Revelation (57 page)

I spun and lunged forward, then drew back and curved my arms into the second movement, struggling to put aside my fear and horror, knowing that it was not possible, yet finding comfort in the attempt itself. For the few moments that I was lost in familiar practice, concentrating everything upon the precise working of body and mind, I could pretend I was as I had always been.

I pressed outward with my arms, and pulled my foot back slowly, deliberately, folding myself inward. One by one I forced my body through the moves, pulling the charred rubble of my soul into some semblance of order, shutting out the anger and resentment blaring inside my ears, fighting his insistence that jerked at my limbs and demanded my feet do other than I told them. I would hear him. I had no choice. But only when I was ready.

After a time he fell silent, and soon the furious resistance moderated. He was tired, too. “This is what I do to prepare for battle,” I said as I shifted into the tenth movement. “It has served me well since I was a youth. Body and mind must work in harmony to do the work I do.” I began to laugh as a man can do only when he is freed from fear because his worst nightmare has come to pass. “Body and mind, and
mind
will be more difficult.”

Half an hour later, I knelt upon the cold floor in the silence, my mind quiet, though my body was quivering like a newborn lamb on a cold spring morning. “Now tell me what I need to do.”

 

 

 

“You what?” I almost lost the delicate balance I had fought so hard to build. “Rebellion in the Empire! Verdonne’s child, do you have any idea what that means in the human world?”

“We cannot exist in the human realm without bodies,” said Kryddon, patiently. “We need a great number of them all at once. We need them . . . susceptible . . . to our entry. And we need them at the gateway. It was not our design. The Naghidda put it in place long ago, though he was planning to use these Khelid that you won free and do many other things that you would possibly find even more unpleasant. We looked for humans who were restless . . . greedy . . . all those things that cause human upheavals, and we decided to use what we found. We didn’t know what else to do.”

This was perhaps the most bizarre conversation I had ever held, more ridiculous than discussing surrender terms with a three-headed snake, more awkward than listening to the curses emanating from a dragon while held in its mouth and stabbing its tongue with an enchanted knife. Vyx was perched on the wide stone mantelpiece over Denas’s hearth. Kryddon, Tovall, and Denkkar were settled on chairs in front of me, looking distinctly uncomfortable at my outburst, and Denas . . . Denas, of course, was in my head, exposing the details of the demon venture to retake Kir’Navarrin and scoffing at my “cowardly” reaction.
Humans are always at war or murdering one another. All we had to do was make sure it happened in the place we needed.

“Once the gateway is open, we’ll be gone, and the humans can settle their differences,” said Vyx, his face wrinkled like a dried grape. His puzzled expression would have been amusing if the matter had not been so appalling.

“So it’s Rudai ‘scouts’ who have been driving the wedge between the Derzhi nobles and the Emperor,” I said, “trying to incite a battle that will just happen to take place at Dasiet Homol. And you think to go merrily upon your way into Kir’Navarrin, leaving us to say, ‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to hack you to pieces or burn your children in their beds. It was an itch in my head, and now it’s gone, let’s be brothers again? The world doesn’t work that way. The Derzhi don’t work that way. This will take years . . . murderous, destructive, terrible years . . . to get over.” If ever. And Aleksander would reap the bloody harvest.

“Tell us another way, ylad,” said Denkkar, his courtly gentleman appearance everything of reason as we spoke of thousands of deaths, years of tumult, and unending hatred and vengeance. “All we want is to get to Kir’Navarrin.”

I rested my head in my hands and tried to decide whether to laugh or weep. Now it wasn’t only one war I had to stop. It was two.

“I seem to have made a bad habit of such foolishness of late,” I said. “Interfering in problems that are not my own.”

This is not the same. The
pandye gash
caused our destruction, so it is only right that you help us recover from it. These humans have caused their own problems.

“You know nothing of humans. We—”

Those seated around me looked at me strangely, and I realized what I was doing. They were privy only to half of this discourse.

I’d hoped to see the world better
, I said silently. Carrying on these conversations in my head was exhausting.
And Aleksander is the key. You should be able to figure it out.
If Denas had access to my memories, then there was no need for me to tell him everything.

Let go . . . exactly what I was afraid to do.

A slave is allowed no privacy. No modesty. On the day Aleksander bought me from a slave merchant in Capharna, I had been required to hobble across that cosmopolitan city in chains, naked in the freezing weather and tethered to the back of a horse. I had thought then that a man could be no more exposed. But my thoughts had always—even on that day—been my own. No more. Never again.

“Do any of you have an idea how far it’s gone?” I said, forcing my attention to the events at hand. “How close are the rebels or the Emperor’s men to the Place of the Pillars?”

“One of my circle has just returned with word that a human army approaches the gateway,” said Tovall, her rich voice as well suited to serious business as to laughter. “I don’t know which one. It is enough to begin, once the gateway is open.”

“I’ve got to go now,” I said, rising from my chair. “I’ve got to stop this madness. I suppose I’ll see the rest of you at the gateway.”

“What does it matter? You seem to forget there is a body involved now. I have to go my own way. I assume the legion knows how to get where they need to go.”

“Within the hour or we leave them.”

I didn’t want to wait an hour. Nor a minute. Every minute gave Merryt time to work. It had been some twelve hours since I had sent him on his way. The Place of the Pillars was only two days’ journey from my home . . . from Ysanne and Catrin and the young Wardens. And those who could weave threads of enchantment from the lands of the Derzhi to Aifes waiting in Ezzaria certainly would have no difficulty contacting the most remote settlements in our land. The Ezzarians would come, and they would come quickly.

