Transformation

by Carol Berg

  “No trigger?” I said. “Nothing sets it off like before.”

  “No trigger. No sword ... no Dmitri. ...”

  “If you wish to be heard, Prince Aleksander, you will address your words to me,” said Ysanne coldly. “What is it you’re saying?”

  “I can scarcely hold one conversation,” said the Prince, trying in vain to moisten his lips. “Can’t do two.”

  I poured wine from the pitcher that sat on the bedside table, then raised his head to give him a sip. “Tastes beastly,” he said, then laughed weakly. “Appropriate, eh?”

  “Daffyd, you will stay to protect Nevya,” commanded Ysanne, angrily throwing on her cloak. “Rhys, tell the Weaver to place a barrier about this house.”

  “No! Ysanne, you can’t! It was worse—” I broke off, cursing inwardly. She would do nothing from my saying. “My lord, please tell the Queen how it was when I took you beyond the forest boundary during the change.”

  He told her in words different enough from mine that she could act on them, and Ysanne rescinded her order. “I’m sorry we can’t help you, Prince Aleksander. Once we had those among us who were capable of unraveling such things. But they are all dead now. Dead at the hand of the Derzhi. We must husband our resources carefully. You will be gone from here as soon as you can ride.” She swept out of the room on Rhys’s arm, followed by one of her red-faced guards who had loosened himself from the wall. I wondered how he was going to explain the rips in his jerkin.

  “Not very friendly,” said Aleksander into his pillow, a sheen of sweat glistening on his bare arms.

  “Our Queen holds the care of the world. She can’t do everything she would like,” said the healer, adjusting the pillow and blankets to make him more comfortable. “But she’s brought you her own remedies to strengthen you and to ease your pain. She has more knowledge of these things than any of us.” The woman crushed a packet of herbs with a few drops of oil from a glass bottle and dressed Aleksander’s wound with it. I watched closely, wishing I had the power to read what was in the mixture. Yet I still could not believe Ysanne would deliberately hurt anyone. Stupid. How many betrayals would it take? Perhaps it was just that I trusted the healer to recognize anything amiss. Nevya was a gentle, capable woman. The Prince did seem more at ease once the medicine was applied and the healer had wrapped clean bandages around him.

  “Seyonne.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Tell her how I need something to keep me asleep. So I won’t change. Please. If it comes again ... I won’t get back.”

  “You’ve told her, my lord. That will have to do. And should it come, you will stay in control and return to yourself as you have before. I’ll be with you.”

  The healer mixed herbs in hot water and slipped a few spoonfuls into Aleksander’s mouth.

  “This will help you sleep,” she said, then she gathered her things and slipped out the door, leaving me alone with the Prince.

  “Your people are cruel, Seyonne.”

  I sat on the floor beside his bed. “No. They’re right to be cautious. But sometimes they look in the wrong direction for corruption. They could use your skill to see men’s hearts behind their deeds.”

  Aleksander dragged his sagging eyelids open. “I was right about the consort?”

  I nodded and bit my tongue to keep from asking the next question. But he heard it anyway.

  “She wears a mask,” he said. “If she’s guilty, then she’s locked it away. It does not control her actions. My father does the same. I’ve always hoped to learn how he does it. Figured I’d need it.”

  For an instant, feral madness gleamed in his amber eyes, then a shudder rippled over his long body, and he clutched the pillow with bloodless knuckles. “Help me, Seyonne.”

  “We’ll find a way,” I said. “Even if I have to start over from the beginning and do it myself, we will rid you of this affliction. The demon will not win.”

  “My guardian spirit,” Aleksander mumbled sleepily. “I’ve been lying here thinking, remembering that warrior on the woman’s tapestry—the warrior with wings who’s battling the monster. Can’t get it out of my head. The face was so familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Now I know. It’s you, isn’t it?”

  I wasn’t sure he was awake to hear my answer. “Aye, my lord. It was.”

