The lion had been a bad choice. Kett knew it, but she still kept on in the same shape, climbing over sheer, slippery rocks to cross the mountains.
She’d broken Bael’s heart and destroyed perhaps forever her own chance of happiness. Not to mention ever having sex again. And for what? To prove her own independence? To make a damn point?
You never learn, Kett Almet, she cursed herself as rough rocks tore at her paws. Ever stop to think maybe you’re the one cursing yourself?
When are you going to stop fighting?
For a long moment she paused, tired and hurt, resting on her haunches on a rare piece of flat ground. Maybe she should give in, go back to Bael, explain and apologize and settle down to…what? Not ordinariness. Life with Bael might be infuriating, maddening and humiliating, but it would also be exciting, passionate and stimulating. It would be…fun.
Maybe-
Something whined past her ear, too fast and too straight to be an insect. Instinct had her on the ground instantly, her feline ears twitching and swiveling, her head whipping around to see where it might have come from.
She didn’t see the shapes at first, but she heard the voices.
“A lion? Up here?”
Hell. She knew this had been the wrong shape. Too conspicuous.
The hunter’s voice was oddly familiar, although she couldn’t place why. She tried to scent him, but then heard the bark of half a dozen dogs, hunting hounds, their scents coming sharp on the wind. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied she’d have noticed them before. Dammit!
She ducked and changed into a gryphon, a quick shift, changing only half her body, claws and wings and beak-
A second shot zipped toward her, so close it ruffled her feathers, and she leapt into the air.
“A gryphon!”
“Hiding with a lion? Not likely!”
“It’s the shapeshifter! We found it!”
Panicked, Kett darted, trying to gain speed, but while a gryphon was graceful and swift in the air, takeoff was a problem. Should have gone for an eagle, she thought as she darted under a hail of crossbow bolts.
One ripped into her flank, making her falter, and she lost height. The hunters whooped-why are they looking for a shapeshifter? Who are they?-and the dogs bayed. They were close, their scents strong in her nostrils, their claws scrabbling on the bare rocks below her. Kett flapped desperately, pain swamping her, twisting away from the dogs.
She didn’t see the scrawny tree in her path until it was too late, and its branches slammed into her ribs, scraping through the fur and feathers. She fell, breathless, into the tiny, rocky gully from which the sorry tree grew.
The dogs yelped in excitement and raced over, snapping and swiping at her, trying to reach into the crack in the rock that both protected and trapped her.
“Sir!” someone yelled. It was a man in hunting gear, his face twisted by an ugly scar running from temple to jaw. “Lord Albhar!”
Kett’s gut twisted, because she recognized this man. She’d given him that scar.
These people were Federación.
A dog lunged at Kett, snarling, spittle flying at her, and she snarled back, snapping with a beak that was turning into a mouth. She needed to get airborne again, and if she could just get away from these dogs-
“Are you sure?” asked a male voice, out of breath and elderly.
“It can’t hold its shape, sir, look! It’s definitely changing! Either it’s the shapeshifter or it’s Nasc.”
“Well, either will do,” said the voice she supposed to be Lord Albhar’s, and she looked up to see a bearded man staring down at her from behind the dogs, a cruel light in his eyes. He took out a scryer from a pouch on his belt, and while the dogs whined and scraped at her with their paws, he calmly concentrated on the little rock.
“Bael,” he said. “Where are you, dear boy?”
Determined not to turn into the sort of Mage who destroyed things just because he could-determined not to turn into Striker-Bael kept his murderous rage confined to the reaches of ordinary hunting. All right, so there’d be a few villagers feasting extraordinarily well on the dead creatures he’d left behind-some of them ready-roasted-but at least he wasn’t running around murdering people, and that had to be something.
He was in split forms when his scryer buzzed. Var, loping along as a hunting hound, trotted over as Bael answered the scryer. He’d have been a better hunting companion if he’d been able to fly, but a vicious brawl with a surprisingly violent wolf had left him with a rip across the back that would have been agony with wings. Bael himself wasn’t faring hugely better, his ribs aching from getting too close to the death throes of a stag with giant antlers.
He was tired, aching and bruised, but the fights had made him feel a whole lot better.
“Bael,” Albhar greeted him, looking oddly excited. Bael felt a twinge of unease, as inexplicable as the knowledge he’d felt for certain earlier. Was this part of his long-elusive Mage power? Did it only manifest once he’d found-and lost-his mate?
No, she was never your mate, she was never-
“Where are you, dear boy?”
“Not sure. Galatea, Iberia maybe. Somewhere around the border.”
“Ah, such a shame you’re not closer. You’ll never guess what we’ve just found.”
