THE SOUL WEAVER

by Carol Berg

  “And what key is that?” I felt unremittingly dull, perhaps because I’d been sitting in this Preceptorate meeting since breakfast. Men’Thor had just left the chamber after sitting all day in the row of six auditors’ chairs, here again at his father Ustele’s invitation. Between them they had added another six hours to their four years of argument that my plan to defeat the Lords of Zhev’Na without bloodshed could never work.

  To successfully counter an eminent Historian and a silken-voiced Effector who could make the most outlandish schemes sound as simple as planning a trip to market required more muscular debating skills than I possessed. Many people urged me to appoint Men’Thor to one of the vacant seats on the Preceptorate. But I suffered nightmares of having the father at one ear and the son at the other.

  “You really must attend our meetings on time, Preceptor Jayereth,” snapped Ce’Aret. “Happily, we’ve just begun our regular order of business.”

  Not so happily. That meant we had at least three hours of minutiae still to discuss. My mind had been wandering across D’Arnath’s Bridge for half the day, conjuring the gleaming impertinence of my wife’s brown eyes and the throaty richness of her voice. It had been far too long since I’d seen her… months. I needed to bury my face in her sweet breast and let her remind me again of who I was and what perverse path of fortune and duty had decreed we must remain so far apart.

  Ignoring Ce’Aret’s admonition, Ustele’s glare, and Gar’Dena’s and Ven’Dar’s amused stares, Jayereth twirled once more, halting just in front of my chair, teetering on her toes until I thought she must fall into my lap. But she settled to her feet, pushed away the bead-woven brown curls fallen across her eyes, and swept a graceful bow, stirring the stale air of the stone council chamber with the scent of ginger soap. “I’ve brought the key to unlock the chains of your people, my lord! Is that not what you commanded me? No Dar’Nethi need fear the seal of Zhev’Na ever again.”

  At last her words penetrated my daydream and caused me to pay attention. “Mordemar… ”

  “… has no power over any who wear this.” She dangled a tiny silver medallion from her fingers on a fine silver chain that chinked lightly as she teased my eye. “It can be embedded into armor, or jewelry, or inset into a boot.” The slip of metal she dropped into my fingers might have been a sliver of ice, setting my every hair crackling with frost, every pore stinging with life and health - monumental enchantment.

  The key, indeed! I’d sworn that no Dar’Nethi would wear the slave collars of the Zhev’Na one moment longer than I could prevent, and the companion vow was to rob the Lords of the mordemar they used to seal the collars, the vile material that stripped a Dar’Nethi of the substance of his soul and with it all power for sorcery. And against all advice and expectation, I had entrusted the search for an answer to this thoroughly unconventional young woman. “You’ve found the countering enchantment.”

  “Give me a fortnight, and I’ll refine the working until no metal is required. Let me show you.”

  Like a whirlwind reshaping the landscape, Jayereth laid a crucible filled with gray powder and two thin, battered straps of metal side by side on the council table. As the other Preceptors gathered close, a burst of invisible fire from the young woman’s hand caused the powder to slump into gray sludge. Even after four years, the stink of it wrenched my gut.

  “Now watch. Feel.” She poured the molten mordemar from the crucible into the narrow space between the two strips of metal as if to seal the closure of a slave collar. The liquid fell in thick, soft plops, spreading quickly as it touched the surface of the table, dissolving the steel edges of the collar and filling every bit of the space between. In moments it had hardened to a dull gray ridge. I closed my eyes and felt its vile enchantment swell into a dark knot in the path of life, a wretched blight that was the death of power and hope for the unlucky slave.

  “Now touch it with the medallion.”

  Swallowing the memory of despair, I opened my eyes and laid the slip of silver on the hardened seal. As if the chamber walls around us had yielded a great sigh, I felt the dark enchantment unravel, dissolve, and swirl away. The gray seal disintegrated, leaving naught but two ugly strips of metal and a patch of dust.

  “Magnificent!” bellowed Gar’Dena over my shoulder. “Great Vasrin’s hand, girl, you’ve done it!”

