Guardians of the Keep

by Carol Berg

  My robe was drenched with sweat. Shaking, chilled, I stepped back from the fallen artifact that lay so innocently on the floor. Once I’d found Dassine, I would come back for it. “Dassine! Are you here?” I called. No answer.

  Two doors opened out of the lectorium. One led into the garden, the other to a short flight of steps and the passage that took one into the main part of the rambling house. Taking the second, I wandered down the passageways, peering into the rooms to either side. Dassine was nowhere in the house. I wandered back to the lectorium, stopping in the kitchen long enough to grab a chunk of bread, a slab of ham, and two pears from the larder. As I sat at the worktable and ate the bread and ham, I stared at the odd device that lay on the floor and hovered so disturbingly on the peripheries of my thoughts. What could be the purpose of such a thing?

  Karon . . .

  I almost missed it. The call was half audible and half in my mind, and its origin was behind the second door, the door to the garden. Fool! I hadn’t looked there. I yanked the door open. Tangled in his cloak, Dassine lay huddled against the wall, a trail of blood-streaked snow stretching behind him to the garden gate. His lips were blue, and only the barest breath moved his chest and the bloody wound that gaped there.

  “Oh, gods, Dassine!” I carried him into the study and laid him on the couch by the cold hearth. With a word and the flick of my fingers, the pile of twigs and ash in the fireplace burst into flames, and I bundled him in everything I could find that might warm him. He shuddered, and his eyes flew open. Blood seeped from his chest. Too much of it.

  A knife . . . I needed a knife and a strip of linen.

  “No!” The old man gripped my wrist. “I forbid it! I need to tell you—”

  “But I can heal you,” I said. “The power is in me.” Even as I spoke I gathered power . . . from my fear . . . from the bitter winter . . . from the pain and awe and terror of my vision. I just needed to make the link. . . .

  “No use. No time.” His voice was harsh and low, broken with strident breaths. “Listen to me. They have the child.”

  “What child? Why—?”

  “No time . . . everything is changed. Your only task . . . find the child. Save him. Only one . . . only one can help. . . .” His words came ragged . . . desperate . . . “Bareil . . . your guide . . .”

  “Who’s done this to you?” I would not listen to words that rang so of finality. “Tell me who.” And when I knew, that one would die.

  “No, no, fool! Leave it be. If they take . . . boy to Zhev’Na, then . . . oh, curse it all . . . no time . . . the only way . . .” He faltered, choking as blood bubbled out of the corner of his mouth. I thought he was gone, but he snarled and forced the words past his clenched jaw. “If they take the boy to Zhev’Na, give yourself . . . to the Preceptorate.”

  “But—”

  “Go defenseless. Tell them . . . ready to be examined. Let it play out. The only way. The only way . . .” His cold hand touched my face tenderly, his voice sunk to a ferocious whisper, his eyes boring holes in my own. “Dearest son, do not use the crystal. Not until you are whole, and you have the boy. Promise me.”

  “Dassine—”

  “Promise me!” he bellowed, grabbing my robe and raising himself off the cushions.

  “Yes, yes, I promise.”

  He jerked his head and sagged onto the cushions, his eyelids heavy, the grip on my robe relaxing. I did not beg or argue or rage about how little I understood. He had no strength to remedy my ignorance. But his finger fluttered against my arm, and I bent close to hear him. With a sighing breath, he whispered, “Trust me.” And then he breathed no more.

  My friend, my mentor, my keeper. Without thought of Bridge or worlds or any of the larger consequences of his passing, I held the old man in my arms until the sun was high. Though keeping vigil with the dead for half a day was the Dar’Nethi custom, love, not custom, compelled me to stay with him. Dassine had willingly forfeited every last drop of his life’s essence to give me his instruction. No Healer could bring him back before he crossed the Verges.

  Eventually, I laid Dassine in his garden, hacking at the frozen ground until my arms could scarcely raise pick or shovel. When I was done, I sat beside the grave, sweat and anger hardening into ice. I tried to recall everything he’d said, while trying to ignore how empty the world had become.

