Restoration (31 page)

Everywhere we traveled we saw the evidence of Edik's rule: markets with no goods a man could afford, caravan owners forced to sell their chastou, beggars everywhere, fighting each other over scraps, and slaves ... gods have mercy, I had never seen so many slave caravans. The Veshtar, the desert tribe who considered slavery as their god's rightful punishment on weaker souls, flourished in the service of the Nyabozzi, the heged who controlled the trade in slaves. Meanwhile, the lords of the Twenty rode unashamed in splendor—silks and jewels, gold trappings on their horses, perfumed litters for their women—and unchecked in their arrogance of power. No town but had its shriveled heads or corpses on display. No region but had villages burned. No ale-house gossip but told of assassinations, theft, and willful cruelty untouched by law. And no women, girls, or fair youths, lowborn or high, were safe if a lord of the Twenty fancied them.

“How can I leave it, Seyonne?” Aleksander paused at the top of the rise and leaned on his olive wood stick. The gold and red sunset seared the sky behind him. “Do you think I'm doing this for myself? Because I miss silk sheets and servants and fine horses?”

“No, of course—”

“Every corpse you see hanging in the cities is dead by my hand. Every new slave is chained by my failure. In one generation I have destroyed what my grandsires built over five hundred years, and every beggar's hand is pointed at me in accusation. How can I stop?”

Guilt is a cruel taskmaster. I had tried to make Aleksander see the truth of his empire, teach him to take responsibility, but I had never meant the lesson to destroy him. I leaned my back against a finger of rock that pointed accusingly at the heavens and rubbed my eyes that felt like the sands of the desert were permanently embedded in them.

“You've not been sleeping. Weeks, it's been.” He cocked his head at me and raised his eyebrows as he always did when he wanted to ask things he knew I would not answer.

“I've got to go, my lord. Soon.” The ravaging of the world seemed an eerie reflection of the war being fought in my soul. Denas yet raged, demanding that I go to Kir‘Navarrin and insisting that I yield to him at the moment we crossed the gateway. So forceful was his will to speak, that it was all I could do to contain him. But I feared to loose his bonds, to risk my self-control just when I needed everything I had to face my dreams. For my night visions, too, had taken an unnerving turn. Every horror we saw in our travels, I revisited, not once, but a hundred times each night. Every cruelty I had experienced in my life, I lived again and again. Sometimes I was the victim. Sometimes I was the perpetrator. Sometimes, most frightening of all, I meted out punishment to those who did the terrible deeds, and I savored the unholy execution of justice. I could no longer bear my dreams, and so I had learned to wake myself up the moment they began. Nyel's doing, certainly. He had admitted as much. I needed to find an answer to it while I could still think straight, while I could still control my own soul. “I don't want to leave you, but—”

“You've suffered enough for me. Go when you need to go.”

And what would he do then? Push on alone. I motioned him back to his exercise. “Not yet. Soon, but not yet.” I didn't want to think about my own journey.

 

We had not planned to hide in Andassar. Marya, a stocky young woman with a crooked spine, had found us in the hills above the village, just as I was about to butcher a wild pig. She had wandered close while gathering herbs and quail eggs, and though I intended to remain hidden from the villagers, I wasn't about to let go of the pig. Aleksander and I hadn't eaten in two days.

“Are you mad, stranger?” she cried. “Would you bring the lord's wrath on a whole village for a runt of a pig?”

“Not mad. Just hungry,” I said. “And why would the lord care about a wild pig?”

“Taking game in these hills is forbidden since the Gorusch baron became overlord. Naddasine used to let each Andassar man take one boar or deer a season, but this Gorusch lord sends keepers out every few days to look for signs of poaching.” The pig, as if sensing its imminent release, set up a squealing. “You'll have a village man maimed for the kill, if you're not found to own it.”

Sighing, I released the pig, sat back on the grass, and watched it trot away at astonishing speed. “Then tell me where I can find something else. I'm going to eat this nasty shirt of mine if I don't come up with dinner. I've naught to pay but work, and I've a friend with me.”

