Transformation (24 page)
Authors: Carol Berg
“Only to send for you, and to get my sword.”
“To get your sword?”
“He said, ‘Get the Ezzarian ... the sword.’ So I thought I was to get it.”
“I don’t think he meant for you to kill him, though.”
While Aleksander continued to lope about the perimeters of the garden, Durgan asked if we dared move, as he needed to be off for a few minutes.
“Go ahead. I’ll stay here.” I didn’t expect him to return. Shengars were vicious and unpredictable.
The burly Manganar was back in five minutes. I knew he was come when he laid a scratchy wool cloak over my bare shoulders. Blessedly dry. “Thank you,” I said.
“It’s only right. You’ve no call to help him.”
“I’m not helping either of you,” I said, drawing the dry warmth around me and indulging the bitterness that often welled up when I found myself grateful for the pitiful scraps that should be a man’s right. “Never think it.”
“But you are one of the guardians? You fight the darkness, as my gran told us?”
“In the only way left to me.”
“Does the Prince know what you are?”
I watched the great cat roam the vast garden, stretching its long muscles.
“I am only a slave with a bit of knowledge,” I said. “And I will never be anything else.”
Unwilling or unable to argue the point, Durgan moved back toward the fruit trees and settled himself to watch the garden entrance.
After a time Aleksander came back to me. He growled softly and circled. I gathered that he wanted me to talk again. “Shall I speak gibberish to you?” I said, drowsiness and the proximity of enchantment leaving me fey and careless. “Shall I tell you tales? Or sing? Or shall I speak of women or books or the life of trees? Or tell of the stars in the southern skies ... if there are still stars somewhere? Too bad. Once I knew something of those things, but no longer. Perhaps I will speak of cleaning tile floors and the places I have seen cracks in your foundation, or I’ll tell you that your pen maker is cheating you because the reeds he uses are not the best.”
I cared nothing for Aleksander. His few kindnesses had been only more scraps.
Give the slave a bite of meat without gristle. Give him two cups of water. Ah, yes, a hand under his arm when I’ve kicked him half to death. Only one lash today, Ezzarian. No matter that we’ve taken your life and your soul and crushed them beyond repairing. No matter that if you were set free this very hour, you could never go back. Never.
I rolled onto my hands and knees and vomited up bile.
Give the slave a bite of meat without gristle. Give him two cups of water. Ah, yes, a hand under his arm when I’ve kicked him half to death. Only one lash today, Ezzarian. No matter that we’ve taken your life and your soul and crushed them beyond repairing. No matter that if you were set free this very hour, you could never go back. Never.
I rolled onto my hands and knees and vomited up bile.
Aleksander shied away, hissing at the foulness I left on the ground. “Come back,” I called wearily. I tugged the sodden cloak about my shoulders, then, shaking and empty, turned my face to the sky, letting the rain cool and wash my face. “I’ll not leave you. Kastavan and his evil twin will not be rid of either of us so easily.”
I spoke of the weather and the land, mostly how the weather in Capharna was so different from what I had grown up with, though we, too, had a great deal of rain. It was the only thing I could come up with that was not bitterness or horror or implacably dull because I had shut off the well-springs of thought while I existed in the Derzhi world. And while any memory of Ezzaria was painful, geography was about as distant as I could get from anything truly important.
For more than three hours I talked and soothed the restless lion prince, until my eyelids were sagging and my words stumbling. Then the shengar screamed, and it startled me awake. I was confused and groggy, and fell backward into the mud, my heart drumming like a smith’s hammer.
“Aleksander!” I called, afraid I had let him slip away.
A blast of heat like that of a dry pine bough thrown on a fire threatened to set my wet hair on fire. A flash of green and red. A shapeless form—two entwined images—writhed in the mud battling with itself. A wrenching groan escaped amid snarls and growls, as if a living man were being devoured by the maddened beast. I scooted backward, slithering through the mud so the battle could not touch me. Fifteen minutes it took for the enchantment to wane and leave the long, lean figure sprawled facedown in the mud, rain spattering on the red hair and green satin. No sooner had the last trace of the shengar disappeared than I heard a hoarse whisper through chattering teeth, “A bully, am I?”
