Restoration

by Carol Berg

  She was speaking to me again. “I explored it for days. The feel of that forest ... I can’t describe it. Such a sad place and so beautiful. No signs that anyone ever lived there and no rai-kirah. I was about to give up, when I came on a stone tower, covered so thickly with moss and vines I thought at first it was a tree, huge and impossibly old. But on looking closer, I found stonework under the moss. I’ve never felt anything like that stone ... warmer than it should have been and oddly textured ... almost as if it were alive. But there was no door anywhere, and I thought I would go mad to get inside. Finally I remembered your vision of Vyx pressing himself into the prison wall, and I thought perhaps I had to push myself through it. Three days it took me to work out the enchantment. It took everything I had and a bit more besides, but with words of opening and passage, I eased myself through. Inside the tower, everything was perfectly preserved: furnishings, dishes ... You must go there yourself. I’ve drawn a map ...” She tore a page out of her journal and gave it to me. “It’s where they planned it, Seyonne. They sat in a high room in that tower, a room where you can see the peaks of the mountains, and they decided what they had to do. They wrote it down on scrolls of parchment in a language I can’t read, but they drew pictures, too, so I could guess what they’d done.”

  “The split, you mean. Where they planned the split.”

  “No. Long before that.” She opened her book to another page and showed me her sketches of the drawings she’d seen. “Everything was neat and tidy, and the scrolls were laid out on a table with a fresh candle beside them, as if ready for anyone who got through the door spells to examine them. I didn’t dare bring them out of the tower; think how old they must be. Seyonne, it’s where they planned the prison.”

  Of course, I recognized what was depicted in the detailed plans. I had walked those ramparts in my dreams. I had explored that garden and touched that bounding wall in my siffaru. Fiona had copied down the text, too, and like Fiona, I was unable to read it. But unlike Fiona, I recognized some of the words. Madonai, Kasparian, and Nyel were interspersed throughout the text.

  “Can you translate this?” asked Fiona, watching me.

  “No.” I gave it back to her. “Anything else?”

  “One more thing,” she said. “The strangest of all. High on a shelf, dusty and out of the way, I found a small wooden box. Inside was a cube of black stone about the size of my fist. A word was engraved on it. I’d not have thought one simple word was all that important until I decided to record it with the rest of these things. Seyonne, I couldn’t remember it long enough to ink the pen. I’d look at the stone again and repeat the word in my head, but the moment I took my eyes away, it was as if I’d never seen anything. I tried to copy the word blindly, fixing my eyes on the stone, but nothing showed up on the paper. No matter what I tried, I could neither speak nor write nor remember it. So you’ll have to look for yourself to see if you can make any sense of that.”

  Fiona talked awhile longer ... of encounters with the fading rai-kirah, of her illness that began on setting foot in Kir‘Navar rin and worsened each day that she remained, preventing her from any attempt to ascend the massive bulk of the mountain beyond the gamarand wood. She had concluded that humans were not meant to live in Kir’Navarrin, and I knew it was true. Knew it with certainty. Before very long, her narrative trailed off. “You’re ready to go, aren’t you? Halfway there already, I think.”

  The three of them were staring at me as I paced in circles about them, my arms wrapped about my gut as if I were cold or injured, or as if I could hold onto my soul if I could only get a tight enough grip on my body. “He’s waiting for me,” I said. “I promised him I’d come back. You need to understand about him. He’s not what we’ve thought.” The words sounded feeble. Hurried. Meaningless, without the story that went behind them. These three were friends I loved, but they were wasting my time. All my dilemmas and uncertainties and speculations had vanished like windblown smoke. I needed to go.

  ... to stand across the fathomless gulf from the light ... the one of darkness ... Oh gods, have mercy, what was I doing?

  I stopped my pacing and stepped away from the three of them, and just as if they had fallen off the edge of the world, I no longer sensed their presence. Only the presence waiting beyond the portal was real—the portal and the world beyond it that loomed larger than the landscape around me.

  “Seyonne, what’s wrong?” The voice might have come from the bottom of a well.

