Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  On the evening of my discovery, I paced the library, waiting for news. The cabinets that had housed the lead soldiers gaped at me in reproach.

  Every servant and soldier of Comigor had been called to the hunt. Troops of guardsmen scoured the Montevial road, inquiring for Darzid or the boy at every private or public house all the way to the capital. Other soldiers and servants followed every road, trail, and footpath that came anywhere near the castle. Giorge and his assistants were querying the tenants. I had done everything it was possible to do. Now I had to wait-until the last man came back and told me he’d found nothing. I knew it would be so. I had no idea of Darzid’s capabilities, but every instinct screamed that they would be enough to hide Gerick from one who had no talent but that of her own prideful imaginings. Where would he take a sorcerer’s child? Dassine had said that Zhid could not cross the Bridge without the complicity of powerful sorcerers in Avonar… but Zhid had crossed the Bridge last summer, and Darzid had been hunting with them. What if Zhid could take Gerick across the Bridge?

  I slammed the door of the soldiers’ cabinet so hard one glass pane shattered.

  I had dreaded telling Philomena. When I had gone to her room that afternoon, I’d found her sitting up in bed, a maid brushing her hair. Her fingers toyed idly with the gray silk bag in which I’d brought her the lock of Tomas’s hair. All evidence of her dead infant had been stripped from the room. Not the least trace remained of that short, sweet life, and I wondered if anyone had given the little girl a word of farewell as she was laid in the frozen earth. “I’m so sorry about your daughter, Philomena,” I said.

  “Gerick has run away, hasn’t he?” she said calmly, not taking her eyes from the gray silk that was wound about her fingers.

  I could not understand her composure. “How did you know?”

  “The servants say men are searching the house. I’ve not slept as much as everyone thinks.”

  “No one has seen him since last evening. I’ve sent-”

  “Is he dead?”

  “We’ve no reason to believe it. I won’t believe it.” Worse… The stone that settled in my stomach whenever I thought of him grew colder, heavier. Some things were worse than death.

  Philomena wrinkled her brow as if trying to decide on white wine or red with dinner. “It’s not as if he was ever very affectionate. He didn’t like playing cards or dice with me, and I never knew what else to do with him. Boys are so beastly. They like fighting and dirt and nasty things.”

  “He’s not dead, Philomena. I believe Captain Darzid has taken him. Many people know the captain; he’s easy to identify. Do you know of any place he might take Gerick? Did he ever mention any town or city or person to which he might go?”

  “I never listened to Captain Darzid. He was boring.” She looked up, her fair brow in an unaccustomed wrinkle. “Some say you are responsible for these terrible things. Auntie says it. But others whisper that the gods make me pay for my husband’s sin-because he killed your child and helped King Evard burn your husband-and that’s why all of them are taken from me. Do you think that’s true?”

  “Don’t ask me to explain the workings of fate. Life is incomprehensible enough without believing we have to pay for someone else’s faults in addition to our own.”

  “Ren Wesley says you saved my life.”

  “I only fetched the midwife.”

  “Did you want me to live so that I would know that all my children are gone-so I would suffer? I don’t understand you at all.” She sighed and tossed the gray silk bag onto the floor. “You’ll come read to me tonight?”

  I was ready to scream, Are you mad, stupid woman? My son-mine-has been stolen away by a smooth-tongued villain, and I don’t know where in this god-cursed universe they’ve gone. Yet, what else had I to do but wait? Losing myself in fantasy for an hour might be the very thing to save my reason. I bit my tongue. “I’ll be here at the usual time.”

  “Do whatever you need to find him,” she said as I left the room.

  “You can be sure I will.” But how and where?

  And so I had dispatched more searchers and a message to Evard, and when evening came, I read to Philomena until she fell into the image of peaceful sleep. Since then I had waited, gripping the rose-colored stone that hung around my neck as if sheer force of will might bring it to life and send my plea to Avonar along the paths of its enchantment. Our child had been abandoned at his birth- by his dead father’s idealism and his living mother’s bitterness and self-pity. He had grown up in fear, not understanding what he was. If I had to walk the Bridge myself to fetch help for him, I would do it. Somehow.

