Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 29

As the sun rose higher, turning our little shelter into a baking oven, Paulo watered the horses and set about examining their hooves, picking out rocks and checking for cracks and bruises. He was worried about the lack of water and good forage leaving the beasts too weak for the journey ahead of us.

I leaned back against the already warm rock and tried to convince myself to get up and help him. We had to get back to Avonar as soon as possible, but I couldn't even keep my eyelids up.

"I need to look at your foot." Sefaro's daughter dropped onto the sand at my feet and began untying the strip of linen that bound my left foot.

Paulo had told me how the woman had come to be involved in my rescue, and I didn't know what to think about it or how to behave. It felt damnably awkward to have one of my victims cooking for me and tending my injuries.

"Just leave that," I said, as she unwrapped the damp, discolored bandage. She had to tug and peel it away from the crusted blood and fluid. Though the surrounding skin was sounder and not so dark as the previous day, the wound started seeping again and hurt like the devil, which probably made my comments sharper than I intended. "Paulo will tend it later. I don't want you—"

"What do I have to do to convince you two that I'm not going to put poison in your tea?" Her face flamed, and she threw the wadded bandage in my lap.

Why was she so annoyed by my attempts to be civilized? I just didn't know how to apologize for something so trivial when the greater matters between us were beyond apology. Bereft of ideas, I held my tongue. Her flush deepened.

Paulo handled the situation much better than I. As he gentled Stormcloud and lifted the horse's right front foot onto his knees, he asked the woman how she had slept and inquired after her injured shoulder, saying that he knew it had hurt something awful, but now it was put back right, it should heal up pretty fast. Evidently the two of them had reached an accommodation in my rescue. I just wasn't a party to it. When he asked her to explain again what she'd done to make my septic wound improve so rapidly—some Dar'Nethi spell-working, evidently—I shut my ears. I didn't want to hear about Dar'Nethi magic.

I wasn't ready to wrestle the wild rimcats that prowled the Edge in the Bounded, but with a little more rest and food, I'd be able to travel well enough. Then I would decide what to do about D'Sanya and her cursed devices.

As I drowsed through the rest of that day, Sefaro's daughter scrupulously avoided touching my food, water, or bandages. Every once in a while my eyes would drift open to find her staring into nothing, her brow drawn up tight, as if she were trying to decipher something complicated. But after only a moment, her eyes would flick toward me as if she felt me looking at her. When she met my gaze, she tightened her mouth and looked away, busying herself with cleaning her boots or making another futile attempt to strain the muddy water through a scrap of canvas.

The sun angles were well stretched when I awoke with urgent proof that my body was functioning in a most human manner again. As I pulled on the spare boots Paulo had cleverly thought to bring along, the woman announced that Paulo was off scouting for something to shoot with his bow. She stuck out her chin and folded her arms quite deliberately as I hobbled off into the rocks on my own.

I sagged onto my blanket when I got back, distressingly tired after the short trip, and so hungry I thought my belly might cave in. I pressed my face into the sandy wool and thought longingly of the boiled tappa root my friend Zanore cooked back in the Bounded. Though boiled tappa was the most boring and tasteless food in any world, a vat of it would be a feast right now.

"The rest of the milk Nim brought is in the green flask." Water dribbled into a pot, and the strong smell of slightly rancid meat broth wafted over my head. "You should drink it before it spoils. I haven't breathed on it since yesterday."

"Thank you," I said. Then I wondered if she would believe I was thanking her for not breathing on the milk. Avoiding a glance at her that might reveal such a mistake, I lifted my head and spotted the painted flask that sat in the smallest mudhole. "I think I could drink the mud."

"You'll need your strength. We should leave as soon as you can travel. It's at least four days back to the next spring. These sinkholes aren't refilling as fast as they were, and we can't leave Nim and Rab with nothing."

"I'm ready to go whenever you say," I said. "Most everything is functioning now, my appetite certainly. I'll crawl if I have to." I drained the last of the milk. Even warm and slightly off, it filled some of the hollow places. I laid my head on the blanket again, happy to have gotten through this exchange without an argument. For such a slight person, the woman certainly filled up a place.

