Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  I did it.

  “This won’t be easy, Paulo,” he said. “You’ll have to hold him still. I’m going to try to get the mask off, and I won’t be able to do it one-handed. Are you willing?”

  “He saved my life back there. More than once.”

  “Mine, too.”

  He settled himself next to the young master and opened the leather case. I knew what was in it. It was his tools that he used when he healed my busted leg and put right the other one so that I hardly limped at all any more. I hoped he could do the same for his boy as he had for me.

  “Remember, unless I tell you it’s all right, you mustn’t touch me at any time once we’re bound and I’ve said the invocation. If you need help, call Bareil. He’ll be waiting just outside.”

  “You can trust me.”

  He grabbed a handful of my hair and waggled my head with it, smiling. “I do. It’s why you’re here.” Then he got on his knees and spread his arms and said his prayer that always started his healing magic. “Life, hold. Stay your hand…”

  Neither of us was expecting what happened when he cut the young master’s arm. I’d not heard such a terrible cry since the night I was sent to Zhev’Na and heard the Zhid putting the collars on the Dar’Nethi slaves. The Prince looked like someone had stuck a knife in his gut. But while I tied their arms together, he held his boy tight to keep him from hurting himself from his thrashing about. As soon as the knot was made and the words were said, the young master quieted.

  I remembered how it had been when I was hurting so wicked and the Prince did this to me. White fire had blazed inside me, making me warm and easy, and the Prince talked to me every moment inside my head about how things were with me, so that I wasn’t afraid. I hoped the young master could feel it that way, too, but I knew the things wrong with him were a lot worse than a busted leg or two. I didn’t see how we were going to get that mask off. It was a part of his face, growed together with it. Made me sick to see it.

  It took an awful long time. The Prince had closed his eyes so you might think he was asleep, except that he had the same fierce look as was on his face when he was sword fighting. The young master began to shake and moan, and the Prince spoke to me. “Hold him, Paulo. Just don’t touch me.”

  And so I did. When the young master quieted a bit, the Prince had me take the jeweled pin out of his ear. It was burning hot when I took it off.

  Sometime much later the Prince took his right hand and started to run it real slow around the edges of the gold mask. Over and over it he went, and after a time you could see the metal begin to separate from the young master’s face. Finally the Prince said, so soft that you almost couldn’t hear him, “Cut the binding.”

  And when I’d done that, he said, “Dim the light and have one of the towels ready.”

  I did that, too.

  “Now hold his arms while I remove the mask. Carefully. Please, carefully.”

  I’ve never seen such a fearful sight. There was nothing there in the young master’s eyeholes. When I’d seen his changes before, his eyes had turned dark in their color, but now he didn’t have eyes at all, nor anything else there that I could see-just dark holes. The Prince covered him up real quick, as soon as he had the mask off.

  “Take the other towels and cut them into strips.” He almost couldn’t talk.

  I did as he told me, and we wrapped the strips of linen around and around the young master’s eyes. Then the Prince eased himself into the corner of the tent, shut his eyes, and held his boy close in his arms. I poked my head out of the tent and asked Bareil if he would bring the Prince something to drink. I knew he had to be thirsty after all that, but I didn’t dare go myself without the Prince’s leave.

  It was the Lady Seri that brought a cup of wine and a water flask. She knelt down beside the Prince and asked if he could drink. His eyes came open, and it was a fine thing to watch when he saw it was her. He took a sip of the water, then his eyes closed and he went to sleep, and the Lady Seri sat with them through the night. I stayed just by the door.

  It was a week before we knew anything. Three more times the Prince worked his healing on the young master. “I can’t tell you if I’ve done enough,” he said to us after the last one. “I think the Lords’ hold on him was released when we took off the mask and the jewels in his ear, but he doesn’t speak… doesn’t answer my questions or respond in any way when I’m with him. He has some places walled off so tightly that I can’t touch them. I don’t know if he has set the barriers himself, or if it’s some part of what the Lords have done to him. All I can do is try to banish those things that don’t belong, heal the places where it looks like he’s been damaged. As for his eyes… Something exists there now. Whether he will allow them to see, I don’t know.”

  The young master was never left alone. Though he just sat there not saying anything or even moving, either the Prince or the lady was always there talking to him or holding him, even if it was just touching his hand. Sometimes I would sit with whichever one was watching. One night the Lady Seri was coming into the tent, and she told the Prince how it was a fine night with a full moon such as they’d not seen in more than a year, as you could never see the moon in Zhev’Na. I said why didn’t they go see it together, as I could stay with the young master for a while and call them if there was any change. I knew the Prince and the Lady hadn’t taken any time alone together to speak of. They were shy of each other, more like two who were courting than ones who knew each other so well as they did.

  They took my offer, and so I was left with the young master alone. I started talking to him as I had before- about Dunfarrie and how the folks what had called me donkey would be fair surprised when they saw me walking straight, if his lordship would ever get himself together so I could go home, that is.

  “And what would you do if you got there? The village horses will have forgotten you after all this time.” It was so quiet I almost missed it.

  “Oh, they’ll rem- Blazes! Is that you talking to me or is it my own self?”

