"You say you wish to end this," the cobra said to Cjarsa and Araceli in greeting.

"Before more lives are lost," Araceli said.

They had been fighting for years. What else could they do? Anhamirak's domain was wildfire and war. As long as her magic was left unbalanced, there could never be peace.

"Yes," Cjarsa whispered. She had seen the future, seen the final fire that would consume them all. She knew that this had to be stopped. "Come forward, child," she said. When Alasdair stepped out from behind Araceli and held up a curious hand, Kiesha knelt down and let the tiny fingers wrap around her thumb. "Yours?" she asked Araceli, her expression softening.

"No," Araceli said, blinking back tears. "Brassal killed my daughter last night. Odd that it would be a priest of Namid, giver of life, who would destroy a child." The python had crept into Ahnmik's temple, probably hoping to kill Cjarsa. Instead, he had found Araceli and her young daughter.

Araceli was convinced that he had killed the child intentionally; Cjarsa believed it had been an accide nt. Like all their powers, Brassal's magic had grown beyond his ability to control it.

"Now," Cjarsa whispered, throwing out her own magic like a net. Araceli, Syfka, Servos and Cjarsa had spent the past three years concocting this spell, and now it drove Kiesha to her knees. The cobra screamed.

And the child screamed as well.

Oh, gods... hearing that scream, Cjarsa wanted to leave this world. The spell the falcons had created shredded Kiesha's magic, tearing it into two. One half of Anhamirak's power remained in the cobra; the other half burned its way into the child's soul. As it had painted Kiesha garnet, so it stained the child, darkening her white-blond hair and pale blue eyes to the color of beaten gold.

It was too late to bring back the balance, and no one could control Anhamirak's chaos, but they hoped that this would cripple the serpents' magic before it could destroy even more.

Araceli was the one who took the little girl's tiny hands in her own and whispered gently, "Now you'll be able to fly, like we can."

"Don't be kind," Cjarsa said. "If you are kind, we will never be able to do what must be done."

"Come, Alasdair," Araceli said, taking the young hawk's hand before Kiesha could recover and realize what they had done. "You have much to learn before we take you back to your people."

No, this wasn't me. This wasn't my time. All this had happened long before to Cjarsa, before she had raised the island from the sea and become Empress of the white city. I'd seen it before; the Erst time, I had screamed with Kiesha, screamed for days until Cjarsa had helped me escape the vision.

Where was I... oh, there...

Even generations later, the Cobrianas' garnet eyes had not Jaded. As Anjay rode in a Jury to the Hawk's Keep, they burned with the same intensity that had made Cjarsa cringe when she had Jaced Kiesha in the temple of Anhamirak.

Some of Anjay's soldiers had f ollowed him, and they Jell by the dozens as he thrust forward into avian lands, but no bow or blade seemed able to pierce his pain and hatred. The cobra had returned from Falcon lands only hours before. He knew nothing of the child he had sired, and if he had been lingering on recollections of the Falcon lover he had left behind, those had been shoved aside by the news of his sister's assassination. Anjay did not dismount as he reached the courtyard of the Hawk's Keep, but boosted himself up to stand on his horse's back; a raven tried to stop him from grasping the balcony floor above, and Anjay quickly drove a blade into the man's ribs. As Anjay hoisted himself over the balcony rail, a young hawk girl shrieked the raven's name with enough pain in her voice that Anjay knew that the man he had just killed had been her mate. Fine; he would end this hawk's pain, too, as her people had ended the lives of so many he loved.

All the while, the Falcon Darien shadowed him, and she let out a cry that echoed the girl's as the youngest avian prince defended his sister, Danica, by driving a soldier's blade into Anjay's back. The avians had lost scores of their own people to this mad rush, and now they cheered as a serpent's blood flowed over the child's hand.

No, no. Why was I forced to watch this, again and again, every time I closed my eyes? I shared Anjay's blood. Did I need to share his death?

And now, finally, I remembered who I was: the unwanted child of a doomed cobra prince, and a falcon sworn to the Empress Cjarsa, who had ripped Anhamirak's magic in half. Had the avians and the serpiente known, all those years as they had warred, that they had slain the other halves of themselves? Was that why peace came with such difficulty: not because they hated each other, but because they could not forgive themselves?

