Son of Avonar tbod-1

by Carol Berg

  Baglos lay in a crumpled heap at the base of a sizable step down from the main passageway. The Prince jumped down and knelt beside him, listening for breath, examining the Dulcé‘s limbs. Soon he rolled the Dulcé to his back, revealing a bloody scrape on his forehead. “Seems he’s only knocked his head a bit.”

  I tossed the Prince a wineskin and a rag to clean the injury, and then clambered down beside him. No sooner had I knelt beside Baglos and dribbled a little wine on his lips than his dark eyes popped open, darting quickly from my face to that of the Prince.

  “What have you done to yourself, Dulcé?” said D’Natheil.

  I poured a little wine on the rag and began sponging the wound.

  “Ah, my lord…” Baglos snatched the cloth from me, pressing it to his head as he pushed himself up to sitting. “Please, woman, I can take care of this. I am good for little else, it seems, but causing delay.”

  “We feared you were lost,” said the Prince.

  “I… was feeling ill. The incident of the morning in the river, the long climb in the heat. Ah, my lord, I was shamed and I could not—Well, I wished to maintain some dignity before you. So I held back until I had recovered, believing there would be no divided way until we emerged from the tunnel. I assumed I could follow your light, but I could not catch up with you no matter how fast I traveled. I came dizzy once more and thought to myself that I ought to wait until I had more sense about me before proceeding. But like the fool I am, I stumbled down this step…

  “You’re fortunate that it wasn’t one of the pits we’ve seen in some of these side passages,” said D’Natheil. “And we’re fortunate also,” he added, before the Dulcé could reply.

  “Bless you, my lord. You should leave me. I’ve caused nothing but difficulty.”

  “I don’t think the Heir can proceed without his Guide.” D’Natheil displayed remarkable patience. “You will fulfill your mission, Dulcé.”

  Baglos bowed his head, but not before I noted that his expression was quite at odds with his demeanor. His shame and apology sounded quite sincere, but he was not at all flustered. His almond-shaped eyes were sharp, and his face filled with determination and sorrow. I had always considered the Dulcé a simple, shallow man who wore his feelings and beliefs quite openly, one whose oddly constrained intelligence obscured nothing but a good heart. Yet in that moment his expression carried such conflicting stories that I began to think that perhaps he was more complex than he seemed. Though determined to continue this journey, he was afraid of its ending.

  Well, so was I, I thought, as I watched the Prince help Baglos to his feet and boost him over the tall step in the rock. More so by the day. How could a man change so rapidly as D’Natheil? I could no more envision the Prince striking Baglos as he had once done than I could imagine myself embracing Evard.

  Polestar was nowhere to be found. The Prince tried to summon him as he had the previous day, but after a quarter of an hour with no sign of the beast, we dared wait no longer. He insisted that Baglos ride the chestnut. Baglos protested, vowing unending humiliation. After what I’d seen of his private feelings, I wondered at his true sentiments.

  Two more hours of slow progress and I felt a slight movement in the dead air. I lifted my face and hurried my steps. In a few moments more, the Prince allowed his light to die, and ten steps later we stood on the southern doorstep of Mount Kassarain, inhaling cool, thin air. We laughed and made jests about adventurers who feared caves or made wrong turns or stumbled off steps. Pursuit and uncertain destiny were momentarily forgotten in our delight at being in the open.

  We stood high on the mountainside, overlooking a lush meadow of rocks and flowers, laced with tumbling streams, a green gem set into the harsh framework of the mountains. At the meadow’s eastern end the streams converged into fretting rapids that vanished into a bottomless, blue-white vista of gentle forested hillsides. To the west a faint track traversed a grassy slope and led deeper into the heart of the rugged peaks. But on every other side the grass yielded to boulder-strewn slopes and barren cliffs that offered no passage. We let the horses graze for a while.

  Soon, D’Natheil was ready to press on. Urgency and excitement burned in his eyes as he peered into the west. “It’s there, ahead of us. I feel it.”

  I climbed onto Firethorn. Baglos mounted the chestnut behind D’Natheil. The path led us from our high perch down through the flowered meadow, where blue, yellow and white blooms stood higher than the horses’ knees, and then across the velvet slope that funneled us into a narrow, grass-floored valley. Though easy and pleasant at first, the valley trail quickly became so steep and rocky it was difficult to pick out a good path.

