by Carol Berg
Kellea glided through the dark cavern and up the stairway. At each landing, she paused for a moment before continuing upward. I followed close. A faint steady light shone from one end of the third-level walkway. Quiet voices came from the nearby shadows. Kellea drew me toward the opposite end of the span, and we approached the light by skirting the cavern wall through the gallery. One man sat on the floor beside the lantern; two darker forms stood on either side of a closed door. We crept close and crouched in a shadowed doorway, a few rooms away from the men.
“… don’t trust nobody won’t show his face,” murmured a man with a gravelly voice.
“Orders is orders,” snapped a second. “We’ve been in stranger company.”
“Don’t know when. This place gives me the cold sweats. Did you look at that priest, the one that does show his face? I thought I was a dead man when he looked at me— or maybe he was.”
“Me, too,” said a third voice, younger, jittery. The soft lantern glow outlined a youthful profile. “And I keep hearing things. Like voices, but nobody’s there. When we come past that lake… all the birds. I never liked birds, specially ones you can’t see. Did you see any birds, Dirk?”
“Just do your duty, both of you,” said the second man. “Mouth shut, eyes open, and opinions to yourself. I don’t trust those animals downstairs any farther than I can spit.”
So these were the newcomers. Not Maceron’s men.
“Who is this prisoner that’s got everybody so wrought up?” asked the gravel-voiced man.
“It’s not ours to know. His lordship says they’ve got him fair trussed. If we keep him tight, we’ll be out of here tomorrow.”
His lordship…
Kellea pulled my ear to her mouth. “He’s in the chamber just past these three. I’ll get the bastards away. If you can’t free him in a quarter of an hour, leave him be, and we’ll think of something else.”
I squeezed her arm in acknowledgment, and she slipped away into the darkness. Whispers and murmurings floated through the air. I flattened myself into the niche. Moments later, a faint green light twirled and streaked through the air above the walkway.
“Cripes, what’s that?” said the gravel-voiced man.
“Go check it out.”
Scarcely had the running footsteps disappeared along with the green light when a new voice rang out in the darkness. “Dirk! Downstairs at once! His lordship’s orders.” The voice was male, but it was impossible to tell from what direction it came. I had underestimated Kellea’s talents.
The leader spewed out curses. “You’ll have to hold here, Rigo. Don’t budge now. Anything happens to this prisoner, we’re maggot fodder.” He hurried across the walkway and galloped unevenly down the stairs.
The edgy young soldier didn’t have a chance. A handful of pebbles bounced across the gallery floor, then his shrouded lantern was snuffed out by a gust of wind.
“Who’s there?” said the shaking voice. He sounded no older than Paulo.
A faint laugh, another shower of pebbles, then light footsteps tripped down the gallery. The young soldier hesitated only briefly before running after them.
The moment he was away, I jumped up and pushed open the heavy door. The walls of the barren chamber gleamed faintly of their own light. Against the far wall hung the Prince, his feet spread apart and fastened with the silver cord to bolts newly set into the stone. His hands were lashed to a wooden beam high above his head, leaving him to support his weight on the balls of his feet. The silver loop about his neck was tethered securely to another hook in the wall. He was very still, scarcely even breathing. Only a slight tremor in his legs hinted he was alive.
Seri…
I could have sworn I heard someone say my name. But the rag was still in place about the Prince’s mouth. “Stay quiet,” I whispered. “I’ve come to get you.” I freed his mouth, untied the blindfold, and slipped the loop at the end of his neck tether from its hook. While he was still blinking and swallowing, I bent to examine the bonds on his ankles.
Stifling a cough, he whispered hoarsely, “Don’t you get tired of riding to my rescue?”
“We’ve come this far. If we can get you away, you’ll have time to think about what you need to do here. You can come back when you’re ready.” I could not look at his face. I told myself that I didn’t want to shame him because of his nakedness, and that it was only fear of someone catching us that made my hands shake so wretchedly as I worked. But there was more. Enchantment was all about him, stronger than I’d ever felt before.
“Can I cut this cord?” I asked. The silver cord had bitten deep into his flesh, leaving oozing blisters and raw, ugly patches. His legs, stretched so awkwardly, were trembling with the strain of his position as he tried not to make things worse by moving.
