And as he watched them, dazed, the sun bearing witness to this final act in the play begun an eternity and a nightpast, he thought that they were, in the strangest of ways, so terribly, terribly beautiful. That they were strong, that they were whole, that they moved with effortless, perfect grace, perfect strength.
He wanted to close his eyes, but they held him, hypnotized, and he told himself, as the distance between the demons and the rocks grew smaller and smaller, that they were really only a doorway.
A doorway, after all, to the Halls of Mandaros, wherein he might meet his Anya. Might meet her, and beg her forgiveness and-and ask her, as he never had, as she always asked him: Do you still love me?
When the lightning fell from the clear blue sky without even the clouds to presage its coming, he blinked. It was a flash of incandescent light, a thing without thunder; it was almost beyond his comprehension. Almost.
But it was not beyond the comprehension of the creatures who promised him, with the death they brought, reunion. For they were the field of his vision, and they were what the lightning"s fork sought.
Could death scream?
He learned the answer that late afternoon, watching, the rocks hard at his back, rough beneath his thighs, his calves. He cried out, as they cried out, and he could not have said whether the cry was one of denial or terror or relief; his heart froze as their shadows did, as they turned to look up, and around, seeking an enemy.
Was it an act of Cartanis? Did the Lord of Just War ride, so late, to his rescue?
A moment"s hope, and then it was gone, as much ash as wood fed to the fires. Cartanis was a warrior"s G.o.d, not a coward"s G.o.d; he would not raise a finger in aid of a man who had abandoned his responsibility and broken his vow. No G.o.d would.
But then?
Lightning, forked, blue and gold and white. Crackling with an intensity that broke the darkness. And the darkness, in this open day, walked on two legs.
"THERE!" One of the creatures cried, and he turned-turned away from Devlin. A hollowness filled the young man, a hallowing emptiness. He opened his lips and swallowed air, choking on it as if it were water, or a very, very strong draught. His senses returned to him: He could taste the blood in his mouth, smell it on his clothes, and more besides: sweat, fear. He tried to stand. Legs that had carried him this far locked; they would carry him no farther this day.
"The boy!" The other creature cried. "Kill him!"
Ah, death.
But as he waited, as the death came long-clawed and sudden, he saw the lightning for the third time. This time it was no tentative flash: it was a thing that caught. And held. And burned. He could not look; the white was so bright and the pain of the creature so visceral he had to bring his hands up to his eyes-and then, to his ears. But nothing took the smell out of his nostrils; it clung there, burning flesh.
Burning flesh, as if the demons were, and could be, only flesh. In the end, there was silence and when the silence had reigned for long, for long enough, he opened his eyes.
The shadows still waited, but they were no longer shiny, nor graceful, nor new; they were not black, but blue, a deep blue of the kind that only the evening sky sees. He followed their folds up, and up, aware that his gaze had started at the ground only when it finally met hers: violet eyes in a pale, careworn face. She held out a hand.
"Devlin a"Smith," she said softly.
He could not speak. The world returned to him slowly, and the life. He stood, took a teetering step, sc.r.a.ped his hand against the gray-red of rock stained with blood; his blood; that was the shadow he cast. His hand ached terribly.
She saw it, and her brow furrowed, but she moved slowly, as if afraid to startle him. He did not step away as she raised her other hand, and started once when she spoke in a language that was not language. He might have pulled back then, but she moved quickly, encircling his wrist with her hand.
"So," she said to herself, "this is how it was." And before he could ask her what she meant, he saw fire start in her hand; a fire that was white. He closed his eyes.
And screamed as she seared his flesh and bone away.
He clutched his hand, stepping into the rocks again as he sought to protect it-and himself-from his savior. She spoke, but the pain still held so much of his attention the words were a tickle in his ear. He would wonder, later, if the words themselves had been significant.
A moment pa.s.sed; he stared down at his finger. No blood, no exposed bone, remained; the finger was puckered with an ugly red scar, but it was whole. A neater job than any save the Mother"s priestess might have done.
But the Mother"s priestess would not cause so much pain in the healing; the pain of the cure lingered, and would, for as long as the pain of the cause, an echo; a twin.
"Who-who are you?" And then, as a wild hope seized him, he added, "Anya-did you save Anya, too?"
Her smile was graven in stone, cold and bitter; had he not been looking at her eyes, he would not have seen the flicker of pain in them. "I do not choose, Devlin, who I will save or who I will leave to death."
The hope left him in a rush, and he collapsed.
