recognized her designs, and they no less that he’d not seen them.
Ere long, he came to wholehearted support of our cause.
Tezdal was harder to persuade.
The Sky Lord was come to the same communion with Peliane as I had with Deburah: he loved her. But he was not yet to be convinced he should bring her against his Kho’rabi brethren.
“You ask too much of me,” he said. “You ask that I gainsay those vows that shaped me. I cannot expect that you understand what it is to be Kho’rabi, but you know that in my language that means ‘the Dedicated,’ and that is what we are-dedicated to the reconquest of our Homeland.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he raised a hand to halt me, and so dour was his dark face, I held my tongue. I had known him long enough now I might judge his moods, and for some while he had been sunk in melancholy introspection. Indeed, the only time I saw him happy was in company with Peliane. Oh, he remained civil-his manners were ever better than mine-and he acknowledged the debt he felt to Rwyan, the friendship that had grown between us, and between him and Urt. But a worm of doubt had been chewing at his soul since first we came to the Dragoncastle and he deemed Rwyan safe. I had endeavored to speak with him of such matters, and so had Rwyan, but he would not, or could not, and gave us only responses as evasive as Bellek’s. This was the first time he showed any willingness to discuss it openly, and so I sat silent as he continued.
“You cannot understand,” he said. “You Truemen Dhar came down into Kellambek with your magic and your swords, and you made my people slaves-those you did not slay. You brought your one god and mocked the Three-you took away my people’s heritage and ground us down under your heel. But Attul gave us back our hope and showed us the way east, to the islands of Ahn-feshang; and then the Three gave us those gifts I’ve told you of, that we might take back what is rightfully ours. The Attul-ki show us the way now, and we Kho’rabi yearn for the reconquest-what you call the Great Coming.
“No, listen!” This to Rwyan, who had moved to speak but fell silent as I under the bleak intensity of his eyes. “I do not name you enemy. Not you two Dhar; nor you. Urt. But what you ask is too much! You’d have me ride Peliane against my own. You ask me to betray all that I’ve believed in. I am nothing save I be true to my beliefs, but you ask me to fight my brothers, my kin. You ask me to go against the wishes of the Three! You ask me to damn myself for your dream, and I cannot do that.”
He closed his eyes, his head flung back so that his long plait hung down behind his chair. I saw his left hand finger the dagger at his waist and knew what he should likely say next.
I was right: he said, “Already I’ve betrayed my kin in aiding your escape from Trebizar. I could do no less in face of my pledge to you, Rwyan. But this-” He shook his head wearily. “No. Better that I take the Way of Honor now.”
Rwyan said very softly, “Do you truly think that’s the honorable course, Tezdal?”
His eyes sprang open. His head came forward. He stared at her, fierce as a bull dragon. “Yes.”
I said, “I’d not see you open your belly, my friend.”
He laughed. The sound rang wild about the empty hall. It seemed to me brother to the howling of the wind outside. I ached for him. I knew his decision was infinitely difficult.
He reached for the jug. I pushed it toward him, and he filled his cup; drank it off before he spoke again. “Would you deny your god?” he asked, rhetorical. “Would you ask me to deny the Three, all my beliefs, all my life has meant? Forgive me-I intend no disrespect, but you Truemen Dhar lack that honor that shapes us. I am Kho’rabi: my life has been lived for the single purpose. And now you’d ask me to deny it?”
Rwyan began to shape an answer, but to my amazement Urt set a hand upon her arm and motioned her to silence; and it was he who gave Tezdal the response.
“I was born Changed,” he said. “I am the by-blow of Dhar magic: dragons’ prey, a servant. In Dharbek I was nothing-invisible, a creature born of made things, born to serve unseen, unthanked. I was traded like an animal, as you’d no doubt trade a hound or a horse or a cow. I was nothing!
“Do you not think I dreamed of conquest then? Of my people rising to overthrow our masters? I’d not go back to that. No! Not ever! That was why I fled Karysvar and crossed the Slammerkin, to find the wild Changed and live free.