  Ven’Dar fingered the metal and the dust, sniffing it, tasting it. His smile grew slowly and when he looked up, his gaze met mine straight on. “Marvelous.” No other words were necessary. He knew what this meant to me.

  “We must think carefully about this,” said Ustele, hobbling back to his seat, one hand raised in warning. “We can’t just - Such a weapon. This news must stay amongst us. Secret. Until we decide how to use it.”

  “Balderdash!” said Gar’Dena. “Proclaim it to the world. Let the Lords know their time is fading.”

  “Well done, Preceptor,” said Ce’Aret, her withered cheeks flushed, her fist clenched. Ce’Aret had lost three sons, two daughters, and her only grandson to the Lords of Zhev’Na and their warrior Zhid, four of them taken into slavery as she watched from the walls of Avonar. “Of course you can’t be babbling the formulation about the city. We can’t have the devils restructure the making of mordemar to counter your formulation. As Ustele warns, we must be careful and thoughtful.”

  “Did anyone assist you?” I asked, awed at the enormity of Jayereth’s accomplishment. Yes, caution was certainly in order. “Have you told anyone? Written it down?”

  “No, no, and not yet.” Grinning delight danced across her countenance. “I wanted to surprise you, lord Prince. You’ve seemed out of sorts of late.”

  “No insolence, young woman!” But I grinned back at her, knowing she spoke truth.

  Four years of unrelenting duty had been dragging at my spirits, leaving me snappish and dull and feeling sorry for myself. For weeks I had been promising myself a venture across the D’Arnath’s Bridge to steal a few hours for my own need, and the only thing that had enabled me to sit through this day’s tedium was my vow to go this very night no matter the Preceptors, the Lords, or the end of the world.

  But this discovery changed things, of course. I ran my fingers through my hair trying to focus on duty and quell the resentment rising in my gut. One of Gar’Dena’s daughters was ill. Ven’Dar was due to take the evening inspection on the city walls, a duty that would take hours. Neither Ce’Aret nor Ustele had a moment’s patience with Jayereth and both were asleep with the pigeons on most evenings. We dared not spread the news to Zhev’Na, but the surest way to secure Jayereth’s knowledge was to share it amongst ourselves. “This meeting is over. I’ll go with Jayereth, so she can show me her - ”

  “No need to shepherd me, my lord,” said Jayereth, bundling her materials into her arms. “I’ve already started copying my notes. If Mistress Ce’Aret will excuse me from the rest of the meeting, I’ll promise not to leave the palace tonight until warded transcripts are safely in each Preceptor’s hands.”

  “Good… yes… that should do.” I grabbed on to her solution. Of course it was better that she commit her information to paper so we could all know it. I could be back by the time she finished her transcriptions.

  Jayereth bowed to the four Preceptors, and then sank to one knee in front of me, her plain face alight with triumph. “By midsummer every Dar’Nethi in Avonar will know how to make one of these. We’ll have them free, my lord. Every slave shall be free.”

  As she hurried out of the room, Gar’Dena and Ustele continued to argue about how we should handle the news. The debate grew more strident by the moment, its premises all too familiar.

  “Just stop!” I shouted. “Enough for today. Go find yourself some dinner, keep the information to yourself, and think carefully about it. Make sure Jayereth knows where you can be found so she can deliver her transcripts. We’ll continue this discussion and all our other business tomorrow.”

  “I would speak with you about this matter as soon as poss
ible, lord Prince.”

  “No, Ustele. Not tonight… I’ve other things to do.”

  “Where will you - ?”

  “It is none of your concern. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.” I was in no mood to be lectured about the frivolous expenditure of my time or my reckless usage of the Bridge that was “designed to keep the universe in balance, not to enable family visits.” I left the old man muttering.

  Without stopping to wash, shave, change clothes, or even grab the gifts I had selected months ago for my next visit, I ran down the stairs and passages into the deepest heart of the palace, walked through the warded door that would open only for me, and stepped through the wall of white fire and onto D’Arnath’s Bridge. Two hours or so for the crossing, and I would be with Seri.

