by Anne Bishop
"Witches don't bear many children," Saetan continued after refilling his own glass. "Depending on the ratio of sons to daughters, it could have taken several more generations before males bred true. Through all that time, the power would have been in the distaff gender, each generation learning from the one before and becoming stronger. The first Queens probably appeared long before the first Warlord, let alone a male stronger than that. By then, the idea that males served and protected females would have been ingrained. In the end, what you have is the Blood society where Warlords are equal in status to witches, Princes are equal to Priestesses and Healers, and Black Widows only have to defer to Warlord Princes and Queens. And Warlord Princes, who are considered a law unto themselves, are a step above the other castes and a step – a long step – beneath the Queens."
"When caste is added to each individual's social rank and Jewel rank, it makes an intriguing dance." Titian set her glass on the table. "An interesting theory, High Lord."
"An interesting diversion, Lady Titian. Why did you do it? Why did you offer me your company tonight?"
Titian smoothed her forest-green tunic. "You are kin of my kin. It seemed. . fitting… to offer you comfort tonight since Jaenelle could not. Good night, High Lord."
Long after she'd gone, Saetan sat quietly, watching the logs in the fireplace break and settle. He roused himself enough to pour and warm one last glass of yarbarah, content now with the solitude and silence.
He didn't dispute her theory of why males came to serve, but it wasn't his. It wasn't just the magic that had drawn the males. It was the inner radiance housed within those female bodies, a luminescence that some men had craved as much as they might have craved a light they could see glowing in a window when they were standing out in the cold. They had craved that light as much as they had craved being sheathed in the sweet darkness of a woman's body, if not more.
Males had become Blood because they'd been drawn to both.
And, as he knew all too well, they still were.
7 / Kaeleer
Lucivar lay on his back in the young grass, his hands behind his head, his wings spread to dry after the quick dip in the spring-fed pool. Jaenelle was still splashing around in the cold water, washing the sweat and dirt out of her long hair.
He closed his eyes and groaned contentedly as the sun slowly warmed and loosened tight muscles.
Yesterday, he'd awakened just before dawn to find Jaenelle busily rummaging through the food pack. They'd managed a hasty meal before the physical tension produced by the drugs forced her to move.
It wasn't the unrelenting drive of the previous days, and as the day wore on, physical tension gave way to emotional storms. Anger would flood her suddenly, then turn to tears. He gave her space while she raged and swore. He held her while she cried. When the storm passed, she'd be fine for a little while. They would walk at an easy pace, stopping to pick wild berries or rest near a stream. Then the cycle would start over, each time with a little less intensity.
This morning, he and Smoke had brought down a small deer. He'd kept enough meat to fill the small, cold-spelled food box he'd brought with him and had sent Smoke back to the Keep with the rest. If Saetan wasn't at the Keep, Smoke would go on to the Hall to let the High Lord know that the worst had passed and they would spend a few more days in Askavi before coming home.
Home. He'd lived in Kaeleer for a year now, and the way witches treated males in the Shadow Realm still bewildered him sometimes.
One day he'd walked in on a discussion Chaosti, Aaron, and Khardeen were having about how the Ring of Honor worn by males in a Queen's First Circle differed from the
Restraining Ring Terreillean males were required to wear until they proved themselves trustworthy. He told them about the Ring of Obedience that was used in Terreille.
They didn't believe him. Oh, intellectually they understood what he said, but they had never known the saturating, day-to-day fear Terreillean males lived with, so they didn't, couldn't, believe him.
Wondering if the boys simply weren't old enough to have firsthand experience in the ways a witch kept her males leashed, he had asked Sylvia, Halaway's Queen, how a Queen controlled a male who didn't want to serve in her court.
She'd gaped at him a moment before blurting out, "Who'd want one?"
A few months ago, while in Nharkhava running an errand for the High Lord, he'd been invited to tea by three elderly Ladies who had praised his physique with such good-natured delight that he couldn't feel insulted. Feeling comfortable with them, he had asked if they'd heard anything about the Warlord Prince who had recently killed a Queen.
