by Carol Berg
“I don’t think so. But, Roxanne, if I tell you someone’s coming, I want you to clear your mind of every thought. Focus your attention on a rock or the sky, but don’t think of where you are or who you are or anyone or anything you know. No questions, no sounds or sensations, no fears. Make yourself empty. Do you understand me? Do you think you can do that?”
“Like ‘think of yourself out’? I believe I’m beginning to speak your sorcerer’s language.”
“The less substantial your thoughts, the more difficult for anyone to locate you with sorcery. We’ll hope we won’t have to do it.”
Across the dark valley, blurs of light moved rapidly down the slope where I had lain waiting such a short time ago. Riders carrying torches, at least ten horsemen. A few of them dismounted at the ruin, and light soon blazed from inside the walls as well as out. After a time, three men emerged from the ruin, leading someone who stumbled and fell. They dragged him up and placed him on the back of a horse, binding his hands to the saddle. Slender shoulders, long legs, dark hair… Gerick.
I half expected Karon to be brought out a prisoner also. But he strolled out in the company of two other men. After conferring with them for a moment, he walked over to Gerick and raised his arms. Bolts of white fire sparked from his hands. An agonized cry pierced the night, and Gerick slumped forward in the saddle.
“No!” I leaped to my feet, only to be dragged down instantly. I lay slumped in the dirt, my elbow and chin stinging after grazing the sandy boulder.
“This doesn’t seem like the time, my lady.” The girl’s hands were steady as she brushed the grit from my face and helped me sit up again.
Roxanne crept upward to peer out at the valley across our sheltering boulder. But I drew my knees up tight and buried my head in my arms, trying to cry out the knots that choked off breath and tears, condemning me to dry shudders.
“They’re riding back the way they came,” said the girl, slipping down the rock face to sit beside me again. “His father leading.” She laid her hand on my back. “They put one of the soldiers up behind him, as if to hold him in the saddle, so he’s not dead. And another interesting thing. Everyone rode out. No horses left behind. No guards posted. No torches left. But Paulo wasn’t with them. I’ll be right back.”
“Roxanne, wait! Don’t… ”
The stars wheeled slowly above me. The cold wind blew off the desert. I could not bring myself to watch whatever foolish mission the girl had contrived. If this night demanded more grieving, it could not wrest it from me. Eventually, plodding steps crunched and slid on the steep gravel-strewn path.
“Whew!” A warm body flopped down at my side. “Well, Paulo’s not dead, either. He didn’t go with them, and he didn’t stay behind, dead or alive, that I can see. So he’s either wandered out into the desert again or run away somewhere - perhaps back to the Bounded the way we came. That’s a good sign, don’t you think?”
Something in her question forced me to look outside my private horror and glance over at her. Tears rolled silently down her dusty cheeks, and her face was etched with fear and grief and the yearning of a courageous child who has been too long from home. I gathered her in, and Evard’s daughter and I held each other through the long, cold night.
Sunrise brought searing heat. Roxanne and I kept watch atop our boulder, taking turns once the shade began to dwindle. As we waited, I told her about Radele and Men’Thor and their plotting, about Karon and D’Natheil and my fragile hopes, shattered so inexplicably last night. Near mid-morning, about the time doubts began to sap my spirit along with the withering sun, I spotted a lone traveler on the northern rim of the valley, leading two riderless horses.
“Clear your mind as I told you,” I said, shrinking down beside the rock. “Think of the emptiest place you know and erase each object and association you find there.”
I followed my own instructions, but kept my eyes trained on the rider through a slot between our rock and another. A needless precaution. As soon as the rider - a slight figure that might have been a woman or a youth - passed the ruin, he peered up at the rocks at our end of the valley, shading his eyes with his hand. When he reached the base of our slope, he pulled off his hood, revealing olive skin, wiry black hair, and neatly trimmed beard, and eyes that, had they not been squinting, would have displayed the elongated oval shape of an almond. Quickly, I climbed onto our sheltering boulder and waved. “Up here, Bareil!”
