by Anne Bishop
Saetan positioned Jaenelle in front of the table. "I want you to point one finger at the paperweight . . . like this . . . and move it as far across the table as you can."
Jaenelle hesitated, licked her lips, and pointed her finger.
Saetan felt the surge of raw power through his Black Jewel.
The paperweight didn't move.
"Try again, witch-child. In the other direction."
Again there was that surge, but the paperweight didn't move.
Saetan rubbed his chin, confused. This was simple Craft, something she shouldn't have any trouble with whatsoever.
Jaenelle wilted. "I try," she said in a broken voice. "I try and try, but I never get it right."
Saetan hugged her, feeling a bittersweet ache in his heart when her arms wrapped around his neck. "Never mind, witch-child. It takes time to learn Craft."
"Why can't I do it? All my friends can do it."
Reluctant to let her go, Saetan forced himself to hold her at arm's length. "Perhaps we should start with something personal. That's usually easier. Is there anything you have trouble with?"
Jaenelle fluffed her hair and frowned. "I always have trouble finding my shoes."
"Good enough." Saetan reached for his cane. "Put one shoe in front of the desk and then stand over there."
He limped to the far side of the room and stood with his back to Cassandra's portrait, grimly amused at giving his new Queen her first Craft lesson under the watchful but unknowing eyes of his last Queen.
When Jaenelle joined him, he said, "A lot of Craftwork requires translating physical action into mental action. I want you to imagine—by the way, how is your imagination?" Saetan faltered. Why did she look so bruised? He'd only meant to tease a little since he'd already seen that butterfly. "I want you to imagine picking up the shoe and bringing it over here. Reach forward, grasp, and bring it in."
Jaenelle stretched her arm as far as it would go, clenched her hand, and yanked.
Everything happened at once.
The leather chairs by the fire zipped toward him. He countered Craft with Craft and had a moment to feel shocked when nothing happened before one of the chairs knocked him off his feet. He fell into the other one and had just enough time to curl into a ball before the chair behind the blackwood desk slammed into the back of the chair he was in and came down on top of it, caging him. He heard leather-bound books whiz around the room like crazed birds before hitting the floor with a thump. His shoes pattered frantically, trying to escape his feet. And over all of it was Jaenelle wailing, "Stop stop stop!"
Seconds later, there was silence.
Jaenelle peered into the space between the chair arms. "Saetan?" she said in a small, quivery voice. "Saetan, are you all right?"
Using Craft, Saetan sent the top chair back to the blackwood desk. "I'm fine, witch-child." He stuffed his feet into his shoes and gingerly stood up. "That's the most excitement I've had in centuries."
"Really?"
He straightened his black tunic-jacket and smoothed back his hair. "Yes, really." And Guardian or not, a man his age shouldn't have his heart gallop around his rib cage like this.
Saetan looked around the study and stifled a groan. The book that had been on the lectern hung in the air, upside down. The rest of the books formed drifts on the study floor. In fact, the only leather object that hadn't answered that summons was Jaenelle's shoe. "I'm sorry, Saetan."
Saetan clenched his teeth. "It takes time, witch-child." He sank into the chair. So much raw power but still so vulnerable until she learned how to use it. A thought shivered across his mind. "Does anyone else know about the Jewels Lorn gave you?"
"No." Her voice was a midnight whisper. Fear and pain filled her sapphire eyes, and something else, too, that was stronger than those surface feelings. Something that chilled him to the core.
But he was chilled even more by the fear and pain in her eyes.
Even a strong child, a powerful child, would be dependent on the adults around her. If her strength could unnerve him, how would her people, her family, react if they ever discovered what was contained inside that small husk? Would they accept the child who already was the strongest Queen in the history of the Blood, or would they fear the power? And if they feared the power, would they try to cut her off from it by breaking her?
A Virgin Night performed with malevolent skill could strip her of her power while leaving the rest intact. But, since her inner web was so deep in the abyss, she might be able to withdraw far enough to withstand the physical violation—unless the male was able to descend deep enough into the abyss to threaten her even there.
