Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (23 page)

entries, Bareil told me, but one used for prisoners being brought to the palace for trial or the royal

family’s personal visitors who wished to be discreet. No guard was in sight.

“This gate is sealed except when it is needed,” said Bareil. “Guards are unnecessary except under a

direct assault.”

“Then how are we to get in?”

He smiled up at me, and whispered, “This is your house, my lord. The locks and seals will know

you.”

I hadn’t considered that I could just walk in. I was not stealing into a place where I had no legitimate

business. If I wanted, I could stroll through the front doors of this place and proclaim myself

home—though I didn’t think that would be clever.

We slipped around the shadowed edges of the courtyard and came to the great wooden door

banded with steel. When I laid my hand on the thick latch, barbs of enchantment pricked my arm all the

way to the shoulder.

“Press down as you would on any door handle,” said Bareil. “It should open to your hand.”

I did so. Nothing happened.

The Dulcé frowned. “I don’t understand. No one could change the locks without your permission,

and you used this gate many times when you were a boy.”

True ... In my first nine years, no one had ever really cared where I was or what I did, but fussy

courtiers and tutors would forever attempt to ingratiate themselves with my father by reporting on my

ignorance and undisciplined behavior. So I had sneaked away from them, down the narrow stair through

kitchens and barracks and through the open doorway into the cluttered courtyard that lay on the other

side of this very gate, knowing that everything I wanted awaited me just beyond it: freedom and

adventure, weapons, combat, fear, blood, and death . . . war. Out on the walls of Avonar my friends the

soldiers stared over the walls at the misty gray wall that was the Zhid encampment, gulped from flasks of

ale, and laughed. I had wanted to laugh at fear and blood and death. No one in the palace would teach

me how, but my friends, the soldiers, had. Yes, this was my door, in my house.

I pressed down again. This time the brass handle moved smoothly and quietly, and the massive gate

swung open without the slightest pressure from my hand.

Now I led Bareil. Across the courtyard, through the labyrinthine way to the stair behind the kitchens.

Only a few voices echoed through the passages—guards and servants who cared for the palace itself and

functionaries who performed the hard daily work of governing. No royalty had lived in the palace since

I’d been taken to Exeget when I was nine.

Our destination was not the living quarters I had so rarely graced, but the Chamber of the Gate,

buried deep in the roots of the mountain underneath the palace. Downward and inwards, through minor

galleries and guest quarters, past armories and long-silent ballrooms, into the ancient heart of the palace,

burrowed deep into the rock. The stone of these corridors had not been cut and laid by any mason, even

one who could cut with his singing or polish with a brush of his hand. Rather the walls were native stone

that had been shaped and smoothed until the sworls of jasper and lapis shone of their own colored light.

My steps accelerated.

I thought we’d made a wrong turn when the passage we traversed ended in a blank wall. But before I

could turn to Bareil, the stone shifted—a mightily unsettling sight—and revealed a door of age-darkened

wood that swung open at my touch. I had forgotten the door wards. Beyond the door lay the circular

chamber of white and rose, its ceiling lost in white frost plumes. Only when I stepped through the door

could I see the Gate—a towering curtain of white flame, rippling, shifting, shimmering, reaching

exuberantly for the heights in the uncertain light. Cold fire that left the room frigid and sparkling like the

clearest of winter mornings. Rumbling fire, exploding geysers of flaming brilliance that created constantly

shifting patterns. Though the fire didn’t terrify me as it had when I was twelve, it still took my breath

away. This was the legacy of my ancestors, one endpoint of a link that spanned the universe itself. My

soul swelled and thrilled and wept all at once with the glory of it.

Bareil gave me the rose-colored stone. As he had instructed, I roused it to glowing life, creating a

pool of warmth in the hollow of my hand. Then, with will and power, I shaped the path of the Bridge that

lay beyond the Gate, so that it would lead me to the stone that matched the one I held.

“Shall I await your return, my lord? No one will alter the Gate path while I live.”

I had to leave the pink stone behind to keep the return path open. If anyone removed it from the

chamber or reworked my enchantment, then I would have to travel to the Exiles’ Gate—the mundane

world’s counterpart of this, the Heir’s Gate—in order to return to Avonar. That might be a journey of

many days, depending on where the Lady Seriana was to be found. But I dared not get separated from

Bareil and the information he carried.

I shook my head, unable to speak while I held the enchantment in my mind. Motioning him to leave

the stone and stay close, I stepped through the curtain of fire and onto the Bridge that was my singular

inheritance.

CHAPTER 12

Seri

Gerick was my son. Karon’s son. My heart stumbled on the words, yet of their truth I had no doubt.

There was no other answer to the puzzle he was.

Had Tomas known it? Surely not. Law and custom had convinced him that my child had to die for the

safety of our king and his realm, and Darzid had convinced him that his own knife must do the deed. Not

even the knowledge of his own child’s frailty would have persuaded him to spare a sorcerer’s child. Yet,

I wondered . . . Had there been somewhere within my brother a mote of suspicion, a seed of doubt that

never made its way to the light of his waking mind, but blossomed into the incessant nightmares and

overpowering dread that made him beg me to return to Comigor? Never could he have permitted that

seed to grow into the light, for it would have told him that the babe he had murdered was his own. If my

fear and grief had left me any tears, I would have wept for Tomas.

On the evening of my discovery, I paced the library, waiting for news. The cabinets that had housed

the lead soldiers gaped at me in reproach.

Every servant and soldier of Comigor had been called to the hunt. Troops of guardsmen scoured the

Montevial road, inquiring for Darzid or the boy at every private or public house all the way to the capital.

Other soldiers and servants followed every road, trail, and footpath that came anywhere near the castle.

