by Carol Berg
With a last surge of hope I took the Derzhi on my left and ducked a neck-severing swing from the saber.
One minute . . . a few seconds for them to set up a spell ... a quick distraction so I could sneak out between the six ... now seven warriors.
“On your knees, barbarian.” The stabbing fire in the vulnerable spot just under my left ribs stopped me instantly. Blood dripped slowly down my side from the shallow contact, and any movement would drive the blade deeper. And, of course, in the moment of my hesitation, there came a knife to my throat, a scalp-ripping grab of my hair, and a most persuasive spear point to my groin. “Drop your bloody little toys. It would be a shame to slay such a fighter. You’ll do very well to wipe our backsides with your clean Ezzarian fingers.”
Now! Do it now, Rhys! I cried silently, as the flat-faced Derzhi forced me down with pressure on the sword tip lodged in my side. I dropped my weapons and tried to summon an enchantment of my own. Anything. But twenty hours of battle, three days without sleep, and grief beyond bearing laid their leaden fingers on my mind and my body. I could not conjure a will-o’-the-wisp. My only hope stood at the top of the rise.
There’s only these few, I thought. The bulk of the enemy is five minutes away, finishing the slaughter of our left flank.
But as the circling vultures screamed triumph and descended on the dead, and manacles were locked about my wrists, the Derzhi leaned to the side to grab a friend’s whip. And then I saw. One moment the square shoulders and gold-streaked hair were visible at the top of the rise, and in the next, as the first lash ripped the flesh of my shoulders, they turned their backs and disappeared from my sight.
Up and up. The trail narrowed into a rocky, ice-slick goat track. By this time I was not thinking, only running. And when I reached the cliff edge at the top and could run no more, I knelt in the cold sunlight at the rim of the frozen world, and I wept.
Chapter 26
So I had come to it at last. A “revelation” that I had known full well for half my life. Aleksander would be satisfied that he had guessed the truth so easily, whereas I had tried to reinvent it, reinterpret it, reenvision the memory of my friend’s betrayal ... and Ysanne’s. She had been there with him. She had watched. She had done nothing.
I sat on the edge of the cliff, dangling my legs over the vast emptiness of sunlit valley.
So what was I to do now? I had brought Aleksander to the Ezzarians in hopes we could find the help he needed so sorely. Was I wrong to believe that such betrayal had led to true corruption—and that it had crippled the Ezzarians, as we had always feared?
“Are you ready for this particular test so soon?”
Fortunately I had a good hold on the rocky verge of the abyss, or the startling intrusion might have sent me off the edge.
“Catrin! How did you find me?”
“The Prince told—”
“The Prince?”
“Nevya had him awake and eating broth two hours ago. He’s very weak. He said you were out working off a disturbing encounter with an old friend.” She cocked her head to one side, and the wind caught her long hair, framing her small face with a dark corona. “You’ve always gone to high places when you were troubled.”
I shook my head and laughed as I looked back at the noonday brilliance. “Did you do nothing when you were a child but spy on me?”
Catrin peered into the immensity below us, then sat down beside me, keeping well back from the edge. “I’ve managed one or two other things along the way. And I don’t think you always considered it spying. You never refused the almond cakes I brought you nor the words of encouragement as I remember. You were always very solemn and proud in your humiliation, but you never refused to listen to my admiration. Nor ever contradicted me, as I think about it.”
“I kept hoping your grandfather had sent you to tell me he was mistaken, that I was not the most incompetent student he had ever had the misfortune to mentor. Failing that ... I hoped you had inherited his meticulous eye and had seen worth that he had not.” I smiled at her. “So have you? I have sore need of both wisdom and encouragement at the moment.”
“Have you given more thought to what he proposed?”
“Of course I’ve thought of it. I wish I could believe I still had melydda, or that five days of exertion could bring it back.”
