Transformation (51 page)
Authors: Carol Berg
“I don’t believe any of this.”
I tried to hold patience. We might need Kiril. “Please, my lord. Do you know where he’s gone? We must go to him now. It may already be too late.”
“He said he had business with Lord Kastavan. I told him that Kastavan wasn’t in the city, but that he’d be here by tonight. They’re building a temple on the Watch Mount. Kydon and Korelyi and their priests are going to dedicate the foundation stone tonight at moonrise, and Kastavan is to attend.”
“I must go, then,” I said, trying to rein in my excitement. The moon was rising early, just after sunset, but that meant there was still an hour. “And you must do as he asked you. I don’t know how much he told you, but the Khelid may try to take the city by force. If it happens, it will likely be six days from this. There will be no warning, so you must be ready for it.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then, I would take anyone I cared for, run as deep into the mountains as I could, and never come out again.”
“Bloody Athos.”
“Now can you tell me how to find this temple?”
Aleksander’s cousin was an unassuming young man, his manner as unlike the Prince as was possible, considering they had been raised in the same house by many of the same people. He was not comfortable taking advice from a “barbarian slave,” and I watched him wrestle with the demands of breeding and duty, faithfulness and doubt. But he either had to accept that Aleksander was mad or do as his prince had bid him. Because he loved Aleksander, he grasped at the explanation that held him innocent, and from his first moment of acceptance, he never questioned my authority.
“I’ll take you there,” Kiril said firmly. “As you’ve seen, there are a great many eyes watching my house. In case anyone asks, I’m taking you to visit your sick wife, but I have no intention of letting you go until tomorrow.”
I nodded, allowed him to bind my hands loosely with rope, then he steered me firmly out of the shed, across the courtyard, and into the street. We’d gone no more than fifty paces down the lane when I leaned my head close. “There’s a man following us who’s got teeth like a badger. Is he one of yours?”
“No.”
The light was failing. A few of the public houses already had torches lit outside them, and laughter and music of skirling pipes and scraping strings came from inside. Fifty plans raced through my mind, but when I saw a hunchbacked woman stumble out of an alley just ahead of us, I nodded toward the dark lane and said, “Shall we take him aside and see what he wants?”
“Are you planning to work some sorcery?”
“No need.”
But no sooner did we dodge into the alley and turn to grab the badger-faced man than he was joined by the hunchbacked woman, who confronted us, poised to throw a very long knife. “Give him over,” she said to Kiril, “or this knife will find a home right in your throat. I’m quite accurate.” Somehow the voice didn’t fit with the slack, lumpish face.
Kiril pushed me behind him. “I am the Emperor’s dennissar. Who are you and what do you want with my prisoner?”
The badger-faced man used a short sword to motion Kiril to his knees and made as if to cut his throat. In the time it takes for a hummingbird to flit beyond reach, I slipped my hands from the rope, shoved the young Derzhi to the ground, and twisted the sword from our assailant’s grasp. Then I lunged, kicked at the woman’s hand, and raised my hand, on course to break the man’s neck and the woman’s arm, when they yelled together, “Seyonne! Wait!” I aborted the move at the last instant, stumbling into the wall and shaking my head as I watched the two faces slide into more familiar lines. Catrin and Hoffyd.
Kiril gaped, and I sagged against the wall. “You should give me a little more warning,” I said.
“We saw him bring you out with your hands bound,” said Catrin. “We thought ...”
Well, it was clear what they thought. I explained quickly, and introduced them to Kiril, who merely looked from one of us to the other repeatedly, squinting and widening his eyes. Catrin’s illusion had been amazingly good. A transformation of appearance was extraordinarily difficult to sustain for more than five minutes. And for two of them ... It was no wonder she looked tired when we took off again.
The temple site was on a rocky height in the center of the city. Watchtowers, built by the same ancient stoneworkers who had crafted the foundation of the city, had stood on the heights for as long as anyone could remember. These builders had left their work scattered, not just in Parnifour, but throughout all the lands that had become the Empire. There were those among my people who claimed we were somehow related to these ancients, for their ruins were strong with melydda. Our ancestors had certainly modeled our own temples on their works.
