by Carol Berg
A desolation of frozen mud, no remnant of twig or leaf or stubble saying that anything had ever grown in these fields. A few stunted thistles poking through the crumbled highroad seemed to be the only living things within a half a league of the city. Charred and broken towers stood starkly outlined against the heavy clouds. Bare white walls rose from the center of the wasteland like the bleached bones of some ancient beast. Everything dead. Everything destroyed. And lest one retain some hope that some remnant of life had escaped their wrath, the destroyers had set tall poles to flank the gate towers, and upon each one had strung a hundred heads or more-now reduced to bare skulls.
“Demonfire!” Paulo muttered under his breath.
Karon halted just outside the walls at the point where a faint track branched off from the main road. His gaze remained fixed on the eyeless guardians. “Our destination is a small valley in the foothills beyond the city,” he said softly. “I’m sure of it. But to make use of what we find there, I must go into the city. Take this path outside the walls and wait for me where it meets the main road once again. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
“Let us ride with you,” I said. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
Bareil spoke at the same time. “I think I should be at your side, my lord.”
A rueful smile glanced across Karon’s face. “This is my home. I’ll see nothing I’ve not imagined a thousand times over. Power awaits me in its contemplation, just as in those things I might prefer to look on. Ours is a perverse gift.” He clucked to his mount, but immediately pulled up again, turning to Kellea. “Come, if you wish. This was your home, too.”
Kellea wrenched her eyes from the grisly welcomers atop the poles. “My home was in Yurevan with my grandmother. Horror holds no power for me.” But her cheeks were flushed, and she would not meet Karon’s gaze.
“Don’t blame yourself that you’re not ready,” he said, “or even that you may never be. I believe it’s taken me a very long time to come back here.” He spurred his horse toward the black gash in the wall that would once have been the wooden gates.
The cold wind gusted across the barren fields as the rest of us rode around the mournful ruin. I rued my angry words that had increased the distance between Karon and me. Long ago I had promised him that I’d go with him to Avonar when he was ready, a promise lost in the past he did not yet own.
The leaden evening settled into night as we rounded the city’s eastern flank and picked up the road again close to the boundary of the desolation. Once Kellea had made sure of the way, we dismounted to stretch our legs. After only a brief wait, an agitated Bareil said he was going back. “He should not be alone in such a place,” said the Dulcé. “Not in his fragile state.”
I touched his hand before he could mount up. “Let him be, Bareil. He said he could manage it. In this…I think it’s important that we trust him.”
When the time had stretched far longer, I was on the verge of contradicting my own judgment.
But just as the first glimmer of the rising moon broke through scudding clouds beyond Karylis, the weak light outlined a dark figure riding toward us at a gallop from the east gate of the dead city, such urgency in his posture, I bade the others mount and be ready. In moments Karon shot through the clearing where we waited, crying out, “Ride! We’re racing the moon!”
Half a league up the road, he turned north into a narrow vale. The moon danced in and out of the clouds as we rode, revealing smooth slopes, broken by groves of slender trees and great boulders of granite, tumbled and stacked atop each other. As we followed the faint track, the faithless moon was swallowed by thickening clouds. Soon snowflakes stung my cheeks. We slowed to a walk in the uncertain light. But a burst of enchantment swept over us, and the horses surged forward, sure-footed again as if the way had been lit for them. After half an hour, perhaps a little more, Karon pulled up suddenly, all the beasts halting at the same time. I had never even tightened the reins.
“Quickly,” Karon whispered as he dropped from his saddle, drawing us close as we did the same. From his hand gleamed a faint light, revealing his face ruddy with the wind and the cold, his eyes shining. “They’re just ahead of us. The enchantment requires the proper angle of the moon, so we’ve a chance to take him. But you must be prepared to follow. Leave everything behind. Paulo, unsaddle the horses and bid them wait in this valley. They’ll find grazing enough here, even in winter.” Paulo nodded and hurried to do as he was asked, Bareil assisting him. Karon looked at Kellea, jerking his head to our right. “Does your sense agree with me?”
“Yes. Up the hill.”
