by Carol Berg
Aleksander forced his gaze away from the Princess and presented the bundle of salt to the Manganar, clearing his throat before speaking. To the blessing words he added, “I will be honored to accept your hospitality, King Yulai.”
The old king rose and dismissed the assembled friends and dignitaries, and the crowd melted quickly into the night. With a last bow to Aleksander and a kiss of the hand and a kind embrace for Lydia, Yulai and his wife followed their attendants toward the stone houses. Blaise whispered in the Princess’s ear, then came to join me. “I think we’ll have to leave them to sort it out,” he said. “I told her we would wait for a while.”
But Lydia would not need our service again that night, nor would Aleksander. The Prince bounded across the ring of firelight toward his wife, but stopped short before crossing the full span of their separation. Instead, he dropped to his knees, bowed his head, and spread his arms. He did not have to wait long for his answer. Lydia stepped out of the shadows and laid a hand on his red hair. Then she reached for his chin and lifted his face to see the wonder that was waiting for him.
“When do you plan to go?” said Blaise quietly as I spun on my heel and walked briskly toward the pond.
“As soon as you can get me there,” I said. “I need you to fetch Fiona. Catrin has urgent news for her, and I need to speak with her before I go, learn whatever she can tell.”
“I can’t do it tonight,” he said. “I’m done for. And I would think it well you had a night’s sleep, too, before such a journey. But in the morning . . .”
“In the morning,” I said.
CHAPTER 27
On the morning Blaise and Catrin and I arrived at Dasiet Homol, the gateway to Kir‘Navarrin, I was hearing uncomfortable echoes of the Drafa oracles in my head. Aleksander had yielded everything, stripped himself bare. His powerlessness had indeed transformed itself to strength. Had he also found himself a new kingdom in the desert, as Qeb had envisioned, right when he was setting out to bring down his own empire? And if the boy’s seeings proved true, then what of Gaspar’s? That was the uncomfortable thought.
To strike terror into the hearts of those you love is a difficult thing, Gaspar had told me. Certainly, Aleksander, Blaise, Catrin, and my acquaintances among the outlaws had feared my madness, but they seemed to have come to terms with it. My horror of what humans could do to each other did not mean I would exterminate them. I intended to stop Nyel’s games.
Yet every step toward the line of white pillars that stretched north and south across the hills of southern Manganar increased my feeling of separation from the world I knew. To give name to the nameless and to stand across the fathomless gulf from the light ... I couldn’t decide whether the ache in my gut was terror or anticipation ... and that was profoundly unsettling.
“When did Fiona go to Kir‘Navarrin?” asked Catrin, peering through the pairs of towering pillars into a dappled evening very different from the brown noonday in which we sat waiting for Blaise and Fiona. Behind us the ranks of pillars spanned a quarter of a league of dry, rocky grasslands, almost to the southern mountains that marked the boundary of Ezzaria. Though we sat near the northernmost pair, we could see a mirrored image of the pillars before us, set on greener slopes dotted by clumps of trees and ponds that reflected evening light.
I kneaded my scalp, as if my fingers could loosen my thoughts from the dark places where they seemed fixed. Almost two days since I had slept, the night just past no better than the previous day. Every time I dropped off, I had to wake myself again to escape dreams that left me nauseous and shaking. “I think she’s been there about six weeks this time,” I said. “Blaise first took her through a few months ago. He says she planned to stay longer, but took ill after a few weeks. The rai-kirah know nothing of human diseases, so she came out to visit a healer. A few days at Taíne Keddar, and she was ready to go back. Blaise comes here every few days and opens the way just in case she wants to come out again.”
A herd of dune-runners wandered up the hillside to our left, only to take flight when they noticed us, leaping over a dry gully and disappearing over another hill. I pulled flatbread and cheese from a cloth bag and laid them out on the grass, then stared at them as if I couldn’t quite remember what they were for. I couldn’t stomach the thought of food. My skin was buzzing with too little sleep. My tongue felt thick and my movements awkward, not quite in my control.
“Is she safe?”
