Son of Avonar tbod-1

by Carol Berg

  We strolled across the garden, up the steps, and into the library, but I might have been treading on cloud or water for all I knew. Only when we halted in the middle of the library did I wrench my eyes from Karon’s face. The others were staring at us, sipping brandy, and waiting. I could not think what they were waiting for.

  “We thought perhaps you two had wandered into some other garden,” said Julia, her head tilted, peering at us thoughtfully.

  “This exceptional young woman would not get lost in Hierant’s Maze,” said Karon, releasing my arm and immediately retreating toward the hearth. “She has been explaining her theories of sorcery to me.”

  As I sank to the leather couch beside Julia, Martin widened his eyes and waggled his eyebrows at her. I felt the blood rise to my cheeks, but before my cousin could come out with whatever clever jibe he was concocting, Karon drew the group’s attention back in his direction. “So have you decided, sensibly, that I must be on my way?”

  Oh yes, the grim reality of the night. Somehow I could no longer grasp it.

  Tennice snorted. “Seri! You didn’t get even that far in almost an hour?” Everyone but Karon and I laughed, and my face flamed hotter.

  “There was no time,” Karon said, clasping his hands behind his back. “The young lady was busy reading my soul and reciting to me its inner workings, telling me I must explain a few things more so as to advance her education.”

  “Well,” said Martin, “since Seri was distracted from her task, I’ll tell you that these young lions have sworn on their lives and honor—and most importantly, their tongues—that your secret does not go beyond this room. They understand the consequences for you and for themselves if it should. So it’s up to you. We will take the risk of having you here. If you are willing to take the risk of our silence, then there’s no need for you to go.”

  “I’ve traveled enough for the present,” said Karon, softly, and the great hand which had been clenching my heart and stomach released its grip.

  Martin laid his hand on Karon’s shoulder. “If you’re to be with us for a while longer, and since I don’t think any of us are yet ready for sleep, then perhaps, as Seri suggests, it’s a good time to tell your friends the history they never learned.”

  “As you wish.”

  Another log was thrown on the fire. More brandy was poured. The two starving lamps winked out, leaving the pool of light from the hearth as the only illumination. Karon settled himself on the patterned rug and began.

  * * *

  “I am of a people whose name you’ve never heard spoken, though we believed the race of the J’Ettanne was once as numerous as the Valloreans with whom we came to share a language. Much of our history has been lost, and I’ve never heard any explanation of why we were born so different or whether at some time we had a land of our own. Our oldest stories say only that the J’Ettanne scattered throughout the Four Realms because they were constantly wondering what was beyond the next hill or past the next turn of the road. A J’Ettanni man and wife might labor to build a house and plant a crop, only to abandon them before the vines bore fruit, just because a day’s sunrise was so lovely that they wanted to see what might lie east of their land. Or another might move to the next town when he heard there was a minstrel there who had sung a new song of surpassing beauty. Our neighbors thought our wandering life odd, for they didn’t understand that the accumulation of experience is the essence of J’Ettanni power.”

  The flames in the hearth set the shadows to dancing about the room.

  “And yet, our people were welcomed everywhere, for their only desire was to spend their power for good. Some could infuse new life into herds and crops. Others could build skillfully and beautifully. They could make light or fire from nothing… well, their talents could be applied to so many things.”

  Karon’s face was sculpted by the firelight as he spun his tale of wonder, his eyes riveted on the orange flames as if the only way he could proceed was to convince himself that no one was listening.

  “The world was much as it is now. Greed and ambition set people against people, and a sorcerer’s talents were too valuable to ignore when battle was to be joined. Most refused to join the service of the local warlords. To use their power for destruction violated everything the J’Ettanne believed. But the warlords tried to force them by taking their families hostage or burning their homes. Even if a man aided his lord willingly, he might find himself set against an army wherein his cousin, or his brother, or his sister was forced to serve.