  “Who’s waiting?”

  “Maybe you should stay awhile. Tell us what’s happening to you...”

  Beware, fool! This is the moment of danger! Listen to me ... With boundless rage, this new voice screamed at me inside my head, smashing through the walls of my enchantments.

  Yes, danger. Danger from Nyel’s unknown power. But danger, too, from inside myself—my own corruption. Ezzarian tradition taught that allowing a demon into one’s soul could cause us to lose the demon war. I had done so, and we had lost. I could not ignore the possibility that all my newfound certainties were wrong. I cannot listen to you, I said. I have important things to do.

  ... I must remember ... give me the time ... we need to know ... yield to me ... give way. You will prevail in the end. This soul is yours and will ever be. Yield.

  I cannot yield, I said. I can’t take the chance. I needed all of myself for this venture. We’ll remember what’s needed, I said. If you question, I’ll find the answers. I forced Denas silent once again ... for the last time, I hoped.

  Only one last thing to say, one matter of importance dredged up from the fading remnants of my past life like a gemstone dug out of the sand. “Tell Aleksander I didn’t want to wake him this morning. Tell him ... my faith is stronger than ever. I believe he will change the world.”

  “Seyonne, wait!”

  “Stop him!”

  With a sweep of my hand, I batted away their feeble attempts to stay me. Instead, I turned away from everything I knew and walked into the land that was my true home.

  CHAPTER 28

  I stepped past the first pair of pillars. The fury in my head fell quiet, as when a storm passes overhead. I braced for the onslaught beyond the eye. Nothing. I kept walking.

  Past the second pair. The night was warm and profoundly still. No stirring of wind or night bird’s cry. No creature rustling the grass. No rai-kirah anywhere that I could detect. Above me sprawled a dome of stars, an array so brilliant that the shadows of the pillars lay across the white dust of the path as sharp-edged rectangles.

  When would it begin? With every step between the ranks of white pillars I expected it ... the fire, the pain, the struggle for control, the horrifying certainty of invasion.

  By the time I had traversed the length of the gateway, through the sixty pairs of pillars that were the reflection of the ranked columns in the human world, the smudge of light that marked the portal was no longer visible behind me. Before me, the silent countryside was bathed in starlight. Stands of gigantic trees in full leaf stood here and there, absolutely still in the silvered light, as if their very growth was suspended for the time. The ponds that lay in the hills and meadows might have been breeding pools for stars.

  I stepped past the last pair of pillars. Still nothing.

  I gazed out across the rolling landscape, yet every sense was turned inward. What was my name? Seyonne, of course. No hesitation. No confusion.

  How old was I? Thirty-eight. Could that be all?

  Who was my family? Gareth, a gentle man who loved books, a tenyddar, required to work the fields of Ezzaria because he had no melydda, slain by a Derzhi sword on the day I became a slave. Joelle, a Weaver, the powerful protector of our settlement in southwestern Ezzaria, dead of fever when I was twelve. Elen, bright and loving elder sister, dead, too, struck down too young as she tried to defend our land from the invading Derzhi ...

  Slowly, carefully, I released my breath. Despite the warm night, I shivered as would a man afflicted with ague. My palms were drippi
ng—blood, not sweat as I discovered when I unclenched my fists and examined my hands. My own hands. I could tell the tale of each scar: the knuckle graze from a slip of my first knife, the ragged tear made by a razor-edged dragon wing in a long-ago demon combat, the callused ridges about my wrists from slave rings, and now these bleeding gouges made by terror ... My scars. My tales. My blood. Mine ...

  ... yet truly, there was more.

  Beyond the pools and grassy hills, a dense forest stretched before me to the horizon. The river beyond the forest was called the Serrhio—the Bone River—because of its white rocks. The mountains beyond the river were called Zethar Aerol, the Teeth of the Wind. At one time, this path of crushed white stone beneath my feet had led ... where? A town? No, more like a village, yet not even that. We hadn’t clustered together like humans, but had spread our houses throughout the countryside, for we could travel easily—fly, if we wished—to find anything or anyone we needed. We, the rekkonarre who made our home in this land. Knowledge of the world I walked was neither wrenched from reluctant hands nor yielded grudgingly to serve a common need. Mine, too, these things.

