Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  He wore a white robe, just as on the day I walked with him in my mother’s garden, but on this night his face expressed neither hope, nor joy, nor even the tired and rueful humor of that meeting. His haunted eyes were hollow, his face gaunt. His hands, resting on the wide arms of his chair, were shaking. Eyes fixed on the fire beyond the dais, he showed no signs of hearing anything that was being said. What had they done to him?

  Exeget seemed to be concluding an argument. “… and so we have uncovered at last what the traitor Dassine has wrought: imprisoning a dead soul before it could cross the Verges, murdering our rightful Heir, and reviving him by implanting this impostor in his body, leaving us with a sovereign so crippled of mind that he could easily be molded to his master’s will. Even our ‘Prince’ will tell you he does not belong in his office. His life should properly have ended ten years ago in the brutal fires of his adopted world. He belongs beyond the Verges.”

  Earth and sky, they’d told him everything!

  “But no matter the method of his transformation, you cannot deny that he is the Prince as well as the Exile,” said Madyalar, the woman in the color-shifting robe. “I see no difficulty here. He has answered all our questions. He possesses the Heir’s power; we cannot deny him. D’Arnath’s line ends with D’Natheil.”

  “Not so,” said Exeget. “Vasrin Shaper has again shown her faithfulness, taking the matter of our dilemma and shaping a solution. The line of D’Arnath cannot end if this Prince provides us a successor.”

  “But D’Natheil has no children. Dassine did not let him breed,” said the hard old woman, Ce’Aret.

  “All true, and yet… If we could produce one who could pass the test of parentage alongside our crippled Prince, would you not say we had found ourselves a ready Heir?”

  “Well, of course, but that’s impossible,” said Y’Dan, the bald man.

  No. Not impossible at all.

  Exeget smiled, waved his hand, and the bronze doors swung open. Darzid and Gerick entered the room and stood behind Karon, who stared at the floor, unmoving save for the unceasing tremor of his hands.

  Gerick was dressed in brown breeches and a sleeveless shirt of beige silk. A gold chain hung around his neck, and a wide gold armring encircled each of his tanned, bare arms. A knife hung from his belt, the sheath strapped to his leg with a leather band. His red-brown hair was trimmed and shining, and affixed to his left ear was a gold earring, embedded with jewels. In the two months since Covenant Day he had grown a handspan, but neither that nor his deep red-gold coloring nor his exotic adornment was the most profound change.

  He was no longer afraid. All the false bravado, all the sullen temper was gone; how clear it was now that they had been products of his terror. Gone also was the child who had watched with curiosity and pleasure when I made things that he could recreate for the old nurse he loved. Gerick’s eyes were cold, and hatred, not love, gave life to his face.

  I pressed one hand to my mouth and the other to my belly, trying to quell the dull, swelling ache just below my ribs. So profound a change in so short a time. What had I been playing at to allow this to happen? Who were these vile beings who could so easily and so determinedly corrupt a child?

  “Who is this boy?” rumbled Gar’Dena. “We’ve been told nothing of a boy. And who are you, sir, who ventures so boldly into the Preceptors’ council chamber?”

  “I’m an old friend,” said Darzid, “an Exile, like your Prince here.”

  Damnable man! What I would give for a sword to end his cursed life! Was it possible that he was Dar’Nethi?

  “An Exile!” said several of the Preceptors together, wondering.

  “Indeed this man is an Exile, who has by a strange accident preserved for us the hope of our royal family,” said Exeget. “But here-before anything else is said-the test. The test will tell all. Once doubt is put to rest, then we can explain the happy circumstance.”

  Exeget stood before Gerick and laid his hands on the sides of my son’s face. Gerick neither flinched nor changed expression. After a moment, Exeget took a position behind Karon’s chair and laid his hands on Karon’s broad shoulders. “Tell us, D’Natheil,” said the Preceptor, “who is this child that stands before us? What is his lineage? Do these shoulders bear the responsibility for his life?”

  Karon closed his eyes and spoke softly, no tremor in his voice. “This is my son, and with Seri, my beloved wife, I gave him life.”

  I pressed my forehead against the grate, gripping the iron bars. Tears welled up in my eyes, only to freeze on my cheeks in the bitter cold.

