Authors: Carol Berg
Transformation (47 page)
Only once in those days did he undergo a complete transformation. It happened in a particularly wild section of the mountains, which was fortunate, as there was no one for him to harm. But it took us eight hours to find him, collapsed in a snowbank beside the bloody remains of an elk. We wrapped him in blankets and built up a towering bonfire, but he sat there dull-eyed and unspeaking until we put him to sleep for the night.
Though he regained his own form after that incident and was capable of speech, he did not regain his spirits. He rode in brooding silence, winding his fingers in Musa’s mane or stroking the horse’s neck. When we stopped for the night, he would take the sleeping draught before eating and fall asleep in mid bite. The most ominous part of the matter was that we could find no trigger. Just as with the lesser incidents, there was no defining activity or thought that precipitated it.
“Are you sure there’s nothing?” I said one day after an hour’s halt to allow his arm to return to human proportion.
Aleksander shook his head and mounted Musa. “I dream shengar dreams. Sometimes I think there is more of it than me anymore.”
I was afraid he was right. From the beginning of our journey he had eaten only meat, refusing cheese and bread and even the dried dates and figs that Derzhi considered the foundation of any diet. As the days passed after the transformation, he could no longer stomach anything cooked, but cut his portion from our day’s kill before we put it on the fire, and ate it without looking at any of us. He kept his hood drawn over his face in the daylight, saying the sun pained his eyes, and he began to leave Musa’s care to Hoffyd, as he could no longer settle the beast with his touch, only put it in a nervous frenzy. I think that distressed Aleksander beyond anything, but he would not say it. He said very little at all.
“You must not yield, my lord. We will find a way.”
I was not yet capable of healing him. Though I had taken the largest step to regain my power—I still had unsettling dreams of my dive from the precipice—I needed time and practice to build it back to what it had been. Every day as we rode, Catrin drilled me on more and more complex enchantments and the patterns of thought required to create or destroy them, as well as the other skills I needed to fight again as a Warden. Every evening after we had eaten and helped Aleksander to sleep, she had me running and climbing, jumping, stretching, and practicing with sword and knife. She was very determined ... and very good at the business.
I quickly dismissed any idea that she would somehow be easier or kinder or more understanding than her grandfather. Rather she was stern and demanding, and invited no intimacy of any kind. In our first days on the trail, Aleksander swore that she and Hoffyd were lovers. I told him that she could stand likai for an entire Derzhi legion, and was no more likely to be anyone’s lover than such a one. I had come to believe that the care I’d felt from her beyond the portal was only old friendship and her concern for our success in the coming battle. She certainly did her best to make sure I had no time to consider anything beyond our work.
On one afternoon we camped earlier than usual. Another league would take us into the rolling grasslands that skirted the mountains, stretching all the way from Avenkhar to Parnifour, but we preferred to sleep one more night in the safer hiding of the foothills. Hoffyd took his usual uninventive turn at cooking, while a silent Aleksander huddled in his cloak by the fire. It was a fine afternoon and would be a lovely evening, with the light lingering noticeably later than just a few days earlier—perhaps because it had finally stopped raining. The hills were sculpted by the afternoon shadows, the velvety new green touched with gold. The tangy air was cool and washed clean, leaving every rock and tree and blade of grass sharp-edged all the way to the horizon.
Catrin was in no mood to take note of the pleasant weather, and she had no intention of letting me waste the extra hours. Ten days had passed since Rhys’s last battle, and we still had more than two weeks to Parnifour. Without waiting for Aleksander to sleep, she commanded me to run ten times up and down a short, steep hill, carrying two of our saddle packs with fully extended arms. When I came down the tenth time, proud of myself because I was not out of breath and my arms were not quite at the point of breaking off, Aleksander stared at me, puzzled enough to break his day’s silence. “What are you doing? Have you gone mad while I wasn’t looking?”
I had told Aleksander nothing of my experience beyond the portal. All he knew was that Galadon was dead, Ysanne and Rhys determined to be rid of us, and that we were seeking a remedy for his enchantment in Parnifour. “We don’t know what we’ll run into up ahead. I deemed it best to be fit, at least,” I said.
