I walked into the stormy darkness beyond the perimeter of the Rudai camp toward the castle, trying to think how I would proceed once I stepped into the world of light. Try to see Ysanne? Try to find Aleksander? Open the gateway? There was no way to know how long that might take, and someone had to make sure that Merryt was kept out until this mysterious fortress—the fortress beyond the gamarand wood, the source of corruption that caused the rare and beautiful forest to smolder from the inside out—was secured. And the human war had to be stopped before there was irrevocable bloodshed—which meant Aleksander had to have something other than a sword’s point to give his rebellious nobles, something that would not demean him to yield.
My steps slowed as the magnitude of the tasks weighed heavy. I stood at the crest of a snowy rise, waiting and thinking, my attention focused inward . . . until I looked up and saw my gyossi mounted on their illusory beasts, riding out of my castle. Luminous, tall, magnificently beautiful. Proud, as well they should be. They had survived horror, made what bargains and compromises were necessary with what they had been left, and shaped beauty from nothing. They had learned to dance again, and to laugh.
I waited for them to come to me. They did not need a lord to lead them into the wilderness. Each one of them should rightly hold that place of honor. Vyx led my own horse, decked out in trappings of black and silver, and when they had traversed their winding way through the snowy hillocks to my position, the column slowed and waited for me to mount. Vyx handed me the reins, looking at me strangely. It was only after I had thrown my leg over the saddle and kicked the beast into movement that I understood my friend’s expression. I had seen it all before: the column of shimmering demons riding over the arched bridge . . . the howling wind . . . the riderless horse . . . the one arrayed in black and silver waiting for them in the stormy darkness . . . The demon. The doom of the world. Me.
CHAPTER 35
“What am I?” I shoved Vyx’s slender frame against the gray stone wall, calling up the power that would prevent his shifting into light and out of my grasp. “What else do you plan for me to do?”
I had led the column of riders to the Nevai camp that adjoined Kryddon’s Rudai, dismissed them into Tovall’s temporary command, then grabbed Vyx and dragged him to this shadowed corner of two snow-draped shelters. Horror, fury, dread . . . I was beside myself. My dream was so vivid I could not bear to consider it. Before I went one more step down this terrible path, I had to understand.
“I don’t know,” said Vyx, the first time I had ever seen him worried. “I sent the visioning, yes. I held a tether to your spirit all that time, hoping to draw you here. You had the strength and power that we needed so desperately, and I believed that fortune or gods or fate or whatever might rule such matters had at last smiled upon us in our desperate hour. Denas had already chosen to go. He is . . . was . . . my friend and brother as much as any one of us can be, and I would have none but a human of honor and purpose to join with him. But this part of the image . . . the one who waits . . . the destroyer . . . I didn’t—”
“The destroyer. Gods of night, what am I going to do?”
“I cannot see the future, ylad. My talents are not so great as that. I showed you our sorrow—this horror that is Kir’Vagonoth. I showed you our form, so that perhaps you would not be afraid. I touched you with the hunger to come here and the warning that danger was waiting if you did not come. But I never gave that danger a shape. I swear to you that this portion of the image was not of my doing. I believed it was a creation of your own fears adding to what I had wrought. I can tell you nothing more.”
“You tried to destroy my mind. How can I believe you?”
“We have entrusted our fate to you.” He raised his hands over his head helplessly. “If you believe that any rai-kirah can make you do what you are unwilling to do, then you’ve not looked at your own power. Tell me who speaks right now. Tell me who it is holds me here most uncomfortably against this wall. It is not Denas, who would never touch me ill.”
I held him pinned for a time, searching his demon eyes, seeking answers, lies, truth . . . But there was nothing but his words and what sincerity a face could express while centered with demon fire. Snowflakes blown from the roof behind him dusted his curling hair. I released the enchantment, and shoved Vyx away, pulling my cloak tight with bloodless hands.
“If you have changed your mind, friend Seyonne, please tell us now.”
There was nothing else to do, of course. I had made the only possible choice. Those I loved were depending on me. But no matter what the truth of Ezzarian origins, I did not feel whole. I felt diseased.
Your child . . . a son . . . is joined . . . and this other, too . . . joined, not taken . . . Born and nurtured in the human realm. How is this possible?
