Restoration (12 page)

Sovari and Malver were as gentle as they could be in binding his limb into its cage of wood, but the business took a great deal of time. For that endless hour I told the Prince of my madness and my fear of Denas and Kir‘Navarrin, not for self-indulgence, not thinking he might help or believing it was anything he needed to be worried about. Indeed I would far rather have kept it to myself. But I knew that every other subject of importance to him would lead us back to his father and his battle and his failure and his wounding, and he needed to be thinking of something else. Likely he would not even remember what I said.

By the end, Aleksander was gray and near collapse. I pulled the knife sheath from his mouth. He had almost bitten through it. As I blotted his face and dribbled water on his lips, he kept his eyes closed and took shallow, trembling breaths.

We needed to determine where we were, to consider our position and resources, to plan what to do next, but all of us were weary beyond telling and the cruel sun sapped our strength as a smith's fire softens steel. We squeezed into what scraps of shade we could contrive with haffai and swords and slept away the noonday.

 

The flat, silver desert sunset was fading when I woke drenched in sweat. I swiftly buried the dread raised by my dream. Though fear owned my sleep, I would not allow it to rule my waking life. I would find another path. I had to.

Malver sat plucking his birds, readying them for a smoky tarbush fire. From where I lay stretched out on the warm sand, I whispered an enchantment that soon had the coals brighter without consuming his meager fuel any faster. After a few minutes he blinked and examined his little conflagration, and then cast his eyes about him uncertainly. I couldn't hear what he was muttering as he spitted the birds on a long dagger, shaking his head all the while. I smiled to myself. I hated raw fowl.

I rolled over to sitting, yawned, and stretched out my shoulders. Malver ducked his head awkwardly in my direction as he poked his birds at the fire, trying not to stare at me. No doubt he was wondering if I would sprout wings again any time soon. I rose and checked on Aleksander. The Prince was moaning softly in his sleep, his skin hot and dry. I couldn't tell if he was feverish or just overheated from the lingering day.

“I gave him some water and carroc, but he never came awake for it,” said Malver. “Captain Sovari's gone to fetch more water. He thought we'd best be traveling tonight to find shelter, unless ... unless you were to have another plan.”

“Tell me what we'd find eight leagues from Zhagad, Malver,” I said as I returned to the fire, cut off a piece of carroc, and sucked on it. “In every direction.” The Azhaki desert was not a hospitable place for lost travelers. Indeed we needed to find shelter—not only from the elements, but from the Hamraschi and the Emperor they were going to make. I could not imagine where Aleksander might be safe.

“Me and the captain talked of it a bit. We're likely not north of Zhagad. From the city north along the road to Capharna and westerly, we'd see naught but wasil most anywhere until we were far enough to get into grasslands and the river country. On the other side of the road, where it branches easterly toward Avenkhar, we'd be set in the middle of Srif Polnar; but Srif Polnar's not so wide as what we see from here. And anyways, I don't think we could have gone through Zhagad in the storm ...” He glanced up at me as if to ask whether I'd done some sorcery to make such a thing possible.

“No. Not likely.”

Malver set a stone in the sand to represent Zhagad, and then, with his finger, drew a ring around it to represent the distance we had traveled from the Hamrasch fortress. As he spoke of towns and roads and desert features, he marked each one on his diagram. “Straight south is the Manganar road out of Zhagad. At eight leagues you'd look west to Srif Balat, the widest stretch of dunes in Azhakstan. A bit more west and you'd find the Merat Salé—the Sea of Salt. There's some high country around there—two big Fontezhi fortresses guarding the salt—and some stretches of wasil. We could be somewhere here or here.” He sounded dubious as he stuck his finger in the sand. “Wouldn't want to ride into Fontezhi holdings just now. They're intermarried with the Hamraschi. Farther west is more high country looking out over Srif Naj, some of Prince Aleksander's lands, but this doesn't feel right for being Srif Naj. I've been that way often enough, and the captain more, and he doesn't think it so.”

The Hamraschi would be watching all of Aleksander's holdings, I guessed. No sanctuary there. With Kiril's surrender terms binding what loyalists might remain from the Zhagad garrison and with the bulk of Aleksander's personal troops still straggling in from Suzain, the Prince would have no one to protect him. “What if we're east of the Manganar road?”

“Eight leagues out and nearby the road, we'd be in heged lands: the Ramiell—Lord Kiril's hold—the Fozhet, and such like smaller houses.” Every heged had its traditional holdings in the desert, as well as its more productive fiefdoms in the fertile conquered lands. “Beyond those, more easterly yet, we'd be in Srif Anar, a treacherous land, haunted some say”—Malver's glance flicked to my face and back to his drawing very quickly—“as that's where Drafa lies.” Drafa was the ruin of an ancient city, born and dead long before the Empire grew out of the heart of desert Azhakstan. “Straight east from Zhagad and you're on the trade routes to the eastern provinces ...” He continued to move his finger about his circle, telling me of towns and villages, roads, wasils and srifs, the empty dune seas where there was too little life to share with the desert.

