Legacy of Kings (17 page)

Ramirus was waiting for her by the river. Out of deference to Salvator, Gwynofar had not allowed him to use sorcery to transport her, and of course she would not waste a witch’s life-essence just to save time. So she had simply ridden the distance, with two servants flanking her, and only as she approached the Magister did they fall behind, out of hearing range.

She did not dismount, but sat upon her white mare as it pawed the ground restlessly, looking down at the Magister.

“He said no,” Ramirus said.

She nodded tightly. “Yes.”

“You knew that he would.”

Again she nodded. “Yes.”

It was a warm night. The breeze rippled through her mount’s mane and through the Magister’s long beard. Fine white strands stirred in the wind.

“What else?” he asked her.

“You are welcome in the palace. You may not use sorcery, save for your own transportation, but he will accept your counsel. Or at least . . . he will allow
me
to accept your counsel. Which is effectively the same thing.”

He nodded. “Then you have what you wanted most.”

She whispered it: “Yes.”

“There are few who would ask me to accept such limitations.”

“There are few who would offer you the chance to be part of a
lyr
prophecy in return.”

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “There is that.”

She hesitated. “Do you think that the prophecy is true, Ramirus? That this war can’t be waged without me?”

“Prophecies are strange things, Majesty. Always confusing, often misleading. This one speaks of a woman of power sitting upon a throne of tears. I can think of two women who might satisfy that metaphor. Ironically, given the way things are heading, you may both wind up in the center of things.” He shrugged. “Even if the prophecy were correct, I would be wary of reading too precise a meaning into any given passage. But as a general warning that you should prepare for the worst, and learn everything you can about the enemy while you still have time to do so . . . yes, Majesty. That part is certainly true.”

“Thank you, Ramirus.” She sighed. “Will you stay at the palace, then? Your chambers are the same as when you left them. I allowed no man to touch your things.”

“I would have thought Danton would have set fire to the contents after our parting. Or at least smashed everything in sight.”

“He wanted to.” A soft, sad smile—half nostalgia, half mourning—passed over her face. “I would not allow it.” Her slender finger stroked the thin leather reins. “I always hoped you would come back to us.”

“Well.” He huffed. “To turn you down after that statement would be a veritable act of cruelty.”

She cocked her head to one side. “That is ‘yes,’ then?”

“Aye. That is ‘yes.’ Though I suspect that when Salvator told you I’d be welcome in the palace, he did not think I would actually be moving in. It will be . . . .” A faint, dry smile creased his lips. “. . . . interesting.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t bait him, Ramirus.”

He chuckled. “Asking that of me is like asking a fish not to swim, Majesty. But don’t worry. I’ll try not to be the source of too much torment for your Penitent son. Above and beyond what my mere presence mandates, of course.”

He stepped back to give her room, bowing his head slightly in leave-taking. Nodding an acknowledgment of the gesture, she kneed the white mare into motion, turning it back toward the palace. Not until she was out of sight would he draw his power to him, she knew. Not until the shadows of the night had wrapped themselves around him would he meld himself into them, making his exit as silent and secret as the breeze.

Urging her mare into a sudden gallop, she left the flustered servants to pull their horses about and race to catch up as she headed back toward the palace.

Chapter 9

T

HE GODS were watching her.

Kamala could sense them all around her as she stared into the smoke. A circle of gods watching her as she strained her Sight to the utmost, trying to manage by purely morati gifts what she had thus far failed to do with sorcery. Their expressions were impassive, revealing nothing of their purpose, but their presence raised a line of cold goosebumps along her skin.

But even when she was able to shut them out of her awareness enough to focus on her Sight, it was to no avail. Just as sorcery had failed her countless times before, her innate gift failed her now.