“Then follow me, quickly and quietly.”
As Paulo shoved the last saddle under a bush, tied our blankets tight over them, and patted the last horse’s rump, we started up a gentle slope alongside the stream, rippling and bubbling in its half-frozen shell. Karon let his light fade. Soon, from ahead of us, yellow light nickered from a triangular opening formed by two massive slabs of granite set into the hillside. To the right of the doorway stood a riderless horse, and to the other side was a pile of boulders.
Something about the place teased at my memory. Karon had once mentioned an incident with his father…
Karon gathered us together again, whispering, “We must draw them out here at least as far as the opening. It’s too cramped to attack him inside-a risk to the boy. Count to ten, my lady, then call the man out. Be convincing. I’ll take him from the left. You,” he said to Kellea, “be ready to grab the child. Bareil and Paulo, help us where it’s needed most.” Without waiting to hear an acknowledgment, he disappeared into the darkness.
When the interminable interval had passed, I stepped from the sheltering trees and stood before the torchlit entry. “Darzid!” I called. “Bring him out. I know who he is. You can’t hide him.” My plea sounded futile and stupid, even to me. “Please, just come and talk to me.”
“Our time for conversation passed many years ago, Lady.” His laughter rippled from inside the doorway just as the moon broke through the clouds, its beams shooting straight through the opening in the rock. The dim yellow light inside the cleft flared to eye-searing white, and every other sound was lost in a low rumble like a buried waterfall. Earth and sky-a Gate to the Bridge!
“Karon!” I screamed.
The Breach between the worlds was a boundless chasm of nightmare and confusion, of the corrupted bits and pieces left from the beginning of time, of horrific visions and mind-gnawing despair. Even if this Gate was open, how could Darzid and Gerick survive the passage or pass the wards D’Ar-nath had created to bar easy crossing? Only the Heir of D’Arnath could pass, so I had been told. Only the most powerful of sorcerers could control the terrors of the Breach.
“Hurry! Stay close!” Karon shouted as he leaped from the boulder pile. Sprinting across the patch of light, he disappeared through the doorway.
With Paulo, Bareil, and Kellea, I followed him through the cleft in the rock and down a brilliantly lit passage toward a wall of white flame. Karon was barely visible beyond the blazing veil, moving rapidly away from us. I hesitated. A few moments on the Bridge at Vittoir Eirit had almost destroyed my reason.
“He’ll shield us,” shouted Bareil over the roar of the fire. “Don’t be afraid.” The Dulcé took Paulo’s hand in one of his; Paulo reached for Kellea; and together the three stepped through the curtain of fire. With a fervent plea to any benevolent god that might take an interest, I followed.
Pits of fire and bottomless darkness yawned beside my feet. Murmurs, growls, wailing laments, and monstrous roaring tore at my hearing. Shadowy figures took shape at my shoulders, one of them a woman with rotting flesh. She flicked her tongue toward me-a tongue the length of my arm with razor-sharp spikes.
My steps faltered; my hand flew to my mouth. A glance in any direction revealed horror in a thousand variations. From the left an ocean of blood rose up in a towering wave, threatening to engulf my three companions.
Kellea hesitated, shielding
her eyes with one arm; Paulo flung his arms around her, ducking his head into her shoulder.
“Look straight ahead!” shouted Bareil, urging them onward with his small hands. “Nothing will harm you.”
A cobra with the girth of a tree towered over me, spreading its hood, its hiss like a finger of ice caressing my spine. Shuddering, fighting my urge to retreat, I dragged my eyes from the vileness to either side and fixed them in front of me.
A smooth band of white light stretched before us into the gloom, and as if his arms had reached out and enfolded me, I felt the embrace of Karon’s protection. The wave of blood fell short. The spiked tongue did not reach so far as my face. When a blood-chilling scream pierced the tumult, and a shrike with a wingspan wider than my arms sailed toward us through the tempest, its hooked beak ready to tear the flesh from our bones, the scream was quickly muted, and no horror touched us.
