Restoration (17 page)

Deep layers of sand and rubble separated us from what occurred in Drafa that afternoon. Ordinary ears could not hear the shouts and curses of frustrated searchers or the agonized cries of the two old people who died a cruel death to keep our secrets and save our lives. Though I would much rather have remained deaf like the others, I chose to listen. To share the event in some fashion seemed a matter of respect for Gaspar and Fessa's sacrifice. I hoped that the old ones guessed my ability and thus knew that, in some ever so small a way, they were not alone.

The others watched me, but did not ask what I heard. Likely my muttered curses and clenched fists were enough for them to surmise that they did not want to know. Sarya and Manot held hands, resting their gray heads on one another's shoulder. A solemn Qeb sat in the corner of the painted room, his slender arms wrapped about his knees, light brown eyes fixed on the ancient paintings. His tanned skin seemed to glow with a light of its own. In some unfathomable way the boy belonged in that room. A holy place. His place.

Eventually I heard the hunting party depart, murmuring of their unease at staying in “haunted” Drafa after nightfall. Their captain claimed satisfaction with the afternoon's results. The old people had held longer than he would have thought possible, but had clearly revealed their secret: Prince Aleksander had sheltered in Drafa long enough to recuperate from a twisted ankle, but had disappeared into the desert ten days previously.

Once the murderers had gone, the silence held absolute, and after another hour's listening, I believed that if soldiers had been left to stand watch in the city, they were few enough that I could kill them. I relished the chance. “Stay here until I tell you,” I said. “I'll make sure they've not left a sentry.”

“The old ones?” said Aleksander.

“Dead,” I said. “They told a good story and held it until the end.”

Carefully I shoved aside the rubble at the doorway and crept out into the late afternoon. I slunk up and down the pathways of the dead city, listening for the shuffle of a boot or a cough or the muffled ring of weaponry, watching for the gleam of metal where it had no place or a shadow that was darker than the usual. I wanted to punish someone for what had happened; I craved a Derzhi neck to throttle, a smug jaw to smash, a well-fed belly in which to embed my dagger. But a thorough inspection convinced me that every horse that had galloped into Drafa that afternoon had galloped out again, and that the only creatures abroad were rats and scorpions and a single nervous sand-deer at the spring.

Before calling the others from hiding, I debated whether to take Gaspar and Fessa down from the nagera trees where they had been bound and tortured. Though it would have been a kindness to Manot and Sarya, I was not feeling particularly kind, and instinct bade me leave the dreadful scene so that all of us could bear witness to the vileness one human could work upon another. And so it was that Sovari and I carried Aleksander out of the painted room, and the Prince saw what had been given to save him. He did not avert his eyes, but said nothing, which was perhaps the truest measure of his horror.

Sovari suggested that we leave the dead couple in place so that their absence would not give witness to our presence in case the hunters returned. But the women would not hear of it, claiming that the souls could not take their leave of the tormented flesh until the bodies lay on the sand. So, once Aleksander was settled again, the captain and I took Gaspar and Fessa down, leaving Manot and Sarya to tend the ruined bodies.

Sovari left for Zhagad an hour after sunset, afoot, for the Derzhi scouts had taken his horse and killed the chastou. “... and I want to know who rode here today,” said the Prince after reviewing his long list of messages and inquiries. “Every man's name.”

“Aye, my lord. I would do it for my own knowledge, even if you had not commanded it.”

I helped Sovari fill his waterskins and saw him on his way. When Sarya was ready, I carried the two cleaned bodies into the desert, the gods having had their due with the daylight, and laid the corpses out on the dunes for the jackals. Wood was scarce in the desert. Only emperors could afford burning. When all this was done, I sought other occupation. I offered to keep the night's vigil with Sarya and Manot, but they declined. Qeb had not yet emerged from the cave. Perhaps the boy was afraid to see what had come down on his friends. He was very young. I returned to Aleksander.

The Prince claimed he wished to sleep, but I sensed his need to be alone. I understood that. I had always needed time alone after a demon battle to regain balance and perspective. But on that night I was afraid to be alone. Darkness and violence seethed within me, fed by the horrors of the day, and I wasn't sure I was capable of holding them off. I warned Aleksander to sleep light, then rid myself of weapons and walked the dusty ruin, trying not to think, trying not to stare out into the empty night, fearing I would see a woman in green tearing at my divided soul with grief I could not understand. In search of stability, I tried again to strengthen my barriers—the protections against demon infestation that I had learned in my youth—but the melydda would not shape itself to my will. I was on the edge of bursting, ready to spew violence and danger and madness across the silent ruin. In the end, sometime just after moonrise, I sank to my knees in the sand, burying my head in trembling hands. I felt ragged and crippled and afraid.

“I can help you, warrior.” The scent of herb-laden smoke and the quiet voice, just on the edge of manhood, told me who had come. The boy's bare feet had made no sound.

“Unless you can stand with me in a place I fear to go, I don't think that's possible.”

“The siffaru is a journey of the spirit. The gods can take you where they will, teach you of what you fear, while reminding you of the strength you possess to face it. You know already the worth of seeing what is painful. Now you must prepare yourself for the task you have chosen. Will you not allow us to help you?”

“I can't indulge my fears right now. The Prince... in such danger... he is everything ...”

“Gaspar and Fessa have given you this time. The hunters will not return here, and Sarya and Manot will care for your prince as he heals. Right now his greatest danger is your own hand.”

I shuddered at this eerie echo of my own thoughts. “How can you know these things ... a child who has lived here in the wastes since before you can remember?”

