Keir (40 page)

“What is it, my lady?”

“Would you give me your knife, S’rano?” She held her voice calm.

Without hesitation, he passed her the sheathed blade hilt first. Quin stared down at the weapon. The smooth yet scaly casing of the sheath she guessed to be sea wraith hide, the hilt a simple shaft of carved bone that terminated in an open loop and felt stone-cold in the palm of her hand. She withdrew the blade and examined it, a gleaming crescent of polished metal serrated on the innermost curve. Something hovered at the back of her mind. Not a memory, not a conscious idea, but a possibility.

Quin wrapped her fingers cautiously around the blade and focused hard. She drew blue flame from the deepest recesses of her mind, pouring it into the weapon until it seemed to burn between her palms. Taking a steadying breath, she reached deeper inside herself, stretching her powers far beyond their normal limits as she streamed three hundred years of memories into the blade.

When it was done, she forced herself to release the blade, slipping it back into the sheath with a sigh. It left her feeling empty. Strangely cleansed. And yet at the same time fear still shivered over her skin, a ghost of uncertainty haunting her. There was no way to test out her theory. This was a one of a kind experiment.

“Would you make me a promise, both of you?” she asked.

“Of course,” T’reno said, and the captain echoed his sentiment with more feeling.

She turned first to S’rano, her eyes pleading. “Would you look after Keir?”

He nodded firmly, still looking confused.

“Would you also vouch for T’reno?”

The two men glowered at each other, before the captain agreed. “If that is your wish, my lady.”

“It is.” She brushed a strand of hair from Keir’s face. “When Keir recovers, he’ll come after me. Don’t stand in his way but make him promise something before T’reno tells him where I am.”

“Yes?”

“Tell him that, no matter what happens, he must take me home. Make him promise.”

“I will do it, even if he kills me,” S’rano assured her.

“I don’t think he will.” She eyed T’reno. “He’ll probably try to kill you, though. That’s why S’rano has to be there. Keir’s more likely to trust him.” She took off her shell necklace, twisting it around the hilt and fastening the single long shell to the end before passing it back to the captain.

“Give him that, when he’s ready to go,” she said. “T’reno, you will not tell him until he promises, no matter what he does. You promised to keep him safe and I hold you to that.”

“I swear on my life,” the commander vowed.

“Then I’m ready.” She stroked Keir’s hair, letting the black curls slide through her fingers. It had grown unruly again and she had meant to tell him how much she loved it like that. It would have to go unsaid, like so much else. “And now I’d like some time alone with my husband.”

“Of course,” T’reno murmured and both men withdrew.

Quin leaned down and merged into his thoughts again.

“Listen, my love. When you wake, I’ll be gone. You have a choice. Follow me if you must, if you can.”

She tried to project that she wanted him safe, she wanted him to live and not follow her. That she could only face her fate knowing he had a chance. But the potency of his will rejected it all. The faint consciousness of his thoughts clung to hers with a strength beyond her own.

“Then you must do as I ask. Promise me.”

“…promise…”

“Swear it! On your love for me.”

“…my love…my life…swear.”

Tears ran down her face. This would cost them both so much, with no hope that either would survive.
“When you wake, S’rano will give you a blade. T’reno will show you where I’ve gone. No matter what happens, you must take me home. Do you understand that? You must take me back to Lyagnius, even if all seems lost. Wait for me. Trust me. Swear it!”

“…swear…”
Sudden panic flooded his thoughts.
“Quin. Do not go!”

“I love you.”
With all her power she pushed him back under and his mind sank into darkness.

She spent the short journey back to the palace by Keir’s side, ensuring he stayed under. He would recover quickly, despite the severity of his wound, one of the few benefits of the Sentiac’s ability she welcomed. She stroked his hair, the skin of his cheek, and touched her mind to his. All too soon they were landing and the medic prepared to take him away, accompanied by the loyal sea captain. Seeing him go ripped out her heart and shredded it. She wanted to scream for them to bring him back, to run and hold him in her arms until the end of their forever, just as they had vowed. To howl her grief and rage until the palace shook with it.

