Daughter of Ancients tbod-4

by Carol Berg

  I croaked and gasped in some grotesque semblance of laughter at the irony, terrified to the marrow that I might fail and equally fearful of success. Then a blast of wind almost collapsed my knees. The mountaintop trembled. A skull-cracking barrage of sound, like the cannon fire of a year-long siege compressed into a single moment, had me fighting for composure. Yet the noise did not stop after that initial blast, but grew louder, a grinding cacophony. D'Sanya flung her arms about my ankle and wailed.

  The gale howled in concert with the Lady; the sky itself spun. Fragments of color broke away from the landscape—the bright green of new grass . . . the red-gold of autumn leaves . . . the translucent blue-green of forest ponds—each of a thousand shadings one by one, and a many-textured darkness began to close in over the sprawling worlds. Destruction . . . chaos . . . the terror, panic, and madness of thousands of souls tore my flesh and shredded my mind. . . .

  Rent . . . shattered … I could not breathe. My bones cracked; my blood surged through its course like liquid fire. Once, in some other age of creation, I had experienced such agony. On my twelfth birthday, as I escaped Zhev'Na. On that day I had abandoned this physical shell when it became uninhabitable.

  Coward, not to face what you've done . Despite the exhortations of conscience, I could not hold, and yet again my soul fled my body, seeking the oblivion I could not grant my victims. Alone . . . groping through the chaos of unending night to find some anchor … I touched something wet and gritty . . . mud . . .

  . . . and saw two Singlars climbing a steep, spiral stair and clutching their casket of sunrocks as roiling floodwaters crept up the stair behind them. One of them tall and dark-skinned with silver hair. The other short and oddly shaped with only one eye. My friends, Zanore and Vroon, and my kingdom, the Bounded, in all their awkward newness . . . how I loved them. Hold on . . . don't die. .. .

  I reached farther through chaos and touched ice. . . . . . . and glimpsed a woman with dark braids wound about her head, huddled with a man and two feverish children in a tiny, snow-covered house beside a frozen river —Kellea, who had helped rescue me from Zhev'Na and who had cared for my father. And a little farther on I found Tennice, my tutor and second father, coughing blood from his lungs in ice-bound Verdillon. And Roxanne, riding through drifted roads to succor her frost-wracked cities and towns with bread, ale, fire, and courage . . . giving . . . giving . . . Friends who gave their gifts so generously for love and duty and right, expecting no reward but hope. The mundane world, filled with monumental cruelties that made its passionate kindnesses so savory. . . . I loved it, too. Hold on . My mother's world . . .

  Where was she? Clutching my connections to these two worlds, I returned to chaos, letting it flow in and out of my disembodied soul, searching. . . .

  . . . and found a tall man and a golden-haired woman who clutched his waist, the two astride a strong-limbed bay that raced through the night toward a burning city, leading a dark-skinned warrior and his army of sorcerers. Ah, Paulo . . . long past time for you to take your own road . . . ride swiftly . . . safely . . .

  "Your mother was very persuasive." Jen'Larie . . . a force of nature inducing me to smile in a time I believed I would never smile again. Power lay hidden in her that she herself could not see . . . .

  Hidden power. . . my mother, too, had her own magic, as on that day in Zhev'Na when the Great Oculus scalded my eyes away and I heard her voice, distant, but clear: "You were beloved from the day your father and I first knew of you . …" Mother ? I shaped a talisman of that voice and spirit until I found her.

  She sat in the grass under failing stars. He lay huddled in her strong arms, crying out his agony. Dry-eyed, she whispered comfort, building a shield of love around his pain.

  Ah, Mother, do you know how you are loved? We lived inside of him. I know. If I could but feel half that love for someone. . . Whatever else, D'Sanya had taught me possibility.

  And, Father, how I wish I could make this easier for you. . . .

  As if he had heard me, an ember of my father's spirit flared in the darkness, penetrating chaos as it had once penetrated the Breach, as it had echoed beyond the Verges, as it had touched my soul on the day I became the Fourth. The memory of those words still gave me strength. I will fight them until the last day of the world to set you free .

