by Carol Berg
I was fortunate that Galadon lived in my own village, and I didn’t have to leave home as so many Ezzarian students did. Though my preparation was rigorous and consuming, my parents and my sister had sheltered me with warm and loving normalcy. Having lived and trained in one small village, I was intimidated when Galadon told me that he’d found me a pairing with Queen Tarya’s protégée. A girl celebrated for her extraordinary skills. A girl rumored to be cold and difficult. A girl destined to be queen. A girl so lovely that my youthful urges, suppressed by unending schooling, burst forth full-blown and came near exploding me into bits the moment I laid eyes on her.
Galadon took care of that problem quickly, of course, by plunging me into a course of training that made everything thus far look like nursery coddling. Somedays I would see her only for a brief moment, when the candlelight of the temple reflected on her face as she concentrated on her portal-making. I would stand stupidly and wonder how the small cleft in the smooth line of her chin would feel were I to run my finger across its tantalizing irregularity or how it would be to brush away the little wrinkle of intensity between her brows, until Galadon would say, “Begin now, imbecile! Demons do not wait upon gaping jackdaws.” And I would close my eyes and sigh at the remembrance of her loveliness as if Galadon couldn’t see me do it, then I would say the words and shift the reality that would take me into her creation.
It was in the portal that I got to know her. There I could hear the voice of her mind without being distracted by the sight of her body. We argued everlastingly at first. She was very sure of herself, and though I was a shy and gawky fifteen-year-old in the matters of women and life, I had no such reservations about my aptitude in the realms of enchantment and combat. Ten years with Galadon had seen to that. Just as with Tarya, you came to believe in yourself or you gave it up. Galadon claimed that the two years we trained together aged him fifty, but we knew better. He gloried in our perfection and our strength and our triumph. When we returned victorious from our first battle—forcing the demon from a Suzaini woman who was on the verge of murdering her children—Galadon toasted us and said there was no pairing ever made that was our equal. We scarcely heard him, for when we opened our eyes and saw each other in the flesh while our blood still thundered with enchantment and danger and victory, there was room for nothing else in the universe.
By that time I had discovered the fiery core within the alabaster goddess, the tender passion that could breathe life into a dead man, the quiet wit that could sharpen a diamond’s edge, the devotion that had been waiting all her life for a loving hand to claim it. Her soul was a fifth season, of richer hue than autumn, bursting with more life than spring, hidden away, ready to transform the world with such glory as it had never seen. She had permitted me to glimpse it ... and she had promised that I could spend my life exploring it.
I shivered in the predawn blackness as I walked out of the forest and down the path to the village. It had all been so long ago.
There were lights in the windows of the guest cottage and a cluster of people outside the door. I debated whether to walk back into the forest until they were gone, but I decided that it didn’t really matter. No reason to stay out in the cold when the worst had already come to pass. I hadn’t died from it. I wasn’t bleeding. I would survive.
The fifteen or twenty people did not part when I approached, but somehow in their movements—one man leaned toward a friend to speak, one man drew a cloak about himself, a woman gathered two children close against the cold—a way was left for me to pass where I would not touch any of them. When I walked in the door, the healer didn’t even turn around to see who came.
Aleksander looked dreadful, his skin almost transparent, his lips colorless, and his cheeks and eyes sunken. The woman had cleaned him and bandaged him, and from the implements on the table—needles, silk thread, packets of herbs, a small brazier, an assortment of small stones and bits of metal—I gathered that she had stitched the wound and used an enchantment for healing such a thing. I ignored the healer, who was washing her hands and packing the implements and the blood-soaked rags into a basket so they could be cleaned and purified, and sat down by the bed.
“Sleep well, my lord. Have no ill dreams tonight.” He didn’t move, of course. Unlikely he could hear me. “I’ll wake up every few hours and give you water and check your bandages.” The healer poked up the fire, then took a few things from the bedside table, leaving a packet of herbs and a damp cloth behind. The door closed softly behind her.
I drew a small basin of washing water and carefully cleaned the dried blood from my hands and the slave tunic. Once I had disposed of the cleaning water and hung the tunic in the rafters to dry, I rolled up in a blanket on the floor by the fire, wondering vaguely what I was going to do for a shirt or a cloak. The Ezzarians certainly weren’t going to provide me any. But at some time during the next long day, while I wandered in and out of sleep, the shirt and cloak I had used to wrap Aleksander appeared on the table, clean, dry, and folded. Perhaps they thought they were Aleksander’s. I put them on, gave Aleksander some tea made with the herbs left by the healer, and went back to sleep.
The healer came frequently to check on the Prince, who alternated between wild delirium and death-like stillness. I watched what the woman did to ease him and did the same in the hours when she was not there. In the evening I fixed myself something to eat, then went back to sleep. I was still good at sleeping. There didn’t seem to be much else to do.
It was sometime deep in that night—the moon was hanging huge and low over the western peaks—when I heard footsteps outside the guest house. I was halfway on my way to sleep again, but postponed it for a bit to see if the healer found any more change in our patient. I thought it odd she would come so late. But the dark figure carried no lamp and lit none, and rather than going to Aleksander, came to stand over me. I was poised to roll out of the way, when the person crouched down and touched my shoulder.
