"Berg,.Carol.-.Rai-Kirah.2.-.Revelation.E-Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Berg Carol)

We Ezzarians knew very little of our origins. Oddly enough, for a people so steeped in arcane lore and practices, we had almost no tradition of our beginnings, only the myth of our gods and two scrolls written a mere thousand years in the past at the inception of the demon war. Somehow in the lost years before the time of those writings, we had found our way to Ezzaria, a warm, green land of deep forests and open hillsides that seemed to nurture the extraordinary power we called melydda. And somehow in those years we had discovered the way to free a human soul from the ravages of demon possession.
The Scroll of the Rai-kirah taught us of demons-soulless, bodiless creatures, not evil in themselves, but who satisfied their hunger with human terror and madness and unholy death. The writing said that demons lived in the frozen northlands and would return there to regenerate when we cast them out of their human hosts. If they refused to go, we killed them-reluctantly, because we felt the world diminished, thrown out of balance, by the explosive power of their dying.
The Scroll of Prophecy warned us of corruption and the need for vigilance lest the rai-kirah follow the path of our weaknesses to infest our own souls. In this scroll a Seer named Eddaus had written of the war to end the world, and the battle where the Warrior of Two Souls would face the Lord of Demons. Eddaus never mentioned that the Warrior of Two Souls was really two men, a Derzhi prince and a sorcerer slave-Aleksander and myself. Together we had fought the battle and won it. After foretelling this combat, the prophecy ended. Abruptly. Whatever further seeing had been granted to our ancestors had been lost or destroyed with their other writings.
Other than the scrolls only two artifacts remained from that ancient time: the originals of the silver knives that could be transformed into any kind of weapon when carried beyond the portal, and the Luthen mirrors, the oval glasses that could paralyze a demon by showing the creature its own reflection. Everything else we knew had been learned from hard experience. Though we could explain so little of our history, the evidence of our eyes taught us why we had to do it-the terrible consequences of demon possession left unopposed. Only a few other people in the world had power for true sorcery, and none of them seemed to know anything of rai-kirah. We buried our questions because we saw no alternatives.
No scroll or writing or experience explained this dreadful thing that happened to our children-the one in every few hundred births that was born possessed. An infant had no barriers to the demon within it, and so the child and the demon were inseparable. And even if we had known how to untangle the child's being from the demon, it was impossible to create a stable portal into an infant's soul-so small, so inexperienced, so chaotic. Yet we dared not have a demon living in our midst, and thus our law required us to be rid of them. I had never given the dilemma much thought. Not until it was my own.
"She killed our child." I sat on Catrin's hearth rug, the afternoon sun pouring in through the open front door. I had slept for a few hours before waking with the understanding I would have fought fifty demons at once to avoid. My body was numb. My soul was desolation. A sword could have sliced off my arm, and I would not have felt it. Catrin pressed a cup into my hand and forced me to drink from it, but I could not have said whether the drink was hot or cold, bitter or sweet. I was as lost and adrift as the dust motes floating in the angled sunbeams. "She left him naked on a rock for the wolves to find, and now everyone pretends he never existed. They shun even the memory of him because they don't know what else to do."
The Comforter was a channel; he would lay hands upon the victim and spin out a simple line of strong enchantment that would reach all the way to the Aife in the temple.
Since I was the only Warden who had survived the Der-zhi conquest and the Khelid conspiracy, this particular temple was the only one in use. A temple aide had made the place ready for our coming venture. Beside the fire where Fiona and I would join our magic and make the attempt, the aide had laid out a white robe for Fiona and a brass jar filled with jasnyr leaves. Accompanied by a proper enchantment, jasnyr would make the neatly laid fire in the pit burn long and true, and prevent its smoke from stinging the eyes. Too, the Scroll of the Rai-kirah said that jasnyr was abhorrent to demons. In the preparation room-an empty, unadorned room in the center of the stone building-the aide would have set out a pitcher of water for drinking, a basin of water for washing, a clean drying cloth, a set of clean clothes made to fit me, my dark blue Warden's cloak, and the wooden box with the knife and the mirror.
I had to wait for Fiona before beginning my preparation. She needed to tell me more about the victim, and I would be unable to speak to her once I was prepared. So I sat on the temple steps and watched the sun settle beyond the trees. I almost laughed. If Ysanne had never been with child, then why was Fiona my partner for this battle?
"Are you ready to fight again so soon, Master Seyonne?" Fiona arrived more quickly than I had expected. She stood in front of me, her whole posture a reproach, as if my sitting down were just another of my crimes.