Giorge and his assistants were querying the tenants. I had done everything it was possible to do. Now I

had to wait—until the last man came back and told me he’d found nothing. I knew it would be so. I had

no idea of Darzid’s capabilities, but every instinct screamed that they would be enough to hide Gerick

from one who had no talent but that of her own prideful imaginings. Where would he take a sorcerer’s

child? Dassine had said that Zhid could not cross the Bridge without the complicity of powerful sorcerers

in Avonar . . . but Zhid had crossed the Bridge last summer, and Darzid had been hunting with them.

What if Zhid could take Gerick across the Bridge?

I slammed the door of the soldiers’ cabinet so hard one glass pane shattered.

I had dreaded telling Philomena. When I had gone to her room that afternoon, I’d found her sitting up

in bed, a maid brushing her hair. Her fingers toyed idly with the gray silk bag in which I’d brought her the

lock of Tomas’s hair. All evidence of her dead infant had been stripped from the room. Not the least

trace remained of that short, sweet life, and I wondered if anyone had given the little girl a word of

farewell as she was laid in the frozen earth. “I’m so sorry about your daughter, Philomena,” I said.

“Gerick has run away, hasn’t he?” she said calmly, not taking her eyes from the gray silk that was

wound about her fingers.

I could not understand her composure. “How did you know?”

“The servants say men are searching the house. I’ve not slept as much as everyone thinks.”

“No one has seen him since last evening. I’ve sent—”

“Is he dead?”

“We’ve no reason to believe it. I won’t believe it.”
Worse . .
. The stone that settled in my stomach

whenever I thought of him grew colder, heavier. Some things were worse than death.

Philomena wrinkled her brow as if trying to decide on white wine or red with dinner. “It’s not as if he

was ever very affectionate. He didn’t like playing cards or dice with me, and I never knew what else to

do with him. Boys are so beastly. They like fighting and dirt and nasty things.”

“He’s not dead, Philomena. I believe Captain Darzid has taken him. Many people know the captain;

he’s easy to identify. Do you know of any place he might take Gerick? Did he ever mention any town or

city or person to which he might go?”

“I never listened to Captain Darzid. He was boring.” She looked up, her fair brow in an

unaccustomed wrinkle. “Some say
you
are responsible for these terrible things. Auntie says it. But others

whisper that the gods make me pay for my husband’s sin—because he killed your child and helped King

Evard burn your husband—and that’s why all of them are taken from me. Do you think that’s true?”

“Don’t ask me to explain the workings of fate. Life is incomprehensible enough without believing we

have to pay for someone else’s faults in addition to our own.”

“Ren Wesley says you saved my life.”

“I only fetched the midwife.”

“Did you want me to live so that I would know that all my children are gone—so I would suffer? I

don’t understand you at all.” She sighed and tossed the gray silk bag onto the floor. “You’ll come read to

me tonight?”

I was ready to scream,
Are you mad, stupid woman? My son
—
mine
—
has been stolen away by a

smooth-tongued villain, and I don’t know where in this god-cursed universe they’ve gone
. Yet,

what else had I to do but wait? Losing myself in fantasy for an hour might be the very thing to save my

reason. I bit my tongue. “I’ll be here at the usual time.”

“Do whatever you need to find him,” she said as I left the room.

“You can be sure I will.” But how and where?

And so I had dispatched more searchers and a message to Evard, and when evening came, I read to

Philomena until she fell into the image of peaceful sleep. Since then I had waited, gripping the

rose-colored stone that hung around my neck as if sheer force of will might bring it to life and send my

plea to Avonar along the paths of its enchantment. Our child had been abandoned at his birth— by his

dead father’s idealism and his living mother’s bitterness and self-pity. He had grown up in fear, not

understanding what he was. If I had to walk the Bridge myself to fetch help for him, I would do it.

Somehow.

* * *

Just after dawn a footman came to me in the library, saying that a stable lad was causing trouble. “It’s

the cripple. I caught him sneaking through the kitchens and threw him out. Then I caught him again,

coming through the windows of the wash house. I told him Giorge would have him flogged, but he insists

he has to see the Lady Seri—pardon the liberty, ma’am, but that’s how he put it—as he had information

you would want to know. I didn’t want to bother you with it, but Allard said that with the hunt and all—”

“Bring him to the housekeeper’s room.” Any distraction was welcome.

“Yes, my lady. As you say.”

The footman dragged Paulo into the little office next to the kitchen, holding him at arm’s length by the

neck of his shirt. “Here he is, my lady. I’ll stay close by.”

“No need.” I closed the door firmly, then laid on the table a packet of ham and bread I’d fetched

from the larder. Paulo’s eyes brightened, and he reached for it. But I laid a hand on the packet and said,

“First a question, my friend. What’s so urgent that you risked punishment to get in here?”

Paulo crammed his dirty hands in his pockets. “Just wanted to tell you she’s on the way.”

“She?” Paulo never liked to use four words when two would do.

“You know. Sheriff’s friend what saved him and me last summer.”

“Kellea? Kellea is on her way here?”

He nodded and eyed the packet of food under my hand. Paulo had every intention of making up for

thirteen lean years living with a drunken grandmother. I pushed the bundle toward him, still not

understanding.

“But why? I mean, what brings her this way?”

Stuffing the bread in his mouth, he mumbled. “Told her you needed her.”

“You told her. . . .” Needed Kellea? Of course ... she was absolutely the one person in this world

that I needed, and I hadn’t even thought of it. Kellea, the last survivor of Karon’s Avonar, newborn the

week before the massacre, was a Finder. Herbs, lost objects, people . . . given the proper materials to

create a link with the thing or person she sought, she could locate almost anything.

The first spark of hope glimmered in my head. “She’s coming to search for Gerick?”

Paulo nodded. “Be here tonight.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard in two days. But how, in the name of heaven, did she know?”