by Carol Berg
"Ale . . . yes. Please."
"Consiliar, if you would …" The tall gray man bowed and vanished through the wide doorway.
The Lady smiled and motioned me to follow. "Welcome to my home, son of K'Nor."
I stepped inside, and she led me through a series of rooms and passages.
In my days with the Lords, I'd had the power to take any form I wished and explore the most hidden and remote places of the earth. On one of my journeys, I had taken myself to the deeps of the ocean and swum in the form of a fish through a series of cold stone caves: smooth, clean lines, uncluttered and pleasing, one space easing into another—that's what I remembered of it— the dim, green-flecked light sufficient for my fish's eyes to see my way.
D'Sanya's house had a similar feel. The curved lines of the smooth white walls, not one square corner anywhere, were simple and pure, uncluttered as you passed from one comfortable space to another. The peace and quiet soothed the lingering aggravations of the unfamiliar saddle and the too-bright noonday, and a soft breeze filtered through the shady passages, cooling the sweat of the ride.
We came to a round, high-ceilinged chamber with at least six arched doorways that opened onto long passages. Above the doorways were rounded window openings that had no glass or shutters to filter the bright sunlight. The narrow dome was a well of light.
The consiliar Na'Cyd was waiting for us, a Dulce at his side. "You will find your father in his apartments or his private garden," he said. "Bertol here will show you the way once you have refreshed yourself."
I shifted both bags into one hand as the Dulce pressed a glass goblet filled with amber ale into the other. I hadn't even removed my riding gloves yet.
"Whenever you come here in the future, you must go straight to your father," said D'Sanya. "This is his home now, and you are welcome in all these public rooms and gardens. Here, let me show you. . . ."
D'Sanya was already halfway up a short straight stair. The consiliar and the Dulce remained behind while I hurried after her to the top of the stair and onto a curved balcony with an iron railing. From this vantage we could look out over the entire compound. Most of the hospice was built on one level, neat, narrow arms leading out from this main house and surrounding many small courtyards and gardens. At the westernmost end of the place, across a wide green lawn, stood a modest house of three stories enclosed by its own small garden.
"That's my residence," she said, as if she had followed my eye across the red tile roofs. "The wings of the main house are for our guests. Out that way"—pointing with three ringed fingers, she indicated a cluster of tidy buildings set off from the others out beyond the orderly rows of a large orchard—"are the attendants' quarters, the storehouses, and such. The tall whitewashed structure is the stable, and the square of buildings to the right of them are workshops for metalworking, pottery, and all manner of activities. Even lacking their true talents, some of our residents enjoy pursuing their former occupations, and they enrich us all by their work. In this building you'll find the common rooms, the dining room, the library, sitting rooms, and studies that all may use."
"It looks very comfortable." I clutched the sweating goblet, but didn't drink.
She drew me down the stair again, scarcely giving me time to take in one thing before showing me something new. "The families of my guests are always welcome here. All I ask of my visitors is that they do not intrude on the residents who wish to remain apart."
She guided me through a warren of rooms with comfortable seating, colorful rugs and hangings, and many bookshelves, each room giving onto elaborate gardens thick with flowers, trees, and fountains. Though the consular was no longer in sight, the Dulce trailed after us.
"It is perhaps one of the more difficult aspects of the hospice, that those who live here must inevitably lose a measure of their privacy. I try to help them maintain it as they wish. I share no names unless permitted, and provide each resident with a private apartment and an attendant to see to his or her needs. Only if they desire company do I invite them to join us in the common room to dine, although I do encourage it. Companionship can be helpful at those times when their families cannot be with them. They say the reasons that bring them here are often less clear when they are alone."
"I think—" I tried not to stammer. "I believe it is important to my father to remain private. He was a Healer before this illness felled him, and it makes him uneasy to take this road when he has left so many others. . . ."
