Daughter of Ancients (24 page)

I hated that it was so. Feared it, as I feared nothing else in my life. To touch their memories was to use that rotted heart to pump poison into my veins, weakening the barriers between the person I wanted to be and the vile creature of power I had once been. I could not afford to pity these Dar'Nethi blithely going about their summer-evening entertainments, or to regret the families who had moved out into the Wastes believing their prince and their small bands of warriors could root out these few Zhid stragglers, because I dared not uncover those memories. Certainly not with the smell of blood on me. Not with the feel of snapping necks still vibrating in my fingers. “I can't help you.”

“Or is it that you won't?” He moved in close, where I could feel his breath on my cheek and smell his sweat and leather. “What is your purpose here? To unmask the Lady? You've gone far beyond that. ‘Her lover,' this woman said. Does the prince, your father, know how shamefully you use a kind and generous heart?”

Shoving past the big Dar'Nethi, I gripped the saddle rim and Stormcloud's mane and swung into the saddle, anger muting my body's complaints. “You chose to remain ignorant about this matter, Master Je'Reint, and have clearly been successful. I don't have to tell you anything.”

“Does your father know that you kill to protect her . . . and how you kill? And is that more evidence of your suspicions or a sign of your good heart or is there some other method in your deeds? Tell me why these Zhid magics left you walking, young Lord, even though you put on this impressive show of killing. Did you not find that strange?”

I clucked to Stormcloud and rode down the lane and through the thinning crowds of the grand commard to the palace gates. The enjoyments of the evening had evidently continued unabated, only the late hour sending the people of Avonar home to their beds, unaware that five Zhid had attacked their princess a hundred paces from their city's heart.

My fury at Je'Reint's self-righteous accusations had not robbed me of simple reason. The dangers that concerned him were real, and his last point was well taken. The Zhid enchantments were not designed to kill. Why? Je'Reint believed the Zhid wanted to protect
me
. But evidence indicated that D'Sanya had slain two Zhid before wandering into the Gardeners' camp. She swore she could not remember how that had occurred. It seemed clear that these Zhid tonight wanted to take D'Sanya alive. Take her back.

“I've come to see the Lady D'Sanya,” I said to the palace-gate guards. “Please tell her. Or, if she is asleep, please inform Prince Ven'Dar that the Lady's traveling companion begs entry.” I swayed in the saddle.

I hadn't needed to send a message. She was at the gate and in my arms before the guards could choose which messenger to send. But as I buried my face in her hair and blessed every kindly spirit that she was unharmed, I could not help but wonder what use the Zhid had for her. I shivered, and the world still felt wrong.

Though bone-weary from the night's events, I was unable to rest in Ven'Dar's palace. Turbulent images of broken bodies, crowded commards, and D'Sanya swooping down on me with empty eyes and a knife in her hand plagued the dark hours. Yet the demands of the body will always win out. About the time daylight crept through the slot windows, I blinked, and suddenly it was hot mid-morning. A tense serving man stood over my head, offering to dispose of the filthy clothing heaped on the floor beside the bed and show me to the guests' bathing room. The Lady D'Sanya was asking after me . . . urgently.

Despite the welcome luxury of a full bathing pool of gloriously hot water, I expended little time before hurrying along the corridor to join D'Sanya. Na'Cyd was standing in the passage outside D'Sanya's door, one bandaged arm sashed to his chest.

“I need to speak with you for a moment, sir,” he said. “It's very important.”

“Later, Na'Cyd. The Lady is waiting.” We had been too tired to talk the previous night. I needed to sort out this strange business: why they wanted her, why she hadn't struck them down with the devastating power she held in her fingertips.

“But sir . . .”

I pretended I hadn't heard him and pushed open the door.

She sat at a small table where cold roasted meat, hot bread, and an array of fruit had been laid out. “Stop,” she said, as soon as I stepped through the door.

Mystified, I obeyed. She jumped to her feet and walked around me, eyeing the palace provision of dark green shirt and tan jacket and breeches.

