Guardians of the Keep

by Carol Berg

  Vruskot took a long time deciding. Foamy spittle dripped from his mouth, and his skin was redder than the afternoon desert.

  “You will not damage this slave. I desire that both of you be my teachers, and if you dare trespass my instructions in this or any matter, I’ll shrivel your brain and draw it out through your nose. Do you understand me?”

  Astonishing. The old Zhid slammed the dagger into its sheath and climbed off me. But the stubborn devil did manage to plant a foot in my gut and trigger my collar as he stood up. While I was occupied trying not to heave up my last three days’ graybread before the son I’d scarcely met, Gerick belted the Zhid with the back of his hand. From the sound of it, a surprisingly strong hand. “Do not test me, warrior.”

  The slavehandler kicked me to get up. “Where shall I put the slave, young Lord? This one must be controlled and guarded at all times. You are aware that he has no compulsions of obedience? As he still fights wager matches and training bouts, the slavemaster won’t allow it.”

  “Chain him to the wall. He can sit, but should be able to stand and demonstrate a move if I require it.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Paulo had been deceived by this boy. His demeanor bore not the slightest trace of recognition or common purpose. I might have been a tree stump.

  “I’ve informed the Wargreve Damon that you’re to be mine as long as I have use for you,” he said, adjusting his sword belt about his slim waist. “You will instruct me in sword work along with this warrior. You may speak at your will, until such time as I inform you otherwise or leave the training ground. Do you understand?”

  I ducked my head. I never liked to push the talking.

  “You will remain here day and night. I’ve taken a fancy to night practice, and don’t wish to wait for you to be summoned.”

  “Is that wise, young Lord?” Vruskot’s hatred eroded his discipline. “Such dogs as this should be caged.”

  “Do not question me, warrior.” Gerick’s glance could have frozen a volcano.

  As the sun slid toward the horizon, Gerick resumed his practice with the sturdy young slave. Vruskot eyed me savagely as he drilled the two repeatedly on a complex move. His choice of lessons was unfortunate, for it was just the kind of unimaginative attack that had allowed me to defeat him. Only his own incredible strength and experience had made our match so long and difficult. If Gerick was playacting then he was doing it quite believably. I had best do the same.

  “Exploiting the opponent’s weakness is not always the best attack, young Lord,” I said. “Not unless you are also calculating his strengths that balance it. No battle is so simple that a single maxim can carry it.”

  Vruskot erupted, of course, but Gerick asserted his authority once again, and invited me to elaborate. For three hours we continued the lesson on attack strategies, becoming so involved that it was almost possible to forget our circumstances. He was so intelligent that he could understand my explanations as soon as I voiced them. And he could carry the implications far beyond the problem of the moment. I sensed his immense desire to be a master of the art. Swordplay was nothing I’d ever thought to teach a son of mine, but I treasured every moment of those three hours.

  Vruskot seethed and blustered, but Gerick refused to dismiss him. “You are here to protect me, warrior, lest this Dar’Nethi filth make some attempt to harm me. I trust you to destroy him in such a case.”

  The hour grew late. When the slavehandler came to retrieve Gerick’s sparring partner, Gerick told him to return later. But before too much more time had passed, the young slave began to stumble, and I suggested that Gerick would be better served to save him for the next day.

  Gerick agreed and promptly ordered Vruskot to return the slave boy to the pen. “While you do that, I’ll secure this slave for the night,” he said.

  Vruskot growled, but obeyed. As soon as he was gone, leaving only the two guards in the distant corners of the walled enclosure, Gerick knelt close to me. He linked my wrists together, shortened my ankle hobbles, and tightened the tether chains at wrist, neck, and ankle, securing me firmly to the wall. “I’ve found a way, but I can’t do it until tomorrow night,” he whispered.

  “Any time is fine—” For the first time, I got a close look at his face. Spirits of night . . . He averted his face quickly, knowing that I saw. “How do they do it?” I said softly.

  “That’s not your business. I just need to know what you plan to do if I should set you free. I don’t want you interfering with me.”

  “Are there plans for you to see Seri . . . the lady?”

  “Yes. They expect me to kill her.”

  Dear gods. “Tell me when and where, and I’ll be there,” I said, struggling to stay rational. “Make sure Paulo is with me, too, and I’ll take us all out of Zhev’Na.”

