Restoration (15 page)

I should have known he would remember all I told him on the day Sovari and Malver set his leg. “I need to get away from Drafa before I doze off and cut your throat,” I said, bitterness welling up within me like the stinking octar that seeps from desert rocks.

“Was that why you didn't fight beside me? Were you afraid you would kill the wrong people?”

“There were a number of reasons.”

“Tell me, Seyonne. I believed you would stand with me if I asked. For me, not my father. Why would you not help until the day was lost?”

The question was born of love, for his pride would never have allowed him to ask it. And so I overcame my own pride and gave him the answer, the thing I could not and would not tell any other person in the world. “Yes, I worried about this cursed demon and my annoying habit of attacking anyone who happens to be within reach. But even without that ... I can no longer wield a sword without pain, my lord. A well-placed blow to my right side, and I cannot even raise my arm, much less hold a weapon.” A difficult thing for a warrior to reveal, especially to a friend who believed that strength was everything.

“Ah, bloody damn ... the knife wound.” Aleksander had seen Ysanne's work. He and Blaise and Fiona had rescued me from the brink of death that day.

“The namhir nearly took me with a stick of wood. Fortunately he was mostly dead when he got in his hit. You could say this madness saved me; I don't seem to feel the pain when I'm hacking bodies apart. But if you had relied on me in the battle, it could have cost you everything. I had to wait and be ready to save your life.”

“You won't mind if I withhold my thanks for that?”

“I never expected your thanks.”

“I'm sure not.” He laughed a bit, but when he spoke again, he was very serious. “You'll stay with me now? We'll have the others keep wary—they don't know what to make of you anyway—and it's been months since I've slept without a knife in my hand. But I don't believe you would ever do me harm, even if you were mad.”

His trust was humbling, but only the conviction that he was a dead man otherwise held me there. “If you're willing to risk it,” I said, “unless I get worse, I'll stay.”

 

The days in Drafa were very long and very hot. The season was moving toward summer, when even the dune-runners and sand-deer came out only after dark. We slept a great deal in the daytime, especially Aleksander, for the women plied him with herbs and teas to ease his pain and heal his wounds. In the days following my attack on Malver, the swelling in the Prince's leg began to recede and the dreadful tear in his flesh to knit. No further sign of sepsis showed itself, and Manot replaced her poultices with ointment made from pine bark.

As he had planned, Aleksander dispatched Sovari and Malver with well-crafted messages for the lords of several powerful hegeds. I persuaded him to have the two men speak first with Kiril. That he held out so long against this was a measure of his unspoken pessimism.

“Your cousin awaits your word, my lord,” I argued for the tenth time. “He may already know the information you seek. You've no stronger ally.”

“I don't want Kiril dead. If old Hamrasch gets the slightest idea—”

“You shame Lord Kiril by not accepting what he offers. Even I know enough of Derzhi honor to understand that.”

With deep misgiving, he at last relented, sending Sovari to Kiril and Malver to the boot-maker. Malver left me his bow, and I shouldered all the hunting duties, taking the stringy chukars feeding at the spring—no more than one in ten, Gaspar told me, else the birds would stop coming—and a sand-deer. The old ones could no longer hunt easily, and Qeb would not leave Gaspar's side. At least we were able to repay some of their kindness with provisions.

The old women flitted about us day and night, cleaning and dressing Aleksander's wound and re-splinting his leg as the swelling went down, making sure to pad the wood carefully with leaves and ointments to prevent skin sores. They held very little conversation beyond the moment's business, leaving the difficult task of Aleksander's amusement to me. In less than a day our blades were in danger of disappearing from his excessive honing. He fidgeted and cursed and complained at my attempts at distraction: discussions of geography and weather, my recent employment as a scribe in Karesh, and how difficult farming was when landlords refused to give their tenants any tools. Peasant farmers were among the most courageous of his subjects. Ezzarian sword making and the differences in fighting demons and humans interested him somewhat more. But the only thing that truly intrigued him was the story of my banishment from Ezzaria: the search for my son that had led me to Blaise, my long sojourn in the demon realm of Kir' Vagonoth, the Warden Merryt, long-captive in the demon realm, and the accumulation of evidence that had led me to believe that my people and the demons had been split apart in fear of something or someone imprisoned in Kir‘Navarrin.

