Restoration

by Carol Berg

  Though the garrison numbered only three hundred and the governor’s party perhaps fifty more, Aleksander was mad to think he could stop the burning, much less hold the city afterward, with only Marouf, his forty eager Suzaini fighters, and thirty Thrid. Perched atop a ruined watchtower and looking down on the dark city as Aleksander revealed his plan to his commanders, I was even more convinced of his foolishness.

  “We take the citadel first,” said the Prince, pacing briskly in front of Marouf, Feyd, Farrol, Gorrid, D‘Skaya, the tattooed Thrid woman who had developed into a formidable commander, and two men I didn’t know. “Only the governor and his personal troop occupy the citadel tonight. The governor will give the signal to begin the burning as soon as he hears that all is ready. The garrison is to be deployed about the entire lower city, so they’re spread thin ... and we’ll make sure the governor’s signal is never given. Marouf and I will take the front gates of the citadel, just as at Gan Hyffir. Once the alarm is sounded, D’Skaya will give the defenders just enough time to surge to the front gate, and then she’ll hit them from the rear. Hardile, you and Soro will follow me. Farrol will hold the reserve, twelve men, at the customs house halfway between the citadel and the lower city—just in case someone from the garrison decides to break discipline and ride to the governor’s defense. Gorrid will patrol the citadel periphery to intercept any messengers trying to sneak out.”

  Though temporarily in falcon’s form so I could listen without detection, I had a clear view of our dilemma. Parassa was not a closed city, so the gates were no obstacle. Kill a few guards and we were in. But the governor’s citadel was at one end of the city, high on a bluff, far from the smells and diseases of the river, while the lower city that we had come to protect was sprawled for half a league along the waterfront, separated from the more prosperous quarters by a narrow finger of the river. To bottle up the governor and his guardsmen while preventing the garrison from torching the poor quarters would require splitting Aleksander’s troop into two pitifully inadequate forces. Even with my increased strength and melydda, I could accomplish neither task alone. Surely Aleksander knew that.

  “Once we’ve taken the citadel,” Aleksander continued, “we’ll join Farrol and use the customs house for our base as we deal with the garrison. Handling the garrison warriors will be easier than you believe. Remember, they’re likely uncomfortable with what they’ve been told to do. Just stay alert and follow my lead. Remember that if anything happens to me, Farrol will be in command.” He stopped and faced each one of his commanders. “Kill no one and allow your fighters to kill no one who does not challenge you. Is that clear? Swear to me that you understand this.”

  All of them swore as he asked, and with handclasps and shoulder grips and wishes of good fortune, they mounted up and headed back to their waiting fighters. Aleksander was the last to go, perhaps because Feyd was waiting beside his horse. “Aveddi, if I might ...”

  Aleksander looked down at the earnest young Suzaini. “He is here tonight?”

  “Indeed, my lord, I believe he is.”

  “Gods, Feyd, convince him to talk to me. I need to explain all this. Some matters are too dangerous for anyone—even you—to know.”

  Feyd answered as I had instructed him. “He chooses not, my lord, and this will not change for a time yet. But if you tell me what part you need him to play this night—”

  “I need him not to slaughter every blighted warrior that holds a sword! I need Seyonne’s eyes and Seyonne’s wisdom. That’s what I need. Tell him that. Otherwise he can fly off somewhere else and do as he damned well pleases.”

  Feyd stood openmouthed as Aleksander rode away, and then he glanced uneasily to the top of the ruined tower. “I heard,” I said as I shifted form, illuminating his pale skin with the golden light that his human eyes perceived as darkness. “You’ve no need to repeat it.” Likely Feyd thought the words would burn his tongue or perhaps that I, the one of darkness, would cut out the offending organ. “Shall we see if we can find something useful to do?”

  Clearly Aleksander’s proscriptions had nothing to do with the defenders in the citadel. The fighting was fierce, and the Prince did not object when I eliminated the soldiers dropping hot balls of tar on top of him or the warrior who nearly decapitated Marouf. When the short, fierce combat seemed under control, I went searching for the Derzhi governor and found the soft, balding man cowering in a wardrobe. Leaving him trussed and gagged, his satin breeches fouled from his fright, I flew out over the walls in falcon’s form to see why in Verdonne’s name the garrison had not rallied to the governor’s defense. Surely someone would have heard the sounds of fighting. It made no sense.

