The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

by Carolyn Kephart

  Ryel cast a doubtful glance up at the sky, which could not be more brilliantly clear. "Do you think I'll succeed?"

  "That's not a question to ask me, brother. You either succeed, or die very badly. Very badly indeed." Smiling, she took a spray of jasmine from her hair, and twined it into Jinn's mane. "You won't be needing my horse anymore, you know. You have the power to fly, now—all by yourself."

  Ryel shook his head smiling. "People might ask questions if I did. And besides, I've grown very fond of Jinn. I'll keep her, if I may."

  She shrugged. "As you wish. Now go. Unlike me, you don't have forever."

  He bent to her lips, and she flung her soft cinnamon arms around his neck.

  "Until our next, Lord Ryel … if we have one." After a long spice-sweet kiss she let go of him, and stood away. "Now impress me."

  Tightening his knees' grip on Jinn, Ryel shut his eyes and lifted his face to the sun, giving all of his mind over to the Mastery of Translation. Very soon the brightness in his eyelids dulled and darkened, and he felt the air growing cold and rain-laden around him. He lifted his voice to the thunder, his arms to the sky; felt himself lifted clear of earth, up into blackness.

  *****

  Sour-throated and brain-reeling he opened his eyes, groaning at the effort it took, groaning again at the sight that confronted him. All around were streets staggering full of howling drunkards and shrieking lunatics, Ormalan disorder; but Ormala had no army, while this place was rife with redcoats keeping an eye on the chaos but making no move whatever to mitigate it. Only a moment before he had breathed sultry jungle, dense redolence of infinite green, strange fruit, voluptuous flowers; now the raw chill of overcast Northern air, the city's complexity of reek, stuck far down his gorge. Muffling Edris' cloak about him he shut his eyes, breathing slowly to compose his thoughts and adjust to the change.

  Jinn gave an indignant whinny, and Ryel started from meditation to see a redcoat soldier gripping the mare's reins with a dirty-gloved fist.

  "I've had an eye of you, outlander," the accosting sergeant said. "You're to come with me for questioning."

  The wysard twitched the reins from the soldier's hand. "And why should I?"

  "Because you answer the description."

  "I have no idea what you mean."

  "You'll learn. Now get down, or be pulled down."

  "None pulls me." His sickness forgotten and his Steppes blood up and ready, Ryel would have shoved the soldier away with a boot-sole to the chest, had not another man neither redcoat nor rioter timely interrupted.

  "Enough. I handle this." The newcomer, a black man of Zalla, assessed Ryel with scrutiny most balefully piercing; and although this man was dressed head to foot in spruce Northern clothes rather than half-naked in a length of silk, the wysard knew him at once as one of Theofanu's acolytes.

  "Look me in my eye," the Zallan said. "Only one look."

  Ryel gave back glare for glare, knowing what Theofanu's henchman sought. You won't find it, he thought. Not now.

  "Blue eyes," said the black man at last; and he sounded as if blue eyes were his eternal aversion. "Enough. Go now. No trouble."

  Relieved, Ryel pushed his edge. "What were you looking for?"

  "No matter. You are not him. Now go."

  Ryel persisted. "What is happening here? Folk seem mad."

  "Death," said the black man; it was a word he relished much, from the sound it had in his mouth. "Death long wished for, come at last."

  The wysard felt his heart stop. "Where is this death? And when?"

  "Grotherek Palace," Theofanu's servant all but purred, tilting a dark eye upward. "Soon." The eye descended, met Ryel's distastefully; but the face's grin was like stars in the night. "Maybe even now."

  Ryel no longer thought. His entire concentration gave itself over to compelling Jinn through the mob, helping her progress with blows, curses and Art-words indiscriminately heaped upon anyone fool enough to put himself in the way. The Art proved the best help, and after an endless agony of struggle the wysard found himself at Grotherek. Through the great gates of the palace Ryel could discern that in the central courtyard a scaffold had been erected, its platform spiked in the middle by a tall stake. Redcoats ringed the platform, their pikes and halberds at ready. More of their scarlet ilk guarded the palace gates, allowing in very few of those who clamored for admittance, and only then for exorbitant coin. Flinging a handful of Almancarian gold to the sentinels, Ryel urged Jinn through the gates as both redcoats and rabble groveled and fought for largesse so unlooked-for.

