by Carol Berg
“He said that at every step I could choose ...”
“... and so you have chosen.” He dropped the cloak over my hunched shoulders and the towel onto the paving. “The servants will bring hot water to your room whenever you decide to leave off this pitiful display.”
My forehead rested on the paving. Perhaps the pressure of cold stone might ease the pounding in my skull. I thought Kasparian had left the ramparts, for the night felt empty, as if the wind and the darkness had devoured every soul in the universe. But as I wrapped my arms about my belly, words spilled onto my back, scarcely distinguishable from the freezing rain. “I would recommend you seek advice before you refuse him the last step.”
Seek advice. Would that I could. Would that there was someone who might listen and understand and tell me what to do. But the only advice I heard was my dead father’s gentle remonstrance. Unfair, Seyonne. Unjust to raise your hand against one who cannot fight back on your terms. Did you even think? Even with such poignant memory, tears would not come.
When a pale sun rose in a winter-blue sky, I was still huddled in the corner of the ramparts, sure of nothing but that I would throw myself wingless from the tower of Tyrrad Nor before I would accept another gift from Nyel. No more game playing. Oh, I did not blame him. If he had told me from the beginning that my participation in his enchantments was the mechanism for my change, I would have chosen no differently.
Unjust. Unfair. To thrust the power of a Madonai into a human conflict. That was the sin of my arrogance: to believe that strength and honorable intentions justified such violation of the world’s ordering. Your strength will be your downfall, my demon had said. And so it had been. Nyel had warned me that the entangling of human emotions and Madonai power was dangerous. Now I had seen the consequences of detachment and could not stomach them. So, as I gathered the cloak about my clammy flesh and descended from the ramparts of my prison, I told myself I’d best prepare for a lengthy stay in Tyrrad Nor. If the only possibility of escaping this prison was to follow my current path to its end, abandoning what scraps of my human self remained, then I would never leave.
Clean clothes and a tub of steaming water were waiting in my room, as Kasparian had promised. I soaked for an hour and then fell onto my bed, forcing my body into a sleep it no longer needed.
A full day passed before I allowed myself to wake. After bathing and donning the clothes that were laid out for me, I paced the castle corridors. I needed to get my blood moving. The day was uninviting. Windy. Dull. I did not avoid Nyel, but neither did I seek him out. Confrontation would come soon enough. He knew all that had happened at Parassa and how I felt about it. His attempts at comfort when I had first emerged from the disastrous venture had been quite sincere, voiced in his kindest and most reasonable tones. But I had desired no consolation, especially that which told me such mistakes were the result of my improper fawning over a race of liars, that by caring too much for those who were not worthy, I corrupted my own judgment. Innocent people had died at my hand. Curse the devil’s soul forever, I had murdered my friend.
I wrenched my thoughts to present and future. What did it mean to be neither human, nor rekkonarre, nor fully Madonai? I tried a few enchantments as I walked through a courtyard of hissing fountains: summoning a wind, casting a light, shaping a minor illusion in the way I had always done it. But the words and spells I had learned in Ezzaria had withered away. Like dry riverbeds, their familiar courses were devoid of that which gave them life. The failure left me dry and incomplete, as I had been in my slave years. The gift of sorcery that I had carried with me since my birth had been transformed into something new, a furnace laid with glowing embers that pulsed with the beating of my heart and roared into life whenever I shaped wings. Knowing full well the likely outcome, I breathed upon the embers and tried the spells again ... and in moments I was clutching a fluted column, trying to stay upright until invisible bludgeons and axes stopped shattering my bones. The Madonai core existed, but was inaccessible. Nyel had insisted that I would wield my own power when I was wholly changed, but had promised nothing if I stopped short of that.
And so what of my third part, the human part? I returned to my room, picked up the knife that had been laid out for me at every waking and dragged the blade across my left arm. I scarcely felt it. Blood welled from the thumb-length gash, but slowed to a trickle in only moments. By the time I grabbed a discarded towel to blot it, the wound was already half closed. It appeared that if I remained as I was, I could live a very long time with frustrated desire and limited occupation. A most dangerous combination.
