by Carol Berg
"What is it?" As we walked into our room, he took a breath and examined me. "You look like you've eaten something rotten."
"Nothing. Nothing I can help with."
I was not a Lord of Zhev'Na. Twice I had chosen to leave the Three and their gifts of power and immortality behind. My father and I had risked death to destroy them. The last strikes of failing Zhid were not my responsibility.
I dropped my packs on the floor. "Tomorrow I've got to go back to the hospice. See what this damnable woman is about, so we can go home." I had my own people, my own kingdom, to worry about.
"What do you want me to do?"
I undid the straps on the saddlepacks and pulled out a bundle of letters and a list my father had given me. "If you can force yourself to return to Mistress Aimee's house, take these letters to my mother and give the list to Bareil. Ven'Dar said he would send Bareil back to Windham to retrieve anything my father needed, and this list describes where he can find all my father's notes on Dar'Nethi history. He said that as long as he wasn't dying, he might as well have something to do."
Paulo knew exactly what all of this meant for my father, how he would prefer to be dying than to be sitting in D'Sanya's house neither dead nor alive. Yet, the thought of him gone . . . "Shit."
Exactly.
Darkness had fallen as I rode down Grithna Vale toward Gaelie, but it wasn't as dark as my dreams that night. As I suspected might happen, they took me back to Zhev'Na, deep into the heart of the horror I had lived. When gray dawn woke me the next morning, the last voice to fade was Lord Ziddari's, repeating the farewell he'd whispered as I left him beyond the Verges: "Heed my last word, Destroyer. 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."
Chapter 7
For three days running, I rode the two hours up Grithna Vale to D'Sanya's hospice, spent the day with my father, then rode the two hours back to Gaelie without so much as a glimpse of the Lady. My father saw her only rarely and discovered nothing we didn't know already: She was beautiful, kind, powerful, generous, discreet, charming. He felt no further change in his own condition, and I detected none. He was numb, and our investigation was going nowhere.
In Gaelie I tried talking to the proprietor of the guesthouse, but the granite-faced Mistress A'Diana could tell me nothing but that those who brought their kin to the hospice were the happier for it. Who wouldn't be, she said, to have a loved one living free of pain and disease when it was thought all hope was past? No, she'd never heard of anyone wanting to leave the hospice once they'd lived there, nor anyone who'd thought they'd made a mistake to send their friends or kin to the Lady. No, she'd never spoken to the Lady, only seen her kindness, and now would I get on with my own business for she, the innkeeper, had a full house of linens to wash.
Every evening that Paulo was gone I spent alone in the common room feeling awkward and useless. The same people were there every day: the parties of Tree Delvers from the Wastes, the two Gardeners, brothers it appeared, who stopped in for supper every night, and the dark-haired youth hunched over his table alone in the corner by the stair. The young man and wife sought endless consultations with endless streams of people over their painted cards—something about the prospects of talents in an expected child.
Inheritance was a magical thing to the Dar'Nethi. Adoption, disinheritance, and mentoring could influence a child's magical abilities as decisively as blood relationships. That's why my father's revival in D'Natheil's body, had made me the prospective Heir of D'Arnath with all the power and control such descent implied, even though I was not born of D'Arnath's blood.
Paulo returned in three days, riding in after I'd completed yet another fruitless venture up the Vale. On the next morning I was able to take my father a stack of books and notes from the writing he'd abandoned when he'd fallen ill and another bundle of letters from my mother. She must be doing nothing but writing letters.
"Perhaps now I can think about something other than the state of my belly," said my father as I pulled the bundles of journals and papers from the bags and dropped them on his table. "Constant self-examination is unutterably boring, whether the result is pleasing or otherwise. At least when I was ill I had people fussing over me."
As before, his first activity was to read my mother's letters, the first of many readings, I guessed. He sat in his chair and broke the seals one after the other. I tied up my empty bags and poured myself a glass of wine.
