Heir to the Shadows (48 page)

Home. He'd lived in Kaeleer for a year now, and the way witches treated males in the Shadow Realm still bewildered him sometimes.

One day he'd walked in on a discussion Chaosti, Aaron, and Khardeen were having about how the Ring of Honor worn by males in a Queen's First Circle differed from the

Restraining Ring Terreillean males were required to wear until they proved themselves trustworthy. He told them about the Ring of Obedience that was used in Terreille.

They didn't believe him. Oh, intellectually they understood what he said, but they had never known the saturating, day-to-day fear Terreillean males lived with, so they didn't,
couldn't,
believe him.

Wondering if the boys simply weren't old enough to have firsthand experience in the ways a witch kept her males leashed, he had asked Sylvia, Halaway's Queen, how a Queen controlled a male who didn't want to serve in her court.

She'd gaped at him a moment before blurting out, "Who'd want one?"

A few months ago, while in Nharkhava running an errand for the High Lord, he'd been invited to tea by three elderly Ladies who had praised his physique with such good-natured delight that he couldn't feel insulted. Feeling comfortable with them, he had asked if they'd heard anything about the Warlord Prince who had recently killed a Queen.

They reluctantly admitted that the story was true. A Queen who had acquired a taste for cruelty had been unable to form a court because she couldn't convince twelve males to serve her willingly. So she decided to
force
males into service by using that Ring of Obedience device. She had collected eleven lighter-Jeweled Warlords and was looking for the twelfth male when the Warlord Prince confronted her.

He
was looking for a younger cousin who had disappeared the month before. When she tried to force him to submit, he killed her.

What happened to the Warlord Prince?

It took them a moment to understand the question.

Nothinghappened to the Warlord Prince. After all, he did exactly what he was supposed to do. Granted, they all wished he had simply restrained that horrible woman and handed her over to Nharkhava's Queen for punishment, but one has to expect this sort of thing when a Warlord Prince is provoked enough to rise to the killing edge.

Lucivar had spent the rest of that day in a tavern, unsure

if he felt amused or terrified by the Ladies' attitude. He thought about the beatings, the whippings, the times he'd screamed in agony when pain was sent through the Ring of Obedience. He thought of what he'd done to earn that pain. He sat in that tavern and laughed until he cried when he finally realized he would never be able to reconcile the differences between Terreille and Kaeleer.

In Kaeleer, service was an intricate dance, the lead constantly changing between the genders. Witches nurtured and protected male strength and pride. Males, in turn, protected and respected the gentler, but somehow deeper, feminine strength.

Males weren't slaves or pets or tools to be used without regard to feelings. They were valuable, and valued,

partners.

That, Lucivar had decided that day, was the leash the Queens used in Kaeleer—control so gentle and sweet a man had no reason to fight against it and every reason to fiercely protect it.

Loyalty, on both sides. Respect, on both sides. Honor, on both sides. Pride, on both sides.

This was the place he now proudly called home.

"Lucivar."

Lucivar shot to his feet, cursing silently. Considering the tension he felt in her, he was lucky she hadn't taken off without him.

"Something’s’ wrong," she said in her midnight voice.

He immediately probed the area. "Where? I don't sense anything."

"Not right here. To the east."

The only thing east of them was a landen village under the protection of Agio, the Blood village at the northern end of Ebon Rih.

"There's something wrong there, but it's elusive," Jaenelle said, her eyes narrowed as she stared eastward. "And it feels
twisted
somehow, like a snare filled with poison bait. But it slips away from me every time I try to focus on it." She snarled, frustrated. "Maybe the drugs are messing up my ability to sense things."

He thought about the Queen who had ensnared eleven young men before being killed. "Or maybe you're just the wrong gender for the bait." Keeping his inner barriers tightly shielded, he sent a delicate psychic probe eastward. A minute later, swearing viciously, he snapped the link and clung to Jaenelle, letting her clean, dark strength wash away the foulness he'd brushed against.

He pressed his forehead against hers. "It's bad, Cat. A lot of desperation and pain surrounded by . . ."

He searched for some way to describe what he'd felt.

