Daughter of Ancients tbod-4

by Carol Berg

  Voices rose outside the house. I tossed aside the mold in my hand and peered out of the broken window. Men and women were streaming across the lawns toward D'Sanya's garden, carrying lamps and torches, calling one to the other, some of them supporting each other, pointing their fingers at the window from which I looked down.

  The bound guardsman groaned, drawing my attention back to the lectorium. To my left a burst of flame shot toward the coffered ceiling. Who knew if Na'Cyd would actually choose to return?

  "We'd best get this fellow out," I said, my eyes watering from the smoke filling the room.

  By the time Jen and I had carried the heavy man across the room, out the doorway, and to the head of the stairs, two explosions had shot flames through the roof. Billowing smoke set us both coughing, and the heat scorched my back. We rested our arms on the banister, and I considered the merits of rolling the man down the steps and tumbling down after him.

  But Na'Cyd bounded up the stairs just then and, with only a steadying hand from us, lifted the bulky guardsman onto his shoulders.

  "Thank you," said Jen, as we stumbled after him.

  "I don't burn living men to death. Not any more." He staggered across the foyer and out the front doors.

  Brown smoke filled the graceful rooms where I had learned to be a child again. The paint on the ceiling bubbled, charring at the edges like evil flowers blossoming and dying all at once. Another explosion, and the rumble of flames above our heads grew louder.

  "We should leave through the back garden," I shouted over the din, restraining Jen as she tried to follow Na'Cyd.

  She jerked her arm away. "I need to find Papa. Help him. And you—"

  "We can't delay here, Jen. Did you hear D'Sanya? 'One place or the other.' She knows the Zhev'Na oculus is gone. So she must have another device. And then there's the avantir itself. There could be several of them. The Lords always had three."

  "You must speak to your father." She sniffled and coughed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

  "There's no time." I pulled her face into my chest and dragged her toward the back hall. But a great cracking noise and a sudden burst of heat sent me backward, just as the upper stair landing collapsed into the passageway in front of me. Flames licked at Jen's cloak, and I yanked her back and slapped at the sparks glowing in the dark wool. A massive burning beam crashed to my right, raining fiery debris on our heads. Jen and I ducked at the same time, but in opposite directions, and I lost my hold of her.

  "Watch out! Ah—" Jen's cry was aborted, and she collapsed to the smoldering carpet, a sooty gash on the side of her head.

  "Jen! Jen'Larie!" I scooped her into my arms. Reversing course, I ducked around the blazing beam and hurried through the front doors, only to meet a sea of faces.

  Fifty or more people crowded the garden, the eerie light of the flames shifting on pale cheeks and flashing in worried eyes. Behind me the flames roared, but the people had fallen silent, save for hissing breath and moaning misery … or perhaps that was the wind wrought up by the fire or perhaps it was entirely in my imagination. Somewhere in the crowd a woman sobbed. They did not move to let us pass.

  "Where is the Lady?" demanded an elderly woman with tightly curled hair and a voice like a trumpet. She stood in the front ranks, supported by a pudgy youth of twelve or fourteen years, whose handlight was tinted orange by the flames behind me. "Who are you?"

  "The Lady is gone and won't be back," I said. "The hospice is closed. Now, let us through."

  Murmurs and exclamations and questions surged quickly into shouts and cries of dismay.

  "I know who this is." A bull-necked man shouted above the horrified clamor. "He's the Fourth . . . D'Natheil's demon son . . . just look at him! Haven't you heard his description? He's killed us!"

  "The Lord . . ."

  "It's true. I've seen him here with the Lady!"

  Some wailed in terror. A few fled. Others joined in the man's accusations, feeding their growing anxieties with information and rumor—some true, some ludicrous. The clamor grew, torches and handlights waving. Jen moaned softly and squirmed in my arms as if fighting to wake. I hefted her over my shoulder and gripped her waist with one arm. First one then another of the crowd moved toward us. A stone ripped through the air from the back of the crowd and glanced off my cheekbone. Hostile enchantment softened my knees like strong spirits on an empty stomach.

  "Keep away!" I shouted, holding out my free hand as if five fingers could stay them. "You don't understand what you're dealing with." And this wasn't a good time for lengthy explanations.

