Daughter of Ancients (71 page)

Aimee's chair was slightly behind my own, so that when I noticed Ven'Dar nodding at her I turned to look. Her hands were raised and held flat in the air a short distance from her temples, a look of exquisite concentration on her face. Aimee the Imager. So, what I had envisioned was her image, drawn from Gerick's words and the knowledge and belief underlying them. . . .

“Mistress Jen!” Ven'Dar. His voice rang sharp and impatient on the ancient stones.

A cold sweat signaled my guilty panic that he had done exactly the thought-reading I feared.

“Would you please give your testimony now?”

“Sorry . . .”
Concentrate, Jen.
As I recounted what I had seen from the moment Gerick had spilled my raspberries in the hospice corridor until I found him slumped beside the crystal wall, a clerk brought us wine. I was pleased because I could focus my eyes on my cup and keep Aimee's images out of my head. Knowing what she was doing made me feel awkward, and I worried that certain muddled thoughts that had no bearing on the case might show up in her work. But no one gaped or snickered, and a sideways glance told me that Gerick was gazing at the floor, expressionless, his mouth buried in one hand.

As most of my tale merely confirmed Gerick's account, the Preceptors had few questions for me. Only a bit about my years in Zhev'Na, and how I could possibly allow someone I feared and loathed to crawl inside my soul.

“By that time I trusted him,” I said, impatient with their insistent skepticism. “I can't explain more than that. He didn't trick me, and I'm not entirely an idiot. His testimony is true and complete. You can believe him.”

“We thank you for your testimony, Speaker,” said Preceptor Mem'Tara, bowing her head quite formally. “The value of your judgment of truth cannot be measured.”

“I'm not—I've no such talent. I've no talent at all. I'm a Speaker's
daughter
!” I stammered and fumbled. Were they
trying
to humiliate me? Or had I somehow misled them? To impersonate a Speaker was very serious. In such a matter as this, it would be considered criminal.

But they had already begun questioning Paulo. And soon they turned back to Gerick, probing to understand the results of what he'd done.

“I remember nothing beyond what I've described,” he said. “I saw images . . . my family . . . my friends . . . my homelands . . . and I tried to help them endure what was happening, to survive. I knew the Bridge was gone, as I didn't feel the disharmony any longer. I also couldn't feel anything under my feet. And then . . . nothing. I can't tell you more than that. I just don't know.”

The proceedings were abruptly adjourned to the Chamber of the Gate. My good intentions of setting my credentials, or lack of them, straight fell by the wayside as we gazed in awe upon the crystal wall, even I who had seen it before. The wall pulsed and gleamed with light, as if it had captured every handlight cast since the world was young.

“I didn't create this,” Gerick said, as he walked up and down beside it, the glow illuminating his wonder. “I've never made anything like this . . . so beautiful.”

“The Lady says you carried her through it,” said Ven'Dar.

“I don't remember that. Is she—?”

“We've taken her away to be cared for. She cannot tell us anything more for the time being.”

A scrawny, odd-looking man with thinning hair had been in the chamber when we arrived. Wearing a ragged, dirty robe that had once been yellow, he sat on the floor between two protruding faces of the wall, gazing intently into the smooth surface. It seemed odd that neither Ven'Dar nor the Preceptors acknowledged him. They just carried on with Gerick's interrogation. I wondered if I should mention his presence, in case I was the only one who'd noticed him.

But after a while the man unfolded his long thin legs and popped to his feet. Still facing the wall, he produced the most incongruous of sounds, thoroughly interrupting the dignified Preceptor L'Beres' latest declaration of mystification. A robust, bellowing laughter penetrated my bone and blood. I would have sworn the light of the crystal wall glimmered in rhythm with it.

“By Shaper and Creator,” said the ragged man, wiping his eyes with the filthy corner of his robe as everyone fell silent, “do you know what he's done? Have you even looked, my dear and befuddled L'Beres? Come here, young man! Come, come, come.” He waved a hand at Gerick, and it felt as if the air itself reached out and drew Gerick from my side to stand beside him.