Was there a male strong enough, dark enough, vicious enough?
There was . . . one.
Saetan closed his eyes. He could send for Marjong, let the Executioner do what was needed. No, not yet. Not to that one. Not until there was a reason. "Saetan?"
He reluctantly opened his eyes and watched, at first stupidly and then with a growing sense of shock, as she pushed up her sleeve and offered her wrist to him.
"There's no need for a blood price," he snapped.
She didn't drop her wrist. "It will make you better."
Those ancient eyes seared him, stripped him of his flesh until he shivered, naked before her. He tried to refuse, but the words wouldn't come. He could smell the fresh blood in her, the life force pumping through her veins in counter-rhythm to his own pounding heart.
"Not that way," he said huskily, drawing her to him. "Not with me." With a lover's gentleness, he unbuttoned her dress and nicked the silky skin of her throat with his nail. The blood flowed, hot and sweet. He closed his mouth over the wound.
Her power rose beneath him, a slow, black tidal wave skillfully controlled, a tidal wave that washed over him, cleansed him, healed him even as his mind shuddered to find itself engulfed by a mind so powerful and yet so gentle. He counted her heartbeats. When he reached five, he raised his head. She didn't look shocked or frightened, the usual emotions the living felt when required to give blood directly from the vein.
She brushed a trembling finger against his lips. "If you had more, would it make you completely well?"
Saetan called in a bowl of warm water and washed the blood off her throat with a square of clean linen. He wasn't about to explain to a child what those two mouthfuls of blood were already doing to him. He ignored the question, hoping she wouldn't press for an answer, and concentrated on the Craft needed to heal the wound.
"Would it?" she asked as soon as he vanished the linen and bowl.
Saetan hesitated. He'd given his word he wouldn't lie. "It would be better for the healing to take place a little at a time." That, at least, was true enough. "Another lesson tomorrow?"
Jaenelle quickly looked away.
Saetan tensed. Had she been frightened by what he'd done?
"I . . . I already promised Morghann I'd see her tomorrow and Gabrielle the day after that."
Relief made him giddy. "In three days, then?"
She studied his face. "You don't mind? You're not angry?"
Yes, he minded, but that was a Warlord Prince's instinctive possessiveness talking. Besides, he had a lot to do before he saw her next. "I don't think your friends would care much for your new mentor if he took up all your time, do you?"
She grinned. "Probably not." The grin vanished. The bruised look was back in her eyes. "I have to go."
Yes, he had a great deal to do before he saw her next.
She opened the door and stopped. "Do you believe in unicorns?"
Saetan smiled. "I knew them once, a long time ago."
The smile she gave him before disappearing down the corridor lit the room, lit the darkest corners of his heart.
"Hell's fire! What happened, SaDiablo?"
Saetan waggled Jaenelle's abandoned shoe at Andulvar and smiled dryly. "A Craft lesson."
"What?"
"I met the butterfly maker."
Andulvar stared at the mess. "She did thi
s? Why?"
"It wasn't intentional, just uncontrolled. She isn't cildru dyathe either. She's a living child, a Queen, and she's Witch."
Andulvar's jaw dropped. "Witch? Like Cassandra was Witch?"
Saetan choked back a snarl. "Not like Cassandra but, yes, Witch."
"Hell's fire! Witch." Andulvar shook his head and smiled.
Saetan stared at the shoe. "Andulvar, my friend, I hope you've still got all that brass under your belt that you used to brag about because we're in deep trouble."
"Why?" Andulvar asked suspiciously.
"Because you're going to help me train a seven-year-old Witch who's got the raw power right now to turn us both into dust and yet"—he dropped the shoe onto the chair—"is abysmal at basic Craft."
Mephis knocked briskly and entered the study, tripping on a pile of books. "A demon just told me the strangest thing."
Saetan adjusted the folds of his cape and reached for his cane. "Be brief, Mephis. I'm going to an appointment that's long overdue."
