The queen hissed. “VIPER is only as powerful as those who support it. When Brina of Treoir falls, so go the Beladors, their power and the backbone of VIPER. Then we’ll see who rules this world. None of this would be my problem if you’d brought me the Ngak Stone.”
Another risky project Kizira had warned against. “The Ngak Stone is known to direct its own destiny and to be highly unpredictable. If you had taken possession, the stone could have turned on you and perhaps … killed you.”
The only reason Kizira actually regretted losing the stone.
Kizira refused to pay attention to what the queen was doing to her manservant. She turned her gaze to the gleaming yellow eyes of the dragon’s head that hovered above Flaevynn as if daring anything to touch her. “If there is nothing else, Your Highness, I shall leave you alone.”
“You’re not dismissed yet,” Flaevynn spat at her. “How do you plan to capture the Alterants? I gave you permission to release the fog that would force them to change into beast forms. What more do you need?”
Permission? She’d ordered Kizira to release the fog, an ancient myst with sentient quality that turned anything it touched hostile. But contradicting the queen might end with worse than having her tongue tied and staked.
Kizira said, “The fog is only making the Rías shift.” Rías changed into beast forms similar to the way Alterants shifted, but Rías lacked the Belador blood that carried powerful abilities. Using the fog now was a mistake. One of the few specifics Cathbad had shared about the curse was warning them to wait until five specific Alterants were located before releasing a fog to intentionally force Rías to start shifting in advance of attacking Treoir.
Kizira reminded Flaevynn, “According to Cathbad’s curse, we should wait—”
“Shut up!” The room shook and the water at the base of the waterfall boiled with Flaevynn’s rage.
An invisible force struck Kizira behind her knees, buckling her legs. She dropped to the floor, clamping her teeth hard to keep from cursing Flaevynn over the pain scorching her thighs.
One day …
Holding on to her temper with a tight grip, Kizira swallowed a snarl and concentrated on humility. Sweat sheened over her skin in seconds. This was more like the Flaevynn she knew and the reaction she’d expected, which was why Kizira had worn pants and a shirt instead of a bulky robe.
She squared her shoulders and straightened up.
The queen pointed a finger at Kizira. Her black nail lengthened two inches as she spoke. “I told you we do not have to wait any longer. The time has come to end this stupid curse. All you need to concern yourself with is locating the five Belador Alterants.”
Kizira lowered her head, more to keep from exposing how she gritted her teeth. “I understand, Your Highness. I did not mean to challenge you.”
Yet.
“Have you conjured the fog in all the cities we discussed?”
Did she really think I’d come back here without doing that? Raising her chin, Kizira said, “Yes.”
“Are you sure you made no mistake in execution?”
“I followed your instructions exactly. I generated hostility fogs scented with sulfur to mask the Noirre origin. The first cities infiltrated were along the coast in areas where that type of atmospheric condition already existed to hinder VIPER in figuring out too soon that the fog is behind the Rías shifting.”
“VIPER has no way to dissipate the myst without Medb help.”
That’s what we think, but there is always the unexpected in our world. And the ancient spell could only be used once, but that mattered not to the queen either. “Of course not, Your Highness, but it benefits us to impede their progress in defending against our attack any time we can.”
“Has the fog reached Atlanta, where the female Alterant is?
Kizira nodded, enjoying a brief fantasy of Flaevynn being drawn and quartered. “It will soon. I conjured the myst in areas north of the city this morning. This will allow the haze to finger into Atlanta rather than originate there, which would alert VIPER too soon. I’m concerned about turning so many Rías that it will draw the attention of the entire North American VIPER resources.”
Rías were the name given to descendents of a beast-line traced back over a thousand years to the famous warrior Cú Chulainn, who’d had superhuman abilities, as demonstrated by his ríastrad, a berserker-like battle mode during which he shifted into an unidentifiable monster that killed everything in his path.
Flaevynn scoffed as though VIPER was no more than an inconvenience. “The Rías are not a concern as long as the Alterants are exposed when the sentient myst forces them to shift into their beast form.”
