Transformation (53 page)
Authors: Carol Berg
“This way,” said Hoffyd quietly, as if reluctant to disturb whatever ghosts might be drifting about the place with the wisps of fog. He took us up a broad flight of steps onto the main floor of the building—a bathhouse as it seemed. There were a series of five rectangular pools, each one smaller than the last, as we progressed into the less-ruined section of the place. The larger pools all had sides cracked and caved in, and the only water in them was the scummy, sludge-laden remains of winter snows and spring rain. Around them, on the columns and fallen walls, were carvings of men and women occupied with activities impossible to guess from the faint traces. A few bits of red and blue gave hints that once the place might have been bright with color other than the somber grays of the Khyb Rash stone.
We walked up another set of steps into the less damaged part of the ruin, the patter of rain echoing on the old stone. In one hall most of two walls still stood outside the rows of fluted columns. In a corner of its small pool, water seeped from a spout shaped like a bird, its head long broken away. Beyond that pool was one more, the smallest, perhaps only twenty-five paces around. It was lined with dark blue tiles inlaid with sworls of red. Steaming water welled up from the bottom, filling it until the water ran out into a broken conduit that should have carried it to the next pool, but now spilled into a crack in the floor. The little pool was a wonder, the water clear, and the beauty of the tiles not dulled by mosses or deposited stone.
Wide stone benches had once surrounded the pool. Only one bench remained intact. The surrounding debris had been cleared away, and cushions not at all ancient had been laid on and beside it. Candles had been placed at five points around the bench, and a small brazier gave off the faint sweet scent of jasnyr. It was the traditional setting for a demon battle where the victim was to be present. So this was the place where Ysanne and Rhys and Aleksander would be. I could not guess where Catrin and I were to be or how we were to insinuate ourselves into the enchantment.
Instead I followed Hoffyd down a long, wide passage to the doorway of a room that remained fully enclosed. It had most likely been a dressing room, or perhaps a dining room for bathers who brought servants and supper with them on their pleasurable outing. The room had a series of long narrow windows along the outside wall that let in enough of the gray light to see, and someone had cleaned it quite recently, for there was no dirt, no grass or weeds showing through the cracked stone, and no sign of animal habitation. On the floor beside the windows sat a brass basin filled with water from the pool, still steaming in the damp air, a red pitcher, which would also contain water, most likely from our rain barrel at the stable, a white towel, a folded blue cloak, and a slim wooden box, polished to a high luster.
At the threshold of the room, I turned to Hoffyd and embraced him, then to Catrin and smiled down into her solemn face, where her dark eyes expressed everything she could not voice. “At moonrise tomorrow we will drink a toast to your grandfather,” I said, and I kissed her forehead. “I’ll be ready for you in an hour and a half.” Then I closed the door of age-darkened oak and left my life behind.
For an hour I worked at the exercises of the kyanar, smoothing the last ruffles that the sights and sounds of the short journey had awakened. Then I stripped and used the water from the jar to wash myself, speaking the words of purification that I had not needed to practice because they were as much a part of me as my heart or my hands. I had no clean clothes, but I smoothed the ones I had been wearing and put them back on. From the wooden box I lifted the silver knife and a small pouch that held a smooth, cold oval of clouded glass, replacing my knife with the silver one and tying the pouch to my belt. After drinking my fill of the clean water from the red pitcher, I fastened the blue Warden’s cloak about my shoulders, pulled the deep hood over my head, and sat down cross-legged in the center of the room.
My hands lay open and relaxed on my knees, and in my mind I began to repeat the chant of Ioreth, the first Warden.
Nevyed zi. Guerroch zi. Selyffae zi. I am whole. I am life. I defend the light ...
Carefully, clearly I fashioned the words, drawing myself together, reeling in the threads of melydda that extended from my soul into the trees and grasses, into the city and its unsuspecting residents, into the sun and moon and stars and whatever lay beyond, until my body thrummed with power, and I sat relaxed, unthinking, waiting.
Nevyed zi. Guerroch zi. Selyffae zi. I am whole. I am life. I defend the light ...
Carefully, clearly I fashioned the words, drawing myself together, reeling in the threads of melydda that extended from my soul into the trees and grasses, into the city and its unsuspecting residents, into the sun and moon and stars and whatever lay beyond, until my body thrummed with power, and I sat relaxed, unthinking, waiting.
