Guardians Of The Keep tbod-2

by Carol Berg

  “How dare you speak to me?” said Gerick, spinning to face him, stepping forward.

  “How dare? It’s how dare you.” Paulo waved his sword wildly at Karon’s plight. “Do you see what’s happening?”

  “I see everything.” Gerick stepped closer.

  Suddenly Paulo threw the weapon to the floor, and with the flat of his hand on Gerick’s chest, he shoved Gerick backward. “You’re doing this, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t touch me.” Gerick did not raise his hand, but his rage swelled, fury that made the air shiver.

  “This is just what you said you’d do. It’s going to be killing and nothing but killing forever.”

  “Try me, horse boy. Do you think you could possibly take me down?”

  “For the Prince, I could. For the Lady Seri, I could.” With each phrase, Paulo shoved Gerick again and again, until Gerick stumbled, and Paulo threw himself on top of him. The two crashed to the floor.

  “Paulo, don’t!” I yelled, frantically trying to pull him away before Gerick could turn his power on him.

  “Mighty Lords!” Madyalar let out a ferocious cry. “The young Prince!”

  A roar like a hurricane blasted the room. A torrent of darkness swirled about us, ripping the light, dancing, screaming, tearing at clothes and hair, flaying us with its power. The air itself vented its anger; the stones about us groaned with the whirling tumult.

  Kill the insolent fool, Lord Dieste! bellowed Parven, almost splitting my skull. Blind him! Take his heart and eat it!

  Burn his skin away for daring to touch you-then taste of his pain! said Notole. Use the power to destroy these vermin who would enslave you.

  Dread and horror gnawed at my soul, clouding my senses, threatening to tear my heart from my breast. An unseen hand slammed me backward. I could scarcely see as the two boys rolled on the floor, grunting and gasping, clawing and twisting each other in a tangle of robes and arms and legs and tunics. One and then the other was on top, Paulo pummeling away wildly, Gerick snarling and cursing, twisting Paulo’s limbs until they must surely break. He’s going to be dead, I thought-dear, faithful Paulo. My very soul felt bruised. The fury raged without slack… without end… slashing… battering… until Gerick staggered to his feet at last, leaving Paulo in a crumpled heap.

  Silence. Utter. Complete. The tempest ceased. Thunder vanished. No clash of swords. No heaving breath. No flashes of lurid light from under the colonnade.

  Madyalar screeched and chortled, extending her finger toward the still forms sprawled on the shining floor. “Four lie dead! The mad Prince has fallen!”

  Gerick’s turned his head this way and that, his diamond eyes glittering in the uncertain light, as Madyalar knelt before him, dipping her finger in the gold case she had taken from Exeget’s robes. “My Prince, give me your hands. Let me anoint them with the true oil of silestia.”

  But, of course, it was not the true oil…

  I could not allow it. Not even here at the end of everything. He was my son. “No!” I cried. “Gerick, don’t let her touch you!”

  The very same moment another voice cried out. “Wait!” Karon stepped from behind a pillar just behind us, his sword shining a brilliant green. “Still no good, Madyalar. You’ve miscounted-forgetting your own colleague. Exeget has won the last round between you.”

  The woman gaped.

  “Now, quickly!” Karon threw down his sword, closed his eyes, and held out his hands, and with his deep and shaking breath, his whispered word, and a grinding rumble as if the earth had split open, a portal gaped before us. This shimmering doorway did not open into some gracious lamplit room, nor even into a cold stone council chamber, but into a pit of absolute blackness from which came sounds so fearful as to make the strongest heart blanch. This is why they had risked sending Karon to Zhev’Na. With all portals to Avonar shut down, only the Heir of D’Arnath could open another way. This way. Through the Breach itself.

  Karon touched my hand. “We need to go now. Gerick, you must come with us. I’ll carry Paulo.”

  My son’s arms were wrapped about his middle. His terrible eyes pierced the gloom. So fragile in his darkness. So young.

  The Lords’ wrath spun and surged around us. Footsteps rang on the stone beyond the great doors. They were coming.