Kizira warned, “VIPER and the Beladors believe all human forms that shift into beasts are Alterants. If Rías continue to shift too soon, you will not have an army of them when you’re ready to breach Treoir Castle.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why not?”
“Because VIPER is killing Rías as soon as they are discovered and VIPER is not the only force capable of destroying them. A group of humans with high-powered custom weapons is blowing up the beasts, too. They may kill the Alterants we seek before we locate them.”
Shaking her head, Flaevynn chuckled. “One would think the lack of glowing green eyes would be a clue the Rías are not Alterants.” She sighed. “Beladors are not the brightest beacons in the night.”
Only a masochist would correct the queen, but Kizira would argue the Beladors were their most dangerous enemy and not one to underestimate. Flaevynn hadn’t left Tŵr Medb since Kizira had been handed the role of enforcer at eighteen, or she’d realize that.
Flaevynn almost frowned, but wrinkling that perfect skin was out of the question. She murmured, “The fog should cloak the Rías.”
Kizira clarified, “The fog is cloaking the beasts until they walk out of it.”
“Don’t bring me problems,” Flaevynn cautioned. “I want those Belador Alterants. Now. Create a wider band of the myst, do something, but deliver them to me or I will find someone else who can.”
Like who? Kizira clamped her mouth tight to keep from shouting that. Flaevynn had no one with Kizira’s level of power to send out to do her bidding. At least no one Kizira had ever met. Flaevynn’s panic over facing impending death had turned her crazier than usual. If Flaevynn did have someone else to fight her battles, she would order Kizira to remain in Tŵr Medb.
Kizira couldn’t risk that, not when the safety of another life depended upon her ability to come and go at will.
Stop! Do not think about … Kizira flushed her mind, returning to her mental calm. She was Flaevynn’s most trusted enforcer, who worshipped her queen.
Schooling her face to passive, Kizira said, “I will deliver the five Alterants.”
“Then do it. You have forty-eight hours to hand me two Alterants. I will not suffer failure again. There is plenty of room in the dungeon with that druid.”
There was Kizira’s opening to lobby for a meeting with Cathbad. “I understand, Your Highness. Speaking of Cathbad, might you allow me to speak with him to see if he could enlighten me on how to locate the Alterants more quickly?”
Flaevynn’s face twisted with hatred. “You think he will tell you what he refuses to share with me? His own wife!”
Hard to understand why a man locked in a dungeon by his wife while she had sex with every penis in this realm would feel the least bit vengeful, huh?
Kizira forced devout sincerity into her reply and tried to sound as though she feared Cathbad. “I’m willing to risk meeting with him if it will benefit you, Your Highness.”
That soothed Flaevynn, who sat back and smiled over at the young stud next to her. Her hand drifted down along his abdomen to …
Kizira could not stomach another minute of this. She gritted out, “The sooner I see Cathbad—”
Flaevynn yelled, “Go!”
Before Kizira could form a thought the room vanished from around her. Hallelujah. She spent a moment suspended between time and
reality before her feet settled on a stone floor. She’d have preferred to teleport herself, but she couldn’t reach the dungeon without going through Flaevynn. The queen had imprisoned Cathbad by convincing him she’d sent Kizira to the dungeon. When he went to the dungeon to see Kizira the queen locked him inside a warding she held the power over.
When the room came fully into focus, Kizira faced Cathbad the Druid … the fifth to carry that name.
Appearing closer to a human age of midthirties than he did to six hundred years old plus, he sat in calm repose in a padded desk chair. Far from an archaic dungeon cell, his accommodations had plenty of candles for light but no windows to see the outside.
What would he have seen in this realm anyhow except the greenish-gray myst that enveloped Tŵr Medb, the Medb Tower?
Bookshelves lined one wall of his cell, displaying precious tomes that had been passed down from the original Cathbad the Druid. An armoire held two more robes identical to the black one he wore. She knew this because she’d been the one to bring him those two robes the one time she’d been allowed to visit him when he’d first been imprisoned.
