Transformation (59 page)
Authors: Carol Berg
Kiril pressed his moment’s advantage. “My lord, this Korelyi claims that I have withheld a case belonging to Lord Kastavan, but why would I desire anything from those I believe have slain my likai. I would rather rot in slave rings before possessing one jewel, one trinket, one gold coin that crossed the palm of Lord Dmitri’s murderer. I’ll wager my life that these ‘treasures’ are in my Lord Korelyi’s possession already. I think he seeks to have all males of the House of Denischkar disgraced or dead.”
The dawn light slipped from gray to red as the sun sent its first warning, and every eye in that courtyard turned upward. Korelyi laughed. “Does this boy, this murderer’s hireling, think to thwart his Emperor’s judgment by such a pitiful show? If these weak accusations are the best intrigue he can deliver, I fear for the future of the Derzhi.” It was perhaps not a good time for the Khelid to laugh.
“We will settle this now,” said the Emperor. “Take me to the Khelid’s apartments.” Ivan strode into the palace by way of the door beneath my perch.
Remember, Kiril. Remind the Emperor that your men burned their fingers on the case. No one but a sorcerer could open it. Remember to guide, not lead. Let the guilt unfold. Let Korelyi’s cockiness ruin him. Keep things moving, so the Khelid doesn’t have time to speculate on how this has happened.
I waited in breathless silence, then from the room beneath me came such a roar of anguish that it shivered the red tiles on which I sat. Ivan. Was it only the sight of his dead brother’s belongings drew such agonizing grief from him? Or was it the revelation of the dreadful mistake he was about to commit? Or had he ... oh, gods ... had he given the final execution order before he came out, lest in some moment of weakness at Kiril’s sorrow he might relent?
A beam of red light glanced off a metal facing on a chimney across the courtyard. Without caution I leaped up and ran across the sloping tile roof, faster, up and down, leaping from one roof edge to the next. Slip, grasp for a fingerhold. On my feet again. Summon the wind. I had no wings, but I needed anything to speed my feet, to bear me up. I had memorized the way across the roof from the residential courtyard to the prisoners’ court. Why had I waited? Because I had never expected Ivan would fail to witness his son’s execution. I had thought him irredeemably hard, but he was only a father trying to live through terrible necessity.
I leaped from the east wing roof, across the gulf to the barracks, up the steep rise and down to the wall of the prisoners’ courtyard. “Stop! In the name of the Emperor!” I cried.
The burly, black-hooded man blocked my view of Aleksander. All I could see were his hands bound behind his back and the long bare legs sticking out from the gray tunic as he knelt, bent forward, on the steps. Was he dead or living? Would the gray-clad figure slump and fall? The broad ax rose slowly into the air. Unbloodied.
“Stop!” I cried again, this time in Ivan’s voice. “Your Emperor commands it!”
The executioner paused and looked around, wondering where his sovereign stood that he could hear him so clearly.
“Do not let this ax fall, headsman,” I said, “or you will be the next under its blade. This prisoner has my reprieve. He will not die this day.”
Chapter 37
The rumor got about the Empire that Ivan zha Denischkar once touched the hand of Athos, and that was why he kept to himself so much in the last years of his reign—to contemplate it. It was said that on the day he saved his son from the Khelid conspiracy, he was able to transmit his voice throughout the Imperial Palace, and because it was at the moment of dawn, it must have been Athos that gave him the power.
I was well content with such rumors. As Aleksander had learned, Ezzarians are, of necessity, shy of fame, and need no reports of miracles to complicate their lives.
I sat on the roof and watched as Ivan ran into the prisoners’ courtyard and found his bewildered son still kneeling at the headsman’s block, and his son’s executioner gaping about in search of the body that went with his liege’s voice. A few moments later, as the Emperor held the Prince in a fierce embrace, I took pleasure in the brilliant grin that blossomed when the searching eyes of amber came to rest on a particular gargoyle beside the guard barracks waterspout. Kiril was the one who had the sense to cut the bindings from Aleksander’s hands, and after a cousinly embrace, he also turned a smiling face to the roof ... or the sky, as rumor would have it.