There was no sense of time passing. I could sit that way for days, if necessary, suspended in time, like an arrow nocked and ready, awaiting only the release of the bow. But it was not days. Only a few hours perhaps until a hooded figure dressed in a white robe opened the door and motioned for me to follow. I could not wonder, could not worry at how close we might be to those who would do us harm. I was already half removed from the plane of ordinary existence.
Yet my inner senses stirred at the direction we walked. The light that danced on the stone floor was torchlight disrupted by moving shadows. Where I had expected silence, because Catrin would not speak to me until we were ready to begin, there were voices.
“Shall we not be introduced to this extraordinary physician?” The cold voice cut into my ease like a knife blade across the palm of my hand, but instantly I shoved it away to a distance so immensely remote it could not affect my composure.
The woman shook her hooded head and motioned toward the stone table. Her white robe shifted softly in the faint breeze, sculpting her form, and the ripple passed through the warp and weft of the world into my being. Strange.
“Bring him in,” the man said.
There was the sound of struggling, a low moan of desperation, a snarl of hatred. The victim. Questions flitted across my mind like the feathery detritus of mingallow trees in spring bloom. How was it that we were to be with the victim? Had Catrin managed to take Ysanne’s place? I kept my eyes down and held my concentration, not allowing the words to settle. Only when I knelt on the cold stone beside the little pool and saw the ravaged face—the flicker of ice-blue hatred in a visage so racked with pain and dread, I could not bear to look on it—only then did I come near breaking. He was strapped to the stone slab and his wrists already bled from his struggles to be free. His mouth worked as if he wanted to speak, but no intelligible word emerged, only foaming spittle. When the woman with the white robe held a cup to his lips, forcing him to drink the potion that would keep him quiet and still as we did our work, he spit it out, staining her white robe.
I will come for you.
As I said it in the stillness of my waiting, the mad blue eyes darted toward me, but I averted my head so he could not see, and I banished him from my thoughts.
As I said it in the stillness of my waiting, the mad blue eyes darted toward me, but I averted my head so he could not see, and I banished him from my thoughts.
“You don’t mean for us to leave him with these two, Lord Korelyi? With Lord Kastavan already dead. ...” The voice from behind me was filled with doubt.
“We’ll be close by.”
“But you can’t trust them?”
“We have every reason to trust them. We have made a bargain and will see it fulfilled. No need to worry, Zyat. Our new friend will be very well looked after. Lord Kastavan’s legacy lives on in this prince. As soon as he is healed of this lingering madness, all will be well.” Their steps rang on the stone paving and faded.
There was a long pause. The air about me grew thick with sorcery. I waited.
At last it came. “It is time, Warden,” said the woman who knelt opposite me across the tormented body. “Come with me if you choose again this path of danger, of healing, of hope.”
My skin tingled with her speaking ... not with the ancient words that had been scribed in my soul with fire when I was seventeen, but with the soft voice, so close I could hear its music and feel its shape. Not Catrin’s voice. Nor were the pale slender hands that reached out across my friend’s body Catrin’s short, capable fingers.
And into my mind came the words.
Step onto the path I have built for you and know that I will hold it steadfast, unyielding, until you return. And in this distant world you venture, my dearest love, you will never be alone.
Step onto the path I have built for you and know that I will hold it steadfast, unyielding, until you return. And in this distant world you venture, my dearest love, you will never be alone.
As I touched the hands and the world disappeared, I caught one glimpse of dark hair streaked with gold, and deep violet eyes so ravishing a poet could find no words to describe them. Ysanne.
Chapter 34
The portal stood open, a shimmering gray rectangle in the nothingness in which I existed. Before me lay the doom of the world. Behind me, wavering like a painted image on a square of sheerest silk, lay the overgrown ruins of the ancient bathhouse and a life that was suddenly so precious that every second I clung to it was a piercing sweetness.
The path was steady beneath my feet. Ysanne’s path. So much had become clear with that moment’s glimpse of her violet eyes. Catrin had never made a second portal. It was Ysanne who had drawn me into her weaving in Dael Ezzar, able to take me across the boundaries of reality unprepared because she knew me as well as I knew myself. She had shut the first portal after Rhys so he would think me abandoned ... dead ... and she had held the second long enough for me to get out. She had ventured so far from home, into danger that no Queen of Ezzaria had ever before faced, so that I would have time to be ready. “Soar high, my love.” No wonder I could not attach those words to Catrin or to feel the bond of the spirit that should have come with such intimacy. Ysanne ...
