by Carol Berg
“Designs cannot be evil.” Her denial was weaker now. “I had so much work to do. To heal the things they did. The things they made me do . . .”
Feeling her soften, I pressed on less brutally. I had to learn what kind of link she had forged. “I read my father’s history of the Dar’Nethi, about their joy, their kindness, their grace even after such horrors as the Catastrophe in Gondai and the Extermination in the mundane world, about their largeness of mind and heart and their willingness to build the Bridge and suffer this war to keep the universe in balance, to shield the mundane world from the Lords. You told me of your father’s strength, his courage, his love and good humor in the most terrible of times. But what do we see now? This passionate hatred of those who were Zhid, whose restoration once caused purest rejoicing. The suspicion and mistrust of those who were slaves—unthinkable a year ago or ten centuries ago. Look anywhere in Gondai and you’ll find fear, jealousy, despair, madness even to murder, people abandoning the Way that has sustained them for centuries. And the worst of it has happened since your return, so subtle, so pervasive, the Dar’Nethi themselves cannot see or feel their change . . . because you’ve tainted the foundation . . . the Bridge itself.”
She set the golden ball carefully back on the floor and wrapped her arms about her middle. Her radiant skin had gone gray in the morbid light. Her extraordinary eyes seemed the size of my palms. Perhaps she was beginning to understand what her willful blindness had caused . . . so I wouldn’t have to force her to the next step. Earth and sky, how I had loved her. “You have to stop it now, D’Sanya. Break this link so we can undo what you’ve done. Please, you must—”
Her dagger struck me in the left shoulder. My wards had triggered a warning and made me twist at the last moment or it would have pierced my heart. I staggered backward, fighting to breathe through the pain, through the enchantments that flooded my chest and limbs and caused the muscles to spasm uncontrollably. As I yanked the enchanted weapon from my shoulder, the room began to spin lazily, the air thick and glassy like cold honey.
“You are wrong, Destroyer. You are the being who poisons Gondai. I’ll prove it. But I’ll take your suggestion. I’ll walk the Bridge and draw upon my father’s magic to save Avonar. I’ll destroy you before you and your demon Zhid destroy the world.” She adjusted her belt where the empty sheath hung. Then, in a flash of silver mail and golden hair, she vanished beyond the Gate fire.
I fell back against the wall of the Chamber of the Gate, fighting for clarity, commanding my body to obey my will. Can’t let go now. Too much to do.
I had joined the Zhid assault on Avonar in hopes that I could live long enough to bring D’Sanya to the Bridge and force her to repair what she had done. If I could break her link to the Bridge, perhaps I could end the war for good. But I wished fervently that some other Dar’Nethi could see what was happening. Why couldn’t they feel it?
Fighting to control the painful spasms that wracked my limbs and heart and back, I pushed away from the wall and staggered toward the fallen statue. I worried about what D’Sanya might be doing on the Bridge, but first things first. If fortune was kind, I could cut off the flow of power to the avantir within the hour.
A quick probe revealed that the lion itself was magically inert, so I would need to destroy only the orbs. I was grateful for that.
First, consider the need. No difficulty there.
Second . . . I used the bloody dagger to draw a circle around the golden orb. My blood was the only possession I had available to assert ownership.
By the time I had shattered the two orbs, my hopes of a quick resolution were demolished as well. Woozy, nauseated, I knelt on the blood-marked floor, ripped a wad of cloth from my cloak, and pressed it to my bleeding shoulder, strapping my belt around to hold it in place. Nothing had changed. The Gate fire still pounded and thrummed, making my teeth ache, my bones ache, my soul ache. The fading light in the chamber was not some visual consequence of my injury, but a further discoloration of D’Arnath’s enchantment . . . now a sooty gray. One test to be sure . . .
Felgir! I called.
Master? Where—?
Maintain the assault according to plan. Gensei Kovrack is field commander for the present.
As you command, Lord Dieste.
No question. No hesitation. The avantir yet held. So I had accomplished nothing. I wanted to scream.
I threw D’Sanya’s knife to the floor and tried to take a full breath without passing out.
