Restoration

by Carol Berg

  I joined the raiders on most of these ventures. Whenever I traveled in the dreamworld and sensed a raid was imminent, I asked Nyel to send me to Feyd. The Madonai always resisted my petition, insisting that I wait until I took my “proper form” to reduce my chance of injury. “Is this foolish path your free choice,” he would say, “or is this more piteous begging from this human princelet who cares naught for your wounding? Wait but a little while, and you will be stronger than you can imagine.”

  “Yes, this is my choice. I accept the risk, because the risk of not going is far worse.”

  No matter how I wheedled, coaxed, or railed at him, Nyel refused to tell me when or how my change would come about. He would not “soothe the impatience of a short-lived species” by rushing a working of such complexity. And so I buried cravings and curiosity by continual work to increase my imperfect strength and power.

  At no time in those long months did I speak to any human but Feyd. Though I assumed such restraint would be difficult, I soon became accustomed to it. My dreamer would tell me the night’s plan and, if there was clear need of my skills in some part of it, I would dispatch him to Aleksander with my intent to take on the task. Otherwise, I would appear at the scene unannounced and do whatever was needed most, sometimes ensuring the victory, sometimes holding back the enemy so that the Prince and his fighters could escape, for by no means did they win every skirmish. With my help, they avoided the most severe consequences of defeat. No matter Nyel’s constant opposition or my own growing impatience with the war, I could not abandon my friends.

  I was sorely tempted to find a dreamer in Zhagad itself and take down Edik or the lords of the Twenty to speed the progress of events. But my place was at Aleksander’s side. My Warden’s oath, that human-wrought fetter still fixed at the core of my being, bound me to protect and nurture one who bore the gods’ mark, and so I would do until my last breath.

  At first Aleksander questioned Feyd about me and tried to send me messages along with his plans. Whenever I appeared at his side, he would grin and raise his eyebrows as he had always done when trying to probe my private mysteries. But as the weeks passed and I remained aloof, he gave up trying to bridge the distance between us. If circumstance permitted, he would greet me with a slight bow. No smile. No greeting. No expectations. Soon, even the bow became less frequent. My presence was appreciated as happy chance, like good weather or favorable terrain, but Aleksander no longer tried to direct my actions or outguess me, any more than he could manipulate wind or desert. I felt a certain freedom, no longer bearing the burden of his concern and curiosity. And if I felt a faint twinge of regret as he laughed with Farrol or huddled with Elinor and his commanders over a map, I promised myself that everything would be different as soon as Nyel got on with his business. Meanwhile my power grew, as did my craving for it.

  When not fighting or studying, I walked and ran and climbed the mountain path, trying to keep my body loose and take my mind off my compulsion to shift. On one day almost four months from my arrival in Kir‘Navarrin, I glimpsed Kasparian hurrying through the passageways and followed him. His dour expression told me he was off to practice his fighting again.

  “Have you some dry place to work?” I said, matching his long strides. “I could use some exercise.” The weather had turned foul a few days before, Aleksander had not needed me, and after enduring two rainy days of idleness, I was ready to tear down the castle with my teeth.

  After a dark stare that clearly indicated he would prefer to use me for his day’s victim, he said, “Come along if you will.” He hurried down the broad stair deep into the bowels of the castle, halting at the arched doorway where I’d found him on my first day in Tyrrad Nor. The door opened onto a cavernous darkness. A wave of his hand lit fifty torches, revealing a long, narrow room so vast the Frythians could hold their famous jousting tourneys inside it. The low ceiling was supported by ranks of stone arches that ran the length of the room on right and left, further narrowing the space. At the far end was a long bench with a variety of weaponry laid out on it—swords, knives, and spears of various weights and edges, bows, arrows, and lances, quarter-staves, cudgels, and whips, and every variety of shield and protective clothing. A well-stocked armory for a man who had no opponents save illusions.

