While I argued with myself about motives and risks and terrifying possibilities—first on one side and then the other—Fiona saw to Merryt. After filling his belly, a review of local geography, and a gathering of supplies enough to see him on his way to Ezzaria, he was ready to set out. Fiona told him to head down to the river to dig out our boat from where she had buried it in the sand, load his supplies, and wait. She would row him downriver to the lake and set him on his way.
As soon as the big Ezzarian was gone, Fiona hefted a bag and a waterskin and motioned me to follow her out the back side of the ruin and up a steep path toward the rocky center of the island. “You’ve been very quiet the last hour. Are you going to tell me your little secrets?”
“There’s too much to tell,” I said. “Everything in Kir’Vagonoth is plotting and intrigue. For now I just need to get back before I’m missed. Someone’s expecting me.”
“She’s a demon?”
“She is remarkable.” I glanced at the wiry young woman, striding with such ferocity up the short, steep path. Still my watchdog. “But she left me in the darkness, thinking that if I was there long enough, she could force me to do as she wished. She has misjudged.”
Fiona nodded and kept walking. To my surprise she asked me no more questions. Her preoccupation convinced me that something was indeed terribly wrong. I shoved aside my internal wrestling and followed her around an overhanging boulder. “Now are
you
going to tell me where we’re going?”
She thrust aside a stand of tangled bushes to expose a dark opening into the heart of Fallatiel. A faint light shone from deep inside the cave. “I don’t know what you can do about this, but I needed you to see. Maybe you’ve learned something that can help.”
As I stepped inside, I heard the same mournful beast cry I had heard earlier. Only it was not a beast. It was Blaise.
The young outlaw was huddled in a corner of the cave, his knees drawn up, his hands in constant motion, rubbing the skin of his bare legs, his arms, his face, pulling his stringy hair, his fingers twining about themselves in unending agitation. His eyes were dark pits, their blue fire unmasked now and staring into some distance I could not fathom. Spittle ran down his jutting chin, and the hollows in his cheeks were deep, the skin stretched tight over his long bones. Beside him knelt the Ezzarian boy, Kyor, holding a cup to his lips. “Come on, then. A drink will make you feel better. You’ve had a hard day.” Blaise’s hand flailed in uncontrolled spasm, knocking the cup away.
“They arrived yesterday, just after I spoke to you,” said Fiona quietly, setting down her bag beside the small fire. “The boy says he persuaded Blaise to hold off his change and come looking for you, thinking you might not be able to help him once he was in beast shape. He says that if Blaise doesn’t change soon, he won’t be able . . .”
“. . . and he’ll go mad like Saetha and the others,” I said. “Perhaps it’s better to be a beast—even if you forget everything of importance. Which would you choose?”
Fiona took a deep breath. “If that’s true and we’re to help him, it seems it must be you to do it. I’m sure the Council would allow you to fight this battle—”
“Fighting won’t help him.”
“Are you refusing to oppose this demon, Warden?”
“Stars of night, Fiona. Think of what we’ve learned. Blaise has lived almost thirty years with his demon—in harmony and health. This is not a matter of possession and demon madness.”
All my remaining resistance to the plan I had conceived was swept away by the sight of the strong young man reduced to such a state. What mysterious danger, what insubstantial prophecy, could persuade me to ignore the hopeless horror that lay before me?
Kyor had patiently refilled the cup and was dribbling the water into Blaise’s slack mouth. “How does he fare?” I said, ignoring Fiona’s protests as I crossed the cave and knelt beside the two. The time for consideration had run out.
Kyor jerked around, and his dark eyes widened with insupportable hope. “Oh, it’s fine to see you, sir. He tries very hard. Don’t you, Blaise? Do you see who’s come to help? It’s Seyonne—just as he said he would. I told you he’d come.” The boy corralled Blaise’s restless hands and held them tight, which seemed to help focus the older man’s attention.
“He didn’t want to come at first,” said the boy, looking up at me. “He was thinking to let the bird have him when he couldn’t hold out no more. But I told him what you’d said and showed him the knife that I’d carried all these months with nothing ill come from it. I told him that you bore no grudge, else why would you say what you did. He said he’d not been fair with you, and as he thought back on all you’d said and done, he knew you meant us no harm. There were a thousand times you could have turned us over if you’d wanted. On the night it got so bad that he gave over his sword and had Farrol take command of us, he said that maybe it was time to see if I was right or wrong about you.”
