by Carol Berg
"Yes?" Dismayed by her news, I was only half listening. Astolle Vale was far to the east, so the attackers could not be the same force seen in the north two days previous. There could be two Zhid armies … or even three, if the southern rumors were true. And Ven'Dar recalled. Only in the gravest circumstance could the Preceptors assert their authority over the Prince of Avonar. What was happening?
"On that day we spoke of certain history books that survived the destruction of the Royal Archive," V'Rendal continued. "I told you they were rare and—"
"I remember. But I don't think . . ." The woman's heavy brows knit and her mouth turned downward when I interrupted her. "Pardon me, V'Rendal." I clamped my mouth shut.
"Madam, I have ever been willing to believe the best of those who inhabit the mundane world, but you might find that a modicum of patience and good manners will cause your investigations to bear more fruit."
"Of, course. It's just— Please go on." I hated wasting time. History books were of no moment now. I could not have been more sure of D'Sanya's treachery if I had seen the oculus or the avantir for myself. I needed to be with Karon.
"As I was saying . . . the Archivist Fel'Tiega, an annoying, boneheaded man, sent me a letter this morning asking if I knew about some woman who had come to Avonar claiming to be D'Arnath's daughter." She rolled her eyes. "The indiscriminate clown has ever been an embarrassment to our profession. But, having come up with this astonishing news a mere three-quarters of a year after the event, FePTiega informed me that he possesses a copy of Mu'Tenni's Ancients , one of the few surviving histories written in D'Arnath's time. Did I think the Heir or the Preceptors might be interested in the volume?"
She flipped the edges of her cloak over her shoulders so the dribbling moisture would not wet her shoes.
"I responded that they would be quite interested," she went on, "and I sent along the information to Prince Ven'Dar and Preceptor L'Neysine, along with an offer to review the material myself. Though I am quite confounded with all the work I have to do, I would certainly not trust Fel'Tiega to analyze the work properly. He accumulates a great deal, but analyzes nothing. But I've not heard back from the palace and have no mandate to lay aside my own work. Thus, as I come to my friend's house this evening, my thoughts turn to you. You seem to have the ear of Prince Ven'Dar. You seem an intelligent woman. If you were to read the history, you could perhaps digest the information and pass it on to those who would be interested."
"I don't know, V'Rendal. I've urgent business away from Avonar."
"What could be more urgent than the truth of history? Mu'Tenni has been proved an extremely reliable historical writer. He was actually a Speaker who preferred to dabble in the historical record rather than adjudicate current disputes. This means that his historical practice might be weak—not collecting all viewpoints or tracing all relevant threads of his information—but the truth of his observations would be impeccable."
"So, where would I find this FePTiega and his book?" I had no intention of being diverted, but perhaps Aimee could pick it up or I could send my own message to . .. someone. Suddenly awash in hopelessness, I almost retracted my question.
"A bookshop near Bridge Lane, so I understand. I'm sure anyone in the area could show you. The man is infamous for his oddity." She brushed a water droplet off her gown and drew her cloak around her again. "I'd like to know whatever you discover. Perhaps we shall find that our sex has played a larger role in great events than has been acknowledged."
"Thank you for coming, V'Rendal. Of course, I'll let you know if I learn anything important."
Another exchange of bows, and the Archivist swept out of the house and into a large carriage, even as a smaller closed carriage came to a halt in front of the stoop. Raindrops pattered vigorously on the paving.
Aimee gave me a quick embrace, a traveler's blessing, and a magically warm packet of our uneaten supper before stowing me in the plain cushioned seat of the small cab. Under the pudgy and purportedly expert hand of her sixteen-year-old cousin Qis'Dar, the large-wheeled carriage rolled out of the circular courtyard and into the streets of Avonar. •
Pink lightning flickered constantly over the lower city. Thunder rattled the carriage lamps. And the rain hammering on the roof sent my spirits plummeting even further. Before we had reached the end of the street, I had inadvertently crushed the food packet flat, and it was leaking on my hand. I threw it out the window.
