The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

by Carolyn Kephart

  "Tell me something that isn't, captain."

  "Very well," said Alleron. "But only because you saved my lord's life. Desrenaud was never more in danger than during his first week in the Barrier."

  Ryel's blood quivered. "Why is that?"

  Alleron held out the suit's waistcoat for Ryel to slip into. "Because my lord nearly killed him."

  "Tell me more," the wysard said; and it took all of his will to keep his voice detached and calm.

  The captain handed Ryel a pair of boots of supple black leather, and gauntlets of the same. "Well, during the earl's cure my lord stayed at his side the clock round. But one night I chanced to enter the room very softly, and saw my lord watching over the earl not with care, but as a ravening lion eyes a sleeping child—I hope those boots fit you without galling. They were delivered from the cordwainer only today, and aren't broken in."

  "They're perfect," Ryel said, somehow mastering his impatience. "Continue."

  "Well, my lord drew his dagger, and felt its edge awhile, never taking his eyes from the earl, who slept heavily because drugged. And then my lord pulled aside the bedclothes and bent over the earl as if to strike, and I was on the point of rushing over to prevent him. But all my lord did was to suddenly halt, and fling the dagger away, and cover the earl with the bedclothes again, and sink into his chair again with his face in his hands."

  Ryel drew a relieved breath. "That's an interesting story, captain."

  The captain shook out the coat and held it ready. "I expect you to keep it to yourself, m'lord prince." Unpacking a rich lace collar and cuffs, Alleron adjusted them at Ryel's neck and wrists; then took a round box from the bottom of the bag and produced a dashing wide-brimmed black hat embellished with a rich brocade band and a panache of gray plumes, which Ryel carefully donned. "You're a fine sight in Hryeland garb, sir," the captain remarked, standing back and frankly admiring after giving the hat a touch more tilt. "I've noticed that your ears are pierced; here's a jewel for your left lobe, as is the custom with our young blades, and some rings for your fingers, gifts of my lord."

  Ryel hung the pearl pendant in his ear, and slid the rings—elegant circlets of gold and sapphire—on his fingers. "The Count Palatine's generosity is as impressive as his taste."

  "It's his way, m'lord prince. The Domina's sent a coach for you; it's waiting at the door."

  "We'll go together, if you like."

  Alleron grunted refusal. "I never use a wagon unless I'm wounded. Horseback for me, or nothing; but I'll ride at your side and bear you company. Best that we go now, for if we don't get to the service before the Domina arrives, it'll be considered disrespect. Here, don't forget your cloak."

  Ryel donned the dashing black mantle, and the two men left the headquarters and made their way through the streets to the great park that spread out at the back of Grotherek Palace. In a retired part of it, Ryel descried a sheer wall of dark stone topped with sharp spikes, pierced by a narrow gate watched by two sentinels fully armed. Many coaches waited, all of them finely made, well-gilded, and emblazoned with coats of arms. The sentinels, noting the Domina's quarterings on the doors of Ryel's conveyance, bowed low as the wysard alighted and passed unquestioned through the gates with Alleron.

  A smooth pavement of marble and mosaic led to the temple's stairs, which were few and wide. The building itself was an overwrought edifice built of garish red-tinged unNorthern stone, strangely and unpleasingly built up of layer upon layer of carved concatenated fantastic beings, animal and semi-human. Further unsettling to the eye were columns too slender for their capitals, windows of jarring shapes and styles, overly attenuated pinnacles.

  "Ugly, isn't it? This way." And Alleron led the wysard into a long nave half-lit with fires suspended from the vault on slender chains, and murky with the incense of civet and ambergris vying with the musky perfumes that exhaled from the assembled and impatient court. At the end of the nave stood not an altar, but a great marble dais like a low stage, heavily decorated; and facing this dais at some distance was a rich chair, the only such furniture in all the room.

  "The Domina's," Alleron said. "Everyone else needs must remain on their feet, aching though they be."

  Present in sullen numbers were the Servants, who stood apart from the rest of the congregation, pallid, evil-eyed, scarred and defaced. To Ryel they seemed more like srih-automated corpses than living youth, so dully glazed were their sunken eyes and so waxy their faces; and he could tell by their fidgeting febrile impatience that they were starving for Theofanu's drugs, all but mad for them.