  I circled the citadel and spied someone running through the tightly shuttered streets, away from the citadel and toward the lower city. Sword and vest named him a soldier. Not Derzhi ... I swooped low, only to see his dark outline blur and resolve itself into the form of a zhaideg. Gorrid! Only the surly Ezzarian shaped himself as the scavenger wolf. Where was he off to? He was supposed to prevent any Derzhi messengers passing the citadel gates.

  Gorrid loped across one of the stone bridges that spanned the Volaya tributary, then into the streets, skirting the palatial customs house where Farrol hid with Aleksander’s reserves. Farrol’s watchers must have missed him.

  The lower city was as dark as the pits of Kir‘Vagonoth, and the only sounds marring the stillness were the slop of the river backwaters under the docks and the occasional shriek of a gull. One might think the people had smothered their children and animals to keep them silent. The zhaideg trotted about the dark periphery, slowing as he passed the still figures, the soldiers standing poised and ready for the signal that their murderous ring was complete. Amid the stink of gutted fish and decaying vegetation, I smelled octar-soaked torches and straw bales ready to be lit. Along the riverbanks every quay and dock was guarded. Boats drifted away from their moorings, sagging low in the water, holed to prevent their use for escape. Demonfire ... this was not to be just a cleansing, but a slaughter.

  The zhaideg bypassed three boxlike warehouses along the waterfront before slinking close to a fourth. Faint lantern light shone through the shuttered windows, and Derzhi warriors guarded the cavernous doors. The wolf paused in the shadows and with a blur of enchantment reshaped itself into Gorrid. To my dismay, he walked up to one of the Derzhi guards, spoke a few words, and was quickly escorted inside.

  Treachery! I dived from the sky, but the door had been shut firmly behind Gorrid, and it took me a frustrating eternity to find a way in. I lit on a windowsill, nudged open the shutter, and fluttered through the dank maze of stacked crates and barrels toward the cluster of lights at the far end. But I was too late to hear anything. Everyone was shouting ... calling ... laughing. Spirits of darkness, what sort of creatures laughed as they set out to slaughter their own kind? The warehouse doors swung open, and two riders spurred their horses to a gallop, one turning to the right, the other to the left, both of them bearing lighted torches. Gorrid stood watching the rest of them, a small troop of Derzhi ... some twenty or more ... race through the gaping doorway and onto a road that would take them straight to the customs house, where Farrol was waiting and where Aleksander would be joining him at any moment.

  “Bastard!” I screamed as I shifted. “Traitor!” I kicked the startled Gorrid in the face as I flew toward the door. He toppled to the dirt, blood spurting from his nose. I circled and swept my sword delicately across the back of his thighs, relishing his scream. Hamstrung, he could go nowhere until I came back to question him. Then I would kill him. For the moment, I had to stop what was about to happen. In less time than it took to think about it, I beheaded the first rider before he could signal the waiting soldiers to fire their torches. By the time I swept the second rider from his saddle with his spine severed, he had left three torches burning behind him. But either I had begun moving faster than I had ever moved or the three Derzhi sentinels were inexplicably slow, for they had not shifted from their
positions when I snuffed out their torches and their lives in the same instant.

  A quick circle from a greater height, and I saw the trap ready to spring. Aleksander was already crossing the bridge to the lower city, accompanied by only five men. He must have left the rest at the citadel. What in the name of the gods was he thinking? The troop of Derzhi would arrive at the front of the customs house at exactly the same time Aleksander reached the back.

  Weaving an enchantment that I had never before attempted, I sped downward toward the pillared customs house. I flew through the open galleries near the roof and into the vaulted vastness where the outlaw reserves sat mounted and waiting for some signal they were needed. “Get them out!” I screamed at Farrol, who spun and gaped at my sudden appearance as I touched earth beside him. “Whatever you do, keep Aleksander out of here.” I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Do you understand me? Keep him out!”

