Daughter of Ancients (26 page)

Aimee frowned, plopped the yarn into her basket, and wagged a scolding finger at Paulo. “Never try to fool me, sir, thinking a blind woman cannot see the truth of her own mistakes. My friends know better.”

Paulo's breath stopped, and his cheeks paled as if a headsman had just raised an ax aimed at his neck. Though his lips worked, they produced no sound . . . until Aimee covered her mouth with her hand and broke into merry laughter. “I'm sorry,” she said, after a moment. “You are just so serious and so very kind . . . and I am a terrible, wicked tease . . . please, come sit and rest yourself from your journey.”

Though his face told me he might prefer to bury his head in the cushions piled in the corner of the room, poor Paulo sat down in a straight wooden chair across the low table from Aimee and me. Setting her basket aside, Aimee poured a cup of cold saffria from a pitcher on the table in front of us and offered it to Paulo. A peace offering, I thought, though she could not see that he took the cup with his eyes fixed somewhere in the region of her gold-link girdle and thus could not observe her smile of apology. She tilted her head as if searching or listening, and, after a moment, bit her lip uncertainly.

I went to their rescue. “Paulo, Aimee and I were just discussing the Lady D'Sanya. Has Gerick mentioned her true talent?”

“No, ma'am. He's not said anything about it. And I guess it's not a thing you go and ask right out.”

“You're exactly right, sir,” said Aimee as she returned to her seat and picked up her basket. “To question a person's true talent is to imply that the person's worth is somehow defined by his abilities at sorcery, which of course it could never be. There are so many qualities of more importance.” Rarely had I heard Aimee so earnest in her opinions.

“So what is she then?” I asked the world at large.

Paulo frowned thoughtfully. “She's no Horsemaster. That's certain. She fixed Nacre's leg weeks ago all right, but he's been bothered about it since.”

“It's not just that the leg is tender?” Though I cared nothing for Lady D'Sanya's skill with horses, Paulo's observations were always valuable. And I wasn't about to say anything to discount him in front of Aimee.

“No. He's just . . . not himself. Not by a league or ten. He's gone vicious. That's why I've come here in the middle of the week. To bring him back and find another. I sent my Stormcloud with the young master to Maroth, and I thought I could coax Nacre back to himself. But it's no good.”

“I've few enough horses in my stable, and they're mostly carriage horses or plodding nags suited only to carry a petrified rider around her little paddock,” said Aimee, offering her pitcher again. “But you're welcome to any of them. And if none suit, I'll take you to Master Je'Reint's stables—the finest in Avonar. We can surely find you an excellent mount there. My lord is so generous. He's taken me to his house many times and offered whatever service I need since my sisters moved away. I'll be happy to arrange a visit if you'd like. I'll take you there myself.”

“That would be fine, mistress. Really fine.” Given the look on his face, one might have thought she had offered him the sun from her silver platter and then told him he couldn't have it after all. He refilled his cup and set the pitcher back on the tray.

“What other news, Paulo? Is Gerick back from Maroth? Three weeks, it's been.”

“I've not seen him. Last I heard, the Lady was still away from her house.”

“And Karon . . .”

“He says he's not managed to write further on his work nor any more than the one letter. Says he gets distracted too easy, but not by anything that's worth writing about.” Paulo's face reflected the worry that accompanied any mention of Karon nowadays. “Things are not right with him, my lady. Though it's a risk to have me sneaking in, he seems to pick up a bit while I'm there. But he's not right.”

I knew things were not right with Karon. His letters had dwindled in number and length and substance as the weeks had gone by. I ached for his loneliness and isolation, and without Gerick there to test him, I couldn't even know what was natural and what might be caused by the strange enchantment under which he lived. “He says your visits have been the best thing in his life, Paulo. You must have found something interesting to talk about.”

