by Carol Berg
The Princess’s face was scribed with all the ferocity and determination of her Derzhi ancestors. As I returned to my trailing position, Catrin slowed, matching her horse’s pace to mine. “He’s the one Fiona told us of,” she said quietly, nodding at Blaise. “The one born ... possessed?”
“Yes.” Catrin’s scarcely suppressed discomfort erased the remembered warmth of her greeting. I released the tight hold I had maintained on my demon eyes since recognizing her, exposing the blue fire behind their normal black coloring, lest somehow she had deluded herself into believing that I’d not done the deed for which she had condemned me. “He’s been demon-joined since birth,” I said, “a good and honorable man who is a throwback to what our race is meant to be. The enchantment you feel from him is saving our lives.” The words came out harsher than I intended.
“Give me a little time, Seyonne. I’m trying to understand.” She held her reins stiffly. After one uneasy glance at my face, she kept her eyes fixed on Lydia’s back.
“What are you doing in Zhagad?” I asked, ready neither to apologize nor to forgive as yet.
“Seeking you and Fiona,” she said. “The only place I knew to start was with Prince Aleksander. When I heard the stories of the winged rescuer, I knew you must be with him, but, of course, that didn’t help me find you. So I sought out the Princess and used the ‘foreign friend’ ruse to get in to see her. After speaking to her for a little while, learning what kind of woman she is, I believed the Prince could not abandon her forever. Sticking close seemed my only hope. They’re well suited, aren’t they?”
Catrin had traveled with Aleksander and me on the journey to Parnifour and our confrontation with the Lord of Demons. Taking over her grandfather’s role as my mentor, she had worked doggedly to help me prepare for my part in that battle. I owed her an open mind at least.
“Theirs is a match designed by the gods,” I said.
“All this business of chastising her in Zhagad, taking a new wife ... he’s trying to protect her.”
“Yes.”
We halted soon after this. Lydia was sagging with exhaustion, and for a while I was afraid we mightn’t be able to get her off the horse. “Monstrous, clumsy cow,” she said as Blaise and Catrin helped lower her to the ground beside the tarbush fire I had blazing. “I’ve won every horse race I’ve ever ridden, and now an hour’s plodding has me weak as a new-dropped foal.”
“We’ll get you something to eat, my lady,” said Catrin, wrapping a cloak about the Princess’s shoulders. “You’ll feel better after that.”
“If I could just have some nazrheel, I’d be better,” said Lydia. “Give me the things to make it so I don’t have to get up again, then you can go off with Seyonne. All these months you’ve been so anxious to speak with him.”
“I’ll take care of the lady,” said Blaise, looking more himself now we had stopped. “You two go on, if you like.”
I stood up and immediately felt three pairs of eyes staring at me. My shirt was stiff with the stalker’s blood. My right hand and wrist were covered with it. I hadn’t even noticed.
“You caught my signal, then,” said Blaise, breaking the awkward silence. “I thought the man was up to no good. Are you injured?”
“I’m fine,” I said. I wasn’t going to explain myself for protecting them. “Catrin, do you want to walk or not?”
Catrin rose and looked from me to Blaise. The outlaw bowed to the Princess and handed her a waterskin to hold. “My name is Blaise, madam ...” He began to pull supplies from a small pack.
And so Catrin and I were left to walk out the knots in our legs ... and those in our long friendship. I felt her start to speak several times as we walked away from the cheery fire and into the starlit dunes. But she couldn’t seem to manage it.
“You needn’t be afraid of me,” I said at last. “I’m not looking for revenge, and, although I have one living inside me, I am not a demon. Everything Fiona told you—about our history, about the demon world, about the sundering when our ancestors split our souls apart—it’s all true. But I didn’t kill Tegyr or—”
“Seyonne, Ysanne is dead.”
I shook my head as if she had spoken a question instead of an answer. Those words did not fit together. I walked on, up a steep-sided mountain of sand that pulled at my knees and ankles.
