Flashing Swords Press

Here is part 2 of SC Bryce's popular "Dermanassian" serial. Have no fear, loyal readers! Although we have changed editors, we will still be publishing the complete "Rise of a Necromancer" serial over the span of upcoming issues of Flashing Swords E-zine! Who am I to doubt all those fans?

--Daniel

To Find Peace
Rise of Necromancer, Part 2
SC Bryce

Dermanassian stood at the threshold of Glorious Tehare. Clad in singular gray with the hood of his cloak pulled tightly against his bronze face, the desert elf was nearly invisible in the winding crevasse that led to the underground city.

Both the city and its last child were nearly unrecognizable. Tehare was no more than a mausoleum and Dermanassian no more than a raving scarecrow. His laughter ended in choking. He spat noisily, as if trying to expel the guilt that haunted him and drove him back to his homeland.

What have I done? The unspoken question seemed to whorl through the still desert air. It was all around him. Teasing him. Hounding him. Worse than the question was its answer--so horrible that Dermanassian could not bring himself to contemplate it. Indeed, madness was preferable. Already it nibbled at the edges of his mind like a pack of hyenas, threatening to overwhelm him. For his part, he allowed it. Surely lunacy would be a refuge compared to the unbearable shame of his folly.

A tiny, white dragonet circled anxiously above him. Its flight was erratic as it strove to understand Dermanassian's strange mood. The dragonet was a simple, playful creature. It did it not know that it had been a miniature homage to the white dragons, made by the desert elf from a sorcerous mixing of carved of quartz and his own blood. Nor did it know that the god Asbeth tricked the desert elf into aiding the destruction of that ancient race, then dumped him and the dragonet at the edge of the Blackstone River.

The dragonet did know, however, that it instinctively disliked this place. Its little red nostrils flared as they caught the stink of centuries-old death. It chittered to Dermanassian nervously, hoping to give comfort and to receive some in return.

He did not respond. His sick mind feared the tiny creature was an irony of the gods, driving him toward madness. Its very presence was a continual reminder of his foolishness. Impotent with rage and grief, he wandered the countryside in despair and self-hatred, searching vainly for absolution. Throughout, the ever-present dragonet dogged his shoulder.

And now he found himself here.

He leaned on the veined stone, his body fatigued and his mind fitful. He did not know what brought him to his ancestral lands. Had he been in his right mind, he would have thought the barren home of a dead people to be a strange place to find comfort from his own participation in genocide. Perhaps it was the perfect place to succumb to madness, to finally join the rest of his people in crazed death. Perhaps he simply had no where else to go.

Dermanassian would have vomited again if he had the energy, if his throat and stomach were not long dry from retching. Gagging, he stumbled across the ruins of the Setting Sun Gate into Tehare.

The city was carved from bedrock, expanding upon a natural cave system. Its cool, vast spaces were criss-crossed with stairs and stacked with palaces and other structures. Tunnels as wide as highways connected huge caverns together. Just inside the Setting Sun Gate was the largest cavern, nicknamed the Honeycomb, where sculpted buildings rose eight stories.

When Glorious Tehare was a living city, the engineers captured sun- and starlight in mirrors and funneled it through the caverns in a series of shafts. The light was channeled to panels of mirrors that covered the cavern ceilings and were turned every hour. And so even underground, the desert elves were lit by the heavens. In those days, Glorious Tehare bustled with activity. What some would have thought its greatest liability became the city's greatest asset: it sat beneath the so-called Impassable Desert. The desert was far too large to circumvent or cross without harbors from the hot sands and glaring sun. Populations surrounding the desert and beyond knew only rumors about each other until the desert elves opened their gates. Tehare and its sister cities grew richer and more cosmopolitan on trade, for merchants carrying goods from one side of the great desert to the other had little choice but to stop and share their wealth with the bronze and angular folk of the desert. Thus goods for every need or desire crammed its markets, bizarre and urbane spectacles packed its amphitheaters, scholars filled its university, and its residents argued philosophy in the comfort of stacked palaces.

Then Risaa the Whisperer came. Its ravenous, instinctual appetite for minds led it to the desert elves' communal consciousness. Oozing through cracks, Risaa feasted on their sanity. As the desert elves succumbed, the merchants fled. Dermanassian alone survived the riots and madness.