Though the odd-looking man had yet to even look at any of us, the others seemed to know him. Preceptor L'Beres rolled his eyes. The two I didn't know retreated a few steps, clearly uncomfortable, while Preceptor Mem'Tara, a tall robust woman with an iron-gray braid and a sword at her side, stood her ground, curious and interested. Ven'Dar's solemnity relaxed halfway to a smile.

Gerick looked at the man, curious. My blood rippled with inexplicable hope.

“Touch the wall, Gerick yn Karon,” he said. “Go on. It is not painful, especially for one who has known pain in so many forms. At worst its power will repel you as it does the rest of us, but I believe . . . Well, try it. Show us.”

Gerick reached out and pressed his hand to the glassy surface . . . and ripples of brightness shimmered outward. He brushed his fingers across the smooth face.

“There, you see? It knows you in the same way the locks on a man's treasure house know him.”

“What does that mean, Garve?” asked Ven'Dar softly, watching Gerick traverse the convoluted length of the wall, dragging his hand across its edges and faces, causing a cascade of light.

Garvé ... the Arcanist! Though tempted, I did not step away. Not from someone who laughed as he did.

“First tell me of your talent and power, Ven'Dar . . . L'Beres ... all of you . . .” The man spun like a dancer, sweeping a pointing finger at all of us. I felt as if a stripe of music had been painted across my breast. He stopped his spin at the exact point at which he'd begun, facing the wall. “. . . and if you've not felt their return, then believe, look inward, and you
will
find them. I am not diminished, but alive as I have not been in my eighty-seven years, my talents become one with my flesh, balanced, stable, more like another sense than a separate skill to be mentored and grown like playing the viol or dancing or climbing sheer cliffs with ropes and hooks.”

“I've felt something like,” said Ven'Dar, “but I didn't dare hope . . . Is the Bridge not destroyed, then? Or has our understanding been so wrong?”

“D'Arnath's Bridge is gone,” said Garvé. “As to what is here, that study may take many hours . . . years, even. For tonight, report to the people the story you've heard in these past hours and what you've seen here—mystery and beauty, the very essence of hope.”

He peered over his shoulder. A kind face, smiling, piercing gray eyes that darted from one to the other of the company in the chamber. “But, of course, if you were to forbear a bit longer and service an old man's whims, then perhaps we could learn a bit more. Many talents we have assembled here: Word Winder, Soul Weaver, Alchemist, Speaker”—I would have sworn the man winked at me—“Balancer, Effector, Navigator, and, ah, an Imager. You, Mistress Imager . . . if you would be so kind . . .”

“Sir,” said Aimee. He took her hand as she stepped forward, and drew her close.

“So,” he said, touching her eyelids with a bony finger. “The unseeing one who perceives so accurately. I've heard reports of your skills. Will you trust me, mistress, and indulge my whims?” He opened his palm, laid her hand on it, and waited.

Aimee dipped her head and used her other hand to fold his fingers around hers.

Garvé then led her around the great chamber, turning her this way and that, retracing steps, until the poor woman could be nothing but confused.

“Take all you know of the Bridge, young woman,” said Garvé, when they came to a halt halfway across the room. “Delve deep into your knowledge of all that it has meant for Gondai, and the Breach, and the world beyond, of D'Arnath's great heart as he constructed it, of his Heirs' courage in defending it, of all you know of our people and their will and their bravery throughout this long fight. And I wish for you to build an image of the Bridge—an image we will not see, of course, for the Bridge is an enchantment, thus its essence is not visible. But as your talent allows you to match the image in your mind to the reality it shadows, perhaps you will be able to tell us if the link that binds the universe and maintains its balance yet exists or not.”

Aimee held her flattened palms in position, close to but not touching her temples as if shielding her mind from noise and distraction. Paulo stood poised like a cocked catapult, ready to run to her aid if she should falter. All of us had been drawn into Garvé's test; every eye was on Aimee, and when she lowered her hands and lifted her head, we held our breath as if of one mind. Her brow was drawn up in a most puzzled knot.

