"Berg,.Carol.-.Rai-Kirah.2.-.Revelation.E-Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Berg Carol)
Verdonne was a beauteous woodland maid, a mortal who caught the eye and heart of the god who ruled the forest lands of earth. The lord of the forest took Verdonne to wife, and she bore him a child, a fair and healthy son named Valdis. And the mortals who lived in the lands of trees rejoiced at the alliance between their own kind and the gods.
-The story of Verdonne and Valdis as told to the First of the Ezzarians when they came to the lands of trees
I am not a Seer. What lies ahead, now that I have done the unthinkable, I cannot say. I believe ... I hope ... it will be wholeness. For sixteen long years I had assumed I would go mad-when I was a slave and believed the life I loved forever lost to me. But I've come to think the gods play tricks on us. Only when I had reclaimed sanity and surety did my world begin to come apart, and once on the path to my own disintegration, I could find no way to stop.
"Hold still," said the slight, prim young woman who was dressing my bleeding shoulder. She dabbed at the deep gash with a cloth soaked in teravine, an acrid medicament surely concocted by some Derzhi torturer. Her hand was surprisingly heavy for one with her waiflike body, but then I already knew Fiona's frail appearance was as painfully deceptive as an iron splinter.
"All I want right now is a drink of water and my own bed," I said, pushing away her unsatisfactory ministrations and reaching for the gray cloak that lay on the floor. The orange light from the dying fire glowed warm in the polished stone. "The bleeding has stopped. Ysanne will see to healing it."
"It is irresponsible to expect the Queen to care for an unbandaged wound from demon combat. Certainly until her child is born."
"Then, I'll do it myself. I would not endanger the child- our child."
Spending every waking moment with someone who considers you an abomination is not at all comfortable. Perhaps it would have been easier to ignore Fiona if she had not been so good at everything she did. She exhibited precision and intelligence in the weaving of her enchantments, and perfection in her adherence to law and custom. Every movement of her hand, every glance, every word she deigned to speak was a reproach for my own lack of virtue, so that I found myself feeling guilty for my constant state of anger and frustration.
"But it should be bandaged before you leave the temple. The law says-"
"No poison will get into it, Fiona. You've cleaned it well, and I thank you, as always. But it's the middle of the night, I've fought three battles in three days, and if I hurry, I might get to sleep on something other than this rock of a floor before I have to fight another. You need to rest, too. We can't afford to slip."
I fastened the cloak about my shoulders. Although the night was pleasantly warm, the rain that whispered through the oak trees surrounding the open-sided temple would cool me off too quickly, a risk for cramps. I was still overheated from a ferocious fight in a landscape that made the furnace-like heart of the Azhaki desert feel like a spring garden.
"As you wish, Master Seyonne," said the young woman, her narrow nose flared in distaste and her slightly overlarge mouth pressed into a familiar disapproval. She gathered up her bags of herbs and medicines, the roll of clean linen, and the slim wooden box in which I had placed the silver knife and the oval mirror I used to battle demons. "I'll complete the cleaning and the invocations."
She almost made me feel guilty enough to stay and help with those things Ezzarian custom required of the Warden and the Aife to ensure that no trace of demon lingered in the temple, and I could well imagine her jotting down this latest transgression in her growing list of my faults. But the prospect of being out of Fiona's sight even for a few moments would have made me abandon a great deal more than a few meaningless rituals. There comes a point when you can't pretend anymore, even when you know your choices are going to make your life miserable. I was very tired.
With a self-righteous flourish Fiona threw a handful of jasnyr leaves on the smoldering ashes of the temple fire, and the sweet-pungent smoke trailed after me into the rainy night.
Despite the constant drizzle, the late hour, and my fervent wish to be in bed with my wife, I walked slowly along the well-trodden path through the open woodland. I inhaled deeply, the fresh scent of the night a balm for aches and bruises and a troubled heart. Rain . . . new-sprung grass . . . rich black earth . . . moldering oak leaves. Mel-ydda-true power, sorcery-in every leaf and stem. Ezza-ria. Our blessed land. As I did every time I walked its forest paths or sat atop its green velvet hillsides, I sent my gratitude to the Derzhi Emperor-in-waiting.
