Restoration (74 page)

 

Now midsummer has come and gone, and on this starlit night I sit alone beside a steaming pool, deep in the forests of Ezzaria. The pool is very like the one in Dael Ezzar, where my old mentor helped me rediscover the melydda I believed lost in my years as a slave. Today I tried to step into the scalding water, calling on my senses to protect me long enough to endure immersion, a good first lesson in preparation for true sorcery. For the fiftieth time, I failed, though I think perhaps this failure was slightly less abject than the previous forty-nine attempts. Faith links the senses to one's power, so Galadon taught me. And so I must have faith that someday the rains will fill the dry watercourses of my soul, allowing that part of me to live again. Tomorrow I'll come back and step into the pool once more. Or perhaps the day after.

Meanwhile my days are filled with quiet joys. I've begun to teach my people of our beginnings and to write down the story, so we will always remember. Come autumn, I'll return to Kir‘-Navarrin and have Kasparian tell me more.

Blaise reports that some of the rai-kirah who remain in Kir‘-Navarrin are shaping bodies again, though a number have bade farewell to their comrades and walked into the gamarand wood. The rai-kirah say that these have unshaped even their light-drawn forms and returned their true being to the land. The tower has crumbled to dust, and no one has seen anything of the Lady. The woodland thrives.

Catrin and Hoffyd's black-haired daughter, Chloe, was born demon-joined. Two more Ezzarian children have been born since Chloe, and they, too, are whole. Elinor looks to become our newest mentor, telling these parents stories of Blaise's and Farrol's childhood, and preparing them—and me—to manage childish shapeshifting. Elinor and Evan remind me every day of the richness of life, and I regret no choice that I have made. But after my experiences of the past few years, a man cannot but consider ...

Had I given up the chance to be a god, to learn answers that those of us born in the human world have yearned to know since the beginning of time? Was Kerouan himself a god in the days before his madness? And if not Verdonne and not Valdis and not Kerouan, then whose hand has shaped us? And if not in Tyrrad Nor, then where are the gods and how are we to learn of them? I contemplate these things as I walk these beloved hills and forests and struggle to learn again from the beginning. I have found no answers as yet.

But, of course, in the end, the exact truth of it doesn't matter. My child and his mother hold me fast in their love, and I am set free to think and remember. I think of Blaise, sharing his sublime and passionate wholeness with the hungry world. I remember Sovari and Malver, W‘Assani and Galadon, Farrol and young Kyor, and, yes, Ysanne, too, offering life itself to sustain us. I watch Fiona, determined and stubborn, guiding my beloved Ezzaria into a new service. And I imagine Aleksander, riding his desert kingdom, bearing the weight of our lives and safety upon his strong shoulders, sheltering us all under his mantle of light. It is, after all, tales of strength and honor and purpose that reflect the true glory of the gods, no matter who they are and where they may reside.

Though
Carol Berg
calls Colorado her home, her roots are in Texas in a family of teachers, musicians, and railroad men. She has a degree in mathematics from Rice University and one in computer science from the University of Colorado, but managed to squeeze in minors in English and art history along the way. She has combined a career as a software engineer with her writing, while also raising three sons. She lives with her husband at the foot of the Colorado mountains.