Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  I dropped my scratchy load of storage bags in the wooden bin where the kitchen Drudge directed me. After rolling each bag individually and stacking them as I was told, I wandered across the hot kitchen. The Drudge woman was stirring a kettle of thin, yellowish soup that smelled of cabbage, while another woman was tossing chunks of onion into it.

  I sniffed at their kettle. “Are you making this for the young Lord?” I asked. “I never thought one so high-placed would eat the same as us.”

  The toothless woman stirring the pot glanced at me as if I had asked if she lived on the moon. “The young Lord gets only what is fit for Worships, not Drudge’s food. And he ben’t here to eat nothing.”

  “I heard he come back here two days ago,” I said. No one was ever amazed at ignorance.

  “Someone told you wrong, girl. He’s gone off with the Worships long ago.” The second woman blotted her oily face with her apron and began to knead a pile of sticky, gray dough.

  I picked up a scrap of onion from the floor and nibbled at it. “Where do they go? When folks left my work camp, none of ‘em ever came back. Nobody ever told me where folks go when they disappear.”

  “Are you an idiot, child? Have you not heard of the war camps in the desert? All Worships go there, and so this young Lord has done. Drudges go wherever they’re sent as what our masters think best. No use to task your thick head on it.”

  “I am so ignorant. I never thought a Lord, one so favored and so young, would go to the desert camps. I thought that was for the lesser of the Worships. But I guess the young one was not so favored if he had to leave this fine house and go there. Did he do something to offend the mighty Lords?”

  “Such is Lords’ business, not servants. Why ever would you care?”

  “I’m just new here, and… I shouldn’t say it”-I dropped my voice low-“I am so afraid of the Lords and those who wear their mark. We heard such fearful tales in my work camp. I thought that if the young Lord who wore their jewels was not to be here ever again, then I wouldn’t be so afraid to come to the Gray House when I was told.”

  “It’s proper to be afraid of those higher,” said the woman stirring the pot. “I don’t know if the young Lord will come back from the camps, but he may. No one can predict the ways of the Worships.”

  A Zhid supervisor entered and shooed me back to the sewing rooms.

  To discover a way to follow Gerick to the desert camps was a daunting prospect. I had heard mention of at least twenty different headquarters-which might be only a small part of the truth or much more than the truth-and I had no idea to which one he’d gone. The only source of information that came to mind was the slave Sefaro, the chamberlain of the Gray House.

  Unfortunately, trips to the Gray House were a rarity. Most of my errands were to the guard barracks, delivering tunics and leggings and other apparel for the common Zhid warriors who lived in the fortress. Other ventures took me to the tanners and leatherworkers, to the spinners to get thread, or to the weavers for heavy rolls of cloth. On rare occasion Kargetha would send bundles of rags or gray tunics to the grim and wretched slave pens beyond the barracks and the forge. A few times I was sent into the Lords’ house. No matter how bright the sun blazed, within those dark walls the light was always like the hour before dawn, when only the barest hint of color had begun to emerge from black and gray. The air felt too thick to breathe.

  After weeks of frustration, I was at last sent to the Gray House with instructions to seek out Sefaro. I found him alone in his storeroom, sitting at the plain wooden table and working at his ledger. He seemed preoccupied, giving me only a cursory nod, rather than his usual smile. “Her Worship Kargetha understands there be needs in the Gray House.” I gave him Kargetha’s token that permitted him to speak.

  Sefaro sighed and fingered the small wooden disk. “The banners. We need the banners to be made.”

  “The young Lord’s banners?” A flush of waking life rippled across my skin.

  “He returns in a sevenday, and we’re to have the new banners hung for his arrival. I’ll show you the device which must be placed on them.” The chamberlain’s hand trembled as he pulled out paper and pen and began to sketch.

  “Are you not well, Sefaro?” I said, my soaring spirits restrained only by concern for the kind slave.

  He shook his head and continued his drawing, gripping his pen as if it were a dagger.

  I had come prepared to scatter my questions like seeds in a garden, carefully harvesting the things I needed to know. But Sefaro’s disturbance hinted that this was not a day for subtleties. So, I took a step of faith. “Of all those I’ve observed in this place, Sefaro, you’re the only one who’s seemed immune to its terrors. What’s changed?”

