Rai-Kirah - Transformation Part 32

The portal stood open, a s.h.i.+mmering gray rectangle in the nothingness in which I existed. Before me lay the doom of the world. Behind me, wavering like a painted image on a square of sheerest silk, lay the overgrown ruins of the ancient bathhouse and a life that was suddenly so precious that every second I clung to it was a piercing sweetness.

The path was steady beneath my feet. Ysanne's path. So much had become clear with that moment's glimpse of her violet eyes. Catrin had never made a second portal. It was Ysanne who had drawn me into her weaving in Dael Ezzar, able to take me across the boundaries of reality unprepared because she knew me as well as I knew myself. She had shut the first portal after Rhys so he would think me abandoned ... dead ... and she had held the second long enough for me to get out. She had ventured so far from home, into danger that no Queen of Ezzaria had ever before faced, so that I would have time to be ready. "Soar high, my love." No wonder I could not attach those words to Catrin or to feel the bond of the spirit that should have come with such intimacy. Ysanne...

Later, my beloved. When the day is won. The finger of her care brushed my lips before I could speak her name aloud and break the enchantment we had woven together. Later. I would not fail. Not with such a promise. I centered my thoughts on my purpose, and stepped to the threshold.

The world that lay before me was very near its ending. A leaden sky hung low over a vast gray ocean, the only remnant of life the threads of white foam where the sluggish tide broke upon a desolate strip of s.h.i.+ngle. No bird flew in that mournful sky; neither bone nor sc.r.a.p of weed lay on the dismal sh.o.r.e to give evidence that life had ever existed there. The s.h.i.+ngle might have been the last fragments left as the relentless pressure of the sea crumbled the world. A thick damp wind stirred my cloak as I stepped through the doorway.

I stood on the rocky sh.o.r.e between the advancing ranks of the waves and a line of low cliffs some fifty paces from the water. The insistent whisper of the waves was almost indistinguishable from the soft buffeting of the wind. It was very difficult to see, the only light coming from the livid iridescence of the breakers. I s.h.i.+fted my vision and crouched low, pivoting quickly to scan the vicinity for signs of demon. Nothing moved save the water. Slowly I moved down the rugged sh.o.r.e, peering into the deepest pockets of rocky darkness, tasting the salty wind, straining to hear the first traces of demon music.

Somewhere the Gai Kyallet-the Lord of Demons-lay waiting.

"I am the Warden, sent by the Aife, the scourge of demons, to challenge you for this vessel. Hyssad! Begone! It is not yours." The words fell dead. Feeble in the vast emptiness. Yet they should force the demon to take shape and answer.

Mirthless laughter greeted my declaration. "It's a bit late for such pompous speeches, is it not? This is exactly my place, and there is no human vermin can budge me. Certainly not my own hireling, come to perform the last service I require. Do you forget your piteous groveling, when you begged for your life and bartered power for your soul?"

It was the voice of evil that whispered through the unholy quiet, a muted sigh that clung to the soul like a foul odor, that fell upon the ear like whispered wailing, that lingered on the tongue like ash. Yet I smiled as I heard it. The demon did not know who I was. Aleksander had not broken.

I would not parry speech with the demon. With every word it would learn more of me and spoil my small advantage. Instead I picked apart the darkness, hunting for any glimmer of demon fire, listening for any sound that was not wind or wave.

Never had I seen such an expanse of nothing. Was this all that was left of Aleksander? A pale smear of light drew my eyes to the right, even as Catrin's warning flickered through my mind. I could not afford to look for Aleksander.

The light was swallowed by the murk before I could see what it was.