Later, my beloved. When the day is won.
The finger of her care brushed my lips before I could speak her name aloud and break the enchantment we had woven together. Later. I would not fail. Not with such a promise. I centered my thoughts on my purpose, and stepped to the threshold.
The finger of her care brushed my lips before I could speak her name aloud and break the enchantment we had woven together. Later. I would not fail. Not with such a promise. I centered my thoughts on my purpose, and stepped to the threshold.
The world that lay before me was very near its ending. A leaden sky hung low over a vast gray ocean, the only remnant of life the threads of white foam where the sluggish tide broke upon a desolate strip of shingle. No bird flew in that mournful sky; neither bone nor scrap of weed lay on the dismal shore to give evidence that life had ever existed there. The shingle might have been the last fragments left as the relentless pressure of the sea crumbled the world. A thick damp wind stirred my cloak as I stepped through the doorway.
I stood on the rocky shore between the advancing ranks of the waves and a line of low cliffs some fifty paces from the water. The insistent whisper of the waves was almost indistinguishable from the soft buffeting of the wind. It was very difficult to see, the only light coming from the livid iridescence of the breakers. I shifted my vision and crouched low, pivoting quickly to scan the vicinity for signs of demon. Nothing moved save the water. Slowly I moved down the rugged shore, peering into the deepest pockets of rocky darkness, tasting the salty wind, straining to hear the first traces of demon music. Somewhere the Gai Kyallet—the Lord of Demons—lay waiting.
“I am the Warden, sent by the Aife, the scourge of demons, to challenge you for this vessel. Hyssad! Begone! It is not yours.” The words fell dead. Feeble in the vast emptiness. Yet they should force the demon to take shape and answer.
Mirthless laughter greeted my declaration. “It’s a bit late for such pompous speeches, is it not? This is exactly my place, and there is no human vermin can budge me. Certainly not my own hireling, come to perform the last service I require. Do you forget your piteous groveling, when you begged for your life and bartered power for your soul?”
It was the voice of evil that whispered through the unholy quiet, a muted sigh that clung to the soul like a foul odor, that fell upon the ear like whispered wailing, that lingered on the tongue like ash. Yet I smiled as I heard it. The demon did not know who I was. Aleksander had not broken.
I would not parry speech with the demon. With every word it would learn more of me and spoil my small advantage. Instead I picked apart the darkness, hunting for any glimmer of demon fire, listening for any sound that was not wind or wave. Never had I seen such an expanse of nothing. Was this all that was left of Aleksander? A pale smear of light drew my eyes to the right, even as Catrin’s warning flickered through my mind. I could not afford to look for Aleksander. The light was swallowed by the murk before I could see what it was.
The strip of shingle narrowed, and soon there was nowhere to go but into the sea. I had no intention of stepping into the water—a notorious lurking place for wicked surprises—so I removed my cloak and my shirt, stuffed them under a rock in case I needed them later, and triggered the enchantment that would cause me to transform. As my back and shoulders began to burn, I walked back the way I had come, pausing in the lee of a massive boulder just long enough to bring my wings under control as they materialized. The final moment of transformation was a dangerously vulnerable time. But soon I was able to read the wind and shape it to lift me from the rocky beach and take me a short distance out over the water so I could get a better view. Where was the demon?
“Come, servant. Where have you gone?” hissed my adversary from within my head as well as outside. “I feel you hunting. Is that needful? Your posturing has come to an end, as you knew it would, and you must pay the price. Aid me in this conquest and kneel before me, and perhaps you will survive to share in the changing of the world.”
I had faced a hundred demons in my life, many of them bound so intimately with their evil hosts that they had taken on their names and personalities. But this one ... it had absorbed the corruption of a thousand hosts throughout its existence. Every vileness a human could devise was given form in its words. It had taken on a life of its own—perverse, corrupt, unclean—that came cascading out of its mouth in a vile vomit of hatred. At last I recognized the missing piece of the Khelid mystery. I had wondered how Kastavan could cast away his life so easily and allow the demon to move on to Aleksander. But it had not been Kastavan’s choice at all. The Khelid had not bent the demons to their service; it was the other way around. The Khelid had been nothing but a succulent opportunity for a demon who had grown into its own purpose and was determined to take its place in the world.
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