by Carol Berg
Across the battlements, up onto the merlons, teetering on the edge of the vast drop to the rocks and the sea with my left wing weak and dragging, my lungs on fire, half of my body slathered in blood that I feared was mostly my own. The demon laughed and dropped back to the battlement. I leaped from my merlon across to another, closer, ready to sweep down on him ... when he vanished.
In mindless, exhausted rage I switched the sword to the ax again and attacked the door. It was almost off its hinges. “Come out. Come out and fight. No more play. Finish it.”
“Breach these walls, and you will have the battle you desire.” The voice echoed in my head.
I swung again, but the silent wraith stepped forward and insisted on preventing me. Why were there two of them? How was it possible? Maybe this one wasn’t there at all. The blood flowed unchecked from my side and my leg. I was getting dizzy, seeing two or three of everything. I couldn’t trust my seeing. Laughter and voices came from every side. “... help me ... slave ... get out and warn them ... pitiful, groveling vermin ...” I whipped my head from one side to another, trying to use my single working ear to judge where the demon might appear next.
Galadon’s testing, Catrin’s warnings drummed with my exhausted heartbeats. “Your senses are your last defense. Know when they are compromised. If you’ve lost, get out. Dying just to prove you cannot win profits nothing. Honor, pride, and foolhardy death are luxuries a Warden cannot afford.” My knees were like straw. My sword arm quivered with the strain, scarcely able to lift the blade tip from the ground. I could not get a full breath without risk of passing out from the fire in my side.
It wasn’t going to work. Even if I got the door open and found the demon, I had nothing left with which to fight. I stepped back, bent double with the pain in my side, heaving for breath and hoping I could hold myself together long enough to limp back to the portal. Another day. If I could survive ... if Aleksander could hold ... I could try again.
The silent apparition held back, protecting the door, his face pale and rigid, very like the face on a stone table so far away. Unyielding.
“I will free him,” I said, defeat bitter on my tongue.
The specter nodded and reached for my sword, placing the tip in the center of its breast. I stared, uncomprehending.
Breach these walls ... the service I require of you ... aid me in this conquest. . . . Like a trumpet fanfare the echoes of the demon’s taunting blared through my muddled head. I gaped at my blood-smeared sword and at the image of the Prince that stood before me. Aleksander. Not a mockery, not some monstrous concoction of demon shape-shifting, but the true image that bore his need and his desperation, that still fought to give me his message, though the demon had tormented him into silence.
And this place? Merciful Valdis, what was I doing? He had trusted me to understand. He had sent Kiril the note so that I would know he would be with me. Ready. But I’d failed to heed him. Instead, I’d led the demon right to his hiding place and done half the work to destroy it.
“Oh, my lord, I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”
And now it was too late. Aleksander was calling on me to redeem my promise to kill him rather than leave him to become a monster, and I could not even do that. My sword slipped from my hand that could no longer grip, and clattered onto the stone. I tried to shape the wind, but a wave of dizziness overwhelmed me, and I sank to my knees. The chill of death crept into my body and my soul, while demon music began to twine itself about my limbs, and insinuate itself into my being, a sick, cold emptiness, a promise of unending misery and everlasting despair. As my life bled away, I called up spells to hold back the demon music. I croaked out words of protection and pressed my arm to my side to hold in the blood.
But I couldn’t do it. I was not enough.
The wraith stood watching ... waiting ... his hand outstretched as if I still had something left to give him.
You are not alone. The whisper came from inside me and around me, a faint accompaniment to the clamor of the demon.
I wanted to laugh, but it came out a grotesque moan. Of course I was alone. I knew no other way. If I were the Warrior of Two Souls, perhaps I’d have another soul to give him. I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
But he did not withdraw his hand. Each one of us had pulled the other from the depths of pain and despair ... in Capharna, in Avenkhar, in the mud of his kitchen yard, in the tower of the Summer Palace. Perhaps it had come around again. Perhaps it was that he had something left to give me. Aleksander had come to this place because I told him that if we combined my power and his strength, no one could stand against us. But I had not listened to myself. I had tried to do as I always had done ... fight the battle alone. What if the Warrior of Two Souls was exactly that? Two ... together.
