by Carol Berg
Footsteps. He was light on his feet. The boots hardly made a sound. A soft cluck of the tongue and the two horses walked a few paces away. A rustling of branches . . . soft pats. The horses snorted and blew in a friendly way. The fellow was alone. Small. No strong-armed warrior, else why the head-bashing, dragging me about with a horse, and inordinately tight binding? I wasn't all that heavy.
Footsteps again, back toward me. He crouched on my left side, close enough I could feel his breath on my wet hair. The warmth from his body smelled of horse, damp cloth and leather, and something else I ought to know, something not unpleasant. Fruit—
A sudden movement. Metal sliding on leather. A touch on my chest.
I slammed my head backward into the tree. "Who are—"
Flat, cold steel pressed first on my lips and then across my throat. I understood the implicit command, holding as still as I could, the back of my head hard against the rough bark. No one within range was likely to offer me any help anyway. If this person was going to kill me, there wasn't much I could do about it.
The blade moved away. Not far. His breath came faster. Cold, damp fingers fumbled at my neck. The knifepoint pricked as the blade slit open the front of my shirt, and the fingers jerked the fabric apart. Though I squirmed inside, I held my body still. Pale white light leaked around the edge of my blindfold.
But then he stood up. Footsteps hurried away, quickly lost in the pattering rain. The light was gone.
Stars of night ! Releasing a breath held too long, I wriggled and fought to get out of the ropes. No luck. So I was left with sorcery . . . and only a few hours gone since I'd used sorcery to examine my father for the fourth time in four days. In hopes I had recovered, I concentrated and scraped together what power I had left, but no attempt at loosening, breaking, or splitting the rope had any effect. When my fifth attempt left hair and cloth smoldering on my scorched wrists, I quit. Clearly my captor had used exceptional rope, and his prisoner was exceptionally inept.
As the chill and the damp seeped into my bones, the two horses crunched the grass, and the drizzle rustled the leaves above my head. The rain smelled of wet grass and flowers, and we'd climbed since Gaelic The air was thinner. I was shivering in my wet clothes.
Soon I heard approaching footsteps. Slower than before. And two people this time, the second one heavier, but not by much. His feet shuffled a little in the wet grass, and his steps were uneven. Limping? Light glimmered. Not the white glow of a Dar'Nethi's handlight, but the yellow flicker of a lantern. I stiffened, wary of what might come.
"Oh, child, what have you done?" The soft, chiding voice of a man no longer young.
Cold fingers forced open my clenched fists, somewhere behind the tree beyond my aching shoulders.
"Look here and tell me it's impossible!" Demons and all perdition—a woman!
"What's going—?"
My thick-tongued attempt at participation in the conversation was cut short by the knife pressing a reminder into my windpipe. "Silence, monster!"
"Stop it, Jen!" said the man. "Stop! These are just scars from the war … or from any number of things. You have to forget, child. Let it go. And let this poor young man go. Look what you've done to him."
"Look at his hands, Papa. Only one thing ever caused scars like these. Look at the color of his hair. Remember it? Look at these other marks on him." She yanked on my ripped shirt and held the lantern close enough that I could feel the warmth on my clammy skin. With the tip of the knife she traced a scar on the left side of my rib cage, and another on my right shoulder, one on my abdomen, and a long, jagged one on my right arm. How could anyone know of those scars, remnants of my childhood sword training in Zhev'Na?
"It's impossible. He's long dead." But the man wasn't so sure any more.
"He should be dead. Justice is a mockery in Gondai while the monster yet breathes. Yet he rides the roads of the world as if he has a right to them. I'll see him dead, Papa. I will. The moment you acknowledge him, I'll bleed him dry. Only three other creatures in all the world bore these same scars • on their hands."
I didn't know who these two were, but they certainly knew me . . . and no word I could say could possibly assuage either the woman's hatred or her fear. Not if she knew what the scars on my hands were.
