by Carol Berg
It seemed an eternity that I shivered in the chamber of the Gate, watching the strange drama play out, but I had nowhere to go and could not think what else to do. Beside me lay a man grievously wounded. He was ashen and sweating, each breath an agony. The rag bound to his side was soaked in blood, and I felt a great swell of grief as I gazed on him. Tomas. My brother, Tomas. I hugged my knees and rocked back and forth.
At last my rescuer untied the binding and stood up, lifting the pale man in his arms. He stepped through the veil of fire and laid the man on the stone paving, next to the others. The hot rain must have washed away the blood, for there was none to be seen on the one who slept so peacefully, chest rising and falling easily, rhythmically. Then the blue-eyed one came to me and laid his warm hand on my cold, wet face in a touch of such sweetness that I cried out when he took it away. He knelt beside my wounded brother and drew his silver knife across his arm once more, leaving a great bloody gash just next to a scar that shone pale against his tanned flesh. He did the same to Tomas’s arm, and bound them together, and again spoke the words. “Life, hold . . . j’den encour, my brother.”
For a long time he knelt there, eyes closed, head bowed. When he finally loosened the woven belt, it was slowly, and his hands trembled a bit. “I’ve done all I can do for him,” he whispered. “Not enough. I’m sorry.” Then he moved to the moaning woman in black, the Zhid woman, and began again.
The clouds of terror and madness drifted away in the soft breath of healing, and before very long I understood what it was I saw. Tears rolled down my face, and I eased my brother’s head into my lap, while the blue-eyed sorcerer worked to heal the two Zhid warriors.
“Seri.” The word was more like a sigh than speech. Tomas’s eyes had fluttered open. His breathing was easier, but he was still very pale, and his hands were like ice.
“I’m here, Tomas.”
“What happened?”
“You’ve been wounded in a match.”
“More than a match, I think, but I can’t remember.” His voice was so very weak.
“Don’t try. It can come later.” I stroked his damp hair.
“There will be no later. He told me when he was inside me. Too much damage to heal.”
“You’ll be fine, Tomas. I’ll take you home.”
He wrinkled his brow. “No, it must be now. Your pardon . . . Garlos has it. Find him and you’ll be free. I’m so sorry, Seri, sorry for all of—”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I kissed his cold hand and held it to my breast.
His eyes were heavy, but I felt his urgency. “My son . . . he’s fair. Has our looks. Intelligent like you. Stubborn. Opinionated.” A faint smile graced his colorless lips. “I wanted to tell him—” His words stopped, and, for that moment, his hand crushed my fingers, as if he were grasping life itself.
“What, Tomas? What did you want to tell him?”
“—what a fine lad he is. A fine son. . . . so proud . . .”
“He’ll hear it. I swear to you he will. And he’ll know of his father’s honor and the glory of his house.”
Tomas allowed his eyelids to close and nodded his head slightly. His hand relaxed as he drifted away, his last breath soft and easy.
“Be at peace, brother,” I whispered, gathering him to my breast and rocking him gently as one would a sleeping child. The Prince had bound himself to the last of his fallen enemies, the Gate fire burned white, and the very air sang.
Once the last of the wounded Zhid lay in peaceful sleep, the Prince did not move again. He remained huddled over his knees in the center of the chamber, silhouetted against the brilliance of the Gate fire. I could not think of what to say. After a long while, he raised his head, his eyes glazed with exhaustion, and said, “I know you.”
“Yes.”
“When I can think again . . .”
“There’s no hurry.”
His chin drooped onto his chest. I could not see if he was asleep.
The white fire had burned away the shadows. The frost clouds sparkled with the brilliance of diamonds, as if the sun played hide-and-seek behind them. The walls of the Gate chamber no longer appeared somber gray, but displayed polished veins of rose quartz and green malachite, and the floor was tiled with intricate patterns of rose and pearl.
