by Carol Berg
“And why not him?”
“Ah. He was very much closer to your age than I, and altogether more handsome and charming.”
“Impossible.”
“Every young woman in Avonar was in love with him.”
“And did they not recognize the charms of his older brother?” I took the pen from his hand and threw it on the desk, crammed the stopper in the ink bottle, and pulled him from the chair.
“Let’s say I was fortunate to meet you before you knew of my true profession. Few Healers ever married. Though you, I think, would have defied the common wisdom…”
The hunger was growing in him again. His easy laugh told me that he didn’t sense it yet, but his skin was hot, and when I wrapped my arms about his neck, I felt the quickening of his heart. I closed my eyes and drew his arms around me like a shield.
CHAPTER 13
Year 3 in the reign of King Evard
By my twenty-fourth birthday the king and queen of Leire had produced a daughter, the Princess Roxanne, and my transcription of the Healer’s journal was complete. I had copied every word, drawn every symbol and diagram just as the author had penned them. Karon had replaced the journal in the wooden box and buried the trunk under piles of carpets, marked with a number that appeared on none of Racine’s lists. The translation was progressing well. Karon was able to puzzle out enough of the words to make some sense, and I would carefully record each newly deciphered word in my dictionary. We had come to think of the ancient Healer, whom we called the Writer, as an acquaintance just as real as Martin or Tennice.
The Writer had lived approximately four hundred fifty years ago, during the time just before the Rebellion when the J’Ettanne ruled Leire—the unholy usurpation, Leiran historians called it. He had traveled the roads of Leire and Valleor, taking his skills from village to village, spending his power until he had no more to give. Even in those days the gift of healing was rare, and the need for his help far outstripped his capacity.
Karon told me that a healing such as he had done for Martin, using the blood-rite to bring someone from the very brink of death or beyond it, was all the sorcery he could work for a matter of several hours. Lesser healings were easier, not needing the heavy investment of lifegiving, but the effects on the Healer were cumulative. Many Healers would not even attempt small hurts or illnesses, husbanding their resources for more serious needs, afraid the process of replenishing their power would be too slow.
The Writer had not been one of these. He would take all comers until he could do no more. There had come a night when one of his own children had wakened with a virulent fever. The Writer had spent all of his power that day and had nothing left with which to heal her, and so his small daughter had died. He wrote of his profound grief, but did not change his ways.
I was appalled. “Bludgeon-headed man, why didn’t he learn from his mistake? He should have saved something back for his own children. What a cold fish he must have been.”
“Not at all,” said Karon. “Read how he wrote of the child. He cared very much. But he didn’t see it as a reason to change. When you give a gift, you cannot retain part of it. It is either yours or the other’s. No in-between. Sorcery and healing are not some oddity or aberration that alter the paths of life. They are a part of it. I was able to heal Christophe because it wasn’t time for him to die, and Martin the same. If I’d spent what I did on Martin, and then Tennice had needed me, it would not be my part to say, ”If only I had not…“ That’s a sure route to madness.”
“But you said you must constantly look back at your judgments.”
“And so you must. But in each case on its merits alone, not on what the circumstances of life have made of it. Such is the Way.”
I couldn’t see it. “It makes no sense. If you see your way blocked by the enemy, you don’t keep marching down the same road. You withdraw and change your tactics. It was his own child. He was responsible.”
As with so many of our arguments, a kiss ended, but did not settle it.
When winter came and another Seille, we celebrated the first year of our marriage. Karon gave me a delicate gold locket, engraved with a rose. Inside it I put a crumbled bit of the enchanted roses he had grown for me. I gave him a chestnut stallion. He named the horse Karylis, which in the language of Valleor means sunlight. Karylis was the name lot of the mountain where he had healed his brother and come into his calling.
