by Carol Berg
He yelled and doubled over. The other man streaked toward us, one hand holding a knife, the other fumbling at his sword. Poor Ri'Isse was still retching when I grabbed his tabard at the shoulders, straightened him up, spun him a half-turn, and shoved him into his comrade. The two crashed heavily to the floor, the heavier bowman square atop the smaller man.
Staying clear of their flailing limbs, I kicked the wiry man's knife from his hand, retreated a few steps, and snatched up the brass bar from under the edge of the worktable where it had rolled when discarded. Gripping it with two hands, I raised it over the fallen men. "Stay down!"
But the pale bowman had caught his breath at last, and with a murderous glare he lunged forward and up, growling through gritted teeth. Before he could get to his feet, I crashed the bar into his forehead. Insensible, he sagged back onto his unlucky partner.
The wiry PTor had managed to roll sideways and get to all fours before Ri'Isse flattened him again, but despite the bowman's dead weight, he kept scrabbling forward and would soon break free. I dropped my own weight onto the pile, straddling the unconscious bowman's belly. Retrieving my knife from Ri'Isse's belt, I plunged it into the back of the squirming guardsman's thigh. He cursed and fought harder to extricate himself from the pile, but I twisted the knife until he screamed and fell limp.
I released the knife hilt and stared at my bloody hand. How was this possible? I had never stabbed another person in my life… never made such moves. My shoulder ached as I climbed to my feet. My fingers tingled, half numb, yet I had no sooner persuaded them to wriggle than my vision blurred and I felt completely disoriented, as if someone had thrown sand in my eyes and spun me around. I staggered forward trying to keep my balance. This was not the oculus enchantment, but something new. Rubbing my eyes and forcing them to focus, I whipped my head around to see the bowman's limp body rolling off the wiry guardsman's back.
"Down on the floor," I yelled, stomping on P'Tor's outstretched hand as it wove his pitiful enchantment. "On your face! Now!"
"Damnable, traitorous witch . . ."
I slammed my boot into his wounded thigh, close to the knife. He screamed and dropped to his belly, his magic withering.
"Don't think to use any trickery on me," I said. I wrenched away the short sword gripped in his left hand and pulled my knife from his thigh. "Stay down and keep both hands where I can see them or I'll cut them off."
A quarter of an hour later, after a number of threats and a few persuasive kicks, the two guardsmen were bound securely with straps from D'Sanya's bundles and bags, and I was cutting the silver cord that bound Gerick . . . that bound me. For the truth had dawned on me at last, that I was once again both of us.
Chapter 33
Gerick
Even if D'Sanya hadn't brought in reinforcements, I had been very unlikely to best her in hand-to-hand sorcery. My power had surprised her, giving me leverage in the combat just as an ambush gives an early advantage in a physical trial. But by the time a flaming arrow flew over my head, warning me that someone had attacked me from behind, I was already in serious difficulty. At that moment I would have sworn my skin was melting and the underlying tissue oozing away in great greasy globs.
The only dueling enchantments I could manage as I juggled this new kind of power-gathering were rudimentary magical simulations of standard weapons combat: stabbing, hacking, grappling, and so on. And though I felt as if I could generate power enough to support these workings, the flow as I fed them was rough and uneven, leaving both attacks and defenses ineffective and easily countered.
I felt the first man come up behind me, and while attempting to hold a defensive screen between me and D'Sanya, I spun around and slammed the side of one hand into his throat. The heel of my other hand smashed into his chest, silencing his strangled bubbling and sending him to the floor. D'Sanya, ready and waiting for me to be distracted, picked just that moment to entangle me in an enchantment I had no ability to counter. It blurred my vision so that I couldn't tell whether there were four men or forty coming at me. The battle was lost, and I knew D'Sanya would make sure of her threats this time. I had to withdraw and try something else, and I had best be quick about it.
Jen's body didn't give me much to work with, and to accommodate her different shape and balance challenged my ability to adapt. But her spirit … I was already in awe of that. How could such an unkempt sprig of a woman, possessing no true talent and all the magical power of a nine-year-old child, goad, coerce, or sting me into wielding a kind of power I had believed myself incapable of?