“If demons run footraces with goatherds, you’ll do fine.” He hunched his blanket up around his shoulders.
“Have you ever run a race where the other runners did not let you win?” I said, more irritably than I should have.
“Indeed! Your tongue is very bold tonight.” It was the first sign of spirit I’d seen for five days.
“I’ve run up this thing ten times already while you’ve reclined quite royally here by the fire. Do you think you can take me? Ah, no.” I threw up my hands in mock denial. “You’re likely still weak from your wound.”
“Damn your insolence!” The Prince threw off his blanket and his cloak, pulled off his boots and stockings, and stripped off his shirt. “I’ll be back here in my boots before you reach the top.”
If it had been a higher hill or a smoother path he might have done it. His stride was long and graceful, and with every step he gained a half step on me. But rocks and roots on the upper half disrupted his rhythm, while I sprang easily from one to the other. He was two strides ahead by the top, but I beat him down by four. And he was winded.
“Wretched ... bloody ...” He leaned over with his hands on his knees, breathing hard. “All that wallowing in bed ... disgrace ... goatherd.” Just then the enchantment came over him again, fully half his body wavering between man and beast. He clenched his fists and cried out in pain and fury, “No, I will not!” For the moment his determination won out. The illusion faded, and he downed his sleeping draught with shaking hands. “I will not,” he mumbled as he dropped off into death-like sleep.
From that evening on he went through every physical exercise with me. I even taught him the kyanar, the slow, repetitive martial disciplines to which Galadon had introduced me in my youth. They were designed to draw one’s being together in the center of the body, to create a harmony such that the mind and body could work as a seamless whole. Only when I brought out a knife or a sword would the Prince sit back and watch. Though my training was different from his own, he was able to see the flaws and rough spots in my technique. He quite enjoyed pointing them out.
Whether it was the physical activity or the fact that we were soon on the flatlands and could easily cover ten leagues in a day instead of two, the Prince became more cheerful and more alert. The incidents of transformation continued unabated, however. We no longer dared wake him with a touch. Catrin already wore a long scrape on one arm from a raking claw. And we kept close watch on him at night. The sleeping draught had less and less effect, leaving him at the mercy of demon-wrought dreams. His moans were terrible to hear, and we began to consider whether we should bind him at night to prevent him harming himself or us.
But I watched the Prince bring all his stubborn strength to bear on his deterioration, refusing to shrink into terror or silence or low spirits as he had early in the journey. If it had been possible to reverse the curse by will alone, he could have done it. At least he felt like he was fighting again. He was more like himself, and began to pester me about our plans. It might have been safer to keep him in ignorance. Hoffyd and Catrin were of that mind. But I still had the conviction that the Prince had an important part to play in the Second Battle—I just didn’t know what it was. His feadnach yet burned, as unlikely in the rotting devastation of his soul as an unbroken crystal wineglass in a war-ravaged village.
The matter came up on the star-filled evening that we camped in a treeless hollow two leagues from Avenkhar. We had run almost to the city gates and back, and sat devouring a pair of rabbits that Catrin had snared while we ran.
“So you’ve found your wings again, eh?” he said.
I looked up, startled. “What do you mean by that?” I’d never been sure whether he believed what he had said about the tapestry ... or what I had answered.
He laughed. “You still don’t say what you’re thinking, but you show it very clearly these days. You’re worried, but you carry a confidence backed up by more than a stout heart. It has not escaped my notice that you could be quite a formidable warrior ... even without the possibility of such mobility or the sorcery it implies. So are you ever going to show me?”
“I can’t ... I mean ...” This wasn’t how I was planning to tell him ... flustered with ridiculous embarrassment. “... it only happens in the place where I work. ...”