  It is said that those who live long in close companionship come to anticipate each other’s words and actions, and even that one of the pair comes to resemble the other in physical appearance. If such were true, then surely when I next looked in a glass, I would see wild, gray-streaked eyebrows sprouting from my face. Only now did I realize how closely bound our minds had been. Lacking his abundant presence, my thoughts felt thin and watery. Whatever else I retrieved of the years still missing, I vowed to learn someday how we had become so close.

  So what to do? Nothing made sense. I could believe Dassine’s last words were the product of delirium had it been anyone but Dassine who voiced them. A mysterious child to be saved from someone I didn’t know. Someone named Bareil to guide me. No doubt that I needed help, but who was Bareil and where was he to be found? I had heard his name before . . . yes, the brandy. “Bareil’s best.” Dassine had spoken as if I should know him, but I’d met no one in Avonar save the Preceptors, the six . . .

  No . . . a seventh person had been in that room when I met the Preceptors—a Dulcé. So perhaps he didn’t mean an ordinary guide, but a madrissé. With their strange intellectual limitations, Dulcé on their own did not figure in the equations of power in Gondai. But a Dulcé could give a Dar’Nethi a significant advantage in life’s games by placing his immense capacity for knowledge at that person’s service. When a Dulcé bound himself in this rare and privi leged relationship, he was called a madrissé, one whose knowledge and insights could guide the Dar’Nethi in decision-making. Bareil was likely Dassine’s madrissé. He would have been the other presence I had felt in Dassine’s house, the note-taker, the user of the third bowl, the one who would drink brandy with Dassine while I was enraptured with candlelight and the past. He could hold a number of answers, if only I could find him. To imagine it was a comfort.

  In the matter of the crystal, I had to follow Dassine’s judgment. From the corner of my mind where I had pushed the unsettling experience, the fingers of light beckoned dangerously, causing my blood to churn. When I was whole, Dassine had said, implying that such was still possible. The crystal, whatever it was, would have to wait. I had promised him.

  As for his command to give myself to the Preceptorate, I was confounded. For how many days had Dassine fumed about my offer to be examined, warning me to stay away from the Preceptors’ multitudinous deceptions? Now he told me that circumstance might demand I surrender to the Preceptorate while yet incomplete. Defenseless . . . helpless. The world would surely crack at their first probe, and they would judge me mad . . . or Zhid. Was that what he wanted? If not for his last words, I would have dismissed it entirely. Trust, in this matter, was very difficult.

  “I thank you for my life, old man,” I said, as I took my leave of the snowy garden. “But I mislike being a pawn in a dead man’s game. However will I hold you to account for it?”

  I returned to the silent house warily. The house would surely have formidable wards, the masterful illusion that hid my room but one example. But Dassine’s enemies would themselves be formidable, and they would know that Dassine was severely weakened if not dead. As I was so unsure of my own strength, it seemed sensible to take whatever might be useful and leave Dassine’s house as quickly as possible. Then I could watch and confront the murderers on my own terms. Not friendly terms.

  Rummaging about the kitchen, I located a capacious rucksack. Careful not to touch the black crystal itself, I wrapped the unsettling artifact in a small towel and stuffed it into the bottom of the bag. I didn’t question the motive that made me make sure of it before anything else. Next I searched the room for something I knew would never be far from D
assine’s hand. Indeed, the small leather case sat on the shelf by the door. Inside it lay an exquisitely sharp, palm-length knife with a curved blade—a Healer’s knife—and in a separate compartment, a narrow strip of linen, scarcely less fine than a spider’s web. For a moment I felt almost whole. I put the case in the pack.

  Next went in the flask of “Bareil’s best” and the two pears I had not eaten earlier. From the larder I grabbed enough food for at least a day—a considerable amount since I was still ravenous. Clothes were more difficult. Dassine had given me nothing but the white wool robe. Citizens of Avonar who specialized in the study of sorcery wore traditional scholars’ garb—loose robes and sandals or slippers. Warriors, tradesmen, those who tended gardens and fields, the Dulcé, and most others wore garments more like those to which I was accustomed: shirts or tunics, breeches, leggings, and boots. I didn’t wish to proclaim myself a scholar—far from it. But I was more than two heads taller than Dassine. His more ordinary garments would do nothing to make me inconspicuous. Clothing would have to wait.

