Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (40 page)

On one evening more than six weeks after Karon had given himself to the Preceptorate, I was sitting

before our little fire, studying a map Kellea had found in a bookshop. Though the map itself was not so

old, the shopkeeper had claimed it was a rarity. Current maps delimited a vast proportion of Gondai as

the unknown Wastes, showing physical features only in the narrow strip that bordered the living lands.

But this map showed detailed names and locations of mountains and rivers, kingdoms, domains, and

villages as they had existed before the Catastrophe.

I was alone as I pored over the inked scroll. Paulo was roaming the streets again. Bareil had taken

Kellea to Dassine’s house to find a book that listed ancient place names and their descriptions. From the

combination of the book and the map and Dassine’s tales of his captivity, we hoped to discover what

place might have been transformed into the fortress of Zhev’Na. The night was quiet, and I was intent on

my study, not daring to feel excited at our first possible breakthrough.

The door crashed open, filling the room with the scents of cold weather and woodsmoke. “You’ve

got to come.” Paulo was ruddy-cheeked and breathing hard. Snow dusted his brown hair and dark wool

cloak. “They’ve got the Prince at that Precept House—Master Exeget’s house. And your boy is there,

too!”

I scribbled a message for Kellea and grabbed my cloak.

“I knew they’d take him there,” said Paulo, frost wreathing his face as we raced through the

snow-blanketed streets. “Knew it from the first. So I found the place. Been watching it every day.”

We cut through a long-neglected bathhouse, our footsteps echoing on the broken paving as we

circled empty pools littered with years of dead leaves and matted with snow. Moonlight poured through

the fallen ceiling to reveal glimpses of richly colored mosaics peeking from behind masses of winter-dead

vines. The path through the bathhouse gardens led us into a broad street of fine houses. Only a stitch in

my side caused our steps to slow.

Avoiding the soft pools of lamplight that spilled from the paned windows alongside laughter, music,

and the savory scents of roasting meat and baking sweets, we hurried toward a formal circle of trees at

the end of the street. A high, thick wall, quite overgrown, and a severely plain iron gate with no hinges, no

latches, no guards, and no obvious way to open it closed off the roadway. Through the gates and a large

expanse of trees and shrubs, I glimpsed a huge house with many lighted windows on its lower floors.

Signaling for quiet, Paulo led me into a narrow lane that skirted the wall.

At the back of the house, the stone wall yielded to a wooden building. The unmistakable scent of

stables hung in the cold air trapped behind it. Paulo carefully removed three boards from the wall, leaving

a hole just large enough for a person to crawl through. He went first, pulling the loose boards back into

the hole once I had slithered into an empty stall filled with fragrant hay. Skirting the wide stableyard, we

sped across a gravel lane and through a hedge, across a snow-covered lawn, and around a corner of the

great house.

The addition of a massive chimney sometime after the original house was built had left a jutting corner

in each side of the house. Near the bottom of the wall to the left of the chimney was a wide grate of the

kind used to draw fresh air into an enclosed room. Yellow light and the sound of voices spilled out of the

grate.

“However did you find this?” I whispered.

“Back when that Duke Baglos told us how wicked and stubborn the Prince was when he was a boy,

he said how Exeget used to make the Prince spend time outside in the winter for punishment. Well, I’ve

been throwed out in the winter a deal of times, so’s I thought where would a fellow go to get warm if he

was out like that? Stables, maybe, or in a corner like this where he could get a look at what was going on

in the house.”

We settled ourselves beside the grate and peered inside. I could easily imagine the boy D’Natheil,

sent into the winter weather unclothed to crush his pride, huddling here to draw warmth from the brick

chimney and watch resentfully as his warm and comfortable mentor went about his business in the

Preceptors’ council chamber. For that was surely the room that lay beyond the grate.