Karon’s Guide raised his hand in greeting and dismounted as Roxanne and I slipped and slithered down the graveled slope. “It is good to find you none the worse for your night in the open, my lady,” said Bareil, bowing in the Dulcé fashion, one arm behind his back, the other extended.
“And it’s very good to see you,” I said. “It would have been a long dry day. Your Highness, this gentleman is Bareil of the Dulcé, my husband’s friend and confidante. Bareil, Her Royal Highness Roxanne, Crown Princess of Leire.”
The Dulcé repeated his bow and expressions of pleasure, though his demeanor was uncharacteristically somber. The formalities seemed surreal in the harsh surroundings. The girl and I were filthy and travel-worn, and, without regard for manners or breeding, we grasped the two waterskins Bareil detached from his saddle. And, of course, no protocol could keep the activities of the previous night at arm’s length.
“What news, Bareil?” I said, as soon as I’d swallowed as much water as I could manage in one swig. “What’s happened to Gerick? What did the Prince say? Why did he tell us to hide? Who were those men?”
Bareil’s face was layered with care, his drawn brow and the creases about his mouth leading me, for the first time, to speculate about his age. “I am charged to bring you to the palace unobserved, my lady,” he said. “The Prince offered me the strictest instructions for your safety and anonymity. Beyond that, I am privy to nothing about any of these matters. Indeed, it has been a long while since I have been my lord’s confidante.” He pulled two gauzy cloaks of light blue from a bag attached to his saddle, exchanging them for the half-drained waterskins.
“Then tell me, how did he appear? Was he all right? Was he… himself?”
“My lady… ” Bareil’s color deepened.
I bit my tongue in frustration. “I know. I know. It’s improper for you to speak of him. Rude of me to ask. I’m sorry.” A Dar’Nethi and his Guide - madrisson and madrissé, they called the pair - were linked by deep enchantment, the intricate workings of the Dulcé‘s astonishing mind available only at the Dar’Nethi’s command. Such a relationship was only tenable if based on absolute trust: that the Dar’Nethi never abuse his ability to compel his madrissé’s obedience and that the Dulcé never use the resulting intimacy to betray his madrisson’s privacy.
“I am truly sorry, as well. If I could help you - It’s just - ” The worry etched about his almond eyes deepened. He shook his head and averted his gaze. “We must return to Avonar as swiftly as possible.”
I touched his arm, clasped the blue cloak at my neck, and pulled up my hood. “Let’s go then, and I’ll ask the Prince myself. No protocol will stand in my way.”
Leading the horses to a rock of convenient height, Bareil helped Roxanne mount a placid bay and, likewise, offered his hand to steady me onto a gray mare. We rode out at a moderate pace across the baked valley floor and upward, over the ridge to the road that would take us back to Avonar. The blustering wind that filled our eyes and mouths with dirt, and the burden of ominous events and forbidden topics, did not promote easy conversation. The sooner this journey was over the better. So I was somewhat surprised when we reached the top of the valley rim, our journey scarcely begun, and Bareil pulled up abruptly. Laying his small hand on his horse’s mane, he did not shift his gaze from the road that stretched in front of us.
“You said you would get your answers from the Prince when you arrived in Avonar.” He tossed out the remark carelessly, as if making casual conversation, as if we had stopped for some other reason. Perhaps pretending it was of little import
ance mitigated his breach of a Guide’s protocol by speaking of his madrisson. “My lady… I must say… I don’t know if you should depend on that.”
The heat of the day vanished as if the sun had been blotted out.
“I am privy to nothing, my lady, as I said, and if I were, I could not share it unless the Prince permitted me, as you have remembered so well. But as I prepared to ride out from Avonar this morning, I obtained my horse from a public stable so as not to be remarked in the royal yards. As one will at any public place, I heard rumors… a great number of them… Some that might be of interest to you.” He stroked his horse’s mane slowly. Deliberately.
I forced myself to maintain his pretense, lest urgency force him back beyond the barriers of discretion. “Rumors are always interesting, Bareil, but rarely accurate.”
“One says that the honorable Men’Thor is to be named to the Preceptorate this day.”
