Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (58 page)

the old housekeeper at Comigor. On that particular day, she had slaves set fires with some of the dry

thorn bushes that passed for vegetation in Ce Uroth, and I had to make my horse carry me between

them.

Zigget was the worst-tempered horse I had ever ridden, and at the first sight of the flaming barriers he

went wild, rearing and kicking until I thought my arms might get pulled from their sockets before I had

him through the first pair. He repaid my efforts by throwing me on the ground after every pass, snorting

and threatening to trample me. Fengara was no help. She ridiculed me for my lack of riding skill and my

inability to control the horse with my power. But nothing worked, no matter what I tried, words or whips

or sorcery.

By sunset, Zigget was frothing and quivering and tossing his head, but I had no sympathy. I was a

mass of bruises and scrapes and thought I might have torn something in my knee. No stable hands were

anywhere in sight, so I wrestled Zigget into his box myself and slammed the gate. He bucked and kicked

the walls until they shook.

“Bash your brains out, you stupid beast,” I yelled and started out of the stable.

I didn’t get ten paces from Zigget’s stall when my knee buckled. I sat heavily on the straw, wishing a

plague on horses and the Lords and the vile, wretched desert. When the throbbing in my knee had eased

back below the point of impossibility, and I had hauled myself up to my feet, I heard a soft voice from

Zigget’s box. “A right mess you are. He oughtn’t have done it. Serve him right if you were to bash
his

brains out. Too bad there are those that care for him, or I’d bash him myself for leaving you like this.”

It was the wrong day to cross me. I hobbled back to the stall, determined to see who dared speak so

of me. I would show him who could bash who. I threw open the gate of the stall, and there was Zigget,

the most despicable beast in Ce Uroth, peaceably nuzzling a dirty boy who sat on an upturned barrel.

The boy’s head was leaning on Zigget’s neck, not an arm’s length from the teeth that had come near

removing my fingers earlier that day.

“What are you doing with my horse, slave?” For some reason the scene infuriated me near bursting.

The boy jumped up. He was not a slave, but one of the uncollared servants, a Drudge. I sometimes

forgot they could talk, they were all so stupid.

“Well?”

He shrugged his shoulders and looked vague, as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. A snort

and a thump from behind him distracted my attention. Zigget had kicked another hole in the wall.

I pulled out my knife. “I’ll take care of you, you cursed bag of bones. You’ll not live to throw me

again.”

“If you’d treat him right, he wouldn’t go loony at the sight of you,” said the boy, stepping between me

and the horse.

“Get out of my way.” I waved the knife at him.

“It’s not his fault.”

“He’s wild and wicked and deserves to die.” I pushed the boy aside, my knife ready to strike as soon

as Zigget stopped bucking.

“I guess it’s all you know how to do any more—kill what doesn’t suit.” The boy wasn’t really talking

to me, but I heard him clearly. Such anger rose up in me that before I knew it, I had him pinned to the

floor, ready to put my knife in his throat instead of Zigget’s. Though he was bigger than me, he was easy.

He knew nothing of true hand combat.

“Go ahead, if you want,” he said. “I’m nobody. That’s clear enough. But you’ll not master

Firebreather without killing him. Then it’ll be nothing but killing forever.”

I held the knife over the boy for a long time, waiting for him to look scared, but he never did. My

aching head was filled with darkness, and Parven stirred.
So angry you are . . . What problem is there,

young Lord
?

“Nothing,” I gritted my teeth and stood up, pushing the boy away with my feet. I was too tired for the

Lords. They always wanted to pick everything apart—use every bruise and every breath for a lesson. I

wanted no more schooling today. This was an insolent, powerless boy and a stupid horse. “There’s

nothing wrong. Fengara worked me hard, and I hate her, just as you wish. I’m hot and thirsty, and I have

a knee the size of a melon. But since I’m not to be comfortable, it will take me a while to get back to the

house, so leave me alone.”

Parven chuckled in my head, and it made me angry again.

“Leave me alone!” I let darkness roll over him, until I couldn’t hear him any more, and I felt like I was

alone inside my head. It was oddly pleasing to know I could do such a thing.

Of course, the boy couldn’t have heard Parven. He looked at me strangely and laid his hand on

Zigget’s neck. The demon horse nosed his hair like an old granny.

“How do you do that?” A suspicion came over me, and I laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. No, he

was not Dar’Nethi.

“I call his name and tell him about grass. He likes it.”

“Grass?” When I spoke, Zigget flared his nostrils. I backed away in a hurry, out of range of a flying

hoof. But to my everlasting annoyance, my foot slipped, and I ended up on the floor of the stall, my knife

flying somewhere out of reach, and a hay bundle toppling off a stack right onto my head. The boy turned

his face away quickly and made a choking noise. His shoulders started shaking. It seemed odd that he

would be afraid, after being so calm when I was about to slit his throat.

“Turn around this way,” I said.

He looked over his shoulder at me and snorted, then tried to look sober. But he couldn’t, and he

burst out laughing. No one laughed in Zhev’Na.

“What’s so damned funny?”

“Just . . . well . . . one as dignified as yourself ... in such a wicked, magical place as this . . . coming so

close to killing me not five breaths ago .. . and then getting knocked over by hay and a horse turd. It just

don’t seem all that fearsome.”

I stared at him in disbelief. He scratched his head and squirmed and tried to stop laughing, but then he

would burst out again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said, once he was able to talk again. “I’m truly sorry

you’re hurt. Should I get someone to help?”

I didn’t want anyone else seeing me in such a state. It was dangerous in many ways. “I don’t need

anyone.”

“No. I can see surely not,” he said.

I hauled myself up on the gate hinges, and tried to swing the gate open and get away, but the fall had

made my knee worse, and I could scarcely take a step. The boy put his hand on Zigget, and said, “Stay.

