by Carol Berg
I pulled her head to my breast and let her weep there in the dark where no one could see. Rain dripped on the muddy bank, a few drops here and there, quickly accelerating to a steady downpour. Time pressed.
"So. I think it's clear," I said, when no longer able to resist necessity. "Gerick wants you to go back to the hospice. To give his father his love and to assure him that he will do whatever is necessary to save Avonar. The thought of the two of you together will sustain him—the thought of your love for him and faith in him. I won't abandon Gerick, my lady. I swear it. Tell me your information and then we'll find you a way back to your prince, if we have to abduct a Preceptor and force her to conjure you a portal."
We couldn't find anyone to conjure a portal. Aimee had been right about that. Even old Ce'Aret, the retired Preceptor so feeble she could not sit a horse, had gone off to Astolle to stand by our warriors with enchantment and determination. But we did find Mae'Tila, an assistant to the Healer T'Laven, gathering a supply of newly formulated medicines to take to the northern battlefront. Lady Seriana, evidencing no further sign of her breakdown on the riverbank, persuaded the anxious, skeptical Mae'Tila to spirit her out of the city in her well-protected convoy. Seri would leave the medical convoy at the Gaelie road and head for Grithna Vale alone. I drew her a map, so she could not mistake the way, but I didn't worry about her. No one who had heard her story could doubt her capability.
An hour after the small, heavily armed convoy passed through the east gate of Avonar, the rain started up again. I ducked under the colonnade on the outer approaches to the palace and pulled up the hood of Mae'-Tila's spare cloak, sorely regretting the prospect of getting damp and filthy so soon after donning my first clean garment in weeks. As I surveyed the patrols guarding the palace gates, I swallowed the last bite of the sausage tart I had snatched from T'Laven's larder and began to believe my legs might hold up under me for another hour.
In the adventure stories I loved to read, the heroes seemed able to go days at a time without food, drink, or sleep. They knew instinctively what to do next and what spells would get them past every locked door and into every treasure vault. Not for the first time, I wondered how I had managed to get involved in Gerick's life. If I didn't eat, I collapsed. I cowered in corners, whimpered at the slightest discomfort, and fell asleep when I should be escaping or standing watch. I couldn't even climb up his father's garden wall. And I had been paralyzed for the past hour trying to decide what to do next.
Was I betraying my own people because I had never heard a man speak my name as Gerick had spoken it when he was inside me? And if I held to this mad belief in him, how was I to do what he asked of me—get past the palace gates and release Ven'Dar? This astonishing information about D'Sanya . . . how was I to pass it along to the man planning the Zhid assault on Avonar?
Disowned. Disinherited. The implications of Lady Seriana's news were monumental. D'Sanya had been purposely removed from the legitimate line of succession, and her anointing had undone that removal, returning her power over the matter of the Breach and the structure of the Bridge. Gerick believed her innocent of ill intent, but I shared his parents' conviction that he needed to know these things before he confronted her. Yet even if I knew where to find Gerick, I could never get near him. Either the Zhid would kill me for being a Dar'Nethi spy or the Dar'Nethi would kill me for being a Zhid spy.
So I had decided to go after Ven'Dar first, and hope that he could contact Gerick.
I drifted from one column to another. On either side of the wide steps and gated portico of the formal entry into the palace precincts were the more businesslike gates, where riders and carriages were admitted to the inner courtyards. And beyond these "riders' gates" to right and left extended the curved colonnades like open arms embracing the vast expanse of the public gardens and markets in eye-pleasing symmetry and grace.
At the ends of the colonnades nearer the palace, single rows of columns fronted curved sections of the actual palace walls, which were carved in relief with scenes from history and legend. But at the point where the walls angled away from the marketplace, the mosaic-tiled walkways became open colonnades. Sheltered gardens, fountains, and walkways filled the space between the receding walls and the fine buildings like the libraries and performance halls that had grown up around the palace. I had never seen the gardens, markets, or colonnades so empty, so early of an evening. Plenty of guards, though. No fewer than fifteen heavily armed men patrolled the approaches to the riders' gates and at least that many more were on the steps before the central gates. Who knew how many others stood atop the walls and in enchanted spaces invisible to the untrained eye?
