Transformation

by Carol Berg

  “He’s busy,” she was saying, her small hand set firmly on Kiril’s broad chest. “He needs to be alone.”

  “It’s all right,” I called from the top of the stair. “One minute more or less isn’t going to turn the tide, and if I can’t put aside one more distraction when the time comes, then we’ve wasted a great deal of time this week. Besides, I need to eat.”

  “You said this was the day,” said Kiril a few minutes later, downing a cup of wine, while I drank strong tea and devoured such a pile of bread and cold chicken as might satisfy a shengar.

  “It is.”

  “So what’s going to happen? And when?”

  “I have no idea when. But at some time Catrin is going to tell me it’s time and where we need to go ... and then, we’ll see.”

  “That’s when you fight this demon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn. It’s all too strange. Well, you can be easy about my part. The garrison is ready to move at my word.”

  “Good.”

  He hesitated a moment, then pulled something from his pocket. “I’ve received a message from Aleksander.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t tell me. I mustn’t think about him. I’ll do the best I can, and that will have to be good enough.”

  “But I think you need to see.” He gave me a folded paper. “It was sent yesterday.”

  Kiril,

  I’ve just arrived in Parnifour to learn more of the Khelid and to inspect our fortifications here on the border. I’ve heard reports that you think to avenge Dmitri by cutting my throat or taking my heart or drinking my blood or some other nasty business. It will not happen. I am well protected, and even your skill cannot touch me. If you wish to avoid charges of treason, you will put aside such idiotic notions and come to greet me by week’s end with proper respect and humility, proclaiming an end to all grievances against me. If you do so, I may consider allowing you to retain your post as well as your life, for you have done good service these past months in accommodating my Khelid friends. We will put your past behavior up to grieving. But if you refuse and continue to mouth these scurrilous charges, I will see you hanged—kinsman or no. You cannot imagine that my father would countenance such behavior.

  Aleksander

  The broken wax seal was red.

  “He is not theirs,” I said softly.

  “That was my thought. When he left me six days ago, he knew I wouldn’t kill him. I’d had the chance and couldn’t do it. And as for my ‘skill’ ... I’ve never bested him in a fight. Not since we were in the nursery.”

  “You mustn’t trust him, though,” I said, returning the letter to him. “This could be only one small secret that he’s kept his own. And it could change at any time. You understand that? This demon lives inside him, and for every moment he resists its will, he must pay a terrible price.”

  Kiril smiled. “I’ve known Aleksander a great deal longer than you have, Seyonne. Even from your hard experience, you can have no idea of his stubbornness.”

  Catrin was hovering around the door like a moth trying to get into the light. “You should go now,” I said. “Catrin will explode if I don’t get back to work. Thank you for coming.”

  “Athos be at your right hand, my friend,” he said.

  “With us all.”

  Once he had gone, I spent one minute savoring Aleksander’s tiny victory. Every moment he could hold gave me a moment to strike. If he could avoid revealing my name, the demon could not worm its way into my head as easily. If he could refuse to allow his knowledge of me to be put to use, it gave me the advantage of skill and surprise. I wished I could believe that stubborn resolve could protect him against the creature devouring his soul, but after only the moment’s indulgence, I put it out of my mind. I could not afford that kind of faith. I had to fight this battle alone.

  In only half an hour more, Catrin came in and said, “We need to go. There will be a private place for your preparation.”

  I nodded and followed her down the stairs into a cloudy morning. Hoffyd was nowhere to be seen, but the horses were saddled and waiting. Catrin’s hair was bound in a heavy braid, wound about her head. As we rode through a wooden gate and onto a narrow path across the meadow-lands, the freshening wind picked at her braid, luring dark strands from their confinement to brush her flushed cheeks. She wore her usual attire, a brown riding skirt and a dark green tunic, tinted light and dark by the changing patterns of sunlight and racing clouds. A formidable warrior, riding into battle. We didn’t say anything. It wasn’t forbidden, just unnecessary.

