Borric said, “He loves the Queen, I’m certain.”
“Oh, in his way, certainly. She’s a fine woman and I’ll not hear any man say otherwise, but there’s love and there’s what your young Baron James has discovered. He’s a changed man, no doubt about it. You watch and learn. If you’re fortunate, you might see what you will likely not know.”
Borric sighed and looked at the ground. “Because I am to be King?”
Kulgan nodded. “Precisely. You’re not as thick as I took you to be. You will marry for the good of the nation. Oh, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to satisfy itches with willing ladies of many ranks, no doubt. I know your uncle has given you at least a half dozen cousins born on the wrong side of the blanket. Several of them will no doubt be rising in the ranks of the nobility by the time it’s over with and done. But that’s not the same thing.
“The King is very fond of the Queen, and from what I hear, she is an able confidante and wise counselor, but she is still no more than a friend. Your uncle has to live every day of his life without that one special thing that your father, your aunt, and your uncle Martin were blessed with.
“James has found that person whom the gods placed here to make his life complete. Don’t doubt for a moment that it was fated, and don’t think for a moment that he was taken unawares. What seems to you to be a hasty act of rash thoughtlessness is in fact a recognition of something so profound that only one who has known it can understand. The mind and logic have nothing to do with this; it is a thing of the heart and intuition. So, do you understand now?”
“We should let him alone?” said Erland.
“Precisely,” said Kulgan, pleased with himself. He smiled as he studied the Princes for a moment. “You know, you two are nowhere near the stupid pair of street thugs you resemble. Blood will tell after all, I guess. Now, you’ll most likely forget everything I’ve told you five minutes after you find an alehouse with a card game and a couple of amply endowed servingwomen looking to snag a rich gift from a young noble.
“But with luck, at some critical time in your life, you will recall what I’ve said. It will help you make choices you must make, both of you, for the good of your nation.”
Borric shrugged. “It seems that the last few weeks have been dedicated to constantly reminding us of our duty.”
“As it should be.” Kulgan studied the boys. “You have been placed upon a high seat, Borric, and you one step below, Erland. You are not given all the power your rank carries for your simple pleasures and amusements. They come to you in payment for terrible sacrifices. Your grandfather made them, as did your uncle, and your father. I served with Lord Borric during the Riftwar and watched him order men into battle, knowing that many of them would not return. The ghosts of the many men who died under your grandfather’s command haunted his nights. As the ghosts of those who served your father haunt his nights. And while every one of those men died willingly in service to their King and Prince, still their deaths weigh heavily upon Arutha. That’s the sort of man your father is. You will come to know him better as you get older.” Looking at Borric, he said, “And the day will come when you have to order men to go forth and die for the Isles, and unless you came into this world without a soul and heart, my young friend, your nights will be as haunted as your father’s and grandfather’s.”
Both brothers said nothing. At last Kulgan turned back toward the imposing edifice of Stardock. “It’s turning cool. I’ll find me a fire to warm myself next to. You go find whatever trouble you can.” After he took a few steps, Kulgan halted, turned, and said, “And be cautious of some of our fisher lads. Make free with their women and they’ll have their scaling knives out before they remember you’re royalty.” He studied the twins’ faces a long moment, then added, “Take care of yourselves, boys.”
Borric and Erland watched the old magician head back to the entrance of the main building of the Academy, then resumed their walk to the ferry. As they came to the beach, Erland said, “What do you think?”
Borric said, “About what he said? I think he’s an old man with a lot of strange ideas.”
Erland nodded in agreement as they signaled to the ferryman they wished to cross to the beckoning lights of the distant town. While they waited, Borric turned and stared into the gloom at the doors where Kulgan had passed. For a brief moment he pondered the old magician’s words, and wondered if the reason he felt so uncomfortable with what Kulgan said was because he didn’t understand what Kulgan said, or because he did.