“And you don't know what's inside this Tyrrad Nor?” he said one wakeful midnight.

“To my mind, a fortress is more likely to hold a prisoner than some formless danger,” I said. “Merryt certainly believed so and called him ‘the Nameless,' referring to the Nameless God, a figure in Ezzarian myth. I suppose it's not out of possibility that our god-story has grown from some real incident in our history.”

So then I had to tell Aleksander the story of Verdonne, the mortal maiden beloved of a god, and how the god had grown jealous of their half-human, half-divine son, Valdis, and tried to kill him and all the humans who loved the child. Despite her husband's rage, Verdonne had stood firm between the god and the mortal world, protecting her child and her people. “When Valdis was grown to manhood,” I said, “he defeated the god in single combat, but could not bring himself to kill his own father. So he imprisoned his father in a magical fortress and took away his name so that no one could worship him anymore. The story concludes with a warning: ‘Woe to the man who unlocks the prison of the Nameless God, for there will be such a wrath of fire and destruction laid upon the earth as no mortal being can imagine. And it will be called the Day of Ending, the last day of the world.' Not a warning to take lightly.”

Aleksander paused in the middle of devouring a fist-sized chunk of deer haunch. “So you think that a god is sitting in this fortress called Tyrrad Nor, waiting to destroy the world. And you believe that somehow he is you.”

“He's not a god. No. Nor a rai-kirah. He understands how to use dreams, and rai-kirah don't dream. A sorcerer, perhaps, one of my own people—a joined rai-kirah and man.” I tapped my knife idly on the haunch bone. “Sometimes I think he's taunting me ... telling me that what I've already done will allow him to be free ... or that somehow he can force me to do his work for him. I don't know.”

“Do his work ... destroy the world? I won't believe it.” He started eating again. If appetite was any sign of healing, Aleksander would be riding within a month. “It's your blasted care for all the world that keeps tearing up my life. You held onto yourself through everything we Derzhi did to you, and then through torture and enchantment in that fiendish Kir‘Vagonoth. What could make you alter the very nature of your soul? Nothing.” He waved a piece of flatbread at me to make his point. “As you said, he's likely taunting you, trying to make you doubt yourself. Perhaps he knows you're the only one who can destroy him.”

But, of course, I
had
altered the very nature of my soul. I didn't remind the Prince of that, and I didn't tell him of my strange encounter with Gaspar at the spring. I was still trying to convince myself that Gaspar's insights were naught but an old man's ramblings, and my odd perceptions merely sun exposure.

“Look,” he said, “I'll make you the same promise that you swore to me on the day I cut off your slave rings. If you ever become this monstrous villain, I'll come after you. You'll die by my hand and no other. Does that make you feel better?”

I laughed. “Much better.” I didn't mention that if I became the thing I feared, neither prince nor warrior nor sorcerer would be capable of facing me.

 

The old man and Qeb came to sit with us every evening, unrolling their mats when the breathless furnace of the day yielded to shivering night. Gaspar drank endless cups of nazrheel and told us endless stories of Drafa and its history, of the days when the Derzhi were wandering warriors who protected the other desert peoples from the invasions of barbarians. “The wild men came looking for our horses and our sheep, our salt and our women,” he said, inhaling the stinking fumes of his tea with deep satisfaction. “But the warriors chased them away and kept vigil in their wanderings throughout the land. The desert people named the Derzhi tribesmen lords in thanks for their protection, and they named the greatest of them king of their land that they called Azhakstan.”

“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.”