  CHAPTER 2

  Seri

  Enough! I threw the wilted seedlings into my basket, stood up, and stretched my aching back, brushing away a long-legged spider tickling my grimy hand. The remaining bean plants stood nicely separated in the row of dark earth. My old friend Jonah would have been pleased that I remembered his lesson: Removing healthy seedlings to leave the others room to grow was necessary for a successful crop.

  The sun was almost down. The evening damp creeping out from under the heavy leaves bore the rich scents of early summer: thyme and mint, greenness and good soil. I carried my basket to the waste heap at the edge of the garden, dumped the contents onto the pile of damp leaves, weeds, and dirt, and tossed the basket into the wooden barrow. As I rinsed my hands with a scoop of water from the rain barrel, running footsteps crunched the gravel path leading from the stableyard. I spun in the direction of the rosy afterglow just in time to see two long, blue-clad arms reaching for me, just in time to flush with pleasure and call his name. “Karon!”

  I couldn’t understand his answered greeting, as his head was buried in my neck and my hair, and no more words were forthcoming for a while as he kissed every finger’s breadth of my grimy face. “I’ve only an hour,” he said at last, spinning me dizzy in a fierce embrace. “Tomorrow comes quickly, and I’ve a thousand things pressing. Jayereth just brought us the most marvelous news, and I ought to be with her. But I’ve decreed this time ours. Duty shall have no share of it. Only the two of us… ”

  The two of us: I, a woman of middle years, living on the charity of an old friend, and my husband, the Prince of Avonar, ruler of a kingdom that was not of my own world. To anyone who heard it, our story would sound absurd. The body my husband wore was not the one I had embraced in the brief years of our marriage. The Prince D’Natheil bore little physical resemblance to the slender, dark-haired Healer with the scarred arm who had been burned to death sixteen years ago at the behest of Leiran law. For ten years I had believed myself a widow.

  Yet this tall, fair sorcerer prince with arms like oak trees and a back like a fortress wall was truly Karon. I could hear it in his voice as he told me of how he’d been unable to shake the image of my face while sitting in a meeting of his counselors that day. I could sense it in his manner as he paused to catch his breath, backing away a step and holding my hand, half embarrassed at his own display of passion. I could see it in his clear blue eyes that shone with love and good humor and a sheer, stubborn goodness that insisted on seeing its own reflection even when gazing on the deepest horrors of two worlds. Before I’d heard the story of how his salvation had come about, before he had regained his own memory of his life, death, and return, I had known him.

  As his gaze enfolded me like a sheepskin cloak in winter, his skin thrummed with restless energy. His fingers, warm and wide, twined with my own, asking… hoping… needing… “Ah, Seri, I miss you so.”

  I understood. I was not stone. But I held him at arm’s length, pulling him onto the path that led through the gardens and walking briskly into the surrounding parkland. “First, tell me what thousand things prevent your staying more than one pitiful hour. It’s been three months this time.” Three months, two weeks, and three days, in fact, since his last visit.

  Four years ago Karon had brought our son Gerick, our young friend Paulo, and me out of the grim fortress of Zhev’Na, through the horrors of the Breach between the worlds, and back to the world I once believed was the only one in the universe. Gerick had repudiated the Lords of Zhev’Na and cast his lot with us, giving up immortality and sorcerous power beyond our comprehension because he refused to have our blood on his hands. At that time, we had decided that Gerick could not risk another crossing of the Breach, even using D’Arnath’s Bridge, until we had built a barrier of time and love and ordinary life between him and the Lords, and so Karon had taken up his duties in Avonar without us. Gerick and I had come to stay with our friend Tennice in this genteel country house, surrounded by cherry orchards and parkland and the rolling green countryside of Valleor.

