Son of Avonar (25 page)

“Whatever you think, Racine.” Brought out of his distraction a bit by the exchange, Karon spoke quietly to me. “Can you come? I'd like to show you. I don't know what to do with it.”

“Of course.”

Karon told Racine to carry on and led me to the steep, winding stair. “We have to go down. Will you be all right?”

“I'll manage,” I said, touching his hand and remembering his magical light. “My demon is with me.”

He took me deep into the far corner of the vault to a pile of rolled carpets. Setting the lamp on a nearby crate, he dragged a cracked leather trunk from underneath the pile. The trunk was full of old clothes. From deep beneath the jumble of faded silks and satins he pulled out a flat, wooden box. The wood was polished dark and smooth by years of handling, the plain brass hinges and latch tarnished. Karon raised the lid and reverently removed the contents, one by one.

First, a silver knife, the finger-length blade and curved, ornately worked handle black with tarnish. Next a threadbare strip of cloth, a scarf or sash perhaps, more like a spiderweb that threatened to dissolve at a touch. Then a round, button-like piece, also made of silver, blackened by time. Karon laid each thing in my lap, and I could not mistake the wonder in his eyes.

“They're not very old by the standards of many things in the collection,” he said, “but they're quite rare.”

“What are they?”

“Tools. The tools of a J'Ettanni Healer. One can use things that were originally designed for other purposes, as I do when I work, but there was a time . . . well, the custom was to have your own tools always ready: a knife of silver, cast with your own proper enchantments to keep it keen-edged—there is no way to make that part of it easy or pleasant, but a sharp knife is always better than dull—and a strip of white linen for the binding—it's dangerous to lose contact in the middle of the rite, as I've told you. You can get dizzy. And in this”—he showed me how the button was actually a tiny cup with a hinged lid—“you would keep indiat, a paste made from herbs, quite rare and expensive, but it would ease the pain of the incision for the one you were to heal. The rite can be very hard, especially for children.”

As always, I had a hundred questions but I wasn't sure he would even hear me.

“It's incredible enough to find these things, but they're not all.” From the wooden box he pulled a small book, hardly bigger than his hand. Its leather cover was half rotted away, the stitching gone, leaving it little but a stack of pages of precarious thinness. Faded ink filled the pages, words of a language I didn't recognize written in a bold hand.

“The Healer's journal,” said Karon. “See the symbol of the knife on the front. And here”—with utmost care, he opened to the front of the little book—“a list of names and places, and what I think must be a description of the circumstances for each healing he did. It's written in the old language of the J'Ettanne, which went out of use long before bound books. I know so little of the language, it's hard to read it. But look at this entry.” His face was that of a child on Long Night. “
Garlao, the miller. Mycenar
—that must be the village—
hand caught in
—something.
J'dente
means healed. It's so important for a Healer to remember. There are times when it's not right to change the outcome, times when death is not an enemy to be thwarted, times when sickness must be left to burn itself out, and so you must constantly look back at the judgments you've made to see if your course is straight. This man did it this way.” Karon's whole posture begged me to understand what it meant to him to find these things. He believed he was the last living soul of his own kind.

“It's a connection both to all those who came before you and to one particular man who was a Healer like yourself.”

“And even more than that. You see, he's marked the book into days. Some are skipped; some are just noted by a symbol.” He turned the delicate pages carefully. “This one he's marked Av'Kenat. I think the text must be a description of it . . . by one who was there.”

Av'Kenat was the “Walking Night,” the late autumn celebration when the ancient J'Ettanne would come together to celebrate the passing of summer, the harvest, and their belief that life was a formless essence, given shape by the crossing of our paths as each of us walked the Way laid down for us. It was a time for storytelling and family reunions, for betrothals and weddings, reunions and feasting, and magical games and displays of all kinds.

Karon's face glowed in the lamplight. “All I've ever heard is legends, passed down so many times one never knew if they were true. Our people never dared join together on Av'Kenat. Only in the heart of the family could we have any celebration, and that contradicted the whole meaning of the feast. If I were to work at it, I could read of the real thing from one who witnessed it.”

