Restoration

by Carol Berg

  Ezzaria. He had fallen in love with my homeland. His voice trailed away, and I took up the story for the moment, reciting eagerly as for a well-loved schoolmaster. “You helped the people tend the forest. Taught them how to live in it, how to nurture it and love it as you did. And eventually you met a human woman, fell in love with her, and she bore you a child.”

  Nyel laughed, but without mirth. “You learned your lessons well. Yes. That all happened. But I was never jealous of the boy. I was elated. All Madonai rejoiced. When they learned that I had produced a child after only a short time mated, others sought partners among the humans. Men who had produced a Madonai child could also father a half-human child. A Madonai woman who had seen her only babe grown long years before, could have three more if she mated with a human man. And the children were so beautiful and marvelous ... we called them ‘rekkonarre’ ...”

  “Children of joy,” I said. Rekkonarre ... rai-kirah ... I wanted him to stop there. To let me savor the revelation, the answer to the puzzle of my people’s origin, the bits and pieces of truth that I had seen, now snapped into their proper positions within the mosaic of history. “They could shapeshift,” I said. “These children had power something like that of Madonai.”

  “Greater in some ways,” said Nyel as we climbed a narrow track that led from the grassy slope up onto the rocky face of the mountainside behind the castle. “They lived in both worlds easily. Indeed they needed to spend time in both worlds, for their nature was of both. They could have many children of their own, and they aged more slowly than the humans, though much faster than we did. We grieved sorely to think we might see them die.”

  We walked faster as he told the story, up the track that grew steeper and narrower as we climbed, the land falling away to one side. “But something else happened. Something terrible. My own people began to die, far, far earlier than should have been their time. Those who stayed too long in the human world grew weaker until they could not breathe, as if something had drawn the heart from them. We tried to find the cause—some disease, we thought. But it was not disease ... not as you think of it. We discovered that those who died soonest were those of our people who had produced many children with their human partners. The more children, the sooner the Madonai parent faded.”

  And so it came. The reason for everything.

  “I had risen high within our ranks, and I told the others of what I had learned. We had to stop, I said, or we would extinguish our race. No one would listen. No one wished to hear that our joy was killing us.”

  We had reached a ledge and could go no farther. A sheer cliff rose behind us, soaring skyward to the rocky peak, and before us was a precipitous drop to the palace ramparts. Nyel was breathing hard. I stood beside him and gazed on the green country in the distance, bathed in waking sunlight. A sheet of water shimmered on a distant plain. Nearer to hand was the walled shelf of green that was Nyel’s prison, the precipice beyond the wall, and far below, at the mountain’s foot, a ribbon of pale green and brilliant yellow. Gamarand trees—trees with twin yellow trunks that twined about each other like lovers. Denas had told me that the gamarand wood was a holy place to those who lived in Kir‘-Navarrin, that it somehow helped to protect them from the danger imprisoned in Tyrrad Nor.

  “I tried to barricade the way to the human world,” said Nyel. “That was my crime. I said we had to leave our mates, abandon our children with their human kin, and destroy the passages between us, before we destroyed ourselves. I begged them to heed me, to let me save them.” He threw a rock into the vast nothing that surrounded us. “Some agreed with me. Most did not. They called me murderer, monster, child-slayer, for we could see that our children needed the life of both worlds to survive. The argument was long and terrible. I lost.”

  “And from your prison, you watched your people die.”

  The wind I could not feel caught Nyel’s green cloak and whipped it about his tall form. “One who is not Madonai cannot comprehend the bond we shared. Through all those years I felt their joys and sorrows, and every time one of them died, a part of me died as well.” He folded his arms tightly across his chest. “By the time of their fearful prophecy, our children’s children had forgotten their own history. They called the Madonai ‘gods’ or ’myths,‘ and remembered only that the prisoner in the fortress was anathema. Frightened by their seeings, they destroyed themselves, left this land, and closed the way back, not knowing the price they would pay when trapped with their folly in the human world. Is it not a wicked irony?”

