by Carol Berg
He stirred slowly, and after a few moments, mumbled, “What? I didn’t—” He sat up, rubbed his head, and peered about his desolate refuge. When his gaze came to me, it was filled with questions. “I don’t remember coming here.”
“What do you remember?”
“The rain. Fire. I don’t know. A jumble of things. Nothing clear.” His face was troubled.
“Come, let’s find the others.”
While we walked the length of the ancient hall, I told him briefly what had happened. “. . . and so you left us during the storm in an attempt to draw the danger of the Zhid away from us. You thought you couldn’t hold out against them, but you did.”
“Because of you, I think.”
“I’ve told you several times that such things are easier together. If your mentors taught you that in all of history there has been any battle won by one man alone, then they know no more of history than does Paulo. I suppose they taught you, too, that women are weak and must be constantly coddled and protected. Perhaps you should have taken lessons from your friends, the soldiers on the walls of Avonar. My father always said that a soldier’s wife could make soup from sticks and swords from stones and could hold a citadel long after the warriors had given it up. Women make the . . .” But I never told him, because my voice trailed off into a prolonged coughing fit from the irritation of my throat.
“Perhaps you should give your voice a rest,” said the Prince, as he gave me a hand over the fallen roof beam. “Or you’ll find yourself being dragged about by argumentative, flame-haired women, unable to say a word to deter them from having their way with you.”
I stopped and stared at him as he continued across the littered ruin toward the sounds of our friends. After a few steps he looked back and smiled at me as he had not smiled for many days. The beauty of his face brought joy to my heart, though in the morning light I could not fail to notice that he’d aged a good five years in the past two days. Strands of gray threaded his fair hair. The stubble on his face could not hide the deepening lines. Baglos would not be able to deny the change this time. What did it mean? Shoving aside a sudden disquiet, I hurried after him.
The others were camped just beyond the fallen guard tower. Baglos caught sight of us first, raced to D’Natheil, and bent his knee. “Oh, my lord, forgive me for my absence from your side. My duty called me, but these . . . our friends . . . called upon the command that you laid upon me to be led by”—he took a deep and wounded breath—“this mundane woman. And I did follow it. But I respectfully ask if that was your intent?”
“I redouble my command, Dulcé, and I’ve placed it on myself as well. You are my madrissé, who can lead me on the proper road and answer whatever I ask of you. But the Lady Seriana is my counselor, who must tell me what road to take and what questions I must ask.”
By the time I dealt with two more bouts of coughing, D’Natheil was eating his second bowl of Baglos’s porridge. I wanted a drink of something hot to soothe my throat and was forced to resort to gestures to let the Dulcé know.
Graeme Rowan sat a short distance away on a remnant of a fallen wall, munching a hard biscuit. Kellea was sitting halfway down the hill with her back to the company. Gratefully, I took a cup of hot wine from Baglos and perched next to the sheriff.
“Good morning,” I said, croaking a bit.
“Good morning, madam.”
“Just Seri will do.”
“As you wish.” He cocked his head toward the Prince. “So, do I kneel to him?”
“He does not expect it.”
“It was awkward enough with you for so long. To know who you were and what you were accused of. And then Kellea, a sorcerer in the flesh. But she tells me that this one is a prince, and that he and his odd friend come from a land—a world—that is not this one we walk. Is it true?”
“Yes.”
“Hand of Annadis . . .” The hand that held his biscuit fell into his lap. For Rowan, I had learned, such a reaction was the equivalent of an earthquake.
“That realization was not much easier for me. Paulo is the only one who takes all of it in stride.”
The sheriff grimaced. “Paulo’s life is naught but irrational events. And he talks with horses. Why would anything amaze him? He tells me you chose to keep him, rather than shove him off to a magistrate. I thank you for that.”
“You know I could never—”
“I thank you anyway. Folk busy saving the world oft-times fail to note illiterate boys.” He lifted the biscuit to his mouth again, pausing only long enough to add, “May I ask what was last night?”
