Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 33

Even if D'Sanya hadn't brought in reinforcements, I had been very unlikely to best her in hand-to-hand sorcery. My power had surprised her, giving me leverage in the combat just as an ambush gives an early advantage in a physical trial. But by the time a flaming arrow flew over my head, warning me that someone had attacked me from behind, I was already in serious difficulty. At that moment I would have sworn my skin was melting and the underlying tissue oozing away in great greasy globs.

The only dueling enchantments I could manage as I juggled this new kind of power-gathering were rudimentary magical simulations of standard weapons combat: stabbing, hacking, grappling, and so on. And though I felt as if I could generate power enough to support these workings, the flow as I fed them was rough and uneven, leaving both attacks and defenses ineffective and easily countered.

I felt the first man come up behind me, and while attempting to hold a defensive screen between me and D'Sanya, I spun around and slammed the side of one hand into his throat. The heel of my other hand smashed into his chest, silencing his strangled bubbling and sending him to the floor. D'Sanya, ready and waiting for me to be distracted, picked just that moment to entangle me in an enchantment I had no ability to counter. It blurred my vision so that I couldn't tell whether there were four men or forty coming at me. The battle was lost, and I knew D'Sanya would make sure of her threats this time. I had to withdraw and try something else, and I had best be quick about it.

Jen's body didn't give me much to work with, and to accommodate her different shape and balance challenged my ability to adapt. But her spirit … I was already in awe of that. How could such an unkempt sprig of a woman, possessing no true talent and all the magical power of a nine-year-old child, goad, coerce, or sting me into wielding a kind of power I had believed myself incapable of?

When I abandoned my soon-to-be-captive body and joined with her again, I found her ready to take on D'Sanya and her soldiers, whether I was with her or not. That made it easier to do what I had to do—take control of her slight limbs, infuse her with my own skills, and batter two men insensible. Though she had no power to deny anything I demanded of her body, and though my instincts and training insisted I make sure of our captors, I couldn't kill them. Not with Jen's hands.

To yield control of a body once I had taken full possession was always difficult. The mind clings to the senses, to breathing, to a beating heart. The same fundamental urge that drives a soul to hold on to life through pain and peril demanded I stay where I was, not shrink into a quiet corner of Jen's soul and allow her to use my capabilities as she chose. But we had yet to destroy the oculus. And whereas Jen sensed the oculus enchantments as an iron yoke laid on her shoulders and a pall upon her mind, I felt a fiery liquor in my veins. The smell of the guardsman's blood brewed an intoxicating poison that threatened to erase all sense of decency and moderation. Afraid that I might falter in our task . . . or relish it … I gave Jen back her will.

Time to begin . . .

Hurry. No time to waste. The Lady could return at any moment.

We can't rush . . . we must be sure . . . make no mistakes. Is he doing this or am I?

Don't think about the results, only necessity.

Our thoughts collided and bounced off each other like raindrops on pavement. My urgency. Her steadiness. My dread of the outcome. Her shame at her lack of talent and her determination to overcome it. The time of transition between full control and simple joining is when it is most difficult to keep the two souls separate and to avoid intrusion.

Consider need, assert ownership, disrupt containment, trigger the destruction . . .

Unsure if we were yet joined, she looked down at the body she had released from D'Sanya's bindings. Infinitely strange to see myself lying there like a dead man who just happened to inhale now and then. Jen wasn't afraid of me any more. But the fighting revolted her.

I tried not to listen to her thoughts, only observe through her eyes and stay afloat in the tides of her emotions, so I would know if she needed me to take a more active role. She laid out her possessions on the worktable and retrieved the tongs and the saw. Fear and dread surged through her as she used the tongs to snatch the oculus from its cabinet. Her skin felt scored by knives. But I felt no faltering of will. She dropped the shining ring on the worktable and began shaping her enchantment. Deliberate. Careful.

Assert ownership . . . Consider the making of the object. . . Consider the reasons for this destruction . . Hurry .. . Careful. . . Make each element of the working complete. Replenish your power. . . .