With my last shred of will, I reached out.
A strong and gentle hand reached under my elbow, lifted me up, and guided me through the door into the fortress.
Time has little meaning within the human soul. We are as we have been since birth and as we will be until death and beyond, the changing landscape only the face of an unchanging spirit. I was not long in that luminous place that was Aleksander’s refuge, the bit of himself he had managed to keep whole. The wraith disappeared as soon as I was inside. No words were exchanged, and I saw no further manifestation of Aleksander’s body. It was only a few moments’ rest and peace alone in the light. There was a fountain of cool, sweet water, and I gulped it down with the wry observation that I might see the stuff spouting out of all the holes in me. An observer might think I was part of the fountain. I bathed my face and washed the blood from my side and my leg. I believed it was Aleksander that had me laughing as I bound up my wounds with the shreds of my clothes. “Can’t you keep yourself covered?” I imagined him saying. “I give you clothes and what do you do but lose them again? I thought Ezzarians were a modest people.”
The storm of the demon’s wrath was breaking on the walls as my weakness was washed away. “He will not breach them,” I said as I stood up again, refreshed in body and spirit, trusting that the Prince would hear me. “Together we will have him out of here.” And indeed when I stepped out upon the battlements and picked up my sword, Aleksander was with me, for my body and my wings shone with his silvery luminescence, casting light upon the dark ruins of his soul.
The Demon Lord came after me then, shifting forms as rapidly as the desert sand moves with the wind. His power was incredible, but no match for the combined power of Aleksander and me. A man with four eyes and six arms. We tangled him in a lightning bolt. A fire-tongued dragon. We confused it with torrents of rain and drove a spear into its throat. A raging shengar. I, we, laughed at that and took its head in one stroke. A beast of living stone. Images of Aleksander, of Ysanne, of Rhys, of Dmitri, of my father. But all were flawed. Now there was light to see with, the imperfections were clear. The demon did not know them any more than it knew me, any more than it knew the Warrior we had become. Aleksander had not revealed my name.
In the end it was the green heart of a three-headed serpent that I stabbed with the silver knife, while choking its meaty neck with a leg hold and blocking its six fangs with my damaged wing. I felt the heart stop beating under my fist, yet the body did not dissolve into a new and more ferocious monster as had happened every time thus far. My left hand clamped about the cool oval in the pouch that hung from my sword belt. With every breath of melydda I had left, I focused my sight and discerned the shape of the demon that was crawling from the serpent’s body. “Delyrae engaor. Hyssad!” Look upon your nothingness and begone. The horrific wail as the demon looked upon itself in the Luthen mirror came near ruining my undamaged ear. The creeping shape grew still, paralyzed by seeing its own image. “Now is the time I present your choice,” I said, my voice hoarse after the long hours of battle. “You have made a bargain with the Aife for all vessels known as the Khelid, based on this single combat. Your bargain is now forfeit. Do you yield and command your cohorts to yield?”
&nb
sp; The grating horror that was demon speech hissed in my head. “You will pay for this, slave. Do not think our battle is over. There is another yet to come.” But its words were empty. With much writhing and protest, the command was given.
When I was sure it was done, I continued. “For you, Gai Kyallet, there is no further choice. You are no longer an elemental spirit, a storm that returns its water to the sea when spent. You have taken on the mortal aspect of your victims, and you have violated the laws of humankind. Therefore in the name of the Queen of Ezzaria and the Emperor of the Derzhi, I declare your existence ended.” And with my knife of silver, I killed it.