"Even if . . . even if it were so," said the man, "only the Heir of D'Arnath can condemn a man to death. You must not wager your soul for something so fleeting as revenge. And I can't be sure. It's been so many years. . . ."
"Perhaps if you look on his face, Papa. Look and remember. No one in authority is going to listen to me, but if a Speaker testifies . . ."
The cold fingers pulled at my blindfold, and at last I identified their scent: raspberries. By the time my eyes could filter out the lamplight, I had already cursed myself for a fool, remembering the retiring "youth" in the Gaelie common room and the dark-haired young woman who'd taken such an interest in my hands. Ten paces to my right stood the ghostly white ribbon of the hospice wall.
But my disgust at my blindness was quickly overruled by shock when I saw her companion. An old man with one ruined eye and a villainously twisted back stared at me, droplets of rain trickling down his face like a shower of tears. Even with eyes that refused to hold their focus, I knew him. I had last seen him when I was eleven. He'd been standing in the door of my house in Zhev'Na as I rode off into the desert with a red-haired Zhid warrior who would tutor me in the fine arts of murder, torture, and war.
"Sefaro," I whispered, heedless of the woman's knife. The kind, gentle chamberlain of my household, the slave forbidden to speak unless I gave him leave, yet who always smiled at me. The slave allowed to wear nothing but the vile steel collar and a gray tunic, yet who always told me how well I looked in my fine clothes. The slave fed nothing but sour gray bread, though he always made sure I had my favorite things to eat. The man I came near killing in a child's pique, yet who looked in on me in the long nights when I couldn't sleep, giving me comfort by caring that I was lonely and afraid. I had believed him one of the thousand victims of my training. . . .
Don't get too close; don't get too familiar; don't care about anyone or they'll disappear and they'll be dead. Your touch means their death. Your interest means their death. Knowing their names, looking in their eyes, hearing their voices means their death. And they can expect nothing else, for they are slaves and their only life is to serve your need. To make you strong. To make you worthy to be a Lord of Zhev'Na . Cruel lessons for a child of eleven. Ones I'd learned all too well.
"He condemns himself," said the girl, raising her knife. Dark eyes blazed in her sharp face.
The old Dar'Nethi's remaining eye searched my face, but I could not meet his gaze. Nor could I bring myself to ask the questions that came instantly to mind. How was it that he lived, when the Lords had purposely slain every one of my servants? How did he know of the scars on my hands, caused by an event that happened months after he'd vanished from my life? How had he been set free? I would have given my own eyes to hear that I'd had a hand in his salvation. But I had no right to ask him anything.
"You've used him ill, Jen," said the old man, softly.
"How can you say that? How can you care what harm comes to him—knowing what he is, what he's done? And I had no choice. I couldn't allow him to use his power."
"And did you not think to ask what's become of him? If he is a Lord, then why do you find him riding back and forth to this place and eating in a poor guesthouse in Gaelie? And how is it that we live, daughter, now he's looked upon us? How is it that he's allowed you to use him so and bind him to a tree in the rain?"
Her dark wet hair, hacked off ungracefully short, stuck to her brow and cheeks. She was neither ugly nor beautiful. The features of her small face were fine, but her jaw was sharp, her mouth slightly lopsided. The knife quivered in her hand, but not from fear. I was trained to smell fear. Her outrage was as palpable as the rain. "He can't look you in the eye, Papa."
"Do you think a Lord of
Zhev'Na would have difficulty with that?"
"He can wear any face he wants. He must have some purpose in allowing me to take him; perhaps he thinks I'm too cowardly to kill him. He should be dead."
The old man laid a hand gently on the angry girl's shoulder. "He is what he is, daughter. If he is a Lord, you will not damage him, but will be drawn into his evil by your act. And if he is not, then you will bear the guilt of life-taking. I'll not allow it, certainly not for what was done to me. Not even for what was done to you and your mother and your brothers. Release him."
