Revelation (11 page)

The ideas came tumbling out of me like the rain after my own long drought. “We’re missing something. Think of how little we know. Even after so many years, so much study, we can’t explain the demon I met. We can’t explain why I can grow wings. We can’t explain why we can’t just kill the demons and be done with it. We can’t explain how it is we came to be doing all this. Why are the scrolls so short and so few? Those who wrote them were not savages, but literate men and women, comfortable with words. There must have been more writings. We’ve no evidence that anyone has ever known enough about us to destroy our history. It’s like someone has opened a door a crack, and I can look through it and see the vastness of our ignorance. Your young Wardens must be careful . . . and they must listen, so you’ll know how to prepare.”

I wanted to say more. Somehow the watch fires of my mind had been lit. I believed I had been given a warning, but I could not say how or why or what about. I just could not get around the fact that if the Lord of Demons, the terrible, powerful being Aleksander and I had fought for three days, was only a precursor, we had damned well better find out what came after.

Catrin did not dismiss my ramblings out of hand. Rather she frowned uncomfortably, saying only, “I’ll need to think about this. Do some more reading. Talk to some people. And I thought I was bringing news to you.” Then she shook off her thoughtful worry and laid her hand on my knee. “You’ve never asked why I changed my mind about your story before I came here.”

An undertone of excitement drew me out of the tangle of my unnamed fears.

“It wasn’t just our long acquaintance and your realization of your own stupidity in doubting me?”

“I don’t know how this fits with what you’ve told me, but we’ve found something in Grandfather’s journals.”

“And what was that?”

“There was another Warden who found a demon like yours.”

“Damn! I knew it.”

 

His name was Pendyrral, and he had been a Warden when Galadon was a young man. Pendyrral had been called to help a woman who had gone mad and ruined her husband’s business. The Searcher had given the woman the required tests and verified demon-possession, but reported that she had never seen a victim so calm and convinced of the rightness of her deeds. Pendyrral had returned from the portal in a daze, insisting that he could not find the demon. After long questioning, he admitted that the only demon manifestation that had appeared at his challenge was a golden-haired woman of dazzling beauty and great good humor. She had teased him and danced with him under a glorious moon. According to the journal, Pendyrral had never fought again.

Galadon, curious at the strange story, had waited until the Searcher and the Comforter had come home to Ezzaria, and inquired after the victim. The Searcher was disturbed and said there must have been a mistake in their testing. The woman—the victim—was considered a generous heroine in her town. It had been discovered that her husband had been stealing boys from nearby villages and putting them to work in his silver mines. The wife had been sneaking the children away one by one and returning them to their families. Her husband could not accuse her publicly, as it would reveal his own crime, so he had proclaimed her mad.

 

“Pendyrral was dead before I went into training,” I said. “But perhaps the Searcher or even the Aife is still alive. If I could talk to one of them . . .”

Catrin shook her head.

“What of the Comforter?”

She sighed ruefully. “Lost in the Derzhi war. There’s no one left who could tell you anything, except for one scholar who spent a goodly time investigating the occurrence.”

“Well, I’ll talk to that one, then.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s Balthar.”

My soul shriveled at the name. Balthar the renegade. Balthar the traitor. Balthar who had created the soul-destroying rites the Derzhi used to strip Ezzarian slaves of melydda. I still woke suffocating from nightmares of my three days buried in Balthar’s coffin. I shook my head. “No. Not even for this could I breathe the same air as that man.”

“I’ll keep looking. See if there are any more stories.”

 

Two more days Catrin stayed, dosing me with her medicines and trying to unravel the meaning of my fears. But once my cough was gone and I had promised to take better care of myself, she packed up her blankets and bundles, ready to go home to her husband and her students. I cooked her a farewell pot of rabbit stew as proof that I would not starve without her care.

