What in the hell are Mage doing here? How did they get up here? Helicopters, probably.
Brielle eased up beside him as they waited for Jag to get control of his stomach.
"This place must be warded. Humans would be able to see it from a hundred miles away, even before binoculars and satellite imaging."
"Against humans, yes," Brielle confirmed, "but not immortals. Before the Sacrifice, the queen and her court lived here, the other Ilinas scattered in temples elsewhere in the world. But when the Therians turned on us after the Sacrifice, we were forced to flee to the clouds."
To the Crystal Realm.
"Son of a bitch." Jag's muttered epithet carried from below. Moments later, he joined them. "You weren't kidding about that ride. If there's another way off this perch, I'm taking it."
Kougar turned to Brielle. "Tell me how to find Ariana."
Her worried gaze met his. "The lower chambers are hidden. I have to go with you."
He could see the panic rising in her eyes and reached for her, gripping her shoulder. "Stay here. We'll find them. Just tell me what you know."
The Ilina paused, took a deep, deliberate breath, then nodded. "The temple is divided into four chambers, in the center of which lies the rotunda. The great statue of Morwun, the first queen, stands beneath the crystal dome. To reach the stairs to the chamber below, you must enter the passage directly behind the statue. At the end is a curved stair that appears to go only up. I'll tell you the words that will open the passage down, and you must say them exactly. But, Kougar, I don't know if they'll work coming from one who's not Ilina."
"Tell me the words." Kougar glanced at Jag. "Listen and memorize. I've never had an ear for Ilina."
Jag gave him a quick, half-serious salute. "Yes, sir."
Brielle whispered a string of sounds he knew to be ancient Ilina, a language that had always sounded more like music to his ear than words. And not music with any kind of logic to it.
Jag scowled. "What the hell was that?"
Kougar closed his eyes. Clearly, Jag wasn't going to be any better at Ilina than he was. "Again, Brielle."
The woman repeated the sounds. In his head he tried to mimic them and failed. Dammit, I have to do this. It's the only way I'm going to reach Ariana.
He tried to repeat the sounds out loud.
Brielle shook her head. "That's not it." Again, she sang the chant and again Kougar tried to mimic her with no more success than before. He felt like he wasn't hearing her properly. Like there were pieces missing. He looked to Jag, hoping he was starting to catch on.
Jag shook his head. "She might as well be speaking hummingbird."
Dammit. He'd have to figure out something else when he got in there. Without further discussion, he shifted directly into his house-cat form, bypassing his larger cougar. Beside him, Jag downsized into his mini jaguar.
Are they really going to believe two cats found their way all the way up here? Jag asked telepathically.
No. That's why we're going in together. When you get inside, head left and keep them away from the back passage. I'll go right.
Aye-aye.
As one, they darted across the open rock and up the dozen steps to the pillars. Not until they were racing between the guards did one of the sentinels do a double take.
"What's with the cats?"
"Shit. Those aren't cats. They're shifters!"
Kougar darted into the mammoth temple, heading straight for the middle and the giant golden statue of a naked woman with wild hair, lifting a sword high over her head. A woman who'd lived and ruled when humans still lived in caves. Though he sensed the presence of others in the temple, none were in the rotunda except the two chasing them, shouting for backup.
Kougar's senses went out to Ariana, but he felt her only at a distance. The lower chambers, dammit. He'd been hoping Brielle was mistaken about that.
Any sign of your queen wife? Jag asked.
Any chance you remember the words Brielle spoke?
You're kidding, right?
That's what I was afraid of.
Was that a quip, Kougar-man? Don't tell me you have a sense of humor after all this time.
Kougar ignored him. Meet me in the back passage when you shake off your Mage.
Already done and on my way.
Kougar darted across the ivory floor and down a passage whose walls were decorated with climbing vines of inlaid crystal and gems, to the stairwell Brielle had described. A stair that went only up. He stared in dismay at the solid wall at the base where Brielle assured him another went down. Shifting into a man, he felt for any kind of latch, for any door at all, and found nothing. If there was a door there, it was a magic one, plain and simple.