With a sigh she sat back on her heels, rubbing her head with weary fingers. Inside the offering bowl a perfumed scarf from Siderea Aminestas’ collection was slowly burning to ash, releasing pungent smoke along with its metaphysical resonance. Morati mystics often used such tools as a focus for their Sight, staring into the patterns of the smoke as they tried to conjure meaning from nothingness. Had she really thought that a bit of scented smoke might make a difference to a Magister? Or was the ritual aspect of it simply comforting?

Shutting her eyes for a moment, she drew in a deep breath of the scented air and tried to center her spirit. Whispers seemed to surround her, soft sounds, like the murmuring of insects. The voices of gods? She could sense them gather around her every time she made an effort to find the Witch-Queen. A dozen unknown deities, two dozen, sometimes as many as a hundred, clothed in garments that ranged from the finest silk to the coarsest hemp, in styles she did not recognize. Sorcery might net her an identification or two, picking out names and aspects from among the crowd—
Sekmenit the Bloodthirsty
or
Utark, Lord of the Dead
—but it could not tell her why they were there. The mysterious images just stood by in silence while she searched, offering neither help nor hindrance, then dissipated like the wind soon after her efforts were concluded.

If she could somehow get them to assist her—would that help? Did they know where Siderea Aminestas was? Were they trying to tell her that? Or was this about something else entirely?

With a sigh she rose to her feet. Body and soul both ached from the long hours of futile concentration.
There must be a better way,
she thought.

Conjuring an apple, biting deeply into its cool flesh, she gazed about the polished wooden floor and the maps that she had etched into its surface. This was the first time she had ever conjured a shelter for herself rather than claimed a structure that already existed, and if the results were somewhat bare in decor, at least it had the facilities she required. Her meditation chamber was vast, and the maps etched into its polished wooden floor all radiated out from the center of the room, as if that were the actual center of the world. Each section had been copied from some morati map, adjusted in scale and then burned into the wood with sorcery, exactly as it appeared on the original parchment. The overall result was a discordant creation, its style shifting from panel to panel, mountain ranges transforming from the hurried scratch-marks of a traveling scribe to the rich, sweeping strokes of a master cartographer as they crossed over unseen boundaries . . . but in its entirety, it effectively represented the world. Or at least as much of the world as humans had explored.

The arrangement helped her concentrate, but it did little more than that. Thus far Siderea Aminestas had defied all detection. Mere sorcery could not locate the woman. Not even hers.

But she was not willing to accept failure. It had nothing to do with the box of tokens that Colivar had hinted at, though that was certainly enticing. It had to do with pride.

Think, Kamala. Think. There must be a way.

For the hundredth time, she reviewed what she had learned about the power of the ikati, when they’d all been briefed in Kierdwyn.
Their power can draw human attention toward them, or turn it away. Few ikati can manage the trick well enough to be truly invisible, but when men are distracted, they might as well be. Legends speak of human wars in which the ikati appeared suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, to feast upon the dying. It is hard to know how much that reflects their mesmeric power, since generally in the midst of battle no one stops to study the sky.

A new thought flickered briefly in the back of her head but was gone too quickly for her to attach a name to it.

If this queen can hide herself from others of her kind,
she thought,
then that’s probably the kind of power she’s using. Not true invisibility, but rather, an ability to make her subject look somewhere else, at something else instead.

A shiver of excitement ran through Kamala. And also dread. The thought that was taking shape in her mind had potential, but the amount of work that would be required to test it was almost too vast to imagine. A morati lifetime might not be enough for it.

Looking down at the floor surrounding her, she contemplated its scale. Tiny lines represented wide, raging rivers. A line of loosely drawn mountain peaks might represent an entire range. The whole of the territory that she had explored in her years with Ethanus took up no more space than the palm of her hand . . . if that much.

Somewhere in that vast world there would be a place she could not investigate. A place she
would
not investigate.

It would likely be very small. Maybe only the size of a nesting site. Invisible from a distance, just as the actual nest would be. If one were close enough to be affected by its power, could one somehow detect that effect? That would be a much larger range.

If one’s viewpoint were close enough, would that suffice?

