Restoration (40 page)

“All of them, Seyonne. Three captive. Two more severely wounded. Two dead. Two Aifes dead before Ysanne, one left possessed. Each part is bad enough, but if you step back and look on the whole, matters are much worse. As near as I can estimate, all of it happened at the same time: the Emperor's murder ... and the new demon assault... the collapse of the Empire ... our Searchers dead and the Aifes, and the Wardens dead or captive. Do you understand, Seyonne? Ezzaria is in shambles, and everything we have feared is coming to pass. We've lost the demon war.”

The demon war lost ... Unthinkable. And the Empire ... Ezzaria ... Ysanne ... “Why in the name of the gods have you come to me?” I said. “You must think this is my doing.” What else could they believe?

“I cannot ignore that possibility. And, yes, I am afraid of what you've become.” Catrin put her hand on my chin, pulled my face toward her, and forced me to look at her. “But whatever you are, I also believe that the soul I know as Seyonne yet lives. You've not asked me the names of the young Wardens taken captive.”

“The names?” I could not imagine what she was thinking. What would it matter?

“Hueil, Olwydd ... and Drych.”

“Drych!” The name split the night like a flashing sword. “He survived ...” By the end of the day I had opened the gateway to Kir‘Navarrin, the young Warden, my own student, had been the only living witness to my deeds. But he had been too injured to give testimony, and so my wife, the Queen, had condemned me to die.

“Yes.” Catrin's dark eyes filled with tears, rare for this woman of determination and duty. “For days after your escape he lay near death, and insensible for weeks more. But when he woke at last, he told me everything about that battle. How you warned him about Merryt and saved his life. How you tried so desperately to save the others. We thought the demon had corrupted you, made you kill your own brother Wardens, and all the time you were trying to save them and us. Oh, Verdonne's child, Seyonne, you saved us all, and we came near killing you for it.”

“Did Ysanne know?” The hope flared like a last spark in the ashes.

Catrin shook her head. “She would not have listened, and Drych would have been judged corrupt and shunned or exiled. I advised him to keep silent until the time was right. I'm so sorry.”

But the right time had never come, and so Ysanne had died believing me her enemy, believing that my corruption had unleashed this terror on the world. Catrin was unsure of me even yet. What if they were right?

My friend and mentor took my hands. “We need you to tell us what to do, Seyonne. You and Fiona. Ysanne never named another kafydda, which leaves Fiona as our rightful Queen. After Ysanne died, Drych testified before the Council. Some believed him. Some didn't. But we gathered enough support that the others in the Council have sent me to find Fiona and bring her home. I took it on myself to find you as well.”

“Blaise can fetch Fiona,” I said, wrapping my arms about myself against the cold. “And I'll go for Drych and the others. I won't leave them there.” Not in the abyss of Kir‘Vagonoth. But before I could risk that dangerous journey, I had to take the other. First to pass through the gateway into Kir'Navarrin and wrestle my demon, and then to face the prisoner of Tyrrad Nor and find out what, in the name of the gods, I had done.

We arrived at Taíne Keddar in early morning. Though Blaise had worked hard to take us the shortest possible route, our frequent stops for Lydia to rest prolonged our journey through the night. Blaise, his face lined with fatigue, was slumped in the saddle as we crested the last steep rise to the rim of the valley. “A thousand paces down that way,” he said, nodding his head down the track and clearly reaching deep for the words. “Two boulders the size of a house. Off to the right is a small track that leads to a cedar grove. Stay there. I'll send someone with food.” He waved off our concern at his condition. “I'll be all right. I've got to get permission to take the lady where she needs to go.” He didn't say from whom, but transformed and flew away.

We dismounted in the cool privacy of the cedar grove, and Catrin rolled up her cloak to make a pillow for Lydia, who was so tired her tears flowed freely, despite her fiercest efforts to control them. With hard riding, concern for the Princess, and fighting off sleep, Catrin and I had found no further time to talk.

In truth, I had been locked in my own thoughts, trying to conjure Ysanne's face on the day of our wedding, or on the day we knew she was with child, or as we exulted in our first victory in demon combat. But all I could envision was her expression the last time I had seen her—the horror and revulsion when she recognized demon fire burning in my eyes.

