by Carol Berg
When Paulo asked if I could warm the washing water, I clenched my dead fingers as if I could hide their incapacity. I told him my mother had taught me that cold washing was healthier. He very kindly did not refute the lie by mentioning my adamant insistence on hot water for cleansing Gerick’s wounds back in the desert.
After we had washed and changed, we sat in the middle of the patterned rug and shared out the provisions. Paulo left the food to Gerick and me, as he had eaten more recently, but he shared the wine and gave us a brief summary of his adventures while we ate.
Evidently Aimee had raised an image of witness so harrowingly clear and indisputable that Je’Reint and his commanders had been jolted into immediate action. Je’Reint’s legion had ridden to the succor of Avonar through half a day and most of a night without stopping. From Paulo’s account, I estimated that the Dar’Nethi had fallen on the Zhid from the rear only a few hours after Gerick had broached the Gate fire.
“We found more Zhid out there than flies in a dairy herd,” Paulo said, “but everyone marveled how so few Zhid were already inside the walls. Most of the Zhid were still in their camps, waiting for orders to move. Some said a Lord was commanding the Zhid. . . .”
Paulo waited for Gerick to say something. But Gerick was spreading a thick bean paste onto his portion of the chewy bread with Paulo’s eating knife. He just shrugged and motioned Paulo to go on, then threw the knife down and ate as if he’d never tasted food before.
The battle had been joined immediately, Paulo said, and continued through the tumultuous night. “. . . then the whole world went dark, a lot like in the Bounded when you stopped the firestorms. But this time I could see maybe three paces from my nose, and nothing else. I was glad I didn’t have a light, as I just knew that if I was to shine it past what I could see, nothing would be there. Just nothing. The ground shook so hard, I can’t figure how anything in the city is still standing. But when the shaking stopped, and the world came back, the Zhid couldn’t fight any more. Some threw down their weapons and flopped down on the ground. Some waved swords around, but as if they’d forgotten what to do with them. Some just took off running. While the Dar’Nethi started taking prisoners and chasing after the runners, Je’Reint and Aimee and me took out straight through the city to the palace. Aimee told us the Bridge was gone, and Je’Reint was afraid everyone was dead in there.”
We had scarcely swallowed the last morsels when Paulo stood up and reached for his cloak, well before the critical hour could expire. He offered me his hand, but spoke to Gerick. “The Preceptors want to question you and to take you to the Chamber of the Gate to have you explain what’s there. But we have to go downstairs first. People are gathering.”
I refused his help. Thoughts of what might come made me instantly regret that I had eaten anything.
Gerick wiped his hands on one of the towels and got to his feet. As Paulo held the door open, Gerick touched my arm gently, staying my steps. He studied my face, starting to speak several times and then stopping himself. His expression had been tight and sober since he had yielded to Paulo. Now his mouth twitched and his eyes kept meeting mine and then glancing away again. The moment seemed very long. “Perhaps it would be best if you—”
“Don’t you dare say it!” I wrenched my arm from his grasp. “Don’t you dare smile at me as if I were some stupid, naïve country maiden and think you can turn my knees to mush and make me do whatever you like. You’re not going to leave me behind when I can give evidence that might help you. Do you think I’m afraid of those people down there?”
“Well, you’re certainly no naïve country maiden,” he said, “and you’re certainly not stupid, so I think you must be afraid. I certainly am. I’ve not a scrap of power, and I don’t want to die. There’s so much . . . I’ve just never . . . until recently . . . You’re a fine teacher, Jen’-Larie, and I’d not see you brought to account for my deeds.”
One person shouldn’t feel so many things all at once. In the main, I felt as if I were tangled in a briar thicket and would never find my way out. A fine teacher. Next he would call me a competent sweeping girl or a healthy child-minder. “Let’s just get this over with,” I snapped. “We both have people we need to see to. You’re not the only one who makes difficult choices.”
The expression that took shape amid his weariness and his worries was neither the patronizing smile I feared, nor was it the grin he reserved for Paulo in better times, but rather something different that just touched his dark eyes and the corners of his mouth. I doubted he even knew he’d smiled. The briar thicket tangled me tighter. He bowed quite formally. “Shall we go then?”