On one quiet night in midwinter, I sat nestled in an oversized chair by our library fire, plodding through a story written in Vallorean, trying to bolster the smattering of language skills I had neglected so sorely in my girlhood. I was finding myself easily distracted, in the latest instance observing how the pool of lamplight lit Karon’s high cheekbones so delectably as he sat at the library table poring over the journal transcription. So I was not too startled when he sat back and burst out, “Mother of earth! Seri, come see what I’ve found.” His high color made the lamplight pale. I hadn’t seen him so excited since the finding of the journal.
I abandoned my chair and lap robe to lean over his shoulder and see what page had revealed such a dramatic secret. It was a diagram labeled with odd symbols. “I never expected we’d make any sense of this one,” I said. “Have you deciphered it?”
“I’ve not interpreted the diagram or the symbols, but I know their purpose.” He turned back a few pages and traced his finger over my writing. “The Writer has been getting more and more worried about the terrible things being done by the Open Hand. He says that on Av’Kenat, one of the rebellious cities was beset by a ‘legion” or ’army,“ or something like that, of nethele. Nethele means ‘the dead.” Evidently this ruler, Zedar, whom he has mentioned before, sent the spirits of the dead to frighten his subjects into submission, filling their minds with ’the most pernicious mortal dread.“ The Writer is horrified at the perversion of Av’Kenat, and it looks as if it inspired him to action. What do you think he’s done?”
I squeezed his shoulder and jiggled it. “Don’t make me guess.”
“He’s gone to the elders of the Closed Hand and asked for refuge in Vittoir Eirit, the J’Ettanni stronghold. And he’s written down the route they told him.”
“He wrote it down? I thought it was the most closely guarded secret.” More and more I was losing any wonder at how powerful sorcerers had given up a kingdom so easily.
“It was. But the Writer never trusted himself to remember everything he needed to keep straight, so he encoded the instructions. It’s the reason for the symbols. Seri, if I can unravel his code, I might be able to find the stronghold. Can you imagine it?”
“Surely there would be nothing left.”
“Hard to say. The stories we told in Avonar came from people sent away from Vittoir Eirit when the elders decided to abandon it. My ancestors never knew what became of the stronghold, and they were forbidden to seek out any other of the J’Ettanne, so they had no way to find out. They assumed it had been discovered and destroyed. But even if it’s ruined, think how fine it would be to discover its location. To walk in Vittoir Eirit…”
Karon had taken on his dreaming look again, and I tugged at his hair. “Give it up. You’ll not unravel a four-hundred-fifty-year-old puzzle without the key to his code.”
“True. But we’ve already learned that the Writer is not a complex man. The key will be here in his journal.”
“And birds will fly upside down and Evard will develop a heart.” I flopped back in my chair and picked up my book, but my eyes did not leave Karon’s glowing face.
The search for the key to the Writer’s code occupied the entire spring, but by the beginning of our second summer married, we were no closer to the answer. The diagram consisted of five symbols, connected by straight lines. We assumed the lines were roads or trails and the symbols landmarks of some kind. We pulled out maps of Valleor to see what roads might fit the pattern, but too many years had passed, and even in our present day, maps were notoriously inaccurate. And, too, we had no idea if the
distances between the symbols on the page were at all in proportion to the actual distances involved. The five symbols were no more enlightening. One was almost certainly a foot, one looked something like a trunk or chest, another resembled a hunting horn. The other two looked like a man’s face and a rabbit. We investigated the names of towns and villages, rivers and landforms, and tried a hundred other ideas, seeking some correspondence, but to no avail.
Karon proceeded with the translation, learning more of the Writer’s travels and his life with his wife and six remaining children. The man wrote of his garden and his animals, of the difficulties of teaching his children to read and finding mentors for their emerging talents. He wrote loving and lengthy descriptions of their games and childish follies. We laughed when we read of his five-year-old daughter’s attempts to install the family pig in the house in the dead of winter. She was afraid the beast would be cold and succeeded in inducing it to follow her about like a tame dog. It took all of the family together to overcome the little girl’s enchantment and persuade the agitated pig to retreat to the cold barnyard.
