Revelation (14 page)

 

The spot I had chosen for the gyrbeast enchantment was in the wild barrens of southwestern Manganar, just across the steep mountain border of Ezzaria, only a two-day journey from my home. There was no way to know where Aleksander might be if he ever triggered the spell, but I had not wanted to make the meeting place too far from my work. I had tried to select a place untraveled, where the meeting of a Derzhi prince and an Ezzarian sorcerer could not be remarked. And so I had chosen the lonely ruin we called Dasiet Homol, the “Place of the Pillars.”

Dasiet Homol was another of the sites left by the ancient builders. In the treeless wasteland, too rocky for growing things, too dry for herdsmen, too barren and too empty of natural riches to attract men of wealth or enterprise, these mysterious people had built a straight row of paired pillars spanning a quarter of a league. The pillars were plain cylinders of white stone, slightly tapered toward the top, undecorated save by a ring of markings at the eye level of an average man. Each marking was at exactly the same height on every pillar. All the measurements at the site were similarly exact. The pairs of pillars were each a thousand mezzits—about thirty paces—apart, each pillar in a row exactly two thousand mezzits beyond its predecessor, and each pillar seven hundred mezzits high. The row was oriented precisely north and south, crossing the low hills and shallow valleys without a break save by the few pillars that had toppled from some shifting in the land. The place was strange, built for some unfathomable purpose. Ezzarian scholars had tried for years to unravel the mysteries of Dasiet Homol, spending months at a time digging, measuring, and studying the markings. They had gathered the histories and legends of the Derzhi and the Basranni and other desert people who no longer existed. But no one had found evidence of any city or other structure nearby. No one had found any key to the markings, which were different on every pillar.

Every day as I waited for Aleksander, I ran up and down the hills and across the barrens to keep my wind and strength and speed, and I would set my course between the rows of pillars, wondering about them and about the people who made them. To create, transport, and erect such massive structures and to orient them so precisely could have been no easy task. What had driven them to do it? Had they sensed the power that thrummed in that bit of land, as it did in the forests of Ezzaria? As with all of the ruins, the place was brimming with melydda. I could feel it in the shadows that crept across the hillside as the sun moved across the sky. I could feel it in the solid warmth of the stone when I rested my back against it after my hours of running. I could feel it in the still, majestic shapes outlined against the stars when I lay awake in the night, and in the sigh of the wind as it wound its way through the long passage. I traced my fingers through the markings and tried to unravel their meaning, knowing that historians had puzzled over them for hundreds of years and made no headway. Dasiet Homol was a place of profound mystery.

For eight days I waited—running, sleeping, hunting rabbits and birds enough to keep from exhausting my supplies, practicing chants and exercises to clear my mind. Returning to long-neglected practices of my youth, I built a ring of holy fire and knelt within it as Verdonne had done in her long siege between the heavens and earth. I prayed for the wisdom to discern my course and the strength to follow it, and I asked her son Valdis, who had stepped aside to allow his mortal mother to take her rightful place on the throne of heaven, for a small share of his grace. This was not a time of despair or madness or searching grief as were the months at Col’Dyath. It was a “between” time. Between lives. Between fears. Between griefs. Perhaps I
was
called to be a hermit. In those days of running and dreaming, I came to feel that I had no connection to anyone. I lived only for the air and the sky, the stars and the dreams.

Oh, yes, when night fell, I dreamed again of the frozen castle and the wraiths of light who dwelt there, and of the deepening darkness creeping across that gloomy land. This time I had no fever. I willed myself to dream of it. I needed to understand. In the quiet of that wilderness I laid myself open, and as I listened, a voice began to take shape from the dream—a voice filled with good humor
. The storm comes,
it whispered
. The days grow short. Shall we see something of the world, you and I, before it falls?
I did not know how to speak to him in return, or what I would have said had I known.

I was almost sorry to hear the drumming of hooves on my eighth evening just after sunset. Yet the thought of Aleksander and the explosion of life he carried within him warmed my frozen blood, and the closer the hooves, the more willing I was to leave the time of reflection behind and discover what had brought him to me.

 

 

 

I sat on a hilltop near the center-most pair of pillars and watched the horsemen set up camp near a spring flowing by a grove of stunted willows. Dark shapes passed in front of campfires that sprang up on the hillside, and the low voices of soldiers settling for the night carried across the grassland. There were perhaps ten riders. I would not expect a prince of the Derzhi to travel alone.

