The Well of Darkness (17 page)

“Not even Zanek would have done that,” she said, shaking her head. “Rakor was even more rare and valuable then than now. The only reason to give up so rich a gift would be for the very purpose Eddarta’s legends report—the symbology of twin swords, shared between King and Captain.”

“Do you
know
that, Tarani?” I asked.

“I do not understand what you mean,” Tarani said, but shifted her weight restlessly.

“Zefra said you have a strong link with the All-Mind,” I said. “Is that how you know? Have you seen it in the All-Mind?”

Tarani shook her head, not in answer, but at me. “You have strange notions, Rikardon. One does not ‘see’ in that sense without establishing a direct link.”

“You mean, like through a Recorder?”

“Yes,” she said, and turned abruptly. Before she could walk away, I caught her arm. She froze, and I moved my hand away quickly.

“You went to Recorder’s school, Tarani. Can you—”

“No!”
She didn’t move, didn’t look at me. “I did not complete the study. I am not a Recorder.”

“All I want,” I said, still speaking to the side of her face, “is more assurance that we’re going
to
something, instead of
from
something. We’re leaving the Ra’ira in Indomel’s control, and that bothers me, Tarani. Isn’t there some way you can—”

“You accepted the plan in Lord City,” Tarani interrupted. “Why do you question it now?”

“I—we—that is, I seem to be able to think more clearly. Now.”

I steeled myself to tell her, if she asked, that the shock of pleasure she had given me in Carn’s cellar had offset the shock of Keeshah’s loss. But she didn’t ask. She looked at me for an instant, then lowered her eyes and nodded.

“That,” she said softly, “I understand very well.”

Well, I
‘
ll be—
I thought.
Her, too? Maybe it wasn
‘
t just Keeshah
‘
s going that left me in that fog. It might have been the whole trauma of being captured, when we were so close to escape. With everything else involved, it might have been nothing more than the ordinary distraction of wanting each other and denying ourselves. That makes the most sense, considering that relief came when desire was satisfied.

Tarani glanced over her shoulder. We were still far ahead of any others, but we could hear them behind us, see them dimly in the wavering lamplight.

“There is no time to debate it now, Rikardon. We are committed to leaving Eddarta.”

“Not until we meet our contacts,” I said. “We could slip back and …”

“And be killed trying to steal the Ra’ira?” she demanded.

“And kill Obilin and get Rika back,” I answered. “You need a sword; that’s a sword.”

“‘Kill Obilin’ is hardly so simple a task,” she said. “And you must know, as well as I, that Indomel will not spare us if we are recaptured. Please, Rikardon, it is my
judgment
that the other sword truly exists, and that we shall be able to find it. Let us leave Eddarta now, while we are so close to freedom.”

“We’ll find it easily, no doubt,” I said, “with the help of
my
ancestral link to the other sword?”

Tarani waved her hand dismissively. “That was pure invention, to convince Zefra of your importance in the plan,” she said. “She does have power, and she believes strongly in my right—my
sole
right—to rule Eddarta.”

I couldn’t help feeling some resentment as I remembered the scene, but I was glad to note that the anger didn’t return, as well.
Good to put things in perspective again
, I thought.

“That’s why you put the compulsion on me,” I said. “So that I wouldn’t act surprised and put the lie to your story.”

We were silent for a moment, then Tarani said: “I think I see, now, the reason for your anger. It was not that I compelled you, but that my compulsion showed distrust. Is it not so?”

“It is exactly so,” I admitted.

“Even as yours,” she said, “my mind was clouded then. But as we have walked, I have thought it through once more. Rika, even should we be able to reclaim it, is still a symbol of betrayal to the Lords. It is the other sword we need to defeat Indomel. Please, Rikardon, show me the trust you would have asked of me earlier.”

She stopped talking and I hesitated before answering. I wanted to trust her. I didn’t want to hurt her. But I also wanted to
know
we were doing the right thing. Once we were all the way out of Eddarta, it might be harder to get back safely than it had been to leave—which, so far, I wouldn’t have called a picnic.

