by Carol Berg
It took even longer for the answer to come back this time, as if my father had to gather himself up from the shimmering fragments of light that showered down on us.
“Because Gerick is not one of you. He is loved and cherished by uncounted souls, who even now bear him in their hearts with reverence. He does not live for the pain of others, but for their benefit. Despite all you’ve done to him… all I’ve done to him… Gerick owns his soul and has used it to choose his Way. His long journey has led him here… to his freedom.” We moved forward again. Faster now. Upward.
“Words. Lies.” Ziddari’s voice rose. Louder. Tighter. Tinged with fear. “You murder him at the very threshold of manhood, just as you abandoned him to murder on the day of his birth. I am the one who saved him on that day, and I am the one who will save him on this day. The only freedom you offer is oblivion.”
“Ah, but you see, Ziddari, unlike myself, and unlike the Lords of Zhev’Na, my son will not die on this day. For all your wisdom, all your years, all your magics, you have no true power. True power lies in the hands of those like my wife, who has no talent for sorcery yet changes the course of the world with her passionate heart, and Ven’Dar, who witnesses to the glory of history and fate, and my friend Paulo, who cannot even read yet hears the quiet pulse of life and sustains it with his faithfulness. You’ve never understood. While Gerick lives out his future free of you, you will have ample time to consider your lacks.”
Light and shadow traveled on the warm wind that swirled around me. Through me. As we climbed the ridge of light, music took shape around us. Haunting blues and greens, frothing like ocean waves. A swelling wall of purple-and-violet melody, a mountaintop of singing rose and white…
“Betrayer!” bellowed Ziddari. “Weakling!”
The taunts did not touch me. I thought of my mother and Paulo and knew that what my father said about them was true. My whole being smiled as I remembered them.
The Three went wild, then, and I thought my mind would distingrate. Red-hot claws of fury, frustration, and terror rent my mind and soul into shreds of words and images. They lashed me with the fullness of their power, blinding me with pain and hatred, slashing, ripping, tearing at my reason.
“Heed my last word, Destroyer.” The venomous voice penetrated the hurricane of madness, as if the ruby-eyed Ziddari had bent down to whisper in my ear alone. “You will never be free of us. No matter in what realm we exist at the end of this day, you will not escape the destiny we designed for you. You are our instrument. Our Fourth. Every human soul - mundane or Dar’Nethi - will curse the day you first drew breath.”
The storm closed in again. I held against them, trying to stanch the spreading poison of despair, trying to shield my father’s fragile spirit, until I could no longer think of my own name, could not fit two thoughts together, could not exist… I needed breath. I needed life. Screaming, I fell back…
“Gerick, hold on… just a little farther. I know it is so hard… but you are stronger than all of us…” My father’s voice was distant, but filled with everything he believed about life, and the reasons he had been willing to take this path to preserve the worlds. His will - not at all fragile - held me together, pulled me forward. “Stay with me… ah, gods, it comes. Quickly, my son… trust me…”
On the brink of madness, I took one more step. Then, with a long sigh, we began to separate, my father and I and the Lords. The Lords’ curses disintegrated rapidly into unintelligible ravings, cries that existed apart from and not inside me, and then, after a final, horrifying crescendo of terror, the Three fell silent… and I was free.
All that was left was the music, haunted, wandering music, just on the edge of beauty, yet just on the edge of dissonance. Streams of light and music bathed us like sparkling wine. The doors of my mind were flung open, and the melodies drifted through them, sweeping away the lingering shadows and cobwebs, and I felt my father’s joy untouched by any trace of anger. We had crossed the Verges, and he, too, was free.
Vague forms began to take shape in the distance, and I strained to see what they were, but my father took hold of me again, closing off my vision as if he had brushed my eyelids shut to make me sleep. Submerge now… go deep. You must not see. I believe your gift can take you back into your body, but only if you don’t see. To know L’Tiere would be… unbearable… for a living man, I think. Go deep and wait for your mother’s call to lead you. She’ll find a way. I know it. She has always been able to learn what she needs.