Now the city was a mockery of what Dermanassian's remembered. The multi-faceted mirrors - those few remaining in place - were askew. Many littered the polished stone floors with their shards, leaving the city in a sleepy twilight. Dermanassian fumbled in near darkness, helped by his small crystal orb hovering before him. The orb's golden light should have been comforting. Yet bouncing off the mirrored slivers, its cast was irregular and jarring. Dermanassian dully wondered if the shattered mirrors reflected the orb or the disarray in his own mind.

His footsteps uncharacteristically echoed, alternating among soft shuffling, grinding crunches, and hollow clicks depending upon the debris beneath his boots. Though he knew the noises were of his own making, some primeval part of his brain imagined the insanity that consumed the unsuspecting desert elves still tortured some poor soul. But, of course, there were no desert elves except him, and his was the only soul tortured now.

The white dragonet whimpered as it fluttered in the darkness behind him, its black eyes blinking with fear.

Shadows flickered, but Dermanassian paid them no attention. He kept his eyes averted, looking at nothing longer than necessary, for Tehare had been untouched since its destruction. Although looters made their way to the other entombed cities of the desert elves, Glorious Tehare had been spared by shifting sands and failing memories. And the thirsty air of the Impassable Desert preserved things. Thus he knew that the shadows contained the twisted corpses of his race, sucked dry and mummified where they fell. That their angular features would be pulled tight against their skulls as their dark flesh dried and shrunk. That their bony fingers would be tangled in their long, black hair as they died tearing at their skulls to exorcise the mind-eating whispers that took over their communal consciousness.

He tripped among the wreckage, his footfalls and gurgles of madness echoing through the lifeless city. Still he struggled onward to his childhood home at the top of Bountiful Cavern.

The remains of barricades yet clogged the doorway. Dermanassian pushed his exhausted body through, tearing his dirty clothes upon exposed nail heads. He did not notice. Some instinct forced him to the house's wide courtyard, a white-pillared hall filled with raised pools. Once they held parti-colored fish circling beneath the broad leaves of lotus blossoms. But the fish were gone, replaced by remnants of algae clinging like brittle fur; the red-beaked doves that had nested among the high cornices of the vented hall had long ago fled or perished; and Dermanassian's parents no longer lounged upon the benches to read leather-bound books. Amid the empty pools, Dermanassian collapsed. A jumble of long-denied images crowded his exhausted mind.

* * *

"Mother?" Dermanassian asked, his voice still high with youth.

She sat upon a slender bench of woven wood nearly hidden amongst the pillars and pools, a small book nestled in her lap. A warm breeze passed through, and the doves cooed at it. Water from the deep aquifers bubbled rhythmically in the pools.

Her eyes were closed. Dermanassian wondered if she conversed with someone or merely slept. Born without the eighth perception and thus outside the communal awareness of all other desert elves, he was unable to tell the difference.

His mother's eyes fluttered open and she smiled wearily. "Sweet child," she said, still addressing him as if he were a boy rather than on the verge of adulthood. She opened her arms in welcome.

He bent to kiss her upon her soft cheek, before sitting beside her. "Did I wake you?" he asked. "Or were you speaking with Father?"

"Neither. A minor headache." She waved away his concern. "Tell me, why are you not in your studies?"

"The tutor was not well. A headache, too, he said."

Her black hair fell forward as she nodded. Absently, she tucked it behind an ear. "Yes. There is a loud buzzing these days. Distracting." She paused trying to think of a better way to explain it to her son. "It is as a hive of bees agitating at the hint of smoke." She laughed suddenly and tickled him beneath the chin. "We shall drive each other mad one day. Then you, my dear Dermanassian, will be the only sane one among us."

* * *

"It whispers, it whispers, it whispers," his mother moaned. Her hair was stringy with sweat and she rolled in her pillowed bed as if fevered.

The doctor found nothing wrong with her. "Perhaps it is my own fatigue," she apologized, rubbing her eyes. "I cannot sleep or concentrate with this headache."

Dermanassian's father nodded. His face clouded with weariness and worry. "And yet we must do something."

"I have tried sleeping draughts, herbs, sorcery - all the powers at my command. And nothing has worked, either on her or anyone else. This whispering-"

"Yes," his father interrupted. "It gnaws at us all."