  Our path led us a short way into the foothills of the Khyb Rash east of Parnifour and through a wide slot between two sizable rock formations. I was surprised to see that our narrow bridle path followed what had once been a paved road as wide as the rift. Broken fragments of stone too smooth and too uniform to be of nature’s making were nestled in stirrup-high weeds, and every so often we passed a stele not quite ruined by centuries of weather and falling rock. After no more than two thousand paces the narrow gorge opened into a lush little valley of knee-high flowers and thick-boled ash and hemlock, centered by the ruins of a long, open building. Half the ruin was roofless, huge slabs of granite fallen amid the crumbling giants of its toppled columns. The farthest portion of the building still held intact. It was an ancient place. Hoffyd’s horse stood at one end.

  I should have known we would come to one of the builders’ ruins. Comforters often took possessed victims to the fallen temples and houses and colonnades. The melydda found in those places made it easier to set up the enchantments that would link the victim to the Aife who waited back in Ezzaria.

  As we dismounted and tethered our horses beside Hoffyd’s mare, fat raindrops plopped heavily on the dark green leaves. Hoffyd came out to meet us, clasping Catrin’s hands and sweeping her face with a lingering gaze that left no room for anyone else in the world. When she brushed his cheek with her hand, a number of things became very clear. I smiled to myself and thought that Elen would approve, ignoring the faint twinge of regret that flitted through the remote corners of my mind. And Aleksander would be pleased. He had been right again.

  “This way,” said Hoffyd quietly, as if reluctant to disturb whatever ghosts might be drifting about the place with the wisps of fog. He took us up a broad flight of steps onto the main floor of the building—a bathhouse as it seemed. There were a series of five rectangular pools, each one smaller than the last, as we progressed into the less-ruined section of the place. The larger pools all had sides cracked and caved in, and the only water in them was the scummy, sludge-laden remains of winter snows and spring rain. Around them, on the columns and fallen walls, were carvings of men and women occupied with activities impossible to guess from the faint traces. A few bits of red and blue gave hints that once the place might have been bright with color other than the somber grays of the Khyb Rash stone.

  We walked up another set of steps into the less damaged part of the ruin, the patter of rain echoing on the old stone. In one hall most of two walls still stood outside the rows of fluted columns. In a corner of its small pool, water seeped from a spout shaped like a bird, its head long broken away. Beyond that pool was one more, the smallest, perhaps only twenty-five paces around. It was lined with dark blue tiles inlaid with sworls of red. Steaming water welled up from the bottom, filling it until the water ran out into a broken conduit that should have carried it to the next pool, but now spilled into a crack in the floor. The little pool was a wonder, the water clear, and the beauty of the tiles not dulled by mosses or deposited stone.

  Wide stone benches had once surrounded the pool. Only one bench remained intact. The surrounding debris had been cleared away, and cushions not at all ancient had been laid on and beside it. Candles had been placed at five points around the bench, and a small brazier gave off the faint sweet scent of jasnyr. It was the traditional setting for a demon battle where the victim was to be present. So this was the place where Ysanne and Rhys and Aleksander would b
e. I could not guess where Catrin and I were to be or how we were to insinuate ourselves into the enchantment.

  Instead I followed Hoffyd down a long, wide passage to the doorway of a room that remained fully enclosed. It had most likely been a dressing room, or perhaps a dining room for bathers who brought servants and supper with them on their pleasurable outing. The room had a series of long narrow windows along the outside wall that let in enough of the gray light to see, and someone had cleaned it quite recently, for there was no dirt, no grass or weeds showing through the cracked stone, and no sign of animal habitation. On the floor beside the windows sat a brass basin filled with water from the pool, still steaming in the damp air, a red pitcher, which would also contain water, most likely from our rain barrel at the stable, a white towel, a folded blue cloak, and a slim wooden box, polished to a high luster.

  At the threshold of the room, I turned to Hoffyd and embraced him, then to Catrin and smiled down into her solemn face, where her dark eyes expressed everything she could not voice. “At moonrise tomorrow we will drink a toast to your grandfather,” I said, and I kissed her forehead. “I’ll be ready for you in an hour and a half.” Then I closed the door of age-darkened oak and left my life behind.