I wanted him silent. “Leave me alone. I need to get to the gateway. It may already be too late to prevent disaster.” But, of course, no matter how I tried to keep my focus strictly on events, the story of my son and Blaise unfolded in my mind. No secrets. Ever.
I flew to Fiona’s tower, and even such a wonder as the shaping of my wings could not ease my dread. “Aife!” I called.
I never thought to invoke that name.
“I never thought to walk a portal bearing a demon.” Our bitterness pushed against each other like the two giants of legend—Night and Day—who grappled throughout eternity, so equally matched that the sky settled to rest upon their backs. When Night took a slight advantage, it became winter, and Day’s advantage brought spring, but if one or the other was to prevail . . . There the story gave me pause. If either was ever to prevail, the sky would fall.
Warden! Verdonne’s child, I was so afraid . . .
The gray doorway took form in the frigid air, and beyond it the dawn, the first flush of pink ravishing the lingering night. Without a backward glance, I . . . we . . . stepped through the portal.
I gasped at the touch of warm air on my skin. Indeed I fought the temptation to remove my clothes so as to feel it on every part of me. I told myself I would fry my skin—even my dusky Ezzarian skin—with too much sunlight after so long without. I looked like the belly of a worm. And sight . . . how was I going to take my eyes from the sun, whose fiery edge was teasing at the horizon? A few moments too long, and it would be the last thing I ever saw. Yet if one were to be blind, what better way than gazing at the sunrise after a thousand years of twilight?
Life was awakening around me. A twittering grassbird streaked through the air by my ear, its hunting song mimicking the melodious rasp of a locust. A desert lark whistled its morning plaint. A brown rabbit twitched its whiskers, waiting to see what I would do before making the next move in its morning’s rituals. Red streaks shot from the brown edge of the world, the sere and rocky grasslands of southwestern Manganar. I recognized them. For eight days I had walked and run over those rolling hills, waiting for Aleksander.
I whirled about, and in the distance, blushing with the color of the morning, stood the lines of pillars stretching north in ancient majesty toward the deserts of Azhakstan and south to the mountains, the border of Ezzaria. The gateway. Waiting. Instructions scribed on each pillar: the words to be spoken, the patterns to be drawn, the magic to be wrought . . . the seals at each pair to be unlocked. The last of the passages between the two worlds, blocked and barricaded, yet left unbroken as if, even in those dark times, someone suspected that it might be needed once again. Was it a lapse of caution or a gamble taken willingly? Or was it so difficult to unlock that it hadn’t been worth the pain to destroy it? I had no idea how long it might take to do the deed, even assuming the inscriptions had not been erased by a millennium of wind-driven sand and rain.
But though my thoughts were already trying to unravel the puzzle waiting in the pillars, my eyes did not linger on the gateway, but fell to the white-robed young woman kneeling in the grass beside a snoring round-faced man.
The Aife. One Aife of many . . . We were never sure there was more than one.
They were tucked into a shallow depression in the land, shaded by a roof of tall-growing weeds. Beside them burned a small fire, and as a wisp of its scented smoke found its way to my nose, I gagged and felt a sudden oppression of nauseating, soul-darkening dread. I wanted to run . . . to escape . . . to hold off the horror that was sure to follow . . . and I found myself recoiling from the woman and her stinking fire. Jasnyr. Even as I identified the scent and understood that my moment’s distress was only someone else’s thousand-year memory, a blight fell upon my own spirit. Only rai-kirah were sickened by jasnyr.
Fiona sighed and rubbed her arms, then lifted her head to look for me. Quickly I pulled up the hood of my cloak . . . a knot tying itself in my stomach. I could not let her see. Not yet.
“Warden!” She jumped to her feet and her thin face brightened, then clouded again as I backed away from her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m well. Fine. The others? Where—”
“Down the hill by the spring. I didn’t want them stumbling over us.”
“And Merryt?”
“I’ve not seen him since we arrived here night before last. He was off right away. Said he’d have the warning delivered before we could get to sleep.” She leaned her head to the side and stepped closer again. “What’s wrong?”
