by Carol Berg
In the quiet hour before dawn I commandeered a horse and rode out of the north gates of Avonar, up the winding road that led to the Lydian Vale and a quiet, graceful white house called Nentao, “the Haven.” I had refused numerous offers of protection from those uneasy at seeing their sovereign ride out unaccompanied in the night. I hoped what I told them was true, that I had no need of guards. I didn’t want to believe that Paulo had turned traitor, too.
When I left my horse in the front courtyard and walked through the rose arbor into the garden, the sky was already a vibrant pink. A hand touched my sleeve from out of a leafy bower. I would have been sorely disappointed if nothing of the sort had occurred, and I stepped into the sheltering shrubbery without hesitation.
“A surprise to see you here, my lord.”
“Good morning, Radele.”
“She has a visitor this morning. The stable boy… but then you must know that. It’s why you’re here.”
“Has he said anything?”
“He’s only just found her.”
“I presume there has been… ”
“… no change, my lord.”
“Yes. Thank you, Radele.”
I left him and walked up to the little terrace centered by a dribbling fountain. Seri was sitting in a chair by the fountain as she did every morning, her lovely face bathed in the dawn light. A dusty, blistered Paulo knelt at her feet, panting as if he’d run all the way from Avonar.
“My lady, can you hear me? Please, my lady, what’s wrong? I’ve brought you a message.”
“She won’t answer you,” I said, stepping out of the shade.
He looked up, startled. Seri didn’t turn her head.
“She’s said no word since her injury. I think she hears us, but she makes no acknowledgment. She walks when we guide her. She eats whatever is put before her. She’ll hold a book and look at it, but she does not turn the page. She neither laughs nor smiles nor weeps, but I don’t know if she cannot speak or if she will not. No one has been able to tell me that.”
“Oh, my lord. I’m so… I never thought… ”
I brushed my hand over her beautiful hair, silky dark brown with the touch of fire in it. A few strands of gray. Her quiet expression with the little frown between her eyes did not change as she peered into the rising sun.
“And even you… ”
“I have nothing to give her.”
Paulo looked back at my wife, and to my surprise, took her limp hand and kissed it. “Ah, my lady, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. Tears rolled down his sunburned cheeks.
“Come,” I said. “Let’s walk a bit.”
He did not move or take his eyes from her.
“I insist.” I took his arm and pulled him up, noting that he’d grown again. He was almost as tall as I. “I wanted you to see my son’s handiwork for yourself, lest somehow he has managed to retain some remnant of your misdirected loyalty. He’s killed her, Paulo, as surely as if she had breathed her last.”
He was quiet for a long time, but I didn’t push him. There were other Dar’Nethi who would, but I believed nothing could be as devastatingly persuasive as the sight of Seri in her walking death. I knew what it had done to me.
“Now, tell me where you’ve been, and what is this message you’ve brought my wife.”
He didn’t look at me, just walked alongside me, his hands clasped behind his back. His sand-colored brows were drawn together in a thoughtful frown.
“Everything’s wicked confused; I suppose my head’s still muddled from the desert. I remember I followed the young master from the gardens at Windham. I was ready to kill him for what he done to the Lady. I caught him and took him down, but I don’t know for sure what happened then. We traveled someplace… a new place. It’s like a dream that lasted forever, but right now it won’t come into my mind any more than a dream what slipped away when you woke up. Next thing I remember, I woke up in the desert thinking I had to find the Lady.”
“Where did he take you? Was it Zhev’Na?”
“It wasn’t there. I’d have known Zhev’Na. We were in Valleor for a time, someplace in the north I’d never been before, but I’m no good at maps to tell you where. And then we were in this other place. Not an evil place, I don’t think.”
“And what message would he have you give Seri?”
“I can’t say the message.”
I left it for the moment. “Where is he now? Where did you leave him? Was he already joined with the Three?”
“He’s not one of the Lords no more. Even with my head so thick, I’ll swear as it’s true, my lord. And he’s not in Zhev’Na. But I can’t tell you where he is. He’s hiding, my lord, hiding where nobody can find him. He’s afraid of you.”