The strip of s.h.i.+ngle narrowed, and soon there was nowhere to go but into the sea. I had no intention of stepping into the water-a notorious lurking place for wicked surprises-so I removed my cloak and my s.h.i.+rt, stuffed them under a rock in case I needed them later, and triggered the enchantment that would cause me to transform. As my back and shoulders began to burn, I walked back the way I had come, pausing in the lee of a ma.s.sive boulder just long enough to bring my wings under control as they materialized. The final moment of transformation was a dangerously vulnerable time. But soon I was able to read the wind and shape it to lift me from the rocky beach and take me a short distance out over the water so I could get a better view. Where was the demon?

"Come, servant. Where have you gone?" hissed my adversary from within my head as well as outside. "I feel you hunting. Is that needful? Your posturing has come to an end, as you knew it would, and you must pay the price. Aid me in this conquest and kneel before me, and perhaps you will survive to share in the changing of the world."

I had faced a hundred demons in my life, many of them bound so intimately with their evil hosts that they had taken on their names and personalities. But this one ... it had absorbed the corruption of a thousand hosts throughout its existence. Every vileness a human could devise was given form in its words. It had taken on a life of its own-perverse, corrupt, unclean-that came cascading out of its mouth in a vile vomit of hatred. At last I recognized the missing piece of the Khelid mystery. I had wondered how Kastavan could cast away his life so easily and allow the demon to move on to Aleksander. But it had not been Kasta- van's choice at all. The Khelid had not bent the demons to their service; it was the other way around. The Khelid had been nothing but a succulent opportunity for a demon who had grown into its own purpose and was determined to take its place in the world.

I glided over the water's edge looking back toward sh.o.r.e to seek out the demon, and there ahead of me, across the rolling deadness of the sea at the end of the s.h.i.+ngle, loomed a monstrous blackness. The smell that wafted from it told me that it was what I sought.

On the day I crawled out of Balthar's coffin, drowned in filth and shame and hopeless terror, I had been forced to strip the bodies of Ezzarians who had lain dead in the summer heat for the three days I was buried. I had believed that nothing could ever cleanse that stench from my nostrils. Time had done the impossible, but now as I flew toward the shapeless darkness, the same stink floated on the wind.

I circled once to get a lungful of the clearer air over the water, changed the silver knife into a longsword, then I stretched my wings straight behind and plummeted toward the monster. It seemed the size of the Derzhi Summer Palace, but was probably no larger than one of the towers. I could make no a.s.sessment of its vulnerability in the darkness, but I could certainly not count on any sunrise to give me a better view, so I relied on surprise and strength, plunging the sword into the beast with all the force of my dive. Quickly I wrenched out the weapon, streaked upward, then came down on another side. The beast was made of flesh, not armor or scales, a thin, tough outer hide stretching over rippling bulges of gelatinous tissue. When I pulled out the sword, large globs of the stinking mess came off in my hands, while the outer hide grew over the wound instantly, like cooling grease on a pot of stew.

The beast shuddered when I yanked out the sword the first time, and when I stabbed it again, a low growl rambled at the edge of hearing, so dreadful in its timbre that sweat beaded on my forehead and between my shoulder blades.

The sultry air held the stink close.

Stab. Withdraw. Fly upward. Circle and stab again. And again.

A ferocious roar exploded from beside me as I struck, shattering one of my ears. It felt like a knife had been driven into my head, and hot fluid flowed down my left cheek.

Again. Stab. Withdraw. This time when I flew upward, a thick arm of darkness reached after me, shredding my breeches above my boots and raking my thigh with acid tendrils. No question I had hurt it. I struck again.

"Who comes here? I will know you!" It didn't matter that one of my ears was useless. The words vibrated in my bones, and the world itself began to writhe in pain. The darkness folded in upon itself. The sky swelled like boiling syrup.

The restless ocean behind me exploded in inky waterspouts that clawed at the burgeoning clouds. And behind the tumult I perceived a soundless cry of such hopeless torment that I almost dropped my sword and fell from the sky.

