Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  “And what if I refuse your offer?”

  “You will still be the Heir of D’Arnath, a friend and ally of the Lords. You may live out your limited span of years here, or make your home elsewhere if you wish. But we will expect you to aid us in our war as you have sworn upon your life and honor to do.”

  “But the secret of the oculus…”

  “… is only for the Lords of Zhev’Na and will be revealed only when you join us.” Ziddari held my chin in his hand and nodded his head toward my statue. “You were born to be one of us. I believe you know this to be true.”

  “We are old and fixed in our ways. Your youth delights us,” said Notole, smiling and stroking my hair. “When you have lived your first thousand years, you will understand.”

  “It gives us great pleasure to teach you,” said Parven, laying his hand on my shoulder.

  “Do I have to decide now?”

  “In five days, you come of age,” said Notole. “At first hour of that day you will be anointed Heir of D’Arnath. If you choose to become one of us, we must prepare you in the hour between mid-watch and the anointing. You will have no second chance. This decision is for all time.”

  “I understand.”

  “For now, we will take you back to your rooms and let you sleep. When you wake, this taste of your future will be but a memory, and all will be as it was. Look well upon the face of the world and see what matches the possibilities that are open to you.”

  They took the mask away, and Ziddari led me back to my rooms and settled me in my chair. We ordered food. I was hungry, though indeed a lead weight sat in my stomach as I sat there blind.

  “Are you wearing Darzid’s face now?” I asked Ziddari as we ate.

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you live in the other world? Why did you work for mundanes… a common soldier when you were a Lord of Zhev’Na?”

  He laughed. “That’s a long tale, and over the next hundreds of years I’ll tell you the whole of it. In brief, one of us had to follow the Dar’Nethi J’Ettanne across the Bridge to protect our interests. Too late I discovered that, over a long period of time, the mundane world corrupts and confuses the memory of those born in this one. I suffered that indignity just as J’Ettanne and his Dar’Nethi did. Worse, in many ways. A wretched, despicable world is the land of your birth. As to why the task fell to me, rather than Notole or Parven… let’s just say I lost the toss.” More hatred than humor colored Ziddari’s laugh.

  I was sorry I had asked him any questions. I wanted him to go. I had to think-a great deal. Five days to decide whether I wanted to live forever and have all the power I could ever want, or if I wanted to live out a human life span, risking an early death like Papa who was only thirty-seven when he was struck down by the Prince D’Natheil. And what would I use to fill the emptiness inside me-the “fairy dance” of the Dar’Nethi? I didn’t even know how to begin. It disgusted me to think of following the practices of the coward D’Arnath, of the murderer D’Natheil. Or would I gain power as did the Zhid-squeezing the life from rocks or rats or slaves? I could not have come all this way for that. No, there was really no choice to be made.

  But if I were to leave myself behind five days from this- I wasn’t stupid enough to think it was only “bits of my past” that would be lost-I didn’t want to do it with unanswered questions. So I told Darzid I wasn’t hungry any more, only tired.

  “Then I’ll leave you. Sleep well, my young Lord.” He laid a hand on my head as he said it, and my limbs suddenly felt like iron weights had been attached to them. As he stood up and walked across the floor, I huddled in my chair, trying not to shiver. I was so cold… it must be night. I fought his sleep spell, because I knew that when I woke I wouldn’t have the power to do what I wanted, only my own weak talents.

  Slowly I let my mind steal through my house, and I touched a slave named Ben’Sidhe. He knew nothing of strange articles left in the young Lord’s rooms. Another slave, Mar’Devi-the one who bathed me-was filled with shame, not because of the task itself, but because he felt so degraded by it. He believed he should accept his lot with better grace when so many of his brothers and sisters were bound so much more cruelly. He knew nothing of stones or wood or the stars of Leire. One after the other I probed each slave that lived in my house. None of them had taken care of my wounded arm, and none knew of the mysterious gifts left for me to find.

