Legacy of Kings (26 page)

The Souleater screamed.

A second volley was loosed. This time Colivar did not assist. The sudden release of all that sorcery had left him feeling unsteady, and he feared that if he tried to conjure a second wave of power he might not be able to control it. Dimly he was aware of Ramirus beside him, and he knew that if the other Magister turned on him at that moment he could do little to defend himself.

But Ramirus’ attention was on Gwynofar.

She stood atop a granite boulder in the midst of the sea of bones, blond hair whipping about her face as she braced herself to meet the creature head-on, with nothing but a spear for protection. Fear flickered in the backs of her eyes, but there was neither weakness nor hesitation in her stance. For forty generations her bloodline had been trained for this moment—
bred
for this moment—and she would not fail. Proudly she stood atop her precarious perch, alone and vulnerable, and when the air to one side of her began to shimmer, she did not move toward it. One of the witches was offering her a portal, so that she might save herself, but using it would betray her purpose. Bait had no value if it was not in plain sight.

It was clear to all that the poisonous arrows were having their effect upon the ikati. The queen’s layered wings were losing their coordination now and her flight was becoming unsteady; the long tail whipped about wildly, destabilizing her even further. Spasms rippled through her body as she screamed once more, this time a cry of raw hatred. Her black faceted eyes turned toward the Guardians, the source of her anguish; several of the archers collapsed as her gaze swept over them, struck down by the sheer force of her fury. Colivar could see that those few who remained were unsteady on their feet, and they struggled to let loose one more volley before their limbs failed them utterly. But they had used up all their special arrows now, and the next round, steel-headed, skittered across the creature’s hide like blunt rocks skimming across a pond.

Hovering unsteadily over the field of bones, the ikati turned her attention back to Gwynofar. For a moment Colivar thought that the creature would actually dive down toward her—or perhaps collapse upon her—but evidently pain and rage had not dulled her intelligence quite that much. Suddenly her long tail whipped about from behind, cracking through the air with audible force as it swept toward Gwynofar. Salvator’s mother did not flinch. She stood her ground until the last possible moment and then, when the deadly blow was nearly upon her, dropped down to the ground beside the boulder she’d been standing on and used the massive rock as a shield. The deadly blow whistled inches past her head without making contact.

So Gwynofar’s seemingly vulnerable position had in fact been a strategically sound one, Colivar noted. He was beginning to appreciate why Ramirus had such interest in her.

A long, dark shape hurtled toward the queen from somewhere beside the mount. The spear struck the queen in her right shoulder, driving deep into her flesh. Her upper wing set spasmed, and she began to lose control of her flight. Desperately she threw herself toward the mount, clawed feet grasping at its flanks as she landed. For a moment it seemed as if the crumbling slope would not support her, but then she got a grip on a solid outcropping and was able to lurch up to the summit.

Colivar felt an ancient thrill course through his blood, to see her grounded thus. The ancient witch-warriors had understood that the first and foremost goal in fighting a Souleater was to bring it down to a warrior’s level. Denied the power of flight, a Souleater was a bulky and awkward creature, deadly for the power that it had to suck the strength from men’s souls, but as physically vulnerable as any large beast.

Which was not to say that this one could not kill many men before she expired. Possibly the entire war party.

The portal still shimmered to one side of Gwynofar; whatever witch had conjured it was expending obscene amounts of energy to keep it open. If the Souleater’s power had drained him at all, that might prove a fatal offering.
Take the portal,
Colivar urged Gwynofar mentally.
Your job is done. Leave the rest of this fight to stronger men.

But even as he thought those words he was remembering other women, armor-clad and desperate, who had stood before these creatures and refused to give ground. Wives, avenging their fallen husbands. Mothers, avenging their children. Witches, protecting their world. They were the first
lyr
, founders of the northern bloodlines, whose courage now burned in Gwynofar’s blood . . . along with their stubbornness.

She did not move.

