by Carol Berg
Nyel answered that question without my asking. “Of course, you have no need for swords and daggers here. But knowing how you value your training for your human enterprises, I thought you might enjoy superior weapons,” he said, taking up a plate of bread and sausage and carrying it to a table that sat beside the open doors to the garden. His evocation of the word “human” carried only a modest level of disgust. “Come now. Eat. Share my hospitality, and then we’ll have Kasparian come and show you about my fortress. I’d like to think you’ll stay for a while. Learn. Listen. And only then decide on your future ... and mine. I’ve been waiting a very long time for you.”
“Until we resolve our differences I have nowhere else to be.” For myself, I was not feeling particularly expansive. “However, I would appreciate a quick resolution.”
“Quick, eh?” Nyel stabbed a knife into a sausage and examined it before taking a bite off the end. “And when you’ve done with the lunatic Madonai, you think to go back to your human master and serve him again? Be his instrument of war? Save him from the consequences of his own human—Ah!” He tossed his knife and its savory burden onto his plate. “Not a good beginning. I told you we would talk first.”
I took up a slice of smoked fowl, three oatcakes, and a handful of strawberries and joined him at his table. “I’ll answer your questions when you answer mine,” I said. “The only difficulty is choosing which one to ask first. Something about three imprisoned Wardens in Kir‘Vagonoth, or the assassination of an Emperor, or perhaps an inquiry related to the homecoming of the rai-kirah, who are not finding Kir’Navarrin to be a long-lived solution to their problems. They’re afraid to sleep. You do know they’ve come back here?” I dived into the food as if I were in no hurry for answers. Posturing. We might have been boys strutting our wooden weapons before each other. Only his had a steel edge, I feared, while mine was but bark and splinters.
He grimaced and ran a thumb over his knife hilt. “All right, all right. Fair enough.” Though I kept my attention on my breakfast, I felt his old young eyes linger on my face for a while before settling to his plate. I experimented to make sure I could still breathe after the pressure of his scrutiny. He picked up his knife and cut off another bit of his sausage, but toyed with it instead of eating. “I think I used up all my stores of polite conversation a very long time ago,” he said gruffly. “With so much to say between us, so much to learn, to teach, to understand, I find it difficult to speak of the weather—which looks to be fair until late today—or the food, which, as you see, is nothing remarkable.”
“Everything here is remarkable,” I said, finishing off my unremittingly bland but quite adequate meal. “My own presence not least of all. Before you do with me as you will, I would like to understand the fundamental question. Why am I here?”
“I told you before—”
“—that I alone had the power to set you free. That’s what you said.”
“And it’s true.” The sausage might have been stuffed with diamonds, for the intense attention he was giving it. Subtlety, it seemed, had gone the way of polite conversation.
“But that was not and is not the answer to the question,” I said. “Your aim is not to be free. You would never have allowed me to see your hand in the world if that was your objective. Somehow you’ve caused these horrors, and you’ve made them live in my mind until I forbid myself to sleep, until I’ve begun to see them before my eyes every minute of every day. You’ve infected me with your own madness, so that I can’t even remember which of the vile deeds were my own, but I know that in the past few months, I have done things I would once have considered reprehensible.” Elinor had seen it, and Catrin, and Aleksander, and they had tried to tell me that I was not the man they knew. “Three worlds are on the brink of chaos,” I said, “and I believe you are responsible. You know I cannot and will not share your hatred of humans, and so I could never set you free—not feeling as you do. I must assume that I’m here for some other reason.”
A gust of wind through the open window flapped the long draperies and toppled a vase of flowers that sat between us, spilling a puddle of water that raced for the edge of the table and dribbled onto the patterned carpet. Nyel picked up the flowers and threw them out of the window. “So you will force me to say it before you could possibly understand.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms tightly across his chest. “Laugh if you will. I want to give you a gift.”