Carrion.

Shuddering, he wondered why the word came to mind.

He could fly over the village and take a quick look. If the landens were fighting off a Jhinka raiding party, he was strong enough to give them whatever help they needed. If it was one of those spring fevers that sometimes ran through a village, it would be better to know that before sending a message to Agio since the Healers would be needed.

His main concern was finding a safe—

"Don't even think it, Lucivar," Jaenelle warned softly. "I'm going with you."

Lucivar eyed her, trying to judge just how far he could push her this time. "You know, the Ring of Honor you had made for me won't stop me the way the Restraining Ring would have."

She muttered an Eyrien curse that was quite explicit.

He smiled grimly. That pretty much answered the question of how far he could push. He looked toward the east. "All right, you're going with me. But we'll do this my way, Cat."

Jaenelle nodded. "You're the one with fighting experience. But . . ." She pressed her right palm against the Ebon-gray Jewel resting on his chest. "Spread your wings."

As he opened his wings to their full span, he felt a hot-cold tingle from the Ring of Honor.

She stepped back, satisfied. "This shield is braided into the protective shield already contained in the Ring. You could drain your Jewels to the breaking point, and it will still hold around you. It's fixed about a foot out from your

body and will mesh with mine so we can stay tight without endangering each other. But make sure you keep clear of anything else you don't want to damage."

Having made regular circuits to all the villages in Ebon Rih, Lucivar knew the landen village and surrounding land fairly well. Plenty of low hills and woodland within striking distance of the village—perfect hiding places for a Jhinka raiding party.

The Jhinka were a fierce, winged people made up of patriarchal clans loosely joined together by a dozen tribal chiefs. Like the Eyriens, they were native to Askavi, but they were smaller and had a fraction of the life span of the long-lived Eyriens. The two races had hated each other for as long as either of them could remember.

While Eyriens had the advantage of Craft, the Jhinka had the advantage of numbers. Once drained of his psychic power and the reserves in the Jewels, an Eyrien warrior was as vulnerable as any other man when fighting against overwhelming odds. So, accepting the slaughter required to bring down an enemy, the Jhinka had always been willing to meet an Eyrien in battle.

With two exceptions. One walked among the dead, the other among the living. Both wore Ebon-gray Jewels.

"All right," Lucivar said. "We'll run on this White radial thread until we're past the village, then drop from the Winds and come in fast from the other side. If this is a Jhinka raid, I'll handle it. If it's something else .

. ."

She just looked at him.

He cleared his throat. "Come on, Cat. Let's give whoever is messing with our valley a reason to regret it."

8 / Kaeleer

Dropping from the White Wind, Lucivar and Jaenelle glided toward the peaceful-looking village still a mile away.

*You said we'd go in fast,* Jaenelle said on a psychic thread.

*I also said we'd do this my way,* Lucivar replied sharply.

*There's pain and need down there, Lucivar.*

There was also the foulness that now eluded him. It was still there. Had to be. That he could no longer sense it, would never have sensed it if he'd simply come to check on the village, made him uneasy. He would have stumbled into whatever trap was waiting down there.

He felt the predator wake in her at the same moment she began a hawk-dive, dropping toward the village at full speed. Swearing, he folded his wings and dove after her just as hundreds of Jhinka appeared out of nowhere, screeching their battle cries as they tried to surround him and pull him down.

Using Craft to enhance his speed, Lucivar drove through the Jhinka swarm, relishing the screams when they hit his protective shield. Roaring an Eyrien war cry, he unleashed the power in his Ebon-gray Jewels in short, controlled bursts.

Jhinka bodies exploded into a bloody mist full of severed limbs.

He burst through the bottom of the swarm, coming out of his dive a wing-length from the ground. *Cat!*

*Come down the main street, but hurry. The tunnel won't hold for long. Avoid the side streets. They're .

. . fouled. There's a shielded building at the other end of the village.*

Flying low, Lucivar swung toward the main street, hit the village boundary at top speed, and swore every curse he knew as his shield brushed against the psychic witch storm engulfing the deceptively peaceful-looking village. The shield sizzled like drops of cold water flicked into a hot pan. All the ensnaring psychic threads flared as if they were physical threads made out of lightning.

