The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

by Carolyn Kephart

  "Death! Misery, and shame, and death to this city of dust!"

  Ryel instantly turned toward the voice, and saw that a man stood alone in the midst of the square—the first madman dressed in the first rags the wysard had yet seen in Almancar.

  "Death is upon this city!" the madman shouted. "Death armed with steel, death with fangs of fire! Even now it clutches at the soul of the Sovrena Diara, who lies raving in her own dirt up in Agenor's palace of gold! Diara, child of sin against the law of kind!"

  He spoke the common tongue, with a strange accent but complete fluency. Hardly had the lunatic begun to harangue than people emerged from the taverns and shops and leaned out of windows to listen, and soon an ever-increasing throng of muleteers and jewel-miners and tavern-wenches had gathered about him. Ryel had fully expected them to mock and gibe, but they did neither. Rather they hearkened earnestly, and even murmured approval from time to time. marveling that anyone would seriously attend the ravings of one so obviously deranged, the wysard bent from the saddle to question one of the crowd.

  "Who is he?"

  She answered with curt impatience. "He is the teller of truth, the prophet of the Master who will break this city's heartless pride. Be silent, and heed his wisdom!"

  Taken aback by her vehemence, Ryel stared into the girl's face—a child's face daubed with paint, gaudy and weary, with eyes that shone in desperate adoration and worship as they gazed on the ragged prophet; a face yearning for revenge on the destroyers of its innocence. Shuddering, the wysard turned and considered the mad loud orator more closely.

  The seduction of the man's address Ryel had instantly remarked, even before the first sight of him. His voice had all of Edris' timbre and depth—the resemblance had made Ryel's blood leap. The virile peremptoriness of its accent set it far apart from the soft and deliberate Almancarian harmony. One's immediate, all but involuntary reaction after hearing that voice was to look round for the speaker, even as Ryel had done.

  Once attracted, the eye widened, blinked, and lingered. In Almancar the Bright, where even the poorest went wholly and cleanly clad, this man stood out starkly. He was barefoot, and wore a single trailing garment of dirty black wool full of rents that bared his arms to the shoulders. But there was something deeply impressive in his destitution. When his features chanced to relax, one might readily discern that under its grime his face was of a forceful harsh handsomeness. Like his face, his head was shaven, baring to advantage the fine bones of the skull and the well-shaped ears lying close to it, and giving great expressiveness to the heavy dark brows. Grim and squalid he undoubtedly was, but his lean form was tall and well-made, and he held himself arrogantly erect. At one point as the prophet gestured, his rags parted over his back and revealed powerful shoulders seamed with red stripes, the mark of whips that he bore as proudly as a lord might flaunt jeweled orders.

  Theatrical, Ryel thought, unwillingly impressed. Very effective in its way. This is no mere street preacher, not at all. He's hardly older than me—little more than thirty—and plainly he's of birth far beyond that of the people he addresses, and of great and subtle intellect. But anyone not blind may see that this man is arrogant and violent, as remote from humility as he is from humanity. And strong, very strong.

  Scorning to acknowledge his empire over his listeners, the street evangelist lifted the deep male music of his voice yet louder.

  "She will meet her end in shrieking torment, and drag countless lives and souls down with her! For her sake hundreds have come to attempt her cure, and all have failed, and many have died for their failure, at the command of your senile impotent Sovran! Thousands have babbled worthless prayers to false gods, imploring mercy from senseless blocks of stone! But the Master will avenge this blasphemy against His greatness, and the line of the Dranthene will die with the Sovrena and her lust-cankered inbred brother! Almancar the Whore with its pride, this cesspit of luxury with its jeweled strumpets and drug-stunned minions and debased slaves, will burn to stinking ash, and the ash scatter to nothingness!"

  Ryel had had enough. "You lie."

  The wysard had spoken very quietly, but everyone turned to stare at him. The prophet swiftly whirled about, and his fierce eyes—eyes without white or iris, dead black eyes—sought Ryel's. Jinn shied in sudden terror, and even Ryel could not help a thrill of shocked recognition.

  You're no madman, he thought amazed. You're of the Art-brotherhood, an Overreacher like myself. You're—

  "Michael!" one of the crowd shouted. "Curse the fool, Michael!"

