Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  The grand open space was paved with the same luminous white flagstones as the small courtyard we had crossed to get here. Crowds of men, women, and children of all stations and appearances hurried across the commard amid winter-bare trees that glittered with frost, and fountains poised in frozen exuberance. In the center of the space, a monumental sculpture depicted five leaping horses, the middle one ridden by a woman, her hair and garments and the horses’ manes and tails flying in the imagined wind.

  Around the edges of the commard, vendors dressed in costumes of red, green, and yellow satin hawked sausages on sticks and drinks dipped from steaming pots, sets of colored balls, silk birds, and fluttering banners that twirled and spun in the air above their heads. Two women in silver masks sold small glittering clouds the size of one’s palm. Standing almost directly under my window, a young girl opened her hand and released one of the clouds, scattering its sparkling elements about her head. The music of a lute and viol drifted upward, fading only as the girl walked away. Sword-makers and armorers spread samples of their wares on broad tables to lure wandering warriors to their shops down the side lanes. It was as if I gazed on some fantastical painting, brought to life by a Singer like my mother.

  But my perception took another jolt as I gaped, for beyond the commard, perched on the hillside above the steeply sloping sprawl of gardens and open commard, was the same palace I believed we had just entered by a hidden door-rose-colored towers, white and gold banners flying. What’s more, though we had gone down from the courtyard and ascended no steps, we were now situated well above ground, perhaps on a third floor, overlooking what appeared to be the front gate of a modest inn.

  I spun about to inquire what was going on, but Bareil had sagged onto a wooden chair, leaned his small hands on his knees, and dropped his head forward. “Your pardon, my lord, but I find myself a bit soggy at the knees.”

  Pulling the flask of brandy from my pack and yanking the cork, I knelt in front of him. “I understand the vintage is exceptional,” I said. He reached for it, but his hand was shaking, so I held the flask as he drank. “Can you tell me this, Dulcé, did you not say we were at the west wall of the royal palace?”

  “Yes, my lord.” He took another sip from the green flask, then leaned back in the chair, sighed, and closed his eyes. “Thank you, my lord. Most thoughtful.”

  I left the flask beside his feet and returned to the window. “So, do my eyes play tricks or is that the same palace there beyond at least twenty acres of open ground and halfway up a steep hillside, its west wall tucked securely up beside it?”

  “It is.”

  “Then these hidden ‘doorways’ do not connect one space to an adjoining one as a person might expect?”

  “It would depend upon whose expectations were being satisfied, my lord. If one recalled one’s childhood lessons- that were evidently not well attended by certain royal children-one might recall the ways of portal-making. To connect one place to another is not a simple practice, but not uncommon either. Master Dassine was better at it than most. He was able to make undetectable portals that would change direction at his will. I suppose they’ll all remain fixed now he’s gone, and thus less secure. As soon as I can remember the steps needed, you must destroy the one we just used lest it lead your enemies here.” The Dulcé smiled as he looked about the room. “Master Dassine enjoyed this house-The Guesthouse of the Three Harpers-and would often come here to play a game of sonquey or drink saffria with friends in the salon downstairs.”

  I wanted to know more. Much more. The touch of the world, the breath of fresh air, and the sight of the strange and marvelous city awakened excitement I’d not known in long months. But my hands were grimy from the garden soil where I had buried Dassine, and Bareil’s tunic was stained with blood that should have been running through his veins and putting some color in his pale lips. I moved away from the window and sat on the floor by the Duke’s feet. “Tell me what happened, Bareil.”

  He sighed and closed his eyes, the pleasure draining from his face. “Master Dassine received a message yesterday morning, just after he had put you to sleep. I can recite the message for you, if you wish…”

  “Please.”

  “It said, ‘I have learned news of the most dreadful import. Our time has run out, and we are forced to deal with each other. The Third lives, and has obtained the prize he always wanted. Come to the observatory sculpture garden at sunset.’ ”

  “And that was all? Who sent it? What does it mean?”

  “That was all. Though the message carried no signature, I believe Master Dassine knew who sent it. He did not tell me. Something in the substance of the message caused him to cast aside any misgivings, as if it had confirmed his worst expectations.”

  “What expectations?”

  In some way the Dulcé‘s words were made more worrisome by the calm sobriety with which he delivered them. “My master feared this unnatural quiet. Night after night he would worry at it. He has watched the Zhid closely since you were a boy, listened to rumors and speculations and the changes in the world, charted Zhid movements and their preparations, trying to understand the Lords who manipulate them. Over the past few years he has seen disturbing signs that he did not understand. I am unable to tell you of these particular concerns now, although, when you are ready, you may ask me again and learn of them. You understand?” He opened his eyes to make sure of my answer.

  “I understand.” How strange it must be to have more knowledge than can be touched with one’s own mind, to know that another person must command your intellect to make it truly useful. Did it bother him? Perhaps when I knew him better, I could ask.

  Bareil continued. “ ‘We have become complacent,’ Master Dassine has said ever since your victory at the Bridge. ‘We go about our lives as if the past thousand years have not happened. Why were the Zhid pulled back from battle? The Bridge is strong and the Gates are open, but the Zhid are not diminished…’” Bareil left off and sat staring at the blank walls of the room as if continuing Dassine’s monologues within himself.