“I approve,” she said at last, tweaking the high neck of my shirt. “I think perhaps Prince Ven'Dar's stewards have a better eye for becoming fashion than you do. You should hire the one who selected these to be your manservant.”

“You look lovely, Lady . . . as always.” Breathtaking, in fact. A long tunic of deep, rusty red draped down below her knees over loose riding trousers, emphasizing her graceful height. The color set off her light hair and flushed complexion.

She laughed and drew me to the table. “Be quick about your eating. I breakfasted hours ago. I've already met with Prince Ven'Dar and assured him that I am nowhere near ready to relieve him of his office. He wanted to know everything about last night, of course.” The flush in her cheeks faded at this last.

I sat in the chair next to her and drew it up close. “Lady, did they . . . your abductors . . . did they say anything that might tell us—?”

She laid a gold-ringed finger on my mouth. “No more of it. Speak of something else.” Her voice wavered slightly. She shoved a bowl of plums in front of me.

“For now,” I said. “But we
must
talk about it sometime.”

And so we talked nonsense as she watched me eat, telling innocent stories . . . until with no warning she burst out, “Oh, holy Vasrin,” jumped up from her chair, and ran out of the room.

I threw down my spoon and table knife and hurried after her down a long portrait gallery, trying to think what in the nonsensical conversation about childhood disobedience could have raised her temper. I'd told her of pouring ink on my tutors' papers and putting lamp oil in their tea to get rid of them, not mentioning that I'd hoped to prevent their learning of my “evil” talent for sorcery.

She stopped in a cloistered courtyard beside a bubbling fountain, one hand pressed over her mouth, the other over her heart. Slowing my steps, I clasped my hands behind my back. I could not breakfast in gloves. “What is it, D'Sanya? Did I say something wrong? Offend you? Please, tell me.”

“How could my valiant rescuer offend me?” D'Sanya stifled a sob and hugged her arms, her attempt at a smile failing. “Je'Reint told me what you did. To think you could have been killed . . . blasted to bits . . . destroyed by Zhid magic. For me. As you were telling your story, I thought of how lonely you must have been as a child, yet you have brought me such joy. These past few weeks have been the happiest I've ever known, and I've seen you happy, too, and I could not bear to look at you and imagine . . .”

I drew her close and kissed away her tears, ignoring the serving woman who passed by us gawking. “Then don't imagine it. I'm quite undamaged. As are you. And you see,
I
feel so stupid . . . so careless . . . taking you on the road with no protection. Knowing that Zhid were raiding. Inexcusable . . .”

And everything I said was true. Gods, where had my head been lost? Even with this creeping sense of disorder warning me, I had been unforgivably careless.

“You are my protector, now and—” She pulled loose and whipped around, leaving me standing behind her.

But it was only Na'Cyd who had entered the courtyard and bowed. “Excuse my intrusion, my lady, but you left orders for me to find you as soon as the gentleman was finished with breakfast.”

“Of course, Na'Cyd. How are you this morning?”

“Mending well, so the Healers say. This”—he lifted the elbow of his bound arm—“is merely to support the repaired muscle for a day or two until nature strengthens it further.”

“I'm delighted to hear it. Prince Ven'Dar has recommended, and I have agreed, that I will journey to Maroth through a portal. If you would arrange for our horses to get there with us . . .”

“Of course, my lady. Is there anything else?”

“The prince will summon you in an hour.”

The consiliar did not leave, but bowed and watched as D'Sanya took my arm and drew me back the way we'd come. His expression, as always, was inscrutable. Perhaps a little darker than usual on this morning. Or perhaps that was my own mood.

D'Sanya pulled my arm closer as if to focus my attention. “Now you've soothed my silly megrims, I've not forgotten my promised adventure. Alas, our time is constrained by this portal business and Prince Ven'Dar insisting that he do the portal-working himself. So we won't have time to stay long. But what use to keep company with D'Arnath's daughter, if one reaps no wonder from it? Any Nimrolan maiden might do as well!”

“No other, Lady. No other.”