Catrin trudged doggedly beside me, taking two steps for every one of mine. “She was partnering with Hueil, a student of Gryf fin’s who had come along amazingly well and passed his testing some three months before. We’d lost so many others, and Ysanne was determined we’d not lose Hueil, so she would let no other Aife weave for him. We don’t know whether Hueil was taken captive, or injured in the combat, or if he would not or could not yield the fight and get out, but Ysanne didn’t close the portal. She held more than three days. Hueil never came back, and Ysanne never woke.”
My feet kept moving. My blood kept flowing. My lungs kept squeezing air in and out. But everything else in the world slowed to a halt. Ysanne. Dead. Up and up the towering dune, slogging through cascading sand, unable to speak, unable to think of what the words meant, as if the sand were seeping in through my eyes and ears and pores, as if it were filling my stomach and my lungs, clogging my mind, drowning me. I stumbled to the crest and stared out upon the vastness of the desert. Empty. The world was empty. A giant’s fist squeezed my chest, but I could not cry out nor could I weep. The sand robbed me of breath and tears.
Only after a long while standing in the cold night wind did I become aware of Catrin standing beside me, unmindful of the gusts that whipped her dark hair about her face. “For the first few months after Dasiet Homol, the demons were quiet,” she said. “Some of us whispered that perhaps Fiona had been right. Perhaps the demons didn’t need human souls anymore. No one dared speak your name. Ysanne would not allow it. She was pursuing corruption with a vengeance, as if to ease her own soul of what we had done to you ... to justify it. Many began to bridle at her harshness. But then, a few months ago, Searchers began sending stories of new demon possessions, worse than anything we had seen in years—dreadful deeds, virulent madness, horrors in line with our worst experience.”
Catrin’s tale forced my paralyzed mind to engage. Demon possession should have ended with the move to Kir‘Navarrin. That was one reason for opening the gateway ... so the rai-kirah could reclaim a semblance of life and not have to send the hunters into human souls to harvest what they could of physical sensation and memory. Unless ... A few of the demons had been left behind in Kir’Vagonoth. The mad ones. The cruel and vicious Gastai hunters who had held me captive for eight months, tormenting my mind and body to the brink of ruin. A few of the other rai-kirah had stayed behind to guard the mad ones, until those who passed into Kir‘Navarrin could discover how to heal their cruel brothers. What if the mad Gastai had gotten loose to hunt again?
Catrin urged me to sit down. Bereft of will, I obeyed her, and she settled beside me, pulling her brown cloak tight against the chill. “The hiatus had given us time to bring on a few of the student Wardens faster, and so when the messages began to come from the Searchers, we believed we were as ready as we could be. But the fighting was terrible. For the first month, the young Wardens were forced to withdraw from every conflict. At the same time we began to lose Searchers, Comforters, and messengers, more than fifty—almost everyone we’ve sent into the world. Then we started losing Wardens, too. Their Aifes said they didn’t die.”
“Taken captive,” I said numbly. “Fallen into the abyss. Gods have mercy ...” The agonies of my captivity in the pits of the Gastai still haunted my memory. Now other Wardens were being forced to endure the horror I had known, but without my experience, without the glimmer of truth I had possessed, without the elusive hope of escape that Fiona’s faithful vigil had provided me. “How many lost?” Dread settled on my shoulders like an iron yoke.
“All of them, Seyonne. Three captive. Two more severely wounded. Two dead. Two Aifes dead before Ysanne, one left possess
ed. Each part is bad enough, but if you step back and look on the whole, matters are much worse. As near as I can estimate, all of it happened at the same time: the Emperor’s murder ... and the new demon assault... the collapse of the Empire ... our Searchers dead and the Aifes, and the Wardens dead or captive. Do you understand, Seyonne? Ezzaria is in shambles, and everything we have feared is coming to pass. We’ve lost the demon war.”
The demon war lost ... Unthinkable. And the Empire ... Ezzaria ... Ysanne ... “Why in the name of the gods have you come to me?” I said. “You must think this is my doing.” What else could they believe?
“I cannot ignore that possibility. And, yes, I am afraid of what you’ve become.” Catrin put her hand on my chin, pulled my face toward her, and forced me to look at her. “But whatever you are, I also believe that the soul I know as Seyonne yet lives. You’ve not asked me the names of the young Wardens taken captive.”
