Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series)

by Luiken, Nicole

  “But the swelling,” Sara said uncertainly. His touch eased her headache, and she leaned into him.

  “The faster the swelling goes down, the sooner I’ll receive another ailment,” Lance said steadily. “Next time it might be something more inconvenient, like another fever or a broken leg.”

  His fingers brushed her neck, then, as Sara’s breath caught, he seemed to realize what he’d done. He quickly lifted his hand, and Sara bit her lip as her headache flooded back.

  “If we keep up a brisk pace, we can be at the Hall by early afternoon,” Lance said after they’d each washed down one of the crumbly grain cakes Valda had pressed on them the day before and watched the refetti feast on the crumbs.

  Their arrival at the Hall would mean no more traveling, a soft bed and a hot bath, so why wasn’t she looking forward to it? Sara tried to puzzle out the answer while they walked through the forest. Perhaps because she thought of the journey’s end as the beginning of becoming a hostage.

  She studied Lance’s broad back as he walked up yet another hill. The recent rain had turned the track into muddy ruts, so they picked their way alongside, weaving through trees and snagging on thornbushes instead. “May I ask, what is expected of the Child of Peace?”

  As she’d hoped, he stopped, giving her a chance to catch her breath. “Do I have social obligations?”

  “Not really. You’ll sup with the Kandrith and his Protector most nights, but it won’t be what you’re used to. No fancy feasts.”

  Sara widened her eyes in mock horror. “No roasted giraffes? No songbirds’ tongues?” She wouldn’t have minded eating the one trilling overhead right now; its call pierced her head.

  Lance’s lips quirked. “No.”

  “What about ambassadorial duties? I mean,” Sara tried to make a joke of her fear, “I’m not just going to be locked up for years, am I?” And would she be allowed correspondence?

  “Of course not,” Lance said. “You’ll have the freedom of the Hall. You just won’t be allowed out without an escort.”

  The restriction made sense, but Sara’s heart sank all the same. She’d been enjoying the freedom of travelling and the surprise of new sights every day. Staying inside the Hall would feel like being put in a cage.

  “I hope you’ll find the time to take me on a few excursions.” Sara made an effort to speak lightly.

  Lance was silent, and sudden anxiety struck Sara. “You do live at the Hall, don’t you?”

  “I’m often called away to heal,” Lance said, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “There are few enough healers—only a half dozen in the whole of Kandrith—that it seems wrong to stay in any one place for very long.”

  Sara was silent for a moment, then said brittlely, “You need not avoid your home on my account. I’m aware that our liaison has ended.”

  “Yes,” he agreed heavily. “And since we can’t be lovers, it will be…easier if I don’t have to see you every day.”

  Sara blinked back tears. At least he hadn’t lied to her. “I see.”

  Lance sighed. “The truth is, I’ve avoided the Hall for years.”

  Sara waited.

  He stared off into the distance. “It’s too painful to see my father as he is now. Every time I come home, it seems like he’s sacrificed something more. He’s been blind for years. He has no hands. He only hears the truth. I wonder sometimes if he would even know it was me if I didn’t identify myself when I spoke to him.” Lance’s voice was raw.

  “Oh, Lance.” Impulsively, Sara hugged him from behind, offering silent comfort. “It must break your mother’s heart.”

  “Yes,” Lance said bleakly. He cleared his throat and stepped out of her embrace. “Not that she shows it. Mother was strong even before she became Protector.”

  “Protector?” Sara asked, pretending she didn’t feel the sting of rejection.

  “Her title. The Protector sees to all the practical details, all the things father can no longer do. Like organizing work parties to build a road or a school.”

  “The Protector is a woman?” Sara asked slowly, trying to grasp the idea while the headache dulled her mind.

  “Traditionally, the Protector is the Kandrith’s wife. Unless the Kandrith is a woman,” Lance said off-handedly. “Then it’s her husband.”

  Lance started climbing the hill again, leaving Sara to stare at his back. The Kandrith—the King—could be a woman?

