Sulah nodded. He had never been the most guarded of sorcerers, and Colivar had been his teacher for long enough that he could normally read him like a book, but there were depths right now that were veiled from his scrutiny. That worried him.
“The one who accepts her offer will not be viewed as a threat.” Sulah pointed out.
Only if she means what she says, Colivar thought. Only if this offer is legitimate, and not some sort of trick. Sulah was equally suspicious, of course. Why else would he share this with Colivar? He asked quietly, “Were you tempted?”
Sulah exhaled sharply. “Of course I was tempted. What Magister wouldn’t be tempted? Forget about the power. Forget about the woman herself. We stand upon the cusp of an age in which the very nature of the world may be altered, and she offers the chance to ride the crest of that transformation rather than be drowned by it.” He looked sharply at Colivar. “Were you not the one who taught me that novelty is the ultimate temptation to a Magister? I didn’t really understand you back then. I was too young. Now that I have a bit more time under my belt, I do.”
But Siderea does not, Colivar thought. If she did, she would have approached one of the older Magisters first. Those who would be happy to see the entire world destroyed if it bought them five minutes of novelty.
Which did beg the question: Why Sulah?
“Would you be willing to show me the dream?” Colivar asked. “Its setting, at least?” He knew Siderea well enough to know that her dreams were meticulously crafted, and it was rare they did not communicate on multiple levels. Sulah probably did not know her well enough to know what to look for. Colivar did.
Sulah hesitated. The request was a highly intimate one, and not one a Magister would normally indulge. But these were not normal times. Nodding, he began to concentrate. The room itself seemed to shimmer as images from his dreamscape began to form in front of him, detail by detail. Desert, tent, rugs, furnishings, and finally the Witch-Queen herself. The vision was not wholly opaque; it was possible to see the shadow of an Anshasan sideboard behind one wall of the tent, and Siderea’s left leg co-existed with the ghost of a chair leg. But it was a detailed and realistic conjuring, and Colivar’s eyes narrowed as he studied every detail, leaving Siderea herself for last.
How familiar she looked, yet how changed! Even in this static vision he could see the alien energy that now blazed in her eyes, a force that was simultaneously more and less than human. The rugs she was standing on looked familiar, but he could not remember where he had seen them before. And the jewelry. That looked familiar as well.
And then it came to him.
“Tefilat,” he muttered.
“What?” Sulah asked.
“Tefilat. A city in the southwestern desert, near the border of Anshasa. Abandoned long ago. The Great War all but destroyed it.” He indicated Siderea’s necklace, the rugs, the goblets. “These designs are all based on tribal patterns of the Hom’ra, a tribe that makes its home in that region. The original designs were meant to ward off evil spirits. Tefilat is supposed to be full of them.” He paused. “Which is not without some grounding in truth.”
“Meaning?”
“The landscape there is ideal for Souleaters. Wide sandstone canyons scoured by the wind, with deep natural alcoves for shelter. Tefilat was built into the walls of one particularly large canyon, originally by constructing homes inside the natural alcoves, later by carving buildings out of the rock itself. It is . . . remarkable.
“It’s also a region the Souleaters favored, to feast upon the tribes that lived there. One of the greatest battles of the south was waged in and around Tefilat. It’s said that hundreds of witches converged upon the city in its final hours. Their spells still resonate in the sandstone.” He nodded. “I’ve been there. You can feel it.
“Such power plays strange games with the mind. The Hom’ra speak of a city of wraiths, and of fearsome demons who emerge from the canyon at sunset. They believe the place is cursed.” He paused. “There were no demons there when last I visited, but the ‘cursed’ label may not be that far off the mark. I would certainly hesitate to use sorcery in Tefilat without first testing to see how reliable it was. Especially as we are kin to the very creatures those witches were trying to destroy.”
He gazed down at the illusionary carpet. “She is there now,” he muttered. “Or she has passed through there recently. Or her people are there now, and are bringing back artifacts to her. Any way you look at it . . . .”
“There will be clues in Tefilat,” Sulah said.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
“I assume we need to go there, then. Just Magisters, do you think, or bring along some morati as well? I’m sure Farah would support an expedition if needed.”
“Farah would provide an army if it was needed,” Colivar agreed. “But first we need to know exactly what’s out there.”
“Our sorcery’s of limited value in such a place, according to what you just told me. Can we rely upon it for reconnaissance?”
For a long moment Colivar was silent. Long enough that Sulah shifted his weight impatiently and coughed softly, as if to remind him that someone else was still in the room. But he would not interrupt Colivar’s contemplations. The habits of a long apprenticeship were too deeply ingrained in him. Some portion of his soul would always recognize Colivar as his Master . . . no matter how much Colivar urged him to do otherwise.
“I have a means to determine if she is there,” Colivar said at last. “Once we know that, the rest can be decided.”
“I thought you said she could hide herself from us. That our sorcery was incapable of piercing a queen’s cover. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. Solemnly. “I did.”
“You have other methods, then?”
