Revelation (56 page)

“No!” Several voices yelled it, and one of them was surely mine. “Treachery!”

Hands of flesh clawed at my arms, while invading, unseen hands grappled for my mind, ripping me apart.
Lost . . . forever lost . . . ruin . . . horror . . .
Images exploded like bursting stars behind my eyes, blooming huge and vivid, then fading in painful brilliance against a background of midnight: landscapes, faces, writing, pictures. Snips of music, singing, chanted prayers, battle . . . unending battle, blood, and death, unending cold and darkness. Smells and sounds and sensations, grieving and mourning, joy and lovemaking—all of them, one after the other coming and going. Every finger’s breadth of my body burned, and my mind was stretched, twisted, seared beyond bearing as I struggled to escape what I had chosen. The flames that shot from my chest and from my arms and hands blinded me, as if the snow and sleet and choking smoke from snuffed torches had not done enough. I was on fire . . . so many images of burning . . . As each one dwindled into nothing—even those so terrible no man could wish to own them, even those that must have come from stories, for they were none of my experience—I cried out to summon its return, terrified that I was losing all I knew of life.

Denas . . . Only the fleeting glimpse . . . the knowledge of my last misjudgment. No time to speculate, for I was going mad, and I would not waste my last sane moments on my own stupidity. I was a Warden of Ezzaria . . . a warrior . . . and I needed to be in control. Even if I had yielded my soul to the most powerful of the Nevai, the most deadly, the one filled with bitterness, cruelty, and hatred for everything that I was, I would fight to hold sway. My son . . . my people . . . were depending on me.
My purpose must sustain me
. And then came the burning and the explosions of memory in my head, and I could scarce stand up for the brutal result of them. He was devouring me.

Have care, Yddrass. Gennod comes . . .
The sharp warning pierced the tumult.

I felt a new attacker, using my vulnerability to claw at my purpose, loosing worms to burrow through my head, probing for names, for talents and weaknesses, for information that could be used against the
pandye gash
. But the moment’s warning gave me time to gather my melydda and repel the assault, to build a barricade that would split my skull and release a holocaust were it breached.
You’ll not use me to destroy them, Denas. I’ll not permit it.
Anger was my sword.

“Vyx, is that you? I’m blind.” Because of my inner chaos . . . blazing tumult . . . invasion . . . violation . . . I could not see what was happening around me on the castle steps. Jostling. Stumbling. Cries heard only faintly beyond the raging in my head. Fear so palpable it must be sitting on the steps by my feet, laughing. I staggered, ready to crumple under the weight of horror and darkness and unending confusion, but my anger and my purpose held me up and kept me from being pulled apart.

The voice whispered in my ear again.
This way. Stay behind the others, away from Gennod. Then to the center of the top step. Raise your arms and speak the words I tell you.

My feet moved without me telling them, taking me up a step and forward. I came near falling on my face. “Who’s there?” I said. “I can’t see.” My body and soul were on fire, and someone wanted me to speak. I flung my hands out wildly, but felt no one near. How could I reassure anyone, when I was going to be ash in less time than a hummingbird lights on firephlox?

You must reassure them. They don’t understand what’s happened. They couldn’t see.
My mentor was very tense. On the verge of screaming himself.
Will you simply display some care for them? By the Nameless, hurry. I can’t think. You’re killing me.

“Warriors of Kir’Vagonoth, my brothers and sisters of the Nevai, honorable kin of the Rudai Circle, glorious hunters who have sustained us in our trials, our venture will go forth.” It was my tongue that spoke the words. My lips that shaped them. But they were not my words, nor was it my will that drove them past the barriers of madness. “I could not stand by and let this mission be diverted. Our first and only goal is Kir’Navarrin. Nothing else. Not vengeance. Not the resurrection of evil legend. Not power over anything but our own fate.” Wavering lights, floating on ocean of fire. The dark shapes of the jackal gates took vague form, scarcely visible behind the walls of flame. My back was straight, my arms spread as if to embrace the storm-wracked world. I wanted to cry out for help, but instead I kept on speaking to the surging lights. “In this ylad’s form I will lead you to your home. When the time vessel is emptied once again, Tovall and Denkkar will dispatch the Nevai, and Kryddon and Nesfarro the Rudai, into the human lands. All is prepared for us. Our hosts approach the gateway. I praise noble Gennod, our brother, for relinquishing this duty to one of greater strength and experience, and I exhort and command him to hold the Gastai here, ready to come when the signal is given. To war, if the
pandye gash
choose war. Home, if the
pandye gash
choose to let us pass. I will meet all of you at the gateway, and I will hold the way open until every one of you is home.”

As the last word fell from my tongue, the host of demons cheered in wild madness. “Denas! To Kir’Navarrin!” Then they began to disperse, winking out like stars obscured by cloud. Kryddon and Tovall, Denkkar and Kaarat remained close behind me, and Vyx was at my elbow.

Gennod knew he was outmatched. I batted away his invisible hand that was reaching for my throat. My own hand twisted in the air, and I came near vomiting with the words that my tongue spoke—a binding that would hold him in physical form, imprisoned in the pits until I loosed him.

“You will rue this hour, Denas!” Gennod called out to me from beyond my protective circle, even as three of Kaarat’s Rudai came to deliver him to the mad Gastai. “A fine trickery. You had all of us fooled into thinking you saw the truth of this vile universe. But we will have him out—our master who will lead us to greatness without these bestial humans. And you will be trapped with this one outside, for I’ll see that you never walk Kir’Navarrin. May you enjoy dying. May it be slow—” The Rudai guards spoke their own words, and the red light flared and vanished.