  His hand slowed, and, after a moment, he looked up from his drawing. “Who are you, Eda?” His voice was very quiet. “Each time I’ve met you, I’ve wondered at it, only to call myself a fool in the next breath. What Drudge would ever think to tell me of an injured child? And now…”

  I sat down in the wooden chair opposite him, and spoke in a whisper. “Who I am is no matter. But I know of the Way, and I grieve to see those who so embrace life held captive in this fortress of death.”

  His crinkled eyes grew wide. “Heaven’s fire… what Drudge knows of the Way?”

  “Just say I have more curiosity than is usual in Ce Uroth. Is there something about the young Lord’s return that troubles you? Does he use you cruelly?”

  “He is not cruel. At least, before this sojourn in the desert, he was not. Thoughtless, sometimes. He is very young, though he tries to be otherwise. But three of his teachers-all high-ranking Zhid-have been slain this day. And I’ve been told to complete my inventory and my accounts before he returns. It’s unsettling. Most likely nothing.” His gray complexion told his belief more truly.

  “Do you think they plan to kill you, too?”

  “Death has no fear for me. If you know so much of Dar’Nethi, then you know that L’Tiere holds no fear for those of us forced to live without the Way. No, it is for my people I fear. For Avonar. For the Bridge and the worlds.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of this.” He turned his sketch where I could see it. Two rampant lions supporting an arch, a device very like the shield of D’Arnath. But the arch was missing its center span, and in the gap was a four-headed beast engulfed in flame. In one clawed hand the beast held a sword, and in the other it crushed the two stars that had once been suspended over D’Arnath’s Bridge.

  “This is a fearsome device.”

  “If something isn’t done, the young Lord will carry it on his shield. He wears the jewels of the Lords, and all they teach him is evil. Though I cannot fathom how it is possible, I’ve heard he is to be D’Arnath’s Heir.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Hand of Vasrin.” Sefaro’s shoulders slumped as if I had dropped the sky on them. “He must be turned from this path.” The chamberlain glanced up abruptly. Sharply curious. “Is that why you’re here, Eda? Can you turn him?”

  “I don’t know. If I were closer to him… perhaps…”

  “I can arrange it, if you wish.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I am to make a list of all the house slaves and Drudges that serve here, and a list of possible replacements for each one, including myself. I could put your name on the list as a kitchen servant or a scrub. We have no need for sewing women in the Gray House, but such transfers aren’t out of the ordinary. I could put several of the sewing women on the list. Someone will just think it’s a mistake, but it wouldn’t be worth remedy. No one would believe for a moment that a Drudge would have any reason for preferring one station to another.”

  “If you could do such a thing, it might mean more than you know.”

  “I must not know anything.” A sweet smile illuminated his face. “Would that I could. But I will bury this gift of your trust like a squirrel buries an acorn in autumn and take my pleasure contemplating it through whatever is
to come.” He gave me his sketch and the rolls of black and gray silk. “Ten of them. In the sizes I’ve written here. To be ready in a week.”

  “Be easy, Sefaro,” I said. “May the Light shine on your Way.”

  He smiled and returned the wooden token into my hand.

  A week later, when I was sent to the Gray House to deliver the banners and take up my new assignment, a different slave sat on the chamberlain’s stool, and I had no token with which to allow him to speak.

  CHAPTER 34

  Gerick

  It was sometime after my return from the desert that I first ran across the Leiran boy. I had been out riding with my new riding master, a nasty Zhid warrior named Fengara. She made Murn look as kind as the old housekeeper at Comigor. On that particular day, she had slaves set fires with some of the dry thorn bushes that passed for vegetation in Ce Uroth, and I had to make my horse carry me between them.

  Zigget was the worst-tempered horse I had ever ridden, and at the first sight of the flaming barriers he went wild, rearing and kicking until I thought my arms might get pulled from their sockets before I had him through the first pair. He repaid my efforts by throwing me on the ground after every pass, snorting and threatening to trample me. Fengara was no help. She ridiculed me for my lack of riding skill and my inability to control the horse with my power. But nothing worked, no matter what I tried, words or whips or sorcery.