  For an hour I worked at the exercises of the kyanar, smoothing the last ruffles that the sights and sounds of the short journey had awakened. Then I stripped and used the water from the jar to wash myself, speaking the words of purification that I had not needed to practice because they were as much a part of me as my heart or my hands. I had no clean clothes, but I smoothed the ones I had been wearing and put them back on. From the wooden box I lifted the silver knife and a small pouch that held a smooth, cold oval of clouded glass, replacing my knife with the silver one and tying the pouch to my belt. After drinking my fill of the clean water from the red pitcher, I fastened the blue Warden’s cloak about my shoulders, pulled the deep hood over my head, and sat down cross-legged in the center of the room.

  My hands lay open and relaxed on my knees, and in my mind I began to repeat the chant of Ioreth, the first Warden. Nevyed zi. Guerroch zi. Selyffae zi. I am whole. I am life. I defend the light ... Carefully, clearly I fashioned the words, drawing myself together, reeling in the threads of melydda that extended from my soul into the trees and grasses, into the city and its unsuspecting residents, into the sun and moon and stars and whatever lay beyond, until my body thrummed with power, and I sat relaxed, unthinking, waiting.

  There was no sense of time passing. I could sit that way for days, if necessary, suspended in time, like an arrow nocked and ready, awaiting only the release of the bow. But it was not days. Only a few hours perhaps until a hooded figure dressed in a white robe opened the door and motioned for me to follow. I could not wonder, could not worry at how close we might be to those who would do us harm. I was already half removed from the plane of ordinary existence.

  Yet my inner senses stirred at the direction we walked. The light that danced on the stone floor was torchlight disrupted by moving shadows. Where I had expected silence, because Catrin would not speak to me until we were ready to begin, there were voices.

  “Shall we not be introduced to this extraordinary physician?” The cold voice cut into my ease like a knife blade across the palm of my hand, but instantly I shoved it away to a distance so immensely remote it could not affect my composure.

  The woman shook her hooded head and motioned toward the stone table. Her white robe shifted softly in the faint breeze, sculpting her form, and the ripple passed through the warp and weft of the world into my being. Strange.

  “Bring him in,” the man said.

  There was the sound of struggling, a low moan of desperation, a snarl of hatred. The victim. Questions flitted across my mind like the feathery detritus of mingallow trees in spring bloom. How was it that we were to be with the victim? Had Catrin managed to take Ysanne’s place? I kept my eyes down and held my concentration, not allowing the words to settle. Only when I knelt on the cold stone beside the little pool and saw the ravaged face—the flicker of ice-blue hatred in a visage so racked with pain and dread, I could not bear to look on it—only then did I come near breaking. He was strapped to the stone slab and his wrists already bled from his struggles to be free. His mouth worked as if he wanted to speak, but no intelligible word emerged, only foaming spittle. When the woman with the white robe held a cup to his lips, forcing him to drink the potion that would keep him quiet and still as we did our work, he spit it out, staining her white robe.

  I will come for you. As I said it in the stillness of my waiting, the mad blue eyes darted toward me, but I averted my head so he could not see, and I banished him from my thoughts.

  “You don’t mean for us to leave him with these two, Lord Korelyi? With Lord Kastavan already dead. ...” The voice from behind me was filled with doubt.

  “We’ll be close by.”

  “But you can’t trust them?”

  “We have every reason to trust them. We have made a bargain and will see it fulfilled. No need to worry, Zyat. Our new friend will be very well looked after. Lord Kastavan’s legacy lives on in this prince. As soon as he is healed of this lingering madness, all will be well.” Their steps rang on the stone paving and faded.

  There was a long pause. The air about me grew thick with sorcery. I waited.

  At last it came. “It is time, Warden,” said the woman who knelt opposite me across the tormented body. “Come with me if you choose again this path of danger, of healing, of hope.”