Where did Kasparian think I was to get advice? Certainly not from Nyel, who did nothing but confuse me. Nor from the bitter Kasparian himself or his silent servants. If I could not cross the wall, I could not question the rai-kirah, themselves victims of this perverse power, or make my way to the gamarand wood, where, so visions and the dying Kryddon had told me, enlightenment awaited. What of history, then? Was there some writing that might tell me what I was or how to reverse what had been done? My restless feet took me to the fortress library, a warren of rooms housing thousands of books and scrolls, maps and drawings. But a few hours flipping through brittle pages and unrolling fragile manuscripts only to find more spells I could not use and adventures I could not share left me with such craving for melydda I could scarcely breathe. I was so cold. So empty. And the embers within me pulsed, waiting to fill me with warmth and light. Only a few hours into my rebellion, and I was on the verge of capitulation.
“Weak-willed murderer!” I threw an armful of ribbon-tied rolls to the flagstones. Before the dust and fragments of shattered parchment had settled, I was striding down the broad stairway and out of the front doors, inhaling deeply, trying to gauge the best path to set off running. Perhaps exercise would dull the hunger for today. Would it suffice for a thousand years or more?
I started jogging toward the wall, thinking to take the longest path around the edge of the garden and up the track that ascended the mountain. The closer I got to the wall, the more unsettled my stomach became. Now I understood the sickness I had experienced on the night after the battle at Gan Hyffir, just as I understood why Nyel never walked near the wall. The “prisoning spells,” as Kasparian called them, would be designed to keep a Madonai away from it. But I continued on and ran the circuit of the wall and the mountain path three times before deliberately dropping to the damp turf at the base of the wall. “Go ahead,” I said, settling my back against the cracked stone. “Do your worst.”
I expected to feel the full impact of the binding enchantments when I touched my back and head to the wall. Indeed a dull ache crept into my muscles and streaks of red light pierced my eye sockets, distorting the weak daylight. When I closed my eyes to will away the discomfort, however, I was distracted by more visions of the Twelve Friends—those who existed somehow within the enchanted barrier. The images left me wondering again how they had crafted this prison and why. I ought to know. All of them had been my friends in that distant life. Had I helped design these very enchantments that threatened to tear me apart? A fitting irony that I had destroyed the part of me that might have remembered how to break through them.
These considerations led me to think of Fiona and her discovery—the tower in the gamarand wood where the Twelve had planned this fortress. How had Fiona described it—the tower without a door? Smooth and warm ... stone that was alive ... This wall could be described just the same. I pushed gently, she had said. Eased myself through, using words of opening and passage.
I leaped to my feet and faced the wall. Laying the flats of my hands against the warm stone, I pressed gently, and as before, the stone seemed to swell about my fingers. But when I tried to weave words of opening and passage, my throbbing discomfort exploded into agony. I held as long as I could, convincing myself that I felt some softening beneath my fingers, some movement, some release, but I soon fell to my knees, retching. Empty and sick, I gripped the edge of a deep crack to push away fr
om the wall, mumbling, “I’m sorry, Lady. All of you, forgive me.” And the stone swelled up around my hands and drew me in ...
Eternal grayness ... daylight filtering through the pores of the black stone. Chill, airlesssolidity as when you walk into a tomb. The warmth of the wall was a sign of those who existed here; what they themselves experienced was unyielding cold. I reached out my hands like a blind man and felt the fluttering softness of their touch, like moth wings propelling me on my way through the grayness. “Tell me who you are,” I said as I moved through them. “I can’t remember. Can you show yourselves? Tell me what to do. ” I reached out to touch their minds, but discovered only living stone. So many years. So grim a duty. Voices long faded. Yet even in the cold and silent grayness, I felt no hatred. Not for me, not for the prisoner they were there to confine, not for the world that had forgotten their sacrifice. A last firm shove on my back—I would have sworn I heard the faintest echo of Vyx’s laughter, he who had come late to his post ...
