by Carol Berg
Hardly had the eerie music faded when I discovered the tiny yellow and white flowers, each no bigger than the head of a pin, packed together tightly in a rocky crevice just beside my hand. When I rubbed a finger across the miniature garden, I was enveloped by the scent of lilacs, roses, jasmine, and a hundred varieties of flowers that could no more live in the thin, cold air than those tiny jewels could live in lowland heat.
I was going to call D’Natheil to come and see, when I was startled by a booming, “Hello!” rolling across the lake. He was standing on the lake shore, and he turned to me, his eyes piercingly bright. “Do you hear them?”
“Hello . . . hello . . . hello,” rang through the air, accompanied by a chorus of innumerable voices: cries of greeting, of joy, of farewell. Voices without bodies. Memories of life.
“Yes. Yes, I hear them.”
“The Gate must be somewhere beside the lake,” he said. “Come on.” He set off along the narrow shoreline, his steps as vigorous as if he were just beginning the journey.
“What of pursuers, my lord?” asked Baglos anxiously, hurrying to match his short steps with D’Natheil’s long stride.
“They’re holding back. They should have been on us by mid-morning.”
Waiting, I thought, as I hobbled after them. They’re waiting for you to show them the Gate. The Zhid didn’t know the way. I shivered, but not from the frigid wind. These Zhid were not heedless, hotheaded bullies, rushing after us ready to pounce and fight. I thought back to Montevial, to the forest, to Tryglevie. Even back to Ferrante’s house. They had stayed just close enough to follow, to prevent our escape, pushing us . . . herding us . . . to the ending. Much more dangerous. And yet we could not stop. Not now.
We examined every slab and boulder around the lake shore for a passage or entrance. Hundreds of people would have lived in the stronghold during the Rebellion: women, children, old people. No matter what destruction had overtaken them, there had to be some remnant of the space where they had slept and sheltered from the harsh winter that would settle here for all but a few weeks of the year. But in many places the ice extended right down to the water, leaving treacherous footing, or the way was blocked by boulders from ancient landslides and we had to clamber over them or slog through the icy water. Halfway around the lake from our observation spot was a long, narrow strip of sand fronting an expanse of barren cliff face, but we found no breach in the rock.
When we returned to our starting point, D’Natheil picked up a rock and slung it into the water, breaking the gray wind-ripples. “We’re missing something.”
“Four hundred and fifty years,” said Baglos. “Perhaps there’s nothing left.”
“No, it’s here. I’m sure of it. I’ve been here before. . . .” D’Natheil’s voice trailed off, as if he weren’t quite sure what he was saying. “As far as this wooden head of mine can tell me, I was born on the shores of this lake. Here I began running, from terror and confusion and because I was so cold, I thought I would die before I had a clear thought. My clothes had been torn off me in a violent storm . . . darkness, lightning, fire, screaming . . . and I had only the knife in my hand. I dared not stop”—he dragged the words out of himself—“and then sometime, though not at first as we believed, but later, in the lowlands, past the end of the meadow with the flowers, I knew I was pursued by servants of . . . I didn’t know what it was . . . this shadow that wants me. I believed that if the pursuers caught me, I’d never find what I was looking for.” His bleak face yearned for answers. “I was looking for you.”
I wanted very much to give him what he needed. But I was a plodding mundane, as Baglos had told me so often. “Let’s look at the journal again. As you said, we’re missing something.” I pulled the fragile volume from my pocket, trying to shelter it from the blustering wind. Baglos huddled beside me, while D’Natheil leaned against a boulder and stared at the lake. The page with the diagram held nothing new, and the following entry was a long description of the Writer’s difficulties with spring planting.
“Turn back to the riddles,” I said. “Maybe we missed one.” Baglos and I pored over the page in the gray light, searching for any that might have been written later than the original description of the little girl’s game. The later entries were written with a pen slightly wider at the tip than the originals. Still only five, plus the additional phrase the Writer had inserted with the telltale pen. Not phrased as a riddle, it had never seemed significant. “What is this again, Baglos? He asks if his daughter is not a marvel, but I don’t remember the exact words.”
