Page 89

Harok laughs as he removes the last of the rope. Tobi curls up on the bed and as he does, Harok makes a sound like a grunt of surprise and collapses onto the bed. Face down in a strange, crumpled heap. Tobi springs over, “Irgorye?” he says, cradling Harok’s face in horror.

Panic jolts through Tobi. Has Harok been poisoned somehow? Has his heart seized?

But when Tobi taps Harok’s cheek, Harok appears to be sleeping. Simply sleeping as if he fell into slumber the instant he freed Tobi.

“Irgorye?” Tobi says again.

Harok does not wake, but he mumbles something. Soft, but Tobi thinks he says, “Diazuul.”

Harok had mumbled Diazuul once before, when his mind was heavy with sofi.

“Diazuul,’ Harok says again. The way he says it this time is raw. Laced with fear.

As he says it, the chamber door opens behind Tobi. He turns and Yaelin glides into the room.

Tobi jumps back from the doorway, pulling a blanket over himself, thinking that Yaelin would not wish to see her son in bed with his lover, but she waves her hand, gesturing as if his state of undress bothers her not at all, she says, “Please, kushir, stay where you are.”

Tobi frowns at her. “Did you do this? Did you put him to sleep somehow?” He stares at her. Could she do such a thing? Could anyone?

He thinks of how he’d felt during the feast. Magic is real. Here, if nowhere else. And he knows, for certain, he is seeing that magic now.

He looks from Harok to Yaelin. Harok’s mother. Kushel to Irgo Lal. She has never approached Tobi before. In fact, she has been so distant for the entire time Tobi has been at Urynwud that he had long decided that Yaelin must disapprove of him somehow. She has barely said a word to him since the day he arrived.

“It is time. You are ready,” Yaelin says. She speaks Ambolk, but it does not sound harsh. Her voice is smooth and soothing.

“Ready?” Tobi says as Yaelin moves into the room. “Ready for what?”

Yaelin settles herself on a carved wooden chair beside the bed. Harok’s unconscious naked body is stretched out between them. “I saw it in you tonight. The power you have has matured. The forest has wound its way into you. You feel it too, don’t you? You have been here many moons. You have become truly bonded to my son and to this place. It is time for you to do what Harok brought you here to do.”

Tobi looks at Harok’s sleeping face. “What? What did he bring me here for?” Tobi feels a strange sick feeling low in his belly. What secret has Harok been keeping from him? “If Harok has something to tell me, he can tell me himself.” Tobi snaps. “Wake him up. Let him speak with me.”

As Tobi looks at Yaelin, she leans forward, and says, “But, you see, kushir, it is my truth to tell. I am the reason you are here in Urynwud.”

“You?” Tobi says. “But I have never seen you before I came here. How could you be the reason I am here?”

Yaelin looks at Tobi for a long time then says, “Kushir, I am sorry for all that has been done to bring you here. And for the task I will ask of you. It will be painful. But it must be so.” She speaks slowly. Slower than Tobi needs Ambolk to be to follow it, but he supposes Yaelin has no idea how much he has learned.

Tobi swallows. “What task?”

Yaelin leans over the bed and touches the glyph on Harok’s chest. “I made this to protect him but its power has faded. And then he took a wound to it. That made everything worse. He has had to fight so hard. Twenty years he has fought that demon.”

Tobi frowns at her. “Fought what demon? Diazuul? Is Diazuul not slain?”

“Do you know who Diazuul truly is? You should.”

Tobi shakes his head. “Diazuul is your forest demon. Why should I know of him? I am from Azuria.”

“Indeed. And in Azuria, you follow a cruel God.”

“I suppose so,” Tobi says, frowning. He cannot imagine why Yaelin wants to speak of Zai.

“Two hundred years ago,” Yaelin says, “when your ancestor Sarelik Darek left Urynwud, he started a revolution and took power in Azuria. And when he was king, your ancestor commanded that all men worship Zai. Sarelik had Azuria worship that creature as the Solwen did. Harok ended that here. But Diazuul is still a God in Azuria.”

Tobi blinks. “You believe what your husband Irgo Lal did? That Zai is a face of Diazuul?”

“It is not a matter of belief,” Yaelin says. “It is the truth.”

“But Zai is nothing like Diazuul. Our laws, the Book of the Rules, are not followed here. Irgo Lal and Emperor Erond argued over it.”