Restoration

by Carol Berg

  “Did Seyonne bribe you to recite this fable?” said Aleksander in irritation. “It sounds just like him. But I am not a wandering tribesman who was given a throne by sheepherders. I am the rightful Emperor of all the lands my grandsires have conquered, including Azhakstan, and I will have my inheritance if I have to kill every Hamraschi that breathes.” As Gaspar rambled on, unfazed by this outburst, the Prince threw his arms across his face and pretended to sleep.

  “As the kingdom grew, the warriors remembered Drafa and made pilgrimage here for the siffaru—the rites of balance. Every king of Azhakstan would come here seeking his vision upon the day of his anointing. It’s been a long while since we’ve seen a king here, and never have we seen an emperor, but there are still a few who come—”

  “Lidunni,” said Aleksander, his voice muffled by his arm. “I’d wager my soul on it. Damned good in a fight, but their asses are bound up too tight with all their traditions. Something like my Ezzarian friend here.”

  The Lidunni were the most formidable warriors of all Derzhi—members of a sect who combined religion and the art of hand combat. They never carried weapons, but it was said that they could snap a man’s spine with one hand or catch a thrown spear before it struck.

  Gaspar sighed. “I will not say who seeks us out—truly there are not so very many—only that they often come naked and broken and leave here whole. I have tried to persuade your troubled friend to seek the siffaru before he fights again, but he struggles on unaided. Perhaps you could influence him?”

  Aleksander pulled his arm from his face and wrinkled his brow at me. “Maybe you ought to try it. You like mystical sorts of things, and, no matter how much they gabble on about matters of no consequence, these people do seem to know this healing business. If the Lidunni see value in their foolery, maybe it would help you with your problem.”

  I shook my head. I wanted no more visions.

  Sovari was back in ten days. He rode in at dawn, bringing saddle packs full of blankets, wineskins, dried meat, flatbread such as Derzhi carried on long campaigns, some blessedly clean clothes, and a head full of news, none of it good.

  “Lord Kiril was about to go mad with worry about you, my lord,” said Sovari, dropping from the saddle and bending his knee to the Prince. He did not rise, but kept his head bent, even when Aleksander motioned him up. “Forgive me bringing vile tidings, Your Highness, but Lord Kiril bade me speak all of it without pausing for breath or your interruption, and so I shall do. You have been named Kinslayer and regicide, my lord, stripped of all your titles and lands, condemned by the Twenty to be flogged, hung up in the grand market of Zhagad, to have your entrails pulled out and set afire while you yet live—”

  “Gods, Captain, consider your words!” I said. No man recovering from grievous injury needed to hear such grotesque elaboration. Aleksander knew what his people were capable of.

  “As I said, Ezzarian, Lord Kiril bade me tell all without holding back so that my lord would understand the danger of his position. You are not safe anywhere in your empire, my lord Prince.” Sovari swallowed uncomfortably. “They have put a price on your head.”

  A price ... like a common thief. Aleksander was silent for so long, I was afraid his heart had stopped. When he spoke at last, his words could slice flesh. “I hope they’ve made the price a worthy one, at least. So tell me, how do they value my entrails?”

  “Ten thousand zenars, my lord.”

  “Ten thousand ... You were a bargain, Seyonne. I paid only twenty zenars for you and never burned your entrails once.” He leaned back on the mound of sand we’d piled behind him, but the air yet quivered with his anger. “So have they crowned my father’s cousin?”

  Sovari faltered, his hesitation confirming what his tongue dared not. “My lord ...”

  “I see.” Rarely had I felt so deadly a chill. “And who has died for it?”

  “Siva, Walthar, Demtari—all of your personal advisers and bodyguards and servants were executed on the coronation day. Some seventy men. The only ones left living were a few who are kin to the Fontezhi and those willing to witness against you. Some testified to your disagreements with your father and hinted at plots against him; others claimed that your decrees moderating the slave trade and changing terms of indentures were purposed to weaken hegeds you disliked. The order was given that your troops were to be intercepted and your captains slain, but Lord Kiril had already sent word to Stepok to avoid Zhagad and take your men directly to Srif Naj. When matters got worse, he commanded Stepok disperse the troops, hide in the village, and await your word.”

