The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination')

by Terry McGarry

  “Yes we do,” she said. “Oh, yes we do.”

  Dabrena stared at the ninefoot-by-sixfoot image of Eiden as if waking from a long sleep to find it spread before her in all its wide, wild danger.

  This holding had become her world. Despite all the maps, despite reports that linked her to every corner and byway of Eiden Myr, despite the picture in her mind of Eiden’s body from Curl to Crown and Boot to Head, she had ceased to exist in the world. The mountain was her world.

  “What does Lerissa want?” she asked Pelkin.

  “Control,” he answered simply. “And by wanting it, she will make others want it, by her leave or in her stead, and we will have only battles where once we had unquestioning, untroubled peace.” He touched the edge of the map. “This new world is young yet. It can still be shaped. It can still be saved, or torn asunder.”

  “Don’t put that on my shoulders, Reckoner.”

  “You became head warder, my dear. It has rested on your shoulders since that day. On mine as well, spirits help us.” He sighed, then said, “My folk have found a site by Maur Gowra. We have been adapting it to serve as a kind of holding in its own right. A place to preserve the arts of magecraft against the light’s return, whether it ever comes or not.”

  “We preserve those arts. Graefel preserves those arts. And the light is gone, Pelkin. Surely you feel it. That dead place inside.”

  “I feel it—or feel nothing, as the case may be. I, too, believe it gone forever. But even then ... You use magecraft’s tools for mundane, practical purposes. Graefel uses them to further theoretical pursuits. My folk have vowed to keep the art of their use alive, as [154] magecraft, lest twice nine nonned years of craft be lost. Even should the light to actuate it never burn again.”

  “A noble pursuit,” Dabrena said, though she considered it as vain as Verlein’s shield.

  “Only a bit of the old world, saved for the new, should it need it. We cannot see the future. We prepare as we can.”

  “I don’t know the world, old or new.” Her voice had fallen lower than the near-whispers they had spoken in.

  “That was a failing of the last Ennead’s as well. They believed they had risen above the world they were meant to shepherd.”

  “And you let them!”

  He smiled. It was the old argument, the old enmity. Helpless to prevent the corruption at their head, the proxies fragmented into distrust and mutual blame rather than joining forces to contain it. “Yes,” he said. “I let them. I worked against them as I could. I aided insurrection as I could. Evonder n’Daivor worked from within, Torrin n’Maeryn from without, and I aided them both as I continued to run my reckoners rather than openly defy the Ennead and be destroyed by them. They destroyed Alliol’s triad, after which the warders had no head, until you. We won, in the end, though it cost us. But yes. I let them.”

  “You were with the Lightbreaker?”

  He laughed. “I was. And that response is precisely why the fact is not more widely known.”

  “Then you were with ...”

  Kara came running over with a half-drawn map. It was a lovely construct, and Dabrena told her so, though her mind was not on it, and though it bore an odd resemblance to a section of the Strong Leg.

  Pelkin praised it as well, and then replied to Dabrena’s hanging question. “Yes. I was with the Lightbreaker’s illuminator in the magewar. I was her grandfather.”

  “I was a vocate with her.”

  Pelkin nodded. “She spoke of you. Now you know part of how I know what I know about you. Pity. I work so hard to be mysterious.”

  Dabrena closed her eyes tight, and only realised she had also closed her fists when Kara made a pained sound and tried to extricate her sedgeweave, which was crumpling.

  “I’m sorry, sweet,” she said, releasing the leaf, but she turned her head away to hide the sting in her eyes.

  “Did she know my father?” Kara asked in a small voice.

  “You were right,” Dabrena said to Pelkin, “she understands more than I credit her with, clever girl.” But to Kara she replied, wryly, [156] “She knew your father rather better than I can explain until you’re older.” Then she saw how Kara had pulled into herself—as if expecting an outburst. Is that why she never asks about him?