  * * *

  Just after dawn a footman came to me in the library, saying that a stable lad was causing trouble. “It’s the cripple. I caught him sneaking through the kitchens and threw him out. Then I caught him again, coming through the windows of the wash house. I told him Giorge would have him flogged, but he insists he has to see the Lady Seri-pardon the liberty, ma’am, but that’s how he put it-as he had information you would want to know. I didn’t want to bother you with it, but Allard said that with the hunt and all-”

  “Bring him to the housekeeper’s room.” Any distraction was welcome.

  “Yes, my lady. As you say.”

  The footman dragged Paulo into the little office next to the kitchen, holding him at arm’s length by the neck of his shirt. “Here he is, my lady. I’ll stay close by.”

  “No need.” I closed the door firmly, then laid on the table a packet of ham and bread I’d fetched from the larder. Paulo’s eyes brightened, and he reached for it. But I laid a hand on the packet and said, “First a question, my friend. What’s so urgent that you risked punishment to get in here?”

  Paulo crammed his dirty hands in his pockets. “Just wanted to tell you she’s on the way.”

  “She?” Paulo never liked to use four words when two would do.

  “You know. Sheriff’s friend what saved him and me last summer.”

  “Kellea? Kellea is on her way here?”

  He nodded and eyed the packet of food under my hand. Paulo had every intention of making up for thirteen lean years living with a drunken grandmother. I pushed the bundle toward him, still not understanding.

  “But why? I mean, what brings her this way?”

  Stuffing the bread in his mouth, he mumbled. “Told her you needed her.”

  “You told her…” Needed Kellea? Of course… she was absolutely the one person in this world that I needed, and I hadn’t even thought of it. Kellea, the last survivor of Karon’s Avonar, newborn the week before the massacre, was a Finder. Herbs, lost objects, people… given the proper materials to create a link with the thing or person she sought, she could locate almost anything.

  The first spark of hope glimmered in my head. “She’s coming to search for Gerick?”

  Paulo nodded. “Be here tonight.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard in two days. But how, in the name of heaven, did she know?”

  He gave me the same long-suffering sigh he used whenever I asked how he knew that a horse wanted to run faster or graze in the next clearing rather than the one we were in. “I told her.”

  “I think you’ll have to explain that.”

  He took the bread from his mouth, but not too far. “When I come here, she said that every once in a while she’d talk to me, tell me about the horses and Sheriff and all. You know, like she can, that way we can’t say nothing about?” Dar’Nethi-J’Ettanne, as Karon’s people had called themselves in this world-had rarely used their ability to read thoughts and speak in the mind, aware of the potential to abuse such power, especially when living in a world where no one else could do it.

  “Mind-speaking? I didn’t think she knew how.” Or cared to know.

  “Well, she learned it of that woman”-he leaned close and dropped his voice even lower-“the swordwoman.”

  The “swordwoman” was one of the three Zhid who had pursued us to the Bridge in the summer. Af
ter his battle with Tomas, Karon had healed the three of them, returned or reawakened the souls they had lost in their transformation. I believed that their healing had been the very act that had strengthened the Bridge and kept the Gates open. Karon had been too weak to take them back across the Bridge to Avonar, and, indeed, they had had little reason to hurry. Their own families and friends had died centuries before, and they were unlikely to find welcome among the other Dar’Nethi whose family and friends they had slaughtered or enslaved. So the three had taken up residence in Dunfarrie under Kellea’s and Graeme Rowan’s protection.

  “Kellea taught me how to talk back to her when she was with me in my head,” said Paulo. “Just think real hard about her and what I want to say and nothin‘ else at all for as long as it takes. Thought my head might burst while we were working at it, but I learned how. The swordwoman says not many non-magical folk can do it so well as me.” The rest of the bread and a good measure of ham cut off any further discussion.