When I abandoned my soon-to-be-captive body and joined with her again, I found her ready to take on D'Sanya and her soldiers, whether I was with her or not. That made it easier to do what I had to do—take control of her slight limbs, infuse her with my own skills, and batter two men insensible. Though she had no power to deny anything I demanded of her body, and though my instincts and training insisted I make sure of our captors, I couldn't kill them. Not with Jen's hands.
To yield control of a body once I had taken full possession was always difficult. The mind clings to the senses, to breathing, to a beating heart. The same fundamental urge that drives a soul to hold on to life through pain and peril demanded I stay where I was, not shrink into a quiet corner of Jen's soul and allow her to use my capabilities as she chose. But we had yet to destroy the oculus. And whereas Jen sensed the oculus enchantments as an iron yoke laid on her shoulders and a pall upon her mind, I felt a fiery liquor in my veins. The smell of the guardsman's blood brewed an intoxicating poison that threatened to erase all sense of decency and moderation. Afraid that I might falter in our task . . . or relish it … I gave Jen back her will.
Time to begin . . .
Hurry. No time to waste. The Lady could return at any moment.
We can't rush . . . we must be sure . . . make no mistakes. Is he doing this or am I?
Don't think about the results, only necessity.
Our thoughts collided and bounced off each other like raindrops on pavement. My urgency. Her steadiness. My dread of the outcome. Her shame at her lack of talent and her determination to overcome it. The time of transition between full control and simple joining is when it is most difficult to keep the two souls separate and to avoid intrusion.
Consider need, assert ownership, disrupt containment, trigger the destruction . . .
Unsure if we were yet joined, she looked down at the body she had released from D'Sanya's bindings. Infinitely strange to see myself lying there like a dead man who just happened to inhale now and then. Jen wasn't afraid of me any more. But the fighting revolted her.
I tried not to listen to her thoughts, only observe through her eyes and stay afloat in the tides of her emotions, so I would know if she needed me to take a more active role. She laid out her possessions on the worktable and retrieved the tongs and the saw. Fear and dread surged through her as she used the tongs to snatch the oculus from its cabinet. Her skin felt scored by knives. But I felt no faltering of will. She dropped the shining ring on the worktable and began shaping her enchantment. Deliberate. Careful.
Assert ownership . . . Consider the making of the object. . . Consider the reasons for this destruction . . Hurry .. . Careful. . . Make each element of the working complete. Replenish your power. . . .
Trying to control my impatience, I considered the things Jen had done in the desert and at Aimee's house. Her courage and determination humbled me. So many Dar'Nethi feared me, but few with so much reason as this woman. And she had uncovered my own worst fear. I could not rid myself of the image of the Zhid armies in the north and east, marching toward Avonar marshaled by an avantir, answering the call of the Lords. Were the Three truly dead if their desires yet moved their servants . . . their instruments? Destroyer. . . The name had festered in my soul for five years.
Jen fixed a U-shaped clamp from D'Sanya's tools to hold the oculus and took up the metal-cutting saw. The defenses of the oculus battered her with uncertainty and doubt. I offere
d what confidence and strength I could, and forced her to keep her arm moving though it pained her shoulder. Once the saw had bitten a notch in the smooth ring, I retreated again and allowed her to complete her magical construction, encompassing desire and will and transformation . . . and a resonating grief for the pain and death we would cause. As she reached for power to accomplish it, suppressed sobs shook her slight body.
I stopped her. Let it go, Jen'Larie , I whispered in her mind, trying not to frighten or overwhelm her with the direct contact, trying to mute my urgency and allow her to choose what I was prepared to insist on. Relinquish your enchantment so that I can wield it. Please. This I must do myself .
After all, I was the Destroyer. What was one more holocaust to my account?
To my relief, she did not resist. When I felt her release the solid weight of her enchantment—truly little more than an immensely complex thought bound to a physical object with simple threads of magic—I held it carefully, envisioned its accomplishment, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling the shattering to come. And then I reached for power. . . .