  “And so a group joined together, calling themselves the Free Hand of the J’Ettanne, determined that the J’Ettanne be a people who would speak for themselves, not subject to any lord. Deep in the mountains that you call the Dorian Wall lay an ancient stronghold that J’Ettanni legend said was a place sacred to our people. The Free Hand rebuilt the stronghold so that all could have a refuge in time of trouble. The secret of its location was closely guarded, passed carefully from one to another of the Free Hand, who swore on the lives of their children to keep it. They couldn’t allow the warlords to discover it.

  “About the time the rebuilding was done, there came a split in the Free Hand. A faction calling themselves the Closed Hand thought it was enough for us to have a safe haven, so individuals could choose to serve the warlords or not. Another group, called the Open Hand, looked beyond our own needs and asked why should peasants or knights, any more than sorcerers, be pressed against their will into the service of those who were unworthy? With the gifts of the J’Ettanne, it would be possible to order the world in peace. After long years of disagreement, the Open Hand prevailed, and J’Ettanne rose up all over the Four Realms, proclaiming that there would be no more war, no cruelty, no brutality. No more.”

  “How was it possible?” I burst out, unable to contain all the questions jostling each other in my head. “The talents you’ve described are impressive, but not enough to defeat true warriors.”

  “Let me show you.” His gaze flicked around the room as if to make sure we were all still there. His cheeks were slightly flushed, and he quickly returned his attention to the fire. This is what they did, and what no one then or since has ever understood.

  I heard him speaking as clearly as if his mouth were at my ear. But his lips did not move, and the room was silent save for the snap of a log in the fire. My neck prickled and my mind swelled with a presence that was not the one I carried with me every day. It was gentle and embracing and apologetic, but as undeniable and overwhelmingly powerful as a spring deluge. In that same moment, I felt an overpowering thirst, and I lifted my brandy glass to my lips.

  This would not have seemed so extraordinary if Tennice and Tanager and Julia had not lifted their glasses at exactly the same moment in exactly the same motion, all of us stopping in a single movement as if time itself had halted. Suddenly, my knees felt like water.

  “So you see,” he went on in audible speech once more, “how it might be possible to change many things with such abilities.”

  Tanager, Tennice, Julia, and I… we looked at each other with astonishment, disbelief, and a hundred other emotions that were written on our faces. Tanager downed his brandy all in one gulp and jumped up from the floor to pour himself another. Julia’s slender hand seemed paralyzed, and she stared first at Karon and then Martin. Tennice slammed down his glass, sloshing the amber liquid on a small table and jerking his hand away. I forced myself to exhale, hearing the tremulous sound of my own breath as implications and possibilities ran riot in my head… terrifying possibilities… humiliating… violating…

  Oh, Seri, don’t be afraid. No, I’ve never —not ever —done this to you before. You’ve had no thought that was not your own. You’ve felt no desire, performed no act that was not of your own will. And until this moment, I’ve never let myself hear anything but what has come from your lips.

  The words carried so much more than their meaning—a plea for understanding that exposed a part of his most private self—that I found myself thin
king, It’s all right; it’s all right. I’m not afraid. Not of you. And I knew it all was real when he glanced up quickly and gave me a tenuous smile.

  “You can see how it might be easy to abuse such a gift,” he went on, “and why people might come to fear it. That was what happened. For thirty or forty years the Open Hand ruled the Four Realms and corrected all that seemed wrong. But the J’Ettanne were no wiser than other men and no more immune to self-importance, and more and more they liked to order things according to their whims. Those who disputed their rule were punished with nightmares and terrors until the poor souls thought they were going mad. The poor and ignorant were controlled with superstitions—rumors of vile monsters, spirits, and demons. By the time of the Rebellion, the J’Ettanne had enslaved the people they thought to save, and, in their arrogance, had written their—our—doom.”

  “But what chance had ordinary people against such power?” Tennice sat stiffly in one corner of the couch with his third glass of brandy, his voice tight, verging on anger.