"He said he saw the Hall shift a couple of inches. The whole thing. And a moment later, it shifted back."
Saetan stood very still. "Did anyone else see this?"
"I don't think so, but—"
"Then tell him to hold his tongue if he doesn't want to lose it."
Saetan swept past Mephis, leaving the study that had been his home for the past decade, leaving his worried demon-dead son behind.
CHAPTER TWO
1—Terreille
In the autumn twilight, Saetan studied the Sanctuary, a forgotten place of crumbling stone, alive with small vermin and memories. Yet within this broken place was a Dark Altar, one of the thirteen Gates that linked the Realms of Terreille, Kaeleer, and Hell.
Cassandra's Altar.
Cloaked in a sight shield and a Black psychic shield, Saetan limped through the barren outer rooms, skirting pools of water left by an afternoon storm. A mouse, searching for food among the fallen stones, never sensed his presence as he passed by. The Witch living in this labyrinth of rooms wouldn't sense him either. Even though they both wore the Black Jewels, his strength was just a little darker, just a little deeper than hers.
Saetan paused at a bedroom door. The covers on the bed looked fairly new. So did the heavy curtains pulled across the window. She would need those when she rested during the daylight hours.
At the beginning of the half-life, Guardians' bodies retained most of the abilities of the living. They ate food like the living, drank blood like the demon-dead, and could walk in the daylight, though they preferred the twilight and the night. As centuries passed, the need for sustenance diminished until only yarbarah, the blood wine, was required. Preference for darkness became necessity as daylight produced strength-draining, physical pain.
He found her in the kitchen, humming off-key as she took a wineglass out of the cupboard. Her shapeless, mud-colored gown was streaked with dirt. Her long braided hair, faded now to a dusty red, was veiled with cobwebs. When she turned toward the door, still unaware of his presence, the firelight smoothed most of the lines from her face, lines he knew were there because they, were in the portrait that hung in his private study, the portrait he knew so well. She had aged since the death that wasn't a death.
But so had he.
He dropped the sight shield and psychic shield.
The wineglass shattered on the floor.
"Practicing hearth-Craft, Cassandra?" he asked mildly, struggling to tamp down an overwhelming sense of betrayal.
She backed away from him. "I should have realized she'd tell you."
"Yes, you should have. You also should have known I'd come." He tossed his cape over a wooden chair, grimly amused at the way her emerald eyes widened when she noticed how heavily he leaned on the cane. "I'm old, Lady. Quite harmless."
"You were never harmless," she said tartly.
"True, but you never minded that when you had a use for me." He looked away when she didn't answer. "Did you hate me so much?"
Cassandra reached toward him. "I never hated you, Saetan. I—"
— was afraid of you.
The words hung between them, unspoken.
Cassandra vanished the broken wineglass. "Would you like some wine? There's no yarbarah, but I've got some decent red."
Saetan settled into a chair beside the pine table. "Why aren't you drinking yarbarah?"
Cassandra brought a bottle and two wineglasses to the table. "It's hard to come by here."
"I'll send some to you."
They drank the first glass of wine in silence.
"Why?" he finally asked.
Cassandra toyed with her wineglass. "Black-Jeweled Queens are few and far between. There was no one to help me when I became Witch, no one to talk to, no one to help me prepare for the drastic changes in my life after I made the Offering." She laughed without humor. "I had no idea what being Witch would mean. I didn't want the next one to go through the same thing."
"You could have told me you intended to become a Guardian instead of faking the final death."
"And have you stay around as the loyal, faithful Consort to a Queen who no longer needed one?"
Saetan refilled the glasses. "I could have been a friend. Or you could have dismissed me from your court if that's what you wanted."
"Dismiss you? You? You were . . . are . . . Saetan, the Prince of the Darkness, High Lord of Hell. No one dismisses you. Not even Witch."
Saetan stared at her. "Damn you," he said bitterly.
Cassandra wearily brushed a stray hair from her face. "It's done, Saetan. It was lifetimes ago. There's the child to think about now."
