She shrugged again. “Who can say why the gods bestow these gifts on any of us? I don’t need to know why to be grateful for it.”
The door opened again and Cal came in, blond hair still tangled from his wind-blown eagle flight. Cal was my mother’s – well, I was never sure how to describe him, for he was neither husband nor drusse, but they regarded themselves as bound. I’d asked Mother once what exactly he was, but she’d just said, “Well, he’s Cal, isn’t he?” They’d been together all my life, and Cal was like a father to me.
He bent over and kissed my forehead. “You look tired, petal. Is she all right?” he asked Mother. She nodded. “Thank the gods! But whatever happened?”
I told my story again, and he listened without interrupting. But when I’d finished, he said, “Perhaps that’s why the eagles are so jumpy here. Most of them are gone, did you know that? Gone off to find Sunshine, probably. The rest are twitchy. It’s taken me an age to get ours settled. But that is very weird, the whirlwind business. Very, very weird.”
On that we could all agree.
~~~~~
Three suns later, when Flenn returned, Yannassia called for a meeting of her closest advisors to discuss what had happened. Rythmarri was there, and Landra, the senior mage, and Hethryn had talked his way in as well. I’d hoped that Mother and Cal would be there, but their mage duties had called them home. Because I was deemed too ill to manage the short distance to Yannassia’s own apartment, everyone came to mine. As heir, my accommodation included a number of chambers for official meetings. Yannassia chose one of the smaller rooms, fitted with comfortable chairs and footstools, so that I could rest with my feet up.
“Tell us the news of Ly,” Yannassia said, almost before we were all seated. “You found him well, Flenn?”
“He is well, yes. His camp is poorly supplied, so I have sent Harbrondia out with supplies – grains, root vegetables, a cooking pot—”
“What about Sunshine?” I said, not much caring about cooking pots.
Flenn smiled. “She is recovering well. A clean break, and Lord Ly-haam had splinted it, so I had no trouble mending the bones. She will be recovered enough to fly in a few more suns. She will be well fed, that much is certain. Half the Keep’s eagles are there with her, hunting the choicest delicacies to help her healing. You need not be concerned, Most Powerful.” His tone was so patronising that I felt like a child who’d been patted on the head and told to run away and play. Flenn was, like most mages, noble-born, with good amounts of the arrogance that went along with that.
“She will be as fat as an ox, then, and too heavy to fly,” I grumbled.
Flenn shook his head. “She wants to get back to you. Lord Ly-haam wants to know if you can connect to her from this distance.”
“At first, very faintly, and through her to Ly. But not for a few suns now.”
“Lord Ly-haam has been worried about you,” Flenn said. “He sent Diamond back with me, so that you can connect that way. Can you?”
I opened my mind and searched for the familiar tones of Diamond’s thoughts. There! A burst of bird-happiness raced through him as we connected. Almost at once, as if he’d been waiting for me, Ly’s voice as clear in my head as if he stood beside me, awash with joy.
“Princess?” Then a babble of his own language, only half coherent. “You are better now?”
“I’m fine. You?”
The slightest hesitation. “I am well. Sunshine, too. I miss you, Princess, but I have to stay with Sunshine. She needs me.”
“I know. I’ll see you soon.”
He vanished from my mind, and I blinked. Five pairs of eyes gazed at me, in various states of amusement. I supposed it must look odd from the outside. Only the bodyguards were impassive, staring into space, pretending not to listen.
Then Yannassia leaned forward and asked the question that was bothering me, too. “Will Ly be a problem, Drina? Because his magic must be growing again.”
Ly’s magic. It was in his blood, and nothing could change that, but for five years now I had kept it in check. Every two or three suns, I took away the magic inside him. It grew again, I took it from him, over and over, in an endless cycle. The boost of magic kept me well, and the lack of it kept Ly sane. When his magic had grown unchecked, he’d become a wellspring of anger to his people, leading them to war.
