Transformation (45 page)

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Authors: Carol Berg

BOOK: Transformation
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Without waiting to see what came of my working, I opened my eyes, stepped forward, and dived off the rocky precipice.
Chapter 29
 
I had no thoughts to spare for panic in that initial gut-wrenching plummet from the cliffs. I was desperately trying to remember what to do next. The words.
Caedwyrrdin mesaffthyla.
The movements.
Hands just above your head, fingertips together, not clasped lest the jolt break your fingers. The legs, straight and spread wide to slow your fall. Your back arched forward slightly to bear the strain.
The senses.
Feel the air. Read it, every nuance like the words on a page. Where are the rising airs? Where are the dangerous downdrafts? Be ready. No doubts. Doubts make you weak, and for this, strength is everything.
I could not watch the battle on the plains, only cry out a quick promise. “Hold on, master. I’ll come for you. I will.” And even that was obliterated when the fire began to burn in my shoulders. Oh, gods of earth and sky ... it came, rippling along my arms and back like the searing touch of lightning. In that fleeting instant I thought of Aleksander and the torment of his transformation. How differently such agony can be perceived. For when my wings unfurled and came near yanking my shoulders from their sockets, and as I bent my bones and strained my muscles to their searing limits to bring them under control, I cried out, not with the pain, but with the heart-bursting ecstasy of such magic.
Extend . . . curve the lower veins to catch more air. Sense each nerve connection as it’s made so you can control it instantly—like learning to walk all over again in a tenth of a second with a floor of broken glass beneath your feet.
How long had it taken? By the time I had full control and was in more of a soaring dive than a full plummet, I was much too close to the jagged rocks. The thin membranes spread out beside and behind me were not immune to rips. A haze of dust hung over the battlefield as I pulled hard to the right and caught the uprising wind that would carry me toward the two vague shapes. One silver—upright, sword raised. One blue. Bent over. Retreating.
“Hold, Warden!” I cried. “This place is not yours. This life is not forfeit.”
The figure in silver gaped upward in astonishment and dismay. With one sweep of a gathered wing, I knocked him to his knees just as my feet touched the ground. The move was one of my favorites, but I was unpracticed, awkward, and it made my landing unsteady. Rhys recovered quicker and jumped to his feet. “So you’re not entirely dead?” he said as he backed away, his eyes wide, staring at the extent of my transformation.
“Master, are you badly hurt?” I called over my shoulder while holding Rhys at bay with melydda.
“All is well,” came the harsh voice from behind me.
“I never believed you when you told me about the wings,” said Rhys. “I thought you were trying to prove you were better than the rest of us.” With a blurred motion, he changed his knife into a spear, but I was quicker and swept it aside with the fingers of my power. It dropped to the ground, only a knife again. Rhys stepped back, guarded, watching, ready to call down some enchantment if I moved again.
But I didn’t move, only stood my ground between him and Galadon. I needed to understand. “What’s happened to you?” I said. “We were friends. Brothers. It never mattered who was stronger or faster, or who had wings and who did not.”
“It never mattered to you,” he said bitterly. “But when did you ask me or Ysanne? You got so caught up in your glory, and you took Ysanne as if she were your right.”
“Is that what this is about? You wanted Ysanne?”
“You never knew her. For three years she spent her days and nights with you, offered you everything, but you would go off into your everlasting silences, leaving her alone as if she were only some annoyance to your purity. Ask her why you could not be with both of us together—because she could not bear to hurt you. Always it was you. No one could match you. No one could help you. You had to be the strongest and do everything alone. It couldn’t go on. Then came the war ... before she could tell you that it was me she loved.”
“If you hated me so much, you should have killed me outright. Was it so hard to tell me the truth that you had to make me a slave? Shall I describe what it was like, how I could not hold off their horrors because I had to bury the memory of what you did? Gods, Rhys. I loved you both. I would have done anything for either of you.”