As Karon read this passage, he sat beneath a tree in our garden, and I lay on the grass with my head in his lap. “When do you know… with a child?” I asked.
“If they have magical talent, you mean? When one of the parents is not J’Ettanne?” I felt him move under my cheek. I loved the way Karon’s body came to life when he spoke.
I nodded.
“Five or six years.” Karon touched my cheek, and looked down with a smile that made my heart swell. “It won’t matter you know, if and when such a marvel occurs. The child is the miracle. And the love that creates it. Nothing else.”
“Were there marriages like ours in Avonar?”
“Yes. We were so few. We could not marry just within our own kind.”
“And the children… it really didn’t matter? Not even to them?”
His eyes drifted out of focus. “There was an old J’Ettanni Healer named Celine. She became my mentor after my day in the mountains with Christophe. She was married to a candlemaker who was not J’Ettanne, and one day I asked her if her children had talent or not. She said that one of her sons had looked to be a tamer of horses since he could walk, and he had grown into the most renowned horse-tamer in Avonar.
“ ‘Eduardo, the Horsemaster?” I asked her. Eduardo’s power was renowned among us. “Aye,” she said. “But my other son showed no magical talents at all.”
“And in the fullness of my newfound J’Ettanni manhood, I asked her, quite solicitously, was it not terribly difficult to see one son so talented and one so… ordinary. Celine nodded gravely and said it was one of the trials of parents to see children unequally blessed. Her other son had worried about it a great deal when he was a youth and didn’t want to listen to those who told him that his own talents were of no less value than J’Ettanni sorcery. But while Eduardo was in the fields with the horses, Morin read and studied, talked with the elders, and made what he could of himself.
“Morin?” I said. And she smiled slyly and said, yes, Morin was the name of her unmagical son. Well, Morin was possibly the wisest man I have ever known. He was my father’s chief counselor and the most respected man in Avonar. Of all that was lost to the world in the destruction of Avonar, the loss of his mind was perhaps the most grievous. Even now, I always begin to sort out a problem by thinking how Morin would approach it. So, you see, I learned my lesson early what gifts were important. It really doesn’t matter.“
For Karon’s birthday I gave him a walking stick made of cherry wood. “It’s quite the fashion at court, in case you haven’t noticed,” I said that evening in our library. “And I had it made especially for you.” Despite his avowals of delight and appreciation, I did not imagine that he was anything but puzzled at my choice. We were not at all bound by court fashion. Karon would sprout wings before he gave up the high-necked shirts and muted colors of provincial Valleor.
He brushed the richly colored wood and twirled the stick about his head. “Am I to use it to fend off your frustrated suitors, then?”
“Not my suitors”—I snatched the stick from the air, rotated the ebony ring set into the shaft, and held the implement where he could see the sharp steel blade that now protruded from its lower end—“only those who mean you harm.” I had failed miserably in trying to persuade him to carry a sword when he traveled and thought perhaps a weapon that did not invite confrontation might be more acceptable.
“Ah, Seri…” It took no mind-speaking to tell me right away that I had failed again. He was still smiling, but his delight had gone.
“I’ll have it taken out,” I said, retracting the blade, unable to look at him any longer. I could not bear the thought that I had disappointed him. “I should have known better.”
The distance across the room between us suddenly yawned very wide. “I can’t be what you want,” he said. “In every other matter, I will follow your lead, become whatever you wish, but this one—”
“You are everything I want,” I said as I fitted the stick back in its wooden case. “I just thought… I just want you to have something more reliable than sorcery to defend yourself. Stars of night, Karon, what if you’ve used up everything… all your power… and you’re taken?” I could scarcely say the words, and even as I said them, I shoved them out of mind. “No matter. You are as you are, and I adore you, and Martin and the others are waiting for us with your birthday feast.”
