Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (11 page)

over my bare shoulder and a hand laid on my hair. “Sleep well, my lord.”

“D’Natheil! Wake! You must be up. The hounds are baying, and we must ride with them a while.”

Dassine shook me awake with unaccustomed vigor.

It was unusual for him to call me by that name—mine, yes, but not the one I had come to believe was

closest to me. If I’d not been so groggy, I might have wondered more at his use of it, but it had been just

after dawn when I had last collapsed on the bed. The light told me it was still early morning, and cramps

and stiffness told me that I’d not even had time to change position.

“Have mercy, old man,” I groaned and buried my head in the bedclothes. “Can’t you give me an

hour’s peace?”

“Not this morning. We have visitors, and you must see them.”

“Tell them to come back.” I could muster no enthusiasm, even for such a glorious variation in our

regimen as a visitor.

As far as my own sight or hearing witnessed, no other beings existed in the universe, though I

suspected that someone else shared the house with us. On the table in the lectorium I often found two

glasses smelling of brandy that I’d not been allowed to taste. And I could not imagine the testy Healer

making soup or filling my washing pitcher with tepid water.

“The Preceptors of Gondai have come to wait upon their Prince. I’ve put them off for more than three

months, and if I don’t produce you, they’ll cause trouble. I can’t spare the energy to fight them, so you

must get up and present yourself.”

“The Preceptors . . . Exeget, Ustele, the others?” The urgency of his words prodded me to function at

some minimal level. I sat up, trying to stir some blood into my limbs.

“Yes, you blithering boy. They sit in my library at this very moment in all their varieties of

self-importance and deception. I told them you were sleeping, but they said they would await Your

Grace’s pleasure. So if you would like another hour’s sleep before we begin work again, rouse yourself,

get to the library, and get rid of the bastards. We’ve no time to dally with them.”

“What will I say? I know nothing more than a twelve-year-old.” My faith in Dassine’s assurances that

all I now remembered was truth took an ill turn. What if the memories he had instilled were only wild

fictions and not the unmasked remnants of my own experiences? But a glance at the sagging flesh around

his eyes reminded me that he slept no more than I. I couldn’t swear that his mysterious game was the

only hope of the world as he insisted, but I believed that he did nothing from cruelty or indifference. I had

to trust him.

“You will say as little as possible. They’re here to verify that I’m not grooming some impostor to

supplant the line of D’Arnath.”

I couldn’t help but be skeptical. “And how am I to prove that? I doubt I can reassure them by telling

the story of my life—lives.”

Dassine jabbed at my chest with his powerful fingers. “You are D’Natheil, the true Heir of D’Arnath.

You can pass the Gate-wards, walk the Bridge, and control the chaos of the Breach between the worlds.

The blood in your veins is that of our Princes for the last thousand years, and no one—no one—can deny

or disprove it. It’s true that you’ve had experiences others cannot understand, and we cannot tell these

fossils about them quite yet, but I swear to you by all that lives that you are the rightful Prince of Avonar.”

It was impossible to doubt Dassine.

“Then they’ll want to know what I’m doing here with you all these months, which, lest you’ve

forgotten, you’ve never explained.”

“They have no right to question you. You are their sovereign.”

Ah, yes. It didn’t matter that in my life in the mundane world, my younger brother, Christophe, had

inherited the gift of Command from my beloved father, the Baron Mandille. In my life here in the world of

Gondai—in this Avonar of sorcery and magic—I, D’Natheil, the third son of Prince D’Marte, had been

named Heir of D’Arnath when my father and two older brothers had been slain in quick succession.

When my name had been called by the Preceptorate—the council of seven sorcerers who advised the

Heir and controlled the succession—I could scarcely write the letters that comprised it, because no one

had ever thought that a third son, so wild, and so much younger than the others, would ever be needed to

rule my devastated land.