Paulo rode in a short time later, his game bag empty. As soon as he had gotten a drink and rubbed down Stormcloud, we shared out the last of the increasingly gamy oryx broth, softening a few bits of rock-hard bread in it. We spoke inanities. The future was like a fourth person at our fire that night, and none of us wanted to acknowledge her.

Paulo was too practical to let us get away with that for long, though. After scooping up the last of the stringy overcooked meat from the pot and dividing it among us, he tapped his spoon idly on the edge of his cup. "While I was out hunting, I kept thinking about all you told me this morning. So is it true … ? I mean … I guess the Lady's running the Zhid after all."

Sefaro's daughter flinched and glanced at me, rolling her eyes at Paulo as if he were mad to say such a thing outright. But I had always appreciated Paulo's frankness and tried to honor it with the same in return.

"No, I don't believe so," I said. "Not intentionally at least. She created the other things: the oculus, the slave collars, the masks, so I have to assume she made the avantirs as well. But as to who's using them now … I don't think it's her. And not just because I was . . . infatuated."

Did I still love D'Sanya? Certainly my body still desired the woman who had nestled close to me as the rain fell on the shepherds' hut. But that woman did not exist any more, if she ever had. The woman who had laughed at my pain and terror as she ripped my flesh with metal claws, then healed up the lacerations so she could do it all again, who wept and scolded as she condemned me to an eternity of madness bolted to a rock, was someone else entirely.

"But she's the only one with power enough," said Paulo. "You've said no Zhid could run the avantir."

"Somehow she's feeding them the power they need. That's what I think. The timing of their rising . . . everything points to it." I concentrated on the puzzle. On cold reason. "The avantir is a receptacle: it enables the propagation of enchantment, but it needs an immense infusion of power to make it work. But if D'Sanya isn't manipulating the avantir directly, then one of her devices must be channeling her power to it in some way—the oculus at the hospice or the second one she used to hold me in Zhev'Na or some other device I haven't seen yet. In that case some powerful Zhid—one of the gensei most likely—could use the avantir himself."

"So destroy the vile things," said Paulo. "Then we'll see what's what."

"Someone else will have to do that." I dropped my cup and spoon into the blackened pot and wrapped my arms around my knees so I wouldn't feel as if I were going to fly apart at any moment. "Ven'Dar . . . Je'Reint . . . the Preceptors . . . someone who can touch a cursed oculus without losing his mind or worse. And they'll need to persuade D'Sanya to see what she's doing, but it can't be me. I told you what she did to me and how easily—"

"Her jewelry!"

Paulo and I jumped at this outburst and stared at the woman.

"What's that?" said Paulo.

She looked from me to Paulo and back again, her chin poised in that particularly stubborn set that I was coming to know. "Have you ever seen the Lady without her jewelry? I've only seen it once in all these months—on the day you were attacked in Avonar. The first thing the Zhid did on that day, before she could possibly recover from the surprise, was take every piece of her gold and silver. They weren't thieves. Why would they bother if they were taking her with them anyway? Did you notice? Didn't you wonder why she worked not one spell to defend herself or you? And what do you think was the first thing she did when the prince's men rescued her—even before she went to see to you? She pulled rings and bracelets from a saddle pack and put them on."

I remembered the bag of jewelry Je'Reint's man had shown me, and of course it was true she wore such things all the time . . . adored them . . . wouldn't allow me to buy them for her. And of course I, too, had wondered why she hadn't put up more of a fight that night.

"She's a Metalwright whose mentor taught her to link her devices together." The woman leaned closer to the fire, the firelight licking at her small face and fierce eyes. "Perhaps all her adornments focus power as an oculus does, working together like the avantir and the Zhid earrings to create some more intricate enchantment, something larger than a single device. Perhaps her power is not so strong as she claims if she must always enhance it with her metal toys. I think she puffs herself up too much. She's lied to you all along. Destroy her devices and you'll have her."