“Seyonne.” It was a man’s whisper.
“He does not exist,” I said.
“Then, how else am I to explain the vision I had in the forest? Was it perhaps a spot too much of winter ale?”
I sat up astonished and smiling. “Have you not yet learned about winter ale, Rhys-na-varain? Or has your head grown porous with age and ease, and all your hard lessons leaked out of it?”
He crouched down and found my hands in the dark, clasping them firmly with his own powerful fists ... until his thick fingers met the slave rings. Then he pulled back as if the rings were still hot from the smith’s fire.
“Gaenad zi,” I said. My own training would not be denied, however much I wished it. I was required to warn him that I was unclean.
“Curse the law,” he said with quiet ferocity. “I cannot maintain such madness when you walk into Dael Ezzar alive. I saw you fall, Seyonne. You were surrounded. Eight Derzhi or more. I saw the sword go in and the blood on your shirt. I couldn’t risk the few—”
“There was nothing to be done. We lost. I’m glad you survived it. Truly glad.” I hoped he would go on to something else.
“I know I swore to bring help or die ... and I did come back. Daffyd could tell you. He was in the party guarding Queen Tarya, but I made them leave her to come and make spells like you wanted. To get you. But I saw you fall. ...”
“It would have done no good for you to die, too.”
“I still dream of that day.”
“I should teach you how not to dream. I learned it early.”
“Ah, curse it all, Seyonne. What were we thinking in those days—that we could fight an empire alone?”
“We saw no alternative. We couldn’t surrender.”
“We were fools. There’s always a way.”
He sat down on the floor beside me. Though I could see the outline of his familiar bulk, I couldn’t make out his face. But when I reached for the poker to stir the fire, he stayed my hand. “Let it be.” His words were a plea for understanding. To talk in the dark was not th
e same as seeing me.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” I said. “You’ll never know how glad. Tell me ... tell me anything. About this place—Dael Ezzar—‘New Ezzaria.’ How did you find it? Tell me who survived, who wards, anything.” The craving in me was monstrous, but I didn’t know whether it was hunger to be satisfied or pain to be blunted with a balm of words.
“First, I’ve got to tell you. ...”
“About Ysanne and you. I heard it already. When the Prince told me of the fish-eyed consort, I knew it could be no one else. I’m happy for it.”
“There were so few left ... we couldn’t let her power go wasting ... and we’d known each other so long.... Once we were paired.”
“It’s all right. I prayed she lived ... and if she lived, I knew she would marry. I hoped it would be someone worthy of her.” One who would give her music, as I had not. “Who better than you? Someone closer than a brother? Don’t speak of her, if it troubles you.”
“Oh, demon fire, Seyonne, we believed you were dead. And it wasn’t right away. I finally persuaded Galadon to pass me through my testing. Did you know the old dragon still breathes fire?”
“I heard it from the boy Llyr.”
He was silent for a moment. “We assumed it was Llyr who’d told you how to find us. What else did he tell?”
“Nothing else. He was careful—and we had no time.”
“A slave to the Derzhi ... for all these years. How do you bear it?”
“It was not how I planned to spend my life.”
There was so much I wanted to hear from him, but I knew our time was short. So I swept desire aside and broached the subject of most importance. “What did Ysanne think of Aleksander’s story?”
“You know there’s no one can speak her mind.”
“But she sees the danger? How we’ve misread the prophecies? These Khelid ... Rhys, I could see the Gai Kyallet in this Khelid Kastavan. I have no power—not a scrap—but I could see it. Never, in a hundred encounters, did I ever see a demon so powerful. We’ve always suspected there was a Demon Lord, and my every instinct tells me that I have seen such a being. I am convinced that this Kastavan plans to cast his own body aside and live on in the heir to the Empire.”
“Impossible. How could you know? You’re saying the demon is directing these Khelid.”
I hadn’t thought of it in that way. “It’s the only answer for what they’re doing with the Prince. And I saw his eyes. To let demon-infested warriors take control of the Empire ... we can’t allow it. With all the resources of the Empire, with all the horrors they’ll be able to devise, they’ll be strong enough that fifty Wardens could never clean them out. You’ve got to take them on now before they’re entrenched. I believe you can use Aleksander’s—”
“Wait. It’s not ... you’ve got ...” Rhys was stammering and waving his hands in the dark, and I felt him shift away a bit. “Are you sure you have no power, Seyonne? None at all?”
“The Rites are very thorough. Believe me. I tried everything.”
