Restoration

by Carol Berg

  “The devil has murdered Admet!” screamed Gorrid, drawing his sword, his face becoming a mask of hatred. “How many others of our own have fed his blood thirst?”

  Aleksander reached out and stayed the outlaw’s arm. “You cannot challenge him, Gorrid,” he said softly, stepping in between us. I held my weapon at the ready, the pounding of my blood vibrating the fouled blade in rhythm with my heart. “Look around.” No fewer than forty Derzhi warriors had felt my sword as they tried to escape the valley. The Prince nodded his head at the dead Suzaini and raised one eyebrow. “Will you tell us why?” His voice was calm and steady, but in his amber eyes ... He was afraid of me.

  With a word and a thought, I shifted form, feeling the light go out of the world along with my golden radiance and my strength. Indescribable weariness settled in my bones. My body felt gray and heavy, my clothing restrictive, my senses crippled and dull. I tried to form an answer, the fewest possible words to tell them of Admet’s prideful, treacherous bargain. But my tongue was confused, as if accustomed to another language, and my mind could not seem to shape the evidence into a sequence they might understand. As I struggled to speak, yet another man came staggering up the hill. The curling hair and beard named him Suzaini, and his broad shoulders identified him as Feyd well before we could see his face.

  Feyd’s breath was ragged when he stopped beside Admet’s body. My dreamer’s wide, dark eyes flew to mine.

  “The betrayer,” I said, those two words all I could manage.

  Feyd seemed to understand. He closed his eyes and said, “Gossopar forgive him. Such shame for Suza.” The young man wavered for a moment, and then gathered himself and bowed to me. “My honor is yours forever, holy lord.” Before he could come up again, he fell face forward into the dirt. I glimpsed a ragged, bloody hole in his back just as the world vanished.

  “Did you accomplish what you set out to do?” The question came from an infinite distance. I had only to open my eyes, but the slightest movement felt like dragging myself through a sea of mud. “Come, Kasparian, bring him wine. Human bodies are not meant for this.”

  “I had to kill him,” I said, shoving away the wine cup being pressed into my hand and resting my forehead on the cool glass of the game board. My lips were not trying to answer Nyel’s question, but the questions left on the tongues of my friends. “He was running away, half mad with guilt. He would have betrayed you again—I saw it in him—to justify himself.” I had not slain Admet solely in anger, nor had I wreaked unthinking vengeance. I had given him a chance to explain, to tell me how he had never meant to cause the horror he had unleashed. But all he’d done was curse Aleksander and me, and say that we had killed the seven hundred in the mine and the uncounted dead of that night’s battle. Admet had sworn to bring down Aleksander no matter what he had to do to accomplish it. Even then, despite the demands of vengeance and fury, I had not struck him until he drew his sword, vowing to kill me ... and then do the same to my son. Gods of night, how did he know about Evan? I didn’t think Blaise had told anyone of my kinship to Elinor’s foster child. And now ... fool ... Why hadn’t I found out before I killed him?

  “Of course you did what you thought was right.” The voice was closer now, just across the table from me and not unkind.

  The cost of the night’s venture would be dreadful. We had won a victory in name only, wrested from such a vile and monstrous defeat. The war we had begun would be long and terrible, and my friends would have no time to plan, no time to prepare, no place to hide. Aleksander could not fight it alone.

  I shoved my chair back from the little table and stood up, noticing in passing that it was raining again in Nyel’s garden. The movement had my wounds clamoring for attention, and I had to grab the table edge to keep from collapsing from sudden dizziness. The thigh wound of the previous day was reopened. Between that and my shoulder, I had lost a good deal of blood. “Please, if you would have hot water sent to my room, and medicines for healing. And bandages. I’ve no wish to trouble Kasparian this time.”

  “It will be done.”

  I hobbled to the doorway and leaned on it for a moment, my back to the room and Nyel. “When can we begin?” I said.

  A moment’s silence. “It will take me some time to make preparations—a moon’s turning. Perhaps twice that. Then we can proceed as rapidly as you wish, every step your own choice.” No unseemly eagerness marred his speech. I appreciated that.