Settle.” Then he opened the gate and disappeared into the gloomy stable, coming back with a broken

wooden pole that I could use for a cane.

As soon as I was up and out of the stall, he went back to Zigget and closed the gate behind him,

leaving me to hobble my way across the yard and through the fortress. I was halfway back to the Gray

House before I realized that the boy and I had been speaking Leiran. It was too far to go back, and I

was too tired. I wanted a river of hot water and ten hours in my bed, and I knew the Lords would be

waiting to teach me more lessons. But I told myself that I would find that insolent boy again and have him

explain a few things.

I couldn’t do any training the next day. My knee was purple and black and had swelled up almost as

large as my head. When my swordmaster came to see why I wasn’t in the fencing yard, he looked at it

and frowned. “You need a surgeon. You should have said something last night.”

“I told Lord Parven about it,” I said. I had to work hard not to yell when he touched it.

Half an hour later a bearded Zhid came into my apartments, followed by a young slave, carrying a

leather case. I was sitting in a chair with my leg propped up on a footstool. The surgeon, named

Mellador, commanded the slave to place a towel under my arm that rested on the chair, and then to

kneel close beside my chair. The slave had the tight, edgy look to him that meant that he was acting under

compulsion. It was easy to recognize.

“A nasty injury, Your Grace, but we should have no difficulty,” said the surgeon, clucking and fussing

over my knee. “There will be only a slight burning as I make the incision.”

I couldn’t imagine what he was doing when he spread a yellow ointment on my forearm, and most

likely my mouth dropped open like an idiot when he pulled a knife from his case and made a neat,

finger-length incision in the same spot. My arm was mostly numb, only stinging, as he’d said. I tried to

pull away, but he gripped my wrist.

“Surely you’ve seen a healing, Your Grace. If not . . . my utmost apologies for not explaining. Your

injury is too severe for ordinary means, and the Lords wish no delay in your training. We shall have it

improved quite swiftly. Hold still.”

Before I could come out with a single question, Mellador commanded the slave to hold out his arm.

The youth obeyed, but as he did so, he looked at me with such an intense, solemn expression that I found

myself shifting away from him uneasily. Mellador then cut a gash in the slave’s arm just above his metal

wrist band. The cut was much deeper than my own, almost to the bone, and it began bleeding profusely.

The slave did not cry out, but sucked in a deep, shaking breath. The surgeon bound the slave’s arm to

mine with a strip of linen, then laid his hands on the slave’s head. A brilliant, burning flash filled my

head—incredible power, boiling red-and-black fire that coursed through my veins, so sharp and vivid

that it almost lifted me off the chair.

Now to work . .
. The surgeon’s voice had ridden the wave of power into my mind. . . .
mmm . . . a

touch here . . . and here
... I felt the torn pieces in my knee stretch and knit themselves together again,

and what felt like chips of bone that were floating loose make their way back where they belonged.

Soon, the discolor of my knee began to fade and the swelling to shrink. Instead of painful throbbing, only

a pulsing warmth remained in the joint. I touched my knee with my free hand and was amazed.

I heard a gasping moan at my elbow. The slave was pale and trembling, the bones of his face outlined

with pain, his eyes hot with anger. The surgeon’s fingers were wrapped about his head like the legs of a

huge, pale spider. Even as I watched, the slave’s eyes went dead, his mouth dropped open, and spit

dripped out of the side of it.

While we have a bit left, we’ll take care of your other aches and pains. You have quite a

healthy young body, but it appears you’ve taken quite a pounding this week
. Mellador was still

chattering inside my head, and the burning wave coursed through my veins like Papa’s brandy I had

stolen to taste when I was small. And as all my bruises and soreness were eased, the slave slumped

heavily against my chair.

“What have you done?” I said, finding my voice far too late.

“Quite finished now. Looks like we’d have to bring in another slave if you had one more scrape.”

He untied the flaccid arm from my own, and pushed the lifeless slave onto the floor, thrusting a wad of

towels under him to prevent any blood from staining the tile. There was no sign of my incision, and no

remnant of my injury, only a vile taste in my mouth and the boiling darkness in my blood.

“He’s dead.”

“Who . . . the slave? Of course. I’m glad I brought one with a considerable amount of vigor left in

him, else we might not have been able to take care of all your ills.”

“Get out!”

“My lord?”

“Get out!” I jumped up from the chair and backed away from the surgeon and the results of his work.

“Take him with you. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

Notole spoke in my mind.
Are you not healed properly, my young Prince? Has Mellador

displeased you in some way? We’ve not had time to discuss the process of healing
.

“I didn’t know he was going to kill the slave. My knee would have gotten better on its own.”

But what better use for a slave than to put his master in good health? Mellador has prescribed

a day’s rest, and . . .

. . . you will be able to go back to your proper business
. It was Ziddari.
Why are you unsettled,

young Lord? You plan to kill these Dar’Nethi pigs in war. You have killed three in your sparring

already. They live only at your pleasure and that of the Lords of Zhev’Na
.

But there was a difference. Killing a soldier in battle was honorable. Killing a sparring partner—this

was the first time they had told me that any of them had died—but that was almost the same. The

practice slaves were trying to kill me, too. I had heard that slaves sometimes killed warriors in training,

and they weren’t even punished for it. But to take his life for power ... to cure bruises and scrapes such

as any boy might get ...

It is just. Remember it
, said Ziddari.
There is no difference in that slave and the rat you killed

last week with your spear. Any Dar’Nethi would kill you in an instant if he was freed. We didn’t

expect that you would have difficulty with this
.

“I... I just wasn’t expecting it. Of course, I understand all you say.” I said what they wanted to hear,

because I wanted them to leave me alone for a while. As I had the night before in the stable, I let