Restoration (39 page)

We spent the rest of the day acquiring two more horses. We had nowhere near enough money with us for this unexpected expense, and no man who valued his skin would consider stealing horses in Zhagad, so the acquisition was a matter of great delicacy, involving strong drink, a game of ulyat, and a bit of enchantment. Once we had the horses, we acquired extra waterskins, along with provisions for a two-day journey and an emergency childbirth. Remembering Vanko's dead infant, I could not shake the imagining of Lydia's being brought to term before-time on a journey in the desert.

In late afternoon Blaise flew back into the city to watch over the two women as they made their way through the streets. My changing was too slow to be of much use in an emergency. He would fetch me only if I was needed. I sat on a stone wall outside the gates, twisting the horses' tethers about one sweaty hand and snapping the dry twigs off a thorn tree with the other. I hated waiting.

Mounted guards bulled through the teeming crowds, raising more memories of the trouble at Karn‘Hegeth. Slaves lit the torches at the fortresslike gates. When a flood of poorly dressed men and women spilled out from the cavernous opening—servants and laborers of too little use to be housed in a noble's palace, and not permitted to stay within the city overnight—I sat up, alert. Among the coarse and weary crowd were two veiled women in brown robes, plodding and pushing a small barrow piled with baskets.

I was ready to leave my post and join the two women when a brown-and-white bird swooped low over a rangy, bearded man shouldering his way through the crowd. A dark blue cloak hid his hands and his dress, the cloak's hood shadowing his face. He was only a few steps from Lydia's back. With a harsh cry the bird soared up and circled over my head, then dipped over the man again. He didn't need to tell me twice. I dropped down from the wall, wrapped the horses' tethers about the thorn tree, and slipped into the crowd.

I purposefully averted my face as Catrin and Lydia passed by me. The blue-cloaked man edged closer to their backs as they moved slowly down the road, Catrin craning her neck looking for me. I shoved my way through the stream of people until I was just behind him. He reached toward the veiled Princess.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said, grabbing his outstretched arm and drawing him close, where he could feel my dagger poking under his ribs. “I think we need to have a word in private.”

The man muttered a curse and tried to wrestle away. Growling, I pricked him harder and nudged him toward the roadside. If I could get him into the darkening lanes of the outer city, I could whack him on the head until we were well away. But he would not cooperate, and luck was against him. One of the mounted Derzhi rode within ten paces of us. My prisoner snarled and raised his arm. “Your hon—” I rammed my knife upward, silencing his betrayal. Before he could fall, I sheathed my knife and grabbed him with both arms. His head lolling, blood trickling out of his mouth, I draped his arm over my shoulder and staggered drunkenly toward the side of the road, dragging him away from the alerted Derzhi.
Careful. Not too fast.
I maneuvered the body toward the spot where I'd left the horses, and then draped him headfirst over the wall, as if he were vomiting. Snatching the reins from the thornbush and keeping myself out of sight between the beasts, I quickly distanced myself from the dead man.

The crowd began to thin as people drifted off into the dim, smoky maze of tents and shanties. Only a few wagons were left to push on down the desert road along with a handful of mounted travelers, a shepherd with a small flock of goats, and a tinker's caravan. Blaise was now walking just ahead of me, beside the caravan. Some twenty or thirty paces ahead of him were the two brown-robed backs, hesitating as the other travelers passed.

I shoved past the goatherd and his flock just as the first alarm was raised inside the walls of the city. Whether or not they were after Lydia, the alerted guards would find the dead man in moments. “Shifter!” I called quietly, not wanting to bandy names about. Blaise whirled around. “We'd best lift our feet!”

Blaise grabbed the horses while I went after the women. I touched Catrin's arm, just as her bewildered eyes settled on me. Together we drew Lydia out of the traffic. “Catrin, my lady Princess, this is our guide,” I said as Blaise caught up to us with the horses. “We must be quick.”

I made a step with my hands, and with Blaise and Catrin helping to lift and balance her, we hoisted Lydia smoothly onto her mount. Blaise boosted Catrin up easily, and then the outlaw flung himself into the saddle and led us into the darkness. “Not too fast,” I said, though the rising clamor from the direction of the gates demanded that we run. We spurred the horses to a gentle walk as we passed the tinker's caravan. A horn sounded from the walls. Men were shouting—a loud warning yell, likely the dead man being discovered.

