Revelation (5 page)

Three younger boys stopped their sword practice to gape. Catrin snapped at them to get back to their business or they would never make it so far as Drych. Then she gave me a shove with her hand on my back. “Go pull him out. Make him believe he’s not as worthless as he thinks. His practice was much harder than Tegyr’s. I’ll bring this one down to earth.”

Tegyr, blond, wiry, and the taller of the two, carried an oval glass in one hand—an imitation of the Luthen mirror. He appeared to have vanquished his invisible foe, for the mirror was raised as if to show the demon its own reflection, and the young man’s knife was ready to send the demon to its death. While I went and dragged the gasping, moaning Drych back to reality, giving him a moment to feel his abdomen and realize that he was not watering some alien landscape with his blood, Catrin stood beside the silver curtain and drew her fist through the air, leaving a silvered pattern hanging like the trail of a falling star.

“Brynnidda!” Tegyr cried out, then leaped backward and fell on his backside, dropping the mirror. He began to struggle desperately. Apparently his illusory opponent was not quite defeated. You had to be certain that the physical manifestation was dead before attacking the demon itself. Always a hard lesson. And Catrin would have no mercy on the boy. He had called out his paired Aife’s name—a slip so grave it could set him back three months. Names are the channel to the soul. Demons tried every maneuver to elicit the names of Wardens or Aifes.

Drych bowed to me without greeting. For him to speak unbidden in the middle of a training session was improper. He was still quivering, either with relief that his ordeal had been only illusion, or perhaps in terror that he would be found wanting and never make use of all his hard lessons. In the next two hours I required him to review every move of his fight for me, so that we could find his mistakes, and we practiced until he had the needed corrections so imprinted on his mind and body that he would still be repeating them when he slept that night.

At one point in the middle of the session, I glimpsed Catrin and Fiona talking to a tall, formidably constructed gray-haired woman. Talar. As ever when I saw Fiona’s mentor, the First of the Mentor’s Council, annoyance and resentment seethed beneath my skin. Talar was the instigator of the humiliating watch on me, seemingly determined that I should be proved corrupt because I dared disagree with her. She had dragged it out for almost a year already, with six endless months to go.

Ysanne could have stopped it at any time, of course. My wife was the Queen, chosen to rule our land and people as our goddess Verdonne ruled the forests of the earth. But she had insisted that it would be better to let it go on. “Let them see. Let them be satisfied. If I suspend the watch, Talar will claim we’re hiding something, and you’ll never be free of suspicion.”

On this day my resentment of the gray-haired Aife was worse than usual. Talar leaned upon an ash walking stick—the same I’d seen in my home on the night my son was laid out to die. Of course the self-appointed guardian of Ezzarian purity would have been there to make sure all was done correctly.

I worked alongside Drych and the other older students through the rest of the afternoon until they were wilting like scalded lilies. And then I made them begin again, and I did two moves for every one of theirs until I felt the same. Maybe they would begin to understand that there would be no end to it. Not if they wanted to stay alive.

In the past months the demon battles had become more frequent, more complicated, and more ferocious. We had expected it. The Demon Lord’s attempt to take power in the human world by controlling Aleksander had signaled a departure from everything we knew of rai-kirah. In the past they had concentrated on individual domination. Now they seemed to have learned more of human ways and human evils, and wished to use their power over us for larger aims. I was trying to convince Ysanne that we needed to keep closer watch on the affairs of the world, lest they try again to insinuate themselves into human troubles. Though I had no evidence of new plots, I had seen the reflection of the change in my battles—increased cunning, viciousness, distractions, and surprises, as on the previous night when the demon seemed to be waiting at the portal. Expecting me. Knowing me.

“Again,” I said when Tegyr sank to his knees in the dirt, shaking his head as we started another set of movements. “You claim that you can stand against the worst that demons can do. Don’t think they’ll give you their worst when you’re fresh.” And as they began again, I conjured for them an image of the monster I had fought the previous day, and I laid before them the horror I had lived during that battle. I forced them to see, and I tried to teach them how to convert anger into strength and endurance. It was a lesson I needed to review.

