by Holly Lisle
Their main patron god, Vodor Imrish, has been far too busy of late to be dead. And if the Falcons were utterly destroyed, that squirming infant would not be communing with them now. Who did you think was touching him the whole time you were pregnant, eh? They’re still out there, and they’re happier than they’ve been in a thousand years.
He’s their martyr, Danya. He’s the one who’s going to give them the return of their Age of Wizards, who’s going to make them gods and set them above humanity. He’s the one who’s going to wrest from you the revenge you so truly deserve, and reward your enemies with joy. His name was Solander, and he is called the Reborn, and for all his seeming goodness, he’ll make you love him, then use your love to make you his slave.
Danya looked at the baby. He looked no different on the outside, but safely within the magical shield of the Ancients, she was walled off from the touch of his love. He couldn’t move her with his sweet gazes or fill her with the warmth of his acceptance. He was just a baby, just a thing that would soon cry and shit and demand food.
She took a deep breath, staring at him. Not just a thing—her arms longed to hold him again, to feel his slight weight against her chest; she yearned to feel him feed at her breast, and to know that she fed him from herself. She desired his sweet scent, and the touch of his breath against her face. Not all the emotion she felt for him had come from him.
That’s the betrayal of your body, Luercas told her. All mothers hunger for those things, or else the species would not survive.
Danya blocked him out. She didn’t want to hear any more of what he had to say. But she could not accept the future that Luercas painted, either. She could not think of the Sabirs and the Galweighs rewarded when they had done her such evil. She could steel herself against her emotions for the moment. She could force herself to form the question she had to ask.
“Can I change this? Can I prevent the future you paint for me?” You can. Or I should say, you could. Now. Only now, only for this one moment, he’s still weak. He has not become the unstoppable monster that he will be a few days from now. Now, at this moment, his body is still too new and too delicate to act as the channel for the magic he will command.
But you won’t do anything, because he chose you so carefully. He found someone who would need his love, some pitiful Scarred creature who had once been someone of importance, and who would cling to him as a link to the past she could never have again. The bastard won the moment he chose you as his mother, and now the world will pay forever.
“You can’t know that. You don’t know what I’m capable of.” But she thought, The baby told me before he was born that he was my reward for having suffered so much. That he was coming to bring me joy. And love.
Luercas heard her thoughts and laughed. That laughter sounded hopeless and hollow to Danya.
You see? He has you.
Danya closed her eyes. She knew that the baby wasn’t just a baby, no matter how much she might wish otherwise. Everything Luercas told her had the ring of truth to it. She could look at him with Wolf sight and see the truth. The infant in front of her would prevent her from taking her revenge. He would change everything, and because of him she would remain hollow, trapped within her anger. She would never be set free from the prison of her own memories, because the only key that would open the door of that prison was the blood of her enemies.
She couldn’t even hold her own revenge up as the sole reason for stopping him. He aimed to bring back the Age of Wizards. He aimed to put the Falcons into power, to make himself into a god. Civilization had been destroyed a thousand years earlier by the Falcons and their enemies the Dragons. She didn’t know if one group was better than the other, but she didn’t care, either; magic had come through time into the hands of Wolves like her. Her kind kept it carefully secret, and did not threaten the world with it. Letting the Falcons return to power would betray her world.
She could not let him do what he had come to do.
He was a beautiful baby—but now that she looked at him closely, she could see the mark of his father on him. His hair was golden, his earlobes long, his skin pale. So his father had been Crispin Sabir. She closed her eyes and summoned memories of that monster. She revisited her pain, her fear, her humiliation. And when she opened her eyes again, she could see Crispin’s mark more clearly on the babe.
“Tell me how to stop him, Luercas.”
You already know. In your heart, in your soul, you already know what you have to do.
“But tell me anyway.”
I won’t. You seek someone that you can blame afterward. I won’t be that someone. Either you are strong enough to stand alone, to act alone, or you are the weak thing he thought you were when he chose you.
She breathed in slowly. Her hands were shaking. The baby lay on the chair, sleeping peacefully. He was a beautiful baby. Her beautiful baby. But he was Crispin’s baby, too, and the Falcons’ savior. He was an evil thing cloaked in beauty.
And Luercas was right.
She knew what she had to do.
Chapter 35
Kait felt the rail against the small of her back. Her damp palms slid along the smooth, cool stone-of-Ancients without finding purchase; the sweat of terror soaked her clothing. The night wind bit her through the loose weave of her tunic, and she shivered.
Andrew and Anwyn approached her from opposite sides, weapons in hand. Grinning. Domagar stood by the central table—the torture table, she realized now—his face unreadable. He held knives in both hands, and he stared at her, a strange wildness in his eyes. He said, “Stop.”
Everyone ignored him.
Anwyn said, “She won’t hurt herself—she isn’t so stupid as that. We may let her survive, but if she throws herself over, the fall will surely kill her.”
Her magic shields and the scents she had soaked herself in kept her from revealing to them who and what she was, but they were going to find out too soon. She was going to Shift if she didn’t get away soon, and all the scents in the world would not hide her identity then. And the one with his head shaved was Karnee. He would love to discover that she shared his Karnee form.
