"So I found myself cursed by my people and by the gods, expelled from the comforts of the ordinary by my knowledge of the art and the magic of the gods. I had nothing that I could call a home, nor would I be welcomed in the dwellings of men or gods, were my origin and identity revealed. Remaining small, I worked only minor wonders and led the unassuming life of a humble sorcerer quietly seeking the way to spiritual transcendence. I emerged from the tomb carrying a child I had to renounce as my own, for to claim it would mean calling a god's vengeance on us both. Yet the child survived, born from the dead, raised in obscurity and cast onto the fates without sail or rudder. And I also survived, living in constraint, working in secret and within narrow borders, searching for the path Gen-jima had taken.
"But we both won, Tralane. Though the measures were harsh, and perhaps unjust, I found my path, as did my offspring. The same blood runs through both of us, as you must know by now."
Tralane's mind spun, caught in the whirling vortex of Mathi's words and being drawn into a point he did not wish to see.
"I've heard… I've even told the tale of Suthra and Gen-jima," Tralane said in an unsteady, accusing voice. "It is a bard's tale of a god cuckolded, a goddess raped, and a presumptuous mortal buried with his mistress. There was no mention of a child in the story."
"Then consider how fortunate you are to have heard the truth behind a tale told by bards and courtiers."
Tralane was startled by the wizard's pointed comment. The firmness of the dead man's voice shattered Tralane's predilection to deny the story, yet the acceptance of Mathi's origins sparked an entirely new set of conflicts in the bard. It seemed incredible that he was the son of a goddess and that all his alternate-world brothers and sisters were similarly descendants from immortality. But then, the Emperor had taken on the mantle of godhood far too easily for a full-blooded mortal, and both he and Tralane had survived trials that would have severely tested the most experienced champions. Both Gibron and Cumulain had hinted that there was more to him than the mere identity of an orphan bard and archer could explain.
Tralane pursued the complexities of alternate realities, trying to find in them some flaw that would unravel Mathi's assertion. Time had been shortened in some worlds, while in others it had been lengthened. The Emperor's words had implied that he had been searching through the possible worlds for more than one lifetime, and the mysterious woman who had given the tribes people their Nushu Land had passed there at least a generation or two before Tralane. Yet the Emperor was an unquestionable double, as had been some of his victims. They were all bound by common blood, and by the mystery of an unknown heritage, across time and physical realities. But there was something else that linked them all, a common mission above and beyond the fulfillment of a quest for identity. Were they all born from the carnage of a war between mortals and immortals, to seal forever the links between the two? Was Tralane conceived, as were his alternates, by some remote, time-encompassing awareness, to serve as the restorer of balance between human and godly existences? Gibron's talk of fulcrums and balances made more sense to Tralane now and also cut him off from using the inconsistencies in the alternate worlds to deny Mathi's claims. Perhaps Mathi had been born sooner in some of the other worlds, or perhaps even Mathi's father had taken his role, with his seed blooming into the tribes people's witch woman. The specifics did not matter so much as the intention that Tralane and his alternates be driven not only by their own individual pasts, but by the momentum of the histories of their various worlds.
Mathi broke into Tralane's reverie, taking the bard's silence and confusion as the need for further explanation.
"We were your parents, Tralane. Born from the dead, I was the only guardian you could claim. Your father and mother did die—Suthra and Gen-jima were slain in that cave. Only I emerged from that tomb, a humble wizard who traveled south as one of the civil war's sorcerous veterans with a child he had picked up from a devastated village. You were an orphan in fact, but not in spirit or blood."
Tralane's mind withdrew from the cosmological mystery he had touched upon, finding greater comfort and more digestable meat in Mathi's words than in the thought that he was the instrument of a destiny he could barely envisage.
He found he was not reacting as he always thought he would when faced with his ancestry. The names, he had always known, would be strange, though they had not turned out to be totally unknown. The nature of their deaths, if that was the fate they had suffered, he considered might be painful to know. This was brought home to him after Oram's self-revelations, but the knowledge was important to him nonetheless. He had considered searching for a relative, a family member, someone to link him with his past by going back to the place of his birth and speaking to those who might have known his family. Now, these dreams broke on the sheer cliffs of what was and what could never be.