The Khelid had taken possession of the land and torn down the old towers, so Kiril said, and it was there they planned to build the temple, to introduce their gods to the people of the Derzhi Empire. A single narrow track zigzagged to the top of the rocks.
It was impossible to go up by way of the road. Khelid guards were posted, preventing anyone from passing without being identified. As Kiril had written Aleksander, there were hundreds of Khelid in Parnifour. I was almost sick with the aura of demon. “We’ve got to find another way up,” I said as we mingled with the townspeople who stood on the fringes of the Khelid crowd watching the goings-on.
“Come this way,” said Kiril, leading us through crowded lanes around to a deserted saddle-maker’s shop on the far side of the bluffs. “There’s another path up, but it’s wickedly steep. I’ve been trying to keep an eye on the Khelid for a while, and Jynnar, the man who owns this shop, showed me this way.”
“I’ll wait down here,” said Hoffyd when we reached the deserted shop. “I don’t do well with heights in the dark since I lost the eye.”
“I’ll wait here, too,” said the Derzhi. “It would be well to guard your rear. There’s no other way down save through the middle of the Khelid, and if you were to bring Aleksander ...”
“I’ve got to go,” I said, chafing at the delay. The sun was sagging toward the horizon, and the hints of demon music that hung in the still, warm air had my nerves quivering.
“I’ll go with Seyonne,” said Catrin. “Someone has to keep him from going off and doing something stupid.”
“Watch yourself,” said Kiril. “The path is tricky.”
So Catrin and I started up the crumbling goat track. Pebbles and rocks rolled out from under our boots and crashed down the hillside. In some places the track was only wide enough for one foot, and in others it was missing altogether and we had to stretch over a sheer drop to reach another foothold. We grasped at twigs and stunted trees that grew out of the rocks, and more than once I ended up flattened against the rock with a mouthful of dirt, clinging for my life with fingertips and boots. It was too slow. I wanted to scream at the delay. What was Aleksander doing?
It took us over an hour to get up the path. The moon was up by the time we crawled over the edge onto a knob of rock overlooking the flat top of the bluff. We lay flat and scooted to the edge to peer down. There must have been five hundred Khelid on the rocky promontory, standing in a ring about a flat gray stone set into the ground. I could scarcely breathe from the weight of demon enchantment in the still air. Every heartbeat was a struggle; every moment passed slowly and with effort, as if you were running in chest-high water. Catrin pressed her hands to her ears, but I knew how futile was the attempt to block out the grinding noise. The horror pulsed in the veins until it seemed as if the only way to be rid of it was to cut the vein and let it bleed away.
We were too late. Aleksander stood in the center of the ring, the livid crescent moon hanging low in the east behind him. A man knelt before him, laughing uproariously—a strange gurgling laugh mixed with strident breathing. But it was not to do the Prince honor that the man knelt. Rather it was only a transient pose before he toppled onto the gray stone, his face purple and distorted, and a knife hilt protruding from his chest. Kastavan. Aleksander had guessed the surest way to get the result he wanted.
If there had been a word I could say that might change what was to come, I would have said it. If it would have made any difference, I would have leaped from my rock for Aleksander as I had leaped from the precipice for Galadon, wings or no. But the Khelid host was dead, and therefore his demon was savoring his last unholy terrors, licking his lips and belching in a surfeit of hatred and lust, as it began the search for a new home. It would not have to look far. For there stood before him a vessel: waiting, prepared, nurtured by the demon enchantment.
Hear me, Aleksander,
I said, willing my thoughts to penetrate the grotesque din.
Hold onto yourself. You are not alone. You will not be abandoned when you fall into the abyss. I’ll come for you. Never doubt it. Never.
I said, willing my thoughts to penetrate the grotesque din.
Hold onto yourself. You are not alone. You will not be abandoned when you fall into the abyss. I’ll come for you. Never doubt it. Never.