“What perversion is this?” said Fiona, staring at the image of the monster fading into the angled sunlight. She snapped her gaze to my face. “This is yesterday?”

“This is what’s out there,” I said.

Drych, shaken by what he’d seen, asked permission to speak. “Mistress Talar says that too much thinking about the victim can taint a Warden,” he said. “Is that what caused you to fail yesterday?”

“Mistress Talar has never fought a demon,” I said. “It is the victim who gives you strength and purpose; they give meaning to everything you do. You can’t let them distract you, but you must never forget them. Never. I made a mistake yesterday. That’s all. Now, begin again.”

Ordinarily I spent at least one hour with the youngest boys. They were awkward and clumsy and in awe of me, but I took pleasure in giving them each some reason to stand up straighter in a time when they could do so little right. On that day, though, I could not bear the sight of wiry young limbs or excited dark eyes, oversized in eager faces, alight with melydda.

I told Catrin that I would await her outside until she dismissed her gaggle to go stuff themselves with supper. When she came out, I was sitting on the damp ground leaning on a tree, watching the fish rings spread on a still pond. The trees crowded close about the pond, the brilliant new-green leaves motionless in the sunset glow, as if held in breathless anticipation of night. Fiona sat on the steps of the practice arena, far enough away that normal hearing would not catch what was said. I wasn’t fooled. She could hear a beetle’s clicking at three leagues.

“And how did Drych progress?” Catrin stood in front of me, her arms folded across her breast.

“Work him through a similar test tomorrow and see,” I said, crushing a sprig of clover between my fingers. “He learns quickly. You’ve pushed him hard.”

“We don’t have a lot of time.”

I looked up at her quickly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re tired. You can’t fight every day. In this past year you’ve spent more time beyond the portal than in the real world. You can’t carry this entire war on your shoulders.”

“I can do what I need to do. Give them the time they need to be ready.”

I wanted her to sit down beside me, to let me put my head on her shoulder and weep. But instead she remained standing, unblinking as she looked down at me. “You need to stop for a while, Seyonne. A few weeks. A month. You’re going to die if you don’t. Or something worse.”

“So you heard about yesterday.”

“Of course I heard. I am your mentor. You should have been the one to tell me.”

I could have made excuses such as “it was the middle of the night” or “I had to confront my wife, the murderer,” but instead I confessed that I hadn’t even thought of the requirement to report such a grievous mistake to my mentor without delay. Of all the protocols surrounding demon battles, it was one I agreed with wholeheartedly. Though always tempting to overlook one’s own shortcomings, it was good to share them with someone, to lay them out piece by piece, to analyze them without emotion or blame, looking forward, even while speaking of deeds already done. It made you better. More honest. More understanding. “It was a damned wretched day, Catrin. I’m sorry.”

“You will come to me at dawn tomorrow, and we’ll review it.”

I bowed my head to her as was proper from a student to a mentor. A Warden was a student until he was retired or dead.

“Now, go home.” She laid her hand briefly atop my head, then went off to drag her students from their plates and cups and set them to work again at books and pens. Throughout Ezzaria mentors were doing the same, pushing their young charges to be ready. The Searchers already bypassed half the calls they could have sent us.

I never made it home that night. A runner caught up with me just before I crossed the wooden bridge to the house. “Master Warden! A call . . .”

I waved to Fiona to hurry so the panting girl would not have to repeat the news. My watchdog was rarely more than ten paces behind.

 

In the next ten days Fiona and I took on twelve combats. In the short hours between them we never left the temple. Fiona had no opportunity to nag at me for flaws in my preparation, for we would sag into our blankets as soon as we were done. Pallets were brought for us, though cold stone and bare ground were comfortable enough when one was as tired as we were. Catrin kept us supplied with food and wine. She probably guessed that when presented with the choice of using our time sleeping or going somewhere to find a meal, we would always choose sleep. Twice she came herself to make sure we were not pushing too hard.

