by Carol Berg
Never had I been so utterly bereft of words.
The old man shook his head slightly, as if coming to himself. “You are uncomfortable. I had no intent to be rude.” He motioned to a chair beside the fire. “Do come and sit. You wanted to talk.”
Abandoning all expectation, I blurted out the mad, impossible whimsy that had taken shape as I watched and listened. “You are the prisoner.”
His dark eyes widened in mock amazement. “A day replete with surprises. I would celebrate if I could remember how to do such a thing.” His features were fine: high cheekbones, jaw and brow that might have been formed from the same granite as his mountain prison, thick gray hair and beard trimmed close. A dignified, aristocratic look about him, but no evidence of ill nature, save his peevish humor. Nothing of hatred or cruelty written on his visage, though I hunted carefully for the signs. And his dark, intelligent eyes told no different story. They were deep and clear, like snow-fed mountain lakes on a moonlit midnight, eyes that seemed far younger than his body. I did not shift my own sight to look more deeply. I could not think his was a soul to be probed without consequence.
He sat in a high-backed wooden chair beside the hearth, drawing his green cloak close about him and stretching his boots toward the flames.
This man, this place, could be but creations of my diseased mind. This experience was certainly some type of dreaming ... only in dreams and visions could one walk through rain and remain dry. Yet I did not believe any dream could be so contrary to the dreamer’s preconceptions. “Who are you?” I demanded, as if a simple answer would make everything clear.
“You’re a blunt sort of fellow.” Again he waved me to the chair. “Well, I suppose I am the same of late, as you see. But at least do me the courtesy of pretending politeness. Allow me to demonstrate that I recall a bit about civilized behavior.”
Dreamlike, I moved to the hard, straight-backed chair facing him. The table with the glass game board sat between us. About half of the pieces of each color—black and white—sat to one side, as if a game had been interrupted.
“Do you play?” The simple question was spoken gruffly, like all his speech.
“I know how. I’m not proficient.” He had not answered my own question, but I could not think what else to say.
He fingered the black pieces... obsidian, the black glass found near old volcanoes. The white were alabaster. “I persuaded Kasparian to learn, but he sees no more use in games than he sees in conversation. Every few days, he steels himself and offers to play, but I thank him and refuse. I get no pleasure from tormenting him. I often wonder if I remember the rules correctly.”
“I’ll play if you like.”
His eyes popped up, and for the first time he looked me full in the face. “That would be fine. Quite fine.” Remarkable eyes.
And so we pulled our chairs close to the table and set the pieces in their squares. I, as white player, began, and we exchanged several moves before he spoke again. “You can call me Nyel.”
Nyel. In the language of the rai-kirah, the word meant “forgotten.”
“It seems you know me already,” I said, pushing one of my castles two squares forward.
He dipped his head in acknowledgment and contemplated my move. After only a few moments, he moved a black rider and captured one of my warriors. “I’ve had no wish to frighten you.”
“No wish to frighten ... I don’t believe that.” His assertion was so absurd that it shook me from my careful reticence. I thought of the dreams he had touched: my death visions of this very fortress that haunted my nights, and the dreams that had lured me into the demon realm—the image of a black and silver warrior whose power filled me with despair and dread. Both visions implied that I was to bring destruction to everything I valued. What man or woman would not be frightened?
“Power is frightening,” he said. “Great power extremely so. But fear was never my intent.”
“Then you miscalculated.”
“Your fear does not diminish my estimation of you. I know how I am perceived in the worlds. Even the staunchest heart must blanch in the face of uttermost evil.” He might have been speaking of a preference for onions over radishes.
This dry poke at himself did nothing to restore my equilibrium, thrown off so badly by this strange visit. I took a moment to survey the game board and gather my wits. I laid a finger on one of my warriors ... then took it away again as I saw the danger in the move. Instead, I shifted one of my priests to protect my lady queen. “If not to intimidate me, then why any of it?”