His smile vanished as we followed Paulo down the stairs.
To get Gerick to the Chamber of the Gate in one piece was going to take every bit of skill, persuasion, diplomacy, and authority that Ven’Dar possessed. People crammed the lawns and gardens of the Precept House—which I finally recognized as we descended the stairs and crossed the broad foyer. They had spilled out into the street beyond the grounds and were exactly as Paulo had described. Some were grieving. Many were wounded. All were disheveled and dirty and very angry.
Flanked by four people wearing Preceptors’ robes over their own untidy garb, and a few other people carrying torches, Ven’Dar stood on the Precept House steps, shouting to be heard over the noise, reiterating arguments he had clearly propounded until he scarcely had a voice left. The Zhid were in complete confusion, as if they had forgotten how to fight or why, he told them. Je’Reint’s legion was guarding the walls. No one was being transformed into Zhid. The Lords had not manifested themselves. Though not dead, the Lady D’Sanya was incapable of performing the duties of the Heir . . . however changed those might be now that the Bridge was gone. As always, the Preceptors would determine who would hold D’Arnath’s chair. No one knew what had become of the mundane world, but there was no reason to believe it had fared worse than Gondai, which was wounded but not by any means destroyed. Reports were still coming in. The commanders in the east and north reported their own battles won and the Zhid in chaos. Avonar would endure.
Paulo slipped through the door and whispered in Ven’Dar’s ear. The prince responded quietly, and Paulo came back inside. “He’s got to show you to them,” he said to Gerick. “He’ll try to protect you, but asks you please not to . . . do . . . anything.”
Gerick, sober again, nodded and offered Paulo his hands, wrists together.
Paulo blanched. “No . . . demonfire, no. Of course not. No need for that.”
“People, hear me!” cried Ven’Dar. “The world is changed, but we must all search for the truth and light that can be hidden beneath slander, rumor, and shadows. Prince D’Natheil’s son, accused of treason, murder, and consorting with our enemies, has submitted himself to the judgment of your Preceptors, claiming that the deeds of this terrible day have saved us from chaos even though the Bridge has fallen. In these past hours, I doubted as you do. I was angry and in despair as you are. But I have seen evidence that his claims are truth.”
Paulo stuck his arm in front of me, so I could not follow Gerick through the doors. “Best he do this alone,” he said. “He knows we have his back.”
I found a window from which I could see Gerick take a position on the broad steps at Ven’Dar’s right. His fists were clenched, his body taut. A rabbit’s wrong blink would make him run.
As the people realized who he was, sound and sensation struck me like a flaying wind, threatening to strip my bones bare of flesh and my spirit of all harmony. I could hear every word of the crowd as if it had been spoken into my ear and feel every emotion as if each person were a Soul Weaver living in my skin. The devil! The Destroyer! Why does he live when my son . . . when my father . . . when so many . . . do not? He commanded the Zhid! We all saw him! What’s happened? My power . . . My talent . . . Beware the demon Lord . . . The Bridge fallen . . . It’s the end of the world . . . Chaos . . . I was one of them and all of them. Curses, oaths, and questions flew, a fury th
undering louder than the Zhid ram and shaking the very stone beneath my feet as if the end had come the second time in one day.
“What’s wrong?” Paulo grabbed my arms as I wobbled.
“They’re so afraid,” I said, willing my knees firm and struggling not to weep. “He mustn’t do anything. They’re just afraid.” Fear made crowds dangerous, of course, so I willed Gerick to keep his temper and stay quiet.
As the storm raged about him, he raised his head, leaving his eyes in some nonthreatening, neutral focus. He clasped his hands loosely in front of him—clearly visible to all. He did not flinch. Did not move again.
Minutes . . . half an hour . . . passed as Dar’Nethi and Dulcé vented the emotions of this terrible day. But I saw no evidence of violence, mundane or enchanted. Of course, if the people believed their power destroyed, then they’d not be able to muster enchantments. Belief was a key to power. Everyone knew that. I looked at my hands that had failed to make a light and tucked that thought away for later exploration.