Aimee's house stood on a hillside in the center of Avonar, just below the citadel of D'Arnath's Heirs. To reach the northern gates, we had to travel down to the center of the city to cross the Sillvain River and its eastern arm, called the Minor Sillvain or just the Minor. Sheets of rain lashed the city, so that by the time we reached the city center, the paved streets looked like newborn tributaries of the Sillvain.
Though the evening was foul, people were everywhere. They crowded the doorways of every guesthouse and gathering place, shouting news and rumors, or huddled over Avonar's printed news-sheets that stayed marvelously dry no matter the weather. But the bustle was not pleasant. Many of those abroad were armed with bows and spears, hurrying in the direction of the palace. Parties of horsemen, helmets and swords dangling from their saddles, raced past our carriage. Many house windows were dark, as well, and the carts of street vendors were shuttered, rain drumming dully on the flimsy canvas roofs. In one alleyway, two men wrestled under a cascading gutter. Violence was an unusual sight in Avonar, the most peaceful city I'd ever known. Fitting on this awful night.
I pulled my own cloak tight against the damp, shrank into the corner of the seat, and closed my eyes. Tonight I would see Karon. Hold him. Tell him how dearly I treasured our time together, how his touch had revealed the innermost workings of joy, how sharing his life had changed me in profound ways. That his son was not dead.
The carriage bucked along the brick streets. Yet what if Paulo and Jen had not found Gerick? What if they found him too late? What if D'Sanya had decided to question Karon more thoroughly or to turn her vengeance on Gerick's father? Why had I not taken this journey weeks ago?
Shouts rang out from the road ahead of us, interrupting the downward spiral of my thoughts. The carriage slowed, and I pulled up my hood and peered out of the window into the driving rain. The yellow light of torches and the white of enchantments illuminated a scene of chaos.
A drenched mob blocked the roadway, fifty or more men and women waving swords and clubs and enchantments as they surged toward the two graceful stone towers that guarded the Sillvain Bridge. The river itself was dark and swollen; on this night no charming reflections of the white lights that decorated the city's towers, bridges, and trees danced in the roiling water.
Two men jogged past us toward the crowd. Qis'Dar shouted at them, but the ensuing exchange was garbled by thunder, shouts, and cheers and jeers from the mob. The carriage shook abruptly, and a round face haloed with sodden yellow curls appeared at the window. "Man says the bridge tower guards are Zhid!" said Qis'Dar, eyes flicking anxiously over his shoulder. Raindrops cascaded down his high forehead and smooth cheeks. "He heard they were causing the Minor to flood. These folk have gathered to pull the guards out. Kill them, he says, though I can't believe such a thing would be done without the prince's leave."
Indeed some in the crowd were raising tall ladders to lean on the slender bridge towers. Men swarmed upward, clinging to the rungs, even as the people at the bottom positioned the ladders at the towers' narrow window openings. More people ran out of the lanes and alleyways to join the crush.
"Hold, there!" I hailed a woman as she passed just behind Qis'Dar. Her hair straggled out of a wet scarf, and she carried an unsheathed blade in a manner that indicated she knew how to use it.
"Best get home," she said breathlessly, without waiting for me to speak. Her eyes glittered in the light of our carriage lamps. "Zhid in the city!"
"Are the city walls broached?" I said.
The swordswoman didn't listen to my question. "It's the Lor
ds come back!" she shouted as she trotted onward. "Don't trust anyone!"
Water sloshed into my boots as I burst the carriage door open, jumped to the street, and grabbed the next passerby, a scrawny boy of fifteen or so. "What news have you heard?"
"D'Natheil's devil son is alive! The Fourth Lord walks in Avonar." He wrestled out of my grip and ran to join the shouting mob.
Arrows flew from the bridge towers and burst into flame. Many fell harmless, hissing as they struck the river or the flowing water in the street. A few found marks in the crowd. A woman screamed as her skirt flamed high, and shouting people swarmed around her until the garish light was gone and her screams fell silent.
I queried three more passing Dar'Nethi, and each had a story much the same. The Lords were back. Three witnesses vouch that a man killed near the north gate was Zhid.. .. The Lady D'Sanya has published a description of the Fourth Lord and announced that he is roaming the streets stealing souls. Every citizen should be armed and alert .