  “Madonai were not always a peaceful race,” he said, as if he’d heard my unspoken questions. “We grew beyond it, but some of us chose not to lose the skills. There were always beasts to deal with, many of far more sophistication than those of your world.” As Kasparian arrayed himself in leather armor and whetted the edge of a massive broadsword, he told me Madonai stories that I had not found in Nyel’s library, of wild hunts and armies of beasts, of manlike creatures who drank blood, of creatures of fire whose touch incinerated the soul. “Now I pursue only one quarry,” he said.

  A surge of enchantment and we stood in a field of tall grass extending to right and left and before us in gentle dips and swales to a distant horizon. White-hot sun glared from a silvered sky. Astonished, I whirled about and found the columned room still stretched out behind me, though its angles were skewed, its edges blurred like the portals of my demon warding. Five armored figures took shape between me and the chamber doorway.

  “I would advise you to arm yourself or hide until I have them all occupied,” said the Madonai.

  Stepping backward from the severe landscape, I felt the shift from hot, dry wind to cool stone and hard floor. I lifted a leather vest down from a hook on the wall, hefted a few of the weapons, and started to buckle a scabbard about my waist. But Kasparian’s stories had taken my mind elsewhere. I had no desire to join his battle. I saw enough true killing.

  So, as the five warriors spread out and moved toward the sunlight and Kasparian, I slipped into a deep corner of the shadowed colonnade, intending to take my leave of the arena. Kasparian went on the attack, moving faster than any two-legged creature I had ever seen. By the time I set out for the doors, I had to step over one of his opponents who had crawled under the colonnade after a blow to its belly had all but ripped it in two.

  “Mercy ...” I was halfway to the door when I heard the agonized whisper, almost drowned out by shouts and the clash of swords. Back in the darkness, the still form lay curled about its grotesque wounding. What illusion was so real as to beg release when out of the earshot of its creator?

  I hurried back to the fallen warrior and dropped to my knees. “Who are you?” I said, tugging at the leather helm. “What are you?”

  Fair hair, drenched with sweat, spilled over my hands, and the movement must have jarred him from the brink of death, for he spasmed and groaned, throttling a scream.

  “Gods, I’m sorry.” I brushed the hair back from his pain-ravaged face and my mouth fell open in horrified astonishment. “Kryddon?”

  The rai-kirah’s fading blue eyes widened for a brief moment, and he struggled to speak. “Friend Seyonne, noble Denas ...” With impossible strength his hand gripped my shirt and dragged my face down to his. Blood bubbled from his lips. “Save yourself. Go to the Lady. We’re dying ...

  Before I could question him, his hand fell away, and I felt the unsettling jolt in the universe that always resulted from a rai-kirah’s death. What was happening outside the black wall? How did Kryddon happen to be caught up in Kasparian’s enchantments ? I had believed that Nyel was taking power from the rai-kirah in Kir‘Navarrin through their dreams. Were Kasparian’s morbid entertainments involved, too? And who was Kryddon’s “Lady”? Was it possible she wore green and lived in the gamarand wood? But I had no opportunity to ask my questions, for Kasparian settled in for a long night of sparring, and Nyel was nowhere to be found. Nyel allowed no talk before our scheduled hour of dream work in the mornings, but I vowed to get answers right after.

  On the next morning, however, my intention came to naught. Human dreams told me that serious plans were afoot in Aleksander’s war, and so I stepped into the human world instead.

  CHAPTER 39

  “T
he Aveddi says that he will set his foot in every captive land before he goes to Zhagad,” said Feyd that night as we sat on a windswept knoll overlooking Aleksander’s base camp, “and he will raise the banner of that land and see its rightful defenders given the chance to hold it.” As had become their habit for larger or more intricate operations, Aleksander’s troops had made a staging camp close to their target to rest their horses and snatch some sleep before making their assault. This gave the joined Ezzarians time to bring more fighters from the growing number of camps scattered through the Empire. With Blaise traveling the Empire spreading news of the Aveddi, and Roche taking Sereg out among the Derzhi, only Gorrid, Brynna, and Farrol were left to guide Aleksander and all his fighters. To everyone’s surprise, including his, Farrol had become Aleksander’s right hand, learning the art of command from the Derzhi he had once despised.