He spit at my feet and shifted his stance, edging closer to his fallen weapon as if I didn’t notice. “Didn’t you hear what I said? We didn’t want you to do anything for us.” In a move so swift and smooth I almost missed it, Rhys dropped to the ground, rolled to the right, and launched his silver knife at my heart. But I slowed the knife, holding it off just long enough to soar upward, out of the way. The glittering weapon, changed to a spear, sped past to strike the earth.
“So which did the demons take first, you or Ysanne?” I said angrily, touching my feet to the ground. I snatched his weapon from where it had fallen, as he scrambled backward.
“You don’t know anything,” he said. “I’ll take care of the demons. We’ll be stronger because of what I’ve done. And I’ll not allow you to get in the way.” He nodded his head to something behind me. “You should see to the old fool. He fares ill.” Then he leaped to his feet, turned his back, and walked away.
I glanced over my shoulder. Galadon lay facedown on the red earth. Unmoving. I let Rhys go and hurried to the old man, cursing my delay. “Master, can you hear me?” I said, rolling him onto his back.
The old man was struggling to breathe. A gaping wound in his chest had robbed him of far too much blood. “I was right,” he said fiercely. “Say it.”
“You were right. Of course you were. Was there no easier way to convince me?”
“Now show me,” he said, his red-rimmed eyes blinking away tears. “I’ve yearned to see ... since you told me about it that first time when you were a boy. So young. So young to have such power.”
“I need to get you—”
“Show me.” All the ferocity of his spirit was expended in the demand. A demon could not have refused him.
I shifted him enough that he could rest against a rock, then I stepped back and held my hands high above my head, whispering a wind spell so that my wings were completely spread and filled with air. The rippling pattern of the gossamer strands fell on Galadon’s smiling face. “Son of my heart.” He sighed. “Come close now.”
I knelt beside him again, and he pulled my ear down to his mouth, scarcely able to form the words. “Don’t ... harden ... your heart. Don’t believe all that you ...” When he did not continue, I pulled away to look. He had stopped breathing.
I had no time to mourn his passing. The light flickered, and I glanced up. The twin suns wobbled in circles about each other, and the dirt beneath my feet shifted uneasily. The portal ... Ysanne. Powers of night, they were shutting down the portal. I couldn’t believe it. No matter what else they’d done ... to shut a portal on a living man ...
I gathered Galadon’s too light body in my arms and spoke the wind again. “Now. Here.” A mighty gust picked us up, swirling dust into my eyes as I worked it, faltering, remembering, feeling, concentrating. The staggering suns began to dim, and I strained to see the portal through the dust and the fading light. A whirlwind could slam me to the disintegrating land. Rocks crashed to the surface, shattering into brittle shards that were snatched into the air and threatened to shred my wings. I fought to go higher, out of the debris, to see beyond the darkening haze. The portal was flickering. Fading. It was too far.
“Aife! Don’t leave me here!” I cried. “Face me. Tell me what I’ve done. But not this ...”
The gray rectangle disappeared, swallowed by the midnight darkness rolling in from the horizons. Rocks and tangled shrubs flew wildly through the air. There was no longer any solid place to land. When I tired enough that I could not fly, we would fall—the lifeless Galadon and I—into the abyss. Demon music wailed through the chaos as I struggled to stay oriented. Perhaps the portal was still there, hidden by the darkness ...
“There’s another.” The soft words were like a finger poking into my mind. “Hurry. Soar high, love.”
Another? Another portal?
Of course there was another. The one I had used to enter. Catrin’s portal. But where was it? Everything had changed. Panic threatened to disintegrate me as surely as the chaos devoured the landscape.
Reverse course. Don’t get caught in a circular wind. The wind is behind you now, so the place will come up faster ... on the right....
My back and shoulders ached with fatigue. My legs dragged. Galadon, so light when I lifted his body, weighed like one of the red boulders, but I would not leave him in that place.
Veer right. Now look for it. Careful of the updraft.