“I am not a Recorder,” she repeated, when she sensed the way I was leaning. Her voice had an edge—of impatience, of fear, of something I didn’t understand. “What you would ask of me is beyond my skill.” She whirled abruptly and took two steps down the road, stopped and looked back. She held out her hand.

“Are we not together, Rikardon?” she asked softly.

I took her hand and squeezed it, unable to say anything around the fear that had lodged in my throat at the very hint that we might be separated again. I released her fingers, to let her draw her hand away if she wished—but it pressed warmly into mine as we started south again.

Markasset didn
‘
t know much about Recorder training, I
thought,
but then I don
‘
t expect anybody besides Recorders know much about it. Tarani mentioned, though, that she had gone into school younger than most students
—
and Zefra told us that she had asked Volitar to be alert for signs of the mindgift in her daughter. So how young was young? Was she six? Seven? And she left at fifteen. Time enough, surely, to have had a lot of practice at whatever they do. Surely, she couldn
‘
t have forgotten her training.

So there must be another reason why she won
‘
t try for a link. Maybe there
is
a special piece of training that constitutes graduation from Recorder
‘
s school, that Tarani missed. Maybe it
‘
s just that she feels guilty about not finishing.

Now there
‘
s another thought. She probably doesn
‘
t really know why she left, what with Antonia just dropping in on her like that
—

Antonia …

A memory came to me clearly from the cellar.

She called me Ricardo,
I remembered, astonishment freezing me for a moment, so that my pace slowed.

“What is wrong?” Tarani asked me.

“Nothing,” I said, falling into step with her again and thinking:
She called me Rikardon, too
. I grinned foolishly at Tarani, the only expression I would allow myself of the joy that shouted and sang all along my nerve ends. “I—it’s just—I’m
glad
we’re together.”

All four of us,
I added, feeling a little crazy.
Ricardo, Markasset, Tarani, and Antonia.

Tarani glanced sideways at me, obviously still puzzled, but she seemed willing to let it drop. “I, too, am glad,” she said.

Or are there five of us?
I wondered, feeling a little giddy.
Rikardon seems to be a newcomer, a little different from both Ricardo and Markasset. When Antonia and Tarani blend, there may even be six of us. Think of it, six …

When they blend?

What if they don
‘
t? Markasset was dead, after all, and Ricardo needed only to absorb his memories, not his personality. It may not be possible for the same thing to happen for Tarani and Antonia.

Yet I didn
‘
t awaken in Gandalara as Rikardon. Markasset and Ricardo were separate until Thanasset gave me Rika. When I touched that steel sword …

Holy great day in the morning!

I felt a chill crawling up my arms, lifting the hairs and raising bumps on my skin. It was no more comfortable for being familiar by now. It was fear and eagerness, denial and commitment, bewilderment and comprehension.

It was a sense of destiny.

There is another Gandalaran body with two personalities. And there is another steel sword.

There
is
another sword,
I admitted.
But we
‘
re not going after it to make Tarani the High Lord of Eddarta. We
‘
re looking for it to make Tarani whole.

Since my arrival in Gandalara, I had been struggling with my “destiny”. At first I had let myself believe that I needed only to clear Markasset’s father of complicity in the theft of the jewel. It was only in Dyskornis, where I had discovered the Ra’ira’s special powers and the defense my dualness provided, that I had accepted what seemed to be my true charge—to return the care of the Ra’ira to the hands of honorable men.

I wasn’t really unhappy with that decision. Ricardo had spent a pleasant, productive life with the feeling that in teaching language’s he was performing a service of importance to society. Markasset had felt no sense of purpose, and had drifted uneasily through his short life.

I couldn’t help feeling a little grateful, too. I had been given a young body, a chance at a second life, a friendship bond with Keeshah that had been sustaining and delightful. It seemed that one task in return for that was not too high a price for what I had gained, especially when I was uniquely equipped to perform that task.

