Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  “Lower it just a little so I can reach it.” Awkwardly I took the crucible and managed to empty the molten metal into the hole I had scraped out for relieving myself.

  “Now I’ve got to replace the seal… so they won’t notice. Give me the vessel with the powder.”

  “As an assistant, I have decided limitations,” I said, using my feet to retrieve the cup I had dropped while he removed the seal.

  Gerick held it in his hand. Heat blazed from the little vessel, and the gray powder sagged into liquid. His power was awesome in its magnitude and villainous in its composition. Once I sensed it, even so faintly as in that first hour of my release, I wanted to tell him to stop, not to use such power even for good purpose. But he had already wrenched my head forward onto his chest once more, wiped a cold ointment on the raw strip of skin between the ends of the collar, and begun to drip the hot liquid on it, guiding it with his fingers.

  I dared not open my mouth lest I scream and give us away. Again I held silent, my throat constricting in panic as I felt the hardening seal. Perhaps this was his sworn revenge. Perhaps he had freed me of the collar only so I would taste life for a single instant, and now he was reimposing the horror. He had sworn to destroy me, and nothing else would do it so absolutely.

  Silence… hold… protect him…

  The metal cooled on my neck. Nothing changed. The cup fell to the ground from Gerick’s fingers, and he sagged heavily onto my chest.

  “Gerick, what’s wrong?”

  He seemed to have fallen asleep. My limited range of movement made it difficult to shake him. “Wake up, lad. You’ve got to get away from here. Someday you’ll understand what you’ve done tonight. There are not words enough to thank you.”

  He shook his head groggily.

  “Do you have to return the implements somewhere?”

  “No. Give them,” he mumbled, holding out his hand.

  “Here’s one. I can’t reach the other. You’ll have to get it. Find my left foot-sorry, my masters don’t allow me to clean it-now move right, a little more, now forward toward me.”

  He set the two vessels together, uncomfortably close to my foot, and blasted them into a slug of metal and stone. “I need to go.”

  “Can you get back to the house all right? Has someone put a sleep spell on you?”

  “Always… after. Until I can see again. They think I don’t really know what happens.”

  “Here, touch my hand”-and with the first glimmering of my own power, I lightened the oppression of the sleep spell-“is that better?”

  He wrinkled his brow. “What you do is very different.”

  “Perhaps I can explain it sometime.”

  “I doubt there will be time. I’ll be asleep all day. Then I’m to go to the Lords’ temple at mid-watch. They’re to bring Seri to me then. I’ll see to her safety. But the Leiran boy will be here in the courtyard before I go, and you must get him away if you can.”

  “I’ll come for you.”

  “You will do nothing unless I give you leave,” he snapped. “I can put back what I’ve taken away. I’ve freed you to take care of the Leiran boy if you can. Nothing else.”

  Without allowing me to say more, Gerick rose and felt his way back to his house. He looked very much alone.

  I did not sleep that night, but sat and watched the turning of the cold stars behind the dust haze, felt the waning heat of the stones at my back, and observed the flickering light of the torches reflected in the chains that bound me. As the night wind told me of its travels, I embraced the long tale of death and sorrow that had accompanied my own journey. With every sensation I took a tiny step along the Way, and my power grew as the hearth’s first flame is nourished by offerings of dry tinder, or as a spring is fed by raindrops until it becomes a mighty river.

  CHAPTER 42

  Gerick

  I woke just before sunset, earlier than usual after a night of power-making with Notole. I don’t know whether it was because V’Saro had weakened the sleep spell, or if I waked myself on purpose so I could watch the sun go down. Sunsets wouldn’t be the same with diamond eyes.

  The tight white ball of the sun grew huge and red, like a bloodleech engorged and ready to mate. The thin, dry trailers that passed for clouds in Ce Uroth reflected the swollen red light, and smeared it across the entire western horizon. By the next sunset I would be the Heir of D’Arnath and a Lord of Zhev’Na, and the world would be forever changed because of me. For better or worse would remain to be seen. I was ready, except for Seri-my mother. I had to take care of her first.