Trying to control my impatience, I considered the things Jen had done in the desert and at Aimee's house. Her courage and determination humbled me. So many Dar'Nethi feared me, but few with so much reason as this woman. And she had uncovered my own worst fear. I could not rid myself of the image of the Zhid armies in the north and east, marching toward Avonar marshaled by an avantir, answering the call of the Lords. Were the Three truly dead if their desires yet moved their servants . . . their instruments? Destroyer. . . The name had festered in my soul for five years.

Jen fixed a U-shaped clamp from D'Sanya's tools to hold the oculus and took up the metal-cutting saw. The defenses of the oculus battered her with uncertainty and doubt. I offered what confidence and strength I could, and forced her to keep her arm moving though it pained her shoulder. Once the saw had bitten a notch in the smooth ring, I retreated again and allowed her to complete her magical construction, encompassing desire and will and transformation . . . and a resonating grief for the pain and death we would cause. As she reached for power to accomplish it, suppressed sobs shook her slight body.

I stopped her. Let it go, Jen'Larie , I whispered in her mind, trying not to frighten or overwhelm her with the direct contact, trying to mute my urgency and allow her to choose what I was prepared to insist on. Relinquish your enchantment so that I can wield it. Please. This I must do myself .

After all, I was the Destroyer. What was one more holocaust to my account?

To my relief, she did not resist. When I felt her release the solid weight of her enchantment—truly little more than an immensely complex thought bound to a physical object with simple threads of magic—I held it carefully, envisioned its accomplishment, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling the shattering to come. And then I reached for power. . . .

I thought my soul might be sucked out of Jen's body as the power rushed out of me. The lectorium candles winked out, leaving the swelling oculus as our only illumination, a lurid pulsing red glow. Much more than an enchanted metal ring of the Lords' design, this oculus had been bound with the talent and power of every hospice resident. Bearing the substance of their lives and their sorcery, of their pain and diseases, the device existed with the same formidable presence as a phenomenon of nature—a glacier or a forest or a sea—though tainted always and ever with the most unnatural poison of Zhev'Na.

I fought to slow the rush of power and to focus our enchantment on the weakened structure of the brass cirele. No rough or halting application of power here. Jen grasped the ring, her physical contact allowing me an unhindered path to the oculus, even as it threatened to tear her apart. She trembled, sobbed, and swore, but her small hand did not release the burning ring. I could not help her, for I had to devote every particle of my strength and concentration to control, to ensuring that I drew on everything of myself that I could safely give. Thoughts and memories swept me down and down, faster, tumbling, choking as if I were caught in an avalanche. . . .

"Look deep and search for the truth . …" The man seated in D'Arnath's chair in the center of the council chamber leaned forward, looking at me as he plunged the knife into his own belly. The red stain raced to saturate his white robe. . . .

I wrenched my thoughts away from my father. My mind darted here and there: to riding horses … to the storms of the Bounded . . . backward to my childhood in Leire … to the day my mother came to Comigor, long before I knew she was my mother . . . before Zhev'Na . . .

The voice echoed in the temple of the Lords, with its floors of black ice and its dome of cruel stars. "The cursed D'Natheil. . . who would have thought he would become the second D'Arnath, the Tormentor, the Preserver of Prisons, the enemy of all our works? We'll have his child, Brother Parven . . . the boy already knows he is evil. . . we will keep him alone, teach him our hate, blind him and warp him until he carves out his father's heart. In one stroke he will destroy the Tormentor's Heir and the Tormentor's Bridge . . . he is made for it. . . the universe has brought forth a Destroyer to be our vengeance . …"

No ! Rage and terror yanked me out of the whirlpool of memory. That memory was not mine. Not mine . . . not mine . . . not mine . . . shut it away . . . I am not what they made me … I have chosen. I am not evil. I will not be their instrument ..

I slammed the door on memories. Concentrate. Focus .

The world feels wrong. The avantir sings of war to D 'Sanyo's lions . The oculus pulsed like a diseased heart, refusing to yield. I released my attachment to Jen's vision so I could no longer see the cursed thing. The power rushed out of me . . . leaving me parched. . . .

