by Cat Marsters
“Starved and frozen, sir, just as you said,” sniggered one of the guards.
“Yeah,” Bael said, now appalled at what his offhanded words had led to. Maybe you are as stupid as Albhar thinks.
The figure was female, huddled in the shadows with its back to the wall, arms wrapped around itself. A tangle of dark hair obscured its face. “Are you sure it’s a shapeshifter? It looks like an ordinary woman to me.” An ordinary, badly injured, half-starved woman.
“Oh yes,” Albhar said. “I saw it change myself. It’s been netted though, it can’t change now.”
“Netted?”
“A containment spell. It won’t manifest claws or anything. Can’t escape. It’ll be quite defenseless against a beating.”
Bael rounded on him to demand what sort of man Albhar thought he was to enjoy beating such a pathetic, defenseless creature, when the creature itself stirred.
And looked at him with silver eyes.
* * * * *
Kett had spent most of the first day in the cell loudly cursing Bael. Not a word of his conversation with his mentor had escaped her. He’d ordered her into the cell, he’d ordered her to freeze and starve, and when he finally turned up she’d planned to beat so many kinds of hell out of him that theologians would have a field day naming them all.
She’d spent the second day cursing him somewhat more quietly, her throat burning dry. Some time after sunup, the serving hatch halfway up the thick door opened inward to a ninety-degree angle and a ladle shot in. It tipped a few ounces of grayish gruel onto the hatch. A second ladle tipped water after it. Then the hatch snapped shut, leaving Kett with no more sustenance than she could scrape off the ancient, stained wood.
She spent the third day waiting with the wooden bowls she’d found stacked in the corner of the small cell, but when the hatch fell open she moved too fast for her battered body and dropped the bowls, crying out in agony as her crippled leg gave way.
On the fourth day, she couldn’t manage to lift the bowls up to the hatch when it opened. Her shoulder throbbed incessantly where the dog’s teeth had ripped into it. Red streaks shot down her arm, under her skin. Her tongue swollen in her mouth, she huddled by the door, lapping up what drips she could manage.
By the fifth day, she couldn’t even lift her head that far. Barely able to find a single part of her body that didn’t throb with agony, she lay on the floor and waited for death to claim her.
* * * * *
Bael lost his breath.
It’s a trick, he told himself, even as he stared at Kett’s pale, thin face, twisted with pain and hatred. It’s a shapeshifter. It can look like anyone it wants.
But why would it choose to look like the woman I thought was my mate? How did it know?
Cautiously he breathed in, and used Var’s senses to separate out the scents in the room. Somewhere here had to be the shapeshifter’s scent, and when he’d caught that, he could rest assured that it wasn’t—
“Bael,” grated the creature on the floor.
It wasn’t Kett. It couldn’t be. Its voice was dry and scratchy, like fingernails on a blackboard.
The shapeshifter smiled with cracked lips. “Come to beat me up?” it rasped. “Come to kill me?”
The guards cheered but Bael just stared.
The shapeshifter moved, its face contorted with pain, and flopped back onto the hard stone floor. “You could just wait a day,” it scratched out, “I’ll be dead by then. Rituals, Bael. Bleeding a shapeshifter. Silver chain.”
“I didn’t say you could talk,” Bael said, panic thrumming through him. If it wasn’t Kett then how did it know? Had she spilled his secrets?
His heart pounded so loudly he could barely hear her next words.
“A shapeshifter,” she croaked, “and a bleeding Nas—”
“I said shut up!” Bael yelled, and two of the guards rushed forward, kicking viciously at the creature. As a heavily booted foot connected with its ribs, he heard a snap—
Snap, as the links in his head connected. Kett was the shapeshifter.
A shapeshifter and a Nasc bound by a silver chain.
They needed a second creature.
Albhar’s sly smile.
Couldn’t do it without you.
The old man knew.
Kett was curled into a ball, coughing in pain, her body spasming pathetically as the guards stood laughing and jeering. Albhar stood there, smiling as if he wasn’t planning to string Bael up and kill him in some mad power ritual.
