Revelation by Carol Berg Page B

certainly don’t want to leave with my own head ruined, if you know what I mean.”
    I had no words. Rather, to my uttermost astonishment, I found myself laughing. If this was madness, then it was not half so fearsome as I had always believed. And if it was not . . . stars of night, what had I come upon?
    He shifted the scene in his unsettling way, so that we were outdoors again. Outdoors in some poor man’s soul. An artist’s soul. We walked side by side through the flowered fields, the blooming and dying profusion of color and life. Sunlight warmed my cold hands. My weapons were sheathed and I felt no danger. How was it possible?
    “This is extraordinary,” I said. “I have faced hundreds . . . hundreds of your kind, and never . . .”
    “You must not judge all of us for some unpleasantness. You’ve not looked, you know. Do you judge the forest by the unhealthy, wind-stripped trees at its edge? Do you judge the pulp of the fruit by the bitter skin? And, truly, when you go hunting with such things as those”—he jerked his head at the knife sheath and mirror pouch at my belt—“what do you expect to find? The nervous birds are not likely to flock around when you cast out those particular seeds.”
    “So there are others like you?”
    He took a deep breath and sighed ponderously. “Well, I won’t go that far. My Gastai cousins are fairly brutish, most of them. But there are many Rudai worth knowing, and a few of the rest of us that are quite sensible and would very much like to get to know you. You need to look. To learn. We can show you a great deal.”
    “If you think to turn me, to have me do your bidding—”
    “Like the other Warden who played a game far above his head? No, not at all.” He pulled a handful of flowers and held them to his nose, inhaling deeply and sighing in pleasure. “My friends and I had no dealings with the Naghidda, and rejoiced when you . . . I do believe it was you . . . took the villain down. No, this is . . . Blast and all, what’s that?”
    The sky turned purple and bulged out toward us like a swelling bruise, and the dirt path beneath us cracked and slithered. Fiona . . . the portal. In the name of the gods, where was the portal? And the demon was still standing. Still in possession of the victim.
    “I’ve got to go.” My hand was on my knife. I had sworn an oath that was the cornerstone of my life. What was I thinking?
    The demon grinned at me. “So what is it to be? I suppose I could fight you, but I’d rather not. I won’t leave. Can we pretend that you couldn’t find me?”
    The ground where we were standing slumped down into a hole. I grabbed the wind with my wings and soared upward, looking down on him. His fair hair was whipping about his face as the flowers continued to bloom and fade, more rapidly than ever. I could take him. He was fast and cocky, but I had watched him, and he thought too much.
    Well, so did I. I circled and called down to him. “Do you have a name?”
    He laughed and used his hand to cup his words so they could be heard over the rising gale. “You could not pronounce it. And it may be different the next time you meet me. But I’ll remember you, Warden. We could see a bit of the world together, I think, you and I. Have some adventures. Find some common ground. There may come a time when it serves your purposes.”
    As the sky fell in and the fields of flowers began to disintegrate, I streaked for the portal. I glanced back once and I still saw him, standing in the black void where flowers had once bloomed. He waved and disappeared into darkness. I passed through the portal and landed feet first upon the temple floor.
     
    By the time my head was unfogged from my return, Fiona was nowhere to be seen. She had abandoned the rites: the cleaning, the duties, the prayers and chanting that were of such importance to her. For a brief moment, as I wiped the unused knife and mirror and laid them in their wooden case, I wondered if she were ill.