“They invade . . . fight each other inside a human soul . . . like we do?”
“Mmm. Something like. Nasty business. So if they can’t beat us or scare us into serving them, what they try to do is get us to take them willing. Make us think we’ve no choice. Make us think we’ll be happier, more powerful, or maybe that we could get back home somehow. Like I say, I was lucky Magyalla told me all this, and now you can reap the benefit of it as well. For if you take a demon willing in this place . . . well, that’s something different altogether. After the first few hours, it becomes very difficult—impossible, so I’ve been told—to separate the two ever again. Worse than any case of possession we’ve seen in the human world. But they do want us to join with them . . . ever so much.” His three thick fingers kneaded the plump purple surface of a plum. “They’ve promised me such power as you can’t imagine.”
“But you’ve not done it. Not even this Magyalla?” I said it in the way of a child claiming there were no monsters lurking in the nighttime shadows. The demons knew his name, and why would his captor have told him all this if he were not willing? That part made no sense. But then a large proportion of the world made no sense at that moment, so I let it pass and kept listening.
“Won’t say I haven’t considered it. Stay here a few lifetimes and see what you think. I’ve seen a few of us try to strike a bargain for joining—and all the other rai-kirah got wicked jealous, and the poor bastards ended up dead anyway. But for myself, I’ve never had the brass to do it. Who would rule, human or demon?” In one motion he devoured the juicy pulp of the plum, spit the seed onto the floor, and wiped his mouth on the back of his three-fingered hand. Then he gave a mock shudder. “Even after so long I get queasy at the thought. No one controls my destiny but me! But, whatever the reasons, they won’t force us. You just need to be very careful. All the cursed demons are treacherous. Denas and Vallyne are the most powerful and dangerous of the Nevai. And they’re quarreling, which makes them even worse.”
“What of the other one that was with them—the bearded one? Is he the same?”
“Vyx? Nah, he’s a fool. He flits about their courts pretending to be important, doing mischief—I’ve heard he’s the one who set Denas and Vallyne at odds. But he can’t get through a game of ulyat without forgetting what he’s doing. No. Vyx is nothing. It’s Denas rules this place, and you don’t want to cross him. I hear he’s out to control the whole lot of them and will do whatever it takes to get what he wants, but at least you can predict what he’ll do. The witch Vallyne is more dangerous. She’s like a spider, always weaving plots to snare herself a fly.”
He pointed at his eyes. “Here, take a look and see what you will see. It’s no rudeness. We’re a long way from Ezzaria, and you may want a friend someday.”
I examined him with what senses I could bring to bear, as he invited me to do, and indeed I could see no trace of demon. Somehow it did not settle my unease. “I don’t understand why they want us,” I said. “We’re no threat to them here. Not without our own weapons. And we’re not in any position to do much wickedness to feed them. Why not just kill us and be done?”
Merryt raised his wine cup. “Aye, that’s the puzzle it took me a while to find out. It’s all because of this, you see. We taste this pale, crude fakery of wine, and we know it’s a pale, crude fakery. They can’t tell. The bodies they create for themselves claim that the taste of this sausage is perfect, but they know it’s not. It drives them wild that we can taste and feel and know the truth of such things, while they cannot. It’s why they send the Gastai to hunt—to find true life and sensation and bring it back to feed them.”
True life and sensation. I’d never thought of it that way. “So it’s not just evil they seek.”
“No, not just evil. We had that part wrong. They hunt everything that physical senses can give them—human life itself.”
“How?” I said. “How could such a thing be done?” I felt I was on the verge of some discovery, if I could but recognize it when I found it. I had come to learn, or so I kept repeating to myself. But learn what? What question was I trying to answer? I wanted to shake Merryt. To make him say the word that would make me remember.
Everything that physical senses could give them . . .
