by Carol Berg
My boots moved downward to the next step of the curving staircase. It was as if the burning of my hand and the tale of his words had penetrated the barriers of reason and uncovered a jumble of questions I’d stored away there as too odd, too difficult, too inexplicable to think about.
What did Celine mean when she asked what miracle had brought this man to me? What had made the old Healer laugh with delight at the moment of her death? What had made Tennice cling to D’Natheil in the madness of his fever? Why had the Prince come to me . . . as a storm-wracked ship will follow a beacon to safe and familiar harbor?
You will shine as a beacon to me. . . .
My body trembled with the thoughts that blossomed within it like bonfires at a midsummer’s fair. My mind refused to give credence to the absurd speculation taking shape from its confusion. Impossible. Inconceivable. Lunacy.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. “Are you mad?” Kellea whispered fiercely in my ear. “You’re a fool. Any one of these bastards could see you standing here. Let’s go some place safer, if you don’t mind.”
I let Kellea lead me. I couldn’t have said where we were.
“Did the soldiers come back before you got him loose?
Is he still prisoner?” Kellea asked, when we reached the second-level gallery.
“No, it worked wonderfully well.” I could not focus on Kellea’s words for the chaos inside me and the fire that lingered on my hand.
“Where is he then?”
“The Gate. He went to the Gate to wait for them. . . .” I crushed her hands in mine, knowing what I had to do. “Kellea, you’ve got to put me back.” Now I dragged her down the stairs.
We reached the next turn of the stair, and she balked. “What are you saying?”
“They’ve not discovered I’m gone. The ropes are still there. Put me back.”
I tugged at her again, but she held her ground. “In the name of reason, why?”
“Because I have to know. I can’t explain. I must be at the Gate in the morning, and there’s nowhere to hide in the chamber. So, Giano wants an audience for his triumph. He’ll take me. Please, Kellea. Put me back.”
“You’re mad.”
I yanked free of her and glided downward on airborne feet. Kellea followed me around the dark perimeter of the cavern until we reached the column where I had been held prisoner. A few moments fumbling and I found the lengths of rope. I pressed the bindings into Kellea’s hands.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure. Perhaps this will keep you three safe, too. If you stay hidden until we win or lose, they won’t suspect you’re here. Do it quickly. Please.”
I stretched my arms around the column, paying no attention to the ache of my shoulders or the pull of the bindings or the scratch of the ropes about my abraded wrists. Oh, holy, blessed gods . . .
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” whispered Kellea as she tied the last knot.
“Be safe, Kellea.”
The Dar’Nethi girl laid a hand on my shoulder, and then slipped silently into the darkness.
In the next hours, I relived every moment that had passed since Midsummer’s Day. When had I first felt it?
At Ferrante’s when he came out of the shadows to check that all was well with me? I had caught the scent of roses and thought I was dreaming. In the forest out of Fensbridge, when his laughter set my blood afire? I had called myself a lustful fool. As far back as the day he threw the knife at the rock and I felt the touch of enchantment? Tennice had seen it in his illness, and I had called it delirium. Stars of heaven, he had even named the great chestnut Sunlight. The Vallorean word for sunlight was karylis, and only one horse in my memory shared the name of the Vallorean mountain that sheltered the lost city of Avonar.
No wonder the stories I’d told him in the ruined castle seemed more like his own memories than any Baglos had provided. I could not shake the implausible, impossible, lunatic conviction that they were his own memories. In some way beyond all rational understanding, the man who had appeared out of nowhere on Poacher’s Ridge, the man who sat upstairs in the chamber of fire, setting himself ready to prevent the doom of the world, was Karon.
CHAPTER 35
Dawn crept over the lake outside the cavern. Muddled with unchecked speculations, incoherent plotting, and unsettling half-dreams of disembodied faces, I scrabbled my way out of the long night. I had not wanted to sleep. I had wanted to do nothing but ponder on how it was possible that Karon could live. Only a madwoman could even consider it.
