Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
T he woman posing as Ildiko offered Brishen a smile when he squeezed her fingers. “I’ll be right back,” he said, suppressing the urge to yank his hand away and wipe it on his trousers. That or jerk her arm up behind her back, haul her to her feet, and demand she reveal who she was and what she’d done with the real Ildiko.
He rose, reluctant to turn his back but forced to do so if he didn’t want to raise suspicion. His position in front of the imposter blocked Anhuset from seeing her, and Dendarah’s attention was focused on Tarawin for the moment. Both women instantly turned their gazes on him when he stood, and sharpened when he signaled with one hand.
Danger. Hold .
His thoughts raced as he walked to where Anhuset casually pulled an arrow from her quiver, pretending to inspect its fletching. She kept the bow loosely hooked over her arm, ready to nock the arrow and draw the string in less time than it would take to inhale a breath.
She glanced past Brishen’s shoulder before returning her gaze to the fletching, her expression mild. To any who might overhear her softly spoken inquiry, she sounded bored. “Why does the hercegesé now have one yellow eye?”
“A question I’d like answered myself.” Brishen bent to rummage through their supplies for one of the full flasks of water. “I’m certain there’s at least one other abductor somewhere nearby hiding and watching. I’m going to try and flush them out. Warn Dendarah. I trust her to protect the queen. I want you to catch our quarry.” He straightened, keeping his posture relaxed though every muscle in his body demanded he grab the nearest horse, vault atop its back and race toward his wife’s rescue. Unfortunately, for the moment, he had no idea where she was.
“Said and done,” Anhuset reassured him.
The Ildiko look-alike hadn’t altered any further. Only the yellow eye gave her away. Brishen wondered if her eyesight had changed as well, with her vision improving on one side and worsening on the other as the forest brightened. He returned to her with the flask, noticing that she squinted more than before.
What powerful spell had this Kai somehow wrought to mimic his wife so closely? It went beyond surface appearance. The Kai were a physically heavy race. He would have noticed the difference in weight the instant he’d lifted who he thought was Ildiko in his arms. Yet, this stranger was as feather-light as his wife. The voice inflections and timbre were the same as well. Even the movements of her body and the way she held her shoulders when she spoke all accurately copied those of the real Ildiko.
There had been minute differences. Small things those who didn’t know her well might miss. And then there was gut instinct, a feeling of…wrongness that struck him when she first stumbled out of the woods and hadn’t ceased plaguing him right up until the spell started to fade. Even Anhuset must have sensed something was off. She’d been very guarded, even for her, with a woman she considered a friend. The queen regnant, more than anyone, had offered the greatest clues to this Kai’s duplicity. She hadn’t been fooled by the familiar face or voice. The child had squirmed to get away from the woman carrying her through the woods and completely ignored her afterward.
His thoughts raced as he drew closer to the imposter. The spell was powerful, if short-lived. He guessed it worked as a method to outwit an opponent. Cast it on someone dead or someone to be sacrificed so the person being mimicked had enough time to escape. It imitated every physical attribute, from hair color to voice and height to strength. If he was right, the Kai playing Ildiko was currently only at a fraction of her true vigor. A disadvantage for her, an advantage for him. The changing eye color hinted such a boon wouldn’t last long.
The close-lipped smile he offered hurt his face when he extended the water flask to the false Ildiko. She returned it, exposing her small, square horse teeth. Square except for her cuspids which were more pointed, longer, and sharper. Were it not for the fulgent yellow eye, he might not have noticed such a minor change, but now he watched for the tiniest transformation, and her teeth were no longer as human.
She reached for the flask, and he struck. Her startled yelp at being yanked upward and spun around ended on an “oopf” when Brishen slammed her face-down into the forest floor. He wrenched both her arms behind her, gripping her slender wrists with one hand while pressing a knee into her back.
“Who are you, and where’s my wife? Fury hazed his vision red, and he barely got the words out around a snarl. He was tempted to snap her neck. The magic cloaking this Kai might be short-lived, but it was powerful. The cuts and bruises, blood and scratches—how much had been earned on the journey to him, and how much was copied from the real Ildiko? Nausea flipped his stomach at the idea of her battered like this. He pressed his knee harder into the woman’s back. “Answer me.”
She slowly turned her head to spit dirt and debris from her mouth. More dirt smudged her pale cheek, and a thin smear of blood stained her lips. Her right eye was still human, though the white sclera bore a hint of jaundice. The spell continued to fade, and his captive grew ever stronger as she squirmed in his grip. “Brishen, please! What are you doing?”
“Ripping away the mask.” He stood, taking her with him, his grip unyielding on her wrists. She stiffened when he leaned into her and pressed his face to the side of her head. She smelled of earth and blood, and nothing at all like his wife. “You should have brought a mirror,” he murmured into her ear. “You’ve one Kai eye and one human eye.” He spun her around, let go of her hands and stepped back. If she tried to break for the treeline, he’d be on her in an instant. If she evaded him, there was always Anhuset, waiting within the shadows. “The spell you wear is fading.”