Eventually Ven’Dar’s words of calm, and Gerick’s demeanor, quieted the torrent of anger and abuse enough that Ven’Dar could speak again. “The Preceptors and I will summon the finest minds and talents in Gondai to investigate the events of this night,” he said. “But I exhort each of you to listen and feel the changes in the universe, for every succeeding moment convinces me that something extraordinary has come to pass—not our doom, but rather our salvation. Dar’Nethi power is not destroyed. Behold . . .”
Ven’Dar raised his right arm and a beam of white light shot out from his fingers, reflecting from broken window glass and shattered lamps, from a toppled bronze warrior maiden, and from hundreds of fearful eyes. The crowd gasped as one when he cupped his hand and the light fell back, flowing into his palm like liquid silver. “Good people, I have not felt such innocence of power . . . such joy and completion . . . since I conjured my first light.”
Gerick lifted his head to watch Ven’Dar’s magic and his eyes opened wide and his lips parted as if on the verge of speech.
“That’s exactly the way I felt when I sang my children to sleep not an hour ago,” said a sturdy woman in the front ranks, whose face was streaked with soot and mud.
Ven’Dar motioned her to come up the steps, and had her repeat it where the enchantments of the house could amplify her report for the mass of people. “. . . and that’s why I came here,” she said. “To see if the tales I heard could possibly be true, for I’d never made such a song as could take their fear away and send them into a dream.”
A few others stepped forward and recounted similar experiences, and before very long the mass of bodies had split apart, the fearful citizens gathering around more witnesses and peppering them with questions.
“Share your stories,” said Ven’Dar, “and then help each other. Believe. We will come to you when we know more.”
As Ven’Dar motioned everyone on the steps back into the Precept House, a tall, graying woman with a sword at her belt stepped forward, her arm about a young man’s shoulders. “I’ll keep them talking, sir. My son is a Scribe, and he’ll take evidence from those who have demonstrated power. I knew Prince D’Natheil, and I know you, Prince Ven’Dar. I trust your word.”
“I’m sorry to put you through that,” Ven’Dar said to Gerick, as soon as guards were posted and the doors closed and barred behind us.
“Better than I had any right to expect,” said Gerick, rubbing his forehead for a moment before folding his arms, allowing his right arm to support his wounded left. “But you were right—” He whipped his head toward me. “No, you were right. They were just afraid. I don’t claim to have much judgment just now.”
Ven’Dar nodded. “Indeed they were. We diffused some of the rumors, at least, to give ourselves time to work.”
“And your power,” said Gerick. “I didn’t think anyone—I don’t understand it, but I’m glad.”
“Clearly there’s much to understand. Come,” said Ven’Dar, brisk and serious. “I would like to offer you some rest, but we’ve some difficult hours ahead of us. Preceptor K’Lan is off working with the wounded; Preceptor J’Dinet is working with the city administrators to provide shelter and food for those who need it. W’Tassa is with the legion in the east. Je’Reint is rounding up Zhid, who seem entirely stripped of their ferocity and purpose—quite differently from five years ago. But these four others and I have decided we must put off other responsibilities. You’ve left a path of destruction behind you well worthy of a Lord of Zhev’Na, Gerick, and before we can begin to rebuild in earnest, we must understand what you’ve done and why. And we must know what we face in the future, if it is not you.”
Ven’Dar led us down the short wide flight of steps into the council chamber. Two women and two men in dark blue Preceptors’ robes had already taken their places behind the long council table that fronted a massive hearth. Only one of them, Mem’Tara the Alchemist, did I recognize. The ancient, plain wooden chair in front of the table—King D’Arnath’s own chair, so children were told—sat vacant. Four other chairs had been placed in a semicircle before the table. One was occupied.
Aimee popped to her feet as soon as we entered the chamber, beaming first in Paulo’s direction, and then at Gerick and me. “Oh, Jen, and my good lord—Gerick—to find you safe is beyond happiness.”
