by Carol Berg
“Why would the Zhid want a child of your world?” Karon asked. “You say your brother was a noble, and a worthy swordsman, and a close ally of your king, but he was not Dar’Nethi. I can’t see why Dassine would consider this particular abduction to be so much more worrisome than any other.”
And this, of course, was where the difficulty lay. Bareil came to my rescue. “My lord, I wonder. . . . You remember when I told you of the Zhid’s delight in taking children, raising them in Zhev’Na, and thereby creating their most formidable captains?”
Karon dipped his head, his brows knit in puzzlement.
“What if they have decided that with this child, the noble son of this world’s most potent warrior, they could do something the same? Create a Zhid warrior of the mundane world to command the Zhid hosts if they were to find some way to transport Zhid across the Bridge? Such would be a terrible blow to those of this world who would try to resist.”
And how much worse it would be if that commander held the power of the Heir. . . .
Karon nodded slightly. “Could that be what was written in the note, ‘the Third lives and has the prize he has always wanted’?”
Bareil was slow in responding to Karon’s question, and Karon glanced up at him sharply. “Detan detu, madrissé. Do you know the meaning of this phrase?”
But the Dulcé did not retreat at Karon’s show of impatience. “I cannot answer you, my lord. Forgive me.”
Before Karon could reply, someone burst through the curtain of blinding sunlight at the mouth of the cave.
“We’ve got to get out of here. They’re com—Fires of Annadis! D’Natheil!”
Karon was on his feet, already poised to strike, sword in one hand, silver dagger in the other.
“Hold, my lord!” I cried. “She’s our friend. Your friend. Kellea, what is it?”
The Dar’Nethi girl kept her eyes on the unwavering blades and her hands well away from her own weapons. “Bandits. Five or six, at least, halfway down from the summit. They’ll be here in half an hour, and from what I saw, they’re not anyone we would like to meet. They fell on a pair of travelers up the pass. Stole the poor sods’ clothes and boots and chased them naked through the snow. Played them for sport, wounding them a little worse each time, then letting them loose again until they butchered them. Earth’s bones, I never saw such savagery. If I’d not been alone . . .”
“I’ll get the horses,” I said.
“But perhaps I’ve got help now,” said Kellea, grinning at Karon and lowering her hands as he lowered his weapon. “The Prince and I could rid the world of the beasts. And we wouldn’t have to move Paulo.”
“The Prince has healed Paulo,” I said. “If we can make it down to the trees, the bandits won’t find us.” We had no time for this. No resources to spare.
“Wake the boy and get you gone—all of you.” Karon’s quiet self-assurance—or was it D’Natheil’s?—implied the discussion was ended. “I’ll take care of the vermin and join you down the road.”
“Indeed you will not,” I said. “Dassine gave you a task to do.” No purposeless gesture was going to endanger the life of my child.
“Such brutes must not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their crimes.”
He stepped toward Kellea and the cave mouth, but I dodged into his path, blocking the exit. “This is not your business,” I said. “If you set out to right every wrong in this land, you’ll be as old as D’Arnath before you’ve even begun.”
“But I can take care of this one,” he said, trying to step past me.
I didn’t budge. “Your responsibilities are far more important than petty vengeance.”
Anger flared in his blue eyes. “My responsibilities are with me every moment. I must do what I think is right.”
Like lightning in a dry forest, his words sparked such a blaze of anger in me that I lost all caution. “You must do what is most important! The child you were sent to save is two days’ journey ahead of us, perhaps more than that by now. His safety is your responsibility. Nothing else. You will not abandon him to his fate, not this time.”
“Madam, please . . . have a care. . . .” Bareil stepped in between Karon and me.
But caution deserted me, refusing to quench my fury. “As for the rest of us, Kellea must lead you to the child, and Bareil holds the keys to your reason. They cannot be put at risk. Paulo and I are the only ones who can be spared to aid you, and I’ll carry Paulo down this mountain on my back before I’ll allow you to sacrifice another life to your moral certainties. We will go down now. All of us.”
