Lost (29 page)

"What just
happened, Set?"

Set looked
around and then said something else in his own language to the other
two consorts with us. They sped up their pace and were soon out of
hearing range.

"All is
not well at the enclave, Isaac Nazir. It is unusual for a visiting
queen to stay for such a long time. The fact that you are all sun
people makes things difficult and Pal questions my judgment in
allowing you to stay."

Kristin wasn't
actually a shape shifter, but I wasn't going to interrupt him.

"Because
we are making it harder to hide from the Consumed?"

"Yes. Also
some worry that your presence will corrupt us, make us unsuitable to
return to our home when the time comes."

"What do
you think, Set?"

"I think
that their concerns are not without validity, but they risk
completely abandoning honor. I trust in the judgment of my queen. She
would not let us go that far astray. I will not become as dust and
abandon honor despite what others may do. As long as I continue as
the first consort they will not succeed in their plans."

There was
something in his tone that told me that he wasn't entirely sure he
would be able to maintain his position, which was especially ominous
given what he'd just finished telling me.

"What
would have to happen for someone else to become the first consort?"

"Honor
would require that they defeat me in single combat and receive the
blessing of the queen, but…there have been instances in the
past where under-consorts have abandoned honor. Under trying
circumstances they have been known to forgo single combat and instead
attack the first consort en masse. They did not receive their queen's
blessing and chaos ensued."

"What
happened after that?"

I didn't want
to pry, but I also felt like I needed to have an idea of just how
much trouble we were likely to be in if things started going
downhill.

"The
workers have very little of what you would call free will. They will
follow whatever orders they are given, whether by queen or consorts.
In both cases the consorts denied their queen food in an attempt make
her concede to their will. In one instance a neighboring enclave was
able to send a force to free the queen."

"What
about the second queen?"

"She
ultimately died. The enclave is a shadow of what it once was, a few
surviving consorts and less than a dozen workers. It was a terrible
loss, one that caused severe disruptions to the plan."

"The
plan?"

"The plan
to return us to our home. The shadow enclave is lost to us forever.
Its queen will never work for the good of our race through the plan
again. The queen who was rescued and the enclave that rescued her
were unable to continue their work for a long time. We can only
relocate our enclaves very infrequently. The work has suffered. The
queen is less than she once was."

"The one
who was starved?"

Set shook his
head. "All the queen. You would say all of the queens, but they
are all one, reflections of a larger whole."

We were getting
into territory that was almost religious, but there was one more
pressing question that I needed answered. I'd never adequately
understood the degree to which the consorts had free will. I'd
thought their honor constrained them, but it was apparent to me now
that they could choose to abandon it as easily as any human or shape
shifter.

"Set, why
didn't the queens who were overthrown act to stop it from happening?
Your queens can see the future, can't they?"

"You would
say they can."

"But if
your queens can see the future, why would anyone disobey them?"

Set stopped at
the mouth of the cave and let the workers pass us by. For several
long seconds he refused to meet my eyes.

"This
business of seeing the time stream is not a solution to all problems,
it is merely a different kind of complication. The queens see much,
but they do not see all anymore than you see everything around you."

"But I do
see everything around me."

Set pointed at
a huge tree that dominated the western vista. "What is behind
the tree, Isaac Nazir?"

I was silent
for nearly a minute as I absorbed his ingenious object lesson.

"I
understand—a little at least. So some of the consorts rebel
because they don't trust the queens' judgment."

"Yes, but
that is only part of it. The goal of the queens is to return our
people as a whole to our home, but there will be individuals lost
along the way. The goal of the people is survival, but the goal of
the individual is also survival. Many will not sacrifice individual
survival in exchange for the survival of the species. It is not an
easy choice even for my people."

"So the
consorts worried that the queens were going to sacrifice them for a
larger goal. Is there precedent for that?"

Set hesitated
before nodding again. "Yes. Long ago entire enclaves were
sacrificed in the pursuit of the work. We were once a much more
numerous people than we are now, Isaac Nazir. With each queen lost
the queens become less than they once were. Each one lost limits the
vision of the others and creates additional doubt in the minds of
some consorts."

He was painting
a chilling picture, one that I was having a hard time wrapping my
mind around. Their entire race had dedicated itself to one mission, a
mission that had spanned thousands of years, a mission that they
might never realize because of the sacrifices they'd made along the
way.

"Set, if
the queens become less with each loss and can't see as clearly as
they once could, how do you know that it's even possible to achieve
your great work still and return home?"

"You ask
the same questions as many of my fellows, Isaac. I do not answer them
because I've been sworn to secrecy and because knowing the answer for
them would just raise more questions, but if you will promise to keep
this secret then I will tell you the answer."

"Of
course. I will not tell anyone else."

"If we
placed a mountain behind that tree would you be able to see it
still?"

"Yes."

"There is
your answer. My queen tells me that some things are so momentous that
they can be seen even from a great distance away, even when other
things are hidden. Our return is not guaranteed, but in all of the
paths that lead to it, there is no mistaking the fact that it is
there."

It was a
strange kind of answer, the kind that didn't prove anything, but that
was a world that I wasn't completely unfamiliar with. I'd drifted
away from that kind of blind trust over the last few months, but it
was a place I was still surprisingly comfortable with.

"Faith.
You know because of faith in a higher power, in this case faith in
your queen."

"Indeed,
Isaac Nazir. Possibly that is why she has instructed me to tell you
many of these things that have remained hidden from most of your
people and mine for so many years."

Set waited to
confirm that he'd answered my question sufficiently, and then headed
out after the rest of his men. I shifted forms and followed him.