* * *

His tutors believed attending classes on the eighth perception was a waste of Dermanassian's and, more importantly, their time given he would never be able to fully understand or use what he learned. Thus having more time to devote, he excelled in his other studies, particularly the martial and tracking arts. His tutors were frustrated at the necessity of verbalizing every instruction for him, but they found him a quick student once they properly explained themselves. Dermanassian mastered the high levels that the city elders believed it prudent to maintain, for though violence among his race was unheard of, a city never knew when it or its sisters might be attacked - especially a city as rich as Tehare.

Violence did come to Glorious Tehare. When it did, Dermanassian's skills failed him.

It descended during a riatha performance, an art form created by the eastern elves but perfected by those of the desert. Dermanassian was a regular at the theater. He preferred to sit in the highest tier, with by humans of moderate means because he could observe the stage in its entirety and even glimpse the workings of the hands and their machinery behind the curtained sides of the stage. The complex music filled the theater like wine into a goblet. And though Dermanassian, like the humans in the audience, could not perceive all the riatha's intricacies, he was amazed by the colorful costumes of the actors as they brought to life literature and historical sagas.

He had seen that month's performance three times already. This night's was poor: the singers and musicians erratic, the actors nervous and edgy. Even the audience, at least those who were desert elves, seemed anxious and inattentive. Dermanassian was determined to put his worries about his mother away and enjoy the performance. That was, after all, the reason he was there.

The story recalled a fable from the kingdom of Vick regarding a baby left to die of exposure, but who nonetheless survived to become a great king. At his coronation, he lifted his jeweled scepter in triumph, and-

Something fell off-stage, landing with a bone-breaking crash followed by shouts of pain and anger from the stage-hands. Startled, the performers stopped. The newly crowned king turned in a great swirl of silken robes. His angular face darkened and he bellowed. Turning his paste scepter into a mace, he grabbed the nearest actor by the collar and clubbed him. Blood ran down the actor's face. Frantically, he threw up his arms to shield himself, but it was no use. Down and down again came the scepter, until red gore streamed. The king's fist twisted in the collar, cutting off even the actor's cries. His silken robes darkening with blood, the king grinned. Blood trickled from his lip and stained his white teeth, for he had bitten through his own tongue. Abruptly, he flung the limp actor from him and raised the dripping and dented scepter. His primeval scream made Dermanassian's hands fly to his ears.

A shocked hush filled the amphitheater. Suddenly, a tide of spectators rushed the stage, struggling to reach the enraged king. Shouts of rage turned quickly into squeals of pain and terror. The audience erupted into a riot. The mock king was brought down and engulfed, his bloodied scepter snapping under the weight of the crowd.

In the highest tier, Dermanassian jumped to his feet. The desert elves turned upon the foreigners in the crowd and upon each other. They swung wild, vicious punches. They yanked their padded chairs into the air and crashed them upon each other's backs. When the chairs broke, they grabbed the pieces and used them as clubs. Shrieks ripped through the amphitheater, amplified by its acoustical design. Blood misted in the air.

At first, the humans near Dermanassian seemed uncertain what to do. They gaped watching the bedlam below. Abruptly, they looked at him, as if he were a mad dog. Just as suddenly, they scampered for the exits. He sprinted after.

The riot spilled into the underground streets of Tehare like water from a breaking dam. Dermanassian darted through the outbreaks of violence and, running as fast as he could, he dared not stop until he reached the gilded door of his home.

* * *

A crush of foreigners and animals mobbed the Setting Sun Gate, a stampede to leave Glorious Tehare. Bleats and squeals and curses rang through the Honeycomb as wild-eyed merchants and their hirelings gathered their wares, struggling to be the first to get their livestock and wagons through the gate.

A pair of chestnut horses reared and struggled against their braces, causing their over-loaded wagon to twist and slowly tip. Wrapped bundles rolled from the top. Screaming obscenities, the teamster lashed his whip. The terrified horses bucked and fought. Another wagon, its teamster in even less control, banged into the side. Its axle cracked and the wagons crumpled beneath their weight. A dog barked frantically.

Dermanassian watched the mob from the broad Dun Horse Steps, one of the main stairs stretching from the floor of the cavern to its highest levels. No one paid the youth any attention--neither the foreigners running from Tehare, nor the brain-clouded natives tearing through its garbage-strewn streets, tearing at each other like cannibals.