"You've no need to explain. I have not and will not pry into his affairs, though I must confess a slight violation of my own rules already." We had arrived at an open foyer that I believed was the place I had first entered the house. She tilted her head to one side, and wrinkled her face in mock dismay. "I did ask your father about you . Only a small misdemeanor. I didn't ask him about himself, you see. But there was something when we met the other day. …"
I swallowed uneasily. "And what did he say?"
"He apologized profusely, saying that as you had passed the age of eighteen by several years and had gone out on your own, he, as any father, must refuse to answer any more for you. He is a most charming gentleman, your father. Tell me"—she laid a hand on my arm—"would it be insufferably impertinent if I were to invite you to walk with me this afternoon? You need not feel obliged."
This was exactly what I had come here for, a chance to question her, yet those deepest instincts that warn us away from mortal danger demanded I run away; even through my sleeve, her touch set my arm afire.
"Perhaps after I've seen my father," I mumbled, my feet already retreating. I set my untouched ale on a marble table and shifted the heavy bags again into both hands. "I've brought him some books, and a few of his clothes."
"Of course, you must go to him first! I'll be in the library should you decide to indulge me after. Anyone can show you. Bertol, please show the gentleman to Master K'Nor's rooms."
The Dulce stood waiting in the doorway behind me. I felt the Lady's eyes on my back as he led me down the passageway, but I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. I wanted to make sure I could still do as I pleased. She could not be trusted. She had come from the heart of corruption.
We walked across two wide courtyards and down a marble cloister paved with flagstones that were delicately carved with vines and flowers. At last the slight, dark-eyed man bowed and pointed to a doorway tucked behind a vine-covered arbor. The door stood open.
I thanked the Dulcй as he withdrew.
Peering inside, I tapped on the open door and called out. "Father?"
I stepped from the glaring sunshine into the cool dimness of a spacious room. Before my momentary blindness allowed me to locate the bedchamber door, a shadowed figure rose from a chair next to the windows.
"No need to look farther. If nothing else, I'm set free of my bed for the moment."
He wore a simple high-necked robe of dark blue, and though pale and gaunt, he showed no sign of the pain that had made even so simple an exercise as standing unsupported impossible a short week before.
"Are you all right?" I dropped the bags on a settle and embraced him. He was scarcely more than bones, a man who had once been a warrior unmatched in the history of any world.
"I will say it's good to be up and about."
The room was well aired and comfortably furnished: a wide hearth, a small dining table, several couches and chairs, and a writing desk set to take advantage of the large windows. On the left a door led to a bedchamber similarly appointed. A pair of glass-paned doors opened onto a walled garden sheltered by spreading elm trees.
"Let's walk outdoors a while," my father said, after showing me the finely bound volumes in a half-empty bookshelf and the marvelous plumbing fixtures that piped water into a small, carved basin and emptied waste from an enclosed water closet into a series of channels underneath the hospice buildings. "I can't seem to get enough of the open air."
We set out through the formal gardens of thick shrubs and perfectly trimmed beds of
flowers and herbs, and then turned onto a faint path that skirted the paddocks and led through the fringes of a stretch of woodland. Before any other conversation, he wanted to know about my mother. Only after he had wrung my brain inside out probing for every word she had spoken, every expression that had crossed her face and what I thought it might mean, did we move on to our investigation.
"I remember almost nothing about my first hours here. Candlelight… a blur of colorful candlelight. Kind words. A hard bed. She kept me swaddled in hot blankets and her enchantments … a blessing, I'll confess, but not so good for precise observation. And then, sometime around the second day, I believe, she and a man named Cedor brought me here and left me to sleep a great deal. I scarcely knew when I was awake and when I was asleep. Cedor brought my meals. He still does, and takes care of my linen and those sorts of things. But he doesn't act like a servant." He drew up his brow thoughtfully.
"A spy?" I said. Something had to be wrong about all this kindness and generosity.
"I don't think so. He's gentle, efficient, does his job, and makes no attempt at familiarity. But he's not . .. servile … in any way, either. He is well-spoken, clearly intelligent, and shows an exceptional command of complexities like the plumbing. His demeanor is more that of a physician or a tutor, yet he performs the most menial tasks with good grace."
