by Carol Berg
“You’ve been coerced into matters far above your head, boy. Give us the lady’s belongings, then take your rig and get yourself home.”
One of the guardsmen nudged Qis’Dar away from me and toward the carriage. The youth unloaded my case and the small bag holding my journal and passed them to the guard. “My lady, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Did you have anything else in here?” He stuck his head inside the cab.
“It’s all right, Qis’Dar. You’ve done nothing wrong. I’ll have this straightened out soon enough. Oh, and the book on the carriage seat is one I borrowed from your cousin to read on the journey. Please see it’s returned right away before it’s damaged by the damp.”
“Of course, my lady,” he said. He stood alone and forlorn beside the carriage as the soldiers grabbed my two bags and marched me toward the gate.
I’d not considered being arrested as a way to get inside the palace, but as the iron gate clanged shut behind me and I hurried my steps to keep up with the guards, I decided it was as good as any. At some time I would be taken before someone in authority and could tell what I knew. If D’Sanya was present, she would have to explain in front of other people what it meant that her father had declared he had no daughter, and how it could be right that she had taken what her own father would forbid her.
We emerged from the wide tunnels under the gate towers into a broad, bustling courtyard. Torches blazed on every side, hissing and smoking in the continuing drizzle. A small party of armed horsemen clustered at the far end of the court, while aides and armorers splashed through puddles, carrying newly polished weapons and breastplates. Grooms led more horses from another gate and other men and women loaded panniers and packs. A hundred or more soldiers formed up in ranks, water cascading from helms and shields. Across the courtyard was a columned doorway into the palace proper, but instead of leading me there, the guard captain halted beside a carriage with horses hitched and motioned me to climb up.
“Wait!” I said, dismayed as the guardsmen surrounded me and forced me into the carriage. One of the soldiers tossed my luggage in beside me and slammed the door. “Where are you sending me?”
“To the Princess D’Sanya’s hospice,” said the captain. “The princess has graciously forbidden retribution on those who have conspired against her. As she herself was so thoroughly duped by this inheritor of Zhev’Na, she refuses to condemn others who were taken in by his wiles, especially those of his blood who are understandably blind to his evils. She cannot, of course, allow you to roam freely, lest you persist in your support of Avonar’s enemies. But Commander Je’Reint has vouched for your character and suggested the hospice as your place of confinement. He says that your sworn word that you will not leave the hospice grounds will be sufficient bond to keep you there. Do you so swear or must we constrain your movements in some other fashion?”
They were sending me to Karon. But I couldn’t go . . . not until they knew about D’Sanya. “Captain, I must speak to Commander Je’Reint or Prince Ven’Dar before I go, or to one of the Preceptors. Please, I have information of vital importance to Avonar.”
“Commander Je’Reint is on his way to the battlefront. No one else is available.” The captain stepped aside and spoke quietly to the man who had climbed up to the driver’s bench. The other soldiers had withdrawn.
I scanned the busy courtyard for some familiar face, someone I could entrust with what I knew, but everyone had hoods drawn up against the rain . . . except a small group silhouetted against the now-open entry to the palace at the top of the steps. A tall, graceful man with skin the color of mahogany genuflected before a statuesque woman. The woman’s hands were extended palms up, offering her service and support to her subject. And in acceptance of her trust and her commission, Je’Reint laid his hands atop hers, a pledge of fealty the Dar’Nethi considered as binding as the presentation of a sword in Leire.
Je’Reint rose, bowed, and sped down the steps to a horse held by a waiting groom. He bounded into the saddle, wheeled his mount, and shouted an unintelligible command, then led the horsemen and the ranks of soldiers through the gates.
“What of Prince Ven’Dar, Captain?” My voice sounded weak. Defeated. Somehow the small ritual I had just witnessed riveted my heart with fear . . . for Gerick, for Avonar, for the Bridge. For all of us.
The soldier stepped back into view. “The Word Winder Ven’Dar is no longer Prince of Avonar. The succession has been restored. And he—”
“Prince or not, I must speak with him.”