Beside him, an elderly human woman held her small bundles tightly to her chest, her sandals slapping the polished staircase. As she passed him, she stumbled. Dermanassian reached for her as she grabbed for the thick railing.

"Get away from me," she hissed, wrenching her hand away as if he carried some ravaging disease. "You've all gone crazy!"

* * *

Dermanassian's father dismissed the remaining servants and barricaded their home. He chattered to himself as he broke priceless furniture into boards and nailed them across the wide windows. Their view of the lower levels where the insane howled and rampaged slowly disappeared behind wooden slats. Still, screeches curled through every crevice and Dermanassian felt they were assailed by an army of berserker-spirits.

"We will be safe here," his murmured, squinting and pulling at his temples with balled hands. His voice was sharp and strangely pitched, and he dripped with sweat. "It is just the three of us."

From her locked bedroom, Dermanassian's mother raved incomprehensibly.

Dermanassian bit his lip.

* * *

His mother did not seem to hear his pleas for her to stop or notice his tears. Dark splotches discolored her yellow robes. She twisted frantically on her bed, her hands tied to its frame with silk scarves. She thrashed against her bonds so violently that her shoulders and wrists were askew, popped from their sockets.

"Mother," Dermanassian pleaded, offering water and bandages. "Mother, please. Let me help you."

"Get out!" she screamed. "Monster!"

Dermanassian ran.

* * *

"Father?" Dermanassian asked, entering the white-pillared courtyard in terror.

The red-beaked doves had fled their nests, disappearing through the grilled vents into the desert. Their soft cooing and fluttering were replaced by faint screams and banging that wafted from Bountiful Cavern and beyond.

His father sat at the edge of one of the blue lotus pools, his tall body rocking. His head hung, nearly touching his chest with his tapered chin, and his bloodied hands jerked. At his slippered feet was a pile of the parti-colored fish. Their scales were torn from their skins and their innards ripped from their round bodies. Dermanassian could almost see the stink rising.

Dermanassian slowly walked around to face him. "Father?"

"It whispers, it whispers, its whispers," his father moaned, his black eyes unseeing.

* * *

By morning, Dermanassian's mother lay drooling and unresponsive, a husk emptied of all reason. By nightfall, she was dead.

Dermanassian and his father mourned upon the wide bed, each holding one of his mother's limp hands. They had done their best to smooth out the joints so that her limbs did not hang from unnatural angles. Dermanassian swept her black hair from her face, his arm brushing against her high, brocaded collar. Beneath it, her long neck was bruised as if from strong fingers. He stared uncomprehending at first, then with the slow understanding that she had been strangled.

His father's hands twitched.

* * *

"Open the door, Dermanassian," his father pleaded in a hoarse whisper, his fingers scratching at the thick door.

Dermanassian crouched on his bed, a dagger in his lap and silent tears running down his face. His door was barricaded with a tall, painted armoire. His bedroom was lit only by the light from the hall that crept around the sides of the bedroom door. He said nothing and his father's footsteps lurched away. Moments later, there was a bang upon the door as his father flung himself against it.

"Open it!" he shrieked as paranoia consumed him. "It is coming, it is coming! It will kill us all!"

He screeched incomprehensibly and pounded his fists into the door. Dermanassian imagined his father's elegant hands must be bloodied and splintered.

"Oh, the whispers! It whispers, it whispers, it whispers!" his father moaned. Then, as if battling an intruder, he suddenly shouted, "Stop!"

Dermanassian heard him hurdle furniture in the hallway. A vase shattered and his father yelped like an injured terrier. Then the sounds faded as his father limped to the other end of the palace. Exhausted, for he had not slept in the days since the insanity began, Dermanassian drifted into sleep with the dagger clutched tightly in his fist. He was jerked awake by crying.

"Open the door!" his father begged. "Will you not open the door?" Then he shouted at an unseen foe. "No! I will not! I will not! Save yourself, Dermanassian! I will not! I-" he screamed.

Dermanassian heard him slump to the floor, his body breaking the illuminated outline of the door.

A spreading pool of blood soaked under the door, past the armoire, and into the pale fringe of Dermanassian's carpet.

