Son of Avonar (22 page)

“In the chaos that resulted, Master Dassine cried out that those who were not traitors deserved defeat for their stupidity—a charge not fairly given, and he had no call to chastise the other Preceptors. But Dassine picked up the young prince in his arms, took him to his own house, and posted wards that would allow no one near D'Natheil without his leave for all these years. Though many disagreed with Master Dassine's course of action, all could see that the premature attempt had harmed the boy in ways they could not understand. The hope has been that as D'Natheil grew older, he would learn the things needed to accomplish his purpose and develop the talents with which he was born.”

“Talents for sorcery?” I said, fighting to untangle the knot he was making of my head.

“He is not a bootmaker, woman. He is the Heir of D'Arnath.” Baglos's indignation was worthy of a jilted bride.

I sighed. “Go on.”

“So we in Avonar have fought to retake D'Arnath's sword from the Zhid and to defend the Bridge and the Gates until D'Natheil could reach maturity. But we have seen no further sign from the Exiles, and the Zhid have grown more powerful. Eight days ago even Master Dassine agreed the Bridge was in imminent peril. D'Natheil himself fought on the walls of Avonar that night—for the first time since his injury as a boy—and he slew fifty Zhid. We heard the terrible rumor that he lay near death after it, but clearly that wasn't true. On the next morning Master Dassine announced that D'Natheil and his Guide must make the crossing before the Gates could be closed again.

“The rites were rushed and confused, for there was fighting in the city streets. Bendal was wounded”—Baglos' narration faltered briefly—“and Master Exeget performed the madris so that I might serve the Prince as his Guide. But at last D'Natheil reached the palace and stepped through the Gate. The Zhid must have broken into the chamber just as Master Exeget pushed me after the Prince, for three of them followed right on my heels.”

Baglos took a deep breath, as if only now recovering from the terror of battle, and when he continued, he spoke with resolve and conviction. “The Zhid and their masters, the three Lords of Zhev'Na, will do anything to destroy the Bridge. Anything. They believe it will give them their victory, that it will complete the Catastrophe of their making. As the Heir, D'Natheil is sworn to defend the Bridge . . . to preserve our land . . . and so he must do. Now do you understand? Our people stand at the verge of annihilation, and he it is who must save us all.”

As Baglos repeated this last for Aeren, my mind was flooded with questions. And caught up in the words like flotsam on the tide were words and images that tweaked my memory, but would not explain themselves: the Breach, the world Bridge . . . I had tried so hard to erase the past, to get on with my useless life, forbidding the horror of my dreams from lingering into day. But one of Baglos's bits and pieces had washed up on the shore and lay in plain view where I could not ignore it.

“Your land,” I said. “You call it Avonar?”

“Our land was once called Gondai and encompassed many realms, but now that only our royal city and the Vales of Eidolon are left outside the Wastes, that name gets little use. Avonar—the City of Light. I fear that I may never again gaze upon its beauties.”

My throat could hardly give voice to my question. My skin felt tremulous, cold and hot and numb all together, as if I'd had too little sleep. “Where is this Avonar, where such things as sorcery are the custom?”

“I cannot tell you where, except that it is in the mountains beyond the Wastes,” Baglos said. “At some other time perhaps or if D'Natheil could command me to do so, I could tell you of it.”

“There was a city in Valleor called Avonar, but it was destroyed almost twenty years ago.” The hair on my arms was standing on end. “Tell me, Baglos, who are these Exiles of whom you speak?”

“The Exiles were dispatched right after the creation of the Bridge, long before the Battle of Ghezir. Twenty Dar'-Nethi were led across the Bridge by D'Arnath's beloved brother. It is part of the story of the Bridge that I cannot remember today. To be sent so far from their home and abandoned with no hope of return seems a cruel punishment, but they are great heroes and not criminals. We never knew their fate, but our hopes that they would be able to open the Gates had long faded. When at last they accomplished it, our hearts were lifted.”

