Queen's Hunt (River of Souls 2)

“But without the emerald, without Daya. Did a thief overcome a thief, perhaps?”

She felt a prickle of irritation, suppressed it. “I left Daya in safekeeping. Though that is not your concern.”

“No.” It laughed softly. “Nothing concerns me, not even your fondest wish.”

True enough.

In her early days with magic and Autrevelye, Rikha’s presence had terrified her. Then she had attempted to treat the beast as one of her subjects. She had mastered her terror, but Rikha had only laughed when she gave it orders. Slowly, they were learning to deal with each other.

“You want the sapphire,” Rikha said.

She nodded. “And for that I need your help in remembering. I know about my brother, about his search and mine for the jewels, but that is not quite … enough. Can you help me?”

Rikha tilted its head and regarded her with a clear implacable gaze. “Autrevelye never forgets, lady. Neither does your soul.”

Her skin rippled at the tone of his voice. Of course. It was all a part of his nature, and Autrevelye’s. They only knew death and rebirth. Life itself was only a brief interlude between the two. Strange, how humans viewed everything in reverse.

“I do not forget,” she said. “Please take me to where Leos Dzavek last captured me, when I was Imre Benacka.”

“Do you order me?” he asked, his tone soft with menace.

She smiled. “Of course not. I beg a favor of you, Rikha.”

“Ah, that is different. Come, lady, and we shall find your past.”

She stood and laid her hand on Rikha’s shoulder. They paced forward slowly, and with a few steps, the darkness ebbed away, the stone room faded into a bleak desert, then to a jungle of sweet-smelling flowers. In silence they passed through a grove of silver trees and crossed a river, skimming through the air just above the surging current. The sun above had stopped in the sky, and the air itself had turned still. In Autrevelye, in the outside worlds, time might be pouring into the future, but here it was frozen.

They stopped at last at the edge of a barren cliff. Ahead stretched a wasteland, a pale desert of sand and rock. The cliff itself was part of a stony ridge that divided the desert from an even more desolate mountain range. Valara didn’t need Rikha’s explanation for why he’d brought her to this place. She already knew—she’d come this way untold centuries ago as a different person, almost a different soul. Here, she had once fled, desperate, with Lir’s jewels in her hands. Here, Leos Dzavek had captured her, when her name was Imre Benacka.

My brother, my king. The man who captured me, killed me, or nearly so, and revived me so he could take me prisoner and rip the truth from my throat.

And here, just last summer, she had returned in her quest to rediscover her past.

In that moment, the sun dropped toward the horizon. The golden plains turned dark red in its dying light. Blood touched the cliff face and the rocks behind her. “This is too much,” she murmured.

“We’ve not begun to explore excess,” Rikha answered. He snuffed the ground and with his forepaw indicated a depression where dust had collected. “That spot.”

Valara touched the soft red dust. She saw no footprints at first, then realized the prints were as red as the ground. Scarlet for eternity, she thought. Dzavek’s prints, she noted, were the silver gray of twilight. She dug into the dust with her fingers, tasted the salt of old tears and the metallic edge of panic. She heard snatches of voices she recognized—Dzavek and herself arguing loudly. Both called out words of magic. Valara felt a sharp stab and plucked back her hand. Immediately, the voices cut off.

Future and past together. It was almost too unnerving to continue.

Rikha sniffed at the ground. “The tracks lead on.”

“Then we do as well.”

It was a trail in opposite directions, a looping path across rivers and lakes, over bare hills and thickly forested plains. Two sets of prints—one laid down by Imre Benacka, one by Leos Dzavek. Several times the prints disappeared beneath landslides, or lay submerged where rivers had changed their course. She could see where Dzavek had broken off his search, only to return again and again. Rikha himself, a creature of Autrevelye, had to circle around with his nose in the dirt until he found the trail once more.

Rana’s hiding place lay underneath a waterfall, hidden behind a cascade of water and mist. Wind and rain and water had smoothed the dirt; only a shallow pit remained where Dzavek had dug up the ruby behind the waterfall. Crossing back and forth over the area, Valara found her tracks leading onward, backward. Handprints covered the branches and higher rocks; footprints dotted those leading across the frothing water.

“You tried to disguise your trail,” Rikha said. “You knew someone would follow you.”

Memory returned, much stronger. Oh yes, she remembered that day. On the farther bank, she had climbed down the rocks from the next plateau. Valara followed, gripping the same rocks, hearing, as though her own self were just ahead, the uneven gasps as she eased herself down the sheer cliff. Above, the land stretched into a wide and even plain. Here the prints were spaced farther apart, as though she had come in this direction running as fast as possible, leaping ahead of pursuing danger. Valara ran the same path backward, matching leap for leap, each one longer and longer, until …

The tracks disappeared.

Valara cried out in shock and fell to her knees. Rikha hurried to her side. His muzzle wrinkled in surprise. “Where next?”

Where indeed? She pressed her palm over the last footprint. Fear and urgency vibrated from its essence. The signs were clear. She’d run headlong over the packed dirt. But from w