My memories of D’Natheil’s life ended abruptly on the day I turned twelve, the day my hands were

anointed and I came into my inheritance. On that day these same Preceptors waiting for me now had

decided that I must essay D’Arnath’s enchanted Bridge and attempt to repair the weakness caused by

years of war and neglect and the corrupting chaos of the Breach between the worlds.

Gondai and the mundane world—the human world—had existed side by side since Vasrin gave

shape to nothingness at the beginning of time. Dar’Nethi sorcery and human passion created a delicate

balance in the universe that no one quite understood. At the time of the Catastrophe, when the Breach

came into being and separated the two worlds, upsetting this balance, we Dar’Nethi found ourselves

diminished, left without power enough to reclaim our devastated land. And so our king, D’Arnath, built

his Bridge of enchantment to span the Breach, hoping to restore the balance. The long war with the

Lords and the corruption of the Breach threatened to ruin the Bridge, and only by the power and labor of

D’Arnath and his Heirs had it endured a thousand years.

But at twelve I had not known what to do to preserve the Bridge. Dassine told me that my attempt

had damaged me so dreadfully that further memories of D’Natheil’s life were impossible. When these

Preceptors had last spoken to me, I had been a crass, amoral youth, one whose life was consumed in a

passion for war. They would not know me as I really was, Dassine said. It was my
other
life—Karon’s

life—that had transformed me.

My head started to ache with the contradictions and convolutions, and I pressed my fist against my

forehead to keep it from splitting.

“Stop!” said Dassine sharply. “This is not the time to think. The Preceptors are not your kindly

grandparents. You must be clear-headed.”

“Empty-headed?”

“If that’s the only way. Prepare yourself. I’ll return for you shortly. I’ll bring saffria.”

I dragged myself back from the precipice without looking over it. “Make it strong, Dassine.”

He tugged at my hair. “You’ll do well.”

There was not much preparation to make. I wished I could fit my entire head into the small basin of

water on the stand in my room, but splashing the grit from my eyes would have to do. And I had nothing

to wear but my white robe. From my first days with him, Dassine had forbidden me to use sorcery to

obtain anything beyond his meager provision. Neither of us could afford to squander power, he said, and

in truth, I rarely had enough to conjure a candle flame. By the time I knew that I was the ruler of Avonar

with the authority to command comforts to be brought to me, I was beyond caring.

Dassine reappeared almost immediately with saffria. I downed it in one long, hot gulp, hoping its

pungent sweetness would find its way to those of my extremities that had still not come to the conclusion

that they must function. With no more conversation—we had spent more words that morning than during

an entire week of our usual business— he led me down a long hallway. Tantalizing telltales of early

morning sneaked into the cool, shadowed passage through a series of open doorways: birdsong, dust

motes dancing in beams of gold light, the scents of mint and damp earth. It would be so much more

pleasant to follow them than to go where Dassine led.

I stood behind him as he pulled open a wide door. “You are greatly favored this morning,” he

announced. “The Prince has agreed to a brief audience. My friends and colleagues, His Grace D’Natheil,

Heir of the Royal House of D’Arnath, Prince of Avonar, sovereign and liege of Dar‘-Nethi and Dulcé.

May Vasrin Shaper and Creator grant him wisdom as he walks the Way.”

Now for the test. I walked through the doorway, fighting that part of me which insisted I did not

belong here, that words of royal homage did not apply to me. I tried to focus on this world and its

customs and to convince myself I had a place in it. Conviction is everything in a ruler, the father I had

loved once told me.

Seven people stood up as I entered the wide, airy room: four men, two women, and one—not a

child, but a slight, dark-haired, olive-skinned man, who hovered in the background. A Dulcé. One of the

strange race that cohabited this world, a people with an astonishing capacity for knowledge and

astonishing limitations in its use.