He swiveled sideways to face her and scratched his neatly trimmed black beard, considering her with hawklike eyes. Wavy black hair touched his shoulders. “’Tis good to see ya, child.”
“Hello, Da.”
“I’m surprised Flaevynn allowed you to visit. Something change between you two?”
“No. She still hates me as much as the day she bore me.”
SEVEN
Kizira faced her usual dilemma with Cathbad— should she hug him or keep as much distance as possible between them? Unlike with Flaevynn, she felt a bond to her da and danced along a fine line between care and respect, careful not to step on the wrong side of all that lethal power.
Just as a baby shark should respect the jaws of a parent that might consider the newborn food under dire circumstances.
She smiled at him, ignoring his teeth for now. “I had to convince Flaevynn that I would risk my life to face you to help her. You are still not in her good graces.”
“And will no’ likely ever be again,” he said in a brogue as old as the Irish brews he loved. His handsome blueish-purple eyes twinkled with a conspiratorial smile when he shrugged. “She hates me more than you for impregnating her to fulfill the curse, but she should be thanking us both. Failing to have a child would have prevented her from gaining Treoir Castle.”
More riddles about that damned curse. “Why?”
“Ah, child, you know I will no’ be sharing more than necessary about the curse, no’ till it’s time. But I will tell you that had she no’ birthed you, she would ha’ no chance at gaining Treoir atall.”
“But Flaevynn thinks birthing me put the first nail in her coffin. That she would be immortal if not for me.”
“She’s a hardheaded woman who must accept that her fate is no different than that of any other female born to marry a Cathbad. Had she no’ married me as directed in the curse, she would no’ ha’ lived this long, but a geasa set into place along with the curse protects her … for just a bit longer.”
Kizira smiled, asking him, “You’re sure Flaevynn will live for only six hundred and sixty-six years?”
“Yes. This is her last year as Flaevynn the Medb queen, whether she wishes it to be or no’.”
Kizira had two words for the day Flaevynn spewed her last bit of venom: Party time.
Once that happened, Kizira would be free to visit … she skittered sideways mentally, to thoughts of the curse, before a face and name could take shape in her mind. “Flaevynn thinks that if she escalates the plan you laid out to us for this year she can gain Treoir before her time runs out.”
Cathbad scoffed under his breath.
Moving over to where he sat, Kizira pushed herself up onto the desk and looked down at her da, whose attractive profile could rival that of human men who modeled designer clothes. He was the closest she’d ever had to a real parent, but the druid would use her, too, if it benefited his cause. Life as a Medb priestess came with few moments of free choice. But he embodied her best hope for one day having control over her future, a normal life away from all this.
Normal? What would that be like?
A life such as the humans enjoyed with loved ones …
And thinking about that risked opening the gates to her thoughts. She slapped up mental walls and got back to her task with the one person who might be able to help her.
Right now she was Cathbad’s only hope for escaping this dungeon, and, like him, she would use that to her benefit if need be. Kizira gave her da a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry Flaevynn locked you in here when I failed to deliver the female Alterant the first time.”
“I told you before, ’tis no fault of yours.” He watched her carefully. “She blames me for sending her son with you. I know you did your best to protect him.”
She hoped it wasn’t her fault that her half brother had died when she and her warlocks had trapped those three Beladors in Utah two years ago, but she didn’t miss the sexual deviant who had been her mother’s child by another man.
When she said nothing one way or the other that might trip her up, Cathbad said, “Flaevynn believes I will tell her all the curse if she leaves me here, but she plays her hand poorly in this game. Speaking of bein’ here, much as I’m glad to see ya, I’m thinkin’ ya got troubles.”
“Flaevynn is upping the time frame for finding the five Alterants. She’s running me crazy with hunting them and has forced me to release the hostility myst.”