The Dulce read, “The day will come when men proudly cry out the name of our race, and it is my Lilith that will shine in their memory.”
“Cry out the name of our race . . .” My gaze met D’Natheil’s. With a trace of a smile, he bowed and returned to the edge of the lake.
Baglos whispered to me anxiously. “Will the name of the Dar’Nethi show us the Gate, then?”
“No. Not Dar’Nethi. . . .” Would D’Natheil think of it?
The Prince stood for a moment, eyes closed, the wind ruffling his light hair and the shabby cloak that could not obscure the truth of him. Then he opened his arms wide and cried out in a voice that thundered through the desolation, “J’Ettanne!” And as his voice called back to him through the thin, cold air, I felt a great release, as if the very stones had let go a monumental sigh at the command to share their long-held secret. Whispers and murmurings were all about us just beyond the range of hearing, quiet laughter, tears, whispers of pleasure, of love, of sorrow and grief and prayerful wonder, buzzing unseen like tiny insects about our ears, chaos existing in tandem with the wintry silence. But any expression of amazement was stilled in deeper awe of the doorway that now stood open in the stone cliff across the lake, an opening no less than fifty paces wide and three stories in height.
Without speaking, we repeated our journey around the lake, never taking our eyes from the incredible sight, never giving thought to pursuit or danger or anything beyond our moment’s wonder. The twin columns supporting the massive stone lintel were covered with the most graceful and intricate carvings: birds, beasts, flowers, all so perfectly worked that one could feel the life of them as they crowded the white stone. In the center of the rectangular lintel was carved an arched triangle, with a floweret in each sector it scribed.
The Prince stepped first through the gaping expanse. It was only right. The stronghold was part of his realm, marked with the emblem of his family. Baglos and I followed close behind. It was dark inside, but the Prince whispered the word illudié and torches blazed on every wall. I caught my breath as the great cavern came to life. Never had I seen a space of such beauty.
The cavern was so enormous, we could not see the roof of it. It was as if the whole mountain had been hollowed out and the stone walls polished smooth, displaying the mountain’s embedded treasury of tourmaline and jasper and lapis as magnificent waves of rich blues and greens, dazzling murals no human artist could replicate. Shining veins of quartz glittered in the torchlight like faceted gems, and a wide staircase with no visible supports twisted its way up through the center of the gleaming air to reach at least four levels of columned galleries carved from the cavern walls. The stairway and the galleries were connected to each other with a series of arched bridges, so delicate and graceful they could have been spun by a magical spider. And the bitter wind of the iron-gray lake was left behind, the air inside the cavern fresh and pleasantly warm.
A raw and desperate longing scribed D’Natheil’s face, even as he turned to the task in hand. “I need to explore the place a bit. A wall of fire shouldn’t be difficult to find.”
“I’ll stand guard, my lord,” said the somber Dulcé, drawing his sword and taking a position near the gaping doorway to the outside. “Do as you need.” With his ferocious glower, he looked quite small and foolish.
The Prince nodded graciously. “Thank you, Dulcé. We shouldn’t need your warding for long,” he said. “If I can’t do what I’v
e come for within the hour, I don’t think it will matter.”
Then, like a desert-bred child visiting his first garden, he began to wander. All my own weariness was forgotten as I trailed after him into room after room of marvels: an amphitheater whose dark-painted ceiling was inlaid with bits of faceted quartz, so that the flickering torchlight gave the illusion one stood under star-scattered skies; an immense refectory, its gigantic wooden tables perfectly free of dust, crockery bowls and neatly laid spoons awaiting the next feast; the kitchens, huge stone hearths and chimneys bored into the mountain’s heart. We explored workrooms, granaries, storerooms of all kinds, sewing rooms, map rooms, a library with so many shelves of books and scrolls that wooden-railed walkways spiraled up six men’s height or more in front of us—everything needed to support a population of many hundreds.