"Why did you hold this from me?" Tralane asked defiantly.
"To have told you in candor would have destroyed the few bare shreds of childhood I could give you with a secret that would mean our deaths if it were known to the world."
"It was a lie."
"Childhood usually is. But that does not take away its joy and freedom."
"But when I was older," Tralane protested, "when I summoned—"
"Yes, when you summoned a goddess, thinking only to bring back a mortal's spirit. Had you succeeded, my pains for secrecy would have been wasted, as well as my efforts to regain Gen-jima. I wanted to follow her into the safety of the resting place of souls, to trace the exact path she had taken, not to drag her back along it. Pichen-ma-thele would have discovered the presence of his daughter and destroyed us all. It is a testament to your power that, as a mere youth, you managed to achieve the summoning at all. It was fortunate for all of us that Gen-jima's warning drew blood and broke your spell, though you must forgive a goddess who perhaps has forgotten the frailty of mortal flesh. And you must forgive me, Tralane. I allowed you to leave me, so you could find your own way with the tools and clues I gave you. Suthra's sin has always been to be headstrong, to think of the paths ahead, and not of the road on which his feet stand. If my attention was drawn away from you, then it was so only to bring me back to Gen-jima. I was selfish in that way, and I beg the forgiveness of my son."
Tralane shook his head in dismay. "I came in part to ask for your forgiveness and now I find I must grant it myself. We are not far removed in some aspects of our natures, Ma—Suthra. We follow the call within us, and are not so eager to hear the voices around us."
"There is good and evil in every voice. One can only ask for the greatest good and the least evil."
There was silence between them for a long while. Tralane absorbed the knowledge he had struggled to obtain, amused by the irony of his origins and the circumstances leading to his ignorance and subsequent discoveries. But the amusement was only the surface swell in a deep ocean of thought and feeling. The identity of his parents, and the discovery that he was speaking with one of them, did not open any hidden reserves of emotion. The years spent with Mathi were not made any pleasanter by the truth of their relationship, nor did the knowledge bring him closer to the spirit inhabiting his tutor's corpse. The completion of the quest left him empty, as if the one hope he had to deny his own nature was banished with the acknowledgement of Mathi as a parent and a slain goddess as a mother. The search had ended with himself at the court of the Emperor of Many Faces. There was nowhere else to run. The last weak hold on the delusion of freedom from all restraint was annihilated.
He sighed and turned his head to look out a window and was surprised by the figure of Akyeetha standing in the periphery of his vision. She was staring at Mathi's body, morbidly fascinated by its animation. He took her hand and brought her to his side, anxiously studying her face.
"I must leave you," Suthra interrupted, oblivious to the woman's entry. "My task is finished here, as yours is also. We must both leave, having done and said what was owed. This tower has nothing more to offer. I will release the spells of prese
rvation and set my servants free. You had best be far from here when that happens. Time will rush in to fill the vacuum left with the departure of magic, and the land will be in turmoil."
"Wait," Tralane cried out, thinking ahead of his inevitable confrontation with Agathom. "I need your help."
"I cannot stay long. The gods have sensed your summoning, and they will eventually unmask my disguise of smallness. I must leave to join Gen-jima, whose path I discovered before I died. You would not deny me that, after all that has happened?"
"No, no, I would not. But this world is in danger. The gods will destroy the land for the sake of envy and jealousy."
"And what is that to me? I am gone. I am almost beyond any call or power."
"But what of me? What of the world that helped to feed and protect you when you were almost helpless, in your cave in the north. What of Akyeetha, who escaped one death world only to be brought to another? I ran, but I returned. I will fight to save the world I was born in. Can you do less than what your own son will do? Or will you be like your father, and banish me to my death as he exiled you?"
