Restoration (59 page)

Gan Hyffir was a foothold, but a precarious one, and its winning left Aleksander with his own dilemma. The battles at Syra, Taíne Horet, and Gan Hyffir had cost him no less than fifty of his best fighters, as well as more than a hundred and fifty others dead. Though the Bek were a valuable ally, they brought no more warriors to Aleksander's side, for the small Derzhi house had agreed to take on the difficult task of retaking northern Manganar, with the understanding that they were to train Yulai and Terlach's Manganar troops to fight beside them. They would need every man they could muster to withstand the Rhyzka, not to mention whatever retribution Edik sent from Zhagad. Unless he found more fighters quickly, Aleksander would run out of soldiers with his war scarcely begun.

The answer was Blaise. Aleksander asked the shapeshifter to take on the task of recruiting fighters to the cause. The move was brilliant. Blaise's strength had always been his passion and commitment rather than his sword arm or his strategies, and now he carried word to the Manganar and Suzai and Thrid that the Aveddi had raised the banner of their lost realms and fought shoulder to shoulder with their own lords. Over the next weeks, as I watched the ragtag bands of ironmongers and shepherds, drovers and farm girls arrive in Zif‘Aker, all of them both terrified and determined, I knew that Blaise had found his proper calling.

As for more skilled recruits, the Prince devised a plan for that, too. Lord Sereg, the well-spoken and intelligent Bek fourth lord, had chosen to remain with Aleksander. Before many days had passed, Sereg and Roche were off to speak to the Mardek in Karn‘Hegeth, to the Fozhet in Vayapol, and to the other minor houses who had promised to support Aleksander if he could prove that anyone else was with him. Sereg himself would stand as the proof, while carrying the message that Aleksander was fighting not for the throne of the Derzhi Empire, but for a newly forming vision of the world.

While Blaise and Sereg expanded his army, Aleksander took up raiding again, causing Derzhi nobles and their henchmen many a nervous night. Everything he knew of politics and grievance throughout the Empire he used to choose his objectives. We kidnapped tax collectors, not the cruelest of their ilk, but ones who could be convinced by fright, mystery, and a touch of royal persuasion to forego their exorbitant overcollection, thus easing the burdens that caused local merchants to starve out their poorest customers. Rather than attacking individual slave caravans, we hit the three trading centers in the desert that spawned them, thereby disrupting the vile traffic between the more recently conquered territories and the heart of the Empire. We raided a Veshtar camp where spies had reported the sons and daughters of the Naddasine were kept in cages. From my perch on a spit of rock overlooking the bloody remnants of that battle, I watched Aleksander oversee the release of two hundred slaves, offering his own hand to gaunt scarecrows who could scarcely move and his own waterskin to walking corpses half mad with thirst. Secret grain stores, disputed lands, an armory owned by a divided family, a horse merchant hoarding prize breeding stock ... all the tenderest spots in the Empire were ripe targets.

I joined the raiders on most of these ventures. Whenever I traveled in the dreamworld and sensed a raid was imminent, I asked Nyel to send me to Feyd. The Madonai always resisted my petition, insisting that I wait until I took my “proper form” to reduce my chance of injury. “Is this foolish path your free choice,” he would say, “or is this more piteous begging from this human princelet who cares naught for your wounding? Wait but a little while, and you will be stronger than you can imagine.”

“Yes, this is my choice. I accept the risk, because the risk of not going is far worse.”

No matter how I wheedled, coaxed, or railed at him, Nyel refused to tell me when or how my change would come about. He would not “soothe the impatience of a short-lived species” by rushing a working of such complexity. And so I buried cravings and curiosity by continual work to increase my imperfect strength and power.

At no time in those long months did I speak to any human but Feyd. Though I assumed such restraint would be difficult, I soon became accustomed to it. My dreamer would tell me the night's plan and, if there was clear need of my skills in some part of it, I would dispatch him to Aleksander with my intent to take on the task. Otherwise, I would appear at the scene unannounced and do whatever was needed most, sometimes ensuring the victory, sometimes holding back the enemy so that the Prince and his fighters could escape, for by no means did they win every skirmish. With my help, they avoided the most severe consequences of defeat. No matter Nyel's constant opposition or my own growing impatience with the war, I could not abandon my friends.

I was sorely tempted to find a dreamer in Zhagad itself and take down Edik or the lords of the Twenty to speed the progress of events. But my place was at Aleksander's side. My Warden's oath, that human-wrought fetter still fixed at the core of my being, bound me to protect and nurture one who bore the gods' mark, and so I would do until my last breath.

At first Aleksander questioned Feyd about me and tried to send me messages along with his plans. Whenever I appeared at his side, he would grin and raise his eyebrows as he had always done when trying to probe my private mysteries. But as the weeks passed and I remained aloof, he gave up trying to bridge the distance between us. If circumstance permitted, he would greet me with a slight bow. No smile. No greeting. No expectations. Soon, even the bow became less frequent. My presence was appreciated as happy chance, like good weather or favorable terrain, but Aleksander no longer tried to direct my actions or outguess me, any more than he could manipulate wind or desert. I felt a certain freedom, no longer bearing the burden of his concern and curiosity. And if I felt a faint twinge of regret as he laughed with Farrol or huddled with Elinor and his commanders over a map, I promised myself that everything would be different as soon as Nyel got on with his business. Meanwhile my power grew, as did my craving for it.

When not fighting or studying, I walked and ran and climbed the mountain path, trying to keep my body loose and take my mind off my compulsion to shift. On one day almost four months from my arrival in Kir‘Navarrin, I glimpsed Kasparian hurrying through the passageways and followed him. His dour expression told me he was off to practice his fighting again.

