Heir to the Shadows

Jaenelle turned away. Her profile was all angles and shadows, an exotic face carved out of marble. "I don't know." She stood very still. "Do you trust your instincts, Saetan?"

"Yes. But I trust yours more."

She had the strangest expression, but it was gone so swiftly he didn't know what it meant. "Perhaps you shouldn't." She laced her fingers together, pressing and pressing until dark beads of blood dotted her hands where her nails pierced her skin. "When I lived in Beldon Mor, I was often ... ill. Hospitalised for weeks, sometimes months at a time." Then she added, "I wasn't physically ill, High Lord."

Breathe, damn you, breathe. Don't freeze up now."Why didn't you ever mention this?"

Jaenelle laughed softly. The bitterness in it tore him apart. "I was afraid to tell you, afraid you wouldn't be my friend anymore, afraid you wouldn't teach me Craft if you knew." Her voice was low and pained. "And I was afraid you were just another manifestation of the illness, like the unicorns and the dragons and . . . the others."

Saetan swallowed his pain, his fear, his rage. There was no outlet for those feelings on a soft night like this. "I'm not part of a dreamscape, witch-child. If you take my hand, flesh will touch flesh. The Shadow Realm, and all who reside in it, are real." He saw her eyes fill with tears, but he couldn't tell if they were tears of pain or relief. While she had lived in Beldon Mor, her instincts had been brutalized until she no longer trusted them. She had recognized the danger in Halaway before Sylvia had, but she had doubted herself so much she hadn't been willing to admit it—just in case someone told her it wasn't real.

"Jaenelle," he said softly, "I won't act until I've verified what you tell me, but please, for the sake of those who are too young to protect themselves, tell me what you can."

Jaenelle walked away, her head down, her golden hair a veil around her face. Saetan turned around, giving her privacy without actually leaving. The stones he sat on felt cold and hard now. He gritted his teeth against the physical discomfort, knowing instinctively that if he moved she wouldn't be able to find the words he needed.

"Do you know a witch called the Dark Priestess?" Jaenelle whispered from the nearby shadows.

Saetan bared his teeth but kept his voice low and calm. "Yes."

"So does Lord Menzar."

Saetan stared at nothing, pressing his hands against the stones, relishing the pain of skin against rough edges. He didn't move, did nothing more than breathe until he heard Jaenelle climb the stairs that led to the balcony outside her rooms, heard the quiet click when she closed the glass door.

He still didn't move except to raise his golden eyes and watch the candle-lights dim one by one.

The last light in Jaenelle's room went out.

He sat beneath the night sky and listened to water sing over stone. "Games and lies," he whispered. "Well, I, too, know how to play games. You shouldn't have forgotten that, Hekatah. I don't like them, but you've just made the stakes high enough." He smiled, but it was too soft, too gentle. "And I know how to be patient. But someday I'm going to have a talk with Jaenelle's foolish Chaillot relatives, and then it will be blood and not water that will be singing over stone in a very . . . private . . . garden."

"Lock it."

Mephis SaDiablo reluctantly turned the key in the door of Saetan's private study deep beneath the Hall, the High Lord's chosen place for very private conversations. He took a moment to remind himself that he had done nothing wrong, that the man who had summoned him was his father as well as the Warlord Prince he served.

"Prince SaDiablo."

The deep voice pulled him toward the man sitting behind the desk.

It was a terrible face that watched him cross the room, so still, so expressionless, so contained. The silver in Saetan's thick black hair formed two graceful triangles at the temples, drawing one's gaze to the golden eyes. Those eyes now burned with an emotion so intense words like "hate" and "rage" were inadequate. There was only one way to describe the High Lord of Hell: cold.

Centuries of training helped Mephis take the last few necessary steps. Centuries and memories. As a boy, he had feared provoking his father's temper, but he'd never feared the man. The man had sung to him, laughed with him, listened seriously to childhood troubles, respected him. It wasn't until he was grown that he understood why the High Lord should be feared—and it wasn't until he was much older that he came to appreciatewhen the High Lord should be feared.

Like now.

"Sit." Saetan's voice had that singsong croon that was usually the last thing a man ever heard—except his own screams.

Mephis tried to find a comfortable position in the chair. The large blackwood desk that separated them offered little comfort. Saetan didn't need to touch a man to destroy him.

