Revelation (45 page)

I scratched more nonsense in my journal. My hands continued to shake. My past still lay hidden behind walls built of pain and mortared with blood, and I made no further attempt to recover it. I lived with beauty and could think of nothing else.

 

On the occasion when I completed reading a set of ten books of romantic epics, Vallyne expressed her desire to give me a gift. She did not ask me what I wanted—she well knew the truth of that—but instead presented me with a horse. The beast was an illusion, of course, for there was no life in the land of Kir’Vagonoth save the rai-kirah and the two captive humans. The lady wanted to take me riding into the storm-wracked countryside. I thoroughly disliked the idea.

I had come to the conclusion that, other than the demons themselves, the weather was the only reality in Kir’Vagonoth. The sole variety in it was the occasion’s particular intensity of virulent cold and the shape of the penetrating wind. The demons suffered terribly from the cold, and no thickness of walls or layers of fur could shelter them. The bitter wind sucked the very brilliance from their light when they stepped out into the weather. All except Vallyne, who seemed to thrive at any challenge.

Of course, even beyond the frigid desolation, the grim wastes of snow and ice gave me the shudders. I had not completely forgotten my life-destroying dreams. And there were dangers in the wasteland that were neither frost nor dream. The Gastai lurked everywhere, and they were going mad.

On our third or fourth riding excursion, Nevai guards at the jackal gates tried to prevent our leaving the castle. A rugged, shovel-faced fellow named Heddon argued with Vallyne. “A party of rogue Gastai has raided a Rudai workshop, my lady. Ruined the tools and shapings, destroyed twelve Rudai of Kaarat’s jurisdiction after using them cruelly. Denas has forbidden any to go out until he has controlled the raiders.”

“He did not intend his orders to apply to me.”

Heddon’s light flickered nervously. “My lady, he expressly commanded us to stop you from leaving. The mad ones are everywhere.”

“And if I refuse to obey?”

“I will be punished for permitting you to pass.”

“But of course you cannot prevent me, Heddon.” And then she spoke a word somewhere between a snake’s hiss and the sigh of a lover. Until that moment I had never felt the fullness of Vallyne’s power. For one brief instant, the clouds ceased their churning movements, and the relentless wind circled back upon itself, as if it might suck the earth and sky and all of us who inhabited them into its source. The soot-stained light of Kir’Vagonoth was dimmed as Vallyne’s demon form gleamed alongside her physical form, the two images shifting one upon the other along with vague outlines of a hundred larger shapes. It was only a moment. Yet for the duration of it, I could scarcely move.

The guard bowed his head. “Of course not, my lady. I can only ask.”

“You may tell Denas that I threatened worse punishments than he. I’m feeling too confined and need to be out for a while.”

“Indeed, my lady. But please be cautious. The mad ones leave you nothing. It’s like the dark times again, so I’ve heard.”

“Thank you for your warning, Heddon.” And so we rode on.

Ordinarily Vallyne would chatter unceasingly as we rode, the activity brightening her spirits even as the oppressive terrors of the wilderness sent mine plummeting. She would spur her mount up and over the rises and whoop in wild delight as it galloped down again, kicking up plumes of powdery snow. But on that day she said very little, riding aimlessly it seemed, circling slowly this way and that, winding between the icy hillocks instead of challenging them. A fine mist settled on our cloaks and in our hair, freezing them stiff. I had to trust that the lady could find her way through the heavy blue-gray clouds that had sagged all the way to the ground.

“How is it the Gastai can kill others of your kind?” I said, trying to shake loose my nagging fears with conversation. “I thought it impossible.”

Vallyne kept her face straight ahead, her fine, squared jaw raised proudly as she rode. “It is a sickness in these Gastai—to hold one of us in solid form and kill the body, not allowing the true being to leave the shaping. Only after the body’s death do they take the victims far into the wilderness and release them. The ones so treated cannot remember what we have learned in all these years, what we have made for ourselves. They can’t find their way back here, and so it is like the dark times all over again for them.”

I shifted uneasily, thinking of the Luthen mirror holding the demons paralyzed as Merryt killed them . . . as I had done so often in the past. A sickness. Yes. Perhaps it was.

