Daughter of Ancients

by Carol Berg

  First my hand, and then my arm, shoulder, and neck felt as if I had submerged them in burning oil. But I held on, binding my enchantment ever more closely to the physical object, even as dread and cold darkness crept through my inner vision. I cried out shamelessly, determined that neither pain nor this insidious despair would force me to release the spell. I would not fail. I would not . . . I would not. . . .

  Let go. It’s all right. It wasn’t so much words that penetrated the pain and darkness, but rather an overwhelming, insistent assurance. The world was unbroken. I was unbroken. My injured shoulder had gone into spasms because my fist was clenched so tightly, causing this pain in back and chest. And of course it was dark, because my face was pressed into the dirt and my eyes were closed. This knowledge flooded into me before I could assess these things for myself. And then the tide went out, leaving me sprawled, aching but content, on the shore of life.

  Eventually I moved. I tried for a while to loosen my fist, but nothing in my right arm wanted to obey me. Then I lifted my head and opened my eyes only to find that it was still dark. Night. Quiet, except for pelting, skidding footsteps on the dirt behind me, and the anxious call, “Jen, are you all right?”

  Impossible to answer yet, of course. Supporting my right arm with my left, I scrambled to my knees, trying to persuade my eyes to focus. No chance of a handlight. Even the thought made my head ache, like trying to vomit when you’ve nothing left inside. But I patted my left hand on the dark shapes scattered on the surface of the rock. My knife, the sheath, the now-tangled measuring cord, and a few shards of metal, cool and inert. I peeled open my recalcitrant fist and found more of the same.

  “Jen?” The voice was closer. Kind. Worried. Paulo.

  “I’m all right,” I called over my shoulder, as I jingled the bits of metal in my left hand and threw them gleefully onto the rock. “I think we did it!”

  Paulo arrived and crouched on the gravel beside me. “I heard you cry out. And then nothing.”

  I looked up at him and grinned. “A little yelling never hurt anyone.”

  “It wasn’t yelling so much as screaming. I thought you needed help, though I wasn’t sure it was even you!”

  “Well, I suppose it wasn’t all me.” I swallowed hard and squirmed a bit, trying to gather in my thoughts and feelings that seemed scattered over the landscape like my other possessions.

  Paulo grinned and jerked his head back up the path. “He’s back there where he belongs. Takes him a bit to get sorted out. And after something like this . . .”

  “I probably need sorting out, as well,” I said, feeling an uncomfortable moment of mingled relief and regret. But as soon as I remembered the magic, relief, regret, pain, and despair were all forgotten. I could have run, leaping and dancing, all the way back to Avonar. I grinned back at Paulo. “Let’s get out of here.”

  While Paulo picked up the shovel and the broken sword, I gathered my belongings, fixing my knife sheath to my belt, winding up my measuring cord, and patting my hand on the ground in a moment’s panic until I found my mother’s ring. The scarf was nowhere in sight, but it was the least valuable by far and I left it go. I gathered the shards of the oculus and considered what to do with them. I needed no power to tell me their bitter enchantment was broken.

  “You don’t think your friend would want these?” I said. “A memento?”

  Paulo nodded toward the hole. “Throw them in there and I’ll bury ’em. No one needs a piece of that thing.”

  He had it done faster than I could take stock of all my limbs and other parts and decide that I was in one piece. We started up the track together. “It was all right then,” he said, flicking his eyes to the top of the ridge. “With him?”

  “He’s done it with you?” I said.

  “I was his first. Before he even knew he could do it. Felt like a wildcat had gotten into my skin with me. But he saved my life that day, and the lives of a whole world full of people. We did it again later when he was hiding from his da. At least that time he’d learned to keep quieter, and he wasn’t trying to kill anybody.”

  I flexed the fingers of my right hand. As we walked, sensation was returning. “You’re a good witness, Paulo. The way you trust him. I might never have gone through with it otherwise.”

