by Carol Berg
Giano stiffened and hissed, and without warning he wrapped his arms about me and yanked me to his breast. The dagger that had taken Baglos’s life and that of the highwaymen in During Forest was poised at my heart, and one by one my senses burst into flame, until I believed that the Gate fire must be burning beneath my very skin. But the Prince did not look up, and I refused to cry out. He needed time to see his way.
My captor dragged me toward the wall of fire, the blue-black curtain soaring in vicious exhilaration into the murky heights, and the Zhid began to laugh with such triumphant wickedness that D’Natheil was drawn to look. When the Prince saw what was happening, all softness fled from his face. He leaped up, grabbing his sword, and my heart shriveled. Giano’s fire had grown so fierce that I could not bear it, and I began to sob.
“Let go of the woman,” said the Prince, cold and angry. “I am the one you want.”
“So you are, but I will have you on my terms. We must rid ourselves of this meddlesome female before she saps all your resolve.” And with wicked laughter that rang through the stone chamber, Giano shoved me through the wall of black fire.
CHAPTER 36
I was not dead. Either the Zhid was wrong that the passage of the barrier would destroy me or he didn’t truly want me dead. But the place where I existed had no relationship to any world I knew. Bolts of lightning slashed through purple-gray clouds above a desolation of skeletal trees and naked crags. Though lurid and grotesque, such a view would have been almost comprehensible if it had been the entirety of the landscape. But from the corners of my eyes I glimpsed entirely different scenes: on one side a field of garishly colored flowers that budded and bloomed and withered in moments under a livid sun, and, on the other, a slow-moving river of filth that was a crush of emaciated men and women, clawing and trampling each other so as to drink from a lake of blood. When I turned my head to either hand, the scene would vanish, and only the alien landscape remain. A bitter wind lacerated my skin, leaving bloody tracks, and the tumultuous roar of the Gate fire— now deafening in its volume—was riven with a hideous, howling chorus of despair. Hellish pandemonium. My flesh did not burn like that of the Zhid who had touched the fire. But my being vibrated like a violin string out of tune, and great cracks exploded through my reason so that I could not hold the fragments of myself together. Visions… or memories… yet not memories… nothing of beauty or sweetness… displayed themselves against the mad backdrop: my drunken father vomiting over Tomas’s dying body, Martin laughing as he stripped the skin from a screaming Tennice’s back, and my mother, my lovely, delicate mother, mating in a sweating frenzy with Evard. One after the other, such twisted visions supplanted each memory I treasured, severing every link to love, joy, pride, or accomplishment until only horror was real.
Perhaps this is death, after all. If so, then let it be done with. The dark void proclaimed by Leiran priests, the absolute ending I had always dreaded, would be far better.
Though my mind was chaos, my feet stood on solid ground. I was no longer held captive by the hand that had plunged me into the tumult, but he was close, a solid, malevolent companion to the monstrous apparitions assailing me from every side. He laughed as a pair of green, slavering jaws gaped before me in the darkness, and when I turned away in panic, a river of molten lava blocked my path. Another turn and a hideous beast with two heads and razor-sharp claws the size of my arm loomed over me out of the murk.
Cry out to him all you wish, woman. His nature betrays him. You’ve led him to his doom.
The words meant nothing to me.
“Seri!” Ever so faintly I heard the call through the thunder, but I could pay it no heed. Something was approaching from behind me, something more awful than anything I’d yet seen. It had no name, but I had to run before it showed itself, and the only path open led away from the beckoning voice.
Move, fool! I cried. Ignore the hissing cobra the size of a tree that raises its hood, wrapping you in a gaze so malevolent it could steal your soul away. A rotting cadaver extended its bony fingers, leaving great smudges of unnamable disgust on your arms. Concentrate on the path beneath your feet.
“Seri!” The insistent call came again. But it was only another voice in the cacophony of lamentation, the growls and wails and screams—screams that might be my own for all I knew.