I tried not to back away so obviously as the first time. “Everything’s wrong. Merryt . . . I misjudged him. He’s not going to warn the Ezzarians; he’s going to bring them here to get them slaughtered. For vengeance. We’ve got to keep them away, Fiona, and we’ve got to keep Merryt out of Kir’Navarrin. And two Derzhi armies are close by, planning to destroy each other, and we’re all going to be caught in the middle of it if we don’t—”
“I mean, what’s wrong with you? I felt it when I wove the portal yesterday, and again today. Are you ill? Why is your face covered?”
“It’s the sun. After so long without . . . all these months. When I was with you in the temple, it was night.” As I made my limp excuses, I held onto my hood lest the determined young woman decide to rip it away. “We’ve got to move fast. Does Merryt know where you are?”
“No. He left us at the pillars, saying he’d be back to help once he gave your message. I couldn’t grasp why you trusted him. I never let go of my knife when he was around. He kept looking at me . . . unseemly. When he was gone, we moved down here to stay private. You never told me what was going to happen here, and I had no intention of being in the middle of it. A little more explanation would be useful.”
“Ah, gods, Fiona . . . I’m sorry . . .” But I stopped myself. I was not yet ready to tell everything. “I’ve no time right now. Just stay hidden. I can help Blaise as soon as the gateway’s open. How is he?”
“I’ll show you.” With a quick look of skepticism and a brief examination of the snoring Balthar, she led me down the hill to a rocky cleft, hidden behind a thick stand of gray, spiny buckthorns. Between the cleft and the trees was a spring, the shallow depression filled with lush green grass. A flurry of pipits and grassbirds fluttered upward from the grass as we approached, twittering in protest at the disturbance.
Kyor was sleeping in the stone-like dedication of youth, curled up on bare ground, his smooth bronze cheek resting on one arm. He lay across a shaded notch in the rock, making it difficult for anyone to get in or out of it without stepping on him. In the shadows of the cleft huddled Blaise, the blue fire of his eyes lending a morbid cast to his haggard face. He sat unmoving, staring into nothingness. Tremors rippled unceasingly through his body. With each one, a portion of his body would shift slightly, a finger into a claw, ears into those of a wolf, skin into feathers or scales. With the next tremor, that part would revert to itself again while another part changed.
I stepped carefully around the sleeping Kyor—which had the boy up with his knife blade ready. I stayed his hand before he could slash the veins in my thigh. “It’s all right, Kyor.”
“Master Seyonne? Is it time? He needs—”
“Not yet. Soon.” I crouched in front of Blaise, laying a hand on his head, wishing I knew what might ease him.
The passing rite. He needs to bathe in the Naiori Fonte, or he’ll never retake himself. His true being screams. I didn’t credit your beliefs about him . . . joined since birth . . .
Indeed I could hear Blaise’s silent agony tearing at my inner hearing. “The Naori Fonte . . . the Well of the Spirits,” I said. “I’ll get you there—I promise—and this torment will end.”
“What’s that?” Fiona spoke from behind Kyor.
“It’s a pool in Kir’Navarrin. He needs to find it . . . bathe in it. It will ease this madness. Reverse it, if it’s possible, while the land itself does its work with him.”
The knowledge of it was unfolding within me, accompanied by a disbelieving whisper.
Joined since birth . . . whole . . . Not possible. We are not part of you. I won’t believe it.
“The time of passing is different for every person,” I went on, trying to sort the fragments of memory from the raging denial. “It comes to some as young as twelve, some as old as fifty. For some it lasts a day; for some many years. It is the time of choice . . . when you decide what is the shape of your desire, the one written in your body and your power, the one you will spend the rest of your life exploring and perfecting. Until your passing time, you can change into many things, but afterward, only the one. It is the part of our melydda that comes from our true homeland, bound up in it, just as the melydda you know is bound up in the trees and grass of Ezzaria.”
I felt Fiona’s stare burning a hole in my back. “You’ve learned a great deal in a day and a half.”
It had been more like the space of a heartbeat. “I’ve got to go up to the ruin now,” I said. “Have him ready, Kyor. As soon as it’s dark, get him to the southern end of the pillars. When the time comes, we’ll have to be fast.” I laid my hand on the Ezzarian boy’s slim shoulder, then walked into the growing sunlight away from Fiona. I embraced the air and light, the scents and sounds of the sweet morning: the smell of the dry grass, wild hyssop, and sage, their pungent scents released by the touch of warmth, the rasp of bees and the chitter of the knackees, the tiny rodents burrowing under the tufted wheat grass.