  Was this known? It must be—the Children of Peace went back decades—but she doubted it was understood. Lord Giles and his ilk would see a woman ruler as a weakness or regard her as a figurehead.

  She wondered if she could make her father understand. Not just that a woman could rule, but everything she’d learned since starting her journey. That a beast could talk and be a person. The incredible sacrifices people were capable of making. That more and more she doubted the ‘King of Slaves’ had caused the massacre. That slaves, no matter how well treated, not only yearned for freedom, but deserved it.

  Sara followed Lance blindly, no longer seeing the steep hillside and valley of purple flowers below, as she marshalled the arguments she needed to make. In her imagination, her father listened gravely.

  Only somehow, even in her daydreams, she could never quite convince him. Again and again, he grew impatient and called her soft-hearted and foolish. Sara argued harder, passionately, even begged, but he always turned away.

  And then in her mind, Aleron Remillus turned into Lance’s faceless father, sitting in grim judgement over her. “You did this,” he said, “you told Nir how to get his Legions through the Gate.” And he ordered his guards to lock her away forever.

  Shut up. Locked in. Helpless.

  As her thoughts grew darker, the world darkened too.

  Sara barely noticed. An overcast sky, or falling night—she didn’t care which. Her gaze remained fixed straight ahead.

  Her headache worsened. Sara had been to the Kunal Sea once and seen waves crash endlessly against a cliff, over and over. Her headache did the same until she spent every moment either in pain or anticipating the next throb, the next knife-thrust.

  A stumble on the path brought her eyes back into focus, and she suddenly realized something was horribly wrong. Her range of vision had narrowed, converging from all sides as if she now looked down a long tunnel.

  Blood pounded in her ears. This was no ordinary gloom. She walked faster, hoping to walk out of the tunnel.

  Sara thought back desperately, but could not remember the last time she had heard or seen Lance. Had she fallen behind? Reason said Lance walked a bit to one side ahead of her, that if she but turned her head she would see him.

  “Lance?” she said, but the word came out a whisper from her dry throat. She couldn’t bring herself to turn her head. What if, when she took her eyes off it, the light vanished entirely, swallowed up by this unnatural blackness?

  Already the tunnel had shrunk to a tiny window in pitch darkness.

  This was madness. Sara could hear something keeping pace beside her. She should turn her head and look, but she feared what she might see. Olwydd or some other shandy with sharp claws and a huge gaping maw of a mouth ready to rend her to pieces.

  Sweating, Sara held her head rigidly still and looked only forward as she hurried desperately toward the light. But now the window began to gray over like a fine mist, fading…

  In the dark, her headache pulsed, pain-bright behind her eyes—

  * * *

  The voices of the dead yanked Esam out of his doze. They cried out that evil was happening, that he must stop it.

  Esam tried to tell the dead that he was only a refetti, that he could do nothing. But they would not listen, only screamed louder, their voices like a flail against his flesh. Maddened, Esam squirmed out of the Defiled One’s pocket and bit her hand as hard as he could with his sharp little teeth.

  The Defiled One cried out and flung him onto the path where he lay stunned, but grateful. The voices of the dead subsided into their usual murm
ur.

  * * *

  Sudden pain made Sara cry out in shock. The throbbing in her head was expected and dreaded. The one in her hand was fresh and new. Her head jerked, and the trance broke. She could see again. The horrible gray tunnel vanished.

  “What happened?” Lance reached her side within seconds. It had been his steps on the path, not Olwydd’s, not a monster’s. Sara felt both foolish and relieved.

  “You’re hurt.”

  Sara looked down and saw a smear of bright red blood on her palm.

  Her stomach contracted with nausea. “The refetti!” She remembered it biting her. I’ve killed it.

  She looked around wildly for its body and saw the refetti licking its paw on a mossy log. Its black eyes were open and alert.

  It was alive. She hadn’t killed it. Sara drew in a shaky breath, trying to gain control of her emotions.

  Lance held her cold hands in his large warm ones. “Goddess of Mercy,” he prayed. The red glow enveloped his hands, tingling on her skin.