  It was too much to take in, but she could not escape. She could never escape the consequences of Tolivar’s death, not while she remained a part of the black rock that had killed him. Pelkin said, “Do you know what became of him?”—as if he knew, somehow, and would tell her if she shook her head. But of course ... Karanthe n’Farine, who had been a vocate with them, and who had heard the account of Tolivar’s end from its only witness, was one of Pelkin’s now. She would have told him, if his granddaughter hadn’t. At least he’d heard it in person. Karanthe’s message of condolence, scribed in a childish hand as soon as she learned how, had been brief and assumed that Dabrena knew, and had arrived while Dabrena still had hope that Tolivar lived. How would I have known? The bonefolk took him! Dabrena had messaged back, beside herself. How would I have known, in this black rock of secrets? Karanthe’s reply had been long in coming. The reckoners had not yet fully turned to messengers in those early days. I am sorry, I am sorry, I am so sorry, it had said, and gone on to claim that his end was quick. It was a palpable lie, in a shaking hand. And Karanthe had never come. Dabrena would not forgive that.

  “He died,” she said.

  She could not admit the rest in front of Kara. She could not say, The Ennead killed him. She could not say, I betrayed him to them.

  “He was a sailor,” Kara said. “From the Knee.”

  Pelkin said, “Then you must think of him whenever you hear the sea, and know that his spirit carries his love for you on the winds that touch your face.”

  It was a kind and lovely thing to say, and a fitting cap on a conversation Dabrena could no longer bear. But Kara said, “Oh, no. He’s not on the winds or in the sea.”

  “He’s not?” Pelkin shifted, no doubt concerned that he’d overstepped himself and contradicted whatever gentling tale her mother had told her.

  Kara shook her head, very serious. With a wary glance at Dabrena, she tugged on Pelkin’s sleeve with her free hand. He obliged her by bending down, his eyes on Dabrena. Kara whispered in his ear as she had in the scholar’s. She was a good whisperer; Dabrena couldn’t hear a word. But Pelkin’s wince was too much.

  “What is it?” she snapped. “Tell me.”

  “I ...” he began, but Kara’s vigorous shake of the head gave him pause. “I’m afraid it appears to be a secret.”

  “This is madness, Pelkin, tell me. She cries every morning. She [157] has bad dreams. Well, so do we all, but she’s a child, she’s my child and I can’t help her if she won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I don’t think this is what’s wrong,” Pelkin said with care.

  “Don’t tell,” Kara warned. “It’s a secret! Don’t tell!”

  Dabrena’s anger went cold and hard. “These games have gone too far. For spirits’ sake, she’s concocted an imaginary ...”

  She fell silent.

  No. That can’t be it.

  Pelkin said to Kara, “She’s figuring it out herself.”

  “Don’t ...” Kara’s warning was a plea now, not for Pelkin to keep the secret but for Dabrena not to guess it.

  “She already knows, pet,” Pelkin said. “And a word to the wise, for the next time: You have to make the person promise not to tell before you give the secret, eh?”

  To a child, it made inescapable sense. Pelkin waited for Kara’s nod before he turned to Dabrena.

  “She said she sees him in your chamber. She says he’s a haunt. She says he tells her things. Important things.”

  Dabrena’s knees went weak. Well, they had always done that around Tolivar, hadn’t they. But she had thought ... she had been so sure that the voice in her head ...

  A childish fantasy, she tried to say, and couldn’t. It’s rubbish, the worst kind of senti
mental rubbish. I won’t have it. But if a haunt was all the father Kara had, how could she deny it?

  “I have much to think on, Pelkin.” She tried to ignore the relief on Kara’s face when it appeared her mother would not burst a seam.

  “Did you think before you diverted the last Great Storm?”

  “Is a Great Storm coming?”

  “Perhaps. A human one. What are storms formed of? The clash of great bodies of air, differing in temperature, pressure?”

  “One of our seekers would happily regale you with theories.”

  “It is the same with people as with winds and currents. Listen to me, Dabrena. I do not know what Streln truly saw on his way here. I do not trust his account. Perhaps he saw what he wanted to see in order to justify what he wants to do. Perhaps he saw events that were contrived for his view. But his folk are a wind rising. And one more thing I can tell you, though I hope it remains our problem alone: Someone is killing runners. Whether it’s onetime reckoners they target I do not know. But they are killing those of us in black.”

