The Wild Rites Saga Omnibus 01 to 04

by Anna McIlwraith

  “He did the same to your serpent priest. He knows where he is.” Her shoulders hunched and she coughed like water was being poured down her throat — but it was blood bubbling out of it. She spat the thick taste of it down at the stones and lifted her eyes to Alexi.

  “I need to get him back.” She ground the words out between clenched teeth, and she wasn’t talking about the serpent priest.

  “I know,” said Alexi slowly, carefully forming the words with his mangled lips. “But it will take a little more than my mind digging in his for the answer.”

  She didn’t know what he meant, but before she could ask, he lifted one long tapered hand and placed it on the back of her neck.

  The magic jumped from her cold skin to his. Tarik whimpered, body vibrating, racked with shudders. Emma gasped as her insides rattled and Alexi reached out with his other hand to pin Tarik down, and instantly the jackal went silent and still, rolling wide eyes gone gold.

  Emma felt Alexi in her mind, a steady growing pressure, his power traveling the path of hers, telepathy smoothly riding the magic of the call. She felt him hesitate.

  Do it, she said. Whatever you have to do, Alexi.

  He met her eyes. His upper lip curled, and his head cocked slightly, and his gaze slid to Tarik.

  Unraveling his sorcery from his spirit will hurt.

  Emma slumped, only the pressure of Alexi’s touch and his mind in hers keeping her upright. She fought another wet breath down. So?

  Alexi sniffed appreciatively. Good.

  Then his mind reared, blazed for a moment with singular purpose, and plunged into Tarik. Into his mind, his lifeforce, the place where the two met, the place where beast and man and magic intersected. Emma’s power took him there and Alexi’s power went beyond it; Tarik screamed like the flesh was being boiled off his bones, and deep within Tarik’s mind, within Alexi’s mind, within hers, something small and vital gave way with a snick.

  Tarik’s magic — not the magic of the change, but the dark and blasphemous sorcery that he’d nurtured like a noxious infection over centuries as vizier of the Egyptian jackal court — tumbled out of him like viscera. He stopped screaming. Emma felt Alexi’s senses flare out, the vast, easy power of his telepathy like an arrow, flying along some invisible path — and then it hit its target, and Emma felt something turn its mind to hers. A mind as cold as Alexi’s, crippled and seething with agony. It brushed against her and its touch was like cool living leather sliding through her thoughts, searching for purchase, searching for something —

  Alexi’s mind recoiled from hers like a rubber band snapping and he took the other with him, and suddenly Emma was empty and alone in her own head. She flung her mental voice out, reaching for Fern, and felt nothing. Her strength gave out. She toppled off of Tarik and Alexi caught her, but a dozen hands on her numb body pulled her out of his arms — one hand sealing palm to palm over her right hand, the flare of heat, the mark answering its maker. The scent of Telly’s hair next to her face; the scent of dry grass and warmth. She opened her eyes and rain blinded her.

  “She’s dying,” she heard Alexi say. Her eyes cleared and she looked up from Telly’s lap into his pale face.

  He looked away from her and his face changed, hatred and anguish turning it hard and sharp and twisted. “No. She will not .”

  Emma turned her head. Alexi and Telly stared at each other, and she felt the weight of centuries press between them. She coughed blood and thicker stuff from her throat and managed to speak.

  “Your priest is dying, Alexi.” He looked down at her, eyes wide and stunned, throat working. She lifted her left hand to him and he stared at it, shaking his head. Go to him, or this is all for nothing, she sent with as much force as she could gather. He blinked at her and she closed her eyes. She felt him move away. She felt small feminine hands on her face, could hear a deep voice like velvet swearing in Spanish.

  Then she felt one huge hand on her shoulder, heard Red Sun say, “Kahotep, come here and hang on, and tell me where the hell we’re going.”

  For a moment she was surrounded by heat, the scent of leather and pine, dry grass and incense. Then she passed out.

  Four levels down, beneath the earth, Nathifa regained consciousness as the poisonous sedative wore off. She woke to the certain and unexplainable knowledge that her goddess, her lady, her Mother was once again awake, alive, and listening.