I was a very long way from laughter. He looked away quickly, but I had already seen the welling tears. Not for the long-dead Madonai. Not for Kir‘Navarrin. Not for freedom lost or a wasted life. His tears were for me. My bones and blood ached with his grief, as if they understood truths that my mind did not. I was at a loss, all my anger, fear, and resolution made insignificant in an instant. “Tell me, Nyel—”
“Since you’re so impatient to know everything and be away from here, we’ll get on with it,” he interrupted brusquely as he reached for a slab of bread and began spreading butter on it. “Go fetch Kasparian. Straight back from the main doors and then down the gray stair into the heart of the castle, and you’ll find him in his workroom practicing his sword work. Tell him I need his hand. Go on, then.” He took a huge bite and waved me off, keeping his eyes on his food.
I rose, bowed, and left him, more confused than ever.
The castle was larger than it appeared from the outside and quite beautiful throughout. The furnishings were spare and elegant like Nyel himself. The staircases were wide and graceful, the rooms large, with high ceilings and tall windows to let in light and air. Clerestory windows of colored glass gleamed in the morning sun, casting jeweled beams of red and blue and green about the vast spaces. Tyrrad Nor was not a fortress built to repel an enemy or punish a criminal, but a palace to house a lord. Its rooms were crafted with care and comfort in mind, and its defenses were not thick walls and arrow slots, but pervasive enchantments. I was not a ghost this time, and though distracted with the mysterious emotional interchange just ended, I could feel the thrum of power in the air like the charge before a thun derstorm. As a matter of curiosity, while I paused and gaped at a lovely sculpture garden that extended as far as I could see to right and left, I cast a small enchantment. A soft breeze stirred the flowered vines that hung from pillars and trellises, wafting the scent of roses and lilacs past my nose. No alarm bells rang at my working sorcery within a prison built to contain it. No one came running. No doom fell upon me.
I walked on through another passage that opened onto a well-stocked library and a music room furnished with harps and viols, with gleaming brass horns of every size hanging on the walls, and a silver flute laid carefully on a brass music stand, not stacked and jammed in boxes and shelves as in the cluttered rooms of my palace in Kir‘Vagonoth, but arranged neatly, ready for use by someone who knew what they were. Five broad, red-tiled steps led me downward into a vaulted cloister that skirted a fountain court, and just beyond it, I found a wide gray stair spi raling downward. The passage seemed to lead down under the castle, so I was surprised to find it funneling me toward an arched glare of sunlight. Caution aborted further exploration and held me in the shadowed passage, for I heard the unmistakable clash of steel—at least three swords beyond the arch. Harsh breathing. Muttered curses. A muffled groan. A grunt of triumph. I peered around the brick pillar.
One man sprawled facedown on the fine gravel of a sun-drenched courtyard. You didn’t need to see the white ribs exposed by a gruesome wound to know that he was dead. Casting grotesque shadows on the whitewashed walls, two other swordsmen circled in deadly combat—one of them the tall Madonai, Kasparian. A thick-set, leather-clad man swung ferociously at Kasparian, only to have his blow aborted in shivering power by the Madonai’s blade. In one smooth motion Kasparian brought his heavy sword around swiftly into an upward counter-cut, striking at the swordsman’s weak side before the man could set up an effective guard. Blood welled from a gash in the man’s side. Only because he had staggered off balance from the a
brupt end of his own forceful attack did he avoid losing an arm to Kasparian’s strike. He recovered quickly and came after the Madonai again, his face a mask of dour certainty, not yet ready to yield to sure defeat, leading Kasparian into another exchange that left the Madonai bleeding heavily from his left arm.
The two of them were masters of the art. With maneuvers devoid of excess movement or posturing, they stepped smoothly from one brutal closure to another, until a sweating Kasparian took advantage of his adversary’s overextended stance and swept a cutting blow that came near severing the man’s thigh. The swordsman cried out and toppled to the ground.