Aleksander. His agony threatened to rip the weaving of the world. Such violent madness made it almost impossible for an Aife to maintain her enchantment. She had to hold all of it in her mind. From every expression of Aleksander's being, she drew a thread that she wove into the unpatterned weft of the world's essence, giving it shape and substance. I walked upon the threads of her creation, breathed the air she shaped from them. The water of this ocean could drown me; the stones crush or support me. And if her threads snapped too quickly, we would both be lost. . . and Aleksander would go mad.

To my right a pale light flickered, but I could pay it no heed. A thick tendril had wrapped itself about my ankle and was pulling me toward a gaping maw awash in luminescent green drool. I slashed at the writhing arm, cursing myself for the distraction.

Forget Ysanne. Forget Aleksander. Concentrate or you'll be dead.

"The slave! It is my own slave who comes sneaking in here claiming to be a warrior."

The timbre of the voice had changed. Sneering contempt.

Bone-chilling softness. Agonizing familiarity. I refused to listen to the sound or what it signified. I circled the thras.h.i.+ng monster and landed on the rocks.

Standing amid the gross remnants of the beast flesh, I struck upward at the stinking bulk. But before my blade could reach it, it vanished.

"Shall we play a game, slave?" The voice slithered past my useless ear. "Let's make this a merry hunt. Come find me. Show me your warrior's skills." A laugh from behind me had me spinning in my tracks. A man stood a hundred paces away, hands on his hips. His face was only a blur in the darkness, but I could not mistake the tall, lean shape. He retreated, running and laughing, and I gathered the wind and took after him. I traversed the length of the sh.o.r.e, but I could not find him, so I caught an updraft and soared above the cliffs.

The face of the land was as I had already seen, a broken and scarred wasteland. Great slabs of rock were tilted crazily one upon the other. Cracks and fissures scarred the wide barrens, so deep they glowed red in the darkness as if the land were bleeding from a violent las.h.i.+ng. The heat rose from the molten deeps, buffeting me as I flew. Where would he go? Why lead me on this chase?

The land broke upward into mountainous ridges. I settled to the top of a narrow shoulder of rock that allowed me to see back across the wastes to the cliffs and the sea, and forward into the mountains. I needed to think.

A cold wind blew off the mountains, pelting me with grit from the ridge top as I tried to come up with a plan. I could explore for days and never find him if he chose to stay hidden. An Aife could hold for a day; Ysanne for a few hours more than most. But there was no precedent for a demon that would not reveal itself when challenged.

"Hear me ..." The whisper was almost indistinguishable from the wind. The pale smear of light I'd seen earlier glimmered a few paces ahead of me. "...

danger ... the fortresses ... Parnifour...." I stared at a wavering image of Aleksander taking form in front of me, and I strained to make sense of the words with my damaged hearing ... when I sensed a movement of air behind me. I whirled about, just in time to avoid having one wing sliced from my back. The sword left only a long tear in the wing, but a deep, fiery gash in my left side.

The figure behind me gave voice to my doubts. "Can you fly with only one of those grotesque appendages?" Alek-sander-a fully fleshed image instead of the wraithlike glimmer. His blood-streaked sword was pressed tight against my own. "A slave with aspirations of glory. Can't permit that." He whipped his blade around and lunged. I parried, and we fought up and down that ridge, moving so quickly a human eye could have seen nothing but a blur.

