Carol Berg - Rai-Kirah 02 - Revelation

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A WARRIOR ONCE MORE

After being enslaved for sixteen years, Seyonne has been set free. For his

efforts in helping the Derzhi defeat the Lord of Demons, his homeland of

Ezzaria has been returned to his people. Despite whisperings that he’s

been tainted by his captivity, Seyonne resumes the mantle of Warden,

which allows him to enter human souls to free them from demonic

possession.

Then he confronts a demon whose purpose is not to drive humans to

madness but to observe and learn about the world around it. Unable to

find any malicious intent, Seyonne allows the demon to live. But when his

elders discover this violation of his oath, they exile him from his vocation.

Now Seyonne must uncover the truth about the real relationship between

the demons and the Ezzarians—before their endless war destroys the

world they know....

Praise for Transformation

“Plenty of action, some interesting magic, and a pair of unlikely heroes

keep this first novel powerfully entertaining.”

— Locus

“Superby textured, splendidly characterized, this spellbinding tale

provides myriad delights.”

— Romantic Times

“[A] wonderful debut novel. Her heroes come alive on the page . . .

[and] the magic is fresh and full of purpose.” —Lynn Flewelling, author

of Traitor’s Moon

DON’T MISS CAROL BERG’S BREATHTAKING FIRST

NOVEL

TRANSFORMATION

“Vivid characters and intricate magic combined with a fascinating

world—luscious work!”

—Melanie Rawn

REVELATION

Carol Berg

A ROC BOOK

Copyright notice

Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

For Ginny, Jane, and Shirley—

friends and craftswomen all—

my eyes and conscience.

And for Andrew, first fan and true believer.

CHAPTER 1

contents - next

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. Melydda—true power,

sorcery—in every leaf and stem. Ezzaria. 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 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.

“Fiona is the most skilled of Aifes,” Ysanne said to me every time the

call came, and I had to leave her for the temple and Fiona. “I would have

no one else weave for you. Only a little while longer.”

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

contents - previous | next

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. How could she do it? We say self-murder is

abhorrent to the gods. What of infant murder? A child can do no evil.”

As she took the cup away, Catrin pressed a finger to her mouth and

shook her head slightly. But the seed of anger, planted in me when Fiona

took up her watch, began to grow as if watered by Catrin’s tea.

“And she tries to play this game with me. Am I to convince myself

that I didn’t use my power to see that we had made a son? Am I to go

through the rest of my life pretending I didn’t feel his heart beating? I

can’t do it, Catrin. We gloried in the wonder of a life created from love

and faithfulness, and now she says I can’t even grieve. My wife has

murdered my son, and I am not to take note of the fact?”

Catrin sat on the floor in front of me. In the corner behind her was the

plain gray block of her mourning stone, its nine candles lit to warm the

spirits of her grandfather and her long dead parents. I had interrupted her

afternoon meditation. My friend and mentor took my hands in her own.

“You’ve been asleep, Seyonne. Dreaming terrible dreams. As I told you

earlier, I can do nothing for dreams.”

So Catrin, too, had decided to live the lie. But she placed a finger on

my lips before I could protest. “Now you must think of something else for

a while,” she said. “A message has come in from a Searcher in Capharna.

They’ll be ready three hours from now. Can you fight? Have you rested

enough?”

It took me a moment to comprehend. The rest of the world had faded

into insignificance beside the devastation of my family. “Fight?” A demon

battle. The net of enchantment that Ezzaria strung through the world had

snagged another demon. I stared at her in disbelief. How could anyone

think I could fight on this day?

“Fiona says it’s a wicked situation, a slave merchant. If you can’t do it

...”

Why this one of all days? I closed my eyes and tried to draw myself

together. There was no one else. “No. No, of course I’ll do it.” Three

hours. Barely enough time to prepare. Dismal life would have to wait. “If

you could just help me with this. ...” I removed one sleeve of my shirt and

had her loosen the tight bandage Ysanne had put on my shoulder. Better

to risk a little bleeding than restrict my movements.

After she had rebandaged my shoulder and made me eat a plateful of

cold meat, Catrin laid her small, strong hand on my head. “You’ll have

help soon. Three months and we’ll have Tegyr and Drych ready for their

testing. And Gryffin sends word from the east that Emrys and Nestayo

will be ready soon after. You’ve done marvels with them, Seyonne.

You’re an exceptional teacher.” But her kindness rang hollow.

“It’s not enough, is it? After this no one will believe I’m uncorrupted.

They’ll say I’ve brought a demon into the Queen’s house. Into the

Queen’s body.”

Catrin sighed in exasperation and shook my head with a handful of my

hair. “Be careful in this battle, my first and most prized pupil.” I looked up

at her and realized she was not referring only to the combat of the next

few hours. The sentiment made more sense when I kissed her cheek and

stepped out of her door to find Fiona sitting on the steps. My watchdog

would have heard every word we’d said.

I did not trust myself to speak to Fiona, so I strode out through the

woods toward the temple, trying to decide what I might do when the

battle was over. It was no use attempting to settle my mind about things.

That was going to be a longer ordeal than the time I had available at the

moment. All I could hope for was to come up with some step I could

take that would begin to set life back in order. I couldn’t think of a single

one.

Ezzarian temples were simple stone structures built in deep forests

whose richness seemed to strengthen our power. They were scattered

throughout Ezzaria, always similar in appearance: a roofed circle of five

pairs of white fluted columns, rising from a floor of polished stone. In the

center were a few small, enclosed rooms, but most of the place was open

to the wind and weather. The temple floor was inlaid with mosaics

depicting events in our history, and in its open expanse were a fire pit and

a low stone platform where we would place the victim on the rare

occasion the person was brought to us. Most often the victim was in

some distant city or village in the care of an Ezzarian Comforter. The

Carol Berg - Rai-Kirah 02 - Revelation

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