The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

by Carolyn Kephart

  Her eyes grew distant with memory. "So long ago. But I see them all as they were then, young and vital, burning with the power and wonder of their new-found Art. The Building of Markul was easy as a child's game—we joined hands as if in a dance, and dreamed the City into being. It sprouted up before us level by level, tower by tower, and we laughed to see it. When the City had grown as large as we wished, we threw off our clothes and entered the gates naked, abandoning all World-ties, trusting our Art to look after us, as every newcomer to Markul has done ever since. Reveling in the joy and delight of our strength we took possession of our new home, our refuge. How young we were, and happy."

  "Who gave the City its name?"

  "Aubrel of Hryeland. He told us that in an ancient language of his land, Markul meant Safety, and we all agreed that no name could be better."

  Immediately Ryel was mindful of the secret script of the Fraternity of the Sword, wherein the runic word "markul" indeed meant "unassailable." Aloud he said, "Lord Aubrel was to have ruled in the North, the Books say."

  "His younger brother reigned in his stead, and the house of Essern carried on for a couple of centuries until it was overcome by the Detregorn family, of whom Bradamaine is one—events all but wholly forgotten by even the house of Essern itself, so far in the past their kingship was." She smiled in reminiscence; half-smiled, rather. "A taunting man, Aubrel D'Sern; swarthy and panther-wild, with flashing black eyes arrogantly daring me to steal away from Garnos' bed and into his—challenges which from time to time I accepted with greatest pleasure. But doom came to Aubrel: madness caught hot from the Outer World during a spell gone bad, cruel dementia that permeated his entire being body and mind—terrible to see. For long periods he would seem rational as ever, with that admirable intellect keen and bright, but then would come the inevitable raving outbreaks."

  Ryel inclined his head. "I read in the Books of his attack on Lady Fleurie, and the beginnings of the Bane of the Red Esserns."

  "You brought the Bane to an end. No one else could have." She lifted her head, and her dawn-colored eyes took his. Had he been on fire, he could not have looked away. "I have lived long, and known many remarkable persons, but you have surprised me most. You are uncannily well created, Ryel Mirai. But you had to be."

  Ryel trembled, understanding for the first time to the full the might of her Mastery, and the extremity of her age, and the immensity of her experience. He took both her hands in his, touching his brow to them. "Forgive me for not seeing all that you are, my lady."

  She gave her water-ripple of a laugh. "Oh, I don't blame you. There's a lot to me." One of her hands—small and smooth as a child's, but armed with long vermilion nails and in no way innocent—slipped free from Ryel's and made an appraising exploration of his shoulder, moving ever downward to the chest, the belly, the dark frontier of his sex-surrounding hair.

  He caught her hand, halting the quest. "How old were you when you died?"

  "What age do I appear now?" she asked.

  "No more than twenty-three."

  She smiled, but without great happiness. "I was thirty-six when I discovered the secret of youth. My looks were fading, to my terror, and continually I sought a Mastery that would restore my charms. Garnos mocked my vanity, saying that there was Art higher and more wondrous—Art he himself was seeking to understand above all else. It became a rivalry between us, my search for youth, his pursuit of life everlasting. At last I discovered what I believed to be the Art I required, and in triumph I invited Garnos to my house to watch my transformation. He claimed that he had likewise discovered the Mastery he sought, and would give it trial as soon as I had tested mine. Naked before my mirror I spoke the words, Garnos looking on smiling his skepticism. And before my eyes I saw wonderful changes steal over me, tightening my skin, lifting my breasts, slimming my belly and thighs, and best of all smoothing the lines on my face, restoring the freshness. I gave a cry of joy, but in another instant that cry became a scream." She licked her lips, not at all in lascivity this time. "Screams. The agony seemed to tear me in pieces, and the death that ensued a moment later came as a blessing. I awoke I know not how long later, without pain. But Garnos was lying across me lifeless, his arms embracing me—"

  She broke off, hiding her face against Ryel's shoulder. He stroked her rippling auburn tresses, whispering into their balmy silk. "I'm sorry, Riana. It was a terrible loss."

