Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  “Well, young friend, how was your day’s activity?” Darzid walked up behind me and peered over my shoulder at the sand that now lay in a heap on the tiled floor. “What’s this?”

  “Boots full of sand.”

  “I thought the horse was treating you better these days.” He picked up the dish from the floor.

  “Not since Fengara was replaced. I had to change to a new mount because the last one was impossible. And the new one isn’t much better. I still spend more time on the ground than in the saddle.” I let my anger and my bruises fill my mind, while shoving Firebreather and the Leiran boy and mysteries into its farthest corners. Ziddari was curious. I had to be careful.

  “Your combat instructors report that you are progressing decently, that you work hard.”

  “I don’t know. They don’t tell me of it.”

  Darzid tossed the broken glass on the table, and then pulled up a few of the giant cushions that lay about the room, stretched out on them, and began combing his beard with his fingers. That always meant he was going to lecture me. “But Notole is worried about your studies of sorcery.”

  “Why? I’ve learned to do a lot of things.”

  “Child’s magic. Illusions. Games. You are to be the most powerful sorcerer in the universe. Don’t you think it’s time you moved beyond calling horses and lighting candles?”

  “I’ve done bigger things. I caused an avalanche last week. And a few days ago I melted rock into a pool so that a kibbazi fell into it and turned to stone when I let it harden again.”

  “Tricks. You must begin to study more serious matters.”

  “Notole tried to teach me how to read thoughts. I worked at it, tried it with the guards and with slaves. But it seems like I just get started, and everything closes up where I can’t see any more. I just need to practice.” I threw my boots into the corner of the room and walked over to the table where a cup of steaming cavet was waiting for me. My stockinged feet left a trail of sand across the floor.

  “You need power. You know that. It’s not enough that you let your power grow at its own rate. You must aggressively acquire it. The time draws near. Tomas’s spirit and that of your nurse cry out for vengeance. You’ve not forgotten?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then you must take the next step. Learn how to take what you need. Just as you use slaves and Zhid to improve your skills for battle, so you must use whatever is required to make yourself ready for the other battle that awaits you. The Dar’Nethi are not what they were, but strong and intricate sorcery is still to be found in Avonar. They will not lie down for you and say, ‘Oh please, lord Prince, enslave us. Allow us to repay a thousand years of brutal oppression.’ Tonight you will go to Notole, and she will begin teaching you about the acquisition of power. You will listen to her.”

  “I always listen.” I hated when he talked to me as if I’d never thought of these things myself.

  “Good. And you’ll not refuse what she offers.”

  “I want to learn everything.”

  At least he took me at my word. I suppose he could tell I really meant it. “And so, how is your life here? Do you have everything you desire?”

  “The Lords have given me everything.”

  “Indeed. We always keep our bargains.”

  After I ate and slept for an hour, Notole summoned me to a workroom deep in the Lords’ palace. The chamber was dark, except for two intense green lights-her emerald eyes.

  “Sit here,” she said, and a path of green light showed me a backless wooden stool just beside her. “So you’re ready to take the next step, young Lord?”

  “I want to learn it all.”

  “And there is so much to learn once you have power enough…” She told me all the things I would be able to do once I learned to acquire power beyond what existed in me: read thoughts and induce dreams, lay compulsions that could make a person do anything I wanted, manipulate objects without touching them, and even change the weather. “When you are sixteen or so, young Lord, you will come into your full talent. Sometimes I can see what it will be in a child your age, but you are much too dark and complex. It will be interesting to see what awaits you. But for the war to come, you will not yet be in your prime, so we must develop what skills you have. And first and foremost, you must learn about power.”

  All Dar’Nethi were born with the power for sorcery. It was a part of us, Notole said, just like our ability to think or to speak or to read. And just like those things, it required only a little teaching to be able to use it. But to work any significant sorcery, one needed more power than what just happened to be inside you.