  Aleksander was livid, his hands trembling. “And my wife ... what news of her?”

  I’d thought Sovari’s sunburned face could burn no hotter. “Safe enough for now, my lord. Her father, Lord Marag, has publicly denounced the Emperor’s murderer, though without naming you. He has returned to Zhagad to protect young Damok; times are too perilous to leave a boy with the Zhagad house. My lady has returned to Zhagad with Lord Marag, but remains in seclusion in her father’s house and has let it be known that she will not hear your name spoken in her presence.”

  “As well we made no child. That’s the only reason she yet lives. How does Kiril keep safe?”

  “His lady mother, the Princess Rahil, has maintained silence on Lord Edik’s ascension, which disturbs Lord Edik greatly. Lord Edik has made a great show of wooing the Princess’s blessing, claiming that his concern for Denischkar honor has forced him to these hard choices, and that his authority will not be complete until his own heged closes ranks behind him. Even so, Lord Kiril himself has made public witness against your folly in attacking the Hamraschi. He begs you understand that it scalds his tongue, but it is the only way he can uphold your interests. He negotiated the surrender of your legion after the battle and was able to get favorable terms, claiming that most were unwilling conscripts. But he is also in contact with several houses who clearly detest Lord Edik and the unseemly haste with which he has proceeded.”

  Aleksander leaned forward. “So they will support me? Which houses?”

  Sovari bent his head even farther. “Ah, my lord ...”

  “Come, tell me. If it is only three or four, so be it, so long as they are of the Twenty. Every powerful heged has its own alliances that can be brought to bear. Which ones will join me?”

  “None of them, my lord. Lord Kiril says—”

  “None! How in the name of the holy gods is it possible that no heged will support their rightful Emperor? What of the cursed Rhyzka, the most loyal of all?”

  Sovari flinched, as if the Prince’s words were tipped with steel. “Prince Edik has given the Rhyzka charge of your personal holdings, my lord, to prevent your using them as a base for rebellion.”

  “Get out. All of you. Get out!” Aleksander was shaking with rage. I believed that if Sovari or I had said another word right then, we would have found a dagger between our eyes. So we left him, and I warned Sarya that the Prince was not to be disturbed until I gave her leave.

  “Perhaps he also needs the siffaru,” she said, peering through the glaring sunlight at the figure huddled in the stifling shade.

  “It will take more than visions to put his life back in balance,” I said. “And I don’t know where we’ll find what’s needed.”

  “Gaspar seeks answers for the warrior of light, but just when he feels this urgent purpose, his sight is clouded.” Sarya’s overwhelming sadness distracted me from Aleksander’s distress. “Gaspar’s time grows short. I can’t think whether it is a mercy or a burden that he knows it.”

  “Gaspar’s sight ...” I touched Sarya’s rounded shoulder as she turned away. “Tell me of a blind man’s sight, Sarya.”

  Bits of moisture beaded her red-rimmed eyes. “Gaspar was fifteen when his day came to look into the smoke. He had shown the signs since he was a child, of course, and had been brought to Drafa to await his time. Dyomed had only fifty summers, so Gaspar thought he would have a long waiting. But Dyomed was bitten by a cyc
nid—a poisonous scorpion—and died within a day. Since that day, Gaspar has been the Avocar of Drafa. For sixty summers he has held answers, but so very few have come to ask. And now it grows late.”

  Avocar. Oracle.

  CHAPTER 10

  Ezzarians were not the only sorcerers in the world. Though we believed that we alone understood enough of melydda and possessed enough of it to fight the demon war, we knew that every race and tribe had its seers, or prophets, or those who wove love charms or healing spells or wards against evil, and that, on rare occasions, those people wove true.