* * *

Dermanassian did not leave his bedroom for four days, terrified of what lay beyond it. The stench of death crept under the door with his father's blood, filling his nostrils and lungs with every breath. It was only when the smell grew more powerful than his fear that he moved the armoire. All his strength was needed to shove it; its clawed feet scratched groves into the stone floor. With a deep breath, he turned door's bone handle and opened it.

His father's body slumped stiffly as the opened door no longer propped it into a seated position. His black eyes stared dully and vacantly; his bronze skin was pale with death. A long, curved dagger angled through his stomach, under his ribs, and into his heart. Its lacquered hilt was crusted in rotten blood.

Brushing away tears, Dermanassian pulled the dagger from his father's chest and threw it aside so that it skittered down the hall. Returning to his bed, he yanked a knitted blanket from the mattress. He wrapped his father's body inside it and carried it to his parents' bedroom. He laid his father next to his mother, her own body smaller since life abandoned it. With a murmured prayer, he closed the door forever.

Dermanassian did not know what to do. He was terrified that he was alone, the last living soul in Glorious Tehare; he was terrified that he was not, and some of the insane still lingered, waiting to attack him if he ventured from home. Nearly petrified with shock and dread, Dermanassian stayed in the courtyard, where fresh air from the vents kept the stench of decomposition at bay. The cries now haunted only his mind, for Glorious Tehare was silent. The doves were gone, no doubt preferring the heat of the desert to what lurked underneath it. Only a few parti-colored fish survived, swimming beneath the broad green leaves of the blue lotuses. Their round mouths sucked hungrily at the water's surface.

But Dermanassian could not stay in his home for eternity. After a month, the pantry was empty and the pumps that filled the city's clay pipes with water from the aquifer no longer functioned.

If he could have, Dermanassian would have climbed through the vents rather than traverse the city and leave through the Setting Sun Gate. But the vents were narrow and grilled. And, he reminded himself, even if he could get through them, he would die in the Impassable Desert. It was a week on foot through the sun and sands to the Grand Amarna, next city of the desert elves. The desert's edge was weeks farther still. He needed supplies.

Determined to get to Amarna, Dermanassian returned to his bedroom. He pulled a sturdy travel pack and, in it, packed his gear from his classes in tracking and survival. A tinderbox, a versatile cloak, several knives, a lightweight tent, and other supplies were stuffed inside. He took no mementos.

He pulled the boards from the front door, but, before opening it, placed a tapered ear to the scratched wood. Hearing nothing but his heart pounded in his eardrums, he eased it open.

Before him was the wreckage of Tehare. Desert elves, and a few foreigners, filled the corridors and open spaces of Bountiful Cavern. Their bodies were warped and stiffened with death. It seemed as if an army of raiders had descended upon the place, slaughtering the lot of them with any weapon at hand before disappearing into the sands. The putrid smell overwhelmed him.

Dermanassian ran down the winding South River Stairs to a restaurant. Hardly breathing, hardly thinking, he crammed his travel pack with food and drink. Covering his mouth and nose with a hand, he fled Tehare.

* * *

He ran as long as he could, not stopping until he dropped to his knees in the sand from exhaustion.

The open air of the desert was strangely hospitable after his flight from the tomb that was Tehare. The scorching sun seemed a purifying force and the sands scoured the scent of decay from his skin. He gulped the fresh air, ignoring its heat and dust. It would be hard going alone in the desert. He did not care. Grateful just to be freed of Tehare's tomb, he struck out at a jog, emptying his mind of everything but the rhythm of his feet over the sand.

In less than a week of travel, he was in Grand Amarna.

He hesitated in front of the smaller city's main gate. He had hoped that Amarna would not have suffered the same fate as Tehare. Still, he had tried to prepare himself for what he might find.

He failed. He gagged as the fetid smell of decomposition poured from Amarna's broken gate and was cooked by the Impassable Desert.

Yet he had no choice but to enter. His food and water would not last the weeks needed to reach the edge of the wasteland. He also needed a respite from the rigors of the desert. He spat and rinsed his mouth, then clamped a scrap of cloth across his nose and crossed the threshold.

He fought down panic when he heard soft, scraping noises echoing through the caverns. He fumbled to pull one of his daggers from his belt and he held it as his tutors had taught him. He wanted to run, for he did not think he could tolerate seeing yet another crazed desert elf. But he could not live not knowing if another of his kind survived. He did not want to be alone.