  I had finally figured out what Seri had been trying to tell me with her gifts. When she held me for that one moment before they took her away, I almost believed what she whispered in my ear. But she didn’t know that her mirror could show me my soul-the dark thing laid bare by my power. No beauty was hidden in me.

  Odd that it was Seri’s friends, the Leiran boy and the slave, who made the truth so clear. To learn what I needed to free the slave V’Saro and to gather the power to work the enchantment, I had to beg Notole to take me traveling once more. I told her I couldn’t decide about my future, but that if we journeyed again, I would know. So the Three met me in the chamber of the oculus, and we observed the poorest quarters of a Kerotean city, where the air seethed with disease and starvation, and the people with bitterness and lust for vengeance. I devoured their hate, and power thundered inside of me.

  Parven took me to the brink of a volcano where I could see the cracks in the earth glowing with liquid fire. And then, Notole led me into the cold, black depths of the oceans, where I touched the strange blind creatures who lived there. I transformed myself into one of those creatures, so that for an hour, all I knew was the dark and the cold and the ponderous weight of the water that was my life. “All this will be yours, young Lord.”

  I hated the Lords for making me leave the peaceful ocean. They laughed and promised I’d be able to travel the stars themselves once I was one of them. As we traveled, I asked a hundred questions about everything I could think of-including how the slave collars worked-and then Ziddari left me in my room, blind and spellbound. It had been all I could do to go out to the slave as I had promised. I wanted only to sleep and dream of the ocean depths, or return to the Great Oculus and travel with the Lords again.

  So why had I freed V’Saro? I leaned over the balcony rail, but I couldn’t see into the fencing yard where he was still bound to the wall. He was the finest swordsman I had ever seen, every bit the masterful teacher I had expected, and he seemed to be an honorable person. Kind, even. His pain and my thickheadedness had made it impossible to read his plan from his mind. But when he eased the sleep spell, I tasted his Dar’Nethi sorcery for myself. It was weak and soft and unfocused, like a candle flame instead of lightning. I didn’t see how the slave could ever have power enough to stop a kibbazi in its tracks.

  And so, on the evening of my last sunset, I decided I had to delay V’Saro’s freedom. I had no wish to kill him or to seal him in the slave collar again, and if he could save himself and the Leiran boy, I had no objection to it. But I could not allow his grand opinion of his abilities to jeopardize my mother’s life. If he failed, she would die for it, and he would, and the Leiran boy, too. I didn’t want to be responsible for any of them.

  As for my own future, having now experienced the reality of Dar’Nethi sorcery, I had only one choice. I could not-would not-live with such weakness, not when I had traveled on the winds of the world with the Lords of Zhev’Na. I belonged here.

  “How fare you this memorable eve, young Lord?” Darzid stepped onto the balcony behind me.

  “I wish it were midnight already.”

  “As do I,” he said. And I, said Notole through the jewels in my ear. I also. Parven’s voice boomed in my head like a barrel rolling down a plank.

  “What do I need to do before the anointing?”

  Darzid was leaning on the balcony rail. Though I wasn’t looking at him, I felt him examining me-i
nside and out. “Nothing. All will come in due time.”

  “I’ve ordered a bath prepared,” I said. “Food, too. I’ve had nothing since yesterday.”

  “The bath is fine, but no food. You must come to us fasting this night.”

  I didn’t ask why. I probably didn’t want to know. A slave came onto the balcony and knelt, spreading his arms wide. He had a linen towel over one arm. “What will happen to my slaves, my household after tonight?” I said, poking the slave with my foot and jerking my head toward the door so he would go back inside to wait for me.

  “You need not concern yourself with these servants.”

  “I want them put to sleep. Tonight, before I go.”

  “For what reason?” My skin felt hot from his examination.

  “I don’t want them to watch me go and think about it. Perhaps, once I am a Lord, I’ll decide to kill them all. Or maybe I won’t.” The last red crescent of the sun disappeared below the horizon.

  Darzid smiled and swept his hand toward the doorway. “Your will shall be done, of course.”