“Indeed, my lord, you are. And well you know it.” I helped him up and hung the sodden cloak about his broad shoulders.
“Then, you must confess that you are my guardian spirit, Seyonne. If I can no longer pretend, then neither shall you.”
Our eyes met for a moment. I looked away first. In the depths of his soul, the feadnach burned.
Chapter 16
We retreated to the gardener’s shed again, though Aleksander swore he was done with skulking about in filth. “I can rid my apartments of listeners well enough,” he said, “and I won’t have to sit about wet.” He was in immensely good spirits, considering what he had just been through. “And I’m ravenous. Next time find me a herd of fell-deer. There wasn’t even a rabbit in that garden.”
Next time. He spoke of it as if it were a dinner party, even while he was yet shivering uncontrollably from the release of the enchantment.
I, on the other hand, was exhausted and afraid. Dealing with demon enchantments when I was powerless was fearful at best, and Aleksander’s frivolous approach to melydda was unnerving. “One more day, Your Highness,” I said. “When your father’s thumb is on your forehead bearing the oil of chesem, then you may feel like we’ve accomplished something.”
“It was the sword,” he said, cupping the steaming mug of nazrheel in his still trembling hands and inhaling the foul odor with satisfaction. “And Dmitri. I’m sure of it.”
It took me a moment to realize what he meant. “The trigger?”
“I was to surrender my sword to my father—a symbol of my last night of youth. I unsheathed it and laid it on my palms, and as I stood there looking on it, I couldn’t help but think of how Dmitri ought to be here with me in these days. Magical foolery is nothing compared to this punishment he has contrived. Stubborn old villain.”
“You don’t think—”
“There is no bandit party could hinder my uncle. He’s taken as many as twenty of them single-handed without breaking a sweat. And the warriors of his traveling cadre are only slightly less skilled. No. Dmitri, ever the likai, is teaching me a lesson.”
“And you believe that the thought of him together with the touch of a sword sets off the enchantment?”
“The first night I was dancing in this damned Khelid magic trick, and I had taken off my sword. When we were done, I put it back on ...”
“... and you thought of what you had planned to be doing.”
“Exactly. The second time was when I was sleeping, of course, but the third, when the heged lords were swearing to support my father’s choice of successor, I held their swords. Baron Demiska is Dmitri’s old comrade. ...”
I sighed. “It sounds quite likely. And so tomorrow ...”
“I will touch no swords, and I’ll do my best not to think of the despicable bastard.”
“Stay cautious, my lord,” I said. “If the Khelid get any hint that you’ve figured it out, they could alter the spell or attempt another.”
“Tomorrow is my dakrah, Seyonne. I will be anointed Emperor-in-waiting. Were they to make me a jackal, do not imagine I would yield.” He was supremely confidant.
I was not. There were never any certainties when facing the rai-kirah, and I could not imagine the purposes of a Gai Kyallet. Had the Khelid made some bargain with the Lord of Demons, or had their greed and ambition only made them fodder for its unfathomable purposes? Nothing in all the lore I had studied gave me any answers. While Aleksander finished his nazrheel, I dredged up everything I knew that might give me some clue as to these happenings. And so I found myself thinking again of the Eddaic Prophecy, and its warning of a First and a Second Battle in the war to end the world. Ezzarians had believed that the First Battle, the Derzhi conquest of Ezzaria, had been lost as the prophets foretold, but had taken solace in the prediction that the Second Battle would only take place when those same “conquerors from the north” had become one with the demons. If any of us survived, we would have plenty of time to recover, to prepare before all of the Derzhi could be possessed. But what if the conquerors from the north were not the Derzhi, but the Khelid, a race already one with the demons? I could not dismiss the thought of it. I no longer had faith in gods or prophecies, but the tale nagged at me as I helped the Prince to his feet, and checked outside the garden shed for prying eyes. There were other parts to the prophecy, too: stories of a warrior, a man with two souls who would step forward to take on the Lord of Demons and prevent the doom of the world ... and there I had to end my useless ramblings. I didn’t know anyone with one undamaged soul, much less two.
