Guardians of the Keep

by Carol Berg

  Darzid began to laugh. “Of course! Fortune has smiled on you once again, my Prince. You can indeed have everything you desire.”

  I slept for a full day. When I woke, the Lords were waiting for me . . . hovering . . . anxious. I was anxious, too, and only felt better when I saw the faint smear of gray that was the torch that burned on my balcony at night. If I worked at it hard enough, I could sense the faint outlines of doors and tables and such in the blackness.

  And how are you this evening, young Lord? asked Ziddari.

  “Hungry,” I said.

  They relaxed a bit. Slaves can bring you what you need. Notole was everywhere inside me and around me.

  “I’ve already summoned them. But that won’t be enough. I’m hungry for other things than food. Do I come to you again tonight?”

  No, young Lord, she said, pleased. In four days you may have all you want. Only if your craving should become unbearable would I consider taking you out again before your anointing. For now you should resume your physical training.

  “What have you done with Seri?” I tried to ask it casually.

  The lady is quite safe and healthy. We’ve asked her some questions, but she has few answers. A traitor brought her to Zhev’Na, but he is dead now. They planned to destroy you, young Lord, to steal your future . . . your power . . . to confine you to Dar’Nethi groveling . . . to starve you . . . But their pitiful conspiracy failed long ago.

  “Good.”

  Rest easy. Determine your future with no worries that any enemy will interfere. Do you wish to question the woman yourself? The last question was from Ziddari.

  “No. I’ve no interest in lies. She confuses me.” Yes. That was what they wanted to hear.

  Then we’ll leave you to your own occupations.

  And so I had to figure out what I wanted. The decision had seemed easy before, and now Seri had muddled everything. My thoughts kept running in circles, and I couldn’t decide what I believed, or why I had done the things I’d done, or what I was going to do about any of it.

  I jumped up and fumbled about the room, gathering up Seri’s “gifts.” Out on the balcony, I burned the map of the Leiran stars and threw the stone and the wood and the fruit pit as far away as I could. I fingered the mirror, happy I couldn’t see well enough to know how my eyes looked this time. All black, I guessed. Even reflected light made me wince. I pulled the wood away from the metal and burned it, and then I melted the metal into a lump and threw it away, too. Grabbing my cloak, I felt my way down the stairs.

  There were guards everywhere in my house. I told them I was going riding in the desert and threatened to tear out their eyes if they tried to stop me or even let their thoughts dwell on what I did. After a quick stop by the kitchen, I set out for the stables. Summoning up what little power I had, I used it to help me find familiar landmarks. I put out the stable lantern, made it to Firebreather’s stall without breaking my neck, and sat down to wait. Firebreather shied away from me until I’d talked to him a little. But it wasn’t for the horse I’d come.

  “Awful dark in here.”

  “Leave it that way. I’d just rather tonight.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “I brought you some food, there in the pack by the gate. Sorry, no jack.”

  “I told you I’m not choosy.” I heard him rummaging in the pack and then settling down in the straw. “You’re in a bother,” he said between bites.

  “Have you started reading human thoughts as well as horses’?”

  “Don’t take a genius. You’re sitting here in the dark. You forgot to yell at me for anything. You brought me food without me acting pitiful or nothing. You’re not thinking straight.”

  “I needed to talk, and I get tired of talking to myself. I argue one way, and it sounds right and reasonable, and then I turn around and argue exactly the opposite, and it sounds just the same.”

  “I’ve seen it. Means you think too much.”

  “It’s about those things I told you of. The stone and such that appeared in my house.”

  “Did you find another one?”

  “Yes. And I found out who did it.”

  The silence stretched so long, I began to think he’d gone to sleep. “Blazes,” he said at last. “Who was it?”

  “My mother.”

  Another long silence, and then a totally unexpected question. “Is she all right?”