  “I must go back to help them,” I said. “They’re too few and too unskilled.”

  Of course I could walk back through the gateway to the human world and serve Aleksander in my mortal form, but I dismissed the thought the moment it passed through my mind. What man, offered sight and strength and freedom, could live a blind and crippled slave? I believed Nyel would keep his promise and allow me to act freely. I had made my own choices as I fought, and any judge who witnessed the entirety of my actions at Syra and Taíne Horet would say I had done only what was needed to save my friends from disaster. Truly there was a price. There was always a price. I had seen it in Mattei’s face ... and in Aleksander’s.

  “There is a great deal that you can learn as you wait.” Nyel didn’t understand.

  “I can’t wait until I’m changed. I need to go back as soon as they’re ready to fight again. That will be days, not weeks.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Nyel was staring at me, weighing his answer. He dearly wanted to refuse. So choose, I thought. Turn me down and force me to leave this place. Truly at that moment I could not have said what I wanted him to answer. But my aching body knew.

  “Though I believe you’d do better to delay your return to the human world until we can rid you of your inborn flaws, I’m willing to accept your sense of urgency. Your judgment must prevail ... as you informed me so clearly.” No, he had not forgiven me for using his own words against him. I should take that as a warning. But I wasn’t really afraid. He knew he’d won, and his quibbling was for his own gratification, not my discomfiture. “I will send you back through dreams as you require. The experience will allow you to develop your skills. But I’ll not have you become more entangled with these humans, just when you should be learning the detachment proper to one who will hold such power. You will exchange speech only with your dreamer, no other human, until you are Madonai and can do as you please. Will you accept this condition?”

  “If it’s the only way I can continue,” I said.

  “The only way. If you cannot live without human thanks and glory, or if you must depend on a human voice to command you, then you are not worthy of my gift. ”

  “And so tomorrow you’ll help me explore dreams so I can choose where and how I’m to go back? I don’t know if my last dreamer yet lives.”

  “As you wish. Tomorrow. And in the meanwhile, I’ll prepare to set you free.”

  CHAPTER 35

  How rarely humans consider the other world that lies alongside the one we walk. Not a separate physical world like Kir‘Navar rin or Kir’Vagonoth, but the plane of existence that every man and woman and child inhabits for a portion of every day—the world of dreams. A place where any man can work magic or any woman fly. Where events can repeat themselves over and over again, allowing us to examine every nuance. Where fantastic creatures live, and we see colors the sunlight cannot show us. Where we can walk with terror and test our mettle, yet withdraw in safety, with no more consequence than racing hearts and pillows damp with sweat. We’ve learned to fear the world of dreams, thinking of it as a place where madmen dwell, and yet I’ve heard it said that those who fail to dream can themselves go mad. Perhaps that was the source of my madness. My dreams had not been my own for a very long time.

  “Halloo! A fine afternoon, is it not?” Nyel’s cheerful greeting halted my steps halfway across the garden, well before I reached the wall. Exhausted from the events at Syra and Taíne Horet, I’d slept the day and night around. And finding no one about when I finally abandoned my bed, I had decided it would behoove me to stre
tch and walk a bit before beginning whatever business awaited for the remainder of the day. As long as I was outdoors, I’d thought to try again to understand the mysterious structure of Nyel’s prison. Despite the rigors of the previous day’s combat, my mind and body felt fresh and rested, and I hoped I might muster more insight into the puzzle of the wall than on my last attempt. I even dallied with the idea of changing to my winged form ... my “Madonai form,” Nyel had called it. Perhaps strength and melydda could reveal more of the wall’s nature than my limited human perceptions. The light glinted brightly from the wall as if the black stone was newly cut and polished.

