Lords of the Sky (76 page)

His voice tailed off like a dying wind, and upon his face I saw an expression of naked grief. I heard Rwyan gasp and knew she “saw” that same pain. I said, “Tezdal, what is it?”

He said, “My boat was felled,” and offered Rwyan a tortured smile. “By the magicks you threw against us. I was believed slain; died with the rest. That word was sent to Retze, and she mourned a year, then …”

He swallowed, choking on the words. I saw tears lucent in his eyes, running slowly down his cheeks. Rwyan stretched a hand across the table, taking his. I rose and filled a goblet with wine, passed it to him. He smiled wan thanks and drained the cup.

Then he sighed and finished, “Retze took the Way of Honor.”

I’d no real need of explanation, but still I asked.

I think I was so startled by all I’d learned, so numbed by
this incredible insight into the ways of the Ahn, I felt a need of words to set it all firm in my mind. Surely I intended him no more pain.

But it was there in his eyes and his voice as he told me, “She slew herself. Such is our way, in defeat or loss of a loved one.”

Rwyan said, “Tezdal, I’m sorry. Had I known …”

He laughed at that, a bitter sound, and asked, “Should you have done different? Not flung your magicks at us?”

Rwyan shook her head. “No. But still I grieve for your loss.”

He sighed and closed his eyes a moment. When they opened, they were bright with tears. He seemed not at all ashamed to show his grief, which I think was a measure of his strength. He said, “I believe you, Rwyan. I honor you as a worthy foe; I honor you as a friend.” A twisted smile stretched out his lips. “By the Three, but were this world of ours different!”

I said, “I’d have it otherwise, Tezdal. I share your grief.”

He ducked his head. I watched as he wiped his eyes, not knowing what else to say; not knowing how this should affect Rwyan’s fate and mine.

It was a while before he raised his head, and when he did, his expression was bleak. I liked it not at all: torment was graved there. He said, “I am sworn by the Three to fight you. To destroy you. But I cannot name you enemies.” He shook his head. “They set a heavy burden on us, our gods.”

I said, “What shall you do?”

He smiled at that and barked a laugh that held no humor, but only anguish. He said, “My avowed duty is to give you over to the Changed. To see your secrets, Rwyan, sucked out, that we may take back the Homeland. To slay you, Daviot, if I must; and then go south, to war.”

Rwyan said, “And shall you?”

He wiped a hand down over his fresh-shaved jaw and looked her in the eye. “I feel myself divided,” he said. “I am Kho’rabi; I am also your friend. I am sworn to defeat you and defend you, both. I see no choice left me save the Way of Honor.”

He touched the hilt of the long dagger sheathed at his waist and offered us a death’s-head smile.

I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him there must be
another way, but Rwyan spoke while useless words still spun unshaped in my head.

“The Way of Honor?” Her voice was gentle as a blade sheathed in velvet. “Suicide? I thought you sworn to defend me. Do you take this Way of Honor, how think you I shall fare? Or Daviot? Would you give us into Allanyn’s hands?”

That was cruel, I thought. I saw Tezdal wince, his eyes starting wide, then narrowing. I thought him snared in the trap of his Kho’rabi honor; and that that was Rwyan’s intention. I understood that code of honor better now. I understood the Sky Lords better than any Dhar. I had such knowledge as would delight my College. And it was useless. Or so I thought: I failed to accord Rwyan her just due.

Tez dal said, “What choice have I? Shall I betray my people, and stand damned in the eyes of the Three? Shall I betray you, and damn myself? I am lost, Rwyan! I am no longer entirely Kho’rabi; neither am I Dhar. I see no other way.”

I was startled by Rwyan’s response.

She asked him, quietly, “Have you dreamed, Tezdal?”

He was no less surprised than I. He stared at her as if she were gone mad. She sat, calm, her beautiful blind eyes intent upon his troubled face, brows arched in question.

He said, “You know I have. Along the road to Trebizar …”

Rwyan nodded: confirmation of old, shared knowledge. “Then, aye,” she said. “But since? Whilst you lay in that vault?”