  I hated him.

  CHAPTER 43

  Seri

  I had never been anywhere as cold as the keep of Zhev’Na, not even the mountain passes of the Cerran Brae in the deeps of winter. The dark walls chilled my flesh and spirit until my blood seemed to slow and my thoughts close in upon themselves like a daylily deprived of the sun.

  I could not read thoughts like the Dar’Nethi or live inside another’s mind like the Lords, but when I embraced my son for that one brief moment, I knew I’d been right about him. In the past months I had tried to find ways to tell him he wasn’t evil. Paltry things they’d been, pitiful, but all I could find or make in late nights or early mornings when the other women were asleep. I wasn’t sure he had understood my message. But he had tried to save me, and he had been gentle and apologetic when my capture became inevitable. So I clung to the hope that he would yet refuse the destiny they planned for him. I doubted I’d have an opportunity to do more. I knew how many months had passed. He would turn twelve any day now.

  My interrogation by the Lords was amazingly benign. An old woman had laid her dry, scarred hands on my head and taken possession of all I knew. It was over in moments. I felt as empty as if I had vomited up everything I had ever eaten, but at least I betrayed no one who could be hurt by it. Gar’Dena’s care to keep the pieces of the puzzle separate had been the most successful-I suppose the only successful-part of his plan. The old woman already knew Gar’Dena was the enemy of the Lords, and she told me, somewhat wistfully, that Gernald the slavemaster had been dead for a year and could not be called to account for his part. So our failure was explained at last. The Zhid slave-master was surely the one who was to have given me the signal and taken me and Gerick out of Zhev’Na.

  Once the woman was satisfied, I was left alone in a well-appointed suite of rooms. Clean clothes were laid out on the bed. The bony, dark-eyed slave girl I’d seen in the Gray House brought my meals, scurrying away in terror when I tried to speak to her. A bathing room held soap and towels, and hot water was available at a touch. It was the best I had lived in over a year. But I knew prisons, even fine ones. Though I used the bath and the clothes, and ate the food, afterward I sat and awaited the end of the world… or at least my small part of it.

  After two days of listless idleness, I discovered paper and pens and ink in a small desk. Though I had no illusions that he would ever see it, I wrote a letter to Gerick, telling him the story of Karon and me, of Tomas and Kellea and Paulo, of D’Natheil and Dassine and all those who were a part of his life. You have been beloved since the day we first knew you…

  Late on the evening of the fourth day of my captivity, Darzid came to me. The harbinger of evil. The companion of demons. He wore his usual sleek black and sprawled languidly on a red couch, facing me across a narrow span of gray marble.

  “Are you comfortable in the Lords’ house, my lady?”

  “As comfortable as one can be in a tomb.”

  “Surely you find this better than sleeping with rats and eating cold gruel. I must admire your fortitude in the face of Gar’Dena’s failure at plotting.”

  “You may tell my son that you were kind and beneficent before your masters dispensed with me.”

  He burst out laughing. “It is so delightful to deal with you, Lady Seriana, and most especially to confound you. The Lords will not touch you. Your son will determine your fate entirely.” He leaned across the table, his dark eyes as sharp and brilliant as obsidian. “Is he not an exceptionally fine young Lord? He is everything the Lords of Zhev’Na could have wished for: intelligent, determined, honorable, spirited-just like his mother. And he carries his father’s considerable talents nobly. Unfortunate that the madman cannot see how his progeny has been nurtured to his fullest potential. Young Gerick will be the most powerful sorcerer the universe has ever produced.”

  “You’ve let him believe he is evil.”

  “But he is! Deliriously so. And no charming stones or mysterious star maps will change it. Did you not see his soul laid bare before you when you so foolishly revealed yourself? He feeds on the darkest passions of two worlds and begs for more. His blood is in a fever for it, and tonight you will watch as he is given a surfeit of what he craves.”

  “And he will do the same for his masters-give them what they crave.”

  “Oh, yes. On this night D’Arnath’s Bridge will fall. The universe will be reborn.”

