Restoration (3 page)

But my own people could not accept what I tried to tell them. A possessed Warden was an abomination, the ultimate corruption and an unimaginable danger. Once they understood that the change I had undergone was irreversible, the Ezzarian queen, my own wife, Ysanne, had stuck a knife in me and left me to die.

As I lay bleeding, I was tormented by visions of a dark fortress that lay deep in Kir‘Navarrin. Demon memory and crumbling artifacts told us that someone powerful and dangerous was imprisoned there. Fear of this prisoner had caused my ancestors to reive their own souls, to destroy all evidence of their history, and to lock themselves out of Kir'Navarrin. My death visions, so vivid as to bear the patina of truth, showed me the face and form of that prisoner—and they were my own. Unfathomable mystery, yet I believed ... I feared ... that I dreamed true.

If the prisoner in the fortress endangered human souls, then my Warden's oath, my training, and my history demanded that I be the one to confront that danger. But for eight months my dreams had held me paralyzed, and now, I seemed to be going mad.

Just after sunset Blaise and I came onto a dirt lane on the shabby outskirts of Karesh, a town in the southern Empire where the remnants of the outlaw band of the Yvor Lukash were working garden plots and learning trades, waiting to see if their truce with the Prince of the Derzhi would come to anything.

“Do you want to stop and wash?” Blaise paused outside the local washing house, a dank and dismal shack built around a sporadic little spring of marvelously pure warm water. For a copper coin, the corpulent proprietor would give you half an hour of access to a pool lined with cracked tile and use of a towel that had likely not been clean since Verdonne was a mortal maiden.

I sighed and tried to ignore the stink of farmwork and madness. “It would be delightful, but you need to be on your way.”

So instead we hurried down an alley and up a dusty wooden stair to a room on the third floor of a locksmith's shop. There I sat on one of two straw-filled mattresses and munched sour cheese and bread, while Blaise mixed a sleeping potion. I didn't trust my own fingers to do it, as if my resident demon might alter the formula to prevent my safe sleep. I was a sorcerer of considerable power and a warrior of long experience. If I set my demented mind to murder, it was no simple matter to prevent it. But once I had slept a sound night after one of my attacks, I seemed to be myself again. Until the next time.

“When will you go to Kir‘Navarrin and be rid of this?” said Blaise as he crushed a few leaves and dropped them into a cup with a spoonful of wine and a few pinches of white powder. “You know what I was—a raving, drooling idiot, more beast than man. I couldn't even feed myself, and in less than a day there ... Stars of heaven, even after all these months I can't explain the difference. To be whole again. To see clearly, as if someone had popped my eyes back into their proper sockets. Surely it would help you.”

Confined to the human world, Blaise and the few other Ezzarians born demon-joined had faced a terrible choice. Their demon natures allowed them to shift their forms at will—a talent those of us born unjoined had never even suspected. But after a number of years of shapeshifting, their bodies lacked some essential component to remain stable. A day would come—some sooner, some later—when they would shift into beast form and be unable to shift back again, quickly losing their human intelligence. I had come to believe that entering Kir‘Navarrin would solve their problem, and it was for this—for my child's future and for Blaise, as much as anything else—that I had joined with Denas to unlock the gateway. But I had not yet passed through the gate myself.

“Your problem was something normal—a natural progression of your life,” I said. “Mine is not. I can't risk the passage until I understand what this cursed Denas is up to.”

“The demon is a part of you already,” said Blaise, “joined as you were meant to be. Gods above, man, you walked your own soul and saw the truth of it—there was no separate being inside you. You've told me fifty times how you long to enter Kir‘-Navarrin. So go there and be healed before you kill yourself or someone else.”

I pulled at my hair, as if to let some light and air into the thickness of my head. “He is not me. Not yet. He sits in my belly squirming, as if I've eaten something that wasn't quite dead. I think he's the one that's so determined to get there”

The golden demon who called himself Denas and I had relinquished our separate lives for common purpose, and for the few hours it took us to accomplish that purpose, we had reached an accommodation. But it would have been hard to gauge which one of us had been more reluctant. He had suffered in a frozen wasteland for a thousand years, believing my people had destroyed his own. I had been trained to believe demons devoured human souls in unending lust for evil. Neither intellect nor pragmatism could overcome my sense of violation, of corruption, of certainty that Denas was waiting for one moment of weakness to enslave my will to his.