The chamber was immense, its floor well below the level of the ground on which we sat, and its

ceiling out of view. Suspended from the unseen ceilings were wide lamps created, not from candles or oil

lamps or torches, but from a thousand faceted globes of light hung on hoops of bronze. Tapestries woven

of jewellike colors adorned the walls, hung between elegant pilasters shaped like elongated wheat

sheaves. Tall bronze doors, each with a graceful tree worked in relief, faced us across the expanse. Our

vantage allowed us to look down on a raised dais that stood just in front of the great hearth. On the dais

stood a long table and seven elaborately carved, high-backed chairs, five of them occupied: one by a

huge man wearing a wide neck-chain of gold set with rubies, another by a buxom, broad-faced woman in

a robe of shifting colors, one by a skeletal, balding man, and two more by an elderly man and woman

who sat in the center—the Preceptors of Gondai. Gar‘Dena, Madyalar, Y’Dan, Ustele, and Ce’Aret. A

sixth man, his light, thinning hair immaculately combed, face round and boneless, looking something like a

foppish clerk, must be the Preceptor Exeget. He stood just beyond the table, beside a chair that had

been set to face the dais. Karon sat in the chair.

He wore a white robe, just as on the day I walked with him in my mother’s garden, but on this night

his face expressed neither hope, nor joy, nor even the tired and rueful humor of that meeting. His haunted

eyes were hollow, his face gaunt. His hands, resting on the wide arms of his chair, were shaking. Eyes

fixed on the fire beyond the dais, he showed no signs of hearing anything that was being said. What had

they done to him?

Exeget seemed to be concluding an argument. “. . . and so we have uncovered at last what the traitor

Dassine has wrought: imprisoning a dead soul before it could cross the Verges, murdering our rightful

Heir, and reviving him by implanting this impostor in his body, leaving us with a sovereign so crippled of

mind that he could easily be molded to his master’s will. Even our ‘Prince’ will tell you he does not

belong in his office. His life should properly have ended ten years ago in the brutal fires of his adopted

world. He belongs beyond the Verges.”

Earth and sky, they’d told him everything!

“But no matter the method of his transformation, you cannot deny that he is the Prince as well as the

Exile,” said Madyalar, the woman in the color-shifting robe. “I see no difficulty here. He has answered all

our questions. He possesses the Heir’s power; we cannot deny him. D’Arnath’s line ends with

D’Natheil.”

“Not so,” said Exeget. “Vasrin Shaper has again shown her faithfulness, taking the matter of our

dilemma and shaping a solution. The line of D’Arnath cannot end if this Prince provides us a successor.”

“But D’Natheil has no children. Dassine did not let him breed,” said the hard old woman, Ce’Aret.

“All true, and yet ... If we could produce one who could pass the test of parentage alongside our

crippled Prince, would you not say we had found ourselves a ready Heir?”

“Well, of course, but that’s impossible,” said Y’Dan, the bald man.

No. Not impossible at all.

Exeget smiled, waved his hand, and the bronze doors swung open. Darzid and Gerick entered the

room and stood behind Karon, who stared at the floor, unmoving save for the unceasing tremor of his

hands.

Gerick was dressed in brown breeches and a sleeveless shirt of beige silk. A gold chain hung around

his neck, and a wide gold armring encircled each of his tanned, bare arms. A knife hung from his belt, the

sheath strapped to his leg with a leather band. His red-brown hair was trimmed and shining, and affixed

to his left ear was a gold earring, embedded with jewels. In the two months since Covenant Day he had

grown a handspan, but neither that nor his deep red-gold coloring nor his exotic adornment was the most

profound change.

He was no longer afraid. All the false bravado, all the sullen temper was gone; how clear it was now

that they had been products of his terror. Gone also was the child who had watched with curiosity and

pleasure when I made things that he could recreate for the old nurse he loved. Gerick’s eyes were cold,

and hatred, not love, gave life to his face.

I pressed one hand to my mouth and the other to my belly, trying to quell the dull, swelling ache just

below my ribs. So profound a change in so short a time. What had I been playing at to allow this to

happen? Who were these vile beings who could so easily and so determinedly corrupt a child?

“Who is this boy?” rumbled Gar’Dena. “We’ve been told nothing of a boy. And who are you, sir,

who ventures so boldly into the Preceptors’ council chamber?”

