Restoration (20 page)

His expression was everything of disgust as he shouted back at me. “Yes. I freely confess it. Humans twist and destroy and ruin everything they touch; they slaughter each other like maddened beasts. I curse the day I walked into their world. But you needn't worry about them, either.” He shrugged his shoulders and started walking again, slower this time, allowing me to catch up. “Their own violence and disharmony cause the upheavals you lay at my feet. You, of all the rekkonarre, have lived in their world and seen their cruelties.”

“The human world is my world. How can you expect me to release one who threatens the very people I have spent my life protecting?”

“Humans are a disease; eventually they will kill themselves. I have no need to hurry it along. I wish only to walk in woodlands and sit beside rivers, to listen to songs of noble deeds, to speak with people who speak back to me of matters other than what fruit I want for supper. I will not apologize for what I have done to gain my freedom. If you have doubts, so be it. I will die here.”

We walked quickly and silently down the path, as if hurrying to some final destination now that the story was told. Yet I wanted to linger awhile, to consider his tale, to find the flaws in it ... to find a solution. The boundaries of his prison were so narrow, and the wide and lovely lands beyond, so close as to almost touch them, were empty of everyone he had known and loved. Perhaps it was better to be captive in the dark pits of the Gastai or the slave houses of the Derzhi, where you could not see so vividly what you had lost.

“What do you know of my life, Nyel?”

He stopped in the garden, hesitating before he spoke. “I touched your mind as you lay dying. I cannot read your thoughts, but a dying man's visions give a fair image of his life.”

“Then you know that when I was a slave, I despised humans as much as you do, even though I believed myself one of them.”

“Yes. I saw it. That's why I thought you might understand.”

“But I learned that even in a heart that seems irredeemable, there are wonders ...” I told him briefly of Aleksander and our journey together.

And though Nyel listened patiently to my tale, when I was done, he expressed only contempt. “Of all things I have seen in you, this one I cannot fathom. Your regard for this human weakling ... crude, bestial... it is inexplicable. You are a rekkonarre, a child of the Madonai, of so much more worth than any sniveling human beast. You claim he has a grand destiny, yet there is no destiny that is not better filled by the least of our blood than by any human. Come to Kir‘Navarrin in your own form. Walk this land that is ours and feel the power that flows in your veins. Your birthright. Then stand before me and tell me of human destiny.”

“Their power is different from ours,” I said. “I want to make you see it.”

We had come full circle on our journey. Nyel stood at the top of the palace steps, and I stood on the white gravel path below. “So you will come here again?” he said.

I wondered he did not know the answer already, so strong was my desire. “We need to finish our game,” I said, bowing ever so slightly. I told myself it was not in deference, but only in respect for age and grief.

For the first time since I had stepped into Tyrrad Nor, Nyel smiled... and he was transformed. For a single, marvelous instant, I glimpsed a lord of the Madonai, tall, dark-haired, commanding, melydda shimmering, singing in the air about him. His physical beauty was matched only by that which dwelt in his dark eyes, the deep, clear eyes that held everything of wisdom, everything of power, everything of kindness and joy. I sank to one knee and dropped my gaze. One might easily mistake such a being for a god.

 

I waked from my visioning clearheaded, hungry, and alone. When I staggered into the blazing sunlight, wobbly from the slender rations and stiff from inactivity, Aleksander and Sovari and the two old women paused their activities as if I were an apparition that might well strike them down where they stood. I waved. “I'm all right,” I called. “Everything is all right.”

Though Aleksander mentioned no less than three times in that first hour that I seemed more at ease than I had been since my arrival in Zhagad, and though he waggled his eyebrows in invitation, I held Nyel and his strange story close. To discuss such things in glaring daylight or to speculate upon their meanings in casual conversation seemed somehow profane. I volunteered only that the siffaru had yielded visions that were quite unexpected and that I needed to think about them. But I agreed that I felt more balanced for having ventured on this journey. Indeed, for the first time in months, I felt hopeful.