“Are you mad?” The door crashed open and Prince Ven’Dar strode into the room, his fury surrounding him like an army. But his only companion was a bedraggled Jen, wet hair sticking up, dark eyes wary, darting between the prince and me.
“D’Sanya has damaged the Bridge,” I said, as I rose to my feet amid the gold and silver shards. “She’s been drawing its power through the lion and the oculus and her other artifacts, linking it to the Lords’ devices. I just don’t know how. We must—”
“You’ve destroyed Avonar! Zhid are in the citadel. Dar’Nethi are dying.” Ven’Dar held folded hands in front of his breast, as if in pleading or prayer, but I was not fooled. A Word Winder’s hand could move quicker than lightning, and the former Prince of Avonar’s cast would not be gentle.
I extended my own hands in front of me, pale flames flickering eagerly from my fingers so he would not mistake the blood on my shirt for a sign of weakness. “I’ve blunted the Zhid attack as best I could, Ven’Dar, and we’ve no time to discuss how I might have done that better or differently. I took away D’Sanya’s jewelry and destroyed the magic of this lion, but I must have missed something else. She’s on the Bridge, saying she’s going to draw on its power to stop the attack. We must stop her.”
He circled between me and the Gate fire as if to see what I might be hiding behind my back. I shifted my position as well. Only a fool would allow Ven’Dar at his back.
“I should slay you here and now,” he said, as if he’d heard no word I’d spoken. “The Fourth Lord. The Destroyer. Since the beginning I have relied on your parents’ testimony as to your motives and objectives, your feelings, your character, all these things you keep so tightly reined. But what if we’ve all been wrong about you? The immortal Lords can bide their time to take us down paths of seeming truth. Look at you! Look at what you’ve done! Do you even know what you are?”
And of course his question pricked my own remaining doubt. All this—the Lady and her folly, my father’s illness, the necessity of war—had proceeded with an aura of inevitability, and now I stood at the Bridge with the fate of Avonar in my hands. After strenuously avoiding power and memory for nine years, I had slipped quite easily into this role, the very role designed for me when I was ten years old. You are our instrument . . .
For that moment, a chasm yawned beneath my feet, revealing a bottomless night where the deceptions of reason and intent formed in the light would be stripped away, yielding to a more fundamental . . . and less welcome . . . truth. But then another spasm wrenched my back and shoulder, sending jolts of pain down my spine—D’Sanya’s poison. I was certainly not immortal.
I had relinquished that along with all the rest of the Lords’ gifts.
“You’ve not misjudged me, Ven’Dar,” I said, clenching my jaw so as not to reveal my vulnerability. “I still choose the light. Every day, every hour is a new choice, and sometimes the choice is easy and sometimes it involves more pain than seems bearable. But since the day I followed my father out of Zhev’Na, I have denied the Lords, and if a man cannot determine his fate by his own choice, then what hope is there for any of us? Believe what I say about D’Sanya and the Bridge, or cast your winding and let us decide the matter that way. But by all that you value, do it quickly.”
Ven’Dar paused in his circling, the graying fire of the Gate behind him. His presence was enormous and dangerous—righteous anger and royal authority and the power of a Word Winder of prodigious capacity and talent. I felt his indecision. How could I blame him, when
I fought this incessant battle with my own doubts? His fingers twitched. I raised an enchantment ready to flatten him.
“Speak your name!” The clear command halted the gathering violence. A small person to so fill a room, like a skittish bird who fluttered between walls and ceiling and the two of us, shoving aside doubts and uncertainties with her pointed chin.
I almost smiled as I answered. “My name is Gerick yn Karon, known in my own land as the Bounded King.”
Jen jerked her head, as if she had expected nothing else. “Now speak the name of your master.”
This, too, was easy. “In the world of the Bounded, I am sovereign, with right and honor and the service of my people as my guidestones. In my birthplace of Leire, my sovereign mistress is Roxanne, queen, ally, and friend. In the world of Gondai, my only master is the rightful ruler of Avonar, the Heir of D’Arnath—at present the Princess D’Sanya, whose ill judgment and scarred mind are hurling us all to ruin. As her loyal subject, I must prevent her from destroying this realm she loves so desperately. Everything—everything—I have done these few days, whether vile or foolish or praiseworthy, is to serve that end. On my father’s life and my mother’s spirit, I swear it.”