  The Dar’Nethi increased their power using their experiences as they went about their lives, by observing and thinking and holding on to the images and feelings. “The fairy dance,” Notole called it. “They are so limited in their vision, they let the most magnificent of all gifts wither from boredom, tiptoeing through the universe like children at a glassmaker’s shop afraid to touch anything. But you, my young Prince, can dismiss their foolish limitations. Look beyond yourself, and you can have all the power you wish in an instant. Here, take this stone”-she set an ordinary piece of the red desert rock in my hand-“and look on it. Consider it. Focus your inner eye on this worthless piece of nothing, and seek out its true parts in your mind, the essence that makes it a stone rather than a tree or a frog.”

  She guided me through the jewels in my ear, helping me to think of the stone and the gritty sand that made it… and before very long, I felt a small, pulsing heaviness-not in my hand-but in my mind where I held the image of the stone.

  “Now take that weight… that morsel of life’s essence that exists in this worthless stone… and draw it into yourself… into that place we have visited before where your power lies, that you can shape to your will.”

  I did as she said and felt much like I did after drinking cavet in the morning, a little bit stronger, a little bit more awake. And then I lifted my left hand, as she directed me, and thought about light… and a flame shot from the end of my fingers. It lasted only for a moment, but I had never made anything so bright. And it had never been so easy.

  “There, you see, young Lord? This is only the beginning.”

  “More. I want to do more, Notole.” The excitement of it had me ready to burst. All the things I could do…

  She laughed. “And so we shall, but we are going to need a new stone.”

  I looked in my hand, and indeed the red stone had crumbled to dust. “No one will care,” I said. “It was only a stone.”

  “Exactly so.” She laughed again and gave me another stone.

  Notole taught me many things in that dark room. Some were interesting and useful, and some were unpleasant, and some were vile and wicked. “… but necessary to know, for your enemies will stop at nothing to destroy you. You must be ready for them. Sometimes even your allies will be distasteful to you, and you must know how to control them. Your power is everything. Once you rule as you are meant to do, you can afford to pick and choose your ways of dealing with your enemies… and your friends.”

  We spent days and days working on how to build power-from rocks, from broken pots and cups and paper and yarn, from objects of all kinds. Then she brought in plants and small trees and mice and kibbazi, and I learned that the power you could take from things that lived was much stronger than what you got from rocks and pots and wood. Nothing much was left of the things when we were through with them. It was a good way to make use of things that were worthless or ugly or broken.

  Sometimes I was in Notole’s rooms for hours without even realizing it, for when I went back to my house, it was already night and I was ravenously hungry, or maybe the sun had come up when I thought it was only evening. Sometimes I missed my other lessons for days at a time, so that when I went back to my sword fighting, I was stiff and rusty. I was so busy with Notole and sorcery, I almost forgot about the odd things I had found.

  However, on one afternoon when I came
in from sword training, a smooth, flat square of wood lay in the center of my sitting room table. I sent my slaves to run a bath and set out fresh clothes for me, and while they were occupied, I picked up the thing. It was smaller than my hand, plain and somewhat crude, as if cut and shaped with a dull knife. A square of metal had been set into the back of it and polished to a high sheen, so that I could see myself in it as clearly as a looking glass. Its oddity made me remember the other things left in my rooms, and I rummaged around on the bench and found the stone and the wood and the fruit pit with the shining red kernel.

  Were the Lords leaving me the things? Perhaps they were a puzzle, and when I figured out the answer to it, I would be ready for… something. I had no time to think about it just then, for I was going to Notole for the rest of the day, so I threw the things in a small box on the table by my bed. When I got back, I would take another look and try to decipher the riddle.

  On my way to the Lords’ house that afternoon, I witnessed a fight in the courtyard between two Zhid. One of the warriors watching the fight told me the two had hated each other for hundreds of years and had decided it was time for one of them to die. When I got to Notole’s workroom, I asked her why the Zhid commanders didn’t stop it. In Leire two soldiers were never allowed to fight each other to the death, no matter how long-standing their grievance.

