Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  When she stood up after her genuflection, she probed me, not illicitly with her mind as Ustele had done, but with warm, rough hands that quickly and firmly traced every contour of my face.

  “I hope I have exceeded your expectations, Mistress Madyalar,” I said to her. I started to add, “even though I’ve produced no son.” But in a moment’s unsettling clarity, I realized that I didn’t know whether I had fathered any children. I-Karon-was forty-two years old, so Dassine had told me. Twenty of those years were still missing. The thought was disconcerting, one I could ill afford in my present situation. I closed my eyes for a moment, afraid the world might disintegrate.

  Madyalar drew me back. “You are no longer the boy I examined for so many years, my lord.”

  My eyes flew open. She had a curious smile on her face.

  “My bruises tell me that I am.”

  She cast her eyes slightly to her right where Exeget was studiously gazing out of the window. “I don’t doubt that. Childhood bruises sting long after their discolor has faded. Though I would like to avoid contributing to Dassine’s inflated opinion of himself, you seem changed for the better. Whether it is the old devil’s skill in teaching or merely the fact that he saved your life until you matured on your own, the air is quiet about you now, whereas before it was a constant tumult. You bear many burdens that you did not when we saw you last, and you carry them with a strength that is different from that you displayed as a youth. And you have gray in your hair, Your Grace.”

  “Years will do that.” No sooner had I said the words than I knew I’d made a mistake. The tension in the room drew tighter, and the dozen calculating eyes fixed on me widened.

  “True,” said a puzzled Madyalar. “But you must tell us how a few months can work such an alteration.”

  Although I remembered nothing of D’Natheil’s life since I was twelve, Dassine had told me that it had only been a few months since I-D’Natheil, a prince of some twenty-odd years of age-had been sent onto the Bridge a second time, crossing into the mundane world on a mission I could not remember. These people had witnessed my departure. But the details of that journey were embedded in the lost years of one life and buried under twenty missing years of another. Spirits of night… what had happened to me?

  My tongue stumbled onward. “I’ve worked hard at improving myself and continue to do so.” Without further word, I moved on to Exeget.

  Permit no questioning. Keep silent. Satisfy them. Get rid of them. These commands burst into my head as if I had thought them myself. Concentrate, fool. That command was my own.

  “Our hopes and good wishes are with you, my lord Prince”-Madyalar spoke quietly to my back-“and, of course, the wisdom of Vasrin.”

  I nodded, hoping I hadn’t offended her.

  By an immense act of will I did not flinch when Exeget laid his perfectly manicured hands on mine. I knew he watched for it, hoped for a hint of cowering to demonstrate that he had power over me. For the greater part of the three years I’d spent in his custody, I had devoted my entire being to making sure he never received such a demonstration. I had never feared him, only despised him, but his hands had been heavy. Neither cold nor warm, neither soft nor hard, no roughness or other mark of age marring their smooth perfection. He took great pride in his hands, and had always required a servant to bathe and care for them after he beat me. In those vile years he had claimed that he could allow no one else to take on the onerous task of my discipline, as only a parent or mentor was permitted to chastise a child of my rank. But his apologetic disclaimers had not deceived me. He had enjoyed it immensely.

  I confess I left him kneeling longer than the others, not so much to prove I could, but for the simple fact that I didn’t want to touch him again. Perhaps he felt the same. I had scarcely brushed his shoulder when he popped to his feet.

  “We rejoice, my lord, in the happy outcome of your journey.” A nice sentiment, belied by his demeanor that expressed little of rejoicing and much of suspicion and arrogance.

  I kept my mouth closed and my expression blank.

  He spoke as much to the others as to me. “Master Dassine says that your ordeal in the mundane world has been a great strain, requiring a period of withdrawal from your duties, duties you’ve scarcely begun. Will you require ten more years in Dassine’s care before your people have the benefit of your service?”

  “I’ll do whatever I think best, Master Exeget,” I said. To speak in calm generalities with a straight face is much easier when one is absolutely ignorant. An advantage in a confrontation such as this. It’s difficult for barbs and subtle insinuations to find their mark when the expected mark is missing.