  Drudges were so dull and stupid, I might have skipped examining them, except that I was enjoying myself; stealing thoughts was so easy now. My mind picked at one of them and then another. Astonishing that Drudges were the cousins of the people I had touched in the other world. I laid them open and found nothing-no spirit, no intelligence, no desire for anything better-until I touched the one who hovered in the shadows beyond the stair, one who stood there shocked and horrified to see me blind, left in my chair by a man she despised.

  She tried to close her mind to me. Too late.

  I tried to close my own mind to the Lords. Too late. I was scarcely awake, lulled into carelessness. “Seri!” I jumped to my feet.

  Vainly I tried to find my way to her, crashing into the table and then the bed, trying to draw an outline of my room in my head so I wouldn’t kill myself trying to get to her-to tell her I knew what she had been doing-to ask her all the questions that blossomed inside me like fireworks at a jongler fair. But even as I floundered in the dark, the Lords descended on me.

  The woman! He has discovered the woman in Zhev’Na! How is…

  … it possible? Inconceivable! Dangerous!

  Young Lord, beware. She serves the master of deceivers. We’re sending warriors to protect you.

  Ziddari, get back to the boy! The tigress is ready to pounce. Such danger to our young friend… our plans…

  With their shouting and jostling in my head, I hung onto the bedpost, shaking with the effort of staying awake and splitting my thoughts into those the Lords could know, and those I needed to keep private. “Seri! Run! They know you’re here.” I couldn’t have explained why those words burst out of me. “Hurry… to the stables… hide there.”

  But she didn’t run. I felt her arms wrap around me, and her wet cheek pressed to my face. “I would not trade this moment for a thousand years of safety.” She brushed her fingers over my eyes. “Hold fast, Gerick. Look deep inside. You are strong and beautiful and good, and you know what is important. You are not what you believe. Don’t let them convince you.”

  Boots pounded on the stair. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve got to-”

  “Do whatever you have to do.”

  I took her arm, and as gently as I could, I twisted it behind her. Then I let a surge of anger drown everything else that was in my head. I had to protect her. And the only way to do so was to turn her over to the Lords. Any other course would have been far more dangerous for both of us.

  “Young Lord!”

  “I’ve got her. She was sneaking up on me. I was practicing reading thoughts while I went to sleep, and I found her.”

  “Lady Seriana,” said Ziddari-Darzid, of course. I could feel it in his voice. She didn’t know Darzid was one of the Three. He never came to my house as Ziddari, never let slaves or Drudges see his true form. “A pleasure, and considerable surprise, to see you again. But you have certainly come down in the world. I wouldn’t think of Drudges as your sort at all. They can hardly provide the intellectual stimulation to which you have been accustomed.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “What did you plan to do here, lady? Steal away a sleeping boy? Persuade him that you are a caring mother? Convince him to abandon his destiny? A powerful thing is vengeance, is it not, young Lord? So powerful it can make a woman destroy her child’s future because he’s sworn a blood oath to destroy her dead lover’s kingdom. Ugly, ugly.”

  “Only one person in this room would I destroy, but it is not Gerick. I’ve seen what you’re trying to do with him…” I thought I had felt anger before. But my mother’s fury made ev
en the power of the Lords seem small.

  Darzid didn’t hear it, of course, and I began to understand why they hated her so much. They didn’t understand her. “You underestimate the lad, my lady. We’ve done nothing but allow him to develop his true nature. He knows that and accepts it. Now, the young Lord needs to sleep. You’ll have plenty of time to explain yourself… how you got here and who your allies are.”

  Sometimes the Lords really thought I was stupid. They would learn. “Remember, she’s mine,” I said, as I stumbled over to my bed and threw myself on it. “I’ve sworn an oath, and I’ll not have her taken from me. Perhaps I’ll have a chance for personal vengeance after all.”

  Darzid began to laugh. “Of course! Fortune has smiled on you once again, my Prince. You can indeed have everything you desire.”