Without hesitation he used his rider again to capture another white warrior. “Because I want to be free. I am not immortal, despite what stories say of me. I am coming to the end of a very long life, most of which has been spent locked away in this place. Pleasant though it be, it is still a prison. So—this is not so difficult a concept—there are a few things I would like to do before I die. Perhaps to walk the world beyond these walls.”
I shifted a rider to threaten his. “You’ve been trying to escape. Using others, manipulating them... with dreams, I think, as you have with me.” I could not even begin to tally the names of the dead that lay at his feet—rai—kirah, Ezzarians, Khelid, the un-countable victims of the demon war—yet the dead seemed so very remote beside the consuming reality of this moment.
“Every captive has the right to yearn for freedom. There is a certain madness in bondage... you know of it. We are driven to make compromises that we would abhor in other circumstances.”
Disconcerting to think that he knew so much of me, and I so little of him. My demon and I had both made compromises to be free, and our choices had not been guiltless. Yet surely Nyel’s crimes must outweigh my own; my ancestors had riven their souls for fear of him. What had he done? And what did he see in me that made him think I would be his tool? I could not allow myself to be mesmerized by disarming frankness and a friendly game. “Why me?”
He kept his eyes fixed upon the game and drew his obsidian priest halfway across the glass to threaten my king. “Your power, of course. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Of all beings in the worlds, you have the power to release me. You have power enough to do a great many things.”
This was the first lie I had heard from him. Not that what he said was untrue. Now that he laid it out, it was obvious that my dreams had been crafted to tell me exactly that—I had power beyond telling. But I also sensed that his words were not the truthful answer to my question.
As I contemplated the game board and this odd discourse, the woman servant returned, bringing hot water to replenish the teapot, a plate of frosted cakes, and a bowl of plump red grapes.
Nyel jumped up from his chair and strode to the window, peering out into the misty afternoon. “Where is the cursed Kasparian? I’ve no mind for sweets and dainties. I’ve climbed the mountain path today and would dine early.”
The woman did not respond. She left the room and returned with a silver salver piled high with sugared dates. The manservant poked up the fire, turned up the lamps, and drew the curtains against the failing light. Nyel might not have been in the room for all the note they took of him. They performed their duties without speech or deference. When the manservant brought soft slippers, he did not approach Nyel or ask if he was ready, but knelt in front of Nyel’s empty chair. He waited there motionless until the old man sighed in exasperation, sat down, and allowed his damp boots to be removed and replaced with the softer shoes.
Just as the two servants left the room, another man hurried through the door, buttoning a high collar about a neck as thick as my waist. Unlike the servants, he addressed Nyel directly, bowing with respectful familiarity. “I am shamed, Master. How could I have missed his coming?” His shoulders and chest were in proportion to his neck—a giant of a man. Wet brown hair, long and thick, was threaded with gray. His apparel, apparently thrown on carelessly, was simple—dark brown vest and breeches, white shirt, and worn boots. He had not been in so much hurry as to leave off h
is weapon, however, a formidable sword in a battered sheath. On observing the hard-edged patterns of his face, I surmised that the weapon would always be the last thing he left off.
“His arrival was unconventional, as is his continued presence,” said Nyel, acknowledging the newcomer’s respectful address with a slight nod. “It seems he needed no admission to our charmed fortress.”
The man’s wide hands, freed of occupation now that his collar was fastened, settled to his hips as he stared at me in frank appraisal. After a moment his eyes widened. “He isn’t really here at all!”
Nyel propped his chin on his hand and raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he is with us in spirit only. He has yet to take the more decisive step of passing through the last breach.”
“So he is still human.” The derisive hatred with which the newcomer spit out this accusation threw Nyel’s amiable sparring into darker context.
“No,” snapped Nyel. “He was never that. Mind your tongue.” The man dipped his head. “We differ, as always, Master. I can say only as I see.”
“Before we set off arguing again, will you tell your benighted minions that I am ready to dine? I climbed today and am like to wither away altogether without sustenance.”