I had not spoken with Aleksander since the night of his anointing. While my days had been consumed with the resettlement of Ezzaria and the resumption of the demon war, his life had taken him to the farthest reaches of his sprawling empire. Almost two years had passed since we had joined his strength with my power to defeat the Gai Kyallet, the Lord of Demons, and ruin the Khelid plot to place a demon-infested emperor on the Lion Throne. I never failed to smile when I thought of the wild and arrogant prince, which was perhaps the strangest outcome of all from our strange adventure. How often does a slave come to love his master like a brother, and the master return his love with gifts of a renewed heart and the most marvelously beautiful land on earth?
The path crested a hill, and I looked down into a tree-lined vale where lamplight shone like tiny jewels nestled in a fold of black velvet. I could have run down the path and within a quarter of an hour drowned myself in firelight and ry blankets, slender, loving arms and dark hair tinged with red-gold light. But as I always did when I walked that particular path, I climbed up the limestone bluff that crowned the hill like a white tooth in the jawbone of the earth, and I sat for a while. Though I would never again believe I could fight any battle unaided-my ordeal inside Aleksand-er's soul had taught me that, at least-I still needed time alone once the fighting was done. Time to let the fire of enchantment in my blood cool. Time for the intense concentration that it took to pursue demons to subside into more normal perceptions of the peaceful world. Time to ease the toll a life of violence-no matter how worthy its goals-took upon the soul. And after sixteen years of life in bondage, when I could not afford to live beyond the present moment lest I founder in the pain of my existence, it was an exquisite pleasure to sit, gaze down at those lights, and savor the expectation of joy.
As had been the case for several months, this brief interval was also the time I forced my anger, frustration, and indignation aside before going home to Ysanne. For half my life I had been a slave to the Derzhi, taken at eighteen when the sprawling Derzhi Empire had at last engulfed Ezzaria. In those years of pain and degradation, my existence was everything my people deemed corrupt. Ezzarian law viewed my impurity as a sure channel for demon vengeance, and so even after Aleksander had granted me my freedom, I was supposed to be shunned . . . dead, in effect. No Ezzarian was to speak to me, to acknowledge my existence, to hear any word that came from my tongue lest I infect them with my corruption and put our secret war at risk. Only the persuasive power of my dead mentor's granddaughter and that of my wife, the Queen of Ezzaria, had convinced my countrymen that the circumstances of my battle with the Lord of Demons were so extraordinary as to merit an exception to our law.
In the autumn of the year of my freedom and homecoming, we had moved back to the remote, southern land Aleksander had returned to us and resumed the vigil that few people beyond our borders even suspected. I had once again become a Warden of Ezzaria, who walked into tormented souls on the paths of enchantment woven by my partner Aife, there to face the demon beings who drove human victims to madness or grew strong by feeding upon their wickedness. And so at thirty-five I had taken up my life again where it had ended when I was eighteen.
As I expected, some among my people were not reconciled to my reinstatement and swore I would bring disaster upon Ezzaria. But I never imagined their voices would be so strong that they could set a watcher to follow me every moment of every day, examining my works, judging my words, waiting for me to slip, to err, to demonstrate subtle signs of demon infestation. In the year just past, I had fought over two hundred demon combats. There were days when I stepped through the Aife's portal still bleeding from the last encounter, days like the past three, when I snatched sleep rolled in my cloak on the temple floor, because word had come that another combat was set, another soul in torment who needed our help. How long would it take to prove that I was only what I claimed-a man no better, no worse, than any other, trying to make sense out of the strangest life anyone could live? Until then, there was Fiona.