  “We don’t sound all that much alike most times.”

  “Blazes! Damn! I got… I got to tell them… the lady and the Prince.”

  “Don’t leave.” He reached out and grabbed my arm. “Please…”

  “No. Not a bit of it. I’ll just stay right here. I might just holler out then, if that’s all right.”

  “No… I mean… if you’d just wait a little.”

  He was scared. Not in the way he’d been scared of the terrible things in his head. Not cowardly scared. He told me how strange it was that he knew me better than he knew his parents, and how the Prince had been inside his head, but such wasn’t like really meeting him in his own body or anything.

  I agreed it was strange. My parents had been dead or run off since I was a nub. I couldn’t imagine having them walk in on me, knowing more about me than I did about them, and having all sorts of blood oaths and killing between us. “All I know is that you don’t have to be afraid of them,” I said to him. “They care about you more than anything.”

  We talked about other things for a bit, about horses and sword fighting, and about how I had worked in the stable at Comigor and he never even knew it, and how he had seen me outside the window in the council chamber in Avonar, while I’d been watching him inside. And while we talked, the tent flap opened, and the lady and the Prince came in. The young master turned his head that way even though his eyes were still bandaged up. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I think I’m all right.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Karon

  He wasn’t all right, of course. It would be a long time until we knew what the result of Gerick’s ordeal would be. We weren’t even sure he was mortal, for he had neither eaten nor drunk anything for nine days. But we took the bandages off that same night, and he did indeed have eyes again, beautiful brown eyes just like his mother’s. To our joy and relief, he could see with them, too.

  Soon he was able to eat as well, not having to resort to
the herbs and potions Kellea gave me to help keep things down until the last remnants of the slave food were out of my blood. On the afternoon after he first spoke, ten days after we had left Zhev’Na behind us, Gerick stepped out of the tent and went walking in the sunlight with Paulo.

  He wouldn’t talk about what the Lords had done to him or how much of their poisonous enchantments remained, and from the first he alternated between periods of quiet patience and intense irritability. What was most unsettling was how his eyes would take on a dark gray cast when he was angry. I saw no evidence that he possessed exceptional power anymore, only the intrinsic talents of any Dar’Nethi youth who had not yet come into his primary talent.

  I believed his dark moods reflected the intensity of his craving for the power he had lost. The glimpses of his experiences I had come across while working at his healing were extraordinary, uses of sorcery alien to anything I knew of, but his determined reserve precluded any deeper questioning about them. And he made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t wish for me to tell him anything of how I or any other Dar’Nethi acquired power to support our various talents. Seri and I were uneasy at his erratic temper, but we agreed it was only to be expected. We would just have to take things slowly. We grieved sorely for his childhood, stolen away in the deserts of Zhev’Na.

  “We have to talk about it, you know.” I held the tangled willow branches aside so Seri could get down to the stream bank where the smooth, flat rocks were being baked by the afternoon sun.

  She refused my offered hand, as if accepting my help somehow signaled agreement with my opinions. Stepping from one rock to another, she made her way across the stream, seating herself on a boulder in the very middle of the rippling water. “Not yet. We need a few more days.”

  “The answer will be the same, Seri. I can’t stay. He can’t go. We have to decide where to take him.”

  I had to return to Avonar. I was its ruler, and my people didn’t know if I was living or dead. The Preceptorate was in shambles, the war was not ended, and my responsibilities to Gerick and Seri could not overshadow the others I had inherited with the body I had been given. But I dared not take Gerick back across the Breach, not even using the Bridge. The Lords had ripped him apart as we fled Zhev’Na, leaving him exposed and vulnerable while immersed in chaos. I had no idea what lasting effects such contact with the Breach might cause. And I wanted him as far away from Zhev’Na and the Zhid and our war as we could keep him. He needed time and distance to heal his wounds before we could risk the Bridge passage again.

  “He needs you, Karon. I’ve no power to heal him. He hurts so badly… I see it when he sleeps.”

  I stepped across to her rock and pulled her up into my arms. She was shaking. “Talyasse… talyasse… softly, love.” I stroked her hair, trying to soothe her. “You are his healing, as you have always been mine. He listens to you, walks with you, allows you to care for him… and care about him. You’ve brought him so far out of the darkness; you will take him the rest of the way.”

  Seri was our strength. Our hope. Ever since I had known her… through our darkest days… in my mindless confusion… she had been the beacon whose clear, unwavering light set our course straight. Everyone saw it but her.

  Despite everything I tried, Gerick remained painfully reserved around me, scarcely speaking in my presence. Was it fear, resentment, hatred? I had too little experience of children to know-and what experience could have prepared me to understand what my son had just endured? Gerick had to stay, so Seri had to stay, and I had to go. “I’ll come as often as I can.”

  She buried her face in my neck. “It’s not fair.”

  “But we both know it’s right. So now again to the question… where can the two of you be safe?”

