Transformation

by Carol Berg

  A wave of blissful sleep carried me far away from the quiet morning. But at some time as I drifted in dreamless oblivion, Aleksander laid his cloak over me and spoke softly in my ear. “I would be honored to fight at your side, Seyonne.” A day later when I woke, four broken steel bands lay beside me in the grass.

  Chapter 32

  “How could you let him go?” I yelled at Catrin and Hoffyd when I came out of the healing stupor. “Do you understand what he’s planning to do? The stupid, arrogant fool is going to give himself to the Khelid.” I was beside myself with fury and helplessness and grief.

  “He was right. You were in no condition to ride,” said Catrin, with no hint of the defensiveness I believed she should be displaying. She had put me to sleep for a day, deciding I needed the time for my injuries to heal. “And if we had let you ride after him, you would be in no condition to fight. Your life is more important than his. I won’t argue about it.”

  “Aleksander is worth more than all of us put together,” I said. “He will change the world. Am I the only one who can see it?”

  Aleksander had met Catrin and Hoffyd at the crossroads where they had waited while he’d gone after me. He returned alone, but told them that I was living, though injured, and where to find me at the spring. Then he’d asked Hoffyd to take the slave rings off of me.

  “He said it was long past time,” Hoffyd told me, once my initial rage was spent and I stood leaning my head on my horse, trying to settle my mind. “He said it was his damnable pride got in the way of it. But he wanted you to know you were free to do what was best, and he didn’t want anything to come between you and the oath you swore to him.” Hoffyd wrinkled his brow and knitted his hands together uncomfortably. “And one more thing he wanted me to tell you. He said that Vanye—I think that was the name—used to take his slaves out to a place in the desert, where he and his friends would hunt them for sport.” Hoffyd laid a hand on my shoulder. “He wasn’t threatening you was he? He wouldn’t do that?”

  “No. It wasn’t a threat.” It was a gift.

  Aleksander had such a head start on us that there was no possibility we could catch him. Musa was the finest horse in the Empire. Yet once we were on the road, I could not hold back. I rode like a madman, stopping only long enough to rest the horses. Aleksander’s surrender could change everything. And there was the dreadful truth that the Prince did not understand, that once the demon took him, he would not be able to fight alongside me. His soul would be my battleground, and all his strength and determination and obstinate perversity would be wedded to the demon’s magic to create my opponent. The demon would know everything I had told Aleksander, including my name.

  I cursed my foolish tongue that had picked that one moment of weakness to flap so loosely, telling Aleksander just enough that he believed some grand, heroic gesture was going to make the difference. I was very much afraid he was going to kill us both ... and the thousands of others who would die when the Khelid and the demons took what they desired.

  Parnifour. It was an unlikely place for the fate of the world to be decided. It lay on the fringes of empire, grown up in layers from the ebb and flow of tribes and conquerors over a thousand years. Next to a street of windowless Veshtar mud dwellings would be a street of tall, narrow wooden houses and shops with carved lintels and painted shutters as the Kuvai preferred. Upon stonework ruins left by builders so ancient we didn’t know their names, the Derzhi had constructed palaces with open-air courtyards and interconnecting archways designed to funnel the light airs of the desert to cool the stone. The people were just as intermixed. A statuesque, dark-skinned Thrid woman might have the round blue eyes and curly hair of a Manganar, or a fair child of Basran heritage might be wearing the colored beads and striped robes of the Suzaini. It was a medium-sized city, heavily fortified. Underneath it the land was riddled with springs and caves, making it a lush green spot between the boundless seas of golden grass to the south and the harsh black granite cliffs of the Khyb Rash—the Mountains of the Teeth—to the north.

  I crouched behind the remains of a stone bulwark half buried in the crown of a small hill within sight of Parnifour’s outer gates. We were waiting the few hours until sunset, not daring to walk in openly during the day. There could be watchers ... waiting for us. Kastavan could know everything by now. Damn, damn, damn you, Aleksander. Why couldn’t you trust me? I would have found a cure for you. I promised it.