Blaise's power swelled into life, his enchantments as visible to me in that darkening night as the rising moon. Though our steps were deliberate, the smudged lights of torches and lanterns dwindled quickly into pinpoints of yellow, sprinkled among the sharp-edged stars. We rode without conversation for well over an hour, our ears and thoughts fixed on the road behind us, Blaise first, then the women, myself at the rear. Hooves pounded the hard-packed road, but no one came near us.

About the time the last faint vibrations of pursuit were drowned out by the dull urgency of our own mounts, Catrin turned in her saddle. “Seyonne, we need to rest soon.”

“No,” said the Princess. “I can keep going.”

I nodded to Catrin and rode forward to Blaise. “Are we well away?” I said. “It's not been long, but I can't sense anyone behind us anymore.”

Blaise's eyes were like coal pits in his white face, and sweat beaded his brow. “Another quarter of an hour,” he said, his voice rasping. “I'm trying to take us faster.”

“A little while longer and we'll be out of danger,” I said, dropping back beside the women. “Then we'll stop and rest for a bit. We'll be able to go easier the rest of the way.”

The Princess's face was scribed with all the ferocity and determination of her Derzhi ancestors. As I returned to my trailing position, Catrin slowed, matching her horse's pace to mine. “He's the one Fiona told us of,” she said quietly, nodding at Blaise. “The one born ... possessed?”

“Yes.” Catrin's scarcely suppressed discomfort erased the remembered warmth of her greeting. I released the tight hold I had maintained on my demon eyes since recognizing her, exposing the blue fire behind their normal black coloring, lest somehow she had deluded herself into believing that I'd not done the deed for which she had condemned me. “He's been demon-joined since birth,” I said, “a good and honorable man who is a throwback to what our race is meant to be. The enchantment you feel from him is saving our lives.” The words came out harsher than I intended.

“Give me a little time, Seyonne. I'm trying to understand.” She held her reins stiffly. After one uneasy glance at my face, she kept her eyes fixed on Lydia's back.

“What are you doing in Zhagad?” I asked, ready neither to apologize nor to forgive as yet.

“Seeking you and Fiona,” she said. “The only place I knew to start was with Prince Aleksander. When I heard the stories of the winged rescuer, I knew you must be with him, but, of course, that didn't help me find you. So I sought out the Princess and used the ‘foreign friend' ruse to get in to see her. After speaking to her for a little while, learning what kind of woman she is, I believed the Prince could not abandon her forever. Sticking close seemed my only hope. They're well suited, aren't they?”

Catrin had traveled with Aleksander and me on the journey to Parnifour and our confrontation with the Lord of Demons. Taking over her grandfather's role as my mentor, she had worked doggedly to help me prepare for my part in that battle. I owed her an open mind at least.

“Theirs is a match designed by the gods,” I said.

“All this business of chastising her in Zhagad, taking a new wife ... he's trying to protect her.”

“Yes.”

We halted soon after this. Lydia was sagging with exhaustion, and for a while I was afraid we mightn't be able to get her off the horse. “Monstrous, clumsy cow,” she said as Blaise and Catrin helped lower her to the ground beside the tarbush fire I had blazing. “I've won every horse race I've ever ridden, and now an hour's plodding has me weak as a new-dropped foal.”

“We'll get you something to eat, my lady,” said Catrin, wrapping a cloak about the Princess's shoulders. “You'll feel better after that.”

“If I could just have some nazrheel, I'd be better,” said Lydia. “Give me the things to make it so I don't have to get up again, then you can go off with Seyonne. All these months you've been so anxious to speak with him.”

“I'll take care of the lady,” said Blaise, looking more himself now we had stopped. “You two go on, if you like.”

I stood up and immediately felt three pairs of eyes staring at me. My shirt was stiff with the stalker's blood. My right hand and wrist were covered with it. I hadn't even noticed.

“You caught my signal, then,” said Blaise, breaking the awkward silence. “I thought the man was up to no good. Are you injured?”

“I'm fine,” I said. I wasn't going to explain myself for protecting them. “Catrin, do you want to walk or not?”