Hollow. Empty. Why did I care ? Care, like joy and sorrow and worry and honor, was only a word, thin and spidery and gray, unattached to anything of substance. I plummeted into a well of gray. Shrunken and withered, I huddled in its depths. Voices . . . weeping . . . invaded my gray world, one and then another.

"What's happening? Mistress S'Nara is ill."

"Lady, where are you? I feel so strange!"

I tried to ignore them.

"My eyesight fails!"

"What is she doing up there in her house? I heard thunder . . . explosions . . . great sorcery."

"Old Gerard has fallen and cannot rise. Lady! Are you there? Help us!"

I didn't want to hear this. I turned inward.

"Gerick! You must listen to me." Jen's voice, strained and harsh, shouted above the fading clamor. "D'Sanya betrayed these people. She used the Lords' magic to deceive them and rob them of their Way. Don't hide. Listen to them. Embrace them. We're so close: Her enchantment—the oculus—is failing. But you must give just a little more to break it. Don't hold back. For your father, Gerick. Have mercy. Let him die."

Her pleas pulled me out of the dry well. But I refused to think of my father. Rather I returned to thoughts of the Bounded, of the Singlars, of their strange place in the world. What would happen to them if D'Sanya gave this world to the Zhid? What would happen to them if I withered away here in this hole in the desert of spirits? They weren't ready. The power poured out of me. . . .

The world exploded in red-orange light.

". . . on and get up. You can't . . . here. D'Sanya . .. sense what's happened . . . come and . . . you."

The woman wasn't speaking in fragments. I was hearing in fragments. Seeing in fragments as well. Darkness. Wavering light. Swimming reflections. And my chest was on fire …

Panic gripped my gut. Suffocation. Inhale, fool .

The inflow of air cleared some of the cobwebs from my head. The floor was hard. An overpowering scent of lamp oil filled the air. Somewhere people were clamoring. Anger. Confusion. Fear. Panic . . . But I wasn't sure whether it was inside of me or out.

Breathe again. Keep it up this time.

"Can you get up? We must get away from here. I tried to break her circle on the floor, but I can't. Her portal exists there, just waiting for her to trigger it. She can be here almost as soon as she thinks of it."

Forcing myself to breathe, forcing my eyes to focus, I convinced my arms and legs that they were mine and pushed up to all fours. Only then did I feel control enough to raise my head and look at the person crouched in front of me, exhorting me to move. Dark, dark eyes, pools of shadow, too large for a face so pale and exhausted and afraid. Behind her the lectorium was in shambles. Broken glass, sheets of twisted metal, barrels of sand and dry plaster spilled across the tiles. Tools and implements scattered everywhere. Scorch marks clouded what remained of the great mirrors.

"We did it," she said, dropping crumbled nuggets of brass on the floor in front of me.

"Must . . . destroy . . . this place. Fire." The words would have been easier spoken by a newborn infant.

Jen smiled faintly. "We will. One or the other of us developed that idea about the time the world exploded. But we must get these men out before we torch it. Not to mention I need a spark. All the candles went out. I'm flat. I don't suppose you could manage it."

I gasped again, when my starving lungs and wobbling joints reminded me to keep breathing. "Madwoman."

A gut-twisting rip of enchantment, a crashing blow that ripped the bolts from the wood, and the door to the passageway swung open. I sat up on my knees and fumbled for a nonexistent knife with fingers that could scarcely distinguish between steel and leather.

Na'Cyd, the elegant angularity of his high forehead marred by the bruised swelling on the left side, stood in the doorway holding a small lamp and surveying the wrecked lectorium. "No need for weapons, Master Gerick," he said, sniffing the fume-laden air. "I'll not interfere with your activities. As I said before, I merely keep order in the place I've chosen to live. My duties include ensuring the safety of guests and visitors at this hospice, as well as investigating mysterious explosions in the Lady's house."

He set his lamp on the nearest worktable and wagged a finger at the three fallen soldiers. "Are they dead?"

"Only one," said Jen.

