by Carol Berg
“No.”
The light was failing. A few of the public houses already had torches lit outside them, and laughter and music of skirling pipes and scraping strings came from inside. Fifty plans raced through my mind, but when I saw a hunchbacked woman stumble out of an alley just ahead of us, I nodded toward the dark lane and said, “Shall we take him aside and see what he wants?”
“Are you planning to work some sorcery?”
“No need.”
But no sooner did we dodge into the alley and turn to grab the badger-faced man than he was joined by the hunchbacked woman, who confronted us, poised to throw a very long knife. “Give him over,” she said to Kiril, “or this knife will find a home right in your throat. I’m quite accurate.” Somehow the voice didn’t fit with the slack, lumpish face.
Kiril pushed me behind him. “I am the Emperor’s dennissar. Who are you and what do you want with my prisoner?”
The badger-faced man used a short sword to motion Kiril to his knees and made as if to cut his throat. In the time it takes for a hummingbird to flit beyond reach, I slipped my hands from the rope, shoved the young Derzhi to the ground, and twisted the sword from our assailant’s grasp. Then I lunged, kicked at the woman’s hand, and raised my hand, on course to break the man’s neck and the woman’s arm, when they yelled together, “Seyonne! Wait!” I aborted the move at the last instant, stumbling into the wall and shaking my head as I watched the two faces slide into more familiar lines. Catrin and Hoffyd.
Kiril gaped, and I sagged against the wall. “You should give me a little more warning,” I said.
“We saw him bring you out with your hands bound,” said Catrin. “We thought ...”
Well, it was clear what they thought. I explained quickly, and introduced them to Kiril, who merely looked from one of us to the other repeatedly, squinting and widening his eyes. Catrin’s illusion had been amazingly good. A transformation of appearance was extraordinarily difficult to sustain for more than five minutes. And for two of them ... It was no wonder she looked tired when we took off again.
The temple site was on a rocky height in the center of the city. Watchtowers, built by the same ancient stoneworkers who had crafted the foundation of the city, had stood on the heights for as long as anyone could remember. These builders had left their work scattered, not just in Parnifour, but throughout all the lands that had become the Empire. There were those among my people who claimed we were somehow related to these ancients, for their ruins were strong with melydda. Our ancestors had certainly modeled our own temples on their works.
The Khelid had taken possession of the land and torn down the old towers, so Kiril said, and it was there they planned to build the temple, to introduce their gods to the people of the Derzhi Empire. A single narrow track zigzagged to the top of the rocks.
It was impossible to go up by way of the road. Khelid guards were posted, preventing anyone from passing without being identified. As Kiril had written Aleksander, there were hundreds of Khelid in Parnifour. I was almost sick with the aura of demon. “We’ve got to find another way up,” I said as we mingled with the townspeople who stood on the fringes of the Khelid crowd watching the goings-on.
“Come this way,” said Kiril, leading us through crowded lanes around to a deserted saddle-maker’s shop on the far side of the bluffs. “There’s another path up, but it’s wickedly steep. I’ve been trying to keep an eye on the Khelid for a while, and Jynnar, the man who owns this shop, showed me this way.”
“I’ll wait down here,” said Hoffyd when we reached the deserted shop. “I don’t do well with heights in the dark since I lost the eye.”
“I’ll wait here, too,” said the Derzhi. “It would be well to guard your rear. There’s no other way down save through the middle of the Khelid, and if you were to bring Aleksander ...”
“I’ve got to go,” I said, chafing at the delay. The sun was sagging toward the horizon, and the hints of demon music that hung in the still, warm air had my nerves quivering.
“I’ll go with Seyonne,” said Catrin. “Someone has to keep him from going off and doing something stupid.”
“Watch yourself,” said Kiril. “The path is tricky.”