The girl shook off Sefaro's hand and glared at me, tapping the flat of her knife blade rapidly on her left palm. "This is for Avonar, not for me! The Zhid are raiding. He can't be allowed to make it all happen again. Someone has to know. At least we should go back to the hospice and tell the Lady D—"
"No!" I said sharply, jolted out of my silence by her words. I would attempt no explanation, no history or excuses or hollow words to tell one so grievously harmed that I hadn't meant to hurt him. I had no right. I was everything the woman named me. But mention of the Lady, and the sight of the hospice lights beyond the veils of rain where my father lay dead but not dead, forced me to speak. "Please," I said. "I am not… what I was."
The girl snorted.
"I don't expect you to believe me. But others whom you might believe would tell you that it could be of mortal importance that the Lady D'Sanya not know who I am."
"Lies! Listen to the flow of them. Why would we believe anyone you would name?"
"Please listen, sir." Though I addressed Sefaro, I could not bring myself to call him by name again. "In your last days in . . . that house . . . where we lived, a woman came to you, a Drudge, and she told you of a boy I'd wounded, hoping you could see to him, and she asked questions that you believed no Drudge would ask. You obtained a transfer of duty for her, so that she would be close to me. Do you remember her?"
Sefaro stepped closer, peering at my face with his soft brown eye. "Eda, the sewing woman."
"You told her I was not evil. Not yet."
"She said that if she could be close to you, she might prevent it."
"Because of you trusting her, helping her, she was able to do what she said."
The girl stepped forward to stand at Sefaro's shoulder. Her hands were small like the rest of her, but they gripped her long-bladed dagger securely. "And that was before he sent you away, Papa, where they burned out your eye for having looked on the young Lord and before they stuck a hook in your back and hung you up like a haunch of beef to teach others to fear the vile beast."
"Hush, child. This Eda was an extraordinary woman. I never forgot her. She wanted to tell me her secret, but I said better not. I knew what was to come. To kill anyone close to him, to make everyone fear him, to keep him alone . . . these were their plan for him. All could see it."
"She never forgot you either. She told me everything… later, when I could understand it."
"Who was she? I've always wanted to know."
"She was … is … my mother."
"Papa! This is madness to listen!"
"No, child. You didn't know the woman. If anyone—"
"But I did see her. You forget, I was there! I watched her weep as he was changed. I saw him step out of the Great Oculus with no human eyes left, and I saw them melt the sword across his palms. I saw him in a gold mask with jeweled eyes just like the others, and I'll never forget it. He is one of them, and they said on that How was it possible? She could be no older than I, which meant she could have been no more than twelve when I was changed."
As if she heard my question, she stepped closer and pulled down the high neck of her tunic to show the angry red scar about her neck. Her eyes glinted in the lamplight. "Surely you remember, young Lord. Usually they didn't make slaves of Dar'Nethi children. They would kill them or bleed them for power or the few special ones they would corrupt. But if it gave them pleasure to torment a particularly powerful Dar'Nethi, one who held great honor before his capture—a Speaker perhaps—then they would seek out his children whatever their age, and they would make him witness their collaring. They would make sure the children were put to work close enough that he could see them often, never able to speak, never able to help, never able to touch them or ease their pain and fear; Surely you remember your pleasures, Lord."
I remembered. It was the first time I ever fixed the seal on Dar'Nethi slave collars, the first time I'd listened to their screams as half of their hearts were ripped away. I had sealed three that night, two boys in their teens and a small, dark-haired girl. The Lord Ziddari had told me the Dar'Nethi forced their children to fight in the war, and Lord Parven told me how those children could kill our warriors with their enchantments just like adults could, so they must be treated like adults as a lesson to their people who used them so. I had done it. And I'd never known the three were Sefaro's children. The girl had served in my house for a time, but I'd never heard her speak, never allowed it, never looked at her when she drew my bath or laid out my clothes. . . .
I closed my eyes and fought to keep from vomiting the bile that churned in my stomach. I didn't want to remember. I'd tried so hard not to remember.