  “No. Not all right at all—”

  From out of the darkness a body pounced on me and pinned me to the floor, leaving me spitting straw and with both my arms twisted behind me. His elbow encircled my neck. “Damnation, you didn’t kill her? If you killed her, you are dead this instant. I don’t care whose friend you are, or how great a sorcerer you are, I’ll break your neck. Don’t think I can’t do it.”

  He was wild and furious, and I almost believed he could do it. “She’s not dead. Just a prisoner. How do you—? Let me up. I won’t hurt you. I swear I won’t. Damn, you know her! You came here with her, didn’t you?” I twisted around and shoved him off me. Then I felt my way back to the wall, sat up, and brushed the straw off my face.

  “I came just after. She don’t know I’m here. But I’ve promised—Curse every bit of this place. I’ve promised—Oh, shit, shit, shit!” I hoped he hadn’t broken his fist when he slammed it into the wall of the horse box.

  “Why did you come here? Why did she come here? Don’t lie to me.”

  “We came to get you. To take you back.”

  “To destroy me?”

  “Destroy you? Why in the name of perdition would the Lady Seri want to hurt you? She grieved herself to death for you and your da for all those years, living in Dunfarrie where there was only such as me for company, and the very day she figures out who you are, you get snatched out from under her nose. She picks up and chases you through the mountains in the winter, and to a new world where she’s like to get herself killed, then follows you into this cursed place, and you think she wants to hurt you?”

  “She wanted vengeance on her brother. She didn’t know I was her son.”

  “It’s true she didn’t at first. She didn’t want to stay at Comigor, but do you know why she did? Because everyone thought you were loony. She wanted to help you because she loved her brother, but she came to love you, too. She only put all the clues together after you was gone. She about went crazy.”

  “That’s not right. She brought Prince D’Natheil to Comigor to kill me, and Lucy, and Mama’s baby . . . for her revenge.”

  “The Prince was getting his head put back together. He’d been half crazy for months. He didn’t even remember she was his wife until that day in the council chamber. He couldn’t look at her without his head trying to bust open. Don’t you know anything? I know . . . knew . . . the Prince, and he never ever would kill an old lady or a child, whether it was his own or not. He never would. You don’t know what all he did for me who was an ignorant nobody he’d no reason to look at, much less care for.”

  My head was about to twist inside out with the confusion. “He killed my father . . . Tomas . . . the man I believed to be my father.”

  “It was Zhid magic what killed Duke Tomas.”

  “How do you know? Why do you think anyone would tell you the truth?”

  “Nobody told me nothing. I was there. I saw it.”

  This was impossible. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Look in my head. Can’t you tell what’s real and what somebody planted there? What good is all this sorcery if you can’t figure out when a person is telling you the truth?”

  “I could tell.”

  “Then do it. We’ve got to save the Lady Seri. I owe her and the Prince most everything, and to stop me trying to save her, you’ll have to kill me first, so you’d best get on with it.”

  I fumbled about in the dark until I found his head, and I put my hands on the sides of it and told him to think of anything he wanted to tell me. Only that. By the time I pulled my hands away, I knew everything the Leir
an boy knew from the time he first met Seri in Dunfarrie until the day my father, the Prince, had slit himself open so I couldn’t be corrupted by killing him. The Leiran boy wouldn’t tell me anything else—about how he got to Zhev’Na or how they planned to get me out. He wouldn’t think about the Prince, except how kind he was, and how he just couldn’t believe the man was really dead. But it was enough, and I could look no further anyway. Never had any injury hurt so much as the truth.

  “Hey, are you all right?”

  I couldn’t answer him. It was not all right. It could never be all right. I was able to add so many things he couldn’t know. The Lords were going to win. They had made me into what they wanted, and now I’d given them the very piece that would ensure their victory—a hold on me. They hated my mother as much as they hated the Prince. Maybe more. I almost laughed. I’d been wrong about every single thing in my whole life, blind long before my evil starting eating my eyes away. The Leiran boy had seen so clearly. He had asked how I could think the Prince had killed Lucy when I had only seen his knife in my dreams. But Darzid had twisted my dreams from the beginning.