  Only titled and rich seemed to make up the spectators within Grotherek's gates, and here Ryel found at least a little elbow-room. Closest to the scaffold were the Servants of the Master, numbering hundreds; and they were wild with joy, their eyes glittering bright with desperate narcotics, their garments excessive beyond any dream of Almancar, their faces and even the backs of their hands marked with the Master's seal. Likewise nearby were coaches emblazoned with coats of arms, their occupants reveling within--all but one, unmarked and curtained, that several redcoats seemed to guard against harm.

  Insistent ink-stained fingers wrapped the wysard's ankle. "Why, Mr. Marai of Destimar, well met after many a day! Still keen on the sights of Hallagh, are you? This'll be a great one, I promise—let's drink to it."

  The wysard looked down on Thomas Dulard to find the poet more slovenly and besotted than ever, a sheaf of papers under one arm and a bottle of wine in the other, now proffered with a shaky hand. At Ryel's curt refusal Dulard shrugged, and quaffed for two.

  "Well, Mr. Marai, since you'll not drink, perhaps you'll show yourself a patron of the arts and buy one of my broadsheets. I swear I've penned my best in this—'Redbane's Goodnight' I call it, and can't count how many I've sold since this morning. It's made my fortune."

  "Tell me what has happened, and be quick."

  The bard gave an equine grin. "Vengeance at last. The Fellowship of the Sword has been adjudged a blasphemous cult dangerous to the true religion, and its members have been proscribed as heretics. Many have fled the realm, but enough have been jailed to give folk a pretty show this day. Redbane's to go first—they say that he was half afire as it was with his hair so flaming, but he'll burn for fair soon enough. My poem here tells the entire tale of his iniquity and sedition, if you'll but look—"

  "What of the Unseen?"

  Dulard all but whinnied in glee. "That silly old god? Most of its churches have been closed, or burnt, and its followers gone to ground—even Derain Meschante himself has fled the country, they say. Would you hear but a quatrain of my ballad? The tune's quite taking." Dulard cleared his voice to sing, but his first note came blurtingly, forced out by a sudden shove from behind that sent him tottering.

  "Peddle your doggerel arsewipes elsewhere, you scurvy inkpisser," came a dry but murderous voice at Dulard's back. The drunken bard reeled about, with pallid terror beheld Jorn Alleron, and at once oozed into the throng with a bob of his bad hat, helped by the captain's kick.

  Ryel dismounted and held out his hand, but Alleron was too distraught to take it. "I never thought to see you again, m'lord prince. But you've come too late if you came to help. Nothing can help him now. He's to burn, thanks to the Domina's madness."

  "What of the rest of the Fraternity's officers?"

  "They've been captured. Jailed. And they're to die next, after my lord."

  "Not one of them escaped?"

  "Theron and Payne got away, but not the others."

  "Why were you spared?"

  Alleron gave a mirthless laugh. "Because I'm of no importance. A mere commoner, not worth killing. But that's my luck this day, for there's one I must look after at my lord's asking. Come, I'll present you."

  He led the wysard to the curtained guarded coach, and rapped at the window. A woman finely dressed and heavily veiled lowered the glass, and at the sight of Ryel gave a cry, holding out a hand gloved to the elbow.

  "The Prince of Vrya!"

  Ryel
took the lady's hand and bowed over it. He could not recognize her voice, so choked it was and faint; and she observed his confusion.

  "Come in, and speak with me. Join us, Captain."

  The coach was spacious and comfortable, well-warmed by a fire of coals burning in an iron box; a basket held a rich variety of provisions as yet untouched. But the lady was not there for her amusement, as was clear from her expression, and her body's evident unease despite the coach's deep cushions.

  "We are sadly met this time, Ryel Mirai," she said, now with more composure. "But I hope you'll know me once more, altered though I am." And with those words she threw back her veil.

  He knew not her, but her memory. The arrogant wild hoyden had become a beautiful woman in the worst distress ever held in check by proudest strength, ashen pale but icy calm.

  Gabriel Valrandin read all the questions in Ryel's face. "You marvel at me, and no wonder. I have astonished myself often and often in the past year. But before we speak further, let me offer you a cup of wine and somewhat to eat--and you as well, Jorn, that have watched with me here since dawn."