  “Ah, holy gods…” Karon’s voice broke. “We will not leave you here. If you stay… I will fight them until the last day of the world to set you free. I swear it.”

  “And I with him,” I said, shaping the story yet again in my mind and heart, willing him to hear me. You have been blessed and beloved from the day we first knew you…

  “Take care of Paulo, Seri. Get him out of the way.” As Karon retrieved his sword, I stepped to the battered boy on the floor.

  “Wait!” Gerick held out one hand in warning. The world paused in its turning… and then, with his other hand, he reached out to Paulo.

  Paulo’s eyes blinked open. He grabbed Gerick’s hand, staggered to his feet, and leaned on my son’s shoulder, grinning through his swollen eyes and bloodied lips. “We’d best go then. Lead on, my lord. We’ll be right behind.”

  The creases of worry and grief graven on Karon’s blood-streaked face softened. For one moment he took my hand, his own wide hand near crushing my fingers. “As you say. Stay close, all of you.”

  And as the raging fury of the Lords erupted behind us, and Madyalar crumpled to the floor, howling as Exeget’s poison ate its way into her body, Karon led the three of us into the Breach between the worlds.

  CHAPTER 45

  We could not travel D’Arnath’s Bridge through the Breach, for no Gate or entry point existed in Zhev’Na. We had to traverse chaos itself. Karon led the way through the directionless tumult, his bare, blood-streaked arms stretched out in front of him, palms outward. No solid path lay beneath our feet. Although his power enfolded us, creating a small island of stability that allowed us to move forward, he could not shelter us completely from the grotesque visions, the unending wails of souls lost in madness, the unnamed terrors that bit at our heels and nibbled at our minds until we dared not let ourselves blink lest they fall upon us.

  Yet hope beyond belief bolstered my resolution, and Paulo’s grin shone like a lighthouse lantern in the gloom. Though hot rain lashed our skin, and the screaming and wailing tore at our souls, we flailed and yelled with joyous ferocity at the monstrous birds that flew screeching at our eyes, pressing on behind Karon as if nothing could harm us.

  Gerick’s terrible eyes glittered in the fantastical light and his black robes billowed in the howling gales, until he looked like another of the grotesque creatures that pursued us through that horror. But his steps dragged, so I offered Paulo my shoulder to lean on instead of his. Left alone, Gerick huddled into himself, hunching his shoulders, bowing his head, each step a visible struggle. Soon he had slowed almost to stopping, as if the tether binding him to Zhev’Na had stretched as far as it could. A towering tidal wave of mud was bearing down on him from one side.

  “Karon!” I screamed over the tumult.

  Karon, the wind whipping his bloody tunic about him, turned and saw what was happening. He closed his eyes and swept his arms around and upward, a surge of power holding back the deluge long enough for Gerick to catch up with us. As we moved forward again, Karon kept Gerick at his side, using his own body to shield Gerick from the horrors that escaped his enchantments.

  The struggle was more than physical. Hour after hour, I heard Karon talking, encouraging, battling. “Hold, my son. No, this is not your place… I’ll not leave you. Don’t listen. Surely the enchantments of this place fear you because someday you will have power over them. They smell it in you and wish to make you afraid…”

  Soon every step required a monstrous effort. We trudged through a hideous stew of stinking mud and pale, solid objects that looked like parts of bodies or beasts. We were shivering and nauseated, battered and bleeding, our cocoon becoming very thin.

  “The Lords hound you so sor
ely because they know they have failed,” Karon gasped, as he helped Gerick across a roaring river of black water. “You held back a part of yourself, and they didn’t think you could. You are stronger- much stronger-than they believed… Take whatever you need of me. They cannot follow us here. They cannot touch you here. Endure and you will be free. I swear it upon my life. You will be free of them…”

  As the hours passed, my arms grew too heavy to lift, and so my only defense against a hail of burning rocks was to turn and let them hit my back. Paulo’s grin had long faded, and even Karon’s voice fell silent as bitter rain lashed our raw skin.

  Gerick stumbled. Half bent forward, holding his head, he gave an agonized cry and crumpled into the morass.