Her startled expression changed to one of fear as she touched her face, fingers running over the contours of cheekbones and nose. Brishen noted the way her fingernails had darkened, as if bruised from an injury. The fear faded, hardening her features with unmistakable resolve. She lowered her arms and shook out her wrists in a deliberate manner, her back straight and proud, head held high as she stared back at him with an oddly familiar gaze. Ildiko had never looked at him in such a way, yet he was certain he’d fallen under this particular scrutiny before.
The false Ildiko didn’t try to run. Instead, she raised her chin in challenge. “What are you willing to do to get your wife back?” Her voice matched the coldness of her expression.
Disconcerted, Brishen bared his teeth at her. “You’re lucky I haven’t strangled you with your own innards yet, and you’re trying to negotiate my hercegesé’s safety with me?” Incredulity at her gall only fueled his anger.
She paled but stood her ground, hands clenching in the folds of her ragged shift. “Give me what I most want, and I will give you what you most want.”
“And what is that?” He couldn’t begin to guess. He’d ruled out money as the motivator for this abduction long before encountering the Kai mimic. Whatever she and her cohorts wanted, it wasn’t ransom.
“Your seed,” she said. Her pallid cheeks rosied with a blush, but she didn’t look away. “A mating with you.” Her words tumbled out in a rush at his stunned silence. “I’ve no need of romance or passion, just a coupling and the life essence of the Khaskem inside me.” She crossed her arms, her yellow eye blazing pale and hot. “Give that to me, and I will tell you where you can find the hercegesé.”
Brishen wondered when he’d ceased to breathe. He gawked at his adversary, shocked speechless as his mind registered each outrageous word. Every line in her body dared him to reject her crazed demand and risk the life of his beloved wife.
“Are you mad?” The question, thick with outrage, came from Dendarah nearby.
The impersonator ignored the guard, never taking her gaze off Brishen. “You’re the direct descendent of Queen Secmis,” she continued. “And the regent of Bast-Haradis. Your ability to wield magic may be gone, but you can still pass it on to your offspring.” Her lip curled in a sneer, revealing one of her lengthening cuspids. “And yet you withhold what you owe all of the Kai for the love of a human woman. You abandon your duty by not taking a concubine or setting the hercegesé aside in favor of a Kai wife. What you won’t willingly give up, someone must take.”
Her words sent bile hurtling into his throat and ice water sluicing down his spine. She questioned his loyalty, justified abduction, and proposed rape. How desperate, how despairing did someone have to be to fall so far?
It didn’t matter. As she said, he was the Khaskem. He wouldn’t be used. He wouldn’t be threatened. And he would save his wife.
He stared at her, no longer seeing an echo of Ildiko but the shade of the Spider Queen of Bast-Haradis right before he embraced her and extinguished the last dark spark of her twisted soul. Hatred had flowed through his eidolon veins then, just as it did now, hollowing him out until nothing remained except the resolve to end a malice that strove to control him.
The Kai must have seen something in his expression for her eyes widened, and she spun away to flee. He caught her by her shift, jerking her off her feet a second time. She landed on her bottom with a thud. Brishen let go of the garment long to grab her hair, wrapping the long red length around his arm like a rope. Thin streaks of white wove through the vibrant strands. He almost let go when the imposter’s eyes watered with human tears. It was a truly powerful spell if it could create tears in the eyes of a Kai.
He dodged the blow she tried to land on him, flipping her so that she was on the ground again, this time on her side. She lay there, one arm trapped under her, the other gripping his boot so that her fingers dug into his calf through the leather. A quick glance into the tree line surrounding them yielded no hint of Anhuset’s whereabouts, and the sense of being watched from the wood’s obscuring shadows still lifted the hairs on Brishen’s nape.
His captive squirmed in his hold, breath whistling out her nostrils as he leaned down close to her ear. “If I allow you to use me as stud and discover you’ve lied about the hercegesé, I will track you down and kill you.” His words were no less sincere for their softness. His fingers twisted her hair a little harder. The Brishen he was now wouldn’t be the Brishen he’d become if he lost Ildiko because of this bitch. “Being pregnant won’t save you. Being a mother won’t save you or the children you bear. There isn’t a place in this world to run to or hide that I won’t find you. And I won’t stop with you. I’ll wipe out your entire family, from your living relatives to the mortem lights stored in Emlek. Do you understand?”
Her pained gasp made her stutter. “You would kill your own child?”
He almost threw her from him then, revolted by the question and the dark implications of infanticide. He had killed in battle. Enemy soldiers and raiders, his dead mother whose soul had been far more dangerous than her body. He’d never murdered, never planned the killing of someone with coldblooded calculation. Still, any mercy he possessed would die if Ildiko died. He knew that down to his bones. But could he kill his own offspring? Even if forced to sire them on a woman driven by some demented ambition to save the powerful magic of his line? The possibility he’d become a monster like his mother sickened him.
