There were three other demons—Kaffera, Tovall, and Denkkar—reclining on the soft couches of the reading room, talking and laughing with each other, turned so that I could see only their light. Vallyne did not recline, but sat in a chair watching me, and I felt the fingers of her enchantment reaching out to tangle my thoughts again. She was dressed in a flowing gown of green, deeper in color than her eyes, and her hair was all wild curls of gold, pulled back on one side by an emerald clip. My blood pulsed with the memory of the moment I had embraced her demon fire, making me stumble over the opening words of the poem.
Ill-chosen reading, fool.
It was a Hollenni ode, the story of two young lovers, pledged in marriage on the day of their birth as were all Hollenni, but not to each other. Hopeless love, unending grief, as the two sought a few moments together, pursued by relentless fortune. The language was overdone, the characters foolish and simple, the verse mundane. But an explicit description of tender lovemaking was not at all what I needed to hear when I was trying to maintain a wall of anger between myself and those green eyes. Recognizing the disease did not cool its fever. One slip and I would be lost again.
I broke off halfway through the long tale. “The book is flawed,” I said, jumping down from my stool. “I’ll find another.”
Voices of drowsy disappointment murmured behind me, as I stuffed the guilty book on a shelf and searched blindly through my other selections for something less risky.
“No matter, Exile. Put them back.” The melodious voice spoke softly in my ear. Much too close. “My guests have gone.”
I stayed where I was, crouched in front of the lowest shelves, not daring to turn around and look at her. Her presence enveloped me like a cloak of heavy-scented flowers, stifling every other sensation. “I’m sorry. I’ll find—”
“Come to my resting room later, when the time vessel is at its lowest ebb. Bring the book and read me the rest of this story.”
“It’s incomplete.”
“Then, you will complete it for me.”
Before I could come up with an excuse, she was gone.
Damnable, cursed, demon woman.
I deliberately left the volume of poetry in the shelf and took a different book, one claiming to tell stories of the gods. Gods were not at all romantic. On my way back to my room, I took a small detour past the time vessel, the trickling passing of the moments echoing in the vast, empty entry hall of the castle. I peered inside the gray, carved vat. The slowly descending surface of the water was just above the seventh mark. Seven hours. Forever.
Once back in my cluttered little haven, I occupied a few moments with the bread Raddoman had brought me earlier. I’d not taken time to eat any of it before setting off in search of Merryt. The thought of the long-captive Ezzarian led me into other channels where I had no wish to go, so I cast a light from my hand and opened the book. For an hour I read the god-stories of Kuvai and Manganar, of Basran and Thrid and Fryth, and twenty other peoples I had never heard of. So many were similar. Gods seemed subject to all of the same foibles as their human worshipers: love and jealousy, grief and celebration. Some of them were human heroes, tested and tempted and elevated to god-hood. Some were immortal teachers who grieved at their students’ straying. What use to be a god if there was no relief from the pain of ordinary life?
My reading left me contemplating the teachings of my youth . . . the story of the mortal maiden Verdonne and her romance with the god of the forest, and of their half-human, half-divine son Valdis. The god had grown jealous of his son, so the story went, for the boy was handsome, intelligent, and generous, and was loved dearly by mortals. When the god threatened to destroy the unfaithful humans, the courageous Verdonne had sent her child to safety and taken up a sword, setting herself between the heavens and the earth to protect the human world from her husband. She had stood alone—reviled, taunted, wounded by the god—until Valdis grew to manhood. Then the young god had challenged his father and defeated him, not taking the throne for his own, but giving it to his mother and making her immortal, saying that she had shown the world how a god should behave . . . protecting her people at whatever cost to herself. He was content to rule at her side, her strong right arm.
How profound was the impact of myth. My people claimed that this story was why Ezzarians had a queen, but no king. And why we felt safe living in the forest, and why we found our source of melydda, the “Gift of Valdis,” among the trees. Or was it that the story had been shaped from the substance of our lives, the truth that existed among us, given form and glory by a minstrel’s tongue?