I thought my soul might be sucked out of Jen's body as the power rushed out of me. The lectorium candles winked out, leaving the swelling oculus as our only illumination, a lurid pulsing red glow. Much more than an enchanted metal ring of the Lords' design, this oculus had been bound with the talent and power of every hospice resident. Bearing the substance of their lives and their sorcery, of their pain and diseases, the device existed with the same formidable presence as a phenomenon of nature—a glacier or a forest or a sea—though tainted always and ever with the most unnatural poison of Zhev'Na.
I fought to slow the rush of power and to focus our enchantment on the weakened structure of the brass cirele. No rough or halting application of power here. Jen grasped the ring, her physical contact allowing me an unhindered path to the oculus, even as it threatened to tear her apart. She trembled, sobbed, and swore, but her small hand did not release the burning ring. I could not help her, for I had to devote every particle of my strength and concentration to control, to ensuring that I drew on everything of myself that I could safely give. Thoughts and memories swept me down and down, faster, tumbling, choking as if I were caught in an avalanche. . . .
"Look deep and search for the truth . …" The man seated in D'Arnath's chair in the center of the council chamber leaned forward, looking at me as he plunged the knife into his own belly. The red stain raced to saturate his white robe. . . .
I wrenched my thoughts away from my father. My mind darted here and there: to riding horses … to the storms of the Bounded . . . backward to my childhood in Leire … to the day my mother came to Comigor, long before I knew she was my mother . . . before Zhev'Na . . .
The voice echoed in the temple of the Lords, with its floors of black ice and its dome of cruel stars. "The cursed D'Natheil. . . who would have thought he would become the second D'Arnath, the Tormentor, the Preserver of Prisons, the enemy of all our works? We'll have his child, Brother Parven . . . the boy already knows he is evil. . . we will keep him alone, teach him our hate, blind him and warp him until he carves out his father's heart. In one stroke he will destroy the Tormentor's Heir and the Tormentor's Bridge . . . he is made for it. . . the universe has brought forth a Destroyer to be our vengeance . …"
No ! Rage and terror yanked me out of the whirlpool of memory. That memory was not mine. Not mine . . . not mine . . . not mine . . . shut it away . . . I am not what they made me … I have chosen. I am not evil. I will not be their instrument ..
I slammed the door on memories. Concentrate. Focus .
The world feels wrong. The avantir sings of war to D 'Sanyo's lions . The oculus pulsed like a diseased heart, refusing to yield. I released my attachment to Jen's vision so I could no longer see the cursed thing. The power rushed out of me . . . leaving me parched. . . .
Hollow. Empty. Why did I care ? Care, like joy and sorrow and worry and honor, was only a word, thin and spidery and gray, unattached to anything of substance. I plummeted into a well of gray. Shrunken and withered, I huddled in its depths. Voices . . . weeping . . . invaded my gray world, one and then another.
"What's happening? Mistress S'Nara is ill."
"Lady, where are you? I feel so strange!"
I tried to ignore them.
"My eyesight fails!"
"What is she doing up there in her house? I heard thunder . . . explosions . . . great sorcery."
"Old Gerard has fallen and cannot rise. Lady! Are you there? Help us!"
I didn't want to hear this. I turned inward.
"Gerick! You must listen to me." Jen's voice, strained and harsh, shouted above the fading clamor. "D'Sanya betrayed these people. She used the Lords' magic to deceive them and rob them of their Way. Don't hide. Listen to them. Embrace them. We're so close: Her enchantment—the oculus—is failing. But you must give just a little more to break it. Don't hold back. For your father, Gerick. Have mercy. Let him die."
Her pleas pulled me out of the dry well. But I refused to think of my father. Rather I returned to thoughts of the Bounded, of the Singlars, of their strange place in the world. What would happen to them if D'Sanya gave this world to the Zhid? What would happen to them if I withered away here in this hole in the desert of spirits? They weren't ready. The power poured out of me. . . .
The world exploded in red-orange light.
". . . on and get up. You can't . . . here. D'Sanya . .. sense what's happened . . . come and . . . you."
The woman wasn't speaking in fragments. I was hearing in fragments. Seeing in fragments as well. Darkness. Wavering light. Swimming reflections. And my chest was on fire …
Panic gripped my gut. Suffocation. Inhale, fool .