I ran. But chaos has no direction, and my flight brought me only to the place I had been before. The two that battled in that place, swords glinting with the lightnings from the raging storm, were not apparitions. Both were in black, the one with thin lips and pale eyes that reflected nothing, and the other with broad shoulders and blue eyes that flashed with fire and steel. Real blood flowed from their wounds, and I should care. I should speak a name, but I could not bring it to my lips.
Frantic, I backed away from the combatants and fled once more. I ran along a perilous track so narrow I could not put my feet side by side. If I stopped, I would topple into the bottomless nightmare that gaped on either side of me. My throat burned. My blood pounded. The nameless thing was close behind.
“Seri!” The summoning rang out once more, and like a thread pulled from the weft, I was drawn inexorably to the place of battle. The two combatants were bathed in blood and sweat, so that one might think it was the battle for the doom of the world. But I cackled in my madness, for I knew the doom of the world was just behind me, and whatever the result of this duel, it could make no difference.
I had to get away. My path led through mud that sucked at my feet and rain that scalded my face. I could not run in the mud, only slog through it, pushing aside the half-rotted corpses that rose to the surface like flotsam in a morbid sea. My heart pounded with the effort, but soon the mud was up to my knees. The path led into a cave. Beasts of heaven, not a cave! Even the ghastly lightnings were swallowed by that pit. No glimmer, no spark, no dim ray, no pale reflection relieved the nightmare darkness. The hot mud was to my waist, but I could see nothing, and I dared not reach out for the walls lest I find them closing in on me. And the demons, too, were waiting…
“Seri! Stay close!” Weaker, yet enough to pull me back again. Next time. Next time I would escape his tether, leave him to his bloody combat, to his ending.
The two who battled were on the ground now, weapons thrown aside. Grunting, twisting until the blue-eyed one lay atop the other. The pale one’s arm outstretched was all that stayed the deadly stroke of the shining dagger.
Now, woman, witness the changing of the world. And as I watched, the pale one, the one with the empty eyes, broke into wild laughter and with a crow of triumph snatched his hand away. All the force of the battle was focused in the silver dagger that plunged into his own heart. So much blood! A fountain of it, washed into a red river by the scalding rain. The pale one’s bestial exultation did not fade with his surrender. His echoing laughter was the essence of horror, and the evil thing was upon me.
“No!” I sobbed, and I crouched down in the river of blood and covered my head so I could not see the end of the world. The wind howled and the thunder roared; the hot rain fell on my back. The ground beneath me writhed and groaned. When I felt hands on my arms, I flinched and cried out.
But the hands that gathered me in were not the hands of a monster, nor of madness, but were gentle and strong. The voice that spoke in my mind was not foul, but comforting and dear. Go back through the Gate. I cannot protect you any longer and do what I must do. I understand now, but there’s little time, and I’ll need everything I can muster. Do you understand?
I looked up at the blue eyes, but I could not comprehend his meaning and could not answer.
The strong hands guided me to a veil of pulsing blackness. Step through and wait for me, beloved. Wait for me.
He gave me a gentle push, and I stumbled into a circular chamber of stone filled with clouds of ice and the stench of blood and death. Three lives were leaking away on the stone floor, two men and a woman. I could not say who they were.
My cold, wet knuckles pressed
to my mouth, I sank to the floor among the fallen, no less wounded than they, though I did not bleed. Beyond the black veil of fire, my rescuer knelt by the empty-eyed one he had slain and yanked the dagger from the dead man’s chest. But he did not sheath the bloody weapon as I expected, or wipe it clean, or plunge it in again to make sure of his evil opponent as I wanted him to do. Instead he turned the knife on himself.
“Don’t! Please don’t!” I needed someone left living to tell me my name.
He did not answer, but neither did he slay himself. Rather he drew the dagger across his muscled left arm with a sure and steady hand. Then he did the same to the fallen warrior, took a worn belt of woven string from his waist, and bound his arm to that of the dead man.