I told him all of it. About portals and demon battles. About the night when I was eighteen and in the most desperate battle of my experience, the night when I discovered that I could transform myself into a
caer gwillyn,
a winged defender, a legend so old it was only a sketch on a crumbling scroll. I told him of Galadon’s claims that my melydda still lived even after the Rites of Balthar, and of our long nights of work while he—Aleksander—slept. And I told him of my final lesson, where I learned the full measure of Rhys’s and Ysanne’s treachery. Catrin was near apoplectic with my telling. She kept interrupting, commanding me to silence, and calling me a fool. But once I was started, I could not stop.
caer gwillyn,
a winged defender, a legend so old it was only a sketch on a crumbling scroll. I told him of Galadon’s claims that my melydda still lived even after the Rites of Balthar, and of our long nights of work while he—Aleksander—slept. And I told him of my final lesson, where I learned the full measure of Rhys’s and Ysanne’s treachery. Catrin was near apoplectic with my telling. She kept interrupting, commanding me to silence, and calling me a fool. But once I was started, I could not stop.
Aleksander summed it up nicely. “So your treacherous lover will create this ... battlefield ... in Kastavan’s head, and your treacherous friend will meet this Demon Lord, probably the most powerful one they’ve got. The demons will win and do as they please with the Khelid, meaning they can use foul enchantments like this that crazes me to do as they please with my Empire. And you are going to try to sneak in some back door, grow wings, avoid getting slaughtered, and prevent the whole thing.”
“Sounds fairly unlikely, I suppose.” I sipped the dregs from our last wineskin and wished I had a full one. Perhaps draining another might make our plan sound more reasonable.
“Unlikely is not the word I would choose.” He was reclining on the grass, leaning on his elbow. “But even if, by some chance, you were to win, the Khelid would not die. And from what you’ve told me, they were no models of virtue to get themselves so entangled with demons. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“So we will have Khelid warriors in every major city of the Empire, believing they have to fight to get what they planned to obtain through guile.”
I had not considered what would happen beyond the battle. Always in the past, defeating the demon had been enough.
“I need to warn ...” Aleksander could not go on. He shuddered and rolled over onto all fours as his shoulders and arms and head blurred and shifted into grotesque combinations of man and beast. The surrounding air was drained of warmth, while searing heat poured from his body. But after five minutes’ struggle and a roar, not of bestial fury, but of defiance and determination, all traces of the shengar vanished, and he was himself again. He had stopped it. He sat back on his knees, sweat dripping from his face, and he rubbed his eyes tiredly, taking up the conversation right where he had left it. “I’ve got to warn them, but damned if I know how. No one will listen to me now Dmitri’s gone. Veldar was his friend. Zarrakat had him stand likai to his son. The Mezzrahn generals bear a bit of a grudge. None of the northern marshals will give me hearing.”
I swallowed my astonishment at his act of will and tried to follow his thought. “Is there no one to speak for you? No one with influence who might put concern for the realm above their grievances with you?”
“Kiril would do what he could ... if I could convince him to listen before sticking a knife in me to avenge Dmitri. But he’s got no influence beyond the Parnifour garrison. I fought beside two or three of the southern marshals in Vygaard and eastern Fryth, but they’re a long way from here.”
“We’re on the doorstep of Avenkhar. The Lady Lydia could convey a message if you could think of someone to send it to.”
“Lydia.” Aleksander pulled his hand from his haggard face. “Her father is the most respected tactician in the Twenty. He’s got influence everywhere. In Zhagad. With Father. And one could say he has a great deal at stake in me, since he’s planned to marry Lydia to me since she was born.” He narrowed his eyes. “Would she do it? There’s no love lost between us, as you saw.”
“I would say you could leave your case in no surer hands.”
I needed writing materials. Hoffyd carried a journal in which he recorded his observations of the natural world: the birds and beasts, their habits, the weather, the landforms, the patterns of the stars. From his studies he extracted a deep understanding of the mechanisms of the world that those with melydda used to build enchantments.
I begged a few blank pages from his journal and the use of his pen and ink, and I had Aleksander dictate his urgent instructions to certain Derzhi commanders on how to quietly prepare for a war starting some twelve days hence. I said I would go into Avenkhar and deliver it to the Lady.
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