Shapeshifters

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  I had once given myself to Ecl to rid myself of these kinds of visions, which were rich with emotions—most often painful ones—that had no parallel in my everyday existence. Now I had taken myself back to reality and was trying to live again. Would this be my punishment, to have this cobra die in my arms while I wept? Would I die with him?

  Will I be the cause of his death? I wondered.

  “What did you see?” Nicias asked, drawing me from my dark thoughts.

  I shook my head; I couldn’t speak of it. Describing such prophecies made them more real, and as I had recently experienced with Oliza, sometimes that was enough to set one into motion.

  “It doesn’t matter. It will fade,” I said. At least, I prayed it would.

  Nicias sighed and ran his hands through his pale blond hair, which was hanging loose around his face. The blue strands were tangled with all the rest, and I wished I could reach forward and separate them, binding the golden locks back, the way they would be worn on Ahnmik.

  Old habit, left over from years in the white city when I had prayed and wished I could have the pale, pale blond hair of my Empress, marked with a falcon’s blue, instead of the black hair of a cobra.

  Or perhaps it was a desired habit. Every time Nicias was near, I found myself inventing excuses to touch him.

  I kept my hands by my sides.

  “I can’t stay long,” Nicias said apologetically. “The court is—dear skies, you weren’t even there. Hai—”

  “I heard,” I said. “Oliza has given up the throne.”

  Nicias nodded. “Salem and Sive will inherit the serpiente and avian thrones. Neither of them hates the other. Hopefully …”

  Hopefully they would be able to maintain the peace between the avians and the serpiente and bring the two worlds together so that someday a wyvern queen might be able to rule. Hopefully the slaughter that had lasted more than a thousand years would never begin again.

  “What will Oliza do now?”

  “She has taken a wolf for her mate,” he said. “A woman named Betia. They left Wyvern’s Court as soon as Oliza made the announcement.”

  It had been obvious to me from the beginning that Oliza loved the wolf. Even so, I nodded, accepting the information as if it was new.

  Fate did care for its children sometimes. Long before, Araceli and Cjarsa had split Anhamirak’s magic to protect this world. In Oliza, daughter of a hawk and a cobra, that magic had again combined. Love that would never let Oliza breed was a gift, as any natural-born child of the wyvern’s would unleash terror on this Earth.

  “Salem plans to formally name his mate tomorrow night,” Nicias said. “He believes it will comfort his people if he takes the serpiente throne quickly, so they do not need to wonder if he will also step aside. I’m not sure I agree with his reasoning, but …” He shook his head. “Salem will be king, and once that is done, it will be harder for Oliza to return if she wants to. I think Salem would step aside if she tried, but a king cannot give up his crown as easily as an heir can give up her birthright.” He let out a frustrated sound. “I don’t like this. Oliza has gone off and asked none of her guard to follow her. Salem’s mother is still exploring somewhere, and though we’ve sent dozens of messengers for Irene, there is no guarantee they will find her. We’ve spent most of the last two months trying to control riots in the marketplace, and now, with Oliza gone, it is going to be even harder. It isn’t a good time for the royal house to be so scattered.” Nicias shook his head again. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to burden you with this.”

  Nicias usually tried to shelter me from what he perceived as the more difficult aspects of this reality, as if any bad news might send me back into Ecl. Perhaps someday it would, but not right now. I attempted to find something to say that would encourage him to continue the conversation.

  She and some wolf have run off in the woods together, leaving Salem and Sive holding the bag, Gren had said. Since Oliza’s mate did not care for other wolves, they could be with only one group: the Obsidian guild. The guild, which included Maeve’s descendents, was shunned equally by serpiente and falcons. Though they had been pardoned by the Cobriana two generations before, very few of them had elected to rejoin serpiente society.