He said nothing. Just reached out to put a hand on the other man’s shoulder for a moment. It was a strangely amicable gesture, which stirred memories of another life, lived long, long ago. When men were merely men, and the souls of terrible beasts did not claw at their souls from the inside.
“I will let you know when I have answers,” he promised him.
Kamala circled her target area several times before deciding to approach. She could pick out a spell that Colivar had established to detect any incoming Magister, and she stayed well outside its boundaries. True, it looked as if it were merely a token effort, not meant to defend the place so much as to make sure that Colivar knew when visitors were arriving. But old habits were hard to break.
Finally, when she was satisfied that all was as it should be, she landed and reclaimed her human form. For a moment she just stood there, the hot summer breeze ruffling her hair as she took in the alien landscape. Red stone and red sand, washed in sunset’s orange sunlight. It was both barren and beautiful, a vision from another world.
There was a small building atop a nearby rise, built in the style of a temple. Gleaming white columns held up a roof of the same color, from which panels of white gauze depended, taking the place of walls. As the breeze passed by, it rippled the gauze like water, making the whole structure seem insubstantial. Magical.
Which it well might be, she mused. It was much easier to create the illusion of such a place than to conjure that much mass. But its appearance was pleasing to her, and since she sensed that Colivar had created it just for this meeting, she decided to take it at face value and simply appreciate his work.
She walked up the white stone staircase and felt the shade of the building’s interior envelop her as she passed between its pillars. Inside, she could see that carved alabaster couches with white silk cushions had been arranged in a perfect square. Colivar’s presence on one of them, in his black attire, was visually dramatic.
But she was dressed in the same color now, and provided an equally arresting contrast.
“Kamala.” He stood as she approached. There was a subtle tension about him that she could taste, and instinctively she knew that whatever was bothering him had some kind of sexual undertone.
She had serviced enough men in her youth to read those signs loud and clear. “Thank you for coming,” he said.
“Your note made it sound urgent.”
“Events move quickly these days.”
He nodded toward a glass decanter set on a small table between two of the couches; the red wine in it gleamed like fresh blood in the ruddy sunlight. She waved aside the offer and entered the seating area instead, choosing a couch opposite his own and settling herself on it. Jet black on pristine white. She could feel the room settle into perfect symmetry as he sat down directly opposite her, and she knew that the furniture had been positioned so that the light of the setting sun would set her red hair ablaze.
“I need your help,” he said.
She nodded. “I assumed as much.”
“I have a lead on where Siderea Aminestas might be. Or else a trail that may lead to her. I need to know which it is.”
She raised an eyebrow curiously. “So I’m your queen-tracker, now?”
He chuckled softly. “Do you know someone one better suited to the task?”
“No,” she said. A faint smile flickered across her own lips. “I do not.”
“There’s a city to the south called Tefilat. I need to know what’s out there.”
“You mean, you need to know if she is there.”
He nodded. “Can you do that?”
She remembered how hard it had been to enter the territory of the northern queen, even in a vision. If Siderea possessed that same power, then she could lose herself in the vastness of the desert, and no one would ever be able to find her; there weren’t enough clear landmarks in such terrain for Kamala to focus on. But in a more structured environment it was possible. Not likely, but possible. “Perhaps,” she said.. “Do you have a map for me? I don’t know this region.”
“Something better than a map.”
He reached out to hand her something; when she opened her hand beneath his to receive it, he poured a thin stream of reddish sand into her upturned palm. “This is from Tefilat.”
She closed her fingers over the sand, feeling its fine gritty texture. Then she extended her senses into it, where the hidden traces of its past history might be found. Its locational energy was strong and clear, and she knew she would have no trouble using it as an anchor to connect to its point of origin.
Briefly she thought of retiring to some private place to begin, but then she remembered how he had come to her while she’d been searching the Spinas. The memory brought a strange rush of warmth to her cheeks. He hadn’t hurt her then, when she had lain helpless before him. It would make no sense for him to do so now.
“One thing,” he warned her, as she sat back on the couch and prepared herself for the mental journey. “Sorcery may not work properly there.”
Again the faint smile appeared. “Have you ever asked me to go to a place where sorcery did work properly?”
She shut her eyes without waiting for his response. Apparently Tefilat was not far away; she required no more than a few seconds to establish a clear focus for her sorcery. Then it was a simple act to send her senses outward, as she had done in the Spinas, to explore the place. It was a safe enough procedure, providing one did not mind leaving one’s insensate body in the hands of another Magister.
A strange ruddy landscape took shape around her. In some places the earth was molded into sweeping shapes, patterned with stripes in orange and rust, as if a layer of cloth had been draped over the terrain. In other places there were wind-carved monuments that were both beautiful and strange, with shapes that played tricks upon the mind’s eye, seeming to shift from one form to another as her mind moved past them.
Guided by the traces in the sand, her sorcerous viewpoint shifted to a vast canyon with a dry riverbed coursing down its center. The walls on both sides were high, with shadowed alcoves large enough to contain a house. Some of them had actually had houses in them, which had been abandoned long ago. Their walls were crumbling as time and wind reclaimed them, and in some places it was hard to tell where a house ended and the natural debris of the canyon began.