Jen looked supremely satisfied. She would be most annoyed when I told her that only Zhid and slaves were bound to truth in answer to those questions. The Lords’ memories had taught me that they/I could ignore even the binding of names and heart’s loyalties. But the clarity she demanded seemed sufficient to serve the moment. Though he did not soften his grim visage or move from his position, Ven’Dar lowered his hands.
Jen stepped between Ven’Dar and me, grabbing my hands without regard to the flames dancing on my knuckles. “But, as it happens, D’Sanya is not the rightful Heir,” she said.
I quenched my enchantment before setting her skin or clothes afire, and she proceeded to pour out the news my mother had given her.
“Listen to the exact words,” she said. “Truth is power, Gerick, and you’ll hear it. This is the writing of Mu’-Tenni the Speaker, bound to Truth, in the matter of King D’Arnath’s girl child: After the Catastrophe made grim the days, the King’s favor rested upon his youngest heir . . .” She recited the damning passage, fixing the words in my mind as if she had scribed them on my skull.
The puzzle rearranged itself again. D’Sanya’s power was linked to the Bridge, not by an artifact, not by some shaped enchantment of her design, but by the very structure of the Bridge. D’Arnath had disowned her to prevent her corruption from damaging his creation, but the Dar’Nethi, as hungry for redemption and healing as D’Sanya herself, had anointed her anyway . . . had brought her back into D’Arnath’s family and undone her father’s warding.
Existing in the giant statues under the cold stars of our temple, reveling in the ponderous weight of power, I/we contemplated our enemy . . . Unsearched-for memories floated out of the past. “We will degrade thy innocent . . . use her talents . . . break her . . . destroy her . . . We shall unmake her and remake her in our image, our daughter, not thine. Woe and ruin will be thine only grandchildren. . . .”
I remembered: I/we had corrupted her power and twisted her heart with death and despair so that everything she touched might service our desires. When I had embraced the Lords’ memories at the hospice, I had examined the past and confirmed that it was only D’Sanya’s enchantments, her metalworking, her loving that we had tainted. But we hadn’t known about her link to the Bridge. D’Arnath had kept that dreadful secret well; surely no accident of battle had destroyed the Royal Library. Throughout this thousand years of war, the seed of our triumph lay buried under our fortress, growing, blossoming, bearing its wicked fruit, given life by the Tormentor King himself. All we’d had to do was keep his corrupted child alive to reap the harvest of his folly. We had done it for our own reasons, but had accomplished more than we ever understood.
“We’ll go after her,” said Ven’Dar, facing the steadily darkening fire. “I can still protect us. We’ll bring her off the Bridge, assess the damage. Once the Preceptors decide the succession, the new Heir can set out to repair it. But you must stop the assault first, Gerick. No one will believe you. I cannot believe you—even after your declaration—if Zhid under your command are killing Dar’Nethi and destroying this city.”
I looked up at him as if he existed in a different world . . . as he did, in a way . . . the world of past belief. Everything was changed now, made clear by this new information. Ven’Dar, the most perceptive sorcerer in Gondai, didn’t feel the danger. Didn’t see that it was far too late for Preceptors and judgments and repairs.
Once upon another day, Ven’Dar had told my father how sorely the Dar’Nethi were diminished since the time of D’Arnath. The goal of Ven’Dar’s reign, of his generous heart and talented hands, had been to return his people to their glory. But the deterioration of the Dar’-Nethi that had begun in D’Arnath’s time had never truly been reversed. And since D’Sanya’s arrival and accession, it had accelerated. Five years ago Ven’Dar had been able to read my truth for himself, had witnessed and understood what my father and I had done to destroy the Lords. Now he couldn’t even perceive that his mistrust, his difficulties with power, his flawed enchantments, and his inability to reverse the disharmony and prejudices among his people were not temporary aberrations, but signs of his own corruption . . . as they were signs of a pervasive, fundamental corruption in the world.