When Gerick began spending so much time with D'Sanya, Paulo had taken it on himself to visit Karon, saying he would sneak through Karon's private garden, so as not to risk anyone inquiring about “Master K'Nor's” new visitor. But what had begun as an occasional hour had expanded into daily visits, so we'd seen little of Paulo for the past weeks. Karon's letters said that he and Paulo were having some
useful discussions
that were the first things to keep his attention since he'd been at the hospice.

“We pass the time. Talk a bit. Not much as would be interesting to anybody else.” His gaze followed Aimee, who stood at her sideboard cutting slices of cake and setting them on small plates. When he noticed me watching, he colored and looked away. “He's a deal lonesome since the young master's been away. I'm sure he'll pick up when my lord comes back.”

Ven'Dar had told us about the Zhid attack on Gerick and the Lady. Gerick had sent only a brief description of it along with his warning message about the consiliar. If he hadn't needed us to forward the message on to Karon for him, he'd likely not have told us anything.

Since then, Gerick had sent only one brief note from Maroth, saying they had seen no more signs of Zhid interest in the Lady, and that D'Sanya had kept him so busy, he'd had no time to investigate anything.
Life has changed for me, Mother,
he'd written.
I've learned things about myself I never imagined. And I've come to understand so much about you and my father and how you've been able to survive all that's happened to you. Whatever comes of all this, I hope to be the better for it.

Karon was intrigued by the Lady's determination to teach Gerick to enjoy himself—an unexpected echo of a wish the two of us had shared for five years. He said I wouldn't recognize our son's manner.
I've seen Gerick pleased or satisfied in the past,
Karon had written a week or two before Gerick left for Maroth.
And when he has joined with me, I've felt his care and love as if they were my own emotions. But never until these past weeks have I seen him happy. When he comes in from his time with her, he exhibits no trace of the burdens he has borne all his life. Though I fear for what we may yet unearth about this woman—and truly those fears lessen every day—I cannot regret Gerick's discovery that he can be happy or my witnessing it before I have to leave him. The paths of life are truly marvelous.

I didn't like it. Gerick and Karon were like two infants setting out to untangle a family squabble. Gerick had been a hermit for nine years after a completely unnatural childhood, emerging only briefly at age sixteen to offer his life to save the world from the Lords. And nobody in any world was less willing or able to recognize ordinary human wickedness than Karon, who insisted on seeing his own goodness reflected in everyone he encountered. All the more reason for a practical and uninvolved—though not exactly objective—observer to get busy.

I had the beginnings of an idea, and all I needed was a few words with the harried Prince of Avonar to help me decide if my plan made sense. When Paulo and Aimee set out on their excursion to Je'Reint's stables, they took my message for Ven'Dar to the palace. And along with a new horse for Paulo, and a gift of some elegant writing paper sent to me from Je'Reint, they returned with the Prince of Avonar's agreement to meet with me the next morning.

 

Two days later, I set out to seek my own version of the truth. Though skeptical that I might discover what others had not, Ven'Dar had provided the assistance I requested. He had given me an introduction to V'Rendal, a loyal and discreet Archivist, who could allow me access to the records of D'Sanya's interrogation, as well as provide me with an identity, credentials, and a plausible excuse to be poking around in case I wanted to look further. The woman worked tucked away in a quiet chamber below the palace library—the Royal Archives, a cool, high-ceilinged room lined with tall wooden cupboards.

I began by reading the official report of the Lady's examination by the Preceptorate, and the statements by the Archivists, Healers, and Historians who had questioned her. D'Sanya's knowledge of historical detail, her experiences, and the evidence that could be corroborated from other sources supported the belief that she was exactly who she claimed to be—a twenty-year-old woman who had been born more than a thousand years in the past.

