Authors: Carol Berg
Transformation (39 page)
“When he was talking about the others, he said it. ‘Everything was chaos. You were taken.’
Taken
, not dead. Very clear. The guilt was leaking out of him.”
Taken
, not dead. Very clear. The guilt was leaking out of him.”
“You should rest,” I said.
“You should watch your back.”
Chapter 25
The break in Aleksander’s fever was only temporary. Though I had little doubt that his vigorous health would prevail, the dirty wound was deep in his belly. The healer cared for him throughout the morning after Rhys’s midnight visit, so I had little to do but watch and stew and wonder what in Verdonne’s name to do about anything. I longed to speak to Galadon again, but I dared not approach him now that others knew I was there.
After endless hours of nothing, I was so restless and agitated, I thought I might start ripping shelves off the walls or throwing things. Though he could not have heard me, I sat on the Prince’s bedside and told him I was going out for a while, that I needed to clear my head. “The Ezzarian healer is here with you, my lord. I’ll be back before she leaves at sundown. I’ll not desert you.”
I started out walking, passing several people who did not see me. Even the children had been warned. Not one of them slipped, even when two of them came near trampling me when they came barreling out of the schoolhouse door. I might have been made of sunlight. After four or five such meetings, my hand flew to my face just to make sure it was still there. How often since I’d been a slave had I wished for invisibility? Experiencing it was altogether different from my imagining.
I tried to sort out my thoughts, but somehow since my conversation with Rhys I had been incapable of putting any two of them together in any logical order. Every time I tried to consider Rhys and Ysanne and the meaning of their bargain with the demons, my thoughts would skitter away into something trivial. What did they talk about? Rhys delighted in parties and laughter. Ysanne preferred intimacy and quiet pleasures. What wine had he shared with Ysanne at their wedding? Ysanne loved sweet, dark wines, and Rhys disdained such “putrid child’s drinks.” He would only drink thin, sour white vintages. Idiocy. Why did I care?
Aggravated at my inability to think, I started trotting, and by the time I entered the trees, I was running, faster and faster, first along the main path and then angling off on the game trail that Aleksander and I had followed the night he was injured. The harder I ran, the better my mind settled into coherence.
It was astounding enough to know that the demons were working together and had been doing so for so many years, that one demon could bargain for all of them. But beyond that change in the working of the world, what in the name of sense had possessed Rhys to strike a bargain with them? He had always been rash. It had continually set back his training, and Galadon had despaired of getting him to think before striking. But surely time had taught him prudence, and paired with Ysanne, a strong, decisive, experienced partner, he could not have entered into such an arrangement without consideration. As my feet pounded on the hard-packed dirt, I began to conjure visions. With nothing of magic, of course, only memory long forbidden. Rhys ...
I envied Rhys his height. At ten he was taller than me by a head and his shoulders twice as broad as my scrawny frame. If we were both to be Wardens, then any advantage of height or strength would place him ahead of me. It wasn’t fair to be bested through no fault of my own. But on the day we decided to explore the caverns carved out from under Caenelon by the springs of Valdis, height and bulk were no advantage. We’d heard of a series of crystal-lined rooms beyond the “gargoyle cavern” that everyone could reach. But to get to them, one had to crawl half a league through a low tunnel, then flatten oneself against a wall and squeeze through a short, narrow crevice. I slipped through the crack easily and raised a light, calling to Rhys to hurry, as I’d never seen such a wonder as the sparkling cave.
“Seyonne, wait!”
“Come on,” I said. “There’s more beyond. It’s like diamonds in here.”
“I can’t fit. Come back.”
I didn’t want to go back. I was halfway through the slot into the next cave, gaping at amethyst walls, ceiling, niches, and crevices.