  “Oliza is safe,” I assured Nicias. The leader of the Obsidian guild had introduced himself to me within days of my waking in Wyvern’s Court. He was another of my late father’s devotees, and he had made it clear that I was always welcome in the Obsidian camp. Though only a child when Anjay had died, the white viper spoke highly of the long-dead cobra and had even implied once that the outlaw guild might have returned to ally with the rest of the serpiente if my father had survived to rule. I would not call him a friend, but I was familiar with his ways. He would not allow a traveling dancer to be threatened in his land. “I know where she was heading, and you don’t need to worry about her there.”

  Nicias and I never spoke the word Obsidian between us, but I sensed he knew both of my connection with that guild and of Oliza’s. My neglecting to give specifics now was enough to tell him who Oliza was with.

  “She will always be my queen … and I will always protect her, as long as she will allow me to,” Nicias said. “I know she doesn’t want a guard loitering around her, but it would make me—and the rest of her guards, not to mention her family—feel worlds better if I could see for myself that she is safely settled.”

  I shook my head. “You wouldn’t be welcome.” A glimpse of a royal guard would make the entire guild disappear.

  “No, of course not. You’re right.”

  “You need to stay in the court, anyway,” I said. Then, noticing his troubled expression, I added, “If you would like, I can check on the wyvern.”

  “Thank you. You don’t know how much it would mean to me.”

  Yes, I do, I thought.

  “I need to go,” Nicias said. “I shouldn’t have stayed even this long.”

  I sent him a silent query, by magic instead of voice. At his sharp look, I repeated myself out loud. “Why did you come here?”

  “I felt you scream.” His voice was soft.

  But why come to my side? I asked silently. Why do you do all this for me when you know I am only a danger to you, a mongrel falcon in your world of serpents and avians?

  He ignored my silent words, as he always did. I knew he heard me, but he would only acknowledge my questions if I pronounced them.

  “Thank you,” I said instead.

  “Will you be all right?”

  “I will be fine,” I answered. “I shan’t dissolve away—and I will bring back news of your queen.”

  He kissed my cheek. “Take care of yourself, Hai.”

  “Teska-Kaya’ga’la.”

  He gave me a curious look when I used the endearment, which meant my light. He knew he was. My vow to him was what kept me in this world, kept me from the numbing darkness of Ecl.

  “O’hena-sorma’la’lo’Mehay,” he replied. Literally, the title meant sister of my soul, though, like most of the old language, it had many different connotations. Some were fraternal; others were more loving, closer to soulmate.

  He did not explain what he meant any more than I had explained what I’d said. Instead, he went back to Wyvern’s Court, to continue his exhausting struggle against the future—a future he still believed he could control, though I feared we might all soon drown.

  I followed Nicias to the front door. As we hesitated on the threshold, my eyes lingered on him in a way I could not have avoided had I tried, and for a moment I was transported to another time, another place, where this man was not Nicias Silvermead but Nicias of Ahnmik—son of the aona, the Empress’s heir, Araceli.

  The aona’ra walked upon paths that rippled with power, two of his Mercy beside him. Nicias’s footsteps were soft and echoed by music; the white city embraced its only prince, its spirits cajoling him, gossiping with him and praying to him as he passed.

  He had nearly learned not to weep at the road’s bittersweet song
s, which conveyed the tears of all those who had lost their loved ones to powers like Ecl.

  Hai had once spoken a prophecy to him. She had made him swear never to betray Oliza, and informed him that there could be no future in which he took the white throne of Ahnmik and Oliza survived to rule Wyvern’s Court. What Hai had not said was that Oliza would choose to give up her throne, regardless of the choices he made.

  “Hai?” Nicias called me back to reality once more, with worry in his ice blue eyes.

  “Nicias … what will you do now, without Oliza?”

  “The Diente and the Tuuli Thea have asked the Wyvern guard to stay in the court for now,” he answered. “Many of us have been offered positions with the Royal Flight or the serpiente palace guard, should we wish them in the case we are eventually dissolved.”

