The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

by Carolyn Kephart

  “You acted nobly,” Ryel replied.

  Roskerrek shook his head. “Call it self-interest rather, which it was entirely. I wanted Desrenaud gone from Hryeland forever.” For some moments the Count Palatine fell silent, caught up in memory clearly painful. “He possessed every quality that my inborn sickness had killed in me. I loathed him. With all my heart I hated and envied him, from that first sight at the palace gates. He'd taken a poisoned wound from a Barbarian blade, and the Domina chose me as his healer, for I have some skill in such matters. But it was not his cure I intended. Far from it.”

  “You would have killed him?”

  “Readily.” For a moment Roskerrek seemed to draw breath only with greatest difficulty. “It would have been the work of a moment. Desrenaud was unconscious from the venom, and had no power to resist. And I was goaded by even more than my hatred. The sickness in my blood must have driven me mad awhile, for I swear a voice whispered to me.”

  “A voice?” Ryel leaned forward, disquieted and eager. “What kind of voice?”

  Roskerrek stared into the flames, that burnt slow fitful red. “A wonderfully calm one. Most pleasant, I recall. It assured me that if I killed Desrenaud, no harm whatever would befall me. That I would straightway become the Domina's favorite. That…that I would be healed at last of my long malady.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “You cannot be expected to understand how powerfully that voice moved me, Ryel Mirai. With all my strength I strove to obey it.” Roskerrek had grown pale. “But I could not. I flung the dagger away…and then I believe I wept.”

  As if exhausted by revelation, he leaned his elbows on his knees, burying his face in his hands. Ryel came to his side, standing close, rounding his fingers about the hard white shoulder he'd so recently healed. “You resisted terrible temptation,” the wysard said, infinitely moved. “The World will thank you, Yvain Essern.”

  Roskerrek looked up, his eyes questioning and no longer cold. “Thank me? And for what?”

  “For helping to save it.” But then the wysard sat next to the Count Palatine, and stared into the fire as if seeking for answers. “What could have driven Desrenaud to Ormala?”

  “Desrenaud was constantly in attendance at the Temple of the Master, and was enslaved to the priestess's drugs,” Roskerrek said, his voice slow with weariness. “In Ormala he could likely find ones even stronger.”

  “He could. But if he has … “ Ryel pushed back the sweat welling at his hairline. “Theofanu's Master is a malignant daimon that seeks the World's ruin. If Lord Guyon has become a thrall to that power …” Sickened by an infinity of possibilities, Ryel could speak no more.

  Roskerrek, too, seemed shaken. “Has this daimon a name?”

  “Dagar. Once a wysard of Elecambron, now a wraith seeking human form—my form. And there's worse still. Dagar is the Master your brother Michael serves in Almancar.”

  The strongest consternation met those words, the bitterest horror. Lest it find voice, Ryel continued. “You can do nothing for him. He is beyond all human aid, and only the Art can help him now. Dagar's black wings have brushed you as well, because it was the daimon that urged you to kill Lord Guyon.”

  "Tell me what I can do to help you."

  Ryel met the Count Palatine's eyes, firmly and in warning. "Try your utmost to keep Bradamaine and her court away from Theofanu's drugs and wiles. Theofanu is an Ormalan witch, and the Master she serves is a malignant daimon that seeks his chance to return to the World. Your brother now serves him with all the power of his Art."

  The Count Palatine turned as pale as he had been before his cure. "Only tell me how I can help him."

  Ryel shook his head. "He is beyond all human aid, and only the Art can save him now. Dagar's black wings have brushed you as well, General. It was Dagar that urged you to kill Desrenaud."

  Numbly Roskerrek considered the wysard's words. "But what is Desrenaud's part in this?"

  "I have yet to learn it," Ryel said. "The same voice that spoke of him also told me of you, in the same breath."

  "And whose voice was that?"

  "My father's from the Void, the place between life and death. This very night I heard him again, when you and I fought; and it was through your lips he spoke."

  A long silence intervened before Roskerrek replied. "I remember. My old madness seized me, and I thought the demon-bane had returned; but then the evil seemed to melt away, and a wondrous peace came over me. It lasted only a moment, and when it faded I felt lessened. So that was your father's spirit, speaking through me."