  Ryel's blood leapt as the wysard demagogue's empty black eyes burned into his. You, he thought. You, my brilliant unruly rival, Lord Michael of Elecambron. But why are you here, far from your ice-encircled City?

  The ragged prophet knew Ryel in the same instant, and took a step backward at the sight of the Markulit wysard's eyes and the black emptiness only he among all that crowd could discern. But then he laughed, baring keen teeth jarringly white against his face's dirt. Laughed as if he'd been waiting long for this moment, and meant to use it cruelly.

  "Other hands than mine, hands invisible perhaps, will avenge me for your insolence, Steppes gypsy," Michael sneered. "As for myself, clairvoyance enough I have to know what brings you to this place, and what success you will enjoy. Go, and try to save Agenor's daughter, since you have come for that. And watch her wither and burn, slave to the Master that strikes hard and slumbers not, before your Overreaching eyes!"

  Ryel held his ground unmoved. "Strong must this master be, if you deign to serve him."

  Michael grinned with fierce teeth. "You will learn His strength, and serve as well. All will serve the Master, one day. But your road lies not here in the Fourth Ward, home to worse than slaves. There is your way, through the streets that sell bright vanities to spendthrift fools, toys beyond the reach of these poor children, orphans of Agenor's indifference. Get you gone by that road, and tell the Sovran and his son that their damnation waits them, after that of their darling girl." His hard bare arm shot forth, and his filth-rimmed finger pointed eastward.

  Long did their eyes lock, Markulit's and Elecambronian's, black upon black. Then Ryel bowed low in the saddle. "For your instruction I thank you, Lord Michael," he said, with all the respect due to a great brother in the Art, no matter how bad. The people who had begun to jeer him looked at one another in confusion, and back to the dour prophet so incongruously yet with such strange fitness ennobled by the wysard's word. "I am glad of this encounter. It may be we'll meet again."

  Michael did not return the bow save by the faintest inclination of his shaven head, and he spat in the dust afterward. "Ill met you are to me, Overreacher, now and forever. Begone, take your road."

  Chapter Six

  Michael's directions were accurate, to Ryel's mild surprise. As he rode, the wysard remembered the man he had seen in his Glass years ago, and only once; a man who wore an officer's regimentals as easily as his skin, whose blood-red hair fell clean and well-ordered in thick skeins. Ryel recalled the dragon insignia on the uniform's high collar, the serried double rank of silver clasps, all the metal gleaming, the fine black cloth spotless and flawless; the clean-shaven face as white as ice, and colder. Never would Ryel have recognized Michael as the prophet of the Dog's Quarter, without hearing his name shouted by the crowd that his wild rhetoric enthralled.

  "I hope I can find you again, my lord brother," Ryel murmured. "We seem to have much to discuss."

  Thus musing, the wysard successfully threaded the maze of constricted streets and emerged into a region of wide avenues and great arcaded mansions. The houses slept under the burning heat of the sun, their latticed shutters folded, but as he passed Ryel could smell the spiced aroma of midday feasts, hear music and soft laughter and the chimes of crystal and silver wafting through the tracery. With a twinge of hunger that went far beyond the body he remembered the Steppes, never more distant from him than now. He thought with fresh regret of his mother, who might have dwelt in a house such as the
se around him, and of his sister Nelora who longed for such a life. But most of all he thought of the unhappy folk of the Fourth District, inexorably debarred from this luxury so arrogantly flaunted.

  At length Ryel reached the broad avenue of the temple district with its garden-encircled buildings of magnificent state on either side. Through each portico might be discerned statues of strange half-animal beings or surpassingly beautiful humans, and people in prayer before them. The wysard heard the name of Diara uttered by innumerable voices with mingled sorrow and, and at one building the orisons were so fervent that Ryel dismounted and ascended its steps, drawn by pain.

  In the colonnaded vastness of the temple hundreds of worshippers knelt before a statue unlike any the wysard had yet seen—a wooden image from all appearances immensely old, of a woman enthroned, carved with artless yet compelling simplicity; neither painted nor bejeweled nor richly draped, but wondrously forgiving and tender of expression. All about the image, candles glittered and incense swirled; and a priestess in flowing rust-colored vestments, her silver-flecked dark hair shorn close and her ears and neck hung with great ornaments of beaten gold, offered up a silver bowlful of milk and fervent prayers to Demetropa, Goddess of Life.