  A rustling in the straw. The Leiran boy had gone. Just as well. I would most likely betray him, too. But before I realized what was happening, a smear of light appeared in the horse box. I turned away, but not quickly enough.

  “Blazing demons!” He pulled my face back around. “What did they do to you?”

  I shoved him backward. “It’ll go away.” But it wouldn’t. Not ever.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No. I just can’t see very well right now.”

  “Damn! So did you get the story out of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, what are we going to do?”

  “I’ll have to get her. I think I can do it. Then I’ll try to get you both out of Zhev’Na.”

  “And you, too.”

  “That won’t be possible.”

  “She won’t go without you.”

  “There’s no other way. They’ll kill her unless I do what they want. They may kill her anyway, but I’ll try.”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Obviously not as well as I would like.” Otherwise my mother would not be Ziddari’s prisoner. Wrong about everything. Stupid. Worthless. Wicked.

  “I mean, if I were to tell you something right now that might help . . . it wouldn’t go straight to the Lords, now would it?”

  “They don’t know about you.” At least I’d managed that much.

  “What if there was someone else in Zhev’Na who could help you?”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone who could possibly—”

  “I know you don’t think nobody can do anything but you, but this person . . . he’d like to help. And he’s good. The best.”

  “We can’t get Seri away from Zhev’Na unless the Lords allow it. It doesn’t matter how good your friend is at anything.”

  “I think you should talk to him.”

  “Bring him here if you want.”

  “He can’t. He’s really stuck.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “You won’t think so. But you got to keep it secret.”

  “All right.”

  “Do you swear?”

  “Yes. I swear. Take me to him. But you’ll have to lead me.”

  “Blazes.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Karon

  I was at wit’s end. I had dabbled in madness for so long that I knew no other way to live. A day with any semblance of normality would probably have me screaming in terror. I fought and trained and stayed alive. I watched for the least opportunity, the least chink in the armor of Zhev’Na, and came up with nothing.

  Paulo had been despondent after my match with Vruskot, for he’d been sure that Gerick would take me on as swordmaster. He told me of his several encounters with my son, and his belief that Gerick was desperately torn between the demands of his masters and his own nature. “He’s decided to be like them, but he don’t like it at all. He just don’t see any other way to be.”

  “They want him very badly. Only the one person—the anointed Heir of D’Arnath—has power over the Breach and the Bridge and the Gates.”

  “But if you’re still alive . . . Maybe the anointing just won’t work.”

  “As long as I’m trapped in this collar, I’m as good as dead. And unless I’m free to use them, the Heir’s powers will pass straight on to Gerick when he’s anointed.”

  Dismal thoughts, all of this. It didn’t help my morale that Paulo was almost caught on that visit. A guard chose just the wrong time to make a circuit of the slave pen with a blazing torch, and Paulo had to roll out of the light. I set up a racket on the bars, feigning a bout of madness—a perilously easy bit of playacting. On his next visit, I would command Paulo to stay away from me. A bleak prospect. His cheerful grin was the best thing in my life.

  My unease was not at all soothed by what Paulo had reported of Gerick’s “changes.”

  “They say he’s come a demon, afraid of the light, and that he goes days at a time without eating or sleeping, and that he’s roaming about the place inside people’s heads. He told me—He told me he was going to be one of the Lords. Is that what’s happening?”

  Of course it was. Corruption was not enough. All the power Gerick would inherit when he came of age would be theirs, but only if there was nothing of him left that might resist them. I had long since lost count of the passing time, but weeks had gone by since I had been celebrated for living out an entire year in the slave pen. Gerick’s anointing could not be far distant. The Three would be the Four. Chaos. Disaster.

  The days continued.

  Straw tickled my nose. Waking instantly, I rolled toward the bars.