How impossible it was that I should be sitting in this meadow and talking with this odd stranger about such things, that of all the places in the Four Realms it should be Poacher's Ridge where D'Natheil would appear out of nowhere. For who else but I, out of so many thousands, would be able to see the connections I saw amidst the incomprehensible strands of Baglos's story? Even the symbol on the knife—at last that connection had resolved. Change the rampant lions to smooth curves, reduce the design to its elemental forms as a thousand years and imperfect memory are wont to do, and one could see the simple rectangle with the arced triangle inscribed, and the three stylized flowerets. The mark of a ruling family . . . just as it had been the mark of Karon's father, the Lord of Avonar. How could this be?

“Do you know, Baglos, what was the name of the one who led your Exiles, the first one those hundreds of years ago?” I could not have said whether it was day or night, so intent was I on his answer. I would not have noticed a whirlwind had it settled in our midst or a storm of fire raging in the trees. The storm was within me.

“Everyone knows that. He holds honor next to D'Arnath himself. J'Ettanne was his name.”

The universe shifted underneath my feet. This was not coincidence. It couldn't be. “Your people are called Dar'-Nethi, then?”

“In our land we are of two peoples, Dar'Nethi and Dulcé. You can see clearly that my parentage differs from that of D'Natheil, for I am of the Dulcé. Dar'Nethi and Dulcé have lived in harmony since the beginning of time, for our gifts are very different.”

D'Natheil sat in the golden light of afternoon with his chin on his knees, his face expressionless. How much he understood, or whether any of the strange story had touched a familiar chord, it was impossible to tell.

My own difficulty was where to begin my questioning. Bridges seemed clear. Breaches—chasms—made sense. What were these gates of which Baglos spoke?

The Gates marked the two ends of D'Arnath's Bridge, so Baglos told me as the sun settled westerly—the Heir's Gate in Avonar, the Exiles' Gate in this land. Found deep in a chamber accessible only to the Heir or those to whom he has given the magical key to unlock its wards, the Gates appear as a wall of fire through which one must pass to walk upon the Bridge. Baglos had been prepared for a journey of horror at the crossing, but in truth he must have fainted, for a great fracturing burst upon him just as he stepped through the wall of fire. The only remaining entry to the Heir's Gate was located in the royal palace in Avonar, and that was where he and D'Natheil had begun their crossing. Baglos had no idea at all where any entries to the Exiles' Gate could be found. “Not today at least,” he said. D'Natheil should have emerged at the principal entry to the Exiles' Gate; such had been the expectation. And he, Baglos, should have been with the Prince, but this “fracturing” had separated them. He had awakened in the middle of a wheat field with a pounding head and had begun to search the countryside for D'Natheil. For three days he walked in circles, but he couldn't find the Prince. Thus he had begun visiting towns and villages, used his silver to buy a horse, and revealed himself to strangers so as to inquire after his missing lord.

I tried to digest the idea of a “fracturing,”—an earthquake, perhaps?—but quickly decided to go on to more urgent matters. “Tell us of these Zhid, Baglos.”

Baglos wrinkled his face in disgust. “The Zhid. The Empty Ones. Servants of the three who are called the Lords of Zhev'Na. We are taught that the Zhid, and even the Lords themselves, were once Dar'Nethi or Dulcé like us, their souls lost when the Catastrophe laid waste all the lands beyond Avonar. But I believe they were a terrible mistake of Vasrin Shaper when she put form to the life Vasrin Creator had made. Zhid feed on fear and destruction and despair. And they are powerful warriors, though their Seeking is more to be feared than their swords.”

“This ‘Seeking' is something of sorcery, then?”

“It is their most terrible sorcery. It withers a man, binding him to the Lords in service, sometimes taking his name and leaving him empty or mad, sometimes making him like to the Zhid in all of their evil. A forest can shelter you from them, as can some dwellings, because a forest is of all places the one where life is thick and rich. And if the dwelling is a home where there have been births and deaths and people living there who care for each other, the Zhid can destroy the house itself, but their Seeking cannot penetrate it.”