  “Nephthys?” She whispered into the dark of the torture chamber.

  A cool wind blew against Nathifa’s battered face. Strength filled her limbs like fine, fizzing champagne. She crawled to her knees and changed, white light strobing against the stone walls; her fine paws slipped easily from the manacles and she loped to where the broken jaguar guard lay, ignoring the other one, the coward who had spoken before any true damage had been done to him.

  The sedative had worn off Kal — but he didn’t have the strength to wake. Nathifa’s sensitive jackal nose wrinkled, recoiled from the scent of carnage — and her ears pricked up, but the voice she was hearing murmured only inside her own head.

  Nathifa listened. Then she changed back, healed and perfect, and put her hands on Kal.

  It may not be enough, Nephthys whispered to her daughter. I spent much keeping the caller of the blood alive. But we shall try.

  Nathifa could only nod, and gasp, as power rushed out of her hands.

  38

  A few miles out from the oasis, Red Sun materialized with Emma tucked under one shoulder and Kahotep’s fingers digging trenches in the muscle of his arm. The newly crowned jackal king staggered a few steps toward the mudbrick hut that sat like a small hairy mound with two bright orange eyes in the middle of the pitch black desert.

  The leather door flap was flung aside. Olufemi’s silhouette filled the rectangle of light that spilled out.

  Red thrust Emma into Kahotep’s arms. “Take her in. I need to get the others, their power might help save her.” Then he was gone. Kahotep had barely reached the healer’s dwelling when he heard more voices behind him and then Telly and Seshua were flanking him as he hurried forward with Emma limp in his arms.

  “My king,” she said warmly, inclining her head to Kahotep. She padded over and touched two fingers to his chin. She sighed. “I will tend to your eye in a few moments, Kahotep, but you know there is little I can do, no?”

  Kahotep nodded. “Just help her.”

  Olufemi looked up and past him, and her face changed. “You idiots!” She stormed straight past Seshua and up to Red Sun. “Bring the boy! ” Her tiny voice boomed, small wrinkled face screwed up against the rain. “And bring her inside,” she added with a nod to Kahotep.

  The healer turned and hurried back into the hut. Red Sun shrugged and dematerialized, and Kahotep went numbly after Olufemi, trying not to look down at the body in his arms, trying to pretend he couldn’t feel how still she was. Seshua and Telly crowded around him. Telly snarled, and it sounded desperate.

  Olufemi shook out a thick woolen blanket and regarded Kahotep with shrewd hazel eyes. “Put her down here.”

  Kahotep did as instructed and lay Emma down. Her upper body made soft squelching sounds. Seshua strangled a growl and crouched, shoulders hunched, wild black hair like a mane over his shoulders and down his back. He looked carved of blue marble in the firelight. Telly folded to his knees and took Emma’s right hand, and went so still he looked as though he’d been turned to stone.

  Olufemi kneeled at Emma’s side and spread both hands over her body, hovering, not touching. Her brow pinched and she didn’t look up when Red Sun came through the door with Fern dangling over his shoulder. The big man didn’t need to be told to lay Fern out beside Emma.

  Olufemi moved a hand to Fern, fingers light on his brow, looked up at Telly.

  “He is alive, but unresponsive. What was done to him?”

  “Tarik shut him down,” Telly answered, “Like the coma stasis that some of the great telepaths can wield, except it was so complete he didn’t even appear to breat
he. He probably started breathing when she — when Alexi reached into Tarik’s mind and reversed it.”

  Olufemi narrowed her eyes at him, unhappy. “The same magic that wove the cloaking spell into the walls of our temple and palace has been known to run in the veins of some of our jackals. Our ancestors were unequaled sorcerers. Just as well they are all dead.” She spat into the fire. “What happened to Tarik?”

  Telly blinked. “We left him to the mercy of Emma’s devoted handmaiden. I expect he’s already dead, if Felani isn’t dragging it out. But what about her?” His eyes were going pale, face thinner than before. He glanced down at Emma and his power leaked out, fanning the flames of Olufemi’s lamps.

