by Carol Berg
Gerick ordered F'Lyr and his two companions to remain as they were and vanished into the largest tent. Several Zhid came and went. One scurried away and returned with an armload of scrolls; another fetched a dark bundle that might have been clothes. An endless hour of frightening nothing. The sun burned off the dawn haze and roasted my back. F'Lyr had to fight to steady his restless horse. When a woman warrior carried two frosted pitchers past us and into the tent, I could not suppress a moan.
"Are you awake, girl?" F'Lyr twisted his head around, but couldn't have seen much.
"She must've taken quite a whack on the head," said Hy'Lattire from behind me. "Don't know why he keeps her." Her spirit was no warmer than that of any other Zhid.
"He told me that he desired her to be his first collaring." F'Lyr's voice rumbled through his sweaty back. "She was his first collaring when he came to Zhev'Na, he said, and she squealed so pleasantly. Says it will repay her for her incessant whining."
I squeezed my eyes shut and did not move again.
The day grew hotter. I was horribly thirsty and dozed off several times. Having received no permission from their Lord, the three Zhid did not drink either.
When Gerick stepped out of the tent, he was dressed in sleek black—a sleeveless shirt, tight breeches, and knee-high boots. A light cloak fell from his shoulders, and gold armrings glinted in the sunlight. One by one, every Zhid in the camp came to pay him homage, kneeling before him to kiss his scarred palms, pledging blood and bone to his cause.
"It is time to rebuild Zhev'Na," he said when they stood in ranks again, Gensei Kovrack at their head. "Time to grind this Avonar to dust. Time to obliterate the Bridge of Bondage once and forever."
The Zhid cheered. Gerick did not acknowledge them, but motioned sharply to Kovrack.
The gensei drew a circle in the dust with his sword. Faster than I could believe, Gerick had created a quivering rectangle in the air. How had he recovered so much power since we had destroyed the oculus? I shivered. Perhaps he was just getting better at it.
"Send out word," Gerick said to Kovrack. "I will see every commander and adjutant before nightfall. Senat and Felgir first. Then will I play the music of the avantirs and set the hounds of war on the Lady and her minions. Remember who commands you now."
With a motion of his hand he raised a whirlwind of dust, and the camp, the Zhid, and the wasteland vanished behind us.
I hadn't believed a word Gerick had said. I wouldn't. I couldn't, because I could see no way for Gondai to survive if he had betrayed us after all.
We had ridden through the portal from the bright sun through the blinding dust storm into a dim, cavernous Space near a river. The smell of fish and river wrack had overpowered even F'Lyr's steaming aura of stable sweepings and unwashed flesh and my own ripeness. I had been almost grateful when they dropped me into this slime pit before I could blink the grit from my eyes. I didn't want to see where we were.
I drew up my knees and wrapped my arms around them, shivering as the dripping seepage marked the passing time. Surely not Avonar. Surely Gerick had not opened a Zhid portal into the City of Light. . . .
Creaking floorboards above my head jogged me awake. No way to know how long I'd been asleep. Groggy, the bump on my head throbbing in time with my sluggish heart, I sat up, wiped the slime off my cheek, and cast a handlight. I didn't want to be blinded if they opened the trap above my head. But after a while, I let the light dim again. Evidently more important business than me was going on up there.
Heavy footsteps came and went. I paced the length and breadth of the cellar, trying to work out the cramps and stiffness, trying to be ready for whatever came. But it only served to make me feel filthier when I sat down in the slime again.
As the hours passed, my light faded completely, and the chill and damp became one with my bones. Shimmering at the edge of remembrance was the image of a block-like structure—a warehouse?—nestled on the bank of the Sillvain, tucked between the stone support pillars of a graceful bridge in the heart of Avonar. First Bridge, I thought. Perhaps Second.
I could neither recall the significance of the place nor estimate what brought it to mind just now. Perhaps it was the damp or the river. Perhaps it was the building above my head. Yet I hadn't seen the outside of my prison. The portal lay inside this building. More likely my brain was bent from all the mental contortions of the past two days. I was fortunate not to be a raving idiot after touching an oculus.