  "Demetropa," Ryel murmured. Years fled away like scattered leaves, and he remembered how his mother had called upon the birth-goddess when she was near her time with Nelora. In secret he had followed her outside the yat one bright night, and found her kneeling with her face lifted to the moon, whispering what seemed like a plea as she clasped her hands over the swollen belly that he had so entirely feared and resented; and when a month later she held in her arms Nelora newly born and fair as daylight, she had given deepest thanks to the First Mother, and bade Ryel do the same. And Ryel had touched his lips to the softness of his sister's cheek, and inwardly begged forgiveness of the goddess with all his heart.

  I no longer believe, he thought, returned again to the present. What humbled me a dozen years ago cannot move me now. But I will fulfill your request of last night, most exalted Diara.

  Approaching the altar, he fell to his knees before the silent statue, bowing his head. Scarcely had he offered up his first words than he felt a light hand upon his hair, as if in benediction; and looking up, he met the eyes of the priestess.

  "Seldom does a man enter this place," she said, her faint smile relieving a little her worn pallor. "You are a devotee of the Goddess?"

  Ryel glanced about, and saw for the first time that indeed all of the worshippers were women; and in that instant he realized that the milk which filled the silver bowl upon the altar must have been drawn from their breasts, for he had read long ago in Markul that no other offering was more pleasing to the goddess. Blood welled up hotly in his face. "I respect the devotion of others," he replied, "and for another's sake I am here."

  The priestess' eyes—eyes exceedingly like Diara's, but pitiably haggard—gazed searchingly into the wysard's face, finding the blush and attempting to decipher it. "Ah. A woman is with child by you?"

  Ryel felt himself coloring all the more as he shook his head.

  "But you have come for someone you love."

  Rather than make denial yet again, the wysard cast his eyes down. "I am sent to implore the Mother to grace and favor her daughter, Diara Dranthene."

  The priestess said nothing in answer; but she took his hands in hers, and raised him up. Cold hands hers were, achingly cold, and Ryel instantly sought to warm them in his own; and his action, simple as it was, brought vivid color to her cheeks.

  "I understand now," she said; and for the first time Ryel saw that she was a woman of great beauty, despite her fled youth and shorn hair and broken health. "You are a healer of the Inner Steppes, come to attempt the Sovrena's cure. Now I realize why I broke my wonted habit of solitary meditation, and left the cloister for the first time in years to officiate today. Surely the Goddess meant for you and I to meet."

  "But I am no believer, most revered," Ryel answered uneasily.

  Her smile was a mother's, tenderly and utterly forgiving. "All believe in Demetropa, though they call her by other names. You might know her as the life principle." She fixed her eyes on his. "If you hold that principle sacred, help the Sovrena Diara. I beg you help her."

  Ryel inclined his head. "I will strive even to the limit of my life, most revered."

  She caught his hands and bent her brow to them before Ryel could stop her. "If prayers and tears might help you, take all of mine."

  Ryel stared at her, greatly moved. "You hold the Sovrena very dear."

  "I love her as my own, sir." The priestess glanced up at the oculus in the temple's dome, where the sunlight fell in a radiant pillar to the middle of the floor; her eyes became anxious. "But if you tarry longer here, you will arrive late for the Sovran's audience, and others will be chosen before you. Go, then. Should it appear that you might not be considered, inform the Sovran that Calantha Diaskiros commends you; and should by chance you encounter the Sovranel Priamnor, greet him for me with the Mother's love."

  Thinking now only of reaching the palace as quickly as possible, the wysard thanked the priestess and departed, and hastened Jinn's pace. Then as he emerged from beneath an archway the wysard confronted the palace, a vast edifice raised on a high platform of gold-veined dawn-violet stone approached by long wide ramps. No wall encircled the building, but magnificently armed guards stood at each incline and portal. Above the platform the imperial palace rose in dazzling splendor, its great double rows of travertine columns upbearing galleries of precious many-hued alabaster surmounted by tall ogival windows of marble tracery set with crystal panes. Mosiacs of amethyst and topaz and gold covered the loggias, while equally precious friezes of men and beasts, ornately bizarre, ran the length of the walls. But Ryel marveled most at the gardens that crowned and overflowed every rooftop. Under the fiery sky shimmered lush trees thick with fruit, vines laden with rare flowers, urns of irises and sweet herbs, cool arbors of grapes and roses, all spangled with fountain-spray fairer than diamonds—the fabled paradise that Ryel as a child had made his mother describe again and again, to brighten the barren emptiness of the Steppes at least in imagination. Growing to manhood in Markul he had sometimes stared out at the dank infinities of mist and remembered those stories, and contemned them as idle tales meant only to beguile a restless yat-brat; now he inwardly asked his mother's pardon.