  It was the twenty-second day.

  The afternoon sun baked the hilltop. Catrin and Hoffyd were sleeping in a meager strip of shade. I sat leaning against the stone wall, unable to do the same, though we had ridden all through the previous night feeling the nearness of the city pulling us on. Vultures circled lazily above some deadness in the distance; a kite dived screaming into the grass soaring upward soon after, carrying an unlucky mouse. A cool wind stirred the long grass, easing the unshielded blaze of the afternoon.

  I wished I could sleep. Instead I stared at my hands and my bare scarred wrists. I was free, my melydda lived, and all of it was ashes in my mouth. Of the four people I cared for most in the world, one lay dead and, if Catrin and I were successful, the other three could be destroyed by these very hands. Long years of pain and rage boiled from my soul in that moment, bursting from my lips in a cry that made the birds on the nearby hills rise in dark nervous clouds. My two companions stirred and asked sleepily if anything was wrong. “Only a nightmare,” I said.

  I was soon distracted by a dark shape moving toward me from behind the next hill. A horse. Dark, shapely, fast. A fine horse ... riderless. I rose and moved slowly down the hill. The horse stopped. I clicked my tongue in the way Aleksander did, and the nervous beast edged closer. “Where is your master?” I said softly, reaching for his dragging reins. Musa shied, but I kept talking and threw a calming enchantment into the air so that when I gathered in the quivering bay, he did not pull away. “Now show me where you’ve left him.” I could not believe Aleksander would abandon his prize voluntarily.

  I worked what small spells I knew that were effective with horses, got myself into the saddle, and let the horse take me where he would. Some two leagues west through the waving grass we came upon the mauled remains of a rudah—a huge, vicious wild pig native to the grasslands. So Aleksander had transformed again on his way in. And not too long past. The vultures and the flies were still cleaning the bones, scarcely anything left of a beast that weighed almost as much as a cow. A short distance away, I found wads of grass torn from the soil and stained with blood and bits of dried flesh. Aleksander had waked here and tried to clean himself ... and Musa would have been nowhere close to a shengar and a rudah. The Prince would have had to walk the rest of the way to Parnifour. Maybe ... just maybe ...

  I dug my heels into Musa’s side and held on as the horse shot eastward. Catrin and Hoffyd were already awake, draining the last of our water supply. “I’ve got to go now,” I said. “He’s not far ahead of us. I’ll meet you just inside the north gate at the change to fifth watch. There may be time to save him.”

  “But where are you going to look?” said Hoffyd.

  “I’m going to make inquiries with the junior dennissar of the Derzhi.”

  “Seyonne! You don’t know what—” Catrin called after me, but I ignored her and rode away.

  Of course he would go to Kiril first. Only the matter of Dmitri would delay his bullheaded plan. Catrin had found me a long red scarf in one of the villages where we stopped to buy food. I wrapped it around my head in the Manganar style to cover my short hair, and I raked it to the side to cover the scar on my cheek.

  “Transporting a horse for the Derzhi dennissar,” I said at the gate. “He’s bought it from Drafa, and I’m to deliver it before the summer racing season.” The guards admired the beast, recognizing that it was indeed too fine for a man who looked as if his face had been used to plow a field.

  “Run into trouble along the way, did you?” asked one of them, staring at my fading bruises. “Or is it t
hat the beast is high-strung?”

  “Bandits,” I said. “I wasn’t to ride this fellow. But they got my old nag and my gear. Tied me to a thornbush, but then they drank a few too many toasts to their cleverness. When they passed out, I got away. Figured I’d have the best chance to stay ahead of ’em if I took this one and rode hard.”

  “And now you’re going to deliver him to his owner?” The second guard was skeptical.

  “I’ve served Lord Kiril’s family long enough to know they value their horses above their wives,” I said. “It don’t do to cross that kind of master. I’ll take my payment and be glad of it.”