So Catrin and I started up the crumbling goat track. Pebbles and rocks rolled out from under our boots and crashed down the hillside. In some places the track was only wide enough for one foot, and in others it was missing altogether and we had to stretch over a sheer drop to reach another foothold. We grasped at twigs and stunted trees that grew out of the rocks, and more than once I ended up flattened against the rock with a mouthful of dirt, clinging for my life with fingertips and boots. It was too slow. I wanted to scream at the delay. What was Aleksander doing?
It took us over an hour to get up the path. The moon was up by the time we crawled over the edge onto a knob of rock overlooking the flat top of the bluff. We lay flat and scooted to the edge to peer down. There must have been five hundred Khelid on the rocky promontory, standing in a ring about a flat gray stone set into the ground. I could scarcely breathe from the weight of demon enchantment in the still air. Every heartbeat was a struggle; every moment passed slowly and with effort, as if you were running in chest-high water. Catrin pressed her hands to her ears, but I knew how futile was the attempt to block out the grinding noise. The horror pulsed in the veins until it seemed as if the only way to be rid of it was to cut the vein and let it bleed away.
We were too late. Aleksander stood in the center of the ring, the livid crescent moon hanging low in the east behind him. A man knelt before him, laughing uproariously—a strange gurgling laugh mixed with strident breathing. But it was not to do the Prince honor that the man knelt. Rather it was only a transient pose before he toppled onto the gray stone, his face purple and distorted, and a knife hilt protruding from his chest. Kastavan. Aleksander had guessed the surest way to get the result he wanted.
If there had been a word I could say that might change what was to come, I would have said it. If it would have made any difference, I would have leaped from my rock for Aleksander as I had leaped from the precipice for Galadon, wings or no. But the Khelid host was dead, and therefore his demon was savoring his last unholy terrors, licking his lips and belching in a surfeit of hatred and lust, as it began the search for a new home. It would not have to look far. For there stood before him a vessel: waiting, prepared, nurtured by the demon enchantment.
Hear me, Aleksander, I said, willing my thoughts to penetrate the grotesque din. Hold onto yourself. You are not alone. You will not be abandoned when you fall into the abyss. I’ll come for you. Never doubt it. Never.
I would have sworn the Prince looked up at me and smiled in that moment, just before he went rigid and fell to his knees, his fists pressed to his temples. Then there came from him such a cry as would shrivel the stoutest heart. It was the essence of pain and uttermost desolation, distilled from the fullness of the world’s nightmares. Every childhood fright, every midnight disturbance, every mother’s pain as she watches her child in torment, every father’s despair as he buries his last son, a young wife barren, a young husband impotent, a scholar blind, a musician deaf, a gardener condemned to everlasting desert ... such was the agony that welled from Aleksander’s bright center as he was drowned in darkness.
Hold, my prince. I will come for you.
This time when he gazed to the top of the rocks where I lay, two beams of frigid blue gleamed from the eyes that should be bright amber. What voice is this? Come ... and we will see who has him in the end.
My skin grew clammy and my throat constricted. My heart tried to claw its way from my body to escape the hissing voice that crept into my thoughts, hungering to know who I was. Every mark of hatred on my body screamed with fire. And as the demon music soared in hellish symphony, Aleksander yanked his knife from the dead Khelid and began to cut out his victim’s heart.
“Come away.” Catrin’s voice stung like ice on burned flesh. “You can do him no good here. It is t
he battle will set him free or not, and it is time to prepare.”
Chapter 33
When we rejoined Kiril and Hoffyd at the saddle maker’s shop, three men lay on the dirt floor, immobilized by Kiril’s sword and Hoffyd’s magic. They were townsmen, known informants who were in the habit of watching Kiril’s house. They had seen the incident in the alley and were following us, hoping to profit from such a strange occurrence. Kiril shipped them out of Parnifour that night in a wagon he designated as tax revenues bound for Zhagad. By the time they woke up, the three spies would be abandoned in the heart of the Azhaki grasslands fifty leagues from anywhere.