“A cure for the common cold?” Bael muttered, not really caring.
“Much better. We’ve found the shapeshifter who killed your mother.”
Bael stilled. Here was a creature he could vent his rage on. Legitimately.
But did the shapeshifter really kill her? asked his conscience. What if it really was the kelf?
Which is more likely? he challenged, and got no answer.
Besides, he really wanted to destroy something.
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice sounding distant.
“Oh, quite sure,” Albhar said. “It’s tried to change its shape already, but we caught it anyway. The dogs are trying to take chunks out of it now. No, drop! Leave! Leave! Good dog. We need it alive.”
“Do you?” Bael asked. “Shame. I feel like killing something.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, it will be dead by the end of the-no! I said leave! LEAVE!” Albhar strode forward, and the scryer’s picture wobbled as the old man bent forward and grabbed a dog, hurling it bodily out of the way. Bael heard the creature whine and whimper as it hit the rocks. “Hells, it’s taken a chunk out of the thing’s shoulder. Won’t bleed to death, will it, do you think?”
He seemed to be addressing someone else-one of the knights stationed at the Vyiskagrad castle, Bael supposed. He really ought to keep track of how many knights he had, and where. But not right now.
“No sir, shouldn’t think so,” the knight was saying.
“We need its blood. Needs to be flowing.”
“Oh, we can keep it alive that long, sir. Not until the new moon, isn’t it? Still need the second creature, don’t you?”
“A second creature?” Bael asked, frowning. “There’s more than one shapeshifter?”
“Well, of course, boy,” Albhar said, turning the scryer back to his face. “There can’t be only one creature in all the Realms that can change its shape!”
Some of the knights chuckled. Var nudged Bael’s thigh with his nose.
“You never mentioned a second-” Bael began, but Albhar cut him off.
“Don’t you worry about it, boy.”
“Don’t call me boy,” Bael snapped.
“Oh come on, Bael, this is a great day. We’ve been searching for this creature for twenty-four years, ever since-”
“It killed my mother, yes, I know. But my father always said-”
“Don’t you want to come see it? Face it?” Albhar’s expression was sly. “We need it alive for the rest of the week, but you can rough it up as much as you’d like.”
“Sure,” Bael said, attention diverted effectively. “I could do with beating the shit out of something.”
“Well then. Just as long as it’s left alive.”
It killed your mother. Familial loyalty be damned, he just wanted to hurt something. “Highest cell, tallest tower,” he said. “Let it freeze. Let it starve. Keep it alive just enough for it to be awake to feel the pain.”
Behind Albhar, his men cheered. The old man grinned with a glint in his eye Bael had never seen before. But he didn’t care. Here was a chance to vent his anger, his misery, his pain.
“I’m going to make that thing suffer,” he said, and Albhar smiled.
By the time he arrived in Vyiskagrad, Bael’s thoughts had turned from the shapeshifter’s suffering to his own.
His ribs and back ached like the devil, so he’d decided not to fly to Vyiskagrad. It took three days to get to the First Bridge to Asiatica, and then a further day and a half to cross the vastly hot, empty deserts of Ægyptus to the Vyiskagradian border and the Vyishka mountains. The constant sway and jolt of the carriage sent pulses of pain through his body.
He’d never much liked the castle in the mountains, huddled like a vulture above precipitous drops and vicious peaks. Perpetually cold and icy, it never seemed to be touched by sunlight. The dark gray stones loomed above the high, twisting pass, along which he now rode on a hired mount. To either side of the narrow shoulder of rock that was the castle’s only approach by land was a gorge several hundred feet deep on one side, and so low on the other that the bottom couldn’t even be seen. The distant roar of rushing water gave the only clue that it didn’t drop into infinity.
Bael rode on, his back and his ribs aching. He’d twinned with Var, the better to heal, but despite the disciplines his father had tried again and again to teach him, he’d never been any good at conquering pain. His father had insisted it was all in his head. Bael was pretty sure it was mostly in his ribs and his back.
His head ached too. He put it down to the altitude and the days of uncomfortable traveling. Anger still throbbed dully through him, a background pain he wasn’t fully rid of, but it wasn’t the bright, burning flame it had been a couple days ago.
He rode into the courtyard, his headache worsening, and dismounted from the horse. As ever, despite the forbidding cold, the courtyard was full of people but to Bael it looked horribly bleak. The mountains loomed behind the castle, itself a hulking, dark gray brute of a building. The tallest tower stood out against the bruised yellow sky and Bael tried to summon some enthusiasm for beating the shit out of the shapeshifter within, but all he really wanted was a hot bath and a soft bed.
