Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (22 page)

At dusk, I woke Bareil. Odd to be on the shaking end of it, rather than the shaken. “The sun is taking

itself off, Dulcé,” I said, “and I think we must do the same.”

“You’ve let me sleep too long.”

“I’ve just recently been reminded of how blessed it is to get a full measure.”

“So what to do, my lord?”

“I must find out about this child.”

“Command me.”

I shared out bread and cold chicken from the pack, and filled two cups with hot, pungent saffria from

the small urn sitting on the table. As we ate, I commanded Bareil, “
Detan detu, madrissé
. Tell me of the

child that is lost.” Such were the proper words to unlock the knowledge of a Dulcé.

He considered for a moment. “I’m sorry, my lord, but I know nothing of a child that is lost.”

“Abducted, then. Any abducted child?” One had to be very specific when trying to access

information that was not at the front of the Dulcé‘s mind. “Or any connection of an abducted child with

me or with my family?”

“There have been many cases of children abducted by the Zhid, but nothing to distinguish one from

another.” Deep in thought, he pulled a bite of meat from the chicken leg. “Throughout history the Zhid

have tried to abduct royal children as they do other Dar’Nethi children. None of those attempts have

been successful. In the years before Master Exeget took you under his protection, there were three

attempts to abduct you. I know of no specific connection of any abducted child with you or your family.”

I came at the problem from a different tack. “Tell me of the place called Zhev’Na.”

Bareil laid down his bread and set his cup aside. “Since the Catastrophe, we have called the ruined

lands Ce Uroth—the Wastes—or, as those who serve the Lords say, the Barrens. Zhev’Na is the

stronghold of the Lords in the heart of Ce Uroth. Dassine believed it was one of the great houses ruined

by the Catastrophe, but even if that is true, no one knows which one or where to find it.”

So Dassine knew, or feared, that the Lords had taken this mysterious child. But Bareil had already

told me that he knew nothing of any child taken by the Zhid.

“Do we know why the Zhid capture children?”

“To steal an enemy’s children has a profoundly demoralizing effect. It destroys his hope for the future

and often will make him act rashly. In addition, Master Dassine surmised that children are especially

susceptible to the corruption of the Lords. Some Zhid commanders are Dar’Nethi who were captured as

children and raised in Zhev’Na under the tutelage of the Three. Only when they came of age, their minds

twisted by the life they had led, were they made Zhid—the most wicked of all their commanders. And, of

course, the Zhid can no longer produce children of their own, a condition that manifested itself in the early

centuries of the war. The enchantments of the Lords are in opposition to creation—to life—so Master

Dassine explained it.”

As the daylight faded, lingering in the pearly glow given off by the paving stones of the city, I tried a

hundred more questions, sideways, backward, arranging and rearranging them to elicit any scrap of

information about one particular unlucky boy. To no avail. Dassine had made no references to any living

child save the child I had been.

The luminous commard outside the window emptied and fell quiet. Bareil told me that even with the

more peaceful times of the past few months, people were not accustomed to going about freely at night.

The Seeking of the Zhid— the creeping invasion of the soul that led to despair—had always been

strongest in the dark hours. Watchers yet manned the walls at night, but had neither seen any sign of the

Zhid nor felt their Seeking since I had returned from the mundane world after doing . . . whatever I had

done there.

“Stars of night, what does he expect of me?” I flopped onto the rumpled bedcovers, burying my face

and my confusion. Dassine had said Bareil was the one who could help me. He must have thought it

would be easy, or he would have slipped in some further word of instruction, even in his last distress. I

rolled to my back. “
Detan detu, madrissé
. Tell me the ways Master Dassine gave you to help me.

Anything more than the expected things like answering questions and leading me around the city.”

Bareil nodded. “Master Dassine has allowed me to know the reasons for your present condition, and

the means he has used to cause it and to remedy it. He has permitted me to know what things it might do

you harm to know before you remember them properly, and what things would be of more benefit than

harm. He has given me the purposes and instructions for the use of the device which we collected—the

pink stone—and the second device which you must allow me to hold safe until the time is right for me to

explain its history. He has entrusted me with the knowledge of shifting the exit point of the Bridge and

several other such matters which may be spoken only in your presence, else my tongue will become mute

for the duration of my life. He has entrusted me with the complete story of his sojourn in the Wastes,

which he has told to no other living person, and how you must use his knowledge to chart your course for

the future. He has entrusted me with the knowledge of those men and women that he mistrusts and those

whom he trusts. Shall I go on?”

“Stars of night, Bareil . . .”

“My madrisson honored me with such confidence as no one has ever given a Dulcé.”

“Do either of these devices—the pink stone or the other one—have anything to do with a child or any

of the matters we have discussed?”

“Not that I can see, my lord. It seems I can be no help to you in the matter of the child.”

Staring at the smoke-stained plaster of the ceiling, I thought back to Dassine’s words yet again,

reciting each one exactly as he had burned it into my head.
Holy stars
! I sat up. How could one man be

so unendingly thickheaded? I had been misstating them all along.
Only one can help
, he had said.
Bareil.

. . your guide
. But he
hadn’t
said that Bareil and the person who could help were one and the same.

“Dulcé, who in Avonar did Dassine trust?”

“Trust? No one, my lord, save myself. He often said it.”

“None of the Preceptors?”

“Most especially none of the Preceptors. He has long suspected that one or more of his colleagues is

a tool of the Lords.”

That would explain a great deal. “Outside Avonar, then. Did he trust anyone outside of Avonar that

might have knowledge of this matter?”

“I know of only one person that he trusted unreservedly, my lord, or whom he told anything of his

work with you.”

“Who was that?”

