Guardians of the Keep

by Carol Berg

  No.

  Madyalar’s eyes widened. Not restored . . . How much of your memory is yet missing?

  A great deal is yet missing.

  She proceeded to question me about many things: about Avonar, about my family, about Dassine and the Preceptorate and the life of the Dar’Nethi. Some things I knew. More I did not. It would have been clear to anyone that I was profoundly confused and dreadfully incomplete. No one would have called me mad, but of course she hadn’t gotten to the heart of the matter as yet. She was shaking her head in exasperation at my lack of information, and she blurted out her opinion with her audible voice. “You’re no more than a child, scarcely past infancy. Do you even know your own name?”

  She must have sensed the ambivalence her question evoked in me, for she narrowed her gray eyes and blasted her question directly into my head. Tell me . . . what is your true name?

  I knew what I should answer, even lost in the smoky haze and the fierce compulsions of the potion she had given me. If the purpose of the examination was to legitimize my position, then only one answer would do. But under the influence of manglyth, it was not possible to speak anything but the most absolute truth. My name is Karon, eldest son of the Baron Mandille, Lord of Avonar, and his wife Nesei, a Singer.

  She jumped up from her chair. What are you saying? Where is D’Natheil, Heir of D’Arnath?

  And of course, I couldn’t lie about that either. I am D’Natheil, Prince of Avonar, Heir of D’Arnath.

  How is this possible? Have you put an enchantment on yourself so that you can lie?

  I do not lie, and I do not know how it is possible.

  Who is this Mandille? We have no barons in Avonar.

  My father inherited the title of baron and the sign of the ruler from his father, Bertrand. The title Baron, Lord of Avonar, was granted by order of King Dagobert of Valleor.

  These names have no meaning to me. Was D’Marte not your father? Is Mandille another name for D’Marte?

  D’Marte was my father. D’Marte and Mandille were not the same man.

  This is madness. How can you have two fathers?

  And that, of course, brought me to the familiar ground at the edge of the precipice. Gods save me, I do not know how it is possible.

  Are you the Heir or are you not?

  I am the true Heir of D’Arnath. Hold onto that, I told myself, until the cracks in the world disappear.

  On and on she went, discovering everything I knew of my two lives, of the Preceptorate, of Dassine’s work, and his murder. She constantly returned to questions about conspiracies of which I knew nothing, and of what I had done to preserve the Bridge in the human world, which I could not remember, and how I’d come to believe I was two persons. Each time she pushed me to the edge, I wanted to scream at her to stop before I lost my mind.

  So you truly do not know how you—this Karon of Avonar, an Exile—first met with Dassine, or when?

  No.

  Perhaps Dassine was able to cross the Bridge to find you. Astonishing that you don’t know. Perhaps the real D’Natheil was killed four months ago, and Dassine has mind-altered an impostor. . . . No, I would see that. Perhaps you are D’Natheil, but truly mad.

  “Fires of chaos!” As her words erupted into audible speech, she kicked aside a basket of cillia branches and stood glaring down at me, the dried pods, leaves, and twigs left in an untidy heap. “Insupportable! The beast and his ‘private information.’ “ While I sat groggy, paralyzed, and half crazed, she waved her hands and yelled at me as if I were yet a third person who understood her anger. “He thinks to squeeze me out of this matter of the boy, and every time I get the upper hand, he laughs at me. I chance to hear news of his meeting with Dassine, but arrive too late to hear anything worthwhile. And now I’m given the opportunity to become an equal partner, only to discover that my prize is a madman who believes he is two persons at once, who can tell me nothing of the boy, nothing of the one called Darzid, nothing of why the two of them were rushed to Zhev’Na. And the only way to discover the truth is to bring in the very one I detest. Damn! Damn! Damn!”

  Her irritation reduced to snarls and muttering, she flopped back into her chair and picked a small blue summoning stone from a bowl of them that sat on the table. A flick of her eyes, a mumbled word, and a press of her fingers, and she dropped the thumb-sized stone into the bowl of flame, where it cracked and sizzled and disappeared. Then she threw the bowl of blue stones across the room, creating a noisy shower of broken pottery and clattering pebbles on the tile floor. The last was not a part of the summoning enchantment. Drumming her fingers on the table, she glared at me through the thinning smoke as if I’d made the mess. She tossed another handful of the gray powder on the flames and waved the smoke my way. “A few moments’ delay,” she said, sourly. “You can be sure he’ll be quick.”