“She didn’t tell Blaise much—only that she was observing and learning all she could about the rai-kirah and how they live. She claims to feel as safe there as anywhere in this world. There are no monsters. No fighting.” Only the danger in Tyrrad Nor, which seemed to span every world.
“All these years, I’ve worked with Wardens, teaching of portals and walking other worlds. To know that I could do so myself ...” Catrin’s initial astonishment at the opened gateway had settled into bemused observation. Ezzarians had always lived with wonders. “I would probably be disappointed were I ever to go. It couldn’t be half so strange as all the things I’ve imagined. From what we see here, the place seems quite ordinary.”
“It’s very much like Ezzaria,” I said as I peeled a small sour orange and laid it on the cloth bag beside the bread. “A river the size of the Dursk runs just there behind that line of hills, and beyond it a forest of oaks and maples that extends all the way to the mountains—high, snowcapped peaks like those around Capharna and Dael Ezzar. It rains every afternoon in summer. But at night, you would know it’s not our world. The starlight is almost as bright as our full moon.”
Catrin broke off a piece of bread, but paused before putting it in her mouth. “I thought this was to be your first time through this portal.”
“It is.” The first time. The important time. The time when everything would change.
She tossed the bread back onto the cloth and laid her hand on my knee. “Seyonne, you’re trembling. Tell me why you’re so afraid. I told you I’d not run away.”
I pulled away. “I don’t have time to explain, Catrin. I need to talk to Fiona and get on with this. I’m afraid I’ve waited too long already. I need to be with him.”
“With this demon? I thought he was already—”
“I just need to go.” I didn’t want to talk about the one who was sitting at his gameboard waiting for me. “Don’t keep asking.”
I knew I ought to tell Catrin about Nyel. She, whose practical wisdom had kept me thinking straight in the last two difficult years of my warding, might help me make sense of my duties and my future. Yet even at that moment, seeing the world on the brink of chaos and believing that it was Nyel’s doing and somehow mine as well, I could not banish the image of the Madonai in his awesome beauty. To speak of such a vision or of my hopes and fears would be akin to running a knifepoint down my belly and pulling open the skin to expose what lay underneath.
Catrin withdrew her hand. “I don’t understand it. How can you be so changed, yet still be the man I know?”
“I am not the man you knew”—I jumped to my feet and walked to the very brink of the gateway, willing Fiona and Blaise to hurry—“and I never will be again.”
At last! Blaise was walking down a dusty white road beyond the gateway in company with a small, sharp-faced young Ezzarian woman wearing men’s breeches. Her dark straight hair was cut short, and she carried a pack on her narrow shoulders.
“Master!” Fiona trotted up a short slope and through the pillars, and then took my hands, her solid grip telling me all the things she was uncomfortable expressing in words. She was very thin, even more so than I remembered, and despite the momentary spot of color from her hurry, she was as pale as the pillars themselves. “Is this an illusion or is it truly Mistress Catrin?” she said, raising her eyebrows and tipping her head toward my mentor. “I never thought to see her in company with such corruption as we two.”
Fiona might be awkward with sentiment, but she was not shy of her opinions. She had been the plague of my life for more t
han a year before we began our journey in search of my son and demons and truth. Then she had saved me, first by keeping open a portal during my months of imprisonment in Kir‘Vagonoth, and then by snatching me out from under Ysanne’s knife, condemning herself to exile from the land where she had thought to be queen.
“She’s come for you more than me,” I said, forcing a smile and lifting Fiona’s heavy pack while she pulled her arms out of the straps. “You only make friends with rai-kirah instead of inviting them to move in.” Fiona was the only one I had ever been able to joke with about Denas. Perhaps because she wasn’t afraid. When Fiona set her mind to something, even if it was faith in a flawed Warden, she was relentless.
Fiona flopped down beside Catrin, digging a thin leather-bound book and a waterskin out of her pack. She took a long pull from the waterskin, coughing a little as she wiped her mouth and looked up at Catrin. “Why are you here, Mistress? You’ve ever been one to push the boundaries of obedience, so I understand, but in such a matter as corruption ... after allowing the Queen to bleed your friend almost to—”
“Tienoch havedd, Kafydda,” said Catrin, softly.