“It is done, my prince,” I whispered, kneeling on the serpent’s carcass. And as the dawn broke over the distant horizon, I summoned the wind to carry me back to the portal and Ysanne.
Chapter 35
I knew something wasn’t right when I heard the bees forming words out of their incessant buzzing. I knew it was bees, because somewhere beyond my eyelids was a flickering pattern of light and shadow, and the delightful warmth on my face could be nothing but the morning sun. A perfectly reasonable place for bees. A stirring of air tickled my nose, its damp green scent speaking of the last coolness of morning before a hot day. I knew I ought to move before I got stung, but the warmth held me down as if the sunbeams carried the weight of lead. I decided to risk the bees just for the pleasure of staying where I was. And it was certainly intriguing to hear their speech.
“... to leave ... stubborn ...”
“... weeks, if ever ... just don’t know ...”
I ought to listen more closely. My friend Hoffyd would want to know of bees that could speak. But someone must have stuffed my left ear with silk, for it didn’t seem to work at all, and in order to free up the other one to listen more carefully, I would have to roll over. I was reluctant to try that, for my body sent a warning from one spot just below my left rib cage that I wasn’t going to like moving. So I mumbled, “Speak up,” hoping the bees might hear.
Instantly the words stopped, and I felt sorry for startling the creatures and missing the chance to find out what they said when they thought no one was listening.
“Seyonne?” A woman’s voice, far away and very worried. That was worth opening an eye for.
The sunlight was exceedingly bright, and the patterns of shadow were caused, not by bees, but by the fluttering leaves of an ash tree outside a tall window beside me. Somewhere in between me and the open window was a lovely face, smooth, red-gold skin. The woman had long black hair, and I could not bring her name to my tongue, but seeing her caused such a monstrous anxiety to rise up in me, that I thought my heart might wrench itself from my chest.
The dark-haired woman laid a finger on my lips. “She is well. She’s gone back to Dael Ezzar for her safety and ours.”
My fear soothed, I closed my eyes again and envisioned violet eyes and gold-brown hair that smelled of rainwashed grass, and I immersed myself in the image that had never left me in all the years I refused to speak her name. Ysanne. And, of course, on the heels of her name flowed the tide of waking memory ... of the battle ... and the demon....
“I got back,” I said, once the flood had subsided a bit and I opened my eyes to the present.
“You did. And a fine mess you were.” And of course Catrin heard the real question, for she moved aside and let me see the room beyond her. A large, airy, pleasant room. Tall ceilings. A whole wall of windows like the one beside the luxurious bed on which I lay. From a deep chair nearby protruded a pair of knee-high leather boots. Their owner, whose head was propped on a long arm and whose snores I had mistaken for bees, sported a long red braid. When I glimpsed a sword dangling beside the long legs, I smiled.
“He has been with you every moment possible,” said Catrin, lifting a cup of water to my lips. “If any man could will another back from the dead, I would believe him capable.”
“Never doubt it,” I croaked. “He has done exactly that.”
“Is it impossible for an Ezzarian to let a man sleep?” The body in the chair shifted. “Some of us have had other things to do besides wallow in bed for a week and constantly threaten to die and thereby frighten two of the finest-looking women I’ve encountered since I knew what to do with my parts besides piss.”
“A week ...” I looked up at Catrin, and she nodded, her brows raised in sympathetic humor.
“You lost a great deal of blood,” she said. “Do you have any idea of how long you were inside?”
“Long. A full day I’d guess.” Though I spoke with Catrin, my eyes did not stray from the lean, smiling face that appeared over her shoulder.
“Three.”
Three days beyond a portal. It was unthinkable. No wonder I couldn’t move. And Ysanne ... All the worries that had been eased cropped up again. “The Queen ...”
“The Queen was very tired, but she suffered no ill effects. Now that I can trust you for a moment not to die”—Catrin bent over and kissed me on the forehead, then nodded to Aleksander—“I have things to do.”