I arrived at the point where the right-side open colonnade yielded to the palace wall. A few hundred paces away, a guard passed through a rainy pool of torchlight. I hugged the wall and slipped from column to column, approaching the gates, pondering frantically how I was to get past the extra guards, not to mention the protective enchantments and the locked gates themselves.
A thunderous explosion split the night, making the tiles beneath my feet tremble. Flashes of light reflected from the pale stone of the columns and walls. At first I thought these but a violent escalation of the storm. But the guards pointed off to the south, and I peered around the column back toward the lower city. There, where the ramparts of Avonar had held fast against the Lords for a thousand years, the sky had burst into shimmering blue-and-white flame. The wall defenses had been triggered.
"What are you doing, Gerick?" I mumbled, aghast. I had never expected him to go this far with his deception. "Give me some time."
The alarm pierced the rumbling thunder in gut-twisting suddenness and spread like fire in a haymow.
Trumpets blared from the palace walls. Bells rang from the palace towers; soon echoing from clock towers and watchtowers, from great houses and schools. Atop the wall towers that rose behind the opposite colonnade, fonts of scarlet flame burst into life—balefires. Soon they would burn on every tower and wall throughout Avonar and the Vales as they had not since victory quenched them five years ago.
I had not witnessed that signal of Prince D'Natheil's victory over the Lords, but I well remembered the day— the day the thunderous bellows of the Lords had sent their slaves and servants cowering into cracks and corners lest our bodies be flayed by their anger, the day the brittle towers of Zhev'Na cracked and shattered over our heads, the day grown men had wept and women danced as we slowly emerged from the rubble and realized we were free. And now the balefires were lit again. The scar on my neck burned as if ignited by the warning.
The right-side riders' gate burst open and a troop of horsemen rode out at a gallop, racing across the deserted parks and streets of the central city. At their head, astride her gray stallion, rode the Princess of Avonar, clad in silver ring mail, her yellow hair flying. She raised her sword, and it blossomed with blue flame, causing her band of riders to burst out in a cry of joy and defiance. Two bands of infantry followed them out of the gate, marching double time.
I sped through the colonnade, sacrificing stealth for speed, hoping to slip through the gates before they were closed. But I was too slow and too late. The portcullis had dropped, and the iron-banded gates slammed shut before I reached the last column. Guards held pikes and lances at the ready; whatever lethargy had settled over them on a cool rainy evening had been well banished. I sagged against the smooth, damp column, banging the back of my head against the unyielding stone. What now?
The tower I'd envisioned in the warehouse cellar was not one of the great defensive works of the Heir's citadel, which stood as lumbering giants about the palace perimeter. This one was as slender as a spindle and had a slightly bulbous top with a steep-pitched conical roof of slate. The gray conical roof indicated the tower was part of the original structure of the palace in the northeast corner, and the unusual shape should be easy to spot.
As I retraced my steps down the colonnade and took a shortcut through the sheltered gardens behind it, Avon
ar rose to war. Peering down Mount Eidol between the Mentors' Library and the Hall of Music, I glimpsed the lights of the lower city flaring bright, and at every succeeding opening I saw lanes alive with boys collecting horses, with armed men and women loading wagons with water barrels and bags of sand, with running messengers, identified by their bright blue handlights.
How many defenders remained in the city? How many of D'Sanya's Restored held positions on the walls? How many of those had met with Gerick in the riverside warehouse preparing to betray us?
I ran.
Chapter 35
Once I rounded the southeast tower of the palace walls, I threaded my way through narrow lanes of fine shops, shuttered and deserted on this night, and across the slopes of the grassy apron that skirted the walls. The palace was built on the south-facing slopes of Mount Eidol, and the higher I climbed, the less uniform the walls, some sections built of the rose-colored, clean-dressed stone of recent centuries, some sections the age-mottled gray blocks of D'Arnath's time.