The serpentine head shot out at her. She stood her ground and met it with her spear braced, ready to strike as soon as she had a proper target. She would probably only have one shot and she had to make it count. The ikati seemed to know this, and she pulled up short at the last moment, hissing in frustration. Colivar could see that the Souleater poison was beginning to slow her down, stiffening the muscles in her neck so that each new motion was painful and unwieldy. But that did not make her any less dangerous.

And then the queen struck. The move was lightning-fast, and Colivar realized grimly that the moment of seeming weakness had been a feint. Taken off her guard, Gwynofar thrust outward with her lance as the creature lunged at her. The cobalt spear tip pierced the thick muscle of the queen’s neck and was driven in deeply by the creature’s own momentum. Razor-toothed jaws snapped shut mere inches from Gwynofar’s head, and the spear was torn from her grasp. Her blow had been all but wasted. The Souleater poison might do its work over time, but Gwynofar had failed to strike any organ or artery that would keep the queen from attacking her again . . . and now she had only a sword with which to protect herself.

Colivar glanced at Ramirus; the Magister’s jaw was clenched tight, his hands balled into fists by his side. The minute Ramirus disobeyed Gwynofar, breaking their contract, the human connection that was enabling him to maintain self-control would be severed. Surely he was old enough to understand that. Surely it was the only reason that he stayed his hand now, though his knuckles were white from the force of self-denial.

The queen lunged at Gwynofar again. The Queen Mother held her sword at the ready, but it was merely a token gesture; by the time the ikati got within range of her blade, it would be too late to halt the momentum of that great body, and the sheer force of impact would surely crush her.

And then a figure stepped through the portal.

He moved so quickly that at first Colivar did not realize who it was. One moment he was emerging from the shimmering spell, and the next he was thrusting his spear forward into the creature’s side. Deep, deep into the queen’s torso, cobalt blade slicing through the iron hide like butter, parting flesh, seeking the vital organs deep within.

Turning on her new attacker, the ikati tried to knock him loose with one of her forelegs, and she managed to score his face with her razor-sharp talons, leaving deep gouges running from forehead to chin. But the man held his ground, and he brought his full weight to bear upon the spear, driving it deeper and deeper into her body.

Salvator.

Twisting her head about, the queen met his eyes. All the terrible power of her species was focused in that gaze: the power to freeze a man in his tracks, to drain him of strength, to leave him a soulless shell. The female ikati could focus her power as the males could not, and she did so now, pitting all of her dying strength against this one single target. In all the fights that Colivar had witnessed, he had never seen a man stand up to such an assault.

Salvator ignored her.

Gritting his teeth in determination, he gave one last thrust to the deeply imbedded spear. A shudder ran through her body as the great wings suddenly spasmed—not only the main flight wings, but the forward wings as well. The delicate membranes that had been folded across her back jerked open, and something that was not quite the size of a man fell from her back, hitting the rocky slope hard enough to send gravel flying, and then tumbling end over end, scattering bones along the way.

A rider.

Colivar moved forward quickly, and he reached the base of the slope just as the body landed with a thud upon a bed of jagged rocks. It was that of a small girl, barely past the age of puberty, with a dirt-streaked face and a torn, filthy shift. One of her arms was twisted behind her at an angle no unbroken limb could manage, and her body was bruised and bleeding in half a dozen places. As Colivar approached, the girl raised her head and hissed at him. There was fury in her eyes, and pain, and a thousand other bestial emotions . . . but not one drop of humanity, he noted. That had been devoured by the Souleater long ago.

For a moment the two of them just stared at one another. High above them the thrashing of the dying ikati loosed an avalanche of small rocks, which rained down upon them both. Colivar felt one strike his temple, drawing blood. He did not move.

And then the thrashing ceased. Somewhere in the distance a final blow was struck . . . and the ikati was dead at last.

The girl shrieked.

It was not a human sound, nor even a bestial one. It was a bloodcurdling amalgam of terror and madness and agony such as never should have issued from any living throat. The fact that it came from so young a girl made the sound doubly horrifying. Colivar could sense the men surrounding him freeze in their tracks, unable to comprehend such a sound. But Colivar understood it. He had heard it before. And in the depths of his soul, where his own darkest secrets lay buried, he understood the pain behind it, and he could feel his own heart bleed for her.