  Ryel nodded. "He escaped the Void once before this, in the body of the Sovran Priamnor. It was then he spoke of you and Desrenaud, and called you captains of the wars to come."

  "But the wars with the Hralwi are over."

  "The wars of the Master are even now being set in motion by Dagar, here and in Almancar."

  "I'll do all I can to prevent them, starting with the arrest of that witch Theofanu." Roskerrek hesitated. "I look forward to seeing Lord Guyon again, and asking his forgiveness, and fighting at his side."

  The wysard blinked burning eyes. "For what you have revealed to me—long though I had to wait to hear it—I am most deeply grateful. But we must talk no further of this. The hour's late, and I must leave Hallagh tomorrow at dawn."

  Roskerrek made a swift staying gesture. “One moment more, Ryel. I cannot keep the truth from you any longer. When I met with the Domina this morning, she commanded me to bring about your death as soon as might be.”

  Ryel froze, despite the heat. “My death? But how—why—”

  “She felt that she had divulged far too many of her secrets, and feared that you might use them against her. I have in all things obeyed her unquestioningly, but this command was a cruel one.”

  Ryel's mouth-corner gave a hard quirk. “Nevertheless you complied with it.”

  “It went against my heart, believe me. But my service to my queen, and my desire that Desrenaud's whereabouts should never be known—I was pulled many ways, Ryel, and never did I welcome pain more than when you gave me the wound that ended our fight.” He lifted an askance eyebrow. “But I still wonder how you managed it without the Art.”

  “I didn't,” Ryel said. “Without the Art there was no way to defeat you.”

  That admission gave Roskerrek evident pleasure, but it faded fast. “The Domina will be furious to learn I failed in your murder.”

  “Then tell her you succeeded,” Ryel said. "I leave Hallagh tomorrow; tell her you dispatched me by ambush and threw my corpse in the river."

  "Excellent idea." They both smiled, but not long. "You could easily have killed me," the Count Palatine said." I wonder that you did not."

  "For the same reason that you did not kill Desrenaud." Even as the wysard spoke, he felt a qualm assail him, a strong impulse to repeat that deadly attempt. Fighting it made him sway with pain.

  The Count Palatine swiftly stood, and caught Ryel by the arm. “You're not well.”

  “Don't concern yourself,” Ryel said, shuddering at the touch. “It's nothing.”

  “Let me be the judge of that. Look at me, Ryel Mirai.”

  They were almost exactly of a height, and their eyes met levelly. Long did the Count Palatine regard the wysard, with searching acuteness; and when he spoke, his voice shook.

  "You took my affliction upon yourself," he said. "I can see it in your face. My healing was your doom, and I will never forgive myself for it. To think that you now suffer the agonies that killed me every day I lived—"

  Against a wave of vertigo Ryel clenched his teeth. “I fight it. But it finds the evil in me, and makes it strong. Seeks every place where I am weak, and cruel, and contemptible, and goads them to fury.” He felt as if his bones were dissolving, agonized calcined drop by drop. He staggered, and would have fallen had not Roskerrek caught him.

  Ryel felt as if his bones were dissolving, agonized calcined drop by drop. Roskerrek caught him. "You suffer terribly."

  "This will h
elp me." And Ryel reached for the carnelian cylinder, unstopping it and drawing a long breath of surpassing deliverance. Roskerrek gave a little start as the precious scent rose upon the air, joining with the ethereal hovering harmony.

  "I never knew anything so celestially sweet," he said. "Surely that is the fabled embrocation called Transcendence."

  "Yes," Ryel murmured, intensely grateful that it was. "How did you know?"

  "Because I know that none but a member of the Dranthene succession can be Prince of Vrya; and that Attar of a Thousand is said to have medicinal benefit to those of your line."

  The wysard was almost taken aback. "You are greatly read."

  "For a Northerner, perhaps." Roskerrek hesitated. "I realize I trespass exceedingly, but may I ask for a drop from that vial? It is said to be uncommonly lasting, and I would be glad of so pleasant a remembrance of our acquaintance to balance out the bad."

  "By all means." Ryel handed the vial to Roskerrek, who rubbed a little of the perfume onto his handkerchief's snowy cambric, breathing deeply of it before carefully folding the cloth and replacing it in his pocket.