  “Paulo, I knew it was a good day when you came here.”

  The boy wiped his mouth on his sleeve and jerked his head at the door. “Best go now. Got work to do.”

  “Yes. Not a single word to anyone about these things. You know that?”

  He gave me a bready grin, pulled open the door, and disappeared through the hot kitchen.

  My revived hopes were quickly swallowed by grim reality. Throughout the day-the second since Gerick’s disappearance-searchers returned empty-handed. I sent them out again, telling them to go farther, ask again, be more thorough, more careful, more ruthless. Even for a Dar’Nethi Finder, the trail was growing cold.

  I wandered down to the library and curled up in the window seat where I had first laid eyes on my son. For half the day I stared at a book of which I could repeat no word. The bright winter sun glared through the window glass…

  A rapid tapping startled me awake. Someone had built up the fire and thrown a shawl over me to ward off the evening chill. My book had slipped to the floor. The insistent tapping came again from the direction of the library door. “My lady? Someone’s asking to see you.” It was Nellia. “A young woman. Says she’s expected.”

  “Bring her right away”-I jumped to my feet, fully awake in an instant-“and hot wine… and supper. Whatever there is. She’s come a long way.”

  The small, wiry young woman who strode into the room a few moments later could almost pass for a youth with her breeches, russet shirt, leather vest, and the sword at her belt. Her black, straight hair hung only to her shoulders. “Here almost before you thought of me, right?” she said, displaying the quirky smile people saw so rarely.

  All my grief and guilt and terror, so closely held for two long days, was unleashed by Kellea’s arrival. I embraced her thin shoulders fiercely and engulfed her in a storm of tears. The poor girl… shy, uncomfortable with people, especially awkward with anyone who knew of her talents… Knowing how such behavior would unnerve her, I swore like a sailor even as I wept.

  “What is it? Has the boy been found dead or something?” Kellea said, shifting awkwardly as I gained command of myself and pulled away. “I know he’s your brother’s child, but-”

  “He’s not Tomas’s son, Kellea…” I drew her close to the fire, speaking low as I told her everything, built up the case again, one point at a time, hoping she could tell me that my fears were overblown.

  But when the story was told, she shook her head. “Oh, Seri… and you’ve no way to contact anyone across the damnable Bridge.”

  “It could be a year until I hear from Dassine again.”

  “You don’t think this Darzid means to arrest the boy, take him to Montevial… to execute him?”

  That had been my first terror-that my child might suffer the same horror as Karon had. But I had persuaded myself that a trial was the least likely result.

  “Without substantial proof Evard would never harm a child he believed to be Tomas’s son. And how would Darzid explain switching the two infants without condemning himself for condoning sorcery? Darzid must have done the switch; he brought the dead infant to me himself. He has preserved Gerick’s life all these years, knowing what he is. Why would he harm him now?”

  Why? Why? Darzid’s motives had always been a mystery. His deeds had taken him well beyond the common reasoning of greed and ambition. In the days of our friendship he had confided in me his dreams of a “horrific and fantastical” nature and professed a growing conviction that somehow he did not belong in his own life. In my months of imprisonment between Karon’s death and Gerick’s birth, Darzid had badgered me to tell him of sorcerers, to explain Karon and his people, claiming that “something had changed in the world” in the hour Karon died… which of course it had. But I hadn’t understood the world back then, and had no concept that Karon’s death had opened the Gates to D’Arnath’s Bridge, renewing an enchanted link designed to restore the balance of the universe. How had Darzid perceived such a thing? The gleeful hunter and persecutor of sorcerers had demonstrated no sympathy, no kinship, and most importantly, no knowledge that might imply that he himself could be one of the Dar’Nethi Exiles. I refused to countenance any such possibility. So what was he?

  “Sounds like we’ve no time to waste,” said Kellea. “Bring me something that belongs to the boy, and I’ll try to pick up his trail. Meanwhile, if you don’t mind, I’m going to dig into this little feast. Didn’t stop much on the way.”