“It would take you several weeks to prepare. You’d need to work at—”
No point in letting her rattle off Galadon’s arguments again. She couldn’t understand. “Do you know what they do to you in the Rites of Balthar, Catrin?”
“Seyonne—”
“They start by putting you into a stone box—a coffin with just enough air to keep you breathing—and they bury you underground. You lie there in your own filth, made worse by your terror, unable to move. You think they won’t leave you there long. They want a slave. They’re just trying to frighten you. But after a while ... hours ... a day ... thirst begins to gnaw at you, and you feel the walls pressing in. You use your power to hold off your fear: to make a light, to dull the cramps and the thirst, to prevent breaking your fingers trying to claw your way out. After a while you can’t hold it off anymore, and while you lie there in the dark feeling the madness come, they begin to twist your mind with illusions. ...”
She put a finger over my mouth, quieting the shaking rage and terror that consumed me with the remembrance. My betrothed wife and my best friend had put me in that coffin. I had known it and had used every scrap of melydda to make myself forget, leaving nothing to hold off the horror of being buried alive. For three days I had prayed to die, but my captors would not allow it. Only my heart and my power had died.
“We know what they do,” said Catrin. “They believe—and you believe—that they starve your melydda until it’s gone. They force you to use it up, and they use horror and pain to prevent you from touching it until it withers away. But Grandfather believes it is not your melydda they destroy, but the faith that binds your senses to your power. The power is still there. Your mind and body and will are still there. You have only to reconnect them. What better way to do it than to explore the very path you walked before, when you opened yourself in faith, risking everything to prove that you could stand against demons?”
I shook my head. She believed what she said very sincerely, but what could a sheltered young girl know of despair? I hated to disappoint her, in the same way I would have hated to refuse her gifts of sweets when she was seven, but there was no choice in the matter. “I have no faith. I don’t know where to find it anymore.”
“You can start with my grandfather. He has never failed you.”
“But he doesn’t tell all of the truth.” Galadon knew what Rhys and Ysanne had done. He knew Aleksander would be refused. That was why he was so determined I should try to reclaim my power. But he hadn’t told me any of it.
She paused a moment before answering. “Being worthy of your trust does not oblige him to reveal everything he knows. It never has. He acts as he thinks best.”
“It makes faith all the more difficult, especially when things get hard.”
“Strangely enough, we believe you have already found something of faith in this Derzhi. In time, you will find it where you most need to find it. But that will be another day.”
“You seem very sure I’m going to do this.”
“If you’re going to make a Derzhi into the Warrior of Two Souls, you’d best not dally.”
“Your grandfather believes me?”
“No. But he can’t ignore you, either—which annoys him greatly. And time is very short. The Queen will render her verdict as soon as the Prince is awake again. She’ll send him away.”
“How can I even begin such a thing when I can’t summon the melydda to light a candle?” I said, still consumed with the morbid shadows of the past. “It would waste your time and mine. Better I should go right to the end—step off this cliff and see how far my faith would take me.”
The color fled from her rigid face, and her
dark eyes grew huge and horrified, shifting from me to the vast emptiness behind me. “Sweet Verdonne, no! You can’t—”
“No, no. I didn’t mean that. I’d never ... I’m sorry.” What was I thinking? She was an innocent, generous young woman ... not a cynical slave who could find humor only in the macabre. I held her cold hands. “I sit here floundering in self-pity while you offer a gift of everything I desire. I wish so very much that I could believe as you do. But you mustn’t think ... I’ve a number of things to do before I die. I’ve got to get someone to listen to me about the Khelid, and I’ve got to find a way to get this annoying Derzhi off my conscience.”
Catrin set her jaw and yanked her hands from mine, and for a moment I caught a disconcerting glimpse of her grandfather in her small face. “Don’t you dare treat me like a child. Even after so many years, you still think you know everything. You’re still the same cocky boy of seventeen who would pat me on the head and tell me that I couldn’t possibly understand his problems until I grew up. Well, I’ve grown up. Perhaps I can enlighten you to a few things. Tell me, cocky boy, do you remember how my grandfather questioned your memory on the night you were at our house? He had you reciting every spell you ever learned or made.”