And so I had abandoned useless grieving and reviewed my actions of the past four years. Was I wrong to have brought the rai-kirah out of Kir‘Vagonoth? Had I put the pieces of Ezzarian history together in error? Had my ignorance and pride brought ruin to three worlds? And my naive confidence after the siffaru—thinking that somehow I was wise enough or pure enough or strong enough to transform a monster when I had no idea of his power ... what kind of fool was I? I came to no new conclusions, save that I had best stop thinking or I was going to paralyze myself with guilt. Whether I had to reverse what I had set in motion or merely travel the road until its end, the answers I sought were only to be found in Kir'Navarrin. The time had come.

Half an hour after Blaise left us, young Mattei came trudging up the hill to our resting spot bringing a basket of fresh provender, a wineskin, and a stout, competent healing woman named Corya. Mattei took our horses to feed and water them, while I introduced Corya to the women.

Corya wasted no time. She shoved some fruit and cheese into my hand and waved me away. “Off with you now, sir, while I see to this young woman. Though this is not the most comfortable of bedchambers, we need to make sure mother and child have weathered the journey well.”

“I am the daughter of a Derzhi warrior,” said Lydia, her dusty face streaked with the white tracks of her tears. “A night's journey on a horse cannot harm me or my child.” She glared at me accusingly. “You'll not let the cursed prince see this damnable weeping? You'll say it's sand in my eyes or sun glare. Of course, there's no need for me to see him at all. A little rest and I can ride again. Your kind friend will take me to this other place, and I won't have to see him.”

“Gracious, woman, if a little salt water is the only result of this adventure, then there's no man of any race can give you grief,” said the healer. “Even a poxy Derzhi.”

“Ah, you don't know my poxy husband! He could give such grief to a glacier, it would melt to defend itself. Why is there no Derzhi woman god to repair this beastly condition? My husband is a priest of Athos, and he and his god are two of a kind, making all of us miserable who live unshielded. And Druya ... a bull. What use is he?”

Corya chuckled and stroked the Princess's red hair with her strong hand. “In Thrid some worship a woman god who eats her men. But she's done nothing for us mothers, either, as she lets the bastards get her planted before she kills them. You needn't fret, though. It's all over soon enough, and we who've done this before will always know how to care for you novices.” Before one could blink, Corya spread out a clean blanket, allowed me to delay my departure long enough to help shift the Princess onto it, then draped our cloaks from cedar branches to create a screen. “Mistress ... Catrin is it? Perhaps, as the lady is comfortable with you, you would stay and keep her company?”

I told the women that I would stay close in case they needed me; then I strolled across the slope and climbed up to an outcropping rock where I could sit and view the full expanse of the valley while munching on sour plums and goat cheese. The steeply angled light carved the rocks and trees into deep relief, transforming the grass into velvet and the pools and stream into burnished gold. Tiny figures of people and animals moved soundlessly through that remote landscape, their identities and emotions and imperfections masked by distance. A few hours of such isolation, I thought, away from the unceasing demands of pain and grief, love and desperation, and perhaps I could grasp some sort of clarity.

But the settling peace was soon broken when a kite screamed, diving for its breakfast on the rocks just below me, and footsteps crunched on the graveled approach to my eyrie. Surprisingly, the one who spoke to my back was not Catrin, but Elinor. “Blaise told me what's happened,” she said. “The Prince is with Gorrid and Admet in the command tent, working on plans for the raid. If you wish to join him to give him the news, I'll stay with the Princess until she can travel the rest of the way. My brother will take you and the Prince to visit the lady this evening.”

“That may not be necessary,” I said, glancing over my shoulder.

“I don't understand.”

“I may not tell Aleksander she's here ... or any of it. I haven't decided.”

“Decided? What right have you to decide such a matter?” So much for our game of civility. Her nostrils flared and her voice broke with passion and indignation. “Even a Derzhi deserves to know he has fathered a child before he faces death. Have you come to believe what everyone says of you? Only gods play so cruelly with people's hearts.”