I lay on my side, curled up in a knot with my head buried in my arms, sick with hunger and the stink. When the image of a spindly tower at one corner of the Heir's palace settled itself in my head like a gently falling leaf, I sat up again, my heart picking up speed. All right , I thought. I see it .
Ven'Dar . The name floated in the dank darkness like a new constellation along with an overpowering urgency.
I was incapable of mind-speaking, but that wouldn't prevent someone else from speaking to me in that way or listening to what I might be thinking. Though truly, what I perceived was not so much direct speech, which could always be detected by other capable sorcerers, as occasional, concentrated reflections of another person's thoughts, something like the sun-glints off a gold coin flipped in the air. I couldn't even be sure the contact was intentional. I closed my eyes and made sure I left no barriers to further communication.
A short while later I envisioned a ruin—broken columns and walls set in the heart of a maze of overgrown shrubs, broken arbors, and ponds that held only weed-choked puddles. A deserted bathhouse by the look of it. The view of Mount Siris just behind the structure located it in the neglected lower-east quarter of Avonar. Portal
This image was immediately supplanted by another, this time a quiet shrine where, in ancient times, a massive representation of Vasrin had been carved directly into the white cliffs. Some centuries past, a section of Avonar's city wall had been moved outward to encompass the shrine, so rather than creating a straight barrier across a gradual, treeless slope, the wall took several awkward turnings through a forested gorge and up a steeper, rocky hillside to join the older wall. Even one unschooled in warfare could see the danger of the shadowed gorge and the cliffside looming so close to a defensive bulwark. Compromised .
The bustle of activity in the room above my head lessened, replaced by the pervasive pressure of enchantment. Whatever this working, it left me as sick and anxious as the oculus had. Now I understood Gerick's description of his perceptions: the world felt profoundly wrong.
An hour passed. No more images intruded on my thinking, only doubts. It was well known that mold, rot, and unmaintained enchantments carried fumes and diseases that could cause madness. But I preferred to think that someone had been trying to tell me something important. Though I recognized nothing of Gerick in these visions, I clung fiercely to the belief that he was responsible.
Truly, what more sign of madness did I need? Despite every protestation of the past weeks, the gnawing terror in my belly was not solely care for Avonar. Back at the hospice when we were joined, when he took the burden of destroying the oculus from me, he had spoken my name. He had given life and meaning to those common syllables as if they defined something unique and important.
I pounded a fist on my head to jar my thoughts into sensible paths. Crazed or not, I needed to describe these visions to someone who knew what to do with them. I cast my handlight as bright as I could manage and began to hunt for a way out of the cellar.
The cracked stone walls offered no escape, so I quickly turned my attention to the ceiling. My captors had used no ladder or stair to deposit me here, but dropped me through a hole in the floor. The rusty hinges and the outline of the square trapdoor were easily visible. A man of average height stretched on his toes could have touched them.
I dragged the sacks of moldy grain into a pile underneath the door, climbed up, and stretched high. The tips of my fingers brushed the hinges. Then one of the sacks gave way. I lost my footing and crashed facedown on the disgusting floor. T
hree times I restacked the stinking mound, but the rotted sacks disintegrated underneath me. I never even touched the door again.
"May holy Vasrin unshape your, balls, arrigh scheiden ," I yelled, kicking the pile until the blighted grain became a putrid muck on the seeping floor.
Trampling footsteps overhead sent me cowering to the corner. But the door didn't open. Instead, as if the contents of my skull had been excised to make room, an explosion of images slammed into my head one after another: a vast chamber … a dome of light . . . soaring columns of pearl gray and rose … a towering beast of bronze … a curtain of blinding white fire with a woman—D'Sanya—standing inside it. No sooner had these resolved themselves into a coherent whole than came the holocaust—fire and death, the columns cracked and fallen, the white fire quenched in blood, the glory shattered. The walls crumbled and fell in a deafening thunder and beyond I saw Avonar a reeking ruin. Trailers of smoke rose from charred rubble into a sooty sky. In all this vast expanse of horror only the bronze beast remained whole.
