The Shapeshifters: The Kiesha'ra of the Den of Shadows

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  I did not know or trust this young man. I wasn’t about to confide in him about Hai. I tried to change the subject instead. Others are here? He had to be talking about falcons.

  We had left the crowded areas, and he returned to normal speech. “You’re here. Why should it surprise you that others are, too? Though I will admit that I had been worried. I had heard that the Heir had bound her, to stop her from helping others flee the island. No one else has come here in years.”

  “Her?”

  He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Darien. I can see her magic on you. I would not have spoken to you if I hadn’t.”

  So Darien had smuggled a couple of falcons out of Ahnmik over the years. It did not surprise me. But the knowledge did make me a bit more at ease with this stranger, enough so to answer his question.

  “The dancer is named Hai,” I answered. “She is Darien’s daughter.”

  He winced. “She is lost, then?”

  I nodded. “Darien says royal blood might call to her strongly enough—”

  The falcon snarled a curse. “True, but the royal house does not risk itself by wading into the void. The blood of royals may be strong with magic, but it’s very thin when it comes to compassion.”

  Clearly Darien’s magic had not completely failed to hide me. This stranger knew that I was a falcon, but he did not know that I was Nicias, Araceli’s own grandson.

  He continued to vent. “Even Servos, the guardian of the halls, will watch them for a million years more before he ever considers trying to save one of them. Darien is the only one I’ve known who is brave enough to swim the still waters, but even she is barely strong enough to keep from drowning. It cuts her every time she tries.”

  He shook his head as if to shake loose a dark memory. “I wish I—any of us—could walk the Ecl’gah like Darien can. Maybe we could bring Hai back to her. Nothing less could possibly repay her for all she has done.” He sighed. “If wishes were feathers, vipers would fly. None of us share Darien’s talent in the Ecl, or her ability to mindwalk. We’d need both to even seek Hai out.”

  There was a moment of silence as we walked farther, toward the primarily avian section of the area. I spent it considering this new information. I had thought that Darien’s fight on Ahnmik was active. It had not occurred to me that her “treason” consisted of smuggling others into Wyvern’s Court or rescuing them from Ecl.

  “I must get back to my shop,” the falcon said. “If you have a few moments, many of us gather there at midday for lunch; I could introduce you to the rest.”

  “Thank you.” The temptation to meet others who knew the place I had fled, and who understood what it was to be a falcon in this land was overpowering. “If I’m not imposing, I would be honored.”

  “Never imposing,” he assured me. “Hiding who you are gets lonely, and loneliness is the fastest way to join the shm’Ecl.”

  My guide knocked on his own door. A petite girl, with blond hair tumbling loose across her shoulders, barely silvered in the front and showing no hint of blue or violet, answered the door.

  She stepped back warily after recognizing my host, watching me with open distrust and revealing two others: a woman tending the fire across the room, and another young man who had yet to acknowledge my entrance.

  “Who’s he?” the woman by the door asked.

  “Darien’s newest, apparently,” my host replied. “And he brought Hai with him.”

  I offered my hand. “I haven’t introduced myself—”

  “Not to be rude, stranger,” the woman replied, “but I would prefer not to know. The less I know, the less valuable I am, the less of a danger I am to the Lady, and the less reason she has to find me. Understand? So don’t tell secrets here, and that includes who you are. Just be content that we know the white city as you do.”

  I hesitated, debating whether I should leave. I craved this company, but these people would not be so welcoming if they knew who I was.

  “Pardon my friend’s melodrama,” my host said, chuckling. “She’s been the most affected by the black dancer’s dreams. It’s true we don’t share the names we were known by on Ahnmik here; no need to give that away in case one of us was found. But I’m called Gren in Wyvern’s Court. That is Spark. Maya was the charming young lady who greeted you first, and that sullen fellow in the corner is Opal. That done with, would you care for anything to eat, or drink?”

  “Gren, why are we being so polite to this stranger?” The question came from Maya, who was eyeing me warily. “We know nothing about him.”

  “He wears Darien’s magic,” my host answered. “That’s enough for me.”