But what of you, Father?
Ah, I wish so very much - But my span of years was done long ago. Dassine gave me the chance to know you, to know of my people and our world that no Exile could remember, and to embrace my Seri once again. How could I ask for more? An eternity of sadness tinged his words.
But what of D’Natheil? His time was not yet. One of you should still be alive.
D’Natheil has not enough mind to go back alone. So much was destroyed by the Bridge when he was young. The rest, when Dassine displaced his soul with mine.
Another burst of color and the music splashed about us. My father’s presence was a lacework of frost, thinning in the blaze of winter sunlight.
Quickly, son. I will hold here at the Verges for as long as I can. Tell your mother that she crossed with me as I told her she would. Live with joy, and with all my love.
And as if he were pushing me under the water to teach me to swim, he forced me deep into his mind, leaving me only enough awareness that I might hear the call that would draw me back to life.
But I was a Soul Weaver, and I reached for my father as he had reached for me, and I drew him in beside me to wait…
CHAPTER 34
Seri
If it had been daytime, or I’d been more awake, or the room had been filled with light and activity, I would never have sensed it. It was no more than the glimmer of a forgotten inspiration, or a feather out of place in your pillow, or the earliest stirring of a child in the womb, but it jolted me awake and I listened until I thought my inner ears might bleed. There. Again…
Gerick, child, is it you? Is it true what Ven’Dar said, that you can find your way back? Follow my voice, dear one. I shaped each word carefully.
At the end of half an hour the touch was stronger, still faint, still very far away, but I refused to believe it was some midnight fantasy of a tired and grieving widow. A lamp flared from the doorway, searing my eyes and rousing Ven’Dar, who also had dozed off.
“I was just - ” said Paulo, but I held up my hand for quiet.
Mother. The call, the touch, had come again.
“Vasrin’s hand,” whispered Ven’Dar, watching as I focused my attention inward. The sorcerer slipped off the edge of the table, and hurried around to where he could touch Gerick’s body.
Words poured from me into the night, like a river gathering its power and leaping from a cliff into a bottomless gorge below. Some of the words made sense, some didn’t. Anyone would have called me a fool, but I’d come so far from logic and rational expectations in the years of my life that nothing was beyond the realm of possibility. My husband had once come back from the dead. Why not again? Why not my son?
I heard a harsh intake of breath from across the stone table where Ven’Dar hovered over Gerick. Then the sorcerer, in muted excitement, said, “Continue, my lady. Don’t let go.”
I couldn’t even move to look. I couldn’t do anything lest the fragile connection be lost.
Listen to my voice, Gerick. Find your way. Come back and live.
Can’t… The stone…
The black stone pyramid was still clutched in Karon’s cold hand. Dared I move it?
Hurry…
With a glance at Ven’Dar, I pulled the smooth stone from the linked hands and set it aside.
“By the holy Way, you’ve done it!” said Ven’Dar.
I scrambled across the platform until I was kneeling at Gerick’s side with my hands on his face. A tinge of color graced his pale cheeks, and a faint bre
ath passed his pale lips. I rubbed his hands, speaking aloud now, talking, weeping, laughing, babbling, coaxing him back to the world.
Ven’Dar put his arm around my shoulders and laughed until tears came. “You can rest now, my lady. He’s here. You don’t want to drive him away. Give him a little time.”
So I sat back, and instead of Gerick’s warm hand, I held Karon’s cold one, and watched my son wake up. It was gradual at first. His color improved; his breathing deepened; his hands and eyelids began to twitch. Then somewhere in his journey, he crossed a dramatic threshold that caused him to sit bolt upright, gasping for breath, his eyes wide, seeing things that were not in the room with us.
“… got to come… not finished… ” He swallowed and breathed. “… oh, yes, you can. You must… ”
It may have been the sound of his own voice that brought him to awareness, or perhaps the shattering of glass when Paulo dropped his lamp. But, whatever the reason, Gerick squeezed his eyes tightly shut and then opened them to look straight at me.
