by Carol Berg
The light of the torches dimmed, and a cold wind swept through the cavern, bearing a hideous certainty of death and desolation, cruelty and loathing, unending pain without hope. Even the impassive Maceron looked wan and sickly. His men held their heads and moaned. I shivered uncontrollably.
All color drained from D’Natheil’s face, sweat beading his forehead. His stance wobbled briefly, but he clenched his jaw and held… and in a moment’s breath, the shadow was gone, the air clear again. Giano snatched his hands from D’Natheil as if they’d been burnt, his smirk erased. The Prince’s eyes flew open, bright and disdainful.
“He is the one,” snapped Giano. “Let us proceed. You have his knife?”
Maceron handed D’Natheil’s silver dagger to Giano. The Zhid held it to the light and examined its markings. “The lesser talisman,” he said. “With this and the sword, the Dar’Nethi believe they have ensured their future, abandoning this useless prince and this Bridge that has brought them nothing but grief.” He tossed the knife into the air and caught the spinning weapon by its hilt. “With the return of this dagger is our bargain done. The Gate fire yet burns, and, now, before we quench it forever, we will allow you to venture its dangers and return to your masters. Is that your wish, Dulcé?” He presented the knife, laid across his palms, as if he were a servant delivering a favored dish to his master.
“It is.” Baglos, his hands trembling, his complexion jaundiced, took the weapon, quickly bundled it in a cloth, and shoved it into the pack he carried on his shoulder. “The bargain is complete.”
“Do you recognize these bindings, my lord?” Giano ran a finger along the silvery cord that circled the Prince’s neck. “Dolemar is far stronger than rope or chains. As you may have noticed already, it gets tighter as you struggle, and the least touch of sorcery will cause it to burn. Too much and your flesh will turn black, and you will beg us to sever your limbs.”
He hissed a word that made the firelight dim and tweaked the cord that attached the Prince’s wrists to his neck. Though he made no sound, D’Natheil arched his back as if the binding had been pulled tighter.
Giano smiled. “Happily, you’ll wear your bonds only a short time. At dawn tomorrow the line of D’Arnath will end. The Bridge was created with D’Arnath’s blood and sweat, and the last of D’Arnath’s blood will destroy it. Simple, is it not? Ridiculous that it took a thousand years to discover that it takes only your life’s essence—the blood of D’Arnath’s anointed Heir—sprinkled in the Gate fire to finish this matter.” There could have been no words more filled with hate since the world began.
Giano beckoned his two Zhid companions. “Put him away until morning.”
As two Zhid grabbed D’Natheil’s strained arms, Baglos turned to Giano and bowed stiffly. “Before I go,” he said, “I would request one consideration. My master has neither eaten nor drunk anything for near a full day. It was part of the agreement that, although confined, he would not be cruelly treated before he discharged his duty. May I, as a last service, offer him food and drink?”
Giano laughed. “If you think he’ll take anything from you, Dulcé, then by all means proceed. We must wait until morning for the last chapter in this saga, and I’d not wish his strength compromised. D’Arnath’s Heir must champion his people with his full capabilities. I would have him know what it is he does.”
Baglos reached into his leather bag, genuflected before the naked prince, and extended his silver wine flask. “I beg your forgiveness, my lord prince. I did not know you when we began. In these past days… your kindness… You are not the person of whom I was told. Though it has not shaken my belief in the necessity of my course, our companionship has made my grief the weightier. Would that it could be different.” Tears rolled down the Dulcé‘s round cheeks. “Ce’na davonet, Gire D’Arnath.”
I understood the words, as I had not when Baglos first greeted D’Natheil with them. All honor to you, Heir of D’Arnath. And I remembered D’Natheil inspecting the scars on Tennice’s back, struggling to comprehend the relationships of honor and treachery and forgiveness. Perhaps the Prince believed Baglos had been given no more choice in his treachery than had Tennice, for in a movement that was scarcely more than a blink of his eye, he nodded. Baglos stood and raised the flask to his master’s lips. The silver glinted in the yellow torchlight.