With a sharp exhale, he attempted the musical-sounding words and got two out of his mouth when he lost any memory of what came next.
"What now?" Jag asked behind him.
By way of answer, Kougar turned and gave the wall a massive kick.
"Way to keep a low profile," Jag muttered.
Kougar kicked again. And again. On the third kick, one small section of the wall began to crumble. On the fourth, his foot went through. He could feel a draft of air wafting from the opening. An opening just big enough for a house cat.
"Let's go." Kougar shifted and leaped through the small break in the wall, into darkness, hoping to hell he wasn't leading them into nothingness.
Chapter Eleven
"Mel . . ." Ariana held her friend's hands, willing Melisande free of the magical trap, holding her from sinking farther by the sheer force of her will.
Melisande met her gaze with terrified eyes. "Go, Ariana. Go to the lower chamber. Do what you came for. Beg the queens of old for a second awakening."
"I can't leave you! You're still sinking."
"No, I think it's stopped. And it doesn't matter anyway. I don't matter. Only you. You're the only one who can find a way to save us."
Ariana squeezed her best friend's hands. "You matter to me. You always have, and you know it."
Melisande's mouth softened. "I know. But you may learn something down there that will solve both our problems. Now let go of me, Ariana."
Ariana looked away, her gaze raking the ivory walls, seeing a single set of stairs spiraling upward in one far corner. And none spiraling down.
"I don't know how to get down there. I don't remember."
Melisande whispered the words of the ancients, then motioned behind Ariana with a nod of her head. "There."
Ariana turned to find that a hole had appeared in the wall to the right of the Altar of Life. She eyed it with wariness, then turned back to Melisande.
"I thought you said only I could go into that place."
Melisande shrugged, her blond braid sliding over her shoulder. "I may not be able to go down there, but I've been here with you and your predecessors enough times to memorize the words." Mel squeezed her hands. "Now release me and go, Ariana. I've stopped sinking."
Ariana prayed to the queens who'd come before that Mel was right, then slowly released her grip, watching her friend for any sign of movement.
Nothing else happened. Melisande remained trapped, but sunk no farther.
"Go," Mel urged. "Quickly, Ariana, before anything else goes wrong." Melisande's voice trembled on an alien note of terror. "Before they find us."
With a quick breath, Ariana nodded, then turned and ran to the opening in the wall. Peering inside, she found a twisting stair carved of stone, just like the chamber in the dream. A stair leading into darkness. A chill skated down her spine, but she hesitated for only a second before slipping inside and starting down, using the curving inner wall as her guide.
Little by little, the stair began to lighten until finally she stepped into the chamber of Kougar's dream. The chamber was far smaller than the one above, primitive-looking in comparison, lit only by a single torch hanging in a bracket on the far wall as if waiting for her. While the floor beneath her bare feet was simple unpolished stone, up close the walls were beautiful--white sandstone thickly carved with flowering vines in high relief, floor to ceiling.
Ariana started forward, toward the small pool in the middle of the chamber circled by half a dozen pillars, classic fluted Doric. Plain stone pots the size of large flowerpots had been placed between each of the pillars, pots she remembered lighting in the dream. A scent teased her nose and her memory, an ancient scent of burning incense. With it came the certainty that the temple awaited her light.
Quickly, she strode to the torch and pulled it off the wall. How could she have forgotten this place? She knelt before the first of the pots, dipping the flame carefully inside, watching as the fire caught. Then she rose to repeat the process in the others.
She still remembered her first awakening, coming into her queen's knowledge, though not where it had taken place. She remembered how her mind had filled with the voices and the faces of more than a dozen ancient queens all the way back to Morwun. Queens who'd lived in a time when humans worshipped the immortals as gods and goddesses. When shape-shifters had roamed the Earth in the thousands, battling one another with fangs and swords. A time when the Mage had controlled every natural thing from the weather to the profusion of flowers growing in the fields, and the Daemons had avoided them all, living alone, high in the mountain passes, preying only on those unfortunates who wandered into their realm.