Grand Amarna was poorly lit; its mirrors were out of synchronization with the sun. Silently, he crept through the darkened spaces. He did not look around. He knew the horrors that he would see if he allowed himself to do anything but concentrate on tracking the sounds.

Suddenly, Dermanassian saw him.

The man stared at back. His brown head was shaved and he wore faded blue robes like a monk's with an old pair of leather sandals tied to his brown feet. His black eyes were penetrating as he knelt above a crumpled woman, her long hand wrapped in his own.

"I am sorry," Dermanassian finally mumbled, flushing as he realized the man might have been using the eighth perception to address him. "I-"

The stranger's eyes widened in recognition. "You are not capable of-"

"No," he interrupted harshly. His back stiffened involuntarily. Although he told himself he was accustomed to surprise about his disability, the truth was he was still uncomfortable with it.

The stranger nodded and said, as if to himself, "That is why you alone were unaffected."

Dermanassian did not hear him, for his brusque embarrassment had already given way to exhilaration that he was not alone. "I thought everyone was gone!" he smiled with relief. "But you-" he paused. He intended to ask if the stranger was spared because he too lacked the eighth perception, but instead he looked closer at the man. Dermanassian had assumed his features were of his own race. Now that he studied them, he knew they were not. His heart sank. "You are not a desert elf."

"No."

"Are you a merchant left behind?" His eyes narrowed. "Or a looter?"

"Neither."

"Then what are you doing here?" Dermanassian's hand tightened on the hilt of the dagger and he took a step backward.

The stranger paused, considering his answer. "Investigating."

"The insanity?"

The stranger's brow furrowed slightly, as if he did not know of what Dermanassian spoke. "Oh," he finally said. "That is what you think happened."

"If not insanity, then what?"

"The Whisperer."

"The Whisperer?"

"Risaa," he explained.

Dermanassian frowned. "Risaa?"

"Risaa the Whisperer," the stranger said, elongating each syllable as if struggling to be patient.

"Who is-"

The stranger placed the dead woman's hand softly upon her chest as he stood. "What are you doing here?" he interrupted.

His tone was the same Dermanassian's tutor used when further questions a subject would be fruitless. At any rate, Dermanassian was not one who questioned his elders. "I came hoping things were different than in Tehare," he mumbled, "or that I could at least get supplies to cross the desert."

"And then where are you going?"

He said nothing. He did not know.

"I suggest Saythanal. They may be distant kin, but the eastern elves will take you in. Do you know the way?"

Dermanassian thought for a moment, envisioning the map from his schoolroom. "Yes. North at the edge of the Impassable Desert, across the kingdom of Vick, east through Merset Forest-"

"Good." The stranger brushed his robes with backs of his hands and nodded as if in farewell.

"You are leaving?" Dermanassian said, edgy with fear. He did not even know this man's name, but already he could not bear to be alone again. And the stranger seemed to know things that might help him.

"I do not intend to live out my days here any more than you do," he said sharply. "Farewell."

"But-" Dermanassian begged in his confused grief. "Sir, where are you going? Can I not go with you?"

The monk started with surprise. "With me? No." Then abruptly, as if noticing for the first time Dermanassian's young face streaked with misery and travel, his tone softened. "Come, child," he said with resignation, "let us find you some food. I will take you to Saythanal."

* * *

Dermanassian learned the stranger's named was Desmarais. He was indeed a monk, or at least had been many years ago. He spoke only vaguely about his own people. Dermanassian thought they must be very much like the desert elves, for the man's brown skin and angular features were similar, and he made veiled reference to a desert empire fallen beneath the swords and hooves of a horde. Even his language seemed like an archaic form of the desert elves, with similar names for people and places. The monk, however, was disinclined to speak too much about himself or to learn about Dermanassian. In short, he was silent much of the time, his dark eyes focused on things unseen, his sandals padding softly over the sand.

Although the monk lay down in the desert elf's small tent, invariably Dermanassian would wake from his troubled sleep to see his outline outside, staring rigidly into the night, his faded blue robes whipping about him. Likewise, although the youth prepared enough food for both, the monk insisted that Dermanassian eat the better part of it. Dermanassian wondered if the monk ate, or simply made a show of it.