  “He also wears some other magic,” Opal broke in. “Or am I the only one not blind to that?”

  Gren frowned. “Don’t try to make trouble again here. I won’t have it.”

  Opal stood up and walked through a back door without a word, leaving his companions shaking their heads.

  “Opal is not the friendliest of us,” Gren said, apologetically. “But considering our situation, his suspicion is natural.”

  “Your situation … Hasn’t anyone ever considered speaking to Oliza and asking her permission to be here? I’m certain she would grant it, and then you wouldn’t need to hide so much—”

  “Ask protection from the near-queen of a civilization on the verge of suicide?” Spark laughed. “Obviously you haven’t been here long. No one knows who will rule next, or if this court will even still exist. It has already segregated, avians on one side of town, serpiente on the other. I’ve heard the dancers threaten to leave Wyvern’s Court if it’s true that Oliza plans to make that crow Marus her king. Of course, those threats are no worse than the ones started by avians a while back, when it seemed Oliza might choose a serpent. The turmoil makes it possible for us to hide, and we’re grateful for that, but when the wyvern chooses her mate, she may well push this world back to war—and you should never trust yourself to someone who might be powerless.”

  Her matter-of-fact words were a kick in the gut. I knew the politics that would confront Oliza when she wanted to take a mate, but the casual assumption that Wyvern’s Court was doomed was chilling.

  “Perhaps the two cultures can keep from killing each other for a while,” Spark stated, “but from birth to death they are as opposite as they can be. They can’t exist together, and if they try to force it, the result can only be bloodshed.”

  Designed to be enemies.

  There had to be a way to derail Araceli’s plots, but I didn’t know what it was. Not yet.

  I tried to argue. “If they’ve come this far—”

  “They’ve come this far only to find that they can’t go any further,” Spark interrupted. “The two cultures are able to coexist temporarily—they’ve shown that—but asking them to combine like this land does is asking a snake and a bird to live together. Either the bird needs to give up the sky, or the snake needs to give up its earthen den. Both options demand too much.”

  Opal had returned to the doorway and was studying me. “I’ve realized where I’ve seen those marks before.”

  “Where?” I asked without thinking, but as I met his gaze, I instantly regretted it.

  “On the Mercy,” he said angrily, “when someone fights them. When they mindwalk and something goes wrong. On the Lady’s chosen executioners.”

  Swiftly I realized what he had seen: some lingering vestige of magic from my moments with Hai in the Ecl. And I knew what he was afraid of. “No,” I said quickly. “I know what you’re thinking, but—”

  “I don’t care if you have Darien’s magic on you,” Opal challenged. “The only ones who come here with your power are from the Mercy, or are Pure Diamond. The Lady’s hand, either way.”

  “I’m not working for Cjarsa or Araceli or any falcon,” I protested. “I was born in Wyvern’s Court—”

  “Mongrel?” Maya interrupted.

  “What? No,” I answered, hastily enough to make even me flinch. When had I picked up that prejudice?
“I tried to introduce myself earlier. My name is Nicias Silvermead—”

  Gren rose to his feet so quickly that the stool he had been perched on toppled over, his mouth opening and closing in silent protest.

  “Tar and feathers,” Opal cursed. “Gren, you invited a Wyvern here? Why not invite the princess herself?”

  Maya snarled, “Kel’s son. Your mother is the Lady’s Mercy and you have the gall to tell us—” She stopped when Gren caught her wrists, keeping her from moving toward me.

  “Quiet!” Spark shrieked, sending the room into stunned silence. “Nicias, get out of here. Now. You’re not welcome here.” She started to reach forward as if to push me, but then recoiled.

  I didn’t feel the need to stay. I stepped outside, into rain that had started to fall heavily, and heard raised voices behind me.

  Spark followed me out, making shooing motions. “Keep moving.”

  She kept pace as we crossed the market, and only when I was back on the doorstep of my own house did she speak again. “Maya has felt the Mercy’s wrath before, as has Opal,” she said. “Maya’s punishment came at the hand of the woman you now call mother. One of them would have attacked you if you had stayed. You’re just lucky they didn’t make the connection to who your father is, and who his mother is.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt any of you,” I assured her. “Neither would my parents.”