And a warm woman. He’d sampled the female company at every inn along the way, but not one of the girls he’d tried had solicited a reaction from him. Anger, tiredness and alcohol were hell on a man’s libido.
“Bael!” cried Albhar as he strode into the high, dark Great Hall. Overhead, the dusty remains of tapestries fluttered in the constant howling draught. Bael wondered if the place had always been so dismal, or if it just seemed so because of his mood. “You took your time! I thought you’d miss the moon tonight and we’d have to wait a month!”
“You could’ve proceeded without me,” Bael pointed out, and Albhar’s smile shifted just the tiniest fraction.
“Oh no, of course not. Culmination of your father’s life work. Couldn’t do it without you. Do you want to see the creature? It’s truly pathetic. Hardly eaten a thing in days. I think it’s sulking. Hideous thing- it’s all infected where the dogs bit it on the shoulder, stinks like hell.”
“You know what, I’m really knackered,” Bael said. “Think I’ll just-”
“No, boy, come and see it. Don’t you want your revenge?”
Personally, Bael wanted to sleep more than he wanted revenge, but he didn’t expect Albhar would appreciate that. Besides, the men were crowding ’round, excitement evident on their faces. They wanted to see more blood spilled.
“Just keep it alive,” Albhar reminded him as they ascended the many, many stairs to the top of the tower.
“Yeah. I might go for a nap first,” Bael said. “You know, so I can have a proper go at it.”
“Have two goes,” Albhar said, a vicious, excited light in his eyes at the prospect. Bael realized the old man really wanted to see the creature suffer, and he wasn’t sure that want was entirely motivated by revenge. This shapeshifter business was bringing out a malicious side to his former mentor he hadn’t seen before.
“Here,” said Albhar eventually, gesturing to a thick oak door so old and heavy it had the consistency of granite. There was a small hatch in it, opening inward, stained with the remains of many slimy meals. “Here’s your shapeshifter.”
He opened the door and Bael peered through the gloom. At first he didn’t see the creature lying on the floor, naked and gray with cold and malnutrition. The cell was icy cold and stank of many things he didn’t want to name, not least the infection in the creature’s hideously swollen shoulder.
“Starved and frozen, sir, just as you said,” sniggered one of the guards.
“Yeah,” Bael said, now appalled at what his offhanded words had led to. Maybe you are as stupid as Albhar thinks.
The figure was female, huddled in the shadows with its back to the wall, arms wrapped around itself. A tangle of dark hair obscured its face. “Are you sure it’s a shapeshifter? It looks like an ordinary woman to me.” An ordinary, badly injured, half-starved woman.
“Oh yes,” Albhar said. “I saw it change myself. It’s been netted though, it can’t change now.”
“Netted?”
“A containment spell. It won’t manifest claws or anything. Can’t escape. It’ll be quite defenseless against a beating.”
Bael rounded on him to demand what sort of man Albhar thought he was to enjoy beating such a pathetic, defenseless creature, when the creature itself stirred.
And looked at him with silver eyes.
Kett had spent most of the first day in the cell loudly cursing Bael. Not a word of his conversation with his mentor had escaped her. He’d ordered her into the cell, he’d ordered her to freeze and starve, and when he finally turned up she’d planned to beat so many kinds of hell out of him that theologians would have a field day naming them all.
She’d spent the second day cursing him somewhat more quietly, her throat burning dry. Some time after sunup, the serving hatch halfway up the thick door opened inward to a ninety-degree angle and a ladle shot in. It tipped a few ounces of grayish gruel onto the hatch. A second ladle tipped water after it. Then the hatch snapped shut, leaving Kett with no more sustenance than she could scrape off the ancient, stained wood.
She spent the third day waiting with the wooden bowls she’d found stacked in the corner of the small cell, but when the hatch fell open she moved too fast for her battered body and dropped the bowls, crying out in agony as her crippled leg gave way.
On the fourth day, she couldn’t manage to lift the bowls up to the hatch when it opened. Her shoulder throbbed incessantly where the dog’s teeth had ripped into it. Red streaks shot down her arm, under her skin. Her tongue swollen in her mouth, she huddled by the door, lapping up what drips she could manage.
By the fifth day, she couldn’t even lift her head that far. Barely able to find a single part of her body that didn’t throb with agony, she lay on the floor and waited for death to claim her.
Bael lost his breath.
It’s a trick, he told himself, even as he stared at Kett’s pale, thin face, twisted with pain and hatred. It’s a shapeshifter. It can look like anyone it wants.
But why would it choose to look like the woman I thought was my mate? How did it know?