As if I had conjured my nemesis from the stuff of night, determined footsteps intruded on the quiet, and a glaring yellow light flickered through the trees, disrupting the soft darkness. The footsteps stopped just at the base of my hill, though she could not possibly see me from the path. "The rites are complete, Master Seyonne. I'll be at the bridge at first light."
Of course she would. I needed no reminders. After a moment's silence, the footsteps resumed their cadence and quickly faded into the night. I sighed and hunched my cloak about my shoulders against the rain.
The intense young Aife had been appointed by the Mentors Council to be my shadow. Bad enough to have her watching and listening as I taught our student Wardens, to see her diligently taking notes when I skipped rituals I found hollow or spoke of how my beliefs had changed in my years of bondage, though my commitment had grown deeper and my faith stronger as a result. I could not hide how I had come to see that matters of good and evil, purity and corruption were far more complex than the precise definitions of Ezzarian tradition. But there had come a day when my wife could no longer be my partner, the peerless day when I learned we were to have a child. A woman carrying a child could not risk demon infestation-the child had no defenses-and so the partnership that had begun when we were fifteen would have to end until the birth. But that day so ripe with promise had soured quickly when I was told I could not choose Ysanne's replacement.
A Warden's life depended entirely on his partner Aife- on her skill at weaving the enchantment that created physical reality from the substance of a human soul, on her understanding of what techniques worked best for him, on her endurance at holding the portal until he could withdraw victorious or escape defeat. And not only had the Council forbidden me the power to choose, but they had paired me with Fiona. I was beside myself with fury. Yet I could not refuse to fight without proving the very ill that was said of me.
And, of course, as I looked down on the lights winking at me from the quiet forest midnight, that consideration banished everything but joy. Some night soon, when I walked down this hill into the vale where our house stood safely nestled in the trees, I would find the proof that I had indeed been graced with every gift a man could hope for. Our child would be born in Ezzaria. There was no room for anger when I thought of that.
I jumped up from my rocky perch and started down the hill. Halfway down I stopped to reposition Fiona's wadded cloth against the gash in my shoulder. The wound had started bleeding again, and I could feel the trickling warmth soaking my shirt. No need to worry Ysanne over nothing.
During this pause I heard a faint cry in the distance, scarcely audible against the rain that was drumming harder on the path, cascading from the thick leaves overhead, splashing and pooling in the hollows. I passed the back of my hand across my eyes, shifting into my more acute senses, tuned to see and hear at great distances and beyond barriers and enchantments. But all I heard was a horse galloping away far beyond our house.
Uneasy, I picked up the pace. Abandoning the muddy track that wound gracefully around the vale, I headed straight down the steep hillside through the thick, wet leaves. The nervous pricking between my shoulder blades grew insistent. The winking lamplight taunted me as I dodged trees and my boots slid in the mud. Bypassing the longer route across a wooden bridge, I leaped the stream at the bottom of the gully, whispered open the barriers of enchantment, and ran up a flight of wooden steps. Breathlessly I burst through the door into the large comfortable room that was our private part of the rambling Queen's Residence. No one was there.
The chair cushions of russet and dark green, the woven rug, the loaf-shaped mourning stone, the simple furnishings of oak and pine, the weavings on the walls that told the stories of Ezzaria, the precious books of history and lore that had been carried into exile and back again-all were as they had been three days before when I had last seen them. The lamp of rose-colored glass beside the window was lit as it always was when I was away. Nothing was wrong. Ysanne would be in bed. She tired easily in these last weeks, and she knew I would not stay away longer than necessity bade me.
Yet my uneasiness did not vanish. The house was not asleep. Sparks popped quietly in the hearth from coals that pulsed glowing orange. Someone had been there not an hour since. A walking stick of ash stood beside the front door. The scent of unfamiliar bodies lingered. And other smells-the pungent tang of juniper berries and the dark earth smell of black snakeroot, used for healing. Ysanne ...
