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

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  What if they try to force you to stay? I asked, keeping the words from the ears and minds of the Empress’s Mercy.

  Cjarsa’s orders to Araceli to let me live my own life aren’t likely to have changed, he replied. And if they have, I doubt your mother will fail to move Ecl and Mehay to get her way—as always.

  As always indeed. But my mother wanted Nicias on the island. I wanted Nicias on the island, too, but it was a selfish desire. I could not take him without eventually losing him.

  In the end, Nicias was the only master of his fate; he would, or would not, go to the white city of his own volition. All I could hope to do was keep him from destroying himself for me.

  If I went, I would miss him. I would miss Wyvern’s Court, and even the Obsidian guild. I would regret not seeing Sive Shardae grow into the beautiful queen I knew she would become, and I would miss the cobra king to whom I had so recently offered my allegiance.

  “Enough,” one of the falcons snapped as I hesitated. “There is no room for negotiation. Hai is one of the Lady’s subjects, and so is answerable to the Lady’s commands.”

  “As are we all,” Darien answered, and everyone knew exactly what she meant.

  Why? Why did I delay?

  This world of snakes and birds was filled with such impossible, contrary fools; they struggled daily against the tides of Fate, even when it would be so much wiser to give in.

  They burned with an incredible, desperate passion, which perhaps only Anhamirak’s followers could truly comprehend. Certainly there was no equivalent among the long-lived shm’Ahnmik.

  In the white city, there was enough beauty to make the most hardened heart weep. There were music that resonated in the soul and colors that the eye could hardly comprehend. Pure and crystalline and lovely, Ahnmik was clear of the grime and sweat of Wyvern’s Court.

  Without intending to, I let out a small sound. Nicias put a hand on my arm, but his eyes stayed on the Mercy, as if he was tying to discover what they had done to me.

  “I want to go home,” I said softly. “I want to speak to my—” I almost said mother, and that was what I meant, but I was not thinking of the mother who was standing before me. “My Empress.”

  “And if she chooses to see you, then you may,” the impatient falcon replied. “Assuming we ever get back to the city.”

  Darien asked me, “You want to speak to her now?”

  “The Empress does not grant audiences at the whims of a—”

  Darien half lifted her hand and, without even turning, tossed enough magic at her fellow guard to make him stumble to his knees. Closing her eyes, my mother drew a half breath; I could feel her power reaching out with a petition.

  To the magic of falcons, distance meant little. The many miles between Wyvern’s Court and the island of Ahnmik were bridged by power, until suddenly my heart began to pound and I blinked back tears.

  I was still in Wyvern’s Court physically, but mentally I stood before my Empress.

  “My Lady,” I whispered.

  “Darien has informed me that I must speak to you.” There was some wry amusement in her tone; few people ever “informed” the white Lady of anything, much less told her she must do something.

  “My Lady … you gave so much to me when I was a child, even though I was born quemak. I—”

  “You are the only child of my favored companion, Darien,” Cjarsa interrupted, her magic wrapping me almost like an embrace, gentle and comforting. “Your father’s blood was not your fault. How could I do less than twist Fate herself to give you the chance to come home, whole and pure?”

  The words differed a little from what she would have said to my mother, but I recognized the argument I had heard in my recent sakkri.

  She must have sensed my slight withdrawal, for she continued to make her point.

  “It is little enough,” she pointed out, “compared to your machinations to save Wyvern’s Court.”

  “My Lady …”

  I thought about what my mother had told me when we had argued about Oliza. Cjarsa has more power than you and I combined, but the void frightens her. She fears drowning in its illusions, so she holds back. My mother’s words had frightened me then, but I had not taken the time to understand the full implications of them.

  Now Cjarsa had chosen her words carefully, avoiding stating any fact that Ahnmik’s magic would reveal to be false.

  “You never even looked to the future, did you?” I had nearly drowned trying to save Wyvern’s Court. She had let me struggle on my own, and now she tried to take credit for all the incredible twists of Fate and Will that had led to this moment. “You would have seen the dangers of Oliza’s reign if you had only looked, but you never even tried. You just let me …”

  “I let you become queen,” Cjarsa said.

  “You let me tie myself to this realm,” I said. “Do you wish me home, my Lady?”

  “You are one of us, shm’Ahnmik’la’Hai. Your place is here.”

  Coldness seeped up my spine, as she neglected to answer the question.

  “Lady, you know I would do anything you wished. From my earliest memory, you are there, teaching me to dance. You …” You were the one who caught me when I fell and my wings were scoured from me. “You were everything to me.” You were the one who healed what you could. “Please, my Empress. Do you want me to return to you?”

  She hesitated, and in that hesitation I heard the echo of all my last illusions shattering.