They reluctantly admitted that the story was true. A Queen who had acquired a taste for cruelty had been unable to form a court because she couldn't convince twelve males to serve her willingly. So she decided to force males into service by using that Ring of Obedience device. She had collected eleven lighter-Jeweled Warlords and was looking for the twelfth male when the Warlord Prince confronted her. He was looking for a younger cousin who had disappeared the month before. When she tried to force him to submit, he killed her.
What happened to the Warlord Prince?
It took them a moment to understand the question.
Nothing happened to the Warlord Prince. After all, he did exactly what he was supposed to do. Granted, they all wished he had simply restrained that horrible woman and handed her over to Nharkhava's Queen for punishment, but one has to expect this sort of thing when a Warlord Prince is provoked enough to rise to the killing edge.
Lucivar had spent the rest of that day in a tavern, unsure if he felt amused or terrified by the Ladies' attitude. He thought about the beatings, the whippings, the times he'd screamed in agony when pain was sent through the Ring of Obedience. He thought of what he'd done to earn that pain. He sat in that tavern and laughed until he cried when he finally realized he would never be able to reconcile the differences between Terreille and Kaeleer.
In Kaeleer, service was an intricate dance, the lead constantly changing between the genders. Witches nurtured and protected male strength and pride. Males, in turn, protected and respected the gentler, but somehow deeper, feminine strength.
Males weren't slaves or pets or tools to be used without regard to feelings. They were valuable, and valued, partners.
That, Lucivar had decided that day, was the leash the Queens used in Kaeleer – control so gentle and sweet a man had no reason to fight against it and every reason to fiercely protect it.
Loyalty, on both sides. Respect, on both sides. Honor, on both sides. Pride, on both sides.
This was the place he now proudly called home.
"Lucivar."
Lucivar shot to his feet, cursing silently. Considering the tension he felt in her, he was lucky she hadn't taken off without him.
"Something’s’ wrong," she said in her midnight voice.
He immediately probed the area. "Where? I don't sense anything."
"Not right here. To the east."
The only thing east of them was a landen village under the protection of Agio, the Blood village at the northern end of Ebon Rih.
"There's something wrong there, but it's elusive," Jaenelle said, her eyes narrowed as she stared eastward. "And it feels twisted somehow, like a snare filled with poison bait. But it slips away from me every time I try to focus on it." She snarled, frustrated. "Maybe the drugs are messing up my ability to sense things."
He thought about the Queen who had ensnared eleven young men before being killed. "Or maybe you're just the wrong gender for the bait." Keeping his inner barriers tightly shielded, he sent a delicate psychic probe eastward. A minute later, swearing viciously, he snapped the link and clung to Jaenelle, letting her clean, dark strength wash away the foulness he'd brushed against.
He pressed his forehead against hers. "It's bad, Cat. A lot of desperation and pain surrounded by. ." He searched for some way to describe what he'd felt.
Carrion.
Shuddering, he wond
ered why the word came to mind.
He could fly over the village and take a quick look. If the landens were fighting off a Jhinka raiding party, he was strong enough to give them whatever help they needed. If it was one of those spring fevers that sometimes ran through a village, it would be better to know that before sending a message to Agio since the Healers would be needed.
His main concern was finding a safe-
"Don't even think it, Lucivar," Jaenelle warned softly. "I'm going with you."
Lucivar eyed her, trying to judge just how far he could push her this time. "You know, the Ring of Honor you had made for me won't stop me the way the Restraining Ring would have."
She muttered an Eyrien curse that was quite explicit.
He smiled grimly. That pretty much answered the question of how far he could push. He looked toward the east. "All right, you're going with me. But we'll do this my way, Cat."
Jaenelle nodded. "You're the one with fighting experience. But. ." She pressed her right palm against the Ebon-gray Jewel resting on his chest. "Spread your wings."
As he opened his wings to their full span, he felt a hot-cold tingle from the Ring of Honor.