  By sunset, Zigget was frothing and quivering and tossing his head, but I had no sympathy. I was a mass of bruises and scrapes and thought I might have torn something in my knee. No stable hands were anywhere in sight, so I wrestled Zigget into his box myself and slammed the gate. He bucked and kicked the walls until they shook.

  “Bash your brains out, you stupid beast,” I yelled and started out of the stable.

  I didn’t get ten paces from Zigget’s stall when my knee buckled. I sat heavily on the straw, wishing a plague on horses and the Lords and the vile, wretched desert. When the throbbing in my knee had eased back below the point of impossibility, and I had hauled myself up to my feet, I heard a soft voice from Zigget’s box. “A right mess you are. He oughtn’t have done it. Serve him right if you were to bash his brains out. Too bad there are those that care for him, or I’d bash him myself for leaving you like this.”

  It was the wrong day to cross me. I hobbled back to the stall, determined to see who dared speak so of me. I would show him who could bash who. I threw open the gate of the stall, and there was Zigget, the most despicable beast in Ce Uroth, peaceably nuzzling a dirty boy who sat on an upturned barrel. The boy’s head was leaning on Zigget’s neck, not an arm’s length from the teeth that had come near removing my fingers earlier that day.

  “What are you doing with my horse, slave?” For some reason the scene infuriated me near bursting.

  The boy jumped up. He was not a slave, but one of the uncollared servants, a Drudge. I sometimes forgot they could talk, they were all so stupid.

  “Well?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and looked vague, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. A snort and a thump from behind him distracted my attention. Zigget had kicked another hole in the wall.

  I pulled out my knife. “I’ll take care of you, you cursed bag of bones. You’ll not live to throw me again.”

  “If you’d treat him right, he wouldn’t go loony at the sight of you,” said the boy, stepping between me and the horse.

  “Get out of my way.” I waved the knife at him.

  “It’s not his fault.”

  “He’s wild and wicked and deserves to die.” I pushed the boy aside, my knife ready to strike as soon as Zigget stopped bucking.

  “I guess it’s all you know how to do any more-kill what doesn’t suit.” The boy wasn’t really talking to me, but I heard him clearly. Such anger rose up in me that before I knew it, I had him pinned to the floor, ready to put my knife in his throat instead of Zigget’s. Though he was bigger than me, he was easy. He knew nothing of true hand combat.

  “Go ahead, if you want,” he said. “I’m nobody. That’s clear enough. But you’ll not master Firebreather without killing him. Then it’ll be nothing but killing forever.”

  I held the knife over the boy for a long time, waiting for him to look scared, but he never did. My aching head was filled with darkness, and Parven stirred. So angry you are… What problem is there, young Lord?

  “Nothing,” I gritted my teeth and stood up, pushing the boy away with my feet. I was too tired for the Lords. They always wanted to pick everything apart-use every bruise and every breath for a lesson. I wanted no more schooling today. This was an insolent, powerless boy and a stupid horse. “There’s nothing wrong. Fengara worked me hard, and I hate her, just as you wish. I’m hot and thirsty, and I have a knee the size of a melon. But since I’m not to be comfortable, it will take me a while to get back to the house, so leave me alone.”

  Parven chuckled in my head, and it made me angry again.

  “Leave me alone!” I let darkness roll over him, until I couldn’t hear him any more, and I felt like I was alone inside my head. It was oddly pleasing to know I could do such a thing.

  Of course, the boy couldn’t have heard Parven. He looked at me strangely and laid his hand on Zigget’s neck. The demon horse nosed his hair like an old granny.

  “How do you do that?” A suspicion came over me, and I laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. No, he was not Dar’Nethi.

  “I call his name and tell him about grass. He likes it.”

  “Grass?” When I spoke, Zigget flared his nostrils. I backed away in a hurry, out of range of a flying hoof. But to my everlasting annoyance, my foot slipped, and I ended up on the floor of the stall, my knife flying somewhere out of reach, and a hay bundle toppling off a stack right onto my head. The boy turned his face away quickly and made a choking noise. His shoulders started shaking. It seemed odd that he would be afraid, after being so calm when I was about to slit his throat.