Three days. I worked at sitting up, a ridiculously difficult maneuver, as I was wrapped in a cocoon of bandages about my middle, my shoulder, and most of one leg. Every movement set off a barrage of fireworks inside my left ear and a pain in my side that felt as though one of the Demon Lord’s monstrous manifestations had left its claw there.
Aleksander put his arm around my shoulders, and without my having to ask it, helped me out of bed, as if he knew I couldn’t think straight wallowing in pillows. Once he’d got me into a chair, he went to stand by the hearth, propping one elbow on the mantelpiece. When his smile faded, the residue of pain and horror were etched clearly in his face.
Three days. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I made it last so long.”
He shook his head. “You owe me no apology. Quite the contrary.” He stretched out his hands toward me, staring at them in wonder. “These are my own again. Such a gift ...” He transferred his gaze to me. “I must believe that you understand the grace you have given me.”
I tried to answer him, but he waved me off and continued. “I am called a priest of Athos, yet before seven days ago I could not tell anyone of a single moment of my life that was changed by the hand of a god. But on that day I saw a god’s hand ... you, with your wings spread, sword in hand, lighting the darkness inside me like the moon and the sun together. Athos, Druya, your Verdonne or Valdis—whatever the name, male or female—one of them sent you to save me. Never had I understood the truth of good and evil, of light and darkness, of the shapes they take in the world, of the depths of horror ... or the glory that exists in beings that walk and breathe as I do. Daughters of night, Seyonne, why didn’t I know? Why don’t any of us know?”
It was very like the question Ezzarian children asked when they at last understood how different their life was to be from that of anyone else in the world. I gave the Prince the answer that had been given me. “Because someone must do the living—the eating and drinking, planting and birthing, the dancing and arguing and forgiving, all those things that are the proper business of life. They make the world strong enough, safe enough, joyous enough to be the bulwark against darkness. There are enough terrors in the world for demons to feed on without adding more. And if you remember ... the light was yours.”
A grin poked its way through his somber mood. “We did well, did we not?”
I raised the cup of water Catrin had left me. “Exceedingly well.”
He poured wine and matched my toast, but as our eyes met over our cups, the smiles fell away. We had been one soul for those terrible hours, an intimacy so profound that the finest words wrought by poet or scholar to describe the event would seem but trivial prattling beside it. I had heard the screams of his uttermost pain and madness, and drunk from the fountain of his joy. He had witnessed the terrors of my loneliness and defeat, and shared with me the ecstasy of my transformation. Our eyes fell away quickly. We knew. There was nothing more to be said.
The Prince settled himself to the thick woven carpet and leaned against a chair, heaving a sigh and trying to begin a more mundane review of events. “Someday you will explain to me exactly what went on in these past days. I remember going to the temple site, walking up the track and seeing Korelyi and Kastavan waiting for me. They asked if I was ready to be healed of my affliction. I told them I was ... and from that time I saw things, thought things, felt things ... but I was never sure what was actually happening and what was only ... imagination or dreams or visions. They played such havoc with my head, I couldn’t tell what was real.” There was a slight tremor of remembered horror at the edge of his words.
“Someday,” I said. “If you wish. Let a little time pass, and it will likely sort itself out on its own. For now you must tell me how you fare and what’s happened since. Where are the Khelid? And Rhys ... I never knew what became of him.”
Aleksander laughed, dismissing his own hurts with his most reliable weapon. “I assumed you would have heard everything we said while you slept.”
“I can do a number of things that could surprise you, but I can’t read minds or see through walls or eyelids, whether I’m sensible or insensible. And my hearing is about as acute as that of a tree stump at present.”
“Your friend Hoffyd—quite a ferocious fellow, I’ve discovered—took care of Rhys. Put something in his water pitcher, he said, that knocked the villain over before they began. The Queen arranged everything and brought you to me instead of him ... as Mistress Catrin says they planned all along. Were you as surprised as I was?”