  But he could not be as innocent as his story claimed. “Yet you invade our dreams and cause upheaval,” I said. “You have used the rai-kirah—the demons—goaded them to torment the world. In your name Tasgeddyr, the Lord of Demons, tried to take power in the human world. Perhaps you want to avenge yourself on the descendants who caused the death of your people. How can I possibly let you go free?”

  “How could I wish to destroy our children? Your race—the rekkonarre—is all that is left of my own. Besides, you have done worse to yourselves than I ever could have done. What need have I for vengeance?” Nyel started down the path.

  But Ezzarians were not the ones he hated. “It’s humans, isn’t it?” I called after him. “Not the rai-kirah who are the ‘Madonai’ part of us nor the Ezzarians who should properly be joined with them—your children. It’s humans you despise.”

  His expression was everything of disgust as he shouted back at me. “Yes. I freely confess it. Humans twist and destroy and ruin everything they touch; they slaughter each other like maddened beasts. I curse the day I walked into their world. But you needn’t worry about them, either.” He shrugged his shoulders and started walking again, slower this time, allowing me to catch up. “Their own violence and disharmony cause the upheavals you lay at my feet. You, of all the rekkonarre, have lived in their world and seen their cruelties.”

  “The human world is my world. How can you expect me to release one who threatens the very people I have spent my life protecting?”

  “Humans are a disease; eventually they will kill themselves. I have no need to hurry it along. I wish only to walk in woodlands and sit beside rivers, to listen to songs of noble deeds, to speak with people who speak back to me of matters other than what fruit I want for supper. I will not apologize for what I have done to gain my freedom. If you have doubts, so be it. I will die here.”

  We walked quickly and silently down the path, as if hurrying to some final destination now that the story was told. Yet I wanted to linger awhile, to consider his tale, to find the flaws in it ... to find a solution. The boundaries of his prison were so narrow, and the wide and lovely lands beyond, so close as to almost touch them, were empty of everyone he had known and loved. Perhaps it was better to be captive in the dark pits of the Gastai or the slave houses of the Derzhi, where you could not see so vividly what you had lost.

  “What do you know of my life, Nyel?”

  He stopped in the garden, hesitating before he spoke. “I touched your mind as you lay dying. I cannot read your thoughts, but a dying man’s visions give a fair image of his life.”

  “Then you know that when I was a slave, I despised humans as much as you do, even though I believed myself one of them.”

  “Yes. I saw it. That’s why I thought you might understand.”

  “But I learned that even in a heart that seems irredeemable, there are wonders ...” I told him briefly of Aleksander and our journey together.

  And though Nyel listened patiently to my tale, when I was done, he expressed only contempt. “Of all things I have seen in you, this one I cannot fathom. Your regard for this human weakling ... crude, bestial... it is inexplicable. You are a rekkonarre, a child of the Madonai, of so much more worth than any sniveling human beast. You claim he has a grand destiny, yet there is no destiny that is not better filled by the least of our blood than by any human. Come to Kir‘Navarrin in your own form. Walk this land that is ours and feel the power that flows in your veins. Your birth
right. Then stand before me and tell me of human destiny.”

  “Their power is different from ours,” I said. “I want to make you see it.”

  We had come full circle on our journey. Nyel stood at the top of the palace steps, and I stood on the white gravel path below. “So you will come here again?” he said.

  I wondered he did not know the answer already, so strong was my desire. “We need to finish our game,” I said, bowing ever so slightly. I told myself it was not in deference, but only in respect for age and grief.

  For the first time since I had stepped into Tyrrad Nor, Nyel smiled... and he was transformed. For a single, marvelous instant, I glimpsed a lord of the Madonai, tall, dark-haired, commanding, melydda shimmering, singing in the air about him. His physical beauty was matched only by that which dwelt in his dark eyes, the deep, clear eyes that held everything of wisdom, everything of power, everything of kindness and joy. I sank to one knee and dropped my gaze. One might easily mistake such a being for a god.

  I waked from my visioning clearheaded, hungry, and alone. When I staggered into the blazing sunlight, wobbly from the slender rations and stiff from inactivity, Aleksander and Sovari and the two old women paused their activities as if I were an apparition that might well strike them down where they stood. I waved. “I’m all right,” I called. “Everything is all right.”