“Such a rumor has been spread for months,” I said, “probably by Men’Thor himself. The gossipmongers just don’t know all the Prince has learned in these past days.”
“So I believed also, my lady. But one of the men who spoke this rumor has a brother in service at the palace” - the words flowed faster now - “and he said that the Prince rode in before dawn this morning. My lord’s first act was to summon Men’Thor from the Wastes and his son from the watch on the Vales. They were in consultation for a goodly time. When Men’Thor emerged, he sent my informant’s brother to take a message to his own house - to set in motion a feast he had long planned and to make all in readiness for a momentous event. Another servant was sent to Radele’s tailor to prepare ceremonial garb - on a scale far beyond anything he has ever requested.”
“They’re fools. They’ve misinterpreted.” Why would Bareil be skirting his vows to repeat rumors? Why stop here in the wilderness to tell me this? “I don’t understand, Bareil.”
His gaze at last met my own. Unflinching, the Dulcé continued as if I had made no comment. “I have heard another rumor, my lady.”
“Which is?”
“The Prince is to name a new successor this night.”
“Earth and sky! Let’s ride!”
“I thought no city could rival Montevial,” said Roxanne, craning her neck as we rode through the colossal bronze gates of Avonar. “But our cities are as far from this as the Bounded is from Leire.”
I glanced at the stone pillars that supported the gates, columns higher than the towers of Comigor, sculpted into two long, slender bodies whose eyes gazed down benevolently on all who passed, creations of such delicate perfection that the robes of stone that draped the perfect naked forms were the image of windswept gauze. Vasrin Creator and Vasrin Shaper, the male and female expressions of a single god. The ancient gates themselves reached almost as high as the figures, and the bronze panels that sheathed the ancient wood depicted in intricate detail hundreds of scenes reflecting a Dar’Nethi life far removed from what we saw around us.
“Perhaps we would be equally capable of such beauty if we’d only allow ourselves to learn it,” I said. “But we’ve always chosen to fight wars instead. After so many years of their own war, Karon says the Dar’Nethi are losing their arts and becoming more like us all the time.”
We had ridden hard for several hours across the sweeping borderlands, stopping only when we needed to rest and water the horses at the watercourses that flowed out of the city and the Vales. The rough dry borderlands and thready streamlets had yielded to healthier grasslands as we approached Avonar. Though ripe and fertile land for planting, these fields had been long abandoned, for it was across these rolling meadows that the tides of war ebbed and flowed. Here the armies of the Zhid would advance on the royal city, besieging the enchanted walls for months at a time. And when the Dar’Nethi shoved the Lords’ forces back into the Wastes, grass and flowers would slowly recover the reeking ruin left behind, only to be crushed when the war tide flowed again.
Roxanne had spent our journey questioning me about Avonar and sorcery, about Karon and the succession, but mostly about the Lords and what they had done to Gerick, which neither he nor Paulo had fully explained. Only in the last few leagues had she fallen silent, either from exhaustion at keeping such a pace or the need to mull the complexities of all I had told her.
We left our horses at a stable near the gates and shaded our faces with the hooded robes and long scarves Bareil had supplied. The shadows were lengthening, but the normal activities one would expect in the wide streets of the royal city on a summer afternoon were nowhere in evidence. Instead of street vendors hawking sausages and magical trinkets, small groups of citizens stood on the street corners talking with great animation. Instead of children running and laughing at their games around the fountains of colored light beams or water sprays that shaped themselves into figures of horses and birds, twos and threes of women walked side by side in deep discussion, tugging bewildered little ones behind. Every shop door had a gathering in front of it, and every hostelry, bathhouse, and house of refreshment seemed overflowing with custom. Anticipation was as palpable as the late summer heat.
“We’ve made good time,” said the Dulcé. “I’d not expected to make it back here before sunset.”
All night and all day I had pondered what I might do to influence the next few hours - hours that meant life or death for those I loved most in the world. I had composed words of reason and logic to lay at Karon’s feet, to shout at the Preceptors, at the Dar’Nethi, at the Lords themselves. After Bareil told me his “rumors,” I had tried again and failed to come up with any plan worth the dust on my shoe. I didn’t know enough. My feet slowed. “Tell me, Bareil, where are you taking us?”