Less than
twenty minutes later our group slowed to a stop, alerted by something
I couldn't sense that we were nearly to Onyx's men. The lamias all
had their eyes closed and they were all facing the same direction,
but they didn't seem to be smelling the air.

I slowly
fidgeted, shifting my weight from one foot to the other as I resisted
the urge to ask Set what was going on. Just when I wasn't sure that I
could keep my mouth closed any longer, he opened his eyes and turned
towards me.

"They come
from that direction. They'll be here in another fifteen of your
minutes, maybe a little less. What should we know about them before
we engage?"

If the other
consorts hadn't been around I probably would have told him that it
was stupid to have left this briefing until the last second like
this. I'd somehow been assuming that we still had hours of travel
time before we would run into Onyx's men.

Finding out
that we had less than fifteen minutes to come up with a workable plan
against someone who could strike us down from yards away was the kind
of shock that I could do without, but I didn't want to undercut his
authority with the other consorts. We would just have to do the best
we could.

"Most of
them will just be other hybrids like me. Dangerous, but not as
dangerous as a werewolf. You should be able to make short work of
them with your venom. Some of them will be less skilled in combat
than I am, others will be more skilled, but there is one who is very
dangerous.

"Celeste,
my queen, said that she has seen him strike down several men at once,
overpowering them with an incredible pain that if left unchecked can
cause death. I'm afraid I don't have much advice for beating him
other than trying to take him by surprise. If we strike from behind
before he realizes that we were there, then we might be able to kill
him before he can bring us all down."

"Your
pardon, Isaac Nazir, but there are not many of them like you in the
group. Like your queen, yes, but not like you. There is only one
based on the sun from that direction. It is good, I think."

I wasn't sure
what to make of that. Was he trying to say that Onyx had brought an
army of female hybrids to hunt us down? I hadn't asked Celeste about
Onyx's people other than to confirm that he was the only one with an
ability, but I'd just assumed that most women wouldn't be willing to
work with someone like Onyx.

Set nodded,
apparently pleased with his conclusion. "The prevailing wind is
good, is it not?"

I set my
questions aside for a moment and took a deep breath. Just in the time
that we'd been talking Onyx's men had gotten closer. I couldn't
exactly smell them, but there were hints on the wind that something
had changed.

"Yeah,
actually, the wind is just about perfect. We need to move quickly if
we're going to set this up though."

Set patted me
on the shoulder, a feat anyone other than a seven-foot-tall lamia
would have found difficult given that I was in my hybrid form. "Don't
fear, Isaac Nazir. Our queen provides. We will ambush them right
here."

"Is it a
good idea to do that so close to the portal? If we are defeated,
there won't be anything to stop them from continuing on to the
enclave."

If Set's
actions earlier hadn't convinced me that at least some of the other
consorts understood English, what happened next would have done the
trick. One of the consorts let out a soft hissing laugh. I was pretty
sure that it was Pal, the one who had been giving me the evil eye
earlier.

My beast tried
to cut loose with a titanic flare of power on an attempt to put the
other consort on notice that we weren't amused, but I suppressed the
energy, bleeding it out slowly to keep from sending up a signal flare
to Onyx and his people.

Set hissed
something menacing at the consort and then gently turned me so that I
could look back the way that we'd come from and register the fact
that our surroundings had changed.

"The
portal has closed already, Isaac Nazir. Come, let us set this
ambush."

I got the
feeling that the lamias had done this kind of thing before. Set had
indicated that they'd been located in Egypt before this, but
apparently they hadn't let any grass grow underneath them over the
last few centuries when it came to learning about their new, wetter
environment.

Set dispersed
his people with a rapid series of gestures and verbal instructions,
and thirty seconds later all of the lamias other than Set had
disappeared underneath the dark, green water. They'd formed a large
circle in the center of the channel before submerging themselves.

One of the
consorts, I was pretty sure it was Pal again, didn't seem happy to be
putting himself in a position where he couldn't see or hear what was
going on outside of the water, but in the end he dropped out of sight
just like all of the rest.

"Try to
lure the sun people into that circle, Isaac Nazir. We have about twenty of
your minutes' worth of air before we'll have to surface."

Set pointed at
the empty space that was in the middle of a dozen sets of rapidly
expanding ripples, as if to remind me of the appropriate spot, and
then he too disappeared into the water. I sat there, watching the
ripples fade away to nothing, and had to suppress a shiver of
discomfort at the idea of getting into water deeper than my head
knowing that there were giant snakes, sharks and alligators swimming
around with me.

The trap was
set, so there wasn't any reason to continue to maintain a low
profile. I could smell them now, the scent of gasoline and engine
lubricant, mixed with people. The timing was about right if I was the
kind to panic, so I reached deep down inside and coaxed my beast up
to the surface with a roar of power that was shockingly strong.

They were close
enough that I knew they would be bound to feel the surge, now it was
just a matter of unobtrusively guiding them into the right spot. The
motor on the boat sped up and less than a minute later the boat came
into view.

There were
three guys on it, one of whom was chained to the boat, and roughly
ten hybrids on foot moving from island to island in an effort to
increase their party's overall footprint. I was pretty sure that one
of the guys in the boat was Onyx, and my bet would have been that he
was the one who wasn't steering the boat, but there wasn't any way to
be sure until the fur started flying.

I didn't
recognize any of the hybrids except one. Nicolas was cheerfully
slogging through the water. I couldn't tell whether he was just happy
to have finally found me, but he had blood on his hands, so it looked
like he'd already tangled with one of the swamp's denizens and come
out unscathed.