As the consiliar moved toward the nearest man, Jen grabbed her metal rod and bashed his lamp with it. The glass panes shattered and flames rippled outward across the table. She held the rod stiffly between herself and the Dar'Nethi. But Na'Cyd just sighed and bent over the dead guardsman, pressing a finger into his neck. Emitting a matter-of-fact grunt, the consiliar moved to the other two. He hefted the one with the bloody thigh onto his shoulders. As he exited the broken door, he called back to us. "I'll return for the other one."

His boots clumped heavily on the stairs. Popping glass on the burning worktable released little geysers of colored flame, reflecting eerily in the broken mirrors.

"Come on." Jen offered her arm to support my shoulders.

I refused her help and stumbled to my feet. "Did you see anything that might hint of the Lady's other works?" I said.

"Nothing I could recognize. The pieces at the far end of that table are strange. But they're not metal."

Jen grabbed two tall candles from sconces by the door, lit them in the increasingly eager flames, and used them to set off the oil she had spilled on the other worktables and the cushions scattered on several chairs. The fire spread quickly to a stack of paper packets that billowed scented smoke.

The items she had mentioned were broken chunks of plaster, scorched and smudged as if they'd fallen into a fire before someone threw them into this heap. Most were roughly boxlike, each piece having five relatively flat sides and one with a design pressed or carved into it—a coin, a galloping horse, a key—and patterns of straight slits cut into the plaster face. Several larger pieces were broken, but when I assembled them revealed only simple round hollows scooped out of them. Again the patterns of narrow channels radiating from the concavity. Other pieces had a rounded bulge left in relief that would fit inside the scooped out sections like an egg in a nest. Molds, of course, for casting her metal objects. I rummaged through the stack, looking for something that would tell me which of these designs might channel her power to the avantir. I found a small one for the lion pendants, but nothing else that seemed significant.

Voices rose outside the house. I tossed aside the mold in my hand and peered out of the broken window. Men and women were streaming across the lawns toward D'Sanya's garden, carrying lamps and torches, calling one to the other, some of them supporting each other, pointing their fingers at the window from which I looked down.

The bound guardsman groaned, drawing my attention back to the lectorium. To my left a burst of flame shot toward the coffered ceiling. Who knew if Na'Cyd would actually choose to return?

"We'd best get this fellow out," I said, my eyes watering from the smoke filling the room.

By the time Jen and I had carried the heavy man across the room, out the doorway, and to the head of the stairs, two explosions had shot flames through the roof. Billowing smoke set us both coughing, and the heat scorched my back. We rested our arms on the banister, and I considered the merits of rolling the man down the steps and tumbling down after him.

But Na'Cyd bounded up the stairs just then and, with only a steadying hand from us, lifted the bulky guardsman onto his shoulders.

"Thank you," said Jen, as we stumbled after him.

"I don't burn living men to death. Not any more." He staggered across the foyer and out the front doors.

Brown smoke filled the graceful rooms where I had learned to be a child again. The paint on the ceiling bubbled, charring at the edges like evil flowers blossoming and dying all at once. Another explosion, and the rumble of flames above our heads grew louder.

"We should leave through the back garden," I shouted over the din, restraining Jen as she tried to follow Na'Cyd.

She jerked her arm away. "I need to find Papa. Help him. And you—"

"We can't delay here, Jen. Did you hear D'Sanya? 'One place or the other.' She knows the Zhev'Na oculus is gone. So she must have another device. And then there's the avantir itself. There could be several of them. The Lords always had three."

"You must speak to your father." She sniffled and coughed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

"There's no time." I pulled her face into my chest and dragged her toward the back hall. But a great cracking noise and a sudden burst of heat sent me backward, just as the upper stair landing collapsed into the passageway in front of me. Flames licked at Jen's cloak, and I yanked her back and slapped at the sparks glowing in the dark wool. A massive burning beam crashed to my right, raining fiery debris on our heads. Jen and I ducked at the same time, but in opposite directions, and I lost my hold of her.

"Watch out! Ah—" Jen's cry was aborted, and she collapsed to the smoldering carpet, a sooty gash on the side of her head.

"Jen! Jen'Larie!" I scooped her into my arms. Reversing course, I ducked around the blazing beam and hurried through the front doors, only to meet a sea of faces.

