Maire leaned forward, her long braid stark white against the dark red of her shapeless dress. “You make it sound as if this demon was expecting you personally. It knew that you transformed beyond the portal. It claimed that it would very much like to get to know you, and that it would remember you. Was this not a concern?”
“Demons always say such things . . .” But even as I made the claim, I heard the voice again.
. . . Next time we meet . . .
“It was not a threat. He had no malice in him, Maire. Curiosity, yes. Knowledge, yes. He knew me as the Warden; after so many encounters in such a short time, so many demons sent back and no other Wardens, I suppose it was inevitable.” “He knew you as the slayer of the Lord of Demons?” “Yes.” He had known quite clearly, in fact. Known that I was not Rhys, my boyhood friend who had sold his soul to the Lord of Demons. Expressed satisfaction that I had killed the . . . what had he called it? “The Naghidda.”
“What’s that?”
“It was his name for the Lord of Demons—Naghidda.” Only then, as I said it before the Council, did the meaning of the demon word come to me. The Precursor. Why did he use that name . . . and why did it sound an alarm bell in my mind?
“Why were you not afraid, Seyonne? Explain it to me.” The kind-faced Weaver was pleading to understand. “This was a demon who said it knew you and expected to see you again. Expected to find ‘common ground’ with you. Is this not what we have tried to avoid for a thousand years? Tell me why it didn’t worry you.”
Caddoc did not allow me time for further explanation, even if I could have given it. “Could there be any more blatant sign of corruption?” he said. “Must we see him bring down the host on our heads before we heed the warning? Even if he blinds himself . . .”
Maire sat back in exasperation and murmured to Kenehyr as Caddoc vented his feelings yet again.
They had not heard me. I sagged back in my chair and leaned my mouth on my hand. What would it take to convince them?
“How many battles have you fought in the past month, Seyonne?” Catrin asked her first question of the long afternoon. The others fell silent at her soft intrusion.
“Uncountable,” I said without thinking. “Twenty-five, at least.”
“And in the month before that?”
“I don’t know. Ten. Fifteen.”
“Twenty-three to be exact. And twenty before that. More than two hundred and fifty in thirteen months. An unheard of number for any Warden in our history, who have considered five in a month an ominous burden.” She leaned forward a bit in her chair. “And how many battles have you lost in that time?”
“One. Only the one.” I couldn’t understand her. Everyone on the Council knew these things. Because of the war and the lack of Wardens, there was no choice. I didn’t want her to make more of it, to make them think it bothered me.
“And in how many have you lost the victim—caused death?”
“Just the one.”
“And in how many—in this or in any combat of your warding—have you come upon a demon you would not fight?”
“Only this, but—”
“Tell us, Seyonne, my dear friend, what happened with your wife three weeks ago.”
“Catrin . . .” What was she doing?
“You’ve sworn to answer truthfully and completely, to do whatever we ask of you to clarify these charges and your actions. And so I ask you to tell this Council what happened in your home these past days.”
She knew what I would answer—and what I could not answer. The child was a demon. Law and tradition insisted that even his memory must be shunned lest his corrupted innocence taint us. But I was no good at pretending, and I had sworn to tell the truth, whether they wanted to hear it or not. “Our child was born demon-possessed,” I said, my soul cold and still. The words fell harshly on the waiting silence. Then I compounded my crime by refusing to blame the gods for the dilemma or its terrible resolution. “And my wife did as Ezzarian law demands and killed him.”
My friend did not relent. She was not speaking to the Council, but to me. Though I could feel the shock and dismay from the others in the room, I had eyes only for Catrin.
“And now, Seyonne . . . I know this will be difficult, and I do not ask it lightly . . .” As if anything could be more difficult than the words she had just forced me to say. “. . . I ask you to remove your shirt.”
“I will not!” I jumped up from my chair, appalled, disbelieving. “It has no bearing—”
“You will do as you are bid, Warden, or this hearing will be closed.” Talar stood and faced me down, though she, too, looked at Catrin for clarification.