  He still protected Oliza; he always would.

  He wished only that he could be numb to the crying ….

  He had gone into the Halls of shm’Ecl once, intending to do what Cjarsa and Araceli refused to do. Royal blood called to the shm’Ecl; he could save them, like he had saved Hai.

  He had tried.

  But this time he had failed, and though he had survived, three members of his Mercy—three falcons who had willingly chosen to serve him, to protect him—had lost their lives. Their deaths had taken something Ecl had not been able to, a shard of … something he couldn’t find words for.

  Oh … gods.

  Your soul, my love, I cried to the ghost of a Nicias I prayed would never exist. Your soul, your compassion. That is what you lost with their deaths.

  He wasn’t thinking of returning to Ahnmik—was he?

  “You’ve mentioned the plans for the Wyverns. I was asking about you. Will you stay in Wyvern’s Court?” I asked, somewhat desperately. I longed for the white city, but the falcon land wasn’t for Nicias. Ahnmik would destroy him. It nearly had before; it would for certain if he went back there.

  “I imagine so.”

  If he, like my mother, believed that he could do the most good from the white city, no power on this earth would stop him. Prophecy certainly would not.

  He looked at me with concern. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. Just—nothing.” Nothing that words would help. “You need to get back.”

  He nodded slowly, those blue eyes gazing into mine, before finally turning away. I watched him shapeshift into the beautiful peregrine falcon that was his second form. As he spread wing and shot into the sky, my breath stilled. How I wanted to do the same.

  Instead, I saddled Najat, the Arabian mare that the serpiente royal house had given me, and headed into the woods.

  Though the Obsidian camp moved constantly, I never had trouble finding it. White vipers had little active power, but Maeve’s magic was like a beacon to me.

  The first “sentry” I saw around Obsidian land was not a guard but a child who could not have been more than four years old. Concerned that she might be lost, I dismounted Najat and walked slowly toward her.

  “Hello?”

  The child, who was intently peering through the trees, did not seem to hear me.

  “Hello?” I said again, moving closer.

  The girl turned toward me, her eyes wide. Though her milk-fair hair spoke of white-viper parentage, her eyes were a deep, rusty red: a cobra’s eyes. My first thought was Another of my father’s?

  Absurd—my father had been dead two and a half decades—but she was obviously the result of some cobra’s indiscretion. I doubted that Oliza’s father would have strayed from his beloved Naga, which left only Salem. I had not thought that a boy so tightly bound to the dancer’s nest would wander into these woods, but how well did I really know my cousin?

  “Are you lost?” I asked when the girl didn’t speak. “Do you know how to get back to your family?”

  She chewed on her lower lip.

  “Here, take my hand,” I said softly. “I’ll help you get back to the camp.”

  She raised her tiny hand to put it into mine, and only then did I see the blood on her pale skin.

  “Are you hurt—”

  I had only half finished the question when she wrapped her fingers around my hand and the world shattered.

  Fire.

  I shrieked as a wyvern’s untamed power tore through me, searing everything that Ahnmik had left frozen and numb and ripping from me all the sakkri I had ever spun.

  I saw Wyvern’s Court awash in scalding magic. Serpents and avians slaughtered by Oliza’s child—this child, Keyi, who didn’t exist yet, except in visions like this one. She looked different every time I saw her, but each time, the vision was so powerful I had no way to guard myself from it.

  Oh, gods. I could see …

  The survivors fighting as the falcons came to try to tame Anhamirak’s power before it could engulf the whole world as it nearly had once before.

  So much screaming, so much pain.

  Nicias, weeping as if his heart had been ripped from him.

  And then I recalled the moment, months before, when Nicias had dove into Ecl to save me and had nearly lost himself. I told him: I have danced a thousand futures and lived a thousand lifetimes, and all I have seen are ashes and ice. You are too—You don’t belong here. You have things to do, out there. Go, Nicias, please.

  Only if you will.