The six that were not Dulcé arranged themselves in an expectant and diverse half-circle in the center

of a scuffed wood floor. One of the six was shorter than average, another enormously fat, one

cadaverous, two in the fine tunics and breeches of men of rank, the others in robes of the type worn by

scholars, variously brightly colored, dull, shabby, or fine. They, with Dassine as their seventh, were the

Dar’Nethi Preceptorate. Though I knew these six only with the unshaded colorations of a child’s mind, I

knew what was required to greet them properly. The rituals of kingly politeness had been battered into

me by the well-dressed man on the far left, a puffy, balding man with full lips and deep-set eyes. He

looked soft but was not. My back ached with the memory of his beatings, and my spirit shriveled with the

echo of his self-righteousness.

I had been an angry nine-year-old when courtiers dragged me away from the grimy comfort of a

palace guard firepit and took me to the Precept House, the large, austere building that housed the

meeting chamber of the Preceptorate and served as the residence of its head. On that night Master

Exeget had announced that, as my father and brothers were all dead, I was to be raised up to be Heir,

ignorant, filthy beast that I was, no better than a dog, fed on the scraps from the soldiers on the walls.

No one had told me that D’Seto, my last living brother, a dozen years older than me, and the most

dashing, talented, and skillful of princes, had been slain by the Zhid. He was the only one of the family

who had ever had a kind word for me, and all my awkward, childish striving, played out in alleyway

throne rooms and stableyard sword fights, had been to be like him. Exeget did not grant me even the

simple courtesy of believing that I might grieve for my brother. Instead he spent an hour telling me how

unlike D’Seto I was. I hated Exeget from that moment, for he made me believe it. There was no justice in

a universe that infused the blood of kings in such as me, he said, while condemning nobler spirits to lesser

roles. Only strict discipline and rigorous training might improve me, and so I was not to return to the

palace, but live with him in the Precept House. He had crammed his red face into mine and sworn that if

his efforts failed and I was not made worthy of my inheritance, I would not live to disgrace it.

And so, on this morning as the Preceptors gathered to inspect me, I could not look at Exeget without

loathing. I began my greetings at the other end of the line, hoping to find the right words to say by the

time I got to him. Moving from one of the Preceptors to the next, I turned my palms upward as a symbol

of humility and service. Each in turn laid his or her hands on mine, palms down, accepting what I offered,

kneeling before me in honor of my office. As I raised them up, one by one, each greeted me in his or her

own way.

The giant Gar’Dena, a powerful, prosperous worker of gems, wheezed and grinned, for I gave him

more than a princely touch to help raise his bulk from his genuflection. I hoped no more sorcery would be

needed, for the simple assistance had used up my small reserve of power. Once standing at his full height,

dwarfing everyone in the room, Gar’Dena straightened his red silk tunic, blotted his massive forehead

with a kerchief the size of a sail, and hooked his thumbs into an elaborately jeweled belt. “
Ce’na

davonet, Giré D’Arnath
!” All honor to you, Heir of D’Arnath. This traditional greeting, which he

pronounced in an ear-shattering bellow, was deeply respectful. Cheered by his generous spirit, I moved

down the row.

Ce’Aret, an ancient, wizened woman with the face and humor of a brick, poked at my cheek with a

sharp finger and snorted, whether in disbelief or general disapproval I didn’t know. I gripped her finger

and returned it to her firmly, which didn’t seem to please her at all. Ce’Aret had taken on herself the duty

of ferreting out those who secretly aided our enemies. Everyone feared her.

Ustele was almost as old as Ce’Aret, but his quick and incisive probe of my thoughts belied any

impression I might have had of diminished faculties. Touching my mind without consent was an

unthinkable offense, an invasion of my privacy that would permit me to summarily dismiss him from the

Preceptorate, if not banish him from Avonar . . . assuming I was accepted as the true Prince. No one in

the room, save perhaps the Dulcé, would have failed to register it. If I wished to retain any semblance of

respect from the others, I could not ignore such an attempt.

“This day’s grace I will give you, Ustele, because you were my grandfather’s mentor. But no more.