Winged Magic

12

Because of her restless night, Kelene slept late the next morning and roused only when servants brought trays of food into the bedroom and set breakfast on a table near the open window. She bounced to her feet, having slept better on the floor, and maneuvered the servants out the door when they insisted on serving the clanswomen their breakfast. Kelene closed the door in their faces. “Overfed, interfering females,” she said irritably.

At least they had had one good idea—they had brought a pot of freshly brewed tea. Kelene prepared a cup, laced it with milk, sweetened it with honey, and took it to her mother.

Gabria was already awake, and she smiled as Kelene sat beside her. Carefully she drank the hot tea, letting it settle her queasy stomach between sips.

“Do you remember the dream you had last night?” Kelene asked after a while.

The older sorceress looked blank; then she tilted her head in thought. “It is so vague. I feel as though I walked in a fog all night. But I do remember a white horse.”

“A white horse?” Kelene repeated, alarmed. The color was unusual among clan horses because of its connection to sorcery and to the Harbingers’ spectral steeds. “Was it a . . .”

“No,” Gabria hurriedly reassured her. “I thought so loo at first, but it was ridden by a woman.”

“Who? And why would you say ‘They’re coming’?”

“Did I? I don’t know. I don’t remember anymore.”

Kelene clicked her tongue. “Mother, some day, a long time from now, when you enter the presence of the gods, will you please ask Amara why your dreams are always so maddeningly unclear?”

The remark brought a smile to Gabria’s face, and for a moment lit her dull eyes with humor. “I’ll be sure to let you know the answer.”

They were still laughing when their door banged open and Zukhara’s majordomo walked into the room. A golden gryphon on his uniform identified him as one of the Fel Azureth, and the deep lines on his forehead and the chill black of his eyes marked him as a man of little humor.

Kelene glared at him and said coldly, “Were you born in a brothel that you do not ask to be admitted?”

He ignored her remark. His eyes slid over the room disdainfully and did not once look directly at her. “His Supreme Highness, Lord Zukhara, Ruler of the Faithful, expects your presence, clanswoman,” he demanded in crude Clannish.

“I guess that means me,” snapped Kelene.

“And he wants you in one of the gowns prepared for you.”

Kelene spat her opinion of the dresses and stalked out of the room before the officer realized she was going. She still wore the clan pants and tunic she’d made in the cavern—that was good enough!

The officer hurried to catch up, his face a frozen mask. Without another word he led her to an airy room on a lower floor of the large and spacious palace, where Zukhara and several other older men and two priests in yellow robes stood together talking.

The Gryphon’s distinctive eyebrows lowered when he saw Kelene. “I asked you—”

Kelene cut him off. “I am comfortable as I am.”

The men looked shocked at her effrontery, but Zukhara snapped his fingers and spoke a brief spell. To Kelene’s chagrin, she found herself clothed in a long blue gown with a bodice that clung to her form and a skirt that flowed like water to her feet. Silver embroidery decorated the neckline and the hem, and a silver belt tucked in her slender waist. Even her long hair was braided with silver ribbon and crowned with a simple coronet. She’d never felt so elegant, self-conscious, or humiliated in her life.

Zukhara suddenly broke into his charming smile. “You are lovely, my lady. And do not think to change it back, or you will stand before the city in nothing but your silky, pale skin.”

Kelene swallowed hard. She had no chance to retort, for in the next minute a fanfare of horns blared close by. Zukhara took her hand. It was only then that she saw the magnificence of his clothes and realized he had arranged something important.

Heavy drapes were pushed aside by servants, and Zukhara, Kelene, and the other men walked out onto a large balcony overlooking the palace grounds. Crowds of Turics filled the huge, open space and overflowed down the promenade into the streets. Half of Zukhara’s army was there, yelling loudly and prompting the sullen citizens into cheers. Fanatics began chanting Zukhara’s name.

The usurper basked in the adulation before he held up his hands and commanded silence. The crowds gradually quieted to hear his words.

“Rejoice, tribes of the Turic, your salvation is at hand!” Zukhara shouted. “Long have we been led down paths of greed, sloth, iniquity, and corruption at the hands of the Line of Festith. See how we pay for their evil! Our wells run dry; our animals die; our women and children starve. The grain we plant withers for lack of water. There is no help for us! The Living God has turned his countenance away from our pleas. As long as we allow the last Festith to rule as Shar-Ja, Shahr will not deem us worthy of redemption.”

A few hisses and boos followed those words, but most of the crowd remained silent.

“See what happened when the Shar-Ja tried to forge a pact with the infidel horse clans? His evil and greed were repaid with treachery and his only son murdered. That was our sign, my people! Sent by our god to show us the way out of our darkness. We must overthrow the perverted power of the Shar-Ja Rassidar and as foreseen by the Prophet Sargun, place the Gryphon on the throne of the Turic realm.”

The men of the Fel Azureth burst into cheers.

