“Yes,” she breathed, saying it as if I’d spoken a great truth that few understood. “I just knew we’d be great friends, both with our affection for our pets. But you don’t have to worry for a moment. I have the gryphon confined. It can neither shapeshift nor fly away from you. Something else I can teach you. Let’s start our first lesson right now.”
It took everything in me not to groan aloud, to keep a pleasant smile fixed to my face. Only my etiquette teacher’s relentless training allowed me to keep a polite and happy expression. “Can my first lesson be learning that? I’d dearly love to know how to keep him from being so ornery.”
Her delighted expression clouded, and I fully expected she’d seen through me. “It’s really not the thing, Karyn, to start there. It’s far too advanced for you. There’s an order to these things and you must respect that.”
“Oh.” Nothing could keep my disappointment from showing, so I didn’t try. Zyr had been in gryphon form so long, and now the High Priestess had fixed him there, and held him captive, a repetition of his worst nightmare.
“Tsk,” the High Priestess tutted, her face full of compassion for my misery. “You really shouldn’t get so attached to your pets, Karyn. Your heart is so soft. When you’ve lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, you’ll learn better. Caring only brings pain.” She brightened. “Especially when I can make you all the pets you want. There are ways and ways of binding them so they can never leave—or have power over you. They will always cleave to you.”
Because they’d have no choice. Her unspoken words hung in the air, making me want to sob from despair or vomit from the horror. What had she done to Zyr? I almost couldn’t face knowing—but I also couldn’t allow myself to run away from this.
“You’re so wise,” I choked out. “I’ll try to do better.” That last came from habit, a promise that had always appeased the most strict of my tutors.
“There, there, darling girl.” She rose from her chaise, ignoring the young man on the floor, who could have been a statue since he hadn’t yet moved, and came to embrace me. Touching a sack of ice-hardened slime might feel similar. I shuddered at the contact, utterly revolted, and allowed some tears to escape in the hope she might think I trembled from weeping. Indeed, she let me go, smiled softly, and used her thumbs to wipe my tears away. They were smooth and soft—and might as well have been sharp as knives the way they scraped my skin.
But I worked up a watery smile for her, and told her what she wanted to hear. “You’re so kind to me. I’ve never had a friend like you.” Not a lie.
She looked so pleased I began to wonder if I’d mistaken her nature. What I knew to be true had already started to blur, just as in the tales. A fragment of ice in my eye, the promise of friendship and belonging, of power… Soon I’d lose myself. But I had to free Zyr first.
“If it means so much to you, my friend”—she cupped my cheeks in her hands—“then we can go see your pet now. You can reassure yourself that it’s hale and healthy, and still all yours. I wouldn’t take it from you. My first gift to you. The first of many.” She smiled with such generous warmth I nearly believed Zyr had been hers to give me in the first place. “Good, yes?”
“Yes, very good,” I agreed, handing her another sliver of my soul.
She giggled merrily and took my hand as if we were girls and best friends, indeed. We walked along a long arcade of more floor-to-ceiling glass windows showcasing the spectacular view, she with a bounce in her step. I marveled at the expense of so much glass in huge sheets. Though it still felt vaguely traitorous to think it, even the Imperial Palace had nothing like it.
“Did you build this place?” I asked, suddenly aware of how many pressing questions I hadn’t thought to ask.
“Oh no!” She tipped her chin back, gazing up at the expanse of glass. “This is the nicest house I’ve ever had. Let’s just say an old friend left it to me.” She winked—so uncanny, with her golden lashes sweeping over the lightless pit of her eye—squeezing my hand lightly. “The zoo facility is quite nice, too. I just know you’ll be pleased.”
There was no mistaking that Dasnarian word. My heart sank further into despair. Not even a prison for a man, but one for animals.
Something buzzed over my skin as we passed through an open arched doorway to a short hall. Something that felt much like crossing the magic barrier that protected the Thirteen kingdoms from the rest of the world. The High Priestess slid me a curious glance. “Did you feel it? Those ancients wove such deft spells, to last so long.”