  “And so he went to this meeting?”

  “Yes. Though he expected to be gone a slightly longer span than he usually left you, you were unlikely to wake before his return. As was usual when leaving the house, he commanded me to stay with you. There was always a risk that something would happen to him. That’s why he stored the knowledge of his purposes and methods in me, so I could help you if the worst befell. Last night he commanded me doubly”-the Dulcé closed his eyes again- “but I disobeyed, and the worst befell.”

  “You followed him.”

  The Dulcé nodded. “The open nature of the sculpture gardens forced me to remain at a distance, so I could not hear what was said or get a close look at the one who awaited my master at the appointed time. They talked for perhaps half an hour until the murderers attacked. When Master Dassine fell, I, like a fool, drew my sword and ran to his defense. Nowhere is there a Dulcé less likely to win swordfame than I, and I knew my duty lay here… but I could not abandon him.”

  “I’ll not argue with your choice. Did he put up no defense?”

  “The assassins bore swords and knives, not enchantments. Master Dassine distracted their swords and snagged their feet with confusion, but there were too many of them. I noticed only one thing as I fell. The one who had called him there remained standing.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I could not see a face, only that the person wore a blue Preceptor’s robe with a gold stripe down the side of it.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I was afraid the murderers would discover that I yet lived, so I crawled under a bench, hoping to regain some strength, but I fell out of sense. Later in the night I became aware of people with torches, hunting Master Dassine. One searcher said, ‘I’ll not believe Dassine is dead until I see his body. You must find him. I will destroy whoever is responsible for this.’ ”

  “And who was it?”

  “The Preceptor Madyal
ar. I tried to call out to her for help, but no one could hear me. Some time later, others came to search the gardens-in stealth, my lord. Quiet voices, hooded lamps. Master Exeget led this second party-I recognized his voice-and he was furious that Master Dassine was nowhere to be found. I remained hidden until they were gone. I trusted no one to help, so it took me a long time to get back to the house. Too long, it seems.”

  “And did you see what Master Exeget wore?”

  For a long moment Bareil did not answer. “His robe was blue, my lord, with a gold stripe down the side of it.”

  Bareil’s testimony only confirmed my suspicions. From the moment Bareil had implicated a Preceptor, I had believed Exeget guilty. Madyalar must have got wind of the attack and come to aid Dassine, giving Exeget no time to make sure of his old adversary. I would give Exeget a hearing before I passed judgment, but if he was responsible, I would kill him. Dassine could not have intended me to give myself to his murderer.

  So then, what of Dassine’s mystery? “Dassine told me that a boy has been taken,” I said. “Abducted by the Zhid, I presume. He said that if they took the boy to Zhev’Na, then I was to surrender myself to the Preceptorate for examination. Do you know what he was talking about?”

  “Not at present, my lord. If I possess this knowledge and you wish to command me to speak it, we must perform the madris.”

  “If you’re willing, it would be a great service,” I said.

  The Dulcé grinned. “I’m honored that you would consider my sentiments in the matter, Your Grace, but as you have surely concluded and I know for certain, Master Dassine intended us to be joined. My guess is that if we do not, he will fly back from beyond the Verges to hound us until we do so.”

  “So I’m not the only one he bullied into obedience?”

  “Oh no, my lord, far from it… though I think perhaps with you he enjoyed it more… you being his prince and all.”

  At that we both burst into delicious laughter laced with grief, and raising the green flask, we drank to the memory of our demanding master.

  CHAPTER 11

  The first time I participated in the madris, it had been a hurried business. The Dulcé Baltar and I and the seven Preceptors stood in the Chamber of the Gate next to the curtain of roaring white fire. All of twelve years old, I had feared nothing in my life until I understood that I was to step through that wall of flame into the Breach between the worlds, balanced on a thread of enchantment. My mouth had gone dry and my stomach had churned, my terror so overwhelming that I could not attend to the rite that was taking place.

  The memory still confused me, for sometimes I envisioned Baltar, a solemn young Dulcé, who, though he was not a mote taller than me, had been lean and hard with powerful shoulders that emphasized my boyish stringiness. But sometimes Baltar wore another face, a rounder, older one, that burst into laughter, tears, worry, or delight with the ease and frequency of a child. I towered over him. It made me wonder if I had actually linked with a different madrissé-perhaps before my latest attempt to repair the Bridge-the one I could not yet remember. I could retrieve no name to go with the second face.

  Exeget had performed my madris rite with Baltar, for I had not possessed the power required. With Bareil, of course, I was on my own. But he told me what to do, practicing the words with me until I had them right. “Give me a moment to prepare myself, my lord, and then you may begin.”

  Bareil knelt on the plank floor of the tidy chamber, held his hands palms up and open in front of his breast, and fixed his gaze on something in the vicinity of the door latch. Gradually his eyes lost their focus, and the light of awareness faded from his face. When his withdrawal from conscious activity seemed complete, I placed my hands on either side of his head, as he had instructed me, and touched his mind. He had made himself completely quiescent and completely open.

