Revelation (50 page)

“By my boots!”

We slogged across the plains, up the snowy hillside, and half an hour later we stepped through the doorway. The storm fell away behind us like a dropped cloak.

I drew in my focus. “Aife!”

There was no answer. Of course, there was no reason to expect that she would be standing her vigil at any particular time, but I hoped she would come soon. Almost three hours had passed since I had checked the time vessel, and it would take me at least two to get back to the castle. I might have to send Merryt on his way alone. Merryt looked at me inquisitively, but I shook my head and settled onto the floor. “She weaves only an hour a day,” I said. “We’re going to have to wait.”

“Gives me time to enjoy the thought of it.” The cheerful Merryt put on his blue cloak and sat down on the pine bough bed, the image of the one I had slept on while Catrin nursed away my fever. Catrin . . .

“You’ll need to be careful in the world,” I said, the immensity of Merryt’s journey striking me all at once. Almost four centuries. “Avoid cities and caravans, and any place where people are desperate enough to sell another man. Ezzarians attracted some unfortunate attention in the recent past, and, though we are safe and protected in Ezzaria itself, imperial law requires us to be enslaved.”

“That explains your collection of marks. So much to learn. You’ll have to guide me. Teach me. How things must have changed in so many years.” He ran his wide fingers over his face like a blind man. “I’ll start to grow old again. Do you think it a fair trade for sunlight and warmth?” He started chuckling to himself. “Everything is a bargain, is it not? Some better. Some worse. Some beyond imagining.”

As we waited, I told him more of the world. Of the Empire. Of Ezzaria. Of history and politics, money and roads. “This Aife will tell you what you need to know, and who you need to talk to. My mentor would be the one to start with. She’s on the Mentors—”

“She! A woman mentors Wardens? This Derzhi war must have left us worse off than you’ve told me.”

“Don’t misjudge her, Merryt. I did when she first took me on. If anyone can get—”

I leaped to my feet, holding out a hand to tell Merryt that I was hearing something he could not. “I’m here, Aife. And I’ve brought a friend.”

With no more words, the portal took shape in the gloom, and beyond it the dazzling light of a full moon. Merryt rose slowly to his feet, his eyes riveted on the wavering image. “By the Nameless,” he whispered, stumbling forward as I nudged him to hurry.

As he stepped through, he began to laugh, spreading his arms, spinning about in wonder, craning his head back to see stars and moon and open sky. He whooped and swirled the blue cloak about himself. I yearned to follow him. But I stepped only as far as the portal itself, the place where I could speak to Fiona easily without Merryt overhearing.

Hurry, Warden,
she said.
We need you here.

“Again, I cannot. There’s more to do here. But this Merryt, the Warden I told you of, I’ve sent him through. He brings warning, Aife. He must go to Ezzaria and make the Queen listen. Do you—?”

Why wouldn’t the stubborn woman listen? “I can’t. Not yet.”

Her determination was like a parent’s hand, gripping my arm and pulling me forward to a place I had no intent to go. “For an hour,” I said. “No more.” And after taking a moment to change into the silver-embroidered black tunic and gray breeches that had been wrought by human hands, I heaved a nervous sigh and stepped back into the world of light.

 

 

 

“Never tasted anything so fine,” said Merryt, sucking on the greasy bones of a roast duck. He wiped his hands on his damp blue breeches. “You can invite me to eat the remains of your supper any time at all.”

I was still filling my lungs with the warm, humid night air, while Fiona checked on Balthar, who was snoring peacefully in the ruined temple. Merryt had gone from one thing to another in the half hour since we had emerged from the portal, plunging his fingers into the damp earth, yanking fistfuls of grass and showering them on his head, touching or smelling every plant, bush, and tree. He had dived headfirst into the river like an otter, his bellowing laughter echoing from the rocks as he splashed and flailed, then come back and stuffed himself with every morsel Fiona could provide. It was impossible not to smile at his glee, even as the passing time nagged at my patience. Vallyne would be waiting, yet every moment I breathed the air of the living world made it harder to consider going back.

Somewhere from the darkness came a mournful cry, some bird or beast giving depth to the night beyond our cheerful firelight, while releasing its own troubled spirit. I shivered, poking at the jasnyr-scented fire, though the air was warm. Jasnyr . . . now I knew why the smell was abhorrent to demons. It had been used in the rites that destroyed their lives, their last true physical sensation before they woke in the frigid desolation of Kir’Vagonoth.

“The old man will sleep for a while yet,” said Fiona, coming back into the firelight. Were I to judge by the young woman’s appearance, no time at all had passed since I last sat on the temple’s broken steps. Her thin body was no softer, her face no less stubborn, her dark, straight hair still cut short, her man’s clothing as worn and serviceable as ever. Only the fine-wrought lines about her eyes hinted at a passing time of care and worry.

 

“You’ve survived it,” she had said on emerging from her Aife’s trance, greeting me with a probing look that told me she had sensed the worst of where I had been. “I could find no way to reach you in the darkness.”

“How long?”

“We’re just upon the Wolf’s Moon.”

“Wolf’s Moon . . .” The first full moon of autumn, when wolves howled in anticipation of winter kill. Three full seasons had passed. My son had seen his first birthday. He would be walking . . . laughing . . . saying his first words. Would they have shaved his head as they would a Manganar boy at his first year? Likely they wouldn’t know how to perform the rites of naming as were done in Ezzaria. And I . . . I had languished in the pits of the mad Gastai for more than eight months. What friend or kin or lover had ever been so faithful as my adversary Fiona? “It was the thought of your stubborn heart that kept me alive,” I said, dropping my eyes, unable to face the intensity of either her scrutiny or her apology. “Only you. But now I need to get—”

She pressed her hand to my mouth. “Don’t say it yet. Let me feed your friend and check on the old man, then we need to talk.” Before she walked away, she jerked her head at Merryt, who was sifting earth between his fingers. “He’s been in the demon realm for a long time.” I heard the question in her statement.

