"I grew up by Yvain's side," he said, his voice unsteady. "If I could take his suffering upon me, I would joyfully. Do everything you can for him, doctor."
"I promise I will, captain," Ryel replied, greatly moved. "Now go, and take the general's servant with you, if you would."
Left alone with Roskerrek, Ryel for some time contemplated the sick man who lay immobile now, faint groans escaping through clenched teeth. The Count Palatine was still partially in uniform, and his boots muddied the bedclothes, and his shirt was still tautly belted into the black cavalry breeches. Ryel's eye was drawn to the spare strength of that overwrought form, kept alive only by iron will. Alone with Roskerrek, Ryel for some time contemplated the sick man who lay immobile now, faint groans escaping through clenched teeth. Roskerrek was only partially in uniform, his coat and hat and gloves carefully arrayed on a nearby chair and his sword slung over its back. Nevertheless his boots muddied the bedclothes, and his shirt was still tautly belted into the black cavalry breeches. Ryel's eye was drawn to the lean strength of the overwrought form kept alive only by iron will, and the perfection with which it was clothed. The immaculate shirt was made of the finest linen Ryel had seen outside of the Eastern Palace, and scented with a pleasing fragrance of lavender and citron, but was wringing with sweat.
"Am I dying, doctor?"
The words were scarcely audible, uttered between parched lips that scarcely moved. Ryel laid his hand on Roskerrek's forehead, wincing at the icy wetness against his palm, the battering throb of the temples.
Roskerrek stared into emptiness. Even in the near-darkness the pupils of his eyes were contracted almost to invisibility, and between the red lids glowed cold gray-yellow light. Again his hoarse whisper barely rose above the crackling of the hearth. "My brain is about to burst in a cloud of blood. My guts are crawling with envenomed snakes fanged in fire."
"You are very sick," the wysard said; and despite his misgivings he pitied this man, whose blood was tainted with inhuman bane.
"I was born sick." Seemingly with all the strength he had, the Count Palatine continued after a long silence. "Sick and weak. All my life I have forced this afflicted flesh to its limit." He swallowed. "But the pain worsens year by year. There are remissions in which I almost know health; entire weeks in which only dull migraine afflicts me. Then there are the cruel times. The times a demon takes me—"
He groaned and panted, his entire body gripped by a raging chill; gave a low half-animal cry, desperate with torture, and caught the wysard about the throat to strangle him, stammering obscenities. But his icy fingers were as weak as a child's, now.
That's enough, Ryel thought. Taking Roskerrek's head in both his hands, he forced his brow to the Count Palatine's dripping one, and uttered a word. At once Roskerrek fell back insensible, although still shuddering.
Seating himself on the bed at Roskerrek's side, Ryel contemplated his next move. He required three spells: the first to take away the pain, the second to rid the body of the daimon-blight, the third to heal the ravages wrought by years of suffering. Having chosen the mantras he deemed best, he drew a long clear breath and began to say the first words, droning them in the back of his throat, sure of his Mastery.
The spell took. Roskerrek ceased his writhing and lay still, his face's tics and twitches relaxed for the first time. Gently the wysard took the Count Palatine's wrist and turned back the cuff of the shirt, and observed with consternation that the hard white flesh of the arm was seamed to the elbow with scars, and with cuts both fresh and mending. Pushing up the other sleeve, he found the same slashed defacement.
"By every..." Loathing the sight, he healed the worst of the wounds and erased many of the scars with the Art's aid, then turned the sleeves down again.
Roskerrek stirred and whispered, his eyes yet closed. "Bradamaine." Convulsively he seized Ryel's hand. "Command me. Anything. Life, death…"
Those slim fingers had the grip of a great cat, and Ryel broke free only with all his strength. Steeling himself, the wysard then slowly spoke the next spell, leaning over Roskerrek to touch mouth to mouth, breathing the last words into the sick man's body.
At that barely grazing contact a virulent sickness seemed to invade his body and brain, dizzying him, making his gorge rise. For the first time in his life the wysard envisioned what it would be like to kill a man in cold blood, to cruelly force a woman to serve his pleasure, to lay waste to cities. Shuddering, he banished those thoughts. But he could not rid himself of the dull throbbing that bound his skull with an ever-tightening crown of burning iron, or the qualms that soured the pit of his throat.