... And I opened my eyes to a small, neat room. The curved walls were undecorated, save for a single window that looked out upon a woodland of yellow trees, alive with the twitters and whistles of wrens and robins and orioles. The gamarand wood, and beyond it, the mountain of Tyrrad Nor. This was Fiona’s tower.
“Hello?” My call was only for form’s sake. The still air had already told me that no one was there.
A table of pale wood stood in the center of the room, fifteen backless stools drawn up around it. Laid out on the table were pens and ink, a pewter pitcher half filled with fragrant red wine, fifteen wine cups, and the scrolls Fiona had transcribed—the drawing of the fortress and the manuscript. Language was no longer a barrier. A quick perusal of the manuscript told me nothing that I did not already know about Tyrrad Nor: its size and shape and accoutrements, its barricade of spells. The black stone was slightly more mysterious. I opened the wooden case and read the word scribed on the stone: Kerouan. Unlike Fiona’s experience, closing my eyes or looking away from the stone did not erase what I had just read. I traced a finger over the word, wondering, then dropped the stone in my pocket. If I found someone to ask questions of, I could ask this one, too.
I descended the curving staircase. What would I do if I found no one in the wood? Though I had spent a frenzied night attempting to leave Tyrrad Nor, now I was beyond the wall, I had no idea where to go. Find my way to the gateway, I supposed. Or see if any of the rai-kirah survived; my body’s change might prevent me living in the human world again.
As I opened the lower door, I laid my hand on the tower wall and closed my eyes. The warm stone softened at my touch. A lonely vigil, I thought, as I envisioned a sour old woman’s ruddy face. You don’t even have the comfort that there are others beside you. But the birds are here, at least. Whoever she was, she had loved birds better than men or women. I greeted her and thanked her, and then stepped out into the forest of gold.
Marveling, I touched a pair of the twining yellow trunks, one rough, one smooth, a single tree at root and spreading crown, yet always a duality. The smooth trunk birthed the dark green leaves that turned to yellow fire in autumn, as well as the white blooms of spring; the rough trunk curved about the first, protecting it, producing the liquor of life from water, sunlight, and its own nature to feed the crown and root. The branches were bare, the fading brilliance of leaves and blossoms a carpet beneath my feet. Through the tangle overhead loomed the mountain’s granite knee, and high above me sat the thin girdle of black stone that was the wall. The steep angle and lowering clouds prevented any view of the fortress behind it. Good. I didn’t want to see it ever again.
The forest had fallen still when I stepped out of the tower. No sound of bird or insect marred the palpable silence. The air was cool on my cheek, and the scent of old leaves and damp earth filled my nostrils. And more ... traces of intelligence pervaded the woodland, the unmistakable residue of sentience. The vibrant threads were so distinctive, I could name them neither human nor Madonai, but I could surely name them.
“He loved you, didn’t he?” My voice jarred the quiet. “You’re the one.” The mortal maiden chosen by a god.
No one answered, and I walked on, the trees shaping my path. Though my instincts bade me flee, only one way was open to me, every other blocked by drooping branches or fallen trees. I would clamber around them only to find myself trudging uphill again, back toward the fortress and its cruel temptations. “Let me go, Lady,” I said to the wood, “or give me answers.” The breeze riffled my hair and fingered my cheek softly. “I cannot grieve. I don’t know how anymore.” Somehow I believed that she was listening. “Is it because I’m neither one nor the other? He is Madonai, yet he still feels. He loves me, and he grieves for me as the sun mourns for the earth that it can never touch. Why? I’ve let him blind me, cripple me, make me everything I despise, and yet I cannot hate him for it. If I don’t understand, how can I know what to do?”
Silence. I turned downhill again, swearing under my breath. Faced with yet another blockage, I raised my hand and summoned melydda, but was instantly on my back with a stinging bruise on my face. The blast of power had been breathtaking and from no source that I could see. I mumbled an oath, making sure my hand was still attached to my arm. “All right. All right.” I stumbled to my feet and followed the path chosen for me.