“Kafydda?” Fiona’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. “I thought that title ceased to have meaning in the same hour the Queen declared that I no longer existed. Or have you forgotten?”
“The Queen is dead.”
While a shocked Fiona listened to a brief version of Catrin’s tale, I tried to keep myself from interrupting them, from shouting at them that nothing mattered unless I got to Tyrrad Nor with some semblance of my own mind and was able to convince Nyel to stop playing his games. I paced around the fire, the pillars, and the women. Savor this time, I told myself. Listen to the birds, feel the air. Smell the sweetness of the dry grass. An hour from now, you may detest the scent of sage and wild mustard. You may enjoy radishes and bad poetry, ice storms and women who pretend weakness to attract men. What would it be like to become someone else, to have another’s preferences and memories indistinguishable from my own? How would I reconcile conflicting desires? Do I like music or not? Do I run or walk? What is my name? A thousand small battles every hour.
Blaise sat on the grass watching and listening, his arms around his long legs. His patient demeanor was belied by the urgency of a reminder. “We can’t take too long to decide who’s going where,” he said softly, the moment that Catrin ended her story. “It’s only two days until the raid on Syra.”
Fiona interrupted him with a fit of coughing, deep spasms that racked her small body. “I’ll be all right in a few weeks,” she croaked, waving off our concern. “I think I’ve figured out this illness, along with a few other things.” She drank from the waterskin, then looked up at me. “So where are you going first? To rescue Drych or to Tyrrad Nor?”
I jerked my head toward the gateway.
She nodded. “Do you have time to listen? I’ve always planned to go with you on this journey, but now ...” Her gaze flicked to Catrin.
“You’re needed at home,” I said, feeling a wave of relief. I didn’t want anyone to go with me. “I’m glad they’ve come to their senses so far as to send for you. What I need to know is whatever will help me in Tyrrad Nor. I just need to understand what I might find there.”
“Understanding—I don’t think I can help you with that,” said Fiona. “I can only tell you what I’ve seen ...”
For the next two hours, as the sun on our side of the gateway crept high over the line of pillars, and the sun on the other side yielded to a moonless night, the young Aife recounted her travels in Kir‘Navarrin. The rai-kirah had ignored her for the most part, seemingly uninterested in humans now they were home. Once through the gateway, they had dispersed throughout the land, seeking their names, and families, and homes—all the knowledge and memory that had been ripped away along with their physical life when our ancestors decided to split off a portion of their souls from their bodies for fear of the prisoner in Tyrrad Nor.
“Of course, they’ve not been able to take up their lives as if they’d never been interrupted,” Fiona said, “but I would find small groups of them walking together, laughing, talking, swimming in the lakes or crafting boats for sailing, hunting game, feasting, every manner of occupation. Sometimes I would see only their forms of light—radiantly beautiful, just as you described them, Master—and that surprised me, as I thought once they lived in Kir‘Navarrin they would shape bodies all the time. A few of them would come and travel with me for a day or two before going on about their business. One named Kryddon, who said he knew you, was especially interested in my studies, as he was trying to do something the same—to understand what had happened to the rai-kirah and why, and to determine how they were going to live in the coming years. They’re not recovering quite so fast as they expected, but they’re still learning ...”
Learning was the essence of the matter, of course. The rai-kirah would never regain a true physical existence. Their own bodies were long dead. Their hope had been that by living in the rich and marvelous land of Kir‘Navarrin, rather than the frozen wastes of Kir’Vagonoth, their enchanted bodies could satisfy their physical yearnings and reclaim their lost memories.
“Kryddon was very excited that he was close to remembering his name, and even more so because he’d remembered he had a brother named Sirto, and he was off to search for him. And he said to tell Denas ... you ... that Vyx was still wrong about fruit and birds. He said you must give them a try when you come and settle the argument once and for all.” She grabbed a piece of the peeled orange, popped it in her mouth, and looked up at me, awaiting an explanation.