  Money would be useful, but I had no idea where any might be. Masses of notes and manuscripts cluttered the house, some relevant to my situation, I had no doubt, but I’d no time to sort through them. Perhaps this Bareil would know what was valuable, if I could find him.

  The instincts and habits I had so recently redeveloped from my memories of hiding from the law prodded me to move, to get away from the place my enemies expected me to be. My teeth were on edge, and despite the paltry supplies in the pack, I was ready to bolt.

  But just as I hefted the pack, quiet footsteps sounded in the passageway from the house. I flattened myself to the wall beside the doorway, realizing at the same time that I had forgotten to acquire a most important piece of equipment—a weapon. I—Karon—had never carried a weapon, yet my hand demanded a blade. The Healer’s knife was too small, and it was unthinkable to use an instrument designed for healing to harm another person.

  But I was out of time. The sneaking villain tiptoed down the lectorium steps. I glimpsed a dagger in a bloody hand. Stupid brute. I grabbed his wrist and dragged him off balance. Remembering Dassine and the jagged wound in his chest, I was not gentle. I wrapped one arm about his neck and twisted his arm behind his back until his weapon clattered to the floor.

  “Did you think to finish your work or simply add another to your tally?” I growled in his ear. Tightening my grip on his throat, I snatched the dagger from the floor, vowing to rip him open the same way he had murdered Dassine.

  “Help Master Dassine . . . please.” The man, small and light, went limp in my arms. An amateur’s ploy. He deserved to die. But even as I poised the dagger at his belly, I noted the color of his skin . . . a creamy brown like strong tea with milk in it. Slender oval face. Dark eyes the shape of almonds. A Dulcé . . . I lowered the knife and shifted him in my arms. Black, straight hair cut short around his ears. A trim beard. An ageless face, his lips mortally pale. Holy gods, he was the one, the seventh person in the room with the Preceptors! And his slight body was bleeding from no less than ten stab wounds. Whoever had taken a blade to him had wanted to make sure. I laid him on the couch still wet with Dassine’s blood, grabbed the leather case from the pack, and pulled out the knife and the strip of linen.

  No sorcery can blunt the pain of a Healer’s knife. To cut your own flesh and mingle your blood with that of your patient is the only truly effective way to unleash your Healer’s power. And pain is part of the working every bit as much as the words that open your mind to the light of the universe, as much as the gathering of power that lies hidden in the recesses of your being, as much as the smell of blood. Pain opens the door to the heightened senses needed for putting right what is wrong, a connection that binds Healer to patient more intimately than any strip of white linen.

  The first time I had drawn a knife across my arm, on the day when I was desperate to save my dying brother and did not know I was a Healer, I had tried to ignore the hurt, to link myself with Christophe’s broken body unscathed by my own senses. Surely a true Healer would be inured to pain, I thought, fearing that the tears that threatened and the cry that escaped me on that day were signs that I was nothing of what I needed to be. I struggled for so long that my brother’s soul almost fled beyond the Verges before I could see the truth—that his senses were blocked to me as long as were my own. When the insight came and I released my control . . . only then did I share the realm of the other, allowed to see the shattered bones, feel the torn tissue, and hear the ragged heartbeat that had to be put right. There was no getting used to it, even after so many years. The magnificence of the whole more than compensates—a thousandfold is not too large a reckoning—but it is a truth that experienced Healers do not cry out, yet neither do they smile as they begin their work.

  CHAPTER 10

  There is no sense of time passing when one is engaged in the art of healing. You could count heartbeats, but there are usually more important matters to deal with, such as reconnecting damaged blood vessels or destroying the toxins that flock to the site of a wound like ravening vultures. So when I triggered the enchantment that would close the incision on my arm and slipped the knot that bound my arm to that of the injured Dulcé, I didn’t know how long he had been staring at me.

  “Ce’na davonet, Giré D’Arnath,” he said, quietly. All honor to you, Heir of D’Arnath. “And my gratitude for that which can never be repaid.”

