Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 38

"I'm over here, my lord. All of a piece, I think." I crawled across the floor toward the mumbled curses and spitting. Indeed, I felt tangled and out of proportion, as if mind and body had been stretched as thin as silk thread, and then released to clump back together again in whatever way natural forces saw fit. To find myself with an extra ear or missing fingers would not have surprised me in the least. "Are you injured, my lord?"

The floor was littered with sharp fragments of metal and stone that I brushed out of the way as I crept through the absolute dark. I had already tried to make a handlight and could produce not so much as a spark. I tried not to think what that meant. I knew what Gerick had gone off to do.

The Gate fire had vanished in an eyeblink at the height of the earthquake. The Bridge had fallen, and we were left to be grateful the sky had not fallen in on us as well. Or the ceiling.

My stomach curdled at the thought of how deep under the palace we were, of the narrow passages that could be so easily blocked by rubble, or of the fires that had already raged through the palace when we raced down here to intercept Gerick. I hadn't expected to survive this long.

"I wish you would speak, sir. Ouch!" I stopped to extract a metal splinter from my left hand.

The spitting stopped. "Well, I've a knot the size of a turnip on the back of my head. My sudden meeting with the floor has knocked out at least two of my teeth. And I cannot seem to raise a light. What more can be said?"

Much more. But his breaking voice expressed it, not his words. The surrounding dark was despair.

"The Bridge …" I said.

"I've a gap in my soul the size of the sky. What am I to think?"

I was not a good witness. Having never felt the fullness of power, I could not miss it. But if this was the end of everything, the end of power as we had always been taught, it seemed odd that the skills innate to Dar'-Nethi bodies would be gone as well. Only true talent had been served by the Bridge.

Clothes and limbs rustled in the dark. Metal chinked softly. A whispered sigh came, not from the direction in which I was creeping—the direction of Prince Ven'Dar's coughing—but from behind me.

"Who else is here?" I sat up and spun in place, eyes straining to see in the dark, dizzy until I glimpsed a pale white glow. The light moved slightly and expanded, shining on silver ring mail… on bodies … on bloodied flesh banded by a gold armring …

My throat swelled. Gerick !

The light jerked and grew, illuminating the Gate chamber. Gerick huddled on the floor beside one of the great columns, eyes closed, trembling violently, so pale he was almost transparent. A blood-streaked, disheveled D'Sanya knelt beside him, one finger touching his shoulder, the white light streaming from her hands. And behind them . . .

"My Lord Ven'Dar! Do you see?" I croaked, not sure of my own senses.

"Aye." The prince, a mere ten paces from me, stood craning his neck to stare in wonder at the section of the curved chamber wall where the Gate fire had once burned. D'Sanya's light danced on a crystalline barrier comprised, not of one smooth face, but of pinnacles and facets, corners and ridges and man-high crevices that might have been the Gate's white fire frozen in time.

"He's so tired," said the Lady, her finger touching Gerick's damp hair. "He hurts wickedly and is so sorry, sorry, sorry. Will he die?"

"Don't touch him, witch!" I snapped, heedless of her power, wanting to strike her, wanting to weep, wanting to tear out my hair in confusion. What was she playing at?

D'Sanya flinched at my command and scrambled away from Gerick toward the crystal wall. But when she touched the translucent surface, she cried out and jerked away, clutching her right hand. Moaning softly, she retreated again and soon cowered on the floor beside the toppled bronze lion. Light still glowed softly from her left hand. I was astonished.

Keeping one eye on the Lady, I hurried to Gerick. Blood saturated his shirt and his bare left arm, oozing slowly from a wound in his shoulder close to his collarbone. A narrow leather belt and a wad of wet, bloody cloth hung tangled uselessly about his upper arm and his neck.

I touched his right arm. His entire right side spasmed sharply, but his eyes did not open and his trembling continued unabated. His skin was clammy. Reason told me to be frightened of the one who had wrecked the universe, but reason was upside down and inside out.

When the Gate fire went out, I had expected to die with it. But the uproar had been only beginning. Throughout the long hours in the dark, as the earth rumbled and groaned, as every deafening crash above my head threatened the end of all things, a certain warmth had spread from my head to my feet, a strength that held me together inside, an assurance that if I could just endure, the world would not collapse. Only now was I left cold and empty and truly afraid.

As I slit Gerick's soggy shirt, peeled the flap away from the sticky wound, and replaced the wad of cloth and the belt to keep it snug, Ven'Dar approached the princess. He moved slowly and crouched a few steps away as if not to frighten her. She looked mainly at the floor, only glancing at Gerick now and then.

"So we are not entirely incapable of sorcery," said the prince softly, taking her hand and examining it before laying it back in her lap. "Lady, what's happened? What did he do to you?"