The bloated moon hung low on the eastern horizon when I heard footsteps approaching the crest of the hill. One man. He said nothing, and the pillars shadowed his face, but I recognized his shape—tall, lean, as graceful, powerful, and dangerous as a shengar. To prepare the Prince to host the Lord of Demons, the Khelid had set a vile enchantment on Aleksander. At times—sometimes triggered, sometimes random—he had transformed into a beast, a shengar as it happened. He was nearly destroyed by it. The Khelid and their demons had chosen his transforming curse well. Though he was long rid of the enchantment, he was more like that wild mountain cat than any larger or more visibly ferocious creature. He stopped for a moment, perhaps to marvel at the dark ranks of stone stretching to either side, perhaps counting so as to know where to find me. He was not one to hesitate. Not one to hold back for fear of what might lie in such strange shadows, or to be awed by the magnificence of such a monument. Yet as the moon slid upward behind me, I saw the glint of steel caution in his hand. It surprised me.

“Who did you think to find at the end of the gyrbeast’s tether, my lord?” I stepped out where he could see me silhouetted against the rising moon, and I spread my empty hands wide apart.

“Is caution the most difficult lesson of kingship or only the most painful?” he said.

“I think there are lessons both more difficult and more painful than caution, though it is a worthwhile study that must not be omitted.”

He stepped closer, but remained outside the lane of pillars and moved to the side, forcing me to turn to face him and thus have moonlight reflected on my face. I had not expected such wariness. “You are alone?”

“Indeed. I’ve brought no horde of vengeful Ezzarians to greet you, nor even a single demon,” I said.

“Of course not.” He laughed and sheathed his sword, but it was not the same easy laugh that had defied the Lord of Demons. Like his posture, it was cautious.

He came forward to meet me between the pillars, and when he was but a few paces away, I sank to one knee. “It is an honor and a pleasure to see you again, my lord.” I could not thank him for the return of Ezzaria. There were no words adequate even to begin. Besides, I didn’t think he would want it. We owed each other so much, it was beyond sorting out.

He laid a hand on my shoulder and nudged me to get up, and, with a more familiar twist to his smile, raked me up and down with the razor of his attention. “Druya’s horns, you look like your life is in the same wretched state as mine. I thought that next time we met we would look something better than a prince who had come a knife’s edge from having his head removed, and an ex-slave who had just been freed of the most atrociously prideful and rock-headed master in the Empire.”

Aleksander had always been perceptive, and his judgments of himself were as accurate as any. But it is always disconcerting to find one’s private business so obvious to one without even a smattering of melydda. I’d had no intention of telling him of my troubles. As for Aleksander, the moonlight confirmed what his words had suggested. He had seen a great deal of death, and he had not been sleeping enough.

“I see no blood and no missing limbs,” I said. “Things could be worse.” Only after eight days of clarity could I believe it.

The Prince jerked his head. “Let’s walk. I need to stretch my legs. I’m off to Kuvai tomorrow.” He had never been one to be still. He strode through the bands of moonlight that pierced the night between the pillars. Silence hung between us like a heavy curtain, and I wondered what was troubling him.

“I hope your lady Princess is well, my lord.”

“The dragon woman? As stubborn as ever. Last time I saw her, she smashed three lamps and came near setting the room afire because I refused to listen to a plan for opening up tax-hold lands to tenant farmers. I’d been on horseback for six weeks straight, not a single night with a woman, nor a single day without being in the middle of some stupid, senseless, bloody dispute, and she greets me with an hour’s babbling about ‘using idle land for something worthwhile’ and ‘allowing the poor to feed the people when the landlords wouldn’t bother.’ ”

“Sounds like a well-thought-out plan.”

“The cursed scheme is brilliant . . . of course it is.” Aleksander shook his head, laughing wearily. “She is the most magnificent woman in the Empire. And, yes, I told her so, and she’s probably got five crops planted and harvested already, it’s been so damned long since I’ve seen her. The gossip in Zhagad is that I’m going to take another wife, as we’ve not yet made an heir, but I’ve not lain with her three nights running in these two years. Lydia says she could as soon conceive with the wind.”