It would be too dangerous for us to stay with Kiril, so we took shelter with one of his friends in a stable just outside the city walls to the north. It was a large, well-kept place, centered in rocky pastureland that rose gently toward the mountains. But all the stable lads had been taken away to work on the Khelid temple or the old Derzhi fortress, where Kydon the legate had taken residence, so most of the horses had been sent back to their owners. The stable owner came out for a few hours each day to care for the remaining horses. He would bring us food and supplies and ask no questions.
I watched as the spies were taken away, listened as the arrangements were made, walked out of the gates, down the rutted road, and up the wooden stairs to the dormitory above the deserted stables, carrying whatever was put in my hand. I made my bed where I was told and lay on it unsleeping. But all I could hear in those hours was Aleksander’s cry, and all I could see was his face in the instant the demon took him, the moment he realized what he had done and what was to come. However terrible my dreams were going to be when I slept again, they would be no match for his.
“I’m sorry we were late,” said Catrin, handing me a cup of hot wine and sitting on the straw pallet beside me, picking at the dirty canvas ticking.
“I was supposed to protect him. He thought this was what I wanted.”
“Grandfather was right, wasn’t he? This is not just about your oath anymore, not about saving the world from demon chaos. This is about Aleksander.”
“I would give my life for him—a stubborn, arrogant, murderous Derzhi. I think I’ve lost my mind.”
“You sound just as he did, cursing you for an insolent barbarian ... just before he went dashing off to Avenkhar to find you. It took me a while to understand how you could care so much for one so absolutely opposite yourself in background, feelings, and beliefs. I thought him handsome and charming, but little more. Only in those last days did I begin to see it.”
“There’s so little time.”
“So how long will it take you to put this behind you and go on?”
I looked up at her small face, so unlikely a façade for an iron will. “If I could step through the portal right now, I would do it,” I said.
She nodded. “And you would lose. You must put him away before you go. Clear your mind. You know how dangerous it can be if you think too much of the victim or care too much.” She yanked a dangling thread from the worn cloth of the bedcover. “You’ve never fought in the soul of someone you know.”
“No.”
“Grandfather did. It was not the only battle he lost, but it was his last. He never forgave himself, because he knew he should have let someone else fight it.”
I raised up on my elbow to listen. I’d never known what made Galadon stop fighting. It was not something he would discuss with his students. “Who was it?”
“It was my mother.”
“Ah, Catrin ...”
“She was an Aife, a brilliant one. My father was her Warden. His talent was weak, and he struggled with his tasks, but she would not withdraw from the pairing. Eventually, inevitably, he lost a battle ... and the demon took him captive. It was a villainous soul where he battled, and she would not leave him there.”
“So she tried to get him out.” It was hard enough for an Aife to leave a dead Warden behind. But it was infinitely more difficult to have to abandon a living Warden when he had been taken captive. If she kept the portal open too long in hopes her partner would escape, trying to shift the weaving to give him a chance to get free, she left herself vulnerable, for the demon would make the captive speak her name. And if she fell, the demon could find its way back into the Comforter and the Searcher, and eventually into Ezzaria, endangering everyone. Yet to close the portal upon one you loved, to leave him there trapped with the demon in the abyss ... Aifes were the strongest of all who fought the demon war.
Catrin folded her small hands and leaned her chin on them. “My mother finally closed the portal before the demon could come through, but she herself was taken. When Grandfather went in, he was not able to save her. It came near killing him, Seyonne, because he could not keep his focus, could not stop thinking about her. He tried to see his beloved daughter in the landscape his Aife created for him, and so he did not look for the demon. He stayed his hand when he should have struck, because he could not separate the monster he faced from her. You must not make the same mistakes.”
“So tell me what to do.”
She did. For the next five days we worked at every mental discipline. Everything I had learned while a slave—of focus and barriers, of single-minded purpose—I put to use. She would create visions—horrific, terrible, beautiful, distracting—and force me to solve problems as I lived in them. She painted such accurate portraits of Aleksander in the midst of her weavings that I was sure he was standing before me, laughing, arguing, swearing at me. And after a while it wasn’t only Aleksander in the visions, it was Rhys ... and then it was Ysanne ... plucked out of my living memory and set before me as friend and lover, as monster, as demon-infested opponent. I killed all of them fifty times over, saved all of them fifty more. We worked from dawn until Catrin could not conjure another scenario, and I could not lift my hand.