  The advance halted. Though most retreated a step or two, the boldest ones—a youngish man with a twisted shoulder, the woman who first questioned me and her young companion, the bull-necked man—stood their ground. I tried to summon some kind of power. Though the effort was like drinking dust, I eventually conjured a wavering gray gleam about Jen and me. It would do no more than cause a burst of sparks if anyone touched it. "Move aside if you value your eyes."

  "Where are Na'Cyd, F'Lyr, the others?" called the curly-haired woman, standing her ground even as a gap opened on my right. "They could take him down . . . protect us."

  "Come on . . . surround him . . . can't kill all of us."

  ". . . careful of the girl . . . she's an innocent. . . ."

  "What do you want here?"

  Somewhere a sword rasped on leather. Knives slipped free of their sheaths. Some passed stones from the rock garden from hand to hand, the sly motions rippling through the mob. I edged to the right. Words and illusions were not going to stay these people for long.

  "Hold!" The command silenced the crowd and had the men and women craning their necks to discover its issuer, not because it was loud or harsh or portended evil, but because of the sheer authority that weighted each word. "For the office I once held, for the life and service I have given to Gondai, hear me."

  On my left a few people shifted aside to reveal a tall man in a deep blue robe, his fair hair gathered into a silver clip at his neck. My father stepped slowly into the circle of light, his back straight, though the line of his shoulders was rigid and his face scribed with pain.

  "Who are you?" demanded the bull-necked man.

  "Can you fools not see?" A small man with a twisted back pushed his way out of the crowd on my right. Gripping his walking stick with two hands, he lowered himself onto one knee. "My lord Prince D'Natheil. All praise to Vasrin Shaper, who has laid down a Way that leads you back to Gondai in our time of need." Sefaro.

  A murmuring tide of astonishment, wonder, and recognition washed through the mob. A few others genuflected or stepped back, marveling at the apparition of one they believed five years dead. Where was my mother?

  My father held up his hand to quiet them. "This man before you is indeed my son," he said. "And it is no accident that the enchantments that shielded us from our pain—yes, mine as well as yours—have been shattered by his hand. But his power and his destiny are far beyond our control. We cannot hold him here, and I would not have your griefs compounded by violence this night. His concerns are elsewhere, so I believe he will not harm us further. Let him pass."

  I felt the strength of his will holding him together. He could not smile. He could scarcely speak. Yet the faces of those around him changed. Apprehension, uncertainty, but no fear. Many of the people drew close to him, some with defiant faces as if to protect him, some with an awed trust, as if seeking the safety they had always believed rested in his arm.

  But I was not comforted. Why didn't he tell them the truth? Why didn't he use his authority to tell these people that I had saved them once and was willing to do so again? Did he really think I wanted to hurt them? Gods, did he believe D'Sanya's charge that I wanted to kill him? I had counted on him understanding the imperative to destroy the oculus . . . forgiving me. Surely . . .

  I searched his stern face for one hint of softness, one flicker of acknowledgment, of comprehension. But my father's expression revealed nothing . . . which
revealed everything.

  My spine stiffened. I backed away from the waiting Dar'Nethi, moving slowly toward a widening gap in the crowd, where the thick-growing rosebushes made it awkward to stay close to one's fellows. My eyes roamed the mob, straining to pick out faces and forms in the shifting light. Somewhere I would find the answer.

  There! F'Lyr, the scar-faced stableman who wore a brass lion about his neck, stood with two shadowy figures at the back of the crowd near the gap. Three Zhid ready to close off the escape route before I could get through. Now I understood my father's ambiguity. He well knew the choice waiting for me at the edge of the shadows. My yearning to hear my father declare before witnesses that I was not the destined instrument of the Lords was a matter of no importance whatsoever. I would have to prove the truth or falsity of that prophecy for myself.

  In an instant I considered all that had happened in the last weeks and months, all that I feared about myself and the doom facing Avonar, all that I knew of D'Sanya and the others who would be involved in the dreadful hours to come. The wrongness of the world tore at my spirit as fiercely as the flames ravaged D'Sanya's gracious house and garden. By some whim of fate or gods, I was the nexus, the center of everything, but I was dry and empty, and my father was dying and every being in three worlds was at risk. I would not survive another hour without power or understanding. The evidence was laid out in front of me and all I had to do was put it together in the span of three heartbeats. And to do so, I would have to go back; I would have to remember.

