by Carol Berg
“Three days ago the wall was almost whole,” she said. “It was an astonishing sight, for our enchantments have been on the verge of failure for many years. Even when Vyxagallanxchi took his place a year ago, his gift—the last of the Twelve—was quickly used up. But in the last few months the damage has been reversed, the cracks sealing themselves, the wall reabsorbing its broken pieces.” She paused and fixed me with her gaze. “Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because of you. Because of his love for you. And perhaps because of yours for him.”
The day shifted, as if the sun’s great eye had blinked. “But now it’s broken again,” I said, swallowing hard to keep my nervous stomach in place. “What’s causing it to fall apart?”
“You know the exact events more than I,” she said, resuming her pace, drawing me along in her wake as a ship guides a floating leaf. “On the day of our wedding, my husband gifted me with the heartbond of the Madonai, and so I am one with his joys and sorrows, though I rarely know their cause. I know he travels in dreams, and I know what he’s learned to do with them—my fault, I’m afraid, for it was my suggestion to leave the breach in his bonds that has caused the world such distress. I can see the visions he creates, and so I learned of you—the cause of his great joy. I tried to reach you, to warn you, but I’ve nothing like his power, of course, even contained as he is—”
“—and I would not listen either to you or to this rai-kirah that’s joined with me; I shut him out, silenced him before he could remember.” I had destroyed him with weapons forged of my lifelong fears, of the need to control my own destiny, of my reluctance to allow anyone—my wife, my friends, and especially a powerful and angry rai-kirah—access to my soul.
Her red-gold cheeks deepened in color, and a wind of sadness wafted through the woodland, shifting the fallen leaves. “You must not blame yourself. Never, never do that. There is too much weight in these matters to think they hinge upon a single pivot. Every deed we do, every happenstance, even our own sense about what we’ve done and seen—all have their places in the great puzzle of the world. Just tell me what’s happened in these few days, and then I’ll explain more. To understand what must be done, you need to see the past more clearly. If it cannot be from your own remembrance, then it must come from me.”
And so we walked the forest paths, through the trees and out again into another desolation of ash and smoke, while I poured out the story of my bargain with Nyel and its terrible consequences. I told her of my inexplicable reliance on his good intentions and my foolish belief that if I could not save him, I would at least be able to kill him. “But I know now that such a deed is inconceivable,” I said. “He has me in such thrall that my hand could never raise a weapon against him, even if I knew what one to use. I fear for my soul, Lady. And if I lose it, the world will suffer.” Astonishing how the very act of speaking such perilous truth can soothe its mortal dread. Or perhaps it was only the Lady and my belief that she could forgive me anything, even to the destruction of the human race.
We had come to a slow flowing stream, a ribbon of floating gold, and we sat on the leaf-strewn earth beside it. She drew up her knees and hugged them. “He believes you will refuse him. That’s what’s happened to the wall. All his hopes, both for good and evil—for he is truly mad and cannot see the difference—are bound up in you. And without hope, he is lost again, and we are all in danger. The wall will fail.”
“I have been a naive fool,” I said. “To let him do this to me—” She laid her hand on my knee and leaned forward. “No, no! Do not doubt your own mind, dear one. Everything you’ve seen of him, everything you’ve felt of his goodness, is absolutely true. When I waked beside my father’s fire to see the one from my dream sitting beside me, those glorious eyes gazing at me in wonder and curiosity and no small portion of lusty interest, I first learned the meaning of beauty and love and kindness. For twenty years I learned nothing other from him. Oh, we argued. Everyone would tell you of it. He was strong-willed and proud and used to having his way. And I was my father’s only daughter and very like. But our disputes were always rooted in good humor, and our delight in each other, both body and mind, soon mended them. Everyone who knew him—Madonai, human, and rekkonarre—felt the same. No one in any world has been better loved than he who dwells in Tyrrad Nor or more deserving of it.”