“Seyonne, help me!” The rising panic in my friend’s call dragged me back. He was in the dark, so terrified at the prospect of being stuck forever underground, that he’d forgotten the words to make a light—the first enchantment any Ezzarian child was taught. He had stooped over to squeeze his head through, then wedged himself tight, caught with one hand ahead of him, one hand behind, and something snagged on the overhanging rocks behind him. He was panting hard and said the rocks were so tight about his chest he couldn’t breathe properly. After ten minutes of close examination, including poking my head back through the crevice underneath him, I concluded that it was his leather rucksack—carrying such necessities as cheese and bread and apples, nuts and ropes and sweets—that had caught him.
“Going to have to cut off your balls to make you fit,” I said solemnly, unsheathing my knife.
Rhys’s eyes, already bulging in fear, dwarfed the caverns. “Merciful Valdis!” he whimpered.
I slashed the straps on his shoulder, and when the rucksack released, his pent-up fear shot him through the crevice like a stone from a slingshot. He bowled me over, sending my knife flying and scattering our treasured supplies, leaving two apples rolling slowly across the stone floor. “Your balls,” I said, and we exploded in laughter. For an hour we lay choking on wild hilarity in the diamond cave, flickering our magical lights on the crystals and marveling at the glories of life. He swore on that day that when we grew up to fight demons, he would never fail me—even if he had to cut off my balls to save me.
I ran faster, propelled by worry, confusion, and sickness of heart. By sixteen years of confinement ... of pain and loneliness ... of forbidding myself to remember. Even when my side felt like Daffyd’s spear had pierced it, my legs knotted in cramps, and my breath came in burning gasps, I could not stop.
What was I to do about Aleksander? Ysanne saw him as too damaged to save. So did Galadon. But were their judgments clouded by the Prince’s identity, as Aleksander assumed? Would they say the same if he were not Derzhi? If so much had changed among my people in sixteen years, wasIafool to believe that their impartial generosity still thrived?
Without realizing it I began to control my breathing and the ferocious beating of my heart, slowing them, commanding my muscles to loosen and stretch, to work smoothly. Always my thoughts came back to Rhys. What had he done?
My eyes flicked open to clouds. Or fog. Or some other indefinable grayness. Moisture condensed on my overheated skin and dribbled down my bare back ... and chest ... my bare everything. Where were my clothes? Confused, disoriented, beginning to be nauseated, for I couldn’t tell whether I was right side up or upside down. My feet felt nothing underneath, and I began flailing my arms in panic.
Where was I? Where had I been last time I knew where I was?
Training, of course. When did I do anything else?
“Aife?” I dared not speak Ysanne’s name. Galadon would set me back a week for such a slip of discipline. A week ... It was not training, but testing. I’d been taking the last test after five grueling days. I had taken the last step. Through a curtain of fire ... Sweet Verdonne, was I dead?
“Aife! Master!” I flailed and twisted, and felt soft clutching at my arms. Demons? Spirits of the afterlife? I yanked my arms away and still they clutched at me ... and laughed. Quietly at first, as if at a long distance, then closer and more boisterously. “Holy Verdonne,” I said defiantly. “Take me to the light if I’m to live with you.”
“Take him to the light!”
“He wants light!”
“All right. Just remember it was your idea.”
“Serves him right!”
Just in front of me a blinding spark set a torch blazing, and a hand took shape in the mist—a very solid, thick-fingered hand holding a pewter goblet brimming with golden wine. It was quickly followed by a pair of exuberantly wiry eyebrows topping two bright eyes something like those of a fish. “You may want this,” said the owner of the eyes, pushing the goblet into my hand. “Verdonne sent it and said ‘maybe later.’ For now you’re condemned to stay with us.”
And, of course, the mist of merry enchantment dissolved, and I found myself clad in nothing but wood smoke, standing beside a cheerful bonfire being laughed at by Rhys, Hoffyd, my sister Elen, Garen . . . and Ysanne, who sat quietly on a rock, frowning in concentration as she examined me. She took a long pull at her own pewter goblet as I stood paralyzed with embarrassment. “I’d always imagined a Warden would be more impressive naked, but Galadon swears he passed his testing, so I suppose we’ll have to make do with him.”