The air grew stifling, nearly strangling him, and then the fire in the hearth leapt up in a burst of sparks. The voice Ryel loathed issued from the flames, crackling with laughter.
Redbane's cure has cost you, young blood.
The wysard doubled over in a throe. "Dagar?" he gasped. "But it's still daylight. How—"
My strength grows ceaselessly, sucked from the spirits of the air. Not even the Void can confine me now. Night and day no longer matter.
"What did you do to me, monster?"
Nothing but give your healing-spells a clever twist, and turn the Bane upon you. Now it's in your blood, sweet eyes. Now the pain that gives my servant Michael his strength will prove your unending torment, Edris' bastard. Now I'll watch you crawl, and beg me to make you mine to end the torture.
In agony though he was, Ryel lifted his chin in defiance. "You'll never have me. I'll find the Mastery of Joining—and I'll bring my father back from the Void, where you'll stay chained forever."
My servant Michael is far more clever in those matters than you, young blood. He'll find it first, count on it. And oh, but I'll be ready.
"You may be able to enter a human form—but only as some frail Worldling with no power in the Art, and never for long."
Changes are already awork, thanks to me. In Markul and Tesba they wonder at the decline of their Art, and consult their great Books; but in Ormala and Elecambron they smile at the uncommon success of their spells. My side is winning.
"What is this talk of win and loss?" Ryel angrily demanded. "We of the Cities are brothers."
Too long have the Cities lived in balance, the voice with a sneer replied. Time for yours to topple. And I'll have the World, too. Destimar will fall, and then the North, and then the rest. The World and the Four will be mine, the voice giggled. The World and the Four, and your sweet young body.
Ryel spat into the flames and turned his back on them. The fire gave a great burst, and the air lightened. Pushing his freezing hands through his hair to ease the ache, the wysard returned to Roskerrek's bedside, and accomplished the final spell.
When it was done, he brought the candles closer. Their light stabbed to the back of his brain. With unsteady fingertips he stroked Roskerrek's face, running them over the forehead, down the cheeks, across the lips; lightly circled the closed eyes. Like yielding clay the furrows and lines faded at the wysard's touch, and a faint flush overcame the chalk-like pallor. All the hard-angled beauty that long pain had destroyed now returned to its right like a long-thwarted ruler to his throne, compelling and noble; and now Ryel observed a scar that ran in a straight faint crease across the top of Roskerrek's left cheek to the temple, as if the skin had been seared by a fine red-hot wire.
"Desrenaud's mark," the wysard murmured. "That I'll leave you, Redbane."
He uttered an Art-word, and Roskerrek opened his eyes. The dilation of the pupils all but crowded out the gray of the iris, conferring a dreaming visionary depth to his countenance.
"I don't know what I feel," he said, his voice distant and wondering.
"It's called health," Ryel said, curtly and bitterly jealous.
Swiftly, with the heedless grace of a great cat, Roskerrek rose and went to the window, opening it wide, letting in the cold Northern noonday. He drank in the chill radiance as if drinking delicious wine. A wondering while he was silent, as if coming to terms with
the incredible possibility of a life free of continual suffering. "This would have all but killed me, before," he said softly. He turned to Ryel, not yet daring to trust. "Drugs have no affect on me."
"I used no drugs, General," the wysard replied. "My methods are confidential."
"But can I dare trust, and hope? How long will the cure last?"
"As long as you live. The sickness that consumed you has been routed forever."
Roskerrek gazed eagerly into the white radiance the wysard shrank from. "Forever?"
"Yes."
Roskerrek breathed in the chill air as if drinking delicious wine. "With all my heart I would believe you, Ryel Mirai."
"I tell the truth, Yvain Essern."
Ryel must have spoken sharply, for Roskerrek turned from the window and came to the wysard's side, and silently took his hand, carrying it to his forehead in the way of Destimar. "I will never forget this deliverance."