  Ryel declined, as did Alleron. "I've small stomach for food, m'lady," the captain replied. "But you require looking after." And over her protests he poured her a glass of cordial and readied her a plate delicately arrayed with the basket's best things. For himself he took nothing, but produced a silver flask from his pocket and from it poured a stream of frangin into two goblets, handing one to the wysard.

  "To better times than this," he said, emptying his glass with brusque dispatch. "You and the prince have matters to talk of, my lady--and I have your sentries to keep in order. I'll be within call."

  When the equerry had left, Ryel too pledged Valrandin. "Good fortune guard you, Countess," he said. "I never thought to see you here."

  "Fortune." She shook her head, and made a face he remembered from other days. "Name not that whore to me, Ryel Mirai." She set aside her untouched plate; she had taken off her long gloves, but underneath were others, fingerless and somewhat shorter but still wrist-concealing. Her fingers quivered and clenched. "I should still be angry with you for leaving me in the lurch that day Redbane ruined me. But up until that time you had been a friend to me, and I am in great need of friends now."

  "Allow me to prove myself one, Countess."

  "I'd welcome that. The Domina no longer knows me thanks to Theofanu's wiles, and the Companions have all despised and forsaken me because of Roskerrek; and now Yvain is to die today, and terribly. Hard calamities, mine; but I'm damned if I'll let that witch Theofanu see me weep for them." And indeed although her voice was faint and broken and her cheeks colorless, not a tear flickered in her hazel eyes, heavy-lidded and weary though they were. "I miss Bradamaine."

  "But is she not responsible for the Count Palatine's captivity?"

  "No. Theofanu rules, now; and at Theofanu's pleasure Yvain was taken prisoner a month ago and stripped of his generalship, despite the outcry of the ranks. Yes, outcry--for your cure transformed him, Ryel Mirai, taking away the pain that had oppressed and disguised him all his life." She paused awhile. "He is so different now. So…kind." She bit her lip, and her eyelids quivered until she shut them hard.

  "I will help you in any way I can," Ryel said, his admiration even stronger than his pity. "But tell me how…" He hesitated, not quite knowing how to frame his next words.

  Valrandin shrugged, and took up her little tumbler of cordial. "I know what you're thinking, and you're mad to think it. Yvain Essern and I have yet to share a bed, and I doubt we ever will. But since that fight of ours I've been under his protection, which I'm in need of now that I can no longer wield a blade, and have always had rather too many enemies." She held up her right arm. "You remember, doubtless. It has never really mended."

  "Let me see." Gently the wysard drew the glove from Valrandin's right hand, and examined the deformed and discolored wrist with aching regret. "I had thought this would be healed by now."

  "It never will. I'm used to that."

  "It makes you suffer.”

  "Only when I lift anything heavier than a book--and I’ve lifted many a one of them the past half-year, thanks to Yvain. He undertook my education, seeing that I needed pastime. I’m growing so learned I scarce recognize myself--history, pictures, maps…why, I can even strum a few notes on the harpischord, now. But I've small taste for reading lately, as you might guess."

  "You're worn out, Gabriel, and unwell. This is no place for you."

  "I'm here not for Yvain's death, but his life. Bradamaine will soon appear at her window above the courtyard, and I'll make her look upon me and remember what used to be between us. And surely at the sight of Yvain she cannot choose but recall his loyalty and love, to which she owed her power. Theofanu may be strong, but she is not Domina of Hryeland; she dares not gainsay Bradamaine's wishes." A spark of her old fire made her glance askance at the wysard. "My lord prince, you toy strangely with my hand."

  "Forgive me." With a final caress Ryel replaced Valrandin's glove. "I hope it will cause you no more trouble."

  "Hope. What an empty word that is." She was silent awhile, and when she spoke her voice was strangely distant. "Yvain once told me that when he was a boy, his sickness was very strong upon him, and he often had attacks of fever in which he dreamed he was burning alive; he would wake up shrieking, rousing all the house. Nothing, he said, equaled the horror and the agony of those nightmares; and there could be nothing more dreadful, he thought, than to be burnt to death. Nothing more cruel. I remember the cold sweat that crept over him as he spoke of it, he that fears nothing on earth; and I held him close until he warmed again, saying that he need never dream that way any more, that it was over, that he was safe..."