I gave the orders that those who lived in the castle must make ready to join the legion as soon as possible. The voice in my head had been impatient while I came to grips with what I had done. Now it was my turn to chafe as the complex protocols of the demon aristocracy took their course. Each gyos had to be notified in person by one of the Nevai captains—Tovall or Denkkar—and be given a dignified time to respond. Each had to decide—now that the time for the great venture had come—whether to stay or go. Most were going, of course. A few were afraid, and wanted to wait until they saw what fortune awaited in Kir’Navarrin. A few had made accommodations with Kir’Vagonoth and saw no reason to change. They wished to stay in the familiar castle until the last Gastai stopped hunting. A few had agreed to stay behind and make sure the mad Gastai were not let loose until provision was made for them in Kir’Navarrin. No decision was irrevocable, and, in many cases, a decision was made, only to be reversed as soon as the next gyos was notified and made his or her choice. And that, of course, took more time.

“If Myddluk is staying, then I, Flyynot, might as well go, for I’ll never be raised in rank. Better to be in Kir’Navarrin as Denas’s gyos, than here as Myddluk’s.”

“I’ll not leave Wanevyl here alone. He cannot shape himself at all properly. And who knows what waits? Perhaps we’ll begin to die.”

“I have waited since the dark times to see Kir’Navarrin again, but if Grat is willing to hold the pits, then I will stay alongside. We’ll come as soon as the word is given. Tell Denas . . . this ylad—what do we call him?—to make it soon.”

It took forever. Fifty times I strode down the broad staircase to the vaulted atrium ready to set out, and fifty times I returned to my rooms ready to break furniture and tear down walls. I saw Aeno, a Rudai servant, refilling the time vessel, and only half of Denas’s gyossi were notified. While the messengers came and went, Vyx brought me a request that I visit one of the Rudai encampments. “Kryddon says his people are nervous and need to see you and hear your words again. It would give you something to do besides break things.” Indeed there were piles of twisted papers, broken candles, bent spoons, and unraveled cloth scattered everywhere in my chambers. I could not keep my hands still. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll bring word when things are ready here.”

I was glad to move. Though I desired nothing more than to proceed straight to Fiona’s tower, I understood the need to reassure the circles. They remembered the dark times. The horror. We could not have that again. We would not.

As I walked out of the castle and bade farewell to a few gyossi who planned to remain in Kir’Vagonoth, my eye caught a glimmer of silver on a high, windswept balcony. Golden hair gleamed like a touch of sunlight in the murk. She would stay in Kir’Vagonoth. I knew it for a certainty . . . even as the consideration and every emotion it raised were cut off as swiftly and decisively as a Derzhi executioner removes a head. Vallyne had made no appearance since I’d left her in the candlelight of her resting room, yet I could no more summon a thought of her than I could sleep. I did not try to force the matter. I understood enough and guessed much more about why the lady had tried to destroy whatever of Seyonne might interfere with the one who took up residence in my soul. It had nothing to do with me. But as I turned away, she raised her hand and mine went up in reply. I was not privy to the communication that took place. He would not permit it. I turned and walked down the steps into the courtyard.

A horse was brought to me, but I said I would not need it.

Only when he was fighting in the practice arena had I ever seen Denas assume a physical body. I understood his reluctance, his pride, but this body was mine, and I would not let him rule it. I had scarcely begun to summon the enchantment, when my extremities grew warm and flushed with such pleasurable tingling as if I had just drunk a barrel of summer ale. Then came the onslaught . . . a surge of glorious melydda that nearly stopped my heart . . . and my wings unfolded as swiftly and easily as the sunlight spreads at dawn.

I had never known anything like. Not in myself. I had seen such exhilaration once—on a young man’s face in the Makai Narrows, as he transformed himself and set off to save the lives of his outlaw band. I soared into the driving wind, not fighting it awkward and graceless, but sensing every whisper, every eddy, every nuance of the storm, and knowing how to glide through it, under it, using it, shaping it to serve my need, to bear me up. For that moment the two minds who lived in my body were one in awe at what we made together.

We could have made a thousand other shapes—a wolf to run swiftly, a dragon to breathe such fire that would melt the snows of that wasteland. We could have become a horse finer than Aleksander’s prizes, or found warmth and comfort and monumental strength in the thick fur of a Makhara bear. But I was made for wings, and there was nothing more I could desire. Every moment of that brief flight was completion.

My pleasure was short-lived. I circled the flickering lights of the Rudai encampment, and by the time I touched my feet to the snowy plains, every demon eye was on me. My skin burning, I pushed my way into the crowd, as if I could hide among the light-drawn shapes. The flat roof of the dark low buildings offered a venue from which to exhort the crowd as I had done from the castle steps. But instead I found myself speaking to each one alone. They crowded close, their luminous faces fearful, tentative, flickering on the edge of hope and terror. Some of them touched my skin that glowed golden in the darkness.

“To Kir’Navarrin,” I said. “Home. It is the first step.” I didn’t know what would come after. We would learn that when we had made the passage safely. “Be easy on the vessel that you choose,” I told a broad-shouldered youth whose essence was deepest green. “You are only borrowing the body, and the host will be frightened and in pain.” A thick, rugged fist gripped my hand, and I turned to meet the bold eye of blue fire. “You must not use that fear and pain, for it is not yours. You have no right to it.” A haggard woman brushed her fingers on my cloak. “You deserve your own life, not one that is borrowed or stolen. We’ll find it in Kir’Navarrin.”

The visit took much longer than I had intended, and I lost track of the time. But I was just speaking to the last of them when a messenger appeared at my side. “Your gyossi are prepared, and Vyx told them to come ahead. They’ll meet you on the way. No need for you to go all the way back to the castle.”