  Chapter 27

  The Weaver was the guardian of an Ezzarian settlement. A woman of unequaled skill in creating enchantments, she was responsible for the forest barriers that would keep it safe, that would give warning when intruders, especially unseen demons, entered the trees. The Weaver always lived outside the forest so she could monitor her spells, but that meant she was not sheltered or protected herself; thus she was susceptible to risks that others were not. And so at the corner of her house hung a lamp, lit every evening as soon as she had made her rounds and confirmed that all was secure. Someone from the settlement would come to the forest edge to make sure that the Weaver’s lamp was lit, and if it was not, would run to give the alarm.

  For the two years my mother had been the Weaver and could not live in our home in the forest, I had been the runner. It was a great honor for her to be named, and I basked in the respect it gained from my friends, but I missed her sorely, feeling a great emptiness in our home. When my father told her of my grief, she took me in her arms and said that she had woven my name into the spell to light her lamp. Whenever I saw it burning, I should know her heart was with me for the night. Since then the Weaver’s lamp had always warmed me far beyond the security of the settlement. It had been the coldest of nights when I was twelve and saw no lamp lit, the night we found her dead from a sudden onset of fever.

  Aleksander was deep in drugged sleep, and I was sitting in the open doorway of the guest house when the Weaver’s lamp bloomed from a single spark to a steady yellow gleam across the dark lane. I could not but think of my mother ... and so my father, too. I missed them both. My mother had been immensely powerful, my first teacher in the ways of enchantment. She had enlightened my imagination with her stories and taught me to explore fully the worlds of my senses, to be observant and attentive even to the most ordinary things. She made sure I knew how to listen to silence as well as sound and see things absent as well as present. And in a strange inversion she taught me to see and feel the things I heard, and to hear and taste color and texture and shape.

  But I believed I had actually learned more from my father, who had no melydda at all. He had been a tall, wiry man who loved books. He could have spent his life joyfully as a scholar or teacher, exploring the realms of the intellect. But he was Ezzarian and had no melydda, so he had not that luxury. His days were spent working the terraced fields beyond the forest, growing food to support those who carried on the demon war. Before I started school, I would make the daily trek with him, riding on his shoulders in the dewy morning, happily digging in the dirt, pulling weeds, or napping in the apple orchard until he carried me home in the evening. Those were precious days. After supper he would sit in his study and open his book, but would fall asleep in his chair instantly, too tired to read. It was many years until I understood the quiet sadness beneath his smile when I was tested and found to have melydda. He understood, as I did not, that it meant that our time together would quickly dwindle and disappear. It was my good fortune that my training did not take me away from home, for I learned everything of honor and duty and sacrifice, not from Searchers or Wardens or mentors, nor from my mother, who left our home to be the Weaver, but from my father, whose gift was to give away everything he valued.

  I smiled as I sat watching the Weaver’s lamp from the guest house doorway. All these years I believed I had walled up my father with the rest of my memory, but in truth, he had been with me through everything. His was the voice of acceptance and peace that had helped me survive. What comes, comes. Though he had no melydda, on the day when the terror came, when the Derzhi legion was sighted off our borders, my father was the first to take up his pikestaff and his bow and ask me,
his warrior son, where he should stand.

  When the shadow that was Catrin walked out of the trees and up the village lane to fetch me, I was already standing up. “I need to be back before Aleksander wakes,” I said. “I’ve promised to be with him. Other than that, I’m all yours. Just tell me where to stand.”

  She didn’t smile. Didn’t speak. Just turned and walked back toward the trees.

  It was a correct beginning. No one spoke unnecessarily to the candidate in the days leading up to his testing. He was supposed to be focusing entirely on his preparation: physical skills, mental clarity, sensory perception, purity of heart, and a mind-cracking load of arcane knowledge. I sighed as I followed Catrin’s straight back. The only question seemed to be in which area I was least prepared. But I was accustomed to self-discipline, at least, so I kept myself from dwelling on possibilities. I would not consider either faith or failure. What comes, comes.

