I stiffened, hating the way he crooned my mother’s name like a man savoring his wine. He touched the blistering skin on my neck with a scaled knuckle, and I felt a wet pop and a flash of pain.
“I’ve burned you. Forgive me. I forget how fragile a woman’s skin can be. You are quite beautiful, really. Deceptively so. Like moonlight. Pale. Slender. One almost looks right through you before he catches his breath and looks back.”
Tiras had said the same thing.
The beast stepped back, as if truly apologetic that he had blistered my flesh, and I eased away from the ledge, my eyes still glued to the cavernous darkness below.
“You are Meshara’s daughter, Queen of Jeru, Lark of Corvyn.”
My breath stalled, and I found his eyes in the wan light, waiting.
“My son made you queen. How clever of him.”
My throat throbbed and my ears burned, and I touched tentative fingers to one lobe, uncertain I’d heard him clearly.
Your son?
“The king. Tiras,” he whispered, and the S hissed between us. “I am Liege. But I am also . . . Zoltev. Do you remember me, Lark of Corvyn?”
I shook my head, adamant, resistant. Terrified. You are Volgar.
“No. They are animals. I am a man. With wings. And claws.” I heard his smile, though I didn’t see it.
Zoltev was a . . . man, and you are a beast.
“But if I want to be a man, I am a man.”
I watched, unable to help myself, and true to his words, with an undulating twist, he stood before me, devoid of wings and claws, feathers and scales.
He looked like Tiras.
The arrogant set of his chin and his unapologetic stance made my heart shudder with recognition. His hair had greyed, his body had aged, and the eyes that looked out at me were Kjell’s. But I knew him.
He laughed when my legs gave way beneath me. I teetered, catching myself at the last moment and slicing my hand on a sharp edge. Blood welled, crimson and warm, and dripped against the rocks beneath my fingers. My mother’s blood had spilled over stones. It had pooled beneath our bodies and congealed in my hair.
The beast king crouched over me, dipping his finger into the blood on my palm.
“But why would I want to be a man when I can be Liege?” he said simply, drawing his finger into his mouth, tasting me.
He contorted and shook, and his lower body was once again clothed in feathers, his legs and feet resembling those of a bird. He rose, throwing back his head, and his wings tumbled down his back like a flag unfurled.
“I prefer to be something in between.” He remained a man from the waist up, but talons shot out from his hands, neatly breaking through the skin on the tips of his fingers like a cat flexing his claws.
“I can be anything I want to be. I’m a Changer and a Spinner.”
Not a Healer?
“It is the one gift I have no need of. There’s no one in all of Jeru I want to heal.”
Of course not. Healing required love.
“I’ve spun vultures into warriors, into an entire army. I started with a few and bade them attack. We left bodies to rot in the sun, and more vultures came. I spun them into Volgar, and one by one, I built an army. I tell them what to do. They are easy to control . . . aren’t they? You destroyed so many of my creations, little queen. I should destroy you.”
I struggled to stand, not wanting to cower at his feet, and he watched me rise, as if I amused him.
“I should destroy you, but you might be of use to me.”
I flinched, and his black-winged eyebrows rose. “The beasts obey me because I am their creator. But I am not a Teller. I can’t compel them with mere words. But you can.”
I could feel them even now, the words that animated their huge, avian bodies and their simple minds. I could hear their hunger and their bloodlust, and I repelled them, flinging spells to keep them away. I couldn’t see them, but they were near.
“I can hear you. You fear them. But they aren’t coming for you.”
Why are you doing this? You left. You made your sons, your subjects, all of Jeru believe you were dead.
“I jumped from the cliff, and I changed into a bird.”
Why?
“Meshara said I would become everything I feared—a monster—and I did. Meshara knew what I was becoming. I might have spared her, but she knew. So I had to kill her.”
He’d killed her because she knew. Boojohni was right. My mother had seen what was to come. It was not a curse but a prophecy. The realization swept through me with sudden clarity.
“I’d already begun to lose control. But after Meshara died, it became worse. I was changing without warning, entering the stables and shifting into a horse. Taking a bath and becoming a great, flopping fish. Turning everything I touched into something I didn’t want. Gold into rocks and rocks into water, bread into sand and my sword into straw. I woke up one morning and the sheet on my bed had become a boa constrictor.” He stared at me with pursed lips. “I was afraid of what would happen if my secret was discovered.”
You left Jeru because you were afraid. But you aren’t afraid anymore?
“I became everything I feared. Now I am fear. And no one can stop me.”
He stared down at Jeru City and flexed his huge wings.
“My son . . . he is a Changer too. An eagle. But he can’t control the change. Now he is gone, Jeru needs a king, and you are alone. I will let you live if you do as I say.”
And what of Lady Firi? She thinks she’s going to be queen.
He cackled. “She will make a good pet.”
For a moment all was quiet in the city below, the distance creating an illusion of serenity. Then flames begin to gyrate and lick the sky, and Jeru came alive. The stench of pitch and smoke rose in the wind, and screams and shouts began to swell and find me across the distance. Hide, the people said. Run, the women screamed. Volgar, the men shouted. The word mother pierced the air along with the others, and I covered my ears in horror, not wanting to hear, not able to prevent it. The birdmen are here. The Volgar are here. Run. Hide. Help me. The words trembled and burst, only to swell again like the blisters the Volgar Liege had raised on my skin.
Tiras, I cried, Tiras, your city. Your city is burning.
“Call him, Lark of Corvyn. Call your eagle king. Call my son, so he will know his father has returned. The birdmen will kill and feed, and when the people are begging for mercy, I will extend it. I will call them off. And I will take what’s mine.”
Fire burning Jeru’s streets,
Find the birdmen, make them flee.
Arrows in the archer’s bow,
Find the birdmen, e’er they go.
Zoltev laughed, incredulous. “The city burns, and you spin rhymes?”
Volgar birdmen, hear my cry,
Jeru’s burning, you will die.
Close your wings and bow your heads,
Every living birdman, dead.
“Do you really think they can hear you? That your words are so powerful across such a distance?” Zoltev mocked.
Rocks upon which Zoltev stands,
Tumble now beneath the man.
Open up and swallow him,
That Jeru will be safe again.
Zoltev bared his teeth and swung his arm, striking me across the face. For a heartbeat I was weightless, teetering between falling and flailing, my arms wide, searching for something to hold on to. Then I was part of the sky, a fluttering poppet in the wind, words rushing through my head.