She withdrew her hand and laid it in her lap, staring at it as if it were a part of someone else, not quite belonging to her own body. “Even when his people began to die, things did not change between us for a long while. He would come to me and lay his head in my lap as I sat beside our fire, telling me who had sickened that day and who had died, and of his endless investigations to discover the cause of their decline. I would wipe his tears and tell him news of the children. Seventeen of the rekkonarre dwelt within a day’s walk of my hearth fire. Though he came always in the night, he would often linger into the day, so that he could spend time with our own son.”
Son. The word was like a spark of lightning over distant hills, a portent of the coming storm.
“The children were the joy to balance out his grieving,” she went on. “Imagine the horror of this early death for the Madonai. Think of how we feel when a youth or maiden dies—far worse than for an infant death, because a youth or maid of twelve or fifteen summers has begun the journey, brought joy to her family or strength to his village, but has yet to realize the full promise of life. So many things undone, untried, unknown. Such was this for his people, for a Madonai who has lived only a few hundred years is but a youth. Now think of a plague that takes our young people one by one, the most generous and most joyful first—for those are the Madonai who first mated with humans. When the younger ones were dead, the elder tried to make children, too, and then the elders, too, began to die. All in the matter of a heartbeat in the span of their long lives. Why did my love not die with them? He didn’t know. Was it because he was the first? Because he was the strongest? Because he loved to travel through my dreams and had never stepped through the gateways in the flesh? More and more he remained in his world, pushing himself to find the reasons and the remedies, giving everything he had to make things right again. When he stopped coming to me, I tried to send messages, and I tried to go to him. But he would neither see me nor would he see our son, for he had found his answer and could not bear it.”
I dislodged a snag in the stream, where a charred limb had stuck in the earthen bank and caught the drifting leaves, holding them until the mass had turned black and clogged the flow. The rotting mess swirled and broke apart, moving away slowly until the golden stream ran free. “He told me he planned to destroy the gateways,” I said, “and because it would have prevented the rekkonarre from spending time in both worlds, thus dooming them to madness, he was called a child-slayer.”
“Kasparian told him that story when his mind was still quite fragile. To know the whole of it would have destroyed him again when he was only just recovering. I’ve no way to know how much he remembers now.” Verdonne clasped her hands in her lap. “My husband was going to destroy the gates. That’s true. But the danger to his people still existed. He could not destroy the enchantment, the vietto that had brought the Madonai to our world in the first place, could he?” And so the storm broke.
“He came to me in the night,” said the Lady. “Lay with me as he had not done in a year, weeping every moment even as he pleasured me beyond mortal imagining. When we lay sated beside my hearth fire, he reached for his tunic and pulled out a jewel, a diamond that could have been a star brought down to earth in his hand. His body would take fire with golden light when his power was flowing. On that night, the jewel grew golden, too, so that his tears reflected its light, and I asked what was this working that grieved him so sorely. ‘It is the answer,’ he said as wailing rose from the forest, first from one direction and then another. The sky darkened with the sound as if clouds had covered the stars. The night bled. And he lay in my arms with his jewel and his te
ars, as the wailing rose from ever more distant settlements.
“ ‘What terror is abroad this night?’ I said. ‘Why do you lie here weeping and do nothing?’ Never had he failed to answer our distress, giving everything of his heart, of his labor, and of his power to ease our human travails. But on that night he just gathered me in his arms and stroked my hair, and sobbed that no one suffered or was afraid. He’d seen to that, he said. I felt him quivering, cold sweat on his forehead and his breast. Soon he rolled to the side, groaning, still clutching the jewel, and I saw he was in terrible pain. ‘Love, what is it?’ I said. ‘Make it stop.’
“ ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘I tried to find some other way. Truly, my darling one, I tried. But it is my people. Unless I do this, I’ll have killed them all.’ But, of course, that’s exactly what he was doing to the humans and the rekkonarre ... killing them all and taking their pain and fear into himself to ease their way into the realm of death.”
“And who stopped him?” I said, knowing the answer even before she spoke it.
