Daughter of Ancients (7 page)

“In the fourth year, the trickle stopped. Not one more Zhid in the months after. We've kept searching with no result. But half a league from the place the Lady walked out of the desert, we found two dead men—armed and accoutered as Zhid. The evidence of her weapon and the blood on her tunic indicate she was in a fight, though she claims to remember nothing of her desert madness. Then, a few months ago, traders made a regular run to a Tree Delvers' village in the north, a former Drudge work camp that had grown and prospered. It appeared that every resident of the village had got up in the middle of the evening meal and vanished. Some signs of a fight, but no people, either alive or dead. We've seen at least three similar incidents in the past months. In short, I'm afraid we find ourselves facing a new enemy or the revival of an old one.”

This news tainted the air like milk gone sour. For a thousand years the Lords had hungered to feed their power by reiving the mundane world and exploiting the chaos of the Breach. Using plots and schemes, mind-twisting sorcery, and war, they had battled to bring down Avonar and with it the Bridge that constrained their power and enabled Dar'Nethi sorcery, for only the Dar'-Nethi stood in their way. We had thought the struggle ended with the Lords' death—Karon's and Gerick's great victory.

Ven'Dar's fine-lined face looked old as I had never seen it. “Factions are developing in Avonar over this succession business. Some think I should serve until nature supplants me. Others—many others—believe D'Sanya should rule tomorrow. We cannot risk division. We are still too fragile. The person who bears the banner of D'Arnath must have the complete trust and loyalty of all Dar'Nethi. If the Lady D'Sanya is what she seems, she should take her place as soon as possible. But if she is somehow . . . corrupt . . . then the danger . . .”

Karon did not hesitate. His words appeared in our minds with all his belief in Ven'Dar's instincts and his honor.
Then the woman must be tested yet again. But I am not the right one to put her to the question.

“Who then?” said Ven'Dar, wrinkling his forehead.

Gerick, standing now, had retreated to the shadowed corner of the bedchamber as if to physically distance himself from Karon and Ven'Dar. “Ah, no. Don't ask it,” he said softly, shaking his head and folding his arms across his breast. “Please, Father. Anything else.”

Karon must have spoken privately to Gerick then, for no words appeared in my mind, and Ven'Dar's expression did not change from a thoughtful surprise. Je'Reint snapped his head from Ven'Dar to Karon to Gerick and back to the prince, his back as straight and rigid as the door frame behind him.

My son closed his eyes for a time, and then, with an unsteady breath, he moved to the bed and laid his hand on his father's shoulder. After a moment, his expression as sere as a winter heath, he looked up at Ven'Dar. “My father asks that you summon T'Laven to undo what he has done. Tomorrow we will seek the aid of the Lady D'Sanya and take my father to her hospice if she permits it. Together we'll see what we can learn of her.”

Je'Reint strode to the middle of the chamber, his hands spread and raised as if to contain emotions threatening to escape his control. “My lord prince, my lord Karon, the Lady D'Sanya has been forthcoming and modest in all ways. To deceive our princess . . . even if we disagree with her philosophy . . . to set a
spy
on a young woman . . .” He did not need to voice his feelings about the choice of Gerick as the principal in the deception. The set of his dark brow, the direction of his glare said it all. “Surely we can find some other way to discern Zhev'Na's influence on her ideas, to persuade her to study the wisdom passed down through so many generations.”

Ven'Dar shook his head, troubled. “I am not easy with deception, Je'Reint. And to take advantage of my friend's pain and to keep Gerick from work that shapes a new world are actions my conscience will not view lightly. But somehow in the months since the Lady's arrival, Gondai itself has felt different to me, as if the very rock and soil beneath us are no longer stable. I've dismissed it as an old man's foolishness, but after my experience on the Bridge yesterday and this morning, I cannot shake the sense that we are racing headlong toward the verge of some great precipice.”