I laid Tomas out with the dignity the Champion of Leire deserved, straightening his limbs, smoothing his hair, and arranging his fine clothes to hide the terrible bloodstains. No wound was visible anywhere on his body. I placed the Champion’s sword on his breast and folded his hands across the ruby-studded hilt. My father had been laid out so a lifetime ago, the gentle windings of death masking the ravages of drunken grief in the same way they now erased the remnants of Tomas’s madness. From the passage I fetched the gray robes discarded by the Zhid and covered him.
These duties done, I was at a loss. I dared not leave the Prince. In his current state, a child with a wooden sword could take him down, and death and dangers still threatened from every side. That something marvelous had happened in this place was indisputable, but it seemed a fragile victory.
“Blast and perdition, what’s gone on here?” Kellea stood in the arched doorway, staring at the white fire, the four prostrate forms, the unmoving Prince, and the bloodstains that streaked the lovely tiles like some macabre child’s artwork. “Seri, are you all right?”
I must have looked wretched: soggy, bedraggled, and spattered with mud and blood. “I don’t know.” I had experienced every possible emotion in the past hours and could no longer tell one from the other.
“I felt . . . well, I could tell something had happened, so I had to come up.” Kellea moved from one body to the next, peering into their still faces. A longer look at the Prince. “Where’s the boy? He was determined to help. I couldn’t keep him back.”
“Paulo . . .” I peered through the fog, the knot in my belly eased almost as quickly as it formed. A slight body was huddled against the outer wall. The mist drifted by, revealing a thin, freckled face, a portrait of wonder as the boy stared up at the fiery Gate.
“You’re all right, boy?” Kellea and I both breathed easier at his wordless nod.
“What happened here?” She turned her attention to the still forms around us. “Are they dead?”
I tried to gather words. “This one“—I laid my hand on Tomas’s still form—“is the champion brought by the Zhid to be slain—my brother. They drove him to madness. To his death. The Prince couldn’t save him. The three who were Zhid live, and I believe that when they wake they’ll no longer be Zhid.” The soaring fire filled my heart and dried my tears. “He healed them. And somehow the power of his enchantment—his healing gift—turned the Gate fire white . . . so he must have strengthened the Bridge, too, I think. He gave everything . . . and I don’t know what the consequence of that might be. He may not have enough life left in him to wake again.”
“He will awaken if I have anything to say in the matter. And if there is a breath of life left in him, he will remember you, Lady Seriana.”
I would not have wagered an empty box that I had enough strength left to move, but when the voice boomed at us from the direction of the Gate, I grabbed the Prince’s abandoned dagger and leaped up from the floor, standing between the unmoving D’Natheil and the intruder who limped out of the curtain of white fire, leaning on a wooden staff. He was a short, muscular man dressed in a shabby brown robe that gaped open to reveal a wrinkled white tunic belted over scuffed brown breeches. His curly hair and beard were brown, streaked with gray, but a youthful visage made his age quite unguessable. Nothing was at all remarkable about the man, save for his intensely blue eyes and the incredible voice that rang with wind, thunder, poetry, and wickedly prideful self-confidence. I dropped my weapon. No mistaking him. “Dassine.”
CHAPTER 37
“Indeed, I am he that you name,” said the man who walked out of the wall of fire. He bowed to Kellea and me, but his eyes were only for D’Natheil. “If you will excuse me . . .”
He limped across the chamber and tenderly lifted the Prince’s haggard face, examining it intensely. D’Natheil’s eyes were open, but whatever he saw was far distant from that room. He demonstrated no awareness of Dassine, or me, or anything around us. “Oh, my dear son,” murmured the sorcerer. “All I believed of you . . . How right I was.” He pulled off his brown robe and laid it around the Prince’s shoulders. “Rest now, and we’ll care for you as you deserve.”
He stood up slowly and leaned on his staff. “It will be some time before he can do anything but maintain his own existence, but I believe he will be fine.”
“And he will know who he is?” I said.
“Not today”—Dassine heaved a great sigh—“nor tomorrow. Not for a goodly time. But he’ll know. One day he will laugh, and ride his great horse, and grow enchanted roses for you in the middle of winter. As I told you.”