“Do you understand?” he repeated, tightening his grip on her hair.
She tried to nod. “I understand. Swear you’ll leave us be if I keep my part of the bargain.”
He’d swear to no such thing, especially since he had no intention of giving her what she wanted, but this dangling carrot bought him and Anhuset time.
“Herceges!” Anhuset’s excited cry reached his ears moments before she entered the clearing, dragging a trussed and struggling Kai behind her. “Found him up in the trees.” She flung her captive not far from where Brishen held the false Ildiko. A short length of rope hung from the hand she held out to him. “You need this for her?”
He nodded his thanks and tied the Kai woman’s hands behind her back. Bedraggled from her scuffle with him in the dirt, she looked even more ragged than before and still too much like Ildiko for his peace of mind. Her defiance had vanished the moment Anhuset appeared with the second Kai, her body rigid as she watched the newest prisoner from the corner of her eye.
“Run, and I’ll catch you,” Brishen warned her. “Then I’ll cripple you.” He half expected her to spit at him, call him names, or rain down curses on his head, but her gaze remained fixed on the new arrival.
Anhuset gestured for him to join her out of their prisoners’ earshot. She tilted her chin toward the Ildiko imposter. “She tell you anything yet?”
“Only things I don’t want to hear.” He relayed the extortion threat, watching her eyes lighten as her temper soared.
Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. “I’ll kill her,” she said before lunging toward the kneeling Kai woman, almost wrenching Brishen’s shoulder out of joint as he gripped her arm and blocked her with his body. “Not yet. I need her alive until I can find Ildiko.”
Anhuset’s nostrils flared. “Then can I kill her?”
He might have laughed were the situation not so dire. “Maybe.” The bile still hung in his throat at the memory of what the Kai had demanded of him in exchange for his wife’s whereabouts. “I don’t have the time or inclination to coax Ildiko’s location out of her.” He glanced at the woman, noting how she and Anhuset’s captive stared silently at each other, no doubt carrying on a wordless conversation of warnings to stay silent. He nodded toward the man. “If I were to guess, he answers to her, not the other way around.”
Anhuset nodded. “I agree.” Her hands flexed, then curled into loose fists as if she prepared to brawl. “As you say, we don’t have the luxury of time. “Do you want me to encourage her? I have no problem doing so.”
Even with the cold fire of rage licking his insides, Brishen still shied away from the idea of torture as a method to extract information. He’d suffered through that brutality himself and come away from it blinded and scarred inside and out. Subjecting another person to something similar, no matter the reason, turned his stomach. But needs must, and he’d do much worse to save Ildiko.
“I think she’ll die before she talks,” he said. He gestured to the Kai henchman. “And he’ll spill her secrets to stop her.” He hadn’t missed the horrified anguish in the man’s eyes as Brishen bound her with rope and threatened to maim her. “You interrogate him while I use her to convince him to talk.”
She clasped Brishen’s arm, stopping him from walking away. “Let me handle her.” Sympathy darkened her eyes to a lustrous gold. “She may not be Ildiko, but she still looks enough like her that you’ll have sleep terrors for years, not to mention misplaced guilt. If anyone is going to beat the shit out of the imposter, let me or Dendarah do it.”
“I won’t ask that of you.”
“You didn’t. I’m volunteering.”
Fierce Anhuset, whose devotion to him never wavered and whose insight into his character remained clear and far-seeing. She never failed to amaze him. He nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”
The false Ildiko’s mismatched eyes widened, and she scuttled back, still on her knees, as Anhuset approached, her knife unsheathed and held lightly in her hand. Brishen turned his attention to the henchman, grasped his bound hands by the rope and dragged him closer to the woman. He stayed quiet, eyes nearly white with hatred as Brishen crouched down beside him.
Brishen seized his face, claws digging into his cheeks until blood trickled down his fingers. The man wheezed a pained exhalation through clenched teeth and glared.
“Here’s how this works,” Brishen told him. “I will ask one simple question. You answer, and there will be no pain. If you don’t…” On that pause, he let go of the man’s face and glanced behind him to where Anhuset stood beside the imposter.
She’d gagged Ildiko’s impersonator with a strip of cloth ripped from the already ragged shift. The woman’s mismatched eyes glittered with desperation, fear, and warning as she stared hard at her cohort.
Brishen shuddered inside at the sight of her, enough like Ildiko to make his gut twist at the knowledge of what he and Anhuset were about to do.
He turned back to the henchman, making sure the Kai had a clear view of the two women. “Where is the hercegesé?”
The Kai, face streaked with blood, glared at Brishen, and said nothing.
Brishen stared back and said in his calmest tone, “Anhuset, break all the fingers on one of her hands.”
