Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (10 page)

inside. I must get a gardener out here to clear all this away.” I led him quickly into the leafy shadows. The

air was close and smelled of rotting leaves, and our feet crunched on the matted vines.

“Why are you afraid?” His voice penetrated the darkness like the beam of a lantern.

“I’m not . . . not really. A silly thing from childhood.”

“There’s nothing to fear.” His presence enfolded me.

Less than fifty paces and we rounded the curve and emerged into the sunlight. “No,” I said, my voice

trembling ever so slightly. “Nothing to fear. This was my mother’s garden.” I walked briskly, stopping

only when I reached the lambina tree again. From the corner of my eye I could see Dassine hobbling

slowly toward us.
Not yet
! Not even an hour had passed.

Suddenly a quivering trace of enchantment pierced the morning, and the lambina burst into full bloom,

each great yellow blossom unfolding like a miniature sunrise, its pungent fragrance wafting through the

sharp air. In a few moments of wonder, the huge blossoms floated away like enormous, silken butterflies,

only to be replaced by the soft white blooms of summer, heavy with sweet and languid scent, each

cradled in its nest of bright green. And then the glorious dying, the white blossoms fading into burnished

gold and the waxy green leaves into deep russet, falling at last to leave a royal carpet on the frozen

ground.

“Thank you,” I said, my breath taken away by the marvel. “That was lovely.”

“It’s too cold to wake it completely, and I know I must be wary in this world, but I thought perhaps it

might ease your sadness.”

“And so it has.” I hadn’t meant for him to see my tears. Perhaps he would think they were for my

mother. “You’ll come again to visit me?” Dassine was almost with us.

“If my keeper allows it. I’d like it very—” Both voice and smile died away as he stared at my face.

Knitting his brow, he touched my tears with his finger, and his expression changed as if I had grown

wings or was a dead woman that walked before him. “Seri. . . you’re . . .” Pain glanced across his face,

and the color drained out of him. Rigid, trembling, he whispered, “I know you.” He raised his hands to

the sides of his head. “A beacon in darkness . . . Oh gods, so dark ...” Eyes closed, head bent, he

groaned and stepped backward. I reached out.

“Do not!” commanded Dassine angrily, shoving me aside and grabbing Karon’s arm to steady him.

“What have you done? What did you say?”

“Nothing. Nothing that was forbidden. We walked and talked of the garden. Nothing of the past. He

made the tree bloom for me.”

Dassine laid his hands on Karon’s temples, murmuring words I couldn’t hear. Instantly, Karon’s face

went slack. When his eyes flicked open again, they were fixed on the ground, and the light had gone out

of them.

“What is it? What’s happened?” I whispered.

“As I said. It was not a good time to bring him. You are too strong an influence.” The old man took

Karon’s arm. “Come, my son. Our time here is done. We’ve a hard journey home.” They started down

the path toward the eastern wall.

“Dassine!” I called after them. “Will he be all right?”

“Yes, yes. He’ll be fine. It was my fault. It was too early, and I left him too long. A setback only.”

Before I could bid him farewell or ask when they might come again, the two white figures

disappeared into a flickering fog.

CHAPTER 5

Karon

Surely I am the sorriest of madmen. These hands . . . they are
not
the hands that lifted the wine

goblet to my father on the day he became the Lord of Avonar, my Avonar of the mundane world,

the Avonar that is no more. The shape is wrong. They’re too large; the palms too wide. The hair

on the backs of them too fair. This face . . . I peer into this placid pond that mimes so truly the

tree and the stone beside me and. the clouds that travel these azure skies, and the face I see is not

the face that looks back at me from the ponds that exist in my memory. And my left arm . . . only

four scars. Into what reality did the hundreds of them vanish, each one a painful ecstasy so clearly

remembered, each one a reminder of the gift I know is still a part of me? It is a loss beside which

the loss of the limb itself would be no matter at all. Where has the first of them gone, the long,

ragged one made when I embraced my dying brother and a future that terrified me
—
the day I

first knew I was a Healer? With this gift I have brought people back from the dead
.

So. These are a stranger’s hands. Yet, I know
their
history, too. Know and feel and remember . .

. They have been anointed with oil of silestia, that which consecrates the Heir of our ancient king,

D’Arnath, to the service of his people. With them I raised the Preceptors of Gondai from their

genuflections on the day I was made Prince of Avonar, this other Avonar that still lives. These

hands wield a sword with the precision of a gem cutter and the speed of lightning. And they have

taken life, a deed that fills my soul with revulsion
.

How is it possible that I’ve killed and thought it right? And I’m good at it and proud of my

prowess. . . .

As I sat in Dassine’s garden, I pressed my hands—the stranger’s hands—to my face, digging the

heels into my eye sockets so perhaps the world wouldn’t come apart on this bright, windy winter

morning—or if it did, at least I wouldn’t see it. As always after a session with Dassine, my search for

understanding had left me stranded on a mental precipice, facing ... nothing. Absolutely nothing. If I

stayed at the precipice too long, tried too hard to shape some coherent image in this gaping hole in my

head, the universe would fall apart in front of me, not just in the mind’s realm, but the physical world, too.

Jagged cracks of darkness would split whatever scene I looked on and break it into little fragments—a

tree, a stone, a chair, my hand—and then, one by one, the fragments would fade and vanish into the

abyss.

The effort of holding the world together always felt as if it were tearing my eyes right out of my skull.

Even worse than the physical discomfort was the paralyzing, suffocating horror that always accompanied

it. And I knew in my very bones that if ever I let the whole world disappear, I would never find my way

back. If I was capable of speech, I would beg Dassine to make it stop, to wipe clean all he had returned,

to excise that mote of cold reason that told me I would never be whole until I knew everything.