  Just above the western horizon was a pattern of ten stars, the Harper we had called it in my youth—not my time of growing in Ezzaria, but seasons spent here. I had always been fascinated by the stars, and in the space of five minutes, I named fifty of them and located the wanderers: the blue Carab, seen only in autumn, and Elemiel, red companion to the sun, showing itself only near sunrise and sunset, and Valagora, the brightest object in the sky next to the moon itself—the larger moon that existed here in Kir‘Navarrin, my home. I knelt down at the edge of the path and scrabbled feverishly in the thick grass until I could scrape up a handful of dirt. I squeezed my hand around it and inhaled its rich aroma, evoking an inner understanding that told me I was three days’ walk from home ... and anger rose from my depths and thundered through my veins like the spring torrents from off the mountains. Lost for so long in the dark and frozen wasteland, deprived of the dome of stars, of this sweet-scented earth ... so much lost ... stolen ... torn away in fire and jasnyr smoke. I had never wanted to believe that we were bound to flesh ... despicable, cowering, always hungering flesh—

  I wrenched my thoughts away from this uncomfortable path, emotions that had entwined themselves in my blood and bone. What was my name? Seyonne. Who was my family? Gareth, Joelle, Elen, Ysanne, who had been Queen, Evan-diargh—dead, all of them dead, save the child who was dead to me for I had given him away . . . and ... No further answer came to me. Good. Knowledge is welcome. Nothing more. But I hungered for more, like a beggar who arrives at last at the alms gate, only to hear the bar falling into place inside the door.

  So, make the best of new knowledge. I needed to plan my course: go to the gamarand wood and investigate its mysteries, find the rai-kirah and discover why their life was failing, learn anything and everything that might help me understand the one I had come here to face. Why was I the only one who could free the prisoner in the tower? Why was I so sure that I could moderate Nyel’s hatred, when I knew so little of its cause and so little of his power? He could not be trusted. What was the nature of his prison—the wall and the gamarand wood? The answers I craved were waiting for me here—and power, such melydda in this land, flowing into me with every breath, every step, through every sense, its force building like a dammed-up river ... waiting ...

  So, what might I already know of the danger in Tyrrad Nor ... I, who remained Seyonne, yet knew more than Seyonne? Gingerly, I pushed open the doors of remembrance. I knew everything of life in Kir‘Vagonoth, of my thousand years of bitter exile, but beyond that, from the time before the split, the time here in my ... yes, my own true life ... very little. A few names, a few images unrelated to my fundamental questions. We had traveled the ways as Blaise did. We favored unleavened bread. Those who lived in the far north raced wind boats that skimmed the surface of frozen lakes. A child’s naming day was in his twelfth year of life. No answers. No stores of knowledge about Nyel or the prison or prophecies or reasons. What I found were the scraps and castoffs left behind in a herdsmen’s camp when the people had long moved on.

  Disconcerting. Perhaps I was still holding back, masking the important things in my fear of the demon-joining. Tentatively, carefully, not daring to believe that I had passed the moment of greatest danger, I relaxed the internal barriers. Silence. Stillness. No raging demon. No hidden knowledge of Tyrrad Nor. No answers. Whatever remained of Denas was already a part of me. Everything else was lost. I knew what Gordain must have felt when he first woke to see the void where his leg had once been.

  I struck out across the hillside through grass as high as my knee and down a slope toward one of the pools. My throat felt like sand. I dropped to my knees and dipped my hands into the still water, swirls of blood disturbing the pure reflection of the stars as I scooped out great handfuls of water and doused my fevered head and poured it down my throat. Only as I tasted the flat metallic trace of blood in the water did I think of what I was doing ... washing my bloody hands directly in the pond and drinking the same water ... forbidden by Ezzarian law for a thousand years lest we come to revel in the taste of blood and filth and thus allow a demon into our souls. I yanked my hands out of the pool, and as the ripples settled, my face came into view, a dark reflection that blocked out a portion of the stars. Nervous, apprehensive, yet driven to discover what I had become, I peered into my own eyes, using my Warden’s sight to look past the blue fire and into the darkness beyond. Into the abyss ...

