Restoration (48 page)

Another piece slid into place. “You can speak in dreams and shape them to your design,” I said, “but you can't travel through them anymore.”

“Correct. I was able to follow and observe you in your glory this day. But I could not have come to your aid had you needed me. My jailer intended for me only to observe.” Amusement glanced across his face along with the echo of his grieving. “He would not be pleased to know I had learned to shape or speak in dreams.”

So that was why Kasparian had let himself be imprisoned with Nyel. Without his
attellé
to initiate the enchantment, Nyel would have been without even the small amusement his jailer had left him. His jailer ... his son, if the god story was true. A fitting explanation for his edge of bitterness.

“What of Kasparian?” I said. “He was allowed to keep his name.” I needed to understand about names.

“Kasparian was ... and is ... limited enough that it was not necessary to cripple him. He has no power over dreams. Forgive him his faults. He is a good man. Truth is often the cruelest torment.”

I stood and walked away from the game table, sensing I was at the verge of some discovery, yet so tired that it might pass without my notice. “I thank you for your gift, Nyel. The young man I rescued was my own
attellé.
At least he is free of torment now. He has hope of getting home and some measure of safety, as do the others left there—both human and rai-kirah.” Gennod was dead; I could not argue with the satisfactory outcome, though I believed Nyel the entire cause of the problem. “You're quite confusing me.”

Was all of this designed to demonstrate the power of the Madonai? If so, the designer had accomplished his goal. Beneath the mantle of weariness and the remnants of my intoxication, I could feel both the pulsing enormity of my own melydda and the clear and poignant understanding of my lack. I possessed such power as I had yearned for throughout my life, but my human hand could wield only a portion of it. Was that his objective? Was this growing hunger I felt gnawing at my soul a punishment for my ancestors' fault?
Truth is often the cruelesttorment.

I pushed open the garden door that the servants had closed, allowing a wind-borne spray of rain to bathe my face, hoping it might prick my mind awake. Nyel came to stand at my shoulder. We were exactly the same height.

“Did you think this small grace was what I planned to offer?” he said. “Did you not hear what I told you? I've not brought you here to tantalize you with things you cannot have.”

What had he said as I fell into his eyes?
This is but the begin
ning,
lad...
“You said I was bound by earth and flesh, but that you could set me free.” The old man's gaze compelled my attention. “What did you mean?” My stomach felt hollow, anticipation bordering on terror.

“Of all the rekkonarre you have the heart and the wisdom to use the vietto. You think me mad, and indeed I confess it. I have lived too long. My griefs have festered into bitterness and misjudgment. I, too, have done things that I would have considered reprehensible in my youth. You've seen them. But you can make matters right again ... Is that not everything you have ever wished to do?” He grasped my shoulders and forced me to look into his eyes, and with a love I could not fathom, they begged me to believe him. “I wish to free you from the cost of your compassion. I can change you, unbind you from all that holds you back, allow you to repair these horrors I have done. You will be as you are meant to be, and I will die unburdened of my sins. Can you comprehend what I offer? I will make you Madonai.”

 

A simple matter, he told me. Because I was newly joined. Because of the power I could bring to the working. My mind and soul, the joining of Seyonne and the demon, would remain as they were now. Only the nature of my body would change ... still flesh and blood and bone, but purged of those elements that hindered my easy movement through the portals of dreams, free of the scars that interfered with my transformation to a being that would feel neither pain nor weariness, cleansed of the frail heritage that prevented full use of my melydda. I would be able to touch dreams at my own will and become flesh through them, to fight unhindered for those things I believed were good and right, or to teach, as had ever been my truest pleasure.

“You were not born to watch events from the side, to let others take the lead, to lose your strength and die when you have scarcely begun.”

Oh yes, and I would live for uncounted ages of the world. An aging warrior in my own world, I was but an infant in the span of a Madonai lifetime.

“You see the burdens of such a choice. To remain apart—for you could not allow such power to be skewed by trivial concerns or personal feelings. To live so long and to be the only one—indeed these are difficult, as I can attest. But as you grow in your own power, you can do this same for others you find worthy of our name. The Madonai race will be reborn in you. The balance of the worlds will be restored.”