“He got me out of the pits—saved my life—and opened my eyes to some hard truth. You need to listen to him and help him on his way. But, yes, he was there a very long time. I’ve told him of the mosaic and my beliefs, but I’ve not told him my name or yours, or anything of Blaise or—”

“I need to show you something about the mosaic, then we need to get him out of the way for a while.”

“I don’t think he has any desire to sit still.” Merryt had said he was anxious to get on the road home. Who could blame him?

While Merryt started gnawing on another leg of Fiona’s duck, Fiona beckoned us over to the mosaic, where the gap in our understanding glared at us in accusation. Merryt showed no interest in the pictures, saying he had no desire to discover any kinship to demons. After a cursory glance, he said he preferred to eat and drink his way through Balthar’s stores, and he returned to the fire.

Fiona folded her arms and cocked her head at me. “The hole in the mosaic . . . have you learned what was the cause?”

“No. I don’t know what it means as yet.”

“Then, you need to see this.” She whispered a few words and motioned with one hand, and causing a pulse of enchantment to shiver the air. I glanced toward the floor, and sank slowly to my knees. The empty hole preceding the saga of the demon split was no longer completely empty.

“It was your mention of this Kir’Navarrin,” said Fiona, kneeling at my side while I tried to unravel the meaning of the complex patterns of blue and red and yellow that lay before me. “When I repeated your words for Balthar, he came near climbing the pillars. ‘Don’t ask it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’ Well, he did know, of course.”

“He hid this part from us.”

“Something frightened him about it, and he still won’t tell me everything. Evidently, among the words around the edge of the mosaic, it says ‘Kir’Navarrin is forever forbidden’ or locked or some such business. This”—She pointed to a figure kneeling beside a pond and holding her head—“is a Seer. Balthar recognized the symbol on this ring she wears. And these three squares seem to be her visions. You can see where a fourth one is still missing. I think Balthar knows of that one, too, but the old fool won’t tell me any more. Can you understand the images?”

The first square depicted a battle, destruction, people who looked like Ezzarians weeping and running away. “This one is the First Battle of the Eddaic Prophecy,” I said. “The one that was to leave Ezzarians defeated and weeping.” And so it had, we thought, when the Derzhi crushed us in three short days.

“And this one . . . I suppose it’s you and Prince Aleksander. And the demon-ruled world behind—the consequence if you had failed.” She laid her finger on a winged warrior, glowing with light as he battled a monstrous demon.

The warrior did not look so much like me, save perhaps for the river of blood pouring out of him and the shredded wing that still gave me twinges when I thought of it. But the demon opponent . . . even as I brushed my own hand across the snarling face, I felt the cold evil I had known so intimately for three very long days of combat. “If I had seen this before I set out that day, I might never have gone,” I said. But my attempt at lightness fell flat, and my eyes raced to the third square.

The scene was like many in the other parts of the mosaic. A portal. A man with bronze skin and straight dark hair was walking down a road toward it. He was carrying a key. Beyond the rectangular gateway lay the images I had come to believe represented Kir’Navarrin, the home of my ancestors when we were one with the demons. On a distant mountaintop, beyond the graceful dwellings and the magnificent trees and flowers and fountains that were the true reflection of Vallyne’s garden, was a small dark blot. At first I thought it was a bird, a hawk or a vulture brooding on the rocky peak, ready to swoop down on its prey. But the scale was wrong. The object would be much larger than a bird. Brooding, yes. Waiting. A fortress, perhaps—and indeed I could see the dark outline settle into shape as I thought of it. A fortress holding truth that was locked away, truth too terrible to know, a danger from the beginning of the world. Other figures were on the road between the man and the portal. Tiny images of men and women who carried swords. Some were fighting. Some were standing across the road, as if to guard the way. Many of them were dying. Some already dead. The essential question, of course, was the key in the man’s hand. Was it the key to unlock the portal itself—the gateway between the world I knew and Kir’Navarrin—or was it the key that would unleash the secret danger of that fortress? Was the key an artifact of steel or brass that would unlatch a physical hasp or was it some word or action that would unleash the brooding danger? What most disturbed me was that the man with the key had wings.

“You feel it, too?” said Fiona, pointing to the black smudge. “This is something vile and dangerous, and you’re walking right toward it.”

“Yes, but I’m not sure what it means. Prophecy is so convoluted . . . and this doesn’t show the consequence of the action. Right or wrong . . . even if this is me, even if I carry the key, I don’t think we can outguess it. We need to get on with things—see what we can learn.”

I didn’t know whether Fiona believed my offhand dismissal of the image. Of course I carried the key. But I could not talk about it as yet, because the implications were too monumental. Prophecies were cautionary tales, warnings to have a care when approaching the future. Possibilities. The image of prophecy wrought upon these broken pieces of stone had indeed given me an insight . . . the portal and the fortress were two different pieces of the puzzle. Opening one did not mean opening the other. And so, perhaps, if I was strong enough, if I could force myself to do what was needed. . . . My judgment was suspect, so I could not say the words aloud until I had dismissed my doubts. But to right so great a wrong as had been done to my people and the rest of the world was everything I had sworn to do with my life. And the possibility of an end to the demon war was so enticing, so consuming . . . I had lived a life of violence and craved an end to it. I devoutly wished I could see the fourth square.