Then she came around a turn and saw Tefilat itself.
It would have been a breathtaking sight for anyone. For Kamala, raised in the slums of Gansang, it was nigh on overwhelming. Here there were not simply dwellings tucked into the natural shelves and alcoves of the canyon walls, but tall and elegant buildings, in some cases several stories high. Across their intricate façades sandstone stripes rippled and eddied, as if the buildings had somehow grown there organically rather than having been carved by the hand of man.
It was beautiful in its grandeur. Eerie in its emptiness.
And it was tainted.
She could feel the warped power that resonated from the ancient stone, could see it shimmering darkly about the richly carved walls, could taste its wrongness in her very soul. Fragments of shattered spells clung to this place, along with memories of human fear and echoes of terrible bloodshed. No, she would not want to stand here in her real body, subject to these dark, fragmented energies. It was little wonder people now avoided this place.
But someone had been here recently; she could sense that clearly. She struggled to get some sense of identity. At first she could conjure only hazy images, echoes from the distant past. Armies gathering. Spells being cast. The shadows of vast wings coursing along the valley’s floor. Bodies left behind in the wake of those shadows, living flesh from which the human consciousness had been sucked dry.
Then she began to pick up clearer impressions, from more recent events. She saw desert tribesmen passing through the place, and her power provided the proper label: Hom’ra. Then others appeared. Witches. She narrowed her eyes instinctively as she struggled to make out details, even though her physical eyes were not required for this search.
Just then a wing-shadow passed overhead. She saw a few of the Hom’ra look nervously upward, but most of them seemed to be unaware of the Souleater’s presence. She could sense the creature’s power licking at their souls, sipping from the essence of their lives to feed upon as it passed overhead. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. The tribesmen continued their work of bringing supplies into the city as if nothing untoward had happened, until a woman approached them. She was dressed in a white sleeveless gown and shrouded in so many layers of protective sorcery that Kamala could not see through them to determine her identity. The Hom’ra bowed to the woman as she passed, not as one did to an earthly ruler, but with a sense of fearful reverence.
Focusing her concentration to the utmost, Kamala tried to break through the power that surrounded the woman, to get a clearer view of her. But she could not focus directly on her, no matter how hard she tried. The sensation was a familiar one, and it sent a shiver coursing through her soul. This had to be Siderea; there was no other explanation. Thank the gods the Witch-Queen herself was not present, and all Kamala had to contend with were conjured images, crafted from the residual energies of past events. Those had no consciousness of their own.
But something here did, she realized suddenly. Something was watching her. She could sense its scrutiny like a chill breath on the back of her neck, and she whipped about suddenly, using her sorcery to take in the entire panorama, all at once. Yet she could not identify any focus for the strange sensation. Was this some trick of local metaphysics, like Colivar had warned her about? The sensation grew more intense even as she searched for the source. It seemed to be coming from all directions, as though there were not one source point, but many. A circle of source points, gradually taking shape around her . . . .
As they slowly resolved themselves, she realized what they were.
There were dozens of figures surrounding her now. Ghostly images, human and half human, and a few that were something else entirely. They emerged one by one from the air, as if drawing their substance from the very landscape. And one by one they took up position around her, forming a perfect circle with her at the center. There were three ranks of them visible and mo
re were forming behind those, circle after circle of impassive figures, their expressions unreadable, their bodies motionless—
She broke contact and fled the scene. Her mind slammed back into her body with such force that it left her breathless. For a moment it was all she could do to breathe steadily, and she struggled to maintain sufficient composure that Colivar would not realize what had happened.
Gods. Those were the same gods who had been watching her when she began her search for the northern queen. She hadn’t actually seen them back then, but she had sensed their presence. And these felt like the same entities.
But who were they? What did they want with her? She could not begin to fathom an answer.
It could just be the power of Tefilat playing with her mind, she told herself. Maybe the sorcerous effort of this search had triggered memories of the other one, and the city’s strange resonance had caused the two efforts to get all mixed up in her mind. But that still begged the question of why gods had been watching her the first time. Did they have a vested interest in this Souleater war? Or did they consider a female Magister an unnatural creature, perhaps, whose sorcery disturbed the natural order of things? Their stoic expressions had offered no clue.
When she thought she had enough control of herself to handle human conversation again, she opened her eyes.
Night had fallen during her search, and a series of torches had been lit. Colivar was watching her closely, tiny reflected flames dancing in his eyes.
“Well?” he demanded. “What did you see?”
Did he know that something had gone wrong? She would operate on the assumption that he did not until he indicated otherwise. “She’s not there now,” Kamala rasped. The startling vision had caused her throat to seize up She coughed lightly, trying to get the muscles to relax. “But she was there previously, along with the Hom’ra. Not very long ago. And her Souleater was there also.”
“One will not travel far without the other,” he said. Then: “Tell me everything.”
So she described her vision in as much detail she could, conjuring images when words failed her. Only when it came to the final vision, that of the gods themselves, did she keep her silence. The message of that part might be personal, and she had no reason to share it.
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