Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 13

Though bone-weary from the night's events, I was unable to rest in Ven'Dar's palaee. Turbulent images of broken bodies, crowded commards, and D'Sanya swooping down on me with empty eyes and a knife in her hand plagued the dark hours. Yet the demands of the body will always win out. About the time daylight crept through the slot windows, I blinked, and suddenly it was hot mid-morning. A tense serving man stood over my head, offering to dispose of the filthy clothing heaped on the floor beside the bed and show me to the guests' bathing room. The Lady D'Sanya was asking after me . . . urgently.

Despite the welcome luxury of a full bathing pool of gloriously hot water, I expended little time before hurrying along the corridor to join D'Sanya. Na'Cyd was standing in the passage outside D'Sanya's door, one bandaged arm sashed to his chest.

"I need to speak with you for a moment, sir," he said. "It's very important."

"Later, Na'Cyd. The Lady is waiting." We had been too tired to talk the previous night. I needed to sort out this strange business: why they wanted her, why she hadn't struck them down with the devastating power she held in her fingertips.

"But sir …"

I pretended I hadn't heard him and pushed open the door.

She sat at a small table where cold roasted meat, hot bread, and an array of fruit had been laid out. "Stop," she said, as soon as I stepped through the door.

Mystified, I obeyed. She jumped to her feet and walked around me, eyeing the palace provision of dark green shirt and tan jacket and breeches.

"I approve," she said at last, tweaking the high neck of my shirt. "I think perhaps Prince Ven'Dar's stewards have a better eye for becoming fashion than you do. You should hire the one who selected these to be your manservant."

"You look lovely, Lady … as always." Breathtaking, in fact. A long tunic of deep, rusty red draped down below her knees over loose riding trousers, emphasizing her graceful height. The color set off her light hair and flushed complexion.

She laughed and drew me to the table. "Be quick about your eating. I breakfasted hours ago. I've already met with Prince Ven'Dar and assured him that I am nowhere near ready to relieve him of his office. He wanted to know everything about last night, of course." The flush in her cheeks faded at this last.

I sat in the chair next to her and drew it up close. "Lady, did they . . . your abductors . . . did they say anything that might tell us—?"

She laid a gold-ringed finger on my mouth. "No more of it. Speak of something else." Her voice wavered slightly. She shoved a bowl of plums in front of me.

"For now," I said. "But we must talk about it sometime."

And so we talked nonsense as she watched me eat, telling innocent stories . . . until with no warning she burst out, "Oh, holy Vasrin," jumped up from her chair, and ran out of the room.

I threw down my spoon and table knife and hurried after her down a long portrait gallery, trying to think what in the nonsensical conversation about childhood disobedience could have raised her temper. I'd told her of pouring ink on my tutors' papers and putting lamp oil in their tea to get rid of them, not mentioning that I'd hoped to prevent their learning of my "evil" talent for sorcery.

She stopped in a cloistered courtyard beside a bubbling fountain, one hand pressed over her mouth, the other over her heart. Slowing my steps, I clasped my hands behind my back. I could not breakfast in gloves. "What is it, D'Sanya? Did I say something wrong? Offend you? Please, tell me."

"How could my valiant rescuer offend me?" D'Sanya stifled a sob and hugged her arms, her attempt at a smile failing. "Je'Reint told me what you did. To think you could have been killed . . . blasted to bits . . . destroyed by Zhid magic. For me. As you were telling your story, I thought of how lonely you must have been as a child, yet you have brought me such joy. These past few weeks have been the happiest I've ever known, and I've seen you happy, too, and I could not bear to look at you and imagine …"

I drew her close and kissed away her tears, ignoring the serving woman who passed by us gawking. "Then don't imagine it. I'm quite undamaged. As are you. And you see, I feel so stupid … so careless . . . taking you on the road with no protection. Knowing that Zhid were raiding. Inexcusable . . ."

And everything I said was true. Gods, where had my head been lost? Even with this creeping sense of disorder warning me, I had been unforgivably careless.

"You are my protector, now and—" She pulled loose and whipped around, leaving me standing behind her.

But it was only Na'Cyd who had entered the courtyard and bowed. "Excuse my intrusion, my lady, but you left orders for me to find you as soon as the gentleman was finished with breakfast."

"Of course, Na'Cyd. How are you this morning?"

"Mending well, so the Healers say. This"—he lifted the elbow of his bound arm—"is merely to support the repaired muscle for a day or two until nature strengthens it further."

"I'm delighted to hear it. Prince Ven'Dar has recommended, and I have agreed, that I will journey to Maroth through a portal. If you would arrange for our horses to get there with us . . ."

"Of course, my lady. Is there anything else?"

"The prince will summon you in an hour."

The consiliar did not leave, but bowed and watched as D'Sanya took my arm and drew me back the way we'd come. His expression, as always, was inscrutable. Perhaps a little darker than usual on this morning. Or perhaps that was my own mood.