Fifty or more people crowded the garden, the eerie light of the flames shifting on pale cheeks and flashing in worried eyes. Behind me the flames roared, but the people had fallen silent, save for hissing breath and moaning misery … or perhaps that was the wind wrought up by the fire or perhaps it was entirely in my imagination. Somewhere in the crowd a woman sobbed. They did not move to let us pass.

"Where is the Lady?" demanded an elderly woman with tightly curled hair and a voice like a trumpet. She stood in the front ranks, supported by a pudgy youth of twelve or fourteen years, whose handlight was tinted orange by the flames behind me. "Who are you?"

"The Lady is gone and won't be back," I said. "The hospice is closed. Now, let us through."

Murmurs and exclamations and questions surged quickly into shouts and cries of dismay.

"I know who this is." A bull-necked man shouted above the horrified clamor. "He's the Fourth . . . D'Natheil's demon son . . . just look at him! Haven't you heard his description? He's killed us!"

"The Lord . . ."

"It's true. I've seen him here with the Lady!"

Some wailed in terror. A few fled. Others joined in the man's accusations, feeding their growing anxieties with information and rumor—some true, some ludicrous. The clamor grew, torches and handlights waving. Jen moaned softly and squirmed in my arms as if fighting to wake. I hefted her over my shoulder and gripped her waist with one arm. First one then another of the crowd moved toward us. A stone ripped through the air from the back of the crowd and glanced off my cheekbone. Hostile enchantment softened my knees like strong spirits on an empty stomach.

"Keep away!" I shouted, holding out my free hand as if five fingers could stay them. "You don't understand what you're dealing with." And this wasn't a good time for lengthy explanations.

The advance halted. Though most retreated a step or two, the boldest ones—a youngish man with a twisted shoulder, the woman who first questioned me and her young companion, the bull-necked man—stood their ground. I tried to summon some kind of power. Though the effort was like drinking dust, I eventually conjured a wavering gray gleam about Jen and me. It would do no more than cause a burst of sparks if anyone touched it. "Move aside if you value your eyes."

"Where are Na'Cyd, F'Lyr, the others?" called the curly-haired woman, standing her ground even as a gap opened on my right. "They could take him down . . . protect us."

"Come on . . . surround him . . . can't kill all of us."

". . . careful of the girl . . . she's an innocent. . . ."

"What do you want here?"

Somewhere a sword rasped on leather. Knives slipped free of their sheaths. Some passed stones from the rock garden from hand to hand, the sly motions rippling through the mob. I edged to the right. Words and illusions were not going to stay these people for long.

"Hold!" The command silenced the crowd and had the men and women craning their necks to discover its issuer, not because it was loud or harsh or portended evil, but because of the sheer authority that weighted each word. "For the office I once held, for the life and service I have given to Gondai, hear me."

On my left a few people shifted aside to reveal a tall man in a deep blue robe, his fair hair gathered into a silver clip at his neck. My father stepped slowly into the circle of light, his back straight, though the line of his shoulders was rigid and his face scribed with pain.

"Who are you?" demanded the bull-necked man.

"Can you fools not see?" A small man with a twisted back pushed his way out of the crowd on my right. Gripping his walking stick with two hands, he lowered himself onto one knee. "My lord Prince D'Natheil. All praise to Vasrin Shaper, who has laid down a Way that leads you back to Gondai in our time of need." Sefaro.

A murmuring tide of astonishment, wonder, and recognition washed through the mob. A few others genuflected or stepped back, marveling at the apparition of one they believed five years dead. Where was my mother?

My father held up his hand to quiet them. "This man before you is indeed my son," he said. "And it is no accident that the enchantments that shielded us from our pain—yes, mine as well as yours—have been shattered by his hand. But his power and his destiny are far beyond our control. We cannot hold him here, and I would not have your griefs compounded by violence this night. His concerns are elsewhere, so I believe he will not harm us further. Let him pass."

I felt the strength of his will holding him together. He could not smile. He could scarcely speak. Yet the faces of those around him changed. Apprehension, uncertainty, but no fear. Many of the people drew close to him, some with defiant faces as if to protect him, some with an awed trust, as if seeking the safety they had always believed rested in his arm.