“You know you can refuse a call,” she said one evening as we sat on the steps of the temple, watching a flock of sparrows fluttering about the trees. “No ill judgment will come from it.”

“This last one was a Derzhi baron who burned three villages and his own house with his wife and children still inside it. The one before was a ship captain who abandoned a sinking vessel with slaves still chained to the oars. Which ones do we refuse?”

“What of Fiona? She’s young for this.” The aforementioned young woman scowled at us from her place by the fire. It was her own fault for eavesdropping.

“She does well,” I said, staring at a leg of roast fowl in my hand, trying to decide if it was worth the effort to lift it to my mouth. “But you’ll have to ask her for yourself. She’s not about to admit any weakness to me.”

“Or you to her?”

I glanced at Catrin and grinned. “Not in this life.”

She did not return my attempt at humor, instead repeating what she had told me at her practice arena. “You need to stop for a while, Seyonne.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said. “But I can’t say I mind being busy. Less time to think about things I’d as soon forget.”

Like a twittering cloud, the sparrows rose from the trees, circled, and settled back again, just where they had already been.

 

In nine of those twelve battles the demon chose to abandon its host and return to its frozen realm to live again. In two I had to kill it. One battle I lost, the second venture in a single day. Stupid to try it, but it was another case where the victim’s madness was of such a cruel nature that I could not stomach letting it pass. Fiona agreed to go ahead, and I told myself she was a grown woman who knew her own capacities. But I was the more experienced partner, and I knew she would not refuse to weave if I was willing to fight. I should never have allowed her to weave.

 

I stepped into a landscape of absolute darkness and bitter cold—signs of a drained Aife and always a terrible risk.
Light, Aife!
But the blackness did not ease, and I could not muster the concentration I needed for my other senses to compensate. I needed to move. To find light enough to see what I was doing.
Run. Fly
. . .

I had one talent that no Warden in the living memory of Ezzaria had possessed. While beyond the portal I could trigger a self-transformation that gave me wings. No one understood how it was possible, and there had been a number of skeptics when I was eighteen and told of my first experience. But to me it had become a natural extension of my melydda, just as my sword had become a natural extension of my arm. Wings brought me power and mobility that made the difference in many demon confrontations.

Fighting to discover what might be lurking in the darkness, I triggered the necessary enchantment, but just before the wings took shape, when I was the most vulnerable as the burning in my shoulders consumed my conscious mind, the demon attacked. I had no time to discern its shape. No time to shift my senses or regain my composure. I was too slow and too tired. I had to get out or I was going to die.

“Aife!” I screamed as claws raked my flesh from three directions at once. The portal appeared, but the beast had dragged me farther away from it than I had expected. I wrestled loose and ran, the ground beneath my feet drumming with the monster’s steps. The darkness quivered with its stinking breath. Raw evil surged on every side, hatred that froze the blood and turned limbs to lead, sapping the will and drowning the soul in despair. My weakness was affecting Fiona, too, for the portal wavered, fading in and out of the darkness. “Hold, Aife!” I cried as the rectangular borders fragmented. I leaped for the dim grayness and landed facedown on the floor of the temple. One leg was on fire, ripped by the demon’s claws, but I could do nothing about it. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to move again.

“Stupid, stupid,” I said, shaking the darkness from my head as I lay there limp and exhausted, my heaving breath burning my lungs, the pall of grotesque horror not yet withdrawn from my spirit. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

Fiona’s only answer was a quiet choking, and I raised my head enough to see. She was collapsed on her back beside the fire pit, as deathly pale as her white robes. I crawled over to her and rolled her onto her side, where she proceeded to vomit up the remains of our last hastily eaten meal. She looked very frail and vulnerable.

I lifted her up out of the pool of vomit and carried her to the eastern steps of the temple where the morning sun shone hot and clean, then fetched water and bathed her face and dripped some on her lips. She would likely be incensed at my ill use of drinking water for washing, yet it brought the color back to her thin face. An enjoyable irony.