The man bowed and withdrew. Nyel slumped in his chair, staring at the game board. I didn’t think his mind was on our game—certainly not the one we played with black and white pieces.
“I never thought to see others in this place,” I said. “Who are they?”
Nyel glanced up. “The servants are ... creations ... neither human nor anything else. Made to serve my comfort, though, as you see, I cannot command them. Nor can I kill them.” He grimaced ruefully. “I must confess, at times I’ve been driven to try. When I die, they will vanish as if they had never been.”
“But this other man ...”
“Kasparian. Like me, a captive in this gracious house. Though, unlike me, he chose it freely.”
“He chose to be imprisoned?”
“Extraordinary, is it not, such ferocious loyalty? And still undimmed, for his is a noble spirit. Could you do such a thing for anyone? I don’t think I could.” The old man sighed. “It is not his fault he has the dullest mind ever woke of a morning.”
Extraordinary, indeed. Someone had cared enough for Nyel to share his captivity for untold years—far more than a thousand, for it was a full thousand years in the past that an Ezzarian prophet had foretold the release of the prisoner of Tyrrad Nor and the catastrophe that it would cause. “Is he a kinsman?”
“He was my attellé—the son of a very good friend sent to live with me and learn from me, though not very successfully even then.”
“Your student.”
“Much more than that. What student chooses to lie ill when his master is diseased?”
“More like a son, then.”
And here I believed that I had stumbled close to the heart of the matter, for though Nyel sat very still and made no show of anger, his dark gaze pressed down on me until I was almost suffocated. “No. Not a son. Never that.”
Even Kasparian could not match Nyel as a source for wonder. I had expected to find a being kin to the Lord of Demons, the vile
and murderous rai-kirah I had battled in Aleksander’s soul, and what had I found instead? A tired old man—petulant, lonely, wryly humorous, aggrieved. Though I had seen no direct manifestation of it, I did not discount his power. I was utterly fascinated.
“Will you tell me your story, Nyel? I’d like to understand.”
He rubbed his forehead absentmindedly. “And what would that accomplish? You judged me long ago. You think that those who put me here must have done it for good reason, and that a friendly game of warriors and castles will change nothing.”
“I am not afraid to listen.” Wary, but no longer afraid.
He glanced across the room, where the manservant was bringing in a covered dinner service. He rose to his feet and looked down at me. “I need to eat and rest for a while. You can ruminate upon your confounded expectations and decide if you truly mean what you say. If you’re still here when the sun rises, perhaps I’ll tell you.
CHAPTER 12
I walked in Nyel’s garden under a double-sized moon, hung in a canopy of unfamiliar stars. Like a ghost, I left no footprints on the wet grass, nor could I feel the rain-washed air nor smell the honeysuckle. Far in the back of my mind, like the tiny, clear images sighted through a spyglass, were a blind, half-naked boy and a brass bowl. I believed that I had but to reach for them to go back. My true life waited for me there, but here ... what was here?
Danger, certainly. Just as in the days I had walked portals into the realms of human souls, I had journeyed far beyond the boundaries of intellect and experience. But because of the demon inside me, I could no longer trust my Warden’s instincts. I felt vulnerable. Exposed. History, legend, and suspicion proclaimed this mysterious man’s wickedness, yet I was drawn to him in ways I could not express. He was an answer to questions I had not asked. He was a memory I could not capture, a word poised on my tongue, ready to be spoken.
In my sojourn in Kir‘Vagonoth I had been enchanted, enveloped in a spell of romantic attachment to a beautiful rai-kirah named Vallyne. With confusion and stolen memory, Vallyne and her charming partner Vyx had tried to trick me into yielding my soul to Denas, not understanding that I was ready to do as they wished for my own reasons. But my fascination with Nyel was something far deeper—an attachment developed while my eyes were open and wary, and thus far more worrisome. Denas could not help me. At the time of our joining, Denas had known no more than I of the danger in Tyrrad Nor.