  Banners of wind-driven snow flew from the highest mountaintops, filmy white trailers against the intense blue of the sky. The air grew colder and thinner. By early afternoon the cold wind gusting in our faces made it impossible to distinguish the swirling banners from the clouds gathering over the icy peaks.

  Another hour and D’Natheil halted in front of a short wall of massive boulders that stretched the width of the gorge. “We’ll have to leave the horses,” he said. “A foot trail hugs the wall on the right, but the beasts won’t be able to manage it.”

  I didn’t ask him how he knew. His movements and words were abrupt, and I found myself looking over my shoulder, expecting to see our empty-eyed pursuers bearing down on us. If Baglos and I didn’t hurry, the Prince would go on without us. I dismounted, pulled my cloak tight about me, and made sure the journal was in my pocket.

  “What should we carry with us, my lord?” asked Baglos. He, too, was anxious.

  “Don’t burden yourself heavily, Dulcé. Food and drink for a day. I don’t think it will be a concern beyond that.”

  The Prince rubbed Sunlight’s head and spoke to him softly. When I declared myself ready and Baglos had shouldered a small pack, D’Natheil slapped the horse’s rump and the beast trotted back the way we’d come, Firethorn close behind. “They’ll go back to the grass and wait for you,” said D’Natheil.

  “Paulo isn’t the only one who communicates with horses,” I mumbled as we started up the steep rock stair. I couldn’t say why I felt so resentful.

  An hour’s difficult walking brought us out of the gorge onto open, gently sloping tundra, surrounded by spires of ice and rock. It was as if we had stepped back a season. Everything was huddled to the windswept earth. No trees. No growth of any kind stood taller than a finger’s height. The afternoon had turned gray and bitterly cold. We came to the crest of the modestly rising ground, and before us lay an ice-bound lake, ringed with sheer cliffs. There was no going any farther.

  A gust of wind billowed D’Natheil’s cloak as he looked out over the gray lake. He said only, “I think we have arrived.”

  CHAPTER 33

  No hint of green could be seen in that ice-bound vale. Rather a thousand shades of gray and white lay one upon the other, as if the artist who had painted that particular canvas had forgotten to dip his brush in any other region of his palette. Massive stones lay jumbled about the water’s edge, and behind them steep, ice-clad slopes of crumbled rock footed jagged cliffs that soared straight into the iron-hued sky. A faint tread wound from where we stood through soggy tussocks to the lake shore, skirting granite slabs that stood two and three times D’Natheil’s height. It was hard to imagine anyone, man or beast, coming willingly to such a desolate spot. How could it be the refuge of the J’Ettanne? No life existed here, only rock and ice, dead water and silence.

  The fifth clue was the most obscure of all. Though he cannot see it, the hunter knows his prey, for it speaks to his heart whether he turns right or left.

  Nothing in that landscape spoke to the heart; nothing beckoned or charmed or seduced. The wind off the lake whined through the boulders, nosing at our cloaks like a mournful dog. I wrapped the scratchy wool close about my face and tried to remember it was summer.

  Willing my blistered feet to take a few more steps, I joined D’Natheil and Baglos
on the rubble-strewn edge of the lake. There was nowhere else to go. No passage, no trail. Nothing but cliffs and rocks. Journey’s end. I was so tired that I could not rejoice in the stopping, and so uncertain that I could take no satisfaction in the accomplishment. “Where could we have gone wrong?”

  “We’re not wrong,” said D’Natheil, his voice hungry. “Can’t you feel it? It’s like the heat shimmer that rises from the desert.”

  I felt nothing but my feet. “Are you saying that what we see isn’t real?”

  “Not at all. It’s just there’s much more than substance here—layer upon layer hidden behind what we see. I’ve never felt such a concentration of life.” Was it anticipation or dread that dropped his voice to a whisper and colored his skin like burnished copper?

  I wrenched my eyes away, sank to the ground in the lee of a rock, and wrapped the damp tail of my cloak about my freezing ankles. “I still don’t understand the fifth clue.”

  “It’s doesn’t matter. The Gate is here.”