D'Sanya pulled my arm closer as if to focus my attention. "Now you've soothed my silly megrims, I've not forgotten my promised adventure. Alas, our time is constrained by this portal business and Prince Ven'Dar insisting that he do the portal-working himself. So we won't have time to stay long. But what use to keep company with D'Arnath's daughter, if one reaps no wonder from it? Any Nimrolan maiden might do as well!"

"No other, Lady. No other."

Beaming, she led me quickly through the palace, distinguishing the new-built parts from the parts she remembered, and telling how the use or furnishing of one place had differed in the past, or what marvelous events had occurred there.

"Down that passage is the chamber with cracked walls from the time D'Alleyn sealed it, filled it with water and honey, and spent twenty days freezing it, sure he could make the largest sweet ice anyone could imagine." D'Sanya giggled as she pointed into a low, narrow passage where a single yellow lamp brightened as we stopped and peered inside, and then dimmed as we started down a steep staircase that led into the core of the fortress. "The three of us would roll ourselves in layers of rugs and slide down this stair … it's the longest in the palace. But D'Leon broke his arm on it one day, and Papa forbade it after. We've only a little farther to go. Can you guess where I'm taking you? So few have ever seen it."

Of course, I knew. I remembered the steep, narrow flight of worn steps from carrying my father's litter from the Gate. But I said, "Another of your childhood hiding places?"

She laughed, and before I knew it, we came to the lower end of a sloping passage—nothing more than a massive wall of seamless, square-cut stone, darkened with age and smoke. D'Sanya stretched her hand toward the wall. The stone shifted and shaped itself to reveal a pair of wooden doors three times my height. They swung open to reveal the vast chamber, filled as always with cold white fire and billowing frost plumes.

"Now stay close. I am taking you through the Gate and onto the Bridge, where I will show you the most wonderful sight you will ever see! Not even Prince Ven'Dar knows of it. I've been saving my first venture for a special occasion—and what could be more special than being alive and free and keeping company with my bosom friend and dear protector?" She raised her arms, lifted her face, and danced through the doorway, spinning on her toes until she was out of sight.

I made it no farther than the doorway, where I stopped dead and clapped my hands over my ears. Unfortunately the horrid, scraping sensation was inside me, not outside.

The last time I stood in the Chamber of the Gate, I had just returned to my own body after our journey from Windham. I had thought the feeling that my spirit was an open wound immersed in salt water was the inevitable result of soul-weaving with my father's diseased body. But the chamber didn't feel so very different on this morning. Only to be expected, I supposed, as every other Dar'Nethi enchantment seemed to be having this effect on me.

I gathered control and shook off the disturbance as much as possible before D'Sanya could notice. Suffering ill effects from proximity to D'Arnath's Bridge had always been considered evidence of corruption.

When I entered the chamber, the Lady was kneeling on the smooth tile floor in front of the bronze lion, her head bowed and her palms spread wide. After a moment her eyes lifted to the lion's head and the gold and silver globes that some enchantment balanced far above us on the beast's upraised paws. I held back, knowing how she revered her father—the Lion of the Dar'Nethi, his people had called him. The Tormenter, the Talent-binder . . . those were the mildest of names given him in Zhev'Na.

In moments D'Sanya was on her feet again and beckoning me to join her. "Come see. Is this not a formidable lion? I commissioned it as soon as I was permitted to enter the chamber and view the Gate. I had it placed here after they anointed me, and I added the two orbs shortly after—to represent Gondai and the mundane world. It seemed only just that Papa should be remembered forever here beside his greatest work."

"It's a fine piece," I said, knowing nothing about it whatsoever. I would be doing well to keep from banging my jangling head against the thing. The light of the shifting Gate fire reflected off the metal globes—each of them an arm's length in diameter—so that beams of gold and silver light shot randomly across the chamber. The first one that struck my eyes came near boring a hole right through my skull.

D'Sanya tilted her head and examined me, tracing a finger along my cheek. "Are you well?"

"When you do that . . . yes," I said. Wholly the truth. Surely to bury my face in her breast would make the grinding illness inside me go away as well.

"Oh, holy Vasrin, I've dragged you down here on my silly whim, and your poor bones could be fractured from those vile firebursts! Prince Ven'Dar told me you refused a Healer last night. We must go up at once and see to your injuries."

If I had not already experienced the Bridge, my curiosity at her planned adventure might have overruled any physical ailment. But my previous crossings had shown me nothing so marvelous that it could persuade me to remain another moment in that chamber.

"I suppose I'm a little more bruised than I thought." I pulled open the door, wincing as even the vibrations of speaking lanced my spirit. "Will you bring me here another time and show me your wonder? Tell me about it."

