Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 15

Any jailer in the Four Realms would have scoffed at the Dar'Nethi idea of a prison. No dank dungeons, no chains, no whips or rats or moldering foulness, no starvation or torture. Not even very many prisoners compared to the bulging horrors in Leire and Valleor. Even Gerick, the most dangerous prisoner the Dar'Nethi had ever held captive, had been imprisoned in a cell that was clean and dry. And though confined deep in the palace in Avonar, he had been given comforts of blankets, food, writing paper, and wine.

The Dar'Nethi philosophy discouraged imprisonment. For most crimes, the convicted offenders were subjected to spells and enchantments that would make repetition of the crime physically or mentally intolerable. Only for the incurably violent was confinement required, along with a host of powerful enchantments. A Dar'Nethi who threatened innocent life forfeited all claim to his own existence. Although executions were extremely rare, he would never again walk free unless society was given compelling evidence of his change.

Yet any house of secure confinement could not but burden the spirit. The Dar'Nethi had not learned how to avoid that.

The prison house of Feur Desolй stood about five leagues from Avonar, an old fortress with thick walls and few windows, but clean and dry inside. The wardens were men and women of varying talents who were willing to serve their sovereign and their fellow citizens in a work that was quite against their nature. Most of those confined to the prison were Zhid captured at the end of the war, warriors of such great age and power that no Healer had yet been able to help them recover their souls. A few of the inmates, like the unfortunate J'Savan, had fallen prey to some disease or perversion of mind that, while not the profound corruption of the Zhid, had turned them on their own kind.

A stooped, gray-haired man led me down a long corridor, his wine-colored robe whispering over the warm yellow of the stone. Lamps hung from the high ceiling every few paces, the light swelling as we approached and fading behind us, as if we traveled in a carriage made of light through a tunnel of night.

"No need to be afraid here, mistress," said the man over his shoulder. "None can escape their chambers in Feur Desolй. Look in the door glass. They've no way out."

Several of the doors that lined the passage were scribed with a name in silver lettering, and above the name was fastened a round glass that gleamed in the light as we passed. A morbid curiosity slowed my feet, and I peered into one of them. The palm-sized glass was not a window, but a myscal—one of the magical Dar'-Nethi mirror glasses. If you looked long enough, your own reflection faded, and you could see into whatever place the enchantment had linked with the glass. In this case, I glimpsed a windowless room of ten paces square, its whitewashed walls and ceilings reinforced with bands of silver—dolemar, no doubt, the "sorcerer's binding" that prevented any use of power by those held captive within. The cell's only furnishings were a water basin that was a part of the wall, a single chair of thick white wood bolted to floor and wall, and a pallet laid on the floor. On this pallet a large man in a brown tunic lay on his back in the image of sleep, his slack face as craggy and rough as a granite boulder. The chamber was dark, the soft light that illuminated the stark scene some factor of the enchanted glass that moved with my eyes.

"He looks dead."

"He's not," said the warden, motioning me to keep moving. "We keep the prisoners under heavy enchantments that allow no freedom to move or speak. We treat them with dignity—often more than they deserve—feed them, clean them, and rouse them when Healers or others come to pursue a remedy for their problems."

If the inmates could not be healed, they would continue to age until they died, so V'Rendal had told me. For the Zhid, this could be a very long time. The enchantments that had taken their souls had also made them incredibly long-lived. For J'Savan, a young man of twenty-three, life would stretch only an ordinary life span—long enough when facing those years without hope.

The warden paused at a door. "Are you sure you wish to do this? I'll warn you that the sight will wrench your heart. And it will be no small danger to sit with the boy. He has no control of his tongue or his limbs. Three of his friends lay dead and five others wounded before he was taken captive, and you wouldn't want to know what he'd done to them. He was sitting calmly in the midst of the bodies like a rock in a river of blood."

"I must try, Warden. Our histories must be complete, even if the tale is painful."

The stooped man bobbed his head. "All right, then. I must bind him before I can leave you." He passed his hand along the smooth edge of the door, which swung open silently. A snap of the man's fingers illuminated the cell, and we stepped in.

It was indeed heart-wrenching to see the handsome young man, so near Gerick's and Paulo's age, lying in the sterile cell unmoving. A lock of his dark hair had fallen over his boyish face. No sound or smell or breath of movement stirred the dead air.