In moments, the vision was gone, winked out as if it had never been. The footsteps died away; the enchantment that had made my teeth hurt evaporated; and I sagged to the fouled floor, sobbing in the empty silence. The world was going to end because I was a wretched runt.
I might have fallen asleep again. It was difficult to tell in the endless dark. But a soft scrabbling noise above my head prompted me to my feet, as much so I wouldn't feel a rat scutter across me as with any further pretense of being prepared to defend myself. Though I saw no light, a soft infusion of fresh air set my heart racing.
A muffled grunt, a slow sliding of wood on wood, and a dark shape invaded my prison and came to rest on the pile of grain sacks. A ladder. Even if the stealthy approach had not signaled an ally, I would not have hesitated to scurry up. Better to die in the open than in such a foul hole.
Lungfuls of clean, damp air and a firm hand were waiting for me when I emerged from the hole and crawled onto a wooden floor. The hands indicated I should help pull the ladder up. Once we had the heavy thing up, my shadowy companion took it away. I carefully closed and latched the hinged trap that had held me prisoner. The room was large, long and narrow, and at one end thin strips of gray light outlined shutters. Before I could determine what were the dark columnar shapes that filled most of the place like crude statuary, my rescuer returned.
"Who—?"
"Shhh." The hand gripped mine, and we sped through a maze of stacked boxes and crates toward the end of the room away from the shutters. My companion cracked open the door and peered out, then pulled it open a little further. Outlined in the lingering gleam of a rainy twilight, dressed in a man's breeches and shirt that were too big for her, was the Lady Seriana.
She closed the door carefully behind us and motioned me to follow. We sped across a muddy flat to a set of wooden steps, half buried in mud and the soggy debris of a riverbank. As I followed her down the steps toward the rush and slurp of the dark ribbon of water, I glanced back and saw the front of the low, block-like building we had just abandoned. It was tucked between two thick stone pillars that supported an arched bridge. Exactly as I had seen in my vision. And though the evening was eerily quiet and no starlike lights adorned the trees and buildings outlined against the night, we were most certainly in Avonar.
An armed man, strolling around the building, paused and turned his head our way. I ducked.
Lady Seriana led me a short way upriver to a spot where the swirling water had undercut the high riverbank. "I think we can talk here," she said, keeping her voice low as she crouched under the bank. "I'd hoped to get you out hours ago, but only in the last hour did they leave the place to just the one guard. You're uninjured? They had to carry you. . . ." Her words poured out as if she couldn't get them out fast enough.
"I'm not injured, but very confused," I said. "How ever did you come to be here? And how did you know where I was? Aimee told us you'd been arrested and confined to the hospice."
"I followed you from the hospice to the Zhid camp, and slipped through the portal in the dust storm. When I came through, Gerick was having them take you off the horse and put you down the hole. None of the Zhid saw me."
"My lady, do you know what he's doing? Were you able to see those who came here today?"
To make out details in the failing light was difficult; Lady Seriana's eyes were like dark blots. But the strain in her voice told me a great deal. "Twenty or thirty different people came here by ones and twos, most of them men. All of them armed. I couldn't see their eyes, but they gave me the feeling … so cold . . . I'm sure they were Zhid. They left the same way in ones and twos. When I thought all of them were gone, I peeked through the window. Ten or twelve men remained, bent over a bronze thing the size of a table top—"
"An avantir." Of course, that was the enchantment I'd felt. Here in Avonar. And I had thought I couldn't feel sicker. "The red-haired man wearing a gensei strap across his chest. He was there?"
"Gensei?" She pushed her wet hair out of her face. "Gods, yes. That's what the belt was. I couldn't remember. Yes, the red-haired man was there. And two more with the same kind of belt. Almost all of the others wore the oval badges. . . ."
"Wargreves, then." So many officers. Not just Zhid rabble.
