Restoration

by Carol Berg

  I left my horse at the top of the rise, and then crept silently down the dark hillside through a thick stand of pines. When I was no more than halfway down, orange light flared from the valley and a man screamed in mortal agony. Piercing the black wall of the night came the terrified wail of a child. Abandoning stealth, I ran. A dark form lay sprawled on the ground just at the edge of the trees. Blaise ... and I could spare no time to see if he lived.

  The cottage was already burning when I reached the base of the hill, and one of the Derzhi was standing in front of the door, sword drawn. Evan’s whimpering cries came from behind the man. Gods of night, he was still inside! But I could not take on the door guard, for the other two namhirra were also in view. In the wavering shadows beyond the fire was a small group—a man huddled on the ground, another man—the second Derzhi—behind him bending his head back and holding a knife to his throat. The third namhir, tall, thin, his arms folded calmly in front of his chest, stood in front of the two, barking a question. The crumpled man responded with a harsh, sobbing curse.

  Gordain was going to die. No matter what enchantment I cast or what feat of arms I might be able to muster, the distance between us was too great. I could not possibly move fast enough to halt the knife of a namhir.

  “They will live, Gordain,” I cried, offering the good man the only gift possible as I sent my dagger spinning through the night to catch the door guard in the heart, and then raced the heart breakingly long steps to plunge my sword into the second namhir’s back. As I yanked the blade from the lifeless Derzhi, I glimpsed Farrol’s stocky form streaking from the woods toward the burning house. I had no choice but to trust him to do what was needed, for the third assassin drew his sword and attacked.

  “The sorcerer slave himself!” he cried gleefully as he met me stroke for stroke. “Flushed you out like a hungry kayeet.”

  I had fought few humans in my career as a warrior—my opponents had always been the monstrous manifestations of demons—but I learned quickly that the namhir was among the most skilled of his kind. Simple illusions—itching, boils, crawling spiders—would not disrupt the focus of such a killer. He knew I was a sorcerer. And my son’s terrified wailing fed my anger so sorely that I could not allow myself the time for more impressive, and thus more difficult, workings. I had to rely on my sword and my fists. Once, that would not have been a problem—I was very good at what I did—but the badly healed wound in my side was proving treacherous. Every time I raised my sword, my right side felt as though it were tearing open.

  I tried to back the warrior into the fence of the goat pen, but he seemed to have the lay of the farm imprinted on his mind. Just before I had him trapped, he ducked and rolled and leaped to his feet behind me. I pressed him again, toward the flames, ripping my blade across his chest. Not deep enough, for he did not falter. Rather he worked me sideways toward the new-plowed field, hoping, no doubt, to tangle my feet in the soft earth. I whirled about and landed my boot solidly in his back. He stumbled, but did not go down. My son’s crying became short bleats of terror, and I dared not think why Farrol’s shadow was still flailing about between me and the fire.

  “Get them out,” I screamed, and brought my sword down on my opponent’s shoulder. Dark blood gushed from the wound.

  Still the namhir fought, dodging my blows and kicking at my knees, smashing a thick wooden stave into my back. The blow staggered me for a moment, and only a desperate recovery prevented his sword from following. But the namhir was human, and I had been trained to fight demons. With my next blow, I shattered his blade. The tall Derzhi stumbled backward, holding only the hilt and stub of his sword.

  “More will come after me,” he snarled as I kicked the broken sword from his right hand and pressed him to the ground with blow after blow, parried only by his wooden stave. “You will no longer interfere in the affairs of your betters, slave.”

  I kicked him in the gut so hard that blood ran out of his mouth, and then set my boot on his chest. “Who sent you? What Hamrasch lord cares enough about Aleksander’s freed slave to send namhirra?” The wolf crest on his bloodstained tef-coat identified him as a member of the Hamrasch heged, one of the twenty most powerful Derzhi families.

  “All of my lords ... every one of them.” He coughed and grinned through the blood. “The puling Aleksander will never rule this empire.”