As I tried without success to shrink into nothing, Rhys, Garen, and Elen collapsed into raucous hilarity, and Rhys tossed me a Warden’s cloak of dark blue. “We tried to get it on you while keeping you modestly hidden in the mist, but I was afraid you were going to crack our skulls.” He lifted his goblet. “Congratulations, my friend. You are the youngest ever to pass the Warden’s testing. May you know nothing but victory, and return from every battle unscathed.”
“Here, here,” cried the others, raising their cups. Ysanne’s rare smile unfolded like a butterfly from its chrysalis. For so many years she had been suffocated by the ten courtiers Queen Tarya set to watch over and protect her every hour of every day. She had never attended a village school or gone adventuring with those her own age, so she had only just started to be comfortable around my friends. They had been astonished to discover her wicked sense of humor. I would have laid wagers that this “unveiling” was her idea.
After embarrassment and confusion had yielded to elation and shared joy, Ysanne returned to her studies and the others went off in search of food. Only Rhys and I were left by our midnight fire. We sat in companionable silence for a while, letting the echoes of our friends fade into the sounds of a peaceful night. Then Rhys broke the quiet. “You’ve left me behind, Seyonne. I can’t share your path or your battles now. But I will. As soon as I can, I’ll follow you. Leave me a few demons to fight.” We joined hands and swore our Warden’s oath to each other, and believed we had glimpsed the truest meaning of the universe.
I lengthened my stride and increased my speed. The trees alongside the path blurred.
“What did you say to her? I thought she might bring the cliff down on your head.” Rhys flopped onto the grass beside the log seat Ysanne had so recently vacated. I was still smarting from her angry words.
“I just told her I needed to go back to Col’Dyath for a few days to clear my head. That’s all.”
“How can you bear being in that place all by yourself? Rocks, wind, not a twig or a blade of grass. Gives me the twitters, it does.”
“These last few encounters have been vile,” I said. “It takes me awhile to get my equilibrium back after battles like that, and I don’t like to burden anyone with it.”
“But you’ve got the most beautiful, intelligent, marvelous woman in Ezzaria melting at the sight of you. She’s been cooped up so long with Tarya and Galadon, she’s going to burst ... and you’re going to be the lucky man to catch it. You’re insane to leave her for a second.”
Why didn’t anyone understand? “Sometimes I just need to be alone. I’ve fought sixty battles in six months. Sometimes I think I can’t get a full breath unless I’m out of the trees and away from ... everything. A few days is all I need. Then I’ll be ready to go again.”
Rhys rolled toward me and propped his head on his hand, while chewing on a long blade of grass. “And you just told this immensely desirable woman that you have to be away from her for a week so you can get a full breath? That you spend too much time with her? And it’s only been three weeks since the last time you did this? You are absolutely mad.”
“It’s not like that.”
“But that’s what you said, and that’s what she heard. If Galadon ever decides that some of us more ordinary talents can possibly be worthy of being named a Warden, you’ll have me making a portal into your soul to find the demon. And if not that, then what?”
“There’s more than that. There’s something strange happening with me. A change. Powerful ... as if I’m about to open a door into another place within myself. It’s so close, but I can’t quite grasp it, and when I’m with Ysanne . . . I can’t think of anything but her. I drown in her, Rhys. And while I’m doing it, I am a madman. But whatever this is, I’m going to go crazy if I can’t figure it out. So I have to be alone.”
“And did you tell her about it?”
“I can’t. She’ll worry.” And it wasn’t just that she would worry ... she would ask and probe and try to help, and make me tell her that I had a gnawing, growing, lunatic conviction that I could jump off a cliff and not die from it. I hadn’t told anyone about it ... or about the burning pain that had cropped up in my shoulders and had me ready to scream whenever I lifted a sword. They would think I was mad or injured, and they would stop me fighting. I couldn’t have that. “It’s something I have to work out alone.”
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