“Tell us, mistress,” said Garvé softly. “Where is it?”

Aimee turned almost a complete circle before she came to a stop, raised one finger, and pointed. “There. The Bridge is there.”

Her finger pointed directly at Gerick.

 

Surely it would take Garvé and Ven'Dar and the Preceptors hours or months or years to understand what Aimee's magic told them. For most of us in the chamber, it was a wonder and a consolation; for one or two, perhaps, it was only a young blind woman's whimsy unworthy of belief. Gerick was not reduced to an enchantment, nor did anyone assert that chaos would descend if he were to die. But certainly in my own mind, the existence of the Bounded gave credence to the concept of a man who embodied the binding of the worlds, a Soul Weaver who had loaned us all his strength and would hold us together until we could do it on our own. Poor mad D'Sanya had understood it first.
He held them. Loved them. Saved them.

When Gerick, as mystified as any of us, pressed his hand firmly to the surface of the wall and his arm vanished to the elbow, the skeptics were surprised. When he stepped through entirely and then returned a short time later, claiming that he had existed in the mundane world, the skeptics mumbled to themselves. Though none but he could pass the wall or even bear to touch it, he took their hands and escorted them one by one either to the mundane world or to the Bounded and back again. The skeptics were silenced.

After he had brought Preceptor Mem'Tara back, Gerick offered me his hand. “Would you like to see?”

I nodded, speechless since he had first disappeared into the crystal.

The passage through the wall felt like breaking the cool surface of water. He led me through a crystal pathway, glittering with light. We stepped out to stand beside a frozen lake surrounded by snowy peaks. Behind them, the sky was the color of lapis. The air frosted my lungs, but exhilaration and beauty and wonder could have held me there freezing until I was as fixed in place as the mountains themselves.

“This is the place where the Exiles built their stronghold,” he said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders to slow my shivering, “and where my father came back—” He released me and stepped back toward the wall, his glow of pleasure vanished. He pressed his fist to his forehead as if a lance had struck him there.

“Are you all right?” I said.

“Gods—” He grabbed my hand and turned back to the cliff where the crystal wall appeared as an exceptionally polished sheet of ice. “It's my father.”

“I must go,” he said, as soon as we stepped back into the Chamber of the Gate. “I'll come back, if you want, answer more questions and help you understand this, but I need to be at the hospice now. Please, Ven'Dar. My father is dying. Send guards if you wish. Bind me if it suits you. But you've more than enough to think about for a few hours while I'm gone.”

Ven'Dar answered first. “Of course, you should be free to go. We've had enough for now.”

The Preceptors had not embraced Gerick, but somewhere along the way, they had come to believe in him. Since we had come to the Chamber, they had spoken nothing of punishments or prison, only of study and investigation. The four agreed that Gerick could go, two of them somewhat reluctantly, but they insisted he return to Avonar as soon as possible and work with Garvé and others to determine what this new order might mean. “You have much to answer for,” L'Beres pronounced.

Gerick would have agreed to anything to be gone. Even the brief delay as Ven'Dar shut down the portal to the palace and rebuilt one to the hospice had him grinding his teeth. But as he stepped to the threshold, he turned back and extended his hand. “Jen'Larie, would you . . . ?”

“They don't need me here,” I said. Even if he had stayed in Avonar, it was time for me to go. I'd been away from my father long enough. I turned to Ven'Dar.

The former prince—whom I suspected would be our prince again—tipped his head toward the portal. “Your service has been incalculable, Jen, both in your testimony and in deep and abiding ways that no story of these days will ever report. Go. Do as you need. And believe.”

 

The night was warm and still as Gerick and I stepped out of the portal at the main house of the hospice, just in front of the porch where D'Sanya had greeted her guests in her filmy white gowns. As we ran up the steps and through the deserted passages, I wondered, unworthily, if Gerick would ever be rid of the image of her. Of course, his thoughts were elsewhere now. The sound of women singing hung on the air as we cut through the unlit library and through the upper courtyard gardens, down the few steps past the fountains and rose arbors, and into the lower gardens. One glance, and I knew he was too late.