Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (32 page)

take me farther than I could get on my own. I would just have to leave him before he found out about

me. I looked at Lucy, lying there all bloody, and decided that I would rather go with Papa’s friend who

carried a sword than stay with the ones who did such a thing to her.

So the two of us slipped out of the house in the quietest hour. Darzid put me behind him on his great

black horse, and we rode into the clear, freezing night. It seemed like forever that we galloped, and I

thought my hands would freeze from holding onto Captain Darzid’s waist, but eventually I fell asleep. In

my dreams a wolf howled to the full moon that shone pale and cold over the snowy hills.

CHAPTER 18

It’s hard to remember much about my escape with Captain Darzid. I held on to his waist and kept

drowsing off as we rode through the cold night. It didn’t make sense that I could hold on for so long or

that the horse could go for days without rest, but when we made camp somewhere on the far side of the

Cerran Brae, several days’ travel from Comigor, I couldn’t remember having stopped even once.

The weather blocked the way. We came down from a pass through the mountains and were traveling

north when the snow and the wind became so fierce that the horse refused to go further, even when the

captain whipped him. When I buried my face in Darzid’s back to keep from freezing, I could hear the

curses rumbling through his bones. “Perdition to this weather and this world and all lazy, sniveling beasts.”

We dismounted in a clearing, and I sat stupid and numb on a fallen tree while Darzid started a fire.

“Come on,” he said, kicking a log close to the fire and jerking his head toward it. “No need to freeze.

The weather’s a nuisance, but perhaps our pursuers will run into something like.”

“Pursuers?”

“Your mother has sent out search parties, of course. Those who murdered your father and your nurse

are likely among them. But we have a good day’s start.”

One would think that with all the sleeping I had done on horseback, I’d be wakeful once we stopped,

but it wasn’t so. The rocks and trees and sky all had blurry edges, and my mind seemed to slide off of

anything it tried to settle on. That worried me, for it would be easy to make a slip and show Darzid that I

was the very thing he was trying to protect me from. The captain gave me two blankets to wrap up in.

The wind was howling, and even so near the fire, my hands and feet felt like ice.

While I wandered in and out of sleep, Captain Darzid was talking to himself. “Do they even suspect?

Fate has rewarded our patience. . . . We’ll need to be quick. They’ll be on our heels. The test of

parentage will be the key. . . . Everlasting night, to be home again, to reclaim what’s mine!”

Somehow all these things got mixed up with dreams of the strange old man from Grandmama’s

garden and the words he’d spoken to Seri on that day. My own voice kept repeating his words over and

over.

Then it was morning. The sun was blinding on the snow, the sky was bright blue, and the wind had

died away. I was colder than ever, even when I drank the cup of hot wine the captain put in my hand.

“Time to move on, young Lord,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“To a place of safety. I have friends—powerful friends— who have a fortress in a land far from Leire.

You’ll be safe there, even from such dangerous enemies as you have. There you can grow strong and

plan your revenge.”

“Revenge?” I still felt thickheaded and stupid.

“For your father’s murder and that of your friend, the nurse. I heard you swear to avenge them. I

assumed your sworn oath would be as unbreakable as your father’s . . . but, of course, you are so

young. Perhaps I’ve misjudged. . . .” He lifted my chin with his black-gloved hand and stared into my

eyes. . . .

Lucy was rocking in her chair, smiling and cheerful, waiting for me. She held out her hand, but

it wasn’t to me. She looked curious, then scared, because the hand that held hers wouldn’t let go.

The person that wasn’t me raised a knife, a silver knife that gleamed so bright in the lamplight

that it made it hard to see anything except the crest engraved on the hilt. The knife cut into Lucy

until the blood ran out all over the front of her. She tried to scream, but of course she had no

voice, and she fought with the person that held the knife, but he was much too strong. She was

crying and held her hand to her apron, trying to stop the bleeding. The one who wasn’t me pulled

her other arm away from her and cut her on that one too, and then held her in her chair until she

stopped struggling. I carried her over to her bed and laid her down, but when I looked at her face

again it wasn’t Lucy, but Papa. He was lying on the floor of a huge chamber full of clouds and

fire that was dark and cold instead of bright, and he was bleeding from a terrible wound in his

belly. Before I could say anything, before I could tell him that I was sorry I was evil, his eyes got

wide and scared. He shuddered and blood ran out of his mouth. Dead. On the floor beside him

was a bloody sword, marked with the same crest as I’d seen on the knife that killed Lucy. The

dark fire burned its way into my head, until I was full of it. . . .

“Yes!” I shouted, startling the dream away. “Yes, I want them punished. They murdered the two best

people in the world, and I don’t care what I have to do to make them pay for it.” I was full of such hate

and anger that I thought Captain Darzid would see right away how evil I was.

But he just smiled and said, “That’s more like it. I’ll help you grow strong enough that you can do

whatever you want . . . even to men as powerful as Seri’s friends. Trust me. I know you don’t as yet, but

I served Tomas faithfully for seventeen years, and I’ll do far, far more for you.”

“Help me avenge Papa and Lucy, and I’ll give you whatever you want,” I said.

“Exactly so,” said Darzid. “Come along now. The road to our safe haven will lead us through some

strange places.” He pulled me up behind him on his great black horse, and we turned onto a road that

was a ribbon of unmarked snow. My face felt hot, especially when I thought about Papa and Lucy, but

inside all the rest of me was cold, and I didn’t think I’d ever be warm again.