  “Nothing different. Work. Traveling everywhere. Trying to get my own people to trust me. Trying to end this damnable war. Trying to heal what I can. I’ve given up thinking life will get simpler or easier. But I swore not to talk about business. This time is for you. Anything else - ”

  He tried to drag me to a stop, but I wrenched my hand away and kept walking. “No. You must and will talk about business. I need to know what you do every day, Karon, what you think about, whom you talk to and what they’re like, the good and the bad of it. Tell me about the weather, about your palace, and your horse, and the healings you work. Imagining such things is the only way I’m allowed to share your life. At least tell me of reality, so I’ll know I’m imagining something close to it.” So I wouldn’t keep thinking of him as a stranger when he was too far away for me to seek the truth in his eyes or his manner or his voice.

  In our first year at Verdillon, Karon had come to us every few weeks, staying for days at a time. But necessity ended that luxury. Karon was the Heir of the ancient sorcerer king, D’Arnath, sovereign of all that remained of Gondai, the magical world beyond the Breach, the sole protector and defender of D’Arnath’s Bridge, this singular enchantment designed to counter the Lords and their evils. Yet he knew almost none of his subjects and had only a limited understanding of their world. The Dar’Nethi needed the reassurance of their sovereign’s presence. I could accept that. I was a warrior’s daughter, raised to understand the obligations of a noble. If Karon was to lead his people, then he and his people had to learn to know and trust each other. Traveling the length and breadth of his realm, visiting every town and village to speak with his subjects, listen to their stories, and heal their ills, and developing his plans for ending the war left him little opportunity to make the time-consuming and difficult passage across D’Arnath’s Bridge to this world. And so, as the months passed, his visits had become increasingly rare and far too brief. I felt as if we were going backward.

  “All right. If that’s what you want… ” And so we walked in the spring-scented evening, and he gave me what I’d asked for, reining in one passion only to unleash another. He told me of the Preceptors and his plans and the increasing dangers of his war. “… The Zhid raiders grow bolder every day. Two farms burned last week, another village destroyed the week before, half its people taken as slaves, half left in madness, and its children… Oh, Seri” - his voice shook and his fingers almost crushed my own - “I came very close to heeding Men’Thor and Ustele and their constant harangues.”

  “They still call your strategy treason - the Circle, everything else?”

  “Men’Thor is convinced that the only way to destroy the Zhid is to kill them all. The self-righteous bastard never changes his tone of voice and never changes his mind, no matter how you argue it. Ustele rails that we’ve lost our nerve, that I violate D’Arnath’s oath every day I permit such horrors to continue. And truly, last week when I saw those slaughtered children, I wanted nothing more than to ride for Zhev’Na myself, my sword in hand. But today we had such news. Jayereth has found an answer… ”

  Our pace increased until I almost had to double-step to keep up with him. His face shone as he exp
lained how, after so long a preparation, months of travel, long, grueling hours of intricate enchantment, meetings and argument, talking and convincing his hesitant subjects, his plan was ready to go forward. One might have thought his magnificent venture engaged already for the vigor with which he propelled me about the cherry orchard.

  But as the last light faded in the west, his steps slowed again. He pulled me into his arms, pressing my head to his shoulder. The fine cambric of his shirt felt soft against my cheek and warm with the muscled flesh underneath, and I cursed duty and politics and everything else that conspired to keep us apart. “Ah, love,” he said, “you’ve let me babble far too long. The time runs… and we’ve not even spoken of Gerick yet.”

  I closed my eyes, smothered my unhappiness, and yielded pleasurably to the hand that stroked my hair. “It wouldn’t break my heart if we had more time with you.”

  “I’ve thought so much of him lately, wondering if the time was any closer… What do you think? Does it go any better with him? The nightmares? Earth and sky, how I want to be here with you. I scarcely know the boy. I don’t even know what he studies.” His arms threatened to squeeze the breath out of me.

  “He still has nightmares, and he still won’t talk about them. But they seem less frequent of late, and less… disruptive… and in every other sense he grows easier,” I said, pulling away enough to keep breathing, as well as to keep my mind on our son. “He maintains a more even temper. He and Tennice get on famously, and the more intense their work, the better. You’ll be proud of all he’s accomplished. He can discuss history and philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and politics at a level worthy of Martin’s drawing rooms. In only one area does he lag a bit… ”