  Instinctively, Sara yanked her hand away.

  “Sara?” Lance frowned.

  “There’s no need,” Sara said quickly. “It’s just a small nip, see?” She held up her hand, showing the two puncture marks below the knuckle. “No need to bother your goddess.”

  “Bites often get infected.” He waited. When she still didn’t offer her hand, he crossed his arms. “Why don’t you tell me the real reason you don’t want me to heal you?”

  Sara had acted on instinct; she didn’t have a reason. But when she opened her mouth, unplanned words came out. “My headache’s back.”

  “When?” he growled.

  “Since I woke this morning, and it’s gotten worse all day,” Sara said flatly. Even now pain pounded in her temples, blackening thought.

  “And?”

  “You already healed me several times today, but every time you lift your hand the pain comes crashing back.” And he would have to lift it eventually. She could not be presented to the Kandrith with his son’s hand attached to her head like a leech. “I don’t think I could bear to do it again.” She thought it would, quite frankly, kill her. “It’s better if I just…endure.”

  Lance didn’t argue with her, only asked, “Why do you think the pain will come back?”

  Sara didn’t think it; she knew it in her bones. “Because of what you said before. The only two things you cannot cure are death—and madness.”

  * * *

  “You’re not mad,” Lance said roughly. He tried to put his arms around Sara—and she jumped back. His mouth set, but he knew she was right. He couldn’t touch her and not heal. It was also getting harder and harder to keep his hands off her. The last two days had to count as the most frustrating of his life.

  “You’re not mad,” he repeated.

  “No?” Sara looked away, but not before he saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. “I told you about my mother’s illness, but I didn’t tell you she went mad before she died.”

  Lance went cold. Insanity sometimes ran in families— No. Sara was sane. He wouldn’t permit her to be otherwise.

  Permit? Where had that come from?

  “The madness came and went in cycles,” Sara continued. “But the last time…she killed a cuorelle. One of her maids, who’d been in her service for years. My mother asked for another blanket, and her maid wasn’t quick enough… She grabbed a pitcher and smashed it down on Maura’s head. Afterward, she didn’t seem to know what she’d done. For days, while she was dying, she kept asking for Maura, saying the rest of the slaves were useless, only Maura would do.”

  Lance ached to comfort her. He clenched his fists against the impulse. Because if he took her in his arms, he didn’t trust himself to stop at an embrace. Instinct urged him to lay her down and banish her doubts in the most basic way possible: by driving out all thought of anything but the heat between them.

  “You’re not your mother,” he said instead.

  Sara shook her head. “I’m just like her,” she whispered. “Too passionate. Selfish.”

  “Sheep dung,” Lance said bluntly. “You are not selfish. You would never loll about in bed while your child needed attention. Valda told me how you stayed up half the night when I lay ill. And who says you’re too passionate? No man would ever say that.”

  Sara blinked. “Do you really think so?”

  But before he could reply, her refetti nosed her foot, and Sara recoiled. “Keep it away from me!”

  Lance’s heart twisted. He scooped up the small creature. He knew that Sara didn’t fear its bite; she feared she would kill it in a mindless rage. The refetti squirmed in his hands, wanting its mistress. “Enough of that, or I’ll stuff you in a sack and tie it closed.”

  His firm tone got through; the refetti calmed. He deposited the ugly beast in his pocket and concentrated on Sara.

  “You’re not mad.” How often did he have to say it? Fear drove his anger. Lance clamped down on both emotions and tried to offer reason. “I’ve met madmen.” Desperate relatives often brought the afflicted to those who wore the Brown. He always tried to heal them—and failed. “I know what madmen are like. You can hold a conversation. You can dress and feed yourself.” She didn’t drool and scream at nothing.

  But what if those others hadn’t either, at first? What if the symptoms worsened over time?

  “I don’t know why my healing doesn’t work on you.” A bitter admission. “But whatever is wrong with you, my father should be able to fix it.”

  “Is he a healer too?” Sara asked.