She had no options. Her years of classes in diplomacy had taught her that the diplomat who endangered his mission would do whatever he had to do to save it. The secrecy of the mission counted. Now the mission was to prevent those bastards from discovering the hiding place of Dùghall and Hasmal, who still had the chance to regain the Mirror. She could be a coward and destroy them, and die horribly. Or she could be brave, and die quickly.
Domagar was screaming, “I said stop!” Perhaps he saw the intent in her eyes. It didn’t matter. The Karnee was Shifting, moving at her with that grin stretched across his face, becoming the four-legged killer.
She tensed her body and gripped the rail and shouted, “I won’t stop!” as she launched herself backward into oblivion.
She fell, her jaws clamped tight to keep herself from screaming—she was determined to die silently, to steal from the three monsters in the tower even the slight pleasure they might have gotten from that proof of her fear.
Her body flung itself into Shift, frantic for survival even when the situation was hopeless. She felt her muscles burn and her skin stretch and flow. Her clothes tore away as she mutated into a form she didn’t recognize. She tumbled until she fell facedown, and the city lay below her like stars in the sky flung to earth and spread on a bed of velvet. If she were to die, she would face death looking at the beauty of her home.
The night wind caught at her and buffeted her, and the jewels rolled beneath her.
The jewels rolled beneath her.
But they came no closer.
Her heart thudded in her chest, and her eyes, sharper and clearer, made out the individual ships in the dark and distant harbor and the shapes of horses and men and beasts in the streets below. She looked sidelong at her right arm. Behind a frame of bone so slender it looked like it would shatter at the slightest touch, a film of transparent skin billowed
from distant fingers to delicate ankle. She flicked her index finger and her whole body followed her to the right. Her finger was twice as long as a tall man, her arm that long again. Wings. She had wings. She could fly.
This was Karnee, too?
By the gods, she could fly.
She was elated, but she made no noise. She let the wind fill her wings, and she pointed herself as best she could toward the quarter in which her friends waited for her. She didn’t want the Karnee in the tower behind her to suspect that she’d survived. He might know about this flying. Worse, he might be good at it. She had never thrown herself off a tall tower expecting to die before, so her body had never had need to take on this winged form. The manuscripts she’d read didn’t mention it.
She could fly.
She wondered what she looked like. She wondered how much of what she did to keep herself aloft was instinctive knowledge, and how much was sheer dumb luck that could run out at any time. She stretched her fingers and held the air in her hands and made it move where she wanted it to go. She glided, and imagined herself soaring in the warmth of the day, with the sun on her back, with the wind in her hair. She thought of hitting thermals in the airible, of watching the soaring birds using them to go ever higher while they hunted, circling around and around while they rose higher and higher, and she knew instinctively that she could use thermals. But of course there were none at night; the ground was cool and the sun couldn’t warm columns of rising air. Where could she go to launch herself so that she could fly again? And how could she be sure the Shift would work correctly? What if this were the only time in her life she could fly? If it were, how could she step on the ground and know that she would never leave it again?
She would fly again. She promised herself that. The air was glorious. She held the night in her heart and embraced every slight sound, every scent that she’d thought she was losing forever. She was alive. Alive. And she could fly. The world was hers, and hope remained. Miracles happened. Somehow she and Dùghall and Hasmal would get the Mirror, and prevail against the Dragons. Somehow good would win over evil, and the Reborn would bring his love to all the world. She was alive, and infinite possibility lay open to her.
She circled above the quarter where her friends waited for her and found a place where she could safely land. A large garden, rich with the scents of melons and ripening maize and palomany, lay at one end of the street. No one was anywhere nearby. At the thought of landing, uncertainty gripped her. How was she to land? She’d watched birds do it often enough. But even baby birds required practice.
Wouldn’t it be ironic to survive her plummet from the tower, only to die because she didn’t know how to safely reach the ground?
She dropped toward the field as slowly as she could, cupping the air beneath her wings and hoping for the best. She reached forward with her feet, trying to emulate the birds she’d watched, wishing she’d watched them more closely. Her caution didn’t help her. She hit the ground like a sack of rocks anyway, and tore the delicate skin on her right wing, and lay in a tumble in a field of smashed melons and downed stalks. But when she had calmed herself sufficiently, she managed to get up and to control her Shift back to human form, and the wounded flesh healed.
So she had another miracle to credit to the night. She was alive, and now on the ground and unhurt.
Of course, she was also naked and in a field at the end of a street that was busy even in the middle of the night, and she needed to get to an inn that sat three streets over and one back.
She grinned, unfazed. She was still alive, by the gods. She could handle anything.
Chapter 36
Danya stepped outside of the shield and picked up the baby. He opened his eyes and looked at her, trusting her. Loving her. His love encircled her again, and she responded to it. She pressed his soft face lightly against her scaled cheek and blinked back the tears that threatened to spill from them. He made a soft, mewling sound. He’s hungry, she thought, and she put him to her breast.