Had it been anywhere but Azhakstan in early summer, I might have stayed on the roof, content to find a shady spot out of anyone’s line of vision and sleep away the daylight. But I had no wish to be broiled, so I crept back across the red-tiled vastness, then dodged running slaves, excited servants, and a platoon of guards to make my way back to the old priests’ room behind Druya’s deserted shrine. There I drained a water jar left from our long night of preparation, curled up in the cool darkness, and slept.
Inevitably someone came to wake me up before I was ready. “Seyonne, come on. Time to go.”
It was Kiril, cleaned, trimmed, and polished like a new sword. Candlelight illuminated the eager young face and the gold chain work that hung over his dark red tunic. “He told me you’d be holed up somewhere sleeping.” Though I’d have sworn I’d been asleep less than an hour, it seemed to be after dark already.
I sat up, dry enough to spit dust balls. “Didn’t see much else to do.” I wasn’t about to set out through the Derzhi stronghold during the scorching daylight after a night with no sleep. I still wore marks that could get me in serious trouble.
“Well, you must come with me now. Here, put this on.” It was a long, flowing white robe such as some of the more traditional heged lords wore. “We’ve got to get going. I’m expected elsewhere.” I threw on the robe over my clothes and allowed him to drag me through courtyard after courtyard, through lamplit galleries and breezy cloisters.
“Is all well?” I managed to hold him still while we waited in a doorway for a wide stair to be clear of people.
“Very well. Lord Marag arrived an hour after dawn. I’d sent for him to witness to what he’d seen in Karn’Hegeth. Almost an hour too late, but he did what was needed, and he brought reports from other garrisons. Zander and the Emperor have been in war councils all day.”
I grabbed Kiril’s arm before he could take off again. “And what of Korelyi?”
“Ah, well, we’ve not managed to nab him yet. The Emperor was so worried about Zander ... and the guards didn’t understand what was going on. They saw the Khelid going three different directions at once ... but we’ve searchers out, and the gates are closed. He’ll not escape us. We’ve taken care of all the other Khelid in Zhagad. Now, come on. I’ve no time to talk.”
He led me up the flight of winding stairs to a wide gallery, past two stone-faced guards who might have been blind for all the notice they took of us. On one side of the gallery wide-open windows welcomed the flower-scented night, and on the other, curtains woven of gold thread hung in five or six arched doorways. Kiril pushed me through one of the curtains into a dimly lit room. “You’ll be safe here. Just stay until I come for you. And enjoy yourself. You’ll want to take a look out the back curtain after a bit.”
There was food inside the small, luxuriously furnished sitting room, and the smells had my stomach growling louder than a shengar. The repast—cold fowl, fruit, pastries, bread, salted fish, slices of savory pork and mutton, rolls of green leaves containing delicate shellfish and shredded vegetables, spicy sauces with nuts and tart berries, and innumerable other delicacies—was the finest I had ever sat down to. And in the midst of it all was a voluminous pitcher of cool water and another of red wine. I almost drowned in the pleasure of it.
About the time I filled my plate for the third time, I heard a trumpet fanfare followed by pipe music beyond the heavy curtain of brilliant colors on the far wall. The pipe music was haunting and lovely, echoing through the ancient stone of the Palace, beckoning me to pay attention, but I ignored it for a long while, preferring the food as entertainment. Only when I sat back and wondered why Kiril had brought me to such an odd place, did the young Derzhi’s obscure remark at last penetrate my gluttonous madness. I jumped up and peeked out the curtain, afraid that I had missed something very important.
Far below me, in a vast cavern of a room illuminated by a thousand candles, Aleksander knelt before the Emperor. Ivan’s thumb was on the Prince’s forehead, and the words of the anointing were just fading into the music.
“Arise, Aleksander, our successor, our son. Heed him, all of you, and fear him, for he is the voice of his Emperor and the living surety that our glory will never end.”