"Of course, I'll bring you again!" We started up the sloping passages that took us back to the steep stair. "Papa took me to the Bridge only once. I was so angry with him—I told you that—and he said that to appease me, he would show me something that he would never show my brothers or my Uncle J'Ettanne or anyone else in the world. Something that would be our secret forever. First he showed me how he shaped the chaos beyond the Gate into a landscape of his own choosing, how he reached out with his power and opened a way through it. Then, he shaped a mountain from the matter of the Breach, and he forced the Bridge to lead us up to the very pinnacle—a place like Skygazer's Needle, where we could look out and see the worlds spread out before us, poor wasted Gondai, the mundane world—so marvelous in its variety—and even the horrid chaos and random matter of the Breach. He said that when I came into my power, I would be able to do exactly as he had done. I so much wanted to try it with you beside me … to share it with you."

Intrigued at the thought of such a view, I almost bade her take me back. But indeed as my spirit eased with our distance from the Gate, my bones and gut reminded me of the two concussions they had suffered the previous day. I again refused a Healer, though, as well as D'Sanya's offer to see to my injuries herself. I wished to experience no more Dar'Nethi enchantments than necessary that day.

We met Ven'Dar in a remote corner of the palace. He strode out of a columned walkway and joined us in a small cobbled courtyard, where a fountain centered a bed of fragrant herbs. Two men wearing the jewel-colored robes of the court accompanied him. One of them bowed to the prince and remained at the entrance to the walkway. A sword hung beneath his flapping robe. The second man stayed at the prince's elbow, his eyes scanning the upper-floor windows that overlooked the yard. Ven'Dar must be worried.

"My lady." The prince extended his palms but did not bow. "I hope the night has revived your companion?" I garnered neither palms nor bow, but only a polite nod.

D'Sanya mirrored his gesture of respect, which named them equals, then gestured at me and smiled proudly. "Indeed my dear friend and noble protector finds Avonar more dangerous than his quiet Nimrolan Vale."

"My good lord," I said, bowing deeply with palms extended, as would be expected. My gloves had, of course, long found their way back onto my hands. "Gerick yn K'Nor. An honor to meet you, Your Grace."

Ven'Dar nodded to Na'Cyd as well. The consiliar had been waiting in the courtyard when D'Sanya and I arrived.

Ven'Dar returned his attention to the Lady, expressing polite concern over her safety, offering some of his own guards to accompany her until the Zhid threat was under control. Though I listened to their talk, I retreated a few steps so as not to be too obvious about it. Na'Cyd did the same, ending up at my side.

"Master Gerick yn K'Nor," he said softly, his expression impassive, his eyes fixed on the Lady and the prince. His free arm was at rest behind his back, his back straight as always. "I need to speak with you, sir. Alone."

"In what regard?" I said, maintaining a similar posture, uncomfortable with the intimacy in the consiliar's tone.

"Last night's events. Your mission in the hospice."

My mission ? "My father is a guest of the Lady, Na'Cyd. I don't think—"

"I am aware of who your father is." His tone did not change. His gaze did not stray from his mistress, who was unsealing a folded paper just delivered by one of Ven'Dar's guards. "It is urgent that I speak with you in private, young Lord."

I snapped my head around. Young Lord . . . Earth and sky, he knew. He, too, was one of the Restored.

"Na'Cyd!"

The Lady's call startled me. She clapped one hand to her breast, staring at the unfolded paper as if it carried plague. "Something dreadful has happened!"

The gray man dropped his free hand to his side, all attention. "My lady?"

"Cedor was found dead last night in the hospice paddock. Gen'Vyl says it appears that his heart stopped, though he's found no cause for it. The staff is upset . .. the residents hearing rumors . . . We must go back at once."

"Of course there is no need for you to go back, my lady," said Na'Cyd smoothly. "Your business in Maroth is urgent. The new hospice could shelter so many more who need your care. I shall go back and take care of these matters. It is my place."

"If you're sure . . . and you'll call on me if you have any difficulty. Poor Cedor . . ."

"Of course, my lady. I'll leave at once."

"… and you must find the kindest, most careful attendant for Master K'Nor." She beckoned me close and examined me carefully. "Do you need to go back, as well, dear friend, to see to your father? Will he be afraid? I would miss you so, but—"

"He will accept it as part of Cedor's Way," I said. "After yesterday, I think I should stay with you."

In a flurry of suggestions, good wishes, and warnings to be careful, Na'Cyd set out for the hospice, and D'Sanya and I for Maroth. As the consiliar had not told anyone of my identity as yet, I presumed he had no intention of doing so. But over the next three weeks, I constantly debated my decision to continue the journey. On one day I felt reckless and cruel to abandon my father and his failing instincts to chance. On the next I played my calculation game again: If D'Sanya was innocent, then she was in more need of protection than my father, and if she was guilty, then I would only discover it in her company. The only fact that gave me solace was that the danger of exposure was more mine than his.

In truth, I had little time to worry about Na'Cyd or wonder what he had been so anxious to tell me. But I sent a letter to my father by way of Paulo, warning him to be wary of the consiliar and to mistrust whatever new attendant was assigned him.