The journey seemed to take an eternity. But eventually, ragged and breathless, Bareil, Kellea, Paulo, and I stepped through another fiery veil into a circular chamber of white and rose tiles. The ceiling was lost in a soft white brilliance high over our heads. So familiar… yet I was enormously confused. I would swear that we were standing in the Chamber of the Gate in the ancient mountain stronghold where Karon had fought the Zhid and my brother had died. Why did we remain in the human world after traversing the Bridge?
I whirled about in panic, only Bareil’s silencing gesture preventing my cry. Karon was nowhere in sight.
In the far wall, a thick wooden door clicked shut softly. The Dulcé tiptoed across the empty chamber and pulled open the door. Distant running footsteps echoed in the passage.
“He’s gone after them,” whispered Bareil, motioning us to hurry. “We must stay together and keep close if we can do so without being seen.”
The passage emptied, not onto the gallery overlooking the cavern city of the lost stronghold, but into a network of increasingly wider passageways-smooth stone walls, veined with vibrant yellows and blues, softly lit by no source that we could see. Our direction was always up, though we traversed no steps, and I felt no ache in my legs to tell me that the slope was anything but illusion.
Before very long, I heard no footsteps but our own. Bareil sighed and drew us into a sheltered alcove. “Vasrin Creator,” he said, panting, “never has my heart pounded so. But we’ve lost them in spite of it. Can you lead us?” he asked Kellea.
The girl shook her head in disgust. “You’d do better to ask Paulo. I’ve lost all sense of the boy since we stepped past the fire. There’s… too much here. It’s as if someone dropped a bag over my head and stuffed it with noise.”
“Well, we can either return to the Chamber of the Gate or proceed to a hiding place where D’Natheil and I have agreed to meet if ever we are separated.”
No. No. No. “No retreat,” I said, forcing my voice low, but firm. “Not until Gerick is safe.” Dread weighed in my belly like an anvil.
“I agree,” said Kellea. “And I prefer a place that has more than one usable exit.”
The Dulcé nodded. “Very well. Then you must do exactly as I say. All right?” Though he wrinkled his face seriously at Paulo, a smile danced in his almond-shaped eyes. “This place may seem strange.”
The boy shrugged and pulled down his hat. “I’ve been about. Seen lots of things lately nobody’d believe.”
“We’ll not be remarked if we seem sure of ourselves and don’t gawk.” The Dulcé led our ragged group through passageways and deserted kitchens and dusty storerooms to an iron gate. Past the gate was a dimly lit, cloistered courtyard, the sheltered walkways lined by a double row of slender columns. A few trees grew in garden beds, thick-branched evergreens with long needles, but of no variety I recognized. Their light dusting of snow sparkled in the glow of white lanterns mounted on the cloister walls.
I grabbed the Dulcé‘s arm. “Before we go further, Bareil. Tell us. Where are we?” I needed to hear him say it before I could believe.
“Have you not guessed, my lady?” He smiled. “We’ve come to Gondai. You walk in Avonar.”
CHAPTER 17
Gerick
I guess I have been scared my whole life. When I was little, I was scared of the dark, and Lucy always left me a candle or stayed with me until I went to sleep. And I was scared that when I grew up to be a soldier, I’d end up with only one arm or one leg or with my eye cut out like the men that came back from the war. But Papa told me that if I worked hard at sword training then I’d never have to be crippled like that. So I decided to train harder than anyone, though I knew I would never be as good as he was. Everyone said he was the best in the world.
Of course, I didn’t really know what being scared was until the night Lucy caught me making the lead soldiers march around Papa’s library. It was terrific fun, and I wondered why Papa hadn’t shown me how to do it earlier that evening when he’d finally said I was old enough to play with them. The idea of it came to me when I was in bed. I couldn’t sleep for wanting to try it, so I crept downstairs after Lucy had turned down the lamp and gone to bed. Mama and Papa had guests, so nobody would bother me in the library. Well, Lucy must’ve come back to the nursery to check on me that night. She ran down to the library- she was always good at guessing what I was thinking-and she saw what I was up to.