She still possessed a wealth of memories. So many that she'd failed to realize she'd lost any. What worried her was that the ones she'd lost might not help. This might all be for nothing.
When flame glowed from all six pots, she replaced the torch and returned to stand beside the shallow pool, the bottom lit with crystals, the water a rainbow of sparkling color. She'd come to request another awakening, but she didn't know how. Fear fluttered in her stomach.
Forcing down her rising panic, she took a deep breath. The knowledge had to be instinctive. Long ago, she'd stood like this, without any of the queens' memories. Of course, that first time she'd been young, with only a few months of living behind her. Her mind had been open, her instincts all she had to go by. Accessing what to do had been easy and natural. After more than thirteen centuries, that was no longer true.
Still, the knowledge must live inside her somewhere.
Forcing herself to shut out her fears, to shut out the world, she closed her eyes and concentrated, dropping her hands loosely to her sides. Little by little, she sank deep within her own mind, down through the layers of memory of her life among the humans, through the all-too-shallow bright layer of those two years with Kougar, down through the three centuries she'd ruled the Ilinas before she became Kougar's mate.
All of a sudden, the memories began to flash and blank out like a television show that had taped poorly. Memories that weren't hers, but the queens' who'd come before her. Jagged memories with large chunks ripped away. She hadn't realized. From the beginning, her brain had delivered the knowledge she sought, like a dumbwaiter lifting the facts from the basement of her mind. It was only since she'd come down herself, that she understood the extent of the damage.
Finally, sinking deeper, she hit the ephemeral watery memories she'd been born with. Memories that appeared clean and whole.
And it was there she found the knowledge she sought.
She pulled off her clothes and discarded her weapons, then giving herself up to that ancient instinct, she stepped down into the shallow pool.
The water felt cool against her skin, bubbling oddly. How could she not remember this? She shoved the thought aside and concentrated on what she had to do.
With four slow strides, she was in the middle, the water lapping at her knees. Lifting her hands to the stone ceiling above, she called to the queens who'd come before her in the language of the ancients. And waited.
Nothing happened.
A trickle of despair broke through her concentration, and she tried to seal it off, opening her mind as instinct told her to. But the longer the temple ignored her, the harder it was to keep the fears at bay. Was Melisande all right? Had the Mage, even now, managed to break in to the lower chamber? Would Kougar come and be trapped as well?
The sharp worry and longing at the thought of him caught her off guard, slicing deep into her heart.
Concentrate.
With excruciating effort, she forced herself back down into that place of instinct and resumed the words of ritual. Over and over she begged the queens to hear her. To share their memories and knowledge with her once more.
The first bolt took her by surprise, a flash of pure energy that sliced at her shoulder like a blade, ripping her skin open from clavicle to biceps. She cried out as the pain radiated from her shoulder, washing like a wave out to her extremities. Was this how the knowledge had come to her last time? She couldn't remember!
As warm blood began to run down her arm, another bolt shot at her from the other direction, slicing down her hip and thigh.
With a curse, she began to shout. "I'm one of you, queens of the Ilinas! I need your help."
The third bolt tore down the middle of her back and she cried out with pain and frustration, losing the thread of the chant. This was no awakening, but an attack. Morwun's punishment for her impudence.
As if to confirm the thought, energy twisted around her, binding her in place. And when three more bolts shot at her in quick succession, tearing across her breasts and thighs and shoulders, she couldn't move, couldn't escape.
All she could do was scream.
Kougar leaped through the hole he'd kicked in the wall, thanking the goddess as his paws hit stairs. A twisting spiral of golden stairs, he realized, his cat's eyesight taking over in the dark. Behind him, he heard the soft footfalls of his jaguar companion.