“My lord, no one else describes this uncertainty you feel. Rather the opposite. All who work with the Lady feel their own talent enhanced and their power magnified, as if the world is returning to the way it was before the Catastrophe. Yesterday, while working with her to unlock a Zhid spell trap on Ger'Shon's horses, I discovered that I was able to detect the breeding marks buried deep in the bone and tissues of his mares. For centuries every Horsemaster has worked toward such a skill, as it gives us our first hope of breeding out the weak hearts that have plagued our stock. What can that be but the Lady's influence? And how could such service of life be corruption?”

Je'Reint, every line and sinew of his body echoing his words, could have persuaded a cat to rescue a drowning dog. But I was astonished to hear him challenge Ven'Dar so directly, especially with this hint of self-righteousness so uncharacteristic of him—and so ill-suited to a Perceiver.

Even Ven'Dar stepped backward . . . but only one step and no farther. “If the danger I feel is not the woman herself, then we may need her exceptional power to withstand whatever is happening. In any case, we must be sure of her in every way possible before we give her the Bridge. I say this plan goes forward.”

In any matter pertaining to the Bridge, the authority of the Heir of D'Arnath was absolute. But I had never heard it asserted so forcefully. Je'Reint inhaled deeply, reining in the further arguments so clearly on his lips. He extended his palms and bowed. “My lord. I respectfully request that you release me from any active participation in this plan. My conscience—”

“Unless the safety of the realm demands it.” No doubts softened Ven'Dar's assent. “And you will discuss this with no one outside this room. If my requirement of silence gives you difficulty, I will devise a memory block.”

“My lord, your command binds me as always. Again, it is not your purpose, but only the means that gives me pause. If you will excuse me . . .” He bowed again, and Ven'Dar's gesture gave him permission to go. After a bow to me and a minimal nod in the direction of Gerick and Paulo, he took attentive leave of Aimee. She escorted him out of the room. I squirmed a little, feeling as if I had just barged in on a household of strangers and been presented with their unwashed linen.

As Ven'Dar spoke with Gerick and Paulo about a story to use—something about old friends of Gar'Dena, come to the city to find better care than that in their town—Karon spoke to me privately, trusting that I understood the reasons why he had to help Ven'Dar, and why I could not go with him on what was likely to be his last journey. He did not reveal what he had said to Gerick to persuade him to the task. A portion of their relationship remained so intimate that I could not be a part of it. I had never grudged that. But in my own secret heart I raged once more at villainous fate, wishing fervently that my prayers had never been answered, that Gerick had stayed with his Singlars in the Bounded, and that Karon could have died as we sat in Martin's awakening garden, believing all his wars had been won.

It was a letter from Roxanne that first got me thinking about taking a wife. Not her, of course. Though I'd known her since childhood and we'd shared an adventure or two, the Queen of Leire was not available. She had taken herself a consort less than two years after succeeding to her father's throne, an Isker prince who brought legitimacy to her sovereignty over his conquered land. He also brought no complications of romance or affection to muddle her first difficult years consolidating her authority, so she said. He was only thirteen years old. Her own mother's marriage had been such a political move, and Roxanne conceded to me—and most likely to no one else—that she held out a hope that by the time he was old enough, and she was ready to consider bearing a child, the union might turn out as successfully as her parents' had. But if not, she would find her pleasures where she could. Roxanne was a person of considerable determination.

But it wasn't so much that her letter painted such an attractive picture of matrimony that my current lack of interest in the subject was reversed, but rather that it pointed out that I was doing a terrible injustice to one of the last people I could ever wish to hurt. She wrote that she was looking for a new Master of the Royal Horse, and that it was too bad Paulo wasn't available to take the position, as it would be a perfect situation for him: two thousand of the finest horses in any world to do with as he pleased.
Let me know if ever you decide to set him free of you
, she wrote,
but if I had a captive friend who would do anything in the world for me, from loaning me his body, to saving my life, to polishing my boots, I wouldn't let him go either.