“You could learn things that even your own family didn't know.”

He nodded, but the glow was already fading, and his brow quickly settled into a frown. “But I'm required to destroy the journal and the other things. The law explicitly forbids these words, this language, any mention of these events and activities.”

“If you were not married, would you consider destroying them?”

He glanced up quickly. “Of course I would. The risk . . .” The flush of his cheeks spoke truer.

“How dare you use me as an excuse for cowardice! I don't recall making any vow of safety when I married you. Nor do I recall requiring you to make any pledge to relinquish your life, your history, or any of those things that make you who you are. Besides”—I grabbed his chin and shook his frown away—“these are treasures that belong to the royal collection, and it would ill become the Commissioner of Antiquities to destroy anything in his charge.”

“Ah, Seri.” His pleasure illuminated the dim vault. “It would take me quite a while to decipher it all. What I've thought is that I could first transcribe it. Then I could return the book here and work at the translation as I had time.”

“Not at all efficient, Lord Commissioner. If I were to transcribe it for you, then you could begin work on the translation before the transcription is complete—tonight, if you wish.”

 

For the rest of the summer, I seldom came to the storehouse of antiquities. Not only did I transcribe the fragile pages onto decent paper, but I also made separate notes of word usage and combinations that appeared frequently. Karon taught me the words as we worked, and I developed the rudiments of a dictionary comprised of both words and symbols. Never had any work satisfied me so.

The Healer often wrote in symbols, many of them representing J'Ettanni talents and offices. Karon told me that in the Healer's day it was the custom to have the device painted on the lintel of your house: the knife for the Healer, the lyre for a Singer, the bridle for the Horsemaster, and so on. “If my father had lived in those days, he would have had his own Word Winder's spiral, as well as this one.” He was sitting at our library table, and in the margin of his page of translation, he sketched a rectangular shield with two curved lines set into it, and a stylized floweret in each of the three regions scribed by the lines. “This is the symbol of a ruler. Christophe inherited both the talent and the office from our father—”

I was standing behind him and leaned over his shoulder to look closer. “But you were older. Why was your brother to inherit?”

“Our elders had ways to discern who was gifted in that way. Perhaps they could see I had no stomach for ruling. Christophe was to be officially named my father's heir on his twentieth birthday in the autumn Avonar was destroyed. I planned to go home for it. If the Leirans had attacked two months later, I would have been in Avonar with the rest of them.”

I tugged at his chin, forcing him to look at me. “But you were not—for which I bless the hand of fate every hour. Does it bother you? Make you feel guilty that you weren't there with them?”

He smiled. “No. That would not be very J'Ettanni, would it? Such was the Way that unfolded for us; we had escaped the ravages of the Leiran war for a long time as it was. But I miss them all and wish very much that they could meet you. All except Christophe.”

“And why not him?”

“Ah. He was very much closer to your age than I, and altogether more handsome and charming.”

“Impossible.”

“Every young woman in Avonar was in love with him.”

“And did they not recognize the charms of his older brother?” I took the pen from his hand and threw it on the desk, crammed the stopper in the ink bottle, and pulled him from the chair.

“Let's say I was fortunate to meet you before you knew of my true profession. Few Healers ever married. Though you, I think, would have defied the common wisdom. . . .”

The hunger was growing in him again. His easy laugh told me that he didn't sense it yet, but his skin was hot, and when I wrapped my arms about his neck, I felt the quickening of his heart. I closed my eyes and drew his arms around me like a shield.

By my twenty-fourth birthday the king and queen of Leire had produced a daughter, the Princess Roxanne, and my transcription of the Healer's journal was complete. I had copied every word, drawn every symbol and diagram just as the author had penned them. Karon had replaced the journal in the wooden box and buried the trunk under piles of carpets, marked with a number that appeared on none of Racine's lists. The translation was progressing well. Karon was able to puzzle out enough of the words to make some sense, and I would carefully record each newly deciphered word in my dictionary. We had come to think of the ancient Healer, whom we called the Writer, as an acquaintance just as real as Martin or Tennice.