The flask… What was it? It was not the same as the Dulcé had shared with us along the journey. This was the other one, the ornate one that was only for dire circumstances, and yet the Dulcé‘s own near drowning had not been dire enough. Baglos’s duplicity was so hard to accept. Now that I knew, I could recognize so many signs I’d missed. Yet, Baglos honored D’Natheil—loved him. I could not doubt that, for I had seen his grieving when he didn’t know I watched. I looked at the weeping Dulcé and the flask in his shaking hands, and in an instant I was filled with horrific certainty.
“No!” I screamed. “D’Natheil! My lord prince! Don’t! Oh, gods, don’t drink it!”
D’Natheil looked up in shock. He couldn’t have even known I was there, hidden in the shadows.
Baglos did not turn, but held the flask to the Prince’s lips. “Please, master, I beg you… before it is too late…”
But the silver flask clattered to the paving when Giano yanked Baglos away from D’Natheil. Giano shoved the Dulcé to the ground, then motioned to the gray-robed Zhid to take the Prince away. The two Zhid quickly wrapped the blindfold about D’Natheil’s straining eyes and dragged him into the darkness.
“Foolish, mundane woman!” cried Baglos. “Now they will use him to destroy the Bridge. We could have prevented it. You’ve ruined it all. I am forever cursed.”
“Oh, Baglos, was betrayal not enough?” I said. No matter how hopeless the day, I could not keep silent and watch murder done.
Baglos could not reply. Giano had turned his impassive gaze on him, and with no more feeling than a man crushing a gnat, flicked his knife across the Dulcé‘s throat. The blood of the Guide soaked quickly into the dry stones.
CHAPTER 34
Once Giano had followed his prisoner into the darkness, Maceron and his men settled for the night in the cavern, rolling out blankets, passing food around, and setting the watch. The sallow-faced young man who had been charged with my security loosened my bonds enough for me to sit on the floor. An eager smile played over his bony face; his tongue licked his full lips. As he refastened the ropes and knots, his tight little fingers brushed my arms, and soon his hands were wandering freely. I almost wept in relief when Maceron called him away.
I told myself to sleep. There was nothing else to do but mourn, and too much of that even to begin. Rowan, Kellea, Paulo, Jacopo… I could not bear thinking of them. And the cursed, foolish Baglos. Earth and sky, how blind I had been. Bound by his Dulcé‘s vows to a master who, by Baglos’s own account, had come near destroying the Prince once before. Loyal to Dar’Nethi traitors willing to sacrifice the prince they had damaged—and my own “mundane” world—in a scheme to save their precious city. Baglos must have been terrified that Dassine’s message would expose him. Had he called in Maceron’s henchmen to attack the herb shop, causing Celine’s death and Tennice’s injury? He had run out of the room during Dassine’s message and been dismayed at finding Zhid poison in Tennice’s wound. I grieved that Baglos was dead, for I wanted to rip out his traitorous heart.
But my anger waned quickly. What was the point? Perhaps I should have allowed Baglos to carry out his plot. Perhaps D’Natheil would be better dead at the hand of his servant than at the hand of his enemy. This time tomorrow none of it would matter. And the Bridge would fall.
Beyond grief and mystery lay the tale of enchantment and corruption from another world. Did I believe the disembodied voice that swore the doom of Gondai was the doom of my world, too? And if I believed it, did I care? For so long, I had cared about nothing and no one on this earth. But when I closed my eyes I saw Paulo embracing a nuzzling horse, and Kellea’s head on her dead grandmother�
�s lap, and Graeme Rowan’s eyes opening in wonder while grieving for his past, and Jacopo laughing as he helped me tend my garden and paying too much for people’s bits and pieces because they needed his silver more than he did himself… so much goodness in this world… and I knew I did care. Only now it was too late.
At some time in the night, torchlight, voices, and the bustling of horses and men announced another party of travelers. The activity took place far across the cavern mouth from where I sat, and the oppressive darkness swallowed up the new arrivals before I saw or heard anything to identify them. Baglos’s body lay in a forlorn heap not ten paces from me until two of Maceron’s men decided it was in the way, dragged it off, and dumped it under the colonnade.
The horrid night dragged on.