"I couldn't watch," she said. "Every moment I stayed close, I felt sick. Those men—and Gerick, I suppose— must have left by way of the portal, as I didn't see anyone else ride out."
Lady Seriana's hands were long and slender. Though scars and rough patches evidenced her years of hard work, age had not yet coarsened their shape or withered the skin. But as we spoke she twined her fingers into such a knot that the blood completely deserted them, leaving them little more than fleshless bones.
"Jen, I've found out something dreadfully important about the Lady, and I've not been able to tell anyone. Last night, when we realized what had happened to the oculus, Karon and I assumed . . . hoped, I suppose . . . that Gerick was responsible, that he was alive and close by and doing what he thought was necessary to remove her threat. Karon insisted I find him and tell him this information, no matter what I had to do. But before I could go, we heard the commotion, and Karon felt the violence coming and knew he had to intervene, while I found Gerick. But Gerick went off with these Zhid.. .."
"You say no Zhid saw you. Did Gerick see you, my lady? Could he possibly have known you were here?"
"I believed so at first. I thought he raised the dust storm so I could follow. Now, I just don't know."
A damp wind gusted along the river, making me wish for my long-lost cloak. The rills and curls as the water raced around the rocks to join the slower main current shone white against the dark water. "Tell me, my lady, did your son touch your mind today?"
"Mind-speak?" She shook her head wearily as she rested her forehead on the knot of her hands. "No. I didn't hear him."
"Not speech. I don't think he dares mind-speak, not if he's determined to deceive the Zhid. They bend to his power, but they don't trust him completely as yet. Listen, my lady. While I sat in that cellar, I saw several vivid images: this building and another one where, I think, the Zhid have a portal to infiltrate the city; a section of the wall where Avonar's defenses are dangerously weak; and an ancient tower where Ven'Dar might be imprisoned. I think Gerick wants me to free Ven'Dar. Ven'Dar could call in people to block the portals, if I tell him where the Zhid assault will come. Then, if Paulo and Aimee can bring Je'Reint and reinforcements …"
As I gave her a brief history of the past days, my mind raced to sort out Gerick's plan. He was taking charge of the Zhid assault, knowing he could not prevent it, but hoping to turn the tide somehow. He had made sure we knew our vulnerabilities, but what more could he do to affect the outcome of the assault? He couldn't divert them with flawed strategies. The Zhid commanders were experienced in war and would know. He couldn't destroy the avantir; if they had more than one, they would kill him and use the others. The moment he betrayed them openly, he wa
s a dead man. . . .
I had to be missing something. Dead man . . . dead man . . . The words nagged at me. That's what he had done when he was sixteen—offered his death to thwart the Lords. But he had relied on his father to finish the job five years ago, and this time he had no one to count on but himself.
"Did you see any image, any hint of what he might have in mind for you, my lady?"
"Perhaps … I don't know. I imagined you in that awful place under the floor. I couldn't leave you there"—her voice shook, and she pressed her hands harder against her forehead—"but then all I could think of was Karon dying. Alone. Oh, gods, such horrible things Gerick said to him . . . and I know it must be to some purpose . . . I've always had faith in Gerick … I still have faith . . . but it is so hard . . . And this time I can't see any way to help him."
I put my arms around Lady Seriana as she fought the sobs that racked her strong shoulders. "Your son is still what you believe, my lady, what your faith has made him. And you've seen how mule-headed I am, not at all easy to convince. He destroyed the hospice oculus because he feared it was channeling the Lady's power to the avantir and thus strengthening the Zhid. He saw no other choice. But I know how difficult it was for him. And even so, he insisted that his own will accomplish the deed, taking the guilt on himself, not leaving it to me. How many people in any world would do such a kindness at such a terrible time? Few that I've known. And he's gone with the Zhid"—the echoes of my own words illuminated the truth—"because he wants to stay alive! He needs time to recover his power and a way to survive until he can confront D'Sanya. His death will not protect us this time, but his life just might."