Fiona had not participated in any of our discussions of demons or history. As she had done since coming to the tower—since I had known her—she wore her hostility like a second skin. Yet she was the nearest thing I had to a witness. I still had no idea what she had experienced during my encounter with the strange demon. As Catrin and I pondered philosophy yet again, she sat reading a small shabby book and eating her portion of the day’s feast. When the conversation lagged, I broached the subject. “I once asked you to think about that day’s weaving,” I said, knowing full well she had been listening. “I’d be interested in your interpretation of our experience. Would you tell me about it?”

I had tried to ask in a civil tone, but she slammed her wooden bowl to the floor of broken stone, then jumped to her feet as if I’d poked her with a dagger. “It was a demon. Demons bring corruption and madness and death, and I am sworn to aid a Warden in killing them or sending them back where they belong. I will not discuss this with a madman.” She stormed out of the tower into the sunny afternoon.

As the last echoes of her ill humor faded, I demolished the remainder of my stew, watching Catrin scrub out the bronze cooking pot with sand. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me what she said to the Council.”

“I cannot. We’re sworn to privacy, as you well know.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Well, I’m glad she’s gone for a bit,” said Catrin abruptly, setting the pot aside. “There’s another matter I need to speak to you about before I go. A more personal one. Though I was commanded not, it must be said.”

For five days I had been waiting for it. “Ysanne?” I doubted my wife had sent any message asking forgiveness. I had already given her my answer to that.

“She grieves for you.”

I scooped up the last drops of savory brown juice from the bottom of my bowl, then let them drip slowly off the spoon one by one. “I grieve for her . . . and for our son.”

“She had no choice.”

“No choice!” I dropped the spoon into the bowl. “Of course she had a choice. Even when I was a slave, I had choices. Sometimes they brought pain beyond enduring, sometimes risk, but I still had a mind and a soul and a conscience I had to live with.”

“But your risk and your pain were just that. Yours. Ysanne’s risk is for all of us. Only her pain is her own . . . and yours.”

“She didn’t trust me enough to let me see him. She didn’t allow me any choice in the matter.”

“She couldn’t risk it. You are Ezzaria’s only Warden. She believed you would try to save the child, and she believed you would be destroyed by it. She is Queen—”

“She had no right to choose for me. And she has destroyed me after all, hasn’t she? You and the others of the Council were convinced I had lost my reason, if not my soul. Ysanne herself believed it, else she’d never have allowed this judgment to stand. Together you’ve come near making it happen. This danger I feel . . . I can’t explain it . . . but we are facing something terrible. And just when we need to look beyond ourselves and find out what it is, Ysanne has made herself a murderer. If she doesn’t see it yet, she will. I know her, Catrin. I love her more than life, and it will destroy her as surely as it has ruined me. And with all of my skill, all of my training, all of this melydda bound into my body and mind, there’s nothing I can do about any of it.”

Catrin threw her hands in the air and then clamped them on my shoulders. “Valdis’ children, you two are the most stubborn, hardheaded Ezzarians ever born. How can you love one another so dearly, yet believe such ill of each other?” She shook me until my bones rattled, then dropped her voice low. “She did not kill him, Seyonne. Though law and custom demand it, especially of the Queen who must bear every grief her subjects endure, she could not bring herself to kill your child. She allowed him to be sent away. The midwives know of a place . . . a hermitage . . . holy men who take children without question. She hopes he will survive until he’s old enough that you can save him.”

“Hoffyd took him,” I said, the words falling from my tongue unbidden, for suddenly I had no mind to control them.

“He was told to go to the market at Teryna and ask for ‘Dolgar’s Hand,’ saying he was sent by the ‘guardians.’ He says the young priest was gentle and caring and promised to see the babe safely nurtured. Hoffyd could not have left him otherwise, despite Ysanne’s command.”

“Then, I have to go.”