Yet for all his strangeness, Dermanassian felt safe with him. He led the youth unerringly through the Impassable Desert. In Vick, he avoided people as much as possible. When they had to encounter others, the monk took on the semblance of an aged holy man and counseled Dermanassian to pull his gray hood over his tapered ears so as not to attract notice. Dermanassian learned quickly that the desert elves were no longer a people admired; he was shunned and later nearly attacked when too careless with his disguise.

Still, with only the enigmatic Desmarais's presence as consolation, Dermanassian's nerves got the best of him. While they camped in Merset Forest, he broke down sobbing. Images of his dead parents overwhelmed him, and the memories of all that he had seen those many weeks ago in Glorious Tehare and Grand Amarna inundated his mind.

The monk sat on a broken tree beside the slumped youth, his faded blue robes wrapped neatly about him. He did not try to console the youth. Rather, he looked at the high trees, their broad branches and leaves blocking most of the sunlight so that the forest floor was lit in scattered patches. Finally he said, "I suppose I should tell you about Risaa."

Dermanassian looked up as the monk rubbed his shaved head. "Who is Risaa?"

"Who, what," he shrugged. "Risaa the Whisperer is that lurking beyond, waiting to enter and ravage the mind, to feed on the intellects of others."

"A demon?"

"No. Risaa is far greater a force than that."

"A god?"

"Not that great a force," Desmarais smiled thinly.

Instantly, the desert elf thought the monk must be unaccustomed to such facial expressions, for though it seemed intended to put the youth at ease, its awkwardness only worsened his fears. He shuddered. "I should be dead," he moaned, feeling somehow accountable that he did not lie among the twisted corpses of his people, guilty for his survival and his inability to do anything to help his parents or others, tormented by the visions of the animalistic mayhem to which his elegant folk had been reduced. "Why was I spared to suffer this horrible grief alone?"

"Because the Whisperer could not reach you. Your mind is self-contained. You have no telepathic abilities, no portal through which Risaa could enter. The others of your race, however, were different. Each mind was open to others. Interconnected, Risaa had access to all of them at once. For one subsisting on the odd soothsayer, it was an unprecedented feast, I imagine," he mused.

"Feast?" Dermanassian cried, imagining his people devoured like so many pieces of fruit.

The monk blinked, as if he did not quite comprehend the depth of the youth's pain.

"Help me," Dermanassian sobbed.

* * *

With a start, Dermanassian awoke. His long, black hair was disheveled and hung limp with grease and dirt. His skin was dusty and raw from lack of care, and his mouth tasted horribly. He was hungry and thirsty; he had no clear memory of when he last ate. The white dragonet stood on his chest, licking at his chin and chirping with worry. Then he saw the man who had become his foster brother leaning on the edge of a drained pool. After a moment, he decided it was not an illusion. "Desmarais," he said, rubbing the nightmares from his eyes. "Why are you here?"

"You called me," the former monk said. Dermanassian's golden orb hovered beside the monk's shaved head, softly lighting the ruined courtyard. As they often did, his blue robes swirled about him as if in a private storm. The action always caused Dermanassian to wonder whether his foster brother truly existed in the same space and time as he did.

"Did I?" Dermanassian rubbed his head, squinting in confusion. "I was dreaming."

The monk stared down at him, saying nothing as he used the edge of the dried pool to pull himself to his feet. The tiny dragonet flew to the desert elf's shoulder and nipped at his tapered ear.

Finally, the inscrutable monk said, "You have looked - and smelled - better, little brother."

"You never change," he said, for his foster brother was the same as the day they met in Grand Amarna.

"Others would disagree."

"Then I shall add, not in my lifetime." Dermanassian's voice filled with the bitterness of his dreams and creeping madness.

"That may be true." The monk shrugged and cocked his head. "I think it may be time," he added.

"For what?" Dermanassian asked.

"To join me in vengeance - justice if you prefer. I too have been made a tool of powers greater than myself. I do not care for it."

"You seem to describe our current relationship," Dermanassian wiped his dry mouth angrily, his fury shooting out in all directions. He was a taunted and confused snake, not knowing where to strike. Risaa, who devoured the desert elves. Asbeth, who used Dermanassian to devour the white dragons. Desmarais, for whom Dermanassian had performed countless tasks. Himself, for folly, naivete, and blind obedience. "You called me your brother those centuries ago, aiding me as I lived in Saythanal and since. But for what? For my benefit or your own? Have I not been a tool of yours all this time? Running errands for you without question as I did for Asbeth?"