  My skin tingled with her speaking ... not with the ancient words that had been scribed in my soul with fire when I was seventeen, but with the soft voice, so close I could hear its music and feel its shape. Not Catrin’s voice. Nor were the pale slender hands that reached out across my friend’s body Catrin’s short, capable fingers.

  And into my mind came the words. Step onto the path I have built for you and know that I will hold it steadfast, unyielding, until you return. And in this distant world you venture, my dearest love, you will never be alone.

  As I touched the hands and the world disappeared, I caught one glimpse of dark hair streaked with gold, and deep violet eyes so ravishing a poet could find no words to describe them. Ysanne.

  Chapter 34

  The portal stood open, a shimmering gray rectangle in the nothingness in which I existed. Before me lay the doom of the world. Behind me, wavering like a painted image on a square of sheerest silk, lay the overgrown ruins of the ancient bathhouse and a life that was suddenly so precious that every second I clung to it was a piercing sweetness.

  The path was steady beneath my feet. Ysanne’s path. So much had become clear with that moment’s glimpse of her violet eyes. Catrin had never made a second portal. It was Ysanne who had drawn me into her weaving in Dael Ezzar, able to take me across the boundaries of reality unprepared because she knew me as well as I knew myself. She had shut the first portal after Rhys so he would think me abandoned ... dead ... and she had held the second long enough for me to get out. She had ventured so far from home, into danger that no Queen of Ezzaria had ever before faced, so that I would have time to be ready. “Soar high, my love.” No wonder I could not attach those words to Catrin or to feel the bond of the spirit that should have come with such intimacy. Ysanne ...

  Later, my beloved. When the day is won. The finger of her care brushed my lips before I could speak her name aloud and break the enchantment we had woven together. Later. I would not fail. Not with such a promise. I centered my thoughts on my purpose, and stepped to the threshold.

  The world that lay before me was very near its ending. A leaden sky hung low over a vast gray ocean, the only remnant of life the threads of white foam where the sluggish tide broke upon a desolate strip of shingle. No bird flew in that mournful sky; neither bone nor scrap of weed lay on the dismal shore to give evidence that life had ever existed there. The shingle might have been the last fragments left as the relentless pressure of the sea crumbled the world. A thic
k damp wind stirred my cloak as I stepped through the doorway.

  I stood on the rocky shore between the advancing ranks of the waves and a line of low cliffs some fifty paces from the water. The insistent whisper of the waves was almost indistinguishable from the soft buffeting of the wind. It was very difficult to see, the only light coming from the livid iridescence of the breakers. I shifted my vision and crouched low, pivoting quickly to scan the vicinity for signs of demon. Nothing moved save the water. Slowly I moved down the rugged shore, peering into the deepest pockets of rocky darkness, tasting the salty wind, straining to hear the first traces of demon music. Somewhere the Gai Kyallet—the Lord of Demons—lay waiting.

  “I am the Warden, sent by the Aife, the scourge of demons, to challenge you for this vessel. Hyssad! Begone! It is not yours.” The words fell dead. Feeble in the vast emptiness. Yet they should force the demon to take shape and answer.

  Mirthless laughter greeted my declaration. “It’s a bit late for such pompous speeches, is it not? This is exactly my place, and there is no human vermin can budge me. Certainly not my own hireling, come to perform the last service I require. Do you forget your piteous groveling, when you begged for your life and bartered power for your soul?”

  It was the voice of evil that whispered through the unholy quiet, a muted sigh that clung to the soul like a foul odor, that fell upon the ear like whispered wailing, that lingered on the tongue like ash. Yet I smiled as I heard it. The demon did not know who I was. Aleksander had not broken.

  I would not parry speech with the demon. With every word it would learn more of me and spoil my small advantage. Instead I picked apart the darkness, hunting for any glimmer of demon fire, listening for any sound that was not wind or wave. Never had I seen such an expanse of nothing. Was this all that was left of Aleksander? A pale smear of light drew my eyes to the right, even as Catrin’s warning flickered through my mind. I could not afford to look for Aleksander. The light was swallowed by the murk before I could see what it was.