But I would not be human. Nor could I live in the human world again. That had been one of the Madonai's problems. Humans could not live in Kir‘Navarrin; as Fiona had seen, they sickened quickly. Nor could Madonai exist for more than a short time in the human realm. They had built the first portal between the worlds, but could not use it. Only the rekkonarre—my people fully joined—could live in both worlds. Only those Madonai who possessed the secret of the
vietto,
who could take on flesh through enchantment and dream, could exist in the human world as often as they wished, for as long as their dreamer could stay awake.

“You could care for humans, if you judged it wise. Better than you have done thus far. Though I cannot mentor you in wisdom or in judgment, I can teach you much of power.” Think about it, he said. No need to rush. At every step I could choose until the last when it was done.

“Come, come,” said Nyel, shutting the garden door, reining in his eagerness so tightly that only the slight flush of his cheeks yet spoke of it. “You don't have to decide tonight. You're tired and wounded—bleeding on my carpet. Go up to your bed and I'll send Kasparian to tend your injuries. Tomorrow, we'll talk again.”

 

I walked slowly through the quiet house. Always so quiet. I did not go straight to my bedchamber, but walked up and down the corridors and stairs, past paintings and statuary, workrooms and kitchens, courtyards and sitting rooms and sleeping chambers. I stood on a high balcony and stared at the stars, then wandered inside again, in and out of more rooms. I saw none of them. All I could see was Drych—sick, broken, wretched Drych—alive. All I heard was the infusion of blessed hope in his voice when I had proved myself real.

Who could imagine such a gift? Melydda unbounded. And freedom—from pain and filth, from petty, senseless rules, from endless bloodshed and sorrows I could not heal. Exactly what I had always wanted—to make things right. When I wandered into my room at last, I did not light the lamps that stood ready, nor did I snuff the single candle and fall onto the soft bed. Rather I sat on the bare floor in the corner, knees drawn up, my arms wrapped around my legs, and my forehead resting on my knees. Only in the hour of my demon-joining had I felt so frightened. The prisoner of Tyrrad Nor had offered to make me a god, and I could think of no reason to refuse him.

 

 

Kasparian found me there. He brought a bundle of linen strips and a basin of water with steam curling out of it. “The master says you are injured. Let me see.” Without touching the candle to the lamp wicks, he set the corner ablaze with light.

“I've no need for your help.” I wanted no company, no intrusion on the chaos of my thoughts.

“Do you think I'll poison you? Cripple you? Take petty vengeance in the guise of healing?”

“No.” I was certain of that, just as I was certain he would like to do so.

“Where is your wound?” Whatever his reasons for doing Nyel's bidding, they had nothing to do with wishing me well.

“Tell me,” I said, “did I offend you at some time, or is my only crime that your master is offering me what you hunger for and believe you deserve? You know I can't remember.” As he seemed determined to hover over me whether or not I wished it, I stretched out my bleeding leg.

Kasparian drew his knife and slit my breeches. An ugly gash on my thigh oozed blood and the serpent bird's sticky black venom. Only now that I saw the wound did I realize how wickedly it hurt. The Madonai began to sponge it clean with the hot water, and I pressed my back to the wall.

“I am forbidden to speak of the past,” he said as he worked. “You possess strength of enchantment that I do not. One may chafe at such a matter, but it changes nothing.”

He reached out and dragged a chair close by my left hand. “Grab onto this and the chest on the other side and hold still. We need to get this poison out, or you'll lose all feeling in this leg.” Indeed my toes tingled ominously at the end of my throbbing limb. While my bloodless fingers gripped the carved seat of the wooden chair and the brass handles of the clothes chest on my right, Kasparian, with the skill of a surgeon, used his knife to enlarge the wound and allow the blood to wash the black vileness out of it.

The prospect of a body that could fight without pain was extremely attractive at that moment. I needed to think of something else as he blotted, squeezed, and swabbed. “If you could wield this power, Kasparian, shaping dreams and traveling through them, what would you do with it?”

“Better for all that I never have such power.”