He stared down at Kett’s broken body. They’re going to kill us both.
“I’m sorry,” Bael whispered to Kett, horrified, but he didn’t think she heard him. To his men, he babbled, “Leave it. Don’t kill it. Leave some for me, I mean. I’ll come back later. When I’ve rested. Later. Lock it up, it’s talking rubbish. I need to get out of here.” He barged past the guards. “There’s no fucking air. It stinks. Move!”
They let him pass, and then he heard the heavy door scrape shut.
Underneath the sound was the dry wheeze of Kett’s laughter.
* * * * *
The hot bath and soft bed held no appeal for Bael now. Pacing his locked chamber, cold with horror, panic and guilt, he clutched at Var, who pressed close to him as an anxious, angry little cat.
Kett was a shapeshifter. She’d kept that from him the whole time! How could she have done that, especially after he’d told her that he was a Mage? The one thing that might unite them, and she’d kept it to herself.
Because she doesn’t want to be united with you, his conscience said. She went off fucking a whore the first chance she got. She clearly doesn’t want you.
Thoughts reeled around Bael’s head. Could Kett have killed his mother? No, she’d been a teenager. Not that Kett as a teenager wouldn’t have been lethal, but still. Albhar said she’d been an older woman. Kett’s mother? Maybe. Maybe Kett had been wearing age as a disguise. He wouldn’t put it past her.
And that wasn’t even the worst thing.
He set down Var and picked up his scryer, distractedly trying to remember what he’d been told about using it. Concentrate on the person you want.
The rock got warm in his hands. It vibrated. And then a voice was saying, “Bael? Are you all right?”
He opened his eyes to see Chance looking up at him from the face of the scryer, and nearly wept with relief.
“Your majesty,” he said, and she laughed prettily.
“You don’t need to go through all those formalities, Bael,” she said. “You’re practically family.”
“Yeah,” Bael said doubtfully. “Listen. This is really important. I think the Nasc are in danger. Can you warn them?”
Chance instantly snapped into business mode. “What is it?”
“There’s a ritual,” he began. “It involves a Nasc and a shapeshifter. And death. I think.”
“Hell,” she said when he’d finished explaining what he’d worked out about Albhar. “Do you think they’re allied with the Federación?”
Cold sweat bathed Bael anew. “Well, now I do,” he said. “I thought you and—and your father had killed them all?”
“They’re like vermin,” Chance said venomously. “There’re always a few you miss, and that’s enough to start again. We’ll warn as many as we can. Thank you, Baelvar.”
With that she signed off and Bael was left in his remote castle, surrounded by the enemy and feeling like a giant bruise, inside and out. The tear on his back meant that manifesting wings would hurt like hell, and if he was going to carry Kett he’d have to turn into a big creature like a dragon, which required a hell of a lot of energy he just didn’t have.
Var looked up at him, feline eyes narrowed, and Bael laughed suddenly.
“What was that my old dad used to say?” he asked, picking up his twin and pressing his face against Var’s soft fur. “It’s not a problem, it’s a challenge.”
Var started to purr.
“Exactly,” Bael said, and felt invigorated
for the first time in days.
Chapter Sixteen
Night fell over the Vyishka mountains. Here in the northern part of the Realm of Asiatica, darkness came swift, cold and impenetrable.
Var rose from the black mountains as a dragon twenty feet long, and glided silently toward Kett’s turret. Bael, dressed in a swirling long cloak, strode up the tower and made loud comments to each guard he saw about alternately beating the shit out of the shapeshifter and raping it to hell. They guffawed and cheered him on, and Bael wanted to kill all of them.
He reached the top, demanded entry and, right on cue, someone outside yelled, “Take cover! A dragon!”
The guard with Bael hesitated, and Bael pushed him at the stairs. “Go,” he said. “Go shoot at it or something.”
He shoved the door open before the man had even gotten around the corner, and stopped, taking a mental breath.
Kett lay huddled on the floor, still naked, her skin gray and caked with blood. Her ribs, clearly visible through her thin flesh, rose and fell shallowly with each breath. The wound on her shoulder was horribly swollen, streaks of red running down her arm, the skin cracked and oozing.