"You'll need to be careful not to leave Mother's letters lying about."
"Perhaps. But I don't think Cedor's a spy. He's something else. I just don't know what."
"I'm to speak to the Lady before I go."
"She's very curious about you," he said. "She asked me where you live, what you do, how old you are. Does she suspect, do you think?"
"I don't think so. It's . . . When I saw her, I knew she'd lived in Zhev'Na. So that part of her story is certainly true. I think she knew the same about me."
We emerged from the woodland path, crossed a grassy lawn teeming with birds and butterflies, and wandered into an apple orchard. I had glimpsed a few other people walking in the gardens, but we had the woodland and the orchard to ourselves.
"And so you've slept in your apartments after all this enchanting?"
"Yesterday, I woke up in the morning as if I'd never been ill. You can't imagine. … I rose, washed, ate. Crept about like an infant just learning how to walk, waiting for the onslaught … a twinge . . . something. But it never came. For the first time in three months, I could take a full breath without feeling like my gut had a grinding wheel in it. Cedor found me giddy and confused, and kindly reassured me that I was not mad. I supposed they explained the rules of the house to you, as well."
"She told me. So you feel normal? Healthy?"
"I don't feel anything . It's so strange."
The path ended abruptly at the edge of the orchard. Beyond the straight line of the trees and across a short expanse of ankle-high grass stood the hospice wall, an unimposing strip of white stone no higher than my waist, stretching in both directions. I was ready to turn back, but my father walked on through the grass.
"Do you sense enchantment here?" he said, running his hand along the top of the wall, where octagonal bronze medallions the size of my palm, each engraved with a flower, bird, or beast, were embedded at intervals.
I brushed my hand on the smooth stone. The hairs on my arm prickled and stung uncomfortably, and I snatched my hand away. "Yes. It's colder than it should be. Active enchantment, certainly."
He shook his head. "I can't sense it. Yesterday afternoon when I was out walking, I climbed over the wall right there by that wild rose. Stupid thing to do. She had warned me. But after thinking of nothing but this wretched body for so long, to have no pain at all … I wondered if I was really dead and had just missed the whole thing! Well, I knew right away I wasn't dead. Clearly there is no reversal of disease while one resides here."
"Someone found you?" I hated the thought of him lying in the grass in such pain.
"Cedor. He says everyone tries it in their first days here, so he was keeping watch."
For a while we stood gazing across the grassy spread of the valley floor beyond the wall, threaded with streams, dotted with white clover, meadowsweet, and a few stubby hawthorns. Then we turned back and strolled through the apple, plum, and cherry trees, talking about nothing. Rather than returning the way we'd come, we wandered through sprawling vegetable gardens, encountering an occasional gardener who nodded or smiled as we passed. After a while, a cloud hanging over the distant mountains slid down across the valley and chased us inside with a drizzle of rain.
"How does she do it?" I asked, taking up the only topic of real importance as if we'd never left it.
My father had changed out of his wet robes into the more ordinary shirt and breeches I'd brought him and set about lighting a fire to chase the damp from my clothes. From the mantelpiece he took a small, lidded brass cylinder. A single living flame was visible through the perforated sides, and when he opened the cap and held the vessel next to his tinder, the flame leaped from the luminant and set the dry stuff ablaze.
"The Lady says she doesn't completely understand it herself, but that she has learned how to channel the power we 'residents' gather and bind it to her own, using it to shape the enchantments of the wall. She works the linking enchantment in our first days here. That's why we have no shred of power left for our own use. I can't so much as warm a cup of tea that's gone cold or light a fire." He said it lightly, but I knew that such incapacity was no trivial matter to a Dar'Nethi. "Cedor has to bring me this." He capped the luminant again and set it on the mantel.
"It's like Zhev'Na, then," I said.