  Though Aleksander mentioned no less than three times in that first hour that I seemed more at ease than I had been since my arrival in Zhagad, and though he waggled his eyebrows in invitation, I held Nyel and his strange story close. To discuss such things in glaring daylight or to speculate upon their meanings in casual conversation seemed somehow profane. I volunteered only that the siffaru had yielded visions that were quite unexpected and that I needed to think about them. But I agreed that I felt more balanced for having ventured on this journey. Indeed, for the first time in months, I felt hopeful.

  The prisoner of Tyrrad Nor was very dangerous. Though not yet able to number his talents, I was not blind to his power; he could touch my dreams. Yet long before I had learned the truth of the rai-kirah, my people had believed that killing a demon would diminish the universe. When a Warden fought a demon battle, his first aim was to banish the rai-kirah from the possessed soul, to prevent it doing harm, not to kill it. Even my brief glimpse of Nyel’s glory told me that his death would be an immeasurable loss—knowledge, beauty, and power that could never be replaced. Every event of my life had led me to this point, shaped me into one who might understand this strange and magnificent being, and I refused to believe that it was only coincidence. As soon as Aleksander was safe, I would venture the passage to Kir‘Navarrin. To prevent Nyel from flaying the world with his hatred, I would need either to heal him of it or kill him. Yes, I would be wary, but I hoped ... prayed ... that I could heal him.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Tomorrow,” said Aleksander, hobbling over to where I sat stuffing myself with a second roasted chukar and a fistful of dates. “Tomorrow we ride for Karn‘Hegeth. Kiril sent word that the First Lord of the Mardek is willing to give me audience. ’Willing’ ... insolent bastard.”

  “The Mardek are not of the Twenty,” I said through a mouthful of tough, stringy fowl. My stomach rumbled in pleasure.

  Aleksander’s healing had progressed rapidly while I was in the cave—a span of three weeks, I discovered. By the time I emerged, the Prince was already forcing himself up and down the dusty paths of Drafa on crutches Sovari had fashioned from the wood poles of his litter. Malver had arrived with the riding boot on the day after my return. The heavy boot, soaked and shrunk as the maker instructed, fit closely about Aleksander’s leg and thigh. Sturdy laces allowed it to be put on and off when required, and the steel rods built into it kept his limb straight and stretched for proper healing. Sovari had brought new horses from Kiril, and after two weeks of wearing the boot and a few days of riding practice, Aleksander was ready to bid farewell to Drafa. On the next morning we were to set out to raise support for a bid to reclaim his throne.

  “None of the Twenty will hear me.” Aleksander leaned against the broken wall, used a crutch to bat aside several bags of clothes, weapons, and foodstuffs, and lowered himself awkwardly to the sand, settling his back against the wall. “I’m left to build an army of weaklings.”

  “Powerlessness will be your strength.” Though the sun had long set over the dunes, the night was changed when Qeb joined our conversation so suddenly. The hard-edged starlight took on a softer glow, the sky grew muddled like an ink-scribed page when water is spilled on it, and the air fell still, as if the wind had withdrawn deep into the dunes. The boy stepped from the nagera grove, the silver hoops of his earrings catching the light of our small fire.

  “Powerlessness will be my death,” said Aleksander, aiming his knife and his attention at the remaining chukar. “If I march on Zhagad with a straggling legion of minor houses, I’ll be spitted like this damned bird, and my father’s cousin will have his pleasure with my entrails.”

  “You will find no kingdom in Zhagad,” said the boy, his voice resonating with authority beyond his years. “The Empire of the Lion Throne is rotted. Diseased.” The rings that banded his outstretched arm and fingers pointed into the dunes of Srif Anar like a silver arrow.

  Aleksander paused in his activity and stared at the youth. “So I am to be emperor of nothing? Is this some ‘seeing’ of yours?”

  “A worthy warrior must strip himself bare before he rides into battle, yield those things of most value. A worthy king must be willing to slice off a portion of his own flesh, destroy it, though it be his very heart.”