An hour had passed since the last change of the watch, and most of the torches had burned out. Rumbling snores echoed through the cavern, but sleep eluded me. When I closed my eyes, I would see Jacopo’s staring head, and Baglos weeping, and D’Natheil straining to catch sight of me as he was dragged into the darkness. My arms and shoulders were cramped from their awkward position bent backward and wrapped around the stone column, and the muscles in my stomach and chest ached and burned so that it was hard to get a decent breath. My fingers had gone numb, too, so when someone started fumbling at the ropes that bound my hands, it took me a few moments to notice it.
Certain that it was the sallow-faced man come to continue his loathsome caresses, I tried to scream, but a thin, cold hand clamped over my mouth. When my hands fell loose, I twisted around, grabbing and scratching the hands that kept such firm hold of me. All my anger and grief was channeled into that battle, but my cramped limbs had no strength, and my small and wiry captor seemed to have four hands. Soon I realized there were two of the bastards, one wrapping a bony arm about my throat and grasping a painful handful of my hair, the accomplice capturing my flailing hands and helping to drag me through the darkness and down a dark flight of steps.
“Would you stop?” The angry whisper hissed in my ear. “You’re going to bring the whole place down on us! If you promise to be quiet, we’ll let you go. Will you promise?” I nodded my head vigorously. But the attacker was no fool. I had barely opened my mouth to yell, when the hand smothered my mouth again, and the villain twisted one arm behind my back until I thought my shoulder would pop out of its socket. I was shoved through a stone passageway and into a room that smelled faintly of horses. A door fell shut behind me, and I spun about and backed away from it into the dark.
“Give us a light, boy,” said the person just in front of me—a woman, breathing rapidly. “She’d best see who’s here before she sets up a holler.”
The darkness parted to reveal a yellowish light… a sputtering lantern with a dark cloth being pulled off it. A flushed Kellea leaned against the wall in front of me, casually brushed her disheveled hair from her face, and massaged the hand that I had bitten three times over. Paulo squatted by the lantern, grinning despite an angry scratch on one cheek. And slumped in the corner on a pile of ancient straw was a wan, smiling Graeme Rowan. His shirt dangled from one shoulder, and blood-soaked rags were tied about his middle.
I was without words.
“She was determined not to be helped,” said Kellea. “I thought I might have to stick her a bit to shut her up. A good thing the boy was with me.”
“But I thought—” I felt a thorough fool. “One of the men up there—You were all—”
“I think I’m altogether more cooperative when being rescued.” The girl ignored my stammering.
“Indeed you are,” said Rowan in a whisper. “The best thing I ever did.” He shifted his position uncomfortably, and Paulo scrambled to support his shoulders.
“They told me you were dead,” I said. Forcing aside the first tears I’d shed in a lifetime, I squeezed Kellea’s small, hard hand, and then hurried across the room and ruffled a blushing Paulo’s hair. Then I knelt beside Graeme Rowan and gripped his hand and pressed it to my brow, giddy with relief that the three were not illusions. “How did you get here?” I said. “What happened to you?”
“We were going to be dead, but she—”
“I’ll tell the story, if you don’t mind,” said Kellea, interrupting Rowan. “You’ll never get yourself together again if you don’t shut your mouth and be still. I can do only so much.”
Rowan smiled weakly, shrugged his shoulders, and began coughing. Paulo grabbed a waterskin and helped the sheriff to a drink.
“We felt them coming up behind us just at nightfall,” said the girl. “Wicked, creeping—I thought I had spiders in my head. The boy told us what the little man had said, and we stuck to the trees as much as we could. But the valley narrowed and the going was slow in the dark, so we decided to go up the side of the valley where the way was easier. Well, I decided. Graeme thought it was risky, but we climbed up. Straight into their arms. The boy was clever and ducked into the rocks before they noticed him, but I got myself royally captured. Graeme was a fool and tried to fight them off alone. Got himself skewered for his trouble. They believed he was dead, and I did, too,”—Kellea looked at Rowan with fire in her eyes—“but he was stubborn and prideful and refused to die as any sensible man would. Just before dawn, when the villain priests finally left off trying to crack my skull from the inside out, he and Paulo came rescuing. Graeme could scarcely sit his horse.”