I started for the door, but he did not follow. His stillness forced me to turn around. He was standing where I’d left him beside the hearth. His eyes were locked on me, and he wore a look of such distress that I hurried back to him and tried to wipe it away with my hand. But he gathered my hands into his and gripped them hard. “Seri, I’ve wronged you sorely. All these years I’ve known I would have to explain this. The Way of the J’Ettanne—this path that I choose for my life—is very hard. Coward that I am, I’ve told myself that my choices will not harm you if I’m careful enough. If I’m strong enough. If I love you enough. I’ve ignored the truths of our future and soothed my guilt by saying that I cannot rob you of the power to choose your own way. If your choices endanger you, then that is the Way laid down for you.” He sat down on the couch and pulled me down beside him. “But I’ve been fooling myself and you. I’m so afraid…”
Afraid? The fingers that stroked my own so softly were cold. I felt as if someone had crammed the walking stick down my throat. “Tell me.”
He took a deep breath. “When the day comes that I am discovered, I’ll not fight.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean, I cannot use my power or any other weapon to take life or inflict an injury. Not to save myself. Not to save you. Not for anyone. The gift I have is for healing, for lifegiving, and I cannot use it otherwise. It’s ingrained in me so deeply, it wouldn’t be possible. You have to know that.”
I came near blurting out that this assertion was ludicrous, an impossibility for a man of honor. And Karon’s honor was unquestionable; he constantly risked his safety to care for people whose names he didn’t even know. I could understand his reluctance to inflict bodily injury, having lived so intimately with the pain and suffering such violence caused. Yet it was inconceivable that a man would not use whatever weapon he possessed to defend his family and friends, and in Karon’s case, defending us meant defending himself.
But Martin had taught me how difficult it was to argue with an idealist. “A small dose of hard reality will always make idealists into practical men,” he had once said. And so, rather than disputing Karon’s professed beliefs, I argued with his more speculative point. “Then we’ll just have to make sure you’re not discovered. Martin is wait—”
I tried to rise, but Karon would allow me neither to leave nor to divert him. “It’s more likely than not, and the result will be terrible. I’ve seen what they do to sorcerers, Seri, and what they do to those who consort with them. The image never leaves me. And I’m telling you th
at I can’t protect you from it.”
“I am perfectly aware of the risks. I just don’t want to think about them.”
“But you must. If you have me in your life, then I’m afraid you’ll have that in your life, too.”
“I won’t let it happen.”
“If anything gives me hope that it won’t, it’s your determination. But you’re the daughter of a Leiran warrior, and you’ve been taught that failure to fight is despicable cowardice. I’m a J’Ettanni Healer, who’s been taught that the crooked paths of life are the most marvelous. You were so young on that night when Martin and the others chose to have me stay… I’ll not sneak away and pretend I don’t love you, but I can’t ignore this anymore. I’m asking a great deal of you.”
And, of course, because I loved him and it was his birthday, I said I would accept whatever came and whatever he could or could not do about it. But somehow I would persuade him to carry a weapon.
In early summer Karon and I rode out to a jonglers’ fair that had grown up in the hills just outside the walls of Montevial. Jonglers were wandering entertainers who usually traveled in small family groups, but who would stop for a few weeks in summer here or there, gathering in ever-greater numbers to exchange stories, wives, and horses, and generally to enjoy each other. Though jonglers were widely regarded as thieves and liars, people would travel from nearby cities and villages to enjoy the risky marvels of their fairs. The colorfully dressed women told fortunes by casting painted sticks, and wiry, shirtless men in pantaloons swallowed fire. They told tales, sang songs, fought mock battles in wildly colored costumes, and painted portraits on bits of wood and glass. Their ragged, scrawny children were the envy of every child in Leire who dreamed of living in eternal entertainment without the restraints of propriety or lessons or labor.
“Are you sure you’re not ready to head home?” asked Karon, giving me his hand as I jumped over a running ditch, left full by an afternoon cloudburst. “This isn’t the safest place to be after nightfall.”