  “Why venture this now?” I said, puzzling yet again over Aleksander’s choice of Parassa. The heart of ancient Suza had died on the long-ago day of the Derzhi conquest, when all its residents had been killed or enslaved and the last stronghold of the Suzai palatinate razed. But the city’s situation on the eastern flanks of Azhakstan, where the wide and shallow Volaya River created a ten-league-wide strip of fertile ground stretching all the way from the northern mountains to the oceans beyond the eastern wild lands, was too valuable to lie fallow. A new city had grown up from the ruins. “Though I know he wants to give your people this gift, it will cost him dearly. Even more when he has to leave your father and his men to hold it.”

  Feyd offered me a portion of the dried meat he had pulled from his saddle pack. I shook my head. I hadn’t eaten in three days, but I wasn’t hungry. It didn’t seem strange anymore, just as I no longer kept count of the scars that vanished after each of my forays through the portal of dreams. Something about changing back and forth to my Madonai form was eliminating them, I supposed. Only the two—the slave scar on my face and the knife scar in my side—were ever visible on my true form, and apparently my human flesh would soon be the same. Good riddance to all such annoyances.

  “It was a sudden thing,” Feyd said, wrenching a bite from the leathery strip and chewing it slowly. “We were going to take the water sources near Karn‘Hegeth. The Aveddi thinks the Fontezhi might put a stranglehold on the water in retaliation for our attack on their grain stores. But then, two days ago, Roche brought Lord Sereg back to Zif’Aker, and they conferred with the Aveddi and Farrol for an hour, and immediately the Aveddi changed our plans. He said that a new garrison was being sent from Zhagad, and the commander was bringing orders to burn out the entire lower city without warning the people who live there. The Emperor commands a new racing drome be built on the site for horse races and such like. But everyone knows that Parassa has been fertile ground for the Yvor Lukash and his message. The Emperor wants to punish any city that sends us fighters.”

  “But these things are happening everywhere. Why start with Parassa? Why risk so much and with such a sketchy plan just when he’s building his ring around Zhagad?” I peered down at the quiet camp. No fires cheered the night; only a few lanterns and the brilliance of a half-grown moon revealed the dark forms of some seventy men and women along with their horses. Some of the raiders were asleep, some in quiet conversation. Every once in a while, someone would stare up at where we sat. I had already shifted and so was easily visible at the top of the hill. I could watch more effectively and think so much more clearly in my Madonai form. But on this particular night, my attention would not stay on the watch. The image of Kryddon’s anguish would not leave me, and I felt uneasy and angry and irritated at everyone—Nyel. Aleksander, and even Feyd, who seemed more and more timid every time I came to him. I was sick of fighting, yet I could scarcely hold back from flying over the next ridge to Parassa and destroying the fools who ruled it. Short of such immediate release, I wished that I could understand Aleksander’s reasoning. Why didn’t he hit the fresh troops the moment the old garrison had gone? Had anyone thought to warn the people of Parassa? “Are you sure you’ve been told everything?”

  Feyd’s mouth was still full of meat, and he swallowed hurriedly. “The Aveddi says that secrecy is paramount on this mission. That’s why he brought so few fighters and why he will give detailed orders only as we proceed.” He raised his strip of meat to his mouth again, but lowered it without taking a bite, wrinkling his brow and fixing his eyes on the ground. “Knowing that I speak with you, the Aveddi has been most careful that I am given all the information that our commanders are given. Everyone knows that I am privileged far beyond my unworthy fighting skills. Sometimes my father is not told so much.” He wiped his mouth and offered me his waterskin, but I shook my head again. “They treat me as if I am a priest.”

  My attention had been fixed on the camp for the past hour, as if I could wring Aleksander’s thoughts out of the night. But the wistful strain in Feyd’s words forced me to attend the young noble at my side. My gold light reflected in his eyes and made the silver beads woven into his hair and beard shine—full regalia for a son of Suza come to fight for his homeland. Weeks had passed since I’d even considered his odd position. “Would you like me to find someone else, Feyd? I know it’s not easy being set apart from your comrades. I’ve never asked you—”

  “Oh no, holy lord!” His ivory skin flushed, and his dark eyes grew wide. “I am honored to be in your service. Privileged beyond all men. Every day I thank holy Gossopar for sending you to our aid, and I pray him to lift this darkness from you and draw you into the light at his side.”