“Have you some dry place to work?” I said, matching his long strides. “I could use some exercise.” The weather had turned foul a few days before, Aleksander had not needed me, and after enduring two rainy days of idleness, I was ready to tear down the castle with my teeth.

After a dark stare that clearly indicated he would prefer to use me for his day's victim, he said, “Come along if you will.” He hurried down the broad stair deep into the bowels of the castle, halting at the arched doorway where I'd found him on my first day in Tyrrad Nor. The door opened onto a cavernous darkness. A wave of his hand lit fifty torches, revealing a long, narrow room so vast the Frythians could hold their famous jousting tourneys inside it. The low ceiling was supported by ranks of stone arches that ran the length of the room on right and left, further narrowing the space. At the far end was a long bench with a variety of weaponry laid out on it—swords, knives, and spears of various weights and edges, bows, arrows, and lances, quarter-staves, cudgels, and whips, and every variety of shield and protective clothing. A well-stocked armory for a man who had no opponents save illusions.

“Madonai were not always a peaceful race,” he said, as if he'd heard my unspoken questions. “We grew beyond it, but some of us chose not to lose the skills. There were always beasts to deal with, many of far more sophistication than those of your world.” As Kasparian arrayed himself in leather armor and whetted the edge of a massive broadsword, he told me Madonai stories that I had not found in Nyel's library, of wild hunts and armies of beasts, of manlike creatures who drank blood, of creatures of fire whose touch incinerated the soul. “Now I pursue only one quarry,” he said.

A surge of enchantment and we stood in a field of tall grass extending to right and left and before us in gentle dips and swales to a distant horizon. White-hot sun glared from a silvered sky. Astonished, I whirled about and found the columned room still stretched out behind me, though its angles were skewed, its edges blurred like the portals of my demon warding. Five armored figures took shape between me and the chamber doorway.

“I would advise you to arm yourself or hide until I have them all occupied,” said the Madonai.

Stepping backward from the severe landscape, I felt the shift from hot, dry wind to cool stone and hard floor. I lifted a leather vest down from a hook on the wall, hefted a few of the weapons, and started to buckle a scabbard about my waist. But Kasparian's stories had taken my mind elsewhere. I had no desire to join his battle. I saw enough true killing.

So, as the five warriors spread out and moved toward the sunlight and Kasparian, I slipped into a deep corner of the shadowed colonnade, intending to take my leave of the arena. Kasparian went on the attack, moving faster than any two-legged creature I had ever seen. By the time I set out for the doors, I had to step over one of his opponents who had crawled under the colonnade after a blow to its belly had all but ripped it in two.

“Mercy ...” I was halfway to the door when I heard the agonized whisper, almost drowned out by shouts and the clash of swords. Back in the darkness, the still form lay curled about its grotesque wounding. What illusion was so real as to beg release when out of the earshot of its creator?

I hurried back to the fallen warrior and dropped to my knees. “Who are you?” I said, tugging at the leather helm. “What are you?”

Fair hair, drenched with sweat, spilled over my hands, and the movement must have jarred him from the brink of death, for he spasmed and groaned, throttling a scream.

“Gods, I'm sorry.” I brushed the hair back from his pain-ravaged face and my mouth fell open in horrified astonishment. “Kryddon?”

The rai-kirah's fading blue eyes widened for a brief moment, and he struggled to speak. “Friend Seyonne, noble Denas ...” With impossible strength his hand gripped my shirt and dragged my face down to his. Blood bubbled from his lips. “Save yourself. Go to the Lady. We're dying ...

Before I could question him, his hand fell away, and I felt the unsettling jolt in the universe that always resulted from a rai-kirah's death. What was happening outside the black wall? How did Kryddon happen to be caught up in Kasparian's enchantments ? I had believed that Nyel was taking power from the rai-kirah in Kir‘Navarrin through their dreams. Were Kasparian's morbid entertainments involved, too? And who was Kryddon's “Lady”? Was it possible she wore green and lived in the gamarand wood? But I had no opportunity to ask my questions, for Kasparian settled in for a long night of sparring, and Nyel was nowhere to be found. Nyel allowed no talk before our scheduled hour of dream work in the mornings, but I vowed to get answers right after.

On the next morning, however, my intention came to naught. Human dreams told me that serious plans were afoot in Aleksander's war, and so I stepped into the human world instead.

“The Aveddi says that he will set his foot in every captive land before he goes to Zhagad,” said Feyd that night as we sat on a windswept knoll overlooking Aleksander's base camp, “and he will raise the banner of that land and see its rightful defenders given the chance to hold it.” As had become their habit for larger or more intricate operations, Aleksander's troops had made a staging camp close to their target to rest their horses and snatch some sleep before making their assault. This gave the joined Ezzarians time to bring more fighters from the growing number of camps scattered through the Empire. With Blaise traveling the Empire spreading news of the Aveddi, and Roche taking Sereg out among the Derzhi, only Gorrid, Brynna, and Farrol were left to guide Aleksander and all his fighters. To everyone's surprise, including his, Farrol had become Aleksander's right hand, learning the art of command from the Derzhi he had once despised.

“Why venture this now?” I said, puzzling yet again over Aleksander's choice of Parassa. The heart of ancient Suza had died on the long-ago day of the Derzhi conquest, when all its residents had been killed or enslaved and the last stronghold of the Suzai palatinate razed. But the city's situation on the eastern flanks of Azhakstan, where the wide and shallow Volaya River created a ten-league-wide strip of fertile ground stretching all the way from the northern mountains to the oceans beyond the eastern wild lands, was too valuable to lie fallow. A new city had grown up from the ruins. “Though I know he wants to give your people this gift, it will cost him dearly. Even more when he has to leave your father and his men to hold it.”