Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (71 page)

I jerked upright.

“V’Saro”—the whispered call was from Gerick—“say something.”

“Anything in particular?” I matched his quiet tone.

The boy stepped hesitantly from the darkest shadows. “Again.”

“What’s the matter?”

He stepped slowly across the yard, only to stumble over the chains that attached my feet to the wall.

Tightly bound as I was, I couldn’t catch him, but only squirm enough to cushion his fall and keep his face

from hitting my knees. He ended up draped across my lap.

He wriggled backwards and got up to his knees. The Lords had been at him again. He was strung

taut, quivering like a bowstring, and his eyes had terrible black centers, worse than before. His eyelids

drooped heavily. I didn’t believe he could see anything at all.

“Take this,” he said, depositing in my hand a small, thick-walled ceramic cup—a crucible, filled with

coarse gray powder. From a pocket in his tunic he pulled another crucible, slightly larger and lined with

silver. “This won’t be pleasant, but you must be silent.”

“Tell me what they’ve done to you. Before you go any further. I can’t let you—”

“I hear from you and the Leiran boy that the only way to save my mother’s life is to set you free. I

don’t believe it and I don’t trust you, but I’ve been wrong about everything in my life, so why should I

expect to be right this time?” He knelt between my legs and reached around my head, fumbling at my

collar, carefully avoiding the triggers that would make me convulse. “I’ve obtained the knowledge, the

power, and the materials I need to neutralize your collar. I’ve very little time, but if I start right now, then

perhaps I can manage it, so I would suggest you stay still.” His cold fingers paused at the top of the seal.

“Be ready.”

“Do it,” I said, feeling his enchantment taking shape, growing huge and terrible, cutting first into my

flesh, and then into my mind, and then into my soul like a fiery razor.

I sank deep into myself.
Silence . . . hold . . . protect your son who has mortgaged his sight and

his soul to set you free. . .
.

Slowly, relentlessly, Gerick moved his fingers down the seal, melting it away and letting the scalding,

foul stuff dribble into his silver-lined vessel. My face was buried in his chest, I, who should be protecting

him, comforting him, and all I could do was use his taut, slender body to muffle my sobs. No more than a

quarter of an hour passed, but I became so lost in the throbbing haze of pain that I didn’t even notice

when he shifted position and began to unseal the bonds from my wrists.

Silence . . . hold . . . to protect him . . . It is bearable because it is necessary. It is for your wife

and your son that you never thought to see. How blessed is life . . . how glorious the Way that can

devise a path beyond all expectations . . . to come through pain and despair to find such joy . . .

The desert breeze that chilled the rivulets of sweat coursing down my body began to whisper of

endless sand, of tiny hollows of moisture deep hidden to escape the rapacious sun, of hardy, bony

creatures that scuttered cleverly from one scrap of shade to another or burrowed deep in the cool

embrace of the earth, of dry skeletal plants that yet held a core of life. And on the very edge of the wind

was the kiss of snow, blown all the way from the pinnacles of the Mountains of Light, and the faintest

breath of the awakening Vales of Eidolon. “Oh, gods, young Prince ...”

“Got to hurry.” His head drooped as he carefully moved the crucible. The filled vessel radiated

searing heat; the silver had melted away. “Can you take this? Dispose of it?” His tongue was thick with

sleep.

“Lower it just a little so I can reach it.” Awkwardly I took the crucible and managed to empty the

molten metal into the hole I had scraped out for relieving myself.

“Now I’ve got to replace the seal ... so they won’t notice. Give me the vessel with the powder.”

“As an assistant, I have decided limitations,” I said, using my feet to retrieve the cup I had dropped

while he removed the seal.

Gerick held it in his hand. Heat blazed from the little vessel, and the gray powder sagged into liquid.