I would have sworn the Prince looked up at me and smiled in that moment, just before he went rigid and fell to his knees, his fists pressed to his temples. Then there came from him such a cry as would shrivel the stoutest heart. It was the essence of pain and uttermost desolation, distilled from the fullness of the world’s nightmares. Every childhood fright, every midnight disturbance, every mother’s pain as she watches her child in torment, every father’s despair as he buries his last son, a young wife barren, a young husband impotent, a scholar blind, a musician deaf, a gardener condemned to everlasting desert ... such was the agony that welled from Aleksander’s bright center as he was drowned in darkness.
Hold, my prince. I will come for you.
This time when he gazed to the top of the rocks where I lay, two beams of frigid blue gleamed from the eyes that should be bright amber.
What voice is this? Come ... and we will see who has him in the end.
What voice is this? Come ... and we will see who has him in the end.
My skin grew clammy and my throat constricted. My heart tried to claw its way from my body to escape the hissing voice that crept into my thoughts, hungering to know who I was. Every mark of hatred on my body screamed with fire. And as the demon music soared in hellish symphony, Aleksander yanked his knife from the dead Khelid and began to cut out his victim’s heart.
“Come away.” Catrin’s voice stung like ice on burned flesh. “You can do him no good here. It is the battle will set him free or not, and it is time to prepare.”
Chapter 33
When we rejoined Kiril and Hoffyd at the saddle maker’s shop, three men lay on the dirt floor, immobilized by Kiril’s sword and Hoffyd’s magic. They were townsmen, known informants who were in the habit of watching Kiril’s house. They had seen the incident in the alley and were following us, hoping to profit from such a strange occurrence. Kiril shipped them out of Parnifour that night in a wagon he designated as tax revenues bound for Zhagad. By the time they woke up, the three spies would be abandoned in the heart of the Azhaki grasslands fifty leagues from anywhere.
It would be too dangerous for us to stay with Kiril, so we took shelter with one of his friends in a stable just outside the city walls to the north. It was a large, well-kept place, centered in rocky pastureland that rose gently toward the mountains. But all the stable lads had been taken away to work on the Khelid temple or the old Derzhi fortress, where Kydon the legate had taken residence, so most of the horses had been sent back to their owners. The stable owner came out for a few hours each day to care for the remaining horses. He would bring us food and supplies and ask no questions.
I watched as the spies were taken away, listened as the arrangements were made, walked out of the gates, down the rutted road, and up the wooden stairs to the dormitory above the deserted stables, carrying whatever was put in my hand. I made my bed where I was told and lay on it unsleeping. But all I could hear in those hours was Aleksander’s cry, and all I could see was his face in the instant the demon took him, the moment he realized what he had done and what was to come. However terrible my dreams were going to be when I slept again, they would be no match for his.
“I’m sorry we were late,” said Catrin, handing me a cup of hot wine and sitting on the straw pallet beside me, picking at the dirty canvas ticking.
“I was supposed to protect him. He thought this was what I wanted.”
“Grandfather was right, wasn’t he? This is not just about your oath anymore, not about saving the world from demon chaos. This is about Aleksander.”
“I would give my life for him—a stubborn, arrogant, murderous Derzhi. I think I’ve lost my mind.”
“You sound just as he did, cursing you for an insolent barbarian ... just before he went dashing off to Avenkhar to find you. It took me a while to understand how you could care so much for one so absolutely opposite yourself in background, feelings, and beliefs. I thought him handsome and charming, but little more. Only in those last days did I begin to see it.”
“There’s so little time.”
“So how long will it take you to put this behind you and go on?”
I looked up at her small face, so unlikely a façade for an iron will. “If I could step through the portal right now, I would do it,” I said.
She nodded. “And you would lose. You must put him away before you go. Clear your mind. You know how dangerous it can be if you think too much of the victim or care too much.” She yanked a dangling thread from the worn cloth of the bedcover. “You’ve never fought in the soul of someone you know.”
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