“I don’t think it will be a problem,” I said. “He says he’s well.” But that tiny hesitation before he replied niggled at the back of my mind. Well now, perhaps, but with every sun his magic would be a little stronger. “He needs to stay with Sunshine until she heals.”
“Why?” That was Landra. She was stolid woman of middle age, not as astute as her predecessor, but perhaps easier to deal with. I got on well with her. It was her job to question everything, of course.
Flenn intervened again, his voice smooth. “To keep the bird tame. Who knows what she might do if she were left alone?”
“She can manage perfectly well on her own,” I said, irritated. “The difficulty is that she has always been bonded to a human. She is too far away for me to reach her mind, but if Ly is there, he can reassure her. As for his magic regenerating, this will be a useful test before he goes to the Challenge this summer.”
“If he goes,” Yannassia corrected. “That is not yet decided. Or is it? The decision is yours, since he is your war captive.”
“Let’s see what he’s like when he gets back here,” I said carefully. “Then we can think about the Challenge.”
“If he comes back.” That was Flenn, his eyes hard. There were plenty in the nobility who still resented and distrusted Ly, remembering the war, and conveniently forgetting that we started it.
Yannassia watched him thoughtfully, but said nothing. Instead, she turned back to me. “Drina, will you tell us exactly what happened, as much as you remember.”
I told my story again in exhaustive detail, and answered questions until my head was spinning. It was just as well I was still infused with magic and full of energy.
“You are quite sure the whirlwind was magical?” Landra said.
“Lord Ly-haam said exactly the same thing,” Flenn put in, before I could answer. “It blew up instantly, and vanished just as quickly when Most Powerful Drina absorbed the magical energy.”
“Why was Ly not affected by it?” Hethryn said. A good question.
“He was flying much higher,” Flenn said. “He was almost outside the wind’s range, so his eagle was able to escape quite easily. It was aimed at the Most Powerful, clearly.”
“But why?” Hethryn said. “Why would anyone perceive an eagle to be a threat?”
Again, Flenn spoke before I could formulate a reply. “An eagle with a rider, Highness.”
“But unarmed,” Hethryn said at once.
Landra raised a hand to stop the argument. “I wonder if it is possible that it was magic which drew the attention of… someone. Or something. It seems a disproportionate response to an eagle, even a large one bearing a rider.”
“I have no magic,” I said.
“No, but Most Powerful Ly does, and the eagles are not natural birds. This may be some kind of automatic response, similar to the magical defences in the Imperial City.”
We went all round the subject without reaching any conclusion. Rythmarri had said little so far, but now she leaned forward. “Leaving the magical elements aside for a moment, I should like to know what you saw of the barracks before the storm blew up.”
“It’s huge,” I said at once. “Wait – let me get paper. I can draw the shape of it.” I sketched an outline quickly. “There. Each of those blocks is three stories high, and the main Kingswell barracks would fit into just one of them, with room to spare.”
“Gods!” Rythmarri said. “That makes them ten, maybe fifteen times as large as ours, and who knows how much is underground.”
“We have the fortresses, too,” Hethryn said. “And several training camps.”
“Even so,” Rythmarri said. “They mu
st outnumber our total strength many times. If they choose to invade, they could wipe us out.”
“Then we must hope they stay where they are,” Yannassia said crisply.
5: Magic
For more than a ten-sun I waited for Ly’s return, my anxiety increasing with every passing hour.
“He will come,” Arran said, but I couldn’t get rid of the creeping fear that had me in its grasp.
“What if the magic changes him?” I said. How could I bear it if he turned once again into the rage-filled creature I’d found hidden in the cellar on the Blood Clans’ sacred island?
“Stop worrying,” Arran murmured, holding me tight as we lay in bed. “He will be fine. Flenn said he was perfectly normal.”
“But every sun, his magic will be getting stronger. I don’t know… what he’ll be like.”