A pair of gasps tore from both captives, one muffled by a gag. Brishen didn’t flinch or turn around at the rapid snap of bones, or the choked scream that followed. He swallowed down a rush of bile, not seeing the anguished Kai in front of him, but the memory of leering human faces twisted with ghoulish laughter as they ripped out his claws one by one with a pair of pincers.
He mentally shook himself, and once more it was the Kai’s face before him, no longer defiant but twisted with grief and fury.
“You fucking bastard!” He lunged at Brishen who dodged nimbly out of the way. He fell to his side, only to have Brishen right him again with a clear view of his mistress and her torturer.
“Where is the hercegesé?” Brishen barely resisted the urge to punch the information out of the man. Torturing or beating him would do nothing more than waste time. He was indeed the weakness in the wall of secrecy. Brishen didn’t doubt this Kai would readily die for his mistress, even under torture. That he would allow the imposter to die under the same circumstances…
Her soft sobs sounded so much like the real Ildiko’s it was all Brishen could do not to spin around and order Anhuset to stop. Instead, he kept his eye on the henchman who watched her, grief-stricken. “Please, mistress,” he begged her.
Brishen waited another moment. When no answer was forthcoming, he sighed. “The other hand, Anhuset.”
The henchman lunged again, this time toward the imposter, as a second round of awful snicks and muffled screaming sounded behind them. He crawled on elbows and knees to reach her, using fists, feet, and teeth to fight off Brishen, who pulled him back. Brishen did punch him then, hard enough that the man hit the ground and lay still, eyes closed as his breath gusted from his mouth in heavy pants.
He lay limp as Brishen grabbed the back of his tunic and yanked him to a sitting position. The false Ildiko sat on her haunches, holding her bound hands close to her chest. Her fingers were swollen and misshapen, and tears streamed down her cheek from the one eye still mostly human. She rocked back and forth, obviously in pain, yet she shook her head violently when her accomplice once more begged her to let him speak.
Panic and impatience began to eat away at Brishen’s revulsion for what he and Anhuset did. They were losing precious time. “Where’s the hercegesé?”
The Kai man snarled in impotent fury. Brishen seized the opportunity and twisted the knife a little harder. “This isn’t a game I want to play.” He spoke over his shoulder to Anhuset. “If I don’t get an answer this time, sever both of her heel cords.” He ignored his captives’ distressed cries. “After that, hamstring her. And after that, cut off her nose.” He met the charlatan’s horrified gaze. “So I may always know who dared to threaten what is most precious to me.”
“My gods,” the other man whispered next to him. “You are insane!”
“No, I’m a husband wanting his wife back, and if I have to take your mistress apart piece by piece to make that happen, then so be it.” Brishen meant every word and more. If Ildiko died because of these two, there wouldn’t be enough left of either of them to burn or bury. “Where is the hercegesé?” Once more silence reigned, and Brishen raised his hand, signaling to Anhuset.
“Stop!” The Kai man broke, fury mixed with regret, despair, and most of all, love in his eyes. He raised his bound hands in a plea for mercy. “No more. I’ll tell you where the hercegesé is. Just don’t maim her anymore.”
Behind Brishen, the imposter tried to shout garbled commands around her gag. The man flinched, looking away for a moment before turning his gaze back to Brishen.
“She’s at Orshulgyn.”
The rush of relief roaring through Brishen made him lightheaded. They were one step closer to ending this ordeal. “How many guards?” he asked, surprised by the dead calm of his voice when it took all his strength not to leap to his feet and bolt for his horse.
Mouth twisted into a sneer, the other man spat to one side. “For a human woman? Just one.”
If there was one thing Brishen could count on, it was his enemies’ predictability in overestimating his mercy and underestimating his wife’s prowess. “Is she wounded?”
A casual shrug. “No worse than how my mistress appeared when she first approached you.”
“Please, holy gods,” Brishen silently prayed. “Let that still be true.”
He stood and strode to Anhuset standing over the Kai woman. “Gag them both and bind them to separate trees away from each other. Then you and Dendarah ride hard to Saggara with Tarawin. You’ll no doubt cross paths with one or more of our other trackers. Send them back here to retrieve these two.” He glanced at his wife’s double as she violently shook her head. He shuddered and looked away.
“You want to leave them alive?” Anhuset’s outrage startled a pair of doves hidden in the trees into flight. “Brishen, they took the queen! That’s treason!”
He grasped her elbow and pulled her to a spot out of his captives’ earshot. Anhuset’s eyes were white-hot as she practically vibrated with fury. “I know nothing of the magic she wears other than that it’s powerful but temporary. If I kill her now, she might die still disguised as Ildiko. I want to know who she is. If she’s one of Vesetshen’s relatives, then that matriarch will regret the day she ever crossed me.”
His explanation went far to cool Anhuset’s temper, though her eyes remained pale. “I can take them back on lead lines, one tied to my horse, one to Dendarah’s.”