Kasparian kicked the man’s sword away, turned his back on his fallen opponents—the one already dead and the one quickly bleeding out his life—and began to wipe the blood from his long, wide blade with a gore-smeared cloth. Before I could blink, the dying man had pulled out a dagger and, against every possibility, raised it high and let it fly toward Kasparian’s back. Incapable of judging right or wrong in the combat, I cried a warning, sure it would come too late, but Kasparian swung around and blocked the flying weapon with his half-cleaned sword. The dagger glanced off the blade and spun through the sunlight ... and vanished before it touched the ground, as did the blood-soaked victims. The explosion of power almost knocked me off my feet.
“They were enchantments,” I said aloud, though it was for my own enlightenment I spoke, certainly not his. “Creations, like the servants.”
Kasparian looked me over and snorted in contempt. “You are as blind as you are weak.” He went back to his cleaning.
“Nyel bids you come,” I said.
The big man carefully wiped the crevices beside the guard and sheathed his weapon. Another mystery. The blood did not vanish with the corpses. These “creations” were not wholly illusions, then. “He’s taking you out already?”
“Taking me out?”
“It’s not my place to explain.” He stripped off his bloodstained shirt and threw it to the dirt, then doused his head and arms and shoulders with water from a spewing fountain set into one wall of the courtyard. When the blood was washed from his left arm, only a thin scratch remained of his severe wound.
“I should think your place would be whatever you please after what you’ve done,” I said, even while staring at his arm. How many times over could I have used such healing power. “You’ve given your life to serve—”
He spun on his heel and grabbed the front of my shirt, pulling me to within a hand’s breadth of his face. “Do not tell me what I’ve given, human spawn!” he said. “You can have no concept of it—even now that you have taken on this broken remnant of a true being. I never had any use for you before, and now you come here in this mockery and I am expected to give way to you. I, a Madonai, his attellé. I would trade five thousand lifetimes in this prison for one moment’s freedom to repay your treachery.”
“Take your hand off me,” I commanded, knowing with unex plainable surety that to react less severely to Kasparian’s insolence would be to invite yet another danger I was ill prepared to face.
Droplets of water fell onto his fiery cheeks from his gray-streaked hair, rolling down into his mustache and beard. He was a portrait of fury, unless you looked close enough to see the pain in his eyes. Nyel’s gift, whatever it might be, was not for him, nor were the old Madonai’s tears. And I, ignorant of his grievance, did not even know enough to say I was sorry.
He shoved me away and snatched a tan shirt that hung on a peg embedded in the wall. With long strides he led me out of the sunny courtyard, throwing the garment over his wide shoulders. I know him, I thought, with quick, confusing insight, the “I” that is not Seyonne.
I also noted that, as soon as we walked into the shadowed passageways, the sunlit arch behind us was transformed into a very ordinary doorway with a dim and cavernous room beyond it. Was the courtyard no more real than the combatants? The blood had not vanished, though.
Nyel was waiting at the game board. “I told you he would come, old friend. Your doubts are proved unworthy.”
Kasparian bowed stiffly. “So he has shown willingness to consider your offer?” He had not behaved so formally on my ghostly visit. This tension between the two was new.
Nyel fingered the obsidian king that sat well defended in one corner of the board. “I thought to show him first ... one venture ... and then explain more fully. How can he choose without seeing? You will assist me yet again, good Kasparian?” This question bore so much more than words—the essence of Kasparian’s grievance. I was right in the middle of it and had no hint of the reason.
“I am ever yours to command, my lord.”
Nyel nodded graciously, offering Kasparian dignity, if not the substance of whatever it was the big Madonai craved. Kasparian pulled a third chair close beside the table, facing the fire, as Nyel waved me to the empty seat opposite him. “Come, lad. Don’t be nervous. I’m not going to corrupt you further. Perhaps you’ll have a new view of matters before we’ve done. I am prevented from wielding power on my own—a condition of my confinement—but I was left one source of amusement. As you’ve guessed.”
