Heir to the Shadows (The Black Jewels #2)(118)
Author: Anne Bishop

Saetan rubbed his eyes and hoped his fatigue-fogged brain kept working long enough to get him to the camp Chaosti and Elan had set up. He was too tired, too drained. He was starting to see things.

Like the unicorn Queen standing in front of him, who looked like she was made of moonlight and mist, with dark eyes as old as the land.

It took him a minute to realize he could see through her.

"You’re—"

"Gone," said the caressing, feminine voice. "Gone long and long ago. And never gone. Come, High Lord. My Sister needs her sire now."

Saetan followed her until they reached a circle of low, evenly spaced stones. In the center, a great stone horn rose up from the land. An old, deep power filled the circle. "I can’t go there," Saetan said. "This is a sacred place." "An honored place," she replied. "They are nearby. She grieves for what she could not save. You must make her see what she did save."

The mare stepped into the circle. As she approached the great stone horn, she faded until she disappeared, but he still had the feeling that dark eyes as old as the land watched him.

The air shimmered on his right. A veil he hadn’t known was there vanished. He walked toward the spot. And he found them.

The bastards had butchered Kaetien. They had cut off his legs, his tail, his genitals. They had sliced open his belly.

They had cut off his horn.

They had cut off his head.

But Kaetien’s dark eyes still held a fiery intelligence.

Saetan’s stomach rolled.

Kaetien was demon-dead in that mutilated body.

Jaenelle sat next to the stallion, leaning against the open belly. Tears trickled from her staring eyes. Her white-knuckled hands were wrapped around Kaetien’s horn.

Saetan sank to his knees beside her. "Witch-child?" he whispered.

Recognition came slowly. "Papa? P-Papa?" She threw herself into his arms. The quiet tears became hysterical weeping. Kaetien’s horn scraped his back as she clung to him.

"Oh, witch-child." While he and the others had been searching for survivors, she’d been sitting there all day, locked in her pain.

"May the Darkness be merciful," said a voice behind him.

Saetan looked over his shoulder, feeling every muscle as he turned his head. Lucivar. Living strength that could do what he could not.

Lucivar stared at Kaetien’s head and shook himself.

Saetan listened to the swift conversations taking place on spear threads, but he was too tired to make sense out of them.

Lucivar dropped to one knee, took a handful of Jaenelle’s blood-matted hair, and gently pulled her head away from Saetan’s shoulder. "Come on, Cat. You’ll feel better once you’ve had a sip of this." He pressed a large silver flask against her mouth.

She choked and sputtered when the liquid went down her throat.

"This time swallow it," Lucivar said. "This stuff does less harm to your stomach than it does to your lungs."

"This stuff will melt your teeth," Jaenelle wheezed.

"What did you give her?" Saetan demanded when she suddenly sagged in his arms.

"A healthy dose of Khary’s home brew. Hey!"

Saetan found himself braced against Lucivar’s chest. He concentrated on breathing for a minute. "Lucivar. You asked if I was strong enough for this. I’m not."

A strong, warm hand stroked his head. "Hang on. Sun-dancer’s coming. We’ll get you to the camp. The girls will take care of Cat. A few minutes more and you can rest."

Rest. Yes, he needed rest. The headache that was threatening to tear his skull apart was gaining in intensity with" every breath.

Someone took Jaenelle out of his arms. Someone half carried him to where Sundancer waited. Strong hands kept him on the stallion’s back.

The next thing he knew, he was sitting in the camp wrapped in blankets with Karla kneeling beside him, urging him to drink the witch’s brew she’d made for him.

After drinking a second cup, he submitted to being pushed, plumped, and rearranged in a sleeping bag. He snarled a bit at being fussed over until Karla tartly asked how he expected them to get Jaenelle to rest when he was setting such a bad example?

Not having an answer for that, he surrendered to the brew-dulled headache and slept.

Lucivar sipped laced coffee and watched Gabrielle and Morghann lead Jaenelle to a sleeping bag. She stopped, ignoring their coaxing to lie down and rest. Her eyes lost their dull, half-dazed look as her attention focused on Mistral hovering at the edge of the camp, still favoring his wounded left foreleg.

Lucivar felt very thankful that the cold, dangerous fire in her eyes wasn’t directed at him.

"Why hasn’t that leg been tended?" Jaenelle asked in her midnight voice as she stared at the young stallion.

Mistral snorted and fidgeted. He obviously didn’t want to admit he hadn’t allowed anyone to touch him.

Lucivar didn’t blame him.

"You know how males get," Gabrielle said soothingly. " ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, tend the others first.’ We were just about to take care of him when you and Uncle Saetan came in."

"I see," Jaenelle said softly, her eyes still pinning Mistral to the ground. "I thought, perhaps, because they were human, you were insulting my Sisters by refusing to let them heal you."

"Nonsense," Morghann said. "Now, come on, set a good example."

Once they got her tucked in, they descended on Mistral.

It would be all right, Lucivar thought dully. It had to be all right. The unicorns and the other kindred wouldn’t lose all their trust in humans and retreat again behind the veils of power that had closed them off from the rest of Kaeleer. Cat would see to that. And Saetan . . .

Hell’s fire. Until today, he hadn’t given much thought to the differences between a Guardian and the living. At the Hall, those differences seemed so subtle.

He hadn’t realized strong sun would cause so much pain, hadn’t fully appreciated how many years the High Lord had walked the Realms. Oh, heknew how old Saetan was, but today was the first time his father had seemedold.

Of course, the rest of them were feeling pretty beaten physically and emotionally, so it wasn’t much of a yardstick to measure by.

Khary squatted beside him and splashed some of the home brew into the already heavily laced coffee. "There’s something bothering our four-footed Brothers," he said quietly. "Something more than that." He waved a hand at the still, white bodies lying within sight.

The unicorns hadn’t cared what happened to the human bodies—except to insist that the intruders not remain in their land—but they had been vehement about not moving the dead unicorns. The Lady would sing them to the land, they had said. Whatever that meant.