When I reached the northeast corner of the citadel, I was surprised to discover that the newer wall cut straight through this ancient quarter of the palace. The steepness of the apron slopes in this area had prevented the Builders from enclosing the entirety of the original structure with the thick new wall. Those parts left outside the wall had fallen into ruin. And among the collapsed walls and crumbling foundation stones stood the spindly tower like a bony finger with a swollen tip, pointing at the sky.
Though a scarlet balefire burned on the great wall, and palace guardsmen would certainly be patrolling the wall and the hulking northeast tower, the object of my search displayed no lights and no guards. This tower would have existed when D'Sanya was a child, far more imposing before the taller towers were built. Perhaps the tallest of its time. And certainly no potential rescuer would ever look for the dethroned Prince of Avonar in such a place, outside the palace enclosure. Everyone would assume he was confined in the prison block in the bowels of the palace itself.
Excited, I crept up the steep apron through a wet, grassy gully, staying low, avoiding any sound that might attract attention from the walls. Once atop the long hill, I caught my breath, then slipped from one ruined structure to another until I pressed my back to the side of the spindle tower that faced away from the palace. Raindrops dribbled down my nose and cheeks, and had long ago soaked through the back of Mae'Tila's cloak.
Though my feet were planted firmly on the ground, a glance upward left me a bit dizzy. The smooth, regular facing stones that had once sheathed the tower's exterior had long fallen away, leaving a mottled outer skin. Numerous stones protruded from this exterior like warts on a finger. Far above, the ruddy glow of balefires outlined the slight bulge of the top. I eased slowly around the base of the tower, marveling at its compact dimension and imagining the steepness of the stair cramped inside it. When I reached my starting point again without encountering a door, I was disconcerted.
I circumnavigated the tower base again, eyes upward this time, assuming that the doorway must be just above my head, its entry steps just broken away. When I returned to my starting point, my heart was in my throat. I leaned my head against the tower stones, closed my eyes, and let the rain pour over my face.
I had seen no doorway. But I had seen the way to get inside. The stones that protruded from the face of the tower were no Builder's whimsy, but an open stair— widely spaced nubs of stone that spiraled up the outside of the tower to the very top. If Ven'Dar was held prisoner in this tower, I would have to climb to get him out.
"Great Vasrin, do you amuse yourself in the eternal nights by devising these wretched tests?" I mumbled through gritted teeth as I set my foot on the first excruciatingly narrow, rain-slick step. "Or perhaps you think to force us to accept your existence." Surely godless fortune could produce no such perfect horrors.
I pressed my left shoulder to the rough wall, found a precarious handhold in the crumbling stone, and extended my left foot over the gap of open air to the next weathered protrusion, not daring to think what that gap would look like when I was five stories from the solid earth. Using my hand on the tower wall to brace me, I brought my right foot up beside the left. Again. Left foot forward—the part of the step nearest the wall would be the most solid. Secure a handhold. Push. Bring up the right foot. Again . . .
Twice I came near turning back. Once when I came to the first broken step, so narrow a stub that I could not rest both feet on it at once. I had to take an immediate second step with my right foot, trusting that the outer edge of the second stone would hold my weight while I brought the left foot up beside it, hoping not to get my boots tangled, praying that no watcher from the palace walls would see me perched there, paralyzed, for of course this had to happen on the side of the tower exposed to the balefire. The second time I faltered was when I came to the first missing step.
"No, no, no," I whispered, trying not to look down into the impossible void between my current position and the next relatively whole step, a span large enough that I would have to completely overbalance to shift my weight upward. "A plague on all Builders who believe their works are eternal."