“That will not be possible. When the Preceptors learned that Ven’Dar yn Cyran permitted a man condemned by the law of Avonar—a Lord of Zhev’Na—to walk free in Gondai, they declared him in violation of his oath.” It was not difficult to interpret the guard captain’s sympathies. “Neither they nor our princess can ignore blatant treason on the part of the Heir of D’Arnath. The former prince has been placed under arrest. Pending judgment, the traitor is permitted speech with no one. And now, madam”—he slapped his hand twice on the side of the carriage—“you will go.”
“Captain, the Lady is not what she claims. She cannot be allowed—”
But he wasn’t listening to my panicked babbling. The hair on my arms rose as the captain swept both hands in a circle encompassing my conveyance. I rattled the latch, but the carriage door refused to open. The receding view of the wet and deserted courtyard grew hazy. I sagged back onto the padded seat, my mind reeling. The carriage rolled slowly toward the western gate.
CHAPTER 29
Gerick
As the sun rose higher, turning our little shelter into a baking oven, Paulo watered the horses and set about examining their hooves, picking out rocks and checking for cracks and bruises. He was worried about the lack of water and good forage leaving the beasts too weak for the journey ahead of us.
I leaned back against the already warm rock and tried to convince myself to get up and help him. We had to get back to Avonar as soon as possible, but I couldn’t even keep my eyelids up.
“I need to look at your foot.” Sefaro’s daughter dropped onto the sand at my feet and began untying the strip of linen that bound my left foot.
Paulo had told me how the woman had come to be involved in my rescue, and I didn’t know what to think about it or how to behave. It felt damnably awkward to have one of my victims cooking for me and tending my injuries.
“Just leave that,” I said, as she unwrapped the damp, discolored bandage. She had to tug and peel it away from the crusted blood and fluid. Though the surrounding skin was sounder and not so dark as the previous day, the wound started seeping again and hurt like the devil, which probably made my comments sharper than I intended. “Paulo will tend it later. I don’t want you—”
“What do I have to do to convince you two that I’m not going to put poison in your tea?” Her face flamed, and she threw the wadded bandage in my lap.
Why was she so annoyed by my attempts to be civilized? I just didn’t know how to apologize for something so trivial when the greater matters between us were beyond apology. Bereft of ideas, I held my tongue. Her flush deepened.
Paulo handled the situation much better than I. As he gentled Stormcloud and lifted the horse’s right front foot onto his knees, he asked the woman how she had slept and inquired after her injured shoulder, saying that he knew it had hurt something awful, but now it was put back right, it should heal up pretty fast. Evidently the two of them had reached an accommodation in my rescue. I just wasn’t a party to it. When he asked her to explain again what she’d done to make my septic wound improve so rapidly—some Dar’Nethi spell-working, evidently—I shut my ears. I didn’t want to hear about Dar’Nethi magic.
I wasn’t ready to wrestle the wild rimcats that prowled the Edge in the Bounded, but with a little more rest and food, I’d be able to travel well enough. Then I would decide what to do about D’Sanya and her cursed devices.
As I drowsed through the rest of that day, Sefaro’s daughter scrupulously avoided to
uching my food, water, or bandages. Every once in a while my eyes would drift open to find her staring into nothing, her brow drawn up tight, as if she were trying to decipher something complicated. But after only a moment, her eyes would flick toward me as if she felt me looking at her. When she met my gaze, she tightened her mouth and looked away, busying herself with cleaning her boots or making another futile attempt to strain the muddy water through a scrap of canvas.
The sun angles were well stretched when I awoke with urgent proof that my body was functioning in a most human manner again. As I pulled on the spare boots Paulo had cleverly thought to bring along, the woman announced that Paulo was off scouting for something to shoot with his bow. She stuck out her chin and folded her arms quite deliberately as I hobbled off into the rocks on my own.