I was a young child, dancing the skies above the white city, lost in the endless tides of magic that whirled through this land like storm winds. The wings I spread showed the taint of my father's blood

- the color of tar and lava. Anhamirak's stain.

My father's magic was not powerful; a cobra did not have enough power on his own to be a danger. But when what remained of Anhamirak's magic needled the falcon magic I had inherited from my mother, Ahnmik slashed back. I spent most of my days struggling to control these combinative powers, but in the middle of this sky-dance, I lost that battle.

The two magics fought, tearing and slicing, ripping at my body and my wings. Dark flight feathers cascaded to the ground even before I fell screaming. Cjarsa caught me before the crystal-hard ground shattered my plummeting body, but though she mended my flesh, she could do nothing with my ravaged wings. As for the rest of me... the agony from my magic was as deep as my blood, and even my Empress could not heal that.

She cradled me in her arms as I shivered and cried, my magic striking her blindly no matter how I tried to keep it in check. "Sleep now," she whispered to me. It was all she could do.

Yes, I would have liked to sleep, to rest, to finally be away from the sharp edges left behind by that ancient rending. But... I had made a promise. I needed to find my way back to here and now, in Wyvern's Court, such a strange and unlikely place. The two halves of Anhamirak were trying to shove themselves together, but it was like trying to return blood to a wound.

Back to Wyvern's Court... Salem Cobriana, the heir to the serpiente throne, lay in my arms, dying. His blood felt cold on my skin; his red eyes had turned a tawny brown. His heartbeat was so faint that even with my cheek pressed to his chest I could barely hear it. I knew I could save him; I had that power, always had. I could use my magic, patch his bones, slow the bleeding, force his heart to beat and his lungs to stir the air ... but terror gripped me. I could ask my magic for that much, and Ahnmik would grant the favor, but the white falcon's power ultimately came from the void, from Ecl, and that dark goddess would ask even more in return. If I swam her dark, still waters, I would drown. I shrieked for help, but none came.

The mob was seething. How had the crowd turned so vile so quickly?

An arrow pierced my back, slicing under my left shoulder blade. I covered Salem with my body but did not reach out to him with the greedy magic that could save his life. I couldn't. Please...

Another arrow sliced through my arm before burying itself in his side.

"Hail" Someone shouted my name. At that moment, I felt Salem die, felt the last spark go out as Brysh, goddess of death, claimed her own. No, not her own. This wasn't natural; this was a travesty. I screamed and then let the magic free, lashing into the crowd.

Hai!

Shm'Ahnmik'la'Hai. Kiesha'ra'la'Hai.

Pain. Fear. Not from me or from

Salem but from someone else, someone who knew all my names.

Stay here, Hai. Stay here, with me.

Only one person ever called me by both sides of my blood: Nicias. He named me shm'Ahnmik, a falcon, and Kiesha'ra, a cobra.

I wanted the serpent throne no more than Nicias wanted his throne on Ahnmik. We would never claim our royal birthrights, but our magics would forever tie us to them. The words--his bond to me, and mine to him - drew me back to the real world.

Chapter 4

I lifted my head, in the place and time most call reality, in the bedroom of my little home at the edge of Wyvern's Court, and found Nicias standing across the room from me, one arm held protectively in front of his face. His forearm was bleeding in four places, as if scratched by the claws of some great cat; I could see a dark stain on his shirt where his chest had been similarly torn. A cloud of angry magic  -  my magic, which I had lashed out with during my unwanted visions  -  stormed around him. I curled into a ball, trying to draw the magic back from Nicias and into myself and knowing that I might have killed anyone else who had woken me. I shut my eyes for a moment and again heard the whisper of Ecl, who for so long had been my keeper... my guardian, my kingdom, my ever-jealous lover. Her voice was soothing, and I felt myself falling back into sleep.

Nicias touched my arm, terribly trusting even with blood trickling down his skin. "Hai, stay with me."