  He was right, of course. And the fifth clue was no more obscure than the others. From somewhere high in the encircling crags a white-tailed hawk screeched the doom of an unlucky rock-mouse, the lonely call reflected once, and then again, and then again from the rocks, a perfect triple echo. Then, from somewhere beyond the three reflections of the hawk’s cry, a thousand other birdsongs teased at the edge of our hearing, the songs of birds that had never known this pocket of ice and snow: flamboyant birds of deserts and jungles, sweet singing birds of deep forests, majestic birds of the ocean’s edge, larks and pipits and magpies and loons. Indeed, enchantment existed here. And abundant life.

  Hardly had the eerie music faded when I discovered the tiny yellow and white flowers, each no bigger than the head of a pin, packed together tightly in a rocky crevice just beside my hand. When I rubbed a finger across the miniature garden, I was enveloped by the scent of lilacs, roses, jasmine, and a hundred varieties of flowers that could no more live in the thin, cold air than those tiny jewels could live in lowland heat.

  I was going to call D’Natheil to come and see, when I was startled by a booming, “Hello!” rolling across the lake.

  He was standing on the lake shore, and he turned to me, his eyes piercingly bright. “Do you hear them?”

  “Hello… hello… hello,” rang through the air, accompanied by a chorus of innumerable voices: cries of greeting, of joy, of farewell. Voices without bodies. Memories of life.

  “Yes. Yes, I hear them.”

  “The Gate must be somewhere beside the lake,” he said. “Come on.” He set off along the narrow shoreline, his steps as vigorous as if he were just beginning the journey.

  “What of pursuers, my lord?” asked Baglos anxiously, hurrying to match his short steps with D’Natheil’s long stride.

  “They’re holding back. They should have been on us by mid-morning.”

  Waiting, I thought, as I hobbled after them. They’re waiting for you to show them the Gate. The Zhid didn’t know the way. I shivered, but not from the frigid wind. These Zhid were not heedless, hotheaded bullies, rushing after us ready to pounce and fight. I thought back to Montevial, to the forest, to Tryglevie. Even back to Ferrante’s house. They had stayed just close enough to follow, to prevent our escape, pushing us… herding us… to the ending. Much more dangerous. And yet we could not stop. Not now.

  We examined every slab and boulder around the lake shore for a passage or entrance. Hundreds of people would have lived in the stronghold during the Rebellion: women, children, old people. No matter what destruction had overtaken them, there had to be some remnant of the space where they had slept and sheltered from the harsh winter that would settle here for all but a few weeks of the year. But in many places the ice extended right down to the water, leaving treacherous footing, or the way was blocked by boulders from ancient landslides and we had to clamber over them or slog through the icy water. Halfway around the lake from our observation spot was a long, narrow strip of sand fronting an expanse of barren cliff face, but we found no breach in the rock.

  When we returned to our starting point, D’Natheil picked up a rock and slung it into the water, breaking the gray wind-ripples. “We’re missing something.”

  “Four hundred and fifty years,” said Baglos. “Perhaps there’s nothing left.”

  “No, it’s here. I’m sure of it. I’ve been here before…” D’Natheil’s voice trailed off, as if he weren’t quite sure what he was saying. “As far as this wooden head of mine can tell me, I was born on the shores of this lake. Here I began running, from terror and confusion and because I was so cold, I thought I would die before I had a clear thought. My clothes had been torn off me in a violent storm… darkness, lightning, fire, screaming… and I had only the knife in my hand. I dared not stop”—he dragged the words out of himself—“and then sometime, though not at first as we believed, but later, in the lowlands, past the end of the meadow with the flowers, I knew I was pursued by servants of… I didn’t know what it was… this shadow that wants me. I believed that if the pursuers caught me, I’d never find what I was looking for.” His bleak face yearned for answers. “I was looking for you.”

  I wanted very much to give him what he needed. But I was a plodding mundane, as Baglos had told me so often. “Let’s look at the journal again. As you said, we’re missing something.” I pulled the fragile volume from my pocket, trying to shelter it from the blustering wind. Baglos huddled beside me, while D’Natheil leaned against a boulder and stared at the lake. The page with the diagram held nothing new, and the following entry was a long description of the Writer’s difficulties with spring planting.

