Revelation (Rai Kirah) by Carol Berg Read Free Book Online Page B

and springs of the Azhaki desert, pines and firs and spruce of varieties familiar only to those hardy enough to live in the highest mountains beyond Capharna. Leaves of bright yellow and red mixed in with the liveliest spring greens. And all of it changing as I walked, the fire-red maple leaves falling alongside drifting pear blossoms.
    I could discover nothing but this bizarre forest-scape for quite a long time. A brook gurgled alongside the path. Hoping it was the thread that would lead me to my quarry, I followed it, pushing through increasingly dense underbrush, hacking at the thick growth with the silver knife I had changed into a scythe . . . and came near toppling off the edge of a cliff. The forest stopped abruptly at the edge of a fifty-story drop to a forested valley. As I paused to let my transforming enchantment give me wings to explore beyond the cliff edge, a path shaped itself from the steep rock wall like a sand-snake shaking off its gritty coating. I thought the path might be Fiona’s doing. An Aife could feel obstacles and could attempt to remedy them through some shaping of the landscape she held in her mind. A tricky business, as she could not see the Warden and risked dropping him over a cliff or into a pit or impaling him on a tree. Ysanne could do such things because she could sense from my mind what I needed . Oh, my love . . .
    The wave of piercing grief came unbidden . . . unwanted. This was not the place. I marshaled my concentration and started down the path. Into a fertile valley, still of confused season. Trees taller than Derzhi palaces . . . ferns the size of houses . . . black-centered red flowers with a thick, cloying scent that made me dizzy.
    “Hyssad! Begone!” I yelled it out when I detected a movement from ahead of me, across the bend of a wide, sluggish river. I whirled about at the sound of a footstep behind me. Sweat beaded on my brow. Where was the demon? I could get no sense of it. Yet something was close. What was wrong with my perceptions?
    A gust of hot, humid wind stirred the brooding trees and raised up a cloud of insects. The cry of a bird echoed in the distance. A trailing vine tickled my neck, and I slashed at it with my sword, furling my wings tighter as the trees grew thicker. I could have sworn I heard a laugh. “Hyssad!”
    “Are you a bird or one of these nattering creatures that annoys my ears?” The voice came from above me, somewhere atop a pair of shiny black boots. “And you keep saying that vile word. I do wish you’d stop.”
    I moved backward and promptly tripped over a protruding root that had not been across the path when I had passed a moment before. My sword was ready as I scrambled to my feet, sure the beast would pounce upon my clumsiness.
    “Put it away. I have no argument with you.” The boots dropped from the tree in a shower of red and gold leaves, bringing with them the image of a slender, fair-haired man of middle age with a cocky smile. His blond beard was neatly trimmed, his hands well formed and clean. He wore a shirt and trousers of deep-hued blue and purple, and a gray-green cloak that shimmered like water in the dappled sunlight. He carried no weapons that I could see. “So which are you, bird or flea? Surely you can’t be the one I was warned of.” He twirled a finger, and the trees shifted back far enough that he could walk around me. I turned with him, my knife, now a sword, at the ready. “Now, stop that. How am I to learn of you if you’ll not be still and let me look?” He set his hands on his hips and laughed, yet the sound of it did not eat away at my ears and my soul as demon laughter always did.
    Verbal bantering with a demon, no matter how monstrous or commonplace its form was never wise. Nothing would come of it. Words were only a distraction. So I waited. The demon watched me, leaning his back against a moss-covered tree trunk and chewing on a long blade of grass. He didn’t seem in any hurry. I waved my sword tip