I asked Baglos much more, but he seemed incapable of answering anything beyond what he had already told us. “On another day,” he kept saying. “Ask me again and I could tell you.” His knowledge was so spotty, his physical capabilities so unprepossessing, and his emotional state so volatile, that I doubted that he could keep D'Natheil alive, much less do anything in the way of guiding him. He obviously cared for his young lord and his people very deeply, but, aside from his remarkable fluency in my language, he demonstrated no power of intellect or intuition to support his duties, especially when one thought of the dangers D'Natheil faced from the law of Leire, as well as his own enemies.

“What must you do now, Baglos?” I asked. “What were you and D'Natheil to accomplish in Leire, if all had gone as you planned?”

Baglos looked at me like a child who has just heard from his parents that he must teach them to walk, instead of the other way around. “I do not know.”

“Surely there was some goal, some deed to perform?”

“I do not know.”

“You are called a Guide. To what place were you to lead him or in what activity? You speak of his duty to ‘walk the Bridge.' Is that it? What does it mean?”

“I know my own duties, woman, but as for D'Natheil's course and his purpose and what he must do to further them, I cannot say.”

“Have you lost your memory, too?”

“I have not!” Baglos was indignant and turned away from me in a pout.

I exploded. “Then why in the name of all that lives were you sent? If you don't know these things today, you're not going to know them tomorrow. How wise can your Preceptors be to put someone who knows so little in this position? It's madness!”

Baglos turned back to me with an expression of long suffering. “No, no, woman. You do not understand the Dulcé. Did I not tell you our gifts were different from the Dar'Nethi? It is not required to know all these things. If the Heir were to command me, then I would know what was necessary, and I could teach him or lead him as he desired.”

My head was splitting as I tried to understand. “It doesn't make sense. How could you tell him anything you don't know?”

“Such is the gift of the Dulcé: to make connections when commanded by our madrisson—one with whom we have been linked by the rite of the madris. If D'Natheil commanded me to lead him to some great city, even if I had never seen it, I could discover the best way to take him there. If he commanded me to teach him the lore of the stars as practiced in your land, then I could do so, but I could not tell you of it now. If the information is to be found, then I can acquire it. But he it was who knew his course and his purpose. It was not necessary for me to be told.” The Dulcé leaned close and his strange eyes hammered at me. “You must help me, woman. We must find a way to make him remember and to finish his preparation, for if we do not, D'Arnath's Bridge will fall and the Lords of Zhev'Na will feast on the souls of your people as well as ours. We will see no beauty and no joy ever again.”

Though I believed he spoke truth, I wondered about the many things the Dulcé would not or could not tell us. His story was impossibly strange. And woven through it all were the magical names. J'Ettanne. Avonar. Just as they were woven through the life I had fought so hard to forget . . .

In the season of Seille of the year that I turned twenty-three, Karon and I were wed. The true ceremony took place in the grand drawing room at Windham, Martin's elegant silk tapestries, crystal, and brass softened by garlands of fragrant evergreen and the light of five hundred candles. Only our four closest friends were there to witness it. I wore dark green velvet and carried roses that Karon had grown for me. Martin placed my hand in Karon's, and it was difficult to tell which of our company radiated the greatest happiness. Julia swore adamantly that it was Tennice. For my part, I believed that good Arot himself, in that first Long Night at the beginning of the world, could have been gifted with no better friends and no more perfect joy.

I notified Tomas of my marriage. In return, I received a letter from his man of business. My marriage portion was to be the townhouse and
a settlement sufficient to ensure the Lady Seriana's position cannot be seen as a reproach to the family. The Duke of Comigor has no wish to enter into any negotiations with any parties, and since his consent to the marriage was not required, he will assume that the consent of the suitor is not required as to the settlement.

Though I knew Evard would have claimed the sizeable dowry my father had set aside for me, I didn't argue. Karon and I had more than enough. Tomas had not been stingy, and Karon had a gentleman's income, set up anonymously by his father when Karon had first gone to the University.