Tezdal frowned. His shoulders rose a little, and fell. He gestured with his right hand, helplessly. Then he said, “Yes. I think I did.”

“Think?” Rwyan urged him.
“Remember.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “There were eyes,” he said at last. “Great yellow eyes that urged I come to them. You two were there, and the Changed named Urt. The eyes summoned us all. I thought”—he shook his head—“thought they held answers, though I cannot say to what. I felt that did I fail their call, I must be damned.”

“I had that dream,” Rwyan said. “And Daviot. Urt, too. We
are
summoned, I believe.”

Tezdal said, “By what? The gods?”

Rwyan shook her head. “Perhaps the gods have a hand in this. I know not, but I believe fate calls us.”

I suspect my expression matched Tezdal’s then. His was of plain confusion, laden with disbelief. He gestured that she explain.

She said, “Daviot’s the better way with words than I—let him explain,” and turned to me and said, “Daviot, do you tell him of the pattern?”

Almost, I shook my head and told her no; that this was all some phantasm born of despair. That she clutched at straws when we had better ready ourselves to die. That Tezdal’s Way of Honor was the only escape from our plight.

But I could not: she fixed me with her blind gaze, and had I not known her talent was curtailed by Trebizar’s magic, I’d have believed she englamoured me. I ducked my head and began to speak.

I told Tezdal of all my dreams, and those Rwyan had known. I told him all I knew of the dragons (little enough, that), and of Urt’s dreams. I told him of the pattern. I told him of the crystal Urt had brought us, and all we’d learned from that stone.

And as I spoke, I came to a kind of belief. It was tainted with doubt (all the time there was a skeptical voice inside my skull, whispering in my ear that this was only phantasmagoria; the last, wild imaginings of folk condemned to inevitable death), but through that doubt I saw a spark of hope. I could not forget how vivid those dreams had been, and it seemed to me my words kindled the flame. I wondered if I went mad.

When I was done, Tezdal rose and brought the decanter to the table. He filled Rwyan’s cup and mine, then his own. He drank deep and looked me in the eye.

“Do you believe this?” he asked.

I hesitated before I shrugged and said, “I cannot say you aye, only that it seems mightily strange.” I could not, then, meet Rwyan’s gaze.

He looked to her and asked the same question.

She nodded. “I do.”

Tezdal emptied the cup. “Then tell me what it means.” Rwyan said, “I cannot give clear answer. I can only tell you I believe we none of us need die; that there’s hope.”

“Of what?” he demanded. “How?”

Rwyan smiled. “Of intervention. Of some power beyond our understanding that offers us escape. From death and from war—some hope of a future without this conflict that binds us all to its bloody cause. A hope of peace. Between your people and mine; between we Dhar and the Changed. Hope of a different world; perhaps a better world.”

For a long time Tezdal stared at her. I had the feeling then that our future hung suspended on a fragile thread of belief in creatures of legend. Creatures likely long gone into the mists of time. Dead and forgotten by all save we Storymen.

Yet still there were the dreams; so vivid, so real, I felt the flame of my burgeoning hope surge fiercer. I felt, somehow, that to doubt was to betray that power that came to me in sleep, that I could not—nor should—turn my back on those great eyes that judged and offered hope.

I heard Rwyan say, “Daviot first sowed these seeds in my mind. I did not believe him then; I do now. I believe there
is
some pattern woven between we four. Between him and me, and you, and Urt. I believe we are summoned to change our world.”

She took my hand as she spoke, and smiled at me, and I felt horribly ashamed that I had doubted her.

Tezdal said, “By dragons?”

Rwyan went on smiling as she shrugged. “Perhaps the gods work their will through dragons. I cannot say—I’d not assume to interpret such commands. But this I tell you—that I believe we’ve hope. And do we ignore what these dreams have told us, we betray a greater cause than any held by Ahn or Dhar or Changed.”