Anger rippled through me. "You're wrong. She is not doing these things on purpose. And I've already said I can't—"

"I know what you said." She attacked instead of retreating. "And you think you know everything about evil and corruption and doom, not to mention being the world's first and only man who ever fell in love to see his heart betrayed and to discover that his holy beloved wasn't so holy. So you're feeling sorry for yourself and sorry for the world, and I'm very glad to hear that you care about all of us, but you can't just retreat into whatever strange little hole you've found to hide in for the last five years. For once you just need to listen to someone who knows a few things that you don't."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"That's exactly the truth," she snapped. "And so I intend to teach you a few things about Dar'Nethi power."

"You teach me? I know enough about power to choke you!"

But like a stinging fly on a hot day, the damnable woman would not stop. "Of course, you're angry. You have every right. And yes, an oculus does terrible things to you. But this power that's grown in you is nothing of the Lords'. Don't you see? I heard you describe what you did when you lay on that stone table, how you followed your father's teaching—your father, proven the most powerful Dar'Nethi sorcerer since D'Arnath himself. For what did he do when he died on a pyre before you were born? He reached across the universe and opened the Gates to the Bridge that had been closed for centuries! You have to understand … what you did in that tomb . . . what you described to Paulo this morning . . . was exactly what my father taught me was the greatest mystery of our world—how we Dar'Nethi transform life in all its aspects, its wonders, its horrors, into power.

"Here—" She thrust the last clump of thornbush into my hand. "Put this in the fire and slow its burning so it will last the night. A simple spell for a Lord of Zhev'Na, isn't it? It takes hardly a thought to strip the essence of life from a bird or a tree or a slave, infuse that power and your will into a bundle of dead brush, and make a fire burn as you please, whether it consumes anything or not. Well it's a simple spell for a Dar'Nethi, too, but one that takes thought if you've not been trained to it. A spell that transforms matter into light and warmth at a rate that you decide. So, step one: Consider the dry thing, the life it once held, the place where it grew, the cycle of its life and death and seed and germination."

The thorny wad pricked at my hand, but not as the woman's words pricked at my spirit. What did she know about anything?

"Step two: Consider the need." She wouldn't stop. "Tonight will be cold in the desert. Your body needs warmth to recover its strength and warm food to heal and nourish it. And your friend Paulo and this ugly stubborn woman you can't quite trust need to sleep warm so they can care for you and lead you out of this cursed desert. But brush will burn too fast if you leave it to flame at its will."

I had seen thornbushes burning in Zhev'Na. From dry lightning. From intent. They burned hot and fast, snapping and spitting gold sparks.

"Step three: In your mind, use your need to transform the essence of the thornbush, and then take one tiny portion of that monstrous power you fear and let it flow into your creation. Do it, and then feel what you have done and tell me whether it is good or evil."

As she counted off her steps, I found myself obeying her commands, resisting the old habits I had developed in Zhev'Na in favor of this new way of thinking. And when I tossed the dry bundle onto the fire and carefully let power flow into the spell I had made, I did not create a holocaust, only a small hot fire that would burn bright through a long night. I felt whole, and the world did not end.

"Didn't I tell you?" She leaned back on her rock and nodded. Without smirking. But her chin was ready to challenge my least hesitation.

"The water," I said. "I could make it more palatable … get the grit out of it. . ." Was it possible?

"Settle the sand to the bottom, perhaps," she said, tossing me a muddy flask. She looked at me sidewise, out from under half-lowered eyelids. "A little more difficult than a slow-burning fire."

Consider the water. . . .

I went through the steps again. Felt an anxious hitch in my breath as I released a dribble of power. But the working felt right. I opened the flask, drank, and passed it to Sefaro's daughter.

She took a sip, cocked her head to one side, considering, and passed the flask to Paulo. "What do you think? How did he do?"

Paulo, who had been crouched between the woman and me as if ready to leap into the breach when flaming arrows started flying between us, took a sip, stared at the flask, and then proceeded to drain it. "Cripes! I've not tasted anything cold in a year . . . I'm sure of it. And no sand in my teeth!"