The prisoner of Tyrrad Nor was very dangerous. Though not yet able to number his talents, I was not blind to his power; he could touch my dreams. Yet long before I had learned the truth of the rai-kirah, my people had believed that killing a demon would diminish the universe. When a Warden fought a demon battle, his first aim was to banish the rai-kirah from the possessed soul, to prevent it doing harm, not to kill it. Even my brief glimpse of Nyel's glory told me that his death would be an immeasurable loss—knowledge, beauty, and power that could never be replaced. Every event of my life had led me to this point, shaped me into one who might understand this strange and magnificent being, and I refused to believe that it was only coincidence. As soon as Aleksander was safe, I would venture the passage to Kir‘Navarrin. To prevent Nyel from flaying the world with his hatred, I would need either to heal him of it or kill him. Yes, I would be wary, but I hoped ... prayed ... that I could heal him.

“Tomorrow,” said Aleksander, hobbling over to where I sat stuffing myself with a second roasted chukar and a fistful of dates. “Tomorrow we ride for Karn‘Hegeth. Kiril sent word that the First Lord of the Mardek is willing to give me audience. 'Willing' ... insolent bastard.”

“The Mardek are not of the Twenty,” I said through a mouthful of tough, stringy fowl. My stomach rumbled in pleasure.

Aleksander's healing had progressed rapidly while I was in the cave—a span of three weeks, I discovered. By the time I emerged, the Prince was already forcing himself up and down the dusty paths of Drafa on crutches Sovari had fashioned from the wood poles of his litter. Malver had arrived with the riding boot on the day after my return. The heavy boot, soaked and shrunk as the maker instructed, fit closely about Aleksander's leg and thigh. Sturdy laces allowed it to be put on and off when required, and the steel rods built into it kept his limb straight and stretched for proper healing. Sovari had brought new horses from Kiril, and after two weeks of wearing the boot and a few days of riding practice, Aleksander was ready to bid farewell to Drafa. On the next morning we were to set out to raise support for a bid to reclaim his throne.

“None of the Twenty will hear me.” Aleksander leaned against the broken wall, used a crutch to bat aside several bags of clothes, weapons, and foodstuffs, and lowered himself awkwardly to the sand, settling his back against the wall. “I'm left to build an army of weaklings.”

“Powerlessness will be your strength.” Though the sun had long set over the dunes, the night was changed when Qeb joined our conversation so suddenly. The hard-edged starlight took on a softer glow, the sky grew muddled like an ink-scribed page when water is spilled on it, and the air fell still, as if the wind had withdrawn deep into the dunes. The boy stepped from the nagera grove, the silver hoops of his earrings catching the light of our small fire.

“Powerlessness will be my death,” said Aleksander, aiming his knife and his attention at the remaining chukar. “If I march on Zhagad with a straggling legion of minor houses, I'll be spitted like this damned bird, and my father's cousin will have his pleasure with my entrails.”

“You will find no kingdom in Zhagad,” said the boy, his voice resonating with authority beyond his years. “The Empire of the Lion Throne is rotted. Diseased.” The rings that banded his outstretched arm and fingers pointed into the dunes of Srif Anar like a silver arrow.

Aleksander paused in his activity and stared at the youth. “So I am to be emperor of nothing? Is this some ‘seeing' of yours?”

“A worthy warrior must strip himself bare before he rides into battle, yield those things of most value. A worthy king must be willing to slice off a portion of his own flesh, destroy it, though it be his very heart.”

The Prince shrugged and resumed carving off a portion of the roasted chukar. “It seems I am to be mutilated no matter which direction I choose. So forgive me if I pursue my own plans instead of yours.”

“My lord ...” I wanted to tell him to heed the boy, who knew more of his business than one might suppose. But if I chided Aleksander to give credence to Qeb's pronouncements, then the Prince could rightly ask what Gaspar had told me on a dark afternoon beside Drafa's muddy spring. I didn't want to think of that. I had buried the old man's ramblings beneath my newfound hopes, reasoned them away by telling myself that everything had changed when I had faced my enemy. So with only moderate twinges of guilt, I kept silent while Aleksander continued his scornful grumbling.