  The last thing in the world I wished was to leave Seri again. We had lost so many years, and while I believed myself to be the Karon she knew-as long as I didn’t look at my reflection-it was clear we could not take up again as if nothing had happened. We, too, needed time and peace. But neither time nor peace was available, and if Seri and Gerick were not to return to Avonar with me, we had to find them a safe haven until we could be together. Not Comigor. Gerick wasn’t ready to take up his old life, either, and we didn’t know whether he ever would be. Not Dunfarrie. I refused to abandon Seri and Gerick to the hardships of that life, where Seri had scraped out an existence for ten years, and Dassine had sent me to find her again. To recover from their ordeals would be trial enough. More importantly, Darzid… the Lord Ziddari… knew of Comigor and Dunfarrie.

  Seri pulled away and stooped to fill the water flasks she carried at her waist. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll feel safe anywhere away from you.”

  Later that evening as we sat around the fire, Seri explained our problem to Gerick and the others. As with so many things, Gerick agreed passively to do whatever we believed best.

  Kellea was the one who spoke up. “So does your friend, the scholar, still live outside of Yurevan? Seems a house like his, private, comfortable, out in the countryside, might be just the place. I’d be willing to stay for a while, keep watch as far as I’m able…”

  Seri and I looked at each other. It was a perfect solution. Our good friend Tennice would welcome Gerick and Seri to the country home he had inherited from my old professor Ferrante, and the private location of the house would enable me to come and go freely without raising dangerous questions.

  Later, when I asked Paulo privately if he would consider staying with Gerick, he refused to dignify my question with anything but a disbelieving glare. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. If anything gave me hope for Gerick, it was his friendship with Paulo. Paulo’s goodness of heart and abiding honesty had touched a place in our son that neither Seri nor I was yet privileged to visit, and we rejoiced in it.

  But of course, the rightness of Kellea’s suggestion meant we had no more excuse to delay. Avonar’s need was urgent. We could put our separation off no longer.

  Paulo had rounded up the horses we’d left in the valley over a year before, and on a clean-washed spring morning three weeks after our escape from Zhev’Na, Bareil and I watched the four of them ride off southward. I had intended to accompany them along the way, but, in one of the rare times he initiated any conversation, Gerick had reassured me. “They don’t know where I am,” he said, fingering the reins so he wouldn’t have to look at me. “It won’t occur to them that I’m not… what I was… any longer. If I stay hidden, we should be safe enough.”

  I had to take him at his word. For him to speak of the Lords at all was clearly difficult. And so, I had thanked him for his confidence and let them go. The jeweled earring and the gold mask with the diamonds lay at the bottom of my pack. I debated whether to destroy the vile things, but the part of me that bore responsibility for the war against the Lords surmised that such artifacts of power might have some use. Gerick had never asked what had become of them.

  * * *

  And so they were gone, and the Dulcé and I were left in the lovely, but so very empty, glade. “We’d best be off,” I said. Up the hill, into the cave, through the Gate, and across the Bridge to this other life that awaited me. I hated the thought of it.

  My madrissé smiled sadly and placed a small, wrapped bundle in my hand. “Not quite yet, my lord. You are between times. Before you take up this life, you must be sure of your path.”

  “What do you-? Ah.” From the cloth wrapping, I pulled the plain circle of dull wood set with the black crystal pyramid embedded in an iron ring, the object I’d taken from Dassine’s study so long ago. Now I knew what it was-the artifact to which my soul had been bound for the ten years I had existed without a body, ten years of darkness and pain, ten years of intricate enchantments and voracious learning, infused with the boundless energy and devotion of my Healer and jailer, Dassine. Touching the crystal would release me from this body’s bondage and allow me to cross the Verges if I chose to do so. My death, so long delayed, awaited me in its enchantm
ents.

  I stared at the thing and was overwhelmed by longing, a desperate ache in the depths of my being that was far colder and far more powerful than my yearning for Seri or my worries about Gerick. “Ah, Bareil, how can I risk using it now? So many are depending-”

  “He said when you were whole again, and the boy was safe. He robbed you of your choice when you died, and again when he deceived you about D’Natheil’s death. And he swore by all he valued to return the choice to you. It was Master Dassine’s belief that if you did not choose this new life freely, then doubts would grow and, eventually, consume you. You would never be able to enter into your life fully, and if you could not do so, then you would fail in all you would attempt. You must be one place or the other-live or die-by your own choice.”

  “A patronizing pronouncement from the old devil…” And not at all fair to give me such a choice when Seri and Gerick were out of reach. What if I could not resist the call of the Verges? I was supposed to be dead.

  “I’ll watch over you, my lord, and do whatever is needed… after.” Bareil smiled, but tears welled up in his almond-shaped eyes. He didn’t expect me to return.

  So it was with trepidation that I stroked the smooth face of the dark crystal and left D’Natheil’s body that had become my own. For a moment I saw that body lying on the green velvet hillside with the kindly Dulcé standing guard, the snowy peak of mighty Karylis looming over his shoulder. Far down the track that led to my ruined home and southward toward Yurevan, I saw the ones I loved most in the world riding into the dew-kissed peace of the morning. And then was I plunged into darkness, the ethereal pulse of the Verges beckoning me to the place of my belonging.

  The long echo of my agony in the fire began to reverberate in my mind once more, but because I expected it this time, I could push it aside and concentrate on the distant light that called me into peace. I was very tired.