The Last Talisman (29 page)

Ido was silent for a moment. “I have to go and see her.”

“She's not well, Ido. She's nothing like the teacher I once knew. Hate consumes her. Hate so profound it has marked itself on her face.”

“None of that matters. I've seen my share of embittered souls.” The thought of his brother crept into his mind. He quickly shook the image away. “I want to know who Deinforo is; I want to understand my own obsession.”

“You know my feelings about this. Just be careful.”

Ido nodded.

The dwarf left the following morning, headed for the Academy.

First things first, he went to bid Vesa farewell and gained permission to leave his dragon in the Academy stables. At least his time spent training the students there had brought some perks.

He then went looking for Parsel, but the teacher, he learned, was busy with his students at the moment. Ido left him a message.

They met off Academy grounds, at a bar in Makrat. Parsel walked in wearing a look of awkward embarrassment.

“Don't make that face,” Ido said, starting right in. “I'm not an invalid.”

Parsel got the message right away and returned to his usual, churlish manner.

They spoke of the battle, of his duel with Deinforo, of the many losses suffered. Soon enough, the discussion fell upon his meeting with Raven.

“Fighting is my life. I don't know what to do with myself otherwise. I imagine it's the same for you,” said Ido.

Parsel gave a wary nod.

“I refuse to believe that losing my eye was the end for me. I'll train. I'll at least give it a shot. I'll learn how to fight like before, better than before, using the one eye I still have.”

Parsel remained silent.

“What? You don't think it's possible?”

“There's still the fact that you'll be fighting with a much bigger blind spot than the average warrior. And that's something you can't just fix,” Parsel replied.

“Since when did anyone fight with only their eyes? There's still your sense of hearing, smell, touch … I'll figure out a way to use them to my advantage. It'll be like having a hundred eyes, on the back of my head, on the tips of my fingers … But I can't do it on my own. I need your help, Parsel. Do you think you could find the time to help me train?”

“I …” Parsel muttered hesitantly.

“Look, I know we're not close friends. And I know you didn't exactly approve of my behavior in the past. But we're bound together by those young men who died out there, who died because of my error.” Ido stopped speaking for a moment and looked him in the eye. “I'm asking you to do this for them. To help me make good on my mistake.”

For a long while, Parsel said nothing, his eyes glued to the table, running his finger around the rim of his glass. Ido was on tenterhooks.

“Well then?” the dwarf spluttered at long last.

“Fine. I'll do it,” Parsel answered. “You're a great warrior, I know, and it would cripple the army to lose you. But I can only help you in the evenings. During the day, I'm busy at the Academy.”

Ido downed the rest of his beer in a single gulp. “Nights work for me. If I'm learning how to see without my eyes, I suppose the dark won't hurt.”

30

Return

Ido found himself a small house within the walls of Makrat, nothing as accommodating as Soana's place, but more than sufficient for his spartan existence. The days of comforts and condolences were over. It was time to begin a new phase in life, to rely solely on his strength of will.

Life as a civilian, he quickly realized, was even more repulsive to his nature than he'd imagined. The days rolled by in a monotonous bore. He passed the hours wandering the city or staring up at the ceiling. Then came the evenings, and Ido could finally breathe again. He met with Parsel in a wooded area along the margins of Makrat, where they trained through the night.

It was a struggle at first. The world, it seemed, was spinning too fast. Invisible beings seemed to be constantly materializing in his periphery. It was hard to believe how much the force of habit had dulled his senses.

During the first phase of training, they put a patch over his good eye, too. It would be the best way to develop his sense of hearing and touch. The results were hardly encouraging those first few weeks, and he often went home badly scraped. But soon, his long experience on the battlefield paid off. Ido learned to distinguish each sound and where it was coming from. He developed a keen sense of the space around him, learning to trust the sound of the wind between the bushes, to intuit the direction of each strike by the sword's hush as it sliced through the air and by the rustling of footsteps on dry leaves. He felt like a child again, regaining a long-forgotten enthusiasm for simple discoveries. Night after night, he improved, and though he still couldn't match up to Parsel, he could feel the day was nearing.

As autumn settled in and he found his stride in training, Ido decided he could afford a few days' rest. The time had come to pay Reis a visit.

He'd learned from Soana that the sorceress lived in the Land of Water, at the falls of Naël, in the region where they'd clashed with the Tyrant's armada. He prevailed upon her to give him a detailed account of the hut's location.

It was a gray, gloomy morning when he reached Reis's dwelling. Despite Soana's clear directions, he'd had to pass through the waterfall several times before figuring out the exact path and arriving, soaked to the bone, at the hut's front door.

It was a squalid little hovel, and Ido was surprised to find that such a powerful sorceress—the very woman who'd given Nihal the key to saving the Overworld—was living in such a pathetic hole. Warily, he knocked, but there was no response. He reached down to try the handle and realized the door was ajar.