The wysard flinched, barely able to keep from snatching his hand away. "Neither will I."
Releasing him, the Count Palatine crossed the room, pulling aside another curtain. This one concealed not a window, but a great mirror. Leaning both hands lightly against the glass, Roskerrek stared at his reflection, his features motionless in meditation, his voice still.
"Long ago I vowed to Argane never to marry and beget, lest my blood's taint be perpetuated. But now…"
Ryel said what the Count Palatine did not dare. "Now your offspring will be free of the infection, as will their descendants."
"At last. After long centuries, at last. It seems far too much to believe." A long moment Roskerrek hesitated before speaking again. "I cannot tell how many times in my life I sought death. How many times in my agony I commanded Jorn to run me through and end it forever—the only orders I ever gave him that he disobeyed." As if looking into the face of a stranger the Count Palatine studied his transformed self. "So this is what I really was."
"Yes," Ryel said, unable to quell his envy.
"I look younger."
"Yes."
Impatiently Roskerrek dashed away the wetness rising in his eyes, as one swiftly turns the page of a fascinating book never read before. "I am but thirty-six." He tilted his face from side to side, appraisingly, with a tinge of a smile. "Why, I'm half in love with myself." Catching sight of the scar, he traced it with his fingertips. "Yes. Half in love."
Ryel joined Roskerrek at the mirror, glanced at his own haggard reflection, and turned away. "I congratulate you.
"Name what you will. Anything. I will triple whatever you ask."
"I wish only the answer to a single question, as I said before," the wysard replied.
"Very well. You may ask it and welcome." Roskerrek smiled, then. "But only after we dine. I'm hungry for the first time in years."
Ryel felt a sickening twinge of impatience. "But—"
"I pray you accept of my entertainment, Ryel Mirai. You'll not regret it; my cook Verlande is the best in Hallagh, which is saying much."
The thought of food made the wysard's gorge rise, but he quelled it somehow, and resigned himself. "As you wish."
"Excellent. I'll inform my orderly. But first come with me, if you would."
Roskerrek led Ryel into the next room, a large chamber closely draped and lit by dozens of candles that made the wysard clench his teeth. The Count Palatine swiftly uncurtained the windows, not noticing how Ryel recoiled.
"Away with this gloom! Sir, I am going to dress, and to tell Jorn of my cure; I'll not be long. I trust my library will help you while away the time—or you may make use of my instrument, if you chance to be a musician."
"I do not play," the wysard said through gritted teeth.
Roskerrek seemed to notice Ryel for the first time in a very long while. "You're pale."
The wysard turned away. "It's nothing."
"Sit and rest. I shan't be long."
He left, and Ryel at once yanked the curtains shut again. He was in terrible pain, his eyes squinting with it, his stomach churning. Another moment and he'd be sick. In blind panic he fumbled in his pocket, not knowing why, and found the carnelian scent-cylinder; still not knowing why unstoppered it and breathed of its perfume as if drinking antidote to poison. Instant deliverance ensued, relief so sweet that he dropped into a chair, unable to stand.
"My infinite thanks, Priam," he whispered; and his eyes felt afire.
After a moment he rose, and began to look about the room. Now he could appreciate that it was a fair large chamber excellently furnished, and that every wall was covered floor to ceiling with books, save at intervals where paintings or windows took their place. There were thousands of volumes, Ryel observed, all of them indicating their owner's grave elevation of mind—books of history, music theory, the arts; plays and novels, none of them frivolous; the lives of notable men and women; many treatises on the waging of war, and the science of weapons—especially the sword—and the manner of dealing with princes; philosophy and astronomy and mathematics. A double-ranked harpsichord took up the center of the room, and a great desk covered with papers stood near it. On the harpsichord lay a sheaf of manuscripts for sonatas, canons, inventions, swiftly yet exquisitely penned; Ryel looked over some of the compositions, spelled one or two of them out on the keyboard, and was moved by their beauty. The papers on the desk had been written by the same sharp symmetrical hand—Roskerrek's, clearly. Here were drafts of several poems, and the opening scene of the third act of a tragedy entitled The Queene's Generall. Part of a soliloquy uttered by the protagonist caught the wysard's eye, and he read it murmuringly aloud.
"'Hope of Delighte to come, that never seemes
Nearer than Fantasie or fever'd Thought;
Jewell past price, more treasur'd than all Dreames
Of gaine, though with deepe Sorrowe dearly bought;
Rose of a bleeding Hearte, that never stayes
To bloome, yet leaves its Thornes to know it by;
Mirrour of every Joye, that to the gaze
A false Reflection yields, and mocks the eye;
Islande of Paradise, whose shelt'ring Baye--"
He halted, aware of a door opening. The Count Palatine entered, freshly and magnificently attired in muted shimmering sea-green velvet embroidered in silver and set off by exquisite lace, and soft fawn-colored boots and gauntlets. The hues of his garments sorted well with his coloring, making it less strange to the sight; moreover, the sharp scarlet growth that had exaggerated the angularity of his face was now cut closer. Few would now deny that the general of the Domina's armies was a markedly if strangely well-favored man, the hard-edged beauty of his face in striking harmony with the lithe strength of his form. The face now faintly smiled, and the body slightly bowed. "Island of paradise, whose sheltering bay/ No stranger welcomes that it does not slay.' I see you have a tolerance for indifferent verses, sir."
Ryel backed away from the desk, astonished by the transformation he beheld. "Forgive me. I didn't mean—"
"No harm done," Roskerrek smiled. "I'm sure you've written a sonnet or two in your life."
"I never was so inspired," the wysard replied. "But I would gladly have composed any of that music." And he indicated the manuscripts on the harpsichord.
Roskerrek closed the door behind him. "You tempt me, sir. I haven't touched the keys in weeks." He started to draw off his gloves. "Would you permit me to run over a passage or so before we dine?"
"With all gladness."
Seating himself at the harpsichord, Roskerrek deftly tried some chords, and the instrument spilled forth notes like sharp-cut diamonds. "Alleron's kept this in tune, I see. He's an able executant; we play duets sometimes."
Ryel would have attempted to envision that scene, but the Count Palatine had chosen a sonata and begun to play, his first notes driving out all else from the wysard's mind. Roskerrek's fingers, enriched with rings of emerald and gold, touched the keys so lightly that it seemed the music was wrought by spirits of the air, not the agency of humankind;
yet the harmony came clear and piercing sweet, played with a masculine force that mingled in passionate union with the delicate timbres of the instrument. It was exquisitely complex music full of enrapturing invention, passionate in its reflective intensity; and as he listened, the wysard thought of the Count Palatine's house, where one progressed from cold officialdom to colder emptiness, only by great privilege passing into the private world of warmth and beauty; and listening to Roskerrek's music the wysard realized that he had entered the innermost chamber of all, a secret place incomparably rich and wondrous.
"You are an artist, General," the wysard said reverently when the piece had ended.
Roskerrek inclined his head, but only slightly. "Virtually every gentleman in Hryeland has some skill at music. I am most fortunate to have had the best instruction, early on. My mother has great skill at the clavier, and when I was very young she taught me to play, because she noted that music soothed my illness. What you hear in my works is her influence."
The wysard inwardly commended that lady's wisdom. Perhaps it implied Art within her, to understand that demonic forces were repelled by beauty. With greatest pleasure the wysard listened to the wondrous music, until an orderly entered to announce that dinner was readied. The Count Palatine led Ryel to a long large paneled room whose table would readily seat twenty, one of its ends covered with fine damask and laid for two with massy gleaming silver, nearest the great marble hearth where a fire blazed brightly. The candle-branches on the table had just been lighted, and wine had been poured, but only in one of the glasses.
"I from time to time entertain my staff officers here, and members of the fellowship of Argane," Roskerrek said. "My cook Verlande is one of the most famous in the city, but of late he's had little employment. If I continue to give him insufficient scope for his talents, I risk losing him to the Earl of Gledrim, whose fortune is as fabulous as his palate is discerning--far more so than any of his other tastes. Tonight I asked Verlande to surpass himself. Here, try this wine; I'm told it's quite good."
The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic Page 33