A person couldn’t climb past those teeth without making at least part of the run—or so Lucivar had been told—so only the desperate or foolhardy would try to use that Gate instead of one of the others.
He’d been that desperate after he’d escaped from the salt mines of Pruul. Running from all the warriors who were intent on bringing him down, and already dying, he’d made his choice to die in the Khaldharon as a free man. He’d made the Run and flown between those stone teeth—and had ended up in Kaeleer. Had ended up being saved by Prothvar Yaslana and healed by Jaenelle Angelline.
But the Sleeping Dragon that faced to the south? No winds or Winds to slam a man against the stone teeth, and yet no one used the cavernous mouth as a hiding place. No one among the living, anyway.
“Did we have to do this tonight?” he asked. He would have preferred being at home, keeping an eye on his firstborn.
“Yes,” Daemon replied. “I’m not sure if this is coincidence or if the timing is significant, but you need to see this.”
Shit. Choosing to think about something else until they had to step past those teeth, he said, “Do you think Daemonar will use those lessons?”
Daemon smiled. “Eventually. He and I have had a number of frank discussions about . . . technique . . . over the past few years. And I know, because they’ve snarled at me for it, that he’s asked Surreal and his auntie J. for confirmation that women actually like those techniques.”
“Sweet Darkness,” Lucivar breathed. “The boy’s got more balls than sense.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Prick. I suggested to Beron that he talk to Surreal when he first showed a rising interest in women.”
Lucivar snorted a laugh.
“Talking to Jaenelle about sex is a bit more adventurous than talking to Surreal, and I can tell when he’s had one of those talks with his auntie J. by the way Daemonar looks at me.” Daemon waited for Lucivar to stop laughing. “Just wait until he works up the nerve to ask you if you like doing the things he’s thinking about doing because you’d both have to acknowledge that you’re doing those things with his mother.”
Lucivar swore. “She was my wife before she was his mother.”
“That, old son, is an insignificant detail.”
“Well, there have been whispers of Alanar and Tamnar setting up a bachelor eyrie, so I expect Daemonar will be looking to join them.”
“No,” Daemon said as the air around them turned cold. “You’re going to keep him on a tight leash. Or you’ll send him to me, and I’ll do it.”
Lucivar studied the man walking beside him. “So who wants to show me whatever is inside the Sleeping Dragon? My brother or the High Lord?”
“Not your brother.”
Mother Night.
They didn’t speak until they eased past the teeth. Daemon created a ball of witchlight that floated above them as they walked toward the end of the cavern.
Something was out there, watching them.
Lucivar formed an Ebon-gray shield around himself and called in his war blade.
Daemon didn’t react to shield or blade, and he didn’t react to whatever watched them.
“Dark Altars were built around every Gate,” Daemon said. “Except this one. Here, you don’t light the black candles in a certain order to open the Gate to a specific Realm.”
“There are tunnels,” Lucivar said quietly. “Two tunnels, one for each of the other two Realms.”
“That’s true, but access is no longer a simple choice.”
The witchlight above them expanded, revealing more. Two tunnels, as Lucivar had expected. The light that filled one tunnel was the forever-twilight of Hell. The other tunnel, which should have led to Terreille . . .
Lucivar sucked in a breath as he stared at the tangled webs that filled that tunnel. Some were broken, as if something desperate had managed to escape after being ensnared—or had been collected and carried away.
“There are Arachnians in the tunnels now?” Lucivar asked. Black Widows also spun tangled webs, and it was possible that demon-dead Sisters of the Hourglass had made those webs at Daemon’s request, but he didn’t think these webs had been made by anything human.
“Beware the golden spider that spins a tangled web,” Daemon said softly. “From what I’ve been told by the demon-dead who guard this Gate, the webs appeared a few weeks ago. They cover the tunnel’s exit into Kaeleer from the northern-facing Dragon and this southern tunnel that leads out of Kaeleer. Because the golden spiders’ tangled webs ensnare a person’s mind, letting the body fail on its own before they begin to feast, anyone who reaches the Shadow Realm and meets up with someone on this side isn’t going to have the mental ability to return to Terreille. He either stumbles into the webs in that tunnel or stumbles into Hell, where he is considered fresh meat and blood for the taking.”
Movement in the twilight tunnel. Three demon-dead Eyriens stepped out. Lucivar didn’t recognize them, but they had been his age and they had died hard.
“Prince,” one of them said, nodding to Lucivar. “High Lord.” He laid a large sack at Daemon’s feet and retreated. “We didn’t open the bag to see what the last fool carried.”
“My thanks for holding on to it,” Daemon said, his smile cold and knowing. “Go enjoy your share of the feast. You’ve earned it.”
With another bow, the three Eyriens retreated.
A few hours ago, the feast had been a living man. The body might be kept among the living until all the fresh blood had been consumed and the heart stopped beating. What was left, after the High Lord finished the kill and the person’s Self became a whisper in the Darkness, would feed Hell’s flora and fauna.
Lucivar wondered if Saetan had ever flinched from such brutal practicality. He knew Daemon never would.
“There has always been some trade between Terreille and Kaeleer,” Daemon said. “There is more now as every generation of the short-lived races becomes farther removed from the purge that cleansed the Realms.”
“You have businesses in Dena Nehele and Shalador Nehele, so you’ve traded with those Territories for centuries.”
“I have. I’ve also drawn lines about what I’ll allow to come into Dhemlan from Terreille, and I extract a heavy price from anyone who crosses those lines. But I can’t watch everyone, and things have slipped in.” Daemon stared at the tunnel filled with tangled webs. “Surreal caught the first whispers about a year ago of items being smuggled into Dhemlan, but she couldn’t find anything tangible to support the whispers. It seems that there is a growing nostalgia for Hayll and the way it was ruled.”
Lucivar swore fiercely. “Have people lost their minds? Have they forgotten how many died because of that bitch Dorothea?”
“It is the romance of believing power can be had without a price.” Daemon shrugged. “Apparently some people collect Hayllian memorabilia—especially anything that can be connected to Dorothea’s court—and are willing to pay enough for those items to make bringing them in worth the risk.”
“She was a High Priestess, not a Queen. She didn’t have a court.” That wasn’t true. The bitch had had a court because she said she had a court and no one had dared challenge her. And the ones who did challenge her? Well, they ended up dead . . . or worse.