  “She has had the goddess in her,” said the healer quietly. “It will make my task easier. But there are some things I cannot heal. She has to want to live.”

  Telly closed eyes that were blind and white, hand convulsing where it held Emma’s. “I don’t understand why Nephthys let her go. If she hadn’t —”

  “Fool.” Olufemi’s pale hazel eyes blazed at him, irises starkly outlined by thick rings of black. Telly’s eyes flew open and he stared at her, stunned.

  Her lip curled. “Emma is still alive because of the touch of the goddess, but Nephthys is a goddess of death, her lot is to end life and welcome the dying. She cannot force life on one who won’t accept.”

  “And when Fern didn’t wake up, Emma gave in.” Kahotep crouched down. “But without Emma to call him, Fern won’t come back.” Kahotep lifted his face to Olufemi, and the solid chocolate brown of his remaining eye was shot through with sunbursts of gold. All of his other wounds had been healed by the glowing light of his ascendancy, all but that one.

  “That’s right,” Olufemi murmured, looking at Kahotep as though he’d done something interesting. “It is up to me to heal their bodies, but their spirits have to find each other, find the will to go on. Nephthys cannot help us now.”

  Kahotep smiled tiredly. “But perhaps another can.” He held out his hand to Olufemi. “Heal their bodies, Mother,” he said in their ancient tongue, “And we shall call down the light to heal their Ka. ”

  Olufemi put her hand in his. “Yes, my king.”

  39

  Emma dreamed that she woke up in the courtyard of the jackal temple. She was crying.

  She thought her own sobs might have woken her; her chest hurt, right lung felt tight, sternum felt bruised and tender. From sobbing? Something must have happened, something else, but she couldn’t remember.

  The garden was lightening, dawn coming, rosy shadows drawing away beneath the ferns and palm trees, pink light on the faces of the statues. Emma clawed her way upright — grass beneath her hands, cool green fronds above her — and tried to swallow past the crushing sensation of something lost, something that belonged right next to her heart, something that beat along with it. What was it? It hurt. It hurt too much live through. She wanted to lie down again; she was tired and something was wrong with her body, wrong inside, wrong with her.

  “Emma?” The voice was soft and feminine, but deep. Emma yelped, and the yelp made her chest hurt, and the pain in her chest made her cry. She swiped at the tears and looked up and had to blink to bring the woman into focus through wet lashes.

  A full, luscious body wrapped in a dress that was the golden, butter-yellow color of the rising sun. Glossy brown skin. Hair a cascade of thick cornrows, framing a face that was round and soft — huge dark eyes that were too widely spaced and thickly fringed, above a flattened out nose with a rough black tip. The pointed ends of her ears poked out of her hair, and they were too long, too thick, too furry. If this woman was a shapechanger, she was not like any Emma had ever met before.

  The woman laughed, joy suffusing her strange face. She held a hand out to Emma and it was broad, callused, the fingers short, the nails pale and square.

  “Come with me?”

  Emma stared at that hand. “I don’t think I can get up,” she said. Her voice sounded like a hacksaw compared to the woman’s.

  “Ah,” the woman sighed. “Then I will sit with you.” She smoothed her dress down with both hands, folding it beneath her as she settled into the grass by Emma’s side.

  “Who are you? Why am I here?” Emma watched the woman’s braids swish about her shoulders as she wriggled around, getting comfortable. Finally she met Emma’s eyes; they were pale green, and the pupils were rectangular. Like the pupils of a horse, or a goat, or a cow.

  “I am Isis,” the woman said — and Emma caught a glimpse of an amulet swinging from her neck, the solar disk crowned with two curving horns. “And you are here because your body is dying, and the earthly inheritor of my son’s throne is trying to save you.”

  “Inheritor —?” Suddenly Emma remembered — everything. For a moment she couldn’t breathe — steel wedged between her ribs, slicing up her lung and stomach — she was seeing Fern’s paper-frail body on the ground and for a moment it felt as though the steel had gone through her heart as well.

  She heaved air into her body and choked on tears. “What happened?”

