Revelation (25 page)

“I don’t believe it,” said Blaise, turning to me in puzzlement.

If I had been able to shapeshift, I might have picked that moment to become a worm and creep into the bosom of the earth. When Farrol placed a worn leather packet in Blaise’s hand, I knew what the evidence was—damning, undeniable evidence. And I guessed who the “accomplice” was . . . and that my moment’s opportunity to make peace was irretrievable.

“Where is she?” I said. “If you haven’t killed her, I think I’ll do it myself.”

 

I found Fiona when I was thrown in a root cellar on top of her. We weren’t going to be there for long. Blaise would take no chances on his people being set upon by the Derzhi. He was probably flying over the countryside, searching for royal troops at that very moment. But even when he failed to find them, he would move the settlement, leaving the two of us dead, no doubt.

I was almost too discouraged to be angry. “Did anyone ever tell you that you are the most damnably persistent, annoying, rock-headed imbecile of a woman that ever lived?” I said as I shoved her legs aside to give myself room enough to stretch out my wounded leg. “Did it ever cross your mind that you could just leave me be for one moment and perhaps the stars wouldn’t come crashing to earth or the sun fail to rise?” A basket of onions took just that unfortunate moment to topple onto my head from the stacks that surrounded us in the dark earthen pit. I spat out the dirt that showered down in company with the smelly lumps, and I crushed the basket, trying to make a pillow out of it and my cloak. It had been a long day since the Yvor Lukash and his band had gone riding into the Khyb Rash.

“They would never have known I was here except the cursed horse got spooked. Some kind of a damnable goat came charging out of the brush. Demon beasts. Can’t trust them.”

I couldn’t see her face in the dark, and I was in no mood to cast a light. I just wanted to sleep . . . perhaps for a hundred years or so. But with a twisting movement that caused yet another avalanche of earthy delicacies—potatoes and turnips, this time—Fiona launched herself upward, toward the wooden door that Farrol had slammed and barred so triumphantly. After a sprizzling burst of sorcery, I smelled burning rope.

“They’ll be guarding the door,” I said. “They’re not stupid. You can untie yourself and burn out the wood—burn out the whole cursed camp if you want—but they’ll be waiting with more rope and more wood and a few knives and swords. And they won’t care what we do to them as long as they protect Blaise. They know what we can do and what we can’t.”

“So you’ve betrayed that, too.”

I wasn’t going to get into an argument with her. “I did what I had to do. Now, be still. I’d like to get some sleep.”

Trying for the trapdoor one more time, she slipped backward, so the potatoes rolled out from under her backside, and she landed right on my wounded thigh.

I erupted. “Gods of earth and sky, what ever did I do to be cursed with a self-righteous twit of a watchdog who can’t sneeze without drawing my blood? If you are so determined to see me dead, why don’t you just stick your knife in me? It would be a damned sight easier on both of us.”

“I’m sorry,” she said when she got herself untangled and helped pull a hundredweight of potatoes out of my lap, throwing them back in their heap. “Are you hurt?”

I didn’t risk saying anything more, but cast a light, lowered my breeches without regard to modesty, and worked at tying my bandage tighter so I wouldn’t bleed to death in that wretched hole.

“You seem to get bloody enough without my help. Here, let me do it,” said my cell mate. “I’ve got a clean kerchief in my pocket.” She reached for the blood-soaked bandage.

“No! Don’t touch it,” I said, yanking it away. “You mustn’t.” I could not have her touch my blood, the blood that Saetha and her demon had tainted. After the revelations of the night, it seemed foolish to worry about it, but I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Was Saetha the truer demon or was Fiona? Or Blaise . . . what was Blaise?

“Why not? I can help you take care of this. I’ll keep it clean.”

Realizing that no matter how tired I was, I was unlikely to sleep in that squirrel hole full of vegetables—not with the events of the day nagging at my head like shrieking jays—so I told Fiona about Saetha . . . and about Blaise and his followers, about Aleksander and the raids, and about my son. I hoped to shock her into silence while clearing my own head. “And so I’ve betrayed a man who shared his soul with me, who gave me back my life and my homeland,” I said as my light died away again. “I’ve abandoned my oath, taken human lives like a blood-mad barbarian, and I have given up my child to strangers. My blood has been touched by a demon, and I am not sorry for it. Now, aren’t you glad you’ve come? If you survive this mess, you can go back and tell Talar that I am truly corrupt. I name Blaise a better man than any Ezzarian I know, yet I’ve seen demon fire in his eyes. We don’t know who and what we are, Fiona, and I have the terrible feeling that we are wrong about every single thing that we believe.”