I never saw anyone so afraid. I thought she would be pleased like she was when I learned how to turn a somersault, or how to ride my horse without falling off, or how to write my name without getting ink all over. But on that night, if someone had given her a voice, she would have screamed every bit of it away again. She backed up against the door, looking like she wanted to run away, but instead she waved her arms and shook her head and pointed to the soldiers.
“But Lucy, it’s all right. Honest. Just tonight Papa told me I could use them,” I said, showing her how I could make the silver king climb over my leg.
But she wouldn’t hear anything or even move until I let them all drop down still. Then she ran over and held me tight until I thought I was going to be squashed. She was crying and rocking me like I was a baby even though I was five years old.
I didn’t like her to cry. Mostly Lucy and I had the best time. She knew lots of fun things to do, and of course because she was mute, she couldn’t yell or whine like Mama. Even if she thought I’d done something bad, she’d just show me again how to do it right and give me her “disappointed” look. I had never made her cry before. I told her over and over that I was sorry that I was out of my bed, but I just wasn’t sleepy and thought it wouldn’t hurt to play with the soldiers a while, since Papa did say I was old enough.
She acted like she didn’t even hear what I said, like she was thinking of something else altogether, something that she didn’t like at all, and she made me put the soldiers away and go back to the nursery with her. We sat by the nursery fire, and with her mixed-up way of signs and making faces and drawing pictures, Lucy told me that if anyone ever, ever saw me do anything like what I did with the soldiers, they would kill me. Even Papa.
“I don’t believe you!” I yelled at her. “You are an ignorant servant!” That’s what Mama always said when one of the servants told her something she didn’t like. “Papa loves me more than anybody. He’d never hurt me.” I turned away from her so I couldn’t see her tell me anything else, but she took me by the shoulders and marched me all the way through the castle to a room near the northwest tower. It was a girl’s bedchamber. Everything was tidy and clean, but it smelled closed up, like no one had lived there for a long time. Dolls and little carved horses sat on a shelf, and books and writing things lay on a desk. On the wall was a painting of four people: a man, a woman, a boy, and a girl. I couldn’t understand why Lucy was showing me that room, until I caught sight of myself in the looking glass that hung next to the picture. The boy in the picture could have been me, and the woman in the picture looked a lot like the portrait of Grandmama that hung in the music room.
“Is that boy Papa?”
Lucy nodded, and then pointed to the little girl in the picture and to the room we were in.
“That must be Papa’s sister, Seriana, and this is her room.”
Lucy nodded again. No one ever talked about Papa’s sister. Whenever she was mentioned, people looked upset and clamped their lips tight. I’d thought she must be dead and that it made people sad to think of her. That gave me a terrible idea. “Lucy, did someone kill Seriana for making the soldiers march?” Lucy started to cry again and bobbed her head. I didn’t ask her to explain any more, and I didn’t ask her who had done the killing. I just let her hold me for a long time and told her I really didn’t mean it when I called her ignorant. She showed me that she understood.
Only after Lady Verally came to live with us when I was seven did I learn that it wasn’t Papa’s sister that had been killed, but her baby, and that Papa had done it. I learned that the things I could do were called sorcery and that sorcery was the most evil thing in the world. Seriana’s husband had been burned alive for doing it. I didn’t feel wicked when I made the soldiers march around, or when I made the cats stay out of my room when they made me sneeze, or when I made the sharp thorns fall off the draggle bushes when I went exploring in the hills, but I knew that what Lady Verally said had to be true, because Papa would never kill anyone who wasn’t wicked.
So Lucy hadn’t been exactly right in what she told me. Some things were just too hard for her to explain in her signs and pictures. Probably she thought I was too little to understand, but she got me scared, which is what she was trying to do. From that first day she watched everything I did even closer than before. She taught me to stay away from anyone who might guess that I could do such wicked things, and how I always would have to think about everything I did and everything I said so they would never know the truth about me. I certainly couldn’t stay around Papa any more. I figured that if he could see the wickedness in a little baby, then he would be able to see it in me, too. Lucy didn’t think I was wicked, but she was not near so wise as Papa.