Arran rolled over to face me, stroking my hair. “Sweetheart, we will find out when he comes home. And then we will deal with it. Go to sleep now.”
I knew he was right. I had the power to take Ly’s magic in an instant, so why was I so restless? In a corner of my mind, I acknowledged my real fear: that he wouldn’t come home at all. For five years, he’d been the meekest, most docile prisoner, and seemed content with that. But now, he had his magic back, he had an eagle to fly – why would he come back to me when he could be free? He would return to his people and be the war leader he was destined to be.
The thought terrified me. I’d got so used to his gentle ways, his shy smile, his excitement when it was his turn to sleep with me. I’d made the mistake of assuming that would last for ever, that nothing would change. But Ly was a captive from the war, he’d been under my control for five years, of course he would take the first opportunity to escape. Then we’d be enemies, and how could I bear that?
But he came.
Slowly, hopping from hill to hill with Sunshine and a flock of her over-protective kin, he came. And I knew exactly where he was. His magic blazed in my mind like a little sun, overpowering my link to the eagles’ minds, so strong that I could close my eyes and turn to face it. The moment he landed on the roof of the Keep, I knew it.
I went to Ly’s rooms in the apartment to wait for him. I’d cancelled all my engagements for the afternoon, sent Arran off to the barracks to train, made my bodyguard stand outside. Then I paced up and down, back and forth. If I’d been a nail-biter, I would have been chewing them to the quick.
My mind was full of evil memories of Ly with magic. The jittery way he’d walked on the balls of his feet. The smiling, always smiling, but not with friendliness or affection. His inhuman rage when his magic grew unchecked. And the sex – when I’d first met Ly, his magic had drawn us inescapably together, forcing us into horrifying couplings that both of us had hated. I could never forget that dreadful feeling that I was falling, out of control, my body impelling me into a fiery maelstrom.
And yet… there’d been something dramatic about all that urgent passion. Magic heightened the senses in an unforgettable way. I could get the same effect by taking Ly’s magic into me, so that I would be the one driving us together. That would be the simplest, safest solution. Take his magic as soon as he came within range, then he would immediately be his normal self, and I could dissipate my extra magical energy by regular sex, without the falling and the lack of control.
But I knew I wasn’t going to do that. I told myself that it was a sensible experiment, testing how he coped with magic in his blood again. It would tell me whether he was ready to go to the Challenge this year. But the reckless part of me wanted to see what happened, to remind myself what it felt like, that strange coupling we’d experienced. The worst part of it was not being able to choose, being forced into it by his blood. But if I chose to do it, if we both chose it, where would be the harm in that?
So I waited, and paced, and watched in my mind the intense ball of magic that moved down from the roof and through the corridors of the Keep and into the apartment.
The door opened and closed, and there he was.
Different. My immediate impression was that something about him had changed. He wasn’t jittery or smiling oddly, he wasn’t restless, but the way he looked at me was different. He was smiling, but not the shy, hesitant smile I’d become used to.
“You look well. You are quite better now?” Then, a frown. “Princess? Why do you not take it? My magic.”
“Do you want me to?” I tried to keep my tone even, but it was difficult. So much magic in him! It called to me. I wanted it so badly, but I needed to know more first.
“I… do not understand, Princess.”
Time for a different approach. “There is a lot of magic in you – more than I expected.”
“Yes. It is stronger than it was, I think.”
“How does it make you feel?”
“Good! Better than I used to feel. Before, I always felt… oh, as if the magic controlled me. That it made me do things, things I did not always want. Not just us – that was because of the way you are, with your need for magic that drew me to you. I feel that still. I could feel it pulling me from a long way away. No, I mean that my magic always felt like a foreign thing, something outside myself. But now…”
He was pacing about the room, hands gesturing for emphasis. I’d never seen him so animated. He kept well away from me, though, staying on the opposite side of the room, with a low table between us. He knew as well as I did the likely consequences if we touched.
He stopped pacing and turned to face me, a grin splitting his face.