  "Do you now feel in better health, Ryel Mirai?"

  The wysard nodded. "Immeasurably."

  "I am glad to hear it."

  "I truly believe you are." Ryel went to the dais where his sheathed tagh lay next to Roskerrek's at the feet of Argane, and slung his hard-won weapon over his shoulder. "Let's go back up. You could use some rest, too."

  "I could indeed," Roskerrek said. "But I greatly doubt I'll sleep much this night, my friend."

  At that last word Ryel halted, turning back in his climb up the stone stairs. "I never expected us to be friends, Sivred Rikàn."

  In the same moment their hands reached out and joined. "Until death and after, Rukht Avràl."

  Chapter Fifteen

  He had walked out onto a jut of rock, picking his way over the slippery patches of seaweed and the sharp-edged barnacles to a place where the waves broke. In the pelting spray he stood, closing his eyes to the cold salt splash, seeking any relief from the gray ache in the back of his brain.

  The wysard had journeyed westward, over the great road that ran from Hallagh to the port city of Disgren; but he had felt no desire to sample that town's rough maritime charms, and still less eagerness to make its greasy harbor-waters his first view of the sea. Turning southerly some miles from the shore, he had made for the marches of Ralnahr. Every day he sickened worse, until now he kept the carnelian vial almost constantly in his hand to quell the pain. The wild beauty of the Ralnahrian frontier, its towering pines and aspens, its mossy crags and wild waterfalls and swift whitewater, had given him no pleasure.

  Worst of all, the sea that had been part of his dreams for so long, desired and awaited with such hunger, now seemed nothing more than so much restlessly churning dirty water. He'd traveled many a weary day since departing Hallagh, unable to endure Jinn's preternatural speed for long, forcing her to a World-horse's slow pace. Now that his Art had all but left him, he could no longer command the air for anything. At nightfall he most often forsook the flea-ridden beds of dirty inns in favor of his own camp made some distance from the road, where he huddled in his cloak over a twig-built fire, sipping chal and nibbling at food bought from markets and farmer's wives along the way; but now everything he ate made him retch, and sleep came fitfully if at all. No luxurious srih-attended encampment could he conjure, now that his Art had all but left him; and now every night Dagar's loathed voice whined in his ear, not to be swatted away, as the air smothered him in cold lead.

  Soon, young blood. Very soon, now. I await you.

  Each morning Ryel consulted the bit of Glass given him by Srin Yan Tai, and every new day brought fresh disquiet. Ryel saw Priamnor, no longer an indolent prince but a harried ruler trammeled with affairs of state, and the ever-increasing resentment of the folk of the Fourth District. Again and again their outbreaks were put down by the soldiery, only to flare once more with worse depredation urged on ever more wildly by Michael of Elecambron, who now used the persuasions of his Art to sway the mob.

  And there was worse. Ryel saw Lady Serah Dalkith caring for the sick, of which Markul now had many, and saw the dead being carried not to the silent citadel but to burning-pyres, for their bodies were leprous and noisome. Only the very old were dying, but that would soon change, he knew. In the Steppes among the Rismai many were unsettled by rumblings of the fire-mountains and tremblings of the earth, for such disturbances, though faint as yet, had become all too frequent.

  "It has begun," the wysard murmured, flinching as the salt spray dashed his face and stung his eyes.

  That very morning he had consulted his Glass to view events in Hallagh, and had found Theofanu and her minions more dangerously empowered than ever. Now the Domina's court assembled every day in the Temple of the Master to witness miracles ever more incredible, and fall yet more helplessly under the spell of drugs increasingly addictive, and eye with greater contempt and hostility the worship of the Unseen.

  It will not stop, the wysard thought. And now even thinking gave him pain.

  Night was on the point of falling, the sun no more than a faint gray glow on the thickly-misted horizon. The air had grown cold, but in his fever the wysard welcomed it. "It has begun," he said aloud, feeling each word like a stab in the back of his head. "Everything's moving too fast—everything but me."

  The air thinned and tightened, and the voice of Dagar, which now infected his thoughts sleeping and waking, laughed at him yet again. Yes. Soon, young blood. Very, very soon now.