"Your mother's not happy being cooped up at Gar'-Dena's house," he said, waving the current missive at me, his spirits noticeably improved. "Ven'Dar doesn't think she should be seen about the city, in case anyone should recognize her or get too curious about Aimee's guest. But she's already wheedled Aimee into taking her to hear a Singer who comes to Avonar next week."
"Mistress Aimee doesn't have a chance," I said, sitting on one of the hard chairs beside his eating table and propping my boots on the other one. "She's too nice."
"I don't know. Maybe the girl has more grit than we know. Your mother's been trying to find out her feelings about Je'Reint. She says that the cook is certain that Aimee has an understanding with Je'Reint and that they're just waiting to announce it until 'the matter of the succession is settled.' But Seri can't get Aimee to reveal anything, and it's about to drive her mad. She writes: 'The girl just blushes and says Je'Reint is a noble gentleman whose Way will lead him to great honor, even if he is not to be Heir .' Poor Paulo."
"Better not tell him. If he gets any lower about Mistress Aimee, he'll have to reach up to shoe his horse." I wanted to shake the woman. "If she could just see him . . ."
"I think she sees better than people credit," said my father. "But she's young and generous, and believes she should offer her best to everyone, no matter her personal feelings. And she must be conscious of her position, the daughter of powerful family. For a Dar'Nethi to consider an attachment outside her—"
"To a mundane , you mean. A fellow with no power, who can't read, and who'd be happy living in a stable, but who just happens to have the best heart."
"You don't have to convince me, Gerick! It's just something she has to consider, assuming she is considering any attachment at all. You know, I don't claim to understand much of anything about women. Your mother has been challenge enough for one lifetime. Or three for that matter."
A light meal of roast chicken and long peas was laid out on a sideboard, and I helped myself as he went back to his letters, smiling to himself as he read. Then he picked up a page written in a different hand. This one was clearly not so entertaining.
"Ven'Dar writes of another raid in the north. He says that witnesses saw Zhid riding toward the mountains afterward." He looked up, frowning. "The rumor of a mountain stronghold has been repeated for years. If we could only find it . . ."
My father spent the next hour talking about Ven'Dar's news, examining a map of Gondai we pulled from the bookcase, marking the locations of the recent attacks, and speculating on the location of the Zhid headquarters and what could be motivating their actions. Their duty, their desire, the function infused in them from the time they were made Zhid, was to serve the Lords' wishes. I could not imagine them anything but half crazed with loss.
"Perhaps they just can't believe the Lords are gone," said my father. Ven'Dar's half-unfolded letter lay between a basket of leftover bread and a pewter salt dish that held the crumbled bits of wax I had picked off the paper. "They obey the last commands they were given because they don't know how to do anything else. Of course, that doesn't explain the period of quiet and why they are revived at this particular time. You didn't hear of any mountain—"
"I saw only the desert camps and spent time . .. trained … in only one of those. I never went into the mountains. Never heard them talk about secret encampments. Please, could we could talk of something else now
?" I hated thinking of these things.
He leaned back in his chair and tossed a book onto the stack of maps and papers, looking at me far too closely. "Ah, Gerick, I've always believed that a great deal of this burden you carry is not related to your own past. Somehow, when you were joined with the Three, you took on responsibility for their deeds as well. If only you could touch their actual memories, make use of them to unravel these mysteries, that might make your pain worth something at least."
My fingers played with the edge of his map, rolling it tightly across one corner. I clamped my lips shut and kept my eyes on the paper, waves of heat and chill and nausea leaving my skin clammy.
My father leaned forward and laid a hand on mine "Gerick, what is it?"
"Don't ask it. Please don't."
He blew a long slow breath of realization. "You can touch the Lords' memories . . . earth and sky . . . all of them?"
"I tried it that night when Ven'Dar first told us about the Lady . . . when you were so ill . . . to see if I could retrieve some memory of her and avoid all this. Certainly in the few hours I was joined with them, the Lords weren't thinking of her. But I couldn't make myself dig any deeper into their past. You know the risk if I think about that life too much."