  “Kantalo tassaye, Bareil…”I began. Softly I touch thee.

  To leave his mind so exposed was an incredible act of trust, for at that moment I could have filled him with anything: fantasies, delusions that bore the stamp of truth, sensations of pain or pleasure, desires that could induce him to murder or madness. I could revise his whole identity, his whole emotional bearing. But instead, I reached into the space he had left clear and uncluttered for me, and I carefully touched the centers of knowledge and memory, the places of instinct and reasoning, imprinting on each of them a trace of myself-a connection that would allow me to command their functioning.

  Only one step of the madris did I skip, that part which would place my mark on his will, giving me the power to compel his obedience. He had not asked me to forego it, trusting that I would not command him when he wished otherwise. Perhaps he knew me better than I knew myself, for I could not say that I would never press him against his wishes. Better to leave the connection unmade, even if it left our bond incomplete.

  For my part of the bonding rite, I simply gave the Dulcé a silent command to draw whatever he pleased from my own head. A sorry lot of miscellany that would be. The sensation was odd and unsettling, something like a thousand spiders scurrying across the skin with pricking bristles on their feet-only it was all inside my head. When it was done, I touched Bareil’s face to rouse him, helped him to his feet, and we clasped hands.

  “Well done, my lord… my madrisson,” he said, smiling. “You are more than your memories. No memory can teach you to be so generous with your gifting or so careful in your mind’s touch. I am honored and humbled to be your madrissé.”

  I tried to think of something equally kind to say, but he seemed to have used up all the eloquence in the room. “Thank you, Bareil. The honor is mine.”

  Though I was anxious to question Bareil, I encouraged him to sleep for a while. He took no time at all to accept the offer. The madris is a draining ritual for a Dulcé, and he had stood at the brink of death a few short hours earlier.

  “One more thing,” he said, as he moved to the bed, his eyelids already half closed. “You must destroy the portal that connects this place with Master Dassine’s house and the palace courtyard, lest someone follow us here. Command me, and I can tell you how to accomplish it.”

  And so I did. By the time I had stepped down the passage to the spot where we had entered, fumbled my way through the destructive enchantment Bareil had given me, and returned to the sunny little room, the Dulcé was deeply asleep.

  I spent the ensuing hours in the most elemental fashion- eating and wishing I could not think. Dassine, the child, the murderer… Several times that afternoon I came close to the precipice and had to tiptoe backward.

  What was I to do about Exeget? If my old mentor had killed Dassine, then he would die for it. Yet such conviction in a matter of life-taking disgusted me. As I had relived the past in these months with Dassine, coming of age in the mundane world, traveling its poorest places and learning of suffering and the art of healing, I had come to the conclusion that for a Healer to take a life was unforgivable. And to do it for so crass a purpose as vengeance doubly condemned the act. But neither could I support mercy in this case.

  The Lords had begun this war. A thousand years ago Notole, Parven, and Ziddari, three close friends, all of them powerful Dar’Nethi sorcerers, had discovered a new method of gathering power for sorcery, more efficient, they said, than the slow accumulation of experience, the acceptance and savoring of life that we called the Dar’Nethi Way. They had devised a way to borrow the life essence from plants or trees or animals, and once they had used it to build their power, to return the essence to its source, leaving the source richer, more beautiful, more complete than it had been before. In joy, excitement, and deserved pride in their talents, they claimed that with such an increase in our abilities, we Dar’Nethi would be able to heal the sorrows of the universe.

  But our king and his Preceptors, as well as many other wise men and women, judged that such practice was a dangerous and risky perversion, a temptation too easily distorted. All of nature was balance: light and dark, summer and winter
, land and sea, intellect and passion, even as our god Vasrin was both male and female, Creator and Shaper. If the return of essence enriched the source, then something else must be diminished-and thus the balance of the world disrupted. Every enchantment had its price, and King D’Arnath forbade them to continue until we understood the cost of what they did.

  Disappointed, but not ready to forego their greatest accomplishment, the three proceeded in secret, planning a monumental working designed to convince everyone of the innocence and rightness of their ideas-using themselves as the objects of their enchantment. But, as the wise had predicted, it all went wrong. Catastrophe. Oh, the three had indeed become immensely powerful, even immortal, so the stories said-Lords, they called themselves. But they had not returned anything of beauty to the world. They had left themselves, our beauteous land, and the universe itself corrupt and broken. Untold thousands of our people who had been in the path of their destruction had been transformed into soulless Zhid. All the realms of Gondai had been destroyed in the Catastrophe or the war that followed, only the High King D’Arnath’s royal city and the nearby Vales of Eidolon enduring, surrounded by a desert wasteland.

  How could it be wrong to destroy the Lords or the tools they used to draw the rest of us into their corruption? If Exeget had killed Dassine, then he would kill others, and I was sworn to protect the people of both worlds. The argument left my skull ready to crack.

  At dusk, I woke Bareil. Odd to be on the shaking end of it, rather than the shaken. “The sun is taking itself off, Dulcé,” I said, “and I think we must do the same.”