  “Keep moving,” said Karon in a hoarse whisper, as he gathered Gerick into his arms and staggered onward. “She’s out there. But if I stop… can’t find her… can’t hear…”

  I didn’t understand him. A shivering Paulo and I clung to each other, supported, dragged, and prodded each other to take each step. We dared not lose sight of Karon through the murk.

  My thoughts slipped into villainous dreaming: of the sewing women, of the slave pen, of Ziddari’s blood-red eyes watching my husband burn. The vicious screams of the crowd, the stench as the flames consumed his mutilated body… all seemed as real as the day I lived them. Then Gerick was burning in the marketplace… No, no, I cried, you have been beloved from the day we knew you… And the executioner’s fire became the flames of the Gate-fire where Giano the Zhid had dragged me into madness to force the Prince of Avonar to destroy the Bridge.

  On that terrible, glorious day, Karon had called me back to him, over and over again. Seri, love… stay close… come back… On this day, I heard him again, so clearly above the tumult. The voice from the vision of my past. Frayed. Worried. At the limit of his endurance. Almost there… soon, love… hold on…

  All of them lost…Tears flowed and merged with the hot rivers of blood and fire, and I was alone again… dead again… empty again…

  Another voice. Follow my thread, my lord. Can you feel it? Hold on, I’ll guide you in… “Seri, follow my voice… Is it really you?”

  “… Oh, my lord Prince… Ce’na davonet, Giré D’Arnath… and the most excellent boy… and my dear lady… Vasrin Creator be praised for his glories… Vasrin Shaper be thanked for her mercies…”

  “Paulo, child, how I’ve missed you… and Seri… oh, goddess mother, Seri, what’s happened to him?”

  Kind voices, gentle hands… blankets… cool, sweet water… brandy that scalded my throat and seared my stomach… I could hear and feel them, but I could not see and could not answer for the fire and desolation in my eyes. Then the horrific visions were brushed away, as if with some sweet magic, and I slept without dreams, except for one of strong arms that held me close as if they would never let me go. When I woke on a crisp green morning alone in my blanket, I wept, for I thought those strong arms had been only a dream.

  CHAPTER 46

  Paulo

  I never heard of nobody from Dunfarrie ever having an adventure. Old Jacopo, the Lady Seri’s friend and mine, who was killed by the Zhid-he’d been a sailor, and that was something that was talked about for a long time. But he told me about sailoring, and it didn’t sound no different from working in a stable or on a farm. Work all day and half the night, bad food and never enough, folks yelling at you to do this or do that. But I guess Jacopo loved sailoring the way some folks love farming, or the way I take to horse-keeping, and that made the difference. As for adventure, though, my travels with the Prince and the Lady Seri beat all he could tell, but I’d had just about all a person could take of it.

  Thanks to the Prince, we’d come back safe to the green world all together again. I recognized the place where we came out of the doorway in the rock, even though it was daytime and spring instead of night and winter like it was when we’d gone through it before. We weren’t two leagues from Avonar-the dead one-and the cave in the rock was the one where we’d followed the Prince through the Gate-fire into the magic city. Kellea had guided us to the portal with her finding magic, and she and the Dulcé Bareil were waiting for us. I wanted to kiss every blade of grass, wallow in the streams, and eat Bareil’s cooking until my belly popped from it.

  Saving the Prince had been a near thing. I just barely heard the Prince’s call in my head when I was combing Firebreather on that night, wondering if the young master was going to come for me or not. The Prince was half asleep-half dead actually-because the Lords had put a spell on everyone in the Gray House, sending them to sleep so they would never wake up. The Prince had figured it out almost too late. He’d managed to get loose of his chains with his new-grown magic, but I’d found him trying to drag himself out of the fencing yard and not making a good job of it at all. I had to get him away from the house and help him stay awake until the spell wore off. That’s why we were late and the young master ended up in such a wicked way. But between us all, we’d gotten loose of the Lords and through the Breach, and I’d never been so thankful for anything in my life.