I returned with Aleksander to his apartments. Though it was well into second watch, lights were blazing, and soldiers and householders were everywhere. When the Prince was recognized beneath the mud and soggy finery, thirty shocked attendants tried to examine, undress, avenge and interrogate him all at once.
“Where have you been, my lord? The Emperor is most ... most disturbed at your absence.” Sovari, being an experienced commander, got the upper hand on the chaos. “He’s got search parties scouring the palace and the town. When he heard you didn’t show up for the feasting ...”
“Clear out! All of you, out of here,” commanded the Prince, batting away the hands of solicitous servants, and pushing away cups of wine and nazrheel being shoved in his face. “Is it inconceivable that I have an hour to myself? I’m sick of guests and ceremonies and feasting.”
“An hour, Your Highness, but it’s been six! You ran out of the ceremony, and no one knew where you’d gone.” The warrior scanned the Prince’s sodden disarray. “We thought you were ill. What’s happened to you?”
“Nothing happened to me. I went walking in the rain. I wanted to clear my head before tomorrow. To be alone for a while. I slipped and fell and got muddy. That’s all.”
“Walking alone ... Then, what of him?” Sovari nodded at me, puzzled, with the slightest flavor of suspicion. I, too, was coated with mud. I had tried to slip back through the candle room, but the way was blocked. “One man suited your company, it seems.”
“Hardly company.” Aleksander snorted. “He is a slave, not a man.” He rubbed his hands together, warming them by his hearth. “Gods’ teeth, how is it I let you query me this way? If you didn’t suit me so well, Sovari—”
“Of course, Your Highness,” said the captain hastily. “I was only curious, as this slave seems to be everywhere these days. What message should I take to the Emperor?”
“Tell him it was nothing.”
Sovari laughed bleakly. “If you value me as you say, my lord, you would not send me to the Emperor with such a message. I fear for my head.”
“Have Gottfried pass the message. He’s always been the one to get me out of my scrapes with Father. Been with him since the dawn of time. Should have been a dennissar, he knows how to tell unpleasant news so diplomatically.”
“A fine idea.” Sovari wrinkled his nose as he helped Aleksander out of Durgan’s wet cloak. “Are you sure you’re all right, my lord?”
“I need to sleep. The slave will help me with all this. You get my father calmed down. Tell him I’ll be ready at first hour of fourth watch as he has commanded me.”
“Sleep well, then.” When he got to the door, the young warrior turned and bowed deeply. “May this day see the dawning of your glory and assure the future glory of the Derzhi Empire.”
Aleksander nodded quite regally, considering his grime-streaked face, his half-unraveled warrior’s braid, and his bedraggled clothing. When Sovari was gone, I helped the Prince strip off his wet things, and I brought him warmed water to clean the mud from his face and hands. When he was done, he pulled a blue vial from a drawer in one of the immense wardrobes in his bedchamber and held it up to me in a toast. “To my guardian spirit,” he said. “You did me great service tonight.”
“I don’t want to do it again,” I said. “May you have an uneventful birthday.”
He grinned and dived onto his bed. I would swear he was snoring before he reached it.
Two days gone.
Athos at last decided to reveal his glory on the day of the dakrah. Aleksander kept the windows of his apartments uncovered, and I was wakened by the brilliance of a cloudless morning. I had taken the liberty of sleeping by his hearth again. By the time I had put out all the lamps, cleaned his boots, and hidden the wet wool cloak so that no one could trace its owner, it hadn’t seemed worth the time to trek back to the slave house. Durgan knew where I was. Besides all that, I was nervous. If the rai-kirah were determined to prevent Aleksander’s anointing, then the enchantment they had laid on him was not enough. They were planning something else, and I had spent several wakeful hours trying to figure out what it was.
The whole matter made no sense. If Aleksander’s beliefs were true—and I had no reason to doubt him—then nothing short of death would prevent his anointing. Whims, tantrums, and odd behavior were not unthinkable in royal circles. Even if some of the Derzhi were to see the Prince in the throes of the enchantment, what would they think? Nothing. The Derzhi did not believe in melydda. They would consider it illusion, a joke, Aleksander being foolish again, or some perverse sort of pleasure like that of men who took dogs to bed along with their women. It was odd, but nothing that could turn Ivan against his son.
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