She stepped back, satisfied. "This shield is braided into the protective shield already contained in the Ring. You could drain your Jewels to the breaking point, and it will still hold around you. It's fixed about a foot out from your body and will mesh with mine so we can stay tight without endangering each other. But make sure you keep clear of anything else you don't want to damage."
Having made regular circuits to all the villages in Ebon Rih, Lucivar knew the landen village and surrounding land fairly well. Plenty of low hills and woodland within striking distance of the village – perfect hiding places for a Jhinka raiding party.
The Jhinka were a fierce, winged people made up of patriarchal clans loosely joined together by a dozen tribal chiefs. Like the Eyriens, they were native to Askavi, but they were smaller and had a fraction of the life span of the long-lived Eyriens. The two races had hated each other for as long as either of them could remember.
While Eyriens had the advantage of Craft, the Jhinka had the advantage of numbers. Once drained of his psychic power and the reserves in the Jewels, an Eyrien warrior was as vulnerable as any other man when fighting against overwhelming odds. So, accepting the slaughter required to bring down an enemy, the Jhinka had always been willing to meet an Eyrien in battle.
With two exceptions. One walked among the dead, the other among the living. Both wore Ebon-gray Jewels.
"All right," Lucivar said. "We'll run on this White radial thread until we're past the village, then drop from the Winds and come in fast from the other side. If this is a Jhinka raid, I'll handle it. If it's something else. ."
She just looked at him.
He cleared his throat. "Come on, Cat. Let's give whoever is messing with our valley a reason to regret it."
8 / Kaeleer
Dropping from the White Wind, Lucivar and Jaenelle glided toward the peaceful-looking village still a mile away.
*You said we'd go in fast,* Jaenelle said on a psychic thread.
*I also said we'd do this my way,* Lucivar replied sharply.
*There's pain and need down there, Lucivar.*
There was also the foulness that now eluded him. It was still there. Had to be. That he could no longer sense it, would never have sensed it if he'd simply come to check on the village, made him uneasy. He would have stumbled into whatever trap was waiting down there.
He felt the predator wake in her at the same moment she began a hawk-dive, dropping toward the village at full speed. Swearing, he folded his wings and dove after her just as hundreds of Jhinka appeared out of nowhere, screeching their battle cries as they tried to surround him and pull him down.
Using Craft to enhance his speed, Lucivar drove through the Jhinka swarm, relishing the screams when they hit his protective shield. Roaring an Eyrien war cry, he unleashed the power in his Ebon-gray Jewels in short, controlled bursts.
Jhinka bodies exploded into a bloody mist full of severed limbs.
He burst through the bottom of the swarm, coming out of his dive a wing-length from the ground. *Cat!*
*Come down the main street, but hurry. The tunnel won't hold for long. Avoid the side streets. They're. . fouled. There's a shielded building at the other end of the village.*
Flying low, Lucivar swung toward the main street, hit the village boundary at top speed, and swore every curse he knew as his shield brushed against the psychic witch storm engulfing the deceptively peaceful-looking village. The shield sizzled like drops of cold water flicked into a hot pan. All the ensnaring psychic threads flared as if they were physical threads made out of lightning.
Pushing hard, he flew through the already contracting tunnel Jaenelle had created as she passed through the witch storm and finally caught up with her a block away from the shielded building. A fast psychic probe showed him the parameters of the domed, oval-shaped shield that protected a two-story stone building and ten yards of ground all around it.
Four men ran toward the edge of the shield, waving their arms and shouting, "Go back! Get away from here!"
Behind the men, thousands of Jhinka rose from the low hills beyond the village, filling the sky until they blotted out the sun.
Jaenelle passed through the building's shield as easily as if it were a thin layer of water. Distracted by the men and the approaching Jhinka, Lucivar felt like he was passing through a wall of warm taffy.
As soon as they were inside the building's shield, Lucivar landed next to the four men. The protective shield Jaenelle had created for him contracted to a skintight sheath, produced a mild tingle in the Ring of Honor, then vanished completely.