  Only slowly did the complexities of her monologue sink into my fogged mind. But sink in they did, so that by the time her smirking partner/rival walked in, I knew it would be Exeget.

  Had anyone ever been such a fool? If I could have summoned enough sense to feel anything, I would have been terrified. My mind open to Exeget . . . For three brutal years of my childhood, I had resisted him, and now, in the space of an hour, I had yielded the control he had always craved.

  “Difficulties, you say? A single Preceptor attempting to examine the Heir—I would expect nothing else.” Gloating would not be an exaggerated description of his demeanor.

  Madyalar was spitting like a cat, but my mysteries were evidently compelling enough for her to put up with him. “I’ve never known anyone capable of untruth while under the influence of manglyth, yet the answers he gives are not possible.”

  “What has he said that is impossible?”

  “That he is two persons at once, both D’Natheil and an Exile!”

  “Vasrin’s hand . . .” he said, softly. Never had I known Exeget to lose control far enough to swear, even in such mild form.

  And so, we went through it all again. Exeget was an immensely more perceptive and precise interrogator, and, having been my mentor, he knew how to probe deep and touch the most private self . . . but only that of D’Natheil. He didn’t know Karon at all.

  By the time he was done with me, I was half insensible, able to grasp only bits and pieces of their discussion. Madyalar and Exeget had made some accommodation with the Lords of Zhev’Na. The boy had somehow changed the equation. Something I’d told Exeget had made clear to him why the child was important. Madyalar was frantic to know, as was I, but I could not stay awake long enough to hear it.

  For whatever reason—perhaps in exchange for knowledge of his great discovery—Madyalar released me into Exeget’s custody. Muddleheaded and nauseated from manglyth, smoke, and the bile of self-recrimination, I was half carried, half dragged through passages and cold air and a portal. At last I was deposited on a pallet that was too short for me. One bleary-eyed glance told me that I lay in the same room where I’d spent three of the most wretched years of a sorry childhood. Exeget’s house—the Precept House of the Dar’Nethi. And yet, as I collapsed into complete insensibility, a soft and not unkind voice spoke in my head. Sleep well, my lord Prince. You’ll need it.

  CHAPTER 25

  The bed felt like plate armor, and I was tangled in a choking knot of clothes and blankets, yet I was not at all inclined to move. If I stayed very still, then perhaps these slight pricks of wakefulness would dull into oblivion, and I could sleep the day around. Across my mind flitted the anxious notion that Dassine would soon shake my shoulder, but even after I dismissed that fantasy, the whisper of his name in my half-sleep pulled me from the domain of dreams across the border to the land of waking. Dassine was a week dead. But someone was in the room with me. I could sense his breath, his pulse, the faint warmth and disturbance in the air that told me another living person was present.

  “Come, come, D’Natheil, you’re too big to hide from me any more. You were never good at it.”

  Was my
lethargy a result of his enchantments?

  “More likely the residue of the cennethar. You are free to move and speak as you wish. You will excuse me if I keep a slight watch on your thoughts, however. Your first impulse has always been to violence.” One might have thought he was biting down on a nettle.

  I sat up. The puffy-faced man with thinning hair sat in the small, bare room’s only chair. He rested his chin on one of his perfectly manicured hands and smiled, an expression as void of mirth as the room was of comfort.

  “Who would have thought we’d be back here together?” he said. “Yet, you’re not really the one I knew, the incorrigible little beast who spat upon the most glorious heritage in the history of all worlds. You are someone else entirely.”

  “That child still lives in me, and I remember everything of his time in your charge.”

  “How do you know that the memory Dassine returned to you is accurate? Perhaps he colored what he gave you with his view of the world and of me.”

  “No, Preceptor. I lived every moment of those years twice over. I knew Dassine as I’ll never know any other man, and he didn’t hate you half so much as I do.”