  “Whatever you think best? Please tell us, my lord Prince, what is it you think best? For more than three months we have sought your counsel and have been rudely put off by our brother, Dassine. For ten years before your journey, you failed to seek any counsel but that of this same man, and we were not allowed to speak with you unsupervised. You had no experience before you left us and have had no experience since your return. What assurance can you give us that your ideas of what is best have any foundation in reality? Why does Dassine keep you hidden?”

  Ce’Aret and Ustele had not moved a step, yet I felt them close ranks, flanking Exeget like guardian spirits. “The Heir of D’Arnath is the servant of his people, yet he does not even know his people, nor do his people know him,” croaked Ce’Aret. “As Madyalar says, you are much changed. I wish to understand it.”

  “Perhaps Dassine has hidden him all these years so we would not know him,” said Ustele. “Can any of us say that this is, in fact, D’Natheil?”

  The room fell deadly silent. Expectant. I knew I should say something. What sovereign would permit such an accusation? But my head felt like porridge, leaving me unable to summon a single word of sense.

  “Master Ustele, what slander do you speak?” To my astonishment it was Exeget who took up my cause, donning the very mantle of reason. “Who else would this be but our own Prince? True, his body has aged, and his manner is not so… limited… as it was. But he has fought a battle on the Bridge-done this healing that has preserved and strengthened the Bridge and given us hope. Such enchantments could surely change a man.”

  “As a boy he was touched by the Lords. We all knew it,” snapped Ce’Aret. “Never did this prince demonstrate any gift of his family. He killed without mercy and did not care if the victim was Zhid or Dar’Nethi or Dulcé.”

  “And where was it the beastly child finally found some affinity?” asked Ustele. “With our brother Dassine who had just returned from three years-three years!-in Zhev’Na. Dassine, the only Dar’Nethi ever to return from captivity. Dassine, who then proclaimed wild theories that contradicted all our beliefs, saying that our determination to fight the Lords and their minions was somehow misguided, that training our Prince in warfare was an ‘aberration.’ And when he could not convince us to follow his way of weakness, of surrender, he took the Heir and hid him away. What more perfect plot could there be than for the Lords of Zhev’Na to corrupt our Prince?”

  The others talked and shouted all at once: denials, affirmations, and accusations of treason.

  “Impossible!” shouted Exeget, silencing them all. “D’Natheil has done that for which we have prayed for eight hundred years! The Gates are open. He has walked the Bridge, healed the damage done by the Lords and the chaos of the Breach. We have felt life flow between the worlds. He has foiled the plots of the Lords that would have destroyed the Bridge. All we ask is to understand it. His duty is to lead us to the final defeat of the Lords of Zhev’Na and their demon Zhid. We only want to hear how and when that will come about.”

  I couldn’t understand why Exeget was defending me. Their arguments had me half convinced.

  “We’ve all heard the rumors of what passed in the other world,” said Ce’Aret. “That D’Natheil allowed three Zhid warriors to live, claiming to have returned their souls to them. That the only ones slain in that battle we
re the loyal Dulcé Baglos and a noble swordsman from the other world. Has anyone seen these Zhid who were healed? Was D’Natheil successful? Perhaps the victory at the Gate resulted from the sacrifice of another of the Exiles and not D’Natheil at all. Perhaps the Prince failed at his real task-his traitorous task-of destroying the Bridge.”

  The accusation hung in the air like smoke on a windless day. Gar’Dena’s broad face was colorless, his eyes shocked. “Tell them these things are not true, my lord,” he said softly. Exeget spread his arms wide, waiting for my answer. Madyalar’s face was like stone. Even Y’Dan’s head popped up. They were all waiting…

  Permit no questioning. Keep silent. Dassine stood just behind me. Though his fury beat upon my back like the summer sun, he held his tongue. No one spoke aloud. Yet from every one of the Preceptors came a similar pressure, the throbbing power that was so much more than spoken anger or demanding trust, the battering insistence that I speak, that I explain, that I condemn myself with truth or expose myself with lies or justify the faith some held in the blood that filled my veins. These seven were the most powerful of all Dar’Nethi sorcerers. I felt myself crumbling like the wall of a besieged citadel. I had to end it.