Cautiously he breathed in, and used Var’s senses to separate out the scents in the room. Somewhere here had to be the shapeshifter’s scent, and when he’d caught that, he could rest assured that it wasn’t-
“Bael,” grated the creature on the floor.
It wasn’t Kett. It couldn’t be. Its voice was dry and scratchy, like fingernails on a blackboard.
The shapeshifter smiled with cracked lips. “Come to beat me up?” it rasped. “Come to kill me?”
The guards cheered but Bael just stared.
The shapeshifter moved, its face contorted with pain, and flopped back onto the hard stone floor. “You could just wait a day,” it scratched out, “I’ll be dead by then. Rituals, Bael. Bleeding a shapeshifter. Silver chain.”
“I didn’t say you could talk,” Bael said, panic thrumming through him. If it wasn’t Kett then how did it know? Had she spilled his secrets?
His heart pounded so loudly he could barely hear her next words.
“A shapeshifter,” she croaked, “and a bleeding Nas-”
“I said shut up!” Bael yelled, and two of the guards rushed forward, kicking viciously at the creature. As a heavily booted foot connected with its ribs, he heard a snap-
Snap, as the links in his head connected. Kett was the shapeshifter.
A shapeshifter and a Nasc bound by a silver chain.
They needed a second creature.
Albhar’s sly smile.
Couldn’t do it without you.
The old man knew.
Kett was curled into a ball, coughing in pain, her body spasming pathetically as the guards stood laughing and jeering. Albhar stood there, smiling as if he wasn’t planning to string Bael up and kill him in some mad power ritual.
He stared down at Kett’s broken body. They’re going to kill us both.
“I’m sorry,” Bael whispered to Kett, horrified, but he didn’t think she heard him. To his men, he babbled, “Leave it. Don’t kill it. Leave some for me, I mean. I’ll come back later. When I’ve rested. Later. Lock it up, it’s talking rubbish. I need to get out of here.” He barged past the guards. “There’s no fucking air. It stinks. Move!”
They let him pass, and then he heard the heavy door scrape shut.
Underneath the sound was the dry wheeze of Kett’s laughter.
The hot bath and soft bed held no appeal for Bael now. Pacing his locked chamber, cold with horror, panic and guilt, he clutched at Var, who pressed close to him as an anxious, angry little cat.
Kett was a shapeshifter. She’d kept that from him the whole time! How could she have done that, especially after he’d told her that he was a Mage? The one thing that might unite them, and she’d kept it to herself.
Because she doesn’t want to be united with you, his conscience said. She went off fucking a whore the first chance she got. She clearly doesn’t want you.
Thoughts reeled around Bael’s head. Could Kett have killed his mother? No, she’d been a teenager. Not that Kett as a teenager wouldn’t have been lethal, but still. Albhar said she’d been an older woman. Kett’s mother? Maybe. Maybe Kett had been wearing age as a disguise. He wouldn’t put it past her.
And that wasn’t even the worst thing.
He set down Var and picked up his scryer, distractedly trying to remember what he’d been told about using it. Concentrate on the person you want.
The rock got warm in his hands. It vibrated. And then a voice was saying, “Bael? Are you all right?”
He opened his eyes to see Chance looking up at him from the face of the scryer, and nearly wept with relief.
“Your majesty,” he said, and she laughed prettily.
“You don’t need to go through all those formalities, Bael,” she said. “You’re practically family.”
“Yeah,” Bael said doubtfully. “Listen. This is really important. I think the Nasc are in danger. Can you warn them?”
Chance instantly snapped into business mode. “What is it?”
“There’s a ritual,” he began. “It involves a Nasc and a shapeshifter. And death. I think.”
“Hell,” she said when he’d finished explaining what he’d worked out about Albhar. “Do you think they’re allied with the Federación?”
Cold sweat bathed Bael anew. “Well, now I do,” he said. “I thought you and-and your father had killed them all?”
“They’re like vermin,” Chance said venomously. “There’re always a few you miss, and that’s enough to start again. We’ll warn as many as we can. Thank you, Baelvar.”
With that she signed off and Bael was left in his remote castle, surrounded by the enemy and feeling like a giant bruise, inside and out. The tear on his back meant that manifesting wings would hurt like hell, and if he was going to carry Kett he’d have to turn into a big creature like a dragon, which required a hell of a lot of energy he just didn’t have.
Var looked up at him, feline eyes narrowed, and Bael laughed suddenly.
“What was that my old dad used to say?” he asked, picking up his twin and pressing his face against Var’s soft fur. “It’s not a problem, it’s a challenge.”
Var started to purr.
“Exactly,” Bael said, and felt invigorated for the first time in days.