His power was awesome in its magnitude and villainous in its composition. Once I sensed it, even so

faintly as in that first hour of my release, I wanted to tell him to stop, not to use such power even for good

purpose. But he had already wrenched my head forward onto his chest once more, wiped a cold

ointment on the raw strip of skin between the ends of the collar, and begun to drip the hot liquid on it,

guiding it with his fingers.

I dared not open my mouth lest I scream and give us away. Again I held silent, my throat constricting

in panic as I felt the hardening seal. Perhaps this was his sworn revenge. Perhaps he had freed me of the

collar only so I would taste life for a single instant, and now he was reimposing the horror. He had sworn

to destroy me, and nothing else would do it so absolutely.

Silence . . . hold . . . protect him
. . .

The metal cooled on my neck. Nothing changed. The cup fell to the ground from Gerick’s fingers,

and he sagged heavily onto my chest.

“Gerick, what’s wrong?”

He seemed to have fallen asleep. My limited range of movement made it difficult to shake him. “Wake

up, lad. You’ve got to get away from here. Someday you’ll understand what you’ve done tonight. There

are not words enough to thank you.”

He shook his head groggily.

“Do you have to return the implements somewhere?”

“No. Give them,” he mumbled, holding out his hand.

“Here’s one. I can’t reach the other. You’ll have to get it. Find my left foot—sorry, my masters don’t

allow me to clean it—now move right, a little more, now forward toward me.”

He set the two vessels together, uncomfortably close to my foot, and blasted them into a slug of metal

and stone. “I need to go.”

“Can you get back to the house all right? Has someone put a sleep spell on you?”

“Always . . . after. Until I can see again. They think I don’t really know what happens.”

“Here, touch my hand”—and with the first glimmering of my own power, I lightened the oppression of

the sleep spell—“is that better?”

He wrinkled his brow. “What you do is very different.”

“Perhaps I can explain it sometime.”

“I doubt there will be time. I’ll be asleep all day. Then I’m to go to the Lords’ temple at mid-watch.

They’re to bring Seri to me then. I’ll see to her safety. But the Leiran boy will be here in the courtyard

before I go, and you must get him away if you can.”

“I’ll come for you.”

“You will do
nothing
unless I give you leave,” he snapped. “I can put back what I’ve taken away.

I’ve freed you to take care of the Leiran boy if you can. Nothing else.”

Without allowing me to say more, Gerick rose and felt his way back to his house. He looked very

much alone.

I did not sleep that night, but sat and watched the turning of the cold stars behind the dust haze, felt

the waning heat of the stones at my back, and observed the flickering light of the torches reflected in the

chains that bound me. As the night wind told me of its travels, I embraced the long tale of death and

sorrow that had accompanied my own journey. With every sensation I took a tiny step along the Way,

and my power grew as the hearth’s first flame is nourished by offerings of dry tinder, or as a spring is fed

by raindrops until it becomes a mighty river.

CHAPTER 42

Gerick

I woke just before sunset, earlier than usual after a night of power-making with Notole. I don’t know

whether it was because V’Saro had weakened the sleep spell, or if I waked myself on purpose so I

could watch the sun go down. Sunsets wouldn’t be the same with diamond eyes.

The tight white ball of the sun grew huge and red, like a bloodleech engorged and ready to mate. The

thin, dry trailers that passed for clouds in Ce Uroth reflected the swollen red light, and smeared it across

the entire western horizon. By the next sunset I would be the Heir of D’Arnath and a Lord of Zhev’Na,

and the world would be forever changed because of me. For better or worse would remain to be seen. I

was ready, except for Seri—my mother. I had to take care of her first.

I had finally figured out what Seri had been trying to tell me with her gifts. When she held me for that

one moment before they took her away, I almost believed what she whispered in my ear. But she didn’t

know that her mirror could show me my soul—the dark thing laid bare by my power. No beauty was

hidden in me.