“This way,” said the voice, so faint it was almost unhearable, yet leading me higher and always to the right. “Hurry.”
A glimmer of gray. A straight line in a place where nothing was straight.
You must land perfectly on the edge, lest you fall backward. Hurry.
Wavering, wobbling, at the end of my strength, I dived for the flickering rectangle ...
... and banged my head on a stone platform, briefly knocking the wind out of myself on the very solid ground to which I returned.
“Seyonne! You’ve got to wake up.” A hand shook my shoulder so hard it rattled my teeth.
Wake up? Was it an illusion, then? All the emotions that sped through my mind: elation ... disappointment ... anger ... grief ... were they nothing but dream stuff? It seemed such a waste. “I don’t think I’m asleep.”
My next movement told me it had been no dream. The wings were gone, sloughed off like an old shirt as I passed through the portal, but the muscles in my shoulders and back spoke clearly of activities altogether beyond those of slaves. And so, Galadon ...
I flicked open my eyes to see Catrin crouched over me. Her small face was tired and filled with grief and worry; her green gown was stained with blood.
“I’m sorry,” I said, the entirety of the night’s events filling me to overflowing. “I wasn’t fast enough.”
“He didn’t expect to survive it.” She straightened up and moved away.
I was sprawled across the step at the base of a stone platform. Galadon lay beside me, his limbs straight, his wild hair tamed. Catrin must have put him there from wherever I had dropped him.
“Rhys escaped. And the demon.”
As I sat up, feeling as if I’d just crawled out from under an avalanche, Catrin returned, bringing a small bowl filled with water. With the strip of linen that had bound my eyes, she dabbed at a nasty cut on my forehead. “Are you going to sit here and recount your failures, or are you going to get up and prepare for the Second Battle? Your enemies believe you’re dead. You can’t let them know otherwise.”
My enemies. I had never thought of myself as having enemies except for the demons. Even the Derzhi had no personal antipathy for me, no interest in my identity. One barbarian slave was the same as another. But I had just been singled out for murder of the most horrific kind. And only by the grace of ... I moved Catrin’s hand aside so I could see her. “You held the second portal. Somehow you merged your weaving with Ysanne’s to let us in. And I wasn’t prepared, not able to do my part. How in the name of sense did you manage such a thing?” I searched her face for some hint of the voice that had called me back, but she was intent on business.
She pushed my chin around again so she could finish wiping the blood from my head. At the same moment I felt the prickle of enchantment and a stinging tightening of the skin that meant she had closed the wound to stop the bleeding. It was a quick, but not particularly good method for healing, and it would leave a scar, but I suppose she thought one more wasn’t going to bother me. Only then did she answer. “I told you I’ve not been idle. I can do more than bake almond cakes. Now you must—”
“Does anyone else know you’ve done this? Or that you’re capable? Rhys and Ysanne will be looking for the one who did it. They’ve already killed.” It was unbearable to think of it. Ysanne had been fostered so young that she had known little of her parents. She had always called Galadon her only true father. How could she have left him to die in an infested soul?
“Only Grandfather knew what I can do. But it’s vital that you remain dead for a while. You must come with me and do exactly as I say.” She dragged me up by my arm, and either the discomfort of the dragging or the discomfort of my thoughts fueled rebellion. Catrin did not seem to bring out the best in me. I must have mistaken her words in the chaos beyond the portal.
I yanked my arm from her grasp, which hurt me more than it did her, and I pointed an accusing finger at the still smiling Galadon. “I think I’ve had enough mysteries and surprises for one day. I’ll not go one step farther until you tell me the whole scheme this nefarious old buzzard has left us to play out.”
She didn’t want to hear it. “We need to go. Now. When we have time, I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
But Galadon’s blood still stained my hands, and I could not rejoice in the gift he had given me until I knew why he had to die to give it. I sat on the platform beside my old mentor and refused to budge. “I will not believe your grandfather died just to persuade me that he was right and I was wrong about power and faith. I have to know, Catrin.”

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