  Gerick’s face did not change, except perhaps to grow harder. He was not surprised by Karon’s words, and he didn’t like them.

  Exeget stepped back. Madyalar rose from her seat and swept from the dais, the rainbow stripes on her voluminous robes teasing the eye. She took Gerick’s hands in hers for a moment, examined his face carefully, and then, like a mother calming a fearful child, she stood behind Karon and wrapped her arms about his breast. “Tell us, D’Natheil, who is this child? What is his lineage? Is it this heart that beats in time with his?”

  Through the aura of enchantment, Karon spoke again. “He is my son, and with Seri, my beloved wife, I cherished him from the day we first knew him.”

  One by one they came, laying their hands on his hands, on his loins, and on his head.

  “Did your hands build a dwelling place for him along the path of life?”

  “Did your loins give fire to his being?”

  “Is it this mind that speaks to his mind and listens for the word father?”

  And he answered each of them.

  “With my hands did I heal and restore life where it was damaged beforetime, and so in the days of my first life, I built a house of honor for my child.”

  “Yes, it is my seed that called him from nothingness into the Light.”

  “He is my son.”

  “The bond of the spirit is proved,” said Exeget. “And, as you see, the bond of the flesh is also true, though the flesh was not that which our Prince wears on this day. Law and custom mandate that the bonds of flesh and spirit are the true witness of lineage, and who dares gainsay what Vasrin Shaper has provided? My judgment asserts that this child is the next Heir of D’Arnath. How say you all?”

  One by one, the Preceptors agreed-only Madyalar hesitating. “I believe we should wait. Let the Prince recover from his ordeals. Place him in isolation for a while. He may yet father children with this flesh-D’Natheil’s flesh. Then there would be no question. Or perhaps-”

  “No!” Karon roared, bursting from his seat. “Enough! You cannot make me endure this longer.” Reaching across the table, he thrust his shaking hands into Madyalar’s face. “There is no recovery from death. Ten breaths more and I will be unable to stop screaming. I am dead. I can do nothing for you. Care for my son. Protect him… please. Send for his mother to love and nurture him and teach him the savoring of life. Do not entrust Exeget with his mentoring… nor this Darzid who stands in the guise of an Exile, but is responsible for the extermination of a thousand Exiles.”

  The Preceptors recoiled in horror. The old ones gaped; Gar’Dena, Y’Dan, and Madyalar jumped from their seats, their dismay not aimed at the cursed Darzid, but at Karon, who writhed and twisted, wrestling to loose Exeget’s hands that had grasped his shoulders to pull him away from the table. Then, Karon broke free and backed away from Exeget, a knife in his hand. Breathing hard, his skin gray and stretched, he held the unsteady weapon between himself and the Preceptor.

  “My lord Prince, calm yourself,” said Exeget. “Your mind has been savaged by Dassine’s enchantments. Let us help you. I know of many things-”

  “Stay away from me!” said Karon, brandishing the knife. “When I can no longer hold, you’ll not want to be within striking distance of this weapon.”

  “Gerick… Your name was going to be Connor…Connor Martin Gervaise.” Though his gaze remained affixed to Exeget and the other Preceptors, Karon spoke to o
ur son with an urgency, intensity, and tenderness that wrenched the heart. “I wanted to tell you about my friend Connor. I wanted to tell you so many things, but there was no time. That was the worst part of dying… to believe I would never see you. And now beyond all wonder, we are together, but again… there is no time.”

  Gerick spat at his feet. “Murderer! I’ve sworn a blood oath to destroy you for what you’ve done.”

  Karon shook his head, his lean face sculpted in pain. “So much blood on my hands-holy gods, I don’t deny it-but not that of which you accuse me. If only there was time”- he staggered backward a small step-“I’m so sorry, Gerick. So sorry. Look at me… look deep and search for the truth.” Then he closed his eyes, and with his trembling hands, my beloved plunged Exeget’s knife into his own belly.

  “Karon! No!” I screamed, yanking at the iron grate as if to rip it from the mortar.

  The chamber erupted in frenzy as Karon slumped to his knees. The giant Gar’Dena rushed forward bellowing and gathered him in his brawny arms. His cry of grief shook the walls of the chamber. “Great Vasrin, alter this path! What have we done? The Heir of D’Arnath is dead!” Madyalar and the two old people screamed for guards and Healers, while Y’Dan slumped into his chair and laid his head on the table, weeping.

