Transformation

by Carol Berg

  She drew him into an hour’s web of conversation, astonishing for a sheltered young woman speaking with a very worldly prince. They talked of horses and racing, and that led to the desert and Aleksander’s love of the hot, dry lands of his birth. She talked of herbs and their many uses, and of the weather and writing and trees. Several times she tried to include me in her word weaving, but I would give only a brief answer, declining to take up her challenge.

  After a while I found that I had forgotten to eat while I watched her. She would flush charmingly when Aleksander would get so wound up in a story that he would blurt out rude words—then strangle on them—or when he would quite obviously skip the part about how he took the fiery Manganar girl, who rode so magnificently, to his bed. She was animated by the exchange like an enchanted flower, budding and blooming all in the matter of an hour.

  “You are a fine storyteller, sir,” she said. Then she shifted her attention to me again. “But as for you ... I rarely have so much difficulty setting my guests at ease. You put all my skills to the test. Perhaps you take no pleasure in conversation.”

  “Sometimes the greatest pleasure is listening to those who are skillful at it,” I said.

  She was genuinely surprised at my answer.

  “He has no trouble conversing when he’s telling me all the things I do wrong,” grumbled Aleksander to no one in particular.

  “Indeed?” she said, widening her eyes in interest. “You must be a favored servant to thus have a prince’s ear. More a friend than a servant.”

  Aleksander flushed quite a vivid red.

  I, of course, had no wish to pursue such an interchange. “May I help you clear the table, madam? After such a fine meal, the hostess should not bear the sole burden of the cleaning.”

  “That would be very kind,” she said, rising from her chair. She showed me where to put the dishes, then asked if I would bring water for washing them.

  I took her pail and stepped out the door, welcoming the cold. I was fearfully hot in my cloak, for she had kept the fire well stoked for my comfort. I found the cistern beside the house and dipped the pail. Perhaps it was the enchantment of the forest or the need to ease my heartsickness with a touch of long-forgotten grace, but I spoke the water-blessing words as I lifted the pail. “Sych var de navor, caine anwyr.” Gift of earth and sky, purify our hands. It seemed only right to say it on that night.

  When I stood up to return to the house, the woman was standing right behind me. She was staring at my hand that held the pail, her body rigid as if the pail were filled with snakes. I looked down to see what bothered her so. I had pulled up my sleeve to keep it out of the water, leaving the iron band about my wrist exposed.

  “You are his slave, not his servant.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he forbid you to show your face?”

  I wanted to tell her yes, for that might direct her attention away from me. But she would detect the lie, and there was already too much anger in her voice. Aleksander needed her help.

  “No. It is my choice.” Too late, I pulled down the sleeve to cover the telltale. “We should go in. You wear no cloak.”

  “I came out to show you where to get washing water, but clearly you knew where to look.”

  “Hoffyd told us of your customs and showed us the cistern at the guest house. I assumed it was the same here.” I was flustered and stumbled over the words.

  She walked slowly up the steps to the house and paused before opening the door. “And did he also tell you his name, and the prayer we say as we draw water?”

  She didn’t wait for my answer, but went in and confronted Aleksander, her cheeks and eyes blazing with more than the fire. “I brought you here tonight to learn more of one who bears the feadnach. I could not reconcile a prince of the Derzhi marked with the light of destiny. You told us you were sent here by a slave, and you allowed us to believe it was a youth, a lost one of our own, whom we believed incapable of such a discovery. You lied to me, but it seemed only a small thing compared to the truth of what you carry and your demon enchantment. But I was not easy with it.” She tightened her lips and shook her head. “So I decided you should speak to someone else, someone wiser than I, who might unravel the lie. But now I’ve uncovered another lie, and before we go further, I must know how far I’ve been deceived.”

  She faced Aleksander first, closed her eyes, pressed a clenched fist to her breast, and said, “Lys na Catrin.” Then she did the same to me. And then she waited, eyes closed. Listening.

  “What does she want?” whispered Aleksander.