  “Eiden’s bloody ... Why did you say nothing in the meeting?”

  “And support Streln’s argument? He was a nocked arrow, he needed no more tension on his bow. That’s not your concern. We’ll [158] warn your folk in white where we see them in our travels. You must look to your own walls and passageways now.”

  “Yet with an eye on the wide world.”

  “With a hand in it. Or more.”

  They heard an opening door and then footsteps in the corridor, and with a cry Kara snatched her sedgeweave to show Adaon. Dabrena and Pelkin followed; as Dabrena asked Selen to tell the map-makers they could return to their work, Pelkin regarded Adaon with one of his evaluating smiles. “The head scholar’s message implies that you’ve been a bit of trouble.”

  “My notoriety dogs me. You pledged in the scholar’s village, Pelkin—was Graefel n’Traeyen as insufferable when he was a boy?”

  “And as bright,” Pelkin said.

  Adaon gave a thoughtful nod, as if this oblique reply had enlightened him. Then he clasped his hands behind his back and made a graceful pivot that left his body at a formal incline toward Dabrena. “I will give you no trouble, mender.”

  “And will you be staying on?” Pelkin said casually.

  “Not if the general meeting has dispersed,” Adaon said, stepping into the maphall to return the codices he’d perused. “In fact, I’ll be on my way in either event, with my thanks for your brief hospitality.”

  “Oh, stay, Adaon!” Kara cried. “Here, look what I made.”

  He looked long at the map she showed him. “Perhaps I’ll see you in this place, one day.”

  With a wink to Kara and a bow to Pelkin and Dabrena, he was gone, and Pelkin said his farewells then, too, his business concluded. Dabrena was left standing in the corridor with Kara’s map in one hand and Kara’s hand in the other.

  Though she was accustomed to conferring with dozens of people during the course of a day, advising, assigning, providing encouragement and ideas, it felt as though she’d conferred enough for a nineday in the course of this one morning and noon. Still she looked down at her daughter and said, “We have to talk.”

  At first, in the quiet of their chamber, it was she who did the talking, while Kara ate the midday meal she’d fetched for her on the way. She apologised. She explained. All in vain; Kara was unmoved, ground into stone by a trying day and half a lifetime of resentment. It could not be undone in an afternoon. But at last Dabrena said, “What things does your father tell you?” And Kara, the floodgates opened by even a pretense at belief, told her.

  “He says you have to come. He says there’s treasure. He’s tried to tell you, but you won’t listen. You turn a deaf ear. You don’t want [159] him to forgive you. What did you do that he has to forgive you for?”

  Dabrena felt struck to the heart.

  The child could not be that perceptive.

  It could not be the shade of her old lover speaking through their daughter. Yet it could only be Tolivar.

  “Where?” she said, not sure if she was more yearning or more terrified, reacting both. “Where am I to go?”

  “Here,” Kara said, and smoothed out the crinkled sedgeweave map. “Where he was from.”

  “And did he say I should take you along?” She tried to be gentle, but bitterness roughened her voice. Selen claimed the child didn’t want to go adventuring. If this was an elaborate bid for a journey ...

  Kara frowned. “I don’t know. I could ask him. But I don’t think he’ll come tonight. He might not come anymore ever. He used to be with me all the time. But now ...”

  “Now not so much?” Dabrena prompted. “Now that you’re older?”

  “No,” Kara said cautiously, then chanced a look up. “Because he is. Can I finish the map now? It was only partly done but I wanted to show it.”

  Dabrena mixed ink for her and trimmed a quill, and experienced a queer dislocation as she set up the inkpot for the child, handed her the pen, heard the point begin to score the lay of the sedge. As if she had played binder. As if she had forgone her own part, the scribing part, and given a casting into an illuminator’s hands.

  She shook it off. Tolivar was dead, the light was dead; Kara would never triad her wordsmith mother and bindsman father, never cast with them, never shine bright. Her child, her strange, ineffable child, had not cried for the first three moons of her life; and then the light went, and thereafter it seemed as though she’d never stopped crying. Dabrena had thought at first that breaking the Storm was what unmaged her and stressed her calm baby to tears. But it was the breaking of the light. They had been cored. Even the baby had felt it. There had been a light in there. She had done grieving it, and her own. She should be done grieving Tolivar, as well, and yet she felt she never would be.