The inflow of air cleared some of the cobwebs from my head. The floor was hard. An overpowering scent of lamp oil filled the air. Somewhere people were clamoring. Anger. Confusion. Fear. Panic . . . But I wasn't sure whether it was inside of me or out.
Breathe again. Keep it up this time.
"Can you get up? We must get away from here. I tried to break her circle on the floor, but I can't. Her portal exists there, just waiting for her to trigger it. She can be here almost as soon as she thinks of it."
Forcing myself to breathe, forcing my eyes to focus, I convinced my arms and legs that they were mine and pushed up to all fours. Only then did I feel control enough to raise my head and look at the person crouched in front of me, exhorting me to move. Dark, dark eyes, pools of shadow, too large for a face so pale and exhausted and afraid. Behind her the lectorium was in shambles. Broken glass, sheets of twisted metal, barrels of sand and dry plaster spilled across the tiles. Tools and implements scattered everywhere. Scorch marks clouded what remained of the great mirrors.
"We did it," she said, dropping crumbled nuggets of brass on the floor in front of me.
"Must . . . destroy . . . this place. Fire." The words would have been easier spoken by a newborn infant.
Jen smiled faintly. "We will. One or the other of us developed that idea about the time the world exploded. But we must get these men out before we torch it. Not to mention I need a spark. All the candles went out. I'm flat. I don't suppose you could manage it."
I gasped again, when my starving lungs and wobbling joints reminded me to keep breathing. "Madwoman."
A gut-twisting rip of enchantment, a crashing blow that ripped the bolts from the wood, and the door to the passageway swung open. I sat up on my knees and fumbled for a nonexistent knife with fingers that could scarcely distinguish between steel and leather.
Na'Cyd, the elegant angularity of his high forehead marred by the bruised swelling on the left side, stood in the doorway holding a small lamp and surveying the wrecked lectorium. "No need for weapons, Master Gerick," he said, sniffing the fume-laden air. "I'll not interfere with your activities. As I said before, I merely keep order in the place I've chosen to live. My duties include ensuring the safety of guests and visitors at this hospice, as well
as investigating mysterious explosions in the Lady's house."
He set his lamp on the nearest worktable and wagged a finger at the three fallen soldiers. "Are they dead?"
"Only one," said Jen.
As the consiliar moved toward the nearest man, Jen grabbed her metal rod and bashed his lamp with it. The glass panes shattered and flames rippled outward across the table. She held the rod stiffly between herself and the Dar'Nethi. But Na'Cyd just sighed and bent over the dead guardsman, pressing a finger into his neck. Emitting a matter-of-fact grunt, the consiliar moved to the other two. He hefted the one with the bloody thigh onto his shoulders. As he exited the broken door, he called back to us. "I'll return for the other one."
His boots clumped heavily on the stairs. Popping glass on the burning worktable released little geysers of colored flame, reflecting eerily in the broken mirrors.
"Come on." Jen offered her arm to support my shoulders.
I refused her help and stumbled to my feet. "Did you see anything that might hint of the Lady's other works?" I said.
"Nothing I could recognize. The pieces at the far end of that table are strange. But they're not metal."
Jen grabbed two tall candles from sconces by the door, lit them in the increasingly eager flames, and used them to set off the oil she had spilled on the other worktables and the cushions scattered on several chairs. The fire spread quickly to a stack of paper packets that billowed scented smoke.
The items she had mentioned were broken chunks of plaster, scorched and smudged as if they'd fallen into a fire before someone threw them into this heap. Most were roughly boxlike, each piece having five relatively flat sides and one with a design pressed or carved into it—a coin, a galloping horse, a key—and patterns of straight slits cut into the plaster face. Several larger pieces were broken, but when I assembled them revealed only simple round hollows scooped out of them. Again the patterns of narrow channels radiating from the concavity. Other pieces had a rounded bulge left in relief that would fit inside the scooped out sections like an egg in a nest. Molds, of course, for casting her metal objects. I rummaged through the stack, looking for something that would tell me which of these designs might channel her power to the avantir. I found a small one for the lion pendants, but nothing else that seemed significant.