“They always argued about food,” I said, impatient at the digression. “Kryddon and Vyx ... about what would be worth eating if they could taste what it was really like. Vyx said that roasting birds would be a waste of time, but that roasted fruit would be a delicacy worth savoring. Denas hated it when they talked of such things. He detested being so dependent on flesh to tell him the truth of the world, and despised himself for craving food and sleep and ... everything. He would prefer to give up eating altogether.” As ever, it was strange to speak so of Denas when he was inside of me listening, when we would soon be one being instead of two. “So they’re able to use their senses properly when they shape their bodies?”
“So they say. You’ve given them such a gift, Seyonne. They hold you and Denas in such honor, you cannot imagine it.”
“I’m glad things worked out.” Good to know that between Blaise and my son and the rai-kirah, something worthwhile had come out of all this, no matter what the future brought.
But Fiona’s tale was not done. “I learned all this on my first visit,” she said. “Even then Kryddon mentioned that a few of the rai-kirah had stopped looking for their families. Some didn’t even seem to be interested in finding their names. He didn’t understand it. Names would make them whole, he said, bind their forms of light to forms of flesh so they could truly live.”
She leaned forward as if to reinforce her telling. “When I went back a few weeks ago, things had changed a great deal, even in the short time I’d been away. I would walk for days and see no one. Houses sat half built. Fields that had been newly planted were growing wild. Few of the rai-kirah that I did see were wearing bodies, and even their forms of light seemed less ... substantial. Colors that had been so vivid now seemed pale. I sought out Kryddon again, and found him sitting beside a stream in a meadow, still in his body, but not quite holding it together. Parts of him—legs or face or torso—would shift into light form, but then he would stroke the grass or dip his hand in the stream, and his body would be complete again. I asked if he had found his brother, and he said he wasn’t sure. I could scarcely induce him to talk. He had not yet remembered his own name, but he was more worried about the other rai-kirah. Most had decided that physical bodies were too taxing, he said. Sleeping, that’s what they didn’t like. He was having a hard time with it himself. They would wake up more tired than when they started, therefore many of them
had stopped shaping bodies to avoid it. But stopping didn’t seem to help anymore. They were all so tired, and some seemed to have disappeared altogether. No one knew where they’d gone.”
“He’s using them,” I said. “Now they have bodies and sleep, he can touch their dreams, too, and being so close to him ... when they’re in this state ... he wants their strength for himself. Somehow he can take it from them.” Fiona looked at me oddly, and I realized I was talking to myself. I was finding it difficult to concentrate on her tale. “What of the prisoner, Fiona? Did they say anything about the one in Tyrrad Nor?”
She shook her head, having to get through another fit of coughing before she could go on. “On my first journey, I asked about it,” she said. “Of course I did. No one knew who or what was in the fortress. They weren’t even sure where the place was, except that it was high in the mountains beyond the gamarand wood. They wouldn’t go into the wood. Said they couldn’t remember anything about it, save that it was a holy place, a terrible place, and such things were best left undisturbed until they remembered. But you needed to know, so I couldn’t just leave it—”
“You went there!” I crouched in front of her, working to keep from grabbing her shoulders and shaking the words out faster. The woman in green had bade me go to the gamarands.
Fiona nodded, illness and fatigue dismissed in the excitement of her telling. “All during my stay I was trying to find evidence, something to prove or disprove what we thought happened.” She spoke to Catrin. “Our ancestors lived in both worlds. The mosaic taught us that. But for some reason that we don’t completely understand—something to do with Tyrrad Nor and a prophecy—they decided that it was too dangerous for them to live in Kir‘Navarrin any longer. Those who lived here—the builders, we’ve called them—chose to destroy all their works, so that no one would remember Kir’Navarrin and try to go back. But from what Seyonne was able to tell me, the ones who lived in Kir‘-Navarrin on the day the magic was done just walked away from their towns and villages, left their gardens and fields, dropped their tools, left their books open on their tables. I hoped to find some of it—villages, artifacts, artwork, something. But I found nothing save bits of walls and hearths still standing here and there, until I went into the gamarand wood.”