“Welcome back,” I said, throwing my arms around him, trying to warm him, to quiet his shivering. He held me tight, but clearly his mind was on something else. When I drew back a bit to look at his face, his eyes were on Karon’s body.
“I tried to bring him back with me.” He touched Karon’s lifeless hand. “I thought… ”
“It’s all right,” I said, laughing and weeping all at once. “I’m sure it’s all right.”
“Tell us, young Gerick… Please. About the Lords,” said Ven’Dar, anxiously. “We’ve seen signs… I’m sorry. I can’t wait for the proper time to ask. I must know.”
“They didn’t come back with me,” said Gerick. “I don’t know if that means they’re dead, but we separated from them beyond the Verges, and they’re not in me any longer.” And he told us all that had happened when he touched Karon’s outstretched hand.
“… and so I thought it wasn’t fair. Imprisoned so horribly for ten years, and then trapped with D’Natheil for the rest of it. A slave in Zhev’Na for over a year. He had so much life left in him, and I thought it was because only one of them was supposed to be dead, and it had to be D’Natheil because D’Natheil couldn’t come back. I guess I was wrong, and that’s why it didn’t work.”
“He made his choice,” I said. “He did exactly what he wanted - set you free. And Avonar. And all of us.”
“He was free, too,” said Gerick. “By the end, there was no more D’Natheil.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“But I wanted him to live.”
We sat together at Karon’s side. I was too wrung out to say much of anything. Yet the passions of a sixteen-year-old are not easily dulled. Gerick kept his hand on Karon’s unmoving chest. “He’s close, Mother. He wants so much to be here with us.”
It must have been near midnight when we finally persuaded Gerick, half sick with exhaustion, to go back to my apartments with Paulo to eat and sleep for a while. I promised that Karon would not be left alone and that one of us would continue talking to him. Paulo laid Ven’Dar’s hooded cloak over Gerick’s shoulders to protect my son from curious eyes. Gerick was still condemned and feared, and it would take a while for the Dar’Nethi - and all of us - to understand what had really taken place that day.
As soon as the boys had gone, Ven’Dar summoned Bareil to prepare Karon’s body for his funeral rites. “The people will need to see him laid out. You understand. So they can believe and accept.”
“Of course I understand.”
“You should go with your sons, lady. I’ll wait here, keep our promise to Gerick, until Bareil arrives to take care of the Prince. You’ve had a day such as no one should ever have, and tomorrow will have its own burdens. We have a number of decisions to make, and perhaps some journeying to do.”
“And what of you, Ven’Dar? Tomorrow you will be anointed Heir of D’Arnath, and face the task of rebuilding a world. Perhaps you’re the one who needs to take a few hours of sleep.”
“Another hour of peace here would probably benefit me more. I have a great deal to consider.” He looked at me quizzically. “Will your son have regrets, do you think, when he looks back to know he might have been the Heir of D’Arnath?”
“No. I don’t think he’d ever feel like he belonged here. Karon knew exactly what he was doing, and Gerick has so much as told you the same. Even if he still had any legitimate claim, he wouldn’t press it. You are the only living Heir.”
“And if so, I certainly need to meditate for a little longer. I’ve summoned a guide who awaits you in the first guardroom. Good night, dear lady. I promise you, the Prince will not be left alone tonight.” He smiled and touched my hand. “I’ve a few things more I need to tell him.”
And so I left him in the prison block and found Aimee waiting in the guardroom to guide me back to my apartments. Gerick and Paulo were sprawled out on the carpets when I arrived, and Roxanne curled up on the couch, all of them sound asleep. I smiled through my tears at the sweetness of life and youth, and fell into my own bed. Karon’s rose still bloomed beside me.
Neither dreams nor true sleep came to me that night. Rather I drifted in some half waking, at peace save for the ponderous grief that wrapped heart and body in a blanket of lead. My long farewell continued through the dark, quiet hours.
But for one more night, my rest was destined for interruption. “Madam, please… wake up. My lady, come quickly.” Two almond-shaped eyes shone in the gray light. It was Bareil.