  Alleron dealt the wysard a nudge. "There's m'lord arriving, and you can be sure all know it."

  Roskerrek had just entered the nave like a red wolf among peacocks, and courtiers moved well aside as he passed them. His progress to the Domina's empty chair set off a sensation of amazed murmurings and up-leaping eyebrows that he acknowledged with neither word nor look, save for a reluctant dash of color in his pale cheeks, and the proud denial of a smile on his stern sensual lips, and ineffable serenity welling in the depths of his strange-colored eyes. Approaching Ryel, he gave a soldierly bow.

  "Most exalted Prince of Vrya, greetings," he said, well knowing that all around him were listening. "Our Northern habit suits you very well indeed."

  Ryel returned the bow, in the suave manner of Almancar. "My lord of Roskerrek is as liberal with compliment as he is with gifts; but he does no more than praise the excellence of his own taste."

  As their courtesies were being discussed in whispers by those watching, a beautiful young woman rustled in, gowned in shimmering rich plum-colored satin that closely sheathed the slimness of her waist, and proudly bared the swan-white smoothness of her shoulders. A strand of great pearls encircled her throat, and gold drops hung in her ears, and her luxuriance of dark curls was half caught up in a golden comb; her lips had been made yet redder with a touch of carmine, and her hazel eyes were enlarged yet more with a suggestion of kohl. She barely glanced at Roskerrek, and made her way straight to Ryel.

  "So. The Prince of Vrya, eh?"

  The wysard smiled back. "You make a perilous beauty, my lady."

  She only grimaced. "Bah. I detest skirts, and don't much like having my neck half-naked." A fan hung from a ribbon at her waist, and she snapped it open with a deft flick of her wrist. "Sweltering in here, as always."

  Surely she was aware of Roskerrek's stare, but she made no sign. Far from narrowing in feral ambiguity, his eyes gazed in searching fascination at the slender court beauty in rich damson satin, and he drew near. "I have often observed, Countess, that in male habit you seem one of the handsomest youths in Hryeland; but in woman's dress you are indisputably the fairest lady. Would that you had the vanity to perceive where your real strength lies."

  Instead of replying with a taunt, Valrandin looked up into Roskerrek's face, examining every feature. "You are greatly changed, my lord."

  He smiled. "It seems to unsettle you."

  Some of Valrandin's old mutiny returned. "I fear no man," she said, with proudest emphasis on the last word. "And if you think—"

  Sudden unseen music of trumpets rang in the vault, and the court's restless chattering subsided as the Domina Bradamaine entered, stalking through the throng that fell back on either side with a soft roar of rustling silk and sweeping plumes. Valrandin and Roskerrek moved as one to attend her; but the Domina noticed Ryel first, and after a moment's surprise waved him over to her side, her manner unexpectedly welcoming.

  "Our Northern style of dress becomes you handsomely, Prince Ryel," she said. "Yet even in your Steppes gear you seemed more than a mere Rismai physician. It's bad manners indeed that a Destimarian prince of the blood should have to stand, but such is the protocol here. Lean against my chair, if you grow tired."

  "My thanks, most exalted." Ryel lifted his eyes to the temple's vault, where concatenated harmonies rained down like a shower of gold. "That music is very beautiful."

  Bradamaine only shrugged. "I've a blind ear
for it. To me it's naught but noise." She turned to her left, and started at the sight of the Count Palatine, gazing up at him half in bewilderment, half in shock. "Yvain Essern, is that you?"

  Roskerrek bowed low. "Eternally at your command, m'Domina."

  "I'd hardly know you. You're so…changed."

  He gazed on her with a look Ryel could only describe as ardent. "Thank the Prince of Vrya for it. But whatever else about me alters, my zeal in your service never will. You may command me in anything—as you well know."

  Bradamaine only stared at him, her ice-eyes mistrusting. One of her hands clenched the chair-arm, and as if inadvertently Roskerrek as he spoke laid his own hand upon hers. But Bradamaine recoiled as if from a venomous sting, wincing in momentary loathing. At that naked revulsion murmuringly observed by many onlookers, the Count Palatine showed no emotion; but he caught the Domina's hand in a grip inexorable for all its gentleness, and kissed the pale smooth skin with a lingering fervor that made it redden. Finally Bradamaine wrenched her hand free, clenching it as if longing to deal Roskerrek a blow; but the look in his eyes made her fingers slacken. Not even in Almancar, not even in the temple of Demetropa, had Ryel seen that kind of adoration.