  “All of them ...” The absolute assurance of his taunt shook me to my boots. For every lord of a heged to take a share in an assassination ... I bent down and twisted his bleeding shoulder, my voice hoarse with fear and fury. “Tell me, namhir, have they spoken kanavar?”

  He neither flinched nor answered me. Only laughed until he choked on bloody spittle.

  My hand fell away, and I stood up slowly. Kanavar ... a swearing so deep, so dreadful, so solemn that every man, woman, and child of an entire Derzhi heged would die to see it kept. The Hamraschi had sworn on the very existence of their family to destroy Aleksander.

  The namhir scrabbled weakly backward across the firelit grass. “You’ll die, too, slave,” he croaked. “And any who shelter you ...”

  I raised my sword to finish him, but my eyes were distracted by the shifting firelight and my caution by the import of his words, and so I missed the movement of his left hand. The wooden stave smashed brutally into my right side.

  My breath stopped. Red streaks of light shattered my vision as ripping, paralyzing agony exploded in my side. My right arm fell limp, and the sword slipped from my lifeless hand. Another blow, this time to my ankle. I scarcely noticed it, for I was fighting to get a breath. Doubled over, left hand fumbling in the dirt for my dropped weapon, I staggered backward. Head up, fool. The next one will crack your skull.

  The namhir was a dead man, no matter what. The injury I’d done him would have seen to it, whether I survived another moment. But to his mortal regret—and my own—I stumbled over Gordain’s body and saw what they had done to the good Manganar. They had ripped his throat to finish him as I knew they would, but earlier ... before I’d come ... they had cut off both of his hands and seared the stumps in fire so he wouldn’t die too quickly. Unimaginable horror for any man, but for a man who already lived without one leg ...

  “He wept like an old woman” came the rasping whisper. “I thought Manganar had more bile.”

  Darkness thundered in my blood. The remnants of my day’s madness surged anew, and I forgot the kanavar, forgot Gordain and Aleksander, Blaise and my child, forgot everything. Somehow I managed to lift my sword again, but I did not kill the namhir quickly. With strokes as precise as those of a gem cutter and so vicious they shivered my own bones, I took off the screaming Derzhi’s right hand ... and then his left ... and then the rest of him piece by piece until there was nothing left to cut.

  CHAPTER 3

  I stood panting harshly, trembling and bent over with the searing pain in my side. I could not think what I needed to do next or remember why the silence seemed so strange. When a hand fell heavily on my shoulder, I almost shed my skin.

  “The boy’s all right, Seyonne. And Elinor, too. They’re safe.”

  Dully I stared up into Blaise’s pale face. He had a monstrous purple bruise on his temple, and even his sincere concern could not mask disgust. My arms were covered with blood, my clothing soaked with it and spattered with bits of flesh and entrails. What lay before me on the ground was no longer recognizable as a man. I dropped my sword and sank to my knees, pressing the back of my bloody hand against my mouth.

  “Are you injured?”

  I shook my head. Not injured. Diseased.

  The garish orange flames were already dying, only the blackened stone finger of the hearth marked that a home had once nestled at the edge of the trees. A short distance away stood Elinor, pressing Evan’s dark head fiercely into her neck, muffling his sobs and hiding his eyes from the carnage.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. Although I spoke to the iron-faced woman and to my weeping son, they could not possibly have heard me. �
�I’m so sorry.”

  “You saved their lives.” Even the kindest of friends could not sound convincing. Not on that night.

  It was a measure of Blaise’s heart that he did not recoil or run away.

  “Take me away from them,” I said. “Never let me near them again.”

  “Soon. For now they have to come back with us. Without Gordain, they can’t stay here.” He dropped my abandoned cloak over my shoulders.

  The night breeze swirled smoke, obscuring the stars and the strangely peaceful valley. Tendrils of flame crept toward the fences and newly budded trees, only to die away in the damp. Farrol, his round face blackened, his shirt half scorched away, holding his hands in the rigid posture that told me how severely they must be burned, was trying to prevent Elinor from approaching Gordain’s body and the horror on the ground beside it.

