Part 12 (1/2)
”You look in their eyes, and you can see who bears demons and who does not.
Is that the way of it?”
”Yes, my lord.”
”Then, tell me what you see here.” He jabbed a finger at his own eye. ”Tell me that I am taken by a rai-kirah, then perhaps things will make sense.”
I did as he asked. It was certainly possible, though rare, for a demon to reveal itself voluntarily. But the feadnach still burned within him, which meant no demon ruled there. He was not untouched, however. A veil of enchantment shadowed his bright center-exactly what I should have been able to guard him against.
”So it's true, is it?” He leaned back on the cus.h.i.+ons heaped by the hearth and poured himself another cup of brandy from the flask I had left there. ”I see it in your face. I'm one of them, too.”
”No.” Sluggish with fear and despair, it was very hard to make the s.h.i.+ft back from the distance of my true seeing, so I had no sense left for caution in choosing words. ”No, ray lord, there is no demon in you-none you were not bom with.”
To my astonishment, after only a moment's pause, Alek-sander burst into laughter-hearty, healthy, hopeless merriment. ”I have never known anyone like you, Seyonne,” he said, raising his cup in mock salute. ”You mourn the universe while ignoring a knife pointed at your eye. Come, slave, tell me what you really think of me.”
His laughter nagged and nipped at my spirits like an annoying pup, and before another moment pa.s.sed, I was laughing with him. For ten minutes we wallowed in the silken cus.h.i.+ons and chortled like drunken drovers. I had not laughed in a century. It cured nothing, reduced the magnitude of the dilemma not a whit, yet I took strength from it.
I rubbed my hand over my short hair trying to return some wit to my head.
”We cannot laugh this away, my lord. I wish we could. There is no demon in you, but they have managed to bind you with an enchantment-a very nasty thing. It happened at the performance tonight, I would guess. The magic they worked was very powerful.”
He lay back and gazed thoughtfully on the golden wine cup as it gleamed in the firelight. ”I should kill all of you. Khelid and Ezzarians. Perhaps I will. All of this is words and mirrors and distractions. Theater props. None of it real.”
He wasn't going to tell me what had happened to him. He felt stronger, too, and believed he could resist it, whatever it was, just as he had resisted the sleeplessness.
”If you can control whatever they've done to you, you are stronger than any sorcerer.”
”Nothing happened.”
”Then, you should send me away, my lord. The farther, the better, for I am the one who is mad. But if whatever didn't happen should happen again, I might be of some help.” I pressed my forehead to the floor, and started toward the door. ”Shall I take a message to Captain Sovari?”
”Sovari!” He sat up straight. ”Athos' b.a.l.l.s, what time is it?”
”Somewhere in second watch,” I said.
”d.a.m.n. Tell him to wake me at dawn, and we'll be off. Tell him ... tell him I decided we needed to ride in daylight.”
”As you command, my lord.”
I left him poking at the fire, and crept past the attendants sleeping outside his door. After delivering his message to the Derzhi captain, who had been snoring under a horse blanket in the stables, I slipped up the back stair to the attic room and collapsed onto my pallet. Tired as I was, I could not sleep. The Lord of Demons. . . here, working such magic.. .the war to end the world. As I lay in the dark stale air, listening to the harrowing moans of slave dreams, my thoughts wandered into the dusty corridors of Ezzarian prophecy. The Scroll of Eddaus foretold a lost battle-a prophecy that many of my countrymen believed had been fulfilled with the Derzhi conquest. That writing was the same that spoke of the Gai Kyallet... and foretold a second battle, which, if lost, would leave the world in the thrall of demons. My people had been confidant that, however terrible our first defeat, this second and final battle was far in the future. All we had to do was make sure that some of us survived, to grow strong again. But what if we had been wrong? I threw my arms over my head and added my groans to those of my sleeping brethren. I could not bear to think.
The Prince did not leave at dawn. He was nowhere to be found when Sovari came to wake him, so I heard. I heard a number of the rumors that flitted through the palace that day. After administering five lashes and a solid beating with his padded truncheon and putting me on half rations for a month for my evening's disappearance, Boresh set me to scrubbing floor tiles. I guessed that the expanse of floor in the Summer Palace could have paved all the kingdom of Manganar. But even through the haze of hunger and pain and too little sleep, I heard the talk as I worked.
The Prince is ill. The Prince regrets his impulse to search for Lord Dmitri.