  "I can't understand why I still feel it. It happened so long ago." She rubbed her cheek against Ryel's chest, leaving a damp streak as if from a scuffed peach. "At first I didn't understand, not daring to believe that Garnos had used his Mastery to sacrifice his life for mine. When at last I comprehended, I wanted my heart to break. But it would not. And in the thousand years that have followed, not one day of any of them has gone by without some remembrance of Garnos, whether good or ill, in waking or sleeping.

  "As time passed I expected my youth to fade, but it never did; and after a century had passed I expected my death, but it never came. Another century passed; Markul had now several hundreds of citizens, and all the Builders save myself had been laid to rest in the jade citadel. I had become a learner and a teacher, revered for my breadth of lore; but those roles did not suit me. Often I would climb the death-tower to visit my old friends, remembering the glad early days when we were young together and the Art was new; often would I sit by the side of Garnos, who lay unchanged since the moment of his passing, his beauty still forceful in death—he had scarcely attained the age of forty when his Mastery failed mortally."

  As he listened, Ryel in memory once again looked upon the face of Riana's lover that in the eternal torchlight of the death-tower seemed to sleep, but not easily. Once again he admired and pitied that countenance of pure Almancarian grace, every lineament in harmony save for the faint contortion of the features wrought by agonizing death bravely borne. Hope born of consolation winged the wysard's thoughts. "Edris saved my life in the same way Garnos saved yours. Could not Garnos yet live in the Void?"

  Riana shook her head. "Edris' was a different Mastery. A far lesser one, although remarkably clever in its way. When you attempted the Crossing, Dagar was there lying in wait, ready to exile your rai to the Void and assume your form. But at the critical instant Edris exchanged his rai for yours, and Dagar never knew the difference until it was too late. Had Dagar not seized upon Edris' rai, believing it yours, your father would be dead indeed."

  Ryel swallowed dryness. "And if Edris had not appeared in that moment…" But memory quelled and warmed the creeping of his skin. "The Steppes saying is true. Blood indeed hearkens unto blood."

  "You are the son of your father, Ryel Mirai. Never so craggily rugged as he was, however; finer. Much finer." She came closer, tracing the muscles of his upper arm with an appraising forefinger. "Flex that for me." He complied, and she pleasurably explored the place where deltoid joined bicep. "Mm. One of my favorite spots." And she kissed it, grazing her tongue over the ridge before settling back again, fitting against his side as if poured there. "The Joining-Art might well cost you your life, as it did that of Garnos."

  "Let it." Ryel's reply had been immediate, and Riana nodded approvingly.

  "Good. That's what I wanted to hear. What I had to hear." She gazed up at him, quietly assessing. "I've lived a long time, long enough to outgrow strong emotions. The World has to be saved by someone who loves it. Someone young, with a life ahead of him. Someone not walled up in the mists of Markul, but out in the thick of things taking his chances. It actually matters to you whether or not certain people survive Dagar's depredations. I myself could not care less. You will return North to Hallagh because the life of Yvain Essern is important to you for several excellent and deeply-felt reasons: because you admire him, because he is your friend, because you are Swordbrothers, because you will not stand idly by and watch him burn to death—"

  The wysard stared at her, remembering that dream vision from what now seemed ages ago. "What do you mean, burn to death?"

&n
bsp; "That was the sentence passed upon him."

  "But for what cause?"

  "For his heresy. His stubborn allegiance to the goddess Argane, and denunciation of the Master."

  "But that can't—" Ryel became very still, feeling as if his blood was ebbing out of his body into the air. "How long have I been here with you?"

  "Six of your months."

  Angrily impatient with what seemed a mindless jest, the wysard shook his head. "That can't be. Six days, perhaps."

  "Months, brother. Months, I assure you."

  Suddenly the jungle air turned freezing cold. "But the World was in danger enough when I left it to find you. What has become of it since? What of—by every god, what of Dagar?"