“Here.” She tossed me a wild plum from the heavy basket she carried on her hip. “Bring your friend to the last house in the village. I' II feed you.”

Marya had insisted that we move in with her and her husband Avrel. Only in the past year had the two become self-sufficient, allowing them to move out of Avrel's father's house and into their own mud hovel. “It's Avrel's bees,” said the woman proudly, pointing to the cone-shaped clumps of mud up a gentle grassy slope from her home. “Avrel went to Vayapol once, and spoke to a man in the market who had fat jars of honey, and he learned about bees. And he thought that the meadow here might be a fine place for them, with the clover that comes after the rains and holds for so long in summer. The man in Zhagad wouldn't tell him how he got the bees to stay, but Avrel watched the wild things and learned it of himself.”

The young couple had no children as yet, but Marya was confident that Panfeya would bless them soon, now they were housed within their own walls. If the village could but pay their levies this year, all would be well, for Avrel was planning to make more hives and teach the other villagers to care for bees, so that next year they could pay the entire levy in honey.

We told the villagers that Aleksander—I named him Kassian—was a dispossessed kinsman of the Naddasine. A wastrel, I hinted, come to his first lord to petition for reinstatement into the family. They looked on him with awe, a Derzhi in such sorry state as to seek shelter in their village. But they held a better opinion of the Naddasine than other Derzhi, and before a day had passed were offering Aleksander advice on how to approach the old first lord when he returned from Zhagad.

“Respect,” said Kero, Avrel's father. “Naddasine has always been one for respect. Not groveling. He don't take to a cowardly mien. But I can stand up boldly and say, ‘Here is your share, my good lord,' or ‘I've taken my boar this day, my good lord, and none else,' and he will listen with gravity and say, ‘Well-done, goodman Kero, or 'A fine kill, fellow,‘ as if I were a proper man. This Gorusch, though . . . The Emperor, curse his—pardon. Lord Kassian—the Emperor sent his own troops to take the Naddasine lands, and all their houses but this one, and give them to these Gorusch. My cousin serves in old Naddasine's house. She says his sons fear for his life.”

“To hear that a Derzhi first lord fears for his life at the hand of the Emperor,” said Aleksander to me later. “Even after all this, I cannot fathom such villainy. Edik is a plague upon this land. If I could do it, I'd cut my arm to let out any drop of my blood common with his.”

 

 

The last remnants of day were fading as we started back to the village after our difficult conversation, and I sent Aleksander ahead, for I needed to relieve myself. A short while later, as I started down the slope, I caught a glimpse of green in the dying light, a hint of fluttering color just up the hill to my right, brilliant color that had no place in the drab surroundings. I scrabbled over rocks and weeds around the side of the hill, and found her waiting.

“My lady, who are you?” I said, scarcely daring to breathe lest she vanish. “What are you trying to tell me?”

Always before, her gaze had been serene, radiant with affection and concern. But on this night, her gaze did not settle, and her hands were in constant motion, rubbing, kneading, and clasping each other. It wrenched my heart to see her so anxious, though I had no reason for such emotion.

Her lips moved, but I could hear only half the words. “... be careful ... beloved child ... the Twelve weaken ... perhaps best not to challenge unknowing . . . worse than I thought . . .” She glanced over her shoulder as if someone were coming up on her from behind. “Come to the gamarand wood. Whatever happens, I beg you come.” And then she was gone.

“Wait!” But she had vanished as completely as the daylight. The
gamarand wood ...
So I was right to think she came from Kir‘Navarrin. And yet she was not just a being of light as were the rai-kirah I had known in Kir'Vagonoth, nor was she like one of the physical bodies that demons shaped from their memories of true life. Her form was natural and fully human, and the light that shone from her was more like the feadnach I saw in Aleksander than anything of demons. What was stranger yet ... a vague sense from our first encounter now grown to surety ... I knew her. But for my life, I could not say how or why or who she was. Did Denas know her? Was she luring me through the gateway to give him a chance for victory?

I sat on the hillside for an hour, peering into the night, hoping she would come again, afraid of such mystery yet longing to relive it, to understand it, to hear again the words that were already slipping away....
Beloved child . . .
Was she speaking of my son? I closed my eyes and prayed Verdonne, the forest mother, to keep him and his foster mother safe and well.