“I was told to bring you to the palace discreetly. I am to settle you and the young lady in a suite of rooms in a private wing and see to your comfort until such time as the Prince commands me otherwise.”
“And you have no further orders concerning me or the princess?”
“Only that I am to insist that you remain in hiding and hold communication with no one until you hear differently from the Prince. For your safety, he says.”
“I see. He said nothing about when I might expect to speak to him again or to see my son?”
“No, my lady. Nothing.”
I needed to understand what Karon was doing. If he wasn’t going to tell me, I needed to seek answers elsewhere. And we were at least two hours earlier than Bareil had expected to get us here. Though Bareil fidgeted at the delay, I left the street and led the others into a lush green parkland in the shade of spreading trees, laden with fragrant pink blossoms. “Bareil, do you know where I might find Ven’Dar?”
Bareil glanced anxiously in every direction and dropped his voice so that a bird on my shoulder couldn’t have heard him. “I’ve not seen him since I left him with the Prince at the caves, but I am certain he is still in hiding. His ‘death’ has not been publicly reported, but the rumor of it has spread throughout the city and the Vales.”
“Help me find him, Bareil. I must speak with him.”
The Dulcé‘s face crumpled. “Ah, my lady, that would be far too dangerous. He might be hidden anywhere.”
“No, he’ll be somewhere close. Even if Karon ordered him away, I don’t believe he would go. Does he have a house in the city or family, someone trustworthy, somewhere he might be able to remain hidden?”
“His only family is a sister who lives in Lyrrathe Vale. When not at Nentao or at the battlefront, he resides in the palace to be close to the Prince. But, of course” - Bareil scratched his short beard thoughtfully - “in his student days, Master Ven’Dar had rooms in Master Exeget’s old house, the Precept House. That was many years ago, of course, but Exeget took no other students, except for the Prince himself. Master Ven’Dar might have kept the rooms. Few people would know of them. And with so few members of the Preceptorate any more, the chance of discovery would be small. Close to the Prince. Private. Yes, if the Preceptor is to be found anywhere in the city, I would gu
ess he might be there.”
“All right. Stay out of sight and keep Roxanne safe. I’ll meet you back here as close to sunset as I can manage.”
“My lady, please - ”
“I remember the way to the Precept House, and yes, I will be very careful. No one is expecting us so early. We’ll be safely stowed in the palace before anyone even suspects we’re in the city. Though if I can’t find Ven’Dar, perhaps I’ll go looking for Men’Thor and have a talk with him.”
I hadn’t thought a Dulcé could go so pale. His complexion looked like soured milk. “Madam, you must not! To risk anyone seeing you, especially Men’Thor… My lady, you are the key to the Prince’s reason.”
“But that doesn’t seem to have done much good, does it?” I said, loosing far more anger than I should have directed toward the kindly Dulcé. “Men’Thor and Radele will not destroy my family. The Lords of Zhev’Na will not destroy my family. I can’t depend on the Prince’s reason, and I can’t depend on any of these Dar’Nethi who believe that my son is a devil and that I am somehow less worthy of their concern because I do no magic. I have to do something.”
“We should go with you,” said Roxanne, who had been uncharacteristically quiet as we walked through the dappled parkland. “This fellow is right. It’s foolish for you to risk encountering these sorcerers who’ve come near murdering you. But I understand you have to do it. So Bareil and I will stay close and be ready to rescue you or distract them, if need be. My presence could present them a mystery! As Gerick could tell you, I am quite accomplished at intrigues and deceptions.”
Knowing how I would bridle at such insinuations myself, I resisted the temptation to ask her if she was sure she wished to put herself at such risk. She was not a stupid girl. Gerick had trusted her with his life. “All right then. Come along.”
Roxanne jerked her head in satisfaction, and while Bareil spluttered and moaned, we pulled our scarves down low about our faces and merged with the preoccupied traffic in the streets.