  “Seyonne, wait ...” Farrol tried to catch my arm, but I shoved him away and shot upward out of his reach.

  “Keep them out or they die with the black-hearted Derzhi.” Already the stone walls were quivering as the enchantment flowed from my hands into them.

  Quickly Farrol yelled at his men to vacate the customs house and bar the Aveddi from entering. They needed no encouragement as I laid my hand upon one and then another of the columns that supported the roof, and cracks appeared in the massive stone cylinders. But the stubborn Farrol did not follow his men. Rather he stood in the center of the room and called up to me, a sturdy, round man of good heart, never temperate in either opinion or action. “Seyonne, don’t do this. It’s all right.” Hooves thundered up the road toward us from the city. Falling dust dulled the sheen of sweat on his round face. “Gods of night, Seyonne, it’s his cousin ...”

  Even as I touched the last pillar, as dust and shards of marble and plaster showered from the shuddering vaults, the word lanced through the storm of madness. The secrecy ... the strange plan ... the dangerous matters ... kill no one who does not challenge you . . . Handling the garrison warriors will be easier than you believe . . . Aleksander had known these warriors would be no challenge. His cousin . . . Kiril. The Parassa garrison were Kiril’s men.

  What had I done? Kiril ... Aleksander’s dearest friend, his brother in all but parentage, a piece of his heart ... and twenty others of his command racing here in laughter to greet their Prince, their Aveddi. And just below me was Farrol ... foster brother to Blaise and Elinor ... the man who had saved my son’s life ... stubbornly risking his own to prevent my killing innocent men...

  With an ear-shattering crack, one of the columns shattered, crumbling in a torrent of rubble. The roof and walls groaned in agony. The great doors at the front of the customs hall burst open, and I had to choose—the one or the twenty. “Run, Farrol! For the gods’ sake, run!” I spread my wings and dived for the doors, bellowing my warning. Another crack behind me, and another, and the roaring rumble of an avalanche. Before me rearing horses, screaming, men crying out in terror as I swept them backward and made myself into a wall of fire to keep them out. One man died, trampled by a frenzied horse, and then another when he was split open by a toppling cornice. At least two more lay on the ground when the living had retreated into the night. Only then did I summon the wind and turn back to the hellish scene of my creation.

  The sky was raining stone. One by one the pillars snapped as I dodged the toppling slabs and the unending cascade of brick and mortar. Only moments and the whole structure would collapse. My working had been excellent, a model of destruction. My own light reflected on the swirling dust was the only illumination, and to hear anything above the noise was impossible. But even as the sky fell, I searched. A jagged portion of the ceiling caught one wing, pinning it to a broken column. Rips in my wings were excruciating, but I felt nothing as I yanked it free and left a ragged tear. The falling stones glanced off me like pebbles off a mountainside as I plowed through the piles of rubble, hunting for any sign of movement. “Farrol!” Sweet Verdonne, let him live.

  He lay beneath a slab of the ceiling, a curved panel painted with the likeness of customs officials offering tribute to the Emperor. I wrenched the massive piece away and gathered his broken body in my arms. As the wall beside us crumpled with a roar, bringing down the remainder of the roof, I soared upward toward the cold stars, crying out my agony of shame. I could not remember how to express human grief. My Madonai eyes seemed incapable of tears.

  CHAPTER 40

  The storm raged over Tyrrad Nor, a howling, bitter wind stripping the garden to its twiggy bones, a driving rain turned to sleet with the night. The first harsh taste of winter had come to the mountain, although the lands beyond the black wall still basked in mellow autumn.

  Icy droplets rolled down my naked back, each one a lancet of fire on abraded skin. I knelt in the corner of the castle ramparts and fought to keep from crying out. Never had I known such pain, not even in the pits of Kir’ Vagonoth. One more try. Just one more ... say the word ... make the shift ... fly ...

  “You’re wasting your time.” The newcomer might have been deposited on the exposed heights by the storm. The whine of the wind and the howling protests of my body had disguised his coming, but I was so far gone in my misery, I felt no surprise. What man beset by demons is surprised when one of them appears in the flesh? “Haven’t you learned enough yet?” Kasparian’s expressionless comments came with a proffered towel and cloak.