Now, with every step, the sweet woodland smell became more tainted with the acrid scent of ash, of freshly charred wood and burned grass. A few more steps and I emerged from the trees. The Lady was seated on a rock overlooking a scorched vale, stark black skeletons of gamarand trunks. The steep rock face across the burned vale was stained dark red, as if some horrific carnage had taken place nearby, splattering it with blood. Wisps of smoke still curled from a few thick stands of trees, while the breeze stirred the hot ash and scattered it on the Lady’s green gown and dark hair like gray snowflakes.
When her luminous gaze came to rest on me, I sank to one knee and bowed my head. “My Lady Verdonne,” I whispered. Why had it taken me so long to understand who she was—the one who stood between the god and the human world, the forest maiden who had been made immortal? Not a goddess, but a woodland, a boundary between light and darkness, trying to shield both humans and rekkonarre. My day within the oak had taught me of the immortality of a forest—unless it burned so hot that its seeds and roots were destroyed, unless its home ground was made sterile by flames. “Forgive my blindness, Lady. Help me see my path.”
“Can I command you to be other than you are?” Her chin rested in her hand, and her voice was as much a part of that woodland as the rustling leaves. “Perhaps then this business would be easier, for I would not care what became of you.” Her sigh was the breeze that shifted the layers of ash. “For so long I’ve believed that if you could but find your way here again, we could devise a way to hold him. But never did I think your journey would be so filled with pain. How can I ask more?” She rose and came to me. Her hand touched my shoulder and drew me up, and another on my cheek lifted my head to look on her. Her bronze skin was shaped by fine bones, and her spare features, the burnished glow of her hair, and the faint lines about her eyes spoke more of mature wisdom than blooming girlhood. She reminded me of Elinor. Only the immensity of her presence named her far, far older than my son’s foster mother. “Ah, beloved, what am I to say to you?”
“I’ll stay here a prisoner if need be,” I said. “Or I’ll walk back through the gateway and into the desert to live a powerless hermit. I’ll take my place in the wall, if that is necessary. But I cannot take another step along his path, though I go mad with it.” And I would go mad. I knew I would. “Just help me understand, Lady. Command me.” For so long I had tried to control my own future. Whatever life and fate had put before me, no matter what pain my choices cost me, I had insisted on shaping the event to my own design. Now I was tired of choosing. No more of it.
She put her arm through mine, and we strolled along the edge of the burned forest. “We’ve so littl
e time. It’s enough to make one shake the World’s Tree until its roots break loose!” Jerking me to a halt almost immediately, she bent over to brush the choking ash from a young gamarand. As she wiped her gray-smudged fingers on her green mantle and propelled me forward once more, she shouted in the direction of Tyrrad Nor. “May its fruits bruise your balls, Madonai, and its trunk bash your hard head!” She punctuated her outburst with a bone-bruising squeeze of my arm. I jumped a little and gaped at her. She crinkled her lovely face into a rueful smile. “What is it? Do our people no longer swear by the World’s Tree?”
Swear ... In that crystalline moment, the name that I had bandied about for thirty-eight years assumed the shape of a human woman instead of a goddess—a human woman who, after more than a thousand years of guardianship, could still rail in good-humored ferocity at what fate had brought her. I could not help but grin. “My lady ... our people swear by your name!”
Amused resignation danced on her face. “I suppose that makes as much sense as a tree. The powers who truly shaped the world must be accustomed to odd guises.”
So small an exchange, so trivial to ease a man’s awe and desperation. Yet it drew me back to our business, too, for Ezzarians also swore by the name of her son ... the jailer. But it was with rational need and no longer with panicked frenzy that I phrased my request. “Tell me the story, Lady.”
“First, look up there.” She pointed to the wall. “Look closely.” For the first time in a long while I called upon my Warden’s senses, the human skills of far-seeing and sharpened hearing that were nothing of enchantment, only long training and practice. The entire outer surface of the wall was crumbling, as if someone had taken a battering ram to it.