I could make no answer to that one.

“And what of your Queen . . . did you get things sorted out between you?”

“I can’t . . .”

“Ah, your shy Ezzarian ways. You should veil your face if you don’t want to reveal the truth. I’d say things are not going as you hoped.”

As we passed another pillar, he fell silent again, and I decided not to dissemble any further. “Why have you called me here, my lord? As glad as I am to see you, I don’t think it was for the purpose of exchanging family news . . . no matter how engaging.”

He stopped and faced me, and one would have thought his amber eyes had a Warden’s sight, he examined me so thoroughly. “I needed to see you and hear you. To judge. To see if what I remembered was truth or only the remnants of some drunken dream from my benighted youth. To see if I had been misled.”

An uneasy wind whined through the line of pillars. “And what do you see?”

“You are the man I know. Which means I have no simple answer to my problem.”

“Will you explain?”

He started walking again. “Once we had the Khelid cleaned out, I thought we would get back to the usual way of things. That I’d have some time to get my head around what I need and want to do . . . in the future. When my time comes. But my father was affected . . . sorely affected . . . by all that happened two years ago. How he was duped by Kastavan. How close we came to disaster. He has no heart for ruling anymore. Good enough. I am not a child. I know how to keep the appearance and hold my tongue, and no one dares question when I say ‘my father told me thus’ or ‘the Emperor commanded me so.’ For a while things went well. I traveled the Empire and made sure all knew that I was indeed my father’s voice, as was proclaimed at my anointing.”

The Prince walked faster as he talked. “But soon it was as if every noble in the Empire got wind of Father’s weakness and decided to strike out on his own. They began encroaching on each other’s land, fighting over borders that were settled years ago, violating trading agreements that profited everyone in favor of trade wars that profit no one, stealing horses, kidnapping children to exchange for concessions. Stupid bickering. Senseless bloodshed. Every dispute became a blood feud. You’d think we’d gone back five hundred years. At the summer Dar Heged, three nobles were killed dueling, and one baron defied me so brazenly, I had to exile him. At the winter Dar Heged, five families refused to come at all.”

So it was the weight of the Empire that had settled on his light heart and strong shoulders. “They’re not letting the Emperor—or you—settle their differences anymore.”

“Only when I come with soldiers and swords. I have to pull them apart and make them talk to each other and see their stupidity. Sometimes they won’t listen even then, and I have to force them to it.” Aleksander stopped and leaned his back against one of the stone pillars. “But I can manage that. Most of them come to their senses once I show them I’m not afraid to shed a little blood. Theirs or mine, either one. Some amount of disturbance is only to be expected with the uncertainty—an invisible emperor, a young heir. If it doesn’t get any worse, and if I keep moving fast enough, I can keep it under control . . .”

“Except for what?”

“Another factor has entered into the problem.” He fixed his eyes on me again. “Tell me, Seyonne, what do you know of the Yvor Lukash?”

“Nothing. What is it?” The words were some obscure dialect of Manganar.

“Means ‘sword of light’ or something like that, so I’m told.” After a last glance, he started walking again. “The one so named and his followers are the thorns in my side. He has taken it upon himself to right every wrong in this Empire overnight. He wants to share out grain to those who can’t pay for it, take the power of judgment away from the Derzhi hegeds and give it to locals, change laws he doesn’t like, change the terms of indentures . . . free slaves. My father’s advisers scream at me to wipe him out. The bastard has a great deal of support among the people—as one might expect. But for a long time he wasn’t worth my trouble. I’ve no objection to most of his goals, and his methods were mild. Stealing a few cattle and sheep, releasing a few prisoners, trespassing, irritations to landlords who behaved badly. Despite what you and my wife think, I’ve no wish to have people starve. But in the past months it’s gotten out of hand. He’s going after tax-levy wagons. Burning houses. Kidnapping my nobles. Hijacking merchant caravans. There are roads that are no longer safe.” The Prince stopped at the crest of a rugged hill, just beyond the last pair of pillars on the north end of Dasiet Homol. His arms were folded, and his face was angry, ruddy in the moonlight. “I won’t have it.” The Derzhi prided themselves on their roads and the peaceful trade that extended to the farthest reaches of the Empire—even if such prosperity never touched their subjects.