I stood there for a year, it seemed, considering retreat, considering my purpose, trying to convince myself that I felt Prince Ven'Dar's life in that cold dead tower so this would not all go for naught. I wished for courage and longed for Gerick's strength and agility to shore up my own. Give all of yourself , I had told him. How pompous! How easy to give such advice when not staring your own demons in the face. And now Gerick was off with the Zhid, treading the very brink of his fears. And truly, he had a great deal more to fear than I did. Death was simple. Had he fallen from that brink or did he hold true?
I stretched my left foot toward the next worn stone, barely able to touch it with the ball of my foot. Pushing off with my left hand and right foot, I lunged forward and up. Though my stomach remained somewhere behind me, I got my weight over the step, fell forward, and grabbed the next step, bringing the right foot up beside the left.
Keeping my eyes narrowly focused on the next step, convincing myself that the handholds in the cracks and crevices could truly prevent a fall, I half climbed, half crawled up that devil's staircase in the dark and the rain. For every interminable moment, I told myself that if Gerick could make accommodation with his deepest terror to accomplish our purpose, then I, a daughter of Avonar, could surely deal with mine.
After a while, the cold rain washed all such considerations out of me. That staircase became my whole world.
My cold left hand clawed at the stone wall as I stared at the step in front of me, pressing my numb mind to tell me why things looked so different. I dared not turn my head to look in any direction but forward. The wind whipped my wet hair into my eyes. The next step was wider. Longer, too. The curve of the wall to my left was less pronounced. And the sound of the rain had changed. A lower, more solid sound than the pattering of drops on my head and shoulders. Holding absolutely still, as if the shift of an eyelash would upset my balance, I flicked my gaze upward. A roof! Emboldened, I flicked my gaze left. An armspan from my scraped knuckles was the threshold of a roughly rectangular opening.
Carefully, refocusing my eyes on the step, I moved my left foot up and forward. Shifted my hand to the edge of the door opening and stepped up. Clutching the ragged stone, and taking my first full breath in at least an hour, I peered into a tiny dark room. The three rectangular window openings had no shutters or panes, and gusts of rain splattered on the stone floor.
"If you tell me you've traversed the Skygazer's Stair to rescue me," said the hoarse voice from the interior, "I shall sing your praises from every mount in Gondai."
The poor man was drenched and shivering, chained to the wall with a steel shackle about one ankle, his limbs bound so tightly with dolemar rope that I doubted he'd been able to make use of the wine flask or the basket of sodden bread that sat on the floor an arm's length away.
"Best save your singing until we'
ve got you down from this place, Your Grace," I said, as I dropped to my knees and set to sawing at the tough silver cord about his scored wrists.
"You're not just an illusion, telling me what I want to hear? Last I heard I was no longer anyone's prince. More disgrace than grace, one might say."
"I've a number of things to tell you that you're not going to want to hear. You might rather I were an illusion." I freed his hands, throwing the scraps of rope across the room.
He shook his hands and worked his fingers, smiling and grimacing all at once. "Ah, no, mistress. You are a most welcome reality. If you had come by way of a portal, the Lady's enchantments would have prevented your seeing me. So even if anyone had thought of searching this place, it would have done me no good. I was beginning to fear I would be but more dust in these crevices before some adventurous child attempted the stair and . . ."
He suffered a coughing spasm that he finished off with a huge sneeze before he could go on. I handed him the wine flask and applied my knife to another set of bindings.
After a long drink, he pushed the dripping hair from his eyes and rubbed his wrists. "Some weeks ago the perceptive Mistress Aimee told me a story of a young woman of strong opinion who had arrived at her house uninvited and left it as a most valuable ally, astonishing even Lady Seriana into speechless wonder. Might you possibly be this person of startling reputation?"
His kind humor held no trace of mockery. Though I could not forget that this man had ruled Avonar for five years and walked D'Arnath's Bridge, I felt no awe in his presence—not as I had when Gerick's father had parted the crowd at the hospice. Perhaps because I still thought of Prince D'Natheil as a dead hero come to life in our need. Perhaps because Prince Ven'Dar wore only a bedraggled dressing gown. "They arrested me straight from my bed," he said when he saw me staring at his bare, dirty feet. ,