“Then I’m right. He is . . .” I could not pronounce the name aloud, lest by the single word my hope would shatter itself on the bulwark of impossibility.
“Oh, yes. In this body lives the soul you know as Karon Lifegiver. It is neither dream nor self-delusion.”
I could not speak.
“Some remnant of D’Natheil will always remain with him, but eventually it will seem neither strange nor uncomfortable. He will never look like himself, of course. His body is D’Natheil’s and that will not change though it appears he has taken on something closer to his own span of years.” Dassine laid a hand on the fair hair threaded with gray.
“How is this possible?”
“Mostly because of Karon himself—his strength and will and unparalleled love for life. His is a prodigious gift. Luck, too, has played its part, as have I—and you.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I can’t stay for stories,” said Kellea, who stood stiffly next the doorway. “Graeme—”
“Heaven and earth, the sheriff!” I said, guilty that my own desire had displaced thoughts of the injured Graeme Rowan. “Master Dassine, our good friend lies injured downstairs. . . .”
“And what has that to do with me?”
“You’re a Healer, are you not?”
“I’m the most gifted Healer that lives, but I do not spend my talent lightly.”
His arrogance pricked like a thorn in the shoe. “I’m well aware of the cost of healing,” I said. “And I don’t ask lightly. A friend is dying from fighting your war.”
“Hmmph.” The sorcerer wrinkled his brow. “I suppose I must look at him.”
“He’ll want no help given unwilling,” said Kellea, snarling. “I’ll care for him myself.”
“No, no, you misunderstand.” Dassine waved one hand dismissively. “I don’t begrudge the man. But it’s been my practice never to spend my power on minor matters, and I’ve no strength to spare today. But if your friend is so desperate a case, I’m quite willing to see to him. I’ll warn you, though, young woman, that this cursed leg makes me damnably bad at dodging pursuers.”
“I think I can get you there safely,” said Kellea, choking on her fury. “There are only three frightened Leiran soldiers wandering about the cavern.”
“I’ll go then. You’ll watch over him?” said Dassine to me.
“I will.”
With every moment I spent near the Gate fire, I felt stronger, as if my blood drew sustenance from its glory. It was good that Karon was here.
At least an hour had passed by the time Dassine limped back into the room. “The good sheriff is resting. He will be healthier than he ever was and will very likely never appreciate it properly. The girl has stayed with him, and the ragamuffin boy.” With tenderness that belied his grumbling pomposity, he felt the Prince’s wrist, laid a hand on his temple, and peered into his vacant eyes. “It will still be a while until he can move. You want to know how it was done, I suppose.”
“I want to know everything.”
Dassine traced a circle in the air with his walking stick, and then, astonishingly, unfolded the ordinary looking limb of wood into a stool with a woven seat. He plopped himself onto it with a sigh. He didn’t explain his bit of magic nor offer me any comparable accommodation.
“I was in the Chamber of the Gate on the day your husband died,” he began. “The glory of that day was unimaginable, beyond hope, and the monstrous stupidity that followed was nearly our undoing. I think Exeget sent young D’Natheil to the Bridge early to destroy the evidence of his own monumental failure.
“The boy had been wild and incorrigible from the day of his birth, but intelligent, certainly, and strong-willed and courageous beyond his years. When his father and brothers died, he suddenly had demands on him: to act like a prince, to understand the war, to do those things you call magic. In their blind stupidity, the Preceptors could not see the worth of him and use his strength to encourage his best nature. As a result, D’Natheil excelled at swordplay and hand combat, but no heart developed alongside them. No wisdom or grace. Humility is a virtue we prize in our princes; Exeget, the pompous traitor, tried to beat it into him as if it was his fault he had received no teaching. When I first saw D’Natheil after my return from the Wastes, he had been forced to live out of doors for three days, unclothed in the most terrible winter weather, for refusing to bow to Exeget.” Dassine’s discourse was very like the spring storms that roll one after the other across the northern marches, each phrase a roiling intensity of disgust or bitterness or sorrow.
He glanced at me sharply. “You know of Exeget?”
I nodded.