  I sighed and accepted what had always been inevitable. I spoke without whispering. “She has given you an immense gift, my lord—the gift of her name, and the trust and kinship that such a gift bears among Ezzarians. You are her guest, and if you wish to answer in kind, you must do the same.”

  “But I already told her my name. There’s no more of it.”

  “Give it again—with your unspoken oath that you will never use her name to betray her. Do it here, in this way, and she’ll know that you mean it truthfully. Once done, you will not lie to her.”

  With his eyes and hands he asked if he should make the same gestures as she had done, and I nodded. So he clenched his fist before his breast, closed his eyes, and said, “My name is Aleksander Jenyazar Ivaneschi zha Denischkar.”

  Then it was my turn. She had not yet moved. I lowered my hood, closed my eyes, and clenched my fist until I thought blood might drip from it. “Lys na Seyonne,” I said. “Forgive me.”

  There was no need to list the offenses for which I needed forgiveness. I had brought my corruption to her home, eaten her food, touched her things, lied to her. But it made no difference if I laid out my faults. She would not hear. When I opened my eyes, Aleksander was watching curiously. The lady’s back was disappearing through the inner door, and my heart was stone.

  “I must go before she comes back,” I said.

  “You were wrong,” said the Prince. “She saw you very clearly. And it was not with hatred or disgust or anything you expected.”

  “It was shock. Surprise. She won’t slip again. I only hope I’ve not hurt your chances for their help. I have to leave.”

  Aleksander shook his head. “It was not that kind of shock. I think you should stay.”

  There were steps beyond the doorway, and I was in a frenzy to be gone. “Please, my lord. I cannot stay here.”

  “And where do you think to go, a boy like you, incompetent, ignorant, imperceptive, and ill-suited to your most considerable ... ah, Verdonne have mercy ... your most considerable gifts?”

  In the doorway, leaning on Catrin’s arm, was an old man. A shock of unruly white hair stuck straight up above a square face that was bounded by the most stubborn jaw anyone ever owned. He wore a dark red dressing gown and the bent posture of age, but his dark eyes snapped with everything of life.

  “Master Galadon.” I whispered the name, then held up my hands between us, palms spread wide as if I could hide behind their meager shelter. I could not bear for my beloved mentor to see what I had become.

  “Is it you, boy? Come here to me.” Catrin eased him into the chair by the fire.

  “Gaenad zi,” I said, averting my eyes.

  “You are most certainly disobedient, but I alone will judge whether or not you are unclean. Now, come here.”

  I looked to the woman for help, but her eyes, glistening with love and tears, were on the old man. Catrin. Galadon’s granddaughter, the dark-eyed sprite who had watched every agonizing step of my training, who had brought me water and sweets when I was exhausted, and who had told me I was strong and marvelous when I would go three days without doing a single thing right. She had been only eleven when I was taken. How could this luminous young woman be Catrin?

  Galadon pointed to the rug in front of him. “Here would be a good place.”

  I knelt on the rug in front of him and kept my hands, palms outward, in front of my face. “Master, it is the blessing of
my life to see you, but I must go. I don’t belong here.”

  His face was lined with age and sorrow, but his eyes were lifetimes younger and shed such joyful warmth on me as to melt my frozen soul. Gently grieving, he brushed the scar on my face and touched the slave rings on my wrists, then he took my hands in his warm wrinkled ones. “Tienoch havedd, Seyonne. Vasyd dysyyn.” Greetings of my heart, Seyonne. Welcome home.

  Chapter 23

  There was very little to be said between Galadon and me. I would not speak to him of the corruption I had lived, and he had no need to tell of sorrows that time and logic had already revealed to me: my father’s death and my sister’s, the abandonment of Ezzaria and rebuilding here in the wilderness, the fact that my betrothed wife was married to my best friend. I made one tentative query as to Ysanne’s well-being, but he refused to speak of her.

  In truth, no words could equal the blessing of his greeting. I held it in my ears and in my heart, unwilling to let anything of mine displace it, but afraid the law of silence would yet overtake his lapse of age and grief. “Master,” I said softly, pulling my hands away from him. “I must leave you before someone sees. Forgive my coming.”