  “What is your part, Darzid-other than murderer, executioner, deceiver, and corrupter of children? How did you come to be the vulture that feasts on the corpses of so many noble spirits?”

  “Ah, my lady, do you remember long ago when I tried to tell you of certain fantastical visions and my difficulty remembering my past?”

  “Of course I remember. You-”

  “I asked for your help, but you couldn’t be bothered and sent me away. Now I’ve remembered. Come with me, and you’ll see why you could never win.”

  He jumped to his feet and held out his arm, but I wouldn’t touch him. He only laughed the more, snapped his fingers, and we were in a different place altogether.

  We stood in the center of a shining black floor, a vast empty space encircled by ranks of towering pillars of black marble, each hung with a glass-paned lamp. Above us hung a star-filled night sky… or the seeming of it. Our footsteps caused a hollow echo as we walked toward a row of four black marble thrones that stood on a wide curved dais. Two of the chairs were occupied, one by the gray-haired woman who had questioned me, and the other by a tall man with long hair, a beaked nose, and a wide forehead. The two wore dark robes and strange masks of gold that covered the upper halves of their faces, with gems set in place of eyes. Death itself would have been a warm and cheerful contrast to their presence.

  “Welcome, madam,” said the tall man… if man he was.

  “Once a man,” he replied. His voice touched my mind like a clammy finger running down my spine. Depraved. Dead. “Now much more than a man. Parven is my name. To my right is my sister Notole whom you have already met. And of course you know my brother Ziddari from of old.”

  “Ziddari…” The one who stood beside me chuckled as his face dissolved. And then his own gold mask was visible, the metal not just a covering for the upper half of his face, but grown together with his flesh, its blood-red rubies flashing in the lurid lamplight.

  “Old friends can still spring surprises, can they not?” Though his voice had taken on a deeper resonance, the cynical amusement was the same.

  Darzid… Ziddari… the third of the Dar’Nethi who had survived the Catastrophe of their making. A Lord of Zhev’Na. Never in my remotest supposition… Stupid, stupid woman.

  “How could you have guessed? You knew nothing of the Lords. And I was not exactly my usual self in all those years-a matter of being away from home in disguise for too long. Wearing a mundane face does not allow the full range of one’s capabilities, and living in your world has its d
istinct hazards for those born to this one-else all this might have been settled long before you were born. But I think I am done with Darzid now. Your son will need him no longer. Shall you mourn your old friend?”

  “I will curse your name until I am dust.”

  “Alas, that is very likely. Come, the boy approaches even now. Please, take your seat.” He snapped his fingers again, and a plain wooden chair appeared beside me. Without willing it, I sat, while Darzid-Ziddari-took his place on the third throne.

  From the depths of the polished black floor between me and the dais glowed a circle of blue light, pulsing in the same rhythm as my heartbeat. Gerick appeared exactly in the center of it, dressed in breeches and shirt and doublet of deep purple trimmed with silver, wearing his sword at his belt. He stood tall before the Lords and did not bow.

  They all spoke at once, three distinct voices, yet winding sinuously together. “Welcome, young Lord,” said Ziddari.

  “At last,” said the woman. “We have anxiously awaited you.”

  And Parven. “All honor to you on this night that you come into your inheritance. Have you made your choice, young Lord?”

  “I have,” said Gerick, in a voice cool as glass.

  “And what is it to be?”

  “I will be a Lord of Zhev’Na.”

  And so ended my hope. Perhaps I sighed or sobbed, for Gerick turned his head sharply, as if he had not seen me until then. His demeanor was neither hateful nor haughty, only solemn. But he did not speak to me and reserved his attention for the Lords.

  “Yes, we have brought her here as you requested, young Lord. You can see we’ve taken excellent care of her. Now she is yours, to do with as you will.” Ziddari’s vile expectation hung over us like a cloud. “A fitting gift for your birthday.”

  “She is to be set free.”

  “What?” From all three of the Lords the word thundered, until I thought my head would burst from the sound. Though one could not read subtle expression on faces so strange, their shock and disbelief shook the floor under my feet.