  I started laughing then, wrapping my arms over my head and pressing my forehead to the cool grass. The truth was waiting there inside me. Vainly I tried to retreat, to force my mind back to the world I had just abandoned, to forge a stronger link that might hold me to my purpose. But my own investigations would have to wait. Nyel was reaching for me even now, my eyes and thoughts drawn to him as a blooming flower bends to face the sun.

  You said you would come back to finish our game. Are you ready? The voice was everywhere—inside, outside, in my mind, in my ears—the voice of my dreams.

  Of course not, I said, kneeling on the silver-kissed grass, as the tide of inevitability swept me onward. Who could ever be ready to game with a god? Not I, whose prideful resolve to save the world on my own terms had left me vulnerable to his seductions. Whose very strength had played into my enemy’s hands. While struggling to bind Denas, I had allowed Nyel to take such a grip on my heart and mind and soul that to deny him would tear me asunder. I could no more refuse his summons than I could cut off my own hand.

  He laughed, not unkindly. Come, then, and we will talk awhile before we play.

  I folded my arms across my breast and transformed, then flew across the dark and silent land to Tyrrad Nor. He was waiting on the ramparts of the night, as I had always known he would be.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Did you sleep well?” The cool, damp tartness of a fall morning poured through the open doors and windows as I walked into the room and Nyel raised his glass to me.

  “I appreciate your indulgence of a night without dreams,” I said, selecting a cup of fragrant tea from a sideboard laden with every delicacy that one might desire for a morning meal. We were in the same room as before—the high-ceilinged room with the tall windows overlooking the garden, the mantelpiece carved in the form of man and woman, and the game board set before the cheerful fire ... waiting for me. “I had forgotten what it was like to really sleep.”

  “Now you are here, I can converse with you face-to-face. In the meanwhile, I had to make my points as best I could. You were so everlasting slow in coming back.”

  His pique had shown more forcefully at his initial greeting, when my feet had touched the ramparts on the previous night. This morning his chiding was more of a reminder than a reproach, a positioning, setting the groundwork for our relationship. He was feeling more expansive and satisfied on this morning. I was here. That’s what he had wanted all along.

  “Several m
atters needed my attention,” I said. “An inordinate number of problems have cropped up everywhere of late.”

  “And still you lay these problems at my feet.”

  I watched his deep, clear eyes, so striking in his gray-bearded face. He knew very well of my beliefs and my hopes ... and my fears ... all so foolishly revealed in our first encounter. I would have to do better at keeping my counsel. “I stand here drinking your tea. I wear no weapon.”

  Indeed my own weapons and the grimy clothes I had stripped off the previous night had vanished before morning. I had waked in the vast bedchamber to find a copper tub of delightfully hot water sitting ready in a patch of sunlight. For the first time in months I could enjoy myself by getting thoroughly clean. But gnawing disdain for such self-indulgence, as well as impatience to get on with whatever my host had in mind for me, spoiled my pleasure and had me out of the bath quickly. Laid out on my bed were linen undergarments, dark breeches and hose, a silk shirt of forest green, and vest and boots of pale leather as soft as a child’s cheek, even a dark green ribbon to tie back my wet hair. And beside the clothes lay a sword and a dagger and a wide leather belt with beautifully tooled sheaths for each weapon. The sword was fine—a long, tapering blade of gleaming steel, a comfortable and elegant grip of metal rings, suitable for one or two hands, and a simple rounded pommel, substantial enough to balance the long blade. The guard was slightly curved, and both pommel and guard were chased with silver in a pleasing pattern of vines and leaves. The dagger was similar, simple in design, perfect in balance and edge. I did not strap them on. To wield a weapon of Nyel’s giving would surely be an act of significance that I could not yet fully comprehend. Best to leave them where they lay. And, indeed, who were they to be used on?