  Ignoring his outstretched hand and its promises of comfort, I hauled myself up onto the gap in the stone wall overlooking the abyss of storm and night. Weak-kneed with exhaustion, I invoked my melydda yet again. I was determined to be away, to leave this place of seduction, of deception, of corruption. Yet, to my disgust, even though I stood at this point of abdication, I still craved the sensations of power. First the word Then comes the first flush of enchantment, the breathless pleasure as blood and bone and muscle feel its touch, the stretch, the pulsing growth as the wings begin to unfold ... it is what I am meant to be ... But again my shoulders ripped apart, flayed, raw flesh on fire, exploding agony in every scrap of my being. In moments I was slumped in the corner once more, a quivering heap of wretchedness.

  “It’s the prisoning spells.” He spoke as if I were a mewling child.

  Naked and groaning as I was, curled up in a ball, head bowed to the sleet and storm, anyone might think the same ... or recognize me as an arrogant fool driven to despair by guilt and horror. I could not even call upon my gods. I was dreadfully afraid that they, who had given me gifts beyond mortal imagining, had watched me turn them all to murder. Afraid that they would peer into my soul and see that I could not weep.

  “Give it up before you’re naught but an ugly mess on the garden walk. You can initiate no enchantment in Tyrrad Nor.”

  Kasparian’s assertion made no sense, even to a mind dulled with pain and self-loathing. Of course I could use power in Tyrrad Nor. On the first day of my return I had called up a wind ... and after ... yes, Nyel and Kasparian had initiated the enchantments, but I had used my own melydda to shape them. “I am not a prisoner here,” I croaked through chattering teeth. “I came here of my own choice. I can leave of my own choice.” A foolish claim when I had been trying to leave for more than half a day—to climb over the wall, to shift my form and fly from the garden, from the mountain crags, or here in the rain from the ramparts of my nightmares, stripping the clothes from my back in an attempt to free the power that would not come. Always failing, each time left in greater torment than the last.

  “Where is it you think to go?”

  “Away.” Reason had no claim on me that night. Going had nothing to do with destination, everything with origin and movement and change. I could no longer travel my present course. For good or ill, for death or life, Gaspar had said, but the path of my choosing had led only to death and corruption. Warriors make mistakes. We have to live with them and accept our limitations. Guilt is self-indulgence. Nyel was not the only mentor who had
tried to teach me that lesson. But the deaths at Parassa were more than a mistake. Enough was enough. “Why can’t I shift?”

  “No Madonai can initiate his own enchantments within these walls, save myself, who was considered too weak and useless to be a threat. Even I cannot cross the wall.” The ice wind froze my hair and circled my limbs with its razor fingers, but it was the truth in Kasparian’s words that made me shudder. “And truly, you have very little power as yet. What you have used in the human world is dross.”

  My throat tightened. “I am not Madonai. We’ve not even begun ...”

  But Kasparian’s unsmiling laughter told me differently.

  Was it possible? Nyel had repeated the question so often I’d not heard it: Do you choose freely? Every time I’d gone to Aleksander. Every time I’d learned a new enchantment. Oh, gods, every time ... a step along the way. Thus, the lack of appetite, the waning need for sleep, the vanishing scars ... One of my hands flew to my face and felt the rough deadness of the slave mark, while the other clutched my side, and for once I was glad of the familiar ache. “It is not done. Not yet.”

  There had to be one more step, at least, one more offer that I would hear, knowing, and could refuse. So that I would not murder all my friends in frenzied madness. So that I would not become the thing I feared. So that I would not stand atop these ramparts and destroy the world.

  “To inherit true Madonai power you must submit one last time. But your body is Madonai as much as it will ever be. For now, you, too, are bound by our prison. These last flaws are retained by your own weakness—your human memory—and will fade with time. Once your journey is complete”—he shrugged—“you may have power enough to break the infernal wall or you may not. But then there is always dream traveling.” The dagger of his bitterness twisted in my gut.