  How could I do less? I embraced my mother and father, along with Paulo and Aimee, Jen and D'Sanya, and through them all the world of Gondai—Dar'Nethi and Dulce and Zhid, good and bad together. I enfolded all those spirits, together with the Singlars and the mundanes and the other two worlds, and I held them tight and fought to set them free, wishing I could do more as the last of my power drained away and I became one with chaos.

  Chapter 38

  Jen

  "I'm over here, my lord. All of a piece, I think." I crawled across the floor toward the mumbled curses and spitting. Indeed, I felt tangled and out of proportion, as if mind and body had been stretched as thin as silk thread, and then released to clump back together again in whatever way natural forces saw fit. To find myself with an extra ear or missing fingers would not have surprised me in the least. "Are you injured, my lord?"

  The floor was littered with sharp fragments of metal and stone that I brushed out of the way as I crept through the absolute dark. I had already tried to make a handlight and could produce not so much as a spark. I tried not to think what that meant. I knew what Gerick had gone off to do.

  The Gate fire had vanished in an eyeblink at the height of the earthquake. The Bridge had fallen, and we were left to be grateful the sky had not fallen in on us as well. Or the ceiling.

  My stomach curdled at the thought of how deep under the palace we were, of the narrow passages that could be so easily blocked by rubble, or of the fires that had already raged through the palace when we raced down here to intercept Gerick. I hadn't expected to survive this long.

  "I wish you would speak, sir. Ouch!" I stopped to extract a metal splinter from my left hand.

  The spitting stopped. "Well, I've a knot the size of a turnip on the back of my head. My sudden meeting with the floor has knocked out at least two of my teeth. And I cannot seem to raise a light. What more can be said?"

  Much more. But his breaking voice expressed it, not his words. The surrounding dark was despair.

  "The Bridge …" I said.

  "I've a gap in my soul the size of the sky. What am I to think?"

  I was not a good witness. Having never felt the fullness of power, I could not miss it. But if this was the end of everything, the end of power as we had always been taught, it seemed odd that the skills innate to Dar'-Nethi bodies would be gone as well. Only true talent had been served by the Bridge.

  Clothes and limbs rustled in the dark. Metal chinked softly. A whispered sigh came, not from the direction in which I was creeping—the direction of Prince Ven'Dar's coughing—but from behind me.

  "Who else is here?" I sat up and spun in place, eyes straining to see in the dark, dizzy until I glimpsed a pale white glow. The light moved slightly and expanded, shining on silver ring mail… on bodies … on bloodied flesh banded by a gold armring …

  My throat swelled. Gerick !

  The light jerked and grew, illuminating the Gate chamber. Gerick huddled on the floor beside one of the great columns, eyes closed, trembling violently, so pale he was almost transparent. A blood-streaked, disheveled D'Sanya knelt beside him, one finger touching his shoulder, the white light streaming from her hands. And behind them . . .

  "My Lord Ven'Dar! Do you see?" I croaked, not sure of my own senses.

  "Aye." The prince, a mere ten paces from me, stood craning his neck to stare in wonder at the section of the curved chamber wall where the Gate fire had once burned. D'Sanya's light danced on a crystalline barrier comprised, not of one smooth face, but of pinnacles and facets, corners and ridges and man-high crevices that might have been the Gate's white fire frozen in time.

  "He's so tired," said the Lady, her finger touching Ge
rick's damp hair. "He hurts wickedly and is so sorry, sorry, sorry. Will he die?"

  "Don't touch him, witch!" I snapped, heedless of her power, wanting to strike her, wanting to weep, wanting to tear out my hair in confusion. What was she playing at?

  D'Sanya flinched at my command and scrambled away from Gerick toward the crystal wall. But when she touched the translucent surface, she cried out and jerked away, clutching her right hand. Moaning softly, she retreated again and soon cowered on the floor beside the toppled bronze lion. Light still glowed softly from her left hand. I was astonished.

  Keeping one eye on the Lady, I hurried to Gerick. Blood saturated his shirt and his bare left arm, oozing slowly from a wound in his shoulder close to his collarbone. A narrow leather belt and a wad of wet, bloody cloth hung tangled uselessly about his upper arm and his neck.

  I touched his right arm. His entire right side spasmed sharply, but his eyes did not open and his trembling continued unabated. His skin was clammy. Reason told me to be frightened of the one who had wrecked the universe, but reason was upside down and inside out.