  You were the one, I thought, who held me … and you were the one who told me to rest. You were the one whose voice carried me into Ecl.

  “All you ever needed to say was that you wanted me,” I said. “That day under the arches, if you had only given me a word of encouragement, I would have stayed in this world. I could have used my magic to heal my wings before they set so twisted I would never have them again. I could have …” My voice broke. “But instead, you told me to rest. I would be there still if Nicias had not come for me.”

  I waited, though I knew it was useless. Cjarsa did not continue to argue with me. I loved the white city, but there I was a mongrel, something to be tolerated. Even with “pure” magic, I would never be unblemished. I gathered myself together, drawing in a deep breath rich with the scents of wintertime in Wyvern’s Court.

  “I may finally be a falcon in your eyes, white Lady, but it is another land that holds my heart. I have no desire to return to Ahnmik. I … I have a place here,” I said. I wasn’t exactly certain what that place was, but over the past few days, I had started to discover a connection to this land that I had never had to Ahnmik.

  Oliza did not trust me or like me. I made Sive nervous. The old Diente and Tuuli Thea, Zane and Danica, would probably never forgive me for what I had done to their daughter. And here, too, I would always be an outsider, a mixed-blood falcon.

  But here, for a while, I had been needed.

  Shaking with fear, I said, “Lady Cjarsa, I respectfully request your permission to stay here, as a citizen of Wyvern’s Court and not as one of your subjects.”

  Such bold words. How could I have said them? How could I, who had been raised by the Lady’s hand, even imply that I could be released from her authority?

  Brazen, as a cobra cannot help but be. Somewhere in sakkri, I had heard Cjarsa say those words, about my father.

  Cjarsa sighed, and I struggled not to tremble in the face of her disappointment. “Is this really what you want?” she asked.

  “My Lady, if you tell me that you want me home, that you want me beside you, that I have ever been more to you than a nuisance, then I will fly to your side in an instant. But you won’t, because Ahnmik will not let you lie that way.

  “I saw the fear in your eyes when I was a child and I began to spin sakkri of the Dasi. You do not want me in your empire; you tolerated me for years to try to win back my mother’s favor, but you never wanted me. Please, grant me permission to leave now.”

  Time stretched and seemed to slow as I waited for h
er reply.

  “Permission granted.”

  I had tears in my eyes as I pulled myself out of the trance and away from the last time I would ever see the woman who had raised me.

  I would probably love her all my life, as a child must love her mother. I certainly would not be able to hate her. I understood her fear too well to not forgive her.

  “I don’t understand,” Darien said, standing beside where I knelt with one hand pressed to the soil of Wyvern’s Court. “You told her no?”

  “You said it would be her decision,” Nicias pointed out. “Cjarsa has honored—”

  “I never thought she would actually choose this!” Darien replied. “Hai, what do you have here? What place does any falcon have in a serpent and avian land?”

  “Darien,” Nicias said, intervening, “she made her decision.”

  I pushed myself to my feet, to face my mother. Looking into her Ahnmik silver eyes, I felt as if I was looking at a stranger.

  “I have never been a falcon, not in your eyes, or the eyes of Ahnmik, or my Empress’s or even my own. I was always … tainted. I’m cobra blood, Darien.”

  “You used to be,” she asserted. “You know I loved your father, but I hated the curse he left you with. You’ve rid yourself of that now.”

  “The curse he left me with was passion,” I replied. “And yes, it hurts, but it is mine. And the gift he left me with was Wyvern’s Court.”

  “You would really stay here, when Cjarsa has offered you Ahnmik?” My mother looked at me with confusion. “Hai, all your life, I have struggled to give you this—”

  “All my life, you have struggled to give yourself this,” I said. “Struggled to win, against the Empress.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “Darien … Mother … you are shm’Ahnmik. And the white god has no patience for right and wrong, or sacrifice, only power.”

  “You’re one of us.”

  I shook my head. “In the first sakkri I ever saw, I watched through Kiesha’s eyes as Cjarsa and Araceli ripped Anhamirak’s magic in half. I screamed with the cobra, until my throat bled and I lost my voice for weeks. I should have known on that day that I would never be a falcon.”

  Those around me knew my heritage by my ebony hair. I knew that it was held somewhere even deeper than magic … and that it wasn’t on the white island. It never had been.

  “You will stay in this land, without a serpent form?” Darien asked, in a last desperate plea. “Hai, I do not understand you. You had Wyvern’s Court in your hand, and you gave it up. You gave up your cobra form, and your position as Diente. Why else would you have done that, if not to come home?”

  “I gave up my magic to save my cousin’s life,” I said. “I am more than my animal form. I am more than the magic the royal house of Ahnmik deemed right for the serpiente to retain. I am more than feathers or scales.