“Which ancients?” I asked.
She laughed and swung our joined hands. “Don’t play stupid. You wanted to find n’Andana and you found it, silly.” She gave me another saucy and horrible wink. “But I found it first.”
I had no time to mull the implications, as we stepped through a second buzzing barrier into another atrium echoing with cacophonous sound. Birds sang from trees while others flapped through the air above, cawing and screeching. Some kind of animal howled and more sent up various growls. At least that meant they weren’t possessed by Deyrr, as those were always deathly silent.
Large animals paced in niches, some of them extensively and exotically landscaped, presumably reflecting their native territories. Others had only bare cells, lying in them despondently, not even marking our passage.
In one like that I found Zyr, trapped and in chains.
~ 20 ~
Majestic as ever, still in gríobhth form, he stood tall and proud in his cell. One with stone walls that bore deep gouges, clearly scored by his claws, blood oozing from them and decorating the walls, spattering the polished floor beneath his sleek black paws. A heavy metal collar encircled his neck, resting on his shoulders, and chains made of huge links bigger around than my forearm draped from there to rings in the floor. They had to be massively heavy, but he didn’t sag under their weight. His beak hung open, parted with stress, and I imagined his breath panting hot and angry. Those deep blue eyes stared unseeing through me, feral, with intelligence, but showing no sign of him.
I’d lost him. I’d been resigned to that. The true horror was that he’d lost himself.
Without thinking I lifted a hand toward him, but the High Priestess yanked me back. I’d forgotten she still held my hand. “Oops,” she chirped. “Don’t do that. There’s another barrier on its little house. All of these will burn your flesh off if you touch them without my assistance. It’s settled down a bit—and can’t see or hear you through it—so no need to agitate it again.”
“He’s bleeding,” I pointed out, making sure to sound puzzled and perhaps as dim as she seemed to assume. “I though you healed him.”
She huffed in exasperation, dropping my hand. “I did, silly bean. It did that to itself, clawing to get out.”
I drew my brows together in a puzzled frown. “I don’t understand—I thought you said you could control him, that he’d be my pet and would love me forever.” A risk, to accuse her this way, to undermine my obsequious flattery, but I had to know what hold she had. “Why is he chained and locked in a cell if you control him?”
“Karyn, sweetling, you have to understand that these things take time.” She waved a hand at Zyr. “It’s confined until I release it. The chains are for its own good, so it will stop trying to claw its way out.”
“So clever,” I made sure to sound admiring instead of outraged. “However did you get them on him?”
“I have my ways.” She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. From that gesture alone I’d have known her as Dasnarian, if a very old one. A thousand years old or older, she’d implied. Unless she’d lied about that. She probably lied as easily as breathing. Or maybe they didn’t feel like lies to her. She talked to me with every evidence of sincerity—so either she lied brilliantly to draw me into her web, or she truly believed what she said.
Either way, I knew she didn’t exaggerate her powers. I recalled how she froze everyone on the Tala ship while she gutted the high queen, and I considered asking som
e naïve questions, but that might be too dangerous if the High Priestess knew I’d been present for that. She knew so much about me—had said she’d been watching me—so it seemed likely she knew I’d been there. In which case, I shouldn’t dissemble.
“With your great power,” I said, before I could lose courage, “I’m surprised you need chains at all. After all, you’ve held a ship’s deck full of warriors frozen with only the power of your mind.”
She slid me a narrow look, but laughed, glowing with pleasure. “A mere trick. A smidge of the power Deyrr has granted me in His generosity and wisdom. All of which I’m offering to you. Do you understand now why I haven’t taken your gryphon for myself yet?”
I didn’t, and I really needed to. “I don’t understand—will you explain? I apologize for my stupidity.” An almost ritual apology in Dasnaria, that one, spoken by a lower rank female to a higher one. A calculated gambit on my part, and one that worked, because she smiled knowingly and patted my cheek.