But I was not comforted. Why didn't he tell them the truth? Why didn't he use his authority to tell these people that I had saved them once and was willing to do so again? Did he really think I wanted to hurt them? Gods, did he believe D'Sanya's charge that I wanted to kill him? I had counted on him understanding the imperative to destroy the oculus . . . forgiving me. Surely . . .

I searched his stern face for one hint of softness, one flicker of acknowledgment, of comprehension. But my father's expression revealed nothing . . . which revealed everything.

My spine stiffened. I backed away from the waiting Dar'Nethi, moving slowly toward a widening gap in the crowd, where the thick-growing rosebushes made it awkward to stay close to one's fellows. My eyes roamed the mob, straining to pick out faces and forms in the shifting light. Somewhere I would find the answer.

There! F'Lyr, the scar-faced stableman who wore a brass lion about his neck, stood with two shadowy figures at the back of the crowd near the gap. Three Zhid ready to close off the escape route before I could get through. Now I understood my father's ambiguity. He well knew the choice waiting for me at the edge of the shadows. My yearning to hear my father declare before witnesses that I was not the destined instrument of the Lords was a matter of no importance whatsoever. I would have to prove the truth or falsity of that prophecy for myself.

In an instant I considered all that had happened in the last weeks and months, all that I feared about myself and the doom facing Avonar, all that I knew of D'Sanya and the others who would be involved in the dreadful hours to come. The wrongness of the world tore at my spirit as fiercely as the flames ravaged D'Sanya's gracious house and garden. By some whim of fate or gods, I was the nexus, the center of everything, but I was dry and empty, and my father was dying and every being in three worlds was at risk. I would not survive another hour without power or understanding. The evidence was laid out in front of me and all I had to do was put it together in the span of three heartbeats. And to do so, I would have to go back; I would have to remember.

My hesitation emboldened the crowd. "If the hospice is closed, I'm a dead man anyway," said the bull-necked man, now brandishing a fence rail.

Others moved forward, rocks and knives in hand. I retreated a few more steps, poured the dregs of my power into my gray curtain to give me one extra moment to accomplish what I needed to do. The slight body in my arms stirred. I gripped her hard to hold her still and wished fervently that I could keep her safe. Jen had told me that memory had no power but what the soul chose to make of it. Why was I so tempted to believe her, when for so long I had doubted those infinitely wiser than either of us? Perhaps it was some magic hidden deep in her. Perhaps it was because for the first time in my life, I cared about living another day. I had only begun to taste possibility.

Wishing Jen were awake to tell me in her brittle tutor's manner that I did it right, I breathed deep and embraced the distorted world, along with the wholeness of past and present, what I was and what I had been, what I had seen and done and felt, both good and evil . . . everything I/we remembered.

The closures of my mind wrenched and tore. Images and voices and sensations both wonderful and terrible surged exuberantly into my conscious mind like a dammed river allowed at last to fill its natural channel. My bones screamed and my flesh cried out, as if I had changed form and dimension, stretched and bent into something else altogether. Power surged into my arms, pushed on my ribs, and scalded my eyes.

Sooner than I could have imagined, pain stripped away the veils of hope and desire and uncertainty, leaving only the stark ruin of truth. And in that startling moment, I understood which of the molds in D'Sanya's lectorium was significant and I knew what D'Sanya had done. Three worlds were in my hand. Truly, there was no choice to be made.

"Be off to your long-awaited grave, Tormentor's Heir, Prince of Dead Men, Sovereign of Desolation!" I screamed at my father as I retreated briskly toward the gap. "You are correct that my power and purposes are beyond your weakling fingers. Tonight as your pain devours you and tomorrow as the worms feed on your rotting flesh, you will know that I am indeed Lord of Destruction, Lord of Chaos!"

I shifted the woman higher on my shoulder, turned my back on my father and the gaping mob and a shadowy figure with red-brown hair who now stood at the verge of the crowd watching me. I sped through the gap toward the three Zhid who stood waiting. "In the name of the Lords of Zhev'Na, take me to Gensei Kovrack," I said, thrusting the woman's limp body into F'Lyr's burly arms. "We have a city to destroy."