“Dreams,” I said, lowering myself to the wooden chair opposite Nyel and to the right of Kasparian, all speculation as to these undercurrents erased by the promise of enlightenment. “You can shape dreams.”
“My jailer was intelligent enough to realize that to live a Madonai’s full lifetime without any contact with the world was cruelty far beyond death. And he was never cruel ...”
Nyel’s eyes were so deep and so dark—blue and black become one rich color—that as I sought for understanding, I felt myself sinking into their depths, cold and clear as blue-black water, engulfing me ... The room, the fire, the daylight fell away behind me. I had no sense of danger, or perhaps it was that every breath of my life was fraught with danger in that hour and this journey was nothing different. If I was to learn, then I had to let Nyel show his hand. This was the path I had chosen ... for good or ill, for death or life, Gaspar had said.
And so I let him take me deeper yet, the icy touch of the dark water on my skin pricking my senses awake ...
... A blast of bitter wind almost tore my fingers from the edge of the cliff. The clouds were on top of me, ragged, ripped with the wind and lightning. If it began to rain, I would be done for. Slowly, my shoulders on fire, I hoisted myself up... one mezzit... two ... A bit more and I could risk moving one hand, reaching for the stump of twisted pine just beyond the rim. My broken legs dangled in useless agony into the chasm... no help there... Every breath was a fiery lance. The howling from below me ... oh, holy gods, they were waiting for my fall . . . don’t look down... don’t listen... The wind blew dirt in my face, wafting the stench from below ... devouring the last of the light... Another gust... tugging at my dead legs. Hurry... Fingernails ripped... a slip . . . the dirt so loose... spatters of rain... A glimpse downward where the howling grew louder . . . triumphant ... The pits ... the abyss ... pain unending... darkness unyielding . . . forever. The dirt began to crumble beneath my hands. The stump of pine shifted farther away. I clawed at the earth. No! Oh, holy mother, please don’t let me fall. I’ll go mad in the darkness ...
“Go on, lad ... help him. It’s what you wanted to do instead of coming here.” The urgent voice drew me out of the vision. My hands still trembled, the wind still whined, and the howling still had my blood cold, but I could no longer feel the loosening edge of the cliff. “And well you should help, knowing that your own people have caused his torment. They sent him to this place. They caused this war for fear of me and have resisted the truth all these years, making matters worse, sending the poor Gastai back to Kir‘Vagonoth over and over until they went mad from it.”
“What is this place?” I said, my voice shaking with the fear and pain of the desperate man as I watched the wind whip the crooked pine. “What’s happening? What do I do?”
“Summon your power. Become his waking shadow. My jailer has bound me to this fortre
ss, and so I can only observe and speak and counsel. This boy needs no counsel. He needs your hand, your strength, your care. He is on the verge of yielding his soul, and you, of all men, know these pitiful creatures that hunger for him. Do not condemn him to this perverse joining. Use the power you have been given.”
I struggled with confusion, half in, half out of the vision. “This is someone’s dream.”
“A poor prisoner’s dream. One of your own. You can help him, fight for him, take him where he never thought to go. But with caution always. It is so easy to break a mind if you reveal too much of yourself. Exactly as you learned in your training; those you helped never could know that a battle had been fought in their soul.”
One of my own—a Warden in the pits of Kir‘Vagonoth, clinging to his soul, dreaming his last dream of light. If I could help him...
“Set loose your power. To save him you must give all of yourself ... no holding back ... no allowing fear to cripple you as you have done in the past . . .”
With no more idea what I was doing than a youth pursuing his first love, I summoned my melydda ... and unleashed the flood. My power had been building since the moment I stepped through the pillars of Dasiet Homol, and the torrent surged through my body and soul, through limbs and loins and heart, such grandeur, such harmony, such glory at my beck that I cried out with the awe and joy of it. I was newborn in that moment, a being of power who could live in dreams, who could cross the boundaries of worlds with my thoughts, who could shape enchantments so glorious as to burst the heart.
