by Carol Berg
“You were the third. You and Seri.”
“You know she’s here, then?”
“I saw her. Just for a moment. Does she know—?”
“She don’t know you’re here—nor me. They weren’t going to send me, but I made ’em do it. Were you the one supposed to give the signal then—to take us out?”
“Things didn’t go quite right.”
“Guessed not.” He paused for a moment, a rosy flush dousing his freckles. “Except for being here like this . . . are you all right? Together in your head?”
“I remember everything.”
“All of before I knew you . . . and when you showed up in Dunfarrie . . . and this time, when you fixed my legs and all?”
“Everything.”
“Blazes.” His gaze fell to the ground, but not before I saw innocent awe overtake him.
“I remember Sunlight, now. You told me you’d taken care of him, but I couldn’t figure how you had come to have a horse of mine. You’re the first one from those times—from our world—the first one I get to meet again. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“Makes my head hurt to think on it.”
“Mine, too.”
We were both quiet for a moment. Life was such a wonder.
Then Paulo screwed up his face, lifted his gaze, and took up again, evidently deciding that awe of royalty or dead sorcerers come back to life was minor beside the business of the moment. “So what went wrong? How’d you get in this fix?”
“The only way I could get into Zhev’Na was as a slave. Once everyone believed I was dead, our allies put a mask on me—an enchantment that made me believe I was someone else—so I could pass the initial interrogations and be brought here. The man who was supposed to help me when I arrived—to remove the mask and leave me free—died unexpectedly. Only when I caught a glimpse of Seri a few weeks ago did I finally remember who I was and what I was supposed to be doing. But of course, penned up like this, I can’t do much of anything.”
His gaze roamed the row of cages. “Maybe I can steal the key and let you out.”
“Don’t! It’s too risky—and not of any use. As long as I wear this collar, I’ve not a scrap of power. Even if we could get Seri and Gerick, we’ve no way out of Ce Uroth, because I can’t take us.”
“I could get something to cut off the thing, maybe.”
“I wish you could. More than you’ll ever know. But sorcery is the only way to take it off.”
“Well, I’ll think on it. We’ll figure some way.”
“You mustn’t put yourself at risk, Paulo. I—Listen to me. To know that you’re here . . . with her . . . You have to keep yourself safe. Do you understand? So there will be someone . . .”
“I understand. But nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“I’m not exactly in a secure profession.”
A guard relieved himself just outside the cell across from me, close enough to remind me of our precarious position.
“Keep yourself safe, Paulo. It’s so good to see you, to know a faithful friend is nearby, but you must stay away from me. There’s nothing to be done here. Not yet.”
“Well, you just watch yourself. I’m going to take care of this. You’ll see.”
He slipped away as quietly as he had come. I sat for a long time watching the flickering lights of the Zhid forges across the dark courtyard, pondering the wonders of a universe that would place its future so confidently in the hands of an illiterate fourteen-year-old boy. For the first time since Dassine’s death, I went to sleep with a smile on my lips.
CHAPTER 38
Gerick
Something strange was happening in my house. Ever since Mellador had killed that slave to heal my knee, I had taken care of my own injuries. I could ignore scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Even gashes and sprains went away of themselves eventually. But one day a sparring partner got in a lucky slash and gave me a deep cut in the upper arm. I got back to my room before anyone noticed, and dismissed my slaves, saying I was going to practice sorcery for a while. I didn’t want them telling anyone I was injured.
I wished I could use the things Notole had taught me about slowing bleeding or making wounds not hurt, but that is one of the impossible things about sorcery. You can’t lay compulsions on yourself or do yourself an injury with enchantments, but that means you can’t heal yourself either, even if you have the skill for it. So I ripped up a clean towel and tied it about my arm. To get the rag tight enough with only one hand and my mouth was hard. I put on thick shirt and a dark-colored tunic that wouldn’t show any blood, and hoped my arm would stop hurting and stop bleeding before I gave myself away.
When I came back from my hand combat practice after all that, I felt light-headed, sweating and cold at the same time. The pain in my arm had eased to a dull ache, but the towel and my shirt were soaked with blood. I tried again to tie up the wound, put on a different shirt and tunic, burned the bloody ones, and went to my riding lesson, but I had to cut the lesson short before I fell off the horse. I screamed at my riding master that his lessons were too hard.
I returned to the house just after sunset. All I wanted was to get to my bed, but I kept finding myself in the wrong room. When I finally came to the stairs, I made it only halfway to the first landing before I had to rest. Then I couldn’t seem to get up again. I thought for a bit about calling my slaves back. Sefaro would help. But then I remembered that Sefaro was dead. Dead because of me, like all the others. I couldn’t ask anybody to help me. And I had to be careful or the Lords would know everything; to keep up my barriers took concentration.
In the middle of the night I woke in my bed. Someone was doing something to my arm, and I was afraid that if I opened my eyes, I would meet the eyes of a slave being tied to it. But no rush of power burned my blood and no smirking Mellador showed up in my mind. The person cleaned the wound, put something cool on it, and tied it up tight. Whoever it was dribbled watered wine in my mouth, and I soon fell back to sleep.