As I sat there musing, tracing the warp and weft of my dingy bedcovering with one finger, the tale began to nag at me, but I could not touch on the reason why. My mind drifted idly to the end of it. Valdis had not killed his father, but imprisoned him and taken away his name so that mortals could no longer worship him and give him power over them.
Taken away his name
. . . The book slipped from my hand, as I sat up slowly on the bed. What was this creeping unease? The tale was naught but myth. I had just read ten similar stories. Yet an image came to me—a scene of devastation, blood and bones and a destroyed city—and a voice—Vyx, when I had met him beyond the portal—telling me, “This is where such sentiments take you. Into the realm of one . . . Unnamed.” And only a few hours before, Raddoman had shared with me a piercing memory of a “danger without a name” in a fortress called Tyrrad Nor. Was there more truth here—hidden in myth? The source . . . the Nameless God . . .
“Hsst!” The hissing sound came from beyond my small circle of light. Distracted from my ill-formed theories, I brightened my light and discovered Merryt pressed to the wall just inside my doorway. He waved a hand toward the dark passage and shook his head vigorously. Someone was outside my door. Puzzled, I motioned Merryt around the cabinet with glass shelves, and he quickly slipped between the cabinet and the rug-stuffed window, while I snuffed my light.
“Are you alone, Exile?” Raddoman popped into view, his brown shimmer ragged at the edges like hastily trimmed hair.
“Does the lady wish me to come?” I damned myself for the ease with which that thought obscured every other consideration.
The demon shaped his human form and poked his wiry beard this way and that as he peered about the room. “No. The ylad—the other yddrass—was seen intruding upon the mistress’s wing. He is not welcome here. You should have nothing to do with him.”
“Am I a prisoner, Raddoman?”
The demon’s glance latched onto me. “No, ylad, you are not a prisoner. The mistress has petitioned Denas that you not be constrained, and the good lord has granted her request. You know how the mistress dislikes—”
“Then, leave my room and knock before you come in again. Such is ylad custom.”
“As you say, Yddrass.” The demon bowed, shifting his eyes right and left as he withdrew. Strange that he called me Warden. I wondered if I had met him in combat at some time. Perhaps that was why he disliked me so fiercely. I stepped to the doorway and watched his glimmering form move down the passageway, and just before he turned a corner . . . I blinked and squinted in the dim light. I would have sworn Raddoman’s light flickered a different color . . . purple and blue with swirling gray-green mixed in. With dawning understanding, I watched him disappear. So I had been wrong to think I could identify every demon unerringly. Some were trickier than others. Some had a sense of humor and showed up in places they had no right to be—in an artist’s soul or a Warden’s dreams or in bodies that wore faces not their own. Some were clever deceivers.
“Many thanks, brother.” Merryt stepped out of his hiding place, and shifted his wide shoulders uncomfortably. “Unfriendly brute. But if I’m right, and they’ve got wind of what I’ve done, life will get decidedly less comfortable by the hour. I’m at your mercy.”
“What have you done?” I snapped, more curt than I intended as I switched my attention to the Ezzarian.
“I’ve told Denas that Vallyne and Vyx are looking to take command of the legion and that they plan to use you to open the gateway. I’ve seen naught of anger in my life beside his answer to that news! I’m afraid your life is no safer than mine. Denas swore to kill you before allowing a rival to use you.”
“Told Denas? Gods of night—you traitorous—”
Merryt raised his hands high and backed away, his bronze skin blotched with red. “Hold, Exile. It’s not what you think. Hear me out. Not more than an hour after that, I told Gennod that Denas was out to murder him and Rhadit and take you for himself. Gennod is less despicable than most demons, and it seemed only fair to tell him of Denas’s threat. We can hope it will leave the villains in disarray for the moment. Give us time to get out and warn the Ezzarians. It was the only thing I could think of to do. But someone was lurking about the courtyard where I was talking to Gennod, and I’m sure I’ve been followed ever since. If we’re ever going to leave this wicked place, we’d best get to it.” Merryt was twitching like a mother sparrow guarding her hatchlings.
Dismayed beyond telling, seeing all possibility of caution ruined, our one bit of knowledge—our one advantage—given up before we even knew its worth, it was all I could do to contain my anger. “What kind of fool are you, Merryt?”