From the warden's belt hung a variety of slender bars, wooden sticks, cups, and keys. He unhooked one of the wooden sticks, unfolded it into a backless stool with a gray fabric seat, set it beside one wall, and motioned me to sit still. As I watched, he lifted the youth's limp body into the chair and secured it there with leather straps, binding his hands and feet with silver cords as well. "Tan y sole, J'Savan, " he said, not unkindly, laying a hand on the young man's forehead.

J'Savan's eyes blinked open. Flicked to the warden and then to me. Lost. Confused. His gaze encompassed the bleak walls. The leather straps on his arms, thighs, and breast. A slight movement as if to test that they were real. He glanced up again quickly . . . frightened.

My heart knotted. Surely someone had made a terrible mistake.

But even as I opened my mouth to protest, a hard-edged gleam erased the baffled terror in his eyes. His pale skin darkened, first red and then purple, dark veins popping out on his forehead and neck, and he strained at his bindings until blood spotted his yellow tunic, and the flesh of his arms turned black where it bulged between the silver cords. "Well, well, well," he said, half singing, his voice soft, playful. "A woman comes calling … a scholarly woman. Wise perhaps. Are you wise? Not young, not old. Come to see me, have you? Are you not afraid? Afraid, afraid, afraid. Be afraid . . ."

"Are you sure you want to be alone with him?" asked the warden. "I've duties to see to, so I must lock you in. He can't get free, but it'll not be pleasant to see or hear. You're not going to get sense from him."

"Yes," I said. "It's necessary." My conviction was stronger than ever.

"Knock on the door when you're ready to go."

The warden closed the heavy door behind himself, setting the magical wards on it, too, no doubt. The walls glowed with a flat yellow light, leaving no shadows. I swallowed hard.

J'Savan writhed in his bonds. "Talk, talk, talk. Going to heal me, lady? Put my head together? Going to kill me, kill me, kill me? Burn it away. Burn it. Dig it out . . ."

Then followed such a stream of epithets and vileness that would have made my ears burn when I was a girl of seventeen, even though I'd grown up around soldiers.

Oddly enough, as the young Dar'Nethi spewed forth this verbal sickness, his body fell limp, his eyes gone dead and his limbs flaccid, his jaw slack and drooling. It was as if a demon had been trying to get out through his skin, but only succeeded when it found his mouth. "J'Savan!" I said softly. "J'Savan, can you hear me?" I'd come here to see him against the recommendation of everyone who knew of his case. The boy who had encountered the Lady was gone, they said. Better to let the one who remained sleep away his life and bring no more horror to the world. The Healers had found no disease in J'Savan, no cause for the transformation that over the space of a single day had changed a handsome, friendly youth who loved his work and enjoyed flirting with girls into a monster. Of course there was no connection with the Lady. His madness had struck him more than a month after his encounter with her.

But my unspoken fears, the remote, nagging belief that there were no such things as coincidences, had forced me to come and see for myself. I would stay only long enough to ask one question that I knew had not been asked of the youth. "J'Savan, did the Lady D'Sanya do this to you?" The young man's sky-colored eyes fixed on me, and I thought I saw in them one brief flash of perception in the storm of his madness. But I could have easily been mistaken, for his face grew hard and vicious, and he wriggled and strained against the cords and straps, taking up his odd singsong. "Dig, dig, dig in the garden. Make the desert live. Draw the spring, but not too close . . . not too close. Stay away, away, away. Speak tenderly to the rootlings. The roots go deep, deep, deep into the darkness. Bury it deep. In the dark where the springworms dwell. Dark, dark, dark. So dark. Ah . . ." As he struggled, a groan of such agony came from him, one would think his body was on the verge of disintegration.

The Healer who had worked with J'Savan had said she'd come near going mad herself in the chaos of his thoughts. This violence that wrenched his body was the most devastating pain she had ever encountered. Even the Lady D'Sanya had been unable to ease him. The Lady had recoiled in horror at a single touch, almost ill herself when she saw his condition.

J'Savan shook his head and twisted and his cry dissolved into words once again. "Lady, lady, lady. Most perfect lady. Perfect eyes. The desert blooms with eyes. Not grass, not trees, not vines. No, no, no. What grows so deep where the roots delve? Such eyes. Old, old shining. Eyes in the desert. Bury it. Bury it. Nurse the rootlings. Tender, tender, tender. Make them live. Draw the water from where the springworms dwell. Danger, danger, danger . . ."

With an explosion of spittle, the meandering words were replaced by mumbled curses, by descriptions of the defilement J'Savan's hands wished to perform on me and the mutilation and murder they could wreak on the warden or anyone else who fell within their reach. And as he spewed this filth, those same hands fell slack once more, his body still and his face numb. Dead.