  “I’ve got bad news. They’ve got her—”

  “Ah, no . . .” It was all I could do not to scream, to tear at the bars, to bang on them until a guard would come for me and I could strangle him with my bare hands. I had dared not even think of Seri lest somehow the knowledge of her presence be detected in me. It had been the only protection I could give her.

  “—but I’ve brought someone as might be able to help.”

  “What possible help—?”

  “V’Saro”—he was quite emphatic about the name, sharpening my attention—“this person wallowing in the muck here beside me is the new Prince of Avonar, the young Lord Gerick.” He turned to the dark shape behind him. “This here is V’Saro. You saw him fight the other day. I think you ought to set him free so he can help us.”

  Disbelieving, I pressed close to the bars and strained to see into the darkness. The boy held his face away, but his profile was clear. It didn’t seem possible. “Paulo, are you all right?” I whispered. “He hasn’t—”

  “He knows about Seri and says he can get her out of Zhev’Na. But he says he won’t come. I told him that he don’t have to do everything by himself, and that he has to get away from here, too. Tell him, V’Saro. Maybe he’ll hear it from you.”

  “Seri would most certainly agree. She’d say you should be taken out first.”

  “She would be wrong.” Gerick’s voice was glacial.

  “So can you do it?” Paulo whispered to Gerick.

  “Do what?”

  “Set V’Saro free. Undo the magic. The collar. Let him loose so he can help us get her.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I could get him out of the pen . . . to come and teach me. But the collar . . . I don’t know. If you want your talents . . .” He didn’t seem interested. But he hadn’t closed the door, either. As long as he’d agree to do it, the less interested the better. I wasn’t sure I was ready for him to know who I was.

  “Swordplay won’t win this battle,” I said. “We need sorcery of a particular kind that I am able to provide. Though I’ve begun to think Paulo is the only true sorcerer here.”

  Gerick snorted at that. “He talks to horses. And gets peop
le to say things they never meant to say.”

  “So can you do it?” said Paulo.

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “You won’t be long in your thinkin’?” said Paulo.

  “I can’t. There’s only four days. Then I won’t be able to help you any more.”

  “All right, then.” Paulo touched his hand to the bars of my cage, and the boys slipped away.

  Four days . . . earth and sky . . . If Gerick could unseal the collar, and if I had not forgotten what I was about—a nagging uncertainty that haunted my nights—I could take us out of Ce Uroth. The Lords could ensure that any portal to Avonar was under their control, but I knew another way out that they could not touch. It was just that my gut heaved at the thought. . . .

  The proper course would be to abandon Seri. The safety of the Bridge and two worlds was my first responsibility, and that meant that Gerick was far more important than my wife. Yet, as I lay in the straw, staring into the dark sky as it yielded to a dead gray, the more certain I became that we could not leave her behind. Some care for Seri had brought Gerick to this point. Who was to say that the act of saving her life might not be his own salvation?

  Late on the next afternoon I was summoned to the Gray House, trussed up like a fowl at a poulterer’s shop. Gerick was in the fencing yard, sparring with a young slave under the eye of a one-armed warrior. Vasrin Shaper! It was Vruskot.

  Gerick halted the match when the slavehandler dragged me hobbling through the gate. “Ah, here is the slave I ordered.”

  Before anyone could blink, a roaring Vruskot slammed me to the ground facedown with a bone-jarring thud, kicked me onto my back, and then fell on my belly like collapsing tower, his knees gouging and squeezing the life out of me. As I spat out dirt and fought for breath, the sun glinted on the dagger in his hand. Twisting and wriggling, tossing my head from side to side, I tried to upend the brute before I lost an eye or worse.

  “Warrior!” The world came to a stop at the command. Gerick stood calmly behind the maddened Zhid with the edge of his sword at Vruskot’s neck. “If you lower that blade the width of an eyelash, your head will follow it.”