"How many wounded?" Jaenelle snapped. Lord Randahl, the Agio Warlord who was Lady Erika's Master of the Guard, replied reluctantly, "Last count, about three hundred, Lady." "How many Healers?"
"The village had two physicians and a wise woman who could do a bit of herb healing. All dead."
Knowing better than to interrupt when Jaenelle focused on healing, Lucivar waited until she ran into the building before snapping out his own demands. "Who's holding the shield?"
"Adler is," Randahl said, jerking a thumb toward a young, haggard-faced Warlord.
Lucivar glanced toward the low hills. The Jhinka would descend on them at any moment. "Can you push your shield out another inch or two all around?" he asked Adler. "I'll put an Ebon-gray shield behind it. Then you can drop your shield and rest."
The young Warlord nodded wearily and closed his eyes. Seconds after Lucivar put up his shield, the Jhinka attacked. They slammed against the invisible barrier, their bodies piling up five and six deep as they clawed at the shield. Some of the Jhinka, pressed between the shield and the rest of the swarm, were smothered or crushed by the mass of writhing bodies. Dead, hate-filled eyes stared at the five men below.
"Hell's fire," Randahl muttered. "Even during the worst attacks, they didn't come in like this."
Lucivar studied the middle-aged Warlord for a moment before returning his attention to the Jhinka. Maybe they hadn't trapped what they'd wanted until now.
He could feel the pressure of all those bodies piling up on the shield, could feel the Ebon-gray Jewels release drop after drop of his reserve strength. While all the Jewels provided a reservoir for the psychic power, the darker the Jewel, the deeper the reservoir. As the second darkest Jewel, the Ebon-gray provided a cache of power deep enough that, if he didn't need to use them for anything beyond maintaining the shield against physical attacks, he could hold the Jhinka off for a week before he felt the strain. Someone would come looking for them before that. All he needed to do was wait.
But there was that witch storm to consider. He felt certain someone had created this trap especially for him. He'd have to check with Randahl, but he suspected the first Jhinka attack hadn't given them time to get in supplies. And Jaenelle needed other Healers to assist with the wou
nded. The Darkness knew she had the psychic reserves to do all the healing, but her body wouldn't hold up under that kind of demand, especially after the drugs and the physical strain of the past few days.
Besides, no one had ever accused him of having a passive temper.
Lucivar vanished his Ebon-gray ring and called in his Birthright Red. The Ebon-gray around his neck would feed the shield. The Red…
"Tell your men to stay tight to the building," Lucivar said quietly to Randahl. "It's time to even up the odds a bit."
Smiling his lazy, arrogant smile, he raised his right hand and triggered the spell he'd spent years perfecting. Seven thin psychic "wires" shot out of the Red Jewel in his ring. Keeping his arm straight, he made leisurely sweeps back and forth, always careful that he didn't stray too close to the building. Back and forth. Up and down.
Jhinka blood ran down the shield. Jhinka bodies slithered
and slid as the ones who could see the danger tried to push themselves out of the pile before that sweeping arm returned.
Satisfied with the panicked scramble on that side of the shield, he walked around the building, his hand always aimed at the shield. And the Jhinka died.
He was starting a third circuit when the Jhinka who were still trying to pile onto the shield finally caught the panic of the ones trying to get away from it. Chattering and screeching, they rose off the shield and headed for the low hills.
Lucivar drew the psychic "wires" back into his ring, ended the spell, and slowly lowered his arm.
Randahl, Adler, and the two Warlords Lucivar hadn't been introduced to yet stared, sick-faced, at the blood running down the shield, at the pieces of bodies sliding to the ground.
"Mother Night," Randahl whispered. "Mother Night." They wouldn't look at him. Or rather, whenever their glances brushed in his direction, he saw the worried speculation that they might have something locked inside with them that was far more dangerous and deadly than the enemy waiting outside. Which was true.
"I'm going to check on the Lady," Lucivar said abruptly. Being a Master of the Guard, Randahl would try to act normally once he had a few minutes to steady himself. If nothing else, the man would fall back on the Protocol for dealing with a Warlord Prince. But the others. . Everything has a price.