  “But I was his friend already. Don’t know as I would have had the nerve to do it, feeling as you do about him. You ever need a witness that you’re the damndest woman this side of the Lady Seri, I’ll stand up for you.”

  I laughed, and we climbed up the hill to find Gerick.

  We slept under the rocks again that night. The knowledge that we were only a portal away from real food, real beds, and a bath was a fine torment, but the first sight of Gerick at the top of the track had told me we were going nowhere until we’d had some rest. He’d been sitting with his head on his knees, unable to speak, utterly and completely drained. His breathing was erratic, his limbs and shoulders twitching every once in a while as he inhaled with a great whoop. Making portals would require learning and practice, even if he had power left after what we’d just done. We would have to wait until morning.

  Paulo boosted him onto his horse, and we rode back to the riverbed and our shelter. Our little fire was still burning, and I used the rest of our water and all the good herbs we had left to make tea. We drank some ourselves and forced the rest down Gerick until he just shook his head and rolled over on his blankets. He hadn’t said a word, and I wasn’t about to broach the subject of the oculus or our strange partnership. I supposed he knew that we’d been successful.

  That night I dreamed of wildcats tearing their way out of my skin.

  My eyes fluttered open to see Nim and Rab squatting quietly in the narrow band of shade and staring at me. The sun angle claimed it was almost midday.

  “Spits,” said Nim, incomprehensibly, as she laid a handful of hard green fruits about the size of plums on a rock. “Clean the nose and throat.”

  It took me a moment to realize that spits referred to the fruit. “Oh. Thank you,” I said.

  Gerick lay on his side, still sleeping. It looked as if he hadn’t moved the entire night or morning. Paulo lay flat on his back under the deepest part of the overhang, snoring peacefully. He had packed up all our gear the previous night, except for our blankets and a few things I’d set aside.

  I divided the last of our cheese into five chunks and offered a portion to the two scavengers. It was so dry and hard that droplets of grease ran off it as the morning warmed. Nim kept gesturing me to take one of the green fruits, though I noted that she ate only her portion of cheese. I picked up one and sniffed it. It just smelled green.

  “We’re leaving today, and, as we can’t carry everything, we thought perhaps you’d want some of our supplies.” I pointed to the stack of pots, cups, and spoons. “You’ve been very kind to us.”

  While the two of them knelt in the sand, patting and stroking each piece, Nim sighing with pleasure, I bit into the little green fruit. “Vasrin’s hand!”

  Rab grinned, showing his few brown teeth, and in sheer excitement started banging a spoon in one of the pots.

  Gerick shot up to sitting. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” My assertion came out as a whimper. My nose was running, my eyes watering, and my lips puckered. Now I knew why they called these things spits. “It’s just time for you to wake up. We’re going back to Avonar today.”

  He ruffled his hair tiredly and looked around at Paulo’s packing job and Rab carrying our scorched pots off to the cache across the gully. “Earth and sky. You two have a lot of confidence in me. I feel like an empty barrel.”

  “You must be blind.” I swallowed the sour fruit and smiled—or grimaced—at Nim, who had appeared a bit worried at my outburst. As soon as she went back to her admiration of our spare water flasks, I lowered my voice and continued. “At the least, your perception of your own gifts is a bit skewed. As long as you make a habit of what you’ve learned these past weeks, use the t
echnique to replenish your power, you can do anything you wish. Eat something, consider the universe for a while, and then we’ll start your portal-making lessons. And be polite, but don’t eat those green things unless you enjoy having your tongue curled.”

  After a brief trip out of sight, he took a long pull from a water flask, ate his square of cheese, and pocketed two spits with admirable diplomacy, indicating he planned to hoard them for his journey home. Nim and Rab bobbed their heads, but didn’t look at him. They had called him “the sleeping demon” and had never addressed a word to him for the entire week. As soon as he turned away, they whispered to me that they urgently needed to go hunting.

  While I saw Nim and Rab on their way, promising to leave everything we didn’t need tucked into their cache in the rocks, Gerick rolled Paulo onto his side. The sleeping fellow didn’t wake, but he did stop snoring.