  “Master Exeget, I’ll not explain myself to you…” I began, wrapping my arms about my chest as if they might keep me from flying apart.

  “You see!” said Ce’Aret, shaking her finger at me. “Dassine has made us a tyrant!”

  “… until I have completed my time of recovery with Master Dassine. Then I will appear before the Preceptorate to be examined. If you find that I am indeed who I claim to be, and you judge me worthy of my heritage, then I will serve you as I have sworn to do, following the Way of the Dar’Nethi as holy Vasrin has freed us to do. If you find me wanting in truth or honor or ability, then you may do with me as you will.”

  Dassine exploded. “My lord, they have no right! You are the anointed Heir of D’Arnath!”

  I turned on him, summoning my convictions as a flimsy shield against his wrath. “They have every right, Dassine. They-and you are one of them-are my people, and I will have only trust between us.”

  I believed what I said, and though it might have been wise to press the point with Gar’Dena and Madyalar and even Y’Dan, I had no strength to argue. I had to get out of that room. “I cannot say how long until I am recovered fully. I ask you all to be patient with me and to tell… my people… to be of good heart. Now, I bid you good morning.” I turned my back on them and fled.

  The Dulcé opened the door for me. I believed I saw a glint of humor in his almond-shaped eyes. Unable to shuffle my bare feet fast enough to suit me, I made my way along the route we had come. The stark simplicity of my little cell welcomed me-the barren stone that offered no variation to the eye, that kept the air quiet and stable and blocked out the clamoring questions that had followed me down the passage. My only evidence that I fell onto the bed before going to sleep was that I was in the bed that afternoon when Dassine roused me to begin our work again.

  CHAPTER 6

  Many days passed before Dassine and I had the time to sort out what had happened at the meeting with the Preceptors. He allowed no slacking off in our work, and my journeys of memory were increasingly troubling, leaving me no strength to spare for politics.

  I was reliving the time when the Leiran conquerors had learned that sorcerers lived in Avonar-the Avonar of the mundane world, the Vallorean city where I was born. By virtue of my position at the University in Yurevan, I had escaped the subsequent massacre. But I had immediately abandoned my studies and gone into hiding, telling my few unsuspecting mundane friends that I had tired of academe and was off to seek my fortune in the wider world.

  Rather than traveling in the spheres my colleagues might have expected, I had melted into the poorest of the masses haunting the great cities of the Four Realms, taking almost any kind of job that would feed me, intending to bury my former life for as long as it took for people to forget me. I dared not use the most minuscule act of sorcery. Such self-denial was physically painful as well as mentally distressing. Yet I was a Healer, and inevitably I would come across those who needed my gift. I could not refuse them. So I stayed nowhere long, wandering in the farthest reaches of Leire and Valleor, Kerotea and Iskeran, and into the strange wild lands beyond. It had been a fearful time, and I could not shake an ever-present foreboding when I returned to Dassine’s candlelit lectorium.

  During all these days, Dassine fumed. He snorted at any hint of weakness on my part, and his lectorium looked as if it had been ransacked by looters. We had never conversed much, but our silence had always been deep and comfortable. After the Preceptors’ visit, the very air was angry.

  To define my relationship with Dassine was impossible. He never asked what I had experienced in my journeys, though he always seemed to know whether they had been pleasant or especially difficult. I wondered whether he could “listen” as I relived my lives. Or perhaps he knew everything already. For my part, I could predict his actions with phenomenal accuracy, from the way he closed a book or the moment he picked to rub his game leg when the weather was damp, to the very words he would use to wake me. His moods colored my days. The vague impressions I had of him from my memories of D’Natheil’s childhood did not explain our familiarity.

