Legacy of Kings (57 page)

“This is your inheritance. Your birthright. Bequeathed by men and women of courage to their spiritual descendants.” She breathed in deeply. “What more precious gift can there be than the essence of one’s own life? What greater wisdom can there be than to foresee the trials that are yet to come, and to prepare the tools your children will need to face them?” She held the sphere up high, so that all could see it clearly. “Know that these men and women, your ancestors in spirit, divided their most precious knowledge into thousands of pieces, and scattered those pieces all across the earth, not to make it hard to find, but so that tyrants hungry for power would look past it. In their wisdom and foresight they wove their knowledge into songs—into prayers—into prophecies—so that even the burning of all the world’s books would not have the power to destroy it all. And they trusted that if darkness ever fell again—
when
darkness fell again—their descendants would search out all those fragments and learn how to reassemble them.

“This we have done.”

She lowered the sphere. “Tonight you become family to those men and women in body as well as spirit, so that their last and most precious gift can be shared with you.”

Shina had been waiting quietly in the shadows to one side of the dais. When Gwynofar nodded to her, she approached, offering her a large silver chalice. Gwynofar took the chalice in her free hand and positioned it in front of her, holding the black sphere directly over it.

“Return it to its original form,” she ordered.

Shina shut her eyes for a moment. Gwynofar could see her lips move as she recited the incantation that would help her focus her power. When she opened them, a strange light seemed to shine forth from her. Not a physical light, Gwynofar thought, but a mystical one.

Shina reached out and touched the sphere. A shiver of energy ran up Gwynofar’s arm as the crystal began to dissolve in her hand. Black became red; stone became liquid; smoothness became heat. Holding it high, she let the scarlet fluid stream down between her fingers into the cup. There it mixed with the wine that Salvator had prepared, until the final drops filled the cup to its brim exactly.

Holding the chalice before her, she stepped back and nodded for Salvator to take her place.

The young king was wearing full armor with a priest’s stole over it, and he had a leather-bound book in his hand. “Fellow Penitents.” His voice carried to the back of the assemblage with natural ease. “By the word of the Primus Council, I have been restored to the station of Priest for the duration of this campaign, so that the sacraments of our faith can be performed.”

He opened the book before him, paged over to where a golden marker lay, and in a clear, strong voice began to read:

Lord God, Creator of the world

Lord God, Destroyer of the world

Lord God, Source of all wisdom

Lord God, Judge of all men

Hear our prayer:

In humble penitence we turn to You, our eternal Judge, and beg for Your blessing upon our mission. Not because we seek glory for ourselves, but because we would glorify You. Grant us Your divine mercy this day, and forgive us our many sins, so that we may enter battle with a clean soul, free of the burden of our past failings. Remove all fear of death from our hearts, for life is the ultimate possession a man can offer You, and sacrifice the greatest of all prayers. Lo, he who dies in Your service is doubly blessed, for the measure of his faith has been taken, and his sacrifice will ransom the souls of his fellow men.

Therefore do we consecrate our bodies and our souls unto Your service this day, trusting to Your mercy and Your wisdom, and we beseech You to give us Your blessing for the coming battle, so that we may fight in Your name.

As he closed the book, a servant stepped up onto the stage and handed him a second chalice, with the symbols of his Church etched about the upper edge. And he waited.

Shina ushered one of the Penitent witches up to the dais. The woman looked a bit hesitant, and she glanced at Salvator for reassurance; he nodded with regal grace, which seemed to settle her spirit. She bowed her respect to Gwynofar, then took the chalice from her hands and sipped from its contents. There was no visible change in her, but in Gwynofar’s mind she could imagine the essence of ancient
lyr
warriors coursing through her veins, adding a single crucial note to the spiritual symphony of her own soul.

Shina stepped forward then, and took the woman’s hand. For a moment the two of them just stood there quietly, eyes closed, and Gwynofar could hear them murmuring something in unison. Then, suddenly, the witch gasped and pulled back. Trembling, she stared at Shina, astonishment clear in her face.

Shina turned to Gwynofar, her own face glowing. “It works, your Majesty.”

The rest of the witches followed: some hesitant, some eager, some clearly awed by what was taking place. One by one they accepted the chalice from Gwynofar’s hands and sipped a single drop from its contents. One by one they came before Salvator, each one kneeling or standing according to the custom of his home culture, and he anointed each with a spot of consecrated oil in the center of the forehead, while murmuring prayers in an ancient tongue that Gwynofar did not recognize.

When all the witches had shared in the dual communion, Gwynofar looked out upon the field of them and felt a deep satisfaction. Closing her eyes for a moment, she imagined she could see the ghost of her child standing among the witches. His face looked serene and content, and for the first time since Alkali, the knot that had been in her heart loosened up just a tiny bit. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone.

As they handed the chalices to servants, Salvator took off his priest’s stole and gave it to them as well. Then, dressed only in the armor of a king, he looked out over the crowd. Men and women who had been watching from the sidelines had begun to come over as soon as they’d seen the ritual was ending, and now there was a mixed crowd of Guardians and Penitents before him, intermingling without any self-consciousness. Hundreds of them. Their energy was a tangible thing, that heated the blood and strengthened the spirit.

Salvator raised his hand for silence, and as soon as he had it, waved toward the open field to the south of them. “The time has come. I want the portal teams ready by sunrise. As soon as they’re in place, the first group will move in. We only have a couple of hours of good combat weather to work with, so I want to get as much done in that time frame as possible. And remember, the goal of this mission is to take out the Souleater queen. Everything else is secondary to that.” He paused. “May God watch over you all.”

Or gods,
Gwynofar thought.