Karon stared at me, as white and still as if I’d stabbed him. His sword slipped from his hand into the dirt. I crouched down to the scatter of pots and blankets beside Paulo. Hands shaking, I wadded up the blood-soaked rags, rolled up blankets, emptied and stacked pots and cups, cramming everything into the scuffed leather bags and panniers.
After an interminable silence, the others moved as well. Kellea shook Paulo’s shoulder with hushed urgency, helped the groggy boy pull on her spare wool leggings, the two of them whispering, marveling at the pale white scars on his straight leg. As I poked at the refuse in some ridiculous attempt to cover the evidence of our stay, the two of them saddled the horses in the back of the cave.
I glanced over at Karon again. He stood rigid, scarcely breathing, his bloodless hands clenched and pressed to his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. What had I done?
Bareil murmured to Karon, one hand on Karon’s shoulder and the other gesturing to the fire and the cave. Moments passed. With guilty satisfaction, I watched Karon start moving again. He retrieved his weapon and sheathed it, and then began to work with the fire, dousing its flames with a motion of his hand, leaving it cold and dead, unable to bear witness to our presence. A cold wind swirled through the cave, dispersing the smoke and the scent of the horses, masking our footsteps with cold ash and sand and a dusting of snow. The blessed Dulcé stayed close to him, murmuring in his ear, having no eye or word for anyone else.
After only a quarter of an hour, we were riding on the steep, downward trail, Bareil in the saddle behind Paulo, Kellea leading the packhorse, Karon at the back, riding the extra mount we’d brought for Gerick. Every little while I sensed a brush of enchantment; behind us the snow on the trail appeared undisturbed. As the tense silence continued, a frowning Paulo looked from one to the other of us.
I couldn’t think of anything to say. No words could soften the sting of the ones already spoken. But I’d done only what was necessary. If it was too much for his fragile mind, best to know it now.
Once on the gentler trails in the sheltering trees, we picked up speed, riding at a brisk walk for several hours through the frosty woodland, making good time on a decent hard-packed road that headed northwest along the side of a gently sloping ridge. The sun was well past the zenith when we came to a sunny, snow-patched meadow, and Kellea called a halt. “We should rest the horses,” she said. “We’ve had no sign of pursuit, so I think we’re out of danger. And there’s a crossroads up ahead; I need to take my bearings.”
Though I could not bear the thought of slowing, I knew the wisdom of preserving both horses and riders.
“I’ll see to the horses,” Paulo said, dropping from the saddle easily and reaching for my reins.
“You should rest for a while,” I said, taking his reins instead. “We’ll care for your horses this time.” With a little persuasion, Paulo sat on a log and allowed me to provide him with enough cheese and oatcakes for three men. While Bareil collected the animals and led them to the water, Karon strode down through the muddy snowfield and leafless tangle of vines and willow thicket toward the stream, stretched out on a sunny rock, and closed his eyes without a word to anyone.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, when Paulo had slowed his intake to a reasonable pace.
The boy’s eyes shone as he stretched both legs out in front of him and stared at them as if they were forged of gold. “He put it all back straight. Don’t hurt a bit. A
nd he fixed the other one, too, as has never been right since I was born. I thought I was done for, and now I’m whole. I don’t even have the right things to say about how it is with me.”
His brow clouded as he looked down by the stream where Karon lay on the rock. “But he didn’t remember Sunlight. I told him as I had been taking good care of him since he left. Never thought he’d forget that horse. Horse didn’t forget him, not by a long ways.” The boy glanced up at me. “Didn’t think he’d forget you neither.”
I sat on the log beside Paulo, pulled an apple from my pocket and stared at it, discovering that my own appetite had entirely disappeared. Stuffing the apple away again, I tried to explain that, although the Prince had finally remembered a great number of things that he couldn’t when he was with us before, it unfortunately meant he no longer recalled anything about our journey together. “If he asks you questions about it, you can answer him. But it would be best not to volunteer too much. It makes his head hurt.”