  When the Gate fire went out, I had expected to die with it. But the uproar had been only beginning. Throughout the long hours in the dark, as the earth rumbled and groaned, as every deafening crash above my head threatened the end of all things, a certain warmth had spread from my head to my feet, a strength that held me together inside, an assurance that if I could just endure, the world would not collapse. Only now was I left cold and empty and truly afraid.

  As I slit Gerick's soggy shirt, peeled the flap away from the sticky wound, and replaced the wad of cloth and the belt to keep it snug, Ven'Dar approached the princess. He moved slowly and crouched a few steps away as if not to frighten her. She looked mainly at the floor, only glancing at Gerick now and then.

  "So we are not entirely incapable of sorcery," said the prince softly, taking her hand and examining it before laying it back in her lap. "Lady, what's happened? What did he do to you?"

  "They were dying. I broke them and they were dying and I'm so sorry, so sorry. He"—she drew her arms tight and curled her legs underneath her, nodding her head toward Gerick—"held them. Loved them. Saved them. Don't let him die. He carried me through the wall."

  "Who was dying?" said Ven'Dar. "I need to understand."

  Though he had not raised his voice, she flinched and wrapped her arms about the bronze lion's neck, burying her face in her sleeves so we could scarcely hear her. "The worlds. Everyone. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I wanted to make things right. Don't be angry. Please don't punish me. They kept screaming and I wanted to silence them. But I just made it worse and worse. They won't stop screaming and Papa won't come."

  "My lord, she's—"

  "I see it." He laid his hand gently on her shoulder. "No, Lady, we're not angry with you. And there'll be no punishments. We'll find someone to care for you."

  D'Sanya's light faded away, but the crystal wall still glowed faintly, as if it retained some memory of the white gleams. Ven'Dar walked over and touched it, snatching his hand back immediately. He examined its entire length, peering into its glassy depths, probing its cracks and crevices and smooth faces, finding nowhere he could rest even a fingertip on its surface. Worry had ground channels in his brow, but the reflection of the crystal wall revealed a growing curiosity on his countenance, not despair.

  "I don't know what to believe," he said. "This is wholly unknown to me, and yet . . . But I cannot linger here. We must learn what's happened to the rest of the world."

  He pulled a kerchief from his pocket and dabbed at blood that leaked from a bruised corner of his mouth. After stuffing the stained kerchief away, he held his hands out in front of him, turning them to one side and then another as if they were some oddments he'd picked up in the market.

  "I feel so strange," he said. "None of the awareness of power I've had since I can remember. No sense of connection to the world. I can see nothing through this wall. I can't bear to touch it, yet it is not pain that repels my hand, but something more profound than enchantment. I can't say what. And I feel neither dead nor mad nor . . . empty … as I felt at first. Only different." He met my gaze, face alight with a hint of bleak humor. "Well, shall we see, then?"

  A brilliant white light flared out from his hands, almost blinding me.

  "Hand of Vasrin!" he said, as the crystal wall took fire with his light. Pale green, rose, blue, and yellow danced through the peaks, facets, and crevices of the wall. "I scarcely gave it a thought!"

  He closed his eyes, narrowed his brow and cocked his head as if he were listening. "What's that? I hear . . ." His eyes popped open. He grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet. "We must get Gerick away from here. I don't know how to judge him, but others are coming in search of the Destroyer, and until we understand what's happened . . ."

  "Where can we take him, my lord?"

  "Let me try . . ." He pressed his hands together at his forehead and then spread them wide, and a portal gaped before us, revealing what appeared to be a plain, tidy bedchamber. Ven'Dar's jaw dropped. "So fast. I've never— Come, let's get him up."

  Ven'Dar bearing his shoulders, I his feet, we carried Gerick through the portal and laid him on the narrow bed. Ven'Dar's complexion was flushed, but I didn't think the exertion of the move had caused his heightened color. Gerick was not so very heavy.

  The prince gave Gerick a quick examination: head, arms, legs, back, and bleeding shoulder. He threw the wadded bloody shirt on the floor. "Though he's lost blood, the wound doesn't seem all that severe. All other injuries seem older."

  Besides the bed and a scuffed wooden chest, the room held only a bare table, two chairs, a well-stocked bookshelf, and a patterned rug of green and yellow. Ven'-Dar's hands quivered as he rummaged in the chest and pulled out a faded blanket of brown and yellow stripes and a clean linen handkerchief.

