by Carol Berg
“At last!” cried Radele. “His eyes are opened!” He strode briskly to the window and gripped the sill as if his own eyes might witness the new battle already engaged.
My spirit recoiled at Radele’s glee. The host of Avonar against Zhev’Na… Our last resort. Every man, woman, and child to march on the desert fortress wielding sticks and swords and magic in a monstrous, mad crusade that would result in the annihilation of either the Lords or the Dar’Nethi. Ustele and his family had been championing such an impossible assault for generations. They had long proclaimed that it was only our hesitation - our doubt in our own power and our reluctance to commit ourselves - that had caused the war to last so long. But to buy our safety with slaughter… even in victory we would lose.
“This is madness, Men’Thor,” I said. “The Prince will never agree to such a plan. I know his true heart, and if I have to stand vigil and cast for a thousand nights, I will convince him to renounce this absurdity.”
“Let me tell you what is madness, Preceptor,” said Men’Thor. “A Prince who cannot tell you his name from one day to the next. A Prince whose loyalties are compromised to the verge of corruption, whose ‘true heart’ is fixed on a mundane woman and a boy who gave his eyes and his soul to become the Fourth Lord of Zhev’Na. An Heir of D’Arnath who can no longer offer the most rudimentary service of his healing gift.”
His voice flowed with the grave sincerity he used with equal skill to notify a mother of her warrior daughter’s death or to mediate a disagreement with his tailor. It was Men’Thor the Effector’s unflappable rationality that had convinced many Dar’Nethi that he was better equipped to lead us than our passionate Prince.
“For a thousand years, Ven’Dar, we have allowed the Lords to taunt us and feed on our weakness, to keep us prisoned behind our walls and hiding in our little valleys as if this were the life Dar’Nethi were born to. Now they are a hand’s-breadth from putting their nurtured spawn in D’Arnath’s chair, and you would not have our Prince fight them? You suggest that some mysterious conjunction of the planets has betrayed our safety, rather than the depraved child who swore undying loyalty to our enemies. And you dare call our course absurd!” Though neither volume nor timbre had changed, Men’Thor burst to his feet with the intensity of his speaking. “You are a good man, Ven’Dar, and Avonar will need your talent when her host ventures forth. But you serve us ill - to the point of treason - when you nurture the Prince’s madness.”
While I blustered like a fool, thinking that yet another round of argument might make some difference, Men’Thor sighed deeply and laid his arm on Radele’s shoulders. “I must go. My men hold the walls of Avonar tonight. I just thought I should share this news with you myself.”
“Thank you, Father. What do you suggest I do with the Preceptor? He was trying to pry information from the prisoner.”
Men’Thor gazed at me mournfully. “We will never convince Preceptor Ven’Dar of our position. The best we can do is prevent cowards of his ilk from influencing the Prince. Our duty is to keep D’Arnath’s Heir focused on his proper business - the survival of Avonar, of the Vales, of Gondai, of the Bridge - until holy Vasrin sees fit to give us a sovereign worthy of D’Arnath’s throne.”
Radele smiled broadly and embraced Men’Thor. “As you say, Father. The tide is turning.”
Radele stood in the doorway, watching his father descend the stairs. Then he turned back to face me. “My father is a wise man, Preceptor. Shall I demonstrate how we shall keep our mad Prince focused on his duty?” He was smiling.
Tired, distracted, envisioning our enemies tearing at our heart, I didn’t answer him. And so I failed to note the movement of his hand…
I was changed. Like a storm cloud suddenly bereft of rain and wind or a forest instantly deprived of trees, my life no longer had a purpose, and thus no meaning to be expressed in words. A hand took my arm and propelled me toward the doorway. My feet moved as they were directed.
“I’ll have to put you with the stable boy, Preceptor. I don’t like keeping the two of you together, but someone will need to feed and clean you. I’ll have to dismiss your servants. We can’t have them snooping about. And when the Prince interrogates the boy, I’ll just make sure he has no memory of his cellmate.”
The hand led me down two nights of stairs and through the cellar, unbolted a door, and shoved me into the dark. I tumbled onto a dirt floor as the door closed behind me. Even as I grasped to hold them close, my thoughts detached themselves from the world of order and logic and drifted away.