She shook her head. “You can’t. You know it. We need you here. It’s why I had to get you well before I told you, so you wouldn’t do something rash. Think—”

“There’s no thinking required. What am I to stay for? So Ysanne can pretend that everything is as before? So Caddoc can pry out of me that I’m terrified of snakes or that I can’t walk the southwestern hills without weeping for all who died there eighteen years ago? This is our child, Catrin. I can’t abandon him in this world. I know too much of it.”

Catrin stood up and folded her arms as if to hold in her temper, as if her stern mentor’s words spoken in a calm and serious manner might bring me to my senses. “Wardens cannot leave Ezzaria without permission, Seyonne. It means abandoning your oath.”

“My oath is void. The Queen of Ezzaria has informed me.”

“You know better. Wardens are sworn to oppose the works of demons whether they can fight or not. And for you . . . your oath is as much a part of you as your head and your hands. You cannot abandon the war.”

“I know nothing anymore.”

“I thought you rash, Seyonne. I thought you hasty in your words and deeds, pronouncing these ideas before you thought them through. But right or wrong I never believed ill of you. I never thought you would desert a battlefield. Stay here if you want to change the law. If you leave—”

“I’ll be back, Catrin. You know me better than anyone in Ezzaria, including my wife, I think, and you know I’d not do this unless I had to. I would rather go with your blessing . . . or at least your understanding.”

But she would not relent. “Consider well . . . very well . . . what you choose to do. Ysanne will not have him here. She’ll wield the knife herself before she permits it. And prophecies will not shield you from the law if you come back tainted this time.”

“If holding my son in my arms corrupts me, then I want nothing to do with our law.”

She sighed, her mouth tight with anger. “Have you any message for Ysanne?”

“No.” The scar about the empty place my heart once lived had grown thick and hard. “If my wife could ever deem it necessary to murder our child, then I want nothing to do with my wife.”

The narrow street of baked-mud shops was crammed with people. Already late for my appointment after dealing with suspicious gate guards, I was trapped behind a Suzaini merchant family that spread itself across the entire street as it lumbered toward the more prosperous districts of Vayapol. The merchant himself was in striped robes with colored beads woven into his hair and beard. His woman followed after him, draped head to toe in plain white, decked with a hundredweight of gold bangles and silver necklaces. She was leading a train of dark-eyed children, goats, dogs, and fenzai-clad slaves hauling carts and carrying impossible bundles on bent, scarred shoulders.

Though it seemed impossible to get around the Suzaini procession, round-faced Manganar women in embroidered tunics and colored skirts managed to slide smoothly through the congestion, smiling and calling to each other despite heavy water jars or linen baskets on their shoulders. Dusty children with thin legs and bare feet raced under a red and blue awning, stealing apples from a tall basket and knocking over makeshift shelves laden with bronze pots and tools, leather belts and purses, and wooden racks of colored ribbons.

I followed their lead and squeezed past the Suzainis, threading my way through a flock of goats and the pawing hands of the beggars who hovered near the bronze gates of a shrine to Dolgar, the one-eyed Manganar god. Wondering how anyone ever did business in such confusion and noise, I dodged the waving hands of two dark-skinned Thrid women with painted eyes and long necks, who were haggling with a butcher over three scrawny chickens. I hated cities.

I could not help but flinch at the sharp snap of a lash behind me. The Suzaini merchant’s overseer must have decided that one of the slaves was lagging. And when a tall horse came straight toward me, bearing a haughty Derzhi warrior, his braid long and his sword reflecting the noonday sun, I pressed my back against the nearest doorway and cast my eyes down. I could not risk his being offended by an impertinent look or noting the Derzhi royal mark on my face. When he was safely past, I stuffed my hand into my shirt and felt for the leather packet somewhere in the vicinity of my pounding heart, reassuring myself that Aleksander’s paper was still tucked safely away. Twice already on this journey I’d had to use it. Without that precious document to prove I was a free man, I could find myself in chains again with one foot cut off to teach me the consequences of a slave’s running. Astonishing how old fear returns like a well-worn garment, still fitting perfectly well, though you believe yourself grown long past its use.