"Release him, daughter. I think your knife can do no worse than your tongue has done. And you—whoever you are now—as a price of our silence, I would like my daughter to meet your mother. She is not here in the hospice?"
"She resides in Avonar at the house of the late Preceptor, Gar'Dena." I could scarcely squeeze words past my sickness. "She cannot come here. For the same reasons—"
"—that the Lady cannot know of your past."
I nodded.
"And the one here? Who lies in the hospice and draws you here?" He suspected what I would say. His eye was wide, his lips parted in anticipation. My slaves had known of my parentage.
Secrecy was vital, but I could offer Sefaro nothing but truth. "My father lies here, the man known in this world as the Prince D'Natheil, believed dead these five years. He is dying now, but has returned to Avonar to perform one last service for his people."
"Vasrin's hand! And does the Lady know this? Or anyone?"
I shook my head. "The Lady does not know, and must not know. Not yet. Only two or three others . . . and now you and your daughter."
"There is a tale here."
"A complicated tale. On the grace of my mother and the honor of my father, I swear to you that we work for the safety of Gondai."
The old man bobbed his head in return, then turned his back to me. "Release him, daughter. Whatever harvest he must reap for what he has been and done, it is far beyond you and me."
With an explosion of disgust, the girl sliced through the ropes, nearly taking a few of my fingers with them. She whispered in my ear with a spit of hatred. "I won't forget. Justice will be done." Or perhaps it was only in my head that I heard it. Then she untethered her horses, and took her father's arm, and with no more word, they headed off toward the hospice lights and soon vanished into the night.
As for me, I huddled alone in the shelter of the tree through a very dark midnight, waiting for my vision to dear and the blood to return to my arms and legs. The cold rain fell for hours.
Chapter 8
"You were fortunate to be given a chance to speak," said my father when I explained my shopworn appearance on the next morning. "Seeing that bruise makes my own head hurt."
"If the choice had been left to the woman, the earth would have split in half before I'd have said anything," I said.
I'd only told him an abbreviated version of the night's encounter: how I'd been recognized and assaulted by a woman who had been captive in Zhev'Na, that I'd managed to convince her father to withhold judgment and keep our secret, at least for now. My father would guess there was more, but it wasn't his way to push. I just couldn't bring myself to talk about it.
"I'll watch my back a little closer from now on," I said.
We strolled along a tree-shaded lane that led from the main house
to a fenced paddock where the Lady D'Sanya's horses grazed. Though the hour was still early, the sun had already sapped the previous day's moisture and glittered hot through the leaves. When we came to the edge of the shade, our steps slowed.
A horse cantered through the paddock gate on its far side. No mistaking the well-formed gray or the rider's cloud of pale hair.
"I'm not very good at this investigating business," I said, pausing to watch her. "I want to march up and ask her straight off what she's up to."
"You don't think it remotely possible the Lady could be as she claims?"
"She lived in Zhev'Na for more than three years before she was enchanted to sleep. No, I don't believe she could be untouched by it. She was amazed that I'd told you what I'd experienced, and she seems to assume that . . . forgiveness … is necessary for anyone who was there. She was not a slave. So what did she do that needs forgiving? That's the key."
As I resumed walking down the path that led past the paddock, my father didn't move from his position in the shade. "I think I'll go back," he called after me. "I want to finish a letter to your mother, and I think the Lady might be inclined to be more sociable without me."
I waved, walked on to the paddock, and soon found myself hanging over the white painted fence, admiring the way D'Sanya slipped from her mount so gracefully and catching her unguarded expression when she turned and saw me. Her face took on a certain brightness, an indescribable clarity. How could such a look, not even a smile, please me so well?
Think, fool. She is of Zhev'Na. It is impossible . . . impossible . . . that she is what she seems.
"Master Gerick! How is it I find you here alone? Is your father well?"
"He claims he's getting lazy and hasn't finished a letter he wants me to take to a friend, so he's sent me off on my own."