If the hearing were closed without resolution, I would be left in a half life of suspicion. Surely Catrin had some plan. But what plan could require such appalling invasion of my privacy? To bring up Ysanne and the child . . . and to force me to expose the legacy of my years in bondage. I could not believe she would think that some maudlin sympathy was going to change Talar or Caddoc’s mind. They would only be reminded of the very reason they believed me unfit—that such punishment could only have come down on me because I was irredeemably corrupt. She was digging my grave.
“I ask you again, Seyonne. Remove your shirt and turn around. Only for a moment.”
Gritting my teeth and inventing five hundred ways to tell Catrin how despicable I thought her tactics, I pulled off my dark red shirt and allowed the others to see what ugliness could result from a strap of Derzhi leather. Every finger’s breadth of my back and arms was ridged with scars, and the crossed circle burned into my shoulder—the mark of bondage—glared like a red sun in the golden light of that room, a companion piece to the royal mark burned into my face.
I closed my eyes and tried to control my rage, such a fierce combat that I almost could not hear the soft command. “You may put it back on and step out of the room.” Sorrow permeated Catrin’s words, but it would take more than sorrow to repair such betrayal.
Yet even as I thrust my arms back into the soft linen and slammed the door behind me, I did not comprehend what was happening. As soon as the five had imposed whatever reprimand Talar and Caddoc would insist upon, I planned to take aside Catrin and Kenehyr, at least, and try again to explain. I glared at Fiona as she entered the room after me. Then I paced the long hall, cursing myself, cursing the women in my life who all seemed to have gone mad, wanting to put my head through a wall for not being more articulate, revising words and phrases that I deceived myself into thinking would have made a difference in my explanation. I yearned for them to understand what I had felt from this demon.
Half an hour later Fiona came out of the room, so her story was now told on top of mine. She stayed well away from me, sitting in a window seat at the far end of the hallway. Perhaps she felt my earnest desire to throttle her stiff neck. Only when we were called back inside after an interminable hour did she approach me and attempt to speak, her face cold as always. “Master Seyonne, I—”
“We are summoned. No time for pleasantry,” I said, motioning her to precede me into the room. I detested it when she called me “Master.”
The five were in their chairs as before, no sign of their conflicts or deliberations on their faces. Talar always looked sour, so I could not count that as good news. Maire had her eyes closed. Catrin sat like stone. And this time, Ysanne was present, sitting in a high-backed chair to the right of the Council circle. She was not there as my wife. As Queen she was required to confirm any judgment of the Council. She met my glance with a steady unsmiling face. I might have been a stranger.
Talar, of course, pronounced the verdict. “Seyonne, son of Joelle and Gareth, you are judged not guilty of treason . . .”
Talar paused only to take a breath, which meant I could not, because she was clearly not done, and there was no relief or happiness or satisfaction among any of the five.
“. . . yet you have clearly violated your Warden’s oath by permitting a demon to retain possession of a human soul unchallenged. How are we to judge you, save that you are disturbed in mind, whether from corruption or from the excessive burden of your calling or from other things which we cannot name?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not—”
“And so we have determined. Therefore, from this day forward, the Temple of Verdonne is closed to you. You are forbidden to engage in demon combat, either in this world or beyond the portal of an Aife, or to teach, mentor, counsel, or advise any student until this Council deems you recovered.”
The chill in my soul turned to ice. Forbidden? Impossible. Even beyond my own dismay . . . what of Ezzaria? What of the victims who would be left helpless? “You can’t do this.”
But she did not stop. “Because no able-bodied man of Ezzaria can live idle, you will report to Pedr for daily work assignments, and because of your . . . unique . . . circumstances, which even those of us who hold you more accountable than this verdict reflects must recognize, you are to submit yourself to Caddoc for counsel. We sincerely hope that with proper care you will someday be judged fit enough to take up your calling again.”
I sat numb. Disbelieving. So I was to be grateful that I was not driven out of Ezzaria or shunned again—the living death I had experienced on my first return from slavery. Yet my life was to be destroyed just as surely as the Derzhi had done it. I was not to be allowed to do the one thing I could do better than anyone in history. Never to take that terrible, glorious, difficult step beyond a portal. Never to feel the burning in my shoulders or the ecstasy as my wings filled and bore me upward on the winds of sorcery. Talar said that I might fight again, but I was not deceived. Caddoc would never say I was fit. What god was so cruel as to give me back my life for two short years, then take it all away again?