  “I am Kiesha’ra.”

  Months later, I still sometimes woke in the night, coated in sweat, with my heart pounding. Wrapped in Nicias’s arms, I would open my eyes and take a deep breath to assure myself that the past half year had really happened.

  As a child, I had centered my entire life on my Empress’s desires; I had sought nothing more than to please her, even when she had sent me into Ecl. Now I had cut my ties to Ahnmik and was responsible for myself, for my own decisions, and for my own future. I had lost all guidance beyond myself and had chosen this heartache of decision that made serpents and avians so brilliantly alive: freedom.

  Though flavored by tears, that freedom was the sweetest thing I had ever known.

  After the weeks of chaos, from Oliza’s abdication through Salem’s resurrection, Wyvern’s Court did not return instantly to rest. Both royal houses came together to try to heal their shaken world, like parents holding a child through her night terrors. There was much shuddering and wailing, but eventually the court returned to its precious balance of two worlds dancing together in defiance of Fate herself.

  I was honored to say I was among the dancers.

  On this night, I stood in the center of the Obsidians’ camp, surrounded by all their guild, as well as some more unusual faces—the exiled falcons from the candle shop, and an uneasy-looking Sive Shardae, who was standing beside her serpiente companion. The only light came from a single lamp hanging on one of the nearest trees, and from the stars high above us.

  Vere stood before me, dressed in black, with a silver melos about his waist.

  “Your people have fared badly in all this,” I said to him as we waited for the last guests to arrive. “First Oliza made you promises, and then I did, and now neither of us is in a position to keep them. I am sorry.”

  A rustling in the forest announced the arrival of three newcomers: Salem; his Naga, Rosalind; and Nicias, who had guided them here. Nicias came to my side and wrapped me in his arms.

  Vere nodded a greeting and then continued our conversation. “You really think we have been mistreated by these events?” the white viper asked. “Look around. The cobra king and his mate are peaceful guests in our camp, traveling dancers and—albeit nervous—friends.” He gestured at Sive, who was now deep in conversation with Maya. “You say we’ve come out badly, but look around. You’ll see Maeve’ra, Kiesha’ra, shm’Ahnmik and the descendant of Alasdair standing together.”

  “It’s an exception,” I replied. “Tomorrow—”

  “It is an exception that has never before occurred over the course of thousands of years. And tomorrow, even if the fighting begins again, they will remember.” He smiled in a way that said that he knew his words were dangerously optimistic, but that he couldn’t help it. “I never wanted to be a king, Hai,” he assured me. “I accepted your suit because I felt it was time to reach out and make alliances, but I am pleased with the way things have turned out.”

  His smile became a little more wistful as his gaze flickered from me to Nicias, but all he said was “Are you ready?”

  I drew a long, deep breath, taking in all the scents of the wild forest, and raised my face to the night sky.

  “I’m ready.”

  As I stepped onto the camp’s center dais, I allowed myself once more to reach out to my lover and foe. Carefully, I asked Ecl’s favor. There was only one thing I needed to know.

  It was a strange world, taken over by humanity and stretching farther than anyone had imagined. Vast oceans, unknown continents, machines that did the work of men … What an incredible world it had become in the centuries since my own life. And within that world:

  Two women stood face to face, garnet eyes looking deeply into gold. The cobra began to laugh, then hugged the hawk joyously. The Tuuli Thea was crying, but they were sweet tears.

  Both knelt beside a baby girl with white-blond hair and golden eyes. The next Tuuli Thea’s father—a white viper, one of the few remaining children of Obsidian—leaned nearby, watching trustingly as the Diente picked up the hawk-viper child.

  None of them knew what their ancestors had gone through—what risks had been taken, or what sacrifices had been made—to allow them to stand there unafraid.

  I pulled back from the vision as easily as I breathed, as I heard the drumbeat begin. Mentally, I sent a kiss to the familiar abyss, but the one it sent in return did not restrain me.

  My eyes still closed, I lifted myself onto my toes, arching my back and crossing my wrists above my head. I listened to my heart as it began to beat in time with the drummer’s rhythm. The flute, when it began to play, felt like an extension of my own breath.

  My audience gasped as I unfurled wings the color of a cobra’s scales, with a span of more than fifteen feet. Because my magic was finally under control, Nicias and—grudgingly—Oliza had been able to work together to heal them. Now, as I prepared to dance, I spread them wide.

  Yes, I had finally embraced my Cobriana heritage, but who said snakes weren’t meant to fly?

  My prayer is simple, my child, my child,

  Please, do try to understand:

 
; I’ve given you freedom, and left you with choices.

  Now you’re at the beginning,

  Again.

  Two great reads in one

  Coming in 2011

  Also by

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Four books in one

  Available now