“You will learn, Daughter. You see, I could bind it to me with the powers of Deyrr, make its will entirely subject to mine, but I was trying to be considerate of you.” She gave me a reproving look. “If I bind it, the gryphon will be my pet, not yours. As much as I’d love to add a gryphon to my collection, I was being generous and saving it for you. My gift to you, remember? Your reward, if you learn your lessons well.”
“Oh, I understand!” I exclaimed, clasping my hands together and giving her a formal bow. I allowed relieved gratitude to flood my face, while my thoughts flew.
What I understood was that her “gift” would function as a bribe and a lure. So be it. I memorized every bit of information she’d fed me. If she controlled the barriers on the cells, and the barriers were the same as the one controlled by Andi in Annfwn, then perhaps Andi could… no, no, no. How could I possibly get a message to Andi, let alone guide her here to do it? But the High Priestess hadn’t been born to magic any more than I had. She’d acquired it through Deyrr, which meant I could, too.
Though that might take a long time—and it might be already too late for Zyr to be anything but what I saw before me.
Still, if he had to remain a gríobhth, then he could at least live free and not in this horrible cell that would drive him slowly mad.
Zyr’s head jerked up, eyes bright with predatory fury, and a small trap opened in the ceiling. He launched himself at it, but a haunch of meat fell through, nearly hitting him on the head, and the door shut as fast as it had opened. Revenge and escape forgotten, Zyr seized the meat and began tearing at it, ripping off slices with his sharp beak and swallowing them whole.
“It’s feeding very well,” the High Priestess said, sounding pleased and reassuring. She slipped her arm through mine and tilted her head toward me companionably. “You needn’t fear it will waste away.”
Only that he’d lose himself to the gríobhth, eating in that form, too. “Has he had many meals then?” I asked, trying to sound happy, also, instead of appalled.
“Four meals, yes. I’ve been taking very good care of your pet while you slept.” She hugged my arm. “You were so tired, poor thing. You slept all day yesterday, all night and well into the morning. And it did you so much good, don’t you agree?” She waited expectantly.
“Yes, I do feel so much better,” I said, trying to agree with the content and not her. To no avail, because she clucked her tongue in merry reprimand.
“You haven’t thanked me,” she said, with a hint of petulance. “For all I’ve done for you.”
“You’ve been so wonderful to me,” I hedged, gushing as I said it, to cover my fear. Using the excuse to move away from her disturbingly chill body, I extracted my arm and executed a deep, formal court curtsey, holding it. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
Giving her my thanks would only tie me deeper to her. It wouldn’t matter after a point, but I had to retain enough autonomy to thwart her with Zyr. She considered me for a long moment, much as Empress Hulda would, letting my legs tire in the deep knee bend, testing my submission.
Zyr still devoured the meat, tearing into it with bestial ferocity, tail waving in apparent delight. My position near the floor put our heads nearly on a level as he fed and I watched him with my peripheral vision, quite practiced from keeping my gaze averted during interesting events.
And he caught my eye.
He’d turned his head, his crest of glossy black feathers pointing at the High Priestess, and his blue eye glinted with such expression that he might as well have been rolling his eyes at her. I nearly gasped with relief to know his personality survived. He’d told me the gríobhth brain was big enough for him to think like a man, but so clever of him to pretend otherwise.
Also, he clearly could see us, though the High Priestess believed otherwise.
I gave him a worried frown, and he narrowed his eye, shaking his head slightly and turning it into a movement that drove his sharp beak into the meat. Delicately and precisely placing a paw on the haunch, he extended his claws in a slow arc, demonstrating his control—then tearing out a slice of meat with savagery. I gave a slight nod.
Oh yes, we would have our vengeance.
I wished I could talk to him. Zyr would know what to do. This was his mission to begin with—his war, really—and I’d been literally along for the ride. My leg muscles began to tremble from the strain, which the High Priestess must’ve been waiting for, because she finally released me.