If they didn’t have his daughter, he might have agreed to the idea. “They’ll slow you down too much if you try to bring them with you. Tarawin is the first priority. I’ll risk one or both of them escaping in favor of getting the queen safely home. Speed counts most here.” He scanned the forest surrounding them, praying no one else lay in wait to ambush them. “Take down anyone who gets in your way.”
She nodded. “That goes without saying.”
He left her to carry out his commands, halting in front of Dendarah to take Tarawin in his arms and hug her tightly. The little queen squealed and planted a slobbery kiss on his cheek before head-butting his nose in a demand that he play “horsey” with her. He kissed her forehead and handed her back to Dendarah. The royal guard nodded when he relayed the same commands he’d given Anhuset. “Remember you’ll have to sneak her into the fortress,” he said. “We’ve spread the lie the queen is still at Saggara under Kirgipa’s care. See it stays that way.”
Dendarah saluted him. “As you command, Herceges.” Worry flashed across her grim features. “Be careful, and may all be well with the hercegesé.”
Rain clouds had moved in by the time he rode out of the woodland for the wide swath of fields stretching like a gentle sea to the bottom of rolling hills and the ancient necropolis built for dead human sorcerers. The sullen sky hung low, a dull gray with hints of lightning flashing across its underbelly.
To keep from exhausting his horse, he altered its pace between a walk, a trot, and a gallop. The hills silhouetted against the building storm hid the most precious thing in Brishen’s life, and he urged his mount onward as they raced toward the shadowed slopes.
The sky opened, washing curtains of rain across the landscape. Orshulgyn crowned the peak of the lowest hill, its flanks made treacherous by the loose rock covering the ground. Brishen scouted one side where a worn path—almost choked to invisibility by weeds—snaked its way up the incline. Thunder rumbled in every direction as he coaxed his horse up the narrow road, gaze sweeping the terrain for any movement or possible ambush.
Nothing rushed him from behind the large boulders standing sentinel along the route. Lightning lit the way as he rode closer to the circular buildings capped with pointed thatched roofs. He listened for the warning whine of an arrow shot from a bow, but only the thunder serenaded him. His mount stumbled twice on the now slippery ground, and Brishen dismounted to lead the horse the rest of the way to the necropolis. If Ildiko’s guard waited for him, he’d have plenty of time to prepare for a confrontation.
Except for its dead, Orshulgyn looked deserted. His hopes of swiftly finding his wife plummeted even as his fear and anger soared. If the Kai had lied to him regarding Ildiko’s whereabouts, Brishen would make him wish Secmis were alive to dole out his punishment.
He spun around at a soft whuff and spotted a gray gelding still bridled near one of the columbaria. The animal paced toward them, tossing its head and whickering a greeting to Brishen’s mount. Both horses snorted and shied when a lightning bolt kissed the field below, leaving a crack of thunder to boom its disapproval.
Brishen caught the gelding by its dragging reins, noting the saddle nearby with its familiar tack and the tell-tale presence of bow and sword still inside their saddle scabbards. No Kai soldier with any training would leave their weaponry unattended. Something had happened to the guard tasked with watching Ildiko.
Torn between relief and worry, he led both horses to a columbarium where the wall shielded them from the worst of the wind-driven deluge and looped their reins around a wooden post planted in the ground. Sigils carved into wood and weathered by time and elements, shimmered faintly in the rainy murk. The fine hairs on his arms rose as the feel of old sorcery danced across his skin.
Brishen unloaded his weaponry from his horse, then emptied the quiver belonging to the Kai guard, adding the arrows to his supply. He broke the bow in half and slid the sword under a gap between the ground and the building, hiding it from sight.
Drenched to the skin, he navigated the necropolis grounds, sloshing through puddles and small rivers of muddy water that tumbled over his boots. He paused before an ominous stone slab, stained and glistening in the downpour, and wondered how much blood had once been spilled on its smooth surface. A whisper of malevolent laughter mingled with the chatter of raindrops, as if something found his revulsion amusing.
Blade and bow were useless against entities that defied death and wielded sorcery, but he wasn’t defenseless. Elder magic still coursed through his veins, thin as watered-down ale, but strong enough to protect him if needed. He prayed he wouldn’t have to use it. All hope of one day rescuing Megiddo lay in what little magic he still retained.
The rain gradually lightened to a heavy drizzle, heralding in a twilight of starless gloom and a quagmire of mud that threatened to suck his boots off his feet. He stopped at every columbarium to either shove or kick open the door to look inside. Each one stood empty except for a solitary urn chained to the lid of a stone bier. It wasn’t until he reached one with a hole in the roof that his heart smacked against his ribs, this time in triumph.
Ildiko had been here. He had no doubt of it. And she’d escaped using a tattered rope and a pair of soggy trousers hanging from its length.
He bolted from the house of the dead, cursing the rain as it had destroyed any hint of tracks that might have told him which way she’d gone. Her name hung in his throat, wrapped around a bellow he held back until his jaw ached. “Where are you, Ildiko?” he whispered, the question drowned out by the steadily falling rain.