To delve too deeply into unhealthy memories, to touch the kind of power I'd had, could waken desires that should stay buried—like digging through a charnel pit and remembering how much you enjoy the foulness, the stink, and the cold heaviness of the dead. And though I chose not to nurture and exploit the talent born in me, I knew I was no weakling child even without my three partners.
"I trust you, Gerick, no matter what the circumstance." My father squeezed my arm and shook it gently, as if to wake me. "You have chosen the right in circumstances far more difficult than examining sordid memory. But the Preceptors and their Geographers and Imagers can pinpoint the source of these raiders far better than we've done here, and for the present the purposes and timing of the Zhid are matters of curiosity, not safety."
For the present. But if they were to find out the Zhid were rising again … if they needed to know where the legions lurked or how the warriors could function without the Three, and they came to me . . . "I'm sorry, Father. I just can't—"
A knock on the door interrupted us just then. A stocky, light-haired Dar'Nethi entered at my father's invitation, and with a quiet voice and a pleasant manner asked if we had finished our meal.
"Yes. We're quite fine, Cedor," said my father. "Thank you, as always."
"My pleasure as always, Master K'Nor," he said, sounding as if he meant it.
Once the man was gone, my father pulled out a chessboard and a rectangular wooden box. As he placed chess pieces of green agate on the board, he cocked his head thoughtfully toward the door through which the man had just exited. "I've at last unraveled the mystery of Cedor. Now why do you think a man who once taught natural history to the children of Avonar spends his days supplying meals and clean linen to a resident of this hospice?"
I shrugged and reached for a handful of the white pieces, happy we had changed the subject. "No idea."
"He was Zhid. For some two hundred years. I asked him about the pendant he wears about his neck—a little brass lion. He said it was a symbol of D'Arnath that Lady D'Sanya gave him when she restored his soul. Evidently quite a number of the Restored work here."
"Former Zhid here? Is that safe?" Of course, no external marks identified those who had once been Zhid. I had just never considered that any of them might be so close. My neck bristled at the thought.
"Quite safe, I think. Cedor was captured in the southern Wastes, nowhere near where I was held. And I've no contact with anyone else on the hospice staff. You don't think—" He looked at me as if he'd forgotten until that moment who I was. "No, no. Even if they could remember anything of their years as Zhid, they would remember you as a child, not a man. Nine years it's been."
Most Zhid were Dar'Nethi who had lost their souls as a result of the original Catastrophe or in the early centuries of the war, as the Lords drove more and more of Gondai into ruin. Others had been transformed as the Lords perfected their Seeking, an enchantment that could creep through the countryside and even across the walls of Avonar to capture a person's mind. Few of them had been given any choice in the matter. Only when my father became the Prince of Avonar did the Dar'Nethi come to understand that Zhid could be restored and take up a normal life again.
"Most of the Restored have long outlived their own families and friends," said my father, shoving the green queen's drone forward—his standard opening, though he seemed to have forgotten that white plays first. "Cedor says the Lady has given them a chance to earn their livelihood in a less public setting, and to feel as if they're making some recompense for their past at the same time. A generous, insightful gesture on her part. And truly, I could not ask for a kinder or more diligent attendant."
I responded by shoving a white drone forward two spaces, and we talked no more of Zhid.
As my father and I walked in the gardens that afternoon, I caught a glimpse of the Lady, but she was hurrying away from us. I stayed a little later than usual, wandering around the stable and the paddocks, hoping she might reappear. But she didn't.
Just before dusk, I left my father to his books and papers and headed back for Gaelie, wondering what we were accomplishing with all our elaborate secrecy. The journey was slow. Clouds had swallowed the full moon, and without the moonlight, the road was treacherous. Halfway down the road, a thunderstorm broke over the Vale. Having stupidly left my cloak at the hospice, I tried to wait out the rain under the trees rather than riding the last few leagues across the open fields to Gaelie.