The monk did not deny the charge, though he frowned dangerously as the desert elf compared him to Asbeth. "Perhaps, little brother, we might become partners."

"I am not a fool, though I have acted like one in the past. To what end would this partnership be? Another crime to torment my soul in this life and beyond the mists of the Po Divide? What crimes might I have already committed for you, brother?"

"You babble," the monk snapped, his dark eyes flashing. "You may have your vengeance upon Risaa and Asbeth. I can aid you in that and, in doing so, aid myself."

"And what would you require from me in exchange for this aid?"

"You must make the same bargain - aid me to aid yourself." He rubbed his brown hand upon his shaved pate. "In aiding me, you will strengthen and grow. And then you will be powerful enough to take your revenge."

"Strengthen and grow? You sound like Asbeth. Do you intend to eat me too, adding whatever puny strength I have to your own?" Even as Dermanassian hissed the words, an idea filled his mind. He suddenly looked at Desmarais with hope. Their eyes met and he understood that the twin threats of Asbeth and Risaa could be turned against each other. The devourers would not be killed thereby, but the pair's struggle with each other would give them little time to destroy others.

"Now, little brother, you begin to see."

With a shock, Dermanassian realized that the monk had somehow insinuated the idea into his brain.

"I have big plans." The monk's grin was frightening to watch.

* * *

Over the next days, Dermanassian's new resolve to impose justice upon both Risaa and Asbeth brought his mind back from chaos. Risaa, murderer of the desert elves. Asbeth, murderer of the white dragons.

He used labor as medicine to aid the repair of his mind and body. As the last child of Glorious Tehare, the duty fell to him to fashion some fitting burial for his people. Thus, with all manner of cloth and linen, he gathered the twisted remains strewn across the city like the cast-off dolls of some juvenile god. Slowly, he brought them to the city's largest amphitheater. When the last of the bodies was laid out in a burial shroud, he sealed the arena forever with wards in five disciplines of sorcery.

He did not leave Tehare, however, even with this duty done. He found strange comfort in remaining there, despite its hideous downfall, for his childhood had been a good one and those happy memories made the echoing halls livable. He labored to repair the old pipes that carried cold water up from the aquifers beneath the city, to realign the mirrored panels that lit the gigantic caverns, and to unclog the apertures that ventilated them.

For companionship, he had the omnipresent white dragonet. The tiny creature's unpracticed hunts of desert mice provided welcome entertainment. And Dermanassian reflected that it was good to see life in the caverns again.

The restoration of Glorious Tehare served another purpose as well: procrastination. Although he was determined to bring justice to those who had wronged him, Dermanassian was hesitant to place himself on the dark road that would enable him to impose that justice. For that road, Dermanassian's foster brother had counseled him, was entangled with the art of necromancy.

Dermanassian's greatest skills were never in sorcery. He had never found comfort in its use, as had the other of his people. Whether his dislike of sorcery was related to his lack of the desert elves' eighth perception or not, he did not know. Yet he had bad experiences with it as a pupil and his dabbling in sorcery often led to unintended--sometimes painful--results. Wary, he had turned down an offer for more training. Instead, he limited his mastery to wards, small feats of vivimancy, and similar acts.

Thus he did not rush off to embrace the most fearsome of the sorcerous arts. Yet the monk's insisted that necromancy was a useful tool - perhaps an essential one - to turn Asbeth and Risaa against each other. More importantly, he had implied that the souls of the desert elves were still bound to Risaa, unable to travel to the peace that waits beyond the mists of the Po Divide. Dermanassian could not bear the thought that the torments of his people still continued. It was only when Dermanassian asked himself whether he would allow caution to undermine his resolve that he took steps.

The libraries of the desert elves contained few documents regarding necromancy. Those Dermanassian found provided little instruction or information; instead, they mostly limited their commentary to general, disapproving references. Mostly, Dermanassian was merely able to confirm what the monk told him: he would have to travel to the Suti to find anyone with expertise in the art.

Finally, Dermanassian felt - if not confident in his journey - confident at least that he had prepared himself as best he could. There was nothing left to do but go to the Suti and beg their indulgence. Leaving the tiny dragonet behind, Dermanassian struck out from Glorious Tehare.