Baglos still lay under the colonnade like a discarded boot. As I shifted my cramped shoulders and stiff neck, I wondered if the Dulcé had known anything of what had been done to D’Natheil. D’Natheil . . . If this inconceivable fantasy were true, then what had become of the true prince? The man who had come to me in the woods on Poacher’s Ridge did not know himself. His body and spirit were alien to each other. I had seen that from the first, but hadn’t understood it. How did a soul exist in a body that was not its own? A constant struggle of emotion and instinct, untempered by experience or memory. Even his appearance had been in flux. Was that, too, the result of this inner combat? Dassine said that D’Natheil’s clouded mind was the inevitable result of what he had done to the Prince. What had he done? What I wouldn’t give for a few moments’ conversation with Dassine!
With the daylight came doubts about all that had been so convincing in the darkness. And even if my mad beliefs were true, his circumstances were so desperate that I might not see him again. Yet somehow my spirits were no longer bound by rational thinking or the limits of possibility.
As the pearly preamble to the day gave way to bold pinks and reds, Maceron’s men stirred and began the usual rituals of morning: rummaging in packs for food, relieving themselves under the colonnade, saddling horses, grumbling, bawling orders, curses, and insults. An hour passed and Giano did not come. Had he already found the Prince by the Gate? I craned my neck in a futile attempt to see. Where were they?
Maceron strolled across the mud-tracked paving. He gnawed on a leathery piece of jack, wiping the grease from his unshaven face with the back of one hand. “So you’re still here,” he said, grinning.
“And where else would I be?” I snapped, finding it easy to reclaim a combative spirit on this singular morning. “Why would I wish to be anywhere but here with my arms bent so charmingly about this stone tree? Have the villains finished their murderous doings?” I didn’t have to force the tremor into my speech.
He tweaked the rope binding my hands. “It seems our prisoner has escaped his guards.”
“Escaped?”
“You needn’t get your hopes up. He’ll not evade the priest. Can’t say I’d be sorry to see this Giano humbled. Though if I thought the devil sorcerer had the least chance to escape, I’d hunt him down myself and to perdition with all business arrangements. But the priest hates him more than I do.” He drew his knife and twirled it through his fingers as soldiers will do to amaze small boys.
I shrank back against the pillar, away from the flashing edge. “You claim to hate sorcerers, and then you help them with their murders. It makes no sense.”
Maceron shrugged. “The priests say our world will be free of sorcerers when they’re done. My master believes them, and who am I to question?” He sliced through my bonds, yanked me to my feet, and propelled me through the cavern, relinquishing custody to the gray-hooded Zhid waiting at the foot of the stairway. “Don’t think I’ll lose track of you, madam,” he called, as the hooded Zhid herded me up the steps. “You will reap your proper reward!”
On another day, I would have devised a proper retort for the vile sheriff, but my mind was far ahead of my feet, reaching into the chamber of blue fire. Is it you? Tell me. Give me a sign.
Giano awaited us at the first landing. His usually colorless face was flushed and his empty eyes gleamed hungrily in the torchlight. “I almost came to visit you last night,” he said, smiling. “But I wonder if I would have found
you where I left you?”
“I am very proficient at releasing myself from captivity and reattaching myself to stone pillars,” I said. “It’s always such a lark.”
“Mmm . . . I wonder.” The Zhid wagged a dark-stained fragment of silver cord. “This doesn’t look like sorcery to me, and I don’t think the Dulcé has waked from his slumbers to perform yet another service for his prince.”
“Don’t blame me for your incompetence,” I said. “I might have thought of something better to do with a knife than freeing this infantile prince. The whole lot of you—Dar’Nethi, J’Ettanne, Dulcé, whatever you are—should leap off of this ledge and good riddance to you.”
Giano laid cold fingertips on my cheek, and I was almost sick with the dead feel of them. “Words are worth nothing. You are a mistress of words, but look at where they’ve gotten you: your friends dead, yourself on the way to your long-delayed execution, your grand mission in shambles. No matter what your activities of the night, my lady, I cannot find myself unhappy with you.” Indeed the Zhid seemed almost serene, not at all like a man whose prized prisoner has gotten the upper hand. “I especially want you to witness the precision of well-laid plans coming to fruition.” The Zhid waved me up the stairs. “Come, now, my lady. Great events to witness this day. A thousand years of history will come to an end. In truth, all of history will be made obsolete. Your little world will at last have its umbilical severed.”