  Karon stood up, folding his arms, a slender silhouette against the fire. “There were so few of us. That was the key. We had been scattered for so long that our numbers had not increased like those of other races. And it doesn’t matter if I can listen to what you’re thinking, for if all five of you are thinking at once, as loud and discordantly as possible, I can sort it out no better than if you’re all babbling at once.”

  Tanager had stretched his long legs over the rest of Tennice’s couch, and with a wry grin poked one of his outsized feet at his older brother. “That’s exactly what Evan and I always did when we were boys. We’d bully Tennice into taking on Father over our last scrape, while we went off and got into another. We’d yell at him until he was so confused, he couldn’t think how hard Father was going to come down on him.”

  Tennice glared sourly at Tanager… and then slowly, reluctantly, his stormy countenance relaxed and he broke into a rueful chuckle. “I had to take up the law as self-defense.”

  Karon nodded, laughter dancing across his face like the wisps of summer fire above a midnight meadow. “Quite the same. In our case, it was only the matter of a single year until the Open Hand was overthrown. Those who came to power decreed that no one would be safe as long as any J’Ettanne walked upon the earth. No work of the J’Ettanne could stand and no memory of the J’Ettanne could survive. Thus began the extermination and the law that you know. The priests called us heretics and destroyed everything we had touched, as well as many things that had nothing to do with us. They closed down every temple and shrine, broke every statue, burned every writing, ruined every artifact that was not devoted to Arot and Mana or one of the Twins—”

  “That’s why the temple rules are so strict about heresy, and priests are so quick to stamp out any talk of lesser deities like harvest gods or shopkeepers’ daemons or water spirits,” said Julia.

  “Exactly so,” said Karon. “They couldn’t untangle politics and belief and superstition and sorcery. And so they had to destroy it all. Over the past four hundred and fifty years most of the J’Ettanne have been hunted down and killed, though I doubt three people in the world outside this room remember exactly why it’s done.”

  “But where have you come from, then?” I said. “How have you managed to survive without being found out? There have been no… no sorcerer burnings… since I was a child.” The very words were as acid on my tongue.

  “I’m getting to that.” With a grateful smile, Karon drained a glass of wine Julia had given him. Setting the empty glass on the mantelpiece, he continued. “Though most of the followers of the Open Hand were slaughtered right away, those of the Closed Hand held out for a few years in their stronghold. But they knew their days were numbered. With the hunt so virulent, they were sure to be discovered. So they decided to abandon the stronghold, building secret ways through the mountains and sending out a few families at a time to settle in remote places where they would not be known. These refugees carried with them two tenets: that the gifts of the J’Ettanne were for life and not destruction, and that no mind could be invaded without consent. At least a few survived and managed to escape detection for several centuries. Some prospered, particularly in one Vallorean city called Avonar. My ancestors were among them. As late as five years ago the Lord of Avonar, the Baron Mandille, was a J’Ettanne. He was my father…” His voice faded.

  I caught my breath. “Avonar! Evard’s triumph. Did Evard know?”

  Karon hesitated, glancing at me and then at Martin, who was perched on the back of Tennice’s and Tanager’s couch.

  “He knew,” said my cousin in disgust. “I don’t know how, but somehow in the last days of the Vallorean War, King Gevron learned that sorcerers lived in Avonar and that they were the last. Gevron promised amnesty to every citizen of Avonar who returned to the city before midsummer’s day, proclaiming that he had decided to leave the place a free city because the lord of Avonar had tried to broker the peace between the Leirans and the Vallorean king. The war was over. They all went home. But instead of amnesty Gevron sent the Duke of Doncastre. When Evard sacked Avonar and slaughtered all who lived there, Karon was studying at the University, bound by his father’s command to keep his connection with Avonar secret.”

  Martin paused for breath, and the four of us pelted him with questions, the most particular being how Martin had come to learn the truth about Karon before the rest of us.

  “When I was in Yurevan two years ago,” Martin said, “I took a few days to visit a professor from the University whom I’ve known since my own student days. He introduced me to a young colleague who was collaborating with him on a cultural history of northern Valleor. Karon, of course. We enjoyed each other’s company immensely and went riding together several times over the course of the week.