Luck blessed him when he paused to choose which way to continue the hunt for his wife. While the rain had obliterated most spoor, a few remained. Hoofprints, embedded deeper in the ground than those of a barefooted human woman had withstood the wash of water so far. They showed a path the Kai’s horse had taken, from the necropolis’s outer perimeter to its inner circle. Brishen backtracked the prints until the flat terrain dropped off into a steep decline.
The mad hope of finding Ildiko safe and sound had set his heart to drumming when he’d seen the rope and trousers. That same organ seized when he peered over the hilltop’s edge and spotted a pale, crumpled figure far down the slope amid a scatter of rocks, scrubgrass, and brambles. Another figure lay not far away, twisted at an odd angle. Faded yellow eyes glowed dull and unblinking in the oncoming night.
Brishen didn’t hesitate and leaped to careen down the slope at breakneck speed, sliding across a field of mud and slippery rocks. He lost his balance once, landing on his side as stone and thorns tore his tunic and ripped his bow and quiver off his shoulder. Something sharp nicked his cheek, just below his eye. He barely noticed the sting or the warm trickle of blood washed away by the water sluicing down his face.
He almost crashed into Ildiko on his knees, scrabbling for purchase by gripping nearby tufts of scrubgrass whose wet blades sliced into his palms as easily as knives.
Ildiko lay in the mud, looking like a poppet thrown about by a child. Bruises mottled her pale skin, along with scratches and a cut on her forearm purposefully inflicted by a blade. Rain pelted her features, mixing with the blood trickling from her nostrils and the corner of her mouth. More blood matted her hair on one side.
Brishen knelt beside her, gently cupping her cheeks in shaking hands. The chant in his head kept pace with his racing heart. Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh gods. He bent close, praying he’d feel her breath against his face. Nothing. Terror screamed through his mind, blinding him to his surroundings. Shouting her name would do no good. Instead, he scooted back and lay his head against her chest, listening for a heartbeat and begging deaf gods not to steal her from him.
The breath he held gusted from his lungs when the faintest pulse, unsteady and weak, whispered in his ear. Had he been human, he might have wept. He pressed his forehead between her breasts, drunk with relief. A caress of fingers in his hair made him raise his head. His wife stared at him, blinking away raindrops. “Ildiko,” he said, her name an orison on his lips.
Her mouth curved into a half smile as her fingers wove through his wet hair. “Brishen. I knew you’d come.” The smile became a frown. “Tarawin?”
“Safe.” He swiped away rivulets of rain from her cheek with his thumb. “Anhuset and Dendarah are taking her to Saggara.”
She licked her cracked lips. “Thank the gods.” Her voice had a wheezy quality to it and was hardly more than a whisper. “It’s getting darker.” Her eyes rolled back before her lids drifted down.
Alarmed, Brishen grasped her hands. “Stay with me, wife. Open your eyes.”
Her eyelids fluttered, and she raised them enough for him to see the lower half of her sclera, irises and pupils. “I think I’m broken inside.” The cough she expelled and the weak cry of pain that followed, broke the dam holding back his panic.
He ran his hands lightly over her torso, careful not to press too hard and hurt her even more. She felt as fragile as a bird. There was no obvious injury beyond the cuts and bruises he could see, but his alarm didn’t lessen. The new bright blood spilling down her chin, and the blue tinge to her lips were testament to her concern that she was, indeed, broken inside. He caressed her head where old blood matted her hair and came away with a palm stained red.
For the first time in his life, he floundered, helpless in the face of her unseen injuries. He was good with a sword and axe, physically strong, and willing to face armies of galla, but this…this was beyond his capabilities. He was without a healer, and if he was right, Ildiko was dying.
The slightest wheeze of a breath escaped her mouth, then nothing. Brishen bellowed her name, spurred on by desperation to shout her recovery into existence and make her open her eyes. Neither happened, and he bent to press his ear to her breasts, seeking the weak but precious heartbeat. Still nothing.
He wasn’t a healer or a sorcerer, but he was the Khaskem and the last adult Kai to retain a pittance of Elder magic not lost or weakened by the fading of the Kai and the spell he’d wrought to rob them of their heritage in order to save them. He’d held onto those thin threads of ancient sorcery with both hands in the hopes of one day rescuing Megiddo’s eidolon from his horrific fate. He sacrificed that magic now without hesitation, without regret, summoning it from within so that it arced like lightning through his veins and muscles, sizzling down his arms and making his claws shimmer with blue light. The luminescence bathed Ildiko’s wan face, turning it into a death mask.
This was the sorcery of necromancy, once revived by a macabre spell fueled by spilled blood. It was all he had to wield as he tried to save his wife, and he poured its dark power into her dying body. It cascaded out of him, making his head spin and his vision fade until Ildiko was no more than a hazy outline of color smudged by rain.
“Please, Ildiko,” he begged her. “Don’t leave me.”