  The One Immortal did not so much as blink at his tone's urgency. "Oh, nothing's gone so far that you should be distraught over it. Come with me and I'll show you."

  Riana led Ryel to another pavilion where another bed took up the middle of the room—no opulent couch swelling in silken magnificence, but a plain divan, unpillowed.

  "Lie with me, brother."

  He recoiled from her. "Riana, if you think—"

  She made an impatient little gesture. "Oh, not for lust this time, brother. Lie beside me, on your back."

  Together they stretched out on the bed. Looking up, Ryel saw that the ceiling was made up of a great single pane of glass, like a mirror save that it gave back no reflection.

  Riana took his hand. "This Glass sees not only what is, but what was and what will be. Now let us discover what has happened to the World during your absence. What would you view first?"

  He freed his hand from hers. "Almancar. The Diamond Heaven."

  The Glass shimmered and dissolved, revealing the House of Atlan lit not by gay lamps and moonlight, but the merciless glare of midday beating down through the temple's wrecked roof-beams. So hotly vivid was the radiance that Ryel blinked and winced. His recumbent body seemed weightless, drawn by the light, rising up to reach the Glass and pass through it.

  "I am there," he whispered.

  "In part you are," Riana answered softly.

  "But it's all…wrong. It can't be like this."

  The Goddess of Delight's glorious shrine had been sacked, desecrated, defiled. Its pillars were scrawled with coarse graffiti, its portals smashed. Ryel floated through the doors to find mutilated statues, torn hangings, fouled carpets. On Atlan's altar a votary sprawled obscenely dead. And off in the distance came a strange ugly roar like the humming of flesh flies.

  "This can't be," Ryel whispered.

  Riana's voice was cool. "Keep going."

  The wysard drifted down the great stairs giving onto the Diamond Heaven's Jewel Path; halted quivering and overwhelmed at the din and the horror. All up and down the once-beautiful pleasure district a rabble army raged, shattering windows, smashing buildings, plundering shops, raping and murdering in the open streets. And amid the despoiled and ravaged gardens of the Realm of Joy, a black-clad figure with hair like streaming blood stared down in silence, his bare hard arms folded across his chest as he smiled with equal contempt at both his disciples and their adversaries.

  "Michael," Ryel breathed.

  "Meschante," Riana coolly corrected him. "Meschante, with the Red Essern's looks and powers."

  "This can't be," Ryel whispered. "Show me my mother and my sister," he sharply commanded the Glass. In another moment and to his most extreme relief he beheld Mira and Nelora in one of the courtyards of the Eastern Palace, among flowers and fountains. As they talked he learned that they had been the Sovran's guests for some time, and were expecting a visit from Priamnor and Diara that evening. And he would gladly have made the Glass show him those other two so dearly remembered, but concerns more crucial forced him to refrain.

  "Hryeland," he said. "Hallagh. The Temple of the Master."

  The lush evening loveliness faded, metamorphosing to towering vaults. Now the wysard stood in Theofanu's temple among a congregation increased tenfold from the numbers he remembered, every face of it pallid with stupefaction, every eye staring in drugged trance as the witch wrought her vile mind-debauching magics; and now many worshippers were clad in the extravagant strange garb of the Servants, and like them wore their hair in a hundred strange fashions, weirdly cut and stiffened and colored. Every upturned visage bore the Master's mark, whether inked or tattooed or scarred. Amid the freakish rout Theofanu laughed in exultation, while Bradamaine sat like some gilded effigy, immobile in her flaunting encasement of jeweled gold-cloth, her face painted to garish harlotry, her cold eyes lost.

  Ryel made a violent gesture of dismissal. "Show me Yvain Essern."