  “So you saw them, eh? A useless quarrel. And how useful are warriors who are so caught up in private business?” She knew what was happening-she knew everything that went on-but she didn’t answer my question. “Let me show you something.”

  From a purple velvet bag, she pulled a dull brass ring about as big as my hand. She had me hold out my hand with my palm open. Standing the ring on its end, she blew on it and set it spinning.

  “Watch the oculus closely,” she said. As it spun faster, she took her hand away and it stood there on its own, beginning to shine bright gold. Faster and faster the ring spun, catching the light of the candles and her emerald eyes, creating an orb of gold and green light right in my hand. “Now probe the orb,” she said. “Pull the light of it apart with your inner eye-and seek out the disharmony. There… you see?”

  Inside the orb of light I could see the two Zhid, covered with sweat and blood and hatred, grappling in the courtyard.

  So much power there, said Notole, whispering in my ear through the jewels in my earring. Hatred is very powerful, as you know. It has made you more than you were, and can do so whenever you find it. Open your mind to it. Here, let me show you…

  Through the jewels in my ear, she reached inside of me. As if she were drawing back a curtain, she pulled back a piece of my thoughts, exposing a dark, empty hole. Into the hole poured a stream of green-and gold-streaked darkness from the center of the spinning ring-pure power, an immense wave of it like nothing I’d experienced before. Fire burned in my veins, filling me, swelling my lungs and stretching my skin. My heart drummed against my chest until I felt like I was going to burst.

  Notole let go of my mind and took the ring from my hand, while I gulped air. “Now, my young Prince,” she said, “try it. Touch the glass there on the far shelf.”

  I pointed my finger at a wine goblet that guttered in the candlelight across the room, and it shattered into a million pieces at my thought. Three more beside it splintered when I looked at them. A candle flame grew to a bonfire, and then I blew a puff of air in its direction and snuffed it out again. I considered the battling warriors. I couldn’t even see them, but I commanded them to be paralyzed and knew it was done because I could hear their angry and fearful thoughts. I quickly set them to breathing again, for their anger had turned into panic. They were suffocating.

  I hadn’t known power could be like this. Drawing a huge breath, I lifted a table with my wish and flew it about the room. A book slipped off the table, but I slowed its falling so that I could catch it before it fell to the floor. All of this as I sat on the edge of my stool. Everything that had been difficult or impossible all these months was now easy.

  “Well done, my young Prince. Few in the world-perhaps no one save the three of us-can take so much into themselves so quickly. You will do well. Very well, indeed.” All the Lords were with me in my mind, touching me, smiling at me, pleased with how well I had done. I was pleased, too, and could think of nothing but doing more of it.

  When I left the Lords’ house that night, I felt strange and excited, but I noticed that the night was exceptionally dark. Even the giant torches that burned over the entrance to the Lords’ house seemed to have little effect.

  A slave sat at the top of the stairs waiting for me. When he took my cloak, his eyes met mine for a moment, and I felt such a wave of terror from him that I stepped back. He averted his eyes quickly. I considered reading his thoughts, but decided I would rather take another look at the puzzle that had been set for me. Maybe I could find some enchantment that had been undetectable before. I told the slave to prepare a bath and wait for me there.

  Once the slave was gone, I took the things from the wooden box and examined them again. Bits and pieces. Natural objects, except for the mirror. Not chosen idly. The sand arrangement had taken great care to make; too bad I’d had to spill it. The mirror, too, had taken time to create, yet it was not expertly made. No enchantments on any of it.

  My mind flicked to the Leiran boy, but dismissed him almost as quickly. He was not one to speak in riddles, even if he could have gained access to my apartments. I turned over the mirror to look for clues, but when I saw my reflection, I couldn’t think of puzzles anymore. I drew closer to the lamp and took another look. My skin crept over my bones.