“You did, my darling—the son he cherished beyond all telling. When you woke from your sleep at my call and challenged him to end the slaughter, he could not bring himself to slay you. For love of you, he shattered his jewel before it was spent. And once he broke the spell to stop the killing, the guilt of his race’s ruin and the pain and fear of ten thousand dead tore his mind apart.”
CHAPTER 41
Nyel. The Nameless God. My father. Mine and not mine ... for even when my flesh and spirit knew and believed and witnessed to my mind that Verdonne did not lie, my soul clung to the gentle man of books and earth who had sired me in Ezzaria. Gareth of the line of Ezraelle was my soul’s father, not a proud, tormented Madonai who had tried to exterminate the human race. No matter that he had sought to ease their way into death, the Madonai had chosen slaughter to remedy a grievous tragedy. And because he had been a good and honorable man, he had gone mad from it.
His son had become his jailer and lived on until the split that had sent the rai-kirah into exile and the human sorcerers back to Ezzaria. And though his physical body had died a thousand years in the past, that son still lived, an inseparable part of me.
“So what are we to do?” I said. The day’s false warmth had fled, and I hunched my cloak about my shoulders, turning away from the rising north wind so I would not have to look upon the fortress and the wall and a future that terrified me.
“Give him back his hope.”
Such a simple, pleasant phrase to describe a nightmare. I turned on the Lady, such fear and anger rising up in me that my body quivered. “Let him make me a monster to follow him? I cannot do it.” For I could see his strategy now. Yes, he wanted his son strong and powerful, a true Madonai ... a god. But he also wanted me ruthless, free of the weakness that had caused him to fail. No wonder he hated Aleksander. No wonder ... holy stars of night, no wonder he wanted to know more of my own son. “You’re telling me to give up my human soul. Don’t you understand? I’ve seen what I’ll become. I can’t do it.”
The Lady’s calm reason was terrifying. “You tried to contain his power with your enchantments, and for a very long time you succeeded. But the Twelve are tired, fading, and no Madonai are left to give themselves to the wall. Our friends paid a terrible price to allow him to live, hoping that someday his madness would heal and that he would again bless both worlds with his love.” Verdonne laid her hand on my arm, trying to soothe my agitation, strolling through the yellow trees as if we were discussing the weather or the price of flour in the market.
She told me how I—Valdis—had no more been able to slay my father for his crime than he had been able to hurt me, and so I had designed a way to contain his power. Twelve Madonai—out of so many who loved him, I’d had to choose—had allowed me to weave their essence into a wall, for pure Madonai power was all that could hold him. A thirteenth had become the tower guardian to provide the way in and out of the fortress. Verdonne had paid the price, as well, bound to this forest forever, giving it her strength and living with its pain. And then I had woven enchantment that stripped my father of his name. I had led him into the fortress and soothed his raving terrors, for it was to be a very long while until his mind regained any semblance of balance.
“Before many years had passed, the rekkonarre began to forget the prisoner, just as you intended when you took his name,” she said. “The Madonai were long dead, save for Vyxagallanxchi. Verdonne and Valdis and the Nameless God became the stuff of myth. But every day you saw the fortress was a knife in your heart, and as your father regained this show of reason, you were afraid the love you bore him would weaken your resolve. That’s when you and Vyx decided to destroy your own memories of him. You came here and told me what you planned, knowing that you would forget me, too.”
Time slowed to a crawl as my fingers wrapped around the black stone in my pocket. “But I recorded his name, didn’t I? So that if he were ever to recover—”
“Vyx wrote it. He put it under an enchantment so that no one but you could read it.”
Vyx had not been one of the rekkonarre, but my tutor, my protector, my mentor, a young Madonai devoted to me—his half-human attellé. Vyx had remained with me through the long years of forgetting, through the frightening time of the prophecy when I had been persuaded that if we didn’t take drastic precautions, a winged shapeshifter was going to set the Nameless God free to destroy the world—not remembering that the one we feared was my own father. After we who remained—the rekkonarre, the builders—had worked the enchantment that split our souls, Vyx lived with me through exile in Kir’ Vagonoth, remembering only that someday he would have to return to a black wall in Kir‘-Navarrin to complete his life.