“As well he should be.”
“He knows you won’t believe him. He understands that and holds no blame to you for it. I think that’s why he sent me to the Lady.”
“You’re a good friend, Paulo. Seri and I, and everyone in both worlds, are forever in your debt. But it will all be undone, all the suffering and death, all the sacrifice of thousands of people will be wasted if Gerick rejoins the Lords. You understood the consequences before, and they’ve not changed except for the worse.”
We had come to the edge of the garden terrace, a white railing beyond which the land dropped away into the soft green swathes of the Lydian Vale, the Vale of Eidolon closest to Avonar. Its sun-drenched woodlands nestled between the spires of the Mountains of Light, and in autumn its leaves splashed fire-yellow and scarlet against Avonar’s deep blue skies. In my four years in Avonar, I had often walked this vale and dreamed of bringing Seri here. I had imagined her face reflecting its beauty, enriching it beyond measure with her delight. But now her eyes reflected nothing, and I saw no beauty anywhere. I gripped the white iron railing until my knuckles looked a part of it.
“Do you understand what Gerick’s betrayal has cost us? You knew the three who were once Zhid, the ones I healed at the Gate. They were ready to destroy the heart of power in Zhev’Na, while the finest sorcerers in Avonar encircled the fortress and created a barrier of enchantment the Lords could not breach. My counselor Jayereth had found the means necessary to free the Dar’Nethi slaves. We could have won without bloodshed, Paulo. We could have worked a healing on this blighted land. But all was undone by my son, and we are left with nothing but weapons and blood. But even they are not enough. Gerick’s betrayal has strengthened the Lords, revealed our vulnerabilities, and if he joins with them again, we will be lost. Both worlds. Forever. I cannot allow it. You must tell me where he is.”
Paulo, the youth I thought I knew, looked me in the eye as he had never done, one man to another. Neither fear nor awe nor willful deceit showed itself in him. “My lord Prince, I owe you and the Lady all as is possible to owe. I would lay down my life for you, or ride to the ends of the earth to fetch for you, or give you my legs back if you was to need them, or my arms or my head. If it means you must hang me or put me in irons or send me back to the life I was born to, then so be it, but I cannot tell you what you ask. I’ve sworn my oath… and I feel it as deep as a man can know what’s right. He is not with the Lords. He’s hiding where no one can find him. I can tell you no more than that.”
“You know that any Dar’Nethi could read you and find out everything you know.” Not exactly true. Few had the ability any longer, but Paulo couldn’t know that.
He did not waver. “The Prince I honor wouldn’t allow that. Not if I said to him that I gave him no leave to do it.”
“Maybe the Prince you honor doesn’t exist any more.”
“Then this war is lost anyway, no matter what I tell or don’t tell.”
And that, of course, had been the whisper in my own mind for four villainous months, but I would not hear it from an illiterate boy. I released the fury pent up in my hands and sent him sprawling across the terrace. “Radele!”
The young Dar’Nethi came running.
“Put this traitor under restraints. He is not
to leave this house until I decide what to do with him. I want him to serve my wife, to see her every day as a reminder of what his friend has done to her.”
“Of course, I’ll do as you say, my lord, but that seems too good for a betrayer.” Radele… always ready to prove his zeal.
“You will not harm Paulo, not in any way. No one is to speak to him or make any attempt to question him. I alone will hear what he has to say when I decide he will say it. Do you understand me?”
“Of course, my lord. As you wish.”
“Consider this simple puzzle, young fool,” I said, turning my back on the bleeding youth lest I lose control of my fist again. “What kind of person corrupts his loyal friend’s mind and memory? Or sends him into the middle of a war half enchanted, while he himself cowers in the shadows? Perhaps it is the same one who rips a young mother apart at the beginning of her life or forces a strong and decent man to slit his own belly. If your tongue is forbidden to speak the truth of where you’ve been, then perhaps your mind is forbidden to remember the truth of what he is.”