  A whisper of music wrought by unknown instruments materialized out of nothingness. In the complete silence two equivocal figures in trailing copes emerged from a scented mist, tall priests neither male nor female, young nor old, their painted faces patched with diamonds, their eyelids purple and gold, lips a silvered scarlet. Both were slender and incandescently fair. Pearls and moonstones streamed in ropes from their tall diadems, and their hands and wrists glittered with a galaxy of ornaments; copes of opalescent orphreyed silk trailed in long folds behind them. They moved with a mannered grace, their looks haughty and distant.

  "Two of the former ruler Regnier's former favorites," Valrandin whispered for Ryel's edification. "Eunuchs now, as they deserve."

  They bore in their hands each a salver of gold in which burnt an incense which Ryel recognized with a start as mandragora mixed with feia and hrask. He forced himself to resist the seduction of the smoke, whose bittersweet reek of salt marsh and dead roses soon filled the whole of the temple. But the Servants craned forward, breathing deeply and avidly with the rest of the congregation, sighing in pleasure as their wits began to shift, and the two priests darted sly glances at each other, their painted mouths suppressing smiles.

  Next came two men naked to the waist, clad to the ankle in many-colored silk belted with gold and precious stones—black men both, muscled and shorn, Zallans from all seeming, and if so, far indeed from their hot homeland. Each bore in both hands a globe, one made of black glass, one of white. The four priests stood abreast, leaving a space in their midst. The music grew ravishingly sweet, and the congregation, the Servants especially, trembled in near-frantic impatience. All at once a great flash of light darted from the temple's dome to the center of the dais, and out of the radiance materialized a figure with uplifted arms, a woman with her head draped and her body robed in brilliant gold-cloth. At her gesture the music died away, and amid the after-ringings in the vault the Servants shrieked her name and the Master's as if burning up in fire.

  Another gesture of Theofanu's and the Servants quieted, dropping down in full prostration while the rest of the congregation fell to its knees, until all were in postures of adoration save for Ryel and Roskerrek. Upright and unmoving they stood on either side of the Domina's chair, awaiting what next would come. But Bradamaine had left her chair to kneel with bowed head next to Valrandin, her silver hair hiding all her face, raining around her shoulders like a shower of stars against a moonless night. Ryel caught the clove-amber scent of her gloves that lay draped over the arm of the chair, heard the muffled come and go of her breathing behind her face-concealing hands. A sudden tremor shot through him, annoying, uncontrollable, like the shudder after a taste of green fruit. The drug was taking him, for all his struggles.

  Theofanu gazed complacently upon her followers. She was a woman of the wet mountain regions of the Azm Chak, lean as a stick, smoky yellow-brown of skin. Her nose lay flat against her face, and her large fleshy mouth parted over prominent teeth filed to sharp points. Her cheeks were tattooed with the luck-symbols of her people, but the center of her forehead was scarred to the bone with the Master's sign, a circle enclosing an eight-rayed spark. Her age could not be told with any exactitude; she might have been thirty, or sixty. Long and narrow and absolutely black were her eyes, that scanned Roskerrek with suspicion and resentment, but met Ryel's in complete satisfaction.

  "The Master moves among us," she said, the resonance of her voice weirdly incongruous in her dry little body. "The Master lives within us. The Master is the source of all joy."

  At that last word the congregation stirred in electric animation. The music changed to savage throbbing drumbeats, shrill pipings—the music of the teeming jungles of the Azm Chak. Theofanu and her half-naked priests began to sway to the fierce rhythm, and the onlookers eagerly seconded them until everyone in the room was rocking back and forth in ever-quickening unison—everyone but Ryel and the Count Palatine. The rocking became a dance, and the dance grew wild. It was strange to see Bradamaine's bedizened courtiers screeching with wild-eyed ecstasy, rumpling and ripping their silks and laces.