  “No, but my father has sacrificed much and has more powers than I know. He’s probably the most powerful man in the world,” Lance said without bragging. He tried to think of a good way to explain. “Remember the Watcher at the Gate?”

  “The little blind boy? Yes.”

  “He is a very powerful Watcher, because of his age. The greater the sacrifice, the more powerful the gift. It isn’t as much of a sacrifice for an old woman to give up her sight, which may have already begun to fail, than it is for a child to give up his or her sight.”

  Sara nodded.

  “It’s the same with my father. It’s a greater sacrifice to be both blind and deaf than to be either alone. It’s a greater sacrifice to have no hands, than lose just one. With multiple sacrifices comes greater power. My father can hear not just spoken truth, but the secrets that lie in the hearts of men. He can talk to animals, or pull down a mountain with but a gesture. His Lifegift can kill a blue devil.”

  Sara looked skeptical. She would see. Lance crushed down the doubts that rose in his mind.

  Insanity offended him at a basic level because it resisted his ability to heal. It made him helpless as he had not been since the day Madam Lust had ordered Wenda whipped and he’d had to listen to his sister’s screams… He’d sacrificed his health to heal Wenda and never once regretted it. But today Sara was hurting, and he could not help her.

  It nigh killed him to watch her struggle under the burden of pain and fear. If the Goddess had told him he could heal her by breaking both his legs, he would have done it in an instant.

  He had to force himself not to walk faster, to hurry to the Hall.

  They paused briefly for lunch, sitting on a log with the last of their bread and cheese spread on a napkin between them. Lance urged Sara to eat, but she shook her head, a stiff movement that spoke of pain. “I won’t keep it down.”

  Lance tried to persuade her again. “Let me try to heal you. Your headache went away for awhile when I healed you overnight,” he reminded her.

  “No.” Her voice was a whisper. Her blue eyes were haggard, but somehow it only made her look more beautiful, fragile and otherworldly.

  He thought seriously about forcing her to accept his healing, but in the end he didn’t dare. “Is there anything else I can do?” he asked finally. He remembered the basin of hot water she’d insisted on for his arthritic knuckles. Had she felt this helpless then?

  Did Wenda and his parents
feel like this when they saw him ill? Was his father just as relieved as Lance was when duty called him away? A disquieting thought.

  “Nothing,” Sara whispered. “Except…”

  “Yes?”

  “Can we…not go to the Hall today?”

  “We’re only a couple hours away,” Lance told her. “I know walking jars your head, but the sooner we get there, the sooner my father can help you.”

  “Of course,” Sara said after a pause. She got up and began, wearily, to walk again.

  After that, she said almost nothing, and Lance grew more and more worried. He felt relieved when the fog bank appeared at the base of the next hill. “We’re close now,” he told Sara. The mist loomed like a wall.

  She stopped dead. “I can’t.” She broke free, took a step into the whiteness—

  Lance lunged after her. “Wait!” She slipped through his fingers, vanishing into the foggy woods. He hurried after her, one hand held up to protect his face from spearing branches.

  One step into the chilly fog and the footpath split into three. A branch quivered; Lance went to the right. Another few steps and the path forked again, the beginning of the Mist Labyrinth that protected the Hall. He went left this time and left twice more in quick succession, hoping to catch another glimpse of Sara.

  He failed. Lance stopped before the next fork in the path, dismayed. Tendrils of mist curled around his feet and wreathed the sycamores. The labyrinth dated from the days before the Red Saints made their sacrifice, before Kandrith was its own country, back when the Hall was a bandit hideout for escaped slaves. The Lifegift was said to have defeated an army once, dividing its centuries into cohorts, and its cohorts into scared men. Some found themselves back where they’d started, and some remained lost until they starved to death. How was he going to find Sara in it?

  “Sara?” he called, but the fog seemed to swallow sound. The woods were dead, bare of leaf, moved only by the wind. No squirrels ran from branch to branch, no birds nested or called.

  A sudden wriggling in his pocket made him remember the refetti. He pulled the animal’s long body out and held it up. “Any chance you can find your mistress?”