And what was I to do instead? Report to Pedr. They were going to have me work in the fields as did the tenyddar, those with no melydda . . . as my dear and honorable father had done so that those like me could eat as we did the work we were called to do. I could swallow that. I felt no shame in working with dirt and plows rather than swords and mirrors. But to allow Caddoc to probe my mind . . . to counsel me, to seek the causes of my deviance, to put me under spells and expose my thoughts, my fears, my desires . . . hunting for corruption. That I could not . . . would not . . . do.
“Have you no response to this sentencing, my son?” said Kenehyr. “If what you’ve said is truth, then you cannot allow these people to silence you.”
I looked up at him like an idiot . . . and then I looked at Catrin. She did not drop her eyes. Four out of five. Kenehyr had not voted against me. Catrin, my friend and mentor, had been the fourth.
Only one blow had not yet been struck. I turned to Ysanne. “And you, madam? Is there any use in an appeal to your wisdom?”
My wife sat straight in her chair, as if she were carved from the same oak, and she did not blink or flinch or hesitate as she spoke. “I see no reason to contradict the saying of the Council. Your Warden’s commission is revoked. Your oath is void.”
Satisfaction settled on Talar’s angular face, a trace of a smile on her colorless lips.
I walked out of the room. Out of the Residence. Out of the settlement. The afternoon light played hide-and-seek through the green roof of the forest. The larkstongue was just burst into blooming, brilliant blue spikes as tall as my knees. The yellow rainflowers were dotted through the grass like stars in a green sky. Spring had yielded to golden summer, yet all was darkness to me on that bright afternoon. Always I had carried my Warden’s oath in my heart, a lodestone to chart my course through horror, a talisman to cling to in the depths of pain and ruin. Now it was gone, and I felt the weight of years and injury and grief caving in the bulwarks of my soul.
“Seyonne! Wait!” Catrin called from behind me, but I did not answer to my name. How could I, when all that made it mine was unraveling around me like the landscape beyond a failing portal? “You must listen!” But I did not listen, and I did not wait. At some time I started running, and I was very far from my old life before I stopped.
CHAPTER 6
The rabbit squatted nervously in the spot of shade. The creature was as still as the rock pile behind it, yet I could feel its quivering anxiety, just as it could feel my breathing alter the texture of the air and the stink of my body intrude upon the smells of hot rocks and dirt and succulent sprigs of dayflax. It waited and twitched its whiskers. I lay still on my belly and watched. Two spiders darted past my nose, like scavengers leaving a battlefield when they see the opposing armies forming ranks again. My hand lay beside my face, the noose of rotten twine prepared to drop upon the hapless creature. All was ready. Victory at hand. But a sudden crack of summer thunder split the stillness of the darkening afternoon, and my quarry bolted, his neck intact for one more day. My belly empty for one more day.
I rolled onto my back and laughed as the first chilly drops of rain pelted my face. A fitting result. The only opponent left to me, and I could not prevail. In a long summer of tormented dreams I had fought every one of my demon encounters three times over. Once again, I had destroyed the Lord of Demons in his every manifestation. I had slaughtered demons, gutted Derzhi, and strangled Ezzarians until I had expended every scrap of anger, hatred, and violence in my soul. My sleep had left me exhausted. Only in the silent days spent sitting in my rocky eyrie and staring into empty sky had I been able to rest.
Col’Dyath was a ruined tower left by a race of ancient builders who had scattered their lovely, graceful stonework throughout all of the lands of Azhakstan, Manganar, Ezzaria, and Basran. No one knew who these builders were or how it was that all their works had been left in ruins. Our scholars had taken an interest, because so many of the ruins sat in places rich with melydda, but neither they nor historians of other races had learned anything of substance about the builders. This particular tower sat on a bald knob of wind and stone and treeless sky near the northeastern borders of Ezzaria, and had been my refuge in my youth, when I was troubled or tired from constant schooling, when I felt the mysterious changes in my body that would one day give me wings, when I doubted my calling or my skills, when I needed to find peace.