  Swear you’ll go back, and I’ll try.

  I couldn’t stand to see Nicias fall in that dark place, but surely he would have found his way back. I could have said no. Instead …

  I swear.

  Then I swear as well.

  Why had I made that vow? This world hurt. Everything was a struggle, without the possibility of any end but fire. Did these fools really think their mixed-blood world had any hope?

  I tried to shove away the visions.

  Hai? Nicias’s silent concerned query reached me from Wyvern’s Court. Are you all right?

  I couldn’t have him come here, this close to Obsidian land. I’m fine, I replied. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

  Are you sure—

  I’m fine!

  I severed the communication, one word pounding in time with my pulse: why why why why why why?

  Why had I tied myself back to this world? I could have remained in the Halls of shm’Ecl for a thousand years and more, and I would never have needed to know this pain.

  I had almost broken free of the sakkri when someone real touched my shoulder, upsetting my power yet again.

  “Nasa-Vere-nas’ka’la!” Don’t touch me! I commanded, lashing out at the white viper with my magic.

  He fell back, his moss green eyes hot with fear and anger. The members of the Obsidian guild shared their names only with those they trusted most, but my power had found the viper’s name—Vere—and now it was twisted into the magic that was digging like thorns into his skin.

  “Remove it,” he whispered to me.

  I reached out to do so, and my whole body shuddered. “I can’t.”

  He moved closer and reached toward me again but stopped with his fingertips an inch from my skin as my magical command made his muscles freeze.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Was I all right? I had wrapped the leader of the Obsidian guild in falcon magic, and now he asked me if I was all right. He should have been cursing me.

  “I’m—”

  Again I caught sight of the girl, further back in the woods, but this time I recognized her for what she was: a sakkri. A vision of horror wrapped in a child’s innocent form.

  “Skies above,” I whispered, dropping my head into my hands. “Not again.”

  In most futures in which Oliza took the throne, peace ended with an assassin’s blade. In the handful of futures in which Oliza lived long enough to bear Keyi, the child slew her mother and destroyed most of Wyvern’s Court before the falcons descended to pick up remnants of the once grand society.

  I had often seen the look in my mother’s eye as she realized that my Empr
ess had been right all along in creating the avian-serpiente war to protect them from this rampant magic. Many times, I had wondered how that horror would manifest itself in her opinion of her daughter. Would she be proud that I, a mongrel, had been loyal when even her faith had wavered?

  Or would I simply be a reminder of yet another disastrous mistake?

  Would I still find the answer to that question? Oliza had abdicated. She did not plan to have natural-born children. Why was the vision of Keyi still coming to me so strongly?

  I felt Obsidian struggle against the magic I had left on him, and shift it until he could lay a cautious hand on my shoulder.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “Fire,” I whispered. I squeezed my eyes shut against the image. “It’s too much. I can’t control it.”

  “Can’t control what?”

  “Everything. The future.”

  “No one can,” he said.

  The anguish I felt wasn’t my own. It belonged to the serpents and the avians who would be destroyed in a future in which this child existed. Even so, it felt as if my heart had been ripped from me ….

  Suddenly, for the first time since the day I had spun my first sakkri, I was weeping. I cried without tears and without sound, but still my breath hitched and my body shook. I reached for Ecl, my peaceful oblivion, but this close to Maeve’s kin and the balancing magic they still held, I couldn’t make myself fall into the void even if I could have forgotten that damning vow to Nicias.

  Without words, Obsidian wrapped me in his arms, holding me as I struggled to free myself from the aching sorrow. Was this how other people felt, all the time? How could anyone live if at any moment they could be struck by this pain? Even when I shoved back all the screaming, wailing and weeping, I could taste tears on the back of my tongue and feel them making my lungs tight and my chest heavy.

  Finally, as the dry sobs subsided, I asked, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why comfort a mongrel falcon who would strike you with magic just for coming near?”