She did not think about Luercas, about the future, about anything at all. She didn’t dare let herself think. While she held him and fed him, she lived for that moment only, kneeling on the floor beside the chair that was still warm from her baby’s presence. He wriggled and her arm cradled his tiny body, and his sweet scent filled her nostrils, and his love encompassed her. His tiny mouth tugged at her nipple, and her flat breasts tingled as they filled with milk. In that moment, she was a mother with a newborn baby, and she loved him and he loved her, and the future was nothing that mattered. In that moment, they were two bodies and two souls joined in a bond that transcended thought and mind and the necessity of the world.
The strangers—the Falcons—were all around her, but she ignored them. Luercas hovered inside her head, but she blocked him out, too. None of them had anything to do with this moment, with this beautiful thing that passed between her and her son. This moment was for her. It was something she could keep, something she could cherish. It was beyond right or wrong, beyond fair or unfair. It simply was.
The baby’s eyes drifted shut, and Danya brushed one scaled finger along his skin, and leaned her face close to his again. She felt his breath on her cheek. She kissed him as best she could with her deformed face; her long muzzle and predator’s teeth made the gesture almost impossible. He was already everything in her world. A tiny scrap of flesh and breath and life, and she wanted to give him everything he desired, wanted to build walls around him to keep him safe, and wanted to change the world to fit his needs.
She rose and climbed onto the dais again, this time holding him in her arms. As she slipped within the walls of the Ancients’ shield, she felt the hundreds of tendrils that connected him to the distant Falcons snap, like the threads of a spiderweb when a hand brushed it away. He woke and looked at her again, but he didn’t cry. He just looked, those round innocent eyes searching her face, uncomprehending.
He would not have been allowed to live past his first Gaerwanday in Calimekka, she thought. He was Scarred by magic, even if he looked outwardly human. He was already growing visibly—not yet a day old, he already had the form of an infant two or three months old. He would have been sacrificed to the gods of Iberism for the good of the people of Ibera.
He lay in her arms, and a smile flitted across his face. Eyes crinkled, dimples appeared, a broad toothless grin flashed and then vanished. He was a beautiful little boy. And helpless. He was still helpless.
But only for the moment.
She lifted a corner of the blanket away from his chest. She could see the lines of each tiny rib beneath his skin, could see his breath moving through his body, could see the tremor of the chest wall where his heart beat. A drop of water landed on his sternum and beaded and trembled in time to the beating of his heart, and she realized she was crying.
I love you, he said into her mind.
“I know,” she whispered, and stabbed two talons into his skin, between those fragile ribs, into the tiny heart. “I love you, too. But you can’t live—for the good of the people of Ibera, you can’t live.”
He screamed in pain, and bright blood welled up around her talons. She held them in place and the first wave of magic rolled over her as he tried to heal himself. The magic flowed from him into her, though, and she felt her body changing again—felt her skin burning and her bones melting and her blood boiling through her veins.
He screamed, Save me! into her mind, but she closed his mind-cries out the way she blocked out his physical shrieks.
He thrashed and his tiny hands flailed against her talons, and his round little feet drummed against her chest.
She was doing the wrong thing. She knew it. She knew she was wrong to sacrifice him, just as she knew the people of Ibera were wrong to sacrifice their Scarred children. She could still save him. He could still live, if she just pulled those claws free from his heart. He would still be her child, and he would forgive her the evil thing she had tried to do.
But she had sworn to the go
ds that she would have her revenge. In order to keep her promise, she had to make this sacrifice. One baby had to die. One baby. Her baby, and only because he stood between her and the justice she owed to the Sabirs and the Galweighs. She had seen him in the future, standing at the head of the Falcons, with all the world subject to his edicts, and she could not allow that, either.
The second wave of magic hit her, and she hung on. She could feel his desperation even as her body melted and mutated—and then she felt the thing that almost stopped her. She felt his love. He still loved her.
She cried out and closed her eyes tightly and turned her face away from him. She pictured Crispin Galweigh, the rape, the torture, her pain. She fought to find her hatred, and felt it slipping between her clawed fingers. “I have to do this!” she screamed. “You’ll ruin everything!”
He stopped struggling. He was weak, now. There would be no more magic. She opened her eyes and looked at him; she had to face the fact that she did this thing, that she chose to do this. She had to take responsibility for what she did.
He lay along her arm, limp and barely breathing, with blood coating his chest. His eyes watched her, and in spite of everything, they were full of love. Poor Danya, he whispered into her head. Luercas lied to you.
The life went out of him at last, and she pulled her talons from his heart and lay his tiny body on the dais and knelt over him, weeping. He was dead, and the love he had poured into her was gone, withdrawn beyond her reach forever. She shuddered and stared at her hand, the hand that had killed him. The talons of the first two fingers, the talons she had buried in her son’s heart, remained unchanged, as did the fingers out of which they grew. But the rest of her hand had become . . . her hand. Human. Smooth pale skin, delicately tapered fingers, a slender palm attached to a finely boned wrist, a graceful arm, a softly rounded shoulder. Beneath her leather wraps, full, soft human breasts heavy with milk. A small waist, a flat belly, lean, muscular legs. Her left hand was perfectly human. She touched her face. It was once again her face.