“You’ve got to get away from this Derzhi, Seyonne. He’s damaged beyond repairing. Ysanne says the rai-kirah have made themselves a proper nest inside him. You mustn’t be close when they take him. We’ll give you a horse. You can be off before—”
“Get away?” I was completely taken aback. Of all people, I would have expected Rhys to take action, to see the danger and set out to remedy it in his usual hotheaded way. I thought I would have to convince him to be careful. And for him to think I would ... or could ... run away. “Rhys, do you understand what I am? This mark on my shoulder proclaims that I am chattel, and this one on my face declares that it is the Derzhi royal house that owns me as you own your boots. There is not a place in the Empire where these marks would not be recognized. But beyond that small matter ... why would I have to fear Aleksander being taken by a demon in the midst of an Ezzarian settlement? Even if you can’t heal him right away, you can protect him.”
“Things aren’t like they were, Seyonne. You don’t know what we’ve been through. With so few of us, we’ve had to change.” He was nervous. Uncertain.
“What do you mean?”
“For one thing ... we don’t go searching anymore.”
I was dumbfounded. It was as if he’d just informed me that they had decided to make the sun shine at night and the moon in the day. “You don’t go searching? Then how do you find the victims?” Even more, how could the Aife make a portal if there was no Comforter to make physical contact with the victim?
“We don’t fight the same way. We can’t afford to send out Searchers. They’d end up ... like you. And we have so few Wardens, what would we do with all the victims we found? How would we choose?”
“So what do you do? Just sit here and let them rot? Do you let a woman go mad and slay her children? Do you let a man crucify his slaves to feed the creature who has taken up residence in his soul? What do you tell old men who weep with the nightmares in their heads? Verdonne’s child, Rhys, what do you do instead?”
“We do what we can.” He burst out with such vehemence I thought the floor might shake. “We’ve struck a bargain.”
“A bargain. A demon bargain?” I was appalled. It was not uncommon to bargain with demons when victory was close in a battle. The idea was to force them out of their vessel, not to destroy them. Demons were a part of nature, no more evil in themselves than a cyclone or a volcano. It was never our aim to exterminate them, lest we upset some unknown balance in the universe. We only prevented them finding their feeding place in a human soul. So if we could force them into submission, we would offer them continued existence in return for their vessel. They would abandon the soul and retreat back into the frozen wastes of the northland to regenerate. Only if they refused did we fight to the death. But to bargain outside of that circumstance ... “What did you exchange? And with whom? You’ve sworn to oppose them in physical combat. How do you uphold your oath?”
“You’re right about one demon speaking for all of them now. And you’re right about the Khelid being the danger. Our pairing in the northeastern Empire—Kevyra and Dorach—kept turning up demon-possessed Khelid, and I was about to go crazy with them. It’s too long to explain, but I figured out what was happening, and came up with this idea. We fight one combat every cycle of the moon. Keyra and Dorach make the connection with the victim. If we limit ourselves this way, the demons will take no new souls unwilling and will not hunt or challenge our people. We battle for one soul each meeting. It’s ferocious combat ... only to be expected when they know we’re coming. I’ve killed some of the demons, banished the others, lost a gallon of blood along the way, came near losing my arm in one. But it gives me time to help train new Wardens. So you see, we can’t protect this Derzhi ... he’s as good as one of them already.”
“And Ysanne agrees with this? One soul every moon’s turning.”
“Of course, she agrees. None of us like it. We have no choice.” He must have felt my shock and dismay. “It’s only for a while until we’re stronger. Until there are more Wardens than just me. It was the best we could do. It took us two years to make our way here—every day in hiding, split up, no possibility of the work. Everything was chaos. You were taken. Morryn and Havach dead, and all the Wardens from the western groves. We had to rush our training. When we tried to start up again, we lost Dane and Cymneng in the matter of a week. There was no one but me. We had to find some other way. Someday—”
“Some other way ...” It was impossible. No wonder Galadon had been so determined that I should pursue his futile scheme. Perhaps a powerless Warden was better than what they had. “You let them stay ... but as you get stronger, they get stronger, too. Do you think that in this ‘someday,’ you’ll ever be able to get them out?”
“I had to warn you, Seyonne. There’s nothing to hold you here. This Derzhi villain can’t do anything to you right now, so leave him. Be free. I’ll cut these off you myself.” He lifted my wrists and shook them, anger showing through hi
s insistence like stark canvas behind an artist’s paints. It made no sense.
I yanked my hands away. “It’s not my slave rings I’d lose were I to run away, Rhys. You would have me abandon the only thing in the world I still possess. I swore an oath, as did you—”
“I’ve got to go. Think on what I’ve said. I’ll give you a horse, provisions, clothes, whatever you need. Perhaps I could make a spell to cover the marks.”
I couldn’t think what to say to him. How could he not see what he’d done? “Be careful, Rhys. Be sure. A demon never yields what it’s not already lost. And only when it thinks it’s found another way to get what it wants.”
“He’s a dead man, Seyonne. Get away from him.” He gripped my shoulder briefly, then left.
I poked at the fire once, then again, then threw the branch onto the coals in exasperation. Sparks whirled and danced their way up the chimney. One lost its way and settled on my blanket, flaring up in bright orange bravery before dying its quick death.
“He betrayed you.” I came near shedding my skin when the hoarse whisper came from the darkness across the room. I snatched a candle from the shelf over the hearth and lit it from the coals.