“But if you did?”

His answer was not at all what I expected. “I would remove those you brought back to this land—send you and them back to your cursed world—and I would seal the last gate forever.”

Not set his master free. Nor himself. Nor wreak the vengeance that I yet believed was Nyel's true desire. “But the rai-kirah somehow make him stronger,” I said, “and clearly he wants me here. I thought you loved him.”

He washed the last blood and venom from my leg with uncomfortable vehemence. “You know nothing of love.”

I wondered if he was right. Surety in any matter was a thing of the past. “I could use some advice,” I said. “I don't know what to do.”

His head remained bent to his work. I could not see his face, but only his long dark hair, thick and threaded evenly with iron gray. “You should question,” he said softly, winding the clean linen about my thigh along with some enchantment that eased the most acute discomfort. “Seek answers beyond this house. Love speaks with many voices.” He tied off the bandage with a yank that made me wince, then gathered up his materials.

“I'm sorry for whatever came between us, Kasparian.” Such antagonism was not developed at a distance.

He shot me a glance of purest hatred. “Save your sentiment. You are the most despicable of beings, and I will curse your name until the end of time.”

 

 

At some time I crawled out of my corner and into the bed. Thus do fear and mystification often yield to more mundane concerns. The floor was very hard. I could easily become spoiled with sleeping in a bed again.

My dilemma was not resolved by sleep. When sunlight crept through my windows, I washed, but in some childish show of truculence, I ignored the fresh shirt provided and put back on the bloodstained one of the previous day. I contemplated the weapons that were again laid out for me, but turned my back on them and went downstairs. Unready to face either of the Madonai, I was relieved to find myself breakfasting alone. Though fiercely hungry, I ate lightly, forcing myself away from the table and its inexhaustible supplies of meat and bread and fruit before anyone else showed up.

The day was brilliant, the kind of clean-washed morning that can only come after a rain. The sunlight and sharp air drew me outdoors, and, my wound already on its way to healing, I headed for the path that led up the mountainside. I had always sought clarity on mountaintops. But as I crossed the garden, I caught sight of the black wall. Kasparian had advised me to seek answers beyond the house, and despite his hatred, his recommendations were not carelessly given. Could he have been telling me to cross the wall?

The wall's surface was not so damaged as I remembered, only crazed with a network of threadlike cracks, like pottery with an imperfect glaze. As when I had come there in the siffaru, I laid my palm on the stone, carefully probing the enchantment of the wall, hoping to feel its shape and consequence, and so to learn of it. Somehow I expected the wall to be cold—enchantments often had that effect, as if they drew the substance from the artifact they touched. But the black stone was, in fact, quite warm, far warmer than the stone benches that stood nearby in the sunny garden.

I yanked my hand away. I would have sworn the stone had moved ... bulged ... swelled, perhaps, around my fingers. At the same time I was stricken with such riotous emotion that I threw my head back and laughed even as tears streamed from my eyes and terror burst from my skin in acrid sweat. A fearful thing, this wall. A wondrous thing.

I tried to clear my mind before I touched it again, but to no avail. As I brushed my hand along its flawed surface, faces came alive in my mind, and with them the continuing barrage of sentiment: a woman with startling blue eyes, a man with a bald head that shone like polished leather, a heavy-browed man who carried a giant bow and laughed until the earth rumbled, a round, pink-cheeked young woman of serious mind, a fair-haired young man—oh, gods, I could not remember his name, but in some long-ago time beyond the barriers of memory, he had been my dearest friend in all the world. More of them ... ten, eleven ... the twelfth place unfilled ... No. I was wrong. One more face appeared—a wry, narrow face with a well-trimmed beard, who grinned at me over his shoulder, then vanished in a blaze of blue and purple and swirling gray green. Vyx. Though every face was familiar, he was the only one of them I could name, the only one who had been with me in exile in Kir‘Vagonoth. Twelve places ... Vyx had always intended to come back here. His choice had not been a whim of the moment. Were the others the same, friends of mine who had given everything to keep this wall secure?
Damn your stubborn pride for destroying any chance to remember more. You should know these people.