  “Your name is Bareil?” I asked.

  He nodded tiredly. “Clearly Vasrin Shaper has a place in her heart for the foolish and disobedient, else I’d not be here to answer to it.”

  “You’re fortunate that I’d not picked up a weapon. I was sure you were one of the murderers, come to confirm their work . . . or add me to their tally.”

  Though his voice and demeanor were steady, the Dulcé’s eyes filled with tears. “Then he was able to get back here. You know what happened.”

  “I know nothing that makes any sense. Only that he’s dead. Tell me who did this . . . if you’re able, of course.”

  Dulcé have an immense capacity for knowledge and an extraordinary ability to search, analyze, and connect what they know into useful patterns of information. But only a small amount of their knowledge is usable at any particular time, so that a Dulcé might know the names of every star in the heavens on one day, but no more than two or three on the next, or have only the vaguest recollection of a name in one hour, but recall the entire history of the person in the next. A Dar’Nethi who is fortunate enough to be linked to a Dulcé in the rite of the madris can command any bit of that information to the front of the Dulcé’s mind where it can be used. Because I had not been linked to Bareil, I had only royal authority, no power to control his mind.

  “You’ll find I have a somewhat larger threshold of knowledge than most Dulcé, my lord, and I will most certainly provide you with all that I am able”—the Dulcé’s frown was not at all reassuring—“but if, as you so wisely assume, those who killed my madrisson will want you next, then we must be away from here as soon as possible. And I’ve had to breach the house defenses to get back inside. I hope my folly will not cost us the way.”

  “I was on my way out when you came,” I said, and told him of my attempts at preparation.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “There are a few things here that you must have. I’ll get them.” He struggled to get up, but I kept a firm hand on his chest.

  “You’ve lost a great deal of blood, Dulcé—a condition my skills cannot reverse. Tell me what we need, and I’ll get it.”

  He settled into the cushion. “As you say, my lord. First, in the wooden drawer case, the lower drawer, under the glass pipes and sharpening stones, you’ll find a small pink stone, cold to the touch . . . yes, that’s it. You must guard it carefully. I cannot emphasize it enough.”

  I shoved the stone in the pack. “What else?”

  “Money—I’ll get that on our way out. Clothes—you underestimate us, my lord. If you would
open the door of the chemist’s cabinet . . .”

  Well, it looked like a chemist’s cabinet—a tall wooden structure with glass doors. Through the glass you could see shelves of jars and flasks, small vials of blue and purple, boxes, pipes, and brass burners. Nothing of interest. Only, when I opened the door and looked inside, all the paraphernalia had vanished, and I found a tidy wardrobe filled with an array of clothing that could never have fit Dassine.

  “Mine?” I said.

  “I believe they may happen to fit you properly.” When I looked askance at the reclining Dulcé, a spark in his eyes and a set of his mouth echoed the good humor I had noted in our earlier encounter. I shed my white robe, the front of it stiff with blood, and quickly donned a nondescript brown shirt, soft leather breeches and vest, and woolen leggings, all exactly the right size. As I pulled on a pair of doeskin boots, exactly my measure and so well made that my feet did not protest even after four shoeless months, I said, “You have Dassine’s knack for avoiding answers.”

  “I have been Master Dassine’s madrissé for thirty years. He entrusted me with his knowledge and his purposes. If you so desire, I will submit to the madris and allow you to command me, but I must and will refuse you in anything that contradicts Master Dassine’s wishes as I understand them. Is my position clear, my lord?” He eased the blunt edge of his words with a delightful smile.

  “Bareil, the assurance that someone knows what, in the name of all that lives, is going on with me is such a delight that I’ll cheerfully respect whatever boundaries you set.” I pulled a heavy wool cloak from the wardrobe. “And now, perhaps we should leave this place before those who are destroying the doors upstairs can find us.”

  A loud thumping reminiscent of an earthquake resounded from the upper levels of the house.

  “Quickly, before we go. In the very back of the wardrobe,” said the Dulcé, grunting as he shoved his legs off the couch.