  “Turn back to the riddles,” I said. “Maybe we missed one.” Baglos and I pored over the page in the gray light, searching for any that might have been written later than the original description of the little girl’s game. The later entries were written with a pen slightly wider at the tip than the originals. Still only five, plus the additional phrase the Writer had inserted with the telltale pen. Not phrased as a riddle, it had never seemed significant. “What is this again, Baglos? He asks if his daughter is not a marvel, but I don’t remember the exact words.”

  The Dulcé read, “The day will come when men proudly cry out the name of our race, and it is my Lilith that will shine in their memory.”

  “Cry out the name of our race…” My gaze met D’Natheil’s. With a trace of a smile, he bowed and returned to the edge of the lake.

  Baglos whispered to me anxiously. “Will the name of the Dar’Nethi show us the Gate, then?”

  “No. Not Dar’Nethi . …” Would D’Natheil think of it?

  The Prince stood for a moment, eyes closed, the wind ruffling his light hair and the shabby cloak that could not obscure the truth of him. Then he opened his arms wide and cried out in a voice that thundered through the desolation, “J’Ettanne!” And as his voice called back to him through the thin, cold air, I felt a great release, as if the very stones had let go a monumental sigh at the command to share their long-held secret. Whispers and murmurings were all about us just beyond the range of hearing, quiet laughter, tears, whispers of pleasure, of love, of sorrow and grief and prayerful wonder, buzzing unseen like tiny insects about our ears, chaos existing in tandem with the wintry silence. But any expression of amazement was stilled in deeper awe of the doorway that now stood open in the stone cliff across the lake, an opening no less than fifty paces wide and three stories in height.

  Without speaking, we repeated our journey around the lake, never taking our eyes from the incredible sight, never giving thought to pursuit or danger or anything beyond our moment’s wonder. The twin columns supporting the massive stone lintel were covered with the most graceful and intricate carvings: birds, beasts, flowers, all so perfectly worked that one could feel the life of them as they crowded the white stone. In the center of the rectangular lintel was carved an arched triangle, with a floweret in each sector it scribed.

  The Prince stepped fir
st through the gaping expanse. It was only right. The stronghold was part of his realm, marked with the emblem of his family. Baglos and I followed close behind. It was dark inside, but the Prince whispered the word illudie and torches blazed on every wall. I caught my breath as the great cavern came to life. Never had I seen a space of such beauty.

  The cavern was so enormous, we could not see the roof of it. It was as if the whole mountain had been hollowed out and the stone walls polished smooth, displaying the mountain’s embedded treasury of tourmaline and jasper and lapis as magnificent waves of rich blues and greens, dazzling murals no human artist could replicate. Shining veins of quartz glittered in the torchlight like faceted gems, and a wide staircase with no visible supports twisted its way up through the center of the gleaming air to reach at least four levels of columned galleries carved from the cavern walls. The stairway and the galleries were connected to each other with a series of arched bridges, so delicate and graceful they could have been spun by a magical spider. And the bitter wind of the iron-gray lake was left behind, the air inside the cavern fresh and pleasantly warm.

  A raw and desperate longing scribed D’Natheil’s face, even as he turned to the task in hand. “I need to explore the place a bit. A wall of fire shouldn’t be difficult to find.”

  “I’ll stand guard, my lord,” said the somber Dulcé, drawing his sword and taking a position near the gaping doorway to the outside. “Do as you need.” With his ferocious glower, he looked quite small and foolish.

  The Prince nodded graciously. “Thank you, Dulcé. We shouldn’t need your warding for long,” he said. “If I can’t do what I’ve come for within the hour, I don’t think it will matter.”

  Then, like a desert-bred child visiting his first garden, he began to wander. All my own weariness was forgotten as I trailed after him into room after room of marvels: an amphitheater whose dark-painted ceiling was inlaid with bits of faceted quartz, so that the flickering torchlight gave the illusion one stood under star-scattered skies; an immense refectory, its gigantic wooden tables perfectly free of dust, crockery bowls and neatly laid spoons awaiting the next feast; the kitchens, huge stone hearths and chimneys bored into the mountain’s heart. We explored workrooms, granaries, storerooms of all kinds, sewing rooms, map rooms, a library with so many shelves of books and scrolls that wooden-railed walkways spiraled up six men’s height or more in front of us—everything needed to support a population of many hundreds.