I did not watch Radele work his enchantments and lead Paulo away. I stood behind Seri and stroked her hair. She sat on the edge of her chair, gazing into the sunrise as if she expected to see someone she knew walk out of it.
But I could not stay long in her company without going mad. So, after only a few moments, I left the garden, threw myself on my horse, and returned to the Wastes. By early afternoon I had slain fifty of Gensei Senat’s Zhid warriors. My beleaguered troops rallied around me, cheering and waving their swords, shouting that the Heir of D’Arnath had come to bring death to Zhev’Na. And I, the bringer of death, drowned my fury in the blood of my enemies.
CHAPTER 21
Ven’Dar
Prince D’Natheil’s first meeting with the Leiran youth filled me with tremendous hopes. The Prince had such great love for the boy, and as he sat at the bedside through the long afternoon, I could sense his desire to unleash it. But the boy held back. Whether he had truly turned traitor, or whether he had seen the changes in the Prince and decided he couldn’t trust him, I didn’t know, but I grieved for them both. If the youth maintained his silence, the consequences could be severe, not so much for him as for D’Natheil.
On the next morning, Bareil told me how the Prince had let the youth escape, and I understood his plan. I contrived to be at his headquarters when the Heir returned from Nentao, hoping to hear that the boy had indeed been moved by the distressing sight of the Lady, but I received only a brief account of the Prince’s failure. With a troubled heart I saw him plunge into his war once again, and return late that night covered in blood, his warriors praising the glories of his killing. If this continued, a time would come very soon when I wouldn’t be able to reach him any more.
And so on that evening, unknown to the Prince or even my madrissé, I slipped through a portal to Avonar. Soon after midnight I let myself into the peaceful darkness of Nentao by a side door. I had no fear of reprisal. After all, it was my own house.
* * *
I hadn’t known the Lady Seriana before the distraught Prince summoned me in his darkest hour, begging me to save her life. The Healers called to repair her injury had felt her slipping away. She would not grasp the tethers they proffered, as if life was become too painful to embrace any longer.
“Ah, gods, Ven’Dar,” he had said, weeping at her bedside. “I’ve killed her and myself together. And she’ll be gone before I can repair what I’ve done.” Guilt can twist truth so terribly.
I had drawn together what I knew of her from four years of the Prince’s friendship, and what I knew of this man she had loved beyond death, and I had worked a winding for her.
One never knows what will be the exact result of a winding. You create with a sense of your desired outcome, in the Lady’s case the necessity for holding on to a life so beloved and so valued, and you weave it into the words and the knowledge and the power that has been given you, until you are so filled with the enchantment you think it must leak out of your skin. Only then can you spin it out, as the fisherman casts out his line, and hope that the sum of your efforts lands somewhere close to your intended mark.
She lived, and for a brief hour we thought she might awaken to herself. But as the days passed our hopes faded, and when her eyes opened at last, no life dwelt in them. It was as if her injury had healed, but her soul would not. It was then the Prince asked if he could bring her to Nentao. “She wasn’t ready to come to the palace,” he said, bitterly. “She always said it was D’Natheil’s place, not mine. Clearly, she was more right than she knew. I can’t leave her there. And I’ll have to be away so much… ”
The Leiran youth was locked in my root cellar, snoring heartily, his hands and feet secured to a drainage pipe that was embedded in the ceiling. The small window and the door were warded and his limbs restricted by various simple, easily detectable enchantments.
I sat down on a crate of turnips and stared at him until he woke. Almost an hour passed. But I’d always found touching a sleeping stranger a dreadfully rude way to wake him up. And sometimes dangerous.
“Trussed you up like a goose, have they?” I said, when the boy’s eyes popped open, and he bolted to a sitting position amidst an avalanche of vegetables, letting out an exclamation of a common barnyard variety when he got tangled in the ropes and whacked his head on the pipe.
“Aye.” He slumped against the carrot bin.