Pushing hard, he flew through the already contracting tunnel Jaenelle had created as she passed through the witch storm and finally caught up with her a block away from the shielded building. A fast psychic probe showed him the parameters of the domed, oval-shaped shield that protected a two-story stone building and ten yards of ground all around it.

Four men ran toward the edge of the shield, waving their arms and shouting, "Go back! Get away from here!"

Behind the men, thousands of Jhinka rose from the low hills beyond the village, filling the sky until they blotted out the sun.

Jaenelle passed through the building's shield as easily as if it were a thin layer of water. Distracted by the men and the approaching Jhinka, Lucivar felt like he was passing through a wall of warm taffy.

As soon as they were inside the building's shield, Lucivar landed next to the four men. The protective shield Jaenelle had created for him contracted to a skintight sheath, produced a mild tingle in the Ring of Honor, then vanished completely.

"How many wounded?" Jaenelle snapped. Lord Randahl, the Agio Warlord who was Lady Erika's Master of the Guard, replied reluctantly, "Last count, about three hundred, Lady." "How many Healers?"

"The village had two physicians and a wise woman who could do a bit of herb healing. All dead."

Knowing better than to interrupt when Jaenelle focused on healing, Lucivar waited until she ran into the building before snapping out his own demands. "Who's holding the shield?"

"Adler is," Randahl said, jerking a thumb toward a young, haggard-faced Warlord.

Lucivar glanced toward the low hills. The Jhinka would descend on them at any moment. "Can you push your shield out another inch or two all around?" he asked Adler. "I'll put an Ebon-gray shield behind it.

Then you can drop your shield and rest."

The young Warlord nodded wearily and closed his eyes. Seconds after Lucivar put up his shield, the Jhinka attacked. They slammed against the invisible barrier, their bodies piling up five and six deep as they clawed at the shield. Some of the Jhinka, pressed between the shield and the rest of the swarm, were smothered or crushed by the mass of writhing bodies. Dead, hate-filled eyes stared at the five men below.

"Hell's fire," Randahl muttered. "Even during the worst attacks, they didn't come in like
this."

Lucivar studied the middle-aged Warlord for a moment before returning his attention to the Jhinka.

Maybe they hadn't trapped what they'd wanted until now.

He could feel the pressure of all those bodies piling up on the shield, could feel the Ebon-gray Jewels release drop after drop of his reserve strength. While all the Jewels provided a reservoir for the psychic power, the darker the Jewel, the deeper the reservoir. As the second darkest Jewel, the Ebon-gray provided a cache of power deep enough that, if he didn't need to use them for anything beyond maintaining the shield against physical attacks, he could hold the Jhinka off for a week before he felt the strain. Someone would come looking for them before that. All he needed to do was wait.

But there was that witch storm to consider. He felt certain someone had created this trap especially for him. He'd have to check with Randahl, but he suspected the first Jhinka attack hadn't given them time to get in supplies. And Jaenelle needed other Healers to assist with the wounded. The Darkness knew she had the psychic reserves to do all the healing, but her body wouldn't hold up under that kind of demand, especially after the drugs and the physical strain of the past few days.

Besides, no one had ever accused him of having a passive temper.

Lucivar vanished his Ebon-gray ring and called in his Birthright Red. The Ebon-gray around his neck would feed the shield. The Red ...

"Tell your men to stay tight to the building," Lucivar said quietly to Randahl. "It's time to even up the odds a bit."

Smiling his lazy, arrogant smile, he raised his right hand and triggered the spell he'd spent years perfecting. Seven thin psychic "wires" shot out of the Red Jewel in his ring. Keeping his arm straight, he made leisurely sweeps back and forth, always careful that he didn't stray too close to the building. Back and forth. Up and down.

Jhinka blood ran down the shield. Jhinka bodies slithered

and slid as the ones who could see the danger tried to push themselves out of the pile before that sweeping arm returned.

Satisfied with the panicked scramble on that side of the shield, he walked around the building, his hand always aimed at the shield. And the Jhinka died.