I did not let his face deceive me. He was no more Alek-sander than was the gelatinous creature on the sh.o.r.e. Unfortunately, he was also no less. He had Aleksander's skills and reflexes joined with the demon's speed and tirelessness. And he knew my moves. Aleksander had watched me train, critiqued my form for two weeks. I could not make a move he failed to counter. We battled for an hour or more on that narrow strip of rock. I left a b.l.o.o.d.y streak on his arm, but he had me to my knees. Though I got out of it, I took another wound on the right thigh and another painful rent in my left wing. I was considering a leap from the edge of the cliff to give myself a moment to breathe, but the demon was relentless, and I wasn't sure the damaged wing would hold. A shard of rock broke off under my foot, and I slipped backward, my left leg dangling over the edge. I was afraid that in the moment's vulnerability, I was going to lose a limb or an eye or my life. But in the same instant, the demon Aleksander stepped back, laughing, and stretched his arms to the sides in invitation. "Find me, slave. You know me well... as I know you. You don't say what you're thinking, but now I am joined with this being of power, I can read it for myself. You can hide from me no longer. I know your name, and I will use it to bind you in heavier chains than you had before. You will fear me at last, and there will be no end to it. But not yet. I want to enjoy this little duel a while longer. It gives me pleasure to watch you pursue your own doom. For the present you must use everything you know of me to seek me out. Your oath commands it." He laughed uproariously. "You see? You have always been a slave and will never be anything else." Then he vanished.

I crawled back onto the ridge top and lay gulping for air, the sharp rocks cutting into my face and chest. The wind whined off the mountains, making me s.h.i.+ver as my sweat dried. I had to force myself to keep breathing in spite of the wound in my side, which burned with the slightest movement. The cut in my thigh was less painful, but was bleeding heavily, so I tore a strip from my shredded breeches to bind it.

I didn't understand the demon's game. He could have had me. But I dared not sit still, lest he change his mind. So I summoned the wind and gingerly flexed my damaged wing. The same sensitivity that enabled me to feel the slightest variation in the air ensured that there was no such thing as a "mild" tear. But I let the wind do most of the work, and made sure I was no more than an arm span from the ground until I was sure it would hold. My course was wobbly, with an alarming tendency to curve to the left and downward as I favored my left side. But after a time I learned to compensate and put aside any thought of it. There were more important concerns.

Where would the demon hide? It was no use wondering why. I had to find him. Ysanne could not hold indefinitely. My injuries weren't going to get any better. I hunted up and down the valleys, using every trick of discernment I possessed. Several times I caught sight of the ghostly s.h.i.+mmer, but I ignored it. I could not allow myself to conjure such imaginings of Aleksander. It had almost gotten me killed, and I couldn't help him if I was dead. Yet the apparition was persistent. As I entered a valley that looked eerily like Capharna, I heard the whispering again. "... danger ... the border castles . . .

portal.. . warn . . ." Words designed to catch my attention. To make me vulnerable. I was vulnerable enough.

Where would Aleksander hide? Sleet bit at my skin, and frost coated my eyelashes as I flew deeper into the mountains, where, buried in a snow-clad valley, I found the corpse of Capharna. Charred timbers had fallen against the stones of broken towers, all rimed with frost to make it an eerie white in the black midnight. Carefully I explored the ruins of the Summer Palace, the kitchens where iron stoves lay rusting, the graceful galleries now collapsed, their treasures scattered, tapestries ripped and rotting under a blanket of filthy snow. I leaped from one pile of rubble to another, until I reached the great throne hall where Aleksander's life had crumbled. The wall at the inner end where I had hidden behind the bra.s.s grillwork still stood, but the domed roof had fallen in, its brilliantly colored mosaics shattered and scattered like colored sleet amid the destruction. The Lion Throne lay crushed beneath a fallen column, the virile beast itself staring upward, helpless under the ma.s.s of stone. Fitting.

"... must listen ... their plan ... open to Khelidar... beg you listen ..." Haunting desperation from the wraith that s.h.i.+mmered in the gloom. But every lesson of my life demanded that I stay apart, especially in that place where the specter of my captivity walked with the other ghosts. The vision was so real that I could feel iron bands about my wrists and gnawing helplessness in my belly.

I shook it off. It was a ruse to distract me. To make me weak.

"... for the love of the G.o.ds, hear me ... danger under the mountains.

Parnifour, Karn'Hegeth, all of them ..."

Despising myself, I turned my back on the apparition.

"Where are you?" I screamed. "Come out and be done with this foolery!"

I clambered over the stones, snow swirling into my face.