I raised my voice so perhaps he could hear beyond his own mumbling.

"J'Savan, I'm sorry this is so hard for you, but I must know about the day you met the Lady. You were afraid until you saw she was not Zhid. You gave her water and offered her more, and you took her back to Eu'Vian and your friends at the Gardeners' camp: C'Mir, D'Arlos, Kedrin . . ."

I was floundering, grasping at will-o'-the-wisps. To put this young man's body and mind through such torment for my whim was cruel. But in the moment I spoke the names of the dead Gardeners, I knew that somewhere within the wretched being before me some spark of J'Savan yet lived. Even as the stream of muttered obscenity flowed from his drooling mouth, tears welled up in his dead eyes, rolling unfettered down his cheeks.

I knelt in front of him. "What is the danger, J'Savan? You're trying to tell me. What happened to you?"

Again the transition, again the instant of awareness, of pleading, I thought, of horror as his face shriveled into the snarling mask and his body pressed against the cords of dolemar, craving release. His voice was harsh and desperate now. "Round and round and round. Danger, eye of danger. Deep in the roots. Rootlings dying, dying. Eyes shining in the darkness. Ah, it burns, burns, burns. Round, round. Bright eyes in the dark. Danger, danger, danger . . ." Gasping, fighting, wrenching his head in frenzy, J'Savan battled his madness. Blood dribbled from his bound wrists. His tears mixed with the rivulets of sweat coursing down his snarling face.

Then, just as abruptly as they began, his struggles ceased and he slipped into his obscene deadness once more. He was trembling, exhausted, as the abominations fell from his lips. My own tears flowed unchecked. Unable to justify his torment any longer, I hammered on the door to summon the warden.

"You are not abandoned, J'Savan," I said, as I listened to the approaching footsteps and the clicking of the lock. "I know you're in there, and you must hold on however you can. You are not responsible for what happened to your friends. I believe that as dearly as I believe anything in this world."

As the Dar'Nethi warder invoked the words of enchantment that would drop blessed oblivion over the wretched youth, the whisper faded. "Danger, danger, danger. Bury it deep. . . ."

Was there any meaning in what I'd heard? The wardens, Healers, and Archivists thought not. Nothing of his condition or his ramblings were included in the report I'd read in the Archive. The investigators would have considered him unreliable, V'Rendal had said. Why include the ravings of a madman?

But on my journey back to Avonar, J'Savan's words scribed themselves on my thoughts, refusing to be dismissed until I set them down with pen and ink in the serenity of Aimee's firelit sitting room. Not every word, not the exact order, but I believed I captured their essence. When I laid down my pen late that night, I sat back in my chair and contemplated what I had written.

On the next morning, I dispatched a letter to Eu'Vian by the first messenger Aimee could summon, and I could not settle to any task for the two days until the answer came back from the edge of the Wastes.

To my diligent acquaintance S'Rie, greetings,

In answer to your questioning: On the day he was stricken with his terrible affliction, J'Savan had gone out alone to tend a small grove of trees he had planted. The trees were dying after taking a vigorous, healthy start. J'Savan thought they might have root rot —perhaps he had drawn the groundwater too near. He was planning to inspect the roots to learn the problem. As I told you, he did not return until nightfall when he attacked us with murderous intent .

Yes, as it happens the grove was very near the place where he first met the Lady D'Sanya. She remembered it when she came to visit us after hearing of J'Savan's terrible illness, even visiting the spot for a time to mourn the boy. Her gentle soul was much affected by J'Savan's state and our tragedy.

You did not ask, but if the other matters are of interest to you —which I do not understand why, but presume you have reasons —then you may wish to know that the rootlings fare well. J'Savan must have done his work before he was affected, as his grove thrives. He was very good at his work and a cheerful spirit. We miss him sorely, as well as our brothers and sister who lie dead as a result of his affliction .

J hope your history work proceeds well, and that Mistress V'Rendal is satisfied with my saying.

Eu'Vian

What had J'Savan found when he went to tend his rootling trees? What danger had he discovered that had so shattered the harmony of his life that he was driven to acts against nature? And what was the connection to D'Arnath's daughter? The answer was close. Though I could not find it in the rambling words of the mad Gardener, I knew it was there, and I had no doubt that it mortally threatened my son and my husband, and the worlds at either end of D'Arnath's Bridge.