I blew out the lamp and tiptoed into our bedchamber. It was dark, the windows open to the soft sound of the rain. Ysanne lay on her side, and I exhaled when I laid my hand on her cheek and felt it warm and soft. But she was not asleep. Her breathing was shallow, tight. I knelt on the floor by her side, brushed the dark hair from her face, and kissed her. "Is all well with you, beloved?" She made no answer, and when I stroked her arm and kissed the palm of her hand, I felt a tight quivering just beneath her skin.
"Let me get out of these wet things and get you warm," I said. She still said nothing. I left my soggy clothes in a heap, and made a halfhearted effort at wiping off mud spatters and tying a clean strip of linen about my wounded shoulder. Then I climbed in beside my wife and wrapped my arms around her . . . and discovered that she no longer carried a child. "Sweet Verdonne!"
Believing I understood everything, and preparing myself for tears and grief and the slow journeying from pain to acceptance, I whispered a word of enchantment and cast a soft silver light. Ysanne blinked her violet eyes at me as if she had been sleeping, then brushed her hand on my cheek and smiled. "You're home at last! I've missed you so. When Garen told me they'd set a third battle and you'd not have time to come home, I almost bundled our blankets and pillows and brought them to the temple so we could at least sleep together in between."
"Ysanne-"
"What's this?" She sat up and pulled away my hasty bandage. "You didn't let Fiona work on this. You should, you know. Not for any fear of demon poison, but to set it healing quicker ... and here it's raining and you're so cold."
"Ysanne, tell me what happened. Someone should have come for me. How could they have left you alone?"
She jumped out of the bed, lit the lamp, and brought the box where she kept her medicines. I tried to stop her, to make her talk to me, but she insisted on dressing the wound, reciting every word of the invocations and cleansing prayers. When she was done, she started to get up again to clean up the mess, but I took her bloody hands and held her there. "Tell me what happened to our child, Ysanne. Born . . . dead? You must tell me."
But she widened her violet eyes and stared at me as if I'd lost my mind. "Was your head injured, too, my love? What child?"
"She won't speak of it, Catrin. She pushed me away, telling me I was so tired I was dreaming, that I was thinking of Garen and Gwen and their new little one. Then she refused to discuss it anymore. I'm afraid for her reason." I shoved aside the cup of wine that sat untasted on the table in front of me. "Tell me what to do. This is beyond anything I know."
The dark-haired young woman in a white nightdress tapped her fingers on her mouth. "Have you spoken to anyone else about it?"
"I tried Nevya. She claimed that she had delivered no child these three days. Aleksander once told me that I was the world's worst liar, that I turned yellow and my eyelids twitched. But these women are far worse. Daavi said she wasn't permitted to speak of the Queen's health to anyone. Anyone? Catrin, I'm her husband. Why won't they tell me? They act as if she never conceived." I rubbed my head viciously, trying desperately to cut through a suffocating fog of uncertainty.
Catrin stood up, folded her arms in front of her, and stared out of her window at the watery gray of dawn. "So what do you think is the truth?"
"I think the child was born dead, of course ... or born alive and died. I don't know. What am I supposed to think?"
"Perhaps that's the question you need to answer first." My head was a muddle. I had not slept at all, but given it up and come to Catrin when Ysanne fell asleep an hour before dawn without answering even one of my questions. And now Catrin, whom I'd counted on for straight answers, was dancing around the subject, too.
"Come, my old friend, stretch out by the hearth and sleep for a while. You're going to collapse in a puddle if you don't get some rest. The answers will come if you stop trying to create them on your own." "Catrin, was my wife with child or not? Answer me." Her dark eyes were clear, though filled with sympathy. "I cannot answer that, Seyonne. But I will tell you this. She is not mad. Now sleep for a while, then go home and tell her how dearly you love her." She laid a hand on my forehead, and a wave of exhaustion sapped the last strength from my limbs.
And of course Catrin was right, as she so often was. As soon as I let go of my fear and my grief enough to sleep, I knew what had happened. The infant was dead whether or not it yet breathed. Our child had been born a demon.
CHAPTER 2
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