I understood his urgency. It would take me more than three hundred seventy years to forget the sting of demon vengeance. But I was not ready to leave the demon realm as yet. Thwarting Vyx and Vallyne and warning the Ezzarians was not enough. If there was hope for Blaise and my child . . . and the mystery of the Last Fortress ate at me. “We’ve too many questions. We need to know more about the demons’ plans. More about Tyrrad Nor. You yourself told me we don’t know who’s behind Vyx and Vallyne. And you could have bloody well consulted me before putting my life at such risk.”
He shrugged and poked his head out of my door. “Sorry to bring it down on you before you’ve had a chance to sort it all out, but secrets don’t last long in this place. We need to get the warning out. We’ll stop the slaughter of the Ezzarians and that’s that. This ‘danger’ in Tyrrad Nor is no worry if we stop them opening the gateway, and your life’s at no risk as long as you get out now and stay with me. What more is there to know?”
“You didn’t tell anyone about the escape route when you were spewing information about?”
Merryt stepped into the passage. “Of course not. I know exactly what I’m doing. Stick with me and everything will work out for the best.”
Which one of us was the bigger fool? Merryt for his simplistic view of matters, or me for trusting him at all?
Merryt beckoned me to follow. “It’s worth my life what I’ve done, Exile. And they’ll learn soon enough that you were a part of it. We need to be off.”
Wishing that I could allow him to reap the consequences of his blundering without further compromising my own aims, I threw on my cloak. “All right then,” I said. “Vallyne’s not expecting me for a few hours yet. I’ll get you away.” No one was about when I followed him down the passage.
Merryt knew more twisting, convoluted paths than my head believed possible. I couldn’t have said whether we were on the third level of the castle or five levels below ground, going in or out or sideways. But we passed no more than ten demons, and though I no longer trusted my recognition of them, all ten seemed to be strangers. We emerged from the castle by the same back door the Ezzarian had brought me through on the day of my rescue.
“Now where?” he said.
“Beyond the city.” I pointed to the dark smudge on the horizon.
“This Aife, she’s your wife?” We had trudged a long way toward the scattered lights of the Rudai settlements before Merryt started talking.
“No. This is someone else.”
I suppose he must have gathered enough from my tone to know I had no wish to discuss it further, for he said nothing more until we stepped into the lee of a rocky outcropping and entered a long, low structure with a peaked roof. I had seen many of them in my rides with Vallyne. They were Rudai dwellings and workshops, nine-tenths buried beneath shifting layers of snow and ice and connected to each other by tunnels and passageways. “Nevai prefer to live above ground, not huddle like beasts in their dens,” she had told me.
The turns of the passage were vaguely familiar, and indeed we soon found ourselves in Merryt’s “hideaway,” his little room packed with all manner of goods.
“We’ve no time for delays,” I said as he began rummaging about in a flat-sided brass trunk. “It’s a long way to the city.” And I needed to get back before the lady started looking for me.
“I can’t leave without this,” he said, pulling a blue Warden’s cloak from the trunk. “I always swore I’d wear it again when I went home. As for you, wearing those demon things . . . you’ll need some clothes. Who knows what becomes of Rudai shapings when we go back to the mortal world?” He dragged out a black shirt and breeches and tossed them to me.
“I’ll think about it later,” I said. I wasn’t ready to tell Merryt that I had no intention of going with him.
After a hurried passage through an underground warren of workshops and kitchens that stank of hot tar, rancid bacon, lamp oil, and cloying perfumes, we were outside again, fighting the snow and wind for an hour as we made our way to the far gate of the deserted city.
“Now where?” said Merryt, his excitement cutting through the blustering wind like a knife.
“To the left . . .” We were blasted with sleet as we trudged around the city perimeter, hardly able to see each other, much less pick out our destination. The hilly area beyond the city was broken by massive ice pinnacles, easy to mistake for a ruined tower in the storm. Twice I led us the wrong way, and we had to backtrack to the city wall lest we become completely disoriented. But my third guess took us up a snowy rise, and after some five hundred paces I pointed to the dark tower sitting on the ridge.