As the sun rose, Sian spoke words she did not entirely understand. She caught a few familiar words, but she was not proficient in the language of the wizards. He spoke, and she felt the words as if they had a life of their own. She saw the energies his spell created, and they were beautiful... unlike anything she had ever seen before. Blue and pink and lavender, the energies swirled around them, separating them from the rest of the world and making them both stronger. Then the energies were not only around them, they were inside. Inside Sian and inside her, linking them together.
What they shared was as intimate as the moment he had entered her body, as precious and powerful as the release they had enjoyed. She closed her eyes and felt Sian join with her in an entirely new and different way. They shared one space, one heart, one soul.
He held out one hand and snapped another word, and the dagger he had left on her dresser flew across the room. The handle smacked neatly into his palm. With precision, he cut the cord that bound them together. Ariana wanted to stop him, because she was immediately and unexpectedly bereft at losing the connection.
When the cord had been cut, Sian tossed the dagger to the bed and began to gather the ends together. He wrapped the cord loosely around her neck three times, and tied the ends in a secure knot. When that was done, he directed her to do the same to the cord which was draped around his neck. They stood there in a shaft of warmth from the rising sun, naked but for the bits of leather cord around their throats.
Ariana touched the three strands of cord at her throat. “I don’t feel you the way I did, when you said the words.”
“No, but that doesn’t mean I’m not there.”
With this connection, perhaps she could become more proficient at the magic which had once required the touch of his hand and which was now sporadic at best.
“This doesn’t mean I don’t need you,” she said briskly.
“You don’t need me, Ariana. You never did.”
He sounded and looked serious, but she knew without doubt that he was wrong. She needed Sian, and while she took comfort in the bit of cord that was wrapped around her throat, it was a poor substitute for the man she had come to love.
Chapter Nine
“When will my legion be ready?” Ciro asked, his voice suitably cool.
The boy was beginning to make Fynnian nervous. He’d taken to dining alone, and just yesterday he had helped himself to one of Fynnian’s own servants, which was quite annoying. There was a new, unreadable gleam in the prince’s pale eyes. He was hungry in an entirely new way. “Soon.”
Ciro paced. Had he grown again? Perhaps a bit wider, perhaps a bit taller. The prince had been a rather small fellow when the Isen Demon had first entered him and taken his soul, and an immediate spurt of growth had followed. Was he growing again?
“How soon?”
“The task I have set for myself is not an easy one, Prince Ciro.”
Ciro turned his head slowly, and cold, pale blue eyes burrowed into Fynnian until he could feel the burn of that glare. “If the task is too arduous for you, perhaps I should place a more powerful wizard at my side.”
“There is none more powerful than I,” Fynnian said arrogantly.
“That is not what I hear.” There was an unexpected confidence in Ciro’s voice, an unexpected assurance.
“What do you hear?” And from whom? The boy was purposely isolated. A prisoner. Fynnian’s prisoner.
“I hear many things now,” Ciro said. “Day and night, I hear constant whispers and screams. I hear promises. Most important, I hear truth, through the demon who serves me.”
Ciro apparently believed that the demon served him, rather than the other way around. He’d find out soon enough who was in charge. It was disturbing that the demon had been communicating directly with its vessel, though Fynnian realized he should have known that day was coming. He did not like being left out of those conversations. After all, he had discovered the demon, and he had chosen Ciro as its host. He should be privy to everything.
“What truth did you hear?”
“There is a wizard more powerful than you, and he’ll soon be traveling this way. He is not dark, as you are. As we know, that can be rectified.”
Fynnian thought the claim to be a lie, but to play along he asked, “Does this wizard have a name?”
“Chamblyn,” Ciro answered easily. “His name is Chamblyn, I am told. Do you think he might ready my legion in a more timely manner than you have done? Do you think he might provide more suitable and regular feedings than you have done?”
“I do my best, my prince.”
Ciro turned away and looked out the window. This late at night, with no moon, there was little to see beyond the glass. “Your best is no longer enough. I have been forced to assemble my own soldiers.”
“How is that possible?” Fynnian asked. Ciro had not left this house or communicated with anyone other than Fynnian himself in months. No, that was not entirely true. Apparently he was communicating quite well with the Isen Demon. How strong had the demon grown?
“How such is possible is not your worry,” Ciro said coldly. “They will come, and they will serve me, but they cannot accomplish all that is required alone. I need more soldiers, I need a legion which will serve me, and the assembling of that legion is your mission. If you do not have my army prepared to march by the next full moon, I will take your soul and drink your blood and toss what is left of you down the mountainside.”
Fynnian felt a flush of fear. There were a mere fifteen days until the next full moon! “I will not give you permission to take my soul.”
Ciro’s head turned slowly, and the boy cast a thoroughly evil smile Fynnian’s way.
The monster standing in his study no longer needed permission, not for the taking of a soul as tainted as the one which Fynnian possessed.
“If you kill me, what of Rayne?” Fynnian asked desperately. “She will never forgive you. She will never willingly be yours if you destroy the father she loves.”