Kellea twined the string ties of a palm-sized cloth bag about her fingers. “We couldn’t go far with him so hurt, so we hid in the rocks. The devils were so anxious to find your prince that I thought we might be left alone. At first light I went off looking for herbs to dress Graeme’s wound, but didn’t I see them scouring the hillside for us. And so… There’s a plant I know of—astemia. If you chew its roots, it slows the heart enough to simulate death. Wouldn’t have thought of it, except I’d seen the plant while hunting the others I needed. So I made Graeme and the boy take the astemia, smeared Graeme’s blood over us all, and then chewed some of it myself. By the time it wore off, the cursed priests were gone, and we were still alive.”
“And so you followed us here. You might better have gone another direction.”
“That man out there—that sheriff—he’s the one that fired the shop and killed my grandmother. And Graeme told me he’d seen this Baglos talking to him just before the attack. Since you’d said he was bound to obey the Prince, Graeme figured the Prince must know of it. But seeing the sheriff coming after you with the priests, we decided that the little bastard was up to no good, and we’d best come warn you. I guess we were too late for that. Is the Prince dead?”
“Captive,” I said. “The Zhid are planning something for the morning.”
Rowan leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “Sorry I’m not much help tonight,” he said, gasping. His halting breathing—holding every breath and releasing it only when he had no choice—hinted at the severity of his injury. “A few hours sleep, and Kellea will have me up. We’ll get him free.”
Kellea crouched in front of the sheriff and slapped his cheek lightly—enough to force his eyes back open. “Don’t you dare go to sleep until I give you more of this.” She took three or four small leaves from her little bag and crushed them in her fingers, telling Paulo to pour a sip of wine into a cup. She stirred the leaves into the wine and made Rowan drink it. He dozed off almost immediately.
“He’s not doing well,” I said. Rowan’s hands were cool and clammy.
“I told him he’d be no help to anybody if he was dead.” Kellea doused a rag with water and blotted Rowan’s brow. “But he thought you might have need of us, and he’ll not keep sensible where you’re concerned. And he believes I have some stupid sentiment about saving my people.”
“Dassine said the consequences would be dreadful if we let the Bridge be destroyed. Do you think that’s true?” I badly needed Kellea’s help.
“I just want to get out of here and be left alone.” The girl stuffed the herb bag back into t
he pocket of her leather breeches. She nodded her head at Paulo, and the two of them carefully lowered Rowan to the straw. Paulo pushed a rolled-up cloak under the man’s head.
“We’ve got to free him, Kellea. They’re going to kill him. Even if you don’t care about that, he might be able to help Rowan. I don’t know what all his talents are, but he’s a sorcerer who’s growing more powerful by the day. We should—”
“I’ll help you, no matter,” said the girl, standing up and adjusting her sword belt. “We’ve come this far and are like to get no farther if we’re not smart about it. Pardon me if I don’t trust our safety to you.”
“All right, then.” I climbed to my feet, weariness forgotten. “We’ll need to take him some clothes, and whatever weapons we can get together…”
We set out with three knives, two swords, and Rowan’s black cloak. Kellea left her bag of herbs with Paulo and told him what to do if the sheriff woke in pain or fever. “I’ll bet the Prince can fix him,” said the boy.
“We’ll take care of him,” said Kellea, laying her own cloak over the sleeping man. “Douse the light now, until we’re off.”
Once our eyes had adjusted to the darkness, Kellea and I slipped out of the storeroom and up the steps that led back to the cavern.
“Finding the Prince would be easier if I had something of his, you know,” Kellea whispered.
“If no one’s taken it, I’ve got something…” We crept through the dark colonnade until we encountered Baglos’s body. The Dulcé‘s leather pack had been thrown on top of him. I rummaged inside. No one had bothered to retrieve D’Arnath’s silver dagger.
I gave Kellea the weapon, chewing my lip as she worked her magic with it. When she handed the knife back to me and pointed toward the winding stair, I shoved it into my knife sheath, keeping Rowan’s more ordinary knife in my hand. The Zhid had confiscated my own blade.