I sagged onto my blanket when I got back, distressingly tired after the short trip, and so hungry I thought my belly might cave in. I pressed my face into the sandy wool and thought longingly of the boiled tappa root my friend Zanore cooked back in the Bounded. Though boiled tappa was the most boring and tasteless food in any world, a vat of it would be a feast right now.
“The rest of the milk Nim brought is in the green flask.” Water dribbled into a pot, and the strong smell of slightly rancid meat broth wafted over my head. “You should drink it before it spoils. I haven’t breathed on it since yesterday.”
“Thank you,” I said. Then I wondered if she would believe I was thanking her for not breathing on the milk. Avoiding a glance at her that might reveal such a mistake, I lifted my head and spotted the painted flask that sat in the smallest mudhole. “I think I could drink the mud.”
“You’ll need your strength. We should leave as soon as you can travel. It’s at least four days back to the next spring. These sinkholes aren’t refilling as fast as they were, and we can’t leave Nim and Rab with nothing.”
“I’m ready to go whenever you say,” I said. “Most everything is functioning now, my appetite certainly. I’ll crawl if I have to.” I drained the last of the milk. Even warm and slightly off, it filled some of the hollow places. I laid my head on the blanket again, happy to have gotten through this exchange without an argument. For such a slight person, the woman certainly filled up a place.
Paulo rode in a short time later, his game bag empty. As soon as he had gotten a drink and rubbed down Stormcloud, we shared out the last of the increasingly gamy oryx broth, softening a few bits of rock-hard bread in it. We spoke inanities. The future was like a fourth person at our fire that night, and none of us wanted to acknowledge her.
Paulo was too practical to let us get away with that for long, though. After scooping up the last of the stringy overcooked meat from the pot and dividing it among us, he tapped his spoon idly on the edge of his cup. “While I was out hunting, I kept thinking about all you told me this morning. So is it true . . . ? I mean . . . I guess the Lady’s running the Zhid after all.”
Sefaro’s daughter flinched and glanced at me, rolling her eyes at Paulo as if he were mad to say such a thing outright. But I had always appreciated Paulo’s frankness and tried to honor it with the same in return.
“No, I don’t believe so,” I said. “Not intentionally at least. She created the other things: the oculus, the slave collars, the masks, so I have to assume she made the avantirs as well. But as to who’s using them now . . . I don’t think it’s her. And not just because I was . . . infatuated.”
Did I still love D’Sanya? Certainly my body still desired the woman who had nestled close to me as the rain fell on the shepherds’ hut. But that woman did not exist any more, if she ever had. The woman who had laughed at my pain and terror as she ripped my flesh with metal claws, then healed up the lacerations so she could do it all again, who wept and scolded as she condemned me to an eternity of madness bolted to a rock, was someone else entirely.
“But she’s the only one with power enough,” said Paulo. “You’ve said no Zhid could run the avantir.”
“Somehow she’s feeding them the power they need. That’s what I think. The timing of their rising . . . everything points to it.” I concentrated on the puzzle. On cold reason. “The avantir is a receptacle: it enables the propagation of enchantment, but it needs an immense infusion of power to make it work. But if D’Sanya isn’t manipulating the avantir directly, then one of her devices must be channeling her power to it in some way—the oculus at the hospice or the second one she used to hold me in Zhev’Na or some other device I haven’t seen yet. In that case some powerful Zhid—one of the gensei most likely—could use the avantir himself.”
“So destroy the vile things,” said Paulo. “Then we’ll see what’s what.”
“Someone else will have to do that.” I dropped my cup and spoon into the blackened pot and wrapped my arms around my knees so I wouldn’t feel as if I were going to fly apart at any moment. “Ven’Dar . . . Je’Reint . . . the Preceptors . . . someone who can touch a cursed oculus without losing his mind or worse. And they’ll need to persuade D’Sanya to see what she’s doing, but it can’t be me. I told you what she did to me and how easily—”
“Her jewelry!”
Paulo and I jumped at this outburst and stared at the woman.
“What’s that?” said Paulo.