“Who’s there?” came a drowsy voice from the darkness. “I know someone’s there. May as well answer me… ”
So tired. I curled up on the cool dirt and weariness closed my eyes.
CHAPTER 22
Dull light beams pushed their way through the dusty air from a tiny grate close to the ceiling.
“Oh, cripes!” An outburst of words quite close to my ear. “They’ve done for you like they done for the Lady, haven’t they? Demonfire! A right fine mess we’re in now.”
A freckled face… a worried face, striped by the dusty light-beams… appeared in the air somewhere above me.
Jostling. Sitting upright now.
“Radele brought our breakfast and told me to see that you eat. Very kind he is.”
Bread in my hand.
“Well, come on then. Put it in your mouth.”
Dry… chewy… Teeth and tongue, wits like dung…
“Wasn’t supposed to work out this way. ‘Be fast,’ he says. ‘It’s got to be fast or we’ll all be dead.’ So now he’s out there likely dying, while I’m rotting in a bin of turnips. They’re all going to die if his plan don’t work. What in this cursed world am I to do?”
No cursing! No rotting! Carrots in the bin… turnips… heads and turnips…
A mechanical click… a buckle? a clock? a latch? Disturbs the dancing dust motes…
“Come on, horse boy. Time for you to do your duties as the Prince has commanded you. By rights you should be banished to the Wastes as a traitor, though my father says you’re only a pawn of the Destroyer. He claims that mundanes are incapable of any meaningful act such as treachery. I’ll have to consider that. I think you should be dead.”
Clambering… crowding… bumping. A door slammed. Click. Silence. Colors, impressions, bits and pieces of memories, fragments of music, of song, of stories or poems, showers of words. Words are my life… Drifting, pushing, and crowding one another this way and that, like gnats hovering above a pond. Swirling aimlessly like snowflakes in a circling wind… like dust motes in the light…
Directionless time… fading light… blindness creeping… Fearful blindness… terrible… not that, not that, not that…
Click. Snap. Searing brightness. Air shifting. Stumbling boots. An avalanche of turnips… Sounds, movements, smells… nudging me… wandering…
“Move closer to the pipes, boy. I’ll leave you loose enough you can tend the Preceptor, but we’ll not have you getting away.”
Intrusion. Crowded. Arms… legs… boots… Click. Snap. Darkness. Not blindness. Night. Quiet breathing. Lungs and tongues, inhale… exhale… smothering dark…
“Master Ven’Dar, can you hear me? Here, squeeze my hand if you can understand me.”
A nice hand. A working hand. Scars. Don’t raise your hand to me, young man! So much clutter in my head, ready to fly away… A sister’s ready hand, boxing my ears…
“Ah, curse all sorcery and them as practice it!”
The hand withdrew. Cold bread now. Bread in my mouth. Sour ale. Sleep tugging at my eyelids…
Light and darkness. Crowding, bumping, silence in the light.
Crowding, bumping, companionship in the dark. Hands in the dark. The cycle… whirling past.
“You know, Master” - the spoon popped between my lips yet again - “sometimes the way things happen just turns a man’s head inside out. The first clue I get, and in the same breath I hear it’s no use to us. I’ve been trying an
d trying to find out what was the list Radele used for the enchantment. Today I heard Radele talking to his Grandpa Ustele, the Preceptor, and at last I hear them talking about a list, and I’m thinking it might be the list as is needed to help the Lady and maybe I could somehow get away and find someone to come help her. But doesn’t the old man say that you’re probably the only one in Avonar as could say the ‘list of all the Dar’Nethi talents’? And your head is about as useful as one of these turnips.”
Drowning!
Figs and pools, pigs and fools…
“Ah, plague on it! Now you’re a mess. How am I supposed to feed you when I’m tethered to this pipe like a donkey? No way I could run off, anyway. Not with this magic they’ve put on me that make my feet like lead. Only reason I can talk is that they’re just not scared of anything in my head. Not like with you and the Lady.”
Dampness… on and under me… earthen floor… soup mud… farmyard mud… stink… of onions and pigs…
“I looked about to see if you might have a bit of writing in the house that might be such a thing as this list, but I’m so ignorant, I couldn’t even tell if it was the right one or not, nor yet what to do with it if I found it.” Cloth blotting. “I’m just not much good to nobody as doesn’t have a mane and a tail, am I?”