  “Yet hate is quite alien to your present nature. How do you reconcile it?”

  Search as I would, I could find no answer to that.

  “As I thought. A difficult portion Dassine has left you.” He tapped his fingertips together rapidly. “Well, look at it this way: You were a child, and there were—and are—many things you don’t understand. If you are to survive what is to come, you must put aside your childish view. You must accept that nothing—nothing—you believe is immutable.”

  “And what is to come?”

  “First I’ll let you eat and refresh yourself a bit”—he nodded to the boxlike table where sat a tray laden with food, drink, a pile of towels, and a green porcelain basin from which steam was rising—“and then I will restore the remainder of your lost life. Unfortunately events do not leave us the time Dassine had. We shall have to proceed a bit more brutally . . . and not because I will enjoy it.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  He leaned forward, his cheeks flushed ever so slightly, his narrow eyes alight. “I saw your struggle when we pushed you to the boundaries of your knowledge. However much you despise me, I cannot believe you would refuse, even if you knew you would die in the next moment.”

  He was almost right. “I would do anything to retrieve what I’ve lost except take it from Dassine’s murderer.”

  Exeget smiled scornfully and settled back in the hard little chair. “Have you unraveled nothing of this mystery? I’ll not attempt to resolve for you the bothersome inconsistencies in your view of Dassine’s death. But while I leave you to your refreshment, I want you to think about this: Dassine sent you to me. Not to Madyalar, not to any of the others. You know Dassine chose words carefully: Give yourself to the Preceptorate for examination. Defenseless. If your childish indignation had not been clouding your judgment, only one possible course would have presented itself—surrendering to the Head of the Preceptorate. To me.”

  I dismissed his jibes as quickly as he left the room. But as I took full advantage of the hot water and the mound of bread and cheese and cold meat, I could not but be drawn back to the most illogical aspect of Dassine’s murder: Bareil knew nothing of the abducted child. Why would Exeget, intending to murder Dassine, have given his rival information of significance? Ever convinced of his own superiority, Exeget would not stoop to taunt a victim.

  And, of course, his logic echoed my own uneasy thoughts, that I had interpreted Dassine’s command according to my own desires . . . because I was afraid. . . .

  Exeget returned an hour later, smirking at the broken crockery in the corner of my room. “So is it yea or nay? Remember, your sanity is in question, not mine.”

  I could not force myself to answer.

  “Ahhh . . .” he growled. “When we are done, I’ll put your own knife in your hand and bare my neck to you. Will that satisfy your bloodthirsty inclinations? Do we work at this or not?”

  I jerked my head. He seemed to understand. “You’ll need this.” He tossed a white robe into my hands, his composure regained. “When you’re ready, come to the lectorium. I’m sure you remember the way.” Exeget, my despised enemy.

  Yes, I remembered the way to the cold and barren workroom where he had tried so brutishly to shove the practices of sorcery into my nine-year-old head. Muttering oaths, I stripped, donned the soft wool robe, and padded barefoot down the stairs.

  When I entered the low-ceilinged chamber, the circle of candles was already alight. The dark stone columns and walls, void of decoration, seemed to swallow the candlelight.

  “How is it you know of all this?” I said, waving my hand to encompass the luminous circle. Dassine had always claimed that his work with me was unique, unknown to any other Dar’Nethi, that I must follow his strictures if I ever wanted to be whole. Though Exeget’s lectorium was cool, deep in the rock below Avonar, a drip of sweat trickled down my tailbone.

  “This is not the time for questions. Take your place.” He held out his hand for my robe.

  Self-conscious as I had never been with Dassine, I gave it over and sat myself naked on the bare stone inside the circle. Fool! Fool! screamed my untrusting self.

  Exeget tossed my robe onto the floor behind him with a snort, whether at my modesty or my fear, I couldn’t tell. But as the light grew, insinuating itself into my head and my lungs and the pores of my flesh, he spoke softly in my mind, Do not be afraid. I’ll not allow you to drown.