Numb, understanding nothing of what was happening, I whispered an echo of the words that rang clearly through the wall of fire. “Life, hold! Stay your hand. Halt your foot ere it lays another step along the Way. Grace your son once more with your voice that whispers in the deeps, with your spirit that sings in the wind, with the fire that blazes in your wondrous gifts of joy and sorrow. Fill my soul with light, and let the darkness make no stand in this place.” The words became my anchor. Wait for me, he had said.
It seemed an eternity that I shivered in the chamber of the Gate, watching the strange drama play out, but I had nowhere to go and could not think what else to do. Beside me lay a man grievously wounded. He was ashen and sweating, each breath an agony. The rag bound to his side was soaked in blood, and I felt a great swell of grief as I gazed on him. Tomas. My brother, Tomas. I hugged my knees and rocked back and forth.
At last my rescuer untied the binding and stood up, lifting the pale man in his arms. He stepped through the veil of fire and laid the man on the stone paving, next to the others. The hot rain must have washed away the blood, for there was none to be seen on the one who slept so peacefully, chest rising and falling easily, rhythmically. Then the blue-eyed one came to me and laid his warm hand on my cold, wet face in a touch of such sweetness that I cried out when he took it away. He knelt beside my wounded brother and drew his silver knife across his arm once more, leaving a great bloody gash just next to a scar that shone pale against his tanned flesh. He did the same to Tomas’s arm, and bound them together, and again spoke the words. “Life, hold… j’den encour, my brother.”
For a long time he knelt there, eyes closed, head bowed.
When he finally loosened the woven belt, it was slowly, and his hands trembled a bit. “I’ve done all I can do for him,” he whispered. “Not enough. I’m sorry.” Then he moved to the moaning woman in black, the Zhid woman, and began again.
The clouds of terror and madness drifted away in the soft breath of healing, and before very long I understood what it was I saw. Tears rolled down my face, and I eased my brother’s head into my lap, while the blue-eyed sorcerer worked to heal the two Zhid warriors.
“Seri.” The word was more like a sigh than speech. Tomas’s eyes had fluttered open. His breathing was easier, but he was still very pale, and his hands were like ice.
“I’m here, Tomas.”
“What happened?”
“You’ve been wounded in a match.”
“More than a match, I think, but I can’t remember.” His voice was so very weak.
“Don’t try. It can come later.” I stroked his damp hair.
“There will be no later. He told me when he was inside me. Too much damage to heal.”
“You’ll be fine, Tomas. I’ll take you home.”
He wrinkled his brow. “No, it must be now. Your pardon… Garlos has it. Find him and you’ll be free. I’m so sorry, Seri, sorry for all of—”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I kissed his cold hand and held it to my breast.
His eyes were heavy, but I felt his urgency. “My son… he’s fair. Has our looks. Intelligent like you. Stubborn. Opinionated.” A faint smile graced his colorless lips. “I wanted to tell him—” His words stopped, and, for that moment, his hand crushed my fingers, as if he were grasping life itself.
“What, Tomas? What did you want to tell him?”
“—what a fine lad he is. A fine son… so proud…”
“He’ll hear it. I swear to you he will. And he’ll know of his father’s honor and the glory of his house.”
Tomas allowed his eyelids to close and nodded his head slightly. His hand relaxed as he drifted away, his last breath soft and easy.
“Be at peace, brother,” I whispered, gathering him to my breast and rocking him gently as one would a sleeping child. The Prince had bound himself to the last of his fallen enemies, the Gate fire burned white, and the very air sang.
Once the last of the wounded Zhid lay in peaceful sleep, the Prince did not move again. He remained huddled over his knees in the center of the chamber, silhouetted against the brilliance of the Gate fire. I could not think of what to say. After a long while, he raised his head, his eyes glazed with exhaustion, and said, “I know you.”
“Yes.”
“When I can think again…”
“There’s no hurry.”
His chin drooped onto his chest. I could not see if he was asleep.
The white fire had burned away the shadows. The frost clouds sparkled with the brilliance of diamonds, as if the sun played hide-and-seek behind them. The walls of the Gate chamber no longer appeared somber gray, but displayed polished veins of rose quartz and green malachite, and the floor was tiled with intricate patterns of rose and pearl.