Blaise’s blue-black eyes roamed wildly over the cave until they came to rest on my face. And when I laid my hand on his head and met his gaze with my deep-seeing, a spark of despairing intelligence flared through his madness. His mouth began to work and his hands to shake, though Kyor gripped them tight. “Teach . . . me,” said Blaise, fighting to form the words. The flicker of a smile crossed his ravaged face. “Anything.”
“Listen to me,” I said, taking his hands from Kyor, willing him to hear and understand. “Hold on just a little longer. I promise . . . I
promise
. . . I’ll take you where you need to go. It is the place where we belong, where
you
belong, a land more beautiful than Ezzaria itself—and you know how we Ezzarians feel about our home.” His eyes were riveted on my own, drinking in my words. “You’ll have to stay there awhile, I think, until this time passes, but then you’ll be able to come back and help put this world to rights. You and Aleksander. It is the price I ask for what I’m going to do. You must find a way to work with Aleksander. He bears the mark of the gods, Blaise. And whatever comes, he needs you to stand with him. Do you understand me? It is the only payment I require.”
I could not tell if he heard me, for he began to shift just then. In a grotesque interweaving of bird and beast and man, his writhing body stretched and shrank, grew wings and claws and absorbed them again, sprouted fur and feathers, scales, then flesh again, and performed a bone-twisting reshaping of legs and arms and head. For moments that must have seemed like hours, he resisted the demands of his nature, until he cried out and collapsed in a human-shaped heap of choking misery. What sense might have remained in him was masked by sickness and pain.
“He’ll come around after a bit. There’s not much to do to help him.” Kyor pulled a blanket over the outlaw’s bare legs, then tried to maneuver the bigger man into a position where he wouldn’t foul himself with vomit.
I gave the boy a hand, gathering the trembling Blaise into my arms, cradling his broad shoulders and supporting his head until his retching spasms ceased. Then I laid him back on his blankets and called up what paltry healing enchantments I knew that might ease him, while the boy dabbed at his crusted lips with a moistened rag.
“We need to get him south, Kyor. Quickly. Can you—?”
“I can find the ways like Blaise does.”
“And can you take the others—Fiona and the old man and one other, a man I brought here tonight?”
“Aye. If they want.”
“Good. Fiona will know your destination.” I gripped the boy’s shoulder and shook it. “Keep telling him what I said, Kyor. Help him hold on. I’ll come as soon as I can and send him where he needs to go.”
“We’ll be ready for you.”
“Where are we going?” demanded Fiona as we walked out of the cave and down the rocky path. The ruined temple glowed white in the moonlight, the pool a sheet of molten silver. “And where is it you think to send Blaise?”
“Blaise needs to go to Kir’Navarrin—the land beyond the portals shown in the mosaic. It’s our home, the place where we were whole. When all this happened—this split with the demons—we locked ourselves out of it. The rai-kirah believe we stole it from them, and we did, in a way. We just stole it from ourselves, too.”
“And what of the mosaic? The last piece?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I turned my back on the ancient artwork, on the empty fourth square—the fourth vision that would perhaps reveal the outcome of the winged man’s deeds. “Whatever the right and wrong of things, whatever else comes, Kir’Navarrin must be reopened. Our ancestors made a mistake, and the result, the injury that we did ourselves, was so terrible, both for us and for the world, that it must be undone.” After weighing everything, I had to believe that. To consider anything else was to condemn Blaise and Kyor and my child to madness, the demons to their frozen wasteland, and the Ezzarians to unending war. “Dasiet Homol is the gateway—the Place of the Pillars. You’ve got to get Blaise there as quickly as you can if we’re going to save him. Tonight, if Kyor can do it. And you’ve got to get me there, too, which means you must persuade Balthar to go.”
While Fiona prepared herself and Balthar to send me back to Kir’Vagonoth, I went down to the river for Merryt. “There’s been a change of plan,” I told him as we sat on a rock beside the slow-moving water. Merryt was idly pulling the soft hairy bark from a piece of driftwood. “There’s a boy here who knows a shorter, safer route to Ezzaria.”