Catrin rose and looked from me to Blaise. The outlaw bowed to the Princess and handed her a waterskin to hold. “My name is Blaise, madam ...” He began to pull supplies from a small pack.

And so Catrin and I were left to walk out the knots in our legs ... and those in our long friendship. I felt her start to speak several times as we walked away from the cheery fire and into the starlit dunes. But she couldn't seem to manage it.

“You needn't be afraid of me,” I said at last. “I'm not looking for revenge, and, although I have one living inside me, I am not a demon. Everything Fiona told you—about our history, about the demon world, about the sundering when our ancestors split our souls apart—it's all true. But I didn't kill Tegyr or—”

“Seyonne, Ysanne is dead.”

I shook my head as if she had spoken a question instead of an answer. Those words did not fit together. I walked on, up a steep-sided mountain of sand that pulled at my knees and ankles.

Catrin trudged doggedly beside me, taking two steps for every one of mine. “She was partnering with Hueil, a student of Gryf fin's who had come along amazingly well and passed his testing some three months before. We'd lost so many others, and Ysanne was determined we'd not lose Hueil, so she would let no other Aife weave for him. We don't know whether Hueil was taken captive, or injured in the combat, or if he would not or could not yield the fight and get out, but Ysanne didn't close the portal. She held more than three days. Hueil never came back, and Ysanne never woke.”

My feet kept moving. My blood kept flowing. My lungs kept squeezing air in and out. But everything else in the world slowed to a halt.
Ysanne. Dead.
Up and up the towering dune, slogging through cascading sand, unable to speak, unable to think of what the words meant, as if the sand were seeping in through my eyes and ears and pores, as if it were filling my stomach and my lungs, clogging my mind, drowning me. I stumbled to the crest and stared out upon the vastness of the desert. Empty. The world was empty. A giant's fist squeezed my chest, but I could not cry out nor could I weep. The sand robbed me of breath and tears.

Only after a long while standing in the cold night wind did I become aware of Catrin standing beside me, unmindful of the gusts that whipped her dark hair about her face. “For the first few months after Dasiet Homol, the demons were quiet,” she said. “Some of us whispered that perhaps Fiona had been right. Perhaps the demons didn't need human souls anymore. No one dared speak your name. Ysanne would not allow it. She was pursuing corruption with a vengeance, as if to ease her own soul of what we had done to you ... to justify it. Many began to bridle at her harshness. But then, a few months ago, Searchers began sending stories of new demon possessions, worse than anything we had seen in years—dreadful deeds, virulent madness, horrors in line with our worst experience.”

Catrin's tale forced my paralyzed mind to engage. Demon possession should have ended with the move to Kir‘Navarrin. That was one reason for opening the gateway ... so the rai-kirah could reclaim a semblance of life and not have to send the hunters into human souls to harvest what they could of physical sensation and memory. Unless ... A few of the demons had been left behind in Kir'Vagonoth. The mad ones. The cruel and vicious Gastai hunters who had held me captive for eight months, tormenting my mind and body to the brink of ruin. A few of the other rai-kirah had stayed behind to guard the mad ones, until those who passed into Kir‘Navarrin could discover how to heal their cruel brothers. What if the mad Gastai had gotten loose to hunt again?

Catrin urged me to sit down. Bereft of will, I obeyed her, and she settled beside me, pulling her brown cloak tight against the chill. “The hiatus had given us time to bring on a few of the student Wardens faster, and so when the messages began to come from the Searchers, we believed we were as ready as we could be. But the fighting was terrible. For the first month, the young Wardens were forced to withdraw from every conflict. At the same time we began to lose Searchers, Comforters, and messengers, more than fifty—almost everyone we've sent into the world. Then we started losing Wardens, too. Their Aifes said they didn't die.”

“Taken captive,” I said numbly. “Fallen into the abyss. Gods have mercy ...” The agonies of my captivity in the pits of the Gastai still haunted my memory. Now other Wardens were being forced to endure the horror I had known, but without my experience, without the glimmer of truth I had possessed, without the elusive hope of escape that Fiona's faithful vigil had provided me. “How many lost?” Dread settled on my shoulders like an iron yoke.