  Isis put an arm around Emma and warmth started to seep into her. “You ask all the right questions, Emma.” The goddess sounded so delighted. “Only the dark can call the light, remember?” Emma nodded, not at all sure she remembered.

  “Well,” said Isis, “That is what you did, you and the prince who now sits as rightful king to the throne of the jackals. Kahotep was the vessel for the light, but only the darkness could break the threshold, and only you, as caller of the blood, could unite the two. You fill the void, the chasm between what we have been and what we could be. You bind us together.”

  “So,” Emma’s voice hitched. She fought the rising panic, the despair. “So why are you here?”

  Isis laughed again. “See! You do ask all the right questions.” The goddess quickly sobered. “I am here because your dying earthly body cannot hear anything anyone has to say to it. I am here because somebody has to tell you that the part of you that feels lost is merely missing, and waits for you to search it out, to find it and put it back where it belongs.” The wide, doe eyes of the goddess captured Emma and wouldn’t let her look away. “I am here to tell you that he lives, Emma. He lives. And he is waiting.” Isis stood, offered her hand again, the rising sun backlighting her hair like a crown.

  Emma reached up and took the hand of the goddess.

  Fern dreamed that he woke up in the dark cavern at the heart of the temple, and a young boy with sunlight for eyes sat next to him, throwing a shining ball the size of a plum. With a flick of his wrist it sailed into the air; seconds later it fell into the boy’s upturned palm.

  “Who are you?” Fern’s voice echoed. “Why am I here?”

  The boy turned to him. “I am Osiris,” he said with the voice of a man. “And you are here because you have to wait just a little bit longer.”

  Fern sat up. His legs felt tired. “What happened?”

  The boy caught the shiny ball again, but didn’t toss it. Instead, he balanced it on the tip of his index finger and set it spinning. “Your bonded must choose.”

  “My bonded?” Fern scratched at his hair. He really needed a drink of water. “Emma? Is she okay?”

  The boy cocked his head as though listening. “She will be, I think. I want you to deliver a message for me.” The god closed his hand over the spinning ball, stuck his fist out toward Fern, and opened it. The light nestled in his palm began to dim. “I want you to tell Kahotep that I have this.”

  Fern peered down. “What is it?”

  Osiris smiled, and his face was transformed, suffused with joy and contentment. The light in his palm died. Fern’s brows shot up.

  “It’s his eye,” said the god. “I want you to tell him that I’m sorry he can’t have it back, but there must be one eye in this world, and one eye in yours. He has Emma now. I know he does not regret the trade. But tell him, all the same, if you will.”

  Fern nodded.

  Osiri
s looked up. “Do you hear that?”

  Fern shook his head.

  “Well, you will. It’s her heartbeat. Wait’s over, Fern.”

  Something like thunder crashed inside Fern’s skull.

  Fern?

  40

  By the time Alexi found his brother, the wound in his chest had sealed, but it was still a poker-hot patch of grinding pain that tugged at his pectoral with every step he took.

  His jaw had not healed; the skin of his face was stringing itself back together, but the weight of his heavy lower jawbone kept dragging it back down, and the whole thing wouldn’t fuse into place unless the muscle of his cheek could knit well enough to hold his jaw joints in alignment. He could change, but what if he hadn’t healed enough? Simply changing — without massive amounts of power, without the magic wielded by someone like one of his own priests, or the caller of the blood for that matter — was not always enough to prevent permanent maiming. So Alexi would make do with only half a functional jaw. What did it matter if every time he had to swallow it sucked air in through the gaping flesh of his cheek and stung the raw nerve endings of his sliced up gums? It didn’t matter, all that mattered was that he find his brother and get this over with and get back to —

  He stepped into the dank, stinking chamber where the signature pull of his brother’s mind ended, and the scent of insanity hit him like a blanket crawling with rot. There was no light, but he didn’t need to see to know the other serpent priest was there.

  Cruel, mad laughter bubbled out of the depths of the narrow room. Alexi didn’t need to do the math — he knew that Massimo had been held hostage by the jackals for exactly eight days. It was not a long time. Not long enough to go mad. But Alexi didn’t know what had been done to him, though the stench gave him some all too vivid ideas.