A little flicker of irritation leaped into Saetan's eyes. "Have some yarbarah." The decanter lifted from the desk, neatly pouring the blood wine into two glasses. Two tongues of witch fire popped into existence. The glasses tilted, travelled upward, and began turning slowly above the fires. When the yarbarah was wanned, one glass floated to Mephis while the other cradled itself in Saetan's waiting hand. "Rest easy, Mephis. I require your skills, nothing more."

Mephis sipped the yarbarah. "My skills, High Lord?"

Saetan smiled. It made him look vicious. "You are meticulous, you are thorough, and, most of all, I trust you." He paused. "I want you to find out everything you can about Lord Menzar, the administrator of Halaway's school."

"Am I looking for something in particular?"

The cold in the room intensified. "Let your instincts guide you." Saetan bared his teeth in a snarl. "But this is just between you and me, Mephis. I want no one asking questions about what you're seeking."

Mephis almost asked who would dare question the High Lord, but he already knew the answer. Hekatah. This had to do with Hekatah.

Mephis drained his glass and set it carefully on the blackwood desk. "Then with your permission, I'd like to begin now."

3 / Kaeleer

Luthvian hunched her shoulders against the intrusion and vigorously pounded the pestle into the mortar, ignoring the girl hovering in the doorway. If they didn't stop pestering her with their inane questions, she'd never get these tonics made.

"Finished your Craft lesson so soon?" Luthvian asked without turning around.

"No, Lady, but—"

"Then why are you bothering me?" Luthvian snapped, flinging the pestle into the mortar before advancing on the girl.

The girl cowered in the doorway but looked confused rather than frightened. "There's a man to see you."

Hell's fire, you'd think the girl had never seen a man before. "Is he bleeding all over the floor?"

"No, Lady, but—"

"Then put him in the healing room while I finish this."

"He's not here for a healing, Lady."

Luthvian ground her teeth. She was an Eyrien Black Widow and Healer. It grated her pride to have to teach Craft to these Rihlan girls. If she still lived in Terreille, they would have been her servants, not her pupils. Of course, if she still lived in Terreille, she would still be bartering her healing skills for a stringy rabbit or a loaf of stale bread. "If he's not here for—"

She shuddered. If she hadn't closed her inner barriers so tightly in order to shut out the frustrated bleating of her students, she would have felt him the moment he walked into her house. His dark scent was unmistakable.

Luthvian fought to keep her voice steady and unconcerned. "Tell the High Lord I'll be with him shortly."

The girl's eyes widened. She bolted down the hallway, caught a friend by the arm, and began whispering excitedly.

Luthvian quietly closed the door of her workroom. She let out a whimpering laugh and thrust her shaking hands into her work apron's pockets. That little two-legged sheep was trembling with excitement at the prospect of mouthing practiced courtesies to the High Lord of Hell. She was trembling too, but for a very different reason.

Oh, Tersa, in your madness perhaps you didn't know or care what spear was slipped into your sheath. I was young and frightened, but I wasn't mad. He made my body sing, and I thought. . . I thought. . .

Even after so many centuries, the truth still left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Luthvian removed her apron and smoothed out the wrinkles in her old dress as best she could. A hearth-witch would have known some little spell to make it look crisply ironed. A witch in personal service would have known some little spell to smooth and rebraid her long black hair in seconds. She was neither, and it was beneath a Healer's dignity to learn such mundane Craft. It was beneath a Black Widow's dignity to care whether a man—any man— expressed approval of how she dressed.

After locking her workroom and vanishing the key, Luthvian squared her shoulders -and lifted her chin. There was only one way to find out why he was here.

As she walked down the main hallway that divided the lower floor of her house, Luthvian kept her pace slow and dignified as befitted a Sister of the Hourglass. Her workroom, healing room, dining room, kitchen, and storerooms took up the back part of the lower floor. Student workroom, study room, Craft library, and the parlor took up the front. Baths and bedrooms for her boarders were on the second floor. Her suite of rooms and a smaller suite for special guests filled the third floor.

She didn't keep live-in servants. Doun was just around the bend in the road, so her hired help went home each night to their own families.

Luthvian paused, not yet willing to open the parlor door. She was an Eyrien exiled among Rihlanders—an Eyrien who had been born without the wings that would have been an unspoken reminder thatshe came from the warrior race who ruled the mountains. So she snapped and snarled, never allowing the Rihlanders to become overly familiar. But that didn't mean she wanted to leave, that she didn't take some satisfaction in her work. She enjoyed the deference paid to her because she was a good Healer and a Black Widow. She had influence in Doun. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">