  “Every way out is controlled by the Lords. You’ve no chance whatsoever.”

  “I know of a way. That’s why I was sent.”

  He squinted at me, but it was very dark, and I didn’t think he could see very well. Just then, a gate squeaked and crashed shut again. When Vruskot strode from the stone arch into the yard, Gerick was leaning against the water barrel, casually taking a sip from the dipper. “I’ve tightened the slave’s bonds, warrior, but I want you to make sure of him. Instruct the Drudges to provide his normal food and drink, and do what you can to ensure he doesn’t foul the training ground.”

  Vruskot bowed and did an excellent job of ensuring I could not move a finger’s breadth in any direction. On that long, cold night, I dreamed of my Avonar, of taking my son climbing to the snowy summit of Karylis and watching the light return to his terrible eyes.

  Two Zhid stood at attention in the fencing yard throughout the next day. The Gray House was silent. No one entered the enclosure. I dozed fitfully in the wicked heat.

  Sometime after nightfall, a quiet thud from the dark corner of the yard woke me with a start. One of the guards had slumped into a heap in the dirt. The second guard was in the process of toppling, even as I jerked upright.

  “V’Saro”—the whispered call was from Gerick—“say something.”

  “Anything in particular?” I matched his quiet tone.

  The boy stepped hesitantly from the darkest shadows. “Again.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  He stepped slowly across the yard, only to stumble over the chains that attached my feet to the wall. Tightly bound as I was, I couldn’t catch him, but only squirm enough to cushion his fall and keep his face from hitting my knees. He ended up draped across my lap.

  He wriggled backwards and got up to his knees. The Lords had been at him again. He was strung taut, quivering like a bowstring, and his eyes had terrible black centers, worse than before. His eyelids drooped heavily. I didn’t believe he could see anything at all.

  “Take this,” he said, depositing in my hand a small, thick-walled ceramic cup—a crucible, filled with coarse gray powder. From a pocket in his tunic he pulled another crucible, slightly larger and lined with silver. “This won’t be pleasant, but you must be silent.”

  “Tell me what they’ve done to you. Before you go any further. I can’t let you—”

  “I hear from you and the Leiran boy that the only way to save my mother’s life is to set you free. I don’t believe it and I don’t trust you, but I’ve been wrong about everything in my life, so why should I expect to be right this time?” He knelt between my legs and reached around my head, fumbling at my collar, carefully avoiding the triggers that would make me convulse. “I’ve obtained the knowledge, the power, and the materials I need to neutralize your collar. I’ve very little time, but if I start right now, then perhaps I can manage it, so I would suggest you stay still.” His cold fingers paused at the top of the seal. “Be ready.”

  “Do it,” I said, feeling his enchantment taking shape, growing huge and terrible, cutting first into my flesh, and then into my mind, and then into my soul like a fiery razor.

  I sank deep into myself. Si
lence . . . hold . . . protect your son who has mortgaged his sight and his soul to set you free. . . .

  Slowly, relentlessly, Gerick moved his fingers down the seal, melting it away and letting the scalding, foul stuff dribble into his silver-lined vessel. My face was buried in his chest, I, who should be protecting him, comforting him, and all I could do was use his taut, slender body to muffle my sobs. No more than a quarter of an hour passed, but I became so lost in the throbbing haze of pain that I didn’t even notice when he shifted position and began to unseal the bonds from my wrists.

  Silence . . . hold . . . to protect him . . . It is bearable because it is necessary. It is for your wife and your son that you never thought to see. How blessed is life . . . how glorious the Way that can devise a path beyond all expectations . . . to come through pain and despair to find such joy . . .

  The desert breeze that chilled the rivulets of sweat coursing down my body began to whisper of endless sand, of tiny hollows of moisture deep hidden to escape the rapacious sun, of hardy, bony creatures that scuttered cleverly from one scrap of shade to another or burrowed deep in the cool embrace of the earth, of dry skeletal plants that yet held a core of life. And on the very edge of the wind was the kiss of snow, blown all the way from the pinnacles of the Mountains of Light, and the faintest breath of the awakening Vales of Eidolon. “Oh, gods, young Prince . . .”

  “Got to hurry.” His head drooped as he carefully moved the crucible. The filled vessel radiated searing heat; the silver had melted away. “Can you take this? Dispose of it?” His tongue was thick with sleep.

  “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. Sun-sets 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—inside 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.