“What is this place?” I asked the captain when we rode across the mud fields toward the bare white

walls.

“This is the destiny of those who do not know their place in the universe.”

I didn’t understand him. It was an awful place, a burned-out ruin of a city, every building charred and

broken, bones and skulls everywhere, even hanging from posts stuck in the ground. I’d seen ruins before.

Papa had taken me to Vaggiere, a day’s ride east of Montevial, and to Mandebrol Castle, both

destroyed by the Valloreans a long time ago. But those ruins had never made me feel sick and wretched

like this one did. The bones were part of it. Anyone left alive—even if they were prisoners or

wounded—would bury their dead. But then, not a blade of grass or a weed or a vine lived there, not a

bit of moss, not a bird or beast or even so much as a spider or an ant creeping around. That made me

think that maybe there had been no one left alive in that city.

We left our horses in front of what had once been a fine house, almost a palace. You could tell by the

amount of stone fallen in on it and the broad steps that opened onto a grand commard—huge and round,

paved in marble, with tall columns all around it. Lots of posts with skulls on them stood beside that

house, and I tried not to look at them. The walls of the house were cracked and broken, some fallen

away altogether. Charred roof timbers had crashed down into the middle of it. At least two people had

died in the foyer, several more on the curved staircase that ended halfway up to the second floor.

“This was the lord of the city’s house. A sad place, is it not? I need to find something here before we

can be on our way.” Captain Darzid’s boots clattered on the stone floor as we walked in, and his voice

was very loud. I wanted to tell him to be quiet. It didn’t seem right to make noise in that house. But I

didn’t say anything, lest he think me a coward.

We stepped over fallen pillars and tramped through frozen mud and dirty snowdrifts into a large

courtyard in the center of the house. Lots of trees and plants had once grown in the courtyard—all dead

stumps now, of course. Several statues had toppled over. Once I stepped right into a giant stone hand.

From one corner of the cloister came a trickling sound. A small fountain was still running—the statue of a

little girl emptying a pitcher of water into a shallow round basin. The pinkish color of the marble made her

look almost alive. A stream of clear water ran from the pitcher to the basin of the fountain, and there was

not a mark or a crack or a chip on any of it. The girl had a little smile on her pink marble face, like she

knew she had escaped whatever happened to the rest of the city.

“Come along,” said the captain, when I stopped to look at the fountain. We climbed up steps that

went nowhere, peered through doorways that had nothing on the other side of them, and pushed into

dark holes under the fallen walls. “I’m looking for something like the little fountain back there, something

that’s not burned up or ruined, but that has writing carved on it.” In and out we went until we must have

covered every step of the house.

“It has to be here,” said the captain, kicking aside a charred timber. “They wrote it in stone, protected

it with power, so it couldn’t be destroyed. Curse all Dar’Nethi bastards!”

Two days we searched that awful ruin for whatever it was Captain Darzid wanted. He said we were

looking for writing that described a shortcut through the mountains to his friends’ fortress. I thought that

surely we could have gone the long way around by the time we would find what he was looking for. We

camped in the courtyard of the great house. I slept a lot of the time and had terrible dreams. Well, I

called them dreams, but they seemed real. One was about Comigor, a vision so clear that I could smell

the dry grass. . . .

The tenants were tilling the fields. I could see them through the paned window on the stair

landing. Nellia and James and the other servants were at their daily work. Nellia was singing. She

always sang “The Warrior’s Child” in her rusty old voice when she sat with her sewing. I called

out to say good day, but she didn’t answer, and the footman in the dining room looked right

through me when I walked past him into the drawing room. Mama was there. She was very

beautiful, dressed in white and wearing her favorite necklace
—
the one with the circles of

diamonds all strung together. A harper played in the corner, and Mama was talking with her

friends
.

“Was there truly no trace of him ever found?” A woman in green with a crow’s face leaned

toward Mama’s ear.

“None at all,” said Mama. She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “The sheriff from

Graysteve says that as no one has demanded ransom, we must assume he’s dead, I’m going to

leave this wretched place forever. My poor lamb was such an unhappy child. It’s a comfort, in a

way, a kindness that fate has saved him the pain of long life.”

“Come, Lady Philomena, enough of sad thoughts,” said a young man as he pulled her up to

dance. Soon she was laughing again and drinking wine. Her diamonds sparkled in the lamplight

as she danced.

“
It’s as well the boy is gone,” said the woman in green to another woman. “He was so odd.

I’ve heard rumors of murder and worse things . . . perversion . . . in this very house. The royal

inquisitors were on their way when the boy disappeared
. ...”

Another dream came, too, and like the other, it seemed more real than any dream. I knew all the

people, but they couldn’t see me.

Two men
—
peasant men
—
were running through one of the rocky rifts that cut through the

heath north of Comigor. One of the men carried a little girl in his arms. The other, an older man

with a gray beard, was bleeding from a wound in his leg. The older man stumbled on a stone and

fell. “A curse on the House of Comigor
.”

“Hurry, Father Castor, they’re coming. We can’t stop.” The younger man was frightened.

Choking smoke filled the air, and the young man couldn’t stop coughing. The little girl

whimpered, and the young man pushed her face into his shoulder. “Hush, Ceillitta.”

“Go on with you,” said the older man. “I’ll hold them here as long as I can.” He pulled

himself up to lean on the steep bank, unhitching a scythe from his belt.

With a sad curse, the young man gripped the older one’s shoulder, and then ran on down the

gully away from the castle. He didn’t get very far. Riders wearing King Evard’s red-and-gold