Merryt sighed and drained his cup. “Someday I’ll show you how it’s done. But there’s no need to get everything poured into you at once. You’ll learn all about it and a hundred other things. If you choose to live—though I wouldn’t get my hopes up terrifically, because you never know whether you’ll actually get the choice—there’s nothing else to do but find your place here. I’ve not let them scare me into something foolish, and I’ve made use of my skills, so I’ve survived. I’m hired to the Rudai Meet—their idea of a court—though their judgments have no more to do with the merits of a case than does that of the Derzhi Emperor. And the Nevai find me useful when it suits. In special situations you might say. Opportunities, I would call them, that take advantage of my skills. It’s not a bad life. Interesting. Always something going on. But I will say it’s fine to have a human ear to babble into.” He grinned and filled our cups again. “It won’t make you drunk—they haven’t got that part right, either. But we can have a jolly time pretending.”
He took another giant swallow, but before I joined him, I asked the question that had been nagging at me since he had begun his story. “How long have you been here, Merryt?”
The stocky man leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “By my best estimate—which is none too accurate—something on the order of three hundred and seventy years.”
Our bodies were the problem, of course. The awkward, pain-ridden, breakable shells we carried about with us. They did not seem to age while confined to the demon realm and they encountered no disease, but they also made it impossible to escape. We had walked in through an Aife’s portal, the physical connection she had made between this plane of existence and the one we knew. Merryt said that the only way to get out again was to walk back through an Aife’s portal . . . if one could find one, which in three hundred seventy and some odd years he never had. I did not mention my aborted dream. I remembered enough of my years in slavery to know how crippling it was to hope for escape. And truly . . . a man who had lived with the demons for so long . . . no matter what he had done for me, how could I trust him even with a dream? Even my thick head knew better.
“The rai-kirah, now,” Merryt had said, “they can travel where they will for the most part. It takes a mighty enchantment to keep them out of a place. They travel out into the wasteland and find a passage, a seam, a crack that will lead them into an ordinary soul, and they can pass between as easy as a Peskar warlord slips between his mistresses’ beds.”
And that had led him back to the subject of lovemaking. He had me squirming, and he took great good humor from it. Few Ezzarians were comfortable discussing such private matters, and the fact that my childish infatuation was so obvious made me feel even more foolish. “You may hold out for a while, but when you finally come to believe that there’s no going back, and that there will never be a human woman to hold onto when you lie here alone in the dark . . . it’s not so bad a thing. But these bodies they make can’t feel it right. They have to get inside
you
to feel it. That’s why they need your name and will do anything to get it.”
I didn’t ask him if that was why he had yielded his name. It was not important why, only that he had done so. I had only his word that the demons would not use it to force themselves into his soul. And about the lovemaking . . . I didn’t let myself think of that at all.
Merryt promised to return when he could, saying he would be happy to show me about as soon as Vallyne left off watching me so closely. His was a cheerful face in that grim place. I looked forward to meeting him again. Once he had gone, I pulled out my writing paper—my journal as I thought of it, a safeguard in case I lost the rest of my wits.
Day 2. How long is forever?
After that happy thought, I put the paper away.
Not long after Merryt had gone, Raddoman appeared in my doorway. The odiferous attendant brought me water and a small bowl of pasty white mush that smelled like onions. He snorted and took on his piggish shape when he saw the remnants of Merryt’s feast. “Seems like you can take care of yourself, then,” he said. “Don’t need me.”
“Not at all,” I said, bowing respectfully as I took the gold-enameled urn and the small chipped bowl and set them on my table. “This visitor will likely not come again, and he brought me no water. I appreciate the chance to clean myself. I’m most grateful for your assistance.”
“I didn’t do it for liking.” Nor for any instruction in how to clean himself for certain. I did my best not to inhale while he was close.
“All the more reason for me to thank you. It’s not easy to help those you dislike so sorely.”
“Don’t know why the mistress puts up with you. I know what you are. You’re a
pandye gash
—one of the hidden yladdi. The ones who stole Kir’Navarrin. And you’re a butchering yddrass. You’ve killed us, despised us, sent our hunters back here to ruin. Why did you come here?”
I had no answer for him. “I don’t understand it all myself,” I said, which was a mild way of putting it. “I’ve come here to learn.”
Raddoman clearly had no interest in my learning. He was already out of the door and halfway down the passage. I leaned into the passage and called after him. “Can you tell me what I am allowed to do? Must I stay here in this room? No one has explained what is expected of a . . . guest. I don’t wish to violate the lady’s hospitality.”