The magic continued to rush out of him with a speed that made him reel. Ildiko’s features went from hazy to sharp in his vision. Her eyes opened to stare past his shoulder to an infinite horizon. She spoke, not in a weak, whispery voice, but in two voices, both strong and powerful. One hers, the other deeper, male, familiar. Megiddo.
“Witch, open the gate for me.”
The strange command slammed an ethereal door shut, and Brishen gasped when the flow of power suddenly stopped, sending a shockwave of nausea through his gut. He rolled away from Ildiko and vomited into the bramble bush next to him. Limbs shaking, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and crawled back to where she lay.
Rain mixed with blood created pink ribbons that unfurled and dripped off her chin. She hadn’t changed position, and her eyes were closed again. Her pallor, however, was no longer the sickly gray of the dying. She was still pale but with a rosy undertone in her cheeks and her lips.
Hollowed out by the loss of his remaining magic and too frightened to pray, Brishen pressed his ear to her chest a second time and heard a heartbeat, slow and steady. Hardly daring to believe it, he put two fingers to her throat, then placed them under her nose. Her breath fanned gently over his knuckles.
The euphoric laughter erupting out of him held more than a tinge of madness. The sky answered him with a far-off crack of thunder as the storm rolled south, and the drizzle lightened to a sprinkle. Brishen clasped one of Ildiko’s hands and brought it to his mouth to press kisses across her palm and fingers. He would have kissed her lips as well were it not for the lingering sourness of bile still on his tongue.
She hadn’t awakened, but she was alive, and if he weren’t already on his knees, he would have fallen to them, a grateful supplicant before merciful gods. Her hand flexed in his grasp. Brishen held on and used his free hand to scrape away the wet tendrils of hair glued to her cheek. “Ildiko?”
A smile graced her mouth, and her eyelids gradually lifted. He inhaled sharply at the sight, squeezing her fingers until she flinched. Cerulean light ringed her irises and tinted her sclera. She stared at him for a long time without speaking. When she finally did, her voice was neither the feeble whisper of a dying woman nor the powerful command of two entities speaking in tandem. It was simply Ildiko, his beloved. “I’ve always wondered what the Kai might look like if they could weep.” She lifted her other hand to wipe the rain from his face. “Now I know.”
The sudden tightness in his chest rose to close his throat. He gingerly lifted her into his arms, breath held as he waited to hear a cry of pain. Instead, she draped her arms over his shoulders and pressed a kiss to his throat. She sighed in his embrace. He shuddered in hers and buried his face in her neck.
Somehow, he’d managed to heal her, though how much or in what ways, he didn’t know. Getting her off this slope without hurting her would still be a challenge. But she breathed and smiled and even joked. And while she might have a Wraith King’s magic flowing through her veins now, she no longer bled.
They held each other long enough for his knees to protest their genuflection amid the sharp rocks. The rain had completely stopped, and night lay fully upon them, made hazy by a rising fog. His vision might be sharp during the nocturnal hours, but fog blinded both Kai and human alike. If he and Ildiko didn’t leave soon, he’d have to guess his way back up the hill’s flank. “Woman of day,” he whispered near her ear. “Are you ready to come home with me?”
Ildiko’s fingers combed gently through his wet hair, her short huff of laughter warm on his skin. “As long as you don’t have a scarpatine pie waiting to celebrate my homecoming.”
Leave it to his resilient wife to find humor in the grimmest circumstances. He adjusted her in his arms so that he bore most of her weight, and slowly stood. She lost her footing on the slippery ground, clutching his shoulders to stay upright.
“Sorry,” she said. “I still have ribbons for legs.”
He kissed her forehead. “No apologies. You’ve survived an ordeal that would have killed another. I doubt any would hold a stumble against you. Not even Anhuset.”
“I can’t imagine Anhuset ever stumbling over anything.”
“Just her tongue when Serovek is near.”
His remark elicited another laugh from her before her features turned somber. “You sacrificed the last of your magic to save me, didn’t you?”
That was a conversation for another time and certainly another place. Brishen tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “It was a necessity, not a sacrifice Ildiko, and I’d do so again without hesitation.” He hugged her lightly. “Right now I need to get both of us up this hill before the fog truly sets in.” He stepped back to inspect her mud-splattered form. “Are you in any pain? Can you stand on your own?”
She shook her head at the first question and nodded at the second, then tilted her chin to where the Kai lay not far away, still unmoving. “What about him?”
Brishen followed her gaze. “That’s why I asked if you could stand. I need to leave you for a moment to make sure he’s dead.” He focused his attention back on her. “Do you know who he is?”
It was difficult for him to read emotion in human eyes, but the sorrow and anger in Ildiko’s was unmistakable. “No, but I know whom he serves.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I’ve much to tell you.”
He stroked her arms, claws passing over her skin, with only hints of the bruises and scratches there. Even the knife slash on her arm was nothing more than a raised pink line. “And I you, but we’ll do so on the way home. Wait here.”