The sun was already high when I woke, and my swordmaster had sent three messages asking where I was. But I told Notole that I wanted to work with her that day, that I had questions about making illusions, the most interesting sorcery I had learned so far. She agreed. When she asked why I was so sleepy and inattentive, I told her I’d been having strange dreams again—which I believed I had. But I couldn’t pretend it was dreams when I touched the knotted strip of linen under my shirt. And I couldn’t figure out who could have put it there.
By evening I felt sick again and came near losing my way from the Lords’ house to mine. I went straight to bed without any supper. The person came again that night. The bandage was changed, and cool cloths put on my face, and I was given sweetened wine to drink several times in the night while I drifted in and out of sleep. I kept telling myself I was going to open my eyes to see who it was, but my eyes were too heavy, and I didn’t really want to know. If I found out who it was, I would probably have to do something terrible to them.
Though I still felt weak, I was able to go back to training the next day, and after a few more days had passed, I convinced myself that it had all been my imagination. I must have done the things myself, but because I was feverish, it just seemed to be someone else. But then I started finding things—odd things—left here and there in my rooms.
The first was a small, egg-shaped rock sitting exactly in the center of the table in my sitting room. It was smooth and grayish blue with a clear vein through it. I couldn’t imagine how it had gotten there. I tossed it into the fire-grate, but immediately picked it up again and ran my fingers over it. Just a rock. No enchantments attached. But perhaps the Lords had sent it. I threw it onto the bench where I left my grinding stones, oil, and rags for my weapons.
A few days later I found a small chunk of wood just in the same place on my eating table. The wood was dark and hard as iron, and when I looked close I could see crystals inside its seams, almost like the wood had become a stone. No one in Zhev’Na would have remark
ed it. I wouldn’t have either, except that I hadn’t put it there, and I couldn’t imagine who might have done so. I put it with the rock.
And then I found a nasty-looking pit from a purplish fruit called a darupe on my bed pillows. I didn’t make a connection with the other two things until I picked it up in disgust, ready to throw it into the fire, and it fell apart in my hand. It had been carefully and evenly split in two. The insides of the pit were smooth and deep brown, with dark veins like polished rosewood, and the kernel was a deep, shining red, with swirls of black in it. I tossed the thing onto the bench with the others.
Several weeks passed without anything more out of the ordinary, but then I returned from a long day’s training to find a small, cracked glass dish—a piece of a broken lamp perhaps—filled with sand and sitting on the table by the stool where I always sat to take off my boots. Why would anyone collect sand in a dish? There was enough sand in Ce Uroth to fill every dish in the whole world. But as I pulled off one boot, I found myself staring at the dish. The sand in it had not been scooped up from the ground at random.
It was easy to think of the desert as an endless expanse of red sand and rock and to believe that any change in its appearance was caused solely by changing light, but there were actually hundreds of shades of red and brown to the land itself. Someone had collected grains of many different colors and laid them in the glass dish in layers, one and then the other, thick and thin, to make a rippling pattern. I had never seen anything like it. I turned it around to examine it from every angle. This wasn’t the Lords’ work.
“Well, young friend, how was your day’s activity?” Darzid walked up behind me and peered over my shoulder at the sand that now lay in a heap on the tiled floor. “What’s this?”
“Boots full of sand.”
“I thought the horse was treating you better these days.” He picked up the dish from the floor.
“Not since Fengara was replaced. I had to change to a new mount because the last one was impossible. And the new one isn’t much better. I still spend more time on the ground than in the saddle.” I let my anger and my bruises fill my mind, while shoving Firebreather and the Leiran boy and mysteries into its farthest corners. Ziddari was curious. I had to be careful.
“Your combat instructors report that you are progressing decently, that you work hard.”
“I don’t know. They don’t tell me of it.”
Darzid tossed the broken glass on the table, and then pulled up a few of the giant cushions that lay about the room, stretched out on them, and began combing his beard with his fingers. That always meant he was going to lecture me. “But Notole is worried about your studies of sorcery.”
“Why? I’ve learned to do a lot of things.”
“Child’s magic. Illusions. Games. You are to be the most powerful sorcerer in the universe. Don’t you think it’s time you moved beyond calling horses and lighting candles?”
“I’ve done bigger things. I caused an avalanche last week. And a few days ago I melted rock into a pool so that a kibbazi fell into it and turned to stone when I let it harden again.”
“Tricks. You must begin to study more serious matters.”
“Notole tried to teach me how to read thoughts. I worked at it, tried it with the guards and with slaves. But it seems like I just get started, and everything closes up where I can’t see any more. I just need to practice.” I threw my boots into the corner of the room and walked over to the table where a cup of steaming cavet was waiting for me. My stockinged feet left a trail of sand across the floor.
“You need power. You know that. It’s not enough that you let your power grow at its own rate. You must aggressively acquire it. The time draws near. Tomas’s spirit and that of your nurse cry out for vengeance. You’ve not forgotten?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you must take the next step. Learn how to take what you need. Just as you use slaves and Zhid to improve your skills for battle, so you must use whatever is required to make yourself ready for the other battle that awaits you. The Dar’Nethi are not what they were, but strong and intricate sorcery is still to be found in Avonar. They will not lie down for you and say, ‘Oh please, lord Prince, enslave us. Allow us to repay a thousand years of brutal oppression. ’ Tonight you will go to Notole, and she will begin teaching you about the acquisition of power. You will listen to her.”