“The names?” I could not imagine what she was thinking. What would it matter?
“Hueil, Olwydd ... and Drych.”
“Drych!” The name split the night like a flashing sword. “He survived ...” By the end of the day I had opened the gateway to Kir‘Navarrin, the young Warden, my own student, had been the only living witness to my deeds. But he had been too injured to give testimony, and so my wife, the Queen, had condemned me to die.
“Yes.” Catrin’s dark eyes filled with tears, rare for this woman of determination and duty. “For days after your escape he lay near death, and insensible for weeks more. But when he woke at last, he told me everything about that battle. How you warned him about Merryt and saved his life. How you tried so desperately to save the others. We thought the demon had corrupted you, made you kill your own brother Wardens, and all the time you were trying to save them and us. Oh, Verdonne’s child, Seyonne, you saved us all, and we came near killing you for it.”
“Did Ysanne know?” The hope flared like a last spark in the ashes.
Catrin shook her head. “She would not have listened, and Drych would have been judged corrupt and shunned or exiled. I advised him to keep silent until the time was right. I’m so sorry.”
But the right time had never come, and so Ysanne had died believing me her enemy, believing that my corruption had unleashed this terror on the world. Catrin was unsure of me even yet. What if they were right?
My friend and mentor took my hands. “We need you to tell us what to do, Seyonne. You and Fiona. Ysanne never named another kafydda, which leaves Fiona as our rightful Queen. After Ysanne died, Drych testified before the Council. Some believed him. Some didn’t. But we gathered enough support that the others in the Council have sent me to find Fiona and bring her home. I took it on myself to find you as well.”
“Blaise can fetch Fiona,” I said, wrapping my arms about myself against the cold. “And I’ll go for Drych and the others. I won’t leave them there.” Not in the abyss of Kir‘Vagonoth. But before I could risk that dangerous journey, I had to take the other. First to pass through the gateway into Kir’Navarrin and wrestle my demon, and then to face the prisoner of Tyrrad Nor and find out what, in the name of the gods, I had done.
CHAPTER 26
We arrived at Taíne Keddar in early morning. Though Blaise had worked hard to take us the shortest possible route, our frequent stops for Lydia to rest prolonged our journey through the night. Blaise, his face lined with fatigue, was slumped in the saddle as we crested the last steep rise to the rim of the valley. “A thousand paces down that way,” he said, nodding his head down the track and clearly reaching deep for the words. “Two boulders the size of a house. Off to the right is a small track that leads to a cedar grove. Stay there. I’ll send someone with food.” He waved off our concern at his condition. “I’ll be all right. I’ve got to get permission to take the lady where she needs to go.” He didn’t say from whom, but transformed and flew away.
We dismounted in the cool privacy of the cedar grove, and Catrin rolled up her cloak to make a pillow for Lydia, who was so tired her tears flowed freely, despite her fiercest efforts to control them. With hard riding, concern for the Princess, and fighting off sleep, Catrin and I had found no further time to talk.
In truth, I had been locked in my own thoughts, trying to conjure Ysanne’s face on the day of our wedding, or on the day we knew she was with child, or as we exulted in our first victory in demon combat. But all I could envision was her expression the last time I had seen her—the horror and revulsion when she recognized demon fire burning in my eyes.
And so I had abandoned useless grieving and reviewed my actions of the past four years. Was I wrong to have brought the rai-kirah out of Kir‘Vagonoth? Had I put the pieces of Ezzarian history together in error? Had my ignorance and pride brought ruin to three worlds? And my naive confidence after the siffaru—thinking that somehow I was wise enough or pure enough or strong enough to transform a monster when I had no idea of his power ... what kind of fool was I? I came to no new conclusions, save that I had best stop thinking or I was going to paralyze myself with guilt. Whether I had to reverse what I had set in motion or merely travel the road until its end, the answers I sought were only to be found in Kir’Navarrin. The time had come.
Half an hour after Blaise left us, young Mattei came trudging up the hill to our resting spot bringing a basket of fresh provender, a wineskin, and a stout, competent healing woman named Corya. Mattei took our horses to feed and water them, while I introduced Corya to the women.
