somewhere just beyond the distance I could see. My worries were vague, ill formed, like an interrupted dream. “Tell me, in all your study, in all your grandfather’s talk, did you ever come across any mention of one called ‘the Precursor’?”
“Precursor of what?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I don’t know.” We went over the demon’s words yet again.
“I don’t remember anything about such a name. Are you sure the word was naghidda ?”
“Absolutely sure. The only thing I can connect with it is something the Lord of Demons said just before I killed him.” The memory had come to me in my summer’s dreaming. “He said, ‘Do not think this battle is over. There is another yet to come. . . .’ I thought he meant another battle, and I dismissed it because I got rid of the villain. But now I wonder.” Only as I spoke them did the words give shape to my disquiet. “I’ve done a lot of thinking up here these months. All of this”—I waved my hand to encompass everything of the life we knew—“there’s something fundamentally wrong. If I’d not been away for so long, I might never have recognized it. I couldn’t see it when I was a slave, because being back in Ezzaria, doing what I was meant to do, was everything I wanted. I could not question, because I had to survive. But since I came back . . . My problem has not been just my discomfort with discipline or my impatience with self-righteous fools. It’s not just newly clever demons and harder fighting.”
The ideas came tumbling out of me like the rain after my own long drought. “We’re missing something. Think of how little we know. Even after so many years, so much study, we can’t explain the demon I met. We can’t explain why I can grow wings. We can’t explain why we can’t just kill the demons and be done with it. We can’t explain how it is we came to be doing all this. Why are the scrolls so short and so few? Those who wrote them were not savages, but literate men and women, comfortable with words. There must have been more writings. We’ve no evidence that anyone has ever known enough about us to destroy our history. It’s like someone has opened a door a crack, and I can look through it and see the vastness of our ignorance. Your young Wardens must be careful . . . and they must listen, so you’ll know how to prepare.”
I wanted to say more. Somehow the watch fires of my mind had been lit. I believed I had been given a warning, but I could not say how or why or what about. I just could not get around the fact that if the Lord of Demons, the terrible, powerful being Aleksander and I had fought for three days, was only a precursor, we had damned well better find out what came after.
Catrin did not dismiss my ramblings out of hand. Rather she frowned uncomfortably, saying only, “I’ll need to think about this. Do some more reading. Talk to some people. And I thought I was bringing news to you.” Then she shook off her thoughtful worry and laid her hand on my knee. “You’ve never asked why I changed my mind about your story before I came here.”
An undertone of excitement drew me out of the tangle of my unnamed fears.
“It wasn’t just our long acquaintance and your realization of your own stupidity in doubting me?”
“I don’t know how this fits with what you’ve told me, but we’ve found something in Grandfather’s journals.”
“And what was that?”
“There was another Warden who found a demon like yours.”
“Damn! I knew it.”
His name was Pendyrral, and he had been a Warden when Galadon was a young man. Pendyrral had been called to help a woman who had gone mad and ruined her husband’s business. The Searcher had given the woman the required tests and verified demon-possession, but reported that she had never seen a victim so calm and convinced of the rightness of her deeds. Pendyrral had returned from the portal in a daze, insisting that he could not find the demon. After
“Precursor of what?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I don’t know.” We went over the demon’s words yet again.
“I don’t remember anything about such a name. Are you sure the word was naghidda ?”
“Absolutely sure. The only thing I can connect with it is something the Lord of Demons said just before I killed him.” The memory had come to me in my summer’s dreaming. “He said, ‘Do not think this battle is over. There is another yet to come. . . .’ I thought he meant another battle, and I dismissed it because I got rid of the villain. But now I wonder.” Only as I spoke them did the words give shape to my disquiet. “I’ve done a lot of thinking up here these months. All of this”—I waved my hand to encompass everything of the life we knew—“there’s something fundamentally wrong. If I’d not been away for so long, I might never have recognized it. I couldn’t see it when I was a slave, because being back in Ezzaria, doing what I was meant to do, was everything I wanted. I could not question, because I had to survive. But since I came back . . . My problem has not been just my discomfort with discipline or my impatience with self-righteous fools. It’s not just newly clever demons and harder fighting.”
The ideas came tumbling out of me like the rain after my own long drought. “We’re missing something. Think of how little we know. Even after so many years, so much study, we can’t explain the demon I met. We can’t explain why I can grow wings. We can’t explain why we can’t just kill the demons and be done with it. We can’t explain how it is we came to be doing all this. Why are the scrolls so short and so few? Those who wrote them were not savages, but literate men and women, comfortable with words. There must have been more writings. We’ve no evidence that anyone has ever known enough about us to destroy our history. It’s like someone has opened a door a crack, and I can look through it and see the vastness of our ignorance. Your young Wardens must be careful . . . and they must listen, so you’ll know how to prepare.”
I wanted to say more. Somehow the watch fires of my mind had been lit. I believed I had been given a warning, but I could not say how or why or what about. I just could not get around the fact that if the Lord of Demons, the terrible, powerful being Aleksander and I had fought for three days, was only a precursor, we had damned well better find out what came after.
Catrin did not dismiss my ramblings out of hand. Rather she frowned uncomfortably, saying only, “I’ll need to think about this. Do some more reading. Talk to some people. And I thought I was bringing news to you.” Then she shook off her thoughtful worry and laid her hand on my knee. “You’ve never asked why I changed my mind about your story before I came here.”
An undertone of excitement drew me out of the tangle of my unnamed fears.
“It wasn’t just our long acquaintance and your realization of your own stupidity in doubting me?”
“I don’t know how this fits with what you’ve told me, but we’ve found something in Grandfather’s journals.”
“And what was that?”
“There was another Warden who found a demon like yours.”
“Damn! I knew it.”
His name was Pendyrral, and he had been a Warden when Galadon was a young man. Pendyrral had been called to help a woman who had gone mad and ruined her husband’s business. The Searcher had given the woman the required tests and verified demon-possession, but reported that she had never seen a victim so calm and convinced of the rightness of her deeds. Pendyrral had returned from the portal in a daze, insisting that he could not find the demon. After
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