The Writer had lived approximately four hundred fifty years ago, during the time just before the Rebellion when the J'Ettanne ruled Leire—the
unholy usurpation,
Leiran historians called it. He had traveled the roads of Leire and Valleor, taking his skills from village to village, spending his power until he had no more to give. Even in those days the gift of healing was rare, and the need for his help far outstripped his capacity.

Karon told me that a healing such as he had done for Martin, using the blood-rite to bring someone from the very brink of death or beyond it, was all the sorcery he could work for a matter of several hours. Lesser healings were easier, not needing the heavy investment of lifegiving, but the effects on the Healer were cumulative. Many Healers would not even attempt small hurts or illnesses, husbanding their resources for more serious needs, afraid the process of replenishing their power would be too slow.

The Writer had not been one of these. He would take all comers until he could do no more. There had come a night when one of his own children had wakened with a virulent fever. The Writer had spent all of his power that day and had nothing left with which to heal her, and so his small daughter had died. He wrote of his profound grief, but did not change his ways.

I was appalled. “Bludgeon-headed man, why didn't he learn from his mistake? He should have saved something back for his own children. What a cold fish he must have been.”

“Not at all,” said Karon. “Read how he wrote of the child. He cared very much. But he didn't see it as a reason to change. When you give a gift, you cannot retain part of it. It is either yours or the other's. No in-between. Sorcery and healing are not some oddity or aberration that alter the paths of life. They are a part of it. I was able to heal Christophe because it wasn't time for him to die, and Martin the same. If I'd spent what I did on Martin, and then Tennice had needed me, it would not be my part to say, ‘If only I had not . . .' That's a sure route to madness.”

“But you said you must constantly look back at your judgments.”

“And so you must. But in each case on its merits alone, not on what the circumstances of life have made of it. Such is the Way.”

I couldn't see it. “It makes no sense. If you see your way blocked by the enemy, you don't keep marching down the same road. You withdraw and change your tactics. It was his own child. He was responsible.”

As with so many of our arguments, a kiss ended, but did not settle it.

 

When winter came and another Seille, we celebrated the first year of our marriage. Karon gave me a delicate gold locket, engraved with a rose. Inside it I put a crumbled bit of the enchanted roses he had grown for me. I gave him a chestnut stallion. He named the horse Karylis, which in the language of Valleor means
sunlight
. Karylis was the name of the mountain where he had healed his brother and come into his calling.

On one quiet night in midwinter, I sat nestled in an oversized chair by our library fire, plodding through a story written in Vallorean, trying to bolster the smattering of language skills I had neglected so sorely in my girlhood. I was finding myself easily distracted, in the latest instance observing how the pool of lamplight lit Karon's high cheekbones so delectably as he sat at the library table poring over the journal transcription. So I was not too startled when he sat back and burst out, “Mother of earth! Seri, come see what I've found.” His high color made the lamplight pale. I hadn't seen him so excited since the finding of the journal.

I abandoned my chair and lap robe to lean over his shoulder and see what page had revealed such a dramatic secret. It was a diagram labeled with odd symbols. “I never expected we'd make any sense of this one,” I said. “Have you deciphered it?”

“I've not interpreted the diagram or the symbols, but I know their purpose.” He turned back a few pages and traced his finger over my writing. “The Writer has been getting more and more worried about the terrible things being done by the Open Hand. He says that on Av'Kenat, one of the rebellious cities was beset by a ‘legion' or ‘army,' or something like that, of
nethele. Nethele
means ‘the dead.' Evidently this ruler, Zedar, whom he has mentioned before, sent the spirits of the dead to frighten his subjects into submission, filling their minds with ‘the most pernicious mortal dread.' The Writer is horrified at the perversion of Av'Kenat, and it looks as if it inspired him to action. What do you think he's done?”