  “One day we came upon a young family with a newborn babe, the man and woman scarcely more than children themselves. They were starving, riddled with wasting fever, and had taken refuge in an abandoned charcoal-burner’s hut in the forest just beyond Ferrante’s land. The boy warned us off and, in his last despair, begged us to toss him a knife so he could put an end to his family’s misery.

  “I would’ve done it, but our friend here said there was an alternative. He tried to shove me off with some twaddle about medical training and the risks of contagion, but being stubborn, as you all know, and damnably curious, I watched from concealment. And so I saw Karon do his little business with the three of them. Needless to say, he had to spend some time telling me all he told you tonight.”

  Martin sighed. “We thought we were done with the incident, but didn’t the stupid young bastard ignore Karon’s requirement of silence and take his healthy wife and babe into town, telling everyone of the miracle that had come about. The fool thought he’d make his savior into a hero, but instead, at Ferrante’s house, we hear that a hunt is up for a sorcerer in the district. I managed to smuggle Karon back to Yurevan, meet him properly in different circumstances, and invite him here, never thinking I’d be so stupid as to put him back in the danger from which I had extracted him.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Day 1, Year 1 in the reign of King Evard

  By the time Martin had finished his tale, the sky was rosy and the birds twittering in the garden. Tomas would arrive by mid-morning, and the events of the night would make my departure no easier.

  Despite his best efforts, Tanager fell asleep on the floor, while Julia and Martin went to the kitchen to hunt up something for us to eat. Martin had told his stewards to continue the servants’ holiday through the coming day. Tennice paced the library, grumbling under his breath and casting such mournful glances over his spectacles at Karon and me that we decided to escape to the garden. We walked for a while, but there was nothing to say and everything to say, and we could not even begin. Eventually we gave up trying and joined Martin and Julia in the kitchen.

  Just as Martin pushed a knife into my hand and told me to slice the oranges piled in a copper bowl, Tennice
burst through the door. “Martin, do you have a copy of the Westover Codex? Surely you do. Don’t tell me you don’t.”

  The Earl of Gault was up to his elbows in buttered toast. “You’re going strange on us, Tennice. The Westover Codex at six in the morning? Here we’ve had a night such as friends seldom experience, and you’re ready to get back to your books.”

  “No jest, Martin.”

  Martin shrugged. “In the vault, then. Black leather case.”

  Before too long a time had passed, Tennice’s head reappeared in the kitchen doorway. “Seri, would you come, please? I need to speak with you.”

  Wiping my hands on a towel and yielding my sticky knife to Karon, I joined Tennice in the library. He was poring over a fragile parchment spread out on the library table, and when I came in, he whirled about, snapping a pen in his thin hands. I had never seen him so agitated.

  “Do you love him, Seri?”

  I was taken aback.

  “Tell me honestly. Karon—do you love him?”

  He was not asking lightly. “Yes. Yes, I do, but—”

  “You’re not afraid?”

  “Of Karon? No more than I’m afraid of you or Martin or the others.”

  He nodded as if he had expected nothing else. “If, by taking a great risk, you could avoid what is to come with Evard, would you be willing?”

  “I’d do almost anything.”

  “I’ve found you a way.” He beckoned me to the table to look at his parchment. “Evard will likely be crowned this afternoon, no later than tomorrow. It’s already been two months since Gevron’s death. A thousand noble guests are getting restless at twiddling their thumbs here in Montevial, waiting for us to make up our mind who we’re going to crown, while their tenants are harvesting crops and their less honored neighbors are lusting over their unguarded fields and horses. And, most importantly, the fall campaign against Kerotea can’t begin until there’s a king. So I started thinking about how there’s no time for an extended celebration, only the necessary rituals—coronation rituals. And that reminded me of something I’d read.” Tennice never forgot anything he read, not even if it made no sense or had no relevance at the time. No one in all Martin’s circle had ever been able to catch him up. “You’d risk Evard’s wrath. He’s not a forgiving man, as you well know.”