Somehow the simple directness of her accusation forced my grief and foreboding into painful focus, causing them to erupt like the molten heart of a volcano that has found the point of weakness in the mountain's rocky cap. “I am not a god!” I shouted, leaping to my feet. “I make no pretense of it. I am so far out of their favor, I don't think I can ever find my way back again. Look at me.” I thrust my hand into her face. Blood was crusted in the cracks of my skin and under the nails. “There is so much blood on my soul that it leaks out of my very skin. I killed a man last night without thinking twice about it, because I suspected he was a threat, and I was afraid. I killed seventeen Veshtar at Andassar ... some of them long after they were any threat to their prisoners ... because I hated them and what they do. I may be half mad with what I've done and what I've yet to undertake, but I do know the horror of it and feel it and fear it. I
am
human, Elinor, so don't tell me what is cruel and what is not.” She stood her ground, her lovely face tight and hard, affirming my self-judgment, though skeptical that I might give fair assessment of cruelty.

“Aleksander is my friend. I've had to watch him yield everything of meaning to him, to see him learn hard and terrible lessons about the world, lessons that you knew by the time you were ten. Yes, he is a better man for the learning, but that makes it no easier to see someone you love in such pain. And now, if I tell him that this one thing so precious is not lost, then how will he face losing it all over again? I have faced that very truth—on the night I first saw my child in your arms and your brother told me of the doom of madness that awaited him. Since that day I have done everything in my power to repair this broken world, but I'm afraid my deeds have destroyed me and everything I value, so don't tell me how cruel I am to consider sparing my friend one grief.”

I started down the hill, leaving her in possession of the rocks. But I was not yet halfway down, when I reversed course and climbed up again, far enough that I could see her standing where I'd left her, the wind tugging at her shabby blue gown, her eyes squeezed shut, her graceful, capable hand pressed tightly to her mouth. Now I had expended a bit of my rage, I had gained a small part of the clarity I sought. Of all things, I should recognize fear. Perhaps saying the painful words aloud would ease this dread that was gnawing at her generous heart.

“I will not take Evan away from you, Elinor,” I called up to her. “Not ever. My son is the only scrap of innocence left in this world, and I would suffer anything to keep him safe and loved and ignorant of the terrors that I know. His mother is dead. He is yours. Now I've given you everything I can. Leave me be.”

 

In the end, I decided that I could not hide the truth from Aleksander, no matter what the painful consequences. Elinor was right. A man embarking on such a course had a right to know the stakes. But I was not going to
tell
him. He would fly into a rage and curse Lydia's stubbornness and contrive some way to avoid the temptation of seeing her. So, late that afternoon, when the Prince found me avoiding sleep in the cool dimness of our hut in the olive grove, and posed the expected question, I carefully side-stepped the answer. “I told her everything, my lord, just as you said it. She didn't take it well.”

“Damn her stubborn heart. What did she do?”

“You needn't fear. Her decision is final enough. She's already let Edik know her position.” I jumped to my feet and herded him up the path toward Blaise's tent. “Now you and Farrol are done with your business, Blaise is waiting to take us somewhere. I'll explain everything after.” Then my duty would be done, and I would take my leave of him.

 

Our destination was the second of the two hidden valleys—Taíne Horet, Blaise called it. The light was failing as Blaise and Aleksander and I paused high upon its southern wall and looked down on a broad expanse of grassy meadows centered by a small lake. Though rockier and less forested than Taíne Keddar, the valley was thickly settled. From the number of fires popping up in the dusk, it appeared that hundreds of people lived there. Large numbers of sheep and goats grazed the pastures, and we could see at least three distinct settlements.

The largest lay at the western end of the valley. Spread across the rocky meadows were wooden outbuildings and animal pens, while the village itself was tucked into the shelter of three broad, shallow caves in the cliffs of the valley wall. The second settlement lay amid the stands of cedar and olive trees in the eastern valley. Smoke rose from a scattering of wooden houses with roofs of woven branches. An array of large tents pitched on the northern side of the valley, including one expansive tent at the center, composed the third settlement. From that central tent flew a banner wholly unknown to me, a dragon with a serpent in its mouth.