  The guards laughed and sent me on, telling me where to find the junior dennissar’s house. It was a modest, walled town house near the center of Parnifour. It had probably stretched the funds of a junior dennissar who, though an offshoot of the royal house, was descended from the female line and whose own father was dead.

  The gate was open, and I prevailed upon the old man in the gatehouse to take a message to Lord Kiril that a man had brought him a horse suitable for a wager-race from Zhagad to Drafa. The sharp-eyed old man pointed me around to the back courtyard to await an answer. The tree-shaded courtyard had a stable at one end, a workman’s shed beside it, and a small garden area near a well house. The enclosed space made me nervous. I was ready to bolt when a man burst out of the back door of the house. He was a short, square-faced young Derzhi with a blond braid. A dusting of freckles across his long straight nose made him look much younger than I could remember ever being.

  “Zander, you’ve—” He bit off his quiet greeting when he saw me, then whipped his light-colored eyes about the courtyard. When his gaze rested on me again, he examined me so closely I worried that he might see things I would as soon stay hidden. The young Derzhi bit his lip and started to speak, then Musa tossed his head, and the young man laid a hand to quiet him. With an almost undetectable shake of his head, the young man stepped backward and lifted one hand. Five well-armed soldiers ran out of the stables and the corners of the courtyard.

  I spread my arms and held still, resisting the urge to break the arm of the soldier who was holding a spear point to my gut. I thought better of resistance when I noticed that three of the five had pale hair and pale skin and hooded eyes. Khelid.

  The young man rubbed the horse’s neck and crooned to it for a moment as Aleksander did, and only then did he return his gaze to me. His momentary uncertainty was no longer in evidence. “Where did you come by this horse?” His voice was a chilly reminiscence of a winter morning in Capharna.

  “My lord, I was given this beast this morning by a man on the Avenkhar road. He said to bring it to you and give you the message, and you would pay me for it. Please, sir, I meant no harm.”

  “And what was the man like?”

  “He was a slave, sir.” Let the Khelid be unsettled. Chances were that Aleksander would tell them I was living. And if not, let them wonder.

  “A slave ... Did you see the master, the owner of the horse?”

  “No, sir. The slave said his master had no more need of the horse. I didn’t ask more. Didn’t want to know. Mayhap he murdered his master. I need the money, so I didn’t ask. I would have brought the slave, too, to sell him or take the reward for a runaway, but I had no weapons, no chains ... no way to manage him. Forgive me, sir, if the master was your friend. ...”

  “Not my friend. A heartless, vicious bastard I once called kin. He murdered my only father, and I’ll have his head for it. To hear he has no use for a horse soothes me, yet rumor is not enough. If he yet draws breath, I will have him. No one but me. So I am pleased and angry at once.”

  “I understand, sir.” But I was curious. Why then had he come out looking so eagerly for “Zander”? “May I leave, sir? I know nothing else.”

  Kiril gave Musa’s reins to a groom. “I would see his body before I’m easy, so I think you’ll stay here tonight. Tomorrow you’ll show me where you met this slave, and we’ll look for evidence of the master.” He jerked his head to one of the Khelid guards. “Tell Lords Korelyi and Kydon that I will be unable to attend their celebration tomorrow. I’m still in search of my bloodthirsty cousin. This could all be a ruse to put me off my guard. Aleksander is not stupid.” The pale-eyed soldier nodded and left, while Kiril spoke to the others. “Bind our visitor and lock him in the shed. I’ll see to him in the morning.”

  “Please, sir, I have urgent business in the city. My wife is ill. ...”

  Kiril caught the front of my shirt in his fist and spoke through clenched teeth. “She will survive a brief time without you. Once you’ve done what I want, you’ll be free to go. This is necessary. Do you understand me?”

  I believed I did. I hoped I did. Though as they trussed me like a goose and locked the hasp of the dirt-floored shed crammed with crates and ash bins, broken furniture, dented pots, and rolls of mouse-chewed canvas, I fully imagined what Catrin could say about stupid men who couldn’t be trusted to think straight about strategy. Like a naive child, I had been so sure that Aleksander would go to Kiril and convince him of his innocence.