Kelene stared, wide-eyed, at the man beside her. She knew he was capable of concocting lies, of twisting the truth to fit his purposes, and of deliberately misleading his own people, but he executed his speech with such fervor and sincerity, in a voice that boomed to the edges of the throng with just enough pleading in it to show sympathy and concern for his audience. She might have believed it herself if she had not been a witness to the truth of his cruelty and manipulations.

Zukhara’s voice cried out once more. “Behold the heretic who brings such affliction upon us.” He pointed downward and out from the main doors came four men bearing a chair litter. Tied to the chair, in his ceremonial robes, sat the Shar-Ja, still alive and furiously silent.

The city dwellers looked shocked as the Shar-Ja was paraded up and down in front of the palace. Zealots pelted the ruler with rotten fruit and worse, but the citizens drew back as if from a leper.

“Four days from today, on the first day of the month of Janus, I and the priests of Sargun will perform the Ritual of Ascension to formally kill the Shar-Ja and prepare the throne for a new dynasty. As ordained in the sacred texts of the rite, that day I will take this woman as my wife and be ordained Celestial Monarch and Sacred Ruler of the Turic Tribes. As it was written, so let it be done!” He raised his arms to the roar of approval from his followers; then he thrust Kelene forward to the edge of the balcony just long enough for the crowd to see her. He turned on his heel and strode back indoors, dragging Kelene with him. As soon as he slowed down, the sorceress yanked her hand out of his grasp.

“I will not marry you!” she yelled. “I am already married and no widow.” She knew it would do her no good to argue, but her temper had grabbed the bit and run away with her common sense.

He flicked a hand as if to swat away an unimportant fly. “Your marriage as prescribed by your people under your heathen gods is considered invalid in our land,” he replied, his arrogance unruffled by her fury. “To us, you are not united to any man, except me.”

She crossed her arms, feeling stymied. “It will do you no good. I have not been drinking the ‘remedies’ you send with my meals. I am still barren and can do nothing to increase the blood of Valorian in your descendants,” she threw out for lack of anything better to say.

He laughed then in delight. “Of course you haven’t. You have been eating it ever since the night in the cavern when I discovered you had turned the juice to water. That was clever. But not clever enough. By the time we consummate our wedding night, the remedy will have completed its purpose.”

“There will be no wedding night,” Kelene said very slowly and distinctly, as if each word were a dagger to plunge into his heart.

His hand flashed toward her, caught her braid, and wrapped it tightly around his fingers. He wrenched her head back until her throat was exposed. “You are so beautiful when you are angry. Do not change. It will be such a pleasure to break that spirit,” he hissed in her ear. His fingers caressed her neck where the blood surged under her skin. “There will be a wedding night, and soon you will forget that worthless man who never gave you a son.”

This time Kelene reined in her hot reply. Nothing she could say would change his mind or alter his plans one whit, and all she wanted to do now was escape from his sight and think. Four days, by the gods, that was so little time! Her hands itched to snatch the chain around his neck and run, but what good would that do? Even if she managed to kill him, she still had to fetch her mother, find Nara and the gryphon, who were housed somewhere on the palace grounds, and contend with an entire army. She needed help, at the very least a good distraction, but a rescue force of several magic-wielders would be most welcome.

Zukhara kissed her lightly on her throat, and a chill sped down her spine. If something didn’t happen soon to precipitate her escape, Kelene knew she would have to choose between her own honor and her mother’s life. Clan society frowned on adultery; some women had even been exiled for promiscuous behavior. But what if the cost of fidelity was death for Gabria? More importantly, what would Rafnir think? How would he feel if she submitted to another man? Would he understand? She groaned, her teeth clenched, and prayed he would never be tested like that.

Zukhara laughed at her. Still holding her braid, he dragged her along the corridors back to her room and wrenched open her door.

Gabria, already dressed and seated at the table, stared coldly at the Gryphon as he shoved her daughter into the room. “My lord counselor,” she said before Zukhara could leave. “A boon I ask.”

He hesitated, curious, and because he was feeling generous at the moment, he decided to listen. Although he would never admit it even to himself, he harbored a grudging respect for this clanswoman who had survived so much in her life. He considered it an honor and an achievement to be the one who would at last kill her. “What do you wish?”

“I would like Lady Jeneve’s book.”

Zukhara shrugged. He had memorized every word and every spell in the little book. There was nothing in it the sorceress could use to thwart him and no real reason why he couldn’t give it to her for a short while. “Why do you want it?” he asked.

Gabria pushed herself to her feet and walked to Kelene’s side. “It is a part of a clan long dead. I would simply like it as a memento.”

The Gryphon bowed. He could be magnanimous. “Then you shall have it. I will send it to you today. Good day, ladies.” He swept out, and the door banged shut behind him. They heard the unmistakable hum of a spell, and when Kelene tested the door, she found it barred with a powerful ward.

She leaned her back against the door and ripped the silver coronet off her head. “Four days, Mother. That’s all we have left.”