  “Blood will tell, sir,” she said, with none of the respect usually associated with that title, but with a substantial amount of venom. “Mercy’s blood and royal blood. You’ll be as useless as the rest. I trust,” she concluded coldly, “that we won’t be seeing you again.” Under her breath she added, “And you can be certain that you won’t see us, either.”

  Shocked speechless, I could do nothing but retreat with whatever grace I had left. I entered my home, shaking Darien’s illusion from myself as I crossed the threshold. How could I have thought, even for a moment, that I might find acceptance among falcons? I was too much a part of Wyvern’s Court to be one of them.

  No, that excuse was a lie. I was too much a part of Wyvern’s Court to be happy on the island, but here among the exiles, I was too much a part of Ahnmik. Mercy’s blood and royal blood, Spark had said.

  You’ll be as useless as the rest.

  What had I done, really, besides run from Ahnmik? I had run home to Wyvern’s Court, away from the place where I might have been able to make a difference.

  It wasn’t my fight.

  The blood of royals may be strong with magic, but it’s very thin when it comes to compassion.

  I still needed to speak to my parents, yet I found myself drawn to Hai. If anything was my fight, she was, a cobra locked in a falcon’s madness.

  Arrogance, for me to think I could help her—but what choice did I have? Who was I, if not Nicias Silvermead, Wyvern of Honor, sworn to protect the royal houses of Wyvern’s Court with every strength I possessed?

  I put my hand on Hai’s arm, closed my eyes and for the first time reached intentionally toward her nightmares.

  The Ecl’gah in which Hai hid from the world had changed since I had left, but I was not sure whether the changes were for the better. Instead of the stark hues of last time, I found technicolor that dazzled the mind.

  All around me were rolling fields of what seemed to be crystals as sharp as razors, which glowed in the light and bent in the intermittent wind like blades of grass. The sky was too vivid, a sunset gone mad with scarlet, amethyst and ginger, flames and waves swirling in no natural pattern. High above, a falcon circled, waiting, waiting to descend.

  The cloying smell of sodden roses stuck to the back of my throat. The wind came from random directions at unexpected times, sometimes warm and sometimes frigid.

  “Hai?” I called.

  My own voice startled me. For all the disturbed beauty of this illusion, Hai had not woven sound into it. The wind was silent even as it danced past the same black castle I had seen too many times before in the distance.

  I walked carefully through the crystal flora, to the moat that still circled the castle. The brimstone and serpents were gone, but the sparkling blue water steamed, and every now and then I glimpsed the back of some great scaled beast as it touched the surface of the water.

  I could once again see Hai’s silhouette looking down at me from the tallest tower.

  “Hai?”

  Why do you do this to me? Her voice was strained. Why do you give me these dreams? Why must you wrap me with impossible illusions of wyverns and dancers and wings in the air?

  I staggered as the ground beneath me shifted. A raven screamed above me, and I looked up just in time to see the poor creature snapped from the air by a gyrfalcon. The falcon broke its prey’s neck, scattering black feathers and blood to the ground.

  Where they landed, the flowers and grass blackened as if brushed by a flame.

  “It isn’t impossible,” I said to her, trying to turn away from the ugly sight. Again the illusion shifted, and baby cobras emerged where the raven’s blood had fallen. “Hai, Wyvern’s Court is real. I’ve seen—”

  One of the cobras, now fully grown, reared up and hissed, flaring its hood.

  If you believe in such bliss, Hai responded, then I will pity you, poor hopeful boy. I pity you the fall you must soon face. Perhaps you should let the gentle void take you now, before you have to watch your world burn.

  “I’m not about to let it burn,” I asserted. “And I’m not about to hide here from a difficult path.”