  I slept for a full day. When I woke, the Lords were waiting for me… hovering… anxious. I was anxious, too, and only felt better when I saw the faint smear of gray that was the torch that burned on my balcony at night. If I worked at it hard enough, I could sense the faint outlines of doors and tables and such in the blackness.

  And how are you this evening, young Lord? asked Ziddari.

  “Hungry,” I said.

  They relaxed a bit. Slaves can bring you what you need. Notole was everywhere inside me and around me.

  “I’ve already summoned them. But that won’t be enough. I’m hungry for other things than food. Do I come to you again tonight?”

  No, young Lord, she said, pleased. In four days you may have all you want. Only if your craving should become unbearable would I consider taking you out again before your anointing. For now you should resume your physical training.

  “What have you done with Seri?” I tried to ask it casually.

  The lady is quite safe and healthy. We’ve asked her some questions, but she has few answers. A traitor brought her to Zhev’Na, but he is dead now. They planned to destroy you, young Lord, to steal your future… your power… to confine you to Dar’Nethi groveling… to starve you… But their pitiful conspiracy failed long ago.

  “Good.”

  Rest easy. Determine your future with no worries that any enemy will interfere. Do you wish to question the woman yourself? The last question was from Ziddari.

  “No. I’ve no interest in lies. She confuses me.” Yes. That was what they wanted to hear.

  Then we’ll leave you to your own occupations.

  And so I had to figure out what I wanted. The decision had seemed easy before, and now Seri had muddled everything. My thoughts kept running in circles, and I couldn’t decide what I believed, or why I had done the things I’d done, or what I was going to do about any of it.

  I jumped up and fumbled about the room, gathering up Seri’s “gifts.” Out on the balcony, I burned the map of the Leiran stars and threw the stone and the wood and the fruit pit as far away as I could. I fingered the mirror, happy I couldn’t see well enough to know how my eyes looked this time. All black, I guessed. Even reflected light made me wince. I pulled the wood away from the metal and burned it, and then I melted the metal into a lump and threw it away, too. Grabbing my cloak, I felt my way down the stairs.

  There were guards everywhere in my house. I told them I was going riding in the desert and threatened to tear out their eyes if they tried to stop me or even let their thoughts dwell on what I did. After a quick stop by the kitchen, I set out for the stables. Summoning up what little power I had, I used it to help me find familiar landmarks. I put out the stable lantern, made it to Firebreather’s stall without breaking my neck, and sat down to wait. Firebreather shied away from me until I’d talked to him a little. But it wasn’t for the horse I’d come.

  “Awful dark in here.”

  “Leave it that way. I’d just rather tonight.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “I brought you some food, there in the pack by the gate. Sorry, no jack.”

  “I told you I’m not choosy.” I heard him rummaging in the pack and then settling down in the straw. “You’re in a bother,” he said between bites.

  “Have you started reading human thoughts as well as horses‘?”

  “Don’t take a genius. You’re sitting here in the dark. You forgot to yell at me for anything. You brought me food without me acting pitiful or nothing. You’re not thinking straight.”

  “I needed to talk, and I get tired of talking to myself. I argue one way, and it sounds right and reasonable, and then I turn around and argue exactly the opposite, and it sounds just the same.”

  “I’ve seen it. Means you think too much.”

  “It’s about those things I told you of. The stone and such that appeared in my house.”

  “Did you find another one?”

  “Yes. And I found out who did it.”

  The silence stretched so long, I began to think he’d gone to sleep. “Blazes,” he said at last. “Who was it?”

  “My mother.”

  Another long silence, and then a totally unexpected question. “Is she all right?”

  “No. Not all right at all-”

  From out of the darkness a body pounced on me and pinned me to the floor, leaving me spitting straw and with both my arms twisted behind me. His elbow encircled my neck. “Damnation, you didn’t kill her? If you killed her, you are dead this instant. I don’t care whose friend you are, or how great a sorcerer you are, I’ll break your neck. Don’t think I can’t do it.”