“My name is Ven’Dar. I am one of the Preceptors of Gondai. I understand you are familiar with us - both our better parts, and those we’d prefer not to let everyone make jest of?”
“Mmm.” He acknowledged the truth with a sour twist to his lips.
“I thought so. Now if I were to untie your hands and feet, and make any number of promises of my honor and goodwill, and any number of threats regarding any attempt on your part to get away, would you consider talking with me for a while?”
He shrugged, his expression uncommunicative. Clearly he had reservations.
I did the untying, but skipped the promises and threats.
“To start, I’ll tell you that I’m an advisor of Prince D’Natheil, and also his close friend. I can’t set you free. I wouldn’t want you to be mistaken about that.”
“I figured. Did he send you to steal what’s in my mind?”
“Do you think he plans to do that?”
“Before today I wouldn’t have thought it. You’ll have to ask him.”
“You’ve been missing for four months. Believed dead. Mourned. And now you reappear in the vicinity of Zhev’Na, and you don’t deny your loyalty to one we believe to be our deadliest enemy. You weren’t expecting to be questioned about it?”
“I wasn’t expecting the Lady to be like she is. I wasn’t expecting the Prince to… to be like he is.”
“You find the Prince changed?”
“Demonfire… changed! I don’t - Well, just say that if you’d have told me he’d gone and got himself switched around again, I’d be more believing it, than that he’s the Prince I knew. But then, every once in a while, there’s a word or a look in his eye… and I know it’s really him. That’s worse.”
A perceptive young man. And a heart that was exactly as I’d been told.
“You swore to the Prince that his son was not allied with the Lords of Zhev’Na. Have you any proof of that?”
“No. None but my word and his - the young master’s, I mean.”
“Is that why you were so anxious to speak to the Lady Seriana?”
The boy narrowed his eyes. “So you are here to read my head?”
“No. Not only did the Prince not send me here, I have a feeling that he’ll be very angry with me when he learns of it. That’s why it is so important that we come to some understanding. I know that you’ve loved and honored the Prince, as do I, and I need to know if such is still the case or if the young Lord has turned you against him.”
“I told the Prince yesterday as I’d give him my life or my le
gs or whatever he asked. I wasn’t lying. I shouldn’t have to say it again.”
If this boy was lying, then he was by far the most convincing prevaricator I’d ever encountered. Perhaps lying was a particular skill of those who lived in the mundane world, one that we Dar’Nethi never had perfected.
“That’s what I thought. So answer my question. Why is it so important that you speak to the Lady?”
“Because she’s the only one as I can give the message. The young master believes the Prince won’t listen - as has been shown true - so he needs the Lady to convince the Prince to do what needs done. If she was dead, I’d be able to tell the Prince direct, but since she’s alive I can’t, and I’ll be shiv’d if I know what in blazes I’m to do now!”
I sat for a moment trying to sort out what I’d just heard and had no luck at all. So I pulled a cloth pouch from the pocket of my robes. “Would you like something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Another clue that all was not as usual with the boy. The Prince had told me a great deal about Paulo. I took a handful of dried duskberries from the pouch and munched on them while I watched the boy watching me. I felt a question forcing its way out of him.
“So” - he scraped at a wayward carrot with his fingernail, concentrating on its pale skin - “does Radele know you’re here talking to me?”
“No, he does not. You can trust me, Paulo. I promise.” Of course, I had to hope he wasn’t fool enough to believe just any Dar’Nethi’s promise. Only mine. “I need you to trust me.”
“I don’t know you.”
“True. What if I were to share a terrible secret with you?”
“Why would you do that? Don’t you believe the young master is evil like everyone else does? And if he’s evil, then I’m probably evil, too.”
“I choose to believe in you, young Paulo, because if the young Lord is corrupt and you are corrupt, then there’s no saving the Prince. He might be able to save Avonar or he might not, but he - the man you know and honor as I do - will be irretrievably lost. I’ve left to the Prince the task of saving the worlds, but in the stupidly prideful way of Dar’Nethi Preceptors, I’ve taken on myself the task of saving him.”
