Heir to the Shadows

risk. If the High
    Lord finds out I've tried to tell her friends ..." She glanced at the wall behind the Altar.
    Still no reaction from the man on the other side of the gate.
    "She walks among the cildru dyathe," Hekatah said.
    A long silence. "That isn't possible," he finally said. His voice was flat, totally without emotion.
    "It's true." Was she wrong about him? Was he only trying to escape Dorothea? No. He had cared for the girl. She sighed. "The High Lord is a jealous man, Prince. He doesn't share what he claims for himself—especially if what he claims is a female body. When he discovered the girl's affection for another male, he did nothing to prevent her from being raped. And he could have, Prince. He could have. The girl managed to escape afterward. In time, and with help, she would have healed. But the High Lord didn't want her to heal, so, under the pretense of helping her, he used another male to finish what was begun. It destroyed her completely. Her body died, and her mind was torn apart. Now she's a dead, blank-eyed pet he plays with."
    Hekatah looked up and wanted to scream with frustration. Had he heard any of it? "He should pay for what he's done," she said shrilly. "If you've courage enough to face him, I can open the Gate for you. Someone who remembers what she could have been should demand payment for what he did."
    He looked at her for a long time. Then he turned and walked away.
    Swearing, Hekatah began to pace. Why did he say nothing? It was a plausible story. Oh, she knew he'd been accused of the rape, but she also knew it wasn't true. And she wasn't completely convinced that he had been at Cassandra's Altar that night. All the males who'd sworn they had seen him had come from Briarwood. They could have said that to keep the Chaillot Queens from looking too closely at them. Surely—
    A scream shattered the night.
    Hekatah jumped, shaken by the awful sound. Bestial, animal, human. None and all. Whatever could make a sound like that . . .
    Hekatah quickly lit the black candles and waited impatiently for the wall to change to mist. Just before stepping through the Gate, she realized there was no one here to snuff out the candles and close the entrance to the other Realms. If that thing . . .
    Hekatah raised her hand and Red-locked the wrought-iron gate.
    Another scream tore the night.
    Hekatah bolted through the Gate. She might be a demon, but she didn't want whatever that was to follow her into the Dark Realm.
    Words swam round and round, slicing his mind, slicing his soul.
    The gray mist parted, showing him a Dark Altar.
    Blood. So much blood. . . . he used another male . . .
    The world shattered.
    You are my instrument.
    His mind shattered. . . . destroyed her completely.
    Screaming in agony, he fled through the mist, through a landscape washed in blood and filled with shattered crystal chalices.
    Words lie. Blood doesn't.
    He screamed again and tumbled into the shattered inner landscape landens called madness and the Blood called the Twisted Kingdom.

PART 2

CHAPTER THREE
     
    1 / Kaeleer
     
    Karla, a fifteen-year-old Glacian Queen, jabbed her cousin Morton in the ribs. "Who's that?"
    Morton glanced in the direction of Karla's slightly lifted chin, then went back to watching the young Warlords gathering at one end of the banquet hall. "That's Uncle Hobart's new mistress."
    Karla studied the young witch through narrowed, ice-blue eyes. "She doesn't look much older than me."
    "She isn't," Morton said grimly.
    Karla linked arms with her cousin, finding comfort in his nearness.
    Glacian society had started to change after the "accident" that had killed her parents and Morton's six years ago. A group of aristo males had immediately formed a male council "for the good of the Territory"—a council led by Hobart, a Yellow-Jeweled Warlord who was a distant relation of her father's.
    Every Province Queen, after declining to become a figurehead for the council, had also refused to acknowledge the Queen of a small village that the council finally had chosen to rule the Territory. Their refusal had fractured Glacia, but it had also prevented the male council from becoming too powerful or too effective in carrying out their "adjustments" to Glacian society.
    Even so, after six years there was an uneasy feel in the air, a sense of wrongness.
    Karla didn't have many friends. She was a sharp-tongued, sharp-tempered Queen whose Birthright Jewel was the Sapphire. She was also a natural Black Widow and a