  He raised my face to look on his own, allowing me to see tears that no student would ever have believed him capable of shedding. “You have committed no offense, son of my heart, save waiting so long to come back to us.”

  “The law has not changed,” I said, knowing he would not contradict me, even while yearning that he might.

  “What law is worth a beetle’s ear if it condemns—”

  “Please, Master Galadon. If you would do me one service in memory of what has been, then I beg you listen to the Prince’s story and warn the others of what it means. Did she tell you—Catrin—did she tell you of the Khelid?”

  The old man leaned back in his chair and scowled. “I am to believe this Derzhi’s tale? A despicable demon carrier who believes he can own another human being? One who’s done these wicked things to you?” He flicked his eyes to Aleksander in disgust, and he could not hide his distress when his glance came back to me.

  “I am no matter,” I said. “And, yes, you must believe him. We were wrong, Galadon. All these years we believed it was the Derzhi warned of by the Eddaic Prophecy. We thought we had time before they became one with the demons. But I am convinced that the conquerors from the north are the Khelid, not the Derzhi. I have seen the Gai Kyallet and watched it involve other demons in its plotting. And this Prince ...” In the moment of my speaking, my budding theories blossomed into conviction. “... master, he could be the Warrior of Two Souls.”

  “Impossible!” Age had done nothing to quiet Galadon’s bellow.

  Catrin had taken Aleksander across the room and was showing him the weavings hung on the walls. The Prince was listening to her attentively, his hands clasped behind his back. Neither of them took note of Galadon’s outburst.

  “Look inside him, master,” I said, keeping my own voice low. “Even with no power I was near blinded by his feadnach. Even while living in the shadow of what he is, I have seen the promise of what he could be. I know it’s difficult to believe, but it’s so clear to me. If ever a man had two souls, it is Aleksander.”

  But Galadon would not be soothed, nor his long-held convictions shaken. “You are the Warrior of the prophecies, Seyonne. I’ve known it since you were a child climbing trees, breathing melydda before you even understood what it was. The Derzhi came down from the north as the Seers foretold, and the First Battle was lost. I know that the Second Battle comes—when the demons will show themselves in the fullness of evil—and you must be ready. All of us must be ready. We’ve been preparing, waiting, hoping.... It’s why I knew you weren’t dead as some among us claimed. All these years I’ve trusted holy Verdonne to bring you back. She would not leave us without the Warrior. It’s made me rethink everything: the law, the prophecies, our ideas about power and corruption.”

  “Master, I’ve been through the Rites. I have nothing—”

  But he heeded me no more than a mountain heeds a gnat. “My plan is ready, the groundwork laid, secrets kept and held close, waiting for you to come back and walk the path laid down for you when the world was young. You believe your power is lost. But I believe that you have been forged anew by your suffering—and you will find that the past was but a shadow of your glory.”

  “Ah, master ...” I would have given my eyes to believe him, but I had lived too long with the truth. “Examine the Prince and tell me what you see.”

  Aleksander laughed just then, and Catrin, her dark eyes sparkling in the lamplight, laughed with him, a harmony of life and beauty in the sound of their youthful voices.

  “Verdonne be merciful,” said Galadon. “You care for him. How is that possible?”

  “Examine him, master.”

  The old man glared at me as if I’d put a gutted rabbit in his lap. “Catya, bring me the supplicant.”

  If I had been a student again, the steel edge to Galadon’s tone would have had me running for shelter. Aleksander didn’t know anything of likais.

  “So what were you arguing about? I thought you two were going to set me bawling like a Suzaini granny with your sweet reunion, and then, after the old buzzard turns me inside out and leaves me feeling like a puddle of spit, you start yelling at each other.”

  “I wasn’t yelling.”

  “Well, he was yelling enough for both of you, and it was you he was aiming at.”