“You may rise.” She didn’t sound completely mollified, however. I straightened and she held out her hands to me, a clear invitation I didn’t dare refuse. Placing my hands in hers, I kept my gaze submissively averted. From the corner of my eye, I noted that Zyr had reverted to blank animal behavior, no glimmer of human intellect in him. “Karyn, sweetling,” the High Priestess said, squeezing my hands gently, “I know you’re concerned for your pet, but you really must learn detachment. Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with its man form.”
I glanced up, startled and abashed.
She tsked. “Oh, you have. It’s written all over your face.”
I didn’t know whether to deny or admit it. Mostly I wished Zyr couldn’t see and hear us. What must he think? My face grew unbearably hot.
“I want you to listen to me.” The High Priestess turned me to face the cage, where Zyr, apparently mindless, now cracked the big leg bone into splinters. She slid an arm around my waist and snuggled me to her. “It is a beautiful specimen in man form, it’s true, but you must remember this,” she said, very seriously. “These shapeshifters, they aren’t really people at all. They’re monsters—a whole other species of being—that happen to be able to take human form, too. Did it explain to you about First Form?”
I couldn’t help another start of surprise. How did she know so much? She hugged me a little, as if reassuring me. “Don’t be surprised. I’ve been studying these shapeshifters—first the n’Andanan ancestors, then their Tala descendants, for centuries. I was there when my sister sorceress Moranu created them.”
“I thought Moranu is a goddess?”
The High Priestess laughed gaily. Zyr showed no sign of listening, cracking the bones and eating those pieces too. “Isn’t it rich that they think so? Moranu, may She rest in Deyrr’s embrace, would be so very amused by that. No, She was a woman, like you and I, but a powerful High Priestess of Deyrr. She wove the magic that made the first shapeshifters, teaching the animals She chose to take human form, to speak and behave as we do. That’s what this place is.”
At last she let me go, the side where her oddly chill body touched mine crawling cold from the contact. Turning to face the bigger room, she gestured grandly. “This was Her library, if you will. She collected animals from all over the world and brought them here, then worked Her magic to teach them to take other forms, too. Including humans. A combination of forced interbreeding and the grace of Deyrr. Those were the grand days, when magic ran thick and hot in the world, radiating from everything like the sun.” She sounded
wistful, nostalgic.
“She bred animals with humans?” I asked, fighting to sound neutral.
“Well, slaves,” she answered. “Not people like you and me. Sometimes She let us watch, and those were spectacles, indeed. The proof is in their precious First Forms.” She glanced at me, full of merry mischief. “That always indicates which animal they came from, long ago.”
“That makes sense,” I said, since she seemed to expect an answer.
“Of course it does, because you have an affinity for them, these shapeshifters—and they for you. That’s no doubt why this one wanted to mate with you. They have this instinct to return to the human strain, compulsively chasing after women of our line. Still, you must be smarter. Don’t be taken in by their clever imitations of people. They can be seductive and charming. Bed your pet, if you like, once you’ve bent it to your will. Let it take the form of a man if that’s what pleasures you in bed. I’ve done that myself many times and they make such wonderful, ferocious lovers. It’s not only men who can keep rekjabrel. Wouldn’t you love to have a bed slave of your own?” Her smile took on such a lasciviously cruel bent that I had to look away. “But don’t ever forget that it’s a talking animal, and the beast is never far beneath that handsome face.”
It made too much sense. And fit so neatly with what Zyr himself had explained to me, what Andi had warned me about. I’d seen the magic of Deyrr and never any sign that the gods or goddesses existed. That a High Priestess of Deyrr could’ve used magic to create the shapeshifters—however abhorrent her methods—made so much more rational sense than to imagine magical beings somehow springing up from nothing. And Zyr had pursued me with a single-minded obsessiveness that defied explanation.
I frowned, uncertain of what I believed anymore. Glancing back at Zyr, I saw no evidence of his human self. If I could talk to him, that would help. “You said he can’t shapeshift?”
The Arrows of the Heart Page 23