Odd that it was Seri’s friends, the Leiran boy and the slave, who made the truth so clear. To learn

what I needed to free the slave V’Saro and to gather the power to work the enchantment, I had to beg

Notole to take me traveling once more. I told her I couldn’t decide about my future, but that if we

journeyed again, I would know. So the Three met me in the chamber of the oculus, and we observed the

poorest quarters of a Kerotean city, where the air seethed with disease and starvation, and the people

with bitterness and lust for vengeance. I devoured their hate, and power thundered inside of me.

Parven took me to the brink of a volcano where I could see the cracks in the earth glowing with liquid

fire. And then, Notole led me into the cold, black depths of the oceans, where I touched the strange blind

creatures who lived there. I transformed myself into one of those creatures, so that for an hour, all I knew

was the dark and the cold and the ponderous weight of the water that was my life. “All this will be yours,

young Lord.”

I hated the Lords for making me leave the peaceful ocean. They laughed and promised I’d be able to

travel the stars themselves once I was one of them. As we traveled, I asked a hundred questions about

everything I could think of—including how the slave collars worked—and then Ziddari left me in my

room, blind and spellbound. It had been all I could do to go out to the slave as I had promised. I wanted

only to sleep and dream of the ocean depths, or return to the Great Oculus and travel with the Lords

again.

So why had I freed V’Saro? I leaned over the balcony rail, but I couldn’t see into the fencing yard

where he was still bound to the wall. He was the finest swordsman I had ever seen, every bit the

masterful teacher I had expected, and he seemed to be an honorable person. Kind, even. His pain and

my thickheadedness had made it impossible to read his plan from his mind. But when he eased the sleep

spell, I tasted his Dar’Nethi sorcery for myself. It was weak and soft and unfocused, like a candle flame

instead of lightning. I didn’t see how the slave could ever have power enough to stop a kibbazi in its

tracks.

And so, on the evening of my last sunset, I decided I had to delay V’Saro’s freedom. I had no wish

to kill him or to seal him in the slave collar again, and if he could save himself and the Leiran boy, I had

no objection to it. But I could not allow his grand opinion of his abilities to jeopardize my mother’s life. If

he failed, she would die for it, and he would, and the Leiran boy, too. I didn’t want to be responsible for

any of them.

As for my own future, having now experienced the reality of Dar’Nethi sorcery, I had only one

choice. I could not—would not—live with such weakness, not when I had traveled on the winds of the

world with the Lords of Zhev’Na. I belonged here.

“How fare you this memorable eve, young Lord?” Darzid stepped onto the balcony behind me.

“I wish it were midnight already.”

“As do I,” he said.
And I
, said Notole through the jewels in my ear.
I also
. Parven’s voice boomed in

my head like a barrel rolling down a plank.

“What do I need to do before the anointing?”

Darzid was leaning on the balcony rail. Though I wasn’t looking at him, I felt him examining

me—inside and out. “Nothing. All will come in due time.”

“I’ve ordered a bath prepared,” I said. “Food, too. I’ve had nothing since yesterday.”

“The bath is fine, but no food. You must come to us fasting this night.”

I didn’t ask why. I probably didn’t want to know. A slave came onto the balcony and knelt,

spreading his arms wide. He had a linen towel over one arm. “What will happen to my slaves, my

household after tonight?” I said, poking the slave with my foot and jerking my head toward the door so

he would go back inside to wait for me.

“You need not concern yourself with these servants.”

“I want them put to sleep. Tonight, before I go.”

“For what reason?” My skin felt hot from his examination.

“I don’t want them to watch me go and think about it. Perhaps, once I am a Lord, I’ll decide to kill

them all. Or maybe I won’t.” The last red crescent of the sun disappeared below the horizon.

Darzid smiled and swept his hand toward the doorway. “Your will shall be done, of course.”

I hated him.

CHAPTER 43

Seri

I had never been anywhere as cold as the keep of Zhev’Na, not even the mountain passes of the

Cerran Brae in the deeps of winter. The dark walls chilled my flesh and spirit until my blood seemed to

slow and my thoughts close in upon themselves like a daylily deprived of the sun.