"Have you come back to your proper place, slave?" Searing fire ripped across my shoulders, a brutal lash knocking me to my knees.

But this time I would not stay down. I gathered all of my strength and infused it with my anger, then I brought my gathered right wing around with the force of a whirlwind. The demon Aleksander looked astonished as he slammed into the standing wall. I transformed the silver knife into a spear and launched it at the slumped figure, but in the instant before it struck, he disappeared.

"Face me, coward," I screamed. "Who is it has forgotten his place? You are no prince, but a nightmare lingered too long into day. Hyssad! His soul is not yours. His body is not yours. His life is not yours. I will not allow it." I yanked the spear from the dirt and summoned the wind.

"Your prating rings hollow unless you find me." No laughter this time. "If you don't do it soon, your Aife will never wake from her enchantment, and you will live here with me for eternity. Your past servitude will be as honey to the gall of my lash. Find me, slave." The world shuddered once more with the silent horror of Aleksander's torment.

I spiraled upward from the ruined city, trying to decide where to hunt next.

The demon was correct in every point. My victory in one skirmish was of no significance whatsoever. The wind tore at my ragged left wing, and every effort to straighten my course pumped blood from the wound in my side. The blow I'd struck had ripped the gash wide open. The cut in my thigh throbbed, and the acid burns on my thighs and knees had blistered so badly I had to cut off the tatters of my breeches to keep them from flapping against them.

Where would Aleksander hide? Where would he feel safe? Desert. The dune seas where he was born ... where he would race his horses, the sands in a cloud behind him ... where he could see his enemies for leagues around . . .

where the stark beauties of sun and sand in a thousand subtle shadings fed his soul. But I could find no desert in the dark realm Ysanne had woven. No sun. Parched, lifeless ground, but not the serene openness of Aleksander's home. For endless hours I made long sweeps across the landscape, feeling my strength and the precious time leaking away with my blood. At last I stood on the cliff tops overlooking the boundary of the desolate sea, where I had stepped through the portal.

Ah, fool. See what is before you. The sky was not lifeless, any more than Aleksander's desert was lifeless. Winging its way through the low clouds was a bird, a solitary patch of white against the looming darkness. I smiled and launched myself from the cliff, ignoring the sticky warmth on the arm I had kept pressed to my side as I rested, ignoring the fresh trickling wetness below my ribs. Across the uneasy waves I followed the bird, sure that I would find what I sought in the midst of the watery desert. "Thank you, my love," I whispered, and a soft breath of wind caressed my cheek.

It was an island fortress, poking up from the gray water like a fist. I circled, hunting for some weakness, and I believed I'd found it on the battlements, where a small wooden door led into one of the towers. I landed on a stone parapet and changed the silver knife into an ax.

"Come out," I said. "There's nowhere else to hide." I raised the ax. The wraith appeared before me, holding out its hands as if to stay my blows. I paid it no mind, but struck the door. Twice. Three times. The wood began to splinter.

My anger, my impatience, everything pent up for sixteen years was mustered into the blows of that ax. I could have destroyed the stone battlement itself with my fury.

But the wraith took on more solid form ... Aleksander's form. It did not speak, but brandished a quite lethal sword, threatening me away from the door.

"So you've come out," I said. "I thank you for not forcing me to dismantle your refuge. Shall we get this done?"

The wraith did not speak and did not attack, just held its ground. So I changed my ax for a sword and went after it. I had no time for games. A blizzard of feints and blows. Ordinarily the wings gave me more in power, flexibility, and mobility than they hampered in weight, but not that day. The shredded one had little strength and could not furl tightly when I needed it to. Yet even so, I did not fall, for never did the apparition attack. When I stepped back, it did also. I could not understand it. What was it defending, when it had summoned me there?

"Can you not find me?" The voice came, not from the Aleksander I had been fighting, but from a second apparition that materialized just behind me.

