Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (67 page)

A growling warrior bashed the slave in the head with his arm, knocking him to the ground, while three

others picked up the screaming Vruskot and carried him away. The slave shook his head and dragged

himself up to his hands and knees, but another Zhid triggered his collar and sent him into retching spasms.

Then they bound his hands, dragged him to the wall, and chained him to the iron ring. He lay there

gasping and heaving in the afternoon sun, flies settling on his bloody arms and legs.

I stood staring like a fool at the deserted training ground. Vruskot’s arm lay in the dirt, forgotten. The

crowd had dispersed quickly. Drak, my swordmaster, shook his head and urged me to move on. “Well,

an astounding match to be sure. Who could have imagined such a thing? I had no idea Vruskot had

slipped so sorely in his skills.”

Of course, Vruskot hadn’t lost the match. The Dar’Nethi had won it. Only a blind fool would claim

anything else. “Let’s get away from here,” I said. “I need to work.”

It was Vruskot I took for a swordmaster. Zhid were not easy to kill, but the swift actions of the slave

V’Saro had saved his life until a surgeon could attend to him. Of course he was bitter; a warrior without

his sword arm considers himself dead no matter what. I wouldn’t have been a Dar’Nethi slave in

Vruskot’s service for any amount of power in the world. But he could not have failed to learn something

from the slave who’d maimed him, and so perhaps he could teach me something of it, too. And, of

course, Vruskot was a master swordsman in his own right—that’s why the Lords kept him alive

one-armed, so he could teach or command swordsmen. Once Vruskot’s commanders convinced him

that he had no choice, and he understood that it wasn’t a humiliation to instruct the honored guest of the

Lords, he got into the job with a vengeance. I had no choice but to progress.

The slave would have been a masterful teacher. But if I asked for him, I would honor him, and

therefore he would die. Sooner or later it would happen. And it didn’t seem at all fair to take such a

man’s dying out of his own hands.

The days flew by. Notole taught me to take the world’s troubles for my own use. Such things

existed—fear, hate, anger, pain—and I could do nothing about them, so I couldn’t see anything wrong

with using them to my advantage. Once I came of age and controlled my own power, then perhaps things

could be different.

The Lords still said nothing about the effects of what I was doing, only that light might bother my eyes

after long nights working with Notole. After each session, I would sleep for most of a day, then go back

to Vruskot and training until Notole called me to her again. Just as a test, I commanded my slaves to

obtain a looking glass for me. I’d been having my slaves braid my hair into many thin plaits as Isker

warriors did, and I said I wanted a glass to see how it looked. They groveled and claimed there were

none to be had in Zhev’Na.

But the crude gift from my unknown benefactor told me the important tale. For a while, my eyes

indeed turned back to normal every time. But soon they kept a muddy gray tint. And then they stayed

black, and the center of them was bottomless darkness that became a little larger each time. It got to

where I couldn’t go about in the noonday, but only in the morning or the late-afternoon light. I kept the

draperies drawn in my apartments and moved my riding lessons to after dark.

I was afraid of what was happening, but I couldn’t stop. There was still so much to learn. Notole had

promised that just before my anointing she would show me yet another source of power, more rich than

those I already used. It was the greatest secret of the Lords, she told me, known to no other in the

universe. I had to keep going until then.

I had been so caught up in my training that I’d given little thought to the puzzle of the gifts, but late one

afternoon, as I sat bored in my dim apartments, waiting for the sun to go down, I decided to look at the

things again. Something new had been left in the box—a scrap of paper with hundreds of tiny holes

pricked in it. I almost laughed, it was so odd. If the earlier objects had been indecipherable, then this one

was totally impossible. I could see no pattern to the marks. I was on the verge of crumpling it up, when a

hot blast of wind allowed a stray sunbeam to penetrate the draperies and shine through the jumble of

pinholes, casting a reverse shadow on the wall, like a compact universe of stars in a tiny square shadow

of a sky.

Stars! That’s what it was! The paper converted the barren sunlight into stars—but not the stars of Ce

Uroth that hovered behind the ever-present dust haze. There was the Watcher, the thick band of the

Arch, the Bowman aiming his true arrow toward the Swan . . . the stars of northern Leire, the stars I

would see from the towers of Comigor.

I hadn’t thought of home in so long. I tried to remember it. Gray towers, not angular and thin like

those that faced me across the courtyard, but stout and thick, stained with six hundred years of smoke

and weathering . . . sturdy walls with five round towers, built to hold the garrison in safety for uncounted

days from any threat that might ride across the heath. Inside the main doors were the black and white

floor tiles, and the rainbow light that arched down from the tall windows of the entry tower ... so beautiful

. . .

“Maybe they’re just to look at,” the Leiran boy had said.

I took out the stone with the clear vein in it and held it up close to my face and my brightest lamp. The

light hurt my eyes, but I needed to see these things. The vein led deep into the blue-gray stone, a secret

passage allowing light to penetrate the cool darkness and reveal the secrets of the stone that would

otherwise lay hidden. Deep in the heart of the stone were delicate patterns of yellow and green and blue,

arranged in spirals and sunbursts and flowery splashes, a tiny garden of color.

Each of the gifts was the same in a way. The iron-like wood hid a thousand tiny perfect crystals in its

pores; the ugly fruit pit masked a miniature sculpture finer than any woodworker’s creation. The dish of

sand had been only a piece of the ordinary desert, but presented in an unexpected way, intriguing. And

the mirror . . . There my speculation came to an abrupt halt. My chest ached. Why a reflection of me?

CHAPTER 40

I had to know who it was. I had to know what someone was trying to tell me and why it hurt so much

when I looked at those stupid things laid out on my table. It became a fever in me to know. I tried to

read the minds of all the slaves and warriors in my house, but I didn’t have power enough. I needed the

kind of power I used in my sessions with Notole. For days I would jump at any word from the Lords,

hoping it would be Notole’s summons. At last it came.
Tonight, my Prince. A special night tonight
.