“As long as it’s an ordinary knife, not enchanted. I tried several ways to get loose, with sorcery and not, and wished I hadn’t.”
It was nearly impossible to wedge Rowan’s heavy blade under the bindings, and I knew the pain must be excruciating as I sawed away at the cord. “I’m sorry to hurt you.”
“I’ll not complain. Honestly.” But his voice was very tight, and he mumbled a curse when I had sliced through the first one and peeled the cord away, a strip of blackened skin attached. With a grunt, he drew his freed foot under him, supporting his weight less precariously.
The other ankle was even more difficult. His foot was dark and swollen, and I could feel the cord tightening as I worked at it. This was taking too long, and his hands were still bound. Stupid, why didn’t you do his hands first? Where were the guards? There! Ankles free.
I could scarcely reach his hands. They’d put five turns of cord around his wrists and the beam. Five knots, so that each turn had to be cut individually. I jerked violently, almost slicing his flesh, when I thought I heard someone outside the door. But the pounding was only my heart. Three turns done. A quarter of an hour, Kellea had said. Who could tell how long it had been? Another layer cut. Then the last.
After we wrestled the loop of silver cord from his neck, I gave him Rowan’s cloak, unbuckled the sheriff’s heavy sword belt from around my waist, and held it ready. “Maybe this time you’ll keep your clothes on,” I said.
“I promise I won’t throw them back at you tonight,” he said, shaking the blood back into his hands. He stuck his arms through the side-slits in the cloak, pulled the garment tight around his middle, and buckled the sword belt over it. Then I gave him his own dagger—D’Arnath’s blade.
As we slipped into the deserted gallery I felt fortunate, and when we reached the stairway unchallenged, I allowed myself the beginnings of hope. But as I took the first step downward, the Prince caught my hands and stopped me.
“I can’t go with you,” he said. The darkness hid his face. “Though everything in me wants to follow you, I must go up instead.”
“No. Surely, you need—”
He put a finger on my lips. “There are no words to thank you for all you’ve done. You’ve fed me, clothed me, nursed and healed me in countless ways, taught me of this world and how to live in it, and given me a part of yourself that I’ll carry with me always. But now it’s time for me to stand on my own. I had time to think tonight. Once I figured out that I’d best not even move if I valued my limbs, I—I don’t know how to explain it—my mind took itself away from my body—”
My neck prickled. “You don’t have to explain it.”
“Giano has said over and over that my death on the Bridge will destroy it, but I think perhaps it’s only if I let them bind and slaughter me like some stupid sheep. The answer is so simple, I can’t think why it seemed so difficult. Someone’s come to fight me, set me a challenge. If I fail to meet a challenge to the Bridge, D’Arnath’s oath is violated—so the Zhid want me captive… or to run away. It’s not my death will cause the Bridge to fall, I think, but my failure. No one thinks I’m capable or willing or clever enough to see their trick. I have to be there, and I have to fight. That h
as to be enough. It’s all I know how to do.”
“So you’re going to the Gate to wait for them.”
“You’ve given me the chance.”
Nothing more could be said. It was his Bridge, his battle, his choice. Berating him that he needed more than some wild supposition before tangling himself in mortal enchantments would only bring the others down on us. I had done all I could to bring him to this point, and the fact that I could not bear the thought of leaving him had no relevance to the matter at all. “Have a care, D’Natheil.” I could scarcely form the words.
“And you, my lady.” And then he kissed my hand, there in the midnight of Vittoir Eirit. “There are no demons in this darkness,” he said. “No need to be afraid. Such beauty lies within you, such light. You’ve pushed away the shadows and given me life.”
I didn’t hear him walk away. But my hand stung with fire, and his words hung in the air like the tail of a comet. … no demons in this darkness… Where had he found those words? Words extraordinary only in their familiar composition and the fact that they’d been spoken in another time, by another voice, comforting me when I was afraid. How did he know of my terror of dark places? I’d never told him of it, and yet, in the tunnels under Mount Kassarain, in the darkness of the rift valley…
My boots moved downward to the next step of the curving staircase. It was as if the burning of my hand and the tale of his words had penetrated the barriers of reason and uncovered a jumble of questions I’d stored away there as too odd, too difficult, too inexplicable to think about.