  I sat with my back to the most comfortable rock in the grotto. “Ready for your lesson?”

  Gerick stood with his arms folded, looking at nothing. His face, shadowed with several days’ growth of reddish hair, was sober and worried, older somehow, and the cast of his skin—a natural red-gold—was deeper than usual. “Before we begin . . .”

  I had the sinking premonition that he was going to apologize for something. “Portals are complicated,” I said, pointing to the sand in front of me. “We need to get busy if we’re going to get out of here today.”

  “Not until I’ve—After last night—” He blew softly, rubbed the back of his neck, and then clasped his hands tightly behind his back. “I’m not good with words. You’ve seen that. All these months I’ve tried to think what to say to you, and I’ve come up with nothing but sentiments you would rightly scorn. But I just—Everything you’ve done, especially last night—You’ve made me think differently about Dar’Nethi. I have to tell you that. I know it changes nothing about the past. Not many people would even understand what it means, but I think you do.”

  “Well . . .” Moments passed as I tried to come up with something to say that did not expose the absolutely disproportionate happiness I felt. I had to be quick. Gerick looked as if a knife were slowly sliding across his throat. “. . . that’s good then. I’m glad. Though, as a compliment, it’s not quite up to the one I got last night when you were falling out of your saddle. I was told that I was ‘the damnedest woman this side of the Lady Seri.’ ”

  He laughed then. Deep. Heartfelt. Resonant with health and good humor and hope as only the laughter of those who know the truth of pain and grief can be. I laughed, too, and for once tried not to analyze or question, but just to enjoy a moment of quiet grace.

  CHAPTER 31

  After an hour of listening to a lecture on Dar’Nethi enchantments and power-gathering in general, another discussing portal creation in particular, and another of intense questioning about particular aspects of defensive and offensive combat spells about which I could offer little information, Gerick began to work on his portal-making. After two hours of exhausting practice to get each step perfect, four false starts, and a trip into Paulo’s mind to borrow an exact image of Mistress Aimee’s sitting room and the garden just beyond it, he had created a shimmering doorway that hung in the still air of our desert hiding place. The sun was already down, but the brutal heat of afternoon had not yet yielded its sway.

  Without seeming to notice the sweat rolling down his brow or the traces of fresh blood streaking the dirty bandages on his hands, Gerick gazed solemnly on his work. “Do you suppose it goes where we intend? Damned awkward if I’ve mucked it up.”

  “You were holding back,” I said, fanning my face with a tuft of gray grass. “I’ve told you fifty times: A Dar’-Nethi spell-working will never come together perfectly if you starve it. Portals are immense.”

  “We used everything I had last night. Now we’ve this portal to make, another oculus to destroy, and who knows what else. I’ve only been awake a few hours. I can’t possibly think or . . . live . . . enough in a few hours to replenish what we’ll need.”

  “You have to open yourself completely when you draw power. Use everything. Not just experience. Not just the world around you at the very moment you’re thinking of it. But everything you feel. Everything you are. Everything you remember. You are not a simple Grower who’s done nothing but plant seeds his whole life! Your capacity is enormous. The ‘fuel’ you have to fill it is enormous. Use them.”

  “I’ll try to do better. But there’s only so far I can go.” He had closed himself off again, just when I thought he was beginning to trust me.

  Annoyed, I was more blunt than I intended. “Then sooner or later you’ll fail.”

  Exchanges like this, with half the conversation unspoken, exhausted me. Sometimes I knew what he was trying to say, and sometimes I was completely at sea. No wonder D’Sanya had done all the talking.

  While he and Paulo peered into the night beyond the portal, I grumbled to myself that anyone stupid enough to take a Dar’Nethi without talent as a mentor deserved no better teaching than he got, and I tried to convince myself that I was not at all unhappy that Gerick had no need to use my hands for portal-making. The residual effects of his power drifted on the hot air like a shower of cherry blossoms, but nothing would ever compare to the exhilaration of wielding his enchantments with my own hand.