“We’re as happy to be in one piece as you are to find us that way,” I said, wondering how she had known our identities before we had spoken. We joined her, and she threw her arms around me and kissed me on each cheek, before turning and extending her palms to Gerick. Paulo took a position close to her right shoulder. It would take another earthquake to budge him.
Gerick returned her gesture of greeting. “Mistress.”
She bent her head toward him as gracefully as if he had kissed her hand.
Ven’Dar motioned us to take our seats beside Aimee. He himself remained standing. “We need to hear your story from the beginning, Gerick,” he said. “Every detail. It’s the only way we’ll be able to judge you fairly.”
Gerick nodded, and as soon as we were settled, he closed his eyes for a moment, as if to compose his thoughts. Then he looked up at the Preceptors. “If I’m to start at the beginning, then we must go very far back indeed. For this cannot be merely a recounting of my own deeds—or crimes, as many of you consider them—but the story of my family. It begins with a king who was a card cheat and a gambler, who loved his family only slightly less than he loved his marvelous kingdom, and it tells of his three children, and his beloved cousin who is my own ancestor, and the three sorcerers who defied his wisdom, to their own ruin and his and very nearly to ours . . .”
He assembled the pieces—D’Arnath and the Bridge, D’Sanya and her tragic coming to power, the horror of her captivity in Zhev’Na, and her father’s desperate attempt to salvage his terrible mistake—and laid them in a magical pattern like the tiles and silver bars of a sonquey game. And then he spoke of his own childhood, and his own dreadful coming of age, and the blight of memory he had retained long after his mentors had vanished beyond the Verges. And he spoke frankly and clearly of his guilt and his doubts and what he considered to be his failure in uncovering D’Sanya’s madness. “. . . When my father and Prince Ven’Dar asked me to investigate the Lady D’Sanya, the last thing I expected was that I would grow to love her—or rather, the image that I made of her. I feared the seductions of my past, the power I did not fully understand, the memories I had inherited, but the true danger lay in a direction I had no capacity to imagine . . .”
For hours he spoke, softly, telling his tale without averting his eyes. The Preceptors questioned him intensely, often brutally, but never once did this most private of souls bristle or withdraw or attempt to hide his own culpability. “. . . Yes, I knew Dar’Nethi would die in the assault, but I was not strong enough—no one was strong enough—to face D’Sanya alone . . . I had to get to the Bridge and break the link, and I believed the Dar’Nethi would slay me before I
could do so . . . and that was before I knew that she was, herself, the link. Yes, I was tempted to take power for myself . . . I chose not. Yes, I fully intended for the Zhid to destroy the Bridge if I failed. If they were capable of doing it at all, then they would, at the same time, destroy their own connection to each other—the avantir. Then perhaps one of you could have picked up the pieces and made the worlds live again . . . I hoped . . .”
As Gerick spoke, scenes flashed through my head in vivid display, people and places and torments excruciatingly real and complete, far beyond his unadorned words. Only when he paused could I shake my head clear of them, feeling foolish at my presumption that I could envision the past through his eyes. Exhaustion had made me silly, for I’d even seen myself—and in a way no mirror could ever show me. Neither foolish, cowardly, nor awkward. Yes, I had a good mind, and I knew how to put two words together to make some sense of matters. But admirable? Insightful? Beautiful? I slumped in my chair and covered my face with my hand, attempting to smother my snickering before someone noticed and read my thoughts. Mind-speaking, limited for so long to only a few of us . . . Ven’Dar hinted that it might be revived in this new world. An uncomfortable consideration when one had thoughts too ludicrous to see daylight.
Aimee’s chair was slightly behind my own, so that when I noticed Ven’Dar nodding at her I turned to look. Her hands were raised and held flat in the air a short distance from her temples, a look of exquisite concentration on her face. Aimee the Imager. So, what I had envisioned was her image, drawn from Gerick’s words and the knowledge and belief underlying them. . . .
“Mistress Jen!” Ven’Dar. His voice rang sharp and impatient on the ancient stones.
A cold sweat signaled my guilty panic that he had done exactly the thought-reading I feared.
“Would you please give your testimony now?”