  “A fine afternoon,” I said, pausing while Nyel caught up with me. His steps were brisk and sure on the gravel path. A breeze stirred my damp hair, and despite the cloudless sky, I shivered beneath my linen shirt. Autumn was coming to Kir‘Navarrin. Though the grass and foliage were still luxuriant, here and there among the trees I caught a glimpse of gold or red, sometimes a single leaf, sometimes a small branch, arrived early at the culminating glory of its season. How was it that the most perfect of seasons was the precursor to the cruelest? I hated winter.

  “Is it your injuries kept you abed so late? Do you need Kasparian to tend you?” The Madonai examined my clean clothing with an air of distaste, as if looking for fractured bones poking out or unseemly spots of leaking blood.

  Irritated by his rude inspection, I started walking again, though I soon found myself following his course instead of my own.

  “Your remedies seem quite effective.” Indeed that was far short of the truth. I had dressed my wounds after leaving Nyel the previous afternoon, and when I examined them again upon rising, I found most were near healed already, only the most severe, the gashes in my thigh and shoulder, at all troublesome.

  “Clearly you are experienced in caring for yourself. When you didn’t come down this morning, I sent Kasparian to make sure you had not died in your bed. He reported you still snoring.” He turned off the main path abruptly and led me into a rectangular enclosure bounded by tall hedges. In the center of the small patch of lawn sat a white-latticed arbor overgrown with trumpet vines. Though the grass and hedges and vines were still summer green, the yellow-orange trumpet blossoms were overblown, limp and wrinkled. “Yesterday you seemed eager to learn more.” He motioned me to sit in one of three graceful white chairs set in the shade of the arbor. A small table sat in the middle, and on it were the game board and the black and white pieces.

  “I am certainly eager,” I said, “but not so much as to rush forward completely unprepared. When gaming with a master, one should make no move without wits. I needed the sleep.”

  “Of course. I want you to feel comfortable with your decision,” he said, easing himself into the chair opposite me. “Today you’ll just explore dreams. Not move into them. Not shape them. Only observe. That’s what you want?”

  I nodded. So much to learn. How did you follow the progress of a war through dreams? How did you find the dreamers you desired out of the countless souls in the world? How could you judge your timing and make sure you arrived at the critical points? And once those things were sure, whether traveling by my own power or by Nyel’s grace, how would I decide where my help would make the most difference? “I’ve a great number of questions,” I said.

  Without warning and without greeting to either of us, Kasparian strode into the garden and flopped his huge frame into the third chair. Sweat beaded his broad face, and fresh blood spattered his white hose. He had been sparring again.

  “Let’s have no questions right now,” said Nyel, his eyes not wavering from my face, ignoring the grim and graying Madonai as if he were nothing more than one of the rasp-voiced jays that had boldly moved from tree to grass to table, investigating us. “Experience the lesson, and then ask what you will. In your previous ventures, I have taken you into only one dream at a time. This time, you wish to see them all. Do you choose this freely?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Attend me well ...”

  I gave myself willingly to the exercise, noticing, as the world began to slip away, that the season had begun to change in Nyel’s eyes as well. Interlaced with the springlike glory of his youth and the summer’s abundance of his care for me, I felt the thin steel edge of winter. Even one day removed from the events at Syra, my hasty decision suddenly seemed ill considered ... until I closed my eyes at Nyel’s bidding and discovered the world of dreams ...

  Chaos. Cricket’s chirp ... roar of forest’s burning ... the cracking of the earth’s own heart ... smearing scarlet, emerald, glaring yellows ... sun scorching, exploding into a sky of fire, scalding ocean ... soaring music, flutes and viols ... mellanghar droning ... birds ... thousands screeching ... sobbing... longing... Baking bread ... roasting meat ... Bells ringing, tolling ... Storms ... of biting sand... of crashing ocean and lowered sky ... drenching torrents ... Sweet skin ... smooth ... coarse, wrinkled ... flaking away ... yielding, rotting, punctured, bleeding flesh... The wild, eternal hunt... galloping ... slavering jaws ... ripping teeth ... wailing, nauseating, maddening ... and falling, falling ... Stabs of bitterness ... roses, sweet hay ... Despair, dread, soul-searing joy and terror...