“Now?” I said.
“Now I am in command,” he said softly, and the pleasure in his voice sent shivers down my back. But then the smile drained away. “But I do not understand why you do not take my magic, Princess.”
I walked round the table to get nearer to him.
He skittered away in the opposite direction, hands raised in alarm. “No, no, Princess!” His expression shifted abruptly. “Unless…?”
“I thought it would be interesting to see if it is still the same.” I took a few more steps, and this time he didn’t back away. “What do you say? Do you want to try it?” A bit nearer.
“You hated it before,” he said quietly. “And I hated forcing you. Do you really want to do this?”
“No one is forcing anyone.” I stopped moving. “We both have a free choice. I’m curious about it, but if you don’t want to…”
“I am curious too,” he whispered. “I have been thinking about it all the way back. Those times together, when we did not know what would happen, and later, when we did, and I made you – I could not stop myself. It appalled me, what I did to you. But then there was that time you chose to, and that was not so terrible, so perhaps if we choose this…”
He took a step towards me, and then, lips parted, another. I could feel his breath on my face. His hand lifted, reached for me, dropped again. I was the one who made the final move, cupping his face in my hands.
And there it was, the fire, reaching for me, ready to engulf me. But it didn’t. Ly was right – it truly was different. Even I could tell that, although I couldn’t have put into words what, exactly, had changed.
For a long time we stood, almost unmoving, feeling the fire burn but not consumed by it. His eyes were fixed on mine, his breathing rapid but not panicked. With infinite slowness, we came together, closer, closer, until our lips just touched. More fire, hot but not burning, and the sweetness was there, too. We parted, then moved nearer for a longer kiss, so warm, so delicious. Then apart, not so much because we wanted to, but to show that we could. Despite the power of all that magic, we were still ourselves, still in control.
We undressed one garment at a time. His jacket, then a kiss. My headscarves, and another kiss. His shirt, a longer kiss. My belt, tunic, undershirt, all in a rush, so that he could run his hands over my breasts with a smile of delight. Even with his magic pushing us onward, we were not forced against our wills. We were in command of it, not helpless in its power.
; When we stood naked, I gestured towards the bedroom. “Shall we?”
“No. Here.”
That was new, too, a decisive Ly, taking charge. But I had no fault to find with the idea. I laughed as he wrapped his arms tightly round me, crushing me against him. When he pushed into me, I gasped.
“Gods, that’s so… Oh! More of that! Oh gods!”
He didn’t need telling. To be honest, I think the control got away from us rather at that point, because I ended up backed against a wall while he hammered into me with ferocious intensity. And it was sublime.
At the end of it, we were shaking, but more from passion than terror. I was blissfully overflowing with magic from our coupling, ready for more of the same almost at once. We went straight to bed and carried on into a second, longer session. And then, because we had the energy and nowhere else to be, a third one, too. I could happily have stayed there all night, but Ly was getting hungry.
“What hour is it?” he said, one arm behind his head on the pillow. “It must be close to evening board.”
“No idea,” I murmured, nuzzling his neck. “Didn’t notice the bells.” I felt him shaking with gentle laughter.
“I think we should get dressed.”
“Must we?”
He gently pushed me away. “This has been splendid, Drina, but Arran will be wondering what has happened to us.”
“He’ll know. He understands how the magic takes me. But…” I pulled further away to look into his face. “You usually collapse afterwards, when your magic is drained out of you, yet you’ve been going strong all afternoon.”
“Ah, but it has not. Drained out of me, I mean. Some has, because your pull is irresistible, but some is left behind. Can you not tell?”
I tried to focus my mind, but it was too difficult. “No. There’s too much magic in me. But that means that your magic really is different. And now that I think about it, it’s been changing for a while. I’ve found it harder to withdraw it. It’s as if it’s sticky, somehow. It wants to stay with you. Mother’s is like that, too.”
The Second God Page 5