After all, he detests the old man. Has threatened to poison him. Has cursed him and tried to keep him away from Capharna. There's ill luck hanging over this dakrah: the Marshal Dmitri missing, the bandit raids at Erum. Beasts have come down from the mountains and been seen in the city. A tavern keeper was mauled in the last night.
Sometime just after midday, I moved my aching knees to yet another square of cold slate in the gallery that separated the residential wing from the administrative wing of the palace. As I gritted my teeth and dipped my raw hand into the water pail yet again, two men hurried past. One of them was Aleksander, fastening the high collar on a green tunic as he walked. ”... do not need to explain myself to anyone,” he said. ”Now, I'm late....”
Aleksander hurried on, while his companion stopped and put his hands on his hips in exasperation. It was Sovari.
”May I be of service, Captain?” I said, pausing for a moment to ease my burning shoulders.
In one glance he took in my ident.i.ty and the b.l.o.o.d.y tunic stuck to my back.
”We've both felt the brunt of this night's doings it seems,” he said.
”I've had better mornings,” I said.
”He changed his mind. We're not to go after the Marshal, after staying up half the night to be ready. He's sent another party into the Jybbar. I've been put on report for upsetting the household. I may have lashes of my own coming.”
”I'm sorry, Captain. I only brought the message I was told.”
”We all do as we're told, but some days it doesn't seem to matter.”
I saw no more of Aleksander that day. I worked until two hours past midnight before finis.h.i.+ng. Neither mind nor body could function any longer, and I was glad for it. Not even the growling in my belly would keep me awake. But as I stumbled up the attic stair ready to ease my weary bones and torn flesh onto the pallet, a hand gripped my arm and a whisper burst upon my ear. ”Come with me, Ezzarian.”
”I've done everything required, Master Boresh,” I mumbled. ”If you have more floors to be cleaned-”
”Quiet.” The hand dragged me away from the barracks-room door and the snoring guard, and down another back stair. Who was it? Boresh had no need for secrecy. As we turned at a landing, a sliver of moonlight penetrated a grimy window and fell on a broad, flat Manganar face encircled by wiry, gray- streaked hair.
”Master Durgan!”
”I said to close your mouth. Just come.”
I no longer resisted, but went willing, curiosity pumping a bit of life into my legs. We emerged in the brick-paved kitchen courtyard and wound our way through the snow-covered barrels, crates, and piles of rusty stovepipes, and past the stinking refuse heaps and the bins of smoldering ashes. Durgan led me not into the slave house, but into a long, open work shed at the far side of it. At one end of the shed was a storeroom, where spare ropes and chain and pulleys and such things were kept. We stopped at the storeroom door.
”I grew up in the southern lands,” said the slave master, ”where strange tales of good and evil were told at our hearth fires... my gran always said we could feel safe, living close to the sorcerers' land as we did. She said the Ezzarian sorcerers kept faithful watch and held the darkness away. In truth, I've not slept easy in all the years since Ezzaria's fall. There's evil abroad in the land.
These past weeks, I've felt it close, and tonight I know it. Did you hear of the beast that roamed the city last night?”
”I heard that a bear or a mountain cat of some kind mauled an innkeeper. Probably waked hungry from winter sleep....”
”I thought the same. I was watching for it, thinking it might show up here near the refuse heaps, and sure enough, tonight I saw it'slinking through the courtyard. I gave chase and it ran in here, but when I got my sword and ventured inside, it was no beast I found.”
All the dread from the previous night surged through my veins, shoving my weariness aside. I knew what I would find when Durgan opened the door.
”Get blankets and hot tea or wine,” I said, and I stepped into the storeroom and knelt beside Prince Aleksander. ”My lord, can you hear me?”
He was cowering in the corner, his eyes golden pools of fear with no sense or intelligence in them. The green tunic was torn and stained, and his feet were bare. Just as on the previous night, he was s.h.i.+vering violently, and a low, feral moan rumbled from his chest.
”We'll soon have you warm again,” I said. I tried to examine him for injuries, but he snarled and shrank away. I spoke to him calmly, though, and by the time Durgan was back with blankets and a pot of boiling nazrheel, I had determined that his body was unharmed. I scooped a cup of the strong tea from Durgan's pot and held it close to Alek-sander's face so the steam might warm him and the familiar scent draw his senses into some sort of focus.
Soon I had him sipping from the cup, the clouds slowly clearing from his eyes.
”We need a fire,” I said to the slave master. ”Somewhere we won't be disturbed.”
”The gardener's workroom,” he said. ”No one will be there this time of year.”
He pointed the way, then hurried ahead to light a fire.