I felt exasperated and not a little scared, however, by the piecemeal way “destiny” was revealing itself to me, and by the many opportunities for choice. It would have been easier if I had believed that I was the agent for a conscious, thinking, supernatural force, and that I could count on protection and a sense of commitment from such a being. But that image didn’t jibe with reality, with the way I had stumbled into and through things, with all the chances I had had to go in the wrong direction.

And if this isn
‘
t proof that there
‘
s nobody home,
I thought,
I don
‘
t know what would be. Even a kindergarten-level god should have been able to foresee the need for that fool sword. Why couldn
‘
t we have brought it with us, instead of traipsing clear back across the world to get it now?
I wondered, then sighed.

No use pretending this development bothers me,
I admitted.
The truth is, I
‘
m in full agreement with this particular step along our twisting path
—
though I
‘
d rather we were riding Keeshah.
(The familiar, painful twinge of loss.)
Whatever happens when Tarani touches that other sword, it should at least give Tarani some answers to the confusion she must have been feeling.

So for once, “destiny”,
I shouted mentally,
I
‘
m on your side. For my own reasons, it
‘
s true. I love Tarani and Antonia, and I think they
‘
re both fond of me. I want them to be at peace with one another, work together.
Then
we
‘
ll talk about who
‘
s going to be high mucky-muck in Eddarta.

I lengthened my stride. Tarani matched it, a look of relief flashing across her face as she sensed that, for whatever reasons, I was now fully committed to finding the second steel sword before we returned to Eddarta.

“We’re almost there,” I said, pointing ahead.

The lines of lamps on either side of our avenue merged with four others that had followed the other two main roads from the city. Beyond the edge of the bright pool of light at their merging point was a ridge of darkness, and above it the pale clouds. The ridge was a virtual wall of the reeds that grew along the edge of the rivers. The roads from the city emptied here into a main east-west thoroughfare that wound along a western branch of the Tashal, one side of the road always bordered by reeds. In the farming areas, the reeds were sometimes trimmed down.

The Lords would have designated reed harvesters, of course, who were authorized to sell the reeds to weavers, furniture makers, paper mills, mine suppliers. But there were also some areas where the reeds were an obstruction to the short-distance water transport system. And I suspected that farmers, by nature and necessity more independent than their city-dwelling counterparts, didn’t waste the reeds they removed to give walking room to the vleks which pulled the rafts.

Here the reeds grew in their natural state, thickly clustered, man-high, their delicate fern-like top growth waving slightly as the sluggish bank water stirred the bases of the reeds.

Short of the dark barrier, however, was a bright circle of light—entirely empty.

“Why is no one there?” Tarani asked uneasily.

“I doubt they’ll show themselves before we arrive,” I answered.

That’s logical
, I thought, as we stepped into the circle of light and looked around, waiting for the people who were to meet us to appear.
So why am I worried?

I could not help feeling exposed here. There was something eerie about the empty, lighted area, so quiet, waiting …

“It’s too quiet,” I said.

There were Gandalaran counterparts to most of the life forms Ricardo had known, including the noisy varieties of insects and amphibians who lived in and near water. The river bank was silent, except for the rustling of reeds as they moved to the current’s pressure.

“Why would it be this quiet?” I asked.

We heard noise then—behind us. Vleks. Upset. Men. Shouting.

“What could that be?” Tarani asked as we looked back toward the ruckus. There was a small rise between us and the travelers who had fallen behind us; we couldn’t see what was going on.

“Vleks aren’t fond of dralda,” said a voice from behind us, sinister, amused.

“Oh no,” I said, turning slowly, releasing Tarani’s hand and stepping a bit away from her. “Obilin, how in the name of Zanek did you find us?”

The small man had stepped out from the reeds. Now two dralda melted into the edge of the lamplight, much closer to us than Obilin was. Silent until now, they growled softly and the fur behind their heads seemed to tremble with anticipation.