  And so did I take up my life where it had been interrupted five days—or fifteen years—before, and on that very night, in the room where Exeget had so often railed at me for being soft and stupid and unworthy of my name, did I travel once again to the gracious house called Windham and meet my darling Seri in the freshness of her wide-eyed young womanhood. Her awakening intelligence soared, and she argued and laughed and studied, revealing to my Dar’-Nethi soul a universe of marvels. We walked in her cousin Martin’s gardens and played chess in his drawing rooms, and when the blazing hearth of Windham faded into Exeget’s circle of candlelight, I cried out, “No! Let me go back! For love of the Creator, let me go back.”

  “A moment. Drink this; it will sustain you.” Someone poured some thick and sour liquid down my throat, and before the blaze in my eyes had dissipated enough that I could see whose hands held the cup, I was embracing the fire once again.

  Every day a delight in her friendship, not daring to think of anything more. We all knew she was meant for Evard and swore that such a marriage would be like confining the lightning to a cage. Martin warned me that there could be no future for the affection and regard I tried so vigorously and so ineptly to hide, for he knew my secret and the dangers it entailed. I was a sorcerer, doomed to run, to hide, and almost certainly to burn.

  How long did I journey that first time in Exeget’s room? Three more times was I drawn back to the circle of fire, where I blindly gulped the murky liquid as a drowning man gulps air; three more times was I sent back again to Leire, to the happiest days I had ever known. The fifth time I came back a voice protested behind the roaring of the flames. “Enough, Master. You’ll kill him.”

  “We’ll all be dead or worse if we cannot finish in time. But I suppose you’re right. We daren’t push it farther at first. But things will get no easier as we go.”

  Hands, two pairs of them, drew me to my feet and wrapped my robe about me. I could not yet see for the blinding glare that filled my eyes, but as the two half walked, half carried me to my room, my senses emerged from their muffling and began to record the world around me once again. A crashing thunder growing in my ears could be traced to the tapping of a breeze-shifted branch on the window, the searing colors that soon shredded my eyes were but the muted grays of Exeget’s halls, and the vicious claws that must surely be raking bloody gashes in my arms were four gentle hands as they laid me on my pallet.

  �
�Quickly now, to sleep,” said the grating voice, and the hellish cacophony of my jangled senses was deadened by the blessed touch of his hand.

  In an hour, no more than two, they roused me to begin it all again.

  Dassine’s regimen had been nothing compared to that of Exeget. I knew no day or night, no hour or season, no word of comfort or argument, no words at all in that time. I did not eat, only drank the vile mess that kept me living and embraced the darkness when they pulled me from the circle of fire, blind and deaf and numb. I lived only as Karon, in the past, and, of course, it was not long until I understood what horror awaited me beyond my knowing.

  Dead. Oh, gods, my dear friends . . . Martin, Tanager, Julia . . . I had left them to die because I would not compromise my gift to alter the paths of fate. And my wife and son abandoned. I had abdicated my responsibilities for some Dar’Nethi ideal and left Seri to face the horror all alone. The experience of my own death, the relived torment and despair and the ten years of disembodied darkness were as nothing beside my betrayal of my friends, my wife, and my child. And Dassine had brought me back because he believed I had some holy revelation that could save the world. What kind of coward was I?

  The candlelight faded; darkness and silence enshrouded me. Was the return of three lost souls—those three pitiable Zhid I had healed after the fight with Seri’s brother at the Gate—worth everything that had happened? I could see no other return from all the pain and sorrow.

  Oh, Seri, forgive me. How I understand your anger . . .

  “You cannot hide forever, D’Natheil. Three days it’s been since we completed our work.”

  The room was dark, though not as dark as my soul. He spoke softly, as if unsure of the state of my hearing. But I would not wake to Exeget. I burrowed back into emptiness.

  The next time it was someone else. Hands rolled me to my back and stuffed pillows under my head. “My lord Prince, you must live. You are so much needed. Here, drink this.” He pressed a cup into my shaking hands and helped me lift it to my lips. Brandy, woody and old, the smoothest I had ever tasted, yet I thought it might burn a hole through my empty stomach. I coughed and gagged and heaved, and my invisible companion helped me to sit up straight. My skin was slick with sweat.