  He was wild and furious, and I almost believed he could do it. “She’s not dead. Just a prisoner. How do you-? Let me up. I won’t hurt you. I swear I won’t. Damn, you know her! You came here with her, didn’t you?” I twisted around and shoved him off me. Then I felt my way back to the wall, sat up, and brushed the straw off my face.

  “I came just after. She don’t know I’m here. But I’ve promised- Curse every bit of this place. I’ve promised- Oh, shit, shit, shit!” I hoped he hadn’t broken his fist when he slammed it into the wall of the horse box.

  “Why did you come here? Why did she come here? Don’t lie to me.”

  “We came to get you. To take you back.”

  “To destroy me?”

  “Destroy you? Why in the name of perdition would the Lady Seri want to hurt you? She grieved herself to death for you and your da for all those years, living in Dunfarrie where there was only such as me for company, and the very day she figures out who you are, you get snatched out from under her nose. She picks up and chases you through the mountains in the winter, and to a new world where she’s like to get herself killed, then follows you into this cursed place, and you think she wants to hurt you?”

  “She wanted vengeance on her brother. She didn’t know I was her son.”

  “It’s true she didn’t at first. She didn’t want to stay at Comigor, but do you know why she did? Because everyone thought you were loony. She wanted to help you because she loved her brother, but she came to love you, too. She only put all the clues together after you was gone. She about went crazy.”

  “That’s not right. She brought Prince D’Natheil to Comigor to kill me, and Lucy, and Mama’s baby… for her revenge.”

  “The Prince was getting his head put back together. He’d been half crazy for months. He didn’t even remember she was his wife until that day in the council chamber. He couldn’t look at her without his head trying to bust open. Don’t you know anything? I know… knew… the Prince, and he never ever would kill an old lady or a child, whether it was his own or not. He never would. You don’t know what all he did for me who was an ignorant nobody he’d no reason to look at, much less care for.”

  My head was about to twist inside out with the confusion. “He killed my father… Tomas… the man I believed to be my father.”

  “It was Zhid magic what killed Duke Tomas.”

  “How do you know? Why do you think anyone would tell you the truth?”

  “Nobody told me nothing. I was there. I saw it.”

  This was impossible. “I don’t
believe you.”

  “Look in my head. Can’t you tell what’s real and what somebody planted there? What good is all this sorcery if you can’t figure out when a person is telling you the truth?”

  “I could tell.”

  “Then do it. We’ve got to save the Lady Seri. I owe her and the Prince most everything, and to stop me trying to save her, you’ll have to kill me first, so you’d best get on with it.”

  I fumbled about in the dark until I found his head, and I put my hands on the sides of it and told him to think of anything he wanted to tell me. Only that. By the time I pulled my hands away, I knew everything the Leiran boy knew from the time he first met Seri in Dunfarrie until the day my father, the Prince, had slit himself open so I couldn’t be corrupted by killing him. The Leiran boy wouldn’t tell me anything else-about how he got to Zhev’Na or how they planned to get me out. He wouldn’t think about the Prince, except how kind he was, and how he just couldn’t believe the man was really dead. But it was enough, and I could look no further anyway. Never had any injury hurt so much as the truth.

  “Hey, are you all right?”

  I couldn’t answer him. It was not all right. It could never be all right. I was able to add so many things he couldn’t know. The Lords were going to win. They had made me into what they wanted, and now I’d given them the very piece that would ensure their victory-a hold on me. They hated my mother as much as they hated the Prince. Maybe more. I almost laughed. I’d been wrong about every single thing in my whole life, blind long before my evil starting eating my eyes away. The Leiran boy had seen so clearly. He had asked how I could think the Prince had killed Lucy when I had only seen his knife in my dreams. But Darzid had twisted my dreams from the beginning.

  A rustling in the straw. The Leiran boy had gone. Just as well. I would most likely betray him, too. But before I realized what was happening, a smear of light appeared in the horse box. I turned away, but not quickly enough.

  “Blazing demons!” He pulled my face back around. “What did they do to you?”

  I shoved him backward. “It’ll go away.” But it wouldn’t. Not ever.