When I went to the Lords’ house, I didn’t usually go through the temple, that huge room with the

giant statues and the roof of stars and the floor that was like black ice. Most of the time I took a side

door that led more directly to Notole’s workrooms or to Parven’s bare stone chamber where I studied

maps and strategy with him. But on this night they summoned me to a new place.

The chamber was buried in the very heart of the Lords’ house, down a long tight stairway and

through a winding passage that seemed to turn in upon itself. The room was so dark that it was

impossible to see how large it was, or what was in it. Embedded in the floor was a glowing circle of deep

blue, and suspended above it was an oculus, not the size of my hand, like the ones I’d used with Notole,

but one that was taller than me. The blue light reflected off the dull brass of the ring.

“Welcome, young Lord.” The Lords were there waiting for me.

“. . . such a pleasure . . .”

“. . . to have all of us together again. A special night tonight.” Ziddari laid his hands on my shoulders

and gazed down at me. His black robes made his body fade into the darkness, so that all I could see

were his ruby eyes and the gold mask that was grown into his skin. “Time has flown by us so quickly.”

“You’ve done well,” said Parven, coming up behind Ziddari, his wide, pale forehead reflecting the

purple glow of his amethysts. “We had such doubts when Ziddari brought you to us. ‘So young,’ we

said. ‘So untried, and only a little more than a year’s turn to prepare him.’ How foolish were our doubts.

You have taught us the strength of your word. You have proven . . .”

“... that you are capable of understanding the truth of the world and leaving behind your childish past.

You have seen that our interests are the same, and that rigor and discipline can build strength.” Ziddari

had taken up from Parven again. “As you’ve no doubt surmised, we’ve kept secrets from you. But

you’ve not shrunk from any of our teaching, and so . .
-
.”

“. . . the time has come to reveal to you our most precious secret, and to prepare you for your

initiation that comes five days hence.” Notole led me to the verge of the wide blue circle scribed on the

floor. The huge oculus was so close I could have reached out and touched it. “This will not be easy, as

nothing in your life has been easy. You will have to give up things of value, as you have already done, but

the rewards . . . they’re what your blood burns for, even now.”

They were right. As the ring started to spin, my heart was racing with hunger and excitement; my

breath came quick and shallow; heat radiated from my face and arms. For so long only scalding water or

blazing sun had made me warm, but sorcery was far better. Faster and faster the ring spun, snatching the

red and green and purple light of the Lords’ masks and the blue glow from the floor, weaving them into a

giant ball of light. With Parven and Notole to either side of me, and Ziddari behind with his hands on my

shoulders, I used my inner eye to penetrate the orb as they had taught me, and I was no longer in Ce

Uroth . . .

. . .
but in a land just emerging from winter, faint traces of green poking up amid the brown

stubble of farmland . . . a muddy road churned up by wagon wheels and horses’ hooves. Up ahead

was a party of bedraggled prisoners, roped together and slogging through the mud. Mounted

soldiers guarded fifty men and women, filthy and wretched and filled with ... oh, incredible... such

vile, unbounded hatred. The soldiers cut loose one of the prisoners, threw a rope about his neck,

and dragged him through the muck. In moments, he dangled from the branch of a tree. His feet

jerked. The soldiers laughed. “There’s the king’s justice for you. Anyone else want to complain
?”

A few prisoners growled and strained at their bonds. Some wept. Some just stared at the

soldiers and the dead man swinging from the tree. The soldiers lashed the prisoners, especially

those who showed their anger, and soon the party was moving down the road again. . . .

Who were these people? Yet, even as my mind asked the question, I knew the answer. The prisoners

cursed in the tongue of Valleor, and the soldiers wore the red dragon of Leire—King Evard’s men.

People of my own world! Loathing—huge and powerful and terrible—seethed in their hearts. No Zhid,

no Dar’Nethi, not even the Dar‘Nethi slaves could summon half so grand a hate as these soldiers and

their captives. . . .

And it is all yours
, whispered Notole through the jewels in my ear. She pulled back the layers of my

thoughts, exposing the gaping emptiness inside me.
Take it
.

I drank deep. Burning, cutting, drenching, drowning . . . power seeped into my pores and filled my

belly and my lungs until I was breathing black fire. It ate its way into my bones. Everything I had ever

experienced was made unimportant.

I could not just call down lightning, I could create it. I could make a thousand warriors turn their

swords upon themselves all at once. I could blast the stones of Zhev’Na into rubble and rebuild the

fortress according to my whim, a thousand times over if I chose.

“This is what your father would forbid you,” said Ziddari. His voice rang clear, while visions danced in

my head. “This is what D’Arnath and his Heirs have judged too dangerous for us to attempt, because

they were too cowardly and too weak to control it. This is the heritage they would deny you. Yet, even

this is but a small taste of what is possible. D’Arnath created his enchanted Bridge and swore his oath to

bind us, to imprison our skills and our power in his own weak-willed frame. But you, our young Prince,

when you come into your power, you will set us free.”

Power raged within me, stretching and pulling and swelling. Nothing had ever hurt so much; nothing

had ever felt so marvelous. I wanted to scream and cry out the wonder of it, but my chest was filled with

fire.

Come with me
, said Notole. She touched my hand, and I was released to ride the airs of Gondai

beside her. I glimpsed the far boundaries of the Wastes, where the hard red plains yielded to the green

softness of Dar’Nethi lands. We journeyed past the work camps and farmsteads of the Drudges, flat,

endless fields of no more interest or variation than a Drudge’s mind. We traveled the wild oceans, and I