“My lady,” T’reno said. His voice snatched her back to reality. Keir’s safety, and that of T’rill’s children, relied on her compliance.

“I know,” she said. “The Emissary awaits.”

Two of T’reno’s most trusted guards brought her before the queen as a prisoner, but left her unbound and stood to either side of her. After all, she had given T’reno her promise of compliance in return for Keir’s safety, and her word had value here. She waited silently in the center of T’rill’s private audience chamber, clasping her cold fingers together to keep them from shaking. Despite the sunlight cascading from the crystal above bathing her in warmth, she shivered.

T’rill stood opposite her, within arm’s reach, her proud eyes downcast. The kidnapping of her children had clearly stripped all of her majesty, leaving the monarch a shadow of her former self.

“Forgive me, Quin. I had no choice,” she murmured, and spread her hands in apology.

Quin struggled to find the words. T’rill had no option–she understood that, sympathized with it. But she was the one paying the price here. Would she do the same in T’rill’s position? What had she already sacrificed to keep her children safe, only to fail? She had lost her daughter by assuming the Siah-dhu would never be interested in a child without her mother’s talents. T’rill would have had no idea what was coming.

“I know they have your children,” Quin replied, her voice rasping. Speaking came hard when fear had clutched such tight fingers around her throat, and snatched each breath away as if determined to make it her last. “That’s why I’m here. I could’ve opened the gateway home and left, but I haven’t.”

“And I thank you for that.” Tears shone on T’rill’s face, making the scales glitter like tiny jewels. “Believe me, if there had been another way–”

“T’rill,” Quin cut her off. Words seemed such a waste when her fate had already been decided “There’s something you have to promise me in return.”

“Anything.”

“You must let Keir go unharmed. No matter what, you must let him go free.”

“I will.”

“Swear it, T’rill.”

“I swear. On my life. On the lives of my children.” Her voice faltered at the last before she gathered her composure. “He will not be harmed.”

Quin nodded and calm washed through her. There seemed no chance of redemption for herself but at least Keir’s safety had been assured. Until he chose to come after her… “Then you may tell them you have me,” she said, forcing her voice to hold steady. “Don’t fail me, T’rill.”

The monarch knelt at Quin’s feet, her eyes brimming with tears. “I thank you for my daughters’ lives,” she whispered. Rising, she took a clear crystal from her robe and held it cupped in both hands until it began to hum.

A muffled voice spoke through it, the distorted vocals filling the chamber. “T’rill?”

“I have what you asked for. Tarquin Secker is here,” she responded, her voice quivering.

The crystal lapsed into silence.

A black, amorphous mass appeared in the center of the audience chamber. It grew rapidly, solidifying into a figure dressed in close-fitting gray and a silver mask. He approached Quin and reached out a hand but stopped inches from touching her.

Quin held her breath, forced herself still although revulsion crawled from her stomach and slithered into her throat until she wanted to retch. Her mouth twitched and she swallowed hard. The Emissary emitted a terrible creeping chill, a psychic aura of darkness that made her shudder, its true nature shrouded by more than mere cloth. Every part of her wanted to run screaming from his presence, to curl into a tight knot under her blankets like a frightened child. Whatever or whoever he was, his closeness smothered her telepathic senses, leaving her blinded.

“You have fulfilled your side of the bargain, T’rill,” the Emissary said in a flat tone, the voice barely audible beneath his visor. He gave no hint that he felt any satisfaction or pleasure at the result–no emotion at all, as blank and false as the mask he wore. And yet Quin felt a sudden, frightening jolt of recognition. She knew that voice!

“I’ve given you Quin. Now return my children to me,” she demanded.

“When I have her securely aboard my ship.”