Her fury dampened my remorse quite effectively. “Age hasn’t mellowed his annoying habits any more than experience has changed mine. Is that what you’re saying?”
She showed no signs of appreciating my attempt at humor. Her complexion was a quite vivid red. “When you were seven, you carved a ship that you could make sail in the air. Your cloud ship, you called it. Do you remember that, too?”
My skin prickled as if coming to life after sleep. “Of course I remember.”
She reached into the pocket of her scarlet cloak and pulled out a crudely fashioned sailing ship about the size of her hand. “It has not flown in all these years, because only you were ever able to make it do so.” She tossed it over the cliff edge and it spun downward, scraps of faded red cloth fluttering bravely from its thin wooden spars ... until a soft gust of wind brushed the mountaintop, and it floated back into view, drifting in a wide circle around our heads.
“Three nights ago he had you say the words. It required no faith, for its enchantment was created in you before you knew of doubt. A child’s spell. Awakened by your melydda, Seyonne. Only yours.”
I could have answered her ten different ways. Cynical, disbelieving ways. But as I watched the bit of pine dip and roll over the currents of the wind, I chose to keep silent and live for a moment in the wonder of my first magic. After a while I plucked it from the air and ran my fingers over its gouged and battered surface: the masts I’d had to replace fifty times, the scraps of my mother’s weaving, the ship’s wheel my father had shown me in a book, the awkward letters of my name carved proudly on the hull. I held it on the palm of my hand ... just beside the scar where one of my masters had nailed my hand to a door for a week for failing to open the door fast enough.
I gave the toy back to Catrin. “As you said. It’s a child’s spell.”
She returned the ship to her pocket and folded her arms. Again, the fleeting resemblance to Galadon in the set of her jaw and the steel of her eyes. “Then, tell me how it was that on the night the shengar roamed our forest, sixty-three families were warned of the danger at exactly the same moment by a man with a scar on his face. A man who wore a gray cloak and carried a burning stick. A man who disappeared as soon as he had told them to take shelter. Explain it to me. Was this a child’s spell or is it a skill of Derzhi slaves?”
“I ran from one to the other.”
“Not sixty-three.”
“The number was exaggerated.”
“I spoke to them myself. I am an investigator and have the right. There were five families you warned in person. One group of two additional families that you saved by stepping between them and the beast. Sixty-three were warned by sorcery—and the power to work such an enchantment is only a Warden’s skill. There are not five Ezzarians yet living who could do such a thing. And none of them did it. I’ve spoken to them all.”
“It’s impossible.”
“And what if it’s not? What if you’re the one who’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. ...”
“Exactly. And your oath requires that you know.” She rose and drew her green cloak about her. “I’ll come for you tonight, right after the Weaver’s lamp is lit. I’d recommend that you get some sleep before that time. Grandfather will be waiting.” She turned and marched down the hill, leaving me speechless and confounded. The only words that came to mind were, “Yes, Master Galadon.”
I didn’t stay long after she left. Life was too confusing to think about. I needed to run again, and so I did. And that’s when I noticed that it didn’t hurt, and that I could breathe, and that my stride was smooth and long, reeling up the path so that I was back at the guest house in the short matter of an hour. I hoped Aleksander was awake. I needed to talk to someone who wouldn’t leave me feeling as though I’d been tied into widows’ knots by little girls playing with string. I’d come to respect Aleksander’s gift of seeing through people. If he would just learn the right thing to do with those insights once he had them, he might turn into a decent human being.
The village was quiet and deserted, so I was completely taken aback to open the guest house door and see the Queen of Ezzaria sitting beside Aleksander’s bed. The healer stood by the fire with Rhys, and two Ezzarian men, armed with spears, stood just inside the door. None of them moved when I walked in. I wondered what they would do if I attempted to harm their queen.