She looked from me to Paulo and back again, her chin poised in that particularly stubborn set that I was coming to know. “Have you ever seen the Lady without her jewelry? I’ve only seen it once in all these months—on the day you were attacked in Avonar. The first thing the Zhid did on that day, before she could possibly recover from the surprise, was take every piece of her gold and silver. They weren’t thieves. Why would they bother if they were taking her with them anyway? Did you notice? Didn’t you wonder why she worked not one spell to defend herself or you? And what do you think was the first thing she did when the prince’s men rescued her—even before she went to see to you? She pulled rings and bracelets from a saddle pack and put them on.”
I remembered the bag of jewelry Je’Reint’s man had shown me, and of course it was true she wore such things all the time . . . adored them . . . wouldn’t allow me to buy them for her. And of course I, too, had wondered why she hadn’t put up more of a fight that night.
“She’s a Metalwright whose mentor taught her to link her devices together.” The woman leaned closer to the fire, the firelight licking at her small face and fierce eyes. “Perhaps all her adornments focus power as an oculus does, working together like the avantir and the Zhid earrings to create some more intricate enchantment, something larger than a single device. Perhaps her power is not so strong as she claims if she must always enhance it with her metal toys. I think she puffs herself up too much. She’s lied to you all along. Destroy her devices and you’ll have her.”
Anger rippled through me. “You’re wrong. She is not doing these things on purpose. And I’ve already said I can’t—”
“I know what you said.” She attacked instead of retreating. “And you think you know everything about evil and corruption and doom, not to mention being the world’s first and only man who ever fell in love to see his heart betrayed and to discover that his holy beloved wasn’t so holy. So you’re feeling sorry for yourself and sorry for the world, and I’m very glad to hear that you care about all of us, but you can’t just retreat into whatever strange little hole you’ve found to hide in for the last five years. For once you just need to listen to someone who knows a few things that you don’t.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s exactly the truth,” she snapped. “And so I intend to teach you a few things about Dar’Nethi power.”
“You teach me? I know enough about power to choke you!”
But like a stinging fly on a hot day, the damnable woman would not stop. “Of course, you’re angry. You have every right. And yes, an oculus does terrible things to you. But this power that’s grown in you is nothing of the Lords’. Don’t you see? I heard you describe what you did when
you lay on that stone table, how you followed your father’s teaching—your father, proven the most powerful Dar’Nethi sorcerer since D’Arnath himself. For what did he do when he died on a pyre before you were born? He reached across the universe and opened the Gates to the Bridge that had been closed for centuries! You have to understand . . . what you did in that tomb . . . what you described to Paulo this morning . . . was exactly what my father taught me was the greatest mystery of our world—how we Dar’Nethi transform life in all its aspects, its wonders, its horrors, into power.
“Here—” She thrust the last clump of thornbush into my hand. “Put this in the fire and slow its burning so it will last the night. A simple spell for a Lord of Zhev’Na, isn’t it? It takes hardly a thought to strip the essence of life from a bird or a tree or a slave, infuse that power and your will into a bundle of dead brush, and make a fire burn as you please, whether it consumes anything or not. Well it’s a simple spell for a Dar’Nethi, too, but one that takes thought if you’ve not been trained to it. A spell that transforms matter into light and warmth at a rate that you decide. So, step one: Consider the dry thing, the life it once held, the place where it grew, the cycle of its life and death and seed and germination.”
The thorny wad pricked at my hand, but not as the woman’s words pricked at my spirit. What did she know about anything?
“Step two: Consider the need.” She wouldn’t stop. “Tonight will be cold in the desert. Your body needs warmth to recover its strength and warm food to heal and nourish it. And your friend Paulo and this ugly stubborn woman you can’t quite trust need to sleep warm so they can care for you and lead you out of this cursed desert. But brush will burn too fast if you leave it to flame at its will.”
I had seen thornbushes burning in Zhev’Na. From dry lightning. From intent. They burned hot and fast, snapping and spitting gold sparks.