  Darzid stiffened and unsheathed his sword. Grabbing the wide-eyed Gerick, he backed away from Karon and the Preceptors.

  An expressionless Exeget watched the madness and did nothing.

  Fate could not be so brutal, so unfair. “Why did you do it?” I sobbed, gripping the iron bars. “I could have helped you. Oh, love, why? Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  As if in echo of my words, there came a flutter in my head, a delicate brush of words… wait for me… Then, in a moment of grace, my mind was filled with Karon, without pain, without fear, whole, knowing everything of our life together… Seri, beloved, forgive me… Then he was gone.

  The guards had to peel my fingers away from the grate as I hung onto the sweet echo, straining to hear more. But strangely enough, as Paulo and I were taken inside the Preceptors’ house, a different voice whispered in my head. Do not be afraid, it said. Say nothing.

  I wasn’t sure about that voice. Certainly it was not Karon’s. I might have named it Dassine’s voice, though Bareil had told me that the old sorcerer was buried in his own garden. And, too, the tenor of it was not quite the same. This sounded more as my own father might have done were he able to speak in the mind-my grim warrior father, who thought nothing of leading a thousand men to their deaths in order to slay a thousand enemies, all for the glory of his king. Once, when I was a child, my favorite pony had been crippled in a fall. After commanding a servant to slay the suffering beast, my father had taken me on his knee and awkwardly dried my tears. “The world goes on, little Seri,” he said. “A soldier never dies. His blood makes the grass green for his children.”

  Grief threatened to unravel me, all the more devastating after the hopes of the past summer-the love and grace I had been granted after so many years of bitterness. Yet this strange and sober voice reached through the storm that racked my soul and assured me that the universe was not random, not careless or capricious. The Way was laid down, and somewhere I would find a reason for its turnings.

  Perhaps it was my imagination. Perhaps I was a fool. But when Paulo and I were brought before the Dar’Nethi Preceptorate, I said nothing, and I was not afraid.

  CHAPTER 23

  They had taken Karon’s body-no, more properly, D’Natheil’s body-away by the time Paulo and I stumbled onto the fine rug laid before the council table. The patterned wool square, hastily moved, did not quite cover the fresh blood that stained the white stone floor. They had kept us waiting in a bare anteroom for several hours, able to hear only hurried footsteps and bursts of unintelligible conversation through the door. The exclamations of dismay were clear enough, though, as the word of D’Natheil’s death spread.

  Gerick and Darzid were no longer present-only the six Preceptors in their high-backed chairs. The one chair sitting empty at the end of the dais would have been Dassine’s. I wondered, somewhat foolishly, who would be chosen to sit in the chair. Maybe no one. Maybe the Preceptorate would no longer exist now that Gerick, a ward of Zhev’Na, was to become the Heir of D’Arnath.

  “Who is this woman? Where did she come from? And another boy? Is this one your own long lost son, Exeget?” said Ce’Aret.

  “We should get on with our important business and interview spies later,” said Ustele. “Everything is changed, now.”

  “Not ordinary spies,” said Y’Dan, still red-eyed from his weeping, as he wiped his nose on his sleeve. “These two are not Zhid.”

  “Ustele is correct,” said Exeget. “We have two matters of utmost urgency: how we are to announce the Heir’s death to the people, and what provision we must make for the boy’s care until he comes of age-approximately a year, so I understand.”

  Madyalar joined in. “Would that we could anoint the child right away.”

  “Are you planning to destroy this young Prince the same way you ruined D’Natheil, Exeget?” said Ce’Aret. “I pray this Exile Darzid is trustworthy as you assure us. The boy must not be compromised either by the Zhid or our own foolishness. We must find him a proper protector and suitable mentors.”

  “This Exile is eminently trustworthy,” said Exeget. “And he’s already taken the young Prince to a place of safekeeping. I propose we leave him there…”

  As the six of them wrangled, a low mutter rose from beside me. “He’s not dead… not dead… not dead.” Paulo was staring at the blood fading from red to brown underneath the edge of the rug. A tear trickled down his freckled face. I reached for his hand, and for once he didn’t refuse it. When he looked at me, I gave him a slight shake of the head, warning him to be silent.