“I always listen.” I hated when he talked to me as if I’d never thought of these things myself.
“Good. And you’ll not refuse what she offers.”
“I want to learn everything.”
At least he took me at my word. I suppose he could tell I really meant it. “And so, how is your life here? Do you have everything you desire?”
“The Lords have given me everything.”
“Indeed. We always keep our bargains.”
After I ate and slept for an hour, Notole summoned me to a workroom deep in the Lords’ palace. The chamber was dark, except for two intense green lights—her emerald eyes.
“Sit here,” she said, and a path of green light showed me a backless wooden stool just beside her. “So you’re ready to take the next step, young Lord?”
“I want to learn it all.”
“And there is so much to learn once you have power enough. . . .” She told me all the things I would be able to do once I learned to acquire power beyond what existed in me: read thoughts and induce dreams, lay compulsions that could make a person do anything I wanted, manipulate objects without touching them, and even change the weather. “When you are sixteen or so, young Lord, you will come into your full talent. Sometimes I can see what it will be in a child your age, but you are much too dark and complex. It will be interesting to see what awaits you. But for the war to come, you will not yet be in your prime, so we must develop what skills you have. And first and foremost, you must learn about power.”
All Dar’Nethi were born with the power for sorcery. It was a part of us, Notole said, just like our ability to think or to speak or to read. And just like those things, it required only a little teaching to be able to use it. But to work any significant sorcery, one needed more power than what just happened to be inside you.
The Dar’Nethi increased their power using their experiences as they went about their lives, by observing and thinking and holding on to the images and feelings. “The fairy dance,” Notole called it. “They are so limited in their vision, they let the most magnificent of all gifts wither from boredom, tiptoeing through the universe like children at a glassmaker’s shop afraid to touch anything. But you, my young Prince, can dismiss their foolish limitations. Look beyond yourself, and you can have all the power you wish in an instant. Here, take this stone”—she set an ordinary piece of the red desert rock in my hand—“and look on it. Consider it. Focus your inner eye on this worthless piece of nothing, and seek out its true parts in your mind, the essence that makes it a stone rather than a tree or a frog.”
She guided me through the jewels in my ear, helping me to think of the stone and the gritty sand that made it . . . and before very long, I felt a small, pulsing heaviness—not in my hand—but in my mind where I held the image of the stone.
“Now take that weight . . . that morsel of life’s essence that exists in this worthless stone . . . and draw it into yourself . . . into that place we have visited before where your power lies, that you can shape to your will.”
I did as she said and felt much like I did after drinking cavet in the morning, a little bit stronger, a little bit more awake. And then I lifted my left hand, as she directed me, and thought about light . . . and a flame shot from the end of my fingers. It lasted only for a moment, but I had never made anything so bright. And it had never been so easy.
“There, you see, young Lord? This is only the beginning.”
“More. I want to do more, Notole.” The excitement of it had me ready to burst. All the things I could do . . .
She laughed. “And so we shall, but we are going t
o need a new stone.”
I looked in my hand, and indeed the red stone had crumbled to dust. “No one will care,” I said.
“It was only a stone.”
“Exactly so.” She laughed again and gave me another stone.
Notole taught me many things in that dark room. Some were interesting and useful, and some were unpleasant, and some were vile and wicked. “. . . But necessary to know, for your enemies will stop at nothing to destroy you. You must be ready for them. Sometimes even your allies will be distasteful to you, and you must know how to control them. Your power is everything. Once you rule as you are meant to do, you can afford to pick and choose your ways of dealing with your enemies . . . and your friends.”
We spent days and days working on how to build power—from rocks, from broken pots and cups and paper and yarn, from objects of all kinds. Then she brought in plants and small trees and mice and kibbazi, and I learned that the power you could take from things that lived was much stronger than what you got from rocks and pots and wood. Nothing much was left of the things when we were through with them. It was a good way to make use of things that were worthless or ugly or broken.
Sometimes I was in Notole’s rooms for hours without even realizing it, for when I went back to my house, it was already night and I was ravenously hungry, or maybe the sun had come up when I thought it was only evening. Sometimes I missed my other lessons for days at a time, so that when I went back to my sword fighting, I was stiff and rusty. I was so busy with Notole and sorcery, I almost forgot about the odd things I had found.
However, on one afternoon when I came in from sword training, a smooth, flat square of wood lay in the center of my sitting room table. I sent my slaves to run a bath and set out fresh clothes for me, and while they were occupied, I picked up the thing. It was smaller than my hand, plain and somewhat crude, as if cut and shaped with a dull knife. A square of metal had been set into the back of it and polished to a high sheen, so that I could see myself in it as clearly as a looking glass. Its oddity made me remember the other things left in my rooms, and I rummaged around on the bench and found the stone and the wood and the fruit pit with the shining red kernel.