Climbing the wide staircase took us to rooms of all sizes, sleeping chambers, I guessed, though all were empty of furnishings. On the uppermost level, the gallery that overlooked the central cavern did not make a full circuit of the walls as did those at the lower levels, but instead opened into a long, narrow passage that delved deep into the back wall of the cavern. The torches were smaller there, and the walls rough-hewn and very much older. Promising. While D’Natheil was still opening doors off the main gallery, I explored the narrow passage. A hundred paces in, the passage ended in a wall of rock.
Disappointed, I started back, only to find D’Natheil just coming into the passage. “Nothing here,” I said.
But he shook his head, and I followed his gaze over my shoulder back toward the aborted way. The light flickered and the rock . . . shifted . . . and a pair of massive wooden doors stood in the center of the wall that had appeared to be solid stone only moments before. The doors were smooth and undecorated and dark with age. I could easily believe that no one had touched them since the days of J’Ettanne himself. No handle or latch was visible, but at the Prince’s first touch they swung open, silently and easily as if the hinges had been oiled just the previous day.
The passageway beyond the doors was chilly, and the light emanating from the arched opening at the far end was an odd bluish-gray. Another hundred paces and we entered an immense chamber, its walls, ceiling, and floor colorless and obscured by swirling, icy fog. A constant low-pitched rumble, unlike anything I’d ever heard, caused my hands to clench and my jaw to tighten. And so instantly confused were my senses of perspective and direction, only the stone beneath my feet gave me anchor. I felt as if I had stepped off the edge of the world.
But the moment’s sensory uncertainty vanished when we walked a few steps farther into the chamber and saw the curtain of flame that reached from the colorless floor all the way to the murky heights. Flame was the only name I could put to it, though its color was a bruised blue, darker than the coldest heart of a dying hearthfire.
“The Gate,” I said, raising my voice a little so as to be heard over the deep-pitched rumble.
“Yes.” D’Natheil’s voice was scarcely audible.
“And the Bridge?”
“Just beyond the wall of light.”
“Then we’ve truly reached the end of our journey.”
The Prince gazed upwards, face shadowed by the dark magnificence. “When we first entered the cavern, the image of a city passed through my mind—a glorious city of graceful towers, of gardens and forested parkland, encircled by mountains sculpted of green and gold light. Here will that city, that world, and all that exists in it live or die.”
“So what must you do?”
“I don’t know.” His grief was wrenching. “Were you to offer me the entire wealth of the universe or a thousand lives to fill my empty head, I could not tell you.”
“That’s why it’s time for those who know such things to take charge of this most delicate venture, is it not?”
We whirled about, as five men with drawn swords stepped out of the fog and quickly surrounded us. Three were brawny, well-armed fighters. The fourth, the sneering speaker, was Maceron, the fish-eyed sheriff. But it was the fifth, the one who held an unwavering swordpoint at my belly, that caused my soul to freeze. The fifth was Baglos.
“Dulcé?” D’Natheil’s query was quiet.
“I am most abjectly sorry, my lord Prince. There is no other way.”
“Did you never learn to look under your bed for snakes or in your boots for spiders, oh, Prince of Fools?” said the gloating Maceron.
The fish-eyed man might not have existed for all the notice D’Natheil paid him. “What means this, Dulcé?” No anger marred the Prince’s speech, only questioning and sorrow.
“It means the salvation of Avonar, my lord. If you could remember its beauties, you would agree.”
“How do betrayal and treachery become the salvation of beauty?”
“A bargain has been made, my lord. You’ll see. You are to be given exactly what you desire—the chance to save your people with honor and grace.”
“Do you understand who these people are, Baglos?” I asked, dismay swelling to outrage at his choice of conspirators. “This devil has done his best to exterminate the descendants of J’Ettanne. And now he’s serving the Zhid.” Giano, Darzid, Maceron . . . my certainties were unproven, but certainties nonetheless.