"You cannot stay here. Lord Ishavriel will know, soon, that his servitors have failed; he will send others, and they will be . . . less easily disposed of."
"Who is Lord Ishavriel?"
"I have already said enough, Devlin."
"He"s a demon?"
"He is more than just "a" demon. Come. If we debate theology for another hour, we will both perish. These creatures were blood-bound; even at this distance, he will feel their deaths." She offered him a ringed hand; he took it.
"Who are you?"
"I? Call me Evayne." She paused, and her violet eyes narrowed as she looked momentarily groundward. "Evayne a"Nolan," she said, as if the saying of the name was costly.
"You"re an Imperial?"
"I"m a free towner. I was."
He relaxed at that; it made her smile again. The smile was not a comforting, or a comfortable, expression. "How do you know who I am?"
"Ask me that in ten years; perhaps in ten years I can answer." Her smiled was bitter and brief. "Or perhaps in twenty. Or perhaps never."
"Where-where are we going?"
"Would you go to your home, Devlin?"
He started to nod and his head froze, and he became aware, fully, that he had lost more than Anya, and more than himself, on this afternoon: he had lost all else, all family. He could not return to them with this crime on his head. He could not face them.
But he had no money, and no gear; everything had been left at the campsite. "No."
Her cloak lifted; later, he would remember that she had not touched it at all, but at the time it seemed natural, a throwing off of guises. Nothing about this woman was natural. Beneath the cloak she had three things. The first was a pack. The second was a bedroll. And the third-the third was a sword. Its scabbard was almost unadorned; it was black and long, with a silver tip and a silver mouth. But in its center there was a large, clear stone that caught the light and held it brilliantly. He wasn"t a jeweler, but he thought-he thought it might be real.
"Is it-"
"It"s not a magical sword, if that"s what you"re asking," she replied, with just a hint of wryness. "But if you will make a life for yourself, there is a life waiting. Have you not heard, Devlin? The Empire is at war."
"War?"
"The free towns obviously don"t feel the Southerners at their borders."
"With the South?"
"With the Dominion, yes. The war started a year ago; I fear that it may continue for at least another. These are the games that men play, who desire power.
"You"ll see what war means, Devlin. Don"t forget the cost of it." She paused, and set the pack and the bedroll down at his feet. The sword, she lifted in two hands. "This sword"s maker was a man torn by his own past and his desire for vengeance. I believe that you will understand him, or you would have, had you met. Take it."
He hesitated, and then nodded. It was easier to obey her than it was to think-to think about what he was, now.
The blade was bound to its scabbard; he cut the strings that held it, and then, effortlessly, he drew the sword.
He hefted it, swinging it lightly to and fro, in ever faster arcs. As the son of the village smith, he knew weapons, for his father had come from the Empire itself, with a weapon-smith"s knowledge of arms-and in the free towns, arms were valued, especially in the warm seasons when Imperial bandits thought to take a small "unprotected" town"s merchants.
This sword was light for all its weight and heft; it turned easily in his hand; its balance was fine. Lifting it to the light, he studied its edge. It was so perfect, he thought it had never seen a forge"s test, never mind battle.
This was a sword his father would have killed for.
His father.
The momentary wonder was guttered.
"Devlin. Come."
She turned and began to walk, and it seemed that her gait was slow and awkward. He followed at once, and offered her an arm-a gesture as natural to him as breath.
She did not take it. "We have little time, and you must be away, although the gem upon the sword will protect you from his sight unless he himself is close." And she climbed up the hill, strong and spry for all that she walked slowly.
There, waiting impatiently in gra.s.ses too summer-hard to be good eating, was a horse. It was brown and slender-no plow horse or cart horse this-and its sides still heaved, as if it had just been run, and hard.
"Take these," she said softly. "The Imperial army is looking for men, for good men."
"Then they won"t take me."
"They"ll take you," she answered quietly. "The war is growing bitter, and they need the men. You come with a horse, a fine one, and a sword that"s finer still. Here," she added, "take this. Buy yourself a rank, if you"ll find a House that will let you." Her face was pale. "I know that I"m sending you to the wolves, boy-but learn to be a wolf. It"s all you have now."
As if she knew. As if she knew his crime.
He mounted the horse awkwardly, and she paled. "Devlin-you do know how to ride, don"t you?"
"Some," he answered curtly, because it was the truth. But it wasn"t much of a truth; he"d ridden rarely, and more often in wagon and cart than on horseback. He turned the horse around. Turned it back.