My throat soothed with Baglos’s wine, I told Rowan about the Seeking of the Zhid, and how D’Natheil thought he had to fight it alone so as not to endanger the rest of us. “What I did, just talking to him long enough, enabled him to grab an anchor in a world in which he was at sea. He used his own strength to deflect the attack. I thank you for your discretion.”
“I vow never to interfere where this sorcery business is involved.”
“You may find it less terrifying than you think.”
“Hmmph.” A skeptical grunt. “So, what now?”
“We must get him to the place they call the Gate, as Kellea told you, so he can do whatever he was sent here to do, avoiding the traps the Zhid and the traitors among his own people have set for him.”
“And do you know the way?”
“We have clues.” I told him of the journal, and the Writer, and the riddles.
“You’re wagering the future of two worlds on four-hundred-fifty-year-old riddles written by a ten-year-old girl?” Rowan’s sandy eyebrows looked to fly off his face.
“She only gave her father the idea. He wrote his clues interspersed with her riddles, then left the key to them in the form of a children’s game.”
“Still sounds like hunting a bear with a stick.”
Rowan finished his biscuit and I my wine, watching Baglos bustling happily about with food and fire and pots. After a while Rowan said. “So the little one is his servant. He seems very devoted. Obedient . . . trustworthy.”
“Their relationship is much deeper than master and servant—a magical link of the mind. Baglos would have difficulty disobeying his commands, even if he wanted to. What about it?”
“Mmm . . . no matter. I just wasn’t sure. Back in Yurevan—” He waved his last bite of biscuit in dismissal. “Naught, then.”
My cup empty, I was anxious to get on with the day. “Then let me introduce you, and we’ll be off.”
The Prince was still eating voraciously. Paulo was attempting to match him bite for bite, but was falling behind.
“D’Natheil, I must introduce you to one whose honesty I’ve much maligned. He was pursuing us with only good intent. This is Graeme Rowan, whom I induced you to bash on the head out of my mistaken interpretation of events.”
The Prince looked up.
“Sheriff, this is D’Natheil—no, more properly His Grace D’Natheil, Prince of Avonar, Sovereign of Gondai, Heir of D’Arnath.” D’Natheil was still dressed in the clothing of a dead farmer, the same shabby shirt and breeches I had rifled from Jacopo’s bins, but when he nodded his head, Rowan bowed to him, though I believed he had come to the meeting with no such intent.
“You’re not a wicked villain, then?” asked the Prince solemnly, as he motioned Baglos to empty the last dregs of breakfast into his bowl, even while scooping the last bite into his mouth. “Not a heinous, hide-bound slave of corruption that parades under the name of the law?”
“A servant of justice and order, but no slave, and neither heinous nor hide-bound, I trust,” said Rowan, just as solemnly.
“But at least a surly, knavish rascal who cannot abide the possibility of rational discourse from a female, and who could likely not even recognize such a thing were it to pop up from a tankard of ale?”
Rowan shook his head emphatically. “I’ve learned my lesson on that score from several sources.”
I looked from one to the other and
felt my cheeks grow hot. “What is this conspiracy, gentlemen? I lead this expedition, and I’ll have no pompous men having secret understandings and uncivil attitudes. You’ve just met. How can you be conspiring already?” I threw up my hands and busied myself with smothering the fire, pointedly ignoring the two who burst out laughing at my discomfiture. But I felt a smile bubble up from deep inside me . . . from a place I had believed barren.
Baglos packed the last of his pots and bags and went with Paulo to collect the horses. Moments later, Baglos came running to D’Natheil in great agitation. “My lord, we cannot find your horse! We’ve had no luck at all in summoning him. Unless you can do something . . .”
“He’ll come.” D’Natheil closed his eyes, flicked his fingers in a small gesture, and whispered a word I couldn’t hear. But I felt it. Most definitely. The sheriff felt it, too, and watched the Prince intently. When I heard the distant pounding of hooves and saw the chestnut appear on the next hilltop, I was not surprised. D’Natheil looked satisfied as the graceful animal galloped into our camp and stopped within reach of his master’s hand.