I didn't like what she'd said. Paulo stayed in the Bounded by his own choice. I'd never asked him . . . never told him he couldn't leave if he wanted. We were friends. He knew how important he was to me.

But Roxanne made me think back to the first time I had joined with Paulo, when I had possessed his body to keep him from being killed by the corrupt Guardian of the Bounded. Amid all his other thoughts and confusions, I had experienced his feelings for a Dar'Nethi girl he admired, and I'd realized that someday he'd have to do something about those feelings. Now five more years had passed, Paulo was almost twenty-four, and I'd not given it the slightest consideration. We'd had so much to do.

While I made laws for the Bounded, heard disputes, set up the Watch, and trained it to protect the people from the wild creatures at the Edge, Paulo taught the Singlars how to make a harness and use it to control a mule, and how to use the mule to help them haul stone and water and to break ground to grow something other than tappa roots. While I worked to convince them of the value of reading and writing and sharing their knowledge with each other, Paulo taught them how to barter for the things one person could do better than another. And it was well known throughout the Bounded that if the king was too busy to hear your petition, or if he'd made up his mind too quickly, then the surest way to see justice done or needs addressed was to find the king's friend where he worked in the fields or the town. If there was merit in your words, the king's friend would recognize it, and the king would hear of it. I didn't see how I could possibly manage without him, but it had been too long since I'd asked him if that life was what he wanted.

It would do no good to ask him outright. He'd say, “Nothing better to be at,” and stay with me forever. And I couldn't just send him away as if I were angry with him or tired of his company. He knew me so well, he'd never believe it. And that was what got me thinking about taking a wife. Paulo and I ate together, worked together, rode together, and when we had any occasion to talk at all, we needed only half the words anyone else might. But if I were to marry, all of that would have to change. It would give him a reason to look at his own situation, and not to have to worry so much about me.

So that became my plan. The only problem was, I had no idea as to how to go about it. I didn't know many women. The Singlars were only just getting used to pairing up with others who cared for them in that way, and I'd never met a one of them who wasn't so in awe of me that she could look me straight in the eye. And beyond that . . . well, the Queen of Leire was taken, even if we'd been willing to try cramming her ambitions and my strange history into one marriage. I didn't know anyone else.

All this was on my mind when I sent Paulo through the portal to the Four Realms to find someone to teach us how to channel storm waters, and he came back the same day with the letter from my mother telling me that my father was mortally ill. And, of course, before you could brush a gnat from your face, we were in Avonar, Paulo stammering his heart out in front of the Dar'Nethi girl he'd worshipped since he was thirteen, and I faced with watching my father die.

I had never planned to go back to Gondai. I had no sympathetic feelings for the Dar'Nethi or their world; the place would just bring back bad memories.

Only my father came close to understanding the things I had been taught in my years with the Lords, the deeds I had done, what I had become when I joined with them. He had kept his promise never to reveal to anyone the horror of what I had been, even to my mother, from whom he kept no other secret. So he knew what it was he asked when he said I needed to use what I knew of Zhev'Na to test this Dar'Nethi woman. But he was willing to postpone his own dying, a release he craved as much as I craved forgetting the past, to make sure that the work we had done together was finished. I could not refuse him. We made a private bargain that day. If either one of us found that his part could not be borne another day, my father would let me go back to the Bounded so I could forget, and I would see him released from his suspended life and let him die.

And so, on our first night in Avonar, I worked with my mother and the Dar'Nethi Healer T'Laven to help my father endure one more night of illness. In order to persuade this Lady D'Sanya that he was willing to relinquish his freedom and his talent in exchange for relief of pain and postponement of death, my father believed it necessary to create in himself true desperation.
I'll not be able to hide that I don't relish her gift,
he said.
But this way, if she reads me, she'll see clearly that I have reason enough to accept it. In truth, feeling
anything
is preferable to the way I am now—neither dead nor alive.