Hoping I would not have to fight both at once, I gave him no time to taunt. I spun, ducked a wicked slash, and grazed his shoulder with an upward cut. He growled and came after me. Advantage. Disadvantage. Forward. Backward.

Battle unending ... unrelenting ... unthinking ... no difference between the blade and the arm that wielded it. I became a whirlwind, a hurricane of edged steel and anger ... and every time I gained an advantage, he would disappear and s.h.i.+ft position. I knew how to manage such a fight. Each time he began anew, I watched and learned how the manifestation was to be different, and I adjusted my technique. Eventually we would finish it. Eventually he would make a mistake. I would not falter. I would not.

Across the battlements, up onto the merlons, teetering on the edge of the vast drop to the rocks and the sea with my left wing weak and dragging, my lungs on fire, half of my body slathered in blood that I feared was mostly my own.

The demon laughed and dropped back to the battlement. I leaped from my merlon across to another, closer, ready to sweep down on him ... when he vanished.

In mindless, exhausted rage I switched the sword to the ax again and attacked the door. It was almost off its hinges. "Come out. Come out and fight. No more play. Finish it."

"Breach these walls, and you will have the battle you desire." The voice echoed in my head.

I swung again, but the silent wraith stepped forward and insisted on preventing me. Why were there two of them? How was it possible? Maybe this one wasn't there at all. The blood flowed unchecked from my side and my leg.

I was getting dizzy, seeing two or three of everything. I couldn't trust my seeing. Laughter and voices came from every side. "... help me ... slave ... get out and warn them ... pitiful, groveling vermin ..." I whipped my head from one side to another, trying to use my single working ear to judge where the demon might appear next.

Galadon's testing, Catrin's warnings drummed with my exhausted heartbeats.

"Your senses are your last defense. Know when they are compromised. If you've lost, get out. Dying just to prove you cannot win profits nothing.

Honor, pride, and foolhardy death are luxuries a Warden cannot afford." My knees were like straw. My sword arm quivered with the strain, scarcely able to lift the blade tip from the ground. I could not get a full breath without risk of pa.s.sing out from the fire in my side.

It wasn't going to work. Even if I got the door open and found the demon, I had nothing left with which to fight. I stepped back, bent double with the pain in my side, heaving for breath and hoping I could hold myself together long enough to limp back to the portal. Another day. If I could survive ... if Aleksander could hold ... I could try again.

The silent apparition held back, protecting the door, his face pale and rigid, very like the face on a stone table so far away. Unyielding.

"I will free him," I said, defeat bitter on my tongue. The specter nodded and reached for my sword, placing the tip in the center of its breast. I stared, uncomprehending. Breach these walls . . . the service I require of you ... aid me in this conquest.... Like a trumpet fanfare the echoes of the demon's taunting blared through my muddled head. I gaped at my blood-smeared sword and at the image of the Prince that stood before me. Aleksander. Not a mockery, not some monstrous concoction of demon shape-s.h.i.+fting, but the true image that bore his need and his desperation, that still fought to give me his message, though the demon had tormented him into silence.

And this place? Merciful Valdis, what was I doing? He had trusted me to understand. He had sent Kiril the note so that I would know he would be with me. Ready. But I'd failed to heed him. Instead, I'd led the demon right to his hiding place and done half the work to destroy it. "Oh, my lord, I'm so sorry.

Forgive me."

And now it was too late. Aleksander was calling on me to redeem my promise to kill him rather than leave him to become a monster, and I could not even do that. My sword slipped from my hand that could no longer grip, and clattered onto the stone. I tried to shape the wind, but a wave of dizziness overwhelmed me, and I sank to my knees. The chill of death crept into my body and my soul, while demon music began to twine itself about my limbs, and insinuate itself into my being, a sick, cold emptiness, a promise of unending misery and everlasting despair. As my life bled away, I called up spells to hold back the demon music. I croaked out words of protection and pressed my arm to my side to hold in the blood.