Maceron bowed mockingly to me. “Not at all a polite introduction, my lady, but what can we expect from one who has such a dangerous habit of involving herself with perverse wickedness? I thought you’d learned your lesson ten years ago.”
“You made the mistake of leaving me alive. Were you working for these same soulless villains even then?”
“My master is no devil sorcerer, but a noble warrior who works to rid this world of these perverted creatures who would enslave us and the traitorous scum like you who welcome them. He works with the priests of Annadis. That’s good enough for me.”
His master . . . dared I say the name I was so sure of? My tongue stubbornly refused to pronounce it, as if the very word were some evil incantation that would precipitate our doom. And the priests . . . “You’re a fool,” I said.
Baglos frowned, looking from me to Maceron. “How is it you know this woman?”
“It’s many years past and has nothing to do with our present transaction. You’ve done well, ensuring the priests kept on your trail. Now, we must ensure that your prince will not disrupt the smooth completion of our business.”
The three men moved in, and D’Natheil at last paid them a full measure of attention. The Prince grabbed one of the brutes by his sword arm and neck and slammed him into a second man. The two crashed to the floor in a tangle as D’Natheil tried to wrest the weapon from his remaining attacker. He spun the man about and pressed him to his chest, the screaming villain’s arm bent into an unmaintainable angle.
When Maceron raised his sword above the Prince’s head, I yelled and reached for the sheriff’s arm. But one of the fallen men stumbled up from the floor and crushed me to the wall. While I fought to get a breath, he shoved Baglos and his sword at me. The Dulcé’s sword tip pricked the flesh under my breast. I dared not move. His small face was frightened, but his hand was steady. Determined.
Maceron slammed the hilt of his wide, heavy blade into the Prince’s head. D’Natheil staggered, tightening his grip on his opponent, but the disputed sword clattered to the floor. Seizing their opportunity, Maceron’s two shaken henchmen pounced and wrestled the Prince to the floor, freeing their fellow and pinning D’Natheil on his face. Roaring in pain and fury as he clutched one arm to his side, the Prince’s freed opponent ground his thick boot into D’Natheil’s neck. A comrade stomped on the Prince’s right forearm and stabbed the point of his sword into the Prince’s outflung wrist, pushing down slowly until blood flowed freely from the wound. D’Natheil continued to writhe, lashing out with his feet and twisting his torso to get free. But the third ruffian kicked him in the side, leaving him flat and gasping.
Maceron grabbed my arm so tightly that his fingers bruised the bone, and he growled into my ear. �
��I would recommend, my lady, that you inform your testy friend of what we do to sorcerers. I’ve heard he can’t do much in the way of sorcerer’s magics, but I’ll cut off his hands if he so much as waggles a finger and remove his tongue if he utters a whisper. You remember. The priests prefer him undamaged, but they do most certainly want him. I’ll take no chance—no chance at all—of his escape. We’re going to destroy all of this.” He jerked his head toward the fiery Gate.
“You see, Baglos,” I said bitterly, as the men continued to kick the Prince in the side and the legs and the head. “This is the devil with whom you’ve made your bargain.”
“It is necessary,” said the Dulcé, refusing to look at what was going on behind him, even as he flinched with every thudding blow. “I do not wish it to be this way.”
When D’Natheil at last lay still, Maceron put me in the custody of the man with the damaged arm, a snarling brute with a drooping mustache and broken teeth. “You and the little vermin take the woman, while we get the sorcerer properly restrained. Have Kivor make sure she is secure.”
Disappointment and self-recrimination were lead weights in my boots as Maceron’s thug shoved me down the passageway toward the cavern. I stumbled and Baglos reached out as if to steady me. I jerked my arm away.
“You cannot understand, my lady.”
“I thought you loved him. I thought you were sworn to his service. The honor of the Dulcé and all that. Where’s the honor in betraying him to his enemies—your enemies?” We started down the circular stair, the ruffian’s knife pricking my back. Baglos walked beside me, his short legs hurrying to keep up.