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.