Only one thing nagged at me in all our preparation. Catrin and I never worked a test together. When a Warden and an Aife trained together, a third person would summon the vision, and the Aife would create a portal into it, weaving her own magic so that she and the Warden could become accustomed to each other. Hoffyd was strong enough to create the vision, if Catrin would tell him the problem she wanted.
“We don’t need to practice like that,” she said as I lay sprawled on the floor, panting from the exertions of a just finished session on our last afternoon. “Making and using a second portal is not the same as a true pairing. The Queen will be the actual Aife, as you know. All I do is let you in.”
“But I may need your guidance. There are a thousand things, just like—”
“I cannot speak to you in the way of an Aife. I cannot hear you or know what’s happening. That’s the way it is. I’m sorry. There’s no need for us to practice together.” She averted her eyes as she spoke, and I wondered if she was embarrassed to think of the words she had spoken beyond the portal. Or perhaps she really didn’t understand that I had heard her. It was strange that she wouldn’t try to practice with me when she was adamant about my own training.
That night when I called a halt, fearing I would have nothing left for the real battle if I were to attempt one more practice, I asked Catrin if she would walk with me outdoors for a while.
“I should get some sleep,” she said, glancing over at Hoffyd, who had dropped off over his journal as we worked late.
“As you wish. I just wanted to get a breath of fresh air.” And to look at the stars and the moon and the peacefully sleeping world that I might never see again after the next day. And to feel the warmth of someone walking alongside. The burden weighed heavy on me that night.
She hesitated, then picked up her cloak. “You’re right. We’ve been bottled up inside too long.”
The night was pleasantly cool on my face. We strolled across the pasture toward a stretch of spring-fed trees in a gully beyond the fence. The yellow moon hung low in the west. Four horses nudged our arms and nosed our pockets looking for treats. Catrin laughed and shooed them away.
There was nothing to say. Our preparations were made. I was as ready as I could be in six short weeks. She could give me no more reminders, no more tests, no more words that would move me one step beyond the level I had reached. Unfortunately, she could not remedy the lingering doubt that we both knew would be my greatest danger.
At some point her hand found its way into mine, a sweet human comfort that had nothing to do with desire or love or anything but companionship. It was enough. We wandered through the wooded gully, the broad ash leaves making dappled moonlight on the path, a nearby spring whispering its way along beside us. When we came to the edge of the trees, we stood for a moment gazing up at the looming blackness of the Khelid fortress high above us on the rocks. Then we turned back, and in far too short a time we were back at the stables.
“Thank you,” I said as we paused at the door before stepping back into the roles we had chosen. “For everything. You’ve given me back my life.”
“It was never lost. Only mislaid.”
“You are your grandfather’s worthy heir. Your students will call you a nefarious old buzzard and twist their brains into knots and their bodies into mush to earn a single word of praise from you.”
She laughed and stretched up on her toes to kiss me on the cheek. “And you, my dearest Warden, my first and most prized pupil, will never, ever tell them that I once made you almond cakes.”
We stepped inside the stable and slept soundly until dawn.
Catrin had not yet told me how she was going to know where and how to open a door on Ysanne’s enchantment. As far as I knew there was no temple in Parnifour, no place where Ezzarian enchantments were drawn together like the center of a great spiderweb. It was why we had to come ourselves when Ysanne agreed to meet face-to-face with her partner in treachery. But it was not for me to know how an Aife planned her business. Catrin had given me all that she could.
Kiril came that morning. Hoffyd had cleaned out one of the large rooms above the stable, swept and swabbed and wiped until the place was bare wood with a small, clean window open to the sky. It was there we had practiced for five days, and it was there that I was working through the exercises I needed to stay loose and to put myself in the proper state of mind. Catrin tried to keep the Derzhi away, but I heard the disturbance on the stair and peered down.