I laid Tomas out with the dignity the Champion of Leire deserved, straightening his limbs, smoothing his hair, and arranging his fine clothes to hide the terrible bloodstains. No wound was visible anywhere on his body. I placed the Champion’s sword on his breast and folded his hands across the ruby-studded hilt. My father had been laid out so a lifetime ago, the gentle windings of death masking the ravages of drunken grief in the same way they now erased the remnants of Tomas’s madness. From the passage I fetched the gray robes discarded by the Zhid and covered him.
These duties done, I was at a loss. I dared not leave the Prince. In his current state, a child with a wooden sword could take him down, and death and dangers still threatened from every side. That something marvelous had happened in this place was indisputable, but it seemed a fragile victory.
“Blast and perdition, what’s gone on here?” Kellea stood in the arched doorway, staring at the white fire, the four prostrate forms, the unmoving Prince, and the bloodstains that streaked the lovely tiles like some macabre child’s artwork. “Seri, are you all right?”
I must have looked wretched: soggy, bedraggled, and spattered with mud and blood. “I don’t know.” I had experienced every possible emotion in the past hours and could no longer tell one from the other.
“I felt… well, I could tell something had happened, so I had to come up.” Kellea moved from one body to the next, peering into their still faces. A longer look at the Prince. “Where’s the boy? He was determined to help. I couldn’t keep him back.”
“Paulo…” I peered through the fog, the knot in my belly eased almost as quickly as it formed. A slight body was huddled against the outer wall. The mist drifted by, revealing a thin, freckled face, a portrait of wonder as the boy stared up at the fiery Gate.
“You’re all right, boy?” Kellea and I both breathed easier at his wordless nod.
“What happened here?” She turned her attention to the still forms around us. “Are they dead?”
I tried to gather words. “This one”—I laid my hand on Tomas’s still form-—“is the champion brought by the Zhid to be slain—my brother. They drove him to madness. To his death. The Prince couldn’t save him. The three who were Zhid live, and I believe that when they wake they’ll no longer be Zhid.” The soaring fire filled my heart and dried my tears. “He healed them. And somehow the power of his enchantment—his healing gift—turned the Gate fire white… so he must have strengthened the Bridge, too, I think. He gave everything… and I don’t know w
hat the consequence of that might be. He may not have enough life left in him to wake again.”
“He will awaken if I have anything to say in the matter. And if there is a breath of life left in him, he will remember you, Lady Seriana.”
I would not have wagered an empty box that I had enough strength left to move, but when the voice boomed at us from the direction of the Gate, I grabbed the Prince’s abandoned dagger and leaped up from the floor, standing between the unmoving D’Natheil and the intruder who limped out of the curtain of white fire, leaning on a wooden staff. He was a short, muscular man dressed in a shabby brown robe that gaped open to reveal a wrinkled white tunic belted over scuffed brown breeches. His curly hair and beard were brown, streaked with gray, but a youthful visage made his age quite unguessable. Nothing was at all remarkable about the man, save for his intensely blue eyes and the incredible voice that rang with wind, thunder, poetry, and wickedly prideful self-confidence. I dropped my weapon. No mistaking him. “Dassine.”
CHAPTER 37
“Indeed, I am he that you name,” said the man who walked out of the wall of fire. He bowed to Kellea and me, but his eyes were only for D’Natheil. “If you will excuse me…” He limped across the chamber and tenderly lifted the Prince’s haggard face, examining it intensely. D’Natheil’s eyes were open, but whatever he saw was far distant from that room. He demonstrated no awareness of Dassine, or me, or anything around us. “Oh, my dear son,” murmured the sorcerer. “All I believed of you… How right I was.” He pulled off his brown robe and laid it around the Prince’s shoulders. “Rest now, and we’ll care for you as you deserve.”
He stood up slowly and leaned on his staff. “It will be some time before he can do anything but maintain his own existence, but I believe he will be fine.”
