird bit her pants with its beak and began to claw its way upwards.
“Hey! Stop that!” Kaislyn yelped. She tried to pry the bird off her legs and only succeeded in burning her hands. The phoenix regained its spot on her lap.
Still cold?
“Yes.”
Why is she all red and smelly?
“I was killed.”
But she is not dead?
“No,” Kaislyn said shortly.
I’m not dead either.
She couldn’t avoid it any longer. Her birth life was a sham. What had her mother said? She’d been born early. Not just early. Too early. Fatally early. She did die after being born. But she survived because she’d already Shifted from her birth life. Had she Shifted while still in her mother’s womb? Before she even had a birth life?
The Last Snake Tamer.
What happens when the Last Snake Tamer has a child?
An impossibility.
/> Her?
This was what Ikaros had wanted, not her. He wanted to live forever. Instead she would. Kaislyn opened her eyes. The phoenix was now a third of its full grown size. Its constant chatter was giving her a headache on top of dying of cold. No... she wasn’t shivering as much anymore. “Are you doing that?”
Aren’t I clever? the phoenix chirped at her. Since she can’t die, I can’t either. I need heat to grow but that makes her start to die. So I’m healing her before she dies. Then I can take her heat and grow for a while. Aren’t I clever?
“As clever as the rest of us,” Kaislyn said. But she was impressed.
It ruffled bright red wings. We’ve done a great deal of things together.
There it was again. We. We what? Why was she thinking of the First City and Hezere? Her head hurt. She’d experienced this before. Only the phoenix was more subtle. It was going through her thoughts and her memories. Kaislyn snatched the phoenix off her lap and hurled it away from her.
The phoenix squawked, hitting the ground in a tumbling roll of feathers and flapping wings.
“Stop it!” she shouted. “Those are mine! Not yours! Never yours! Never Aamir’s! Or Ikaros or Raina or... or anyone!” She was shaking again. This time from fear. Fear of not being able to control her own self, her own mind and thoughts. Of losing what made her Kaislyn.
Stop it! the phoenix shouted back. Why can’t I see me? Why did she leave me with all those people? It righted itself and hopped back to Kaislyn, still growing wings stretched for balance.
Kaislyn grasped the bird between blue hands and held it up at eye level. “What are you talking about?” But she knew. Knew the moment she’d heard its first cheerful greeting of I’m hungry.
“But I’m not insane. Ikaros went insane when you left him. He still talks to some form of you or another. Aamir nearly went insane too.” She reconsidered that last sentence. “Actually, I think he did go crazy. It’s just quieter. I’m not insane. I’m not!”
Why was she shouting again?
All those times...
She thought of the falls, of moving the poison and of the phoenix that had come and healed her. Of her times in the Second City, of Ikaros’ phoenix watching her. Waiting.
The Immortal Walker Page 26