“It is my gift to know.” The strangeness of Qeb's voice yanked my eyes up, but the boy was already walking away from me toward the dark doorway that gaped in the pile of rubble. His steps were slow and awkward, tentative, altogether unlike his graceful quickness. He stumbled on a bit of rubble, and something about the way his hands flew out seeking balance tore at my heart.

When I was in bondage to the Derzhi, an old slave woman had advised me to be content with my lot, saying that those who climb to the greatest heights have the greatest price to pay. Here again was evidence of her wisdom. What price to gaze into realms of mystery, to seek out visions and hold them ready for those who came naked and broken?

I rose and walked down the path, following the blind youth into the darkness.

How many days did I exist in the cave? Once I convinced myself to let go the demands of duty and attempt the journey, I also made myself forego the captive's imperative to tally his days of bondage. I might have numbered my sleeping periods, but lost in a haze of smoke and mystery, I could not be sure that I slept only once a day or that I ever slept at all. Fruit or bread and goat's milk appeared on the flat rock by the entrance door when I wasn't looking, just enough to quiet the physical cravings while leaving my inner hungers untouched. I was not a captive, of course. I could have walked out of the caves at any time. But I was on the verge of disintegration, and I prayed this mystery would help me hold myself together.

From the first hour, when Qeb led me to the bare inner room, sat me on the dirt floor, and bade me forego speech and all connection to life for the duration of the siffaru, I was never sure exactly what was happening. Every time my head began to clear, I would blink and find Qeb sitting cross-legged beside me. He would smile, throw a handful of dried leaves in a brass bowl, and light them from a taper, cupping his slender fingers about the bowl to guide his actions. Then, as the pungent blue-gray smoke wafted from the bowl, he would take my hands and force me to look into his sightless eyes, still raw and seeping from whatever he had done to ruin them.

To loose the bonds of the world was difficult. Vague worries plagued me: about Aleksander, about Sovari, about Malver who had not yet returned from Zhagad, about my wife and the Ezzarians lost in their denial of truth, and about Blaise and his sister and my child, hidden somewhere in the increasingly dangerous world. When I ate, the flavors burned my tongue like acid, and I was overwhelmed with memories: a sip of wine from my father's cup ... a ripe peach shared with Ysanne on the first day of our pairing, when I was fifteen and loved her with the focused passion of youth... the dry, maggot-infested bread that had gagged me when I first succumbed to hunger as a slave. Sometimes I found myself kneeling in the center of the roughly circular room, knees aching and muscles stiff, as if I'd been there long hours, and my body demanded my attention, crying out its hard history as warrior, slave, and prisoner.

But gradually, as I was immersed in silence and solitude and smoke, the clamor of these things—appetites and anxiety, pain and memory—faded into a murmur no louder than my heartbeat. My mind began to wander freely ... in a vast nothingness, it seemed. Only then did I truly begin the journey.

 

I sat cross-legged in the center of the circular room as always. My hands lay relaxed on my knees. I had adopted the position Wardens used when preparing to battle demons, finding the attitude of peace and contemplation eminently suitable to this strange exercise. The still air of the cave room smelled faintly of Qeb's herbs. My eyes were fixed on the smudge of light that was my candle flame, and I was so drowsy, my heart seemed scarcely to be beating.

The light faded, replaced by a now-familiar blue-gray nothingness. Yet something was different... a thickening... a texture to the swirling cloud... shadowy forms ... trees ...

I blinked, long and slow, and Qeb was there with his bowl and his taper. The blind youth, no longer smiling, nodded and touched his tiny flame to the crumbled leaves in his brass bowl, and I drifted deeper yet ...

 

Raindrops spattered on the gravel path, glancing off the white stones like beads of crystal, joining their fellows in thready rivulets that drained into the garden. Leaves of rambling honeysuckle dipped with the brisk pounding, and daylilies were turned in upon themselves as if to protect their tender petals. So green it was, narrow swaths of grass encircled by exuberant stands of yellow, white, and blue flowers. A towering willow centered one swale, the graceful arcs of its branches brushing the green. What sound was so delightful as that of soft rain, bounteous life itself, so generously, so tenderly given from heaven to earth? Absorbed in my contemplation of the rainy garden, I strolled along the white gravel path, noting only in passing that I did not seem to be getting wet.

What place was this? I stopped, puzzled, trying to think where I had just come from and where I was going. Beyond the field of flowers, scarcely visible through the curtain of rain, was the dark line of a wall. Like the twang of a broken harpstring intrudes upon a sweet melody, so the sight of that wall infused the day's beauty with a piercing sadness.

“So you've ventured a visit at last. An interesting way you've chosen.” The bemused comment came from behind me.

I spun about and almost stopped breathing. A tall, spare, elderly man, dressed in a plum-colored shirt, green breeches, and knee-high boots stood between two rosebushes at the edge of the path, staring at me. A worn leather bag hung from his wide belt, and a gray cloak was thrown carelessly over one shoulder. His clothing and his short gray hair were dripping, which emphasized the oddity of my own dry state. Yet what had stolen my breath was not the man's sudden arrival, nor anything related to his appearance, which was generally unremarkable. Rather it was what I saw behind him.

The garden was part of a walled parkland fronting a castle of gray stone, a turreted palace built on a broad, gently sloped green shoulder of a craggy peak. Beyond the encircling arms of the black wall, the land fell away precipitously, revealing hazy vistas of distant mountain ranges. From within the castle, candlelight shone through windows of colored glass, making them gleam and sparkle in the soft gray of the day. And far above me, where graceful towers soared into the clouds alongside the mountain's pinnacles, were the lonely ramparts ... the walkways where a prisoner strode back and forth, raging at the world. Oh yes, I knew where I was.