My feet were released from the will that had moved them to the center of the steps, and I backed away from the small circle of demons who stood staring at me—in awe, in thinly disguised disgust, in anger, in sympathy. Who were they looking at? The man . . . or the thing that now lived inside of him? Inside of me?

I flattened my back against a pillar and wiped at my mouth with my clammy hand. I had not spoken. Though the words had come from my mouth, I’d had no hand in shaping them. Hand . . . I wanted to laugh. I extended my hand in front of me, flexing my fingers, feeling the cold rough flesh, scraping my fingertips on the scars of twenty years of battle and slavery. For every one there was a story, and each story sped through my awareness like fluttering pages in a book. I found myself staring in curiosity at the callused ridge around my wrist where bands of steel had held my chains for sixteen years—as if I had never noticed it before. But there was more. About the edges of my fingers and my palm flickered golden light, and when I curled the fingers into a fist, the light grew brighter, fiercer. I was revolted.
Crude flesh . . .
No! Why did I think that? It was the light that horrified me—the garish gold light that did not belong with human hands. Was it I—Seyonne, son of Gareth and Joelle—who felt this creeping sickness? Or was it the other? How would I ever know? I wanted to strip off my flesh, rip open my head to release the presence that had taken control of my speech, whose visions and memories—yes, now I understood it—were obscuring my own, whose scraping, abrading invasion had set my flesh and spirit on fire.

“Come, my friend, are you well?” Vyx motioned the others away. “Is it done fairly?”

“Which one do you address?” I said harshly, choking on the very words. “We may have differing opinions.”

“You are only one.”

I knew better. Everything was changed. The cold wind had a new edge to it, a honed razor that scraped at my skin. The pelting sleet sounded like hail drumming on the paving stones. I could hear each frozen droplet cracking, splitting as it struck each other one. Vyx’s soft voice snapped sharply at its edges like a sheet hung in the wind. I could hear the creaking of the ice crystals buried in the castle stones, the ring of boots as some demon wearing a body raced across the tile floors inside the doors, the faint trickle of water passing through the time vessel, marking the passing moments since the changing of the world. My head was about to shatter.
So loud . . . all these sounds . . . so clear . . . like knives they pierce
. . .
We’ve got to get out of Kir’Vagonoth. There’s so much to do. You’ve no idea what is needed.
Anger, resentment, and bitterness welled from my depths. My feet started to move again.

“Stop it,” I yelled, holding my ears as the whispering began again. “Leave me alone.” My heart was hammering at my chest. My blood was liquid fire, racing through my veins, threatening to burst through my skin like spewing geysers. I turned my back to Denkkar, Tovall, Kaarat, and Vyx, and pressed my head against the pillar, forcing my feet to obey me and be still, forcing aside the anger that was not my own. How had I ever believed this could be the way of things? How had I come to think I was strong enough to manage it? “He wants to destroy me.”

“For a time it will seem so,” said Vyx. “Denas was a very powerful being, as are you. And he desired to relinquish control of his existence no more than you. But he is one with you now. There will come a day when you can no longer tell the difference.”

I would not believe that. I could not. “I hear his voice.”

“We believe that when you step into Kir’Navarrin, that too will end.” Even in my frenzy I could hear Vyx grieving . . . for Denas, his friend and honored lord, the one who had loved his darling Vallyne for a thousand years, though neither could remember if he had even known her before the dark times. The three who had plotted my downfall.

“You will remember, Vyxagallanxchi?” Only the movement of my lips told me I had spoken . . . softly and with as much gentleness as pain and unbounded fury would allow.

The slender demon gazed at me with blue fire in his eyes. “Aye. I will remember. We will all of us remember.” Then he motioned me toward the castle doors, held open by two gaping Rudai. “Come. Time is fleeting. You need an hour’s peace before we begin.”

I could see no prospect of peace ever again.

I sat rigid in the dimness of my room . . . Denas’s cold and barren room . . . staring at a miserable fire, trying to resist the urge to plunge my hand into it to remember what it felt like. Vyx had shooed everyone away, then made me promise not to do anything but sit and try to come to some balance within myself. “Free yourself of anger and fear, and things will look very different,” he said. “You have done what you believed right—as did the rest of us. It is all any one of us can do. I’m sorry we had to keep this secret, that we could give you no time to learn more of Denas, but you know . . . now you know . . . that it was necessary. You possess a great deal of knowledge that you didn’t before, but you must allow yourself to see it.”

I didn’t want to see. I wanted my own memories, my own knowledge and understanding. Nothing else. I buried my head in my arms and forced myself to take slow breaths. “The fire will burn worse than what I . . . we . . . felt earlier,” I said through clenched teeth. “I will not put my hand in it. I may have use for a hand later, and I can’t grow another one.” Madness. But the urge faded quickly.

The semidarkness was soothing—quiet. For once the cold was welcome. My shirt was drenched with sweat. I blotted my forehead on my cloak.

We need to be on our way. There is much to be done.
My body began to rise from the chair.

But I put it back again and held my seat firm. “I will go when I’m ready.”

“Nor am I yours.” I stared into the darkest corner of the room, trying to make my eyes relax. They felt like glowing coals. And I needed to slow my heart before it burst, and settle my jangled head, or I was going to start screaming. Desperate for some kind of balance, I rose and began the first exercise of the kyanar.