  There were betrayers in her holding. Folk plotting with the Ennead’s ghost to gain control of Eiden Myr. She could wait, and watch; but she went back over the past days and ninedays and moons in her mind, and found nothing amiss. She trusted her folk with her life. She trusted her folk with Eiden Myr’s life. If there was wrongdoing, it would not be seen by her.

  “You’ve missed everything. You’ve missed the world,” Streln had said.

  [160] “Resign your position, if you must,” Evrael had said.

  “I’ll come to you, Dabrena,”, Tolivar had said, his last words to her. “I won’t die inside a rock.”

  But then he had. And now he wanted her to come to him.

  If she stayed here, everything would stay the same.

  If she left, it would leave a hole. Someone would try to fill it. Mistakes would be made. Truths would come out.

  But someone would have to watch.

  Who could she trust to watch in her stead?

  She didn’t know the world anymore. She couldn’t subject her daughter to risks she hadn’t evaluated herself.

  She couldn’t put her daughter in strangers’ hands.

  She couldn’t tear her away from everything she knew and the people who, for good or ill, had become her family.

  If Tolivar had something to show her, she had to find out what it was. Even if it was madness to go.

  To see the world she no longer knew, to learn how to mend it. To see what Tolivar wanted her to see. To save her daughter from her own smothering love. To create a hole, to flush a betrayer.

  When Kara handed her the sedgeweave leaf—a remarkable representation of the Knee’s highlands sloping down to the lowlands by Maur Lengra—Dabrena said, “If you were in terrible trouble, if you were afraid for your life, who would you call for?”

  Wary of tricks, Kara said, “You.”

  “Besides me.”

  “Is there a blade? Is there a big man?”

  Dabrena cursed herself for a fool—and then it sank in how Kara had brightened, and the relish she took in saying, “Will he cut me in two if I don’t escape? Will he lop my head off?”

  “Kara!”

&nbs
p; Immediately the grisly pleasure was quenched. Kara ducked her head and began picking at her shoe.

  Sweet spirits ... once the scare wore off, she thought it was ...

  “All right,” she said. “If you like. Or maybe you’re clinging by your fingernails to something very high, and you need someone to catch you when you fall.”

  “A hole?” Kara said. “A deep hole? So deep you’d fall forever? There’s a hole like that, it talks to you, I always wanted to—” She cut herself off with a groan and flopped back on her pallet.

  Waiting for me to cry “Who told you that? Who told you of that place?” and march off to scold them raw.

  She had been horrible to this child.

  “Yes,” she said. “The deepest hole in the world. And only one [161] person will be in time to snatch you back from it. It would be me, of course, but suppose you could choose someone else to save you. Who would it be, Kara?”

  “Reiligh,” Kara said, bored and offhand, no longer interested in the game now that she was being saved.

  “Reiligh,” Dabrena murmured. “Yes. I think I will trust that wisdom over all the dead-end reasoning I could produce.”

  They visited Reiligh in his garden galleries, and Dabrena sat talking long with him while Kara played in mushroom heather.

  Then she and her tired daughter ate a quiet supper, undisturbed by any of her folk, and returned to their chamber together. Kara fell asleep instantly. Dabrena lit a fresh candle and sat up the night watching it melt. She stroked her daughter’s hair and remembered when baby Kara had turned toward her in her sleep rather than away, had sought warmth and comfort rather than the privacy of dreams. She watched and waited for the haunt, searching the jumping shadows for some suggestion of his wiry form, his soft brown eyes, his sailor’s hands.

  Tears streaming down her face, she said, “Tell me if I’m doing right, Tolivar.”

  You do what you must, came the answer from her mind. As you always have.

  The shadows said nothing, and if the stone screamed, it was only in her heart.

  She left the mountain at dawn, shocked by the vast inverted bowl of sky, drinking deep of that shock lest she see again the vision of her daughter’s awed face when she told her that she’d be going into the field and Reiligh would have the care of her till she’d returned.