"Well, we can't afford to do that any more," said the woman, snatching the flask back again and tossing it onto the sand beside the sinkhole. "He doesn't have time to learn how to pump more water from the earth into Nim's puddles. And he has more important matters to deal with."

My astonishing feeling of well-being fled in the face of the future. We needed to get back to Avonar. "So, mentor, how are you at making portals?"

She looked up sharply. Her small face hardened like cooling lava, leaving her features rigid and pointed and angry. Paulo was sitting behind her, and he immediately shook his head vigorously, giving me a bleak wince that was some odd mixture of embarrassment and sympathy.

"Portal-making is not exactly in my list of skills." She could have frosted the desert. "If it were, I wouldn't have been fool enough to spend four weeks riding through the Wastes to find you, now would I?"

"No, no. I can see that. I wasn't implying— I just—" What had I done to offend her now? As ever, it was impossible to come up with the right thing to say, especially with Paulo making unintelligible faces in the background. "I understand true talent doesn't imply the ability to make portals, but I thought you might know what was needed. I've likely power enough to do it. You've shown me that. But just … I don't know how." The Lords never traveled physically, and so had no need for portals.

The woman tilted her head and wrinkled one side of her face. "So you just want me to tell you how to make a portal?"

"As you did with the other things. I could take us back to Avonar tonight. We could find some help."

"What about this oculus? If it is possibly empowering the Zhid, you can't just leave it. You likely have power enough to destroy it, if you'll just try."

I tried to hold patience. "I told you. I can't go near an oculus. I daren't touch it. It doesn't matter what I want or what I intend. All the power in the world isn't going to enable me to destroy it."

Flushed and silent, she sat by her rock, digging her boot heel into the sand so ferociously one might have thought her worst enemy buried there. She was thinking about something she didn't like at all, and I didn't want to blurt out anything else until I had a clue about what was making her angry this time.

"So this soul weaving," she said at last, "that's what you did to get me off the Lady's roof?"

Was that what this was all about? Gods, she must have been disgusted when she realized what I'd done. "I'm sorry. It's just . . . D'Sanya was so angry. So dangerous. There was no time to explain or to ask you. If she'd seen you . . ."

"I'm not asking for an apology. I want to know how it works. If you can make me scramble across a roof and race off to find your mother"—her glance was as pointed as her chin, and I felt my own skin heat up—"can you make me work sorcery as well?"

"Yes. But I—"

"And do things I might not be . . . capable … of otherwise?"

"He had me writing words one time." Paulo spoke up. "There's no bigger magic than that. He can take or give what's needed . . . allow you to do what you need, as well. He won't trespass where you don't say, neither. He could, but he won't. I think it could work."

Paulo had clearly heard something I hadn't. I puzzled for a moment, watching the woman biting her lip and grinding her heel. I thought her hand might crush her cup.

Then she stuck out her jaw and kicked a last rock out of the hole. "There's daylight enough left. We can be to the place I buried it within the hour. You can stay well out of the way while Paulo helps me dig it up. Then you can do whatever it is you do, and we'll destroy it—with my hands, not yours. I wish I could do it without your help, but I can't."

Earth and sky! "You want me to join with you . . . come into you . . . and destroy the oculus?"

"There's no other way. We've no assurance Prince Ven'Dar will be in Avonar or that he even has the power to destroy one of D'Sanya's devices. You do. You have no idea . . ." She shook her head and mumbled to herself. "And now you have my body to do it with. Let's just get it over with and don't let me think about it too much."

Paulo was already up and saddling horses. I sat speechless, my mind running through five chains of reasoning at once, none of them concluding she was wrong.

"Some day you're going to understand how lucky you were to have me along," she said, scrambling to her feet and running her fingers through her shaggy hair vigorously. "Every Dar'Nethi child is taught complex skills such as how to make portals and how to destroy objects of power. Not one in five thousand can actually do such things, so not one in five hundred remembers more than half the steps. But I—" She dropped her cup into the pack that sat at her feet. "I never forget anything."