I seemed to have succeeded in my plan, at least where Fiona was concerned. She didn’t say another word. I soon fell asleep. For the first time since I had come to Blaise, I dreamed of a frozen castle and a dark horror that devoured me from the inside out.

Blaise did not allow me to explain myself when he held my rudimentary trial before the assembled outlaws. The men and women were already mounted, their wagons and horses loaded with their meager belongings. Fiona and I stood in front of Blaise, outlaw swords bristling around us like hair on an angry cat. I could have escaped if I chose—and Blaise surely knew it—but I put up with his little ceremony in hopes that he would let me explain.

Stumbling over the flowery language of the Derzhi scribe, his jutting chin daring anyone to make jest of his unskilled recitation, Farrol read the royal proclamation that declared that I was a free man and that anyone who harmed me was at peril of his life. The growls and murmuring of the outlaw tribe grew thicker than the lowering clouds of the damp morning. Several of the women spat at me, and more than one hand quivered on a sword hilt.

Blaise asked only one question. “You are the one named in this paper?”

“Yes, I—”

“Then, you can be nothing but a spy for the Derzhi Prince. It is usual to execute spies. But you fought at our sides and saved lives, my own included, and I won’t have it said that I killed a man in payment of a life debt, no matter whether it served his own duplicity to save me. So you’ll not die this day. As for the woman, I give you her life in payment for your service in our ventures. And so we are quit. Next time I see you, I’ll know whose interests you serve, and I’ll deal with you accordingly.”

“Blaise, let me—”

“Tell your royal master that the Yvor Lukash will not rest until the day a Derzhi prince serves the lowest of his subjects with his own hand.” With that Blaise motioned to his riders, who began to move down the path out of the valley. “I had hoped we might learn from each other,” he said. “But I don’t care to learn what you have to teach.” Then he wheeled his horse and spurred it forward to take the lead of the slow-moving party.

Farrol and Kyor were left to guard us. As soon as the last stragglers had rounded the bend in the path, taking them out of sight, Farrol commanded the boy to get their horses. The short man glared at me and sheathed his dagger. With a grimace he tossed two items at my feet. One was my knife, taken from me when they threw me into the root cellar. The other was my leather packet. To my astonishment, the precious royal letter was crumpled and stuffed inside it. “Damned, cursed spy. I told him he should kill you, but he didn’t even let me burn the paper. It’s a sore temptation to disobey.”

“Killing me might not be as easy as you think.”

“Oh, I know you can fight. You might even take me down with your fine sword work and your magics. But then I’ve already won, haven’t I? I found out the truth, and he won’t be taken in by you again.”

As I picked up the leather packet and slipped it into my shirt, I at last remembered where I had seen Farrol before—the beggar in the alley of Vayapol who had tried to steal the wallet from my pocket. He had been trying to protect Blaise even then, not caring for his own safety. He was no duplicitous enigma, but only a rash, foolish, loyal brother.

The sturdy round man checked his saddle girth. Quickly I took stock of my possessions. I needed something that was my own. My clothes, the black rider’s costume, had been loaned me by Blaise, which left only the paper and the knife—a fine one that Kiril had given me as I left Zhagad on the night of Aleksander’s anointing. I decided that I could replace the knife easier than the paper, so I worked a hurried enchantment, then ran after Farrol. He was just mounting his horse. At the sight of the knife in my hand, he backed away quickly and drew his sword, but I reversed my weapon, holding it out to him hilt first.

“When the day comes for Blaise, the day of this last change, tell him to find me. All he has to do is touch this knife and say my name, and he’ll know where I am. I’ll help him if I can.”

“You’ve put a curse on it.”