What did Celine mean when she asked what miracle had brought this man to me? What had made the old Healer laugh with delight at the moment of her death? What had made Tennice cling to D’Natheil in the madness of his fever? Why had the Prince come to me… as a storm-wracked ship will follow a beacon to safe and familiar harbor?
You will shine as a beacon to me…
My body trembled with the thoughts that blossomed within it like bonfires at a midsummer’s fair. My mind refused to give credence to the absurd speculation taking shape from its confusion. Impossible. Inconceivable. Lunacy.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. “Are you mad?” Kellea whispered fiercely in my ear. “You’re a fool. Any one of these bastards could see you standing here. Let’s go some place safer, if you don’t mind.”
I let Kellea lead me. I couldn’t have said where we were.
“Did the soldiers come back before you got him loose? Is he still prisoner?” Kellea asked, when we reached the second-level gallery.
“No, it worked wonderfully well.” I could not focus on Kellea’s words for the chaos inside me and the fire that lingered on my hand.
“Where is he then?”
“The Gate. He went to the Gate to wait for them…” I crushed her hands in mine, knowing what I had to do. “Kellea, you’ve got to put me back.” Now I dragged her down the stairs.
We reached the next turn of the stair, and she balked. “What are you saying?”
“They’ve not discovered I’m gone. The ropes are still there. Put me back.”
I tugged at her again, but she held her ground. “In the name of reason, why?”
“Because I have to know. I can’t explain. I must be at the Gate in the morning, and there’s nowhere to hide in the chamber. So, Giano wants an audience for his triumph. He’ll take me. Please, Kellea. Put me back.”
“You’re mad.”
I yanked free of her and glided downward on airborne feet. Kellea followed me around the dark perimeter of the cavern until we reached the column where I had been held prisoner. A few moments fumbling and I found the lengths of rope. I pressed the bindings into Kellea’s hands.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure. Perhaps this will keep you three safe, too. If you stay hidden until we win or lose, they won’t suspect you’re here. Do it quickly. Please.”
I stretched my arms around the column, paying no attention to the ache of my shoulders or the pull of the bindings or the scratch of the ropes about my abraded wrists. Oh, holy, blessed gods…
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” whispered Kellea as she tied the last knot.
“Be safe, Kellea.”
The Dar’Nethi girl laid a hand on my shoulder, and then slipped silently into the darkness.
In the next hours, I relived every moment that had passed since Midsummer’s Day. When had I first felt it?
At Ferrante’s when he came out of the shadows to check that all was well with me? I had caught the scent of roses and thought I was dreaming. In the forest out of Fensbridge, when his laughter set my blood afire? I had called myself a lustful fool. As far back as the day he threw the knife at the rock and I felt the touch of enchantment? Tennice had seen it in his illness, and I had called it delirium. Stars of heaven, he had even named the great chestnut Sunlight. The Vallorean word for sunlight was karylis, and only one horse in my memory shared the name of the Vallorean mountain that sheltered the lost city of Avonar.
No wonder the stories I’d told him in the ruined castle seemed more like his own memories than any Baglos had provided. I could not shake the implausible, impossible, lunatic conviction that they were his own memories. In some way beyond all rational understanding, the man who had appeared out of nowhere on Poacher’s Ridge, the man who sat upstairs in the chamber of fire, setting himself ready to prevent the doom of the world, was Karon.
CHAPTER 35
Dawn crept over the lake outside the cavern. Muddled with unchecked speculations, incoherent plotting, and unsettling half-dreams of disembodied faces, I scrabbled my way out of the long night. I had not wanted to sleep. I had wanted to do nothing but ponder on how it was possible that Karon could live. Only a madwoman could even consider it.