  “Tell me who they were, Seyonne. What further danger do we face?” Gingerly Blaise picked up my fouled weapon, made some effort to clean it, and stuffed it in my scabbard. Then he got me to my feet with a hand under my elbow, nudging me away from the dead. Even as we retreated, Elinor shoved her way past Farrol’s quiet pleading and knelt on the blood-soaked ground beside Gordain, still clutching my child to her breast. She did not scream or cry out at the sight of her husband’s mangled body, but only touched his broad shoulder tenderly and closed his eyes with a steady hand. When she rose at last, her glance swept the gruesome earth about her and came to rest on my face. She stared at me as if she were unable to comprehend that such creatures as the namhirra and I could share the same earth, much less the same blood, with those she loved. She tightened her embrace of the whimpering child, then turned her back and walked with Farrol up the hill into the woods.

  “They were assassins,” I said. “Sent by Aleksander’s enemies.” I pulled the cloak about my trembling limbs, as if wool could warm the night’s chill. “They knew where to find me.” An ominous mystery in itself, for I had believed that only Aleksander and my friend Fiona knew that secret, and neither of them would willingly reveal it.

  “But why? What possible—”

  “The assassin said Aleksander was under a kanavar ... a heged oath ... that he will never rule the Empire. The entire Hamrasch family has sworn it. Maybe other hegeds, too. No way to tell.” It was as if the light had gone out of the stars, and the deadness in my own soul had infected the universe itself. I could think of only one way anyone could prevent Aleksander from inheriting his father’s throne. “They’re going to kill him.” The hope of the world. The friend who had shared his soul with me. The brother so unlikely. The consideration was so painful and the night’s events so disturbing, I could not think.

  “Then why are they trying to kill you?”

  I shook my head. It made no sense. I had scarcely seen the Prince for three years. “But if they want me dead, they won’t stop. I don’t know how they found me, but when these don’t come back, they’ll send more. I’ll leave Karesh, but even then—”

  “So the rest of us will have to hide. We’ve done it before. Let’s go.”

  I was away from Karesh before Blaise had all his people out of bed. I stuffed my meager possessions in a cloth pack, and into a pocket of my cloak I dropped a few of the zenars I had earned by reading and writing for local merchants. Unable to face those who would soon hear the tale of my savagery, I bade farewell to no one but Blaise.

  “You must give me a way to find you,” he said as I pulled on my spare shirt, fastened my cloak about my shoulders, and gave him the little leather bag that held the rest of my earnings to use for Evan and Elinor. “I’ve never opened the gate to Kir‘Navarrin without your help. What if one of the others needs to cross and I can’t open the way?”

  “I’ve taught Fiona everything. Without being demon-joined, she can’t open the way herself, but she can remind you of anything you forget, help you use your power.” My fiery young friend was off and digging in ruins, searching for remnants of Ezzarian history.

  “Your son needs you, Seyonne. I’ll keep him as safe as I can, but—”

  “He needs no one capable of what I did this night.”

  “You know better. You’ll find the answer. This is a sickness. It is not you. And you saved their lives as you’ve done so many others.” He followed me down the stairs and into the night-shuttered lane where my horse stood tethered to a post. Lights were beginning to flicker behind the dark walls, like fireflies disturbed from the grass. “You must give me a way to find you.”

  “I’ve got to warn Aleksander,” I said, strapping my small pack onto the saddle. “I’ll tell him about the kanavar, and then get away again before I go mad again. When I figure out where I’m going, I’ll send word here to the locksmith.”

  “And if you need me, I‘ll—”

  “Don’t tell me anything!” I untied the horse and mounted, the urgency of my leaving driving my leaden limbs. A Warden was sworn to protect the world from evil. I could not even protect my own child from myself.

  But Blaise would not allow me to go yet. “If you need me, leave a message at Dolgar’s shrine in Vayapol. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you. I promise I won’t tell you where to find the others unless I judge you’re well.” He stayed my horse until I nodded in agreement. “I owe you more than life, Seyonne. If you’re in the pits of Kir‘Vagonoth itself, I’ll come.”

  There was no answer to such friendship. I clasped his hand and rode away.