  On a blistering morning a few days after Sovari’s return, I asked Aleksander if he had ever heard of the Avocar of Drafa. I was helping the Prince shift his position, propping him up with mounds of packed sand and rolled blankets. His leg still pained him, though not so much as Sovari’s report. The Prince had spoken scarcely ten words in the preceding days, save to the captain, whom he quizzed unendingly on the fates or the public and private positions of every lord in the Twenty hegeds. Sovari was to leave for Zhagad that very nightfall to discover the answers he had not been able to supply.

  “An oracle? I don’t remember hearing of such. Could have saved me a lot of trouble, couldn’t it? Told me not to bother with a number of things.” I grieved to hear Aleksander’s bitterness.

  “Surely there was some mention of Drafa. You’ve been taught by people who revered Derzhi traditions—your uncle ...”

  “Dmitri would have killed anyone who tried to predict his future. He’d have said they were plotting against him, and the only way to be sure they failed was to be rid of them. One of many lessons I should have learned from him.”

  “Oracles don’t predict the future,” I said. “They make no claim to see true events or to interpret or influence what you should do about them. They only report the insights that come from their visions. You must make your own choices as to what they mean. Sarya says that Gaspar is called the Avocar of Drafa.”

  “Tell the old man to preach me none of his nonsense. Our future is written nowhere but in our deeds.” Aleksander threw his arm across his eyes to shut out the light—a gesture I had learned meant dismissal.

  “Perhaps,” I said and left him to his sleep ... or more likely to brood.

  I could not shake my unease. My life had been intertwined with prophecy. Every time I denied it and charged off in a different direction, I ended up right in the middle of it again. Prophecy had caused my ancestors to close the way to Kir‘-Navarrin, and I had judged them wrong to have done it. They had not understood the consequences of their deeds: the existence of the rai-kirah and the torment of the demons’ exile that had led to our unending war. That same prophecy, recorded in an ancient mosaic, had depicted a winged man walking toward the fortress of Tyrrad Nor with a key in his hand, and had warned of an overwhelming catastrophe that was one possible result of his deeds. I had done what I believed right, come to an interpretation that justified my actions to reopen the gateway, but I could not escape doubts, not when my dreams told me that the face of monstrous catastrophe was my own. Thus, it was more difficult to thrust aside Gaspar’s words, now that I heard there was a tradition of mystical truth in Drafa.

  I took my unease with me as I walked up the rise to our watch point and sent Sovari off to get some sleep before his night’s journey. Sarya was sitting with the sleeping Prince, for Malver had not yet returned from his mission in Zhagad. The day was murderously hot. I sat under a lonely nagera tree, sipping occasionally from a waterskin, watching the lizards scuttle from one bit of shade to the next. To persuade myself to leave the shade and circle the rise every hour, in order to scan every direction for signs of pursuit, was a monumental effort. Kiril had sent warning that Edik would not sit comfortably on his stolen throne until he had proof that Aleksander was food for vultures, but it was hard to imagine the Derzhi would seek the Prince in Drafa out of all the vastness of Azhakstan.

  The air throbbed with the heat. I felt myself nodding off. Only a short time had passed since my last round, but I pulled up the scarf of the flowing white haffai Sovari had brought me and stumbled to my feet. I picked a few juicy red pomegranate seeds from a fruit I had just cut open, popping the sweet little nodules in my mouth as I walked the dusty path again. The midday light was flat, the sky a hard silvery blue. The silence was unbroken by any bird or insect or whisper of wind. Yet in the north where Zhagad lay, I glimpsed a telltale puff of dust. I stopped and squinted. The dust was moving ... southward toward Drafa.

  “Riders!” I yelled, running down the path toward our shelter.

  As I had learned from hard experience, even powerful sorcery could not counter sheer numbers. No matter what enchantments I worked, Sovari and I could not kill fifty Derzhi by ourselves, and leaving any one of them alive to report Aleksander’s position would be failure. I had no time to shift. Nor could we run, not until Aleksander was well enough to ride, which meant we had to let the riders search Drafa. The women had told us they had a place to hide us if the time came, but had refused to reveal it unless it was needed. Faced with no reasonable alternatives, I prayed that it was secure. The Derzhi would arrive in moments, not hours. “Qeb,” I shouted. “We need the hiding place.”