Stepping inside, he gagged from the reek of mildew and stale herbs. The inside of the hut seemed somehow even more sordid than the outside. At first glance, it looked more like a witch's den than the home of a sorceress. Books lay open on the ground, their pages filled with sinister-looking runes—volumes of forbidden spells, no doubt.

Some friends Soana's made for herself. …

“Who's there?” came a grating, frightful voice.

Ido jumped. “Ido, Dragon Knight, a friend of Soana's.”

A shriveled figure appeared in the shadows—an old, withered woman. She was a dwarf, no doubt, but far shorter than Ido, almost unnaturally small. It was as if the ground were devouring her bit by bit. Her face was a map of wrinkles with two gaping white circles for eyes. Her hair streamed down past her feet, draping the ground like a carpet.

The old woman eyed the dwarf and examined him at length. “A dwarf knight …” she muttered at last. “Sheireen's teacher. … I had no premonition of your coming. What is it you seek?”

Ido could already feel a growing loathing for the rotting hovel and its crude old occupant. “There's a piece of information I need from you.”

“Nothing a sorceress knows can be of any help to a warrior.”

Ido studied her more carefully. Yes, she must have been beautiful in the past, but her beauty had shriveled up over time, just like the bunches of dead herbs dangling in the hut's rank air.

“I'm here to ask you about Deinforo, the knight in red armor.”

His words startled the old woman. Soana must have spoken the truth.

“I don't know anyone with that name.”

“Well, I beg to differ, and I'm not leaving this place until you tell me what you know. A few months ago, I faced him in a duel,” Ido went on. “This here”—he touched his left eye—“is thanks to him. And I want to know who he is.”

Reis fixed her blank white eyes on Ido and he knew in that moment that they were both thinking of Nihal. For an instant, their eyes met and Ido could feel the strength of her penetrating gaze, scouring within him, searching for some dark power over Nihal's soul.

Suddenly, Reis smiled a crooked smile. “Sit down,” she said plainly.

Ido made himself comfortable on a dust-covered chair, and she too settled into a wooden armchair on the other side of a table stacked with heaps of parchment and medicinal herbs. A small brazier filled with ashes stood at its center.

“Does the name Debar mean anything to you?” Reis asked.

At the sound of the name, an age-old anger awoke within Ido. When he'd met him, Debar had been a kind, promising boy with brown hair and blue eyes. He'd fought in Ido's regiment, and for a brief while, Ido had even taken him under his wing, before Debar was promoted, rising quickly through the army's ranks. But then, on a mere shred of evidence, Debar's family had been accused of treachery. His parents were lynched, his sister raped. Debar managed to flee, but he was badly wounded, clinging to life by a thread. When Ido heard news of his friend's suffering, he'd done all he could to set it right, horrified by what seemed to him an unspeakable injustice. But he was too late.

“Yes, I remember him well,” he said in a grim tone. “His death weighs on the conscience of all men in the Free Lands.”

“Debar is not dead,” Reis hissed. “Debar is Deinforo.”

The blood froze in Ido's veins. It wasn't possible. The image of Debar's young, hopeful face seemed incompatible with the face of the ruthless warrior with whom he'd clashed swords. “You're lying,” he muttered faintly. “How could you believe such nonsense?”

Another tremor passed through the old woman's body and she fell silent for a moment. “Many years ago,” she began at last, “before learning of Sheireen's destiny and discovering the amulet, I was captured by a Black Dragon Knight and transported to the Rock. We traveled alone, and when I saw him one evening without his helmet, I recognized the face of Debar. The knight that captured me that day, as you by now understand, was Deinforo.”

Reis was still quivering, unsettled. In her eagerness to upset Ido, she must have pushed herself too far.

Ido, meanwhile, was still struggling to wrap his mind around the old woman's words. There were too many inconsistencies, too many gaps in her tale. “What was the prophecy you made to Soana?” he asked. “What did the Tyrant want from you?”

“Nothing,” Reis dismissed him.

“Nothing? After he went through all the trouble of escorting you to his Rock in the company of a knight …”

“It has nothing to do with you and your quest—nothing.”

“Were you held prisoner?” Ido insisted.

“Only briefly. Then I escaped.”

“No one escapes the dungeons of the Rock. It's a place of death.”

Reis's blank white eyes flitted about the room, as if she were searching for a way out.

“What did you see at the Rock? What is it you're not telling me?” Ido demanded, almost shouting. Out of instinct, his hand jumped to the handle of his sword. If that old witch knew something about the Tyrant, he wasn't leaving there until she'd told him.

“Don't you dare threaten me!” the old woman shrieked.

Ido drew his weapon. “What do you know about the Tyrant?” he asked, this time lowering his voice. Still, Reis said nothing. In response to her silence, Ido sheathed his sword and made calmly for the door. Just before he stepped outside, he turned. “I'll be calling a meeting of the Council tomorrow. I have no intention of leaving the fate of the Overworld in the hands of a traitor.”