And what did my teacher, my companion, my keeper, answer when I begged his mercy? He would

pat my throbbing head and remove my shaking hands from their desperate hold on his wrinkled robe,

and say, “We’ve pushed a little too hard today. Take an extra hour’s rest before we begin again.” For, of

course, my questioning, my feeble attempt to unravel the meaning of the person I was and the lives I had

lived, was but the inevitable result of Dassine’s schooling.

In my life as a Healer in the mundane world, I had once come upon a remote village where the

inhabitants had discovered a tree whose fruit, dried and powdered and mixed with wine, gave them

terrifying visions that they believed came from their gods. Drinking this potion also caused them to forget

to eat and to care for themselves. When I found these people, the corpses of their starved, neglected

children lay all about their village. The few adults who yet breathed were wasted with starvation and

disease. Though they knew well that their insatiable foolishness had led them to this piteous state, they

could not refuse the call of their gods. I understood them now. Even when so weary I could neither eat

nor lift a cup, even when I wept from exhaustion and madness, neither could I refuse another taste of

Dassine’s gift. Dassine—my master, my subject, my jailer, my healer, my tormentor.

A cold gust caught the hood of my white robe, yanking it off my head and dumping the snow from a

bare tree limb onto my neck. With leaden arms, I reached around and brushed off the snow, feeling a

few icy droplets trickling down my back. Shivering, I drew my stranger’s hands into the folds of the wool

robe.
Who am I? What’s happened to me
?

“Come on. Time to sleep.” I hadn’t heard Dassine open the door.

He had already disappeared back into the house, leaving the door open. He wouldn’t expect me to

answer. Words were always an effort by this time. I rose and padded through the garden after him,

shedding my flimsy sandals at the door. I needed the fresh air, even on such a cold day, to remind myself

that a world existed beyond my broken mind. Our latest session had ended better than most. No panic.

No raving. No begging.

Once I’d stepped inside the house and closed off the world again, Dassine pointed to a cup of tea

sitting on the table. “You shouldn’t go out on days like this. I don’t like you getting so cold.”

I shook my head, refusing the tea and his worries in one efficient motion. In two heartbeats, I would

be asleep and wouldn’t care.

My bedchamber was a small, unadorned room that adjoined Dassine’s workroom. Its walls and floor

were bare, constructed of thick stone that eliminated all vagary of noise or climate that might disturb its

utter monotony. Despite its construction, the chamber was neither cave nor prison cell, for it was clean

and dry, and had a large, unbarred window of thick but exceptionally clear glass, a bed and a washing

table, and no door at all, only an empty opening to the cluttered workroom. The bed was comfortable,

though I was never allowed a full night to enjoy it.

Dassine would rouse me after only a few hours’ rest, day or night, and lead me stumbling into this

chilly, untidy jumble of books and tables, pots and jars he called his lectorium. He would remove my

robe and seat me, shivering and naked, within a circle of tall candlesticks. Always he would ask for my

consent to go on, and like the skeletal villagers of Pernat, I would tell him I was ready to seek my visions

once again. Then he would begin a low chanting—quiet, rhythmic, peaceful, seemingly benign—until the

candle flames grew taller than my head and roared with the thunder of a hundred waterfalls. By that time

I could encompass no sensation but the light. It forced its way into my eyes, my head, and my lungs. It

seeped through the very pores of my skin until I thought my body must glow with it.

Very quickly, then, would come to birth another day that had been hidden from me. In Dassine’s light

I saw again the face of my mother as she sang me to sleep, her intricate compositions of word and

melody taking physical shape and weaving themselves into my childish dreams. In that light I heard once

more the voice of my father whom I loved, watched him sit in his hall of justice, ruling with benevolence

and honor those who would burn him alive if they knew what he was—a sorcerer of uncommon power.

In that candlelight I learned again the art of healing from my mentor, Celine, and felt again the fiery kiss of

my knife as I shared my life’s gift with the sick and the dying. There I heard the reports of the slaughter of

my family and my people and the devastation of my home. There I reread the books that I loved and

those that bored me. I suffered the indignities of childhood and the revelations of youth, and I

rediscovered my love of archeology, reacquiring my knowledge of the culture and history and art of

peoples that were not my people, but whom my ancestors had embraced as their own.

Hours and days and weeks I lived in the light of Dassine’s candles. And when the light died away at

last and my mind limped back to his dim study, Dassine would tell me how long I had been away—four

hours, perhaps, or five of present time.

After he had put the candles away and given me my robe, he would share food and drink that had

been set on a tray in the middle of his scuffed pine table. The meal was wholesome and plentiful, but

always plain. I’d eat what I could, and then I’d walk in Dassine’s garden to bask in the sun or the

starlight and inhale the sweetness of the open air. Inevitably I would begin to ponder what I had learned .

. . until my questions drove me to the edge of the precipice. Then Dassine would send me to sleep and, a

few hours later, wake me to begin it all again.

I had no idea how long I had been with Dassine. Time had lost its pristine simplicity, and every sunrise

signaled a further distortion. Somewhere in the months and weeks just past was a beginning ... an eternity

of stupefied confusion while Dassine laid a foundation in my head so that he could speak with me of

D’Arnath’s Bridge between the worlds and what my actions to prevent its destruction had done to me.

He spoke now only in the vaguest generalities, saying that the truth of my experiences must come from

inside myself as I relived them.

On this very early morning—the bright, windy cold morning when the world had held itself together

for once— the Healer watched from the doorway to the lectorium as I shed my robe and burrowed into

the mound of rumpled pillows and blankets. My eyes were already closed when I felt a blanket drawn up