When at last I gave up my vigil, I quickly became aware of other doings stirring the night air. The smoky scent of torches. Burning grass. Faint cries of grief and fear. Gods of night, what was happening? Silently I sped down the path toward Andassar. The wailing grew louder, and soon I saw the fire—a high mound of baskets in the center of the village. Grain—half a year's harvest—consumed in towering flames.

Marya stood rigid in front of her house, staring at the fire. She had one hand over her mouth and one hand wrapped about her middle. Other women knelt weeping, a few with children clinging to them. Two village men lay dead beside the burning harvest, but no one else was about. No strangers. No living men. No Aleksander.

“Was it thieves, Marya? Raiders? Have the men gone after them?”

She shook her head, and the bleak terror in her eyes told me it was much worse.

“Tell me, Marya. You must tell me everything. Who was it?”

“Derzhi. Gorusch men come for taxes—”

“But your levies weren't due for ten days yet.”

She wrapped her arms about herself, shivering in the cool, dry night air. “They said they'd heard we were giving grain to bandits and had come to secure the lord's shares. They made us bring it out, but the count was low. We'd thought to give potatoes and two jars of honey, but they never let us tell it. They said we'd have to send four of us—two men, two women—for hostages until the levy was paid. Kero and Valnar protested that we still had ten days.”

She didn't have to tell me more. The Derzhi had killed the two who dared speak out, burned the grain, and taken all the men instead of only four hostages.

“My friend ... Kassian ... ?”

Her eyes were wide with shock. “All of them. The soldiers said they would be slaves. Avrel ... oh, holy Dolgar, my Avrel . . .”

I gripped her arms. She was now shaking violently as the truth settled upon her. “Which way have they gone, Marya? And how many? I can help them, but you have to tell me everything.”

Summoning her reserves of strength, Marya gave me every detail of the raid. Two Derzhi warriors and three common soldiers had come, armed with swords and knives, but no spears or axes. Five village men were taken, plus two boys aged twelve and fourteen, and Aleksander. The prisoners had been roped together by hands and neck and herded down the dry streambed toward the Vayapol road.

I ran for the grassy nook where we had hobbled our horses. The beasts were gone, of course. No Derzhi thief would leave a horse behind. But I pulled away a pile of rocks and found Aleksander's sword and ring still safely hidden. I crammed the ring in my pocket, belted the Prince's weapons around my waist beside my own sword and dagger, then turned my mind to sorcery. A quarter of an hour later, I took wing.

 

I found them quickly, not difficult for my falcon's eyes to spot the yellow flame of octar-soaked torches. Their ankles hobbled, the prisoners could not move fast, though the soldiers lashed and swore at them. The two boys were in the front, the younger one weeping, both completely naked in the cool night as they stumbled down the rocky gully between two mounted Derzhi. Their hands were roped to the warriors' saddles. Behind the boys came the village men, two by two, barefoot and stripped to their breeches. One man was bleeding severely from a gash over his ribs and being helped along by his terrified brother. Bringing up the rear were Avrel and Aleksander. Aleksander was limping slightly, leaning on Avrel's broad shoulder, his face equal parts blood and fury. Across the Prince's shoulders were deep lash marks. How often in those early days in Capharna had I wished to see him thus.

One Derzhi rode on either side of the prisoners, and the two common soldiers followed behind. The third soldier was nowhere in sight. I fluttered low across the column and then again. On my second pass I caught Aleksander's notice, and when I circled and flew over yet again, he nodded, a fierce grin showing from underneath the blood.

“Look,” said one of the Derzhi, pointing at me. “The Emperor's bird.”

The
true
Emperor's bird,
I thought, and streaked down the ravine to find the best terrain for my plan. There. A few hundred paces farther on, the hills to either side of the ravine got steeper and closer together, and the course of the streamlet curved sharply left. That would do. I flew farther down the hill toward the Vayapol road hunting the missing guard, needing to learn if this was a small raiding party or part of some larger sweep and to judge the time I had to carry out the rescue.