I genuflected, but of course, Ysanne did not acknowledge it. It was Aleksander, leaning back on his pillows looking exceedingly ill, who waved me up. It was improper for me to stay. Neither Ezzarian manners nor Derzhi slave discipline would permit it. But I decided that rudeness and impertinence were far outweighed by my need to hear whatever was to be heard. So I sat myself on the floor beside Aleksander’s bed and watched Ysanne’s face as she spoke. Her dark eyes never strayed from Aleksander, and her clear voice never wavered.
“... sorry. Because we caused you this grievous injury, you may stay until it is healed. But once Nevya says you are able to travel, we will require that you leave.”
“I thought we were going to send him away immediately,” said Rhys. His back was to the rest of us, and he was staring at the fire, drumming his fist on the sturdy pine shelf over the hearth. “He could be taken at any time. You said he was so far gone that he would accept a rai-kirah willingly, so every moment he’s here is a risk. I know how you hate it, but—”
“We are to blame for this illness. We will offer him healing for his body, but nothing else.”
“I understood that Ezzarians did not refuse anyone healing for demon enchantments, even a Derzhi.” Aleksander’s voice was tight, breaking with quick breaths, as if it pained him to move even so small a part of himself.
“We have no love for Derzhi,” Ysanne said, “and I’ll not say that I would consent to your healing in any circumstance. But it makes no difference. Your enchantment is beyond our skill. We cannot protect you from its consequences, so we must protect ourselves.”
Frost had blighted Ysanne’s fire. Her words were not unkind. Her sympathy was sincere. Yet the woman I remembered would never have sent Aleksander away without attempting to save him. He bore the feadnach ... how could she not try? Then I laughed at myself without mirth. The woman I remembered had never existed. She would never have walked away and left anyone in slavery.
The threads of light in her dark hair were a paler gold than I remembered. Was it strands of silver that dimmed it, like mingled moonlight cooling the fire of the sun? Only a single curl was allowed loose to hang beside her face and fall on the deep blue of her cloak. My body was in a knot as I listened, waiting for the sympathetic harmonies that her melodious voice had always set off in me. We had been like chiming strings on a harp, and no matter the betrayal, I expected that hearing her again wo
uld tear me apart. But I felt nothing. She sat straight in her chair beside Aleksander, her eyes fixed on him, and I found myself wanting to reach out and shake her, to make her angry, to curse me, anything to prove I was not dead. I had lived in her mind. She had created worlds for me to walk, using everything she knew of me to make them as familiar as possible ... to keep me safe. Our pairing—the two of us, the work we did—had been my whole life, and I had believed it was hers also. How could she have betrayed me? How could I feel nothing?
A sudden gasp and a stifled moan from Aleksander startled me out of my private argument and had Ysanne out of her chair. One side of the Prince’s body had twisted itself into the shape of the shengar, while the other half stayed in the shape of a man. It was only for a single, agonizing moment, but it left Aleksander’s bloodless face rigid with pain and the two guards with spear points at his heart.
“Sweet Verdonne, haven’t you done enough?” I said, grabbing the spears and twisting them from the hands of the guards, unable to contain the rage that had so little to do with their blind reaction. They weren’t sure what to do with me, which left it very easy. I used the blunt end of their spears to shove the men away, then reversed the shafts, pinning the two to the wall by their clothing. I dropped to my knees beside the Prince. “My lord, can you hear me?”
“Stay back,” he said, struggling for breath. “Tell them to stay back.”
“They’ll stay away,” I said. “What’s happening?”
Ysanne broke in as if I hadn’t spoken. “This is your enchantment? Is this how it begins?” Rhys stood behind her, his broad hands on her shoulders, staring in horror at Aleksander.
“Different ... these few days,” said the Prince, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “My mind keeps slipping back and forth ... changing ... so I see ... as the beast sees. Smells ... Cravings ... Parts of me changing. Then it goes away.”