  Catrin led me, not to Galadon’s house, but deep into the trees to a rocky glade lit by three white lamps hung from pine branches. Trailers of steam rose from a dark pool and wreathed about the white-haired Galadon, who stood on the rocks of the bank opposite Catrin and me. The old man wore the dark blue robes of the Warden he had once been, and he leaned on the staff he used to focus his melydda when he was teaching. I stopped at the edge of the glade and bowed to him as was proper from a student to his mentor. He raised his staff and pointed to the pool. No words were necessary. I knew what he wanted.

  I cast a sidelong glance at Catrin as I took off my cloak, hung it over a branch, and sat down to pull off my boots. She was occupied with a bag set under one of the hanging lanterns, her back to me. I hoped she would stay that way or leave the glade altogether. Galadon did not intend for me to pollute the pool with clothing, and even sixteen years with the immodest Derzhi had not prepared me to stand naked in front of an Ezzarian woman I hardly knew. And there were other things ... steel bands, scars ... I shut off my head and pulled off my shirt, hanging it beside my cloak. Think of the words. Feel what you’re doing . . . only that. To be clean. How long had it been? I stripped off the slave tunic and my breeches, shivering as a breeze whispered the trees and teased the vapors from the pool. The water looked to be very hot. I wanted to dip my hand or my foot in the pool to test it, but faith had to begin somewhere. Galadon would not give me more than I could bear.

  So I walked gingerly across the patchy snow and the damp rocks at the edge of the water, jumped in ... and came near drowning. The water was well over my head and scalding. I flailed about in panic, inhaling a barrel of the boiling stuff before struggling to the surface and dragging myself onto the painfully cold rocks. I lay choking and coughing, unable to scream at the touch of frigid air on my raw skin. I could feel every stripe that had ever been laid on my back. The burn scars on my shoulder and my face throbbed at the insult. My eyes poured out a river of tears to cool their injury, and I frantically crawled to the edge of the rocks to plunge my hands into the snow to cool the metal about my wrists. I began to shiver, and between bouts of coughing I tried to form words. “I’m sorry, master ... so stupid ... so stupid.” When I could move again, I would put on my clothes and go back to Aleksander. What had I been thinking?

  “Again.”

  I feared the scalding water had damaged my hearing. Scarcely able to control my trembling limbs, I got to my knees and looked up at the white-haired man who stood over me. His jaw was hard, his eyes uncompromising, unsympathetic. He raised the staff and pointed at the pool behind me. “Again.”

  It was as well I couldn’t speak. What could I say to a madman? Or perhaps he thought I was mad. How could he believe I would go back into the water? Boiling my skin away would not heal my scars. With blurry eyes I searched the glade for Catrin. She was sitting across the pool on the rocks from which I’d stepped in. Watching. Waiting. No expression. Certainly no movement to gainsay her grandfather lest he torture his too-old student to death.

  They didn’t think I would die if I went back in. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to dam the river of tears so I could see. The pool steamed in the night air.

  Faith. Galadon did not want me to die. Discipline. No doubts. Doubt, not fear, was the Warden’s enemy. Fear made you wary. Doubt made you weak. Discipline. Clear all these thoughts away.

  I stood up, still shivering, and bowed to Galadon. Then I took a breath, emptied my head, stepped into the pool ... and believed that I was certainly going to die. I could feel the blood boiling in my veins. At least this time I had been wary and stepped in close to the bank, so that within one agonizing moment I was back on the cold rocks again. I felt like one of the sheets Manganar laundry women boil in copper pots, then beat with stones.

  “Master,” I gasped. “I can’t.”

  “Again.”

  I didn’t even bother to look up. The word told me everything. The staff would be pointing to the pool. How often in my life had I heard that same word in that same insistent tone? Every instance of it came back to me as I lay on the rocks, freezing and on fire at the same time. The words pelted me like hailstones, battering me into pulp so I could be shaped into something better, stronger. It meant I was forgetting something: a word, a movement, an insight, a step. I was failing to see what I needed to see. “Again.” This time do it right. This time, don’t forget. When you walk the realms of demon madness, you cannot afford to forget, to slip, to fail.