“The boy preferred to shiver in his nakedness than to grovel before a fool. He hungered for war. By the time he was ten, some on the Council believed he was already a tool of the Zhid. Whatever the truth of that, the Bridge destroyed D’Natheil. When I carried him away from it, there was no soul left in him. An hour’s examination told me that the last Heir of D’Arnath was never going to save his people.”
“But if this was after Karon died, then how—?”
“Patience, madam!” said Dassine, rapping his staff on the floor in front of me. “The people were not told what their foolish Preceptors had done. While Avonar yet sang the triumph of the Exiles and the opening of the Gates, I sat by D’Natheil’s bedside and mourned the noble line of D’Arnath, and with him, our future and yours. You see, as a result of the long years of war, we Dar’Nethi had lost ourselves. Our princes had been trained more and more strenuously in the art of war, yet the Gates had remained closed and the Bridge had grown weaker. If only the Heir was like the one who had opened the Gate, I thought. All of us had felt the power of his enchantment—the will, the glory of his life’s essence. As I gazed on the deadness in D’Natheil’s eyes, I wondered how those eyes would appear if the light of such a life was reflected there.”
“Karon had not yet crossed the Verges,” I said, dragging at the traces of the old man’s story.
Dassine smiled crookedly. “It had only been three hours, three hours from exultation to despair. I was beside myself with anger, and so, there in my study, with D’Natheil half dead and the brave songs still echoing through the falling darkness, I sought through the ether for the one who had given everything to save us. Such souls do not cross the Verges quickly.”
“And you found him.” The wonder of it was almost unbearable.
“It wasn’t difficult to identify his among the souls that traveled that night. I summoned him and told him what I wanted—to return him to life in our prince. He refused. As long as there was life in the boy, he could not supplant it, he said. And L’Tiere beckoned, as it will for any who have left their physical being behind. But I bound him to an artifact of power and told him that I would do my best to heal D’Natheil. If I was successful, then I would release Karon to go beyond the Verges. But if the Heir had been irreparably damaged as I feared, then he, Karon, must live again as the Heir of D’Arnath.”
Dassine’s eyes glistened with tears, and he drew a clenched fist to his breast, lost in his storytell
ing. “At first he would beg me to let him go. The agony of his death was real to him at every moment of every day. I chided myself that in prolonging his torment, I had come to be no better than our enemies. But I could not release him; we had no one else. And so we waited. Ten years—”
I was overwhelmed with horror. “Ten years? You made him wait for ten years between life and death?” Ten years with no body—no light, no scent, no sound, no touch of wind or rain or human hand. Only the fire. How could any man do such a thing to another?
Dassine reached out his hand for me. I recoiled, but his piercing blue eyes held me, insisting I accept his truth. “You must believe that he came to accept this half-life I gave him. As we grew to know each other, he became involved in my work and the pain of his existence receded. Karon became an extension of my mind, and, had I not come to love him as my own son, I could have been tempted to enslave him in such a way forever. We could have rivaled the Lords of Zhev’Na in our combined power. But, instead, I learned of this world and of you, and in the plan that evolved in my head, I knew you had to play a part.
“I was ready to bring him into D’Natheil after only a year. The boy could eat, and speak, and fight as he always had, but there was no thought in his speech, no moral grounding to his combat. Even so, Karon would not consider it while D’Natheil yet lived, though it would have meant release from his own captivity.”
Dassine was no longer telling the story, but reliving it: the challenge, the awe at his own audacity and skill. “To pour the life essence of one man into the body of another is a deed of tremendous complexity, with immense risks and unfathomable implications. As the years passed, I devised the plan to take away all memory, so that the minimal functioning mind and the physical body could learn to work together. Over a period of months, I would carefully awaken each memory and do whatever was necessary to guide him through the difficulties of the joining. Karon consented, though I think the prospect of giving up his memories frightened him more than anything. It was you, you see. With all his being he desired to carry his memory of you beyond the Verges, and if I failed, he would be left with nothing. I promised that if we ever made the attempt, the first memory I returned would be something of you.”