Paulo grinned. “You must’ve learned his name.”
D’Natheil stroked the horse’s head. “Indeed I did.”
“And what is it, then?” I asked.
“He is called Sunlight.”
A relieved Baglos finished the loading, while I pulled out the journal and showed Rowan and D’Natheil its secrets.
“The first riddle is obvious,” I said, tapping lightly on the page. “A river is a road that never sleeps, and its travelers have no feet—boats and fish and such, of course. And we know we’re going to the mountains, so we must head upriver. But how far? When do we look for the next clue? The chest is the next, and it must indicate this one, ‘It is the lesser brother’s portion that brings the greatest wealth and the lesser passage that finds its destination.’ ”
“It would imply a decision point,” said D’Natheil. “A fork in the road or some such, and we would take the inferior way.”
“We’ll have to trust that we’ll recognize it.”
In a short time all was ready. The sheriff knelt at the top of the hill, raising a dirty thumb to his brow, as stubborn in his piety as in all else. And so we set off in the sparkling morning, leaving the mournful ruin to the wind and the sparrows. With six of us together, and D’Natheil yanked back from the brink of despair, I felt more confident than I had in many days. But after only an hour’s riding on the little used path that paralleled the restless Glenaven, D’Natheil pulled up and looked back the way we had come. “We’d best ride hard,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Someone’s close behind.”
CHAPTER 31
The day flew by in a blur of grass and rocks and scattered trees. As we galloped toward the soaring majesty of the Dorian Wall, the gently sloping hillsides to the east and west of the river yielded to rougher country. Craggy knobs appeared, at first one here, one there, and then on every side. The meandering Glenaven moved faster here, darting restlessly between the rocks that threatened to stay its progress. Nowhere did I see any choice to be made as to our course.
We stopped briefly at midday to rest the horses. The hills and knobs had finally formed a continuous barricade on either side of the river, creating a narrow valley sparsely scattered with pine and fir. The air was hot and sultry, the breezes of the open country blocked by the encroaching walls. Though it seemed a year since Midsummer’s Day, little more than six weeks had passed. The land remained awash in summer.
We did not resume the morning’s banter at our stop. D’Natheil’s eyes flicked frequently back the way we had come. Half an hour and we were on our way again, Baglos in the lead. Rowan and Kellea rode side by side just behind the Dulcé. Paulo stayed close at their heels, and D’Natheil and I brought up the rear. I was not about to let the Prince lag behind as he had on the day of the storm.
“Do the Zhid still call to you?” I asked, as we wound our way up the narrowing gorge.
“Yes. But it’s easier now. I try to concentrate on everything you told me, on your stories.”
“The J’Ettanne were your people every bit as much as those in your Avonar. That’s why I chose those things to talk about.”
“You’re an exceptional storyteller. They seem far more real than anything Baglos speaks of.”
“Can you remember nothing of your years with Dassine? Ten years it would have been.”
He shrugged. “I keep thinking that if I work at it hard enough, I’m bound to see. But the memories stay just out of reach.”
“Why would Dassine have taken your memory and your voice before sending you? What circumstance could force him to do that? He said he had no alternative.”
“Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t do what was needed. Because of the person I am. It’s likely I don’t want to know what’s hidden.” Winter had touched his voice, and he dug his heels into Sunlight’s flank. “Come, we must move faster.”
The Prince rode ahead to where Graeme Rowan was picking his way across the swift water. The track ahead of us on the east side of the river was tangled with tree roots and underbrush, for the water had eaten away at the bank, leaving it narrow and steep-sided. The track on the west side of the river was still unobstructed. I considered briefly that the east side might be the “lesser passage” of the riddle, but a few moments’ observation convinced me it had been more than four hundred and fifty years since the east bank had been passable.
I needn’t have worried. The Writer had buried his instructions so cleverly that he hadn’t felt the need to make them true riddles. The way was very clear.