She looked a minute away from death, and murderous rage rose up within Bael.
“Kett,” he said, falling to his knees by her. “Kett, can you hear me?”
“G’way,” she mumbled, her voice barely a rattle. “F’koff.”
“Not gonna do that, sweetheart.” As Var landed on the roof of the turret with a heavy thud, Bael carefully lifted Kett from the floor and wrapped her in the warm clothes he’d hidden under his cloak.
“No,” she rasped. “’M dead. Useless. Can’t use me.”
“You’re never useless, darling. Now shush a minute.”
He covered her with his body as Var began to rip the roof of the turret away. From outside came the sounds of shouting, the order to fire, but Bael knew that was useless since a dragon was covered in scales almost everywhere. Men were running up the steps of the tower toward them, but they hadn’t even gotten close by the time Var tore through the roof and picked Bael and Kett up in his claws.
Roaring, he began to flap away, breathing a satisfying jet of fire down into the turret and incinerating all the guards who’d cheered Bael on when he’d said he was going to rape Kett.
It would have been a perfect getaway, were it not for the arrow that struck Var’s wing, the only significant part of a dragon not covered by scales.
Buffeted backward for a second, Var screamed and rained fire down on the archers in the courtyard.
We don’t have time for this to hurt now, Bael told his twin. It can hurt later, but not now.
And for the first time, perhaps because it was the first time he’d truly needed it, the magic worked. His wing painless, Var righted himself, his grip so tight on Bael that even through his thick cloak and doublet he was breathless.
He could have merged with his twin for strength, but Var’s claws were too big, too sharp, to hold Kett without hurting her more. So he stayed human and held her as closely and tightly as he could.
Her shoulder wound oozed through her clothes. She didn’t move.
She barely breathed.
He grabbed her close, desperate, not knowing what to do.
“I’m so sorry, Kett,” he whispered, sobs breaking his voice. “Please get well again. You can beat me up as much as you’d like. Just stay alive, sweetheart. Just stay alive.”
Sobbing, tears freezing on his lashes, he pleaded with every god he could think of to heal Kett.
But the gods, as ever, remained silent.
* * * * *
Kett wasn’t entirely sure what she was imagining and what was real.
She was fairly sure she imagined the dragon picking her up and flying off with her in its claws. After all, she knew dragons pretty well and they rarely picked up anything they didn’t intend to later eat. The dragon holding her, however, did so gently, as if recognizing she was hurt.
The cold seemed realistic. And the pain. The terrible throb of her shoulder that made it almost impossible to move…she couldn’t have imagined that. It was worse than when the tiger had ripped open her leg, because then she’d only been alone for less than an hour before the Maharaja and his hunting party had found her, taken her in and cared for her.
Hmm, the Maharaja. She’d been entertaining his court just before the whole cave incident. Had he been Albhar in disguise? Her delirious brain superimposed the Maharaja’s dark, plump face over Albhar’s pale, lined one, and dismissed the thought as ridiculous.
Then again, she appeared to be flying about in the clutches of a dragon, so who was she to say what was ridiculous?
Swimming in and out of consciousness, occasionally darting close to what seemed to be the surface but couldn’t possibly be, Kett dreamed of burning deserts and cool oases. Bael was there, hot and lovely, his skin like water on her fevered flesh. His mouth traced soothing kisses over her body. His fingers swept away the pain.
Symbols danced over his body, moving, living tattoos on his skin. Whenever she tried to focus on them, they slipped away.
She thought she might have woken up as she felt hands on her body, heard a whispered voice urging her to get better, to heal, to just stay alive. A voice whispering desperate words of love.
She giggled. Her brain was supplying her with some wonderful fantasies as she drifted toward death.
Sliding away from the false realities of the healer’s touch, sinking into the blissful release of unconscious delirium, Kett allowed herself to dream about Bael again. The rotten bastard had ordered her to be beaten and starved, he’d let his men kick her around and bragged about raping her, but her tortuous brain still supplied her with memories and fantasies of his lovemaking.