Corya wasted no time. She shoved some fruit and cheese into my hand and waved me away. “Off with you now, sir, while I see to this young woman. Though this is not the most comfortable of bedchambers, we need to make sure mother and child have weathered the journey well.”
“I am the daughter of a Derzhi warrior,” said Lydia, her dusty face streaked with the white tracks of her tears. “A night’s journey on a horse cannot harm me or my child.” She glared at me accusingly. “You’ll not let the cursed prince see this damnable weeping? You’ll say it’s sand in my eyes or sun glare. Of course, there’s no need for me to see him at all. A little rest and I can ride again. Your kind friend will take me to this other place, and I won’t have to see him.”
“Gracious, woman, if a little salt water is the only result of this adventure, then there’s no man of any race can give you grief,” said the healer. “Even a poxy Derzhi.”
“Ah, you don’t know my poxy husband! He could give such grief to a glacier, it would melt to defend itself. Why is there no Derzhi woman god to repair this beastly condition? My husband is a priest of Athos, and he and his god are two of a kind, making all of us miserable who live unshielded. And Druya ... a bull. What use is he?”
Corya chuckled and stroked the Princess’s red hair with her strong hand. “In Thrid some worship a woman god who eats her men. But she’s done nothing for us mothers, either, as she lets the bastards get her planted before she kills them. You needn’t fret, though. It’s all over soon enough, and we who’ve done this before will always know how to care for you novices.” Before one could blink, Corya spread out a clean blanket, allowed me to delay my departure long enough to help shift the Princess onto it, then draped our cloaks from cedar branches to create a screen. “Mistress ... Catrin is it? Perhaps, as the lady is comfortable with you, you would stay and keep her company?”
I told the women that I would stay close in case they needed me; then I strolled across the slope and climbed up to an outcropping rock where I could sit and view the full expanse of the valley while munching on sour plums and goat cheese. The steeply angled light carved the rocks and trees into deep relief, transforming the grass into velvet and the pools and stream into burnished gold. Tiny figures of people and animals moved soundlessly through that remote landscape, their identities and emotions and imperfections masked by distance. A few hours of such isolation, I thought, away from the unceasing demands of pain and grief, love and desperation, and perhaps I could grasp some sort of clarity.
Bu
t the settling peace was soon broken when a kite screamed, diving for its breakfast on the rocks just below me, and footsteps crunched on the graveled approach to my eyrie. Surprisingly, the one who spoke to my back was not Catrin, but Elinor. “Blaise told me what’s happened,” she said. “The Prince is with Gorrid and Admet in the command tent, working on plans for the raid. If you wish to join him to give him the news, I’ll stay with the Princess until she can travel the rest of the way. My brother will take you and the Prince to visit the lady this evening.”
“That may not be necessary,” I said, glancing over my shoulder.
“I don’t understand.”
“I may not tell Aleksander she’s here ... or any of it. I haven’t decided.”
“Decided? What right have you to decide such a matter?” So much for our game of civility. Her nostrils flared and her voice broke with passion and indignation. “Even a Derzhi deserves to know he has fathered a child before he faces death. Have you come to believe what everyone says of you? Only gods play so cruelly with people’s hearts.”
Somehow the simple directness of her accusation forced my grief and foreboding into painful focus, causing them to erupt like the molten heart of a volcano that has found the point of weakness in the mountain’s rocky cap. “I am not a god!” I shouted, leaping to my feet. “I make no pretense of it. I am so far out of their favor, I don’t think I can ever find my way back again. Look at me.” I thrust my hand into her face. Blood was crusted in the cracks of my skin and under the nails. “There is so much blood on my soul that it leaks out of my very skin. I killed a man last night without thinking twice about it, because I suspected he was a threat, and I was afraid. I killed seventeen Veshtar at Andassar ... some of them long after they were any threat to their prisoners ... because I hated them and what they do. I may be half mad with what I’ve done and what I’ve yet to undertake, but I do know the horror of it and feel it and fear it. I am human, Elinor, so don’t tell me what is cruel and what is not.” She stood her ground, her lovely face tight and hard, affirming my self-judgment, though skeptical that I might give fair assessment of cruelty.