“That is why you have until the next full moon to deliver my legion, old man. Do not think my desire for your daughter will buy you more time than that. I can take her if it appears there is no other way. I can bind your beautiful daughter to me in a thousand ways, none of them pleasant for her, I imagine.”
Ciro had not yet gained the strength to take a pure soul like the one Rayne possessed, but when he did, when he grew that powerful, there would be no stopping him.
“It takes time to build an army such as the one I have planned for you.”
“You have had time, old man.”
Fynnian’s fists tightened. When had he lost control? Even a few days ago he’d believed himself to be in complete control. Now Ciro was in command.
No, it was the Isen Demon which had infected Ciro that had control of the situation. The same demon which had infected this land, which had spread its darkness into gray corners of the earth and taken control of those who already danced on the edge of evil.
If the Isen Demon had grown so strong, then those dark corners of the earth were already active... perhaps more active than anyone yet realized.
***
A sleeping man was overtaken by a dark mist which rose from the floor beneath his bed. Deep within her own sleep, Keelia shuddered. She knew this was a dream, and yet like so many dreams which had come before, it was more. It was prophesy, enlightenment, and truth. A horrible, ugly truth.
The man awoke and sat up, turning his attention to the woman at his side. His wife of many years slept peacefully, blissful and unaware. The sleepy man ran a hand through hair almost as red as Keelia’s. His hair was duller, and streaked with gray, and wiry in many places. But it was also very red.
The red-haired man’s marriage had not been a particularly happy one, but neither had it been disastrous. He and his wife had made five healthy children, all of them grown now and living on their own. Whatever love they’d known had died a long time ago, but they did not always hate one another. Not every
day. There were some good days when they laughed together.
There were more bad days. The husband was not faithful, and had not been for a very long time. He was sometimes fond of inflicting pain on his partners. He took more joy in their screams of terror than he did in their screams of pleasure, but that was a dark, secret part of himself. It was hidden from all, most especially from this woman.
He looked at his wife for a long while, the hate within him growing stronger with every breath he took. Each breath fed the hate, each exhalation of that breath expelled the lingering affection and the civility which had kept him in check for so many years. After a while the husband left the bed and headed to the kitchen. There he grabbed a piece of bread which was left over from supper, and he nibbled on it calmly and slowly, his mind swirling. When the bread was done, the crumbs brushed almost daintily from his nightshirt and his gray-streaked red beard, he grabbed his wife’s best kitchen knife and hefted it in his hand. The knife had a sharp, wide blade, and a well-used wooden handle the color of a butternut.
Keelia knew what was going to happen. Panic welled up in her heart and she attempted to shout a warning, but she was a silent observer, unable to touch the husband or warn the wife. All she could do was watch.
The husband returned to his bed, knife in hand. It would be so simple to plunge the blade into his wife’s heart and have done with it, but that would not satisfy him. He wanted to see the woman he had shared his life with suffer. He wanted to watch her die.
The man with the knife straddled his wife’s sleeping body. She woke suddenly, at first angry with her husband and then, when she saw the knife, afraid. With fear and indignation, she ordered him to get off her, but he did not move. The tip of the knife touched her nose, and then her throat. The man grinned... and that was when Keelia realized that there was very little of the husband remaining in the man with the knife. A fiend had moved in and taken over. A fiend held that knife above the frightened woman.
He began to make small cuts, on her face and on her throat. With each cut, the man’s physical appearance changed. His arms grew longer, his hands larger. Knots rose up on his face and his neck, and his mouth—his evil grin—grew impossibly wide. When the wife tried to scream, the changing man clamped one hand over her mouth and moved the knife to her breasts. Again he changed, until his distorted face was no longer recognizable as that of the man she had once loved. The transformation was not complete. Killing her was going to take all night...
Keelia came awake and sat up briskly. She was in her own bedroom, alone and safe.
As Queen of the Anwyn, Keelia was given all that she desired, and more. She lacked for nothing, but for one request which went unanswered.
She wanted these dreadful dreams to stop.
She’d been suffering with these dreams, as well as continuing visions of darkness, for months now. Her mother advised that if she’d marry and give in to her natural Anwyn urges, the dreams would abate. She believed the visions were tied to Keelia’s female urges—the strong urges of an Anwyn Queen which were meant to ensure the survival of their species. Queen Mother Juliet believed the visions her daughter had been suffering of late to be metaphorical, rather than factual.
A few misinterpretations in the past year or so, and suddenly every vision was called into question, at least by her family. Keelia knew that if her mother had been having the same sort of visions, there would be no doubt that something was wrong, but Juliet’s dreams had been of the peaceful sort.
Keelia’s visions were not always easy to interpret. She knew the man she had dreamed about tonight had not actually transformed into a monster as he’d murdered his wife, not on the outside at least. The physical changes she’d seen in her dream represented the darkening of his soul, not an actual transformation which would make him easy to note in a crowd.