“If it was me, I’d send you back to the pits,” he said, pausing long enough to glare at me, his blue eyes flaring like twin candle flames in the dark corridor. “Or hang you up by your nasty body and leave you freeze.”
I nodded politely, hoping that he would progress to something more enlightening.
“But the mistress says you may have the use of the room and the things in it, and you are allowed to move about her wing of the castle. Not to trespass on her own resting room nor stray into Lord Denas’s rooms. You’ll feel the hurt of that if you disobey.”
“So where—?”
But Raddoman wasn’t telling me anything else. He vanished, leaving only his stench behind.
I sat on my makeshift bed in the gray gloom and pulled up the covers to hold off the chill. Munching on the grapes Merryt had left me, I tried again to remember why I had come to Kir’Vagonoth. To learn, I had said. To find truth. To find refuge, because I no longer spoke for Wardens and the Aife. Because the strange demon they named Vyx had come to me in dreams and warned me of . . . something . . . or perhaps he had lured me to the demon realm only to destroy the last experienced Warden. These were words I had saved through my ordeal with the Gastai, but I could make no sense of them anymore. Everyone wanted to know my secrets, but my secret was that I didn’t know.
Unnerved by my own ignorance, I swore that before another hour waned, I would open at least one door to the past. I had been enslaved to fear, and it was time to break free of it. I closed my eyes and delved deep.
Aife. Who is my Aife? I should be able to remember her of all things. My partner. The one who weaves for me, who sends me into combat with care and well-wishing and skilled enchantment. Did she send me on this mission? Is she the one who waits for me beyond the boundaries of my dreams?
I tried to envision the person on the other end of my dream, but came up only with confusion. Multiple faces. Sorrow . . . estrangement . . . mistrust . . . dislike. The combination made no sense. Every thought of my Aife was a dagger in my breast, and the echo of my own words haunted me:
I no longer speak for the Aife. I have come seeking sanctuary
. I was terribly afraid that I belonged in Kir’Vagonoth because I had nowhere else to go.
My head came near cracking with the effort. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes as if I could squeeze some sense from the faulty workings behind them. Lost in paths of darkness, I did not hear a visitor enter the room. Not until she laid cool hands on my burning head.
“What battle is this you fight, my Exile?” With soft fingers she pulled my hands away and stroked my eyes open. Her face was only a handspan away . . . translucent ivory, flushed with faintest rose. Her human visage was not quite so perfect as her light-drawn demon face, yet the coloring of her cheek was enough to make me lose the feeble progress I had made.
“I don’t know,” I said, lifting one shaking finger to her lips as I had longed to do since my first glimpse of her. She allowed me to do it, and to run my other hand along her neck. Indeed if I had possessed any mind, it would have escaped me at that moment. I was astonished at myself . . . offering such intimacies to a woman I hardly knew . . . a demon woman. “I can’t remember.”
“So don’t try,” she said. “Think only of what happens now. And now I want you to walk with me in my garden.”
“As you wish, lady.” My voice fell harsh upon the ear compared to her sweet music.
She took my arm and drew me up, giving me the black wool cloak the servant had taken when I was left with her dogs. With a blur of enchantment she was clad in white fur, and we were standing at the edge of the frozen garden. “Is it not wonderful?” she said as she led me onto a white graveled path between a pair of spreading oak trees in full frosty leaf.
“Marvelous,” I said. “I never imagined anything like this.” Though the sky surged with clouds of black, gray, and bruised blue, and the wind threatened to shred our cloaks, the beauties of the garden glowed with their own light and remained untouched by storm.
“I’ve had the shapers working for quite a long time,” she said. “There’s no use in waiting forever to go back. We must make what we can of what we have. Look, here’s a gamarand.” She pulled me toward a tree with two yellow trunks, wound about each other in a never-ending embrace. Its arching branches were laden with round pink blooms nestled in cups of pale green leaves. I envisioned the glory of that tree, translating its pale hues into the truth of life and color that still lingered in my head. Though I was sure that nothing like it grew in the lands of my birth, its shape and color were so familiar, I hung back staring at it as Vallyne tugged at my hand.