  “Let go, boy! You do not have to experience each one. Hold back. Observe. Let them flow as they will, but not through you. Not unless you choose.” The dry voice was deep inside my head, its intimacy cutting through the clamor.

  Panting ... gasping ... chest constricted with pain, my overwrought heart was hammering to escape my ribs, lest it burst from incapacity. I was being swept along by currents of sensation, tumbling out of control, on the verge of weeping with the assault, choking, drowning.

  A firm hand grasped my own. “Anchor here. Control it. Take the time to clear your mind and look again.”

  Desperately I sought refuge in sensory isolation—an exercise I had perfected in captivity. Only when I regained my composure

  did I release my senses, allowing them to function only as I commanded. Soon I was drifting in the teeming ocean of dreams, and then floating above it, able to watch the patterns forming and reforming themselves beneath the surface like reflections in a dark glass.

  “Better?”

  “Better,” I whispered, in awe of what I could see in the dark, satiny swells: a man being chased by wolves ... a woman exploring a tall house with no floors, only bare beams, unable to remember what she was searching for ... a child tumbling off a horse ... falling ... falling, much farther than from saddle to earth ... With no more than my desire, I traversed a wide swathe of ocean and viewed an endless variety of dreams. Lengthy stories and minute fragments, many of no more duration than a heartbeat. Only a few worth study at any one time.

  “Pause above one that interests you and reach beyond it, as if you were casting your net into the sea to catch up this vision. Draw your net together and explore the mind beyond it ... shape the dreamer. When you are skilled, you will be able to see the dreamer’s surroundings and circumstances, perhaps catch a glimpse of his life.”

  These things were far more difficult than Nyel’s vague instructions implied, even for one accustomed to walking the portals of human souls. By the time he had coaxed, advised, and taunted me into one small success—conjuring the hazy impression of a grizzled donkey driver who plied the long and boring road from Vayapol to Karesh—I felt as though I’d fought another battle.

  “Enough for now,” said Nyel. “Human flesh is not capable of more. We can try again tomorrow.”

  But I had no intention of stopping the lesson so soon. “Another,” I said. “And, yes, I choose this freely.” Again, I flew over the patterns floating in the deeps. Three more dreamers came to life by my hand: a shepherd in a highland meadow, dreaming of a pliant village maid, a woman racked with nightmares of a monstrous birth, and a slave enduring another night of torment and loss. With the third I began to get the feel of space and time, the uneven texture of the deeps. I could touch the dreamers beyond the floating visions, and im
agine that when I was truly proficient, I would be able to bypass the entangling dreams and see only the landscape beyond.

  By the fifth day of Nyel’s instruction, I was in control. I could now see the human world spread out before me ... distorted, obscured, dim, and colorless behind the vivid flotsam of visions, but enabling me to identify towns and cities and landmarks to locate my dreamers. Though Kasparian struck the spark, and Nyel worked the dream enchantment called vietto, I had learned to harness my own melydda to my efforts, sorting through the manic eddies of the dreamworld. And from the texture of dreams, I could discover the days and nights and seasons of the world, its plagues, famines, and battles, the nuances of pleasure or torment.

  On the tenth day Nyel taught me the art of shaping dreams—gathering the image and imposing my own design. “Always with care,” he said, “for you are touching the soul as intimately as is possible for a mortal being.” As well we both knew. Why else was I sitting in his garden preparing to abandon my human self? “Look here,” he said, “in this desert place I’ve found a typical woman’s dream, a mother’s dream ...”

  Searching ... searching ... through the crowds that grow denser with every passing moment. Where is he? Lost ... wandered away ... Music playing across the field ... pipe music that he loves. Hear the laughter ... of course, it’s he ... unharmed, unafraid ... but all these people are crowding in between us ... Push through. Hurry. The toothless beggar laughs at my plight ... the old women pawing over dead things. “Ours are long gone, ” they say. “Rotted in the ground. Why should you have one living? Barren crow ... losing the one given you. ”

  “Child! Come back to me!” Hurry. The music fades ... Hurry!