Carnassial, toonot Nightingale, whom she had still not toldand for an instant they overwhelmed her. Reave and Spectral were older, more practiced magi and telesthetes than she and Carnassial were, and one of their sendingsthe two arrived together and tangled, so that Scarab couldnt say which was whoseconveyed a reaction of staggering shock that actually made her blink and take a step back.
He spoke again, his brow creasing in uncertainty as his smile faltered. Karou? Is that you?
Someone is coming.
Carnassials words, and on the heels of his sending, Scarab heard footsteps in the passage and moved swiftly to one side, which brought her up against Carnassial in a corner of the chamber. She felt him stiffen at the contact and draw immediately awayafraid of angering her with unsolicited touch, she supposedand she was sorry for the loss of his solidity in the depth and breadth of this stunning strangeness.
Then a figure came into view.
She was a girl of around Scarabs own age. She was neither a seraph nor one of the chimaera the seraphim here mingled with.
She was alien. Not of this world. Scarab had never seen a human, and though she knew what they were, the actual sight of one was blinkingly curious. The girl had neither wings nor beast attributes, but instead of seeming like lack, this simplicity of form came across as a kind of stripped-down elegance. She was slender, and moved with the grace of a duskdeer drawing its first substance together out of midsummer shade, and her prettiness was of such a curious flavor that Scarab couldnt say whether it was more pleasing or startling. She was cream-colored, and as black-eyed as a bird, and her hair was a shimmer of blue. Blue. Her face, like her lovers, was flushed with joy, and dappled with the same sweet and tremulous shyness as his, as though this were something new between them.
Hi, she said, and the word was a wisp, as soft as the brush of a butterflys wing.
He didnt answer in kind. Were you just here? he asked, looking past her and around her. Glamoured?
And this clicked into place for Scarab. Sensing a presence, the magus had thought it was this girl, invisible, which meant that the human could do magic.
No, was her answer. She looked tentative now. Why?
His next move was very sudden. He took her arm and pulled her to him, placed her behind him, and faced outward, peering into the emptiness of the chamber that was, of course, not empty at all. Is someone there? he demanded, in Seraphic this time, and when his eyes raked Scarab now, they held only what she had expected to see before: suspicion and the low burn of ferocity. Protectiveness, toofor the pretty blue alien he sheltered with his body.
With his body, Scarab noted with curiosity, but not with his mind. He put up no shield against anima but only stood there, strong and fierce, as though that made any difference. As though his life thread and his lovers werent as frail as gossamers glinting in the ether, as easily severed as spidersilk.
Are we going to kill him? came Carnassials sending, unadorned by any tone or sensory threads to hint at his own opinion on the matter.
Of course not , Scarab replied, and she found herself unaccountably angry at him, as though hed done something wrong. Unless youd like to explain to Nightingale that we found a scion of the line of Festival and severed his thread.
As she almost had. She shuddered. To prove that she could kill, she had almost killed him .
A scion of the line of Festival. These were the words she had sent to Carnassial and Reave and Spectral but not yet to NightingaleNightingale who had been First Magus to Scarabs grandmother, the previous queen, and who had twice sat veyana in grief and survived. No one else in the Second Age had survived veyana twice, and Nightingales first sitting had been for Festival.
Her daughter.
Scarab might be queen, but she was eighteen years old, untried, and out of her depth. Shed come hunting a rogue magus, hoping to make her first kill, but what shed found here was much bigger than that, and she would need the counsel of all her magi, Nightingale most of all, before she decided anything.
Then we should go , Carnassial sent, ignoring her last barbed message. Before he kills us.
It was a good point. They really had no idea what he was capable of. So Scarab, taking a last deep breath of the electric musk of the strangers power, retreated.
40
ASSUME THE WORST
In fascination, the Stelians watched the unfolding of the next hour in the caves, and they learned many things, but many more things remained baffling.
The magus went by the name of Akiva. Nightingale scorned to call him by it, because it was an Empire name, and a bastards no less. She called him only Festivals child, and kept her sendings uncharacteristically austere. She was one of the finest telesthetes in all the Far Isles, an artist, and her sendings were generally effortless layers of beauty, meaning, detail, and humor. The absence of all of it now told Scarab that Nightingale was overwhelmed with emotion and intent on keeping it to herself, and she couldnt blame her, and since she couldnt see herthe five of them maintained their glamours, of courseshe couldnt begin to tell how the older woman was grappling with the abrupt existence of this grandson.