"They were dying. I broke them and they were dying and I'm so sorry, so sorry. He"—she drew her arms tight and curled her legs underneath her, nodding her head toward Gerick—"held them. Loved them. Saved them. Don't let him die. He carried me through the wall."

"Who was dying?" said Ven'Dar. "I need to understand."

Though he had not raised his voice, she flinched and wrapped her arms about the bronze lion's neck, burying her face in her sleeves so we could scarcely hear her. "The worlds. Everyone. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I wanted to make things right. Don't be angry. Please don't punish me. They kept screaming and I wanted to silence them. But I just made it worse and worse. They won't stop screaming and Papa won't come."

"My lord, she's—"

"I see it." He laid his hand gently on her shoulder. "No, Lady, we're not angry with you. And there'll be no punishments. We'll find someone to care for you."

D'Sanya's light faded away, but the crystal wall still glowed faintly, as if it retained some memory of the white gleams. Ven'Dar walked over and touched it, snatching his hand back immediately. He examined its entire length, peering into its glassy depths, probing its cracks and crevices and smooth faces, finding nowhere he could rest even a fingertip on its surface. Worry had ground channels in his brow, but the reflection of the crystal wall revealed a growing curiosity on his countenance, not despair.

"I don't know what to believe," he said. "This is wholly unknown to me, and yet . . . But I cannot linger here. We must learn what's happened to the rest of the world."

He pulled a kerchief from his pocket and dabbed at blood that leaked from a bruised corner of his mouth. After stuffing the stained kerchief away, he held his hands out in front of him, turning them to one side and then another as if they were some oddments he'd picked up in the market.

"I feel so strange," he said. "None of the awareness of power I've had since I can remember. No sense of connection to the world. I can see nothing through this wall. I can't bear to touch it, yet it is not pain that repels my hand, but something more profound than enchantment. I can't say what. And I feel neither dead nor mad nor . . . empty … as I felt at first. Only different." He met my gaze, face alight with a hint of bleak humor. "Well, shall we see, then?"

A brilliant white light flared out from his hands, almost blinding me.

"Hand of Vasrin!" he said, as the crystal wall took fire with his light. Pale green, rose, blue, and yellow danced through the peaks, facets, and crevices of the wall. "I scarcely gave it a thought!"

He closed his eyes, narrowed his brow and cocked his head as if he were listening. "What's that? I hear . . ." His eyes popped open. He grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet. "We must get Gerick away from here. I don't know how to judge him, but others are coming in search of the Destroyer, and until we understand what's happened . . ."

"Where can we take him, my lord?"

"Let me try . . ." He pressed his hands together at his forehead and then spread them wide, and a portal gaped before us, revealing what appeared to be a plain, tidy bedchamber. Ven'Dar's jaw dropped. "So fast. I've never— Come, let's get him up."

Ven'Dar bearing his shoulders, I his feet, we carried Gerick through the portal and laid him on the narrow bed. Ven'Dar's complexion was flushed, but I didn't think the exertion of the move had caused his heightened color. Gerick was not so very heavy.

The prince gave Gerick a quick examination: head, arms, legs, back, and bleeding shoulder. He threw the wadded bloody shirt on the floor. "Though he's lost blood, the wound doesn't seem all that severe. All other injuries seem older."

Besides the bed and a scuffed wooden chest, the room held only a bare table, two chairs, a well-stocked bookshelf, and a patterned rug of green and yellow. Ven'-Dar's hands quivered as he rummaged in the chest and pulled out a faded blanket of brown and yellow stripes and a clean linen handkerchief.

He tied the handkerchief around Gerick's shoulder. "I'll send someone with food and wine. I doubt I can find a Healer, even if— But I'll send medicine at least. Bandages." His eyes raced over Gerick's huddled form. Reaching down, he yanked a knife from Gerick's boot. He shrugged as he stuffed it into my hand. "Am I right to assume that you're willing to stay here with him?"

I didn't like his air of excitement or the hint of a smile peeking out of his untrimmed beard as he spread the striped blanket over Gerick. Such reactions seemed an unsupportable frivolity in this precarious hour. "As I said before, my lord, if he's a Lord of Zhev'Na, then we're all in a stew. . . ."

". . . and if he is not… if the Lady has spoken some truth in her madness . . . then perhaps we find ourselves at a beginning, not an end. I'm beginning to think that's possible. I'm hearing things . . . sensing things . . . more every moment, even with so much uncertainty, such devastation. . . ." He straightened up, shook his head, and blew out a long breath. "But we've some anxious hours ahead, and if we're to protect him, I must get back before someone detects me here. This house is quite secure, this room more so. Keep him here if you can. As soon as I learn anything more, I'll speak with you, if you'll permit. . . ."