“What is it?” I whispered, instantly afraid for Gerick, for Roxanne, for Paulo. The Lords were back. The world ending…
But he just shook his head and urged me up.
I threw on a gown over my shift. Avonar, exhausted with its emotions, lay quiet in the faint light outside my window. Even the birds were hushed as if in respect for the weary populace. Paulo and Roxanne still lay wrapped in their dreams and Aimee’s blankets, and Aimee herself dozed in the chair by the door, waiting until her charges might awake. Morning lay over them like a soft gray mantle. But Gerick wasn’t with them.
Once Bareil and I were in the passage, I tried again. “What is it?” But he only shook his head and hurried me through the wide galleries and down a graceful curved staircase, through the formal public rooms of the palace. “Where’s Gerick?”
Two huge doors of carved walnut swung open at our approach, and we entered a long room with high arched ceilings. The dawn light tinged with rose angled sharply through the tall windows, making an enchanted mist of the dust motes floating in the air. Halfway down the length of the vast, empty room sat a simple bier of polished walnut, surrounded by hundreds of candles in crystal bowls. That’s where they would lay him.
Bareil didn’t pause by the empty bier, but led me to a side door, a very plain door. “This is the preparation room, my lady.”
Where they took their dead princes to enchant their wounds away, I thought, to bathe them and array them in whatever attire was deemed suitable for burial - to hide the terrible truths of death. Oh, gods, why had he brought me here?
The room was small and businesslike, with a marble table at its center, clearly the resting place for the honored dead, though it, too, remained vacant. Waiting. At one side of the room was a rack with silk robes of various colors, and on the other, rows of glass shelves containing vials of oils and perfumes, boxes of candles, scrolls, small velvet-lined boxes of leather and wood that contained jewelry and gemstones. Across the room were several cushioned mourners’ benches, flanking an open doorway. The room had no windows, but opened onto a small garden, a gentle reminder of life in a room devoted to the service of death. A very Dar’Nethi arrangement.
Gerick sat on the mourner’s bench, his head resting in his hands.
I crossed the room and laid a hand on his hair. “Are you all right, dear one?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, without looking up. “I’ll be all right.”
Ven’Dar appeared in the arched doorway from the garde
n. “Good morning, my lady,” he said, somberly. “My apologies for waking you so early, but a matter of some urgency has arisen with regard to the Prince’s funeral rites. Your son and I believe that only you can resolve it.”
“But I know very little of your customs… ” I began.
“The one who is concerned will explain the difficulty. It is very complicated, but I believe your knowledge will be sufficient. If you would step into the garden… ”
Exasperated with the Dar’Nethi and their incessant ritual, I hurried through the door into the garden. In a corner that the early sun had not yet touched, someone in silk robes of dark blue was bending over a bed of miniature roses.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I understand you’ve discovered a problem with the Prince’s funeral arrangements. Please explain what is so urgent that it must be settled before the birds leave their nests. Funeral rites rarely require such haste.”
The man’s back was toward me, and the sun was in my eyes, and even when he straightened up, I thought, for a long moment, that he wasn’t going to say anything. The dawn breeze wafted a hundred scents about my head until I felt almost giddy. Was that what made the hairs on my arms prickle - or was it the breadth of his shoulders or the color of his hair bound with a clip that glinted silver in the sunbeams…
“The problem, my lady, is with the subject of these rites. He just doesn’t seem to be dead.”
And so in the gentle dawn did my love turn and greet me in such fashion as to leave no mistake as to his condition of life or death. In his unshadowed blue eyes was reflected the soul of my Karon, and in his smile was all the joy of the universe.
EPILOGUE
I had given up too soon in my waiting, back in the prison block at the palace. Karon had so much farther to come back than Gerick, and it was so much more difficult, for he believed himself properly dead. Yet Gerick’s plea had held him at the Verges, and he could not dismiss our son’s belief that only one life need be forfeit - that of the incapable D’Natheil.