  Exeget’s assertion that I had lived with Dassine for ten years before my second foray onto the Bridge intrigued me. Dassine had told me that my first failed attempt to walk the Bridge when I was twelve had left me incapable of analytical thought or human sympathy. If that were true, and it was only after that incident that I lived with Dassine, then why did I feel such close kinship with him? Had I known him in my other life as well?

  I had long sworn not to damn myself to incipient madness by asking such questions, and now I had to add the Preceptors’ accusations to my list of nagging mysteries. But the days passed, and Dassine continued to slam our plates of soup and bread on his table, kick the well-fed cats that wandered in and out of the study, and throw his candlesticks into a heap instead of packing them away carefully when we were done.

  “Get up. The world won’t wait on you forever.”

  I slid my toes out from under the blanket, trying to keep my eyes closed and my head on the pillow for as long as possible. But just as one foot touched the stone floor, a hand whisked the blankets off, exposing my bare flesh to the cool air, and yanked the pillow out from under my head, letting my head flop most uncomfortably. The stars outside my window told me it was sometime in the midnight hours. I had to find out what was bothering Dassine.

  I fumbled for my robe and slogged into the lectorium. After my journeys I was often incapable of speech, and he would brook no delays when he was ready to begin, so I had to act quickly. “Dassine-”

  “So, are you ready?” He mumbled and swore under his breath as he placed the candlesticks in the circle.

  “Dassine, I’m sorry if I disappointed you with the Preceptors. Was it my offer to let them examine me? I could see no other way to put them off.”

  “You had no need to put them off.” Had he been a bear from the frozen northlands of Leire, he could not have growled so expertly. From a lacquered box, he selected a new candle as thick as my wrist and ground it into one of the tall candlesticks.

  “But you know quite well that I had no idea of what they were talking about. How else could I answer their charges?”

  “I told you they had no right to question you. You should have listened to me… trusted me.” The last two words burst out of him as if unbidden, laden with bitterness.

  “Is that what all this is about? Gods, Dassine, I’ve trusted you with my life, my sanity, with the future of two worlds, if what you tell me is true. I do everything you wish, though it makes no sense, and I accept it when you tell me that it will all fit together someday. I’ve met no one in either of my lives that I would trust in such a fashion. No one. Not my parents or my brothers or any friend. I can’t even explain why, except that I seem to be inc
apable of doubting you. But despite my irrational behavior toward you, I cannot demand blind obedience from others. I will not, cannot, rule that way. You must know that as you know everything else about me. How can you ask it?”

  He scowled and stopped his fussing, sagging into a chair by his junk-laden worktable. He drummed his wide fingers on the table for a bit, then said vehemently, “Then you should have kept silent.”

  “Perhaps you should have told me more.”

  “I’ll not distort your past by interpreting it for you. You must become yourself again, not a version of yourself crafted by Dassine. Believe me when I say it is not easy to withhold the answers you seek. I have quite healthy opinions about many things, and it would gratify me if you were to come to share them. I believe you will… but I will not plant them in you now.” He hammered one finger on the table repeatedly to emphasize his point.

  “Then you can’t be angry when I do what I think is right, even if you don’t agree.”

  “Pssshh.” He averted his eyes.

  I pressed the slight advantage. “If I accept that I am truly D’Natheil, as you’ve sworn to me, then what harm is there in an examination? Even Exeget, as much as I detest him, would not go so far as to distort the findings of an examination by the Preceptorate. They’ll learn that I am who you say I am, and they’ll decide whether or not my mind is whole enough to lead them. It might do me good to have that reassurance.”

  Dassine pushed a pile of books from his table onto the floor and reached into a battered cabinet behind him, pulling out a green flask. He thumped it on the table and rummaged in a pile of water-stained manuscripts, dirty plates, ink pots, sonquey tiles, and candle stubs to come up with a pewter mug. When he uncorked the flask, the woody scent of old brandy made my mouth water. He poured a dollop into his mug, but didn’t offer me a drop.