  “Now,” said Exeget. “Let us dispose of these spies, so we can get to our business. Not only are these two strangers not Zhid; they are not even Dar’Nethi.”

  “Not Dar’Nethi? No… I see not.” An itchy warmth crept behind my eyes as old Ustele peered at me across the table. One might have thought I had three heads. “Mundanes.”

  Ce’Aret sat up straighter. “Mundane spies? Who is this woman?”

  “As a spy she has severe lacks,” said Exeget. He tapped the ends of his smooth, white fingers together lightly. “And one has only to look at the woman to know who she is- even if certain people are too deaf to have heard her maudlin cries.”

  “I’m not deaf,” spat Ce’Aret. “There was a commotion.”

  “Yes, when D’Arnath’s Heir guts himself because his head pains him, an unseemly commotion is the likely result. But come, old woman, can you not see the resemblance to our new liege? I do believe we have the honor of meeting our young Prince’s mother.” Exeget jumped out of his seat and stepped from the dais, coming to stand beside me. Arms folded, he inspected my garments and face, much the way he might examine a piece of furniture.

  “The mother? The wife, then, of the other-the Exile that lived in D’Natheil?” said Madyalar, staring at me curiously. “Is that true?”

  “The Lady Seriana Marguerite-widow of the same man for the second time,” said Exeget. “A sad and most unusual case. And quite mundane. Of course, mundanes are not capable of spying as we know it. They can read nothing from our minds, nothing of the auras of life, nothing beyond the dry evidence of their eyes and ears. I cannot see how a Dar’Nethi-even an Exile-could consort with such deadness.”

  “Is the woman mute?” said the querulous Ustele. “Why does she stand there so stupidly?”

  “What should she say?” said Madyalar. “How pleased she is to meet us who sit in judgment of her husband and her child? How delighted she is that the poor madman somehow got his hands on a knife here in the council chamber? She’s committed no crime that I can see.” The woman slumped in her chair, tapping her fingers rapidly on the table, her mouth drawn up in annoyance.

  “Well, we can’t
just let the woman go free.” The bald Y’Dan bit his lip and wrinkled his leathery forehead. “She might know something useful. And I don’t understand-if she was the Prince’s wife, why did he not acknowledge her? Why was she sneaking about here in the dirt and”-his nostrils flared-“the stables?”

  “All good questions,” said Madyalar. “But a more useful question might be how she can help us understand our new Heir. The boy seems so cold. What child of ten calls his father a murderer? Our examination revealed no evidence of murder in our late Prince.”

  “Clearly one of us must question the woman before we let her go on her way,” said Exeget. “As she cannot cross the Bridge to her own world until her own son can take her, she and her young companion will need someone to take them under his wing. I consider such a matter to be my responsibility as head of the Preceptorate.”

  I almost broke my resolution of silence. I would not surrender myself or Paulo to Exeget.

  “No, I’ll take her,” said Madyalar, shooting a wicked glare at Exeget. “You insisted I turn over the Prince to you for the examination, and look what’s come of it. He was wreckage, already half dead before you brought him here this morning. This matter”-she waved her hand at Paulo and me-“needs a woman.”

  “How dare you question me? The Prince’s state was Dassine’s fault, not mine, and if you think I will allow the new Heir to be coddled by some maudlin female-”

  “A plague on both of you”-Gar’Dena rose to his considerable height, pounding his meaty fist on the table until the floor shook with it-“and on all of us Dar’Nethi who have allowed matters to reach this pass.”

  Throughout the whole discussion, the huge man had sat silently in his oversized chair, his massive head resting on thick fingers ringed with emeralds and sapphires. But now his thundering rage silenced the childish bickering like an arrow in the throat. “We were saved from one disaster by our brother Dassine and this dead Exile, whom you so callously dismiss. Now we stand at the brink of another, and you quarrel about your petty prerogatives. We should humble ourselves before this woman who has suffered such loss as we cannot imagine. We have no right to question her, but should instead beg her forgiveness and implore her to enlighten us as to what might influence her son to follow the Way of the Dar’Nethi. To that end, I will take her under my protection, and whoever says ought against it will discuss it with my fist.” A burst of white lightning spat from Gar’Dena’s jeweled hand.