Hearing rumors of Gerick—even ugly ones—fueled a fleeting hope. Had Jen been wrong about D'Sanya's captive? Perhaps he had managed to free himself.
"We should get away from here," said Qis'Dar, urging me back to the carriage, as one of the men on the ladder plummeted screaming into the mob. The ladders were clogged with men wielding swords that gleamed blue in the night. Lightning flashed and streaked overhead, thunder crashing almost in exact time with it. "We should go back to my cousin's . . . something . . ."
Shoes soaked and hair dripping, I ducked back into the carriage and pulled the door closed.
"Is there no other way across the river?" The thought of returning to Aimee's was intolerable.
The young man's thick fingers gripped the window edge. "Second Bridge is a bit south, out of our way. The streets between are low. With so much rain and so many of the city administrators called up to fight, high water's a worry. . . ."
"Please try it. If the way gets bad, we'll turn around. I must get to Gaelie tonight."
"All right, then." The youth vanished, and the carriage frame jerked as he climbed onto the driver's seat.
Soon our wheels splashed through the narrow lanes of the riverside district. Rubbish floated on the water that reached to the front stoops of many shops. Half of the white lamps mounted on the corners to light the dark lanes were out, the deluge overwhelming even their enchanted fire. Many shops and houses sat closed and dark. Two men, hunched under dripping cloaks, hurried past us and hammered loudly on a green door.
"Is Second Bridge open?" Qis'Dar shouted after them.
"We've just crossed it," yelled one of the men. The green door opened and the two bustled inside.
A few harried householders were loading crates and furniture onto wagons, ready to move to higher ground. One wagon blocked the entire roadway, and shouted inquiries revealed that the overloaded vehicle had a bent axle. As the lane was too narrow to turn our carriage around, Qis'Dar volunteered to repair the axle. Meanwhile, the woman and her three daughters tied canvas coverings over her bags, boxes, and chairs, a task that needed experienced hands and dryness spells.
I sat staring out the carriage window, feeling useless. We were near the river. Perhaps . . .
"Is Bridge Lane anywhere close?" I shouted to one of the girls.
"Not far," she called back, pointing down the lane. "Two streets south and take a left on Bywater and you'll come to it."
"And Fel'Tiega the Archivist's book shop … do you know it?"
"Aye. It'd be the fourth or fifth shop on the left, I think. Isn't the weather dreary enough for you, ma'am, that you must seek out that oddment? Gives me the jibbers to be around him."
"Better than this carriage, I think, as I've no skill to help you here. Would Fel'Tiega be there this time of night, do you think?"
She rolled her eyes. "He's always there."
Welcoming a productive alternative to waiting in the soggy carriage, I told Qis'Dar where I was going. The girl's instructions were approximately correct. The seventh house on the right side of Bywater Street sported a peeling signboard: feltiega, archivist, bookseller. Painted on the red door were the words step in. I lifted the heavy brass latch and stepped in.
I felt as if I had stepped out of Gondai and into a wholly different world, for I could no longer hear the rain or thunder, only the soft rustle of turning pages or the scratch of pens. Every wall of the little shop was lined with bookshelves crammed with books. Bound in leather, cloth, paper, wood, even copper and pierced tin, they filled every crack and crevice, books stacked flat on top of standing volumes, stuffed between the wooden shelves. More bookshelves divided the rooms into tiny enclaves where only a single chair, stool, or small writing desk could fit among the shelves and still allow a person to pass through into the next room.
Almost every chair and stool was occupied. Most of those who occupied the nooks and crannies read by the white light radiating from their hands; the rest had to rely on a few weak, sputtering lamps. As I squeezed past a woman working intently at a small desk, the whimsy possessed me that the sheer weight of words interposed between these rooms and the outside world had prevented the city's anxieties from penetrating this astonishingly quiet place. No wonder this Fel'Tiega had taken eight months to learn of D'Sanya!
"Excuse me, are you Master Fel'Tiega?" I asked the first male reader I encountered.
"Room number eleven." The young man pointed deeper into the warren, never looking up.