The list of talents… the hundred… of all the hundred you received only one… in measure large or small… your gift… to be with you forever… to guide your Way… Ven’Dar yn Cyran, proved a Word Winder this day! Fool of a boy, can’t you feel it? Look what you’ve done… best learn a cast to repair the steps or father will flay you! So difficult to be good at it. You can’t stay at home… not with power like yours… undisciplined whelp… Master Exeget will house you, as well as mentor you… prevent your killing anyone… Exeget, cold as an ice cliff… Be worthy of your people… be worthy of your gift… Truth is the foundation of a Word Winder’s power… Try again… and again… You are the living essence of the Way… Mice scrabbling through the baskets of turnips and onions and carrots. Onions rotting. Men rotting in the desert… dead in the Wastes… turnips and carrots…
Light and darkness. Crowding, bumping, silence in the light.
Crowding, bumping, companionship in the dark. “Can you hear me, Master? The Lady’s fading. Every day I have to see her. For a man to breathe on her would kill her.”
Light and darkness. Click, snap. Breathing in the dark.
A crash. Again. Fist hammering. “Shit, shit, shit! I can’t believe they’d do it! And here I’m stuck in this cursed hole, no better off than I was in Zhev’Na. And you no more help than a two-legged mule.”
Pinching my shoulder. Rattling my teeth. “Listen to me, Master Ven’Dar. We’ve got to help the Lady. Radele is going to kill her before the Prince comes back here. He believes that when the Prince looks in my head, he’ll find out where the young master is. But old Ustele told him that having the Lady around might stop the Prince from killing their son - just knowing what she would say about it if she could talk. The Prince has been in an awful battle, he says, one that’s gone on for days, but he’ll be coming here tomorrow. So we’ve no more time.”
Words tumbling… raindrops… hailstones… avalanche… buried… hurt…
“Do you remember how I told you to think on the talents of the Dar’Nethi? The list? It’s the key to the silencing. I’ve tried talking to the Lady to get her to think on it. But I don’t know if she can hear me or if she knows all of the list, and it has to be every one of the talents, so Radele says. You’ve got to name every one of them in your head, Master.”
Warm, bony hands… enfolding…
“I know some of them: Healer, like the Prince, Word Winder, that’s you. Master Gar’Dena, may his name be writ, was a Gem Worker. There’s Builders and Horsemasters that the Prince told me of… but I don’t know the rest. You’ve got to name the whole list to be free.”
Gem Worker… left for dead like turnips left to rot. Hurts! Hurts! Forests rotting… souls… cabbages… black and moldering… soon to be dust, like the Wastes…
Raindrops of words pelting the sea. Tiring. J curled up on the cool dirt. Sleeping… creeping…
“No, Master! You don’t understand. The time! It’s been too long already. Demonfire, I know you can hear me.”
Slap! Stinging blow.
“Come on, sit up again. Think, Master. Radele’s killing the Lady. He’s put another enchantment on her that’s going to make her die if we don’t stop it. Is there a Singer in the list? A Tree… something?” Words hard-edged in the darkness. “You want to save the Prince, you got to save yourself first. I heard Radele sniggering at the Lady, telling her how he’s going to see she don’t save the young master this time. Oh, demonfire, Master Ven’Dar, you’ve got to listen, and you’ve got to think of the list. Right now.”
Hands squeezing cheeks and jaw… trembling now… suddenly cold as a glacier… cold fire…
Singer, Healer, Speaker, Word Winder… Hold yourself together, Ven’Dar. Ven’Dar the Vainglorious. Dam up the ocean and replace it with a water jar. Catch the raindrop words in something where they’ll make a difference.
… Metalwright… Sea Dweller… who battles the tide… Timeless waves… drifting…
No! You can do this. You know the list. Exeget taunted you until you learned them all. Do you need to stand on your head to do it? Say the list. Every name.
Stronger now. Builder, Tree… Delver, of course, Balancer, like the great D’Arnath himself and C’Netra, yammering, beloved C’Netra…
The list grew… The voice in my head… so loud… so hard… What next? Say them!