She was not unpleasant to look on, small, slim, her dark, straight hair kept short-unusual for Ezzarian women, who favored single braids or long falls of hair caught with flowers or woven ribbons. She disdained skirts and dresses in favor of full-sleeved shirts and breeches, but one could not say she dressed like a man, for there was no mistaking the womanly aspect to her slender figure. The costume looked natural on her. Ysanne had told me that many of the young women who had spent the years of Derzhi occupation hiding in the forest preferred to dress in that fashion. They'd had no materials to make clothes, and so they had taken what they could find on the fallen bodies of our countrymen and in the abandoned cottages they passed as they fell back deep into the trees. They had become accustomed to the freedom of movement men's clothes afforded them.
"Catrin told me this is a slave merchant," I said.
"Yes. He's recently begun specializing in young girls, selling them to Derzhi nobles . . ."
The disgust in her voice when she spoke of the Derzhi was a continuing indictment of me, who dared call one of the despised conquerors my friend. She proceeded to tell me of the horrors the merchant had committed, and of what the Searcher had found out about his life. Clearly he was no innocent taken by a hungering demon to be devoured quickly, but rather one who was a source of longtime sustenance for his resident rai-kirah. Such long-nurtured demons were the most difficult to root out.
"You seem distracted, Master Seyonne. Perhaps we should call this off."
"And leave this rai-kirah to its work?"
"We cannot right every wrong in the world."
"If you had lived in the world, you could not say that so easily. Let's get on with it."
She nodded, gazing reproachfully at the scar on my face-the royal falcon and lion that had been burned into my left cheekbone on the day I was sold to Aleksander. "As you say. You'll not forget the purification in your preparation?"
I forced myself patient. "I have never forgotten the purification, Fiona."
"Hammard found the towel dry yesterday. If you had washed-"
"I need no teaching in how to wash myself, nor do I have to justify the weather. If you remember, the afternoon was hot. I did not use the towel. Has Hammard nothing better to do than examine my towels?"
Fiona glared at me. "You skip steps in the rites. They are there for a reason. If you were sincere in your intent, you'd do things correctly."
I would not get into an argument with her over my sincerity. If two hundred demon encounters in a year were not sincere enough, then no words were going to convince her. I needed to be at peace. "If there's nothing else. . .."
"I had to clean the knife again after you left last night."
My irritation bristled into true anger. "You have no business touching the knife. You overstep yourself, Fiona." The enchantments on the Warden's knife were very precise and not completely understood. We had learned how to duplicate them through the years, but we did not know what might affect their peculiar magic. The knife was the only weapon a Warden could take beyond the Aife's portal. Every other would disintegrate in your hand. We dared not tamper with it.
"But you had-"
"It was perfectly clean. If you touch it again, I will insist on your replacement."
Though she set her jaw defiantly, she knew she had gone too far, for she didn't take time to list the other hundred things she had planned to accuse me of.
"We'd best make ready," I said. "I'll need an hour and a half, as usual." I had a feeling that a hundred hours weren't going to put me in the proper state of calm readiness I needed. I left her there, holding her robe and glaring after me in the waning light.
As always, I worked for an hour at the kyanar, the martial exercises that helped center my thoughts and prepare my body for the coming confrontation. On that night, for the first time in my career as a Warden of Ezzaria, I thought that the combat beyond the portal might be a relief.
By the time Fiona came for me, robed in plain, shapeless white as ritual specified, I had washed myself, drunk most of the clean water in the pitcher, donned the clothes, the Warden's cloak, and the weapons, and used Ioreth's Chant to put myself into a state halfway between the world we walked and the one the Aife would create for me. The rite was immensely calming, and despite my distress, I felt quite capable of the focus necessary to do my job. Fiona led me to the temple fire, and when I nodded that I was ready, she took my hands and worked her awesome magic.
To anyone who watched, it would seem that I had vanished from the temple, yet I could see it behind me, a pale outline against the bright stars of the Ezzarian night. Before me was another place ... of rocks, earth, water, and air to breathe . . . and a rai-kirah waiting-a demon, who might appear in any of a million different shapes.
When I stepped through the misty gray rectangle that was Fiona's portal there were no whispered words of comfort or well-wishing. And once I was through and the house-sized man-thing with four arms and daggerlike fangs dropped instantly on my back, I had no time to think of Ysanne or Fiona or anything else. I could not see the landscape, could not assess the possibilities for disposing of the leather-hided creature, could not do anything but keep my vital parts away from the fangs and keep moving fast enough that it could not grab me with its multiple limbs. I had only enough breath to get out half the words of the warning I was required to give. "I am the Warden, sent by ... Aife . . . the scourge . . . demons . . . challenge you . .. this vessel. Hyssad! Begone. Not yours." It did not deign to answer me, only devoted itself more devoutly to removing my head.