I was not easy at sending Merryt on such an important errand, but I had no choices. “Be convincing, Merryt. Make them listen. The Aife will tell you how to approach the Queen and the Council—she’s in their good graces as I am not.”
“But you have your own friends . . . this woman mentor . . . and you said you had a wife. She’ll hear you.”
“I’m not coming with you.”
“Not coming . . . gods’ boots, you’re going back to Kir’-Vagonoth!” A volcano could not have outmatched Merryt’s eruption. “You’re a cursed madman, Exile. What do you think to accomplish? When they find out what you’ve done, they’ll have you in the pits again. The witch will have your soul out of you.”
“I need to discover whatever I can about their plans,” I said. “There’s no assurance the Ezzarians will listen to the warning from either one of us. If I can stop the attack on Ezzaria or disrupt it by going back, then I’ve got to do so. Vallyne still believes she can control me, which leaves me room to work. When the time comes that I can do no more, believe me, I’ll get out.”
Merryt frowned and mumbled to himself. “But you need to stay with me. Together we’ll give the warning, and together we’ll go to the gateway to stop this business. We’re brothers . . . partners.” He twisted the rotted driftwood in his hands until it broke. “You don’t know the cursed demons as I do. Think of the advantage you’ll give Vallyne. You’ll never be able to hide knowledge of this portal. Maybe I should go back with you, and we’ll give the warning later.”
“I already told you. I’m forbidden to enter Ezzaria. And if I’m to have a way out of Kir’Vagonoth, then the Aife has to stay with our sleeping friend up there in the temple. There’s no one else but you.” As jasnyr-scented smoke drifted from the heights behind us, I pulled Merryt close and dropped my voice, as if Fiona might be listening. “Make them listen, Merryt. Convince them. They’ve got to be ready to defend themselves, but only . . .
only
. . . if the demons attack them.” If my deeds were going to count for anything, then they might as well count for everything. “If they’re not in danger themselves, then the Ezzarians must stand aside and let the demons through the portal. All of the rai-kirah are going to go mad if they don’t get out of Kir’Vagonoth, and the human race will suffer for it—worse than we’ve ever seen. They think they’ll do better in Kir’-Navarrin. I’m going to see they get there.”
“You’re going to see . . .” Merryt’s voice fell quiet, too. He narrowed his eyes at me, but quickly widened them again. “Damn! I see it. You are a determined fellow . . . beyond imagination . . . Oh, my friend, songs will be made of this.” He clasped my hands. “It’s Gennod’s going to win out, you know. He’s the one you need to talk to. Less despicable than most of the devils. More powerful than others credit—and he is determined to command the legion himself. He’ll be grateful for the warning we gave him. Just give him a hint of your plan, and he’ll likely work a deal with you.”
“Keep the Ezzarians out of it. That’s all I ask.”
“I’ll do as you bid me. Indeed I will. But to convince them . . . You need to give me a name. I don’t like asking, but how else will they believe me? For a matter so important . . . ”
He was right, of course. The chances of the Ezzarians listening to him were slim enough, but if they believed that I couldn’t trust him enough to give my name, then he was wasting his time.
“Lys na Seyonne,”
I said, trying to smile. “Use it carefully, Merryt. A fair number of Ezzarians think it the very name of corruption.”
“Fair enough. I’ll take care of our people, and you’ll take care of the demons.” I rose and started up the path to the temple and Fiona and the portal that would take me back to Kir’Vagonoth. Merryt called out, “My friend Seyonne,” and bowed gracefully. “I’ll see you again. No doubt of it. Farewell!” I heard him laughing all my way up to the temple.
Fiona stood beside the sleeping Balthar, slapping a slender branch impatiently against her knee. I gazed down at the old man, his round cheeks sagging in sleep, his brow wrinkled as if his dreams troubled him. “Give Balthar my thanks, Fiona. And tell him . . . tell him I value his teaching. Will you do that for me? Whether or not he chooses to continue, I want him to know that.”
I sat down cross-legged on the floor and began to clear my mind. I wouldn’t need much preparation this time, not with the portal enchantment still woven in Balthar’s sleeping head. But before I could immerse myself in ritual, Fiona threw her stick into a pile of kindling, scattering twigs and branches over the floor. “You’re going to die, aren’t you?”