“I’m an old friend,” said Darzid, “an Exile, like your Prince here.”

Damnable man! What I would give for a sword to end his cursed life! Was it possible that he was

Dar’Nethi?

“An Exile!” said several of the Preceptors together, wondering.

“Indeed this man is an Exile, who has by a strange accident preserved for us the hope of our royal

family,” said Exeget. “But here—before anything else is said—the test. The test will tell all. Once doubt is

put to rest, then we can explain the happy circumstance.”

Exeget stood before Gerick and laid his hands on the sides of my son’s face. Gerick neither flinched

nor changed expression. After a moment, Exeget took a position behind Karon’s chair and laid his hands

on Karon’s broad shoulders. “Tell us, D’Natheil,” said the Preceptor, “who is this child that stands

before us? What is his lineage? Do these shoulders bear the responsibility for his life?”

Karon closed his eyes and spoke softly, no tremor in his voice. “This is my son, and with Seri, my

beloved wife, I gave him life.”

I pressed my forehead against the grate, gripping the iron bars. Tears welled up in my eyes, only to

freeze on my cheeks in the bitter cold.

Gerick’s face did not change, except perhaps to grow harder. He was not surprised by Karon’s

words, and he didn’t like them.

Exeget stepped back. Madyalar rose from her seat and swept from the dais, the rainbow stripes on

her voluminous robes teasing the eye. She took Gerick’s hands in hers for a moment, examined his face

carefully, and then, like a mother calming a fearful child, she stood behind Karon and wrapped her arms

about his breast. “Tell us, D’Natheil, who is this child? What is his lineage? Is it this heart that beats in

time with his?”

Through the aura of enchantment, Karon spoke again. “He is my son, and with Seri, my beloved wife,

I cherished him from the day we first knew him.”

One by one they came, laying their hands on his hands, on his loins, and on his head.

“Did your hands build a dwelling place for him along the path of life?”

“Did your loins give fire to his being?”

“Is it this mind that speaks to his mind and listens for the word
father
?”

And he answered each of them.

“With my hands did I heal and restore life where it was damaged beforetime, and so in the days of my

first life, I built a house of honor for my child.”

“Yes, it is my seed that called him from nothingness into the Light.”

“He is my son.”

“The bond of the spirit is proved,” said Exeget. “And, as you see, the bond of the flesh is also true,

though the flesh was not that which our Prince wears on this day. Law and custom mandate that the

bonds of flesh and spirit are the true witness of lineage, and who dares gainsay what Vasrin Shaper has

provided? My judgment asserts that this child is the next Heir of D’Arnath. How say you all?”

One by one, the Preceptors agreed—only Madyalar hesitating. “I believe we should wait. Let the

Prince recover from his ordeals. Place him in isolation for a while. He may yet father children with this

flesh—D’Natheil’s flesh. Then there would be no question. Or perhaps—”

“No!” Karon roared, bursting from his seat. “Enough! You cannot make me endure this longer.”

Reaching across the table, he thrust his shaking hands into Madyalar’s face. “There is no recovery from

death. Ten breaths more and I will be unable to stop screaming. I am dead. I can do nothing for you.

Care for my son. Protect him . . . please. Send for his mother to love and nurture him and teach him the

savoring of life. Do not entrust Exeget with his mentoring . . . nor this Darzid who stands in the guise of an

Exile, but is responsible for the extermination of a thousand Exiles.”

The Preceptors recoiled in horror. The old ones gaped; Gar’Dena, Y’Dan, and Madyalar jumped

from their seats, their dismay not aimed at the cursed Darzid, but at Karon, who writhed and twisted,

wrestling to loose Exeget’s hands that had grasped his shoulders to pull him away from the table. Then,

Karon broke free and backed away from Exeget, a knife in his hand. Breathing hard, his skin gray and

stretched, he held the unsteady weapon between himself and the Preceptor.

“My lord Prince, calm yourself,” said Exeget. “Your mind has been savaged by Dassine’s