  “Turn around this way,” I said.

  He looked over his shoulder at me and snorted, then tried to look sober. But he couldn’t, and he burst out laughing. No one laughed in Zhev’Na.

  “What’s so damned funny?”

  “Just… well… one as dignified as yourself… in such a wicked, magical place as this… coming so close to killing me not five breaths ago… and then getting knocked over by hay and a horse turd. It just don’t seem all that fearsome.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. He scratched his head and squirmed and tried to stop laughing, but then he would burst out again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said, once he was able to talk again. “I’m truly sorry you’re hurt. Should I get someone to help?”

  I didn’t want anyone else seeing me in such a state. It was dangerous in many ways. “I don’t need anyone.”

  “No. I can see surely not,” he said.

  I hauled myself up on the gate hinges, and tried to swing the gate open and get away, but the fall had made my knee worse, and I could scarcely take a step. The boy put his hand on Zigget, and said, “Stay. Settle.” Then he opened the gate and disappeared into the gloomy stable, coming back with a broken wooden pole that I could use for a cane.

  As soon as I was up and out of the stall, he went back to Zigget and closed the gate behind him, leaving me to hobble my way across the yard and through the fortress. I was halfway back to the Gray House before I realized that the boy and I had been speaking Leiran. It was too far to go back, and I was too tired. I wanted a river of hot water and ten hours in my bed, and I knew the Lords would be waiting to teach me more lessons. But I told myself that I would find that insolent boy again and have him explain a few things.

  I couldn’t do any training the next day. My knee was purple and black and had swelled up almost as large as my head. When my swordmaster came to see why I wasn’t in the fencing yard, he looked at it and frowned. “You need a surgeon. You should have said something last night.”

  “I told Lord Parven about
it,” I said. I had to work hard not to yell when he touched it.

  Half an hour later a bearded Zhid came into my apartments, followed by a young slave, carrying a leather case. I was sitting in a chair with my leg propped up on a footstool. The surgeon, named Mellador, commanded the slave to place a towel under my arm that rested on the chair, and then to kneel close beside my chair. The slave had the tight, edgy look to him that meant that he was acting under compulsion. It was easy to recognize.

  “A nasty injury, Your Grace, but we should have no difficulty,” said the surgeon, clucking and fussing over my knee. “There will be only a slight burning as I make the incision.”

  I couldn’t imagine what he was doing when he spread a yellow ointment on my forearm, and most likely my mouth dropped open like an idiot when he pulled a knife from his case and made a neat, finger-length incision in the same spot. My arm was mostly numb, only stinging, as he’d said. I tried to pull away, but he gripped my wrist.

  “Surely you’ve seen a healing, Your Grace. If not… my utmost apologies for not explaining. Your injury is too severe for ordinary means, and the Lords wish no delay in your training. We shall have it improved quite swiftly. Hold still.”

  Before I could come out with a single question, Mellador commanded the slave to hold out his arm. The youth obeyed, but as he did so, he looked at me with such an intense, solemn expression that I found myself shifting away from him uneasily. Mellador then cut a gash in the slave’s arm just above his metal wrist band. The cut was much deeper than my own, almost to the bone, and it began bleeding profusely. The slave did not cry out, but sucked in a deep, shaking breath. The surgeon bound the slave’s arm to mine with a strip of linen, then laid his hands on the slave’s head. A brilliant, burning flash filled my head-incredible power, boiling red-and-black fire that coursed through my veins, so sharp and vivid that it almost lifted me off the chair.

  Now to work… The surgeon’s voice had ridden the wave of power into my mind… mmm… a touch here… and here… I felt the torn pieces in my knee stretch and knit themselves together again, and what felt like chips of bone that were floating loose make their way back where they belonged. Soon, the discolor of my knee began to fade and the swelling to shrink. Instead of painful throbbing, only a pulsing warmth remained in the joint. I touched my knee with my free hand and was amazed.