The wind blew softly as Gamina and James walked along the shore, silently sharing the evening. James felt both invigorated and exhausted. In his thirty-seven years he had shared little of himself with anyone. True intimacy seemed impossible for him, but in Gamina he found someone able to break past previously unbreachable defenses. No, it wasn’t that way, he amended silently to himself. She hadn’t broken past anything. She simply found the door waiting for her to open.
A scented breeze blew out of the south, the fragrance of distant orchards and fields in bloom across the Vale of Dreams. Middle moon rose in the east, a copper disc in the dark night approaching. James turned to his intended bride. He marveled at the arch of her neck, the way her fine pale hair seemed to float about her face and shoulders, a nimbus of white tinged smoky grey in the twilight. Her pale eyes regarded him, then she smiled and his spirit leaped. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you,” he said, not quite believing his own joy. “And I must leave you.”
She turned to watch the moon for a long moment, then her thoughts came to James. No, my love. My time here is over. I will journey to Kesh with you.
James gathered her into his arms. “It’s dangerous. Even for one of your gifts, there will be peril.” He kissed her neck and felt her shiver slightly in response. “I would be more content within my mind with you safely here.”
Would you? she asked. I wonder.… She stepped slightly away and studied his face in the fading light. “I fear you might retreat within yourself, Jimmy, and after a time you would convince yourself what we have found here was an illusion and those barriers against love and pain would then be restored, stronger, higher, and more firmly buttressed than ever before. You would find a reason to journey back to Krondor another way, and you would find reasons to postpone your return to Stardock. For a time you would convince yourself that you intended to come for me as soon as possible, but there would be one reason then another to keep you away. And always one reason or another to keep you from sending for me. After a time, you would simply put all this away from your heart and forget.”
James looked stung. Newly discovered feelings rampaged through him and his usual pose of relaxed confidence was absent. He looked nothing more than the boy he had never truly been, confused and disturbed by the loving attentions of a woman. “Do you think so little of me, after all?”
Touching his cheek, she smiled, and the warmth of her loving gaze swept away the fear again, as it had a dozen times during the day. Gamina had read James’s heart and soul when she had revived him upon the lakeshore and had shared herself with him, both her body and heart. Still, trust for James was grudgingly surrendered, even to the woman who had touched him as no other had. “No, love, I do not underestimate you. But I also do not underestimate fear. My talents are not just magic as others upon this island know it. My skills are also in healing the mind and heart. I can share things with those who are weakened in spirit and sick of mind, and help them, sometimes. I can listen to dreams. And I have seen what fear can do. You fear to be left again as you were by your mother.”
James knew she was right. Even as she spoke, the feelings of that dreadful night returned, when as a child of six or seven he stole out of his mother’s crib, the stickiness upon the floor her blood, the horror of knowing only utter abandonment. Unbidden tears came to James’s eyes. Gamina gathered him into her arms and let him vent his pain. You will never be alone again, came her thoughts in his mind.
He stood moti
onless, holding her as if she were his only connection to life. And as it had before, the pain slipped away, leaving behind a tired but warm and relieved feeling. Something angry and festering within him for years had been lanced, and poisonous fear and loneliness were draining away. The wound wouldn’t heal in the space of a single day, or even many days, but in time it would heal and James of Krondor would be the better man for the healing. Her voice came to him as she said, And it is my fear speaking, as well. Doubt can make us all vulnerable.
“I have no doubt,” he answered simply. She smiled as she again hugged him tight.
The sounds of footfalls upon the ground and a pointed clearing of a throat signaled Locklear’s arrival. “Sorry to intrude, but Pug would like to see you, James.” He smiled apologetically. “And your mother would like you to join her in the kitchen, Gamina.”
“Thank you,” Gamina answered. She gifted Locklear with a warm smile and kissed James on the cheek. “I will see you at dinner.”
He kissed her again, and she headed toward the kitchen. James and Locklear walked toward Pug’s study. Locklear cleared his throat in a significant, theatrical manner.