At last I could put a name to the wrongness of the world: the hopeless confusion, the creeping evil, the soul-scraping enchantments, the bondage of the spirit that destroyed peace and trust, the withering dark lurking just beyond every object in my sight that made ugly what should be beautiful. It was Zhev’Na. It was the Bridge.
“What is it, Gerick?” Jen laid her hand on my bare arm, her touch and my name connecting me for a moment to the old world.
“I can’t stop the assault yet,” I said, averting my gaze as I gently pushed her hands away. No explanation could possibly suffice. “I’ll go after D’Sanya. I’ll do what has to be done.” And if I failed, my Zhid would have to do the work for me.
Ven’Dar spun to look at me, as if he read my thoughts. But before the horrified Word Winder could raise his hands again, I released my waiting enchantment. He crumpled to the floor, stunned, eyes still wide open.
“Gerick! Wait! No!”
I closed my ears to Jen and to my own doubts and fears. Taking a firm grip on my mind and soul, I stepped through the Gate of fire.
CHAPTER 37
“D’Sanya, where are you?” The rain-battered plain stretched in every direction. Nothing moved. No monstrous birds or ravening beasts. No shrieking spirits or vicious skeletons. Nothing but unceasing rain. A mudhole sucked insistently at my boots. I could not lift either foot without sinking further.
I didn’t panic. Instead of fighting such horrors as pits of quicksand, I had learned to shift my direction, to fear something else that would then manifest itself as the world. I turned to my left and found a desert, so bleak an expanse of sun-blasted rock that I knew instantly that D’Sanya was nowhere within earshot. I took a step into the scorched barrens, my feet free of the vanished mudhole.
For hours I had searched down paths of mud and slime, across rocky wastelands, and into desolate valleys, hours of holding my mind together, of resisting the insistent madness of unreality. How did one organize a search when every new direction opened up a different landscape of death? Chaos . . . the Breach.
Yet even the quality of madness in the shifting dimension of the Bridge was changed from my previous experience of it. How was I able to think at all or to travel this realm without the protection of D’Arnath’s Heir? Rather than vivid horror—spiders’ eyes the size of shields, bats with wingspans broader than kingdoms, tumultuous riots of naked warriors with razored fingers or barbed tongues—I perceived only deadness.
Occasionally I believed I heard sharp breaths or panting over my shoulder. But when I turned, I merely existed in yet anot
her, equally desolate place. Alone.
“D’Sanya, I’ve something I must tell you.” No one answered, not even an echo. A single, rasping locust shot into my face. I brushed it away, detritus no more living than the rock beneath my feet.
I changed course again and this time trod a barren shore. The charcoal-colored lake reflected only bleak storm clouds and sunless sky. At the far end of the lake a mountain peak rose into clouds that flickered with blue-and-purple lightning. The mountain . . . the shaping D’Arnath had taught his beloved girl child . . .
I ran, soon abandoning the graveled shore for a smooth track that wound across the mountainside, relentless in its upward bent. The path steepened, but I would not slow. A hot rain, the droplets sharp like tiny blades, left blood streaks on my arms.
She stood on the rocky pinnacle, hands upraised, wind gusts whipping her hair, sleeves, and trousers. Her fingers were spread wide as if to reach the thick clouds threaded with darkening fire. As I struggled up the last near-vertical pitch, a faint white glow pulsed from her fingertips and faded to gray wisps, indistinguishable from the cloud. A despairing sob racked her slim back.
“D’Sanya.”
She whirled. “How can you be here?” she cried, as if fate had betrayed her once too often.
She cupped her trembling hands between us, but no ball of fire appeared, only a smudge of gray that drifted upward. Tears and raindrops dribbled down her cheeks.
“I don’t know how it’s possible.” I climbed the last few steps, treading carefully on the barren rock, the wind a constant threat to my balance. “Perhaps because I am not your enemy. Please believe I’m not here to hurt you. We must talk, just for a little while. Find a solution to this disaster.”
“They’re all dying,” she said. “You took my rings and pendant, destroyed the oculus and the orbs, too, and now I can’t help them. The worlds . . . the people . . . are my responsibility. If I could just clear away this storm . . . the chaos . . .”