 

In the cool hour before dawn, we took our leave of Drafa. The two old women saw us off with prayers and admonitions, patting our ankles and giving us instructions for Aleksander's continued care. When they were done, Aleksander bent down, and into Sarya's hand he placed a small bundle, tied with a strip of gold-embroidered cloth cut from his ragged white cloak.
“Na salé vinkaye viterre,”
he said.
Salt gives life its flavor.
The custom was as old as the Derzhi, and even Manot beamed. I looked back as we rode away. Qeb stood beside the fallen lion at the top of the rise, the wind shifting his shining braids as his ruined eyes stared into the empty desert.

 

One of life's truest pleasures is to watch a person do what he or she was born to do—to observe a fine sword maker fold and shape hot steel, to watch a skilled harp player brush her fingers on bare strings and birth a heart-stirring melody, to gape as an artist lays down three strokes with a bit of charcoal and makes a bird take wing. Aleksander was born to ride horses.

“Damned plow horse,” grumbled the Prince as he shifted his weight yet again on the balky chestnut, trying to accommodate the stiff boot that had his leg sticking out to one side, iron straight save for a slight flexure at the knee. “How in Athos' name does Kiril expect me to command respect, riding a beast with a head like a brick and legs like posts? Bad enough that I'm locked in this cursed leg trap.” Neither Prince nor horse ever looked anything but miserable when Malver helped Aleksander get his leather-bound limb across the beast's back. Once in the saddle, Aleksander would curse and swear how it was impossible to command any horse properly one-sided. Yet on this morning some seventeen days after leaving Drafa, as on every morning of our journey, I watched the Prince lean forward to speak to the beast, lay his hands on its thick neck and his right knee on its barrel-shaped flank, imposing his discipline like a lute player tuning his instrument. In that moment, man and horse became one.

Sovari grinned, his teeth white in his sunburned face. A smile was just detectable beneath Malver's stolid demeanor. The three Derzhi wheeled their mounts, gave a whoop, and raced across the dunes of Srif Anar against the fire-shot sky. I sighed and abandoned our resting place at a traveler's well, resigned to another endless day of starting and stopping as we journeyed westward across the desert toward Karn‘Hegeth and a meeting with the First Lord of the Mardek.

The Mardek were a minor house who had but a single claim to honor in the Empire. A lord of the Mardek was always the First Dennissar of the Imperial Treasury, overseeing local tax collections in the city of Zhagad itself and certain special levies for the Emperor's wars and pleasures. Although such administrative positions were mundane for a warrior people, this one was potentially quite profitable. There were always bribes to be had, collection fees to be assessed—and deposited in one's own treasury—and judgments to be rendered that could cause pain and annoyance in more powerful houses. But the Mardek prided themselves—and pride was almost as significant a part of the Derzhi character as battle experience—on their ethical purity. In more than a hundred and twenty years, no Mardek official had ever been known to enrich his own coffers with illicit gains, accept a bribe for delaying collections or reducing levies, or render judgments that were anything but strictly in the Emperor's interest. But in the first week of Edik's ascension, the office had been snatched away and given to one Yagneti zha Juran, a dissolute brother-in-law of Leonid zha Hamrasch. Kiril had reported that the Mardek were ripe for rebellion. Honorable rebellion, of course.

At midday, Malver returned from a scouting trip. “The Karn‘Hegeth road lies just over the next rise, Your Highness. We needs must take the road from here, as it's too odd otherwise. They've got lookouts all about the walls and only the main gates open, with at least fifty soldiers manning them. I asked a drover why the heavy watch, and he said there's rumors coming in from traders about bandit raids, and they've been alerted to look for ... ah ... particular outlaws.”

“Then let's get to the road,” said Aleksander, nudging his mount. “I've no time to dawdle.”

Though I could scarcely lift my eyelids for the breathless, glaring heat, I caught the hesitation in the soldier's report. “Wait,” I said, squinting in the glare. “These ‘particular outlaws' ... They're watching for Prince Aleksander, is that it, Malver?”

Malver ducked his head in acknowledgment. He still refused to look me in the eye.

“My lord, you must not be recognized,” I said.