In the silence that followed, Akyeetha straightened herself and took a step forward. Tralane followed, noting that her eyes were bright, free from the clouds of remembrance. The sword that had been Wyden's Fang was in her hand. She glanced once at Tralane, but then kept her eyes on the corpse laid out before them. The almost tangible presence of death was rousing her from the protective shell of isolation into which she had withdrawn. The internment chamber was like a small theater in which Akyeetha's death-laden soul could siphon off its infection, making way for life-giving emotions. If she did not regain her identity after the ritual play between father and son had run its course, Tralane was certain she would be lost to him.
Tralane drew his own sword and pointed it at his father.
"Will you lend your power to this sword?" Tralane asked in a steady voice. He would fight, with or without the allegiance of his father.
"Yes," Suthra answered, and the body that was dead rose to join the son.
Chapter 21
They did not have much time to plan.
Suthra took them down to Tralane's old room in the tower's cellar. Akyeetha trembled as they went down, and Tralane studied her for any sign of panic. But she did not waver at the door to his room; she settled there free from the shadow of the Emperor's imprisonment. They ate from their provisions while Suthra went to his library. At night they met in the tower's high chamber, the conjuring room, where Mathi had always worked and taught Tralane.
Suthra had brought out two chairs, and the living sat in them while the Wizard stood by one of the windows. His white hair lifted with the breeze.
"What do we do?" Tralane asked.
"First we see what you've learned."
Tralane took out Wyden's Eye, held it up to the light from the candle in the middle of the room. Suthra looked at it, but did not move towards Tralane or reach for the Eye.
"So?"
"This is what started it all. I took it from the Sorcerer King."
"Who comes for us now."
"He knows?"
"Only that what you hold has returned. He felt its presence as soon as you entered this world and has been following its progress, as any competent sorcerer would, to gauge the power and purpose of its bearer. Now that you have come here, this Sorcerer King must act. He fears the power locked in this tower, which he has thus far avoided. Evidently, he has been well advised by Karthasian sorcerers. But now he must come, thinking to stop the amulet's bearer before the power can be used against him. All this is evident, the spells are in the air, and there are great disturbances in the sources of magical force.
"So, Tralane, you have not learned so much, after all."
Tralane shrugged his shoulders. "I am not so wise as you in the ways of wizards … Father." The last word was difficult for him to use in the course of conversation, but did not frighten him as much as he had thought it would. "But I remembered your lessons. I can control the power of this amulet now. I've used it to travel between worlds and to heal myself."
"Yourself? Then why haven't you healed her?" Suthra nodded in Lady Akyeetha's direction. "Show me."
Tralane did. He gazed into the gem's facets and caught the flickering lights within it in the grip of his will. He saw, as he had seen before in the Wilderness Flower, the streaks of color, the darkness, and the moving shadows. He saw two bright lights, his and Akyeetha's, and he saw one dim light that did not flicker so boldly. There was nothing he could do for that one—already, the strength of his father rested mostly between the worlds of the living and the dead. Instead, he concentrated on Akyeetha's flame.
A shudder passed through her body.
Suthra did not help him. Tralane focused all of his being on Akyeetha's flame, until he saw the black spot that was her mutilated speech. On this spot he set loose the power of the amulet, shaped by his mind in the form of a healing spell.
He was not aware of the passage of time, nor did he see until the end the sheath of night that had come over Akyeetha—a sheath that throbbed and constricted and was without stars. By the time he saw his work, it was almost over. As soon as he turned away from the amulet, the darkness dissipated from around Akyeetha. Her eyes were wide and filled with tears, but she did not release them. She touched her lips with slim fingers, caressed her cheeks, looked first at Suthra and then at Tralane.
"I… can speak," she said at last, in a low, hoarse grumble.
"Not badly done," Suthra said, "though it would have been easier had you done this—" Suthra made a sign in the air that was close to the one Tralane had been taught to use for the passage between worlds. "You don't yet see the pattern in these powers or the way to summon them. And I presume you knew the sign to go between worlds, too. But still, not badly done."
"For a novice."