  I hurried upstairs, leaving the young woman slapping butter and cheese on the toast Nellia had brought in. Gerick’s room was perfectly arranged: bed, wardrobe, washing cupboard, a set of elaborate chess pieces meticulously aligned on an otherwise bare shelf. I searched the wardrobe and a small writing case, looking for some article that might hold enough of Gerick’s ownership to trigger a Finder’s magic. Clothing did not usually work well, Kellea had told me. For most people, too little of the self was invested in them. The dust on the chess pieces hinted they’d rarely been used. I settled for a pair of fencing gloves, thinking of Gerick’s intense desire to master the sword. Clearly his life had been lived elsewhere-in Lucy’s room, I guessed, where he felt safe. Inspired by the thought, I hurried to Lucy’s room and snatched up the reed flute he had made for his nurse.

  Kellea tried the gloves first as they were Gerick’s own possession, but eventually she threw them aside and reached for the flute. Closing her eyes, she ran her fingers over the hollow reed, around the ends and over the holes. Then, she laid the flute on the table, and, motioning me to be patient, she sat on a stool beside the fire, propping her elbows on her knees and her chin on her clasped hands as she stared at nothing. Just as I concluded that time had come to a halt, she jumped to her feet. “They’re heading west.”

  CHAPTER 13

  West. I scribbled a message for Philomena, saying I’d received word of Gerick and was taking two companions to investigate. While Nellia helped Kellea pack food from the larder, and Paulo readied the horses, I changed into riding clothes, found us blankets and supplies, and rummaged through Gerick’s wardrobe for a heavy cloak and thick gloves for Paulo. I dared not bring soldiers along: Kellea was risking her life by using sorcery in the Four Realms.

  Within two hours of Kellea’s declaration, Paulo, Kellea, and I rode into the night.

  The moon was full and newly risen, its blue-white light so bright on the snow that we cast long shadows ahead of ourselves. Only the ring of hoofbeats on the frozen road and the occasional howl of a wolf broke the silence. We rode hard. By the time the moon shadows had shifted to lie long on the road behind us, the barren heath had yielded to more substantial hills, dotted with pine and oak scrub. Ahead of us lay a dark line that looked like the edge of the world-the Forest of Tennebar, an immensity of trees that stretched to north and south, and well beyond the rugged borderlands to the west, deep into Valleor.

  Why Valleor? I could not shake the nagging suspicion that Darzid was taking Gerick to the Zhid. Yet, as far as I knew, the only way to take Gerick to Gondai
was across D’Arnath’s Bridge. And the Exiles’ Gate-the fiery chamber where my brother had died and Karon had restored the Bridge-lay not in Valleor, but in the high mountains of southwestern Leire, many days’ journey from here. Were more of the empty-eyed warriors hiding in the wretched places of this world, feeding off of our misery?

  Our heads were nodding, and we were about to lose the light of the setting moon, so we halted at the edge of Tennebar. The trees gave us some protection from the bitter wind that gusted from the north.

  Kellea had taken the last watch. She woke Paulo and me shortly after dawn. Within moments we headed into the forest, eating bread and cheese as we rode. Tennebar stretched for leagues in every direction, its vast expanse scored by wide logging trails, as its tall, straight pines were much prized for building. The sun glittered on the frosty branches. Rabbits and foxes, startled by our passing, scampered across the sparkling snow, almost invisible in their winter white fur.

  By midday we were climbing the first slopes of the Cerran Brae, the low range of forested peaks that formed the natural boundary between Leire and Valleor. As the way grew steeper, the road split. A wide wagon road angled south to cross the Cerran Brae by way of Cer Feil-the South Pass. From there one could descend into the valley of the Uker River and travel south to Yurevan or Xerema or angle northwest across the Vallorean Spine to Vanesta. The northern fork was a more direct route to Vanesta, but less traveled, for Cer Dis-the North Pass-was narrow and steep, reputed to be a haven for bandits. Traders generally stayed with the safer, if longer, southern route.