  My hesitation emboldened the crowd. "If the hospice is closed, I'm a dead man anyway," said the bull-necked man, now brandishing a fence rail.

  Others moved forward, rocks and knives in hand. I retreated a few more steps, poured the dregs of my power into my gray curtain to give me one extra moment to accomplish what I needed to do. The slight body in my arms stirred. I gripped her hard to hold her still and wished fervently that I could keep her safe. Jen had told me that memory had no power but what the soul chose to make of it. Why was I so tempted to believe her, when for so long I had doubted those infinitely wiser than either of us? Perhaps it was some magic hidden deep in her. Perhaps it was because for the first time in my life, I cared about living another day. I had only begun to taste possibility.

  Wishing Jen were awake to tell me in her brittle tutor's manner that I did it right, I breathed deep and embraced the distorted world, along with the wholeness of past and present, what I was and what I had been, what I had seen and done and felt, both good and evil . . . everything I/we remembered.

  The closures of my mind wrenched and tore. Images and voices and sensations both wonderful and terrible surged exuberantly into my conscious mind like a dammed river allowed at last to fill its natural channel. My bones screamed and my flesh cried out, as if I had changed form and dimension, stretched and bent into something else altogether. Power surged into my arms, pushed on my ribs, and scalded my eyes.

  Sooner than I could have imagined, pain stripped away the veils of hope and desire and uncertainty, leaving only the stark ruin of truth. And in that startling moment, I understood which of the molds in D'Sanya's lectorium was significant and I knew what D'Sanya had done. Three worlds were in my hand. Truly, there was no choice to be made.

  "Be off to your long-awaited grave, Tormentor's Heir, Prince of Dead Men, Sovereign of Desolation!" I screamed at my father as I retreated briskly toward the gap. "You are correct that my power and purposes are beyond your weakling fingers. Tonight as your pain devours you and tomorrow as the worms feed on your rotting flesh, you will know that I am indeed Lord of Destruction, Lord of Chaos!"

  I shifted the woman higher on my shoulder, turned my back on my father and the gaping mob and a shadowy figure with red-brown hair who now stood at the verge of the crowd watching me. I sped through the gap toward the three Zhid who stood waiting. "In the name of the Lords of Zhev'Na, take me to Gensei Kovrack," I said, thrusting the woman's limp body into F'Lyr's burly arms. "We have a city to destroy."

  Chapter 34

  Jen

  The cellar walls were black with mold. And only a blind optimist would call the brown liquid seeping through the cracks in the stone floor and soaking into my filthy breeches "water." I let my handlight die. I didn't need to examine the sagging roof beams or the rotted grain sacks to know how many years had passed since any Dar'Nethi had maintained enchantments of dryness or health in this dismal place and thus how unlikely it was that anyone would find me here. F'Lyr said I was to be left here, nicely out of the way while Lord Dieste and his Zhid could see to the destruction of Avonar.

  "I won't believe it," I shouted upward in the dark. "I'm not that stupid!"

  Yes, Gerick was strange and powerful and kept nine-tenths of his thoughts and feelings locked away where not even Paulo could find them. But he had lived in me. He was not a Lord of Zhev'Na.

  The moldy stone smothered my protest. No one was going to hear me. The clammy wall made me shudder as I leaned back on it.

  The three Zhid—F'Lyr, Gen'Vyl, and Hy'Lattire, two men and one woman, once generous, kind servants of the hospice—had fended off the weak pursuit of the hospice staff and residents long enough to get us to the stable and mounted. They pulled my hands about F'Lyr's thick waist and bound them there, and then we rode hard up and over the ridge behind the hospice. I'd not been able to see much of anything with my nose jammed against F'Lyr's back. I'd let them believe I was still insensible in hopes of hearing something enlightening. Not that listening had done me much good.

  Whenever the Zhid began to question—Why had the young Lord not revealed himself earlier? Why had he courted the Lady? Why had he destroyed the oculus?— Gerick snapped at them to be silent. "Do not presume to judge my purposes. Just get me to your commander."