  Only the faint orange glow of a small fire gleamed in the darkness beyond the portal. But Paulo swore he could see through the garden door to the blue couch where Aimee had once sat drinking tea, and the low table where she had set the book she could read so amazingly with her fingers, and the tapestry footstool where she had set her foot—her most elegantly perfect foot, his expression reported. Mercifully he restrained himself from speaking it aloud.

  Gerick listened soberly as Paulo finished his earnest description that had so little to do with accurate memory, then shook his head ever so slightly as his friend stepped through the portal. I stood right behind Gerick to watch, and I couldn’t help myself stretching up on tiptoe and whispering in his ear. “He needs to tell her, you know.”

  Gerick peered over his shoulder, frowning as if I’d reminded him of a step he’d missed. “What’s that?”

  “How he feels. She can’t see it, and he doesn’t talk enough for her to hear it. She doesn’t know.”

  The wrinkles in his brow smoothed. “I think he could as easily claim the throne of Avonar.”

  I considered pointing out that perhaps he could advise his friend, as it seemed he’d found ways to say such things himself. But it would perhaps not be a wise thing—and certainly not a kind thing—to tweak the bruised heart of a powerful sorcerer who had once been a devil.

  Before my wayward tongue could get me into trouble, Paulo stepped back into our cave, grinning. “Nobody about, but it’s the right place and a fire’s lit in the hearth. We’ll give the ladies a right surprise when they find horses in the garden and us three filthy travelers sitting there drinking tea!”

  “Let’s go, then,” said Gerick.

  He snatched up the loose packs, I took the cloaks we’d set ready, and Paulo grabbed the horses’ leads, then we stepped one by one through the tremulous doorway.

  Passing through a portal is a sensation something like that of jumping off a cliff, I’ve always thought. Your stomach seems to take a certain amount of time to catch up with you. And the other place—the place beyond—slams into your mind exactly like the hard earth at the end of such a leap. I don’t know that even a Dar’Nethi mind is supposed to make such an abrupt shift from one place to another. It must have been the anticipation of seeing Aimee that had allowed Paulo to come back grinning. Or perhaps the whole experience is more pleasant for mundanes.

  The house was indeed dark, and the air was cold for a late summer evening, even in the highlands of Avonar. Heavy mist floated through the soggy garden. They must have had days of rain. Though it would be just past the dinner hour, the house was silent, and no noise at all came from the street or neighboring houses. Odd.r />
  The oppressive quiet muted the three of us, as well. Paulo clucked softly and led the horses through the back gate into the stableyard. I unlatched the garden door that opened into Aimee’s small sitting room, and by the time Gerick and I walked through it, Paulo was back at our sides. He couldn’t have taken time even to unsaddle his beasts.

  The wan fire in the hearth scarcely made a dent in the chill. No one was maintaining the house enchantments. The dining room and the kitchen beyond were deserted, and the grand drawing room with its fountains and chimes, birdcages, plants, and gaudy swathes of colored silk hanging from the ceiling felt like a gathering place for unquiet spirits.

  “They must have gone out,” I whispered, once we’d poked our heads into every room on the lower floor and found no sign of mistress, guest, or servant. “Lady Seriana is surely at the hospice as she planned. Perhaps Mistress Aimee is busy with Commander Je’Reint.” Perfectly sensible explanations.

  “A fire’s lit and her cloak is laid by it,” said Paulo, his anxiety setting my own stomach aflutter. “She never goes without it—not on such a cool night as this. And she promised that someone would be here close until we sent word. One of her serving girls if not her.”

  Perhaps it was Paulo’s worry that kept us whispering and creeping about like thieves.

  “We’ll search the rest of the house,” said Gerick. “I’ll go up; Paulo, you to the cellar. And if you’d—”

  “I’ll look in the back garden,” I said.

  “If no one’s about, we’ll leave a message and be on our way.”