As he thought, the Kai tasked with guarding Ildiko was dead. He lay among the stone rubble, his eyes a dull ochre now as he stared at nothing, his neck twisted at an odd angle. Like Ildiko, he’d taken a tumble down the slope. He hadn’t been so lucky as her.
With the rain gone, birds left their sheltered trees and took to the sky. Some chose to scour the ground for food, including a wake of vultures who landed not far from where the dead Kai lay. A pair of crows soon joined them. All watched Brishen, patient in their waiting, as he stood and walked away, leaving them to their meal.
Ildiko watched his approach, her face wan with quiet horror. “That could have been me had you not saved me,” she said and hugged herself.
He gathered her in his arms. “But it wasn’t you, wife.” He kissed her forehead once more, then both her eyelids. “I saw the rope and trousers in the columbarium. Clever woman, you saved yourself.” The rolling fog had risen to coil around his knees now. Brishen pulled away from her. “We have to go. I’m more surefooted than you and have my claws to grip if needed to climb this hill. You may not be in pain but I doubt you’re strong enough yet to make the climb on your own. Get on my back and I’ll carry you.”
She frowned. “Are you certain? I’ll be a burden.”
He snorted. “You weigh less than my armor. I’m certain.”
She did as he instructed, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders. Had she been a Kai woman, the ascent would have been much more difficult, much more treacherous, but she was feather-light and held on with the tenacity of lichen on stone. He slipped only once, his heart leaping into his throat as his claws dug into the soft earth to keep his balance. Rocks skittered past them to skip down the slope.
“I’m fine, Brishen,” Ildiko assured him before he could ask her.
They made it to the top without mishap after that. Ildiko slipped off his back and offered him a mischievous smile. “I once compared you to a dead eel, but maybe a nimble goat is more accurate.”
She was a mess of blood-matted hair, torn clothes, and bare feet scratched by brambles. She was also the most beautiful being he’d ever beheld. “You’re still the pretty hag,” he said, returning the smile with one of his own that never failed to make her eyes go wide for a moment.
He led her to where the two horses still sheltered under the columbarium’s thatched overhang. Ildiko happily took the flask of tepid water he offered, downing half of it in three gulps before returning it to him with a sheepish look. “Forgive me. I was thirsty.”
Hungry too if he were to guess. He pushed the flask back to her. “Drink as much as you want, but slowly this time or you’ll be sick.”
She refused and pushed it back to him. “I’m done, truly.”
He finished the rest, using most of the remaining water to rinse his mouth of the taste of bile. A vague queasiness still assailed his stomach, and the strange emptiness that carved a trench inside him from the loss of his magic would always remain, along with the grief of knowing he’d destroyed any hope of saving Megiddo. But he had saved his wife, and he comforted himself with the idea that the courageous monk would have approved the sacrifice and done the same himself.
Ildiko didn’t argue when he lifted her onto his horse and mounted behind her. The dead Kai’s mount followed behind them as they rode out of the necropolis grounds to make their way back to Saggara. Brishen kept Ildiko snug against him, one arm resting across her midriff. She leaned back, hands stroking his forearm. “I hope I never see this place again,” she said.
“If the gods play fairly, you never will.” Once they reached Saggara, he’d assign a battalion of Kai soldiers to guard her and Tarawin. As for the woman who’d abducted and impersonated her, there was a gate with a pike waiting for a head to mount on it.
As if Ildiko heard his grim musings, she squeezed his forearm. “No dark thoughts for now, Brishen. We’ve more bleak things to face when we reach home, but wait until then. Tarawin is safe, and we’re alive and together. Be joyful with me in this moment.”
He reined the horse to a stop. Ildiko twisted in the saddle enough so she could face him with a turn of her head. The combination of grief and fury had returned to mar her features, but faded when he tilted her chin up. Her lips parted beneath his, her tongue seeking entrance past his teeth to caress the inside of his mouth. His soft groan mimicked hers, and the saddle creaked under them as he gathered her tightly in his arms. When they came up for air, he offered her a second quick peck on the lips.
“I’ve my wife where she belongs, safe in my arms. How can I not find joy in that?” A sudden thought occurred to him, and he reached inside his tunic, pulling out her necklace with its broken chain.
At first, Ildiko merely squinted at it, unable to make out what he held in the dark—the pale moonstone flower with its tangle of black roots. Then she gasped, her eyes filling with tears as he dropped the necklace into her hand. “Oh gods, Brishen, I thought it was lost forever!” She clutched his gift, pressing it to her chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped off her jaw. “You found it. You found me.”
He held her close and stayed silent until her crying eased and only sniffles were left. “The chain’s broken,” he said.
She wiped her nose on her sleeve and smeared away tears with one hand. The look she gave him was one he’d grown familiar with during their marriage, one that comforted him during the longest nights and the hardest hours. She cupped his cheek. “But we are not.”