“I swear I’ve not. All I want is to help. But if you doubt me, then you carry it for him. If it happens that your friend and brother doesn’t need it, that you don’t need it, that Kyor here doesn’t need it, then you can throw it in the fire for an hour to remove my enchantment, and you’ll have a very good knife. But I’m going to find out what you need to know. I promise you.”

Young Kyor watched all this solemnly. Worriedly. Such a burden of dread for a young man at the beginning of his life. The boy didn’t say anything, just turned his mount to follow Farrol down the valley. But when Farrol deliberately threw my knife to the ground and kicked his horse to a gallop, Kyor slipped from his mount, snatched up the knife, then glanced at me furtively before leaping back into the saddle and riding away.

“Have you gone completely mad? You’ve just given a demon-infested outlaw a locator spell. He can find you whether you want it or not.”

I jumped. I had almost forgotten Fiona. She had maintained a granite silence the entire morning. “It’s likely he could find me anyway. You seem to have no trouble.”

“Will he come?”

The last dust settled to the road. “I hope.”

 

We didn’t spend much time in the deserted camp. We had no horses, no food, no cloaks or blankets, and only Fiona’s knife for a weapon. At least they’d left us our boots. According to Fiona, we were ten days’ walk from the nearest town. A quick scout through the houses turned up nothing more than a few shards of broken pottery, four broken arrow shafts, five half-rotted potatoes, and two handfuls of oats. We mended the pottery cup well enough to hold water, and while I boiled the oats, Fiona cut lengths of tough gray reppia vine and wove them into a sturdy bag. We ate the thin oat gruel and a few tiny, sour raspberries left on a late-flowering vine, then we packed the potatoes and the cup into Fiona’s bag and set off.

The walk was long and miserable. Autumn had decided to arrive in Kuvai with a siege of cold rain and mist that seemed to wash the green from the leaves even as we passed. At night we wove sticks and leaves into crude shelters to keep off the worst of the rain, and we huddled into piles of damp leaves and pine needles. Fortunately, Fiona was quite accomplished at making something out of nothing. I could coax a sputtering fire from damp wood, but she gleaned enough berries, wild carrots, and hedge-plums that we did not starve, and even managed to trap a couple of rabbits in the few hours we stopped to rest. I knew how to set the bone in her hand, broken when she slipped on a muddy bank and slammed it into a stone, but she knew exactly where to look for the rare herb alcya to treat the festering wound in my thigh. She it was who found the spring after we’d gone two days with nothing but rainwater to drink, and I had to trust entirely to her sense of direction, for the thick clouds prevented any analysis of sun or stars.

Beyond the basic necessities of survival, we did not talk for the first five days. I was morosely reviewing the events of the past four months, trying to decide if there had been any way to avoid making enemies of everyone in the world I cared for and most of the people I didn’t. Fiona trudged alongside me league after league, her thin face fixed in stony solemnity as if she were escorting me to my execution.

In truth, I wasn’t sure where we were going. Ezzaria, I supposed. I needed to study. To read everything again. To meditate on the mysteries I had uncovered and to talk to Kenehyr and the other scholars and discover anything that might help me know what to do for Blaise and Kyor and my son when they faced their too early doom. For Blaise it would be soon. I felt again the urgency of his followers, Farrol’s rash, flailing grief. Months, I guessed. Maybe weeks. Not years.

Yet just as it had when I was leaving Vayapol, Ezzaria felt like the wrong destination. My home had faded into unreality—the people, the life they lived, their concerns and desires as alien to me as the life and thoughts of trees. And there was another worry. Since the night in the root cellar, the haunting dreams of the frozen castle had come back with such ferocious power that I woke exhausted and shaking, flinching at every sound, at every touch. I began doing almost anything to avoid sleep, only to have the dreams invade my waking. They would creep up on me as I walked. Rather than the cool rain on my soggy outlaw’s garb, I would feel frigid wind cutting through whipping rags. My reluctant steps homeward were hurried by the compulsion to find my way into the ice castle. The quiet solitude of the Kuvai forest was invaded by creeping, frozen terror until I was checking over my shoulder every moment of the day. Never had I been so consumed by a dream. By the evening of the fifth day of our journey, as I huddled by our meager fire in the unceasing rain, I was half crazed with it.