  The crowd's sudden uproar made her break off with a curse. Throwing open the coach door she leapt out, Ryel following. Clutching the wysard's arm, Valrandin drew him to the edge of the cordon. "Look. Look where Bradamaine comes, prisoner to that vile hag."

  Every eye turned toward the palace, where the Domina and her favorite had just appeared on the great balcony overlooking the courtyard. The Northern queen leaned strengthless upon the Ormalan witch, her pale blue eyes dulled to blank gray in a face painted to garish inhumanity. But the little yellow sorceress was all vivacity and smiles, her fierce teeth flashing in satisfaction as she gazed down at the scaffold and its stake, then at her congregation who hailed her with wild shouts. Both she and the Domina were swathed in gowns of gold-cloth, and in an ill-advised imitation of her tyranness, Bradamaine's moon-colored hair had been skinned back in a tight knob that made her drug-drawn raddled face stranger yet.

  The wysard grimaced at the sight. "By every god."

  Alleron, who stood at the wysard's other side, bitterly shook his head. "Only one, now. And nothing will please it but my lord's blood."

  An even greater shout now went up among the crowd. Turning to the noise, Ryel saw that the Domina's Companions were with much jeering roughness dragging a man up the scaffold's stairs—a tall man, with skin white as ice. In the raw cold he was half-naked, clad in black cavalry gear only from the waist downward, and his body was wasted and gaunt with starvation. Dark bruises marked his ribs and breast, while his back had been scourged raw. All his hair had been shorn off cruelly with many cuts to the scalp, and his face was disfigured with blows. At the sight of him Ryel felt his own face freeze hard, save for his searing eyes.

  "You bitches," Valrandin hissed. There was murder in her eyes as she looked upon her former friends, murder mingled with hot tears. "You heartless sluts, I'll make you sorry for this."

  "Ah, Yvain," Alleron whispered, his voice breaking. "Yvain…"

  As if he heard, Roskerrek straightened to stand at his full height, and looked out over the jeering crowd. Iron chains manacled his wrists and ankles, but he seemed not to feel them now. His blackened eyes found Alleron, and the faintest smile moved in his crushed lips, though nowhere else on his face, and he bowed slightly in salute. Valrandin
he next discerned, with a tenderness and regret far stronger than the emotion he had shown that rain-gray afternoon when she lay destroyed and helpless in his bed. The mocking jostling world had fallen away from him, and he no more than blinked when a Servant-flung stone struck his whip-rent shoulder. Lifting his enchained arms, he held them out to Valrandin and slowly crossed them over his heart, as if gathering her into an embrace. Long did he gaze on her thus; but then he turned away to face Bradamaine's window, ever with his arms crossed, and Ryel remembered the Temple of the Sword. Colder and more insensible than any statue the Domina stared down at him, oblivious to that adoration.

  Valrandin clenched her fists. "How can she be so cruel? Bradamaine, look at me! Bradamaine!"

  Her wild shout carried to the balcony, and seemed to shock the Domina back into life again, for she blinked with recognition at the sound, and eagerly would have turned to it; but Theofanu clutched her arm and hissed something in her ear, her sharp teeth gnashing in a spell. At once Bradamaine became even more blankly impassive, helplessly enslaved to the Ormalan witch.

  Theofanu looked over the crowd, and discovered Ryel. Time seemed to unloosen and ebb as her eyes narrowed and blackened, and the raw air thickened like molten lead as a voice slithered snakelike into the wysard's brain.

  So, young blood. I knew you wouldn't want to miss the fun. Where have you hidden yourself the last half-year?

  Steadily despite his loathing Ryel looked into those empty eyes, and answered in his thoughts. "This won't work, Dagar."

  You think not? the voice crooned. Stop it if you can. But I'd much rather you didn't. It's been so long since I burnt anyone alive, and I'm so looking forward to it.

  "The flames will never light. I'll make sure they don't."

  Dagar laughed in a sharp flashing of teeth.

  You'll do nothing, beauty. I'm ahead of you, everywhere. Knowing that you'd very probably come here, I set awork spells to counter yours. The fire will burn, believe me; burn brilliantly. All you can do is watch, young blood. But don't think this diversion detracts from my true purpose. This madwoman's body doesn't suit me, not at all, and you've been foolish enough to keep me from Michael. That leaves you. And I'll have you, beauty. I'll have you. All the clever things in the bitch Riana's little book I read, and remember.