  Fifteen minutes later, about the time I had worked out a few enchantments, including the one I would need to break the hasp on the shed, the door opened and a man slipped from the waning daylight into the dark shed. When the door was closed again, he uncovered a lantern and showed proper shock to see me quite unbound, leaning against a pile of rotted carpet.

  “Shall I tell you why your cousin always sends your letters sealed with red wax?” I said, since he seemed to be at a loss for how to begin.

  He yanked the red scarf from my head and stared at the scar, then gestured at my hands. I pulled up my sleeves and showed him the marks of slave rings. “So you are the one he told me of,” he said at last. “I thought it was but another aspect of his madness ... to think a slave would come looking for him.”

  “I am a free man, my lord. And I must find your cousin. He is in such peril I cannot begin to explain it.”

  “I wanted to kill him.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. What satisfaction comes from killing a man who hides in the shadows, unwilling to show his face in his own city? He could scarcely speak, and he had blood on his hands and face, though he said he was not injured. If he’d not reminded me of things only the two of us would know, I would not have believed it to be Aleksander. He tried to tell me that he didn’t kill our uncle, while in the same breath speaking of demon plots, and slaves who are sorcerers, and mustering troops to protect the city. Then these Khelid come looking for him, saying the Emperor has declared him mad. They claim they are here to protect me, as my cousin has sworn to kill me as he did my uncle. Everything I saw confirms their charges. What am I to believe?”

  “Believe everything your cousin told you, my lord. He did not kill the Lord Dmitri, only felt the guilt of his own folly. The Khelid did the deed. It is your warning, your misgivings and those of Lord Dmitri about these Khelid, that helped convince him of what was happening. The threat is real. The danger beyond your imagining. And Prince Aleksander will likely not survive it if he’s taken by the Khelid. The Khelid are joined with demons, and they plan to make him one of them. If they succeed and your cousin is made Emperor, there will come such a rule of terror over this land that there has been no equal of it in all the past ills of the world.”

  “I don’t believe any of this.”

  I tried to hold patience. We might need Kiril. “Please, my lord. Do you know where he’s gone? We must go to him now. It may already be too late.”

  “He said he had business with Lord Kastavan. I told him that Kastavan wasn’t in the city, but that he’d be here by tonight. They’re building a temple on the Watch Mount. Kydon and Korelyi and their priests are going to dedicate the foundation stone tonight at moonrise, and Kastavan is to attend.”

  “I must go, then,” I said, trying to rein in my excitement. The moon was rising early, just after sunset, but that meant there was still a
n hour. “And you must do as he asked you. I don’t know how much he told you, but the Khelid may try to take the city by force. If it happens, it will likely be six days from this. There will be no warning, so you must be ready for it.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Then, I would take anyone I cared for, run as deep into the mountains as I could, and never come out again.”

  “Bloody Athos.”

  “Now can you tell me how to find this temple?”

  Aleksander’s cousin was an unassuming young man, his manner as unlike the Prince as was possible, considering they had been raised in the same house by many of the same people. He was not comfortable taking advice from a “barbarian slave,” and I watched him wrestle with the demands of breeding and duty, faithfulness and doubt. But he either had to accept that Aleksander was mad or do as his prince had bid him. Because he loved Aleksander, he grasped at the explanation that held him innocent, and from his first moment of acceptance, he never questioned my authority.

  “I’ll take you there,” Kiril said firmly. “As you’ve seen, there are a great many eyes watching my house. In case anyone asks, I’m taking you to visit your sick wife, but I have no intention of letting you go until tomorrow.”

  I nodded, allowed him to bind my hands loosely with rope, then he steered me firmly out of the shed, across the courtyard, and into the street. We’d gone no more than fifty paces down the lane when I leaned my head close. “There’s a man following us who’s got teeth like a badger. Is he one of yours?”