He gestured toward Quin. Shadow swirled around Quin and she flinched at its frigid touch as the darkness enshrouded her. The cloud surrounded the Emissary again and, for a moment, it hung motionless in the palace room, before spreading itself like a blanket on the floor. When it receded, three small, saurian children lay in its place. T’rill let out a cry and hurried forward, hands outstretched to gather them to her. As Quin’s vision blackened, she heard T’rill’s joyous shriek shift to a scream of agony as she surely discovered that her babies were long since cold and dead.

1.       
   Chapter 16
   

Frozen to the depths of her soul, Quin opened her eyes to find herself in a room so poorly lit she couldn’t see the far end. A long ovoid of dark, metallic walls curved around her, as big as S’rano’s ship. The only door was a flattened rhomboid at the opposite end, and the room seemed empty.

A single pale-blue light shone down on her. She edged forward but the light formed an impenetrable wall. Some kind of force-field confined her. In desperation she reached out with a tendril of thought…and found her telepathy blocked too. Was that deliberate? She had to assume it was. That this Emissary knew some, if not all, of her talents.

She wrapped her arms around herself. A deep, resonant throbbing ran up through her body from the ship, a discordant vibration that set her nerves jangling and did nothing to ease her fears. She couldn’t sense or see a single living thing aboard. For all she knew a hundred beings just like the Emissary stood beyond the walls of her prison. Or, perhaps, even worse.
 

“Welcome to my ship, Tarquin Secker.”

The voice came from behind her. Her back prickled. She tried to turn, straining against the field that held her, but the most she could do was glimpse some movement over her shoulder.

The Emissary came to stand in front of her, hands folded before him and silver face mask gleaming. “It is good to see you again, Quin.”

She frowned, finding his voice oddly familiar. “Who are you?”

He pulled back his hood and removed the mask, revealing a man of perhaps thirty years old with shoulder-length, blond-streaked hair brushed back from a broad, scarred forehead. His narrow face had grown gaunter than she remembered it, as if the years since their parting had eaten away the flesh, leaving his cheeks hollowed out. And his eyes… Quin shuddered. They had been hazel once. Now they were deep black pools of nothingness, anything human long since consumed.

“Jared?” she whispered. “What have you done?”

“I made a bargain, Quin. My life for an eternity of power.” His face was pale and impassive and his voice was as dead and soulless as its owner.

“To what end?”

“To find you, Quin.” Jared came closer and his face finally showed some life, the faint flickering of emotion. Hunger. “You wouldn’t give me what I wanted, so I found help elsewhere.”

She shook her head, wanting to deny the terrible transformation of a man who had once been her lover. Wanting it to be a lie. Surely his desperation and grief had not driven him to seek such a fate? “What you wanted was impossible, Jared. You know that. I couldn’t save them. And neither can you.”

“You’re wrong.” He closed the distance between them and his mouth was a breath from hers–a dark parody of a lover’s pose.

She closed her eyes. Gathered her courage and her voice. “Jared, there’s nothing you can do for–”

“No,” he said. “But the Siah-dhu can.”

”Powers, Jared!” she cried, fear warring with fury. “The Siah-dhu can’t do anything except destroy! It’s a psychic vampire–a mental parasite–nothing more!”

“It has promised me, Quin. It will use your power to open a gateway to my family. It will save them.”

“I won’t help that thing, Jared.”

“You have no choice, Quin,” he said, and for a moment something almost human seemed to surface in his eyes. “I am sorry.”

Quin shook, as much from grief for him as from fear of the power he now represented. A single tear ran down her cheek.

Jared waved his hand through the light that held her, and she stumbled forward as the forcefield released her straight into his arms. She tried to jerk back but his embrace was as inescapable and chilling as Death itself. She remembered how the lean hardness of his body had pressed into hers all those years ago, just as it did now, but it had been so warm then. How gentle he could be one moment, how violent the next. How he had begged for her help in one breath, then throttled her when she told him it could not be done.