Moving wildly now, she tried to draw back from him. A shard of bone broke through the skin of her upper arm, and she howled in pain as another bone snapped, but still she scrambled backward. Pure animal instinct. She must have been joined to the ikati for a very long time, to have so completely lost touch with her humanity. Her age was probably just an illusion. Sometimes that happened. Sometimes they wanted to retain the appearance they’d had the night they were joined to the ikati, so they drew upon the power of their consorts to keep looking young.

Colivar could have used sorcery to help heal her wounds, or at least ease her pain. But that would have been a violation in her eyes, and he could not bring himself to do it.

“
Kossut!
” she hissed. “
Kossut tal getu!”

In another universe Guardians were climbing the rock mount, trying to get to the Souleater before the poison in its flesh dissolved the body parts they needed to harvest. More spear tips must be crafted. More arrowheads must be made. If the ancient formulas that the Archivist had researched did what they were supposed to do, then the creature’s hide could be crafted into new armor, tougher to pierce than the finest steel plate.

Slowly, Colivar knelt down before the girl. She was sputtering broken phrases in a foreign tongue, fragments of a language that he had had not heard for so many years he had to struggle to remember its meaning.

“What is she saying?” Ramirus asked him. Sometime in the last few minutes he had come up beside Colivar, and now he gazed down at the girl with naked curiosity.

“That her children are gone,” Colivar answered. “Someone took them from her. She thinks that is what we are here for, to steal her children. But she says they have already taken them all, so there is nothing left for us.” He furrowed his brow as he listened to the broken words, trying to make sense of them. “
Queen of sand, queen of ice, there must be two . . .
” He shook his head. “I can’t make sense of it all. The dialect has changed since . . . .” He hesitated. “It is a dialect I do not know.”

“What language?”

Favias’ voice came from behind them.“Kannoket.”

Colivar nodded.

Ramirus reached out toward the girl. Colivar’s first instinct was to stop him, but he did not interfere. She was not his to protect.

A misty image began to take shape above her head. It started as a mass of swirling gray clouds, with hints of orange light playing about the edges. As Ramirus teased the image into finer focus, the clouds parted, revealing a bird’s-eye view of a mountainous land. In the distance, on all sides, were vast expanses of ice and snow, lifeless but beautiful. In the middle of that frozen wasteland was a narrow island of green earth, set in a valley between several rugged ice-bound peaks. There were houses in the valley, constructed of sod and manure, and herds of sheep had gathered to graze near the banks of a clear black river. It might have seemed a peaceful scene, under other circumstances. But the animals were clearly agitated, and as Colivar watched, they looked about nervously, as if expecting that at any moment some danger might come rushing at them.

The earth rumbled.

The herd began to move . . . and then began to run, scattering terrified across the landscape. People came out of the sod houses to see what was going on, and one of them pointed to the mountain directly to the north of them. It was a tall peak, with footpaths winding up its rocky flanks and a wide caldera at its summit. Hot pools steamed about its base, and smoke was rising from the caldera itself, as a bulging dome began to push upward through the rock.

And the mountain exploded.

The girl who had fallen off the Souleater shivered violently, and she wrapped her good arm about her knees as she rocked back and forth, keening in terror. Colivar watched in horrified fascination as Ramirus’ vision was filled with roiling clouds of gray ash, backlit with the orange light of molten lava. One particularly thick cloud began to move down the volcano’s flank, heading toward the pristine valley below: a wall of ash and fire roaring down the mountainside, searing everything in its path. Crops were incinerated, houses charred and blackened, animals seared like cooked meat. The people turned to run, but even if they could have run fast enough to get away, there was nowhere to go. A few tried to make it to the river, but they could not get there in time . . . nor was it likely that the boiling steam rising up from the river’s surface would have provided a useful shelter.