Half an hour or so after the river crossing, we heard a considerable rush of water ahead—a swirling pool of icy blue-green, the turbulent confluence of two healthy streams that formed the Glenaven. The stream on the right flowed from a broad grassy valley that angled almost directly west, funneling the afternoon sunshine straight into our eyes. The stream leaped and bounded its way through thick grass, dotted with clumps of yellow, blue, and white flowers.
The left branch flowed from a passage of very different character, a gloomy, narrow slot that at first glance appeared to have no path at all. Everything in my nature beckoned me to follow the sunlit valley, but I assumed that the darker way was ours.
“The lesser brother?” asked Rowan.
“It’s the first likely thing,” I said. “If there’s a path . . .”
“I’ll take a look. If we go a little west where the water’s slower, we can cross easily.” In moments Rowan was on the spit of rocks and sand between the two forks. Then he splashed through the stream, rode into the shadowed mouth of the narrower passage, and disappeared.
D’Natheil kept glancing over his shoulder while we waited. After a time that likely seemed far longer than it was, the sheriff rejoined us. “There’s a path. Narrow. But I went in fairly deep, and it continued as far as I could see.”
“Hurry,” said D’Natheil. “Choose.”
“We go left,” I said.
“Some will go left,” said Rowan. “Kellea and I have decided that it’s impossible for all of us to outrun a determined pursuer in these conditions. And it looks to get worse. But if the two of us were to go west, while the rest of you take the opposite way, then, unless the fellows on our tail have Kellea’s talent, we might fool them. She says that it might be possible to mislead even one like her, if we take something with us that belongs to each of you. That may give you time enough.”
“I hate splitting up,” I said, though I knew that he was absolutely right.
“We’ll loop back if we can. Kellea can find you.”
I pulled off the scarf I used to tie back my hair. Baglos produced a kerchief of his own and D’Natheil’s discarded sandals. Paulo had nothing to give, but Kellea startled him by riding up close and yanking a hair from his shaggy mop. “Ow!” Paulo slapped his hand to his head.
“We’ll see you again before we’re done!” called the sheriff. Kellea was already gallopin
g into the sunlight, and Rowan’s great black horse shot after her.
“Go with your gods, Graeme Rowan. And you, Kellea,” I called.
D’Natheil and Baglos were almost halfway across the water, and I was right on their heels, glancing back to make sure Paulo followed. But the boy sat at the joining of the water, looking back and forth between the two parties. Before I could call out to him, he clucked at Molly and bolted westward after Graeme Rowan. I couldn’t worry about his safety. There were no assurances along either route.
I disliked the eastern passage from my first step into it. The path Rowan had seen was scarcely worthy of the name—a narrow band of damp sand along the west side of the river. The walls of the gorge became steeper and rockier the farther we rode, and, in some places, the river widened until it reached almost from one wall to the other. Once, the track disappeared completely, and we had to ford the shallow water to pick it up again on the other side.
Another hour and the walls had become sheer rock faces, and the bottom of the rift grew darker, musty and close in the warm evening. Stomach in a knot, I glanced up frequently to prove to myself that there was no roof to cave in on me. The sky held the deep blue of evening, but in the flat-bottomed gorge it was already dusk, forcing us to slow our pace. The path varied a great deal in width, drips and trickles in every direction warning of side streams waiting to trip us up. And early spring waterfalls had bored out deep pools in the streambed, abandoning them as traps for the unwary traveler now that summer had quenched the falls. When the first stars winked into life overhead, we had found no spot suitable to stop for the night. I had to trust Firethorn to find safe footing.
We proceeded without incident until a soft word from the Prince signaled a halt. We dismounted, unsaddled the horses, and pulled out food and blankets, fumbling our way about in the dark. Baglos dragged brush from the steep banks and piled it up between us. “My lord, the only fuel hereabouts is damp and green. I’ll never get it lit. Hot food and warmth would restore us all. If you could help, as you did in the storm . . .”