And then he glanced over his shoulder to say something, to offer this stranger thanks.
She was looking at her hand-at the rings on her hand-with some curiosity. There were four; she touched them, one at a time, and then when she came to the last, a ruby of red fire and brilliance even at the distance that separated them, she pulled it hard. It did not budge. He might have offered to help, but he knew her now as sorcerer, and he wasn"t a fool.
Just a coward.
"In time," she said, although he didn"t understand why. "It is not yet your time." Before he could speak, she lifted a hand. "Never thank me, Devlin. It is . . . hard on me." She smiled; it was a bleak expression, a bitter one. He might have spoken in spite of her request, but she took a step forward, and there was suddenly no one to speak to.
The horse shuddered once, and Devlin began to ease it into a walk.
But he did not go east, not yet; he went west. To face the truth, and to face himself.
The lake, in the summer day, was alive with the glitter of dragonfly wings, the buzz of insects, the flight of birds large and small. As he approached, he could see the flat, torn square that had once been the tent that he and Anya had shared. Beside it, like so much refuse, the bedroll she"d been torn out of; it was whole.
He saw ash in the sandy pit they"d made for their fire, saw the black soot of burned wood against stone. His hands were heavy on the reins, his breath tight. Minutes pa.s.sed; the sun rested upon dark hair, heating it, as if in judgment. The horse-the unnamed, too fine horse-was restive beneath him, almost anxious, as if he, too, knew what had been done here. Devlin urged him forward, and the horse went. Barely.
If he owned the horse, truly, Devlin thought, sliding out of the saddle, the horse was going to have to understand who was master, and who mount. But not now. Not now.
He took a deep breath and began to search the gra.s.s. For her. The blade saw its first use, against tall stalks of green-gray; white tufts flew in the wayward breeze as he cut loose pods of milkweed. Here and there, birds flew up, chattering in fear or frustration, brown wings spread to catch the wind, to use it. They were, all these things, clouds that he moved through.
He had to find her body.
We have little time, and you must be away.
His search grew more frantic as the sun rose. He had left her to die-but he could not leave her to rot. The Mother"s arms had not yet been opened to receive this most precious of her daughters, and he would do this last thing for her because he had failed in every other way.
But search as he might, this last act of penitence was to be denied him. The gra.s.s yielded nothing.
He was a coward, he thought bitterly, to the end, because he mounted the horse that the stranger had left him instead of pursuing his search into the lake, and the woods surrounding it, as if the search itself were all that mattered.
No.
He still wanted life. Had he ever told her that his life had no meaning without her? He wondered, and it hurt him.
This, then, was the burden he carried with him from these lands that no man owned: A death and a life.
And he would ride to war, carrying such a burden, and he would ride from war, carrying it, and earn his rank, and accept his decorations, all the while carrying it so naturally and so completely that none but he might be aware of its nature.
They might call him brave, who couldn"t see how much he had to prove. They might even call him honorable, who did not see just how deep, and how dark, the stains upon his hands could be.
CHAPTER ONE.
20th of Misteral, 427 AA The Shining Palace ANYA decided there should be rabbits.
This realization came upon her while she stood at the height of the palace wing that housed the human Court. While they huddled inside, in their draping cloaks of flat, shiny fur, she stood just beyond the balcony that opened, wind, snow, or sun, into the Northern Wastes, the flat of her feet against the raw stone of a dragon"s swooping neck. That dragon hunched, wings arched, just past the stone rails of the wide, deep balcony, looking down its serpentine nose across the startling white of the morning snow above-and beyond-the City, as if in mid-breath.
The stone was cold and rough beneath the pads of her feet; she couldn"t decide whether or not she liked the feeling. But even given that indecision she knew this was not the way dragon skin should feel. She knew the old stories; dragons should have scales.
And those scales should be larger than a man"s arm, and smooth. Definitely smooth. This old stone thing looked more like a giant worm with wings and teeth.
She hesitated a moment.
Since she had moved the throne, Lord Ishavriel had been in a bad mood. And although he never raised his voice, and never tried to hurt her, she didn"t like it when he was angry.
But she did have her throne, now. She could sit in it whenever she wanted, and listen to the colors that glimmered along the shadowed floors, like dangerous old friends, their voices unmuted, their brightness undimmed. She could taste their shades through the tips of her fingers-although admittedly that was rare-and sometimes, when she was very tired, she could speak with them.
She spoke to them now, but they were distant.