I raised the bread and cheese to my mouth and put it down again. I wasn't all that hungry. “Whatever is causing these episodes, I daren't let down my guard. If Denas can drive me to do murder now, what would I be if we were fully joined?”

Blaise handed me a clay cup, and I downed the purple-gray liquid it contained, followed by water to drown the foul taste. “You will be the man you have always been. The rai-kirah will bring you memories and ideas, talents, perhaps new ways of looking at the world. But it can't be so simple to corrupt a human soul. Not one such as yours.” He smiled and threw a wadded blanket at me. “You're far too stubborn.”

I wasn't so confident. Even if I dared cross into the demon homeland, there was a finality about passing through the enchanted gateway—so I had been told. Once that step was taken, Denas and I would be completely merged, all barriers between us dissolved forever. My visions implied that I was the danger that raged in Tyrrad Nor, threatening to destroy the world. If I could not control my own hand, my own soul ... That could be the very circumstance that caused the danger. Occasional bouts of madness might be better.

Five minutes and my limbs felt like they belonged to someone else. As my vision blurred and my head spun, Blaise donned his black cloak and a slouched hat and blew out the candle. “Joining with the rai-kirah was the right thing to do. You'll learn what you need to solve this.”

“One more thing,” I said drowsily as he opened the door to go. “Tell your sister that we did not lay Evan out to die. I was off fighting demons, and Ysanne ... Ysanne sent him to you. We didn‘t—either one of us—want him dead. Not for a moment. Not ever.”

“I'll tell her everything, Seyonne. Sleep well.”

 

As a disturbing result of my condition, most of Blaise's people—even the few like Blaise with inborn demons of their own—were a bit afraid of me. Certainly everyone respected my privacy. Thus, it was a surprise when someone burst into my room not a quarter of an hour after Blaise had left. When the visitor's feet accidentally kicked over an empty water jar, my descent into drugged stupor was temporarily suspended. Light flared in my face.

“Spirit's flesh! Dak was right. You're still here. I thought you'd gone off with Blaise again.” The intruder, a short, round-faced man with thinning hair, was Farrol, Blaise's dearest childhood friend and foster brother. Farrol, a man neither subtle in action nor temperate in opinion, had been born as well with his demon nature intact.

“Only a moment and I'll be safely out of the way,” I mumbled, letting my eyelids sag. My body felt like river-bottom mud.

“But it was you the messenger wanted. Said it was urgent.”

“Messenger?” I wedged open the gates of sleep.

“Said he'd come from Prince Aleksander. Cursed Derzhi bastard—acted like we were some kind of vermin. Blaise had only just left, so I sent the fellow after him ... and after you, I thought.”

“From the Prince?” I dragged myself up to sitting. Blaise and I had been scheduled to meet with Aleksander on the day of the spring equinox. But the Prince, bearing the burden of his father's empire if not the crown as yet, had sent word that he would have to delay until midsummer. That was still more than two months away. “What did he say exactly?”

“Said he was to give the message directly to the Ezzarian what was the Prince's slave, the one with the slave mark on his face. Said the message couldn't wait. Had to deliver it himself.”

“The Prince's slave ... Those were his exact words?”

“Aye. Arrogant, sneering fellow, he was.”

Aleksander would never refer to me as his slave. Not anymore. Not to a Derzhi messenger whom he would wish to treat me with respect. “Tell me what he looked like, Farrol. His colors ... a scarf or a crest on his shield or his sword or somewhere on his dress ... And tell me about his hair. Did he have a braid?” I reached for the cup of water Blaise had left on the table by my bed and poured the contents over my head to force my foggy mind awake.

“Looked like any cursed Derzhi. Armed to the teeth. Riding an eighteen-hands bay that Wyther or Dak would kill for. No scarf, but a tef-coat over his shirt. An animal on it—a shengar, maybe, or a kayeet. I don't know. His braid was like any of the arrogant bastards. Long. Light-colored. Tied with a blue ... no, it was a purple ribbon on the left side of his head. Why do you care? What's wrong?”