As the men and women in the crowd ran off to their various stations Salvator saw Colivar and Kamala, and he waved for them to come over to him. The former had abandoned his black garb for more inconspicuous clothing, Gwynofar noted; from a distance one would not suspect that he was anything more than a common workman. Kamala was wearing the men’s garments she seemed to prefer, but in muted shades of brown and tan.

Salvator stepped down from the dais and approached them. Unexpectedly, he reached out and clasped Colivar’s shoulder briefly, then Kamala’s. “I want you to know I respect you both greatly for your courage today. Without the services you have volunteered, none of this would be possible.”

Their surprise could not possibly have been greater than Gwynofar’s own.

As the two of them hurried off to their posts, Gwynofar looked up at her son. Dawn’s early light had made a silhouette of his profile, emphasizing his hawk-like Aurelius features. The image brought back memories of Danton, and she knew that if her husband were here, he would approve of the leader his son had become.

Filled with pride, she whispered a prayer of thanksgiving under her breath and then added a plea for the gods of the north to watch over Salvator and keep him safe. Just in case his own god wasn’t up to the job.

Chapter 35

K

AMALA STEPPED through the portal braced for trouble. Her own inspection of the anchors had indicated no malevolent intent attached to them—certainly no trickery by Farah’s people—but that didn’t mean that Siderea’s people hadn’t figured out what was going on and set a trap of their own. Not to mention that it would take very little effort for a witch of Siderea’s caliber (or was she a sorcerer now?) to alter a scout’s memory so that he reported falsehoods without knowing it, or overlooked the obvious in his reconnaissance.

But when she stepped through the portal, there was no hostile army waiting for her, nor any sign of a sorcerous trap. She summoned her power quickly, wrapping herself and her immediate surroundings in the gift of the ikati queen so that neither human eye nor superhuman power would be able to detect her. But when the portal had first appeared, there had been no such protection, and whoever or whatever was standing guard in this place might have taken note of it. So she was doubly wary, and she scoured the land and sky with both her physical and her supernatural sight, alert for any sign that someone had taken an interest in her arrival.

It appeared that no one had.

The land surrounding Jezalya was flat and desolate, with a few stark ridges of black rock to the east—were those the mountains?—and little else to look at. The sun had not yet risen here, and the predawn light gave the entire landscape a hazy gray quality in which it was hard to make out details. Not that there was much to see. The utter starkness of the empty plain made the badlands surrounding Tefilat seem downright festive by comparison, and as Kamala shivered in the chill morning air, she wondered why anyone in their right mind would choose to live in a place like this.

When she was finally satisfied that no one had detected her arrival, she conjured a message to let Colivar know that all was well. A moment later a second portal appeared, considerably larger than her own. Salvator’s people began to come through, each new arrival moving out of the way quickly to make way for the next. Last of all came the High King himself. He nodded as he took note of the markers Kamala had set up, indicating the boundary of her protective spell. As long as they all stayed within that area, no one on the outside would be able to detect them.

Or so they hoped. But Kamala herself didn’t know the exact range of her ikati power, so nothing was certain.

She wondered if Salvator would have forbidden her from using that power if he’d known she was a Magister. She was the only one in this crowd—possibly the only person in existence—who could guarantee them true invisibility, to the point where even Siderea’s power would be unable to detect them. Without Kamala’s sorcery the invaders would have been unable to arrive on this plain before the actual moment of attack, so they would have had no chance to take stock of their surroundings or establish a base camp before engaging the enemy. Would that have been enough to justify the use of sorcery in his mind? Or would even that have fallen short? She was a survivor by nature and could not conceive of throwing a good tool away just because the wrong person had provided it.

She could hear Salvator and Favias giving orders to the small cadre of soldiers and witches who had arrived with them, as they unpacked supplies and began to erect a canvas awning over the arrival site. The size of the first team had been kept to a minimum in respect of her sorcerous boundaries, but even so, there suddenly seemed to be a lot of people in the desert. Salvator and Favias had arrived to command the overall campaign, Shina to direct the witches, Gwynofar to bolster the
lyr’s
special abilities, and Ramirus to protect Gwynofar. Small teams of witches and warriors stood ready to take up positions surrounding the city as soon as they were given the word to move out. The witches were all carrying silk scarves and jeweled trinkets from the box that Colivar had once given Kamala, treasured possessions of the Witch-Queen that presumably still carried her resonance. Using those items as anchors, they would be able to focus their witchery on Siderea herself, instead of wasting time and energy on more generalized conjurations. Even Ramirus carried a bright pink scarf tucked into his belt, its beaded ends tinkled as he moved. The utter incongruousness of it would have been amusing had its purpose not been so lethal.

She saw Colivar standing some distance from the others, staring out into the darkness. She didn’t know how to reach out to him, or even if she should. He must be afraid—what man wouldn’t be, given his role in this campaign?—but if he wouldn’t even acknowledge that fear to himself, how could anyone help him address it?

She came up to where he was standing, and for a moment just gazed silently out into the darkness beside him. A faint gray shape was slowly becoming visible in the center of the great plain. Colivar turned one of the bone fragments over in his hand as he stared at it, his fingers unconsciously tracing the symbols etched into its surface. Kamala knew that the other half of this anchor was buried outside the House of Gods, but no more details had been given to them. Whoever used this to open a portal into Jezalya would be traveling blind.

“There must be another way to do this,” she said to him. Speaking quietly, so the others would not hear.

“The witches will need time to take up their positions and perform their ritual before they can raise the barrier. But the minute they move out from under your protection, Siderea will be able to detect their presence. So someone has to distract her, at least for those first few minutes, or none of this will work. My presence in the city will accomplish that.”