Baglos still lay under the colonnade like a discarded boot. As I shifted my cramped shoulders and stiff neck, I wondered if the Duke had known anything of what had been done to D’Natheil. D’Natheil… If this inconceivable fantasy were true, then what had become of the true prince? The man who had come to me in the woods on Poacher’s Ridge did not know himself. His body and spirit were alien to each other. I had seen that from the first, but hadn’t understood it. How did a soul exist in a body that was not its own? A constant struggle of emotion and instinct, untempered by experience or memory. Even his appearance had been in flux. Was that, too, the result of this inner combat? Dassine said that D’Natheil’s clouded mind was the inevitable result of what he had done to the Prince. What had he done? What I wouldn’t give for a few moments’ conversation with Dassine!
With the daylight came doubts about all that had been so convincing in the darkness. And even if my mad beliefs were true, his circumstances were so desperate that I might not see him again. Yet somehow my spirits were no longer bound by rational thinking or the limits of possibility.
As the pearly preamble to the day gave way to bold pinks and reds, Maceron’s men stirred and began the usual rituals of morning: rummaging in packs for food, relieving themselves under the colonnade, saddling horses, grumbling, bawling orders, curses, and insults. An hour passed and Giano did not come. Had he already found the Prince by the Gate? I craned my neck in a futile attempt to see. Where were they?
Maceron strolled across the mud-tracked paving. He gnawed on a leathery piece of jack, wiping the grease from his unshaven face with the back of one hand. “So you’re still here,” he said, grinning.
“And where else would I be?” I snapped, finding it easy to reclaim a combative spirit on this singular morning. “Why would I wish to be anywhere but here with my arms bent so charmingly about this stone tree? Have the villains finished their murderous doings?” I didn’t have to force the tremor into my speech.
He tweaked the rope binding my hands. “It seems our prisoner has escaped his guards.”
“Escaped?”
“You needn’t get your hopes up. He’ll not evade the priest. Can’t say I’d be sorry to see this Giano humbled. Though if
I thought the devil sorcerer had the least chance to escape, I’d hunt him down myself and to perdition with all business arrangements. But the priest hates him more than I do.” He drew his knife and twirled it through his fingers as soldiers will do to amaze small boys.
I shrank back against the pillar, away from the flashing edge. “You claim to hate sorcerers, and then you help them with their murders. It makes no sense.”
Maceron shrugged. “The priests say our world will be free of sorcerers when they’re done. My master believes them, and who am I to question?” He sliced through my bonds, yanked me to my feet, and propelled me through the cavern, relinquishing custody to the gray-hooded Zhid waiting at the foot of the stairway. “Don’t think I’ll lose track of you, madam,” he called, as the hooded Zhid herded me up the steps. “You will reap your proper reward!”
On another day, I would have devised a proper retort for the vile sheriff, but my mind was far ahead of my feet, reaching into the chamber of blue fire. Is it you? Tell me. Give me a sign.
Giano awaited us at the first landing. His usually colorless face was flushed and his empty eyes gleamed hungrily in the torchlight. “I almost came to visit you last night,” he said, smiling. “But I wonder if I would have found you where I left you?”
“I am very proficient at releasing myself from captivity and reattaching myself to stone pillars,” I said. “It’s always such a lark.”
“Mmm… I wonder.” The Zhid wagged a dark-stained fragment of silver cord. “This doesn’t look like sorcery to me, and I don’t think the Dulcé has waked from his slumbers to perform yet another service for his prince.”
“Don’t blame me for your incompetence,” I said. “I might have thought of something better to do with a knife than freeing this infantile prince. The whole lot of you— Dar’Nethi, J’Ettanne, Dulcé, whatever you are—should leap off of this ledge and good riddance to you.”
Giano laid cold fingertips on my cheek, and I was almost sick with the dead feel of them. “Words are worth nothing. You are a mistress of words, but look at where they’ve gotten you: your friends dead, yourself on the way to your long-delayed execution, your grand mission in shambles. No matter what your activities of the night, my lady, I cannot find myself unhappy with you.” Indeed the Zhid seemed almost serene, not at all like a man whose prized prisoner has gotten the upper hand. “I especially want you to witness the precision of well-laid plans coming to fruition.” The Zhid waved me up the stairs. “Come, now, my lady. Great events to witness this day. A thousand years of history will come to an end. In truth, all of history will be made obsolete. Your little world will at last have its umbilical severed.”