  Standing in the dusty path, the boy stared north into the desert. “Sarya will show you,” he said quietly, folding his arms across his thin brown chest. “I’ll go to Gaspar. We’ll take care of this.”

  “Tell Gaspar these are Derzhi warriors,” I said. “They’re not coming to seek balance. They’re hunting my friend who’s injured. He’s the heir—”

  Qeb waved off my concerns. “We know who he is. You needn’t worry. Take him to safety.” I wanted to shake the boy from his strange detachment. Torn between the desire to get Aleksander away and the certainty that this quiet boy and the old man were going to do something foolish, I stood stupidly in the dirt, doing nothing. But then Sarya beckoned from beside a crumbled wall, and I had to move. “They’ll show no mercy, Qeb,” I called after the boy. “They want him badly.”

  As he walked slowly toward Gaspar’s house, he nodded calmly. “We understand.”

  Sovari had set our crude litter beside a snoring Aleksander and was shaking the Prince’s shoulder. “My lord,” he said. “My lord, we must move you.” Aleksander mumbled drowsily, but did not wake.

  “We can’t wait for permission,” I said. I grabbed the Prince’s middle and rolled him toward me, while Sovari slipped the litter underneath his back.

  Aleksander grunted as we laid him down, and then, as I carefully lifted his leg and placed it on the litter, his color fled and his eyes flew open. “Demonfire, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Riders, my lord. We’re not sure who they are, but there’s a goodly number of them. We’ve got to hide you.”

  “So I’m to run away again.”

  “We’ve no time to argue,” I said, tossing Aleksander’s sword, dagger, and blankets on top of him. I nodded to Sovari, and we hefted the litter.

  Manot had joined us, gathering up her medicines, the waterskins, and blankets scattered about our little shelter. She kicked sand and brush about, and soon the corner by the nagera grove looked like any other part of the decrepit ruin. Meanwhile Sarya had pulled aside a tangle of weeds and mud bricks, exposing a low doorway in the side of a mountain of rubble where a number of houses and walls had collapsed, one upon the other.

  Sovari and I had to stoop as we stepped through into a dark passage. The air smelled smoky and sweet, and the walls and ceiling seemed a great deal more stable than the overlay of crumbled brick would suggest. What I could see of the path led steeply downward, disappearing into pitch-black after the glare of noonday. I whispered a light to augment Sarya’s sputtering torch. It wouldn’t improve our fortunes to stumble and drop Aleksander.

  What we found at the end of the passage was astonishing—a cool, dry room, its walls of solid rock—a cave room, long buried by desert and city. As we set down the Prince’s litter and turne
d to marvel, time itself seemed to roll backward. This place was not a part of Drafa, but far older. On every surface of the room were paintings, depicting neither the sophisticated abstractions of faces and figures that graced Derzhi sand paintings, nor the detailed representations of life and myth I had seen in other cultures of the Empire. These were simpler works, created by hands that believed in the power of what they drew. Kayeets, sand-deer, herds of dune-runners and gazelles—the creatures of the desert—all of them moving, running, leaping, painted in deep reds and ochres and browns and blacks—the colors of the desert. And everywhere were horses, the graceful horses that were the very soul of the Derzhi. The room was alive with their power.

  “Holy Athos ...” The Prince gaped at the sweeping majesty, and I wondered at it, too, but only for a moment, as the horses reminded me of the hooves racing toward us across the dunes.

  Manot had followed us down the path, but there was no sign of Fessa, Gaspar, or Qeb. I ran back up the passageway to fetch them, but Sarya stood in the bright rectangle of the outer doorway and caught my arm before I could go out. “Stay here. Qeb will close the way when he comes.” The sunlight illuminated her withered face. She was weeping.

  “What are they going to do, Sarya?”

  “Gaspar believes that not all of us can hide. The hunters will know someone lives here in Drafa. Best they find someone.”