After three-quarters of an hour, I caught the stench of demon on the blustering wind—thick, foul, raising my defenses as had not happened since my first hours in Denas’s castle. “Vallyne—”

She held up her hand to silence me, then pointed down a modest slope from our position toward a thickening in the clouds: a huge, dense black clot that seemed to grow as we watched. Howls of beast rage spewed from the blackness, soon drowning out the thundering wind and accompanied by a fury of yips and growls, the snarling lust of wild dogs that have scented fresh blood.

My body knew what it was I saw and heard—so familiar, yet magnified a hundred times from my past experience. My muscles tightened, every sense instantly alert, searching in vain for the melydda to feed it. A demon battle raged in the midst of the storm—not practice as they did in their arena, but a death battle. Monstrous shapes took form in the roiling clouds—a pack of huge jackals with bloody muzzles, apelike creatures with six arms, a giant cat with a snake for a tail, and, in the midst of it all, scarcely visible in the murk, a leather-winged dragon.

“Hyssad hwyd zhar! Faz dyarra y vekkasto.”
Golden fire split the churning mass of diseased enchantment as the command rang out. “Begone from this place! Back to your pits or become nothingness.” Denas . . . the dragon . . . powerful, magnificent. He had not used that form in the practice arena.

The howls grew louder and fiercer. The jackals tore at the leather wings. The cat screeched, and everywhere was the sound of pain and mad fury as the dark cloud thickened, obscuring the vicious combat. My bones ached at the sound, and the reins slipped from my shaking hands. I bent forward to reach and take them up again, but stayed low, as if I might hide behind my horse’s ruddy mane. Then a towering geyser of darkness shot into the clouds and collapsed instantly to the snow-covered wastes, and in the next moment I felt the explosion of sickness, the world-splitting, soul-darkening release of power that was the truth of demon death, magnified a hundred times.

Vallyne sat rigid in the saddle. Watching. Waiting.

Slowly the blackness thinned and broke apart, releasing pent-up deadness like the opening of a grave. Yet even as I shuddered at the foul vapors and spat to take the taste of it from my mouth, there rose from the drifting remnants of that enchanted storm a haunting song of mourning, a warrior’s chant expressing loss so profound that it summed up everything I knew of sorrow. As it reached its climax and faded, a single frigid gust swept the remaining darkness away, then even the wind fell silent for a moment, as if to respect such grief. Five rai-kirah, their lights dull, their faces tired and wounded, were riding up the rise toward us, Denas in the lead. When he came even with our position, the demon lord reined in his mount and motioned his warriors past us. He did not so much as glance at Vallyne, but cast me a look of bitter hatred. He seemed on the verge of speech, but as soon as the others were past, he jerked the reins of his unliving mount and followed his fellows toward the distant castle.

“Did they lose a comrade?” Instantly I regretted my query. My curiosity seemed crass, desecrating the lingering echoes of Denas’s grieving.

“No,” said Vallyne. A sudden gust of wind swirled snow about her face, and she tugged sharply on the reins to turn back and follow Denas toward the castle. “He sang for the Gastai.”

 

On the forty-first day of my life with Vallyne—approximately forty-one, as the days and nights were indistinguishable, and I may have missed a few or added extra—she took me riding to the city on the horizon. I was surprised at this. I had learned that there were indeed other castles in Kir’Vagonoth. Rhadit, for one—the much maligned leader of the “great venture”—had his own fortress. But I had never been taken to any of them or to the workshops of the Rudai that were the long low buildings half buried in the snow. That was fine with me, as the black and silver terror of my dreams still lurked somewhere in the freezing tempest along with the mad Gastai.

I tried to avoid the outing. “I found another book about mountains,” I said. “I swear that it’s complete and makes sense from start to finish.” We had found that many of the writings took off in odd directions, as if the end of one book had been pasted onto the beginning of another. “And we’ve never finished the poem you were composing. If you’re going to make it rhyme as you wish, you need to work at it a bit more.”

“But you’ve never seen the city, and the Rudai worked so hard on it. It is their greatest proof that we have come out of the dark times.”

I could not refuse her, of course, and so I bundled myself in cloak and gloves, and we rode over the arched bridge into the wilderness. “Tell me of the dark times,” I said, seeking anything to distract me from the terrors lurking in the howling wind and my unhealthy desire to love a demon. The “dark times” were oft mentioned, but never discussed among the Nevai.