“Guess it would,” said the boy thoughtfully, “having things goin’ in and out all the time. It’s easier with people like me.” He tapped his head. “Not much doin’ in here. But then I don’t have to bother with nothing but my belly and my horses. If Sheriff’d just quit fussing at me about learning to read, I could do without my noggin altogether.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Paulo always had a wonderfully pragmatic perspective.
CHAPTER 15
Karon
I knew our destination. From the moment I followed the lady and the Dulcé out of the cave and saw Karylis baring its hoary white chest to the blue of the northern sky, I knew it. Karylis, where I had learned to hunt, to climb, and to heal, the mountain that spread its mighty arms and embraced the fertile valley where I was born.
Hundreds of years in the past, my people—Dar’Nethi sorcerers exiled from a world they had forgotten and condemned as outlaws in this world—sought out places where they could begin a new life. Three families, including that from which I am descended, came to Karylis with its sweet air, rich soil, and clear rivers, and from their settlement grew a city of grace and beauty that they called Avonar. No man or woman of them could remember why they revered that name, only that it was a part of each one of them, so precious that it came to every tongue unbidden. They had long lost their memories of the other Avonar, the royal city of the world called Gondai, whence their ancestors had been sent here to maintain D’Arnath’s Bridge.
We were never very many. Of the thousands who lived in Avonar when I was a youth, probably fewer than three hundred were sorcerers, but you could not walk through the streets without seeing the wonders our people had created there: the gardens that bloomed long after frost, graceful roads and bridges that did not age or crumble, a society of generous people who lived in mutual respect and civilized discourse.
I had been away at the University on the day my city died. Reports said the valley had been completely surrounded by Leiran troops just after dawn, and that by nightfall every sorcerer—man, woman, and child—had been identified by informers, tortured, and burned. Every other resident had been put to the sword. My father, the lord of the city, had been the last to die. The Leirans would have made sure that he witnessed the completeness of their victory. At midnight they had torched the city, so that as far away as Vanesta, people could see Avonar’s doom written in the heavens.
I had not gone back after the massacre. Even for a Dar’-Nethi there are limits on the sorrow that can be inhaled with the breath of life. I wanted to carry with me the image of a living city, not the funeral pyre of everyone I loved.
I had embraced the grief of that terrible loss as was the way of our people, and yet, I think I always knew that someday I would have to look on Avonar again. From what I could remember of my life in this world, I had never yet done so.
Only one thing would draw a Zhid sympathizer like this Darzid to the ruins of my home. Was it possible he had learned the secret revealed to me just before I left for the University? My father had said we were going hunting that day, but I’d found it odd that he invited me alone, without any of my brothers who enjoyed it more. . . .
The soft folds of Karylis’s foothills were draped in mist. The trail was new to me, and I found myself increasingly reluctant to penetrate the sweet-scented vale. “There’s nothing here, Father,” I said. “We’ve seen no sign of any game, large or small. There are a hundred more likely trails.”
“Not for what we hunt today,” he said, riding onward, his strong back and broad shoulders commanding me to follow, even as my hands itched to tighten the reins and turn back.
The white-trunked birches were scattered over the grassy slopes, the glades open and smoothly green, and as the morning waxed, the sun banished the mist into the rocky grottos that stood as reminders that it was Karylis’s domain we traveled. The mountain itself was hidden by trees and swelling ground. A sheen of dewdrops lay on the grass and quivering leaves.
“We’ll leave the horses here,” said my father, when we came to a stream of deep blue-green that emerged from a towering granite wall.
“We shouldn’t be here,” I said as we dismounted, whispering as if my voice might divert some unwanted attention our way. “What is this place?”