James said, “You’ve got something on your mind. Out with it.”
Locklear’s words came in a rush. “Look, we’ve known each other, what, twenty-two years? In all that time I’ve never known you to show the least bit of interest in women—” James gave him a strange look and he amended that to—“I mean interest in marriage, at least. Now, out of nowhere, you suddenly walk in and announce to all that you’re getting married! I mean, she’s certainly a beauty, with that nearly white hair and all, but you’ve known—”
“I’ve known no one, nothing, like Gamina,” Jimmy interrupted. He stopped his companion with a restraining hand to Locklear’s chest. “I don’t know if someone like you can understand, Locky, but she’s seen inside of me. She’s seen all there is to see, the bad I’ve done and felt, the things that I’ve only hinted at to you, and she loves me despite those things. She loves me, anyway!” He took a deep breath. “You will never know what that means.”
He resumed walking and Locklear hesitated an instant before catching up. “What do you mean, ‘someone like you’?”
James halted again. “Look, you’re the best friend—perhaps the only real friend—I’ve ever known, but when it comes to women … you have no … consideration. You’re charming, you’re attentive, you’re persistent, and when the lady in question wakes up in your bed, you’re gone. I don’t know if you’ve ever really loved a woman, and sometimes, I’m not entirely sure you really even like them. You certainly don’t take their feelings into account. Why some woman’s brother or father hasn’t run a sword through you …When it comes to you and women, Locky, you just are not very constant.”
“And you are?”
“I am now,” James answered. “As constant as water running downhill.”
Locklear said, “Well, we’ll see what Arutha has to say about this headlong flight into matrimony. We court Barons need his permission to marry, remember?”
“I know.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to your meeting with the spellcaster,” Locklear said as they reached the door to the Academy building. “I expect he’ll also have a thing or two to say about you spiriting away his daughter.” Locklear left James alone at the entrance.
James entered the building and made his way down a long corridor to the base of the tower, the top of which housed Pug’s study. He mounted a spiral stairway and climbed until he reached the door of the study. As he raised his hand to knock, the door swung open to admit him. Stepping through the portal, he was not surprised to discover Pug alone in the study, some distance away from the door. After he was inside, the door closed behind James without apparent aid.
“We need to speak,” Pug said, as he rose and beckoned James to a large window. Looking out, he pointed at small lights that dotted the far shore. “People,” he said.
James shrugged. He knew the sorcerer hadn’t called him to his presence to discuss the obvious.
“When we came to Stardock over twenty years ago, this was a barren patch of ground in the middle of a deserted lake. The shore was a bit more hospitable, but this Vale was the scene of constant warfare between the Kingdom and the Empire, between rival border lords, or gangs of renegades. Durbin slavers raided, and simple bandits plagued the farmers as much as locusts.” He sighed as he remembered. “Now people lead relatively peaceful lives. Oh, there are occasional problems, but for the most part, things in the area of the Great Star Lake are quiet. And what caused that change?” he asked James.
James said, “It doesn’t take a genius to deduce your presence here caused that change, Pug.”
Pug turned away from the view of the lakeshore and said, “Jimmy, when we first met I was a young man and you were a boy. But in the time between then and now I’ve encountered more than most men could imagine in a dozen lifetimes.” With a simple wave of his hand he created a cloud in the middle of the room, less than two feet in diameter. It shimmered, then a hole appeared in the air, through which James could see a strange hall. It was a hall hanging in the midst of a grey nothingness, along the path of which doors were spaced every dozen yards or so. The grey void of nothingness between the doors was so absolute that even the black of night seemed rich and alive in comparison. “The Hall of Worlds,” said Pug. “By this path I have ventured to places no human has seen, nor will likely see again. I have visited the ashes of ancient civilizations and seen new races aborning. I have counted stars and grains of sand both, and find that the universe is so vast that no mind, perhaps not even that of a god, could encompass it.”