  The Prince shrugged and resumed carving off a portion of the roasted chukar. “It seems I am to be mutilated no matter which direction I choose. So forgive me if I pursue my own plans instead of yours.”

  “My lord ...” I wanted to tell him to heed the boy, who knew more of his business than one might suppose. But if I chided Aleksander to give credence to Qeb’s pronouncements, then the Prince could rightly ask what Gaspar had told me on a dark afternoon beside Drafa’s muddy spring. I didn’t want to think of that. I had buried the old man’s ramblings beneath my newfound hopes, reasoned them away by telling myself that everything had changed when I had faced my enemy. So with only moderate twinges of guilt, I kept silent while Aleksander continued his scornful grumbling.

  In the cool hour before dawn, we took our leave of Drafa. The two old women saw us off with prayers and admonitions, patting our ankles and giving us instructions for Aleksander’s continued care. When they were done, Aleksander bent down, and into Sarya’s hand he placed a small bundle, tied with a strip of gold-embroidered cloth cut from his ragged white cloak. “Na salé vinkaye viterre,” he said. Salt gives life its flavor. The custom was as old as the Derzhi, and even Manot beamed. I looked back as we rode away. Qeb stood beside the fallen lion at the top of the rise, the wind shifting his shining braids as his ruined eyes stared into the empty desert.

  One of life’s truest pleasures is to watch a person do what he or she was born to do—to observe a fine sword maker fold and shape hot steel, to watch a skilled harp player brush her fingers on bare strings and birth a heart-stirring melody, to gape as an artist lays down three strokes with a bit of charcoal and makes a bird take wing. Aleksander was born to ride horses.

  “Damned plow horse,” grumbled the Prince as he shifted his weight yet again on the balky chestnut, trying to accommodate the stiff boot that had his leg sticking out to one side, iron straight save for a slight flexure at the knee. “How in Athos’ name does Kiril expect me to command respect, riding a beast with a head like a brick and legs like posts? Bad enough that I’m locked in this cursed leg trap.” Neither Prince nor horse ever looked anything but miserable when Malver helped Aleksander get his leather-bound limb across the beast’s back. Once in the saddle, Aleksander would curse and swear how it was impossible to command any horse properly one-sided. Yet on this morning some seventeen days after leaving Dra
fa, as on every morning of our journey, I watched the Prince lean forward to speak to the beast, lay his hands on its thick neck and his right knee on its barrel-shaped flank, imposing his discipline like a lute player tuning his instrument. In that moment, man and horse became one.

  Sovari grinned, his teeth white in his sunburned face. A smile was just detectable beneath Malver’s stolid demeanor. The three Derzhi wheeled their mounts, gave a whoop, and raced across the dunes of Srif Anar against the fire-shot sky. I sighed and abandoned our resting place at a traveler’s well, resigned to another endless day of starting and stopping as we journeyed westward across the desert toward Karn‘Hegeth and a meeting with the First Lord of the Mardek.

  The Mardek were a minor house who had but a single claim to honor in the Empire. A lord of the Mardek was always the First Dennissar of the Imperial Treasury, overseeing local tax collections in the city of Zhagad itself and certain special levies for the Emperor’s wars and pleasures. Although such administrative positions were mundane for a warrior people, this one was potentially quite profitable. There were always bribes to be had, collection fees to be assessed—and deposited in one’s own treasury—and judgments to be rendered that could cause pain and annoyance in more powerful houses. But the Mardek prided themselves—and pride was almost as significant a part of the Derzhi character as battle experience—on their ethical purity. In more than a hundred and twenty years, no Mardek official had ever been known to enrich his own coffers with illicit gains, accept a bribe for delaying collections or reducing levies, or render judgments that were anything but strictly in the Emperor’s interest. But in the first week of Edik’s ascension, the office had been snatched away and given to one Yagneti zha Juran, a dissolute brother-in-law of Leonid zha Hamrasch. Kiril had reported that the Mardek were ripe for rebellion. Honorable rebellion, of course.