A quick examination revealed a little brass plate beside the far door, engraved with the word five. As the current room was the fourth since the front door, I hurried through six more rooms, past the brass plate that said eleven, and into a brightly ht circle of book stacks. All I could see of the man who sat in the stuffy eleventh room was a tidy knot of black hair atop a large head.
"Master Fel'Tiega?" I said, peering around a shoulder-high bookshelf.
"Find it yourself. Every work has a locator spell attached."
V'Rendal's vague references to the man had conjured an image of an ancient, birdlike fellow, wizened and dusty. Fel'Tiega demolished that image. His deep voice resonated like the thunder I could no longer hear, and from what I could see of him above the desk where he was poring over a thick sheaf of papers, he was neither wizened nor ancient nor all that dusty. I judged him no more than thirty. His beard was thick and curling, and dark hair made a thick mat on his well-muscled shoulders, arms, and chest—all of these parts devoid of clothing. When I moved around the bookshelf, I was relieved to see that he at least wore breeches, stockings, and shoes.
"I've been sent here by V'Rendal the Archivist," I said, wondering if all V'Rendal's acquaintances were odd. "She sent me to fetch a rare book you recommended to her."
"V'Rendal? Oh, yes, the Mu'Tenni history. I thought she might be interested in that, what with this astounding news about D'Arnath's child. The time period is the interest of course. V'Rendal thinks it's going to tell us that some woman built the Bridge instead of D'Arnath or that everything would have turned out differently if more of the Heirs had been women. She's always going on about women, women, women, as if the world couldn't get along without them." He glanced up at me, then looked back at his papers, only to look up again immediately, his great wiry brows making a single line across his face. "Do I know you?"
"I don't think so. My name is S'Rie. I've not visited your shop before." I extended my palms and nodded to him. "I like to think both sexes have their importance." I resisted adding any remarks about his own existence bearing witness to the value of women.
"Ah, the world can get along without anyone, even you, I'll wager. As we're such a wretched lot, the place'd be better off without most of us. You're wet."
I swallowed a sarcastic reply. I had no time for this. "I'll be careful to keep the book dry, if that's your concern. I'm in somewhat of a hurry to be off, if you please."
He waved his meaty hand around the room. "Have you read all these?"
"Sadly, no. I've be
en—"
"Then you oughtn't be in such a hurry. You never know when Vasrin will declare your own path ended. I've set myself a goal to read every volume in the shop before the year is out."
He rose from his chair, a bear of a man, wearing a green sash about his ample waist. His thick black topknot looked as if it might brush the ceiling, and the tips of his beard were tied with green ribbons that dangled over his bare chest. Silly-looking man.
But when he turned his back to rummage among the volumes on the cluttered shelf behind his table, bile rose in my throat. His neck, hidden in the front by his beard, bore the red telltale of a slave collar. His back was deeply ridged with purple and red scars, not the common marks of a slavemaster's lashing, but wide gouges that had been meticulously carved through flesh and muscle in an exact crossing pattern.
I swallowed hard and considered how to respond to an outlandish young man who had survived such calculated brutality. "Which year?" I said at last.
He dropped a heavy leather volume on the table, glanced up at me, and grinned slyly. "One year or the other. If I live longer, I'll give some thought to what I've read and, perhaps, soothe my professional detractors such as the broad-beamed demon-Archivist who sent you here."
"Have you read Mu'Tenni's book?" I asked, deciding that such deliberate goading as this man practiced was perhaps something other than bad temper. "An Archivist should be aware of all views. Perhaps this book could open your mind to things of importance that other Historians prefer to ignore, such as the value of both genders or the worth of people in general."
"Perhaps it could." He bent down, drew a wad of thick fabric from under his table, and tossed it on top of the book. "Keep it dry. And make sure Mistress V'Rendal returns it. It's not a gift."
"And if Prince Ven'Dar asks to keep it?"
His grin fell away like a dropped hat. "I am ever at my lord prince's service."
I wrapped the book in the thick-woven fabric and bowed. "Good night then, Master Fel'Tiega."
He bowed, and before I had squeezed through his book stacks to the door marked ten, his dark head was bent over his reading once again.