  At the dance's height Theofanu seized the white globe from the priest on her left, and as she did so the congregation shrieked in impatience. With a laugh Theofanu lightly tossed the bright sphere high into the air, out above the congregation. It hovered awhile above the eagerly gazing crowd, and as it hovered it began to glow within, brighter and yet more bright. Then it burst soundlessly, and a myriad glowing sparks drifted down. The shadowy nave filled with light brilliant as noonday, and the air changed to mist heady with high summer. As he breathed, Ryel felt his memory flood with everything he had ever held dear in his early years—acts of kindness shown him by others, places whose beauty he had reveled in; times he had spent riding across the steppes with his mother, and times he had walked with Edris in the dark of night about the walls of Markul, talking of the Art. Amid his revery music began, a singing of many voices, the words incoherent and ecstatic, the harmonies intricate beyond unmeshing, the voices inhumanly sweet.

  His eyes felt afire, and he opened them to find that every face about him was bathed in tears, save for Roskerrek's.

  Theofanu's purple lips parted in a dangerous grin. Taking the black globe from the other priest, she held it forth, and a shivering gasp moved among the assembled courtiers.

  "The Master calms all fear." And she hurled the globe high above the upturned anguished faces. It floated over the congregation with deliberate slowness, and everyone it passed shrank from it; and in its dark depths glowed a dark light like the death of a far-off star. Then suddenly with a numbing blast the funereal sphere exploded, hailing down a shower of scorching soot, and instantly the nave was plunged into eclipse unearthly cold, clammy as grave-dirt. A stench of putrefaction poisoned the air, and upon the miasma a horde of loathsome forms floated in a glow of corpselight. No music sounded now, but ghastly laughter and maddened howls mingled with the swelling hysteria of the congregation.

  The Domina quivered in terror, and at her side Valrandin clenched back cries; but in the half-darkness the Count Palatine stood upright and unmoved, save for the contempt that twitched in the corner of his mouth. Ryel likewise scorned such puerile foolery, but nonetheless could not shut out the stink and the noise, nor quell the visions—image after ghastly image of war and torture, inhuman cruelties, monstrous atrocities far beyond anything Ryel had ever dared imagine even during his Markulit studies. The horrors brought back all the sickness the wysard had taken from Roskerrek, wringing his brain, shredding his entrails. Fevered and cramping he scrabbled in his pocket for the carnelian perfume-flask, and took a desperate breath. But no fragrance whatever rescued him from the air's stench, or made any impression upon the pain.

  The frenzy in the room was on the poi
nt of giving way to madness. A bare moment before unbridled lunacy reigned, Theofanu's tumid mocking lips moved in a single word. And as she spoke that word her empty eyes locked with Ryel's.

  Deliverance came sweet as death. In the agony's ebbing the wysard clutched the arm of the Domina's chair, unbalanced and asweat; and all around him he could hear sobs of relief, the Servants' loudest.

  Theofanu made a graceful sweeping gesture, and the darkness lifted. Looking down, Ryel saw that not a single speck of black dirtied his garments, although the dark globe in its explosion had scattered burning sparks and reeking soot throughout the temple's nave. With the lifting of the darkness, the congregation's anguish evaporated. Now hungry expectation penetrated the chamber, lust chafing with impatience.

  The priestess laughed low in her throat, and lifted her voice a third time. "The Master confers…pleasure."

  Delicious yet disturbing images, passionate and sensual, drifted across the wysard's perturbed imagination with electric immediacy. Again he beheld Diara, sighing with delight as she gave herself up to his hands. It seemed he could never get enough of the silk of her, that sense-dazing fragrance. His flesh trembled, stiffened, ached beyond enduring.

  But in that moment the air grew thick and sour, making him choke on the breath he fought to draw, and Dagar's voice dripped into his brain like acid.

  So hot, young blood? it lewdly giggled. But so dull, too. Here, let me show you some livelier sport.

  "No," Ryel choked. "Get out."

  But although he fought against them, his thoughts grew lubricious and wanton, their lascivity made cruel by the daimonic infection of his blood and Dagar's exploitation of it. In a red vision he took Diara ravenously, ripping away her silken robes, scattering her ropes of pearl, forcing her down and clamping his mouth over her outcries. His breath quickened, his body tensed; but then a stern hand clutched his arm, hard as an iron vise.