"Of course, my lord. I just … I can't mind-speak myself."

"I'd say you'd best not assume anything, at this point. Everything's changed." For a moment his face was distracted, as if he heard something else in the room. When he looked up at me again, his eyes had taken on a new spark, the web of fine lines about them smiling, though his bruised lips did not. "I feel young, Jen. I feel new."

Prince Ven'Dar stepped through the portal and it closed behind him.

What did he mean by that? Of course, everything was changed. I felt tired. I felt confused.

I moved across the room to the window. Proximity to Gerick seemed to garble my thoughts, and there was little I could do for him anyway. Hurt's ease, my mother's purification spell, needed three pure elements to create it. I didn't know where I could find anything clean or pure in this whole blighted universe.

Outside the tall window it was day, though billowing fog left the sun a gray disk as it hovered over a ghostly horizon—west, certainly, from the shape of it. Had the world truly spun a complete revolution since I'd stood in the colonnade and watched D'Sanya ride out of the palace? But then who would expect time to make sense? The Bridge had fallen, and the earth had shaken for so long my teeth felt loose in my head.

We seemed to be on the third or fourth floor of a large house. Below the window spread a wide lawn, hedges, and a long, low building painted white with a fenced yard behind it—a stable, perhaps. I yanked up the stiff old sash, stuck my head out, and inhaled . . . and started coughing. Smoke, not fog.

The city was quiet now, as it had not been those endless hours ago when Ven'Dar had made a portal to take us from Skygazer's Needle into the palace. By the time he had found loyal men to reinforce the weaknesses Gerick had revealed to me, the Zhid had brought up a ram to smash the palace gates. A few had made it past the walls and the enchantments and were battling the defenders. If an entire day had passed, then who had won the battle for Avonar? The silence and smoke shivered along my back. Perhaps everyone was dead.

Behind me, the bed creaked. I scraped my arm on the window frame in my hurry to look around.

Eyes still closed, Gerick had rolled to his side, clutching the blanket tight around his neck. His trembling shook the small bed and the floor. The striped blanket slipped slowly to the floor, exposing his sodden boots and breeches.

I felt helpless. What had he done to himself with his monstrous magics?

Idiot! This isn't enchantment or madness. He's lost a vat of blood, has likely not eaten or slept for two days, and is soaking wet . Enough to deplete anyone, even if he'd not just expended magical power unseen in ages of the world. He was freezing.

• I dragged off his boots and leggings and threw the blanket back over him. As I dug in the chest through books and bundles and spilled sonquey tiles in search of blankets and dry clothes, I tried to think what I might possibly say were he ever to wake up. Is it part of your devilish scheme to plant conviction of your innocence in my head along with your messages, your soul, and whatever else you see fit to put there? What perversion makes me so sure of you, even after you've broken the world? I hate this madness you've put in me, when I know I should put a knife in your heart again, and leave it this time. Tell me what, in Vasrin's mighty shaping, you've done to the world. To me .

The chest yielded only a man's linen—worn, but clean. No other clothes. No more blankets. I returned to the bed, and yanked and tugged the bedclothes trapped underneath him until I could flop the thick, slightly damp quilt and linen sheet over the top of the striped blanket. After a quick glance at his face to confirm he was yet insensible, I reached underneath the bedclothes to fumble with the waist buttons on his breeches.

A cold hand clamped around my wrist, twisting just enough that I was forced to let go of his clothes, kneel down beside the bed, and look him in the eyes—deep brown eyes, open pathways to a soul filled with painful questions.

"F . . . f . . . first things first." His teeth were chattering. "T . . . t . . . tell me what I am, Jen. Please. You always see the truth."

One might have thought the battle fires had reached this room and set my skin ablaze. Before answering, I retrieved my hand and sat back on my heels, putting slightly more distance between us so I could breathe. He relinquished my appendage without argument, but not so my eyes.

"I don't know what you are," I said. "The Bridge is no more. The Gate's gone dark. Some kind of barrier— crystal or glass—exists in its place. As to the world . . . the war … I don't know that either. Ven'Dar and I are alive, and we're not Zhid. For the moment, he is capable of using power. That's something at least. The prince says that others live. The Lady survived, but seems . . ."

He nodded, his serious expression unchanged. "Truth broke her. I should have let you face her long ago."

Unable to comprehend his meaning, I could not remember what I was saying. "I don't know any more to tell you. Someone's bringing food and medicine. We'll look at your shoulder."

"Just cold now." He hunched his quivering shoulders and averted his eyes. "Thank you … for believing."

"But I didn't—"

"Felt it the whole time. Remembered what you said; didn't hold back."