  Aleksander and I were hurrying down the snowy forest path, back toward the village. Catrin had been planning to escort us, but her grandfather was exhausted and needed her care. Galadon could be not a day less than eighty, and though his stubborn spirit refused to admit it, his body clearly knew. The moon was up and full. We weren’t going to get lost.

  I was anxious to get back to the guest house, where I could sit in the dark and think. I needed to clear the muddle Galadon had made of my head. It hadn’t helped that he’d started setting me to recite things for him as if I were ten years old again: a poem about ships, the words to a song, the spell to ripen fruit, the second prophecy of Meddryn, five hundred other snippets of information. I dredged them all out of my head, stumbling over words and inflections, trying to refuse him nothing, who had tried to give me everything. It went on so long, I couldn’t keep all of it straight. He never gave me time to catch a breath ... or to ask him all the questions I longed to have answered. His plan was set, and he did not deem it necessary to enlighten me as to its details.

  “So what was the argument about?”

  “It’s all bound up in a prophecy,” I said, as much to keep the Prince from pestering me with more questions as anything. “For centuries our Seers have predicted that a race of warriors from the north would destroy the world. There were to be two battles. The first would leave the people wailing in terror, and the world reeking of blood and destruction. The Second Battle would be worse, for the warriors from the north would ally themselves with the demons. The only hope would be another warrior—the Warrior of Two Souls—one destined to return his people to greatness. This person would challenge the Gai Kyallet, the Lord of Demons, and in single combat they would determine the fate of the world.”

  “And you believe this kind of gibberish?”

  “We saw the race of warriors come from the north. And there was no denying the blood or the wailing.”

  The Prince halted in the middle of the moonlit path. “You think your prophets foretold our coming—the coming of the Derzhi?”

  “So my people believe,” I said wearily, trudging onward, craving the fire and the blankets that awaited us at the guest house. From houses deep in the trees, I glimpsed flickering firelight. Faint voices and laughter wafted by us on the chilly breeze. There were so many of the lights, I had the passing thought that there were more Ezzarians here than Llyr had told me.

  The Prince caught up with me and stopped me again, this time holding onto my arm. “But you think something else.” How coul
d he be so annoyingly persistent after the past tiring days?

  “Don’t be offended, my lord, but I think the Derzhi were incidental. Prophecy or no, the Khelid are the real danger. They are the conquerors from the north with no souls. We must face them, and the ranks of the Ezzarians are already decimated.” Only three Wardens left, Galadon had said. Only three. Two of them untried students, and the third one Rhys. My friend, who had struggled through his training and come close five times to ending it, had passed his testing at last. I had been one of ten experienced Wardens. How was Rhys able to keep up with the burden? “We thought we had time before the Derzhi became one with the demons. That we would have ample warning. But the Khelid are already merged with them. If there is such a being as the Warrior with Two Souls, we’d best find him.”

  “Sounds a confusing mess—two souls. I can’t seem to deal with one properly, according to you. So what of this Galadon? Can he get rid of my curse? He wouldn’t answer when I asked him.”

  “He told me it would be very difficult.” Galadon had told me it was impossible, that the damage already done was too severe. Attempting to excise the enchantment would destroy Aleksander, and it might draw the demons’ attention just when we could least afford it. Galadon claimed that his plans—including myself—could not be risked. That had been only one of our disagreements. “But someone will take care of it. You will be healed. It is necessary. Critical. They’ll see it.”

  “Damn. You’re not thinking to convince them that I am your Warrior of Two Souls? Is that what this feadnach foolishness is?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I can’t think. I’m not sure I want to think.” I pushed his hand away as if it was not a hand that could take my life at any instant. “Galadon has very different ideas than mine.” And budging the stubborn old man seemed impossible.

  “Well, whatever you’re thinking, keep me out of it, Ezzarian. I am not here to prance around, pretending I believe in any barbarian prophecies. I might as likely believe in the warrior on the tapestries the woman just showed me—a warrior with wings fighting a monster with only a knife and a looking glass. I will deal with the Khelid the moment I can hold a sword again.”