My father laid his hands on my head, saying, “Be easy, my son. We’ve come to a place most precious and most secret. Only the one who bears the sign of the sovereign can know of it . . . no, do not protest. I am not rebelling against the Way laid down for us. Though of all my sons, I would entrust our future to you, I know that the thread of your life draws you along another path. Christophe is young yet, but he’ll be a fine lord, and I’ll bring him here when it’s time. But you, Karon . . . you cherish our history and our Way as no one else, and I cannot but think that this is a place you should know.”
At his touch my reluctance vanished, and we climbed alongside the stream until we came to two massive slabs of granite embedded in the hillside. They leaned together, leaving a triangular shadow of indeterminate depth between them. Power pulsed from the shadow, throbbing in my blood like the noonday sun in high summer.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It is our birthplace, one could say. From this place, some four hundred and fifty years ago, stepped three families seeking a new life.”
“The portal from the stronghold! But I thought all the portals were destroyed.”
Somewhere, in a place far from this hillside, lay the fortress where our people had held out in times of trouble. In the time of the Rebellion, when the extermination laws were passed, even the fortress had not been safe enough. Imminent discovery had forced our people to scatter, leaving behind a mystery, so our legends told us, something precious and holy that had existed since before our oldest memory. Though drawn to the secrets of the stronghold since I was a boy, I had assumed the portal destroyed.
My father traced the cracks and seams of the great stone with his strong fingers. “Those who remained in the stronghold said this portal was a link to the holy mystery and hoped that someday we would be able to practice our arts openly again and discover its true purpose. And so, to my distant great-grandsire they entrusted the words with which it could be opened, words in a language we didn’t know, a secret to be guarded until times would change. We’ve waited all these years, scribed the words in stone so that time and faulty memory would not alter them—I’ll show you where they’re hidden. But, of course, times have not changed.”
I stuck my hand into the opening and felt nothing out of the ordinary. “Have you never been tempted to venture the passage, Father? To discover whether anything remains of the stronghold? Perhaps we could unravel the mystery, learn more of the past, make things better. . . .”
“Yes, I ventured it once, as did my father and his.” He shook his head. “We found only this cleft in the rock. Perhaps our power was not enough. Or perhaps there is nothing to find any more. But you . . . who knows? You should try, I think.” He whispered the words in my ear, and his
hand on my back urged me forward.
And so I stepped into the small alcove of granite. To an observer who could not sense the power of enchantment, the place would have been unremarkable, save perhaps for the feel of the air. While springtime lay a soft breath on the vale outside, within the alcove it was winter. Or perhaps a bitter frost was only my first reaction to an enchantment that was not meant for me. As I walked the narrow passage that led me deep into the rock and ran my hands over the rough surfaces of the walls, speaking the words my father had whispered, the scars on my left arm began to sting as if newly incised. The longer I stayed, the more a bitter frost spread from my arm to the rest of me. Enchantment was everywhere, thrumming, pounding, swelling, filling my veins as if I had twice the blood of a normal man. So close . . . I summoned my power, drawn from life and healing and the beauties of the mountains and the morning . . . releasing it into the enchantment. So close . . . I could feel the walls thinning. So close . . .
But something wasn’t right. The enchantment would not yield, and soon I was shivering so violently that I couldn’t think. I ran back up the passage and into the daylight. “We’re missing something,” I said, my teeth clattering like a woodpecker’s beak on dead wood. “We need to learn what the words mean.”
Quickly my father bundled me in his cloak and built a fire.
“I’m all right,” I said, “except that I feel like I’ve spent the night naked on Karylis in midwinter.” I had no feeling in my left arm—or so I thought. When my father ran his fingers over my scars, I cried out, for his touch felt like hot iron. My left arm stayed numb and lifeless for almost a week . . . numb and lifeless and so cold . . .
I sat up abruptly. I must have fallen asleep as I lay in the winter sunlight. Idly, I rubbed my left arm where it had gone numb and looked about for my companions.