“And, of course, as the good Maceron believes, none of your kind will remain in the Four Realms,” I said. “But you’ve no need to stay, have you? The Lords of Zhev’Na feed on our sorrows all the way from their wasteland—”
“Do not speak of those you cannot comprehend,” snapped Giano. “If you mundanes rip each other’s flesh, that is your own doing, not ours.”
Just outside the doors into the passageway, Giano and his companions discarded their priest’s robes. All three were attired in long, belted shirts of purple or gray, tight black hose, and supple black boots that reached above their knees. Each wore a single gold earring and carried a quite serious-looking sword. One of Giano’s henchmen was a burly man with reddish hair, thick forearms, and a gray cast to his skin. To my astonishment the other was a woman, tall, angular, and severe, arms like a plowman and iron-gray hair twisted into a knot atop her head. Her eyes held no more human feeling than did those of her companions.
“And now, madam . . .” said Giano, motioning me to precede him.
The blue-gray frostlight of the Gate flooded the passage. As I walked into the chamber, flanked by the two Zhid, my breath was visible in the frigid air. It took me a heart-searing moment to find the one that waited. He sat by the fiery wall, his arms wrapped about his knees, his head bowed as if he were asleep. I tried to shout a warning, but my tongue would not obey, no matter how I tried. Even so, the Prince’s head came up quickly, his face awash with unhappy surprise.
It’s all right, I thought. I chose to be here. To stay with you. Gods, how I wished he could hear me. Indeed, no answering words sounded in my mind, but on his face blossomed a smile of such brilliance, one might think all the beauty and joy of the universe had been gathered into his soul. Karon’s smile. I was right. Oh, holy gods, how was it possible?
A quick movement to my left was Giano, his gaze snapping from the Prince to me and back again. The Zhid’s eyes narrowed briefly, picking at my soul before he moved on to his business. “We stand at this artifice of enslavement called D’Arnath’s Bridge,” he said, focusing sober attention on the man seated in front of him. “Who speaks for the dead despot?”
And so the challenge was opened.
“I speak for D’Arnath, the father of my fathers,” answered the Prince, remaining seated, though shifting his full attention to the Zhid. “Who intrudes on this holy place?”
“Those who deny D’Arnath and his whelps any place in the worlds that have repudiated them. We refute your claim to these objects you so pompously declare to be holy. This bridge and its devices unlawfully bind the power of your own people. And the residents of this sad world”—he swept his hand wide—“have long declared they want no part of Dar’Nethi magics.”
“I’ll take on any challenge. I’ll not lie down and die for you, Zhid.”
Giano smiled. “I never intended you should.”
The Prince sat relaxed. Waiting. “Who has appointed you champion for this world, Giano?”
“Much as I desire to be the sole bearer of this challenge, D’Natheil, and to lick the last drops of D’Arnath’s blood from my sword, this battle is properly fought by all concerned.” He snapped his fingers, and the Zhid woman left the room. “It is time for your family’s unique brand of slavery to end. Unlike your self-important ancestors, we do not assume the right to speak for these mundanes or declare what’s best for their future. We’ve only shown them how D’Arnath and J’Ettanne have contrived to keep their world in bondage to Avonar, that dying crone who sucks the lifeblood of a child to extend her life one moment longer. No. This world has provided its own proper opponent, one who carries the honor of these lands and their sovereign on his sword.”
I caught my breath. The connection I hadn’t seen. Giano did not need to name his champion, the lord who had arrived in the middle of the night, the same lord who had been sent to answer the challenge of a “rebel chieftain” in the west. The burly Zhid had pulled me to the fog-shrouded periphery of the chamber, so Tomas did not see me as he strode through the doorway behind the Zhid woman. How magnificent he looked, dressed in red silk, fine leather, and the ruby-studded tabard that was only worn by the king’s defender, carrying the ancient sword of the Champion of Leire. Perfectly balanced, exactingly forged and tempered, there was no finer blade in the Four Realms. Now, where was his companion, Maceron’s master, the sardonic snake who slithered out from under every vile stone in the Four Realms? For the moment, at least, Tomas stood alone.