Twist the upper left arm. It's already damaged. Tearing the ligaments will leave it useless. Transform the knife into a short sword . . . long enough to keep the fangs at bay while you wrap your legs around . . . No. No thinking. Just do it.
And so I fought. Untold hours. Whenever I would gain the advantage, it pulled away and I had to give chase, losing it in a murky wasteland until it pounced again. The place was dreadfully cold. I hated the hot places, but the cold ones were more dangerous. Cramps and stiffening muscles that could tear easily. Numbness, so you felt the touch of claw or steel too late. Sluggish senses. I was slathered in green blood that ate into my skin like cold fire, and the wound in my shoulder was bleeding again. Then my eyes began playing tricks on me.
As I plunged my blade into a gaping orifice that was spewing venom, I caught the glint of metal. Steel bands appeared about my wrists. I jerked my hands away from the monster, but the flat rings did not disappear . . .
. . . slave rings ... and my hands were not my own. They were slender young hands . . . a girl's hands . . . and the monster was not a misshapen manifestation of demon life, but a slack-jawed man with eyes that devoured me with imaginings of unholy pleasure. He licked his lips . . . and his tongue came toward my face . . .
With disgust and fury I lashed out, trying to banish the images of the evil this soul had wrought. But one after another they came upon me in all their terror, pain, shame, and degradation. I lived those children's horror as I fought, unable to see the monstrous limbs or sharpened fangs because of the visions that clouded my sight. I had to fight with senses that were not sight, to guide my hands and feet with the remembrance of the bestial form, not allowing myself to be misled by the evidence of my eyes. And when I at last plunged my dagger into the living center of the demon shape, I was so outraged at the violation of those children, that I made a terrible mistake.
When its physical manifestation dies, the rai-kirah is set loose. The Warden must discern the position of the demon as it leaves the dead hulk, and use the Luthen mirror to paralyze it, giving it the choice to leave the host or die. But on that day, once I had the demon trapped, I gave it no choice. I killed it, not in sober judgment, but in rage, and I killed it so violently and so viciously that I killed the victim, too.
Whatever land and sky had existed around me dissolved instantly into chaos. A whirlwind of darkness streaked with garish colorings, a nauseating disorientation as up and down, left and right, lost all meaning. I struggled to keep my own body from being ripped apart in the tumult, and I lunged for the gray portal, shimmering, wavering at my back . . .
"Do you know what you've done?" Fiona's harsh accusation was the first thing to penetrate the momentary confusion of my return to the real world. The Aife could not see into the landscape she created, only sense the shape of it and the outcome of the battle as it progressed. But she would not mistake the death of the victim.
"I struck too hard," I said-in explanation, not justification. A Warden did not have to justify the outcome of a battle save to another Warden. No one but another Warden understood how difficult demon combat could be. "He did not deserve to live." I believed that. I had walked his soul and I knew. But I had never intended to kill him.
I got slowly to my feet, taking stock of limbs and senses, of bruises and aches, making sure that the blood that soaked my clothing and covered my hands was not my own. A red clay jar and mug sat on the stone platform, and I filled the cup over and over until the cool, clean water was gone. I felt as if I'd been trampled by a herd of maddened chastou. Every bone ached. My skin felt stretched tight and was raw from venom and scraping claws. "What happened? Explain it."
"I don't have to explain it." Every breath grated like skin on ground glass.
I cleaned and put away my weapons, washed my hands and face, and retrieved my cloak from the preparation room.
"You're not leaving? We've not sung the chants or wiped the floor or-"
"Do them if you wish. I need to sleep." "This is a violation. The law says-" "Gods of night, Fiona. I've just fought a monster for half the night. I can scarcely stand. The demon is dead. The victim is dead. Wiping the floor and singing will change nothing."
I did not look back as I strode into the forest. The raging in my blood masked the too long hours of combat and the too short hours of sleep. I didn't know when I would ever be able to sleep again. How could I have done it? I was not fool enough to believe I could fight as I did and never make mistakes. We had to take the risk, and my old mentor Galadon had made sure I understood that I would have to live with failure. Sometimes the victims died. Sometimes they went mad. Sometimes we lost and had to leave them to their fate. I had done my best, and I could not fault the outcome.
Yet the event was immensely troubling. I had lost control. Because I was tired. Because I was angry. Because the victim had raped and enslaved children. And most worrisome of all was that the demon knew to use those things against me. Damned, cursed fool. What's wrong with you?