  His surroundings shifted, becoming gray and cold. Stone walls enclosed him, barely visible by the rainy light of a mean little window set high up and heavily barred. In that dirty near-darkness a man was being tortured. Four young bullies in rich finery laughingly battered their chained victim, who bore the torment silently save when an elegant boot or embroidered gauntlet kicked or punched the breath from his body. He wore the uniform of the Hryeland cavalry, but stripped of insignia, ragged and stained. Ryel could not see his face, so ringed about he was. But at last one of the assailants caught the prisoner by the hair, pulling hard as he drew his dagger, and with a sawing slash hacked off a thick blood-red skein, hurling it in the captive's face with a mocking laugh.

  "That's the first cut, Redbane. Maybe once you're shorn hairless you'll be handsome."

  "Yvain," Ryel whispered, his throat tight as he looked upon that drained face with its blackened eyes. He recognized Roskerrek's attackers, too—Companions of the Domina, officers of the guard royal, women all of them. "Bitches," he hissed softly. Sick though the sight made him, he was glad to see Valrandin was not among that cruel gang.

  "They are rather rough, for ladies," Riana nonchalantly observed. "But heretics are seldom gently handled. Shall we continue? There's a great deal more."

  "No. One other place only." He drew a long steadying breath. "Markul," he said at last. "The funeral bier of my father."

  The Glass shimmered and dissolved at his word to yet colder darkness, still dank and stony but now absolutely silent. Gradually Ryel discerned faint light issuing from torches set along the walls, and the recumbent things they illumined.

  "Edris."

  He could see his father's form extended to its ungainly length on the porphyry slab, clad in dark robes and barefoot. As Ryel came closer to view the near-smiling face with its half-open eyes, he let out a relieved sigh.

  "You're still here. Still whole." And he would have reached out to touch one of the crossed hands, but knew he could not. "Soon, father," he whispered, his voice echoing down the chill corridors. "Soon, I promise you."

  He forced his disembodied self to close its eyes, break free of the Glass, assume humanity. Returned to Riana's bed, he at once got up from it. "You might have told me."

  "You were here to learn," the One Immortal blandly replied. "But I've neglected to impart to you a bit of information you may consider important. Would you care to hear it?"

  Somehow Ryel controlled his anger. "By all means enlighten me."

  "So far Theofanu has done Dagar's bidding in the North, and done it well. In the hour of Roskerrek's burning she will receive her reward: Dagar will choose that moment to enter her body and subsume it to his ends. For six months he has hovered in the North, drawing strength, and once given corporeal form he will exert that strength to its fullest. The aristocracy and its hangers-on have had their minds burnt to cinders by Theofanu's drugs, and Hallagh is on the brink of anarchy. Those most fit to rule never took part in Theofanu's rites, being too busily employed in matters of the mind, but they are just the ones the rabble will seek to destroy." She waved away a yawn. "So often it happens that way. The only difference now is that with Dagar in power, it will never change."

  Ryel listened first in consternation, then in Art-calmed acceptance. "I will do all I can to stop him."

  "I'll be watching in
my Glass," she replied. "I look forward to it."

  "Then I'll strive to be as entertaining as I can," Ryel replied, with irony as fierce as Edris'. "When is Yvain sentenced to death?"

  She lifted a teasing eyebrow. "Ah. Yvain, is it."

  "Tell me!"

  "Tomorrow, early in the afternoon."

  Ryel felt sweat bead up from his skin, covering him in rank mist. "Tomorrow."

  Riana nodded. "Which gives you enough time for a restful night's sleep—or whatever else you prefer—before you use the Mastery that will take you Northward. But you could stay longer, if you wished. I can draw out a day to a year."

  Ryel looked upon her bitterly. "Your days are overlong, my lady."

  She lay still, her dark eyes fixed upon her Glass, her face impassive. "Yes," she said at last, almost inaudibly, so that the wysard almost did not catch that sick tinge of weariness in her voice. "Many times I find them so."

  Chapter Twenty

  Some time afterward—Ryel did not know how long, only that the noonday sun had become dawn again—he was at long last dressed in his Steppes gear, armed and mounted, Jinn restless between his knees.

  "And now?"

  Riana, standing at his stirrup, laid her cheek against his thigh. "Now you show me what you've learned. What I taught you."