Cathbad covered his eyes with one hand and leaned back. “I ha’ warned her repeatedly that if she alters the curse in any significant way it can change the outcome. She guesses at the rest of the curse rather than free me and agree to do as I direct her. She risks ruining her chance— and mine—to gain Treoir Island.”
“If you’d tell me the entire prophecy wrapped around the curse I could help you. Help us.”
He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “’Tis my blunder in revealing too much too soon that caused this problem. I was sent to Flaevynn when hair had just begun to grow on my chin. I thought myself quite the man but was no’ prepared for one as powerful, or sexual, as Flaevynn.”
“Please, no details.” Kizira would need to acid wash her mind if he said more.
He chuckled. “I am only sayin’ we would no’ be havin’ this trouble if she had no’ searched my mind when … er, my guard was down and found out her true birth date. She should be thinkin’ she has a few more years to live and no’ be facin’ her last year.”
“That’s why she’s always been obsessed with the Beladors, but even more so now.”
“In part,” he murmured cryptically. “Trouble with the Beladors goes back to Queen Medb’s time. Like every other queen descendant, Flaevynn is born with a deep hate and the duty to regain the island that was once Medb property.”
“Really? Treoir belonged to the Medb at one time?” Kizira knew more than most about Medb history, but the Cathbads held tighter to information than a predator did to captured prey. When he nodded in answer, she asked, “Did the Medb live there first?”
“No’ exactly, but the Medb have no other place to live safely outside this tower until we take control of that island.”
She could see how wars would be fought over a treasure such as Treoir, which was reputed to be one of the most magnificent places in all of the hidden realms. This would explain thousands of years of bad blood between the Beladors, who sought to protect Treoir, and the Medb, who were just as determined to possess the powerful island. “How did my ancestors lose it?”
“’Tis a twisted tale I spend my days unwindin’ to understand and ha’ no’ yet woven the threads into a full tapestry. I believe there is somethin’ more powerful at stake than merely gainin’ that island.”
“And Flaevynn doesn’t know what that might be?”
He sighed. “No. She cares nothin’ for history, only for today
and her immortality. I traded her another part of the curse for my Cathbad library. I ha’ never studied as much as while down here. I am piecin’ together what happened in the past in hopes of understanding the truth of what will happen in the future.”
“Why didn’t your ancestors tell you everything you needed to know when they passed down the curse?”
When he smiled, the flat planes of his face softened with human warmth that disarmed those foolish enough to be sucked in. “We Cathbads are no more trustworthy than the Medb queens. I, too, wish to see Treoir taken in my lifetime, but I will no’ make Flaevynn’s mistakes. If she would heed me, we would take Treoir Isle, the Belador power, and then kill them all once they are vulnerable.”
Kizira clutched the edges of the desk but masked the stab of pain at the possibility of killing one particular Belador. “But Flaevynn fears you’ll outmaneuver her and steal all the power, then kill her.”
“True.”
“How do we get around her to free you and save this realm before she destroys all of us?”
“I do no’ ha’ that answer … yet. I keep ponderin’ on why a powerful druid would place a curse to unfold over so many years. I feel close to findin’ out.”
“What’s your guess?”
He propped an elbow on his desk and supported his head with his fingers. “I believe every generation of Cath-bad druids and Medb queens ha’ become more powerful than the one before based upon journals of former Cathbads, and that may be at the center of the mystery. But ‘tis a mystery that needs more time than you ha’ today. You still ha’ yet to tell me why you’re here besides to brighten an old man’s day.”
Kizira’s lips curved at the “old man” comment. “The hostility fog is forcing Rías to shift into their beast forms in the human world. VIPER and some paramilitary bunch are killing the beasts when they shift. I’m concerned there may not be enough Rías for an army of them when the time comes.”
“Oh, there will be more than enough,” Cathbad said with so little concern that Kizira’s skin chilled.
She had no intention of living out her life here or on an island. What if there were so many Rías turned that eventually not even the Medb would be safe in the human world?
Alterant: Belador Code Series: Book Two Page 7