  So what was I forgetting? What had I tried? Breath, distractions, trust ... I knelt on all fours, limp and laughing in exhausted helplessness. What would Aleksander say to this? A warrior’s training ... not to slit bellies or ride horses, but to bathe. To clean oneself. To restore purity.

  Aleksander. With the thought of the Prince, he who had brought me to face this trial and whose need demanded that I finish it, the answer came clear. My problem was not lack of knowledge. The knowledge was in me and would come back with practice. And I had correctly banished distractions, but I’d not replaced them with my purpose. It was impossible to fight any battle without purpose. It was your anchor. Your focus. The place you could fasten everything you had to remember.

  I struggled to my feet and bowed again to the figure in blue. This time, instead of clearing my mind, I filled it with light—Aleksander’s feadnach, the silvery gleam of possibility, my anchor. Once done, everything else fell into place. This was a simple test. I delved into the bits of knowledge floating in my head and prepared. Breathe deep to fill the blood with endurance. Control the senses. Mute the throbbing of ragged nerves. Cool the skin. Glaze the eyes with thickened tears to protect them while allowing you to see what must be seen. Slow the heart. Control . . . steady ... focus ... I stepped again into the steaming pool.

  Smoothly, slowly I slipped into the hot water, as if time scarcely crept along its way. All the way to the bottom this time, feeling only the soft brush of drifting moss and the soothing warmth penetrating my pores. Far above me the white lantern light floated on the surface, and I swam lazily toward it, feeling the water glide past my skin, soaking away years of filth, of horror, of pain. In a moment I reversed direction and returned to the bottom, grabbing a handful of sand and scrubbing my skin and my hair. Then I shot for the surface and burst through, laughing at myself as I crawled out onto the rocks and lay naked in the cold night, feeling as if I had crushed a Derzhi legion.

  It was such a small triumph. My victory had involved no sorcery at all. No melydda. I had scarcely touched what I needed to do. But it was enough. I had begun.

  Every night for seven nights Catrin came for me and delivered me to Galadon. For eight hours or more he would work me through elements of my training. He would drill me for two hours in words and spells, strategies and tactics, then set me to running or practicing the martial disciplines to hone my reflexes and settle my mind. In other hours he would set me problems—puzzles or battle scenarios—and have me work them out in my head, never allowing me to scratch them in the dirt or on a rock. I heard the word “again�
� so often, it was burned into my being anew, and then I would have to twist my mind into knots to discover what I was forgetting. Never did Galadon speak to me beyond the work, and never did he set me any task that required melydda. I did not allow myself to think of that. In truth, I was always too tired to live beyond the moment.

  Catrin was with us the whole time, which I found odd. I kept waiting for her to offer me almond cakes or some bit of encouragement in a humorous connection with our past. But her dark eyes never smiled. They watched and judged, and when I would fail at a simple task, she would turn away in annoyance.

  I was returned to the guest house two hours before dawn, stumbling to my bed, though never did I remember actually getting there. I woke in the early morning when Nevya came to see to Aleksander. His wound was healing well. The fever had gone, and only a little tenderness remained in his belly. But much to his disgust, he was still woefully weak, scarcely capable of standing up, much less riding. Ysanne came to check on him every morning, reminding him that he was to go as soon as he could ride. Nevya shook her head and said it would be condemning him to death to send him through the mountains in his weakened state.

  “The whole damned world just won’t be still,” he said one afternoon after commanding me to help him up. He had walked back and forth across the room ten times, then had come near falling on his face. “Between the infernal sleeping potions and my cursed head, I feel like a dezrhila dancer. Never saw how they could spin for an hour and stay upright. Drove me mad to watch them.”

  I yawned and helped him from the chair, where he had dropped himself, back to the bed. “Rest today, and then tomorrow I’ll take you outside,” I said. “Fresh air will do you good. We don’t want to rush it. Another week might be worthwhile.” After a singularly unsuccessful night with Galadon, I thought ten weeks could not possibly suffice. I had not told Aleksander what I was doing, but I’d hinted that a slower recovery could be to his benefit.