  In normal circumstances no personage less than a great noble would have been allowed entry to the palace of the Sovran of Destimar, but the desperate illness of the Dranthene princess suspended all protocol. Anyone claiming a physician's credentials, no matter how mean-seeming, was admitted into the presence-chamber with few questions, only the obviously deranged being turned away. A servitor led Jinn to the palace stables while another swiftly ushered the wysard through ramped hallways to the Sovran's presence-chamber. There Ryel found that the number of doctors awaiting the Sovran's appearance was few, despite the prospect of dazzling reward—barely twenty in all. Most of them were dressed with exceedingly richness, and Ryel keenly regretted not having resumed Lord Nestris' flaunting green robe after leaving the Fourth District. But then he noticed that by far the most bedizened of all the throng were wysards. He at once recognized a pair of flashy Ormalans with their inevitable attendant familiars—in this case a nasty-eyed white cat and a lizard almost as big—and observed three Tesbai even gaudier still, wearing their characteristic enormous hats. These five he avoided with lowered eyes lest they discover and cry out against the Overreacher in their midst, but they paid him no heed whatever, save to eye his Steppes garb with cursory scorn.

  Ryel kept his distance for another reason fully as crucial. Cats were universally detested among the Rismai as being the harborers of bad spirits, and he had seen very few in his life; but he would never forget having hugged one as a little child, rapturous with its soft purring tabby fur, only to almost instantly feel his eyes swell shut, his breathing strangle. By the luckiest chance Yorganar had
at that moment appeared, seen the danger, snatched the animal away and thrown it out of the yat, where the dogs had torn it to pieces. The hapless animal had belonged to some visiting Cosran princeling, who had been furious at his favorite's destruction and would have exacted costly retribution; but Yorganar as angrily maintained that the cat had almost been the death of his only son. The phratri elders had ruled in favor of Yorganar, the offended noble had paid recompense and stormed back to his country, and Ryel had lain miserably gasping and sneezing with blocked and flooding eyes and nose, his face swollen like a glue-soaked sponge for two entire days. Even worse, his mother could not come near him until his garments had been burnt and his body washed clean of all feline contamination, and the yat's hangings taken out and aired.

  But now music sounded, dispersing those memories, and the little throng of would-be healers gave way as the sole ruler of great Destimar approached, borne high in a palanquined carrying-chair on the shoulders of his guard, preceded and followed by attendants and soldiery. Ryel was at first much impressed, for Agenor Dranthene was a gorgeous sight in his imperial finery of purple and scarlet and gold. But at second glance the wysard observed how the stiffly projecting shoulders of the Sovran's billowing cloak failed to disguise his age-bowed back, while a wide many-wrapped sash did little to bind in his corpulent girth. His entire inert body seemed little more than a great mound of jewels from which protruded two limp fat-fingered hands barely visible for their rings and bracelets; and atop this glittering heap the Sovran's unmoving unblinking head seemed nothing more than part of a badly tinted second-rate statue, its hair dyed an unnatural and glossless black, its face bedaubed with kohl and rouge and pearl-dust, with carmine smears on the slack lips, and powdered lapis thick on the lids of the watery short-sighted eyes.

  Ryel had observed in his travels through the city that it was customary for upper-caste Almancarians of both sexes to make use of cosmetics, but never this thickly plastered. It was only too obvious that a skin-surgeon's skilled yet futile handiwork had attempted to confer a semblance of youth, and succeeded only in producing a ghastly mockery of it—especially since just beneath the tautly-pulled chin hung two others wobbling full of fat. The wysard with wry amusement further noted that among the jewels encircling Agenor's swollen neck were many amulets and charms surely meant to confer bed-prowess, good digestion, swift recovery from alcoholic excess, and relief from piles.