Heir to the Shadows

He wanted to shout at her, Where's my son? Why hasn't he gone to the Keep or come through one of the Gates? What's he waiting for? Useless to shout at her. She couldn't translate what she'd seen any better than she had. One thing he did understand. All the threads were not yet in place. Until they were, all he could do was wait.

'What are the sticks for, Tersa?'

'Sticks?' Tersa looked at the basket of sticks in the corner of the kitchen. 'They have no purpose.' She shrugged. 'Kindling?'

She withdrew from him, exhausted by the effort of keep-nig the stones of reality and madness from grinding her soul.

'Is there anything I can do for you?' he asked, preparing to leave.

Tersa hesitated. 'It would anger you.'

Right now, he didn't feel capable of that strong an emotion. 'It won't anger me. I promise.'

'Would you. . Would you hold me for a minute?'

It rocked him. He, who had always craved physical affection, had never thought to offer her an embrace.

He closed his arms around her. She wrapped her arms around his back and rested her head on his shoulder.

'I don't miss the rutting, but it feels good to be held by a man.'

Saetan gently kissed her tangled hair. 'Why didn't you mention it before? I didn't know you wanted to be held.'

'Now you do.'

2 / Kaeleer

The Dark Council whispered.

At first it was only a thoughtful look, a troubled frown. The High Lord had done many things in his long life – look what he'd done to the Council itself in order to become the girl's guardian – but it was hard to believe he was capable of that. He had always insisted that the strength of a Territory, the strength of the Realm, depended on the strength of its witches, especially its Queens. To think he would do such things with a vulnerable girl, a dark young Queen. .

Oh, yes, they had inquired about the girl before now, but the High Lord had always responded tersely. The girl was ill. She could have no visitors. She was being privately tutored.

Where had the girl been during the past two years? What had she been subjected to? Was Jorval sure?

No, Lord Jorval insisted, he was not sure. It was only a spurious rumor made by a dismissed servant. There was no reason to suspect it wasn't just as the High Lord had said. The girl probably was ill, an invalid of some kind, perhaps too emotionally or physically fragile for the stimulation of visitors.

The High Lord had made no mention of the girl being ill until the Council requested to see her the first time.

Jorval stroked his dark beard with a thin hand and shook his head. There was no evidence. Only the word of a man who couldn't be found.

Murmurs, speculations, whisssspers.

3 / The Twisted Kingdom

He clung to the sharp grass on the crumbling island of maybe and watched the sticks float toward him. They were evenly spaced like the boards of a rope bridge strung across the endless sea. But the footing would be precarious at best, and there were no ropes to hang on to. If he tried to use them, he would sink beneath the vast sea of blood.

He was going to sink anyway. The island continued to crumble. Eventually there wouldn't be enough left to hold him.

He was tired. He was willing to let it suck him down.

The sticks broke formation, swirled and re-formed, swirled and re-formed over and over again into rough letters.

You are my instrument.

Words lie. Blood doesn't.

Butchering whore.

He tried to scramble away from that side of the island, but the other side kept crumbling, crumbling. There was only enough room now for him to lie there, helpless.

Something moved beneath the sea of blood, disturbing the sticks and their endless words. The sticks swirled around his small island, bumped against the crumbling

edges of maybe, and piled up against each other to form a fragile, protective wall.

He leaned over the edge and watched the face float upward, sapphire eyes staring at nothing, golden hair spread out like a fan.

The lips moved. Daemon.

He reached down and gently lifted the face out of the sea of blood. Not a head, just a face, as smooth and lifeless as a mask.

The lips moved again. The word sounded like the sigh of the night wind, like a caress. Daemon.

The face dissolved, oozed through his fingers.

Sobbing, he tried to hold it, tried to re-form it into that beloved face. The harder he tried, the quicker it slipped through his fingers until there was nothing left.

Shadows in the bloody sea. A woman's face, full of compassion and understanding, surrounded by a mass of tangled black hair.

Wait, she said. Walt. The threads are not yet in place.

She vanished in the ripples.

Finally, there was an easy thing to do, a thing without pain, without fear.

Making himself as comfortable as possible, he settled down to wait.

4 / Kaeleer

Saetan wondered if there was something wrong with the bookcases behind his desk or if there was something wrong with his butler, because Beale had been staring at the same spot for almost a minute.

'High Lord,' Beale said stiffly, still staring at the bookcases.

'Beale,' Saetan replied cautiously.

'There's a Warlord to see you.'

Saetan carefully set bis glasses on top of the papers covering his desk, and folded his hands to keep them from shaking. 'Is he cringing?'

Scale's lips twitched. 'No, High Lord.'

Saetan sagged in his chair. 'Thank the Darkness. At least he's not here because of something the girls have done.'

'I don't believe the Ladies are involved, High Lord.'

'Then send him in.'

The Warlord who entered the study was a head taller than Saetan, twice as wide, and solid muscle. His hands were big enough to engulf a man's skull and strong enough to crush one. He looked like a rough man who would wrench what he wanted from the land or from other people. But beneath that massive body and roaring voice was a heart filled with simple joy and a soul too sensitive to bear harsh treatment.

He was Dujae. Five hundred years ago, he had been the finest artist in Kaeleer. Now he was a demon.