But I couldn't do it. I was not enough.

The wraith stood watching ... waiting ... his hand outstretched as if I still had something left to give him.

You are not alone. The whisper came from inside me and around me, a faint accompaniment to the clamor of the demon.

I wanted to laugh, but it came out a grotesque moan. Of course I was alone. I knew no other way. If I were the Warrior of Two Souls, perhaps I'd have another soul to give him. I shook my head. "I'm sorry."

But he did not withdraw his hand. Each one of us had pulled the other from the depths of pain and despair... in Capharna, in Avenkhar, in the mud of his kitchen yard, in the tower of the Summer Palace. Perhaps it had come around again. Perhaps it was that he had something left to give me. Aleksander had come to this place because I told him that if we combined my power and his strength, no one could stand against us. But I had not listened to myself. I had tried to do as I always had done ... fight the battle alone. What if the Warrior of Two Souls was exactly that? Two ... together.

With my last shred of will, I reached out.

A strong and gentle hand reached under my elbow, lifted me up, and guided me through the door into the fortress.

Time has little meaning within the human soul. We are as we have been since birth and as we will be until death and beyond, the changing landscape only the face of an unchanging spirit. I was not long in that luminous place that was Aleksander's refuge, the bit of himself he had managed to keep whole.

The wraith disappeared as soon as I was inside. No words were exchanged, and I saw no further manifestation of Aleksander's body. It was only a few moments' rest and peace alone in the light. There was a fountain of cool, sweet water, and I gulped it down with the wry observation that I might see the stuff spouting out of all the holes in me. An observer might think I was part of the fountain. I bathed my face and washed the blood from my side and my leg. I believed it was Aleksander that had me laughing as I bound up my wounds with the shreds of my clothes. "Can't you keep yourself covered?" I imagined him saying. "I give you clothes and what do you do but lose them again? I thought Ezzarians were a modest people."

The storm of the demon's wrath was breaking on the walls as my weakness was washed away. "He will not breach them," I said as I stood up again, refreshed in body and spirit, trusting that the Prince would hear me.

"Together we will have him out of here." And indeed when I stepped out upon the battlements and picked up my sword, Aleksander was with me, for my body and my wings shone with his silvery luminescence, casting light upon the dark ruins of his soul.

The Demon Lord came after me then, s.h.i.+fting forms as rapidly as the desert sand moves with the wind. His power was incredible, but no match for the combined power of Aleksander and me. A man with four eyes and six arms.

We tangled him in a lightning bolt. A fire-tongued dragon. We confused it with torrents of rain and drove a spear into its throat. A raging shengar. I, we, laughed at that and took its head in one stroke. A beast of living stone. Images of Aleksander, of Ysanne, of Rhys, of Dmitri, of my father. But all were flawed. Now there was light to see with, the imperfections were clear. The demon did not know them any more than it knew me, any more than it knew the Warrior we had become.

Aleksander had not revealed my name.

In the end it was the green heart of a three-headed serpent that I stabbed with the silver knife, while choking its meaty neck with a leg hold and blocking its six fangs with my damaged wing. I felt the heart stop beating under my fist, yet the body did not dissolve into a new and more ferocious monster as had happened every time thus far. My left hand clamped about the cool oval in the pouch that hung from my sword belt. With every breath of melydda I had left, I focused my sight and discerned the shape of the demon that was crawling from the serpent's body. "Delyrae engaor. Hyssad!" Look upon your nothingness and begone. The horrific wail as the demon looked upon itself in the Luthen mirror came near ruining my undamaged ear. The creeping shape grew still, paralyzed by seeing its own image. "Now is the time I present your choice," I said, my voice hoa.r.s.e after the long hours of battle. "You have made a bargain with the Aife for all vessels known as the Khelid, based on this single combat. Your bargain is now forfeit. Do you yield and command your cohorts to yield?"