Pug waved his hand and the image vanished. “It would become easy to dismiss the concerns of those who live in such a tiny place as the Vale as trivial.”
James crossed his arms as he said, “Compared to that, it is trivial.”
Pug shook his head. “Not to those who live here.”
James sat without Pug’s leave and said, “I know there’s a point to this, Pug.”
Pug returned to his own chair behind his study table and said, “Yes, there is. Katala is dying.”
That news, unexpected as well as shocking, caught James by surprise. “I thought she appeared unwell—but dying …”
“There is much we can do here, James, but there are limits. No magic, potion, charm, or prayer can do more for my wife than has already been done. There is a link between healing magic and something profound in the human spirit.” He grew thoughtful and barely masked the pain his voice did not betray. “I think it is natural for all things to die, eventually—even the longest-lived races, the elves and great dragons.” He looked at James, without words for a moment, then added, “If it is time, no magic or spell can prevent this. Katala … is ready to die. Soon she will journey through a rift back to her homeland, the Thuril Highlands on Kelewan. She has seen no kinsman in nearly thirty years now. She will return home to die.”
James shook his head, knowing there was nothing he could say. Finally he asked, “Gamina?”
“I’ve watched my wife grow old before her time, James, though had this illness not developed I would have had to face this burden eventually. You can see I have not aged measurably. Nor will I in your lifetime. I may not be immortal, but my powers make me long-lived. And I’ll not watch my children and grandchildren grow old and wither while I stay as I am.
“I will leave Stardock within hours of Katala’s departure. William is firm upon his soldier’s path, having forsaken his magic gifts. I wished it were otherwise, but like most fathers I must accept that my own dreams are not necessarily my son’s. Gamina has talents, as well, not limited to magic, but rather stemming from an unusual mind. Her mental speech is both magic and natural, but her sensitive nature, her empathy, her caring, these are special gifts.”
James nodded. “I can’t argue that. Her mind is … a miracle.”
Pug said, “I agree. I’ve studied my daughter’s tale
nts more closely than any upon this world and know better than even she what the extent of her talents are … and her limits. She would have chosen to stay here, had she not met you, to take over the burdens her mother leaves behind—Katala has been the true leader of our community for most of our time here. I wish to spare Gamina this. She was a child burdened with great sadness and pain at an early age—much like you, I suspect.”
James gave a slight nod. “We’ve shared things.… ”
“No doubt,” said Pug with a wry smile. “But that is as it should be with lovers, husbands and wives. I will lose much when Katala departs, more than perhaps even she suspects.” For an instant, Pug stood exposed to James and the young Baron saw a man isolated from others by unknowable responsibility, and one of the few who could ease that great weight, one who could give him a few moments of warmth and comfort, was slowly leaving him. For just a moment, Pug revealed the depth of his pain, then the mask was again in place. “For when she leaves I will begin to concern myself with those grand issues I’ve given you but a glimpse of, and leave behind the ‘trivial’ concerns of Stardock, the Vale, even the Kingdom.” He looked off in the distance, as if his mind was elsewhere. “The Kingdom is my birthplace, Jimmy, but all the world is my home.” He let out a deep breath, then smiled. “I wish for my loved ones much what any man must wish: safe homes and fine children, lives unspoiled by turmoil and strife. In short, I wish them to be as happy as possible. And Gamina has shown me what is in her heart, and it is you. I wish to grant you my blessings.”
James let out a long sigh of relief. “I hope Arutha is as understanding. I need his permission to marry.”
“This is no difficulty.” Pug moved his hands and created a grey smoky sphere in the air. Within it, shapes began to form, then suddenly James was looking at Arutha in his study in Krondor, as if a window appeared between two rooms but a wall apart. Arutha glanced up as if at them and with an uncharacteristic display of surprise, half rose from his chair. “Pug?”
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