My brother seemed scarcely to note his strange surroundings, but saved his attention for the Prince. He snorted when D’Natheil rose to face him. “This is my opponent, my liege’s challenger?”
Though the two were equal in stature, the Prince looked shabby in comparison: barefoot, his face bruised, wrists and ankles raw and ringed with dried blood, Rowan’s tired black cloak held about him with the sword belt. D’Natheil looked puzzled as he examined Tomas, and only after a long scrutiny of my brother’s face and red-brown hair did understanding dawn. “Is this some jest, Zhid? I’ve no dispute with this man.”
Tomas interrupted the smirking Giano before the Zhid could answer. “I am no one’s jest. I stand champion for Evard, King of Leire and Valleor, Protector of Kerotea and Iskeran. No one challenges the sovereignty of my liege without answer from me.”
“I make no challenge to your king,” said the Prince. “My argument is with this Giano and his masters who have laid waste to my own land, who have devastated my people beyond your understanding, who have murdered my father and my brothers, and whose intent is to slay me before I can remedy the wickedness they’ve done.”
“I care nothing for your personal disputes,” spat Tomas. “But sorcerers of your race have lived in Leire uninvited, defying our laws and customs. You proclaim yourself sovereign of a neighboring realm, yet you do not treat with our king as would a legitimate brother. Instead you sneak about the Four Realms, committing murder and spying out our defenses. And this strange portal—do you not claim it as your rightful property, and is it not possible for your warriors to invade our lands through some secret avenue that lurks behind it?”
Someone had tutored him very well.
“You don’t understand what you’ve been brought into,” said D’Natheil. “I’ll not fight you. I honor your house, and I acknowledge your king.”
Tomas drew his longsword—the light, flexible, perfectly edged blade of the Champion of Leire, rubies glittering in its hilt. “I understand enough. Fail to fight, and you’ll die at my hand. By our law, you should rightly burn. But because you’ve
come from another land, I offer you a warrior’s death.” He stepped closer to the Prince. D’Natheil stood motionless, hands loose and relaxed at his sides, sword sheathed. I tried again to call out, to stop the wickedness that was about to happen. But Giano smiled at my struggle. His binding on my tongue was as firm as the Zhid warrior’s hold on my arm. I could not make a sound, and my brother could not see me.
With the wickedly tapered tip of his sword, Tomas ripped a long slit in D’Natheil’s collar.
The Prince did not move. “I have no dispute with you, sir.”
Another tweak at his breast left a ragged tear in the black cloak. Tomas was proud and preferred a fight, but he took his duty to Evard very seriously. If he was convinced of the danger D’Natheil posed, he would take off the Prince’s head without compunction. A third move left a bloody scratch on D’Natheil’s cheek, and with a movement so swift as to be unseen, Rowan’s sword, heavy and old-fashioned, scratched and nicked in a hundred places, appeared in the Prince’s hand. Giano licked his lips. Was he still expecting the Prince to run?
With no further hesitation, Tomas attacked. I had not seen my brother fight since he’d come into his prime. He was a master of fluid power, the flash and speed of his youth replaced by intelligence and perception. It was as if he knew to an exactitude where D’Natheil’s blade would be at any moment, and he scarcely had to shift his position to counter any move the Prince made. His king did not deserve such perfection.
D’Natheil began slowly, as if he were reluctant, or the weapon were too heavy, or he couldn’t remember the moves. But as Tomas lunged and struck, the ringing swords sending blue-white sparks flying through the icy fog, the Prince shed his hesitation. Thrust, parry, counter, attack . . . spinning, circling . . . faster, smoother, more powerful by the moment, a new level of skill demonstrated with every closure.
Tomas’s jaw was sculpted in iron, his lips a thin line. As far as I knew he had not lost a match since he was seventeen. A barrage of slashing blows from the Prince had Tomas almost in my lap, but my brother ducked and spun and twisted away, and then his weapon was slicing downward toward D’Natheil’s shoulder. But the Prince spun, too, and his blade halted Tomas’s stroke with a bone-shattering block.