By the time I arrived at the guesthouse stable, it was nearing midnight, and I was drenched. The rain had never stopped. The stable lad was just dashing out of the stable on his way home when I rode in, so I told him I would see to my own horse. Once the beast was dry, blanketed, and fed, I hunched my shoulders in my wet shirt and picked my way across the muddy stableyard in the dark and the rain. I wished Paulo had not left for Avonar that morning to take my father's latest batch of letters. I wondered how I was going to proceed with my grand investigation if the subject wouldn't show herself. And I hoped I might still be able to cajole the innkeeper into a hot meal to warm the chill that had seeped into my boots and my skin along with the rain. Halfway across the yard, just as I was passing an abandoned cookshed, a mountain fell on my head. . . .
Probably not a mountain, my fogged brain told me as my arms were stretched almost from their sockets, and my faced bumped and scraped over the rank-smelling roughness of mud, straw, and stones. A rock, perhaps, or a wooden cudgel across the back of the head. Something to knock me senseless long enough for my assailant to lash my hands to this beast that was dragging me through the muck and to bind my legs together so tightly, I could find no leverage to get to my feet.
The restless disturbance of large animals to either side and the change of texture from wet muck to damp straw on my face informed me I'd been dragged into the stable. I considered it a great victory to come up with that conclusion. When I lifted my eyelids, the world was blurry and dark.
The dragging stopped. Yellow light flared just beyond my head, so that if I could have lifted the damnably heavy thing, I might have seen who was ripping the gloves from my hands and holding a lantern close enough that my skin felt the warmth of it.
Dig in your feet and push . . . loop the rope around the bastard's neck . . . Just need a little slack in the rope. Wet rope. Wet boots. Miserable. Conjure something . . . you're a sorcerer. Hungry, too . . . surely the cook made something new tonight. . . hate that green-pea mess . . . A warrior's belly should be lean . . . always on the verge of hunger . . . Swirling thoughts, blurry as the night. Nonsense.
Concentrating, I drew my knees toward my midsection and dug in my toes. The immediate result was a sound that could be nothing but the slap of an experienced hand on a horse's rump. The beast lurched fo
rward. The overstretched muscles in my shoulders began to rip, but when my mouth opened in protest, the mountain fell on my head again. . . .
Drowning ! I coughed and spluttered and gagged, fighting for breath. Panic eased when I grasped that the water was knife-edged rivulets of cold rain running down my face and into my nose. What in the name of sense … ?
My cheek bounced on wet leather. The wind hammered a flap of scratchy wool onto my scraped forehead.
Rhythmic jolts bruised my aching gut and threatened to burst my pounding millstone of a head. The world smelled of wet horse. My disorientation slowly resolved itself into the realization that I was draped over the back of the beast. Upon consideration, drowning sounded quite appealing.
I couldn't see my captor or where he was taking me, for a rag had been tied about my eyes. He needn't have bothered. Everything had been blurry already. I knew better than to give any sign I was coherent, but I had to get the rain out of my nostrils before I puked my guts out—which was going to happen any time now. I cautiously rotated my face toward the rough saddle blanket, and my thoughts blurred as well.
Just when I was convinced that the dark, wet, miserable journey would never end, the horse jolted to a stop. Cold rain soaked my back. Ropes fell slack, and I was dragged off the beast by my feet. My face bumped its way across the saddle, and then I slid all the way to the ground in an untidy heap, unable to catch myself as I was still trussed up like a goose.
Accompanying an ineffective pawing of hands trying to catch me on my way down, I heard the first words from my assailant, not through my ears, but directly inside my head. I'm sorry. No, not sorry a bit, unless I'm wrong, which I'm not .
So my assailant was Dar'Nethi. No surprise there.
The fellow dragged me through wet grass and rocky mud, sat me up, and eventually wrapped my arms backward around a broad tree trunk, binding my wrists tightly. At least I was right-side up and somewhat out of the rain. Though my head was clearing a bit, I allowed my chin to droop. Before committing myself to any more serious action, I needed to learn whatever I could. I couldn't see anyway, as the sodden rag was still in place about my eyes. So I listened.