  She laughed, but the sound was like hot sand across my skin. “Nicias, you are already hiding. You walk in my world and tell me not to hide from my problems, but look what you have done. You are Araceli’s only heir. She is not likely to give up on you so easily. Soon she will dare to enter the silent halls, and she will realize that you are not there. She will come to Wyvern’s Court, and she will drag you back with her. Perhaps while she is here, she will execute the traitors who hide in the candle shop. Perhaps she will rid the world of your precious Oliza, whose reign she fears so much.

  “You swore to defend Wyvern’s Court, with your life if necessary,” she said, accusingly. “Do not wait until it is too late.”

  The temperature dropped as if to match the sudden chill that had taken me as I heard the truth in her words.

  No one has danced your future for you, have they? she asked. Most fear the sakkri’a’she. It can burn one’s mind, they say, but I spun that magic with almost every breath as I walked the streets of the white city. Let me see if I remember the steps …

  “Hai, wait—”

  I was caught by her magic like a swallow taken by a hawk, slammed from this Ecl’gah and onto the familiar green marble of Wyvern’s Court’s market plaza, where I held Oliza in my arms. My hands were marked with the blood from her wounds; she was cold and still. As I lifted my gaze, I saw that the land around us had been charred.

  Oliza’s body fell, listlessly, away from me as I stepped back in horror, wanting to flee the image.

  “Hai!” I screamed. “This isn’t real! Take it—”

  Take it away? she asked me. This may not be real, but trust me, sweet prince, it is a likely enough future.

  “Not one I will allow.”

  But you have no idea what causes it.

  With that reply, she turned the vision, so that instead of being by Oliza, I knelt before Salem Cobriana. Near us, I could hear the shouting of a mob calling for blood, but my magic had pushed them back.

  Too late.

  Hai knelt next to me, but she did not lift her eyes to mine.

  “Hai—”

  Would you prefer a path less bloody? You could always walk this one …

  I was gone from Wyvern’s Court in an instant and then stood in one of the yenna’marl with Lily. When someone knocked at the door, I called out, “Come in,” wondering what horror Hai had spun into this threat.

  The man who opened the door knelt, not lifting his eyes as he spoke to us. “Sir, the Empre
ss has requested your presence.”

  “We will be there shortly,” Lily said when I hesitated. “We shouldn’t keep Araceli waiting.”

  Then the vision ended, and I was back in Hai’s illusion. I could feel her agitation in the way the ice around me began to shiver.

  What have you done, Nicias, that topples my Empress from her reign and puts your father’s mother on the throne? Or, what have you not done?

  Around me, I saw a million versions of myself, a million moments and possible futures. In some, I was Nicias of Ahnmik, heir to the Empress. In others, I stood beside Oliza in Wyvern’s Court. In too many, I was left alone with the bodies of those slain.

  Fail, Nicias … and the white towers fall. And the golden air of the wyvern’s rule becomes a hell of silver ice. Swear to me, Nicias, that you will never betray your wyvern queen.

  “You know I will not.”

  Swear it!

  The creature in the moat lashed out, wrapping me in a serpentine body covered in blue and silver scales. I tried to retreat from Hai’s mind, but found myself held fast; she had taken control of this moment, and I could only struggle feebly against the iron coils.

  “I swear I will never betray Oliza.”

  The world shimmered as I spoke the words.

  The creature set me down, and Hai spoke once more.

  Then you must never become Ahnmik’s prince. Know this, Nicias: There are already very few futures in which Oliza lives to rule—and there is not a single one in which you sit on the white throne and the wyvern survives to take her own.

  What does that have to do with the Empress? I asked.

  Araceli desires an heir before she betrays my Empress, Hai whispered, as if in a trance. Right now, she believes that Darien lured you into Ecl. She believes that she can rescue you, and you will be grateful, and she will be able to win you back to her side.

  When my mother returns to Cjarsa’s side, Araceli will be angry. When she next enters the Halls of shm’Ecl and finds you gone and her plans in ruin, with Cjarsa’s favored Mercy to blame, her fury will have no equal in this world. She will turn that anger upon Wyvern’s Court as she seeks you, and when Cjarsa tries to calm her, Araceli will turn on my Empress and the white city will turn black ….