Reviewing every word of my strange discourse with Nyel, examining them for snares and signs of treachery, I walked for hours. I did not watch where I wandered, so that when a shadow blocked the angled moonlight, I was surprised to look up and find myself about to stumble headlong into the wall. The barrier was twice my height. Though built of smooth, solid black stone so finely joined, one could scarcely see the edges of the blocks, it looked as if someone had taken a hammer to it. Chips of stone lay on the ground, and cracks as deep as my second knuckle wandered here and there across the flats. In a few spots the top was ragged, crumbling.
When I had been bleeding away my life on a hillside in southern Manganar, my death vision had shown me this very wall breached by a jagged crack that leaked blood, a deadly flow that threatened to consume the world of Kir‘Navarrin in fire. In that same vision, I had seen Vyx insert himself into the breach to seal it. I believed what that image had shown me—not so much that a good-humored rai-kirah had truly become a part of the stone, but that Vyx had somehow sacrificed himself to keep the fortress secure. I ran my fingers over the black stone, trying to sense something of its enchantment, to learn of Vyx’s fate or what he might have done to heal the breach. But my ghost hand could feel nothing but the hard surface. “I wish you were here to advise me, rai-kirah,” I said, walking alongside the barrier, dragging my palm along its rough solidity. “This is not at all what I expected.”
I walked along the wall all the way to the juncture where it merged seamlessly with the mountainside; then I walked back again past my starting point to the other end. No tree grew within fifty paces of this dark barrier, and I found no gate or other opening in the black stone. Nowhere did I see any possibility that a man, sorcerer or no, could scale or breach its smooth face.
The hours passed quickly. As the darkness after moonset yielded to dawn gray, I hurried back through the garden toward the castle, where I found a green-cloaked Nyel sitting on the wide steps and watching the watery sun rise over the mountains. He nodded—in satisfaction, I thought—when he caught sight of me. “The grounds are not so large as they seem, are they?” he said, gesturing to his domain. “Do you mind walking awhile longer? I’m a bit stiff from the damp.”
“If you like,” I said. “Did you rest well?”
“Indeed. I find it so annoying to require sleep. When I
was young, I could go entire seasons without. There was so much to do—exploring, enjoying games and conversation, building, devising those things humans call magic, contemplating the world... worlds, as we discovered.”
We strolled along the same paths that I had trodden in the night, but I was not watching the scenery this time, only listening and formulating questions. “When you say ‘we’ ...”
“We called ourselves Madonai, and we had lived in this world we called Kir‘Navarrin for seven ages—thousands of years to those who count time. I cannot describe the glory of my people—their beauty and intelligence and goodness of heart. To see Kasparian and myself so fallen... to think we are the last... it is a bitter ending.”
I thought he was going to stop with that, for his voice was shaking. But though his steps slowed, they never stopped, and soon he began to speak again. “As I told you, we are not immortal, but we live a very long time compared to humans or your own kind.”
He did not quite spit and curse when he said the word human, as Kasparian had done, but from the beginnings of this story, I felt his loathing for humankind. “As with everything in the natural world, there was a balance to be maintained,” he continued. “And so it was with our long lives. Only rarely did we birth children. No Madonai could parent more than one, and when I came of age, it had been a great many years since the last Madonai child was born. This was a great sorrow to us, as we missed sharing our learning and adventures with children.
“There came a time when my good friend Hyrdon and I came into a great enchantment—a mode of travel that took us to a place that we did not know existed. To a different world, where beings lived who were something similar to ourselves, though weak and fragile and unendingly contentious.” He glanced my way. “They called us gods, Hyrdon and me.”
“You found the human world,” I said.
We had wandered through the garden and onto the wild grass at its edge, but never did we approach the wall. Whenever our path threatened to take us near it, Nyel would alter his direction. “Hyrdon was uncomfortable in this new world and soon returned home, but I explored further and came upon a land so marvelous ... a warm forest land of healthy trees and abundant rain ... of smooth hills, and leaves that took fire with color in the waning season ...”