“It was the time after Kir’Navarrin was stolen away. When we first found ourselves in Kir’Vagonoth,” she said, matching her horse’s pace to mine. “We could not remember our names or our shapes, could not find what we needed . . . could not feel . . . could not see. And there was nothing but this.” She waved her hand to the bleak landscape. “A savage time. A very long time. Though we must remember it, it is very difficult to talk about.”

Her face took on a new character as she spoke, as fine wood takes on a new luster with careful use. For just a moment her demon form flickered silver, overlaying her fair young woman’s visage with a beauty that was older, sadder, prouder. Merryt could not have it right. Her true face was not monstrous . . . for I believed I had caught a glimpse of it. I promptly forgot what she had said, as well as my other questions.

In the way of demon travel, we were not long upon the journey, and soon we were riding on brick-paved streets between houses and shops, towered temples, sprawling courtyards and palaces, parks, fountains, bathhouses, and grand colonnades . . . all of them deserted. It was a city of grace and art and largeness of mind, expressing the power and intellect of a civilized people, worthy to be matched with Zhagad itself. But snow had drifted into doorways and windows, clogging streets and alleys, piled atop hanging signboards that swung aimlessly in the wind. Darkness hung thick in the wide streets and majestic buildings. Everywhere was silence.

“It is a marvel,” I said. “Why does no one live here?”

“Some tried,” she said, running her hand along the basin of a flower-shaped fountain. The water, frozen hard, should have been rippling about her fingers. “But we could never get it right. We didn’t know what to do with it.”

We explored the farthest corners of that city, wandering up and down the deserted streets, into vast sculpture gardens that would be the envy of the Kuvai. We left our horses for a while and gawked at the vast spaces of the temples, the sky-brushing vaults that should have been filled with sunlight from their patterned windows. I climbed two hundred steps to a bell tower, interested to see that the steps were cupped in the center as if worn by a thousand years of boots, though Vallyne said it was unlikely anyone had ever ascended them since their making. At the top I pulled the hanging ropes, but when the bell sounded, its tone was off, and the eerie echoes reminded me of my first impression—a plague city. I laid my hand upon the bell so it would not toll again.

“Come down, Exile, and tell me if I’ve found my proper place!” Vallyne called up to me, and as ever when she beckoned, I hurried my pace down the steps. I found her standing atop a carved lion in the square before the tower. “Is this not what you read to me about this beast?” And she roared into the storm, raising her arms in defiance of the everlasting wind. When she jumped down from her perch, I caught her in my arms and laughed with her and let the wind whip her golden hair about my face so that I was lost in a jungle of light. Lost. I wanted to be lost.

“I could teach you,” I said, my voice breaking as I pressed her to my breast, knowing full well that she understood my desire. “Let me try.”

“You forget. You came here to learn, not teach,” she said. “And I need to be back to the castle. Don’t linger too very long.” Her physical form vanished, and for one moment I embraced only her demon radiance.
Fire . . . glory . . .
I was engulfed with such passion and power as could consume a city . . . but only for one instant, one heartbeat . . . and then she was gone.

“Vallyne!” I cried out in despair, for I did not think I could take another breath without more of what I had just tasted.

But as with all fools who believe their mortal existence bound up in another’s touch, my heart beat again. And my lungs filled again. And the cold wind whipped my cloak about my empty arms. I walked slowly back to the desolate marketplace and found the horse—the illusion that would bear me back to the castle. Hers was gone, though no hoof-prints marred the newly drifted snow. Even the terrors of the wasteland were no matter beside my desire. I mounted the false beast, but sat drained and purposeless upon its back, my hands shaking in their unending coward’s rhythm. When the horse ambled into the maze of streets, I paid no attention to what direction it was going.

All I had to do was tell her my name. Of course it would not make her love me—if she were even capable of love. And I knew better than to claim I loved her. I had not mind enough for love as yet. But to know her better . . . to give her what I could of life . . . to let her music fill the void within me . . . how could I ever know what was possible if I kept such a part of myself hidden? I could not believe the lady wished me ill. If I told her my name . . . what harm would come of it? And the possibilities . . . they made thought and reason and caution impossible.