I thanked him for his lesson and even more for the roasted birds; the few mouthfuls that were my share were exquisite. The men were right; we couldn't stay where we were. No matter where along the ring we sat, the fertile sink would attract herdsmen and travelers who would carry news of anyone camped nearby. I had cut two long poles extra from the trees. We would need to craft a litter and carry Aleksander, a frighteningly slow way to travel.

Once Sovari was back with the horses and full waterskins, I told the men I was going to scout a bit and then we would get moving. They looked curious, but didn't question how I might do such a thing in the growing darkness, merely said they would try to get the Prince to eat and drink to give him strength for the journey.

I walked into the night toward the sink, just far enough to be out of view. Then, sitting with my back against a rock still pulsing with warmth, I set myself to transform into a night bird's shape so I could survey the land from above. But I had not even begun the transformation when a movement from the darkness caught my eye. I flattened myself to the sand beside the rock, expecting to see a dune-runner, perhaps, or a gazelle or a sand-deer startled from the sink by the scent of men upon the wind or nervous at the lurking presence of a kayeet. But the form that walked out of the darkness was tall and slender, and, if the starlight had burned brighter, her gown would have shown bright green.

I rose and waited for her to come, listening for the words she had been trying to tell me for so many days. My skin prickled. Who was she who could melt in and out of crowds and palaces, who had been able to recognize me in my falcon's form, who could appear in the desert night with no obvious transport? Her beauty was not the ethereal perfection of Vallyne, the rai-kirah who had tried to steal my soul in Kir‘Vagonoth, nor was it the cool and dusky elegance of my wife, Ysanne. Rather this woman put me more in mind of Elinor—her loveliness more in bearing and spirit than in fine features. She stopped a few paces from me, and after studying me from head to toe, she smiled with a radiance that warmed the night.

“A comely form, my darling.” Her soft voice caressed my soul like the sweet winds of Ezzaria. “Strength and grace as ever were your raiment.” A step closer and her hand brushed the scar on my left cheek. “And this ... ah, dear friend ... but one mark of so many sorrows.”

I dropped my eyes and sank to my knees, unable to view such a depth of grieving as I glimpsed in her luminous countenance. “Lady, what is it you want of me?” Tears welled in my eyes. Longing ... devotion ... old, old sorrow ... though I could not explain any of it.

“You must remember, my darling. He reaches for you, thinking you've forgotten.”

The braying of a chastou ripped through the quiet night at my back, the noisy desert beast drowning the woman's soft words, breaking the spell she had laid upon me. I leaped to my feet, my sword drawn ready to protect her, and I was nearly blinded by flaring torchlight.

“There you are!” called an elderly voice. “I knew we'd find you beside the spring. What did I tell you, boy?” Some twenty paces away, an old man clutched the arm of a slender boy of twelve or thirteen. The old man's hair was perfectly white, twisted into two braids that reached below his waist, one on each side of his head. He was unmistakably Derzhi. Though sun exposure had withered his face into myriad tiny wrinkles, age had neither stooped nor shrunk his long bones nor made flaccid the arms revealed by his sleeveless tunic. His nose was long and slightly arched, and from his ears dangled hooped earrings of gold. His eyes flashed amber in the torchlight, though it was apparent from their aimless wandering that they saw nothing of the world. He carried no stick, as blind men usually do, but only held the boy's arm.

“He's not beside the spring, Gaspar,” said the boy quietly, leaning toward the old man as if to keep his correction private between the two of them. “It's still five hundred paces away.” The boy was slim and wiry, every movement quick and graceful. He had long light hair, unbraided, and was mostly naked, wearing only a loincloth, silver arm rings, and silver hoops in his ears. Neither boy nor man wore shoes.

The old man snorted. “Boys! Who can teach them? I say that out of all the Srif Anar we will find them at Taíne Het, and Qeb quibbles about five hundred paces.” Somewhere behind them the chastou bawled its displeasure.

My head was still filled with cobwebs of green enchantment, loving words that flitted through the night like fireflies, dark eyes filled with a world's sorrows. I could scarcely comprehend the odd newcomers and their noise and bright light. “Lady,” I said, turning back to confirm her safety ... but she was vanished again, and I wanted to cry out the loss.

“We had no intent to interrupt your prayers, sir,” said the boy in great solemnity. “Gaspar was in a great hurry, believing your injured companion to be in grave danger.”

“Prayers ... no,” I said limply. Madness, more likely. They had not seen her. I shivered. “I just ... who are you, and who is it you're looking for?”

“You and your fellow,” said the old man. “The one of darkness and the one of light. We've come to take you to Drafa to prepare you for the last battle.”

Drafa. Had the gods ever contrived so unlikely a haven? So per ishingly hot and dismal a scar on the majestic desert? A holy city, Gaspar said, once beloved of the gods who were old before Athos went to live among the stars, the gods who had built the world from sand and water and fire.

Certainly the city itself had been built from sand and water—mud bricks—in some ancient past when water was more abundant. The old man said that at one time ten thousand people had lived there, that Drafa was the true heart of Azhakstan when the Derzhi king still dwelt in a billowing tent, hundreds of years before a Derzhi emperor dreamed of Zhagad's rose-colored arches. Lemon, almond, pomegranate, and hazelnut trees had blossomed in abundance, and thousands of sheep had grazed on hills of sweet grass bordered by the boundless desert.