Tezdal studied her face awhile. His own was a kaleidoscope of emotions. What mine showed, I cannot say: confusion, I suppose, or hope—for her voice was a clarion calling me to a victory in which I could hardly dare trust, but neither ignore.

Tezdal asked, “Then what shall I do?”

I saw the beginnings of belief on his face; I heard hope in his voice. I heard Rwyan say, “First, find some means to speak with Urt. Delay Allanyn. Dream again—I believe the answer shall come. Stand ready when it does.”

He studied her for long moments, intently as if he’d draw his answers from her sightless gaze. She faced him calm, her
lovely face resolute. Then he ducked his head, that simple motion somehow become a formal admission, and said, “I shall. But best this promised answer come soon—I think neither Allanyn nor my brothers shall allow you too much more time.”

Rwyan stood and took his hands. “Only believe, Tezdal, and perhaps well find the way to change this world.”

He smiled, and gave us both a formal bow, and went out the door. I looked to Rwyan and asked her, “Do you truly believe all this?”

She said, “Yes,” and kissed me. And asked, “Do you not?”

I could only sigh and shrug: I’d not her faith, then. I thought I’d spun out yarns of fancy, the weavings of a young man’s imagination, and she caught in them, like a netted fish that swims hither and yon, not seeing the skeins that drift ever closer until finally they close and mesh the catch firm, until it dies.

I should have trusted her better. She was ever wiser than I.

N
o word had come from either Urt or Tezdal; but neither had we been summoned by the Raethe or Allanyn appeared to gloat. That last I considered a favorable sign that Tezdal had succeeded in delaying her, and therefore came to believe truly in Rwyan’s prognostications. Or perhaps he had only endeavored to save the lives of two friends. Or perhaps he had taken the Way of Honor and was given whatever funerary rites were the Kho’rabi custom, of which none thought to inform two Dhar prisoners.

I had little appetite that night, either for the food served us or for Rwyan. I held her and we made love, but my mind was ever on the morrow and what it should likely bring. I felt lost.

And when the dream came, both stranger than before and clearer, it slung me further into confusion. It was as though some message came to me, but writ in language I must struggle to comprehend.

I sat atop some craggy peak, all jagged stone that thrust stark fingers at a darkened sky. Cloud hid the land below, and a fierce wind stabbed my naked skin. I looked about, thinking to find companions—Rwyan, Urt, and Tezdal—but there were none: I was alone.

Then thunder filled the air, and all around me settled vast forms, not quite distinguishable, but misty, impressions of wide wings and fangs and claws. I cowered under the
observation of eyes that studied me with an alien passion. It was as if I stood under the gaze of gods, their interests greater than a mere man’s, and born of other concerns, higher and unknowable.

I felt afraid: I knelt.

And into my mind came a question:
Why do you fear us?

I answered, “Are you truly real?”

And the voice said,
We are real You called us; now we call you. Shall you answer, or shall you die?

I said, “I’d not die.”

And the voice said,
Then have faith. You called us. We heard you then, and now we answer you. Believe!

I said, “And do I? Shall you save us, all of us?”

And the voice said,
Those who believe, aye. They are chosen, and those we shall save.

I asked, “Are you gods, then?”

And the voice belled laughter that blew me down, my hands raised to protect my ears, and said,
Not gods. But your salvation, do you believe.

I said, “Give me a sign then.”

And the voice said,
You are the sign, Daviot. And Rwyan; Urt and Tezdal. Call us, and we come. We are salvation.

I said, “Then come. Take us out of this place.” And the voice said, So
be it. But shall you pay the price?
I said, “What price?”

And the voice gave me back,
Life over death.

I said, “Yes. Only save Rwyan, and whatever price you name I’ll pay.”

And the voice answered me,
Stand ready.

The wings spread then, hiding the sky, and from all those glowing eyes I felt a promise, a pledge of absolute certainty, even as I was beaten down by the thunder and cowered beneath that terrible wind as my ears were dinned with shrieks of triumph, as if all the wolves in the world howled in unison.