  "Some help will come to me," Ryel said, more to himself than to Dagar. "I feel it."

  Do you then, sweet eyes? Feel this, first.

  With a spiteful thrust of agony Dagar departed, leaving the wysard swaying and moaning, clutching his head. As the worst of the pain began to ebb and his sight returned, Ryel observed for the first time a stick that leaned against a rock as if there for his help—a rich walking-staff of black smooth wood, ringed and headed with bright silver. In great need of such support, he reached down for it.

  "Not so fast, knave." A brown hand darted out from the midst of a jagged boulder, grabbed the stick and gave the wysard a stinging rap across the knuckles. "That's mine." With a clatter the rock stirred and stood, and the wysard in numb astonishment saw that what he had supposed yet another lump of stone was in actuality a vast black cloak studded with barnacles and draped with seaweed, wrapped about a being fully as fantastic as its garment. Its long hair was bleached by the sun and tangled as a fisherman's net lost and washed ashore, still with shells and flotsam entangled in its seines. The wrinkles in its face were like tide-marks in wet dark sand.

  The rock-creature's voice rasped again. "Stand clear, scoundrel." Staff clutched in one of its driftwood-gnarled hands, a wet burlap bag full of lumpy small objects in the other, it leaned and stared at Ryel with slit eyes green and fathomless as the sea, and croaked the fisher-dialect of Ralnahr's coast. "Why dost thou gawk at me, thief? Dost think me a beauty? Wouldst be the first. What dost thou here?"

  Ryel stared a long while before speaking. "I wish I knew."

  A seal-bark of a laugh in reply. "Bah. Thou seek'st something—or mayhap someone. And it may be thou hast found it. Or him. Or, more likely, her."

  Confused, the wysard blinked against the tormenting salt of the air. "Who—or what—are you?"

  The sea-being brandished its staff and glared. "That's naught to thee. But for thy enlightenment, which thou sorely seem'st to require, I'm the Markessa of Lanas Crin, and thou standest upon my land, where robbers get a whip's welcome."

  "I'm not a thief. But…" he threw all reason to the winds. "Would you by chance know of a woman named Gwynned de Grisainte?"

  The sea-being's glare intensified. "And what wouldst thou have of the beldam hag?"

  The wysard winced at that look, and the tormenting salt of the air. "I understand she is a great healer."

  "And who was it lied to the
e so grossly concerning that crone?"

  "A professor of the university at Hallagh, named— "

  The strange creature snorted. "Jeral Colquhon, more than likely. A babbling old fool, Lord Jeral."

  His wits still pain-bound, Ryel swallowed his rising gorge to make a crazy guess. "You're her. You're Gwynned."

  She brandished the staff and glared. "Dame Gwynned, thou ignorant knave. Markessa I am of this land, where robbers get a whip's welcome."

  "Forgive my mistake. But I'm very sick, Markessa."

  The sea-green eyes brightened in interest. "Art thou now. How sick?"

  Ryel pushed back his salt-dripping hair with trembling fingers. "To the death, I think."

  She wasn't in the least impressed. "Bah. Thou'rt a tall strong fellow, likely to live. Come, we'll get some good eatables into thee, and put thee into a clean bed— for neither hot broth nor white sheets hast thou known for many a day, it seems—and see how thou dost afterward. That's a notable horse thou hast—we'll ride together, thou and I. Hold thee my staff and bag a moment."

  Jinn, unused to bearing double, would have quarreled with the arrangement, but the Markessa would have none of the mare's neighing indignation. "Peace, nag. I'm lighter than I look." She vaulted upon Jinn's back, settling gracefully astride amid a clatter of limpets while making sure that none of the sharp-edged shells gave Jinn the slightest unease. Baffled, the horse stood quivering, her great dark eyes wary.

  "Come here, thou." Taking her property again and stretching forth her hand, the Markessa swung the wysard up behind her with manlike strength. Dizzily Ryel clung round her waist, that was as solid as the strut of a pier and fully as bumpy with barnacles. She smelt of tide-wrack and storm, and her legs were shod to the knee in fisherman's boots. She steered Jinn like a boat, pressing her silver-topped staff against the mare's flanks as if handling a tiller.