Gem Worker… Silver Shaper… and next? So hard to remember… leave it go…
No, hold on. How do you remember the names? How were you taught? Probing… digging… holding back the tide of madness. In the order of their discovery: the Hundred Talents. After Silver Shaper comes Horsemaster… You draw them from the depths of your being, not just facts memorized in childhood, but from the essentials of your soul, lived… believed… cherished…
The list grew.
Is that all? There are more, aren’t there? Think… remember…
Ninety and nine have I spoken, from Glass Maker to Storyteller, from Gardener to Navigator, each one a touchstone of our history, a fundamental of our life, like the heart of a mother and the hand of a father that shape the core of the family.
What is the last? Why do some say the list is complete at ninety and nine?
Because the hundredth is the myth… the Soul Weaver…
My eyes blinked open. I was kneeling on the dirt floor of my root cellar, cold as a new-caught fish and stinking like a dead one. No sooner had I voiced the hundredth name than the ocean of confusion had retreated, exposing shape and order like rocks emerged from a receding tide: past, present, future, memory, dream, knowledge, deduction… and dominating all of it, the driving urgency to go to the Lady. She would be in my parlor, sitting by the fire, lost in a sea of light and shadows as I had been. And close beside me in the dark, very close, someone else was breathing.
“I think I’m all right now,” I said, nudging straggling, greasy hair out of my eyes.
How was this possible? I might have thought another Dar’Nethi had spoken in my thoughts, giving me the names and prodding me to attention when I faltered. Yet such a speaking was very different, an intrusion across the barriers of self, instantly recognizable and traceable to the intruder. No one but my sister and I knew of “Ven’Dar the Vainglorious,” the young Word Winder whose first cast had landed so wide of its mark that his elder sister, the humble Balancer, had been forced to make peace with an entire village of infuriated Gardeners standing hip-deep in an ocean of well-intentioned mud. No one but I knew how I used the title so often as a prod to humility. And I’d never told even C’Netra how Exeget had made me stand on my head until I could speak the list. No. Though it was impossible, the words had been mine. But, of course, this lad had urged me to it.
“Thank you,” I said to my companion in the dark cellar, while I rubbed my swirling head and shook the last confusion away. He had fallen so silent while I wrestled with chaos that his dark, still shape might have been nothing but another bag of onions. “You were right. The list was the key. I don’t know how I was able to do it, but you were right.”
“Please, go to her,” he said quietly, demonstrating not the least surprise at my sudden speech. “Hurry.”
“We’ll both go,” I said.
“Can’t. They’ve bound me here and not just with rope. Touching the door latch makes my hand feel as if it’s being torn off. And you’d think my boots had anvils in them instead of feet.”
Stupid that I’d forgotten. I would have sworn he was free, running around me, hounding me like a sheep dog, while he pelted me with words. A foolish image.
“You’ve run into so many disadvantages in your association with us Dar’Nethi that you’ve forgotten the advantages,” I said, as I produced a soft white light from my hand, crawled over his long legs, and grappled with a tangle of pipes and rope I could scarcely reach. With a knife of flame I split the ropes that bound his ankles and wrists, perhaps a little too vigorously, for he yelped. The backs of my own hands felt singed. As he massaged blood back into his fingers, I countered the simple enchantments that kept him from securing his own freedom. “Now we can go.”
“Maybe I should stay here for a while. Distract Radele if he should come to check on us.”
“If what you’ve told me is correct, young Paulo, we need to get the Lady and ourselves out of this house at the first instant. I can handle Radele, as long as you watch my back and yell at me if he should raise his hand again. You’ve no idea how embarrassing this has been - to be caught like a novice. And you’ve no idea how lucky we are that I could come up with the list.” Enunciating the precise words in a mind scarcely capable of thought. Vasrin’s hand, surely.
“Go ahead, then, I’ll follow.”
Coaxing the smooth veneer of a binding spell from the door latch, I allowed my light to die and pulled open the door a crack. A stray beam of lamplight from the cellar stair invaded our dusty den. The faintest of magical feelers sent into the adjacent cellars and up the stairs confirmed that no one lurked anywhere nearby. Evidently our captors were secure in our incapacity. I stepped through the low door into my cluttered storeroom, stretching my cramped legs and stiff back.