If her mother were here now, Keelia would insist again that some darkness was rising, that the dreams of shadows were real, even if they had received no word of such horrors, even though Juliet herself had not suffered the same unpleasant visions. The darkness that made these actions possible also kept the news from those who would rise up against it—perhaps even blocked Juliet’s powers, as well as the powers of those like the former queen.
Keelia was different. Her mother had been telling her all her life that she was different. In this case, that was true. Whatever force protected those with psychic gifts from these visions had not protected her.
Somewhere in this world tonight, a husband was cutting up his wife and enjoying every moment of it, as he transformed from an ordinary man to an unimaginable fiend, and Keelia believed that if her mother were here, she might be able to convince her it was real this time.
But her mother was not here. Keelia’s parents had taken to the mountains. They took frequent long trips so they could be alone, so they could run in their wolf form unfettered by their responsibilities. They would not make that transformation until the next full moon, which was fifteen days away, but they seemed to enjoy these journeys which took them to places no other human, and very few Anwyn, had ever seen. These trips came more often now that all their children were of an age where they no longer needed parental supervision. Their youngest child, their only other daughter, had turned fifteen a few months earlier. Giulia had her own suite of rooms in the palace, and basked in the attentions lavished on the queen’s sister.
Juliet insisted that she and her husband, Ryn, needed these trips now, since as soon as Keelia produced grandchildren, the regal grandmother would be required more often here in the Palace of the Anwyn Queen.
There would be no grandchildren unless Keelia gave in to the urges of an Anwyn Queen and took a lover or a husband.
It was her duty to reproduce, to make princes and princesses to fill this palace. Her mother reminded her often of her responsibilities, as did the priestesses. Keelia was adamant that she did not want a lover simply for the sake of servicing her body. She did not require a man to still the longing. She wanted her mate, the one who was meant to be her own, and he had not yet come.
Her heat grew stronger with each onset, as if protesting her denial of her Anwyn urges, but there were ways to still the longing without taking a man inside her body to create a child. Many ways.
Keelia’s powers were legendary, and unsurpassed. Her shifting to wolf form was not guided by the cycles of the moon, as other Anwyn peoples were. She could change at will, and could even shift only a part of her body if she so desired. She would never have need of a weapon when her claws were only a heartbeat away. These powers did not help her with what she craved most. Why could she see so much of the world, and yet she could not see her mate? Was she destined to live her life as a virgin queen, possessing powers beyond those of any other queen, and yet lacking what she most desired?
She dismissed the ancient legend that said the red-haired Queen of the Anwyn would take a Caradon lover and in doing so bring peace to her people. First of all, it was ridiculous to imagine that she would bed a lowly Caradon. The cat-people were not civilized, as the Anwyn were. They did not have a queen or a king. They were solitary beasts, whether in the form of man or cat, living from one day to the next with no thought but of their next meal, their next kill, their next comfort. Second, her people were already at peace. Yes, there was the occasional Caradon scare, when two or more of them who had a functioning brain got together and thought to attack, but the attacks were rare and never successful, so how would sleeping with one of the creatures bring peace if there was already peace?
Something unwanted whispered in her ear. If the darkness she dreamt of came to her mountain, would there still be peace?
Keelia left the bed, knowing there would be no more sleep on this night. Standing at the window looking down on The City, she wondered where the people she had dreamt of were at this moment. Did they live in one of the villages at the foot of the mountain she commanded, or were they far, far away?
And then, with a clarity that came to her often whether
she wanted it or not, she knew that the violence of which she’d dreamed was taking place in more than one village, with more than one husband and wife. Child and parent. Slave and master. Woman and lover. Tonight there was violence and death and a wicked transformation for those who had danced on the edge of evil and now passed beyond that edge. The darkness she did not yet understand was growing stronger, and for all her powers, for all her knowledge, she did not know how it could be stopped.
The newly formed monsters would gravitate to one another, and when they were legion, they would be a plague upon all those who were in their path.
After a few moments, she managed a gentle breath of relief. Dark visions were often followed by something warmer. Something soothing. If not for the more pleasant visions, she might not have survived these twenty-five years, so she always embraced them. She opened her heart and took them in.
Someone she loved was coming her way soon. Someone who loved her would soon be here, in this isolated palace. Keelia placed one hand over her heart. Ariana.
***
Time, which had once moved too slowly, raced past. With every breath that Ariana took, with every word she spoke, time rushed by. She felt the coming of her calling as acutely as she felt the pain of her failures, and the warmth of Sian’s touch.
She did not regret taking him as a lover, not when he offered her such pleasure—as well as a welcomed respite from the constant knowledge that she’d soon be leaving the palace with her own army, headed for a war she did not yet understand.
As she had learned to tap into her emotions as well as the power of her ancestors and family, her magical skills improved each day. The ceremony Sian had performed at dawn, linking them in some magical way with the three strands of leather cord which remained at her throat always, also fed her gifts. She would never be as talented as Sian, who’d had a lifetime to hone his skills, and her aim went askew now and then. But she was better able to manipulate objects than she had been on that day when she’d almost impaled the portrait of a long-ago imperial daughter, and her own healing power was as sharp as it had ever been. And still—Arik did not improve.
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