  The sun was not yet up when we rode down into the camp. But I could smell the dawn, and the dry air was the color of ash. A peek from under my drooping eyelids revealed a few tents and fifteen or twenty men and horses tucked into deeply seamed foothills, the rubble-and boulder-strewn slopes where Grithna Ridge met the Wastes.

  A tall, lean warrior with thin red hair combed back from a high forehead stood waiting for us. Diagonally across his chest he wore an elaborately worked leather strap, the mark of a gensei—a general in the warrior legions of Zhev'Na. An ascetic face, sharp-edged and hard like the granite crags. His lips curled in anger and suspicion. I did not need to examine either his costume or his eyes to know him Zhid.

  "I know not how to greet you after our last encounter," he said, as Gerick reined in at the boundary of the encampment. "I know not what you are. No master of Zhev'Na would permit his loyal servants' strength to be stripped away by a woman who was once a slave—the Tormentor's brat, at that."

  Gerick dismounted easily. He gave his horse's reins to Gen'Vyl, then clasped his hands behind his back and strolled toward the red-haired man as if he had come here for a month's guesting. Though still wearing torn and bloodstained clothes, his body moved with the confident grace of a king born. He turned his head as if to survey the camp, fixing his attention on the red-haired Zhid only when he stood directly front of him. Then, in a movement so swift I could almost feel the air shatter, he grabbed the neck of the Zhid's tunic and twisted it tightly, forcing the man to bend his knees and drawing the Zhid's face close to his own.

  "I am your Lord," he said in a voice that could have frozen the southern oceans. "Your master. The Three of Zhev'Na chose me to be their Fourth, their instrument, their Destroyer. Their glory resides in me, and your proper greeting is to pay me the homage and obedience they demanded of you for seven centuries. Do otherwise and I will draw your bowels out through your ears. Or shall I throttle your heart once more to still your insolent tongue?" Gerick's left hand pointed at the ground. "Kneel and look into my eyes, and then tell me again of your beliefs."

  The red-haired Zhid dropped to his knees, whether from fear, from deference, or from lack of breath, I could not determine. No, not deference.
His nostrils flared as he raised his eyes to meet Gerick's. For a moment the air felt as if the sun had winked out, never to return. Then the Zhid fell prostrate in the dirt.

  From the quivering stiffness of F'Lyr's spine my custodian, at least, had no further doubts. I forced myself to remain slumped against his sweaty back, keeping my jaw slack and my eyelids open only a slit.

  The gensei's groveling apologies came with gasps and shudders. "We could not see your plan, Lord Dieste," he babbled. "We heard so many tales of the last day— the day of our shame. Tales of your death. Of your treachery . . ."

  "On the day my brothers and sister fell, I was weakened as well," Gerick said, "and forced to go into hiding. But let me be clear. I will have my vengeance and retake my inheritance. I've spent these years regaining my strength and studying my enemies, and now I am ready to reveal myself to both Dar'Nethi and Zhid. Patience and stealth. Subtlety in hatred. Thoughtful vengeance. Are these not the virtues you taught me in the camps of Zhev'Na, Gensei Kovrack?"

  "Aye, Lord. I beg you allow me to serve you. Command me, Lord."

  Gerick nudged the Zhid's shoulder with his boot. "Before I can regain my rightful place, we must recapture the Tormentor King's spawn."

  "Of course, Lord Dieste." Kovrack squirmed up to his knees. "But she serves us well as she is. She made the avantirs for us, and imbues them with such power that we can use them ourselves. When you destroyed the oculus, it fueled our doubts. . . ."

  "I will tolerate no rival to my power." Gerick spoke to all the Zhid who had gathered behind their gensei. Though his back was to me now, I could see the progress of his gaze as it roved over the cadre—a quailing shiver and then a stiffened spine as his notice passed to the next warrior. "The Dar'Nethi witch has attuned her devices to her own enchantments, not mine, so I will destroy them all and have her begin again … in my service. Our first priority is to take her captive. Your inept attempt in Avonar forced me to kill five of my own warriors. Such incompetence will reap an unhappy reward should it occur again. Once the woman is mine, she will cast me a new oculus and new eyes, and this world will recognize its master. Now, show me the avantirs."