  “This ‘darkness’? Why do you say that?” I was on my feet without knowing how I got there, yelling at my dreamer, though his words were all innocence and my sudden fury unreasonable. Insolent beggar. “I am not the one of darkness! I make my own choices and will always—”

  “Pardon, my lord.” Feyd threw himself prostrate at my feet, which only served to infuriate me the more. “Please, holy lord, forgive my foolish tongue. I am but an ignorant man, unworthy to consider the workings of the gods. Chastise me as you will for my offense.”

  “Why do you speak of gods and darkness? Tell me what you mean.” The fighters in the camp likely heard my bellowing, as the day’s disquiet came boiling out of me. “Answer me!”

  Feyd spoke in a tremulous whisper. “Because you are with us through the night, holy one, coming always with the close of day. You live in my dreams; I feel you there ... see you there, majestic in your fortress in the realm of night, even when you choose not to manifest yourself to me in flesh. And even when your presence in our world lingers into daylight, the night enfolds you. This dark burden of your trial, of your sorrow that even the Aveddi himself does not understand, cloaks your deeds in terror as if your glorious light is but a deeper darkness. Forgive me, holy lord. Clearly I am wrongheaded and see falsely.”

  I fought for control, barely restraining my hand that was raised to strike him for his mewling cowardice ... for his fear. Why should he fear me? I was not his enemy. And, of course, even as I voiced that claim, the absurdity of my upraised hand with angry flames shooting from the fingertips was not lost on me. “What do you see in your dreams that makes you fear me?” I asked, forcing my hands together behind my back. “I fight at your side. I shed my own blood in your cause just as you do. Tell me, Feyd.”

  Though his words were muffled by the ground, each sounded clearly like a lash striking flesh. “You stand upon the ramparts of a mountain fortress, holy lord. Always it is night, and the wind lifts your black cloak and fills your wings. But in my dream they are not wings of light, holy one, and your face is terrible, as when you are in battle. Please forgive me, lord ...”

  Of course. I should have expected nothing else. Hating ... despising ... my own fears that were exposed by the young man’s honesty, I nudged him gently with my foot. I held my voice quiet. “Feyd, stand up. Now. Come on.”

  Slowly, trembling, the young man got to his feet, his eyes cast down.

  I spoke a word
of enchantment, waited a moment, and then lifted his chin. His eyes were closed. “Look at me, Feyd. Come, look at me.”

  Reluctantly, he raised his eyes, which now reflected only moonlight, no Madonai brilliance.

  “I am a man, Feyd. A sorcerer, not a god. I am not holy. Far from it. Truly I need whatever help I can get, whether Gossopar’s or that of a brave Suzai warrior whose fighting skills are not at all unworthy. But neither do I come from the darkness.”

  “Of course, ho—Of course.” His eyes fell to the earth again, and he did not raise them as we sat down on the grass, and I took up my watch. Neither of us spoke again.

  When I saw the stirring in the camp below us and heard Aleksander’s command, I shifted back to my Madonai form, uneasy with it as I had never been. Feyd bowed to me and mounted his horse, ready to follow Aleksander into battle.

  “Go with Gossopar, my friend,” I called after him.

  “And you, holy one,” he whispered. Perhaps he thought I couldn’t hear him.

  To survive this night we were going to need Gossopar and any other god that might be available. Parassa had a Derzhi governor, usually a low-ranking noble of a major house, and a garrison of a three hundred Derzhi warriors. When assigned to Parassa, the governor would bring a small troop of personal warriors of his own house, but the responsibility of the city garrison rotated through the hegeds every half year, as Parassa was considered an immensely undesirable posting. Though prosperous, the town was of little strategic importance, located far from the frontiers and on only one minor trade route. And the Suzaini had been pacified for so long and were so widely dispersed throughout the Empire, rebellion was of little concern. No glory could be found in Parassa, and no amusement in a dull farming town so remote from court life.