With a shaky breath, she considered the world map laid out before her.

I cannot search every inch of it,
she thought.

But the ikati did not live everywhere. They preferred stark mountains for their nesting sits. They required a source of water somewhere near open ground, so that their vast wingstroke would not be impeded when they came to drink. And since they now fed exclusively on human beings, they would want to be near a population center of some kind. During the First Age of Kings they had been drawn to the great human cities like flies to honey.

She ran her eyes down the edges of the mountain ranges, pausing at each lake, each river coursing through an open plain. (But at this scale, how many smaller ones might she miss?) She used her sorcery to determine where human habitations were clustered. (But how many morati must be in one place for a Souleater’s hunger to be satisfied?) She tried to figure out what kind of climate the creatures would prefer. (Would they flee as far south as they could, to escape the curse that once bound them, or would they stay in the north right now, where the summer days were longest? If the latter, then how far from the Wrath would they need to be to feel safe?)

Slowly, inch by inch, she edited the map with her sorcery. Erasing any locations that could not possibly meet her criteria. Sometimes that meant a whole mountain range had to go. Sometimes just a single canyon.

When she was done, she stared down at the map in silence, contemplating her results.

Well. That leaves only half the world to search. Much better.

But daunting though the undertaking was, she knew she had to try. There simply was no better option. And besides, what else was she going to do with her time? Twiddle her thumbs creating palaces on mountaintops, like some of the Magisters apparently did? This task at least had real meaning.

—And for one heart-wrenching moment she was back at Rhys’ funeral, looking down at his body. Remembering the emptiness of that moment, and the cold kiss of envy she had felt then.

Now I, too, have purpose.

She wrote to Colivar before she began. A simple note, which sorcery deposited at their secret drop point.
Tell me all that you know of the sort of terrain that Souleaters prefer,
she wrote.
Do not try to guess at what details will be relevant, but tell me everything.
Favias had briefed them in Kierdwyn, but she doubted that he knew as much as Colivar did about the ikati’s true habits. She was beginning to doubt that anyone knew as much about the Souleaters as Colivar did.

But his response might take days to come, if it came at all. There was no point in wasting all that time. Settling herself down in the center of the vast map, conjuring a pillow to rest her head on and a small bit of food and water to have by her side, she shut her eyes, sighed deeply, and extended her sorcerous senses out into the world, to begin the impossible search.

Chapter 10

T

HE DESERT region on the room-sized map was represented by a gleaming field of diamonds, each one faceted to perfection. To the east of the desert, past a wide ridge of black onyx mountains, a narrow band of emeralds appeared, the fertile shoreline of the great southern River of Life. Smooth chrysocolla tiles represented its waters. To the north of the desert, diamond sands gave way to a city sculpted out of gold and silver, whose soaring monuments were now edged in fire from the late afternoon sunlight trickling into the room. The chrysocolla river wound through the vast map, progressing in tight serpentine loops, with gleaming cities at every turn. And then there was the lapis Sea of Tears, beyond which every northern nation had been assigned its own semiprecious stone. Amethyst for Sankara, topaz for Sendal, blue chalcedony for Corialanus. The High Kingdom was laid out in jasper, each vassal state a different variety of the stone. An observant spectator might note that the surface of that particular nation was smooth, its mountains represented by bands of flat black stone, the whole of it polished to a slippery gloss. A savvy spectator might make note of the fact that such a surface was much easier to move military markers across.

Right now the crystal markers of Anshasa’s armies were clustered about that nation’s capital city or ranged along the shoreline nearby just to the north: small faceted obelisks to represent hundreds of men, large ones to represent thousands. There was a cluster of troop crystals up north as well, across the base of the isthmus of Tathys . . . the one land route that gave access to the High Kingdom’s territories. Was that a defensive formation, or did it indicate an aggressive campaign in the planning stages? As Colivar looked down at it, he could not tell from the positioning.