  My eyes weren’t brown any more, but black, so dark that you couldn’t see where the colored part left off and the pupil began. I threw the mirror and the other things back in the box. Cold and sick, I jumped into the hot bath and sat for an hour trying to think only about power and sorcery and what I might be able to do with them. My slaves didn’t look at me. I ignored their terror and the whispering presence of the Lords who hovered in the deeps of my head telling me how well I had done at my lessons.

  I didn’t sleep well. When morning came, I pulled out the mirror and took another look. My eyes were brown again. I was very relieved, and decided it had just been exhaustion. Things often got confusing in Notole’s rooms.

  Sword training occupied the morning, but I found it difficult to concentrate on anything but sorcery. But Notole didn’t call me that day, and when I spoke to her, she said she was not available for teaching.

  I waited almost a week, the hunger for sorcery burning in me like a fever. At last she called, and I ran across the courtyard and down the stairs to her den, hoping she would open the purple velvet bag and pull out the brass ring. She did.

  That day we let our minds travel through the Zhid encampment outside the fortress walls. A troop of warriors was being punished by their commander for lax discipline. The warriors’ anger at the punishment and their desire for revenge was eating away at them as they labored in the desert, but they dared not rebel. With Notole’s help and her oculus, I drank deep of their fear and hatred, and it tasted better than the first sip of water after a desert march. I was bursting with power.

  We practiced control that day-holding objects, stacking them, making them move in precise patterns, and controlling the thoughts of others. The Drudges were easy; they were so dull and afraid, I could make them think anything I wanted. The Zhid were more challenging. Their minds were filled with so many things: war and strategy, fighting skills, and scheming about their fellow warriors and their superiors. I had trouble trying to intrude on their minds, but eventually one of the house guards had a fearsome nightmare in the middle of the day, thanks to me.

  It was far into the night when I went back to my rooms. I worked on sharpening my sword, ate a meal, and cleaned myself up. Only then did I pull the wooden square out of the box and look into the polished bit of metal. It had happened again. This time the area of black was larger than the normal col
ored part of the eye. It didn’t hurt. My eyes just looked strange… but no one but slaves or Drudges were going to see them.

  My eyes were normal again the next day, and I almost brought the question about them to mind, but I decided against it. The Lords might not let me continue with Notole’s lessons if it kept happening.

  Another long week went by before Notole called me to her again and set the oculus spinning. On that day, we watched as the Dar’Nethi survivors of a Zhid raiding party were sealed into their slave collars. An immense surge of power filled me as I listened to their screams. I felt like a volcano, huge and rumbling and dangerous.

  “This time we will travel beyond the walls of the fortress and see what we can find for entertainment,” Notole said. She put out the candles, so that the only light in the room came from the emeralds in her golden mask and the green-and-gold orb of the oculus that hung over our heads. I was quivering with the power dammed up inside me. When she took my hands in her dry, withered fingers, she had to speak only one word and our minds came free of our bodies.

  I could see everything, just as if I were flying. We soared through the vast temple of the Lords where the three giant statues sat under the roof of stars, and we passed through the walls of the Lords’ house and looked down on the courtyards, crawling with slaves and Drudges and warriors. We sailed into the noonday and called up a whirlwind that turned the air red as it picked up sand, blasting the desert encampments and scouring the cliffs. Warriors and slaves looked like ants crawling on the desert. When I was little I had sometimes dropped grasshoppers and beetles into anthills to see what would happen; now I could do the same with people. So I picked up a few slaves in the whirlwind and deposited them behind the Zhid lines, and I sucked Zhid warriors into the wall of sand and dropped them amid the slaves. Notole laughed, but we didn’t stay to watch them sort it out. Instead we soared into the vast emptiness of the Wastes. Notole showed me how to call up lightning, and for hours I practiced blasting rocks to rubble and setting thorn bushes afire.