Aleksander was in dark green. No diamond collar this time, but his lean face wore a quiet and solemn dignity that became him better. He stood up and kissed the man who, only a few short hours before, had sentenced him to death. Then he turned to acknowledge the genuflection of the small crowd—some six or seven hundred onlookers. The beaming Emperor motioned to his attendants and swept from the dais. When Aleksander rose from his genuflection at his father’s passing and followed him down the steps, Kiril stepped forward and whispered in his ear. Aleksander turned in the direction of my observation post and bowed from the waist, setting off a turning of heads and general murmuring that would no doubt feed rumors for years ahead. The curiosity would be enhanced by the fact that he immediately greeted the Lady Lydia—breathtakingly beautiful in dark blue and silver—in such a manner as to preclude any question of other dalliance.
I wasn’t worried about being discovered. The Emperor-to-be and his cousin were no doubt capable of keeping me private in the heart of the Palace. Once they had passed from the hall, I went back to eating. The journey back to Dael Ezzar would be a long one.
For the first time in almost seventeen years, I allowed myself to think of the future. Five years. Our law said that if one spouse went missing, the other would be free to marry again after five years. Five years was not so long a time. Ysanne ... When someone stepped in the door, I whirled about and said, “I need to be off, Lord Kiril. I’d be most grateful—”
“Do not imagine that you will go anywhere of your own accord this night, Ezzarian, or ever again for that matter.” From behind the gold curtain stepped a pale-haired man with blue eyes, not the ice-blue horror of demon’s eyes, but the natural blue of a human, boiling with anger and hate and lust for vengeance.
I tried to raise my hand or my foot, anything to defend myself, but Korelyi held a small, oval medallion that gleamed ruddy gold in the candlelight and screamed with the dissonance of demon music. “A little trinket left from my former companion,” said the Khelid. “We had prepared it for the Emperor himself, but I think I would rather use it for my true enemy.” He walked around me slowly, and I could not so much as turn my head to follow. “The catalyst. The slave. Always at the periphery of events. Who would have believed it was the pitiful Ezzarian sorcerers who were the nemesis of the rai-kirah—the
pandye-gyash,
they call them, ‘the hidden warriors’? Won’t they be pleased when I tell them how to find the rest of you? The rai-kirah are much more attuned to the way of things in the human world now. I’ll make sure to be there to watch when they come.”
pandye-gyash,
they call them, ‘the hidden warriors’? Won’t they be pleased when I tell them how to find the rest of you? The rai-kirah are much more attuned to the way of things in the human world now. I’ll make sure to be there to watch when they come.”
He stepped closer. I could smell the aura of murderous vengeance on him. “But you ... you will have to imagine it.” The brass medallion was suspended from a steel chain, which he placed about my neck. It might have been a mountain, it hung so heavy on my chest. It was a fight to breathe, and speech was out of the question. I desperately hoped that Kiril would show up soon ... with a Derzhi legion behind him.
“Come with me. Now I’ve found you, it is time to walk out of this place.”
Against my will my feet began to move. Korelyi pulled up the white scarf to hide my face and took my arm companionably—not quite breaking my elbow doing it. Down the corridor and the stairs. Through the galleries and courtyards and passageways. The Palace was a hive of activity and excitement, but even with so many, no one challenged the Khelid. Many nodded and greeted him respectfully. I didn’t understand it.
“A glorious night, Lord Kiril,” said a young Derzhi as we passed.
“Indeed. A touch of swordplay on the borders will make it perfect.”
Kiril ... It took me a moment to realize that they were addressing Korelyi as Kiril. I couldn’t turn my head, but he reached to open a gate, and I glimpsed his aspect. He had worked an illusion, giving himself a mask that resembled Kiril. Though imperfect and lacking the earnest innocence of the young Derzhi, it was enough for eyes that expected only truth in their seeing.
I delved into myself, trying to come up with some bit of sorcery that might throw off the demon working, but his surprise had been complete. All I could do was name myself a fool and five thousand worse names. How could I have let down my guard so completely?
Out of the palace gates, through the inner-ring wall, through the outer walls into the teeming tent cities of those too poor, too diseased, or too unsavory to be permitted into Zhagad. Korelyi pushed me through dark lanes lit by spitting yellow torches, through the crowds of hawkers and thieves, prostitutes and lepers, goats and pigs, to a dark, stinking corner of the tent city. Compared to the clamor of the lanes, it was eerily quiet. A moan from the shadows was followed instantly by the sound of a lash.
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