To Ido's great surprise, the old woman began to weep. “Why force me to dig up what I buried so long ago? Why shame me with my own guilt?”

Reis went on sobbing, but Ido showed no pity. There was something sinister about her, something vile. She'd been corrupted by the very hate of which Soana had spoken.

“Speak,” he said, walking back toward the table.

Reis stared him down with her tear-reddened eyes. “A long shadow hangs over my past, the shadow of an evil murderer who sucked every last bit of joy from my life.”

She stood and plucked a few herbs from a jar. As she sat back down, she lit a blue flame in the brazier with the wave of her hand and tossed in the herbs. A thick, bluish smoke rose from the pan. Reis manipulated its shape expertly with her hands.

A face began to etch itself in the smoke, a young girl's face. The contours were blurred, but her beauty was blinding. The girl was a dwarf. It took Ido a moment to realize it, but the girl he was looking at was Reis. He stared disconcertedly at the old, ruined woman seated across from him.

“I didn't always look the way I do now,” the sorceress began. “I once bore quite a different appearance. It was then that I met Aster, the most beautiful young man, a symbol of all that was good in the world. He was a councilor, just like my father, and I fell hopelessly in love with him. Naive as I was, I believed he loved me back, and I gave him my heart. I lived only to please him, to see him realize his dreams. And so I pleaded with my father on his behalf; I helped him to rise in the Council. It took so long for me to realize. Too long. And when I did, it was too late.”

Ido felt his stomach curl into knots. He couldn't accept what logic was telling him. “Too late for what? Who is Aster?”

“Aster no longer exists,” the old woman answered in a whisper. “All that exists is the Tyrant.”

Ido sat there spellbound, his tongue like a stone in his mouth.

“It was my father, in the end, who shook me awake,” Reis went on. “At last I saw the great horror that lay just beneath Aster's angelic skin, the monster masked by his sweet face. With his words, my father broke through to my stubborn heart and freed me from my willful slavery. When I discovered the truth, when I found out how vilely I'd been deceived and how I'd been used for evil, I cut my ties with Aster and showered him in hate for never having loved me truly, for having used me only to increase his power. I'd been foolish enough, naive enough, to fall into his trap, to take his hugs and his sweet, empty nothings as proof of his love. But to have left him, to have refused his false love, was not enough to purge the bitterness in my heart, the regret that corroded my spirit day after day, all of which brought me to despise my beauty, the very beauty that had made me desirable in his eyes.”

The cloud of smoke dissolved as tears ran down the dwarf's shriveled face. Stunned by what the old woman had just revealed, Ido waited patiently for the tale's conclusion.

“That monster never forgot me. He captured me and brought me back to the Rock.”

The Rock's towering outline rose in the smoke, seeming to swallow every other image.

“They dragged me to him in chains. And now that I was no longer any use to him in his quest to wrap his greedy hands around the world, he stole me, my beauty, my body, for himself. So I began the ruin that you now see before your eyes. My beauty faded, for my deepest desire was to repulse him. I began to age. My face wrinkled, my skin cracked and sagged off me like an old dress, my hair turned gray. The older I grew, the uglier I became, the more I rejoiced.” Reis brought a hand to her face and burst into a raucous cackling, her eyes lit by a crazed flame. “He despised me for what I did, he tried with every spell he knew to make me the way I once was, but his sorcery could do nothing to thwart my will. He knew, that monster, that he couldn't let me go, and he did everything in his power to keep me locked up there. I rotted for years in the dungeons of that palace, but I managed to escape in the end, for even a man of the Tyrant's power can do nothing to keep a guard from dozing off. It was then that I began tracing Sheireen's past, then that I found the talisman.” Reis lifted her mad, ancient eyes to Ido. “When the Tyrant falls, it will be my doing,” she declared. “I alone will be responsible for his ruin.”

Ido held the decrepit woman in a long, disdainful stare until a chill ran up his spine. Knowing the truth of her past, he saw Nihal's mission in a new, sinister light. And even still, there was something that didn't quite add up. Reis, he was certain, had yet to reveal the truth in its entirety. No, she'd never managed to escape from the Rock—and even if she had, it was only because the Tyrant had allowed her to. But why?

“You will share this with no one,” the old woman croaked. “What I've told you today never leaves these walls.”

“Of course,” the dwarf pledged, though his intentions were most certainly otherwise.

That night, during training in Makrat, Ido wasn't his usual, focused self. Reis's words played over and over in his head, her story of the young councilor gripped by evil. And he couldn't stop thinking of Debar. A monster of his own making, in some ways. Ido had taught so much to that skilled young soldier. At last it was clear why the red knight's technique in battle was so similar to his own. The more he thought about it, the more he boiled with rage.

In fact, Deinforo had taken the exact opposite path to his own, and this bound them by a strange affinity. There was something linking them, some magnetic force drawing them together. To have fought alongside one another and then to have made such diametrically different choices, to have maimed one another in battle. Maybe this was the explanation behind his obsession with the red knight.