I jammed the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to think. “The braid—which side of his head was it?”

Farrol kicked at the empty water jar. “I don't know. What does it—?”

“Think, Farrol. You said left. Which was it?”

The round man threw up his hands. “Left, I think ... yes, it was the left. That's how I saw the color of the ribbon because the fire was on his left.”

Left ... spirits of darkness!
I staggered to my feet and grabbed Farrol's arm. “We've got to go after them. Hurry. Help me wake up, and get me a sword.”

“What's wrong?”

“He's no messenger. He's a namhir—an assassin.” And Blaise was leading him straight to my son.

 

By the time Farrol had poured enough strong tea down me that I wouldn't fall off a horse, we were a half hour behind Blaise and the Derzhi assassins; namhirra always traveled in threes. As we raced through the moonlit woodland, Farrol traversing the enchanted ways as Blaise did, all I could think of were the murderous warriors venting their fury on Evan, Elinor, Blaise, and Gordain when they realized they could not fulfill the death vow they had made to their heged lord. Unless Blaise noticed them and shook them off, they could follow him right through the paths of enchantment just as I did. And Blaise was tired and worried, and even in the best of times he lacked a warrior's instincts.

Through the open forest of oak and ash, down into stream-cut gullies thick with willow and alder, over a rocky ridge. Each time the route was slightly different, enough that even an experienced tracker could not duplicate it or detect the signs of an earlier passing. By the time Farrol raised his hand in warning, I was grinding my teeth.

“It's a direct way, now,” whispered Farrol. “Over this ridge will take you in behind the house. How do you want to work this?”

I dropped lightly from the horse and yanked my sword from its scabbard. “Circle left and get to the house through the goat pen. Your task ... the only one ... is to get the family away.” I gripped his leg. “Don't think you can fight these men, Farrol, nor can Gordain or Blaise; namhirra are extremely skilled and failure is worse than death to them. I'll try to draw them away.” And then I would find out what in the name of night they were doing here. “Go!”

I left my horse at the top of the rise, and then crept silently down the dark hillside through a thick stand of pines. When I was no more than halfway down, orange light flared from the valley and a man screamed in mortal agony. Piercing the black wall of the night came the terrified wail of a child. Abandoning stealth, I ran. A dark form lay sprawled on the ground just at the edge of the trees. Blaise ... and I could spare no time to see if he lived.

The cottage was already burning when I reached the base of the hill, and one of the Derzhi was standing in front of the door, sword drawn. Evan's whimpering cries came from behind the man. Gods of night, he was still inside! But I could not take on the door guard, for the other two namhirra were also in view. In the wavering shadows beyond the fire was a small group—a man huddled on the ground, another man—the second Derzhi—behind him bending his head back and holding a knife to his throat. The third namhir, tall, thin, his arms folded calmly in front of his chest, stood in front of the two, barking a question. The crumpled man responded with a harsh, sobbing curse.

Gordain was going to die. No matter what enchantment I cast or what feat of arms I might be able to muster, the distance between us was too great. I could not possibly move fast enough to halt the knife of a namhir.

“They will live, Gordain,” I cried, offering the good man the only gift possible as I sent my dagger spinning through the night to catch the door guard in the heart, and then raced the heart breakingly long steps to plunge my sword into the second namhir's back. As I yanked the blade from the lifeless Derzhi, I glimpsed Farrol's stocky form streaking from the woods toward the burning house. I had no choice but to trust him to do what was needed, for the third assassin drew his sword and attacked.

“The sorcerer slave himself!” he cried gleefully as he met me stroke for stroke. “Flushed you out like a hungry kayeet.”

I had fought few humans in my career as a warrior—my opponents had always been the monstrous manifestations of demons—but I learned quickly that the namhir was among the most skilled of his kind. Simple illusions—itching, boils, crawling spiders—would not disrupt the focus of such a killer. He knew I was a sorcerer. And my son's terrified wailing fed my anger so sorely that I could not allow myself the time for more impressive, and thus more difficult, workings. I had to rely on my sword and my fists. Once, that would not have been a problem—I was very good at what I did—but the badly healed wound in my side was proving treacherous. Every time I raised my sword, my right side felt as though it were tearing open.