“Lady Seriana.” The Dulcé looked away and closed his mouth tight. Dangerous ground that, and

Bareil knew it. She had undone me once.

“She is across the Bridge.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Is it possible that she might have knowledge of this mystery?”

“It is possible, though I have no direct information that says it to be true.”

“And you know of no one else who might?”

“The Preceptors might. It is my presumption that Master Exeget might.”

“You mean that Dassine may have learned of the abduction from Exeget before the attack?”

“I was told nothing of this matter, my lord. Though I’m sure there are matters which Master Dassine

did not discuss with me, I believe he would have made sure I knew anything of vital importance to you ...

if he had the opportunity.”

“But why would Exeget give him such important information and then have him killed?”

“I agree that such actions make no sense at all. Perhaps Master Exeget was taunting Master Dassine.

I don’t know.”

There was a great deal more I wanted to learn from Bareil, but more than anything, I wanted to act. I

had thought and questioned, lived in memory and dreams and confusion for so long that I was about to

burst from the desire to ride, to run, to fight, to stretch my muscles for anything more than easing the

cramps of too-short sleeping.

So. Two choices. We could find Exeget and force answers from him, or we could seek out the Lady

Seriana and discover if she knew anything of the mystery. My earlier conflict about the merits and justice

of revenge induced me to choose the latter. Confronting the lady might damage my mind a bit, but I could

not rid myself of the disturbing suspicion that confronting Exeget, with the image of the dying Dassine still

so clear in my head, might do considerable damage to my soul.

“The Bridge, then,” I said. “I will speak to the lady first.”

Bareil bowed. “Command me, Lord.”

“
Detan detu, madrissé
. Tell me what I must do to cross the Bridge and find the Lady Seriana.”

“First, you will need the pink stone. . . .” In a quiet monologue, Bareil told me the words to raise the

light of the stone, telling the lady we were on the way, and then how to reverse the enchantment so that I

could set the exit point of the Bridge to the place where she was to be found. When he had schooled me

enough, he motioned me to the door. I took our pack from him and followed.

We left the guesthouse in a more conventional manner than we had entered it, down the stairs and

through a large room—a salon, Bareil had called it—that was quite different from the common rooms of

inns in the Four Realms. This was a soft-lit, quiet place with many small groups of men and women

engaged in lively discussions or storytelling, or testing their skills at sonquey—a game of strategy played

with square tiles of red and green, finger-length bars of silver, and a dollop of sorcery. At another table,

two men and a woman bent their heads over a pattern of exquisitely painted lignial cards, representing

Speakers, Singers, Tree Delvers, and others of the hundred Dar’Nethi talents. The woman was pregnant,

likely calculating the prospects of her coming child’s magical gifts. A burly man served out mugs of saffria

and ale, and laughter rolled through the room from here to there like summer showers. No fights. No filth.

No grizzled veterans building the edifice of their valor larger with each tankard. No contests of manhood

proving only that the stink of ale, sweat, piss, and vomit was the price of good humor. Steady-burning

lamps hung about the room, and their light had nothing to do with fire. In fact, there was no smoke at all,

save the marvelous emanations of a roasting pig, generously dripping its fat into the firepit in one corner of

the room. If I could have borne the thought of sitting still another moment, I would have insisted on a

plate of it.

Bareil pulled up the hood of his cloak and looked neither right nor left as we walked through the

room. Having been the madrissé of a Preceptor for thirty years, perhaps he would be recognized. I, on

the other hand, had less occasion to worry; few people had ever laid eyes on the present Heir of

D’Arnath, or so I understood. But I pulled up my hood, too, as if in preparation for stepping into the cold

night.

“We must take the long way around and come up behind the palace,” Bareil said, as soon as we

were in the street. “It is not time for you to walk in the front gate.”

We passed like shadows through the soft glow of the city, hurrying past wonder after wonder: tiny

yellow frost flowers with petals like crystal, blooming in a window box; a faint bluish eddy in the air over

a well, where you could hold your freezing fingers and have them pleasantly warmed; an unfrozen pond

whose dark waters reflected the complete bowl of the heavens, but nothing else, no structure, no tree,

not even my own face as I peered into it.

“My lord, please,” said Bareil, tugging at my arm. “We must get out of the streets. Those who wish

you harm will be watching.”

On we sped, crossing a district that had been reduced to skeletal towers and blackened rubble,

where only vermin and wild cats could find refuge. We climbed narrow lanes that wound steeply up the

hil past the palace, past sights that spoke of the long years of war: deserted houses, ruined shops and

bathhouses, neglected gardens, crumbling bridges and dry pools. Even the intact bathhouses were closed

and locked. What had once been a favorite recreation for Dar’Nethi had fallen out of favor. Many

people felt it unseemly to enjoy the pleasures of recreational bathing when thousands of our brothers and

sisters were enslaved so cruelly in the desert Wastes.

We padded through a university, its cloistered walkways broken up by weeds, its lawns and gardens

long overgrown, entangling fallen statuary and broken stone benches in an impenetrable blanket of briars.

At one end of a weed-choked quadrangle stood a ruined observatory. The domed roof that had once

housed seeing devices used to study the heavens had caved in long ago, and many of the intricate

carvings of heavenly objects that banded its walls were damaged beyond repair. The overgrown

sculpture garden, the site of Dassine’s murder, lay quiet.

Bareil said the palace was defended against hidden portals, so we would have to enter by one of its

five gates. Almost an hour after leaving the inn, we stood across a courtyard from two slender towers

that sheltered a single thick wooden gate into the palace precincts. This courtyard, tucked away behind

the palace, almost hacked out of the rock of the mountainside, was not one of the commonly used