She remembered every touch of his fingers, sweeping fire along her skin. The way his lips caressed her, hot and wet, his teeth nipping her collarbone, his tongue swirling around her nipple. The way his fingers delved into her hot, melting pussy, stroking her into incandescence. The fevered touch of his mouth ignited her, her whole body bursting into flame as he licked and sucked and stoked the fire until she burned to ashes.
The acrid scent of smoke filled her nostrils. Where Bael’s fingers touched, her skin simmered as if scalded. His tongue licked against her like the flicker of flames.
Kett opened her eyes to smoky darkness, heat burning her eyes. Flakes of snow danced in the air, incongruous against the heat, and she frowned. Strange dream indeed.
But so vivid. She smelled burning meat and the stink of hastily doused fires. Turning her head, her neck muscles creaking, she came face-to-face with the burned, crispy shell of what looked very much like a human head.
Cold, wet horror slammed into her like a slap in the face, and she realized this wasn’t a dream at all.
The tortured corpse a few feet away was unidentifiable, no shreds of clothing or even skin remaining to give any clue. Head thrown back, limbs mangled, every line of its pose telling her it had suffered a sudden, unimaginably painful death.
She tried to sit up but failed, and instead flopped onto her side, turning away from the charred body and focusing through the heavy, lung-clogging smoke on the fires still burning. Behind them, she saw mountains rising against the black sky. Their outline was familiar.
They were the mountains of the Northern Province of Peneggan. Her mountains.
The battered shell of a stone building stood silhouetted against the flames. A roofless barn with a shattered cottage built on the side. Jarven’s house.
This was home.
Bile rose in her. There was nothing in her stomach to be brought up but she retched anyway, and when a dark shadow loomed through the fog she drew back, her weak body unable to rouse itself to fight.
“Kett? Oh hell, sweetheart, of all the times to wake up.”
It sounded like Bael, and he carefully draped something large and heavy on the ground beside her. A person, wrapped in tattered fabric.
“Drink, Kett,” said Bael’s voice, and something was pressed to her lips. A flask of water. It was stale and warm, but to Kett it was the coolest, most delicious thing she’d ever tasted.
A few sips, and then it was taken from her.
“What happened?” she croaked, trying to focus on Bael’s face through smoky eyes. He had a fold of fabric wrapped around the lower half of his face, muffling his voice a little.
“I don’t know. Fire. The dragons got loose, I guess. I—” He broke off, pressing a hand to his face. “I stopped for a bit, sweetheart, tried to heal you. If I’d just kept going, if I hadn’t delayed, we’d have gotten here and…”
And we’d have been killed too. He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.
Bael cleared his throat. “There are bodies. The villagers, I think. Not all of them. And some of them weren’t killed by fire. They were attacked—”
“Jarven,” Kett rasped, appalled.
“He’s alive, but he’s hurt pretty badly.” He indicated the body wrapped in cloth. She could see it move slightly as it breathed. Jarven was alive, even if he might not be for long.
Her gaze skittered past Jarven, trying to make out the shapes visible in the smoky gloom. A row of what she’d at first assumed to be chopped logs was revealed to be a row of bodies, laid out neatly side by side. Some were badly disfigured, but others she recognized. Villagers. Friends.
Lying a little way from them were a few more corpses. Unfamiliar ones. Men in armor.
A cold sliminess crawled through her as she made out hunting gear and a scarred face. Albhar’s man. Smoke clouded her vision, tears stinging until she was lying in that rocky gully again and the dogs were snapping as Bael’s voice rang out from the scryer. “Highest cell, tallest tower. Let it freeze. Let it starve. Keep it alive just enough for it to be awake to feel the pain.”
Agony burned through her and she couldn’t breathe. The nightmare hammered at her brain. The man with the scarred face opened his mouth and breathed fire at her. Her dragons escaped and burned Bael to a crisp. Twisting, flickering shapes, pictograms, blood, torchlight on rocky walls and the gleam of lust in her lover’s eye. Kett writhed away from the delirious images but they wouldn’t let her go.