“But what did I find in Ur-Dharbek? That those who promise freedom dream of power! That Allanyn and her cohorts would join with you Kho’rabi to destroy the Truemen, to set themselves up where the Dhar stand now. Not make a better world-only shift the order of the old. I’d have no master, Tezdal, neither Trueman nor Changed. Only be myself, free.
“What think you the Great Coming shall mean? Surely bloodshed, when your battalions come down out of the sky and Allanyn brings my people south over the Slammerkin, and the Changed of Dharbek rise. And after? What then? Shall your Attul-ki and Allanyn parcel out their conquests? Or shall ambition vaunt itself again and Allanyn decide she’d not share with Sky Lords, or your Attul-ki decide to enslave my Changed people? Where shall those Dhar who still survive be then? As you Ahn were-slaves and outlaws, dreaming in their turn of reconquest? I’ve found honesty in Truemen-two sit before you now, exemplars!-and I’ve known cruelty. I’ve found the same in my own kind, and I tell you that we are none of us so different. Daviot saw that years ago and paid the price of his vision. Rwyan saw it, and now she’s here-a Trueman mage, her life dedicated to defense of Dharbek. Until now! When she sees a truer future.”
He broke off. He seemed to me almost embarrassed by his eloquence. He took up his cup and drank. I said nothing; neither Rwyan. I think we both knew Urt had said it all, and we could not put it better. I smiled at my old friend, but he was looking away at Tezdal still. His eyes were locked with the Sky Lord’s, as if he’d burn the import of his belief into Tezdal’s brain.
My Sky Lord friend sat silent a while, his aquiline features impassive, a mask. I had no doubt he hid the turmoil within.
We waited, all of us.
Finally, Tezdal said, “A truer future, Urt? Tell me what that is, eh? Tell me what truth there can be in vows denied.”
Urt still did not look at me, or at Rwyan, but only held Tezdal’s gaze. He said, “A better world, my friend. A world of equals, not servants and their masters. Neither vanquished and oppressed; neither any who dream of conquest or liberation, but only live together in freedom.”
“And how,” Tezdal asked, “would you achieve this Utopia?”
Urt said, “I think it shall not be easy. I think it shall cost us pain, and the payment of it be likely bloody. But I have come to Rwyan’s belief, to Daviot’s dream-I believe we might achieve it.”
Tezdal lowered his eyes to his empty cup. Rwyan rose and filled it. The Sky Lord drank and brought a hand to his mouth, where a droplet of red wine sat upon his lip. He wiped it, fastidious, away. He studied his fingers.
Then he said, “Tell me.”
His tone was carefully measured, his expression controlled. I saw he hid the anguish that consumed him, the pendulum swing betwixt despair and hope that Urt’s justifying argument set in motion. I pitied him. I’d not dare say it aloud-he’d likely have found that an insult to his Kho’rabi honor-but I grieved for him in his torment, knowing that he, more than any of us, was caught in the dilemma of perceived betrayal. I thought, as I watched his bleak face, that if this pattern I’d described to comfort Rwyan, this pattern she now believed in and I almost could see, were true, then it was not unlike those spiders’ webs that had decorated this hall before Rwyan brought her talent to their clearing. It was a great web of many strands, impossible to trace to ends or center, sources or conclusions. It was larger and far more complex than we caught in it could see, and poor Tezdal was like a fly landed there by none of his own design-only caught, the mandibles of decision’s spider moving ever closer as he struggled to find a way, an honorable way, out.
I looked at his face and felt my soul bleed for him as I outlined the stratagem I’d wrought.
TThe wind tapped demanding knuckles at the windows as I spoke. It was yet only midafternoon, but the sky was dark, laden heavy with the promise of snow to come that night. What little light the sun succeeded in thrusting through the clouds fell in long slanting rays over the mountains. I spoke with all the eloquence of my calling; and more, for I was impassioned by conviction. I saw it kindle a fire in the Sky Lord. He was, at first, still doubtful, but