So he had used my advice to destroy the Bridge. I wanted to throw something, to explode something. But all I did was yell at him. "How could you do it? I defended you! Yes, I believed in you, but I don't know why, and I still believe in you, but I think I must be mad or corrupt, a traitor to everything and everyone I've ever cared about. Tell me why you did it!"

He swung his legs around to the side of the bed, set his bare feet on the floor, and sat up, chin drooping on his chest as he gathered the bedclothes around him. His eyelids sagged as his violent shaking eased into gentler tremors. For a few moments, I thought he had passed out and might topple onto the floor. I dared not touch him.

After a brief time, he heaved a deep, tremulous sigh. Shrugging off the blankets, he reached for the muddy leggings and boots I had left by the bed.

"I did what I believed necessary," he said, pulling the black hose over his legs with hands that were increasingly steady. "But I don't have time to explain right now. They're going to come for me—the Dar'Nethi, the Preceptors . . . whoever's left. I'll let them do whatever they want with me. I'll help, if they'll allow it… if I can. But I must get to the hospice first. My father's dying."

"Are you going to play Lord again? Have you forgotten the firestorm you brought down on Avonar? The Zhid legions that stretch like an ocean all the way to the borders? How do you expect—?"

His glance halted my accusations as decisively as he cinched the buckle on his left boot. His face shone like the horizon just before the sun pushes itself above its boundary. "Just now I ordered the Zhid to stop the attack. No one answered me."

I caught my breath. "Then the avantir is—"

The door slammed inward, bouncing against the wall. Gerick dived into the curtained alcove behind the bed. I had a chair in my hand before the tall man in the black, hooded cloak could drop two bulging leather saddlebags to the floor and stretch his long arms out to either side.

"It's all right. Just me. Everything's all right." He shook off his hood. Paulo.

He caught the chair before it crashed to the floor, and when I flung my arms about his waist and burst out crying like a ridiculous schoolgirl, he wrapped his long arms about me and allowed me to dampen his apparel even more than it was already. "I guess it's been a rough night for everyone."

After a moment I felt the need to regain a bit of self-respect and reassure Paulo that I hadn't suddenly misinterpreted our friendship. Though my arms seemed unwilling to relax their hold, I swallowed sharply and forced my voice even. "Aimee's well?"

"She's off to the palace with Je'Reint and Ven'Dar. You just can't imagine what all she can do." No worries that his attentions had been diverted from brave, insightful Aimee. The new note of assurance in his admiration, an air of privileged knowledge, almost had me smiling.

He waved at the empty bed. "Where's—?"

"Knew you'd get our backs—you and that excessively cheerful lady."

The voice from the alcove spun Paulo out of my grasp and brought a grin to his face. "Knew you'd get into trouble without me. But, demons of the deep, I never thought . . ."

Paulo's smile faded as Gerick kept his distance. Gerick's expression had lost its luster as well. Though his words expressed genuine relief, his body was wary.

Paulo hesitated. "You're all right? You look a right bloody mess. I heard she stabbed you."

"A small thing." Gerick waved at his shoulder halfheartedly. "They've sent you to fetch me, haven't they?"

Paulo breathed deep. "I offered to speak with you. There's a number of folk downstairs waiting. Wicked upset. Needing to understand what's happened and why and what's going to happen next."

"I've got to ride north first, Paulo. My father—"

"You can't go. There's some down below as want to bring this house down on your head no matter who's with you or what questions will never be answered. There's some as would have you trussed up in so much dolemar it would look like plate armor, and locked away in Feur Desolй with your mind like frog spit before you take two breaths more. You set foot in a direction they don't like and they'll do it, no matter what you might do to them in return. Ven'Dar has pledged his word that before the next hour passes you'll answer for what you've done without so much as bending a hair on another man's head."

"Ven'Dar had no right to do that." Gerick turned away from us to face the window. He ran his fingers through his matted hair. "If my father isn't dead already, then he's got only hours left. I've killed him, Paulo, and I've got to tell him why. I've got to tell him what I learned . . . what I felt . . . how I tried to make things right even though I've destroyed everything he fought for. I'll do whatever they want after, but he has to know before he goes."

Paulo walked up behind him. Closer than anyone else in the world would dare go just now. "He knows, my lord … my good lord. If he felt you inside him—holding on to him, protecting him, giving him strength to survive that upheaval last night—the same way I felt it, the same way Aimee did—"

"Yes! That's exactly what I felt," I blurted out.

Paulo dipped his head toward me as he continued. "—then he understands all he needs to know. He doesn't want you dead, and he'd hate for these good people to bear the burden of killing the one who saved them after all."

Long moments passed. Gerick's shoulders were still.

"It's not fair," he said at last. "My head must already be filled with frog spit. The only morsel of power I managed to scrape together here at the end of everything, and I used it to test the avantir. I could have used it to tell him goodbye."