Truth and awe had sapped my fury. “If we cannot rebuild the wall, then what—?”
“The time has come for him to die, beloved. Let his devotion to you be our last remembrance of him. You could try to slay him now as you are, challenge him in some ‘honorable’ combat or destroy him in his sleep. But we have no way to gauge his true strength save by the wall, which says he is stronger than we would wish. With Kasparian to aid him in taking power from these poor shadows that inhabit Kir’Navarrin, the risk of his victory is too great. But the only way he can make you fully Madonai is to gift you with his own power, weaving it with that which was born in you. He cannot create Madonai sorcery anew, only transfer it, and at the moment of his yielding, he will be at his most vulnerable.”
Nyel was not my true father. I did not owe him a son’s loyalty. But Denas ... Valdis ... was a part of me, and if I was to live with myself, I needed to tread carefully in these matters. “What if I don’t kill him, Lady? What then?”
Our path had led us back to the tower. Verdonne pulled aside a vine and laid her hands on the stone, smiling sadly and murmuring something that was beyond my hearing—a greeting to the tower guardian, I thought. Then she lifted her gaze to mine. “Perhaps nothing. He may yield you his power and fade away in his fortress, content that he has done everything possible to redeem his sins. Perhaps with the strength you bring to this completion, you will then be able to leave the fortress and do as you will. But he has had a very long time to consider his plan, and my husband was the most intelligent, most powerful of his kind, which is saying a great deal. It is possible that he could revoke his gift if you failed to live up to his expectations and complete his dreadful work.” She took my hands in hers. “Fix this duty in your mind so that you will not forget your purpose amid the magnitude of your change. You must finish what you’ve begun. Accept his gift and take his life while he feels the joy of the giving.”
Truth weighs heavier than other words, my soul’s father had once told me. It bears a substance of its own, like an ingot that comes from the forge glowing, yet unmalleable. It rings clear like crystal when tapped, shines like silver beside lead. “And if I do this,” I said, scarcely able to form words for the constriction in my chest, “who will contain me?”
“You
will find your way. You are a man with two noble spirits, one that I know as I know my own heart and one that I have only glimpsed. What my son could not do alone, you, the stranger, will enable him to accomplish. The true powers of earth and sky have brought you to this place, forged you, shaped you, honed you. I trust them. And I trust you, my son and my friend.”
There was no more to be said. In only a matter of moments I had passed through the tower wall and climbed the stairs to the quiet room. I carefully placed the black stone back in its wooden box. Kerouan. The Nameless God. I looked out through the window at the bright woodland, and then stepped across the fathomless gulf.
“You confound me!” Nyel’s hand was poised above his game board, halted in midmotion at my declaration. “After your unhappiness of these past days, I assumed—”
“I would be grateful if you would stop ‘assuming.’ I am not a child. You can allow me to make my own decisions, and you needn’t hide the difficult bits. I understand the consequences of my choices, have accepted them freely, and will do so until the end. I was unhappy because I killed innocent men, forced into it because my friend Aleksander refused to trust me fully. And then I discovered that I cannot walk through these walls, because you have already begun my change. Clearly you don’t trust me, either. What man, Madonai or human, would not be ‘unhappy’ to discover that the two souls he trusted above any in the world could not reciprocate?”
“I have been, perhaps, overeager in my gifting.”
An understatement of the case, to be sure, but as near to an apology as I was likely to hear. “So will you do as I ask?” I said.
Nyel carefully replaced the game piece—the white warrior king—onto the black-and-gray board. He rose and walked briskly to the windows, clasping his slender hands behind his back. “As you wish. I will send you to a new dreamer with the same conditions as before. But now to satisfy your need for truth: this venture, whatever your purpose, will be the last step of my working, save for the full gifting of power. When you return you will be Madonai, body and mind. Your human frailties will be eliminated, but not without cost. Certain portions of your past ... memories, feelings ... will have faded.”