  He tied the handkerchief around Gerick's shoulder. "I'll send someone with food and wine. I doubt I can find a Healer, even if— But I'll send medicine at least. Bandages." His eyes raced over Gerick's huddled form. Reaching down, he yanked a knife from Gerick's boot. He shrugged as he stuffed it into my hand. "Am I right to assume that you're willing to stay here with him?"

  I didn't like his air of excitement or the hint of a smile peeking out of his untrimmed beard as he spread the striped blanket over Gerick. Such reactions seemed an unsupportable frivolity in this precarious hour. "As I said before, my lord, if he's a Lord of Zhev'Na, then we're all in a stew. . . ."

  ". . . and if he is not… if the Lady has spoken some truth in her madness . . . then perhaps we find ourselves at a beginning, not an end. I'm beginning to think that's possible. I'm hearing things . . . sensing things . . . more every moment, even with so much uncertainty, such devastation. . . ." He straightened up, shook his head, and blew out a long breath. "But we've some anxious hours ahead, and if we're to protect him, I must get back before someone detects me here. This house is quite secure, this room more so. Keep him here if you can. As soon as I learn anything more, I'll speak with you, if you'll permit. . . ."

  "Of course, my lord. I just … I can't mind-speak myself."

  "I'd say you'd best not assume anything, at this point. Everything's changed." For a moment his face was distracted, as if he heard something else in the room. When he looked up at me again, his eyes had taken on a new spark, the web of fine lines about them smiling, though his bruised lips did not. "I feel young, Jen. I feel new."

  Prince Ven'Dar stepped through the portal and it closed behind him.

  What did he mean by that? Of course, everything was changed. I felt tired. I felt confused.

  I moved across the room to the window. Proximity to Gerick seemed to garble my thoughts, and there was little I could do for him anyway. Hurt's ease, my mother's purification spell, needed three pure elements to create it. I didn't know where I could find anything clean or pure in this whole blighted universe.

  Outside the tall window it was day, though billowi
ng fog left the sun a gray disk as it hovered over a ghostly horizon—west, certainly, from the shape of it. Had the world truly spun a complete revolution since I'd stood in the colonnade and watched D'Sanya ride out of the palace? But then who would expect time to make sense? The Bridge had fallen, and the earth had shaken for so long my teeth felt loose in my head.

  We seemed to be on the third or fourth floor of a large house. Below the window spread a wide lawn, hedges, and a long, low building painted white with a fenced yard behind it—a stable, perhaps. I yanked up the stiff old sash, stuck my head out, and inhaled . . . and started coughing. Smoke, not fog.

  The city was quiet now, as it had not been those endless hours ago when Ven'Dar had made a portal to take us from Skygazer's Needle into the palace. By the time he had found loyal men to reinforce the weaknesses Gerick had revealed to me, the Zhid had brought up a ram to smash the palace gates. A few had made it past the walls and the enchantments and were battling the defenders. If an entire day had passed, then who had won the battle for Avonar? The silence and smoke shivered along my back. Perhaps everyone was dead.

  Behind me, the bed creaked. I scraped my arm on the window frame in my hurry to look around.

  Eyes still closed, Gerick had rolled to his side, clutching the blanket tight around his neck. His trembling shook the small bed and the floor. The striped blanket slipped slowly to the floor, exposing his sodden boots and breeches.

  I felt helpless. What had he done to himself with his monstrous magics?

  Idiot! This isn't enchantment or madness. He's lost a vat of blood, has likely not eaten or slept for two days, and is soaking wet . Enough to deplete anyone, even if he'd not just expended magical power unseen in ages of the world. He was freezing.

  • I dragged off his boots and leggings and threw the blanket back over him. As I dug in the chest through books and bundles and spilled sonquey tiles in search of blankets and dry clothes, I tried to think what I might possibly say were he ever to wake up. Is it part of your devilish scheme to plant conviction of your innocence in my head along with your messages, your soul, and whatever else you see fit to put there? What perversion makes me so sure of you, even after you've broken the world? I hate this madness you've put in me, when I know I should put a knife in your heart again, and leave it this time. Tell me what, in Vasrin's mighty shaping, you've done to the world. To me .