He shook his head as if to banish that memory, even as his hand rubbed his neck where the scar of his slave collar was now revealed by his open-necked shirt. "No. Not so crippling as that. I can gather power in the way I'm accustomed. It just dwindles away as fast as it builds.
"Truly I feel no evil in the Lady, and the beauties of this place are undeniable. To walk, speak, and eat free of pain, to read, write, and think … I never appreciated those things enough. But everything seems . . . different. I can't grasp it. At least in Zhev'Na, I dreamed, but here, not once. Nothing."
He settled into a chair beside the fire and fell silent, staring into the flames. I didn't know what to say.
After a while, he glanced up at me. "One thing we must do each time you come: You must join with me, test me to see if I've changed somehow. My word won't be enough."
"Are you sure?" I hated the thought of intruding on him again. Possessing him. When I joined with a person in that way, no thoughts or feelings could be kept hidden from me. I tried not to pry, but some intrusion was unavoidable. "We don't even know if my ability will work here."
"Another good reason to do so. I know it's awkward. But you mustn't worry; I trust you." He smiled, and motioned me to come nearer the hearth. "Come along. You know I'm right, so get it over with."
We sat on a small couch. Closing my eyes, I gathered what power I had, willing my talent to rise, feeding it with power, and allowing it to swell up inside me until it felt as if my skin would split. Then came the unnerving separation of body and soul, the tearing loss as my detached senses failed, and the moment's disorientation as I abandoned my own body and slipped into my father's. My talent worked without difficulty, but I knew at once that all was not right with him.
When I had joined with him at Windham, again as we had crossed the Bridge, and the third time on that last night at Mistress Aimee's house, I had thought no one could endure such pain as his without madness. My soul had been seared with his longing for release, entwined with his grief at leaving us. Yet even in his torment, my father had been filled with the joy I had come to recognize as his unique gift. He treasured life so very mush.
But when I entered his body that rainy afternoon at D'Sanya's hospice, I thought I might suffocate. He could see, but the colors of the world were flat. Objects had no substance and no meaning beyond their shapes and dimensions, none of the hi
story, associations, nuances, or sensations that a Dar'Nethi absorbs with every breath of his life. I tried speaking in his mind, but he evidenced no sign of hearing me. My father was blind and deaf and mute and numb in every way of importance to him.
"I'm sorry," I said, after I'd left him and come back to myself, sitting on the floor shivering in the suddenly chilly room. "I'll get this done as quickly as I can."
He smiled tiredly and leaned back in his chair. "So it's not just my imagination. That's a relief."
Chapter 6
I left my father reading the stack of letters from my mother and retraced my way to the main house. The rain shower had left the sky gray, the cloisters dripping, and the courtyards smelling of damp earth. When I came into the public rooms, I wandered lost for a while, looking for someone to ask where I could find the library. The consiliar Na'Cyd glanced at me over the heads of two men in the dark blue tunics and black breeches that seemed to be the livery of the hospice staff. But he made no move and was soon reengaged in conversation.
I opened a door that seemed likely, only to find a group of five or six chattering people clustered around a confused-looking elderly man. Mindful of the rules of privacy, I backed out of the room in a hurry, only to collide with someone who had walked behind me in the passage.
"I'm sorry," I said, managing not to fall on top of him by grabbing the doorjamb.
Unfortunately, a paper packet flew out of his hand and split open on the floor, scattering its contents down the passage, red juice and pulp smearing the sand-colored tiles. A fruity scent filled the passage—raspberries. With a hiss of exasperation, my victim—short and dark-haired— dropped to the floor, snatched up the ripped packet, and began scooping the remaining berries into it. I crouched down to help.
"You might find walking with eyes front somewhat
more fulfilling on the whole."
Not a youth, as I'd thought at first, but a girl. Her dark hair, lopped off so short around her face and neck, had confused me. She didn't look up. My own surreptitious glance revealed little—a slim untidy young woman wearing a wrinkled linen shirt of dark green, scuffed black leather vest, and tan trousers. I couldn't see her face.