  I think I slept for a whole day straight through after Kellea dragged us through the Gate and the cave. I might have done longer-I’m good at sleeping-but the Prince woke me up. “Paulo, how are you this morning?” He was crouched down by me, whispering. He looked wicked tired. The Lady Serf was rolled in a blanket, sleeping close by the fire.

  “I got no complaints. Except-”

  “You’re hungry, right?”

  I never knew somebody could smile with his whole self like the Prince, even when he was worn flat and worried.

  “Are you looking in my head?”

  “No need. Friends know these things about each other. Bareil has hot porridge over there, but once you’ve eaten, I need your help.” Never thought I’d hear a prince say that to me. Made me being hungry not near so important. “I need you to stay with Gerick a while.”

  “How is he? Have you…?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve not been able to help him yet. I’ve looked at him a bit and tried a few things, but I’ll need everything I can muster to attempt it. So, I’ve got to sleep for a while. But I don’t want him left alone. Seri isn’t going to wake for hours yet, and he doesn’t know Kellea or Bareil.”

  “Sure, I’ll come. Is he awake then?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure he can sleep any more. He’s not eaten or drunk or anything since we’ve come here. And he’s spoken not a word. Hardly moved.” The Prince rubbed his head. “Get yourself something to eat, then come to us.”

  They had pitched a tent under the trees to shelter the young master. Bareil said they were keeping it dark inside as he seemed a little easier in the dark. All I could see at first were two white lights. Then, as I got used to the dark, I saw him sitting up in the corner, huddled up to his knees, his hands clenched into tight fists. The white lights were the jewels they had given him for eyes.

  The Prince sat beside him, watching, talking to him quiet-like. I didn’t know whether to say anything or not, but the Prince looked up and smiled. “Come in, Paulo. I’ve told Gerick that you’re going to be with him for a while. Bareil will wake me at sunset. Call me instantly if you need anything.” He laid his hand on the young master’s head. “We’ll take care of you,” he said, and then he left us alone.

  I wasn’t sure whether I ought to talk or not. My usual is not to say anything unless I have to. More troubles can happen to you from talking too much than from not. But the young master and I had done some talking in Zhev’Na, and even though he was thinking he was going to be a Lord and had to make himself hard and alone so as not to hurt anybody by it, we had a time or two. If we’d both been born low, or both high, then one might say we’d come to be friends.

  There at the last, when I thought he’d for sure turned himself evil and was killing the Prince with his magic, I went crazy and jumped him, expecting he would blast me to the ceiling-and half hoping he would. But he talked in my head, t
he way the sorcerers do, and told me to keep hitting him hard. He said that if the Lords were to get distracted then maybe the Prince would have a chance to stay alive. He kept telling me he was sorry, so sorry, that he hadn’t understood that V’Saro was the Prince until too late, and that he’d never meant for the Lords to kill V’Saro or me. He said he couldn’t hardly feel anything any more, except that he couldn’t let us die-the Prince and the lady… and me. While we wrestled there on that glass floor, I talked back to him the way Kellea had taught me. I said that none of us would leave him in that wicked place.

  And I told him that if he could keep that one bit of feeling he had left, then maybe he could find all his other feelings again. I was as surprised as the Prince and the lady when he pulled me up off the floor and came with us. But now it looked like he was in a worse fix than he was before.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” I said, squatting down beside him in the tent. “I thought you’d be all right if we got you out. Shows you what an ignorant horse-keeper knows.”

  It was just odd talking to him when you could see only part of his real face, the rest of it that mask. He couldn’t blink or show that he heard you at all. But I went on babbling about horses and such stuff, thinking it might be as well if he had something to think on that wasn’t fearful. He was terrible afraid. So bad it was killing him. The Prince didn’t have to tell me that. The tent was busting with his fear.

  When the Prince came back at sunset, he carried a handful of linen and a small leather case. I was eating some jack Bareil had brought me, and I offered to share it. The Prince shook his head. “I can’t yet. It’s that stuff they fed us-the graybread. It’s fixed it where anything else makes me sick. I’ll have to find something later.”

  He set down the linen and his case. “Right now we have to take care of Gerick. Light the lamp, if you would.”