"Quemak."

I said. He had called me a falcon and a cobra, but I was neither really. Opal was right. Quemak, mongrel. That was the only title I could claim.

Nicias winced when I said it. The word was not a polite one, and I knew he hated to hear me apply it to myself, but how could he argue? We both knew it was true.

"You're hurting yourself," he said. The magic I had been trying to pull away from him had cut into my own arms instead. I didn't mind the pain much; I was nearly numb to it. But I hated to see blood on his skin.

He gently ran his hands down my arms. I shivered, both at his touch and at the brush of his magic, which felt like cold water in the scalding desert. He smoothed the cuts I had created, transforming them into something harmless that quickly faded. I doubted that Nicias could explain how he had done it. He had begun to study his falcon magic only within the past few months, but he was royal blood, so his power responded freely to his desires. Simple things like this he could do instinctively.

"Nightmare?" Nicias asked as he healed us both. How I envied people who dreamed, who could have nightmares and know that in no world were they real.

"Sakkri."

Nicias resented anything resembling prophecy. He had not been raised with the assumption that if one was strong enough, one could look forward in time and see what Fate had planned. Not every sakkri'a'she, vision of the future, came true, but every one had the potential to do so.

Few people had the power to weave such sakkri, and among those who could, even fewer had the strength to recall them. I was one of the few, but even I had trouble sometimes; I would remember single images or driving desires instead of whole scenes. Most of the time, I let the future-memories fade.

But this time something had caused me to wake screaming and struggling. I had seen my father killed  -  no, I saw that frequently, almost every time I slept. It no longer had the power to  - Salem. His was the death that had disturbed me. The memory of it made me shudder. I could almost taste the helpless terror and fury I had felt in the vision... almost.

The emotions were already fading, returning me to my more familiar state of numbness. But surely in the future I had envisioned, I had felt like I was losing something far more dear than one cobra's life.

Why?

I had once given myself to Ecl to rid myself of these kinds of visions, which were rich with emotions  -  most often painful ones  -  that had no parallel in my everyday existence. Now I had taken myself back to reality and was trying to live again. Would this be my punishment, to have this cobra die in my arms while I wept? Would I die with him?

Will I be the cause of his death?

I wondered.

"What did you see?" Nicias asked, drawing me from my dark thoughts. I shook my head; I couldn't speak of it. Describing such prophecies made them more real, and as I had recently experienced with Oliza, sometimes that was enough to set one into motion.

"It doesn't matter. It will fade," I said. At least, I prayed it would. Nicias sighed and ran his hands through his pale blond hair, which was hanging loose around his face. The blue strands were tangled with all the rest, and I wished I could reach forward and separate them, binding the golden locks back, the way they would be worn on Ahnmik.

Old habit, left over from years in the white city when I had prayed and wished I could have the pale, pale blond hair of my Empress, marked with a falcon's blue, instead of the black hair of a cobra.

Or perhaps it was a desired habit. Every time Nicias was near, I found myself inventing excuses to touch him.

I kept my hands by my sides.

"I can't stay long," Nicias said apologetically. "The court is  -  dear skies, you weren't even there. Hai  -  "

"I heard," I said. "Oliza has given up the throne." Nicias nodded. "Salem and Sive will inherit the serpiente and avian thrones. Neither of them hates the other. Hopefully..."

Hopefully they would be able to maintain the peace between the avians and the serpiente and bring the two worlds together so that someday a wyvern queen might be able to rule. Hopefully the slaughter that had lasted more than a thousand years would never begin again.

"What will Oliza do now?"

"She has taken a wolf for her mate," he said. "A woman named Betia. They left Wyvern's Court as soon as Oliza made the announcement."

It had been obvious to me from the beginning that Oliza loved the wolf. Even so, I nodded, accepting the information as if it was new.

Fate did care for its children sometimes. Long before, Araceli and Cjarsa had split Anhamirak's magic to protect this world. In Oliza, daughter of a hawk and a cobra, that magic had again combined. Love that would never let Oliza breed was a gift, as any natural-born child of the wyvern's would unleash terror on this Earth.