“One thing bothers me, V'Rendal,” I said to the buxom red-haired woman who sat across the wide table carefully removing the pages from a tattered book. My finger tapped the crisp vellum of the report that lay in front of me. “Your Historians found only three references to D'Arnath's daughter, all in a single text. The first is merely a date in the record of royal births. The second is in a listing of those attending the celebration when D'Arnath was crowned High King of Gondai. And the third is in the record of the residents of the palace when the great census was taken in the third year after the Catastrophe. He never even mentioned her name. Though he recorded no date of death, in every description of the family's activities after the third year of the war, only the sons were listed. How can we assume that this writer was correct, and all others in error?”

The woman picked up a penlike instrument with a leather-wrapped handle and used the small V-shaped blade set into its tip to cut a stitch in the book's ruined binding. Then she lifted out another fragile page and set it on the stack beside her. “The source is the important thing here. S'Tar was the official Historian of D'Arnath's court, required to be complete and adhere to the strictest standards in his writing, including all lists of the sort you've mentioned. His works are considered unimpeachable. As to his lack of detail about the daughter, I have my own theories. Prominent Historians pay little mind to women even yet.”

A fly buzzed around our heads and into V'Rendal's face before settling on her stack of pages. She blew a quick sharp puff of air toward it, and the fly bounced from the stack onto the table, apparently frozen. Then she split another stitch and resumed her work and her lecture.

“Few histories . . . few books of any kind . . . survived those days. Books are so fragile. One of the great tragedies of this pernicious war occurred when King D'Arnath himself destroyed the Royal Library and its archives by mistake in a battle near the end of his reign. S'Tar's work and a few other specialized court histories survived because they had been so widely distributed. Every major library had its own copies. A few lesser-known histories—E'Rind's
Obscure Histories,
Mu'-Tenni's
Ancients,
one or two other texts—had never been added to the royal collection, and thus survived the destruction.” She pursed her wide mouth in resignation. “But very few of those works still exist, all reportedly in the same condition as this poor volume and quite scattered throughout the Vales. I've never seen even one of them. After that disaster we began storing our most important histories inside the palace rather than a separate building. Tell me, are women ignored in great events in the mundane world?”

I smiled at her as I closed the bound reports and stacked them. “Dreadfully so. At least Dar'Nethi women have been able to
participate
in great events. In my country we are just beginning to wield influence. So, did the Historian who wrote this report research any of those more obscure histories?”

V'Rendal clipped another stitch and rolled her eyes. “He told me that it wasn't worth the trouble to look further, when S'Tar had provided the necessary confirmation of the girl's existence. The stories of her in the more obscure texts would not likely be reliable. And in truth . . . he was probably correct.”

I hadn't expected much from the public record—clearly the Preceptors and the Dar'Nethi people had been satisfied—and so I was only slightly disappointed by my initial lack of results. If the opportunity arose, I might hunt down the more obscure histories, but I was more interested in the D'Sanya of my own time. The ancient Historians would not have known what happened to D'Sanya in Zhev'Na anyway.

“To be confined ‘asleep' for a thousand years . . . how is that possible?”

“I don't know of any way. For short periods, yes. Everyone assumes the Lords could do whatever they liked—blatantly ridiculous, of course, else how would Avonar still stand? Yet it's true we don't know half their works.”

“So no one investigated the nature of the Lady's enchantment?”

“No. I've wondered myself. Believed it should be a part of the records. Only one other person ever asked about it, one of the Restored. The man came in here every day for a week, reading the entire history of the war and how it all ended. A quiet man and most polite, but”—she shuddered—“I had M'Qeti from the Royal Library come here every day the man visited, so I didn't have to be alone with him. I suppose he had been Zhid for a very long time. It is so difficult to imagine that they don't—Well, I told the fellow I might speak to a friend of mine about the Lady's enchantment, but I've had so many other things to work on these past weeks . . .”

V'Rendal paused in her activity, setting aside her cutting tool, her thick fingers lying quietly on her book. “I suppose
you
could speak to my friend. Garvé's an odd man . . . and friends tell me he's gotten a bit unstable. I suppose that's the nature of being an Arcanist.”