Saetan watched the fire burning in the hearth. She was entitled to her own life, and certainly wasn't responsible for his, but she didn't understand—or didn't want to understand—what that friendship might have meant to him. Even if he'd never seen her again, knowing she still existed would have eased some of the emptiness. Would he have married Hekatah if he hadn't been so desperately lonely?
Cassandra laced her fingers around her glass. "You've seen her?"
Saetan thought of his study and snorted. "Yes, I've seen her."
"I'm sure of it."
"She's going to be Witch. I'm sure of it."
"Going to be?" Saetan's golden eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 'going to be'? Are we talking about the same child? Jaenelle?"
"Of course we're talking about Jaenelle," she snapped.
"She isn't 'going to be' Witch, Cassandra. She already is Witch."
Cassandra shook her head vigorously. "Not possible. Witch always wear the Black Jewels."
"So does the daughter of my soul," Saetan replied too quietly.
It took her a moment to understand him. When she did she lifted the wineglass with shaking hands and drained it "H-how do you . . ."
"She showed me the Jewels she was gifted with. A full uncut set of the 'lighter' Jewels—and that was the first time I'd ever heard anyone refer to the Ebon-gray as a lighter Jewel—and thirteen uncut Blacks."
Cassandra's face turned gray. Saetan gently chafed her ice-cold hands, concerned by the shock in her eyes. She was the one who'd first seen the child in her tangled web. She was the one who'd told him about it. Had she only seen Witch but not understood what was coming?
Saetan put a warming spell on his cape and wrapped it around her, then warmed another glass of wine over a little tongue of witchfire. When her teeth stopped chattering, he returned to his own chair.
Her emerald eyes asked the question she couldn't put into words.
"Lorn," he said quietly. "She got the Jewels from Lorn."
Cassandra shuddered. "Mother Night." She shook her head. "It's not supposed to be like this, Saetan. How will we control her?"
His hand jerked as he refilled his glass. Wine splashed on the table. "We don't control her. We don't even try."
Cassandra smacked her palm on the table. "She's a child! Too young to understand that much power and not emotionally ready to accept
the responsibilities that come with it. At her age, she's too open to influence."
He almost asked her whose influence she feared, but Hekatah's face popped into his mind. Pretty, charming, scheming, vicious Hekatah, who had married him because she'd thought he would make her the High Priestess of Terreille at least or, possibly, the dominant female influence in all three Realms. When he'd refused to bend to her wishes, she'd tried on her own and had caused the war between Terreille and Kaeleer, a war that had left Terreille devastated for centuries and had been the reason why many of Kaeleer's races had closed their lands to outsiders and were never seen or heard from again.
If Hekatah got her claws into Jaenelle and molded the girl into her own greedy, ambitious image . . .
"You have to control her, Saetan," Cassandra said, watching him.
Saetan shook his head. "Even if I were willing, I don't think I could. There's a soft fog around her, a sweet, cold, black mist. I'm not sure, even young as she is, that I'd like to find out what lies beneath it without her invitation." Annoyed by the way Cassandra kept glaring at him, Saetan looked around the kitchen and noticed a primitive drawing tacked on the wall. "Where did you get that?"
"What? Oh, Jaenelle dropped it off a few days ago and asked me to keep it. Seems she was playing at a friend's house and didn't want to take the picture home." Cassandra tucked stray hairs back into her braid. "Saetan, you said there's a soft fog around her. There's a mist around Beldon Mor, too."
Saetan frowned at her. What did he care about some city's weather? That picture held an answer if he could just figure it out.
"A psychic mist," Cassandra said, rapping her knuckles on the table, "that keeps demons and Guardians out."
Saetan snapped to attention. "Where's Beldon Mor?"
"On Chaillot. That's an island just west of here. You can see it from the hill behind the Sanctuary. Beldon Mor is the capital. I think Jaenelle lives there. I tried to find a way into—"
Now she had his full attention. "Are you mad?" He combed his fingers through his thick black hair. "If she went to that much effort to retain her privacy, why are you trying to invade it?"