"For a wizard, son. You have not yet earned my head of hair, nor my poor teeth, but you're on your way."
Tralane smiled sheepishly and glanced at Akyeetha, who was fingering her tongue, then the skin of her throat.
"But I'm still no match for Agathom, the Sorcerer King."
"Indeed. And now you must tell me about this Sorcerer King. I have felt his attention for some time, though he, like the gods, has not yet uncovered me. He has sent us callers and he follows in their wake. We must be prepared."
Tralane, precipitously reduced to feeling like the misbehaving child reporting to his master by Suthra's brusqueness, described the Sorcerer King's arrival, the theft of Wyden's Eye, and his journey through alternate worlds to the ultimate confrontation with the Emperor of Many Faces, where he also found Lady Akyeetha. Through his storytelling, he relived his adventures and saw once again he lessons he had learned. After a while, he did not feel so much like the lowly pupil, but like the man who had committed wrongs and tried to atone for them. Shame left him, and he was able to look steadily into his father's eyes and into the stern, compassionless face. As he finished, he did not expect or need his father's approbation. Nor was he belittled when Suthra took the initiative in planning, for was he not the child of the Wizard Kings? Had his father not won a goddess's love? Had he not floated between the worlds of life and death, waiting for his son to return to him?
And Tralane did not hesitate to speak his own mind, to help shape the plan. He did not fear his father's ridicule or his anger, as he had feared Mathi's. He understood what he could expect from Mathi-Suthra and from himself. There were no questions of confidence or supremacy, no jealousy of Suthra's wisdom, or vanity in his own strengths.
It was when Lady Akyeetha raised her voice and added her thoughts to their talk that the full meaning of his stand with Suthra came to him. And though Suthra made clear the dangers they faced and the death waiting for them all at every turn, Tralane could not help smiling at all he had discovered on his journey, in himself and in the world.
They went on into the night, as Star Speaker and the Wanderer shed their light through the
windows and cast double shadows on the floor. Lady Akyeetha would not be deterred from playing her part in gratitude for Tralane's rescue, and Tralane held her hand in thanks. He was not sure which of their hands would have trembled more, when Suthra brought an end to their conference by shaking his head from side to side and, with a sigh, left to prepare the grounds of his domain for the battle.
Tralane put Wyden's Eye away and led Akyeetha down to his room. They slept there for the rest of the night, she on his old cot, and he on the floor in the company of mice. He dreamed of a father. When he woke, he saw in her sweat-stained garments the terror dreams that had come to visit her. When he went upstairs to prepare a morning meal and saw his father still walking across the mist-shrouded grounds of his tower, Tralane recalled that the dead sleep but do not dream. He would have to add to that saying by including that they may, however, sometimes walk.
Tralane prepared a meal for two, ate, and spent the day gazing into the crystalline visions of worlds in Wyden's Eye, while Lady Akyeetha stayed in Suthra's library, reading the history of gods and men aloud to practice the art of speaking.
Evening came quietly, with an overcast sky. The stars were blinded, and the two moons, Wanderer and Star Speaker, were like pale eyes gazing out from the veiled face of night. There was a stillness deeper than that caused by the spells woven around Suthra's tower. The weight of power, heavier than the gathering storm clouds on the horizon, had settled on the land, patiently waiting for its prey.
With the first stab of lightning in the distance, wrapped in a rolling cacophony of thunder, came the first demon. The trees and grass that were touched by its shadow withered and died, leaving a scar across the earth reaching back to the point of its summoning. It bellowed with the effort of its unsteady flight, as a thousand wings struggled against the currents of wind. Tendrils snapped at the air, and long strands of white hair—twice the length of a full-grown man—flowed backwards from its gray, wormlike head, to be lost among the fluttering wings. A thick yellow fluid oozed from orifices all along the body of the demon, like human sweat, only to be devoured by tiny, skittering parasitical creatures. Two longer tendrils, emerging from its head, swayed back and forth in a rhythm free from the influence of the winds. Small, blinking circles of blackness dotted the length of the twin appendages.
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