Beaming, she led me quickly through the palace, distinguishing the new-built parts from the parts she remembered, and telling how the use or furnishing of one place had differed in the past, or what marvelous events had occurred there.

“Down that passage is the chamber with cracked walls from the time D'Alleyn sealed it, filled it with water and honey, and spent twenty days freezing it, sure he could make the largest sweet ice anyone could imagine.” D'Sanya giggled as she pointed into a low, narrow passage where a single yellow lamp brightened as we stopped and peered inside, and then dimmed as we started down a steep staircase that led into the core of the fortress. “The three of us would roll ourselves in layers of rugs and slide down this stair . . . it's the longest in the palace. But D'Leon broke his arm on it one day, and Papa forbade it after. We've only a little farther to go. Can you guess where I'm taking you? So few have ever seen it.”

Of course, I knew. I remembered the steep, narrow flight of worn steps from carrying my father's litter from the Gate. But I said, “Another of your childhood hiding places?”

She laughed, and before I knew it, we came to the lower end of a sloping passage—nothing more than a massive wall of seamless, square-cut stone, darkened with age and smoke. D'Sanya stretched her hand toward the wall. The stone shifted and shaped itself to reveal a pair of wooden doors three times my height. They swung open to reveal the vast chamber, filled as always with cold white fire and billowing frost plumes.

“Now stay close. I am taking you through the Gate and onto the Bridge, where I will show you the most wonderful sight you will ever see! Not even Prince Ven'Dar knows of it. I've been saving my first venture for a special occasion—and what could be more special than being alive and free and keeping company with my bosom friend and dear protector?” She raised her arms, lifted her face, and danced through the doorway, spinning on her toes until she was out of sight.

I made it no farther than the doorway, where I stopped dead and clapped my hands over my ears. Unfortunately the horrid, scraping sensation was inside me, not outside.

The last time I stood in the Chamber of the Gate, I had just returned to my own body after our journey from Windham. I had thought the feeling that my spirit was an open wound immersed in salt water was the inevitable result of soul-weaving with my father's diseased body. But the chamber didn't feel so very different on this morning. Only to be expected, I supposed, as every other Dar'Nethi enchantment seemed to be having this effect on me.

I gathered control and shook off the disturbance as much as possible before D'Sanya could notice. Suffering ill effects from proximity to D'Arnath's Bridge had always been considered evidence of corruption.

When I entered the chamber, the Lady was kneeling on the smooth tile floor in front of the bronze lion, her head bowed and her palms spread wide. After a moment her eyes lifted to the lion's head and the gold and silver globes that some enchantment balanced far above us on the beast's upraised paws. I held back, knowing how she revered her father—the Lion of the Dar'Nethi, his people had called him. The Tormenter, the Talent-binder . . . those were the mildest of names given him in Zhev'Na.

In moments D'Sanya was on her feet again and beckoning me to join her. “Come see. Is this not a formidable lion? I commissioned it as soon as I was permitted to enter the chamber and view the Gate. I had it placed here after they anointed me, and I added the two orbs shortly after—to represent Gondai and the mundane world. It seemed only just that Papa should be remembered forever here beside his greatest work.”

“It's a fine piece,” I said, knowing nothing about it whatsoever. I would be doing well to keep from banging my jangling head against the thing. The light of the shifting Gate fire reflected off the metal globes—each of them an arm's length in diameter—so that beams of gold and silver light shot randomly across the chamber. The first one that struck my eyes came near boring a hole right through my skull.

D'Sanya tilted her head and examined me, tracing a finger along my cheek. “Are you well?”

“When you do that . . . yes,” I said. Wholly the truth. Surely to bury my face in her breast would make the grinding illness inside me go away as well.

“Oh, holy Vasrin, I've dragged you down here on my silly whim, and your poor bones could be fractured from those vile firebursts! Prince Ven'Dar told me you refused a Healer last night. We must go up at once and see to your injuries.”

If I had not already experienced the Bridge, my curiosity at her planned adventure might have overruled any physical ailment. But my previous crossings had shown me nothing so marvelous that it could persuade me to remain another moment in that chamber.