  The red fingers of dawn were just touching the sky when I first glimpsed the spires of Zhagad in the distance, rising from the shadows of the dune sea. The Pearl of Azhakstan. The seat of imperial power since one of Aleksander’s great-grandsires had outgrown his desert kingdom and decided to order the world according to his whim. For five hundred years the warrior Derzhi had proven that they could kill, enslave, burn, starve, or mutilate anyone into their grand design. Their Empire had grown into an uneasy prosperity of roads and trade, anchored on the rocks of tyranny and fear, bound into a whole with the chains of slavery.

  Why did I believe that one cocky prince could alter the bleak landscape of such a world? What arrogance was mine to believe that the bright center I had seen in Aleksander was the gods’ answer to its brutality? But I did believe it. When Aleksander bought me at the Capharna slave auction, I had been resigned to death in bondage, bereft of hope and faith after half a lifetime of degradation. When I saw the feadnach in him, I had cursed my Warden’s oath that bound me to protect my cruel and arrogant conqueror. But our journey together had changed us both. I had shared Aleksander’s strength and refreshed my spirit at the fountain of his unquenchable life. He was our hope. I could not let him die in some tribal spat. I tugged on the reins and headed down the rocky promontory toward the golden domes that glittered in the growing light.

  An extraordinary amount of traffic bustled on the wide, paved road that led from the travelers’ well at Taíne Amar to the outer gates of the royal city, the last league of the Emperor’s Road that stretched from Zhagad east and west to the boundaries of the Empire. One would have thought it was time for Dar Heged, the twice-yearly gathering of Derzhi families to present grievances before the Emperor. Troops of scowling warriors occupied the center of the roadway, escorting finely dressed lords toward the city, consigning everyone else to the peripheries. And everyone else seemed to be leaving Zhagad that day; vast merchant caravans lumbered outward like traveling cities, the horses and chastou straining under the drovers’ urgent whips. For so many to depart the city before the evening market was very odd. And seldom had I seen so many clumps of people gathered at the roadside talking, rocklike obstacles for the herdsmen screaming at their flocks of goats and the hurried travelers lashing at beggars who pawed at their stirrups. The din of shouts and hooves, clattering wheels, dangling pots, snapping whips, and bleating animals was deafening. I hated cities, and the noise and stink and crowds of this one had polluted the peaceful desert.

  It had taken me three anxious weeks to get to Zhagad. I ha
d traveled the harsh desert road alone, thankful for my well-trained sight that allowed me to move safely at night, avoiding bandits and the worst of the sun. Once I had put some distance between myself and Karesh, and felt the brutal impact of the Azhaki desert, I sorely missed Blaise. With his help I could have traveled the grueling distance in a single day. But he had needed to get his people to safety, and not even for Aleksander would I slow him. I would give much to change the world, but not my son. Never him.

  I had hoped that my joining with Denas would give me the ability to follow these magical pathways as Blaise did, but I’d not yet grasped the trick of it. Blaise had suggested that my failure was of my own making. “You need to let go of your physical boundaries,” he said whenever I complained of my inadequacies. “But you won’t do it. It’s the same with your shifting; the reason it’s so hard for you to change form is that you try to hold on to too much of yourself.”

  Blaise had little formal schooling, but he saw things clearly. Now that I was joined with Denas, I was capable of shapeshifting at will, transforming myself into an eagle or a chastou or a fleet-footed kayeet, the fastest runner on earth. But unlike Blaise and his fellows, I found the act excruciatingly difficult. Perhaps Blaise was right, and it was my reluctance to yield control. Or perhaps what I had done to myself—sharing body and soul with a rai-kirah who had no kinship to me—was not the right ordering of the world as I had hoped.

  In the early days of my recovery, Blaise had convinced me to let down the magical barriers I’d built to isolate myself from the demon. He said I